Crooked Herring (18 page)

I followed Kevin’s gaze and encountered Crispin Vynall’s grinning, party-ravaged face staring down at us from a television screen on the wall. It was an old photo taken at a book launch. He had his arms round two girls, who had, as far as possible, been excised from the shot. But you couldn’t excise the leer from Crispin’s face.

‘Can you turn the sound up?’ I asked.

He fiddled quickly with the remote and we just caught the following: ‘In a statement issued today West Sussex police have confirmed that a man is helping them with their enquiries. This is widely reported as being Mr Ethelred Tressider, who writes crime novels as (the announcer paused briefly to check his notes) Peter Fielding and (another quick pause) J. R. Elliott. Peter Fielding is noted for his widely praised police procedural novels set in the fictional town of Buckford. It is understood, however, that no charges have yet been made. And now I’ll hand you back to the studio.’

‘See,’ said the young man. ‘It’s on all the time.’

‘And do they say “widely praised” every time?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. I might go and buy one. I like crime. I just hadn’t heard of Peter Fielding before.’

‘And it’s on all of the channels?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Twenty-four hours a day?’

‘That’s how it is now. So, what do you want me to do with the CCTV?’

‘Nothing at all for the moment,’ I said. Because I’d had an idea. ‘I’ll be in touch again when we need it.’

‘OK. What’s that warrant card number by the way – so I can check you on the Internet?’

‘B305CHB,’ I said without even blushing. It had, after all, been my first car and a nice little runner. ‘But I think the system’s down at the moment. You may not be able to find it this evening. Don’t worry, Kevin. I’ll be in touch again soon.’

‘And you’ll try not to get me into trouble?’

‘I’m sure we can just sneak the equipment away without anyone noticing, when the time comes.’ It wasn’t entirely untrue. I was sure the police could sneak it away quietly; it was just unlikely that they would.

‘Thanks,’ he said. He seemed genuinely grateful, though not as grateful as Ethelred was going to be. We’d have him sprung from the county gaol (if that was where he was) in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

Or maybe, thinking about it, six or seven shakes. After all, he was getting a plug on one channel or another every half-hour or so. His books were being mentioned without the faintest hint of criticism. You couldn’t buy publicity like that. And prison was, when you thought about it, not such a bad place to write. Look at John Bunyon. Look at Oscar Wilde. Look at Cervantes. Look at Boethius. Look at Jeffrey Archer. In a day or two I’d tip the police off that the recording was still there. They’d drive down and pick it up. Kevin would get a mild ticking off, but into every life a little rain must fall.

No rush, then. No rush at all.

My final visit, on the way home, was to the pub in Didling Green. I bought myself a lemonade and had a quick chat with the landlord.

Yes, he said, he thought that one of the photos of New Year’s Eve might have been taken from the board by a customer. It happened. You could never tell what customers would do. He looked at me the way I look at people when discussing the many foibles of writers. Well then, could he check his camera and see if he still had it? He shook his head in response to my question. It had not been one of his own pictures. Customers sometimes nicked photos from the board but more often they stuck up pictures of their own. He had no idea who had taken that one. There were dozens of people in. I asked him if he could find out who it was. I’d like a copy myself, I said.

He looked at me very oddly. ‘You’ve never seen the picture?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘And the only person you know in it is, you believe, a bit blurred and in the background, with his mouth hanging open?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And you actually want a copy for yourself?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If possible.’

‘I’ll let you know if I track it down, in that case,’ he said.

I left my business card with him, but somehow I wasn’t expecting to hear from him any time soon.

I spent the following day phoning up journalists that I knew and feeding them information on Ethelred’s books. There were a couple of good reviews I wanted re-quoted (including Henry’s – why not?) and I shamelessly made up details of his work in progress, saying that it would draw on his experience of being arrested for murder. It was true that, inevitably, one or two people came out of the woodwork and expressed the view on camera that Ethelred was a bit creepy and slightly wet, but on balance opinion was still very much in his favour. The overall impression was of a talented but slightly neglected author, who was well liked by his fellow crime writers. And Internet data suggested that sales were soaring. Obviously Ethelred was in a dungeon eating gruel with a wooden spoon or something, but he’d be dead chuffed once I let his lawyer know that the CCTV footage was safe and that I’d saved the day and so on and so forth. So, there was scarcely a
cloud in the sky, you might say, until the second day after my visit to Sussex. My phone rang and it was Ethelred’s lawyer, slightly troubled.

‘When are you going to bring it round?’

‘Bring what?’

‘The death threat letter. It’s the only concrete evidence we have.’

‘Oh that old thing. Don’t worry. It’s there on the table. Perfectly safe. No, it isn’t, it’s gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Well, it was there in front of me the other night. It can’t have wandered very far. What did I do next? I needed food. I made a shopping list on a scrap of old paper …’

‘Elsie? Hello? Are you still there?’

So, the question was this. If Sainsbury’s found a shopping list on the floor of the biscuit aisle would they:

Then I noticed that Ethelred’s lawyer was just saying: ‘Hello? Hello?’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was thinking …’

‘But the death threat letter?’

‘I may have left it by the Jammy Dodgers in Sainsbury’s. Sorry about that. Easily done, as you will agree. I did copy it out in this notebook I have …’

‘We need the original for it to be any use at all. If we
just give them a copy you made … you could have just made it up this morning.’

‘Yes, I suppose I could. Like I say … I’m sorry about that. Still, the good news is that I do have a much better piece of evidence.’

‘Which is?’

‘The CCTV footage from the club in Chichester.’

‘It wasn’t wiped?’

‘No.’

‘And you have that safe with you?’

‘Well, strictly speaking it’s in Chichester. I’m going to let the police know … er … very shortly. But it’s absolutely safe in the meantime. I mean really, really safe – not like the letter.’

‘I hope so – but it’s better we see it first, before the police. Can you get hold of it and send it to us straight away?’

‘Yes, of course. No sooner said than done. I’ll give you a call tomorrow. Tell Ethelred I’m on the case.’

He rang off. OK, I’d been a bit of a disappointment up to now, but I was about to make up for that. Big time.

I had the number of the club, so I rang it and asked for Kevin.

‘Detective Inspector Elsie Thirkettle here,’ I said. ‘I’m going to drop in tomorrow morning and pick up the old CCTV equipment.’

‘But you did it today,’ he said.

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Some guys turned up, just like you said. I wasn’t around at the time, but somebody told me they just took it all away.’

‘Your boss had said the machine was going to be scrapped?’

‘Yes.’

‘So there’s just a chance these guys had been sent by your boss to pick it up and take it to the tip?’

‘Wasn’t it the police, then?’

‘I’d say that that was somewhere between very unlikely and completely impossible.’

‘Was it important?’

‘Let’s hope it wasn’t as important as I thought it was,’ I said.

Of course, Cervantes was a galley slave for five years before his agent sprung him. With luck Ethelred wouldn’t have to wait quite as long as that.

It’s fortunate under the circumstances that I had a Plan C. It wasn’t quite as legal as Plans A and B, but it would do perfectly well. And my first step was to make contact with Henry’s mole at Francis and Nowak. I was pretty sure I knew who it was.

Extract from a tape recording. The two people whose voices feature on the tape would appear to be Elsie Thirkettle (ET) and Tuesday Lane-Smith (TL-S). The exact date is unclear but diary entries point to its being mid-January. The background noise and the opening conversation suggest a very cheap cafe just off Tottenham Court Road.

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