Gavin Lyall - Blame The Dead

Today he was the country squire: cavalry twill trousers, flared hacking jacket, thick, soft shirt with a faint check – just like the last three generations of Winslows except that he wore the silk neck-scarf flapping loose and theirs would have been tied like a riding stock. Wherever Willie put his immortal gift of originality, it wasn't into his wardrobe.

'Any news on H and Thornton? ' I asked.

'Sorry, old boy. They're not solicitors – I checked.'

'Something in shipping? A line?'

'Not a shipping line. But-'

'Marine surveyors? Or any other sort of subsidiary firm?'

'You mean chartering brokers or forwarding agents or ship-brokers or warehousing agents or a bunkering firm or perhaps just the two chaps who have the barnacle-scraping concession on Ilfracombe lifeboat?' He gave me a quick, dry sideways glance.

'All right,' I growled. 'So shipping's still bigger business than most people think. But-'

'But,' he said firmly, 'one chap I mentioned it to at Lloyd's said he thought he'd heard it before only it didn't sound quite right somehow, you know?'

'What sort of chap?'

'A solicitor.'

That didn't tell me anything, though. I gave up. 'How's the syndicate getting on?'

'Hardly at all, what? We'll probably merge with one of the bigger ones – best thing, I dare say. We only kept going as a small affair because of Martin,'

'Tell me: am I right in thinking he had only about the minimum deposit in Lloyd's – even for an underwriter?'

He took his time answering; hell, he took his time deciding whether or not to answer at all. He was driving a wide but busy road with a precise opportunism, keeping in a lower gear than most drivers would have done, and letting the engine work for its living. It didn't create any great hush, but it made for some natty wrong-side overtaking.

But finally he got caught at a traffic light. Willie took a long cigarette from a magnetic-based box clinging to the dashboard, lit it with a rolled-gold Dunhill, and said, 'You were almost asking that at the funeral, weren't you, old boy?'

'Almost.'

'You're sure it's really relevant?'

Just then we took off at the speed of scandal. I hauled my head back from the rear seat and said, 'It could be. But I'm not planning to put it in my best-selling memoirs anyway.'

He grinned quickly. 'Sorry, old boy. Yes – Martin only had about ten or eleven thousand in the kitty and you can't go much below that. I suppose with a place in the country and a flat in London and David going to Harrow… and then the bad years at Lloyd's, well – he just couldn't build it up.'

I could have told him a little more detail about Fenwick's income and outgo, but I didn't think he'd like the way I'd got it. The point was that he'd confirmed my basic thesis. Well, almost.

We swung left down Hendon Way and speeded up. After a time, Willie asked, is there anything more you want to check on before you see David?'

'Why? – are you worried I might have found out something about his father that you think he shouldn't know?'

'Yes.' From Willie, that was good blunt stuff. For a moment, it threw me. Then I managed to ask, 'Such as what?'

'God knows, old boy. But there must have been something -what? People don't get shot for nothing.'

'Tell that to the next innocent bystander at a bank raid.' I stared at the road and wondered. But David had hired me first. 'No, I'll tell you both everything at the same time.'

He nodded, seeming quite contented. After that, we hardly said a word until we'd parked at the top of the Hill itself. By then, both pavements were crawling with groups of schoolboys hurrying here and there and all wearing straw boaters that made them look like actors in costume against that gloomy, dank afternoon. The style seemed to be for the hat tipped right forward and the elastic chinstrap bunching up the hair at the back of the neck. Anyway, that's how David was wearing it when we met outside a small café. We shook hands formally all round, then went on in.

Long ago, the proprietor must have realised that his main clients were interested in quantity of food for money and nothing else. Apart from a jukebox, the only overhead in the place was the ceiling, and that looked a fairly written-down value. Willie looked cautiously around the grimy, rough-plastered walls speckled with notices and shuddered delicately.

David said politely, 'What would you like? – I'll get it. The hamburger and onions is rather nice.'

'Just tea,' I said quickly.

'Coffee, please,' said Willie and then caught my hard stare and realised what the coffee would be like in there and said, 'No, sorry – tea.'

When David had gone, we sat down at one of half a dozen simple riot-proof tables. Only one other was occupied, by a group of fifteen-year-old Harrovians who glanced at us and forgot us.

'Good God,' Willie muttered. 'You forget how… primitive. schoolboys are.'

'I'm sure you never were.'

'I wasn't at Harrow, of course, but…,' he stared at the group. 'Just look at that lot, what? They look as if they've run an assault course through pig-food in those clothes. And yet I'll bet I know half their families.'

'Willie, you're a snob.'

'Oh, yes, rather.'

David came back with our teas, a Coke and a meat pasty for himself. 'Well, sir,' he started. 'Mr Winslow told me about the chap Steen getting killed, of course. But did you find out any more?'

I said pompously, 'We now know what we're looking for is the log of the Skadi.'

Willie said, 'Oh, that ship? Well, sorry, old boy, but we aren't looking forthe log. Do you mean the deck log or the engine log or the rough draughts of either, or the official log? Not to mention the movements book-what?'

'So don't mention it, then,' I growled. 'Mrs Smith-Bang didn't tell me.'

'Oh, you saw her?'

'You know her?'

'Everybody in shipping knows her. And the ADP line was one of our regulars."

'So I gathered. Well-' And I started to tell my story.

They listened quietly, Willie sipping his tea and looking equally pained at each sip, David just ploughing through his pasty and watching me carefully.

When I finished, Willie said, 'You do live, don't you?'

'Barely.'

David said, 'You were jolly lucky about your Mauser and finding it first.'

'Not entirely. The other side was counting on luck as well. Somebody else might have found the body before I could possibly have got there – I could have had a perfect alibi, like boozing in a bar with the king, or something.'

'It was still your pistol,' he pointed out.

'Oh, yes, but I'd only have been in trouble with the Min of Def for not having reported it lost. That's not murder. No, they had the luck that theoretically I could have done the killing and the bad luck that I was snoopy enough to get there first and start fiddling the evidence. Or unfiddling it.'

Willie said slowly. 'So it mattered more to them to kill Steen before you saw him than to get you blamed for it?'

T'm sure of that.'

'But all he was going to do – from his notes – was tell you about the Chief Engineer, Nygaard, and where he lived.'

'And H and Thornton. And anything else he thought of before he saw me.'

'Yees.' He scratched his cheekbone.

David asked, 'But why was Daddy having to take this log to Arras?'

Willie watched me carefully. I shrugged. 'Being blackmailed, I think.'

'Was he? What about?'

T don't really know; it doesn't matter. The important thing is that they tried the same trick with me and I ended up doing exactly the same thing: playing along to see if I could find out who was behind it, and taking some protection. I took Draper, like your father had taken me.'

David was only half listening. 'But how could they blackmail him? Do you think he was having an affair? '