What Would Wimsey Do?

by Guy Fraser-Sampson

  “Not sure about that,” Collison said thoughtfully. “I think she’s been through enough for a while, and we have a full statement from her on file.”

  “I agree, guv,” Metcalfe interjected, staring hard at Leach.

  “But this is a whole new angle, sir…” Leach allowed the suggestion to hang in the air.

  “Possibly a new angle,” Collison corrected him. “Possibly, Andrew. Start with anyone else you can find and if you do identify anything worth re-examining with her then we’ll go back to Ms McCormick, but check with me first, please. I’m conscious that we’ve already put her through an ordeal in the witness box to no good purpose.”

  “Anything else, anyone?” Metcalfe asked.

  It seemed there was not.

  “Very well, carry on,” Collison called out. “I know this all seems tedious but remember that we’re onto something real here. Only the murderer or someone close to him could have put those items in the loft. We need to keep on eliminating people and sooner or later we’ll find our man.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Leach said, approaching Collison as the others drifted away to their tasks, “but these discussions last night. Would they have involved Dr Collins at all?”

  “Why do you need to know?” Collison asked, knowing the answer.

  “This is very difficult, sir, and I’ve no wish to place anyone in an awkward position, but I do have specific orders from the AC Crime that I’m to speak to Dr Collins as soon as possible and get his version of what happened with Clarke.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible for a while. He’s not well enough to see anyone he doesn’t already know.”

  “Perhaps I could see him jointly with you, or one of the others, sir?” Leach suggested. “You know the AC Crime as well as I do and he’s being very insistent on this point.”

  Collison sighed. “I know, I know. It’s not your fault, Andrew, and I don’t blame you. It’s just that there are—well, some sensitivities around Peter Collins’s situation at the moment and I’d rather they didn’t get flushed out into the light of day until they absolutely have to be. Could you find some way of stalling the AC for a couple of days to give us a chance to resolve them—why, by then we might have caught our murderer too.”

  “I don’t think I could do that, sir,” Leach said carefully. “And in order even to consider it, I’d need to know more about what these sensitivities might be.”

  “Oh, very well,” Collison said wearily, “I need a break anyway. Let’s go out for a coffee and I’ll tell you about it.”

  They walked downstairs, out of the main entrance, and began climbing the steep hill up toward Hampstead station. It was a grey day and as they dodged the inevitable baby buggies determinedly wheeled towards them by grim-faced women they felt a few light spots of rain.

  “Have you noticed how much bigger pushchairs seem to have got over the years?” Collison said, making conversation. “Or is it just me getting old?”

  “They have got bigger,” Leach agreed cautiously. “Though I think their owners’ behaviour is that much more aggressive than it used to be, particularly in certain parts of London. A sort of pavement rage, you might say. Your average pedestrian is just expected to get out of the way or be run down. Same in shops and even pubs, God help us.”

  They moved to the other side of the road via the zebra crossing at the community centre and walked on, uphill all the way. Just past the King William IV pub was a small cafe and they stopped.

  “Let’s sit outside and take a chance on the rain,” Collison suggested.

  Leach adopted the expression of a Detective Inspector accepting a Detective Superintendent’s proposal even though it might be the stupidest idea he had ever heard, and they sat down, Leach ostentatiously brushing a few specks of rain from his chair with an abandoned napkin. Within seconds, it seemed, a waitress was clearing the table and taking their order.

  “Now then,” Collison said, gazing not at Leach but vacantly across the road in the general direction of Barclay’s Bank, “I think the fairest thing for everybody is if I tell you the full story and then leave it to your discretion what you need to relay to the ACC, and when.”

  So he did. It was a fairly lengthy exposition during which their coffees arrived and started to grow cold, for it was not a warm day. Eventually Collison finished his narrative and took a long mouthful of cappuccino. Leach, whose expression had grown more disbelieving as the tale had unfolded, did likewise.

  “Who is this Lord Peter Wimsey?” he asked at length, rather faintly.

  “He’s a fictional detective from what they call the Golden Age,” Collison explained. “Three of the main writers, all women, were Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh, who created the characters of Poirot, Campion and Alleyn respectively. But for many people Dorothy L. Sayers was perhaps the best writer of the lot, and her Lord Peter Wimsey the best detective.

  “You need a bit of stamina, though,” he concluded as he finished his coffee, “since her books tend to be quite a bit longer than the others’.”

  “I see,” Leach said. “And so you’re all pretending to be characters from the book in order to keep Peter Collins involved in the investigation?” His blank tone failed to disguise his incredulity.

  “Well, not really. At least, that wasn’t the intention. The plan was to provide him with a kind of comfort blanket that would allow him to emerge from this altered state as gently and harmlessly as possible. It just so happened that on our last visit he made some good observations, so we are acting upon them.”

  “Forgive me, sir,” Leach said, preparing to step over the mark, “but these are observations made by a madman, someone who is clearly living out some sort of deluded fantasy. Is it really sensible for a DS to give them so much weight?”

  “You have to be very careful with words like ‘mad,’” Collison chided him gently. “What is ‘mad’? People like Laing and Foucault said that we live in constant states of ‘fantasy’ as you put it, using perception to filter out a reality which we might otherwise find too upsetting. If that’s true—and it seems to me that this is exactly what Peter is doing—then you could argue that what you might call madness is simply a sane reaction to an insane world.”

  “Foucault?” Leach echoed, staring blankly at Collison. “Didn’t he invent the pendulum or something?”

  Collison sighed. “You don’t read much, do you, Andrew?”

  “You mean books? No, not really. Who does these days?”

  “So how many books do you think you read every year? I’m asking just out of interest, you understand.”

  “Well, I take one on holiday with me, and say two or three others.”

  “I see,” Collison said thoughtfully as he paid the bill. “So how do you learn things, then?”

  “Isn’t that what the internet’s for, sir? Anytime you want to know something, you just look it up.”

  “But doesn’t that presuppose,” Collison replied as they started strolling back down the hill towards the police station, “that you know what it is that you’re looking for in the first place?”

  “How do you mean, sir?”

  “Well, clearly the internet is a fantastic information source but reading is different. With books you learn things, random things, whatever the author might be talking to you about, and you sort of soak them up like a sponge over the years. They are stored away in some dim recess of the unconscious mind until one day some equally random stimulus sparks a connection, and you find that you’ve combined different items of memory and perception into a completely new insight.”

  “Even detective stories?” Leach countered.

  “Ah,” Collison said ruefully. “Yes, there you have me I’m afraid. I must admit that I read those purely for pleasure.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “So let me see if I’ve got this right,” the AC Crime said in a measured tone. “You bring a psychologist who has no previous relevant experience, and no formal police accreditation, in
to the team as a profiler…”

  “You approved his appointment, sir,” Collison interjected.

  “At your recommendation, Simon,” his superior replied smoothly. “When a talented officer with a previously outstanding record makes a suggestion, naturally I back his judgment.”

  Collison noted the ‘previously.’ The ACC waited to see if any response would be forthcoming and, when it was not, pressed on. “He then comes up with a profile which sounds fine enough, but which we have no real means of checking. On the back of this profile you arrest someone who turns out to have been an innocent man all along with, as things turn out, tragic consequences.”

  “I made the arrest, sir, based on evidence which at the time seemed overwhelming. I agree that the profile guided our efforts, but it’s common ground that the items found in Clarke’s loft were indeed genuine articles either used or taken during the commission of our murders.”

  “But without the profile you might not have been looking in Clarke’s loft in the first place. Or, should I say, a loft to which Clarke had access along with various other people.”

  “With respect, sir, I think that’s unfair. Whether the profile was accurate or not we won’t know until we catch our killer and see if he fits the picture. We aren’t using it as a basis for our enquiries, as you know, only to narrow the search. And whatever the circumstances, we did find the evidence. It’s just that we now know—which we couldn’t possibly have known at the time—that it wasn’t pointing us in what seemed like the obvious direction, but somewhere else entirely.”

  Across the desk, the other man looked unconvinced.

  “Furthermore, sir, Peter Collins specifically questioned whether Gary Clarke was our man. There was evidence that he might have stalked Katherine Barker, and Peter said that didn’t fit the pattern. It was me who decided to proceed, notwithstanding his reservations.”

  “That’s all very well, Simon,” the ACC said, with a wave of his hand, “but I need to get at the facts here before the newspapers do. I don’t need your damn public school instincts kicking in and making you do something noble by carrying the can for other people.”

  “That’s not how it is at all, sir,” Collison averred doggedly. “Dr Collins expressed reservations and I pressed on anyway because I felt the strength of the available evidence was overwhelming. That’s how it was.”

  “Without doubting your word, Simon, I need to investigate this for myself. Furthermore I need to be seen to investigate it myself. Imagine my irritation, therefore, when the officer I appoint to make some enquiries for me reports back that Dr Collins has had some sort of nervous breakdown and is in no fit state to be interviewed.”

  “That is the case, sir.”

  The ACC fiddled with a pencil on his desk, and then continued as though he could hardly believe what he was saying. “I now understand that Dr Collins has in fact completely lost his grasp on reality to the extent that he believes himself to be a famous fictional detective…?”

  “Put like that it sounds rather bleak, sir,” Collison said, trying to find the right tone. “What seems to have happened is that he blames himself—wrongly, as I have just shown—for Clarke’s death, and has adopted this particular harmless little fantasy as a defence mechanism to shield himself from what he believes to be the awful reality while he comes to terms with it.”

  “I don’t call it a harmless fantasy, Simon, when a key member of a murder enquiry team loses the ability even to know who he is.”

  “Like I said, sir, it’s a defence mechanism. We don’t anticipate it will be permanent, or even prolonged. And anyway, Dr Collins is no longer part of the enquiry.” Collison bit his tongue as he realised what must come next.

  “Is that so?” the ACC asked ominously, putting down the pencil on the desk with a distinct crack. “Then perhaps you can explain why members of the team are being asked to pursue lines of enquiry which he is suggesting—in, let us not forget, the persona of Lord Peter Wimsey, a fictional character?

  “Perhaps you could also explain,” he went on before Collison had a chance to find an answer, “why you and some of your colleagues are spending time in conversation with Dr Collins when at the same time you told my representative that he was in fact too ill to see anybody?”

  “To see anybody other than us, sir, yes. It would be too great a strain for him.”

  “Is that what his doctor says, or psychiatrist, or whatever he is?”

  “It’s a therapist, sir.”

  “Very well, then, therapist. What does he think about all of this?”

  “To be completely honest, sir, she disagrees with our approach. In her opinion Peter needs to be jolted out of his state but DC Willis—who is Dr Collins’s partner—disagrees. So we’ve sort of agreed to differ for the time being. We trust Karen’s judgment and we’re supporting her in trying to ensure he recovers as gently as possible.”

  “Your approach being what?”

  Collison swallowed hard. “We’re going along with the… well, the pretence I suppose you could call it. In order to do that, we’re assuming the roles of different characters from the books. I’m Charles Parker, the police detective his sister marries. DC Willis is Harriet Vane, and so on.”

  The AC squeezed the sides of his nose between his forefingers and stared deeply at the top of his desk.

  “Simon,” he said at length, “do you have even the faintest idea of how this would all look if the media got hold of it? First we take on a profiler who was clearly of an unreliable state of mind to start with. Then we use his profile to catch a ‘serial killer’ who turns out to be innocent, and who is murdered in prison before we can get him released. Then the profiler goes completely off his trolley—and don’t start, because that’s exactly how the tabloids will describe it—and rather than having nothing further to do with him, senior detectives visit him and play bit parts in his deluded little fantasy.

  “And then, God help us,” he continued after a moment’s thought, “suggestions which he makes while believing himself to be a fictional detective get taken seriously and acted upon by the real life investigating team.”

  “They were things we would have done anyway, sir,” Collison protested. “It’s just that he got there first. He’s got a very quick mind—regardless of who he thinks he is.”

  “Simon, I thought you were a modern police officer. I thought you understood the importance of the press.”

  “So I do, sir.”

  “No, I don’t think you do at all,” the AC said heavily. “The press can be a great help to your career by raising your profile, but they can also destroy it anytime they like with something like this. Can’t you just imagine how a maliciously intentioned tabloid could present it? Next thing you know they’d have you listening to fairy voices at the bottom of the garden, or throwing stones like in Twin Peaks. Can’t you see how vulnerable you are at the moment, what with this whole Clarke business?”

  “I’m willing to take that risk, sir,” Collison said stubbornly. “I’m supporting a friend at a difficult time, a friend for whose condition I feel partly responsible. If I’d listened to his doubts at the time perhaps this might never have happened.”

  “There you are, you see,” said the AC in exasperation. “I knew we’d get to this bloody public school nonsense sooner or later. Snap out of it, Simon, for heaven’s sake.”

  He waited for a response, but none came.

  “I have to tell you that I’m very close to taking you off the case, Simon. I’m not going to, at least not yet and subject to one condition, because I want you and your team to have a chance to redeem yourselves, but don’t push me.”

  “Thank you for your support, sir,” Collison said calmly, “but what is the condition?”

  “The condition,” the ACC said, “is that you and your team have nothing further to do with Peter Collins, or to make it more specific since Willis lives with him, Peter Collins is to have no further involvement with this case. I wish him a speedy recovery—God k
nows this whole wretched business is a dreadful thing to happen—but I will not have the image of the Met tarnished by you and your colleagues’ playacting. You may be prepared to take that risk but I am not, so if you will not or cannot accept my condition then you must be prepared to step aside. Now, what is it to be?”

  Collison thought for a moment. “I understand your position, sir, and I appreciate your continued support. I will accept your condition, but I ask to be allowed to see him one last time to try to find some way of breaking the news to him as gently as possible.”

  “Granted,” the ACC replied, “but how will you do that? If he’s completely lost touch with reality, how will you…reach him, as it were?”

  “I don’t know, sir, but I know that I need to try.”

  “So, Charles, old man, how goes it?” Wimsey asked later that evening. “Come and tell all to your Uncle Peter.”

  “Hello, Peter,” Parker said as he followed Harriet into the room. “Not too well, I’m afraid.”

  Wimsey rose and, as they shook hands, gestured to an empty armchair.

  “Ah, and here’s Bunter too,” Wimsey said happily. “How is Mrs Merdle, Bunter?”

  “Going tolerably well, thank you, my lord,” Bunter replied. “I have had the tappets adjusted and that seems to have resulted in a distinct improvement.” He glanced at Harriet, who smiled approvingly.

  “The tappets, eh?” Wimsey marvelled. “Who would have thought it? And where have you been, old sergeant of yore? I haven’t seen you beetlin’ around the place for quite some time.”

  “Duke’s Denver, my lord. His Grace your brother sends his regards. Lady Mary is remaining with him for a few days more, I believe.”

  “Dashed bad form, Charles, for your wife to leave you all alone in London, what?” Wimsey commented, turning to Parker. “Mice will play and all that, don’t you know?”

  “This particular mouse is in the middle of a murder investigation,” Parker reminded him, “and thus has not the time to play even if he had the inclination.”