Blame The Dead

I rang Harrow first, then tried for Willie. He rang me back before lunch. 'Can you make a board meeting before the end of the afternoon?'

'Er, I think so – d'you mean with young David, too? '

'That's the idea. He's free to go out to local cafés after four-fifteen. I fixed a date for four-thirty.'

'Rather. Jolly good. Would you like me to pick you up?'

'That's not a bad idea.' Then we could leave my car – which just might get recognised – out of it. 'But have you got anything less conspicuous than the Tiger Royal?' He chuckled. 'What about a red Mini-Cooper?' It would have to do. So I arranged to meet him outside the Swiss Cottage pub at four o'clock. Getting over there would give me space to lose an extra shadow I happened to be throwing.

But meantime, there was one extra piece of insurance I wanted to take out. I drove over to my rifle-and-pistol club and conned the resident watchdog into letting me use the pistol range; in winter, it doesn't usually open on weekdays. Then I put fifty rounds through the Mauser HSC and afterthat the rifling marks would be distinctly different from those on any bullet they dug out of Steen's head.

While I was there I also fired the derringer for the first time. The kick and bang were something very extra special – with a barrel that length the cartridge was practically exploding in the open air – but both the waterlogged rounds went off, although God knows where they went off to. I fired another six shots and it wasn't until I'd closed in to ten yards that I could even see where I was putting them: way high to the right. Don't shoot till you can smell the garlic on their breath.

I had a beer and a sandwich on the way home and got in just as the telephone started ringing.

'Major. Where the bloody hell haveyou been?'

Dave Tanner, of course. 'Sorry about that, Dave. Something -came up. I'm back now.'

'Yes?' he asked sourly. 'And for how long?'

'Can't see anything else coming up. Have you got anything for me?'

'I had it last Monday. I don't know if we've still got it. But I'll check and let you know.'

'Thanks, Dave.'

He rang off. I stood there with the phone in my hand, remembering I hadn't asked about Pat Kavanagh; Dave could likely have heard of him. But he didn't exactly owe me any favours and you don't want to build up too much of a debit. It could wait.

Willie was right on time. I folded myself up into the Mini-Cooper's front seat – why a man of his height and income chose that even as a second or third (or ninth, for all I knew) car, I just couldn't guess. We scuttled away up the Finchley Road.

Today he was the country squire: cavalry twill trousers, flared hacking jacket, thick, soft shirt with a faint check – just like the last three generations of Winslows except that he wore the silk neck-scarf flapping loose and theirs would have been tied like a riding stock. Wherever Willie put his immortal gift of originality, it wasn't into his wardrobe.

'Any news on H and Thornton? ' I asked.

'Sorry, old boy. They're not solicitors – I checked.'

'Something in shipping? A line?'

'Not a shipping line. But-'

'Marine surveyors? Or any other sort of subsidiary firm?'

'You mean chartering brokers or forwarding agents or ship-brokers or warehousing agents or a bunkering firm or perhaps just the two chaps who have the barnacle-scraping concession on Ilfracombe lifeboat?' He gave me a quick, dry sideways glance.

'All right,' I growled. 'So shipping's still bigger business than most people think. But-'

'But,' he said firmly, 'one chap I mentioned it to at Lloyd's said he thought he'd heard it before only it didn't sound quite right somehow, you know?'

'What sort of chap?'

'A solicitor.'

That didn't tell me anything, though. I gave up. 'How's the syndicate getting on?'

'Hardly at all, what? We'll probably merge with one of the bigger ones – best thing, I dare say. We only kept going as a small affair because of Martin,'

'Tell me: am I right in thinking he had only about the minimum deposit in Lloyd's – even for an underwriter?'

He took his time answering; hell, he took his time deciding whether or not to answer at all. He was driving a wide but busy road with a precise opportunism, keeping in a lower gear than most drivers would have done, and letting the engine work for its living. It didn't create any great hush, but it made for some natty wrong-side overtaking.

But finally he got caught at a traffic light. Willie took a long cigarette from a magnetic-based box clinging to the dashboard, lit it with a rolled-gold Dunhill, and said, 'You were almost asking that at the funeral, weren't you, old boy?'

'Almost.'

'You're sure it's really relevant?'

Just then we took off at the speed of scandal. I hauled my head back from the rear seat and said, 'It could be. But I'm not planning to put it in my best-selling memoirs anyway.'

He grinned quickly. 'Sorry, old boy. Yes – Martin only had about ten or eleven thousand in the kitty and you can't go much below that. I suppose with a place in the country and a flat in London and David going to Harrow… and then the bad years at Lloyd's, well – he just couldn't build it up.'

I could have told him a little more detail about Fenwick's income and outgo, but I didn't think he'd like the way I'd got it. The point was that he'd confirmed my basic thesis. Well, almost.

We swung left down Hendon Way and speeded up. After a time, Willie asked, is there anything more you want to check on before you see David?'

'Why? – are you worried I might have found out something about his father that you think he shouldn't know?'

'Yes.' From Willie, that was good blunt stuff. For a moment, it threw me. Then I managed to ask, 'Such as what?'

'God knows, old boy. But there must have been something -what? People don't get shot for nothing.'

'Tell that to the next innocent bystander at a bank raid.' I stared at the road and wondered. But David had hired me first. 'No, I'll tell you both everything at the same time.'

He nodded, seeming quite contented. After that, we hardly said a word until we'd parked at the top of the Hill itself. By then, both pavements were crawling with groups of schoolboys hurrying here and there and all wearing straw boaters that made them look like actors in costume against that gloomy, dank afternoon. The style seemed to be for the hat tipped right forward and the elastic chinstrap bunching up the hair at the back of the neck. Anyway, that's how David was wearing it when we met outside a small café. We shook hands formally all round, then went on in.

Long ago, the proprietor must have realised that his main clients were interested in quantity of food for money and nothing else. Apart from a jukebox, the only overhead in the place was the ceiling, and that looked a fairly written-down value. Willie looked cautiously around the grimy, rough-plastered walls speckled with notices and shuddered delicately.

David said politely, 'What would you like? – I'll get it. The hamburger and onions is rather nice.'

'Just tea,' I said quickly.

'Coffee, please,' said Willie and then caught my hard stare and realised what the coffee would be like in there and said, 'No, sorry – tea.'

When David had gone, we sat down at one of half a dozen simple riot-proof tables. Only one other was occupied, by a group of fifteen-year-old Harrovians who glanced at us and forgot us.

'Good God,' Willie muttered. 'You forget how… primitive. schoolboys are.'

'I'm sure you never were.'

'I wasn't at Harrow, of course, but…,' he stared at the group. 'Just look at that lot, what? They look as if they've run an assault course through pig-food in those clothes. And yet I'll bet I know half their families.'

'Willie, you're a snob.'

'Oh, yes, rather.'

David came back with our teas, a Coke and a meat pasty for himself. 'Well, sir,' he started. 'Mr Winslow told me about the chap Steen getting killed, of course. But did you find out any more?'

I said pompously, 'We now know what we're looking for is the log of the Skadi.'