Read Herring on the Nile Online
Authors: L. C. Tyler
‘Well . . .’ said Sky.
‘It is perfectly clear to me,’ said Campion. ‘Since there were no photos, Sky must have seen an artist’s impression or something at the time. I think we should just
accept that Purbright and Raffles are different people. Let’s leave the poor girl alone.’
‘There were no artists’ impressions either,’ said Proctor. ‘Or nothing good enough to identify anyone. How on earth is Sky supposed to know him?’
Sky paused as if on the verge of some significant revelation. What she eventually said was: ‘I’m a librarian.’ As revelations go, it was not a big one.
‘He used to come into the library,’ Sky added, getting into her stride. ‘To borrow books.’
‘What sort of books?’ demanded Proctor.
‘Romantic novels,’ said Sky.
Proctor had not been embarrassed that his client had narrowly avoided conviction for murder, but this shameful disclosure left him, for the moment, with nothing to say.
‘OK,’ said Tom quickly. ‘Purbright is Purbright and Raffles is Raffles. So we won’t try violence on anyone for the moment.’
‘There’s something else,’ I said. ‘Raffles was, it would seem, definitely planning to join us on this boat. Isn’t that a bit of a coincidence under the
circumstances?’
‘Loads of people come into the library,’ said Sky.
‘Coincidence or not, we’ve been lucky to avoid his company,’ said Campion. He looked around the group, defying us to contest this statement. ‘Unless we are suggesting
that Sky killed Purbright, and I for one am not, I can’t see this is getting us anywhere at all.’
I looked at Tom and he looked at me. He seemed to be thinking the same thing. Everything pointed to my policemen being, very sadly, a couple of terrorists. And to Ethelred being right. But there
were still a few things that needed to be explained.
Tom and I again gravitated to the far side of the saloon, where a whispered conversation could be conducted in the reasonable hope of secrecy.
‘I’m not calling Sky a liar,’ said Tom, ‘but isn’t it just too much of a coincidence that she knows Raffles and now turns up on the same boat that Proctor is
expecting to find his client on? And can you recently recall seeing somebody as nervous as Sky is now?’
Ethelred was once up for a very minor literary award, and had shown a similar propensity to drop and knock things over, right up to the moment that they announced he hadn’t won it. But
there was of course more to Sky’s unease than that.
‘Sky and Campion were plotting something,’ I said. ‘I overheard them talking the other evening. Campion was saying that they had to go through with it now – or something
to that effect. Since then Campion’s been on pins every time Sky opens her mouth, as if he’s afraid she’ll give something away.’
‘So the pair of them could, on some sort of tip-off, have travelled out to Egypt in the hope of being able to get a better chance to take a potshot at Raffles here.’
‘Sky has to be in disguise,’ I added. ‘The whole no-make-up, cheap-jewellery thing always seemed a bit overworked. Nobody over the age of sixteen would wear a necklace like
that except for a bet.’
‘Good point. Why didn’t I spot that? Damn, I’m losing my good taste. Anyway, Raffles gets a warning letter and calls in Herbie Proctor. But Raffles chickens out and
doesn’t show up.’
‘That doesn’t sound like Raffles – not from Proctor’s description,’ I said.
‘No? Well, accepting now that Purbright never was Raffles, perhaps Sky and Campion are still expecting the real Raffles to join the boat later – at Aswan, say – and decide it
would be safer to get rid of Proctor first, or at least warn him off. Sky goes up to the roof of the temple in her floppy hat and lobs the rock down.’
‘But,’ I said, ‘they’d have no reason then to shoot Purbright, being the only ones on the boat who were absolutely sure he wasn’t Raffles.’
‘That’s the one minor flaw in my theory,’ Tom conceded.
‘And where does Campion fit in, anyway? Even if we accept that Sky supplies Raffles with romantic fiction, what’s Campion’s interest in all this?’
‘I’m certainly not letting it drop anyway,’ said Tom. ‘Maybe Ethelred will have some answers when he gets back.’
We looked out through the window. There was another boat approaching. Seven men in a white motorboat. And they were heading our way fast.
‘Stay away from the windows!’ said Proctor. ‘We were told to keep our heads down.’
Tom was crouching and I decided it might be a good idea to crouch too. The white boat was now sliding silently alongside. I could see Ethelred, quite clearly, starting to get awkwardly to his
feet, then the boat disappeared out of our line of sight.
I stood up, hoping to be able to catch a glimpse of it from a better angle, but all of the action was going on somewhere I couldn’t quite see.
‘Get
down
,’ hissed Proctor.
‘It’s OK,’ I said, still standing. ‘The white boat is leaving. It’s swinging round and back off up the Nile. Everything’s going to be OK. We’re
safe!’
At which point there was the most enormous explosion.
Twenty-six
‘Shit,’ I said.
The guy in the linen suit paused for a moment. We were both calculating how long we had. The terrorists would not detonate the bomb while they were still moored to the
Khedive
. So, ten
seconds to cast off, then fifteen seconds maybe to get clear of us before they pressed the button?
The case was ripped from my hands and flung through the open door in a broad arc that took it twelve feet or so above the smooth waters of the Nile. There it seemed to hang, improbably suspended
in mid-air, before it started to tumble, end over end, and down into the murky depths. I saw the white motorboat speeding away, then all was hidden by a vast plume of water as the briefcase,
perhaps still drifting slowly towards the bottom of the river, exploded with a roar.
‘So,’ I said as the guy in the suit helped me to my feet, ‘Majid isn’t on our side then?’
‘Doesn’t look like it.’
The ringing in my ears was so bad I had to ask him to repeat that, which he did.
‘He told me he was,’ I said.
‘We’ll have to add “deceiving a member of the Crime Writers’ Association” to the list of charges then. I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes.’
‘No,’ I said.
The chandelier above our heads was still swinging gently, the glass lozenges brushing against each other with a tinkling noise that was in a different key from the noise in my ears. The overall
effect was a bit like Stockhausen. I’ve never liked Stockhausen.
‘George Masterman,’ said the guy in the suit, holding out his hand, this time to shake mine.
‘Ethelred Tressider,’ I said.
‘Yes, we know that,’ said Masterman. I suspect that most things he said sounded dismissive, but he had put just that extra bit of effort into his last remark.
‘I’m sorry to have put you to this trouble,’ I said.
He grunted. He was sorry too. ‘A tip for you, Ethelred. If we tell you not to bring anything with you, we mean just that. It’s not like when the girly at the airline check-in desk
asks you if you’ve packed all your bags yourself. You could have killed everybody on the boat.’
‘He said he worked for the Egyptian police.’
‘Don’t believe everything people tell you.’
Masterman purported to work for MI6. He seemed to think that I
should
believe that, the crisp linen suit presenting an irrefutable argument in his favour.
‘Is everyone on board OK?’ I asked.
‘They’re fine. Maybe we should join them?’
Fortunately I had not expected a hero’s welcome when I found my way back to the saloon.
‘You moron, Tressider,’ said Proctor. ‘When did you join Al-Qaeda?’
‘I didn’t know it was a bomb,’ I said.
‘What did you think it was?’ asked Proctor. ‘A ham sandwich?’
There were obviously many other things the case could have contained other than a bomb or a ham sandwich, but I felt the mood of the meeting was too much against me to point this out.
‘I thought it was just a briefcase,’ I said.
‘Yeah. A ticking briefcase,’ sneered Proctor.
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘bombs rarely tick. This one was designed to be detonated remotely by—’
‘Thank goodness the security services were on board,’ said Professor Campion. ‘That’s all I can say.’
‘Are you sure you don’t have any other bombs with you?’ asked Proctor, backing away in mock terror. ‘Have you checked your pockets?’
‘Look,’ said Tom. ‘Ethelred’s had a pretty tough time out there. Had things gone differently, the world of literature might have lost one of its stars tonight. Maybe we
should show him a bit of sympathy?’
‘He’s an idiot,’ said Campion. ‘And the world of literature would hardly have missed him.’
‘True enough,’ said Elsie. ‘Still, give the poor lad a break, eh?’
‘Yes,’ said Annabelle. ‘I think we should give Ethelred a break.’
And Elsie, for some reason, glowered at her.
I ended up sitting with Elsie out on deck, watching the sun come up. She had filled me in on what had transpired in my absence.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘that looks like that. We know who killed Purbright. It was Mahmoud and Majid. They were clearly not policemen. And, whatever they told me, they clearly needed
him dead. Masterman says a tug is on its way from Aswan to get us floated again. We’ll be in Kom Ombo in time for lunch. They’ll do running repairs there to get us to Aswan.’
‘But
do
we know who killed Purbright?’ asked Elsie. ‘Mahmoud and Majid are accounted for at the time the shot was heard.’
‘But Masterman says Jane Watson was mistaken.’
‘That’s only because he is a pompous prat,’ explained Elsie. ‘I was with Jane when she heard the shot. I believe her.’
‘Did you hear it?’ I asked.
Elsie paused and considered. ‘There was an awful lot of other noise,’ she conceded, ‘but Masterman wasn’t even
there
. How does he know? How do we even know who
Masterman is?’
‘He’s MI6,’ I said.
‘What proof do you have?’
‘I spoke to him via the number that Purbright gave me,’ I said. ‘Also he hasn’t tried to blow us up lately, unlike your so-called policemen.’
‘Good point,’ said Elsie. ‘It could have been Annabelle of course.’
‘Why?’
‘In mistake for you.’
‘Hardly,’ I said.
For a while we sat there, the horizon now a broad flash of crimson that merged slowly into the last blue-grey strands of night.
‘Why did Annabelle initially refuse to come on this trip?’ asked Elsie.
‘She changed her—’
‘How about the truth this time?’
I sighed. ‘You know that I am planning to sell the house?’
‘Yes. You told me ages ago . . . hold on, you hadn’t told her, had you?’
‘Not until last week,’ I said.
‘But you have a buyer.’
‘More or less,’ I said.
‘So didn’t Annabelle notice would-be purchasers tramping through her sitting room?’
‘The market for houses that size isn’t like the market for flats,’ I said. ‘The agents advertised it discreetly to a small number of potential clients. I had arranged for
the agents to visit Muntham Court when Annabelle wasn’t there to take video footage. Most of the likely buyers were overseas anyway.’
‘But to tie up the deal they would have to see it?’
‘It’s been known for sales to take place without that, but yes, in this case, they wanted to.’
‘So Annabelle would have found out . . . unless she was away for a while. In Egypt, for example.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s a fair summary.’
‘So you booked a trip for the two of you on the
Khedive
?’
‘At first she wasn’t keen. Then she noticed that the word “luxury” was mentioned twenty-seven times in the brochure.’
‘That woman is
so
shallow,’ said Elsie.
‘We were all set to go but—’
‘But she found out?’
‘The buyers turned up ten days too soon. They thought it would be OK to bring the appointment forward a bit.’
‘So, was it OK?’
‘Annabelle and I had a long discussion about it afterwards,’ I said.
‘I bet. And then you decided that you’d come to Egypt anyway?’
‘It seemed prudent,’ I said.
‘Ethelred,’ said Elsie. ‘If you were to die before the sale goes through – and heaven forbid that my signed first editions should appreciate in value in such a sad manner
– what exactly happens to Muntham Court? Does Annabelle get it back by any chance?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s complex but—’
‘“Yes” is fine,’ said Elsie. ‘And the message threatening to kill you was from Annabelle?’
‘It wasn’t intended to be taken literally,’ I said. ‘She probably sent it – well, round about the time she realized I actually had gone to Egypt on my own. Think of
it as a reflex reaction. Anyway, I can’t see Annabelle chipping her nail varnish firing a gun, can you?’
I could tell that Elsie desperately wanted it to be Annabelle who had killed Purbright in mistake for me. That Annabelle might kill me was still very much on the cards, but she’d be more
subtle than a bullet fired at close range. Of that at least I was certain.
The Nile was very still. On its surface lay an impressionist view of green banks and distant brown hills. It was day, but the last damp traces of the night still hung in the
air. Out in mid-river, sensibly avoiding running aground, were three small fishing boats. The men on board were going through a routine of beating the water with long poles, then dragging it with
nets, then beating again. They waved. I waved back. In the distance I heard a diesel engine cough into life as a pump started its work for the day. There was a cruel normality to everything I
could see or hear or smell. It was difficult to believe that any of the previous night’s events had actually occurred, were it not for the fact that the
Khedive
was stranded on a
grassy bank and that Purbright was not there and would never be here or anywhere else again.
Most of the passengers had retired to their cabins to catch up on their sleep. I was wondering whether there was any point in my not joining them, when I saw Annabelle appear from the stairway.
Her suitcase must have been almost as capacious as Elsie’s, because she wore yet another perfectly pressed outfit – this time an off-white linen skirt and blouse. Her hair was tied back
with a bright pink scarf. She looked in my direction and smiled. Instinctively I glanced behind me, but then realized that I was for some reason the object of her pleasure. She confirmed this by
coming over and standing next to me at the ship’s rail.