The Herring Seller's Apprentice (21 page)

I don’t know if you do jigsaws, but there is always a stage where you would swear that the morons have left a piece out yet again. You search through the box, but nothing looks even vaguely like the bit you need. Then you pick up a bit you knew you had all the time, turn it round, and suddenly Bob’s your uncle. It was just like that now.The piece I had needed was sitting there all the time,just waiting to be seen the right way up.

Yes, why should anyone want them
now that she was dead?
A cold chill ran down my spine.And atthat moment,for the very firsttime, I knew exactly what Ethelred had been playing at.

The silly tosser.

All that afternoon and most of that evening I tried phoning Ethelred’s number over and over again. Somewhere in Sussex a phone rang in an empty room and stopped.Then it rang again and stopped again. Then it rang. I am sure the neighbours loved it, but into the life of every Sussex village a little rain must fall.

It was almost one o’clock in the morning when the phone was finally picked up and somebody said, ‘Hello?’

‘Ethelred,you tart, I’ve been trying to phone you all day’

‘I’ve only just got back from Scotland.’

‘Well, you took your sodding time.’

‘Possibly Look, is this urgent?’

‘No, I always phone people in the small hours for a casual chat, dickhead.’ It’s not only Swiss banks that can do irony. Bearing in mind that I should have been asleep just then, I was not doing it too badly, either.

‘Well, what is it then?’

‘We need to talk.’

‘Generally or specifically?’

‘I need to stop you making the biggest mistake of your life.’

There was a pause and then Ethelred said, ‘I’ve got a plane to catch.’

‘In that case I’m coming right over.’

‘Now?’

‘When else? Now. Listen, Ethelred, I know everything. You’ve finally slipped up. I know exactly what your game is,you pillock.’

There was another pause. ‘I doubt that,’ he said.

‘I know who you’re off to meet.’

‘Do you? I bet you don’t.’

‘You bet I do,’ I said.‘The only thing I don’t quite understand is how you’ve got away with as much as you have.’

‘Unmerited good fortune,’ he replied.‘And the fact that I’m a writer of detective stories. That I suspect played a large part in it.’

I may have given a snort of derision at this point.

‘You’re right,’ he continued, ‘perhaps that was not significant. But it has gone much better than I could have possibly hoped. I’ve had two massive strokes of good fortune – Peters’s death was the second, of course.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘After all, it would have been most inconvenient if he had been able to deny that he had ever met Geraldine.’

‘Very But why did you do it?’

‘I suppose that I never stopped loving her.’

A tosser to the end,’ I said. ‘What time does your plane leave?’

‘I have to check in around five o’clock.’

‘In the afternoon?’ I asked hopefully.

‘In the morning. The taxi’s booked for four.’

‘Cancel it. She’s just using you, Ethelred.’

Another silence, then: All right. I’ll tell you what. Perhaps you do deserve an explanation, at least.We’ll talk about it all on the way to the airport. I’ll tell you what happened and if you can make me change my mind, I won’t get the plane.’

‘Don’t leave until I get there.’

‘I promise.’

‘Good. But honestly, I despair of you. Ethelred Tressider, what are you like? Eh?’

‘I’m like my father,’ he sighed.‘I’m exactly like my father.’

Another bizarre night drive, but this time primarily on the left-hand side of the road. I passed through the weird, empty, ochre, neon-lit City, over Blackfriars Bridge and along the South Bank. The Houses of Parliament appeared briefly across the dark water on my right, the long blank wall of Lambeth Palace on my left, and then I was off into the unending grot of south London. Somewhere around Chessington I hit open country again, and it was foot down on the accelerator, slamming on the brakes only momentarily for known speed cameras. Michael Schumacher would have been proud of me. Him and David Attenborough. This was, after all, a mission to Save the Penguin.

There was a note on the front door of Greypoint House that read, ‘Don’t ring – door unlocked – come straight up.’ Kind of him to think of not disturbing the neighbours, I reckoned. Well, some prat had apparently kept them awake until one o’clock in the morning ringing the phone.

When I entered the sitting room, three cases were standing neatly packed in the middle of the floor. Ethelred was tidying some papers away.

‘At least you’re still here,you pillock,’ I said.

‘I am a pillock of my word. I never tell a lie.’

‘But you tell the truth pretty selectively.’

‘That’s what writers do. As you will recall, I am a writer. To be exact, I am three writers,’ said Ethelred.

‘Then you’d think that one of you at least would have some sense.’

‘What are you saying? I’ll never get away with it? That was one cliché I did manage to avoid putting into the mouths of any of my characters.’

‘No, I’m saying you are a complete dickhead.’

‘All right. So tell me what you think you know.’ He gave me a funny look. If it had been anyone except Ethelred, it might have frightened me. But it was Ethelred. Just dear old Ethelred the Penguin.

So, I gave him the lot, finishing with the telephone call from France,the yellow dots,the photograph albums and the jigsaw analogy. Though I say it myself, I was shit-hot stuff.

‘Not bad,’ he said when I had finished.‘There is some detail that you have missed – but then I don’t know the whole story myself, of course. I promised to tell you on the way to the airport, and so I will tell you everything I know.The taxi is cancelled, by the way. We’ll take my car. If you don’t make me change my mind,you can drive it back from Gatwick for me, OK?’

‘OK,’ I said.

Ethelred smiled.‘Good.That’s settled then. Now, we’ve got a few minutes to spare. Would you like some coffee?’

I shook my head.

He looked a little disappointed.‘What about some hot chocolate then? I’ve got some Charbonnel and Walker’s.’

He knew that there are certain things that I cannot resist.‘Just a big one then,’ I said.

I drank it while he got together the last few things he wanted to pack. The hot chocolate was really very good. Once or twice I thought that it had a slightly bitter aftertaste, but I drank it all. Obviously.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Another journey in the rain, I’m afraid, Elsie. It’s enough to make you want to leave the country, eh? The trip should take no more than forty minutes – but that should be enough time, I think, to give you the full story. The corner we’re coming up to now, by the way, is the one where Peters crashed. They’ve removed the wreckage, of course, but you can see the spot in our headlights now – look, just there where the earth’s ploughed up and the grass is scorched. A hundred and twenty miles an hour? Not even his Porsche could manage that. We’ll take it at a slightly more sedate fifty, I think. We’ve plenty of time. All the time in the world, really. Well, you have anyway. Just settle back and listen for a bit. Heating too warm? No? Good.

If there’s one thing I tried to avoid in any of my books it’s long concluding chapters in which everything is explained. But you deserve the complete version, so forgive me just this once.

You are right in thinking that you have worked out some key elements in the plot, but that of course was your difficulty all the way through – you thought that it was just
one
story, whereas in fact it was three, linked only in the most tenuous way. To use your analogy, you had the pieces of three different jigsaws in your box, and that’s why you’ve been struggling to make sense of them.

So which story shall I begin with? How about Mary Jones’s story? It’s a rather sad little tale, but perhaps the most straightforward of the three. So, yes, let’s begin with that one.

You will remember Mary Jones from
Crimewatch:
the rather plain lady consultant who vanished in Bournemouth. Of course, I don’t know all of her story and the only people who can fill in the missing details are dead, I’m afraid. But we do know that she was a rather unhappy and lonely person, with few friends, a failing consultancy business and a large overdraft. She arrived in Bournemouth one day towards the end of September to pitch for some work with a company there. She had, you will recall, allowed a couple of hours for the meeting, which in fact ended after fifteen minutes. Poor Mary. She must have realized that she was on the road to bankruptcy. So what did she do? Oddly enough, I can tell you almost exactly. She did not visit any of the local galleries. She did what any self-respecting woman facing bankruptcy would do – she went shopping. First she went to one of the department stores – she was caught on camera there. (Fame at last, eh?) She bought a bright red Italian suit. Then, at the same shop or elsewhere, she bought some expensive Italian shoes. She paid cash, withdrawn from a cash machine that day. I suspect that she had no choice but to pay cash, because her Access card had already been taken away from her, but that’s just speculation on my part. She probably also bought some new lipstick and eye shadow; I don’t think that she had owned either of these things before and she would certainly use both before the end of the day. Finally, she went off to a hairdresser’s and had her long mousy hair cropped short and dyed blonde. The makeover was complete. Did she feel better for it? Did she have a new confidence that everything was going to be OK? I hope so. I do hope so.

Then what? I have to start guessing at this point, but it goes something like this. She finds a cafe somewhere near the railway station to wait for her train. She orders a cappuccino and pays with her last remaining banknote. She pockets the change and sits, aware that a man at the next table is eyeing her appreciatively. This never happened before the makeover. She glances briefly in his direction: he’s rather good-looking. Dark wavy hair and a gap between his front teeth. He smiles at her. She looks straight ahead of her again, not in fact totally displeased, and takes a sip of her coffee. She takes out the novel that she has brought with her –
Professional Misconduct
by Amanda Collins – and pretends to read about the exploits of the dashing Mr Colin Cream MBBS FRCS FDSRCS (Eng).

Then suddenly there he is, standing at her table – not Colin Cream, but somebody almost as good.

‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ asks the man. (Let’s call him George Peters, because that was his name.)

‘I don’t think so,’ says Mary. It’s an obvious chat-up line, but Mary doesn’t get chatted up too often.

‘Your face is very familiar. Do you work for the BBC?’

‘Me? No! Do you?’

‘Oh yes. I’m a producer,’ he says.

Yes, OK, I really am making the dialogue up now, but something of the sort
did
take place somewhere in Bournemouth that afternoon. Maybe he didn’t then offer to buy her another coffee – perhaps it was a glass of Chardonnay or a half of lager. Maybe he told her he was a professional footballer or that he was in advertising. But let’s stick with coffee and the BBC for the moment.

So, Mary drinks her second coffee and they chat for a while.

‘Do you live in Bournemouth?’ asks Peters.

‘No, I’m just here on business. I’m getting the next train back to Margate.’

‘Really? What a coincidence. I’m going that way myself this afternoon,’ says Peters, his eyes opening just slightly too wide in surprise. ‘We’re filming near there tomorrow. I could give you a lift. Forget the train. You can travel by Porsche door to door.’

‘Don’t be silly – I’ve got a return ticket.’

‘Throw it away.’

‘What a waste! I couldn’t!’

‘You could. Honestly, it’s going to be faster than having to change trains in Portsmouth and Brighton, or wherever it is. And anyway, I’d really enjoy your company.’ He smiles. There’s that gap between the teeth again (just like Colin Cream). He looks nice.

Funny, with hindsight, to think that with her long mousy hair and no make-up he would have ignored her completely, and she would now be alive and bankrupt and asleep in a single bed in Margate. But Peters likes blondes. I mean,
really
likes blondes. So what happens is this.

‘If you’re sure …’ she says.

‘Oh, yes, I’m sure.’

She smiles too. She in her turn rather likes this dark-haired man – so different from the librarians and accountants that she has (only very occasionally) been out with before. There is just a hint of danger about it all – a hint of danger that the new Mary in a bright red suit feels is rather fun. ‘So this is what blondes get up to,’ she thinks.

Then off they go, along the south coast on a sunny September day. Does she enjoy speeding along in a sports car? Does the wind blow through her new blonde hair? Do they stop somewhere later for a drink or a candle-lit supper? Again, I really hope so. It would be nice to think that she was happy on her last evening.

Somewhere near Worthing they turn off the main road.

‘Where are we going?’ she asks.

‘Have you ever seen the moonlight on Cissbury Ring?’

‘No.’

‘It’s magic. Really romantic. I’ll show you. It won’t take long.’

Romantic? Yes, please, she thinks. I like romantic.

The moon is bright. The car speeds along the Sussex lanes. This, thinks Mary, makes up for everything else. This, in my new Italian red suit and my new red Italian shoes, is the beginning of a new life. The life I was always meant to have.

At what point, I wonder, did she realize that it was all going horribly wrong? On the muddy climb in those new red shoes up to the top of the hill? Or not until his hands closed round her throat? Poor Mary.

Now, unlike Mary, I am back on firm ground again. The following day a man walking his dog finds the body in a depression that was once an old flint mine. Nearby is a damp copy of a cheap romantic novel.

A little while afterwards Mary is lying on a table in a brightly lit room that is all white and chrome, not that she is in a position to notice her surroundings. A middle-aged gentleman, who would have been a total stranger to her in life, comes in. He is accompanied by a young policeman. They are in their different ways apprehensive about what they have come to do. The young policeman is not used to this type of work. He is uncomfortable with the dead and even more so with the bereaved, and he just wants it to be over as quickly as possible. The middle-aged gentleman’s worries are less easy to pin down. When he sees the body a look of shock momentarily passes across his face, then he smiles.