‘No corroboration?’
‘The friends at the club and his wife. But since he went to bed immediately and they occupy separate bedrooms, her usefulness is limited.’
‘If I understand it all correctly,’ said Amiss, ‘we’re in the interesting position that Lambie Crump was definitely murdered but there was no apparent motive for anyone doing so, while Piers Papworth or even Sharon McGregor had excellent reasons to get rid of Henry Potbury, who probably died accidentally.’
‘That’s about it.’
‘So what will you do next?’
‘What can I do except go on burrowing? I’m focusing at the moment on the trust-busting business and the money involved.’
‘Have you met the trustees yet?’
‘I had an entirely useless conversation with Lord Hogwood and Sir Augustus Adderly, both of whom are next to gaga and both of whom were busily bewailing the loss of Saint Willie. But I’m glad to report that they think you’re doing well.’
‘I should hope they do. I’ve been assiduously following in Willie’s footsteps by buttering them up at every opportunity. What did they say about the possible reduction in the powers of trustees?’
‘Just that they’re there but to serve, that they had always been guided by Crump and that when he had said it was necessary to move with the times they had been happy to go along with him since one must always be on the side of progress.’
‘Did they mention Henry?’
‘Just said he was a nice fellow who got rather hot under the collar about things and they had hoped he’d come round.’
‘Anything about the change in The Wrangler’s politics?’
‘Adderly said that Potbury had exaggerated the scale of it and it didn’t matter anyway since “we are all Blairites now”. And Hogwood kept bleating on about the necessity to bend to the call of modernity.’
‘God, they really are an awful pair of old idiots. Absolutely classic examples of gutless Great and Good Tories—the kind that would have wanted to make friends with Hitler because he couldn’t really be such a bad chap and might be cross if you argued with him. Anyway, whatever they are, they’re a fat lot of use to me or to The Wrangler and I wait impatiently to hear how Jack gets on on Monday at her first formal trustees’ meeting.’
‘See if she can do dinner afterwards,’ said Milton, as he got up to leave. ‘By then I should have talked to the solicitor in charge who’s just back from his holidays. It’ll be on me. Just agree a restaurant with Jack and let me know.’
As he opened the door, he turned back. ‘Will Rachel come?’
‘I’ll ask, but I should think she’d rather stay late at work. She’s pretty pissed off with The Wrangler.’
‘But she’s pleased about you being editor, isn’t she?’
‘She was, and in a way she still is. But she is, as she put it recently, “disappointed that I’ve taken it backwards”. And enraged that I allowed Dwight to attack one of her ministers.’
‘That’s not reasonable.’
‘It is from her perspective. I hate to admit it, Jim, and I can’t understand it, because Rachel always disliked bullshit, but she seems to have bought the rhetoric of this fucking government. She talks about vision and leadership and people power and all the rest of those awful words they use to cover up their complete absence of any genuine philosophy, principle or policy. “Compassion with a hard edge,” for Christ’s sake. All that means is that you do Tory things but claim you’re doing it because you’re good, while they did it because they were bad.’ He sighed. ‘I’m afraid the abandonment of intellectual rigour and scepticism is now afflicting even the public service.’
‘Not me so far,’ said Milton. ‘But perhaps Tewkesbury will yet convert me.’
Chapter Twenty-two
‘It was doubly unfortunate,’ wailed Amiss. ‘Vexed is not exactly the word. Try incandescent. We could have done without all this outside provocation to make things worse than they already are. I didn’t realize that taking this job was liable to require such sacrifices.’
The baroness leant across the table and patted his hand. ‘I’m proud of you, my boy. You have put principle before comfort. Under you, The Wrangler is, as the Prime Minister no doubt would put it if he weren’t on the other side, “a beacon of hope in a world of darkness”.’
‘That’s not the way Rachel’s looking at it. She thinks I’ve put Dwight Winterton before Rachel Simon because I’m thoughtless, uncaring, cowardly, bigoted and a lot of other adjectives I’d rather not repeat.’
‘She’s a silly-billy,’ said the baroness.
‘I always thought she was very easy-going,’ said Milton.
‘So did I,’ said Amiss.
‘It’s New Labour,’ said the baroness. ‘She’s been infected. It’s like a cult. She needs to be kidnapped and taken to one of those places where they re-educate the brainwashed. Would you like me to seize her and incarcerate her in St Martha’s? I could always put her in a padded cell with Plutarch. Speaking of whom…’
‘Not tonight, Jack, please. I’m worn down by personal problems.’
‘I’ll let you off tonight, but we’ll have to talk about it tomorrow. The anti-Plutarch camp is mutinying, and what she did yesterday didn’t help.’
‘Oh God, what did she do?’
‘You’re not up to hearing tonight.’ She turned to Milton. ‘Right, Jim. Get on with it. What gives from the solicitors?’
‘The trust would be very expensive—though conceivably possible—to break if all three trustees stood resolute. If one trustee backed change, the case would be slightly strengthened; two make a big difference. Three and it’s a piece of cake.’
‘Well, they’re not going to get three,’ said the baroness grimly. ‘That’s for sure.’
‘So the solicitor said. In fact, he allowed a wintry smile to crease his wintry face and said that the recalcitrant trustee was even more recalcitrant than her predecessor. “I thought her,” he said, “a rather odd choice of Lord Papworth’s. But that was before I discovered he and his son did not see eye-to-eye on the matter.”’
‘Any figures put on the price of recalcitrance?’
‘He thinks your very existence could add two hundred thousand to the costs and two years to the timescale.’
‘How interesting,’ said the baroness. ‘So that’s why Sharon McGregor offered me a hundred-thousand-pound bribe.’
‘A real bribe?’
‘Not in so many words. Sharon is a direct woman, but even she is not that brash.’
‘So how did she put it?’
‘She said she would like to make a hundred-thousand-pound donation to St Martha’s, but might not have the readies because of legal expenses. A likely tale.
‘I asked artlessly what expenses were these, and she said she was funding Piers Papworth’s assault on the trust. Then she smiled at me and said that not being a dumb Sheila I would understand her position. It seemed, she went on sweetly, a pity to waste money because some fuddy-duddies opposed making changes to a mag that could only benefit from modernization.’ The baroness took a thoughtful swig of Chablis. ‘I’ve rather gone off Sharon McGregor.’
‘I thought you liked tough and amoral broads,’ said Amiss.
‘I do, I do, but they should recognize that Jack Troutbeck is not a purchasable commodity.’
‘So it’s the end of your brief friendship?’
‘Let’s say she’s gone off me too, though only for the moment, I hope. I retain some optimism that we’ll get back together after this battle is over and make beautiful music again. After all, if she wants to climb socially, she could do worse than rope me in. She’d have a good time.’
‘Do you think she or Piers Papworth tried to bribe Henry?’ asked Milton.
‘That would have been more difficult,’ said Amiss, ‘in
that it would have been personal, whereas with Jack, because of St Martha’s, it’s not so blatant.’
‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ said Milton. ‘I think someone had a very good reason to murder Henry Potbury. I’m looking forward to a useful conversation with Miss McGregor and with young Papworth when he returns. Just one question, Jack.’
‘What?’
‘If I think it necessary with McGregor, can I mention the bribe?’
There was a silence. ‘Oh, fuck it,’ she said, when she came out of her reverie. ‘Yes, I suppose so. If it was only to do with finding fucking Lambie Crump’s murderer, I wouldn’t. But I don’t mind queering my pitch as far as the McGregor millions are concerned if it’ll help with the Henry business. We old lags must stick together. Dead or alive.’
***
‘Listen, Mr Milton, I’ve companies to buy and investments to make and nothing to do with the murder of some obscure bastards on a piddling rag.’
‘As I understand it, Miss McGregor, this is a “piddling rag” that you wish to buy.’
‘Oh sure. And when I buy it, it won’t be a piddling rag for long. It’ll be a journal of international significance.’ A faraway look came into her eye. ‘Of course, it’ll have to change. Its gotta have zap and wham and pizzazz. Maybe the name’ll have to go too. The Wrangler isn’t a name would mean much in LA or Sydney or downtown Singapore. Thing’d be to keep the spirit of The Wrangler but find another word—something like argument, combat, conflict, challenge, discord, dissent. Do you get the idea?’
‘Yes, indeed. Clearly you are serious about this, Miss McGregor. In fact, I understand that some time ago you had a management consultant in to look it over to assess the prospects for rationalization.’
‘Sure, sure. I called in Walter Bett—guy I used to sort out some bus companies. Stupid bastard came a cropper. Frightened the Abos by talking about firing everyone and replacing them with robots. Headbanger. Fired him. Robots are OK doing robots’ jobs. Different in magazines.’ She snorted. ‘Bastard just didn’t understand and he didn’t help me one bit by getting them all in such a stew.’
‘I gather that though you want The Wrangler, you’re not happy with its present legal status.’
‘That’s right. I’m not taking on a company where three old bastards well beyond their sell-by date can tell me who to hire and fire.’
She smiled dazzlingly at Milton. The crimson lipstick was as threatening as it was brilliant and matched the stunningly simple silk suit that screamed money, even to someone sartorially blind.
‘So you wanted the trust scrapped.’
‘Sure did. Scrapped or castrated—its balls broken. Don’t care if it’s there or not as long as I can do as I like.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Milton observed that Tewkesbury was gaping at Sharon McGregor like a child looking in awe at a ringmaster in a circus. He sympathized with him. It was all he could do himself to stay calm and on course. Her energy was curiously enervating.
‘I’d be grateful for your help,’ he said gently. ‘I appreciate that your interest in The Wrangler is commercial, but my job is to find out who murdered Mr Lambie Crump and possibly Mr Potbury, and I need all the help I can get. You may be able to shed some light on tensions within the paper.’
‘OK. What do you want?’
‘Perhaps you could begin at the beginning and tell me how you got to know of The Wrangler, when you thought about acquiring it, something about your relationships with people connected with the paper and how things stand now.’
She shot back her left cuff and scrutinized her diamond-encrusted Rolex. ‘OK. It’s the seventh today. Makes just four months since I went to my first dinner party in London and met Piers Papworth. We kidded about. He asked me what it was like to own half Australia. I asked him about the joys of being a belted earl. He said by the time he got to be one he wouldn’t have two pennies to rub together.
‘So I say maybe we should get married. You know, like the old tradition of rich foreign heiresses marrying English upper-class poms, though I’m better than an heiress because I have the stuff already. He says sorry, he’s married already. Points across the room to some Sheila with a face like a horse. I say why hadn’t he married money? He said he’d married some, but if he was doing it again he’d need much more to compensate for all the estate had lost through his pa being so bloody high-minded.
‘That sounds really interesting to me. It’s not often you hear about people like that. Usually people are complaining about being screwed by greedy bastards. So I ask him what he’s going on about and he tells me about The Wrangler and how his old man has spent a fortune on it because he thinks it’s his duty.’
She looked squarely at Milton. ‘Now I’ll tell you something about myself. I want to make more money, but I want to enjoy myself as well. Seems to me that a daft magazine associated with nobs might be just the right way into society here. Of course, being rich I’ll get lots of invitations, but they’ll mostly be from people who want you just for your money. You know the kind. They’re either on the fund-raising circuit or they’re after you to invest in their business. I wouldn’t mind meeting journalists and intellectuals and all those as well.
‘So next day I send for a heap of back copies of the mag, tell my lawyer to find out all about it, get a researcher on to the background and by evening I’ve decided to buy it if the business can be done with the trust. I call in Piers and tell him to get to work and he tells me he’s got no influence with the trustees. I say what about his pa and he says pa doesn’t either, and even if he did, he wouldn’t. He’s a nobleman of the old school, apparently, generally full of old-fashioned crap. But then he says if I really want to pursue it I should try going through The Wrangler’s editor, Willie Lambie Crump. “Willie,” says Piers with a wink, “might be persuadable.”
‘So Piers brings Lambie Crump along to drinks at my hotel and then bows out tactfully after half an hour. I’ve got the measure of Lambie Crump by then. He’s a sponger and he’s a dickhead, but I need him. The only question is what’s his price, and I know it can’t be used fivers: he’s too dishonestly corrupt for that. We’ve got to do it the English way and be subtle. Then he can keep feeling superior even though he’s taking the money to sell out his own paper.
‘So I talk to him about my big plans to build up a media empire. I talk about being inspired by Aussies like Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch, but say too that I know that since I’m so inexperienced in Britain I’ll need wise counsel. In fact, I say, what I really need is someone I can trust who will help me to get started and who can then be chairman of the board of this big, ambitious, expansionist company. And where better to start than The Wrangler and Lambie Crump.
‘He’s purring by now, especially when I get across the idea that this is all going to be big and money’s no object. This chairman will be my guru. He’ll be non-executive, of course: won’t have to spend much time on the job except for advising me and helping me network. I’m painting a picture of a guy who has big influence, big income, big status and big perks, and Lambie Crump’s getting orgasmic.
‘ ‘Course along with all this he’s got to keep his shabby little conscience quiet by admiring my vision and smarming that with my sensitivity and intelligence I’d be different from those other foreign proprietors from hell. “I say, my dear,” he says, “together we could be a winning team.” Kisses my hand and talks about how we’re beauty and the beast. How we’ll shake up the British press and then move in overseas. And nowhere better to start than The Wrangler, though I’ll appreciate how difficult it will be to bring the trustees on board.
‘So it’s all understood. As far as he’s concerned, he’s going to be rich and powerful if he delivers. Doesn’t have the balls to demand a written agreement, more fool him. Doesn’t realize that I’d shit on him the moment I could, because I despise people who are that eas
ily bought, especially if they’ve got no loyalty. What sort of a drongo would I be to trust someone who rats?
‘Off he goes to work on the trustees and delivers two proudly within forty-eight hours. But try as he might, he can’t get anywhere with that fat, drunken bastard Potbury. Piers tries too but there’s nothing doing. I put a private eye on to him and he reports we’ve hit a real roadblock here. Bugger’s got brains and principles and he’s honest. No sign he’s greedy for anything. Already got plenty of money to get pissed with every day, no higher ambitions: even has all the women he wants.
‘Seems we’re stymied. I tell the lawyers to get on with it as fast as possible without him. Then it gets worse, ‘cos Piers tells me Potbury and old man Papworth are now in cahoots and Papworth’s lawyers are going to fight me all the way on what they describe as the high moral ground.’
She paused for breath and Milton nipped into the aural void. ‘What I don’t quite understand, Miss McGregor, is what is the point in going ahead, since presumably whatever happened with the trust Lord Papworth wouldn’t sell to you anyway.’
‘But he’s very old and Piers says we should be ready for when he goes for the high jump. Might be now, might be next year, might be in ten years’ time. But Piers reckons, considering the family history, he won’t be around that much longer. And he wants to sell up the day his pa is buried.’
‘But you’re investing a lot on a gamble, aren’t you, if you’re fighting a law case?’
‘Sure. It could cost a lot. And the old man might hang around for years and I can’t afford to wait that long. But that’s business. Gotta gamble.’
‘What I also don’t understand is how anyone can be meddling in the terms of the trust without the consent of the owner.’
‘Only through the heir. It’s one of the safeguards that either the proprietor or the heir can challenge the trust if they can show sufficient reason. Kind of insurance in case one of them’s a fruitcake.’
‘How complicated. But I think I understand. Now back to Mr Potbury. There’s no denying that it was good news for you and Piers Papworth that Potbury died.’
Publish and Be Murdered Page 19
