Red Herrings

by Tim Heald

  ‘Anybody else who moves gets a dose of the same,’ said Dandiprat.

  Nobody moved.

  The siren was much closer now.

  ‘Don’t you think we ought to move?’ asked Felix. His voice was unnaturally high-pitched. ‘I don’t think it would look too good if they found us in here. Especially if you’ve shot the doctor dead.’

  ‘It’s too late now,’ said Bognor. ‘It makes no odds whether they find you here or anywhere else. You’ve blown it. The evidence is too conclusive. You’ve had it no matter what happens.’

  Suddenly the door of the vestry to Bognor’s right crashed open and the Bengali-Oxford accents of the swami could be heard calling on everyone to put their hands up and their guns down. Seconds later gunfire erupted from both sides of the church. Bognor dived down on to the floor of the pew, pulling Samantha with him.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ whimpered Samantha.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Bognor, putting a protective arm around her and pulling her to him.

  Which was how, a few minutes later, Monica, Mrs Bognor, found them.

  ‘You can come out now,’ she said. ‘Coast is clear. Guy is here with hordes of fuzz armed to the teeth with stun grenades and Armalites; and the swami’s lot have come with an armoury too. I think Guy’s turning a blind eye to that. But not, Sammy dear, to you. You, I rather gather, are under arrest for something to do with indecency or running a brothel. Likewise your friend Amanda Mandible – who, according to Guy, was picked up in the middle of a black mass conducted by none other than our very own vicar, the Reverend Branwell Larch. The congregation consisted entirely of American attorneys from Tennessee. Remarkable.’

  Chapter 8

  By the following morning all those in a position to ‘sing’ had done so. In every case, like Samantha, they had delivered the simple message that everyone but them was guilty. Essentially it transpired that the dirty words were by Miss Carlsbad, and the naughty pictures by Damian Macpherson of Samantha and other uninhibited ladies supplied for the most part by Lady Amanda Mandible who also laid on stately settings for orgies. Rude food was cooked and presented by the Pickled Herring; grace was said by the Reverend Branwell Larch; managerial skills, frilly underwear and ‘sexual aids’ (including manacles, whips and face masks) were Peregrine Contractor’s province. He, together with the late Brian Wilmslow, had cooked the books.

  The Pickled Herring boys did grudgingly admit to two attempts on Simon’s life as well as being accessories in the demise of Wilmslow. The principal culprits, however, were generally agreed to be Doc Macpherson and Dandiprat. Macpherson was, in the time honoured phrase, ‘dead on arrival’ at Whelk General Hospital. It was agreed that death was due to shooting by Dandiprat. There were, of course, witnesses. The doctor was not spoken well of even in death. He had supplied all drugs, from cannabis to cocaine and from hash to heroin. He, with Dandiprat, was unanimously agreed to be the main murderer of Wilmslow and Sir Nimrod Herring. He would almost certainly have got life had not Dandiprat given him death instead.

  Dandiprat himself was the most bitter pill. The bogus butler had done a successful bunk. Somehow, in the confusion, he had managed to escape. Dodging among the gravestones he had reached Samantha’s Mercedes unharmed and driven off at breakneck speed in the direction of Whelk. (Like any good butler he always carried a set of his mistress’ car keys – just in case.) The Mercedes had been found abandoned on the outskirts of town and there the trail ended. There were regular trains to London and Guy believed he might have caught one of these. Three cars were reported stolen during the night. Any or all of them might have been taken by Dandiprat.

  ‘He won’t get far,’ averred Chief Inspector the Earl of Rotherhithe next morning at Herring Hall. ‘We’ve put out a red alert at all Channel ports and the international airports. There’s a house to house search going on in Whelk as we speak. It’s not possible for him to elude the net. This is 1985. You can’t just disappear into thin air in 1985.’

  ‘What about Lord Lucan?’ asked Bognor mournfully.

  ‘That was years ago,’ said Guy. ‘This is 1985. Different ball game.’

  Talking of ball games, they were walking along the gravel path towards the real tennis court where the swami was to introduce Bognor to the mysteries of that ancient and holy game.

  ‘He’s supposed to be a master of disguise,’ said Bognor, uncomfortable in a set of whites borrowed from the swami. The swami, though stoutish, was much much shorter than Bognor and the clothes were tight. ‘If you ask me he’ll surface in Uruguay in a year or two running a rest home for retired Nazis.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Guy seriously, as they entered the tennis court and said good morning to the swami who had just finished an energetic hour with his private professional, a young Australian from Hampton Court. The swami was sweating.

  ‘Stop worrying about Mr Dandiprat,’ said the swami. ‘He’ll turn up, just like any other bad penny ha’penny.’ He laughed immoderately for this was a joke. Parkinson had inadvertently triggered the answer to Sir Nimrod’s clue. Monica had found the definition of Dandiprat in the dictionary. It was a coin of Henry VII’s reign and it was this discovery which had set her charging off with the swami in search of her threatened spouse.

  In the event it had proved to be a clue too late but it was gratifying to have solved it at last.

  Bognor accepted a racket from the professional as he came off the court and joined the swami who was standing near a line marked five at the service end.

  ‘He’s probably hiding in some ditch,’ said the swami, beaming up at the high balcony above the wall at the far end. A gaggle of beautiful brides were leaning against the balustrade and watching play. They were all colours and shapes but mostly very beautiful. Bognor noticed Blessed Orchid smiling beatifically at one end of the row.

  ‘Take your eyes off my brides,’ said the swami, ‘and pay attention. This is the ball. Same size as a lawn tennis ball but underneath the felt it is hard as a cricket ball. Feel.’

  Bognor did as he was told, leaned close towards the swami and said, ‘Don’t look now, but that bride standing on Blessed Orchid’s left isn’t a bride at all. Unless I’m a swami too it’s none other than our friend Dandiprat cleverly made up and wearing a sheet. Perfect disguise.’

  The swami was unversed in the ways of the intelligence services, incapable of the cool, implacable response to sudden disaster and dramatic revelation. He looked straight up at the bride on Orchid’s left and gasped. ‘My God, you’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s Dandiprat.’

  Dandiprat realised he had been spotted and reached immediately under his robe for the gun which Bognor knew must be there. But the swami was too quick for him. With a lazy graceful swing of the racket he struck the ball high up towards the gallery. Dandiprat was still struggling to extricate the revolver when the ball struck him full in the chest and knocked him to the ground. In seconds Blessed Orchid had the Mafioso butler in a full nelson, and Chief Inspector the Earl of Rotherhithe was mounting the stairs three at a time in order to make the final arrest.

  ‘Good shot, Bhagwan!’ said Bognor appreciatively as the audience applauded. ‘That’s what I call real tennis.’

  Preview of the next in the Simon Bognor Mystery series

  Brought to Book

  Before retiring for the night, Vernon Hemlock pours a brandy, lights a cigar, and takes a look at his cache of pornography. Far more than a wad of dirty magazines stashed under a mattress, this is a collection of some of the world’s finest erotica, dating back as far as a dirty doodle drawn by da Vinci. The millionaire publisher is perusing the Swedish section when the shelves begin to move. By the time he notices the walls closing in on him, it is too late. Vernon Hemlock has been flattened by filth.

  This would not normally bother Simon Bognor, but he fears it will be bad news for his book deal. A stridently lazy Board of Trade investigator, Bognor stumbled his way into a handshake deal with Hemlock to write a kind of memoir. With his
publisher dead, Bognor has no choice but to find the man who squashed the king of porn and confront his own greatest fear: hard work.

  Chapter 1

  Vernon Hemlock caressed the bulbous base of his brandy balloon with almost as much lascivious pleasure as he devoted to the sublimely erotic bottom of his mistress, Romany Flange. The grey-blue coil of smoke from his enormous Romeo y Julieta eddied towards the deliciously rude ceiling painted for the house’s original owner in 1864. Hemlock gazed wistfully at the sportive nymphs, shepherds and satyrs frolicking about a Tuscan countryside in which every piece of topography seemed to be a phallic symbol of one kind or another.

  Vernon Hemlock smiled. It had been a good day at the office. The six-monthly sales conference of Big Books PLC, the publishing giant he had created with a ten thousand pound loan from his old chum Barrington-Fingest, was an occasion of ever-increasing self-satisfaction. Big Books grew bigger and bigger. As the books got bigger the cheques got bigger and so did the American sales and the film options and the enormous co-produced TV series. Hemlock published fewer and fewer titles every year, but such titles! Today had seen the announcement of The Royal Family Cookbook, a certain bestseller for Christmas with the astonishing innovation of edible pages. Biochemists in Taiwan had come up with a revolutionary form of rice paper which could be impregnated with whatever flavour you wanted. An edible Royal Family! Hemlock purred.

  Tonight as so often he decided to take a last look downstairs in the library basement where he kept his magnificent collection of erotica and pornography. He was not certain whether he would be bedding Romany tonight or whether he would have to make do with his wife but whatever was in store it always helped to have a last salivating linger over the goodies in the basement. He rather fancied a look at the Scandinavian section.

  He took the lift to the basement, inserted the plastic card which was the only way to get through the computer-controlled security doors and swayed over to the stack marked ‘S’. ‘S’ was for ‘Sade’, and for ‘Sweden’ and ‘Swiss Army Knife’; for ‘Sachertorte’ and ‘Syphilis’ and ‘Scrotum’ and ‘Sarcophagus’ and, indeed, for ‘Sex’ itself. There was more in ‘S’ even than in ‘F.’

  The entire collection was willed to the Getty Museum in California. Perhaps it should have gone to the nation, but if the nation had it it would be kept on locked shelves whereas in California it would be available to all. Besides, Hemlock relished the thought of the nation’s predicament in having to decide whether or not an export licence would be granted. It might be filth but it was unique filth and priceless, too. There was a Leonardo cartoon of mind-boggling ingenuity; a Picasso of geometric perfection and physical impossibility; a Laughing Cavalier who saw a joke unsuspected by anyone who knew only the original; a Constable in which the beasts of the field were as bestial as Henry VIII in Holbein’s extraordinarily irreverent portrayal The Monarch at Rest in the Dedans.

  Hemlock exhaled and licked his lips, then turned the wheel to prise the shelves apart. He had always had a weakness for this sort of thing ever since his first glimpse of Health and Efficiency on Platform 3 at Bristol Temple Meads so many years before. He was one of nature’s voyeurs. It was what made him such a successful publisher.

  The floor was shiny tiled and his slippered feet made a sibilant lounge lizard sound as they greased along the newly opened aisle. At Stradivarius he paused. There was something extraordinarily titillating about erotic stringed instruments of the seventeen hundreds. He removed the bulky vellum volume and licked his lips again.

  He was so engrossed that he never heard the turn of the screw, or noticed that the shelving was starting to move together again. It was only when his brandy glass toppled, spilling VSOP over a naked nun playing the cello, that he realised something was wrong. The shelving was power-assisted so that within seconds he was trapped. For a moment there was a pause, and from what seemed a long way off he heard laughter, muffled by volume upon volume of priceless erotica. The tip of his cigar caught the edge of the page, which started to smoulder, but his arms were now trapped at his side and he could not move to put out the fire. Coughing now he began to call out but the shelves ground on, tightening their grip remorselessly to the accompaniment of the distant laughter.

  The fire triggered the smoke detectors about half an hour later, by which time it had gained a strong enough hold to effectively destroy the entire collection. Luckily it was well insured. Oddly enough it was not until morning that a thoughtful police constable opened up the shelves marked ‘S’ and discovered Vernon Hemlock of Big Books PLC.

  He was, of course, extremely dead.

  Chapter 2

  Simon Bognor and his wife Monica were guests at Hemlocks that night. Not that Bognor was what you might call ‘bookish’. Not in the modern sense. Apart from one or two whodunits and other ‘genre’ novels he eschewed contemporary fiction, leaving it to his wife Monica, a devotee of the East Anglian school of writing which drove Bognor into terrible rages. Bognor believed that the novel had died at around the outbreak of the Great War.

  Occasionally Monica would encourage him to read something safe and old fashioned like the latest Amis but after a few pages Bognor would give up, muttering, and return to Dickens or Mrs Gaskell. He was none too keen on non-fiction, either. ‘If it’s true it’s boring; if it’s not boring it’s bound to be lies.’ He was becoming curmudgeonly in middle-age, only saved from being a tiresome fogey himself by his contempt and distaste for those who really were members of that peculiar brotherhood. ‘Teenage pensioners’, Bognor called them with all the middle’s hatred of extremes.

  It was this hostile attitude towards modern literature which had led Parkinson to propose that Bognor should prepare the Board of Trade’s preliminary working (mauve) paper on ‘The Publishing Industry’.

  ‘This should force you into the twentieth century, laddie,’ Parkinson had said, announcing the project. ‘I want no leaf unturned. A Good Book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit and nowadays Good Books are Big Bucks. I want none of your mimsy Oxford college nonsense about aesthetic values. This is a commercial business. No claptrap about starving novelists in Bloomsbury attics. No Times Literary Supplement arty-fartiness. We need to know about the sort of books people read, Bognor. Not pseudo-intellectual sociology lecturers. Real people.’

  ‘I see,’ Bognor had said, biting his lip dolefully. ‘I see’ had been his standard response to Parkinson ever since he had first joined the Board of Trade so many years before.

  And there was another project not known to Parkinson. Now that Bognor was in his forties, contemporaries of his seemed to have risen to positions of eminence and even power. One, a porcine economist called Weinstube, was a junior minister in the new Socialist Coalition Government. His curious task was concerned with propaganda and the rewriting of history. After only a few weeks in office Weinstube had come up with a long list of utterly uncommercial titles such as The People’s Friend—The Role of the Job Centre in Post-Industrial Society and a two-volume life of Patrick Gordon Walker. One such project was a history of the Board of Trade. Meeting Bognor at an Apocrypha College Society Dinner he had, after port, asked Bognor if he would take on the volume dealing with the Special Investigations Department, where, God help him, Bognor had worked all his adult life.

  Weinstube might have been a silly man but he wasn’t stupid. His silver tongue had secured considerable sums of government money for his department and its publications. He had also negotiated a number of deals with Vernon Hemlock. These were unorthodox and the only certainty about them was that they reflected personal financial credit on the two principals. This was arranged through carefully selected third parties acting through a discreet bank in Liechtenstein and was reckoned by both Weinstube and Hemlock to be foolproof. Thus it was – up to a point and in a manner of speaking – that Bognor became a Big Book author. Not that Hemlock would be publishing under his Big Book imprint. That would be wholly inappropriate. The almost certainly unsalable Weinstube bo
oks would be published by Aspen and Larch, the small subsidiary house Hemlock had acquired for just such contingencies. Aspen and Larch dealt in rubbish of various kinds and operated mainly as a tax loss. The publishing industry was full of Aspens and Larches.

  ‘I suppose they’ll have to call off the sales conference,’ said Bognor, peering morosely out to sea. He and Monica were taking a modest constitutional along the front after breakfast. It was noticeable that Hemlock’s demise had had very little effect on their appetites. Nor on anyone else’s.

  ‘I doubt it.’ Monica yawned. ‘Whatever time did those perfectly bloody fire alarms go off?’

  ‘About half an hour after I nodded off,’ said Bognor. ‘Worst possible time. Just when you’re into deep sleep. It could be quite dangerous.’ Bognor had been reading an article about sleep patterns in the ‘specialists’ page in the Daily Telegraph – the page which was always illustrated with pictures of building blocks and arrows. It looked like the instruction manual for a build-it-yourself Finnish picnic table which still lay half-constructed in the Bognors’ garden shed back home.

  ‘You were snoring. I was still asleep.’

  ‘Lucky you!’ Bognor spoke feelingly. ‘That means you’ve had more rest than I’ve had. I’ve actually had a minus quantity of sleep, being woken up like that.’ He flexed his paunch and turned inland, breathing deeply. ‘I must say I do like the seaside,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t like Byfleet-next-the-Sea.’ Monica spoke with the asperity of an insulted and quite exhausted wife but her husband seemed not to notice.

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ he said, ‘I think it’s enchanting.’ He gazed along the promenade, absorbing the shuttered soft-drink stalls. the bolted bathing huts, the upturned dinghies, the tarpaulin over the stacked deckchairs which flapped in the winter wind ‘Where else in the world would you get this sense of desolation’ “Listen! you hear the grating roar of pebbles which the wave … er … te-tum … and fling … until …”’