Charles and Evelyn Grogan: American couple, ages 68 and 66, retired. On a world tour for their second honeymoon. A friendly old couple, but very patronising. Tried to give us tips every time we brought them something. Claimed to have heard of Perch’s newspaper, but not the man himself. Regarded the murder as little more than an inconvenience on a par with a missing bag.
Just one more to go. Meadows irritably checked her watch. ‘Where is this guy?’
‘You know celebrities,’ Brownlow replied with a small smile. ‘He’s probably doing his hair.’
Another minute passed, then finally there was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ snapped Meadows.
A uniformed constable entered. ‘Mr Gold, sir,’ he told Brownlow, ushering in another man.
The detectives gave each other a brief knowing look. The final interviewee almost certainly had been spending his waiting time working on his hair; his flowing coif, its colour matching his name, certainly didn’t give away that he had just got off an overnight flight. His clothes were equally immaculate, a sharply tailored blue suit in a style aiming ahead of the fashion curve over a forcefully contrasting red silk shirt and cravat. In the drab surroundings, he stood out as vibrantly as if he had turned his own personal colour setting up to eleven to compensate.
‘Take a seat, please,’ said Brownlow, gesturing at the chair across the table. The tall, slender man nodded politely to the constable and strode across the room. He examined the chair with a disdainful eye, then took a white handkerchief from his breast pocket and made a show of dusting the seat before smoothly lowering himself onto it. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Brownlow of the Metropolitan Police’s Murder Investigation Team; this is Detective Constable Meadows.’
‘Can I take your name, please?’ said Meadows.
The new arrival gave her a look of mock surprise. ‘You mean you don’t know?’
‘For the record,’ she added with impatience.
‘Of course. Leviticus Gold. Charmed to meet you both.’ His voice was smooth and mellifluous — and familiar, its owner being near-ubiquitous in the British media.
She was unimpressed by the presence of fame, however. ‘Your real name, I mean.’
‘Leviticus is my real name! My parents were tediously religious. I used to hate it, but at a certain point I realised it also had its advantages. It’s certainly not a name you forget, is it?’
Meadows wrote it down. ‘Your age?’
The faux expression was now one of mild outrage. ‘I suppose I’m going to have to give my real one rather than my official one on this occasion, aren’t I? Very well. Fifty… four.’ Both numbers seemed to be forced out of him.
‘And what do you do?’
Gold gave her a perfect white smile. ‘A little of everything. At the moment, I’m working on the second volume of my autobiography, co-writing a play in which I plan to star, researching my second novel, I’ll be guest-hosting Have I Got News For You in a couple of weeks, doing a little voiceover cameo work for a new Pixar film… everyday stuff.’
‘Everyday stuff,’ Brownlow echoed sarcastically. He scribbled some notes of his own. ‘What was the purpose of your visit to Thailand?’
‘Oh, to wallow in wanton debauchery in the fleshpots of Bangkok, of course.’
‘I’m being serious, Mr Gold.’
‘So am I. My visit was entirely for the purposes of decadent pleasure. But you can rest assured that I did nothing illegal. Well, nothing that was brought to charge, at least. The Royal Thai Police are most understanding.’ Another smile, which faded a little under his audience’s stony stares. ‘Speaking of which, shouldn’t they be investigating this affair? As I understand the Tokyo Convention of 1963, the country of registration has jurisdiction for crimes committed aboard an aircraft in flight.’
Brownlow raised an eyebrow. ‘You know a lot about it.’
‘I know a lot about a great many things. It helps when I appear on QI. Some people apparently find it annoying. I can’t imagine why.’ He beamed at Meadows.
‘The Thai authorities have requested that we perform the initial investigation, since the victim was a British citizen,’ she said, unamused.
‘Ah, yes.’ The smile disappeared. ‘Desmond Perch.’
‘Did you know him?’ Brownlow asked.
‘Of course I knew him. Not socially, of course, if I could help it. Loathsome man. Perfectly suited to his horrid little chip-wrapper of a newspaper.’
‘So you disliked him?’
‘Good God, yes. And the feeling was mutual. There’s nothing a reactionary hates more than a libertine — and nothing a reactionary newspaper loves more than hating a famous and successful libertine in print. It makes good copy, stirs up their readers’ blood.’
Brownlow looked back at his notes. The stewardesses had been united in their praise of Gold’s charming and generous nature during the journey — but had also mentioned an event that seemed relevant to the case. ‘According to the cabin crew, you and Mr Perch had an argument during the flight. Is that correct?’
Gold gave a dismissive flick of one tanned hand. ‘Hardly an argument. He was doing the vast majority of the talking, I ignored him for the most part.’
‘What was it about?’
‘His usual pot-stirring, threatening to print some nonsense about me.’
‘He threatened you?’ said Meadows.
‘Not in any melodramatic sense — and certainly not in any sense that would provide motivation for murder, I assure you. The only assassinations I carry out are of character.’ A hint of a smile, pleased with his own bon mot. ‘Far less messy and troublesome. No, he said his muckrakers had dredged up some old story or other. I told him to go ahead and print whatever it might be; if it were a lie I would sue as usual, and if it were true I would assuredly be proud of whatever I might have done, again as usual. Then I closed the blinds on him. He kept on about it over the partition until the girls told him to stop bothering me. That was the last thought I gave him — well, until he was found dead the next morning. Poor Mali, that must have been a terrible shock.’
‘Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary in approximately the two hours before the body was found?’ Brownlow asked.
Gold shook his head. ‘I didn’t leave my suite in that time — when I wasn’t asleep, I was pecking away at my autobiography. So I didn’t see anything, and certainly didn’t hear a gunshot.’
‘The weapon might have been silenced,’ said Meadows.
‘The correct term is “suppressed”, and I know what a suppressed gun sounds like. They’re still surprisingly loud. So again my answer is no, I didn’t hear a gunshot. Just the usual sounds you hear on an aircraft.’
She frowned at him, but Brownlow spoke before she could reply. ‘You’re familiar with firearms?’
‘I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I’ve used them,’ replied Gold. ‘I once visited a place in Nevada calling itself a “combat ranch” for one of my television shows. You pay them a few hundred dollars for the ammunition, and they let you blast away with anything in their arsenal. It’s rather exhilarating, actually. And if you go to Russia and talk to the right people, you can shoot anything you want. I even got to blow up an old jeep with a rocket launcher. That wasn’t for television, though. My hosts for the day were, shall we say, the kind of men who prefer to remain off-camera.’