I might have been amused by the thought that Gospill was clearly missing a very important date because of this, but one word had caught all my attention and there was nothing amusing about it.
Terrorist!
That’s what had launched me into my long defence and justification.
Gospill tried to interrupt me a couple of times, presumably to point out that the tape wasn’t on and I’d have to say it all again. But once I got started, out it all came, and finally he sat back and listened. He never switched the recorder on but after a while he did start making notes.
When I finished he made no attempt to answer my concluding question but sat with furrowed brow in complete silence.
Then his phone rang.
He listened, said, “Jesus H. Christ!” and switched off.
I said, “What?”
“Accident on the motorway,” he said, not really in answer to me but in accusation against some malevolent fate. “Twenty-mile tailback. Jesus!”
Then he picked his notes and without another word rose and left the room, to be replaced by the silent constable.
Another hour went by. I tried to provoke the constable to speech by requesting a drink. He went to the door and bellowed, “Tea!” and that was all I got for my effort at social intercourse, except for a cup of tea so foul there’d have been a riot if it had been served in India. By the time Gospill returned I was feeling very irritated and ready to be extremely uncooperative.
“Now listen, inspector,” I said. “Either you start answering my questions or you’ll get no answers when you start asking yours.”
To my surprise he smiled.
“Certainly, Mr Lachrymate,” he said. “Now let me see. I seem to recall the last question you asked me was, where did it all go wrong? Where indeed? My problem is knowing where to begin. You made more mistakes than Tony bloody Blair! But let’s start with the biggest one of all, shall we? You clearly didn’t stop for a moment and consider who it was you were dealing with!”
I said weakly, “Sorry, I don’t understand…”
“Clearly! Well, listen and learn. Now, I like watching detective series on the box as much as the next man, and I’ve read quite a lot of crime novels too, and I can tell you, from a professional point of view, they’re mainly very ripe farmyard manure. What most of them writers know about real detection you could write on the end of a gnat’s cock without arousing it.
“But this Mr Keating, he’s different. He’s been at it so long, there’s stuff he could teach us! So there he is, on his eightieth birthday, opening his prezzies, and he sees this package from India. Or at least it looks as if it’s from India. Except that he can’t see a Customs Declaration.
“Funny, he thinks. So he looks closer. Now he gets a lot of mail from India, does Mr Keating. He’s big out there, it seems. And he’s got lots of young relatives and friends who collect stamps so he takes note of the postage. So here’s what his sharp detective mind gets puzzling over. He knows the Indian Post Office Speedpost rates to the UK are 675 rupees for the first 250 grams and 75 for each additional 250 grams. So why should a package which weighs about 1200 grams only have the basic 675 rupees postage on it?”
He paused. If his intention was to alleviate his own irritation by making me feel foolish, he was succeeding. Seeing this, he smiled malevolently and pressed home his advantage.
“But there was something else, something much more basic. The very first thing that attracted his keen detective eye was the fact that you got his name wrong.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said indignantly. “I’m absolutely sure I didn’t misspell Keating.”
“No, you got that right,” he admitted. “It was the initials you cocked up. It’s HRF, not HRS.”
I checked my memory bank which is usually pretty reliable. It definitely printed out Uncle Harry’s initials as HRS.
“Are you quite sure?” I asked.
“Dead sure. Look for yourself.”
From his pocket he produced one of the Keating paperbacks I’d bought and dropped it on the table.
He was quite right.
HRF Keating.
“I don’t know how I got that wrong,” I muttered disconsolately.
“I do,” he said smugly. “As soon as we were alerted to this attempt on Mr Keating’s life, we contacted our colleagues in Mumbai to check if the postmark was genuine and to ask if they might be able to throw any light on the outrage. They got back to us about forty minutes ago. And it was the thing about the wrong initial that put them on to it. Very efficient record keepers, those boys. It seems that about thirty years ago, in 1973 to be precise, they had their eye on a suspected con man who was using the name Keating. Our Mr Keating’s name was already getting to be well known in literary circles over there, and this fellow was obviously trying to cash in on it by implying that he was the distinguished British crime writer, without actually saying it. By using the famous three initials he put the idea into people’s minds, but by changing the last one from F to S (which sounds very much the same if you say it fast) he put himself just out of reach of a charge of personation. Clever that. Of course from what you say, in your parents’ case it probably didn’t matter as they don’t sound the types to be interested in anything so worldly as detective novels.”
“No, I’m pretty sure they thought Agatha Christie was a nun,” I burbled as I tried to come to terms with what he’d just said. “I’m sorry, inspector, but are you telling me that HRF Keating the writer isn’t the same man as HRS Keating, my Uncle Harry, the con man?”
“Of course he’s not, you moron,” snapped Gospill. “Do you think a man like Mr Keating would go around conning people out of money? In any case, what happened to your father happened in 1973, right? Well, it’s on the record that our Mr Keating didn’t make his first visit to India till a couple of years later!”
“No, that can’t be true,” I objected. “From the dates on those books of his, he’d been writing about Inspector Ghote for a whole decade by then. How could a man show such an intimate knowledge of a country without visiting it? Who’s to say he didn’t make an earlier trip before this official one he admits to?”
“You are,” he cried triumphantly. “You mentioned it was your birthday, your sixth birthday, on the day that your father let Uncle Harry con him out of them rupees. And that would be the nineteenth of May, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, by one of those quirks of fate which protect good innocent people and put toe-rags like you in jail, Mr Keating, who is a meticulous record keeper, was able to tell us exactly where he was on that date. He was at a Crime Writers’ Conference in Harrogate on the weekend of Friday 18 to Sunday 20 May 1973, and he was able to give us the names of several other writers of unimpeachable character and unfaultable memory who were delighted to confirm what he said. So there it is. You picked on the wrong man, stupid!”
I was beginning to be seriously annoyed by his attitude. I mean, I might be a murder suspect, but there was no need to be rude!
And in any case, now I thought about it, I wasn’t actually a murder suspect, was I? From the way he was talking, the attempt must certainly have failed.
For the sake of certainty, I continued to ignore his rudeness and asked, “So Mr Keating is all right, is he? I mean, from what you say, the bomb didn’t go off?”
“Yes, I’m glad to say Mr Keating is alive and well and at this very moment no doubt entertaining his friends at his birthday party with the story of the idiot who tried to blow him up. Of course, what he doesn’t know yet because the bomb squad only confirmed it an hour ago was that he never was in any real danger. Don’t know where you got your recipe from, Mr Lachrymate, but the experts say there was as much chance of your bomb going off as there is of Mr Keating’s birthday cake blowing up when they light the candles!”