Gavin Lyall - Blame The Dead

I came to a dead stop, staring at him.

Harry said cheerfully, 'It was partly my idea, too, sir.'

'Look,' I said slowly. 'I'm not a proper private detective, I haven't got much experience in civilian investigations.'

David said, 'But you want to find out anyway.'

'Yees.' I sat down again. 'There's still another point. I don't know what I'm going to find-if anything. But it might turn out that your father was – well, mixed up in something.'

He was pale and serious again. After a while, he said quietly, 'I think I'd like to know, anyway. Will you do it, sir?'

'There's also the legal position…'

'You mean that I'm under age, sir? As I understand it, that means you can't enforce a contract against me. But if I paid you in advance, you'd be safe.'

'To quote your housemaster – umm. If Oscar Underbill finds out, he'll want to have me pinched for stealing by trick, defrauding a minor, and false pretences."

David smiled politely. 'Then you needn't tell him, sir.'

'I needn't tell anybody – in fact, ethically I couldn't – without your permission.'

'He's going to do it!' Harry squeaked.

Hell, it did ratfter look that way. Certainly I needed a client. His father's fee hadn't run dry yet – I'd been paid in advance and cash, which is usual for bodyguard jobs – but pretty soon I'd have to be drumming up work on the security advice side and letting things slip on the Fenwick front. And he was supposed to have too much money from Mother, wasn't he? I just hoped 'too much' was enough for me.

David reached into an inside pocket and took out a wad of crumpled fivers. 'There's fifty pounds here, sir – that's all you can get from the post office bank in one lump. I'll be able to get more from my real bank when I go through town again. Probably-' he paused and swallowed '-for the funeral.'

The casual way he handled the notes cheered me up a bit. 'I don't know how much it'll take, but I'll give you a strict account weekly.'

'Probably quite a bit,' he said thoughtfully, 'if you have to follow where Daddy went.'

'Like where?'

'H^'s been in Norway recently; he sent me postcards from Bergen. But I don't know what he was doing – except that his syndicate rather specialised in Norwegian shipping.'

Harry added, 'It's the fifth biggest merchant fleet in the world. I think so, anyway.'

I nodded. 'Well, I won't start charging off to Norway until I've got a better excuse. Tell me one thing: did your father commute up from Kent every day?'

'Oh, no. He had a flat in Saint John's Wood. He spent most of the week there.'

With or without the willing Miss Mackwood? I took out my notebook – in fact a last year's diary; I buy them by the dozen, cheap, at this time of the year – and wrote down the address. 'You wouldn't have a key to the flat, would you?'

'Yes.'

'D'you mind if I go along and burglarize it a bit?'

Instinctively, he did mind – but he saw the sense of it. He took out a key ring and started working the key off it. Harry just sparkled: this was what private eyes were supposed to do -go busting into people's flats and turning them over.

David asked, 'Have you talked to any of the members in Daddy's syndicate, sir?'

I dodged. 'Who d'you recommend?'

'Well, there's Mr Winslow, he's rather cheerful, and of course Miss Mackwood. She ought to know what was happening.'

Her name didn't seem to have any particular echo, the way he said it. But tried a little more, just in case: °You've met her, then?'

'Oh, yes. When I've visited Daddy at Lloyd's.'

He just might have said something about her turning up at a weekend, somewhere. So I just nodded and wrote down the name Winslow. I planned on trying just about everybody in the syndicate, if I needed to – but not until I knew more myself.

The interrogator's biggest weapon isn't rubber truncheons or bright lights or electrodes on to the balls or anything – it's knowledge. Just that. The more you know, the more you can use as a lever to pry loose the rest.

I said carefully, 'How about your mother?'

He shrugged. 'I don't think she was very interested in Daddy's work.'

'I have to see her sooner or later. Do I mention that I'm working for you?'

'I'd rather you didn't.'

'Okay. You're the boss.'

He looked startled at the idea, then smiled.

'And now,' I said, bouncing a sideways look off Harry, 'I want you to talk generally about your father – if you feel like it.'

Harry got the look – or maybe he just had good manners. He got up sharpish. 'I'm off, now. I hope I'll see you again, sir.' We shook hands and he went out.

David smiled again, a little sadly. 'Well, sir… he was a rather quiet man. I think he worked hard. He loved Lloyd's -that was really his whole life. I mean he didn't have any hobbies; he just played golf most weekends, but I think that was for exercise. He didn't talk about his scores or anything.' He went off into a thoughtful dream.

I said gently, 'When he took you out at weekends or whatever – what did you do?'

'On our exeat Sundays… we went to a museum or to the pictures, or… whatever I wanted to do. He didn't have, sort of… many ideas of his own.' His eyes were slowly filling with tears; he blinked, annoyed. 'He was a veryhonest man. You know the Lloyd's motto is "Fidelity". Well, he really meant it, he really did. And I don't see why anybody should kill him!'

He put his head in his hands.

After a while I got up and touched his shoulder. 'All right, son – try a sip of liquid manure.'

He looked up and smiled through his tears and gulped at my glass, choked and sputtered, but looked a bit better.

'One last thing.' I began to unwrap my new Bertie Bear parcel. 'And I want you to take this seriously. Have you ever seen this book before? Does it mean anything to you?'

He stared at it, thumbed through it, finally looked up at me. 'What is it, sir?'

I sighed. I hadn't really expected, but I'd hoped. 'Your father was carrying it to Arras. Wrapped up. It was the parcel he was supposed to deliver.'

He looked back at it incredulously.

'Put it another way,' I said. 'Wrapped up, does it remind you of anything the same size? Anything to do with his work?'

He shook his head slowly. 'Most of his Lloyd's work was on little scraps of paper or big ledgers… You mean you think he was taking a dummy parcel?'

'That's one of the things you're paying me to find out. Well -is there anything else?'

He thought about it. 'I don't reallyknow, but Ithink Daddy was hiring a private detective at one time.'

'You think?'

'Somebody rang up when I took a message for Daddy. It was just that he'd ring again later and he said his name was James Bond and Daddy said hewas a sort of James Bond… well, that's all.'

I chewed it over and couldn't get any more taste from it than he had. 'I'll see if I can track them down; there may be some papers from them at the flat. And I'll keep in touch. If you want me…" I explained about my problems with the press and gave him my hotel number – and my name there.

He showed me back down the stairs and to another front door – the boys' entrance, I suppose. Did I want to see Hawthorn again? No – I'd only end up telling him lies. So I shook hands again, got quickly into my car, and pushed off.

By now outbound traffic had built up into a snarling, crawling stream, but I had a fairly clear run back to London. I cruised past my flat and spotted what I had to assume was the press'Nachtwachet(so why couldn't a jumbo jet crash or Princess Anne fall off her horse?). But at least the pubs were just opening, so I parked at the hotel, then walked around to the Washington.

Of course, I could have gone and burgled Fenwick's flat, but maybe that should wait until the morrow. The building would be emptier, and people are less suspicious of strangers in daylight; they should read the crime statistics sometime. Then again, I could sit down with a big piece of paper and write down everything I'd learned about Fenwick himself – except I knew that would come out just a little bit south of bugger-all. Or I could just have an early dinner and an early bed. The day had got started rather early, and punch-ups before breakfast take it out of me these days. Getting old.