Blame The Dead

The casual way he handled the notes cheered me up a bit. 'I don't know how much it'll take, but I'll give you a strict account weekly.'

'Probably quite a bit,' he said thoughtfully, 'if you have to follow where Daddy went.'

'Like where?'

'H^'s been in Norway recently; he sent me postcards from Bergen. But I don't know what he was doing – except that his syndicate rather specialised in Norwegian shipping.'

Harry added, 'It's the fifth biggest merchant fleet in the world. I think so, anyway.'

I nodded. 'Well, I won't start charging off to Norway until I've got a better excuse. Tell me one thing: did your father commute up from Kent every day?'

'Oh, no. He had a flat in Saint John's Wood. He spent most of the week there.'

With or without the willing Miss Mackwood? I took out my notebook – in fact a last year's diary; I buy them by the dozen, cheap, at this time of the year – and wrote down the address. 'You wouldn't have a key to the flat, would you?'

'Yes.'

'D'you mind if I go along and burglarize it a bit?'

Instinctively, he did mind – but he saw the sense of it. He took out a key ring and started working the key off it. Harry just sparkled: this was what private eyes were supposed to do -go busting into people's flats and turning them over.

David asked, 'Have you talked to any of the members in Daddy's syndicate, sir?'

I dodged. 'Who d'you recommend?'

'Well, there's Mr Winslow, he's rather cheerful, and of course Miss Mackwood. She ought to know what was happening.'

Her name didn't seem to have any particular echo, the way he said it. But tried a little more, just in case: °You've met her, then?'

'Oh, yes. When I've visited Daddy at Lloyd's.'

He just might have said something about her turning up at a weekend, somewhere. So I just nodded and wrote down the name Winslow. I planned on trying just about everybody in the syndicate, if I needed to – but not until I knew more myself.

The interrogator's biggest weapon isn't rubber truncheons or bright lights or electrodes on to the balls or anything – it's knowledge. Just that. The more you know, the more you can use as a lever to pry loose the rest.

I said carefully, 'How about your mother?'

He shrugged. 'I don't think she was very interested in Daddy's work.'

'I have to see her sooner or later. Do I mention that I'm working for you?'

'I'd rather you didn't.'

'Okay. You're the boss.'

He looked startled at the idea, then smiled.

'And now,' I said, bouncing a sideways look off Harry, 'I want you to talk generally about your father – if you feel like it.'

Harry got the look – or maybe he just had good manners. He got up sharpish. 'I'm off, now. I hope I'll see you again, sir.' We shook hands and he went out.

David smiled again, a little sadly. 'Well, sir… he was a rather quiet man. I think he worked hard. He loved Lloyd's -that was really his whole life. I mean he didn't have any hobbies; he just played golf most weekends, but I think that was for exercise. He didn't talk about his scores or anything.' He went off into a thoughtful dream.

I said gently, 'When he took you out at weekends or whatever – what did you do?'

'On our exeat Sundays… we went to a museum or to the pictures, or… whatever I wanted to do. He didn't have, sort of… many ideas of his own.' His eyes were slowly filling with tears; he blinked, annoyed. 'He was a veryhonest man. You know the Lloyd's motto is "Fidelity". Well, he really meant it, he really did. And I don't see why anybody should kill him!'

He put his head in his hands.

After a while I got up and touched his shoulder. 'All right, son – try a sip of liquid manure.'

He looked up and smiled through his tears and gulped at my glass, choked and sputtered, but looked a bit better.

'One last thing.' I began to unwrap my new Bertie Bear parcel. 'And I want you to take this seriously. Have you ever seen this book before? Does it mean anything to you?'

He stared at it, thumbed through it, finally looked up at me. 'What is it, sir?'

I sighed. I hadn't really expected, but I'd hoped. 'Your father was carrying it to Arras. Wrapped up. It was the parcel he was supposed to deliver.'

He looked back at it incredulously.

'Put it another way,' I said. 'Wrapped up, does it remind you of anything the same size? Anything to do with his work?'

He shook his head slowly. 'Most of his Lloyd's work was on little scraps of paper or big ledgers… You mean you think he was taking a dummy parcel?'

'That's one of the things you're paying me to find out. Well -is there anything else?'

He thought about it. 'I don't reallyknow, but Ithink Daddy was hiring a private detective at one time.'

'You think?'

'Somebody rang up when I took a message for Daddy. It was just that he'd ring again later and he said his name was James Bond and Daddy said hewas a sort of James Bond… well, that's all.'

I chewed it over and couldn't get any more taste from it than he had. 'I'll see if I can track them down; there may be some papers from them at the flat. And I'll keep in touch. If you want me…" I explained about my problems with the press and gave him my hotel number – and my name there.

He showed me back down the stairs and to another front door – the boys' entrance, I suppose. Did I want to see Hawthorn again? No – I'd only end up telling him lies. So I shook hands again, got quickly into my car, and pushed off.

By now outbound traffic had built up into a snarling, crawling stream, but I had a fairly clear run back to London. I cruised past my flat and spotted what I had to assume was the press'Nachtwachet(so why couldn't a jumbo jet crash or Princess Anne fall off her horse?). But at least the pubs were just opening, so I parked at the hotel, then walked around to the Washington.

Of course, I could have gone and burgled Fenwick's flat, but maybe that should wait until the morrow. The building would be emptier, and people are less suspicious of strangers in daylight; they should read the crime statistics sometime. Then again, I could sit down with a big piece of paper and write down everything I'd learned about Fenwick himself – except I knew that would come out just a little bit south of bugger-all. Or I could just have an early dinner and an early bed. The day had got started rather early, and punch-ups before breakfast take it out of me these days. Getting old.

Nine

I let the next day get started at its own pace. When I reckoned the working world had got into gear, I did a round of telephoning: my answering service (nothing worth while), Oscar (expected back this afternoon), and a couple of clients just to reassure them that I was still around and in business (neither of them actually told me to get lost).

At about eleven o'clock I arrived at Fenwick's flat. It was on the second floor of one of those buildings built in the 1920s with rounded corners and metal-framed windows with lots of tiny panes; the best of German modernism and Elizabethan tradition combined.The flat-door lock was a simple Yale without even a reinforcing strap, so I could have slipped it myself in a few seconds. But the key was my proof of respectability: an old family friend picking up some things for David, in case anybody asked.

It was a simple two-bedroom, one-living-room, kitchenette-off-the-tiny-hallway layout; the rooms weren't either big or small, but a bit higher than they'd build these days. I shut the outside door quietly and just sat down to try and absorb the feel of the place.

After a few minutes I gave that up; either I couldn't do it or it didn't work in this flat. The furniture was just furniture; not old or new, not cheap or pricy. Just comfortable. The only 'personality piece' was a small, round antique table, but you can't get a modern table that size and height anyway. There was a double bed in one room, a single in the other; built-in cupboards instead of wardrobes. No paintings on the walls -just a print of an old-style Admiralty chart and a couple of nice photographs of clippers under full sail.