Herring in the Smoke

by L. C. Tyler

‘Only in the most general way.’

  ‘So, what’s he been doing for the past twenty years, George?’

  ‘Teaching English. Copy-writing. Living the dream.’

  ‘He just chucked in writing books and went to eat lotus flowers in Laos?’

  ‘That’s the story.’

  ‘For twenty years? Never a letter home?’

  ‘Not even to check on his royalty statements.’

  ‘It doesn’t ring true.’

  ‘It’s what he told me. Look, he had a decent income from the television series and from the books he’d already written. He knew the money would be waiting for him when he wanted it. He had found fame. Maybe, in short, he felt he’d achieved what he set out to achieve. Maybe he decided he didn’t want to write any more. Maybe he simply liked it out there. From where I’m sitting it looks pretty good.’

  I looked at him. ‘Where were you sitting, just out of interest, the night he was killed?’

  ‘At home. We had a few friends round to dinner. They left just before midnight. Roger was killed around 11.30, I think?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘There you are, then. Whatever minor disagreements Roger and I might have had, we had resolved them. And, more to the point, I have a watertight alibi.’

  ‘Good for you, George. You’re probably one of the few people who does.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ‘You are ignoring,’ said Elsie, ‘the immense value of what I have discovered.’

  ‘There is,’ I said, ‘the small question of legality. The police said, stay out of Roger’s flat. That meant don’t go in it and, incidentally, don’t remove stuff that you take a fancy to.’

  ‘Yes, but there is also the large question of what I found out. I don’t think Roger Vane went anywhere near Laos.’

  ‘He went to Thailand. That’s undisputed. And it’s pretty close.’

  ‘You know what I mean, Ethelred. I think, after Thailand, he went somewhere else entirely. Have the police found any trace of his stay in Vientiane?’

  ‘He was there under a false name, which we don’t yet know,’ I said.

  ‘In other words, they haven’t.’

  ‘No. But they may.’

  ‘Or they may not.’

  ‘You can’t be certain,’ I said.

  ‘I can be more certain than you can.’

  Conversations like this with Elsie could, I knew, go on for some time.

  ‘What’s your theory, then?’ I asked.

  ‘You said Slide was recruiting for MI6. What if he recruited Vane? What if Vane’s disappearance twenty years ago was actually organised by MI6 – that they needed him to vanish?’

  ‘Why would they need that?’

  ‘All right – maybe that’s not what happened. I do think that Cynthia knows what he’s been doing, though.’

  ‘Hence the giant and unexplained payout?’

  ‘Hence the giant and unexplained payout. One million smackeroos. And Vane was desperately trying to get his hands on more cash, so maybe she was still squeezing him.’

  ‘I suppose she hasn’t returned your call?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I tried her mother again – she was insistent that she hadn’t seen her. Do you think she could be in danger?’ Elsie asked. ‘I mean, if she knows this thing, whatever it is.’

  ‘Roger Vane had received some sort of threat,’ I said. ‘Cynthia hadn’t, as far as we know. The fact that she pitched up right at the murder scene is odd and so is the fact she’s not returning calls. But there could be all sorts of reasons why she doesn’t want to be contacted.’

  ‘And the police are looking for her?’

  ‘Yes. Also Roy Johnston. And the hen party. And the man in the leather jacket.’

  ‘Have they found any of them?’ she asked.

  ‘Roy Johnston is still lying low somewhere. But the hen party was less concerned about not being noticed. It was simply a matter of asking round the various bars and clubs until somebody recognised them. To cut a long story short, none of the girls saw anything. But they were so off their faces that most didn’t even remember going down that alleyway. A couple of them actually said they couldn’t have gone that way because they’d never go down it after dark – there have been muggings there before.’

  ‘Leather Jacket?’

  ‘They’re still working on him. They tried digitally enhancing the best shot of him, but it was nobody I recognised. Still, as a witness he was closer to the action than anyone and not obviously drunk. He may have seen something that the girls missed. But the prime suspect in my view remains Dr Jonathan Slide. He was at a bar in the centre of Chichester. The barman remembers him making a call at one point, but didn’t overhear what he said. He doesn’t recall what time Slide left. Maybe as early as eleven-thirty – he wasn’t paying much attention.’

  ‘Then Slide left in time to kill Roger?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Probably.’

  ‘And we know that Jonathan Slide phoned Roger …?’ asked Elsie.

  ‘Yes. Twice that day. Probably including at least one death threat.’

  ‘So, in short, Slide could have lured him to the alleyway and killed him. But why? We know Roger treated him badly, but that was years before.’

  ‘There’s another possibility,’ I said. ‘It may be that Roger Vane arranged the meeting in the alleyway so that he could kill Slide.’

  ‘And it all went very wrong?’

  ‘It’s possible. It would at least explain why Roger Vane seems to have willingly gone to his death with a man who had already threatened to kill him.’

  ‘So, if they had both been working for MI6 …’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. But I admit, if we knew what he had been doing for the past twenty years, then it might be clearer why Roger Norton Vane left the mean streets of London, only to be murdered in an alleyway in the middle of the remarkably safe and law-abiding city of Chichester.’

  ‘So, what next?’ asked Elsie. ‘It feels like a bit of a dead end.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘while you’ve been blundering around in Vane’s old flat, I have been going back through my notes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I’m going to see Ogilvie and Davies again.’

  ‘So that they can patronise you and pull the wool over your eyes?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not this time. This time will be slightly different.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  There were no biscuits. No coffee was on offer. Ogilvie looked at his watch pointedly.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m a little busy at present, Ethelred. I can spare you five minutes, then I really will have to ask you to leave. I have an important client coming here at eleven and I’ll need you out of the office by then.’

  ‘As you wish. I shall leave whenever you choose. You will only have to tell me when to go.’

  Ogilvie looked at me suspiciously. ‘So, what is it? Some missing detail from the biography?’

  ‘Let me put my cards on the table,’ I said. ‘You’ve lied to me, Mr Ogilvie. You’ve also treated me as an idiot. I’m used to that, of course. My agent does it all the time. But lying to me was a mistake. I have relatively few skills that are of much use to anyone, but as a crime writer I do know how to spot inconsistencies – how to make connections. That’s why it wasn’t a good idea to assume that I wouldn’t find out what was going on.’

  ‘As I said, Ethelred, I don’t have a lot of time. And since you have reminded me that you are a crime writer, let me remind you that I am a lawyer. If you have come here to slander me, or anyone else, then I would advise caution. I would advise you not to suggest anyone has been lying.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s kind of you. Let us begin with your most recent lie, then. You told me you hadn’t been in Chichester the night that Vane was killed.’

  ‘I told you that Roger Vane had asked me to go there. I don’t think I said whether I had complied or not. It didn’t seem especially relevant. If you chose
to interpret my silence as meaning I didn’t go, that is scarcely my fault. I was entirely truthful.’

  ‘You have a strange idea of what constitutes the truth. An old friend is murdered and you think it’s irrelevant that you were in the same town at the same time? I don’t think so, do you? Nor do I think, when you gave me that registration number to pass to the police, that you had forgotten you were driving another car entirely. But, to cut to the chase, you were caught on CCTV in a car park in the centre of Chichester and you were making a phone call. The police have checked Roger Vane’s phone records and I know that a call was made, at about that time, from your phone to his.’

  ‘You’re right, Ethelred,’ said Ogilvie, with an unexpected display of contrition. ‘It was very wrong of me to attempt to mislead you. I apologise unreservedly. Roger had told me he was going to Chichester and wanted to meet up. So, I stopped off in Chichester and phoned him to check which hotel he was in – that’s the truth, I swear. I got no response, so I drove on to London. When I heard that Roger had been killed, I was naturally reluctant to say more than I had to. Now, perhaps, having cleared that up …’

  ‘It wasn’t wrong to mislead me,’ I said. ‘It was stupid. As you say, the CCTV just shows you stopping and making a call. But your lying made me go back and look at my notes again. All the way through our various discussions I felt you were covering something up – something from your past and Roger’s – something that was not to your credit. Then I saw the CCTV of you … and the car. Nice motor, as they say. It’s a Jaguar, isn’t it? That was when it clicked. You’ve always liked driving, haven’t you?’

  I was watching his face very carefully. Ogilvie’s mouth was hanging open slightly, but he had no idea he was doing it.

  His phone rang. Without taking his eyes off me he picked it up. ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘Mr Somerville is here,’ I heard his secretary say.

  ‘Tell him to wait,’ said Ogilvie. ‘No, I don’t know how long I’ll be.’ He put the phone down.

  ‘I’ll go now if you wish,’ I offered. ‘You don’t have to answer the question.’

  ‘I’ve really no idea what you’re talking about,’ he replied.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ I said. ‘You also lied, in a way, about that too. You told me not to believe the story that Roger Vane had stolen a car when he was at school. You went out of your way to assure me that it was probably untrue and that I’d get sued if I used it. But you know the story as well as any other living person, don’t you? Because you were Roger Vane’s accomplice. You helped him steal the car. You were also arrested.’

  ‘What if I did? It was a very long time ago.’

  ‘It didn’t bother Roger. It might not bother most people. But they are not standing for parliament. They are not trying to assure the voters of their commitment to law and order. Of course, you got away with it at the time, but only because the school pulled rank on your behalf and prevented it ever going to court. The story wouldn’t have been about a youthful indiscretion, but about using rank and privilege to cover it all up. I would imagine your opponents at the next election would have great fun with that. As you say, the biggest majority can just evaporate if you’re not careful.’

  ‘How are you so certain?’

  ‘I wasn’t. I just said the words slowly and watched your reaction as I did it. If I can give you further advice, Mr Ogilvie, it’s that you don’t have a great future as a poker player.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean I killed Roger Vane,’ said Ogilvie.

  ‘It gives you a very strong motive. You couldn’t be sure what Roger would tell me to put in the biography and you could scarcely sue any of us if we accused you of car theft, because it would have been true. So long as nobody was sure that it really was Roger Vane, you could hope that the person concerned had no personal knowledge of the crime. Once it was clear it really was Roger, you knew you had to act. Because you knew he was just the sort of person who would enjoy watching people squirm. To save your political career, he had to be put out of the way. So, knowing Vane was in Chichester you arranged to meet him. You chose a place that you knew had some associations for him, because he boasted of losing his virginity there – something only a few people would have known …’

  ‘Oh, hold on!’ said Ogilvie. ‘I admit that it was me with Vane when he stole the car. But as for the rest of it – that’s madness. Nothing remotely like that happened. Anyway, I was scarcely the only one who was worried what Vane might say about them.’

  ‘Who else?’ I asked. ‘It might help if you told me.’

  ‘Is that your price?’ asked Ogilvie incredulously. ‘I sneak on somebody else and you let me off?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, that’s not my price. But if there was somebody with a better motive, then it can hardly hurt your cause to tell me. I notice that you were quite happy before to reveal that Dr Slide was in Selsey in the hope that that would take some of the pressure off you. So, tell me, who else had a better motive?’

  Ogilvie’s phone rang again. He ignored it.

  ‘Very well.’ Ogilvie licked his bottom lip. ‘Davies has much more cause to worry than I do. You said Vane lost his virginity in an alleyway in Chichester?’

  ‘That was with Davies?’

  ‘You bet. Again, it might have amused Vane to tell the story but Davies might have felt otherwise … Now, there’s a motive.’

  I nodded. Davies’ love of privacy was, as I have said, only too well known. No story about him was allowed out into the world until it had been meticulously groomed by his PR team. With the best will in the world, this would be a difficult one to groom.

  ‘He has an alibi for that evening,’ I said. ‘He was in his office. He said that the CCTV cameras would show that he never left the building.’

  ‘You mean the CCTV in reception?’ asked Ogilvie. ‘There’s no CCTV for his private entrance. There’s a lift straight down to his parking space.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, making a note in my book. ‘That’s very helpful. I think you should see Mr Somerville now. He’s been waiting out there for some time.’

  ‘Ethelred, you won’t repeat anything I’ve told you? I mean it was in confidence …’

  ‘I’d like to be able to do that for you,’ I said. ‘As to whether I can … the one thing I’m not going to do is to lie to you, Mr Ogilvie. It really doesn’t pay.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Lord Davies’ secretary, ‘that Lord Davies is very busy at the moment. It may be some time – some weeks, in fact – before he can see you. But if you email me and let me know what it is you wish to discuss, then I’ll let you have his response as soon as I can.’

  I adjusted the handset while I consulted the sheet of paper in front of me. ‘You might like to quote this to him,’ I said. I read the words in front of me.

  ‘I can’t possibly say that to him,’ she said.

  ‘Try it,’ I said. ‘Then ask whether he’ll see me.’

  There was a long, slow intake of breath. I heard her put the phone down and her footsteps as she walked to Davies’ office. I didn’t hear exactly what happened next but when she picked up the phone there was a puzzled tone in her voice.

  ‘He can fit you in at four-thirty,’ she said. ‘It was difficult to find you a slot, but he says he’ll be happy to discuss it then.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll be there at three,’ I said. ‘Three on the dot. If he has another meeting then, tell him to cancel it.’

  ‘I don’t think—’ she began. I didn’t hear the rest because I had hung up.

  At three o’clock I was ushered, with equal measures of suspicion and respect, into Lord Davies’ office. He waited until the door had closed before he spoke to me.

  ‘Well, Mr Tressider, you have a nerve, I must say. After all the help I’ve given you with your damned book, you dare to come in here and try to blackmail me. Just what I’d expect from your sort. No manners, no decency.’

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to see
me, Lord Davies,’ I replied. ‘It’s good of you. I know that you have a busy schedule and I’m grateful to you for fitting me in in this way. I’ll try not to take up more of your time than I have to.’

  Davies laughed. ‘All right. We’ll do it your way. It’s an enormous pleasure to see you, Ethelred. To what do I owe this honour?’

  ‘I was hoping I could get you to grass up your mates,’ I said. ‘They have already grassed you up, as I shall relate.’

  The smile left his face. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘First, however, I need to caution you that anything you say may be taken down and used in Roger Norton Vane’s forthcoming biography. Oh, and I’d prefer the truth. I’ve had enough lies to last me some time. In your case you wanted me to tell the police that they should examine the CCTV footage of reception to see when you came and went. Did you think I was stupid?’

  ‘To be perfectly frank, yes, I did. Forgive me, Mr Tressider. When you have made a lot of money yourself – and I have made a great deal of money – you tend to judge others according to how much money they’ve made. You have clearly made very little. I may have judged you harshly as a result.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’ve probably learnt more because you and your friends looked down on me than I would have done if you had treated me as an equal. I know, for example, that you had sex with Roger Norton Vane in an alleyway in Chichester – some years ago, admittedly, but it does seem to be the one he was killed in.’

  ‘Badly lit alleyways are useful for all sorts of things. Are you suggesting that there is any connection between the two you mention?’

  ‘That would be for the police to decide. You are aware, however, that I know of another connection between you and Vane.’

  ‘Why are you so sure?’

  ‘Because you agreed to see me. Had the lines meant nothing to you, you would have told your secretary to tell me to get lost. But I’d suspected for some time. The editor and salesman of Roger Vane’s pornographic poem had to be a close friend. There were only a few to choose from. Your ability as a businessman, which as you imply is considerable, made you an obvious choice. I thought there were some nice lines in it, by the way, though the one I quoted definitely plagiarises the Earl of Rochester’s satire on Charles the Second. In Charles’s case the comparison was with his sceptre – impressive if true.’