Crooked Herring (17 page)

The room was small and bare, apart from a table and three chairs. I had noticed, when I first came through the door, a slight odour of sweat and coffee, recalling for some reason a gym that I briefly belonged to some years ago. There was a mirror on the wall, which might have been a two-way device, for other investigators to view the interrogation, or equally might have just been a mirror. There were no windows, except for an uncurtained horizontal slit, very high up on the wall, which at this hour of the day and this time of the year gave no light at all. In an ideal world I felt that there should be a single light bulb, with no shade, suspended from the ceiling. The room was in fact illuminated by two neon strips, one of which buzzed quietly to itself the whole time. I had ceased to be aware of it after a few minutes. I had now been in the room with my interrogator for almost half an hour. We were not making much progress.

‘But I’ve told you: I wasn’t at the pub,’ I said.

The inspector was unblinking.

‘According to evidence that we have received, Ethelred, you and Mr Vynall and Mr Henry Holiday spent the early part of the evening at a pub in West Wittering. Mr Holiday then went home and you proceeded with Mr Vynall to a nightclub in Chichester.’

‘According to Henry Holiday’s evidence,’ I said. ‘But he’s lying. You must see that?’

The inspector said nothing.

‘I wasn’t at the pub,’ I repeated. ‘I know that Denzil claims I was, but I wasn’t.’

‘Who is Denzil?

‘The barman.’

‘Surname?’

‘I don’t know. But there’s only one Denzil there.’

The inspector made a note in his book. ‘Thank you, Ethelred. That’s very helpful. We shall of course talk to him, now we have that information.’

‘And it was Henry Holiday who went to Chichester with Crispin Vynall,’ I added.

‘You have evidence of that?’

‘Well, first, Henry told me.’

‘And second?’

‘There was CCTV evidence of both of them arriving and departing.’

‘We’ll take a look at it, then.’

‘It’s been wiped,’ I said.

‘You know that?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘I asked them. At the club.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, as I told you, I’d been investigating what Henry had done on New Year’s Eve. He asked me to.’

‘Because you have some special skills in investigation?’

‘I’m a crime writer.’

The inspector said nothing.

‘I write police procedurals.’

‘This is real life, Ethelred. That being the case, didn’t you think, if Mr Holiday actually did ask you to do any such thing – which he strongly refutes – that it would have been better for you to hand the whole thing over to the police?’

I wondered whether to correct him over his use of the word ‘refute’. Probably not worth it at this stage. ‘He said he wanted to know what had happened before he decided what to do next. He didn’t want me to go to the police in case he really had killed somebody …’

The inspector raised his eyebrows. ‘So you are saying that you would have willingly been party to a cover-up if it transpired he had murdered somebody?’

‘No. Obviously not.’

‘So, why not go to the police straight away, then?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Do you think we’re all idiots, Ethelred? Do you think we don’t know how to investigate a crime?’

‘No. I mean, I don’t think you’re idiots and you do know how to investigate crimes.’

‘So, why not come to us?’

‘Henry said he preferred me to investigate.’

‘You? That’s scarcely likely, is it? And, for the record,
Mr Holiday assures us that nothing of the sort took place. He says he became more and more suspicious of your activities, particularly when you asked him to accompany you to Didling Green. Eventually he formed the reluctant conclusion that Mr Vynall’s disappearance had something to do with you. He immediately came to us. Quite properly.’

‘I was going to report him missing, but Henry Holiday had kept Crispin’s phone and then sent me the text, apparently from Crispin, saying he was alive. So I didn’t go to the police after all.’

‘And where do you think the phone is now?’

‘Henry says he got rid of it.’

‘We found it in the bushes near the body.’

‘Henry must have thrown it there, after he sent the text, when we both went to Didling Green. It would have been easy enough to do. He had me searching all over the place. I couldn’t watch him the whole time.’

‘Or
you
threw it there, having previously sent the text to yourself, so that you could persuade Mr Holiday that his friend was still alive. That’s equally possible, isn’t it?’

‘Henry’s lying. He actually told me that he’d killed Crispin.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘He wanted me to know that he’d set me up – that he’d got his revenge.’

‘Even at the risk of incriminating himself?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s not very likely either, is it? Not in real life.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You have to admit, Ethelred, that your version of
events looks a little contrived. Why should Mr Holiday have reported his friend missing if he had in fact killed him? Why should he have prevented your reporting him missing when he was about to do so anyway? Why should Mr Holiday have told us where to look for the body?’

‘There you are! He knew where the body was.’

‘Only very roughly. He said you had taken him to the spot – something you more or less admit. He thinks you were unable to resist returning to the scene of your crime. Looking in the boot of your car he’d noticed some rope and what appeared to be Mr Vynall’s Barbour. I scarcely need to say that we have recovered both from your vehicle and are having them tested now.’

‘I’m not denying I’ve been to Didling Green. I’m not denying I drove Henry there. I’m not denying it was Crispin’s coat or that the rope was used to kill him. But it wasn’t me that killed him. Anyway, the coat will certainly have Henry’s DNA on it too.’

‘He says you lent it to him up on the Downs because it was raining. Later he realised with horror that he had been wearing Mr Vynall’s coat.’

‘But he was there in Didling Green on New Year’s Eve. There was a photo of him in the pub.’

‘Where is the photo?’

‘I gave it to Henry. He destroyed it.’

‘You’re saying you let him destroy evidence that he was the killer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Knowing that it was crucial to the case?’

‘I suppose so, but …’

‘We’ve also taken a look at your computer.’

‘I’d like that back when you’ve finished.’

‘I’m sure you would. In the meantime, could you explain why your last searches are for a body found strangled in Sussex and for Crispin Vynall?’

‘I just wondered if a body had been found …’

‘Where were you on New Year’s Eve, Ethelred?’

‘I’ve told you already, three or four times. I was at home. Watching television.’

‘On New Year’s Eve?’

‘Yes, on New Year’s Eve.’

‘Nobody was with you?’

‘No.’

The inspector paused. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

‘There was a suggestion that Mrs Vynall might have been with you.’

‘A suggestion? Meaning Henry said that?’

‘It was apparently widely known that the two of you …’

Well, that was clever of Henry and perhaps explained why the police had pressed this point when they had first interviewed me. Henry was suggesting an alibi of sorts for me, seeming to disprove my contention that he was out to incriminate me. But Emma would of course deny it, leaving me back where I started, except for a lingering suspicion on the part of the police that I did have a motive for bumping Crispin off: an unrequited passion for Emma Vynall that drove me to kill her husband.

‘It’s not true,’ I said. ‘She wasn’t with me.’

‘Mr Holiday implied that you were actually claiming something of the sort.’

‘Claiming?’

‘Boasting, you might say.’

‘What? That I was in bed with Emma on New Year’s Eve? Does he have any sort of proof?’

‘Of course not. You offered him no hard evidence. It was merely something you claimed to have done.’

‘Well, I didn’t say anything like that.’

‘So when you told him that you had been at home that evening with a lady friend, that is untrue? Maybe some other lady?’

‘I told him nothing of the sort,’ I said.

I sounded, on reflection, like a Victorian gentleman trying to protect the reputation of some innocent woman that I had inadvertently compromised. Since I wasn’t a Victorian gentleman, the inspector would simply conclude that I had repeatedly lied and changed my story concerning what I had been doing. I had to admire Henry’s plotting of this particular fiction. He had been thorough. In some ways.

‘Anyway, Emma will have told you that she was back in Brighton.’

‘She seems to have a certain … well … affection for you, though.’

‘Does she?’

‘That surprises you?’

‘A bit.’ It sounded ungracious, but I was, under the circumstances, surprised she had said it.

‘So, you and she had had some sort of relationship?’

‘That isn’t what I said.’

‘She said she’d tried to get you into bed at Harrogate and you’d turned her down.’

I was grateful to Emma for at least trying on my behalf.
But I hadn’t turned her down. I’d just missed the signals.

‘Are you saying you didn’t reciprocate her feelings?’

‘I suppose … up to a point … but it has no relevance.’

‘You find her attractive?’

I hesitated. It seemed rude to say ‘no’, inopportune to say ‘yes’. The silence continued for some time.

‘Cat got your tongue, Ethelred?’ he enquired.

‘She’s a very attractive woman,’ I said. ‘But we were scarcely even friends – let alone anything else.’

‘But you visited her twice in the last few days. She said you seemed to be trying to find any excuse to do so.’

I sighed. This was much as I had feared. ‘And I suppose she said that I seemed to know Crispin was dead?’

‘No, Ethelred, she didn’t say that. Did you in fact tell her that Crispin was dead?’

‘Only inadvertently. I mean, I hadn’t intended to say that, but it all came out wrong. She got the impression that I knew he’d been killed. It was only because of the death threats and the reference to a second body.’

‘That’s the second body that is such a cliché in detective fiction?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘And who wrote these death threats?’

‘Henry, I suppose. It must have been part of the web of lies …’

‘Web of lies? Another cliché?’

‘If you say so.’

‘And he admitted to writing the letters?’ asked the inspector.

‘No. He didn’t.’

‘And where are these so-called death threats now?’

‘My agent took one of them and I gave Henry Holiday the other one.’

‘So we can’t see either? How convenient.’

‘I can get the one my agent has. I doubt Henry plans to release his.’

‘That would be helpful, but not as helpful as letting us have both straight away, if they exist.’

‘I realise that you don’t believe me.’

‘You’re right there, anyway.’

‘It seems you also had another motive. Mr Vynall had been writing overly critical reviews of your books on Amazon?’

‘Under an assumed name,’ I said.

‘That would have affected your sales?’

‘A bit. Not enough to worry about.’

‘But you would have seen it as a personal attack?’

‘I suppose so. Yes, of course. All bad reviews hurt. But if I killed everyone who gave me a bad review …’

‘I take your point. Mr Holiday has, however, given you some very good reviews?’

‘Yes.’

‘That doesn’t fit in with your contention that he disliked you and was trying to frame you for murder.’

‘But he had a motive of his own. Crispin and I had awarded a CWA prize to somebody else …’

‘You failed to give him a prize?’

‘Yes.’

‘A major prize – like the Booker or something?’

‘No … a relatively minor one, in fact, but—’

‘So he decided to frame you for murder?’

‘Yes.’

‘Forgive me, Ethelred, but you are losing me here. Surely there must have been dozens of people that you failed to make an award to.’

‘Yes, a couple of hundred, at least. But Henry felt very strongly about it. It’s why he killed Crispin.’

‘He felt strongly enough to kill Mr Vynall, but not strongly enough to give you a bad review in the
Sunday Times
?’

‘I’m not explaining myself properly.’

‘No, I think you’ve been very clear, Mr Tressider. We need to talk to Denzil at the pub and perhaps one or two other people. Then we’ll run through this again. Perhaps then we’ll get to the bottom of it.’

‘Can I go home now?’

‘I’m afraid not. Do you have a lawyer?’

‘I don’t need one.’

‘Oh, I think you do, Ethelred. In fact, the sooner you start talking to one, the better.’

It is relatively rare for customers to stop dead in the middle of Sainsbury’s biscuit aisle and exclaim: ‘Shit! I’ve been a total idiot!’ Or at least, the reaction of my fellow customers suggested that they hadn’t seen that many people do it before. But I had been just that. A total idiot.

Maybe it was the effect of the walk to the supermarket, which cannot be done without a certain amount of exposure to the fresh air, but suddenly, right in front of the Jaffa Cakes and just to the left of the Jammy Dodgers I was granted a vision and all was suddenly clear.

Of course! The death threats! There could be little doubt that these too were from Henry. The first had been intended to push Ethelred into taking the case on by appearing to warn him off – a hint of a small but manageable element of danger. The second had caused him to make an idiot of himself questioning Emma again, thus stacking up further
evidence (if it were needed) of an apparent motive. They’d been effective, but Henry hadn’t mentioned any of this when boasting to Ethelred about how clever he’d been. Perhaps he realised, as authors often do on rereading a manuscript, that there was a worrying weakness in their plot. And there are no second drafts in real-life murders. So he’d played that one down.

I had no doubt he’d have taken the usual precautions that people do when writing death threats. I’d already noticed the cheap paper, unexceptional ballpoint and (in all likelihood) absence of fingerprints. But he wouldn’t have realised that I had taken so much interest in his grammar and spelling. Nor would he know, and this is what had caused me to freeze, hand half-extended towards a special offer on Jaffa Cakes, that I had worked out that the sender of the letters was the same person as Thrillseeker and Sussexreader. Which in turn meant that it was Henry, not Crispin, who had been running multiple sockpuppet accounts. Of course he had. It actually explained one of the many things that had puzzled me: why Sussexreader not only praised Henry but rated him more highly than Crispin. Henry’s lack of interest in technology was, like his tweed jackets, a mere affectation. Nobody his age was genuinely incapable of working the Internet. I couldn’t prove anything myself, but Amazon at least would know which account they had come from. They would be able to tell the police who had been a naughty little sockpuppet and, by extension, it would be possible to show that Henry had been sending Ethelred death threats, which would hardly fit in with the story he had given them.

I checked my shopping list and added Jammy Dodgers and chocolate digestives to my shopping basket. My mobile rang. For a moment I was juggling my list, my basket and my phone, then all more or less righted itself, and I proceeded on my way with my basket over my arm and the phone clutched in the other hand.

The caller introduced himself. I recognised him as being the lawyer who had, many years ago, handled Ethelred’s divorce. ‘Is that Elsie Thirkettle?’ he asked.

‘Speaking,’ I said. ‘In person. How can I help you?’

‘You know that Mr Tressider has been arrested.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said, surveying the shortbread selection. ‘Murder. But he didn’t do it.’

‘He’s asked me to represent him,’ said the lawyer.

Well, that was an odd choice after the result he achieved in the divorce settlement, in which Geraldine had taken everything Ethelred possessed or was ever likely to possess. But Ethelred had stuck with him. Loyalty was one of Ethelred’s most noted traits. Stupidity was another one.

‘But he’s OK?’ I asked. ‘I mean, he really didn’t do it. Henry Holiday did.’

‘That’s what he tells me, but the evidence is very much against him. I wonder if you can do two things for him?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said, selecting the Taste the Difference shortbread rounds, which have a nice dusting of sugar – not too much but enough to give them a bit of an edge over the competition.

‘First, he needs a death threat he says you have.’

‘Safe at home,’ I said. ‘And Henry Holiday was the author.’ I explained how I knew.

‘Ethelred had come to much the same conclusion,’ said
the lawyer. ‘But we’ll need at least one of the letters to prove it.’

‘I can post it to you,’ I added.

‘Maybe bring it round yourself, if you can. We don’t want to lose it. It could be critical.’

‘Check,’ I said. ‘And the other thing?’

‘It’s slightly more complicated. The police seem to have got it into their heads that he might have been having … well, let’s call it a one-night stand … with a young lady on the evening in question. They feel that he is being evasive in his answers to their questions. In your opinion … I mean, is it possible that he was with somebody and for chivalrous or other reasons doesn’t want to admit it?’

‘Ethelred might do almost any moronic thing for chivalrous reasons. That’s the sort of person he is. He really belongs in the fifteenth century, though he’d settle for 1958, with Peter May’s elegant batting securing a victory for England on a sunny July morning at the Oval.’

‘So, you’re saying it’s possible he did have somebody with him but is not admitting it?’

‘Absolutely not. I’m sure he was watching television, just like he says. He doesn’t get out a lot, and I’d know if he’d got a girlfriend.’ I paused recalling a certain jauntiness in his manner when he had been talking about Emma Vynall – but no, we could rule that out. ‘Large or small?’ I added.

‘Sorry?’

‘Packets of Kit Kat. Large, I think. It’s always a mistake to get the small ones and run out just as you need a couple of fingers at one o’clock in the morning. But plain or milk, that’s the real question? Where were we?’

‘We’d more or less finished. Well, maybe one other thing … we seem to have lost one key piece of evidence – a CCTV recording of Henry Holiday and Crispin Vynall at a club near Chichester.’

‘Apparently.’

‘And there’s not much else by the way of hard evidence. So, if there’s anything that you can think of that would prove where Ethelred was or Henry Holiday was on the night in question, that could be very important.’

‘Obviously,’ I said.

The thought crossed my mind that Ethelred’s lawyer had not gained any additional brain cells over the years since the divorce. Still, British justice would not condemn an innocent man, however stupid he was and however badly he chose his lawyer.

‘Look, I’ll get that letter to you. Then you need to get Amazon to track down the owner of the two sockpuppet accounts,’ I said. ‘It will prove to be Henry Holiday.’

‘Fine,’ he said.

I hung up.

What next? I realised that in the hurly-burly of saving Ethelred I had mislaid my shopping list. Biscuits and chocolate biscuits … what else? Ah yes! Chocolate! So, disaster avoided, then.

I proceeded in a westerly direction to where the chocolate bars lived happily together in massed ranks of blue and red and gold. I would adopt some and take them home.

It was as I was eating my second Kit Kat, so no more than five minutes after I had got home, that it occurred to me that it was amateur detective time again. Since the police
didn’t buy Ethelred’s theory that Henry was the killer, they would not be looking in the right places for clues. And since Ethelred’s lawyer was a dipstick, he wouldn’t be either. But there might be somebody at the club who did remember seeing Henry there. And it was just possible that there was more to the Ethelred and Emma thing than met the eye. The Amazon thing should be enough, but you can never have too much evidence in your favour when it’s a murder charge. I made a quick phone call to Brighton and laid out suitable clothing for a little trip to the coast.

‘There’s a strange sense in which death pays all debts,’ said Emma. ‘A couple of days ago I seriously wanted to kill Crispin. Now that somebody else has done it … I’d reconciled myself to being a divorcee; I just hadn’t quite got my head round becoming the Widow Vynall. Now it’s his killer, I’d like to kill.’

‘But you don’t believe that Ethelred killed Crispin?’

‘Ethelred? God, no. If he’d wanted me I was there and available in Harrogate. There was no need to kill Crispin to get into bed with me or anything else. And Henry really admitted it all to Ethelred?’

‘That’s what Ethelred says. You’d have to be monumentally arrogant to do it, but Henry actually thinks he’s been clever enough that he can let Ethelred know who’s done this to him.’

‘So, what do we do?’

‘I’m working on it. In the meantime, can I check – there really is no chance that Thrillseeker’s reviews were written by Crispin?’

‘Absolutely none. I’m sure Crispin had never read one
of Ethelred’s books. He tends to leave things lying around, so I know what he’s reading. He doesn’t read crime much at all, actually, but certainly not the sort of thing that Ethelred writes. And I’m certain he’s never written an Amazon review in his life. He buys … sorry bought … all his books from an independent just down the road. And he was never that good with computers. He wouldn’t know how to set up a fake account. Anyway, there was no animosity at all between Ethelred and Crispin. Well, not much.’

‘And you’ll say that in court if necessary?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘One other thing. Where were you on New Year’s Eve?’

‘Since Crispin didn’t come home, I went out with some friends – just to a restaurant down the road.’

‘OK. My other idea won’t work, then.’

‘What’s that?’

‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you afterwards.’

‘I won’t ask then.’

‘It’s Plan C. I’m only going to try it if all else fails, anyway.’

‘I’m sorry – I’m sure I’ve made it worse for Ethelred,’ said Emma. ‘With the police, I mean. But he was acting strangely. All those books. Thinking about it, I can see that it was just Ethelred being Ethelred and in a way sort of endearing. But it was still weird. Maybe if I’d slept with him in Harrogate …’

‘He’d still have been weird. Trust me. He has towards his women a dog-like devotion of a sort that is endearing only in actual dogs.’

‘Yes, I can see that might be the case. I’ve got some
turkey stew I can defrost, if you’d like an early supper.’

‘Yes, I would like that. The place I’m going to next doesn’t open properly until about midnight. You don’t have any biscuits, I suppose, while we’re waiting for supper?’

In fact, I arrived at about seven-thirty and had to hunt around for a way in. It was strangely quiet, even allowing for the fact that most of its clientele were not exactly early risers. I’d been snooping in a general sort of way for about ten minutes when a voice said: ‘Can I help you? You shouldn’t really be in here, you know. We’re not open to customers. It’s Sunday.’

Ah, yes, of course. Sunday. Only essential services such as the police, ambulance and literary agents would be operating.

‘That’s fine,’ I said, ‘because I’m not here as a customer.’

The young man was, if not young enough to be my son, at least young enough to be my naughty little nephew. He knew at once roughly how much shit I would take and how difficult I’d be to remove if I didn’t get whatever it was I was after.

‘But you can help me,’ I continued. ‘Were you on duty on New Year’s Eve?’

‘You from the police? Or are you a reporter? If you’re a reporter, I can’t talk to you.’

‘Then it’s your lucky day. I’m not a reporter.’

‘But it’s about the murder?’

‘You could say that.’

‘So you are from the police?’

My past record of impersonating police officers was mixed. Occasionally it worked splendidly. But not often.
It depended on the intelligence of the person I was trying to dupe.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m from the police.’

‘Could I see your warrant card?’

‘We don’t carry them anymore. It’s all computerised now. I’ll give you a reference number and you can verify it on the Internet afterwards.’

‘OK …’ He seemed doubtful for some reason. I couldn’t for the life of me see why.

‘Do you want to speak to the manager?’

‘Not at the moment. You are …?’

‘Kevin. Kevin Smith. Assistant manager.’

‘OK, Kevin. Do you remember speaking to Mr Tressider – the man now accused of the murder?’

‘Yes. He came in here asking some very odd questions. Even at the time I thought it was peculiar.’

Well, that was Ethelred all right.

‘But you don’t remember seeing him here on the night in question?’

‘New Year’s Eve? No. Like I told him, there were a few old guys in, but I wouldn’t have been able to pick them out later.’

‘You’ve seen pictures of Crispin Vynall?’

‘Yeah – you can scarcely miss them on the telly, can you?’

‘I don’t watch it much. I try to catch the book programmes, though mainly out of a sense of duty.’

‘Not
Crimewatch
?’

Crimewatch?
Ah yes, of course, I was a member of the police. It would probably be a good idea not to forget that.

‘Can we get back to New Year’s Eve, please, Kevin?
Ethelred … Mr Tressider … says that there was CCTV footage but it got wiped.’

The young man looked slightly sheepish.

‘Well, was it?’ I repeated.

‘Don’t tell the manager, will you?’ he said. ‘I was supposed to wipe it but I forgot. I swore to him that I’d done it too. I even swore on my gran’s life, him not knowing she died when I was two.’

‘So it’s still there? But the manager will notice it, anyway?’

‘No. A couple of days ago we got a new system in. That’s the one he plays with now. He loves that new system. All the New Year’s stuff is on the old one that’s sitting in the storeroom waiting to be scrapped. He’s getting somebody to take it for recycling. Nobody’s going to look at that again.’

‘You’ll have to show it to the police.’

‘Will I? I’ll get sacked when he sees I didn’t do what he told me to do.’

‘But the police and I will be very grateful.’

‘I thought you said you were the police?’

‘I’m only some of the police. I mean the rest of the police and I will be most grateful. So will Ethelred. Mr Tressider, I mean.’

‘What do you want me to do …? Look, there he is!’