Blame The Dead

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.'

Twenty-eight

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.

I said. 'With sea and air fares, she must have spent at least two hundred pounds on that jaunt.'

'Probably more than we've spent on you, so far, what?'

'Certainly.'

'Impressive, rather.'

'Maybe it just proves she was in love with him. Sex hardly proves that, these days.'

'Bit cynical, what, old boy?'

I just shrugged again.

The houses in The Bishop's Avenue have just two things in common, they're all set back from the road, giving room for nice big lawns and a good piece of driveway, and people like you and me couldn't afford them in a million years. These aspects apart, each house is different – and intended to be. Not just Stockbroker's Tudor and Banker's Georgian, but everything from the Third Gothic Age to North London Château of the Loire via green-tiled Haciendaàla Rudolph Valentino and Plantation Scarlett O'Hara.

This last was Mockby's: a square-cut block of the deep South in red brick with a white Grecian portico and a flood of wide steps sweeping down to the green tarmac drive. Willie found a bellpush in among the brasswork of the double front doors, but the house was too big and solid for you to hear it ring inside.

After a cold wait, one side of the doors opened and the big chauffeur I'd met at my flat looked stonily out.

Willie said pleasantly, 'Mr Mockby's expecting us.'

The big one nodded at me.'And him?'

I gave him a friendly smile. 'Passed your finals in robbery with violence yet? Or d'you want some more lessons?'

He bunched his fist. Willie looked at me reprovingly. Then, from somewhere inside, Mockby bellowed, 'Don't fart about, Charles! Let 'em in!'

We went through an inner set of french doors, along a big hallway with enough furniture to start a chain store, and into the lounge.

It was a big room but with an odd confined feeling. There must have been windows somewhere behind the gold silk drapes, but you wouldn't bother with them: there was too much to look at inside. The place was jammed with furniture; usable stuff like fat wing chairs and sofas and couches, unusable bits like tiny tables covered in silver photo frames, carved benches, embroidered footstools. Even the flock wallpaper was put up in panels, and each panel with a gold-framed still life of dead pheasants and careful beads of moisture on every grape.

Willie must have seen it all before, but I thought I heard Mm give a little sad sigh.

Mockby was standing in the middle, wrapped in a vast red velvet smoking jacket with green lapels.

'Hullo, Willie,' he called, 'What are you doing with that blackmailing bastard?'

Willie twitched like a nervous horse. His faith in me wasn't even skin deep, after alclass="underline" he'd taken me more or less on David's trust.

'Blackmailing?' he asked warily.

'Of course,' said Mockby. 'Trying to sell us something that belongs to us already.'

I said, 'You mean the Skadi's log?'

'That's what I mean, sonny.'

Willie said, 'Oh, that,' and looked vaguely relieved. Even he couldn't believe I was fool enough to try and sell Mockby something I hadn't got.

Mockby seemed puzzled, but recovered fast. 'Well, have you come to do business now?'