Gavin Lyall - Blame The Dead

Willie made a strangled coughing-gulping noise. I tried to look uninterested.

David said, as much to himself as anybody, 'I suppose he might have done… but with whom? Anybody we know. It could be Miss Mackwood, couldn't it, and that was why she was involved?' He glanced at Willie, who did a good job of not having heard of Fenwick, Maggie, or fornication, either.

I said firmly, 'But at least we got a solid identification out of it. According to Draper, this Kavanagh's a bit of a hard case. Herb apparently fired him for trying to bribe a juryman, and before that he'd left the police in something of a hurry. Sounds like one of those times when they say "Oh, he's a terribly nice chap, he'd never do a thing like that," and privately tell him to resign in six months, or else.'

David's eyes opened a little wider. 'Do they do that?'

'Every organisation does it, what?' said Willie, glad to find something new to talk about. 'Including the public schools. But what are you proposing to do about Kavanagh? – tell the police?'

'Whose? The Steen case is closed; I never reported the truth-drug business over here, and as for Arras-'

I stopped. David had gone very white and his clenched fists were bouncing nervously on the edge of the table. His eyes glittered at me. 'Do you think,' he said in a thick voice, 'that he killed my father?'

I wished I'd seen where I'd been leading. Smearing as much calm consideration on my voice as possible, I said, 'We know there weretwo men in Arras; from what we now know of Kavanagh he could have been one of them, and I'm going to get the word to Arras – indirectly – to check his name in hotels and any cross-channel passenger lists they can find. Not that such things exist much nowadays.'

I wasn't looking directly at him, but from the edge of my eye I could see he was cooling down. I went on with my lecture. 'Meanwhile, Draper's doing some quiet work trying to find out what Kavanagh's been doing recently – remember, we've got an advantage that he doesn't know we know him. But also, he's not working for himself and we don't know who he is working for.'

David was staring down at his plate, nodding gently to himself. In the corner, one fifteen-year-old voice said, 'And don't tell me that was a director's film. Two directors walked off it before he got there.'

Another voice asked, 'Have youseen the film?'

'No, of course not. What are film reviews for?'

Tve often wondered that.'

Closer to home, Willie lit a cigarette carefully and said, 'But it does rather bring up the question of who the other side is in all this.'

I said, 'First, does Mrs Smith-Bang's story hold up? About engine trouble and the log proving it?'

'Yes, it sounds pretty possible, you know. Could be an important point, all right. Though to my mind, it doesn't so much prove the Prometheus Sahara officers are liars as that their radar set must have had a screw loose. And that's rather a worse offence, in fog. The courts expect the odd tall story, you know; most collisions take place between two stationary ships ten miles apart both hooting and firing off rocket signals, if you know what I mean? But trusting a duff radar set – that's serious.'

I grinned. 'Fine. So the Sahara Line's got a good case for wanting that log suppressed.'

He sighed. 'Yes, but… they're a big, solid company, you know. They don't do the sort of thing like… like Arras.'

But David took it calmly, this time.

I said, 'That's bunk, Willie. As you said yourself, all organisations do, and the bigger the oftener. Were you and your Lancers ever in the Middle East?'

He shook his head.

'Well, halfour work in Intelligence out there was finding out if the oil companies were going to start a revolution, never mind the Russians and Egyptians and our friends in the CIA. It's never the chairman of the board who does it, of course, and he may not even know, but somewhere down the line somebody else gets the idea that the boss is interested in results and not methods, and a few more steps down somebody picks up a gun and goes bang. Somebody hired Kavanagh and others to get that log; he wasn't working on spec.'

Willie nodded sadly and we sat silent for a while. Then he said, 'Of course, I don't suppose it would do any good, but you could always ask Paul.'

David said, 'D'you mean Mr Mockby, sir?'

'Yes. He's a director of the Sahara Line, you know.'

The pubs were just open by the time Willie and I started back, so we stopped at one halfway down the Hill and he phoned around to find Mockby while I washed away the taste of that tea. He didn't tell me what Mockby had said, apart from come and see me at home at half past six, but his expression showed the fat man hadn't undergone any injections of Christian charity on my behalf. Well, I could live with or without that from Mr Paul Mockby.

It was getting dark and the outbound traffic was the usual bad-tempered, many-eyed snake plus a few kamikaze pilots -as usual. Willie drove thoughtfully and quietly, his slightly melted Greek-god profile outlined against the passing headlights.

After a time, he asked, 'Do you really think Paul could be… ah… well, you know?'

'I don't know, but if there's a profit in it and he wouldn't be caught, I'm sure the answer's Yes. Am I right?'

'Probably, I'm afraid.' He said nothing for a distance, and then, 'I didn't want to mention it with David there, you know – but do you have a real idea why Martin was being blackmailed?"

'Well, hewas having it off with Maggie Mackwood. Didn'tyou know?'

'Er… but how did you find out?'

'She told me herself.'

'Good God Almighty.' But he said it gently, mostly to himself. 'I suppose youdid have to mention blackmail to David?'

'I think so. It's the keystone of the whole thing, as far as I can see – Fenwick's vulnerability to a divorce.'

'Oh, I don't know… They aren't too old-fashioned about these things at Lloyd's.'

Til bet they're pretty old-fashioned about an underwriter suddenly losing most of his deposit – and that's what would have happened. Give a divorce judge a nice clear-cut case where the man's been set up in business on what was his wife's money and then the breakup's all his fault… Christ, Fenwick would have come out of court with his bus fare home and a bob for the meter to gas himself with.'

'Yes – I suppose a judge's decision would override everything else,' he mused.

The prisons are full of people who disagree.'

'But of course, youai eassuming Lois would have divorced him. She might not.'

'Yes…' After all, Mrs F herself had as near as dammit told me she believed Fenwick was taking a horizontal opinion of Maggie. 'Probably it was that he couldn't affordany risk of divorce, it would have been so final for him. So he was vulnerable to any threat at all.'

'I suppose you must be right…' He did a neat piece of light-jumping that brought us out ahead of a Rolls-Royce. Headlamps flashed angrily behind us. 'What do you make of this business of Maggie having you followed to Norway and so on?'

'That she was damn fond of him – didn't want me raking up anything to discredit him. And maybe her as well.'

'But she then went and told you about it.'

'Yes – when I was bound to find out anyhow. And I'd suspected it before.'

'Ah. I say, how much would it cost her to hire him?'

T calculated. The Rolls's headlights were still throwing broadsides after us, making Willie's rear-view mirror flash like a warning lamp. 'In case you hadn't noticed,' I said nervously, 'you're about to be rammed by a Cunarder abaft the starboard lug-hole.'

He grunted. 'Some damn silly little East European ambassador.' But he pulled over and we rocked in the wake of the big car whooshing past.