Blame The Dead

'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? '

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.'