Crooked Herring (20 page)

There was one other call that I needed to make. Janet Francis’s PA was reluctant to let me anywhere near her but I persisted and was told that I could have five minutes – and no more – with the great agent in person. But I’d need to come round straight away.

‘I hope this is as important as you claim,’ said Janet. She was putting papers in a bag, preliminary to departing for some Important Meeting. ‘I’m already late.’

‘You’ll want to hear this,’ I said.

I produced a piece of paper and placed it on the table. She picked it up.

‘What is this exactly?

I, Janet Francis, declare that I was told in December by Mary Devlin Jones that she was in a relationship with Ethelred Tressider, also known as the author Peter Fielding, and that she was looking forward to spending New Year’s Eve with him.
She later told me that she and Mr Tressider had been at Mr Tressider’s residence for the entire night of 31 December/1 January
.

Then for some reason there’s a space for my signature. I’m not signing that! It’s not true for one thing – it cannot possibly be true – and even if it were, why on earth would I sign? I’m well aware that Ethelred is under arrest for murder and I’m well aware that New Year’s Eve is supposedly when the murder took place. Why would I sign something I know to be a lie?’

‘Because I’m asking you to perjure yourself. You may later have to swear to this in court, but I hope not. I think all charges will be dropped the moment the police interview Mary.’

‘I’m sorry, but I really have to go. I don’t have time for some elaborate joke at my expense.’

She stood up.

‘I know about Karen Rockingham’s detective novel,’ I said.

She sat down.

‘You can’t! I mean, there’s no such thing.’

‘Yes, there is. I know and others know too.’

‘Who? What are they planning to do about it?’

I pointed to the note on the table.

‘You can’t expect me to sign that in order to find out … You
do
expect me to sign that to find out, don’t you? Oh my God – this is blackmail, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it’s proper blackmail. The leak comes from this office. If it reaches the press it will ruin your agency.’

‘Then you have to tell me.’

I tapped the note on the table.

‘Do you know what the penalties for perjury are?’ she demanded.

‘Less than what will happen if news of the Rockingham novel hits the press. Anyway, read the note in front of you: all you’re saying is that’s what you believe you were told. It would be difficult to prove that Mary didn’t say that to you. It would be even more difficult to prove that you didn’t think that’s what Mary told you. I doubt you’d even get a custodial sentence.’

‘I’d make sure you went down with me.’

‘It’s a deal. We’ll share a cell. I bag the top bunk.’

Janet’s eyes shot daggers at me across the table, but I was dagger-proof. She took out a very expensive fountain pen and scratched her signature furiously on the page.

‘Now, who leaked what to whom?’

I told her.

‘And there’s no point in sacking Tuesday,’ I added. ‘I already have her under contract to me, as is Elisabeth Söderling, interestingly.’

‘Elisabeth Söderling?’

‘Maybe I’ll need to explain that one some other time. I’m sorry you’ve lost Crispin too as a client – though I guess that the estate of Crispin Vynall is almost as valuable.’

‘Value? That isn’t a consideration,’ she said.

Then I remembered something Mary had said about Janet fancying Crispin – or perhaps I had said it to Mary. Either way, it could well be true. Maybe it wasn’t just the commission that she would miss.

‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘that you get closer to some of your authors than others.’

‘Meaning what exactly?’ Janet was haughty but very
much on her guard. I could tell there was something she was holding back about Crispin – or maybe one of her other male authors. Well, I could get Tuesday to relate all of the gossip to me at leisure. I didn’t need to know at this precise moment.

‘I’ve had my five minutes,’ I said. ‘I’d better be going.’

‘But what do I do now? I’ve signed your damned note, but as far as I can see there’s no way of stopping Henry Holiday going to the press.’

‘These things always depend on how they are done,’ I said. ‘Henry would leak it to the journalist who would put the least favourable interpretation on it all – a trashy novel that had been largely ignored and sold few copies. You, on the other hand, can select your own journalist to leak an exclusive story to – you might let their paper write a very favourable review a week or so prior to the leak so that they can boast they spotted the exceptional quality of the novel even before they knew who had written it. Most papers like an exclusive. They’ll be eating out of your hand. You’ll know how to handle it from here without advice from me – now I’ve told you what’s going on and you have time to ensure things happen your way rather than Henry’s.’

Janet was nodding thoughtfully and looking at me almost with respect. Her nimble mind was planning each step. She knew I was right. As long as she could control it all, she could turn this to her advantage. The publicity would be enormous. At the very least she could massively increase the sales of Karen’s book.

‘I’d better let you go to your meeting,’ I said.

‘Meeting? That wasn’t important. I have calls to make.’

I left her dialling furiously. She hadn’t thanked me in so many words, but deep down I knew she was grateful.

Of course, I hadn’t told her my whole plan. She’d learn that later. I folded the signed perjury note carefully and put it in my bag. Then, thanking her secretary profusely, I went on my way.

‘I have,’ I said to Ethelred’s lawyer, ‘some good news and some bad news.’

‘Do you have the CCTV footage?’

‘That is the bad news.’

‘There is a delay …?’

‘It’s gone to the rubbish dump.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there. By dustcart, probably.’

‘So, our last piece of evidence has gone?’

‘Yes, but I have an even better plan.’

‘Which is?’

‘I have established that Ethelred spent the night with another writer. She is willing to give evidence that she did so.’

‘But Ethelred says he didn’t. He was alone.’

‘Well, that’s Ethelred all over, isn’t it? He’d go to the gallows before he besmirched a lady’s name.’

‘Elsie, we are living in the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth.’

‘But Ethelred is still living in the nineteenth century, isn’t he?’

‘You might say that.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘And this is true?’

‘It’s as true as it needs to be,’ I said. ‘You lawyers spend all day saying, “I put this to you” or “I put that to you”, and you know damned well that you’re just on a fishing trip. I bet fifty per cent of the things you say in court are less than half-true.’

‘I don’t say things in court that I know to be lies,’ he said.

‘You don’t know this is a lie either,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you won’t be saying it. Mary Devlin Jones will.’

‘How do you spell that?’ he asked.

I told him. ‘Don’t worry if Ethelred acts a bit surprised when you tell him,’ I added. ‘That’s just his way.’

‘Is there any danger he will deny it?’

‘Yes, because he is noble and chivalrous and, frankly, a bit of a plonker. The police suspect that there may have been somebody because Henry told them there might be, but that subtle little double bluff is about to rebound on him. We’re pushing at an open door.’

‘And will there be any proof that Ms Jones was with Ethelred? Just in case the police think that’s it’s slightly too convenient that this evidence has shown up when it did?’

‘Yes, I have a signed note from a very well-respected agent, saying that Mary told her some time ago that that was what she had done.’

‘Any other evidence like that?’

‘How much would you like?’

‘I’m not asking you to fake witness statements.’

‘OK. We’ll have to do it your way, then. That’s all I have. Is it enough?’

‘Do you assure me that what you have told me this morning is the truth?’

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’

‘Based on that assurance, I’ll let Mr Tressider know, then.’

‘Just make sure he doesn’t screw it up.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Elsie, coming from you that’s pretty rich.’

He had a point. Still, what on earth could go wrong with a plan like mine?

Later I phoned Ethelred’s editor.

‘Hi, Will, you’d better start reprinting Ethelred’s books. He’s about to be released from custody and there’s going to be massive interest. I’m going to arrange for him to sell his story to one of the big Sunday papers. His books will just be flying off the shelves.’

‘We’re already reprinting. Sales have rocketed in the last few days. Being arrested was the best career move Ethelred’s made for some time. Just so long as he is found not guilty.’

‘Strictly speaking he hasn’t been charged yet. Nor will he be. Fact.’

‘You sound very confident.’

‘Oh, I am, Will. I so am.’

But the next day came, and the one after and Ethelred had not been released. The story had, to tell the truth, faded a little from the front pages. Other stories had taken its place. Book sales were still good, but Ethelred’s face no longer featured on the news programmes.

I tried phoning his lawyer a couple of times, but on each occasion I was told that he wasn’t available but that my message would be passed on to him.

Doubtless it took time for the police to conduct their interviews with Mary and Janet. Soon – tomorrow if not today – I would receive a call from Ethelred, thanking me profusely for springing him from his dungeon and expressing admiration for my strategy in delaying his release to ensure maximum publicity and book sales. Well, something like that, anyway.

And I had plenty to do. Tuesday had started work at my office, which involved finding her desk space and a computer and a phone and paper and pens and paper clips and showing her how a very old photocopier worked and discussing why we didn’t have a nice coffee machine like Janet’s.

I put her straight onto the recently acquired Söderling account. But I was expecting to land a much bigger fish very shortly. I put through a call to Karen Rockingham, and explained one or two things to her.

I also sorted out things with one of my contacts at the
Sunday Times
– Ethelred would write them an exclusive account of his unjust incarceration for a fee to be agreed, once it was clear he was actually being released.

I was in fact so busy that three days passed before I actually started to worry. I mean, had I underestimated
not merely his chivalrous nature but also his honesty? He would obviously have worked out what was going on. Would he have decided he would rather go to prison than lie? It was unlikely but then … and, holy shit! If he said it was untrue and the police believed him, that did not look good for Mary or Janet or me. I wasn’t sure whether my offer to share a cell with Janet was in any way legally binding, but I didn’t want to go to gaol anyway.

I was, of course, still hopeful my plan would work, even after the call from Mary.

‘The police interviewed me yesterday,’ she said.

‘And?’

‘I told them what we agreed. That I had arranged to spend New Year’s Eve with Ethelred.’

‘And what did you say you did?’

‘We watched the programme on meerkats.’

‘Nice touch. And absolutely true. You did both watch it – at precisely the same time, only not in precisely the same place.’

‘They seemed very suspicious.’

‘That’s their job.’

‘They seemed to know I wasn’t telling the truth.’

‘It’s just a way they have.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Trust me. I’m your agent. Would I allow you to get into some stupid mess?’

All week, I’ve had
BBC News 24
running constantly in my office, volume muted, just in case there was the merest hint that Ethelred was about to be freed or, conversely, that
investigations had taken a more serious turn, with other arrests expected. Possibly that the police were hunting for two literary agents and one author of books about a cat detective. But there has been nothing at all.

So, I have decided to drive down to Sussex, with this notebook and my tape recorder. I shall visit Henry Holiday and see what more I can get him to tell me. Because it is just possible that there is more evidence that I have missed and it is just possible that he is so conceited and arrogant that he will tell me. But before I do that, I shall drop in on Ethelred’s house, because I know his neighbour has a spare set of keys, and I shall check that all is well there and nothing is malfunctioning. Ethelred and I go back a long way. If he does go down for thirty years, less time off for good behaviour, I’ll at least need to know how his boiler works.

It had been a long day. When the police finally said that I was released and could go, I felt an immediate flood of relief, tinged almost with disbelief.

My lawyer had kept me well informed, of course. I’d heard with despair of Elsie losing the death threat letter and then, disaster piling on disaster, how she had also failed to obtain the CCTV footage when it was available. Then, when her Great Plan was revealed to me, I almost gave up on the spot. Fortunately it had all worked out in the end. I had been driven back to West Wittering and had just made myself some tea when I heard the key in my front door. It was only a mild surprise when Elsie marched in to the sitting room.

‘Bloody hell, Ethelred! What are
you
doing here?’

‘It’s my house,’ I said.

‘That doesn’t mean you can just barge in whenever you like, frightening the shit out of me.’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘But you are supposed to be in gaol. I still haven’t got the
Sunday Times
deal in place yet. They’ll want pictures of you leaving Paddington Green police station. We need to get you back there and—’

‘There’s a police station at Selsey, if you’d like to get a snap of me outside one. I’ve no plans to go inside a police station for some time.’

‘So, Plan C worked, then? I mean you’re free?’

‘Elsie, shall we run through your contribution to my freedom? First, you encouraged me to start this stupid investigation on Henry’s behalf.’

‘A bit,’ she said.

‘Then you allowed yourself to be fooled into believing that Crispin was Thrillseeker …’

‘You’d never have worked it out.’

‘… thus providing one of the key pieces of evidence against me.’

‘Your infatuation with Emma Vynall was good evidence too.’

‘I was never infatuated with Emma Vynall. But you still told the police that I fancied her rotten.’

‘Well, you did.’

‘Once, perhaps. But you didn’t have to say it. It wasn’t helpful.’

‘Still, it was me that got you off. I mean, if I hadn’t got Mary to say that she’d slept with you …’

‘That was a complication that I would prefer to have avoided. It could have ruined my defence and led to Mary being convicted of perjury. But never mind. In the end it left the police bemused but they won’t be pursuing
that line of inquiry further. It did no harm.’

‘So, the police haven’t released you because of the watertight alibi I constructed for you?’

‘I’ve
always
had my own watertight alibi. And it was a real one – not an invention. I just preferred not to use it unless I absolutely had to.’

‘What was that, then?’

‘I spent New Year’s Eve in bed with somebody.’

‘Not Mary Devlin Jones?’

‘Clearly not.’

‘Emma Vynall?’

‘No. Even though I apparently fancy her rotten.’

‘Who, then?’

‘I’m coming to that. Fortunately I never needed to tell the police who it was.’

‘So, if the police
didn’t
believe you were in bed with Mary, and you wouldn’t say who you were really in bed with, how did you get out of gaol?’

‘The CCTV footage.’

‘But it was thrown away.’

‘No, the police picked it up. My lawyer told me what you’d told him. You thought, and Kevin may have thought, that the old machine had gone for recycling. All that had happened was that the police had contacted the manager – the proper manager, not the idiot boy you spoke to. The manager said that he still had the machine in store and the police came and took it away. He hadn’t told Kevin because it was none of Kevin’s business. The police went through the footage for New Year’s Eve. It was clear that Henry had lied to them and that he and not I had been with
Crispin shortly before midnight. He has now been arrested. Henry’s problem was that he was just a bit too clever for his own good. He’d forgotten, on the night, that there might be CCTV in the car park, but when I told him that the recording had been wiped he felt completely safe. Hence his willingness to taunt me with the details of how he had done it all.’

‘So the police have identified him from the CCTV?’

‘Yes, and from the photo in the pub.’

‘They found it? But the landlord said he had no idea who took it.’

‘People put pictures up in all sorts of places these days. The police searched Facebook for “New Year, Didling Green”. It came up straight away. Then there were the sockpuppet accounts. They were just the icing on the cake, but it was helpful in proving my contention that Henry had been trying to frame me.’

‘The police traced them to Henry? I told them they might be able to but they didn’t seem that interested.’

‘They were already onto it. Amazon were apparently very helpful. They wouldn’t say exactly how they had done it, but they identified Henry as the originator. One of the problems with crime writers is that they don’t keep up to date with the technology. Their apparently watertight plots are blown wide open. Thus it was with Henry.’

‘Wow. So that’s Henry put away for a few years. He’ll have time to reconstruct his great literary crime novel then.’

‘He doesn’t need to. It was never destroyed.’

‘But he burnt the paper copies, wiped the discs,
shredded the notes and then shed genuine tears into an empty glass …’

‘The CWA had sent a copy to each of the judges. Crispin and I had destroyed our copies years ago, of course, but Janet Francis has an army of efficient helpers and a well-organised paper filing system. Some intern had filed them in boxes in the storeroom – all two hundred of them. If Henry had asked her, he could have had it back any time.’

‘And it is a great literary masterpiece?’

‘I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Janet has – she says it’s a pretentious load of crap. We were quite right not to shortlist it. Of course, following Henry’s arrest, and the publicity that will certainly follow, some publisher may now be interested …’

‘Well,’ said Elsie, ‘Janet may have the manuscript but she no longer has Karen Rockingham. I signed her yesterday.’

‘So I heard. But you let Janet know about Henry’s plot to reveal Karen’s crime-writing activities, and she was working on releasing the news to the press. All should have been well. So why did Karen switch agencies before the news was even out?’

‘Because,’ said Elsie, ‘I then phoned Karen and explained that the only reason Janet was able to rescue things was that I had found out what was going on. If she wanted to avoid screw-ups in future, she’d better sign up with an agency that was slightly more on the ball.’

‘And she did?’

‘And she did.’

‘You explained, of course, that the person who leaked the information was now working for you?’

‘I may not have mentioned it yet.’

‘Well, you haven’t done too badly out of my incarceration, have you? You’ve acquired three new writers: Mary Devlin Jones, Elisabeth Söderling and now Karen Rockingham. And you got yourself a new assistant in Tuesday Lane-Smith, though you’ll probably need a couple more just to handle the Rockingham account.’

‘It would be a sad world if good deeds went entirely unrewarded.’

‘By good deeds, you mean the way you almost got me twenty years in gaol by interfering and faking evidence?’

‘That’s slightly uncharitable but yes, if that’s how you want to describe it. Anyway, how do you know all this? You’ve been in a dungeon with just a meagre streak of daylight providing enough illumination for you to be able to see your bowl of gruel. You won’t have been able to talk to anyone except your lawyer and maybe the gaoler when he came to refill your jug of putrid ditchwater and plump up your straw pallet for you.’

‘Janet drove me back to West Wittering,’ I said. ‘She gave me a full account during the two-and-a-half-hour journey. She is not happy.’

Elsie looked at me. I’m not sure at what point it had dawned on Henry Holiday that he had not been quite as clever as he had thought, but my guess was that his face at that point looked much as Elsie’s did now.

‘
Janet
drove you back?’

‘Yes, Janet drove me back.’

‘Janet
Francis
? Not somebody else, coincidentally called Janet, who happens for unrelated reasons to
be a bit unhappy about something – the death of a pet hamster, say, or Ed Milliband’s latest opinion poll ratings?’

‘Yes, Janet Francis. She doesn’t have a hamster, as far as I know.’

‘Ethelred, when you said that you were in bed with somebody on New Year’s Eve, you couldn’t have possibly meant …’

‘Janet and I have been friends for some time. Neither of us had anything to do on New Year’s Eve so I invited her over. One thing led to another. The morning after, we both agreed over hot coffee and croissants that it had really been a bit of a mistake. Not that either of us regretted it … it had been fun … but all the same … We’re at an age when one-night stands feel a bit … juvenile. So we promised each other that we would stay friends but would never mention New Year’s Eve again.’

‘Even if the alternative was going to the gallows?’

‘That was not an eventuality we foresaw, even if there was still any such thing as gallows in this country, which there isn’t.’

‘So you always had a fallback if the other evidence failed?’

‘Not one I wanted to use.’

‘And the police were right. You were concealing the fact that you’d had somebody with you. I just thought they were being stupid.’

‘The police aren’t stupid. Not in real life. Fortunately I never had to tell them about Janet because they came up with the other evidence. Which meant I also never needed to deny Mary’s touching but completely untrue statement
about what she was doing on New Year’s Eve. That was fortunate for a lot of people.’

‘Well, how right you were to end it amicably over coffee. I mean, I realise that you
thought
you were attracted to Janet. And I suppose, now I think about it, that she is precisely the sort of bossy, upper-middle-class, school-captain type that you go for. And she’s as old-fashioned as you are, in her own sweet way – I mean, those Filofaxes and card indexes she so loves. She probably enjoys country walks and the Last Night of the Proms and the Chelsea Flower Show and wet Labradors slobbering over her. But you were so right to dump her. She’d have bullied you mercilessly, Ethelred. She’d have organised your life for you down to the last detail. She’d have …
Why
did she drive you home?’

‘I phoned her as soon as I was released.’

‘Not me?’

‘No.’

‘But—’

‘You’ve treated Janet very badly. Do you realise how humiliated she felt having to sign that ridiculous piece of paper saying that I’d spent the night with Mary Devlin Jones?’

‘But you’d agreed to remain just good friends … Oh, no, don’t tell me …’

‘We’re not going to move in with each other … not yet. But I think we’ll be meeting up from time to time. As often as possible, in fact.’

‘But I’m still your agent …’

‘That might be awkward. You really have upset her. And taken her biggest client.’

‘But the story for the
Sunday Times
…’

‘Janet has organised something with the
Mail on Sunday
. Then I’m going to work on the book about it all that will come out later this year. Janet thinks we might sell a couple of million. She says you always undervalued me as a writer.’

‘No more than you deserve.’

I said nothing. Elsie was right. All of those put-downs over the years – hadn’t I somehow invited them? I’d got what I deserved. It had just taken me a long time to realise that there was an alternative. I could have what I didn’t deserve.

The silence lengthened until eventually even Elsie realised that something was slightly amiss. ‘You’re a bit cross with me, then?’ she asked.

‘What do
you
think?’

‘I could apologise to Janet.’

‘Thank you. I’ll pass that on. But it wouldn’t really change things.’

‘Is it because I lost the evidence that would have cleared you of a murder charge?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Is it because I ate your chips?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘So, that’s that?’

‘Just leave the keys on the shelf in the hall.’

‘Bye, then.’

‘Bye.’

Just as she was leaving the sitting room, Elsie turned. ‘I bet Janet wouldn’t have faked evidence for you or blackmailed people or got half the crime writers in the country to commit perjury.’

‘Hopefully not,’ I said.

A bit later I heard her car engine cough into life and a bit after that I heard her turn the corner at the bottom of the road. Then there was silence.