Murder on Page One (4 page)

‘Do you read much, Chandavarkar?’ Flick asked.

‘Yes, Sarge. Today should be very interesting. But please call me Baggo. Everyone else does.’

When he had arrived at the Wimbledon office a year earlier, he had been met with barely-concealed mockery. He had taken this as teasing, not bullying, and readily answered to Baggo. Within weeks, his cheery nature, IT skills and hard work had made him universally popular. But Flick, uncomfortable about his initial treatment, always called him Chandavarkar.

‘I don’t think Baggo is a, well, dignified name,’ she replied stiffly.

Baggo frowned. ‘I know there is a lot of racism in the police,’ he said slowly. ‘But I expected that sort of thing when I joined up. To tell the truth, at home we have a good laugh at you Native Brits. You have lovely pale skin which you try to burn off every summer; you eat Vindaloo till the sweat comes out of the top of your heads; you have no extremes of climate yet you moan about the weather; you drink yourselves silly so you can’t enjoy the weekend with your families; and you talk constantly about football, which you can’t play for toffee. We laugh at you more than you laugh at us.’

‘That’s nothing to be proud of.’

‘It’s life, Sarge. As long as I’m treated fairly, I’m not going to get upset over a little racism. Mind you, if anyone calls me a Paki, I’ll kick his bum. Or hers.’ He grinned.

Sensing that his reaction to being called a Paki had nothing to do with political correctness, and disliking his reference to kicking a woman, Flick tightened her grip on the steering wheel and stared at the road ahead.

The uneasy silence which followed was broken by Baggo. ‘Do you read detective stories, Sarge?’

‘Yes, I do actually.’

‘Which writers do you like?’

‘My favourites are the Kay Scarpetta books. I also enjoy Karin Slaughter. Barbara Cleverly too. And you?’

‘To me, Dorothy L Sayers is the Queen of Crime. Of the modern writers I like David Baldacci and Ian Rankin. I’d love to visit Edinburgh. It sounds so gritty and cold. I model myself on Rebus, you know.’ He looked for her reaction.

‘Do you?’ She sensed he was testing her. It was probably a joke. She forced out a chuckle.

* * *

Aided by a sheaf of Googled pages containing both directions and pictures of the route, they easily found Lavinia Lenehan’s home. Set back from the road in an exclusive cul-de-sac, gravel crunched expensively as they parked in front of the mock Tudor detached house. Long-established rhododendrons and mature, waxy-leafed camellias obscured the neighbouring houses. The doorbell gave a musical chime and a dog barked. The door opened a fraction and a woman peered out.

‘Detective Sergeant Fortune and Detective Constable Chandavarkar. We phoned earlier,’ Flick said, her warrant card in her hand.

‘Just a minute.’ The door closed, there was the noise of canine protest, then the woman opened the door wide. She was fifty-ish, tall and elegantly dressed. Half-moon specs perched on the end of a large nose. She smiled.

‘Ms Lenehan?’ Flick asked.

‘Mrs Smith, actually, but yes, that’s me. Please come in.’ She led the way into a spacious, south-facing room, brightened and warmed by the midday sun. Bookshelves occupied two walls and a Chippendale carver sat in front of a large mahogany desk covered in papers. The detectives sat side by side on the chintz-covered sofa. Their hostess sat on the carver.

‘Do you organise the Debut Dagger Competition?’ Flick asked.

‘Yes, I do. Perhaps I should explain. I wrote for ages without any success, then I got my wonderful agent. She told me that Jane Smith, my true name, would never sell books, so I changed it for literary purposes. I’ve been lucky since then.’

‘I like crime books, but I regret I haven’t read yours,’ Baggo said. ‘I must correct that deficiency soon.’

‘My stuff is set in the nineteen forties. My protagonist is an aristocrat, and he has a pretty girl barrister as a side-kick. I actually sell better in America than here.’

‘I shall look out for them,’ Baggo said. ‘I think Lord Peter Wimsey is the bee’s knees.’

‘We’re here because we’re investigating the murders of two literary agents in London.’ Flick got the conversation on course. ‘We believe that the murderer may be an aspiring crime writer who would be likely to have entered your competition, and we would very much like to have access to all the entries.’

Mrs Smith wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m delighted to help if I can, but you must be short of clues,’ she said. Taking the answering silence as agreement, she said, ‘Do you have a warrant?’

‘No, but I can get one.’

‘I’d prefer it if you did. Data protection and so on. But I don’t want to be obstructive. What do you think you might learn from the entries?’

‘Well, both killings show imagination. Not all the details have been released, but we have reason to think that the killer may have wanted revenge on agents who rejected him or her, and killed them in a way that reflected their anger. So entrants showing a strong sense of revenge or describing bizarrely appropriate killings would be worth investigating.’

‘Writers do give away quite a lot about themselves, particularly if they’re inexperienced,’ Mrs Smith mused. ‘How soon can you get a warrant?’

Baggo produced his i-Phone and looked at Flick.

‘May we go somewhere private?’ she asked.

A quarter of an hour later they returned, confident of having a warrant e-mailed to Baggo’s i-Phone by four that afternoon. The detectives prepared to take their leave and return later.

‘I wouldn’t hear of it,’ Mrs Smith exclaimed. ‘It would be wonderful to talk to real police officers. When you phoned this morning, I knocked up a lasagne. My husband comes home for lunch, and he’d love to meet you too.’

Mr Smith turned out to be a local solicitor with a frosty manner that was soon mellowed by a glass of claret. While Flick ate sparingly and drank water, Baggo took advantage of the hospitality, earning his meal with tales of life in the police. He described how Prawo Jazdy became the most wanted man in Ireland, although the words were not a name but meant ‘driving licence’ in Polish. At this, Mr Smith choked alarmingly on his lasagne. As his wife patted his back and fussed over him, Baggo avoided Flick’s glare.

Having survived lunch, the solicitor drank his coffee and returned to his office. Mrs Smith re-filled their cups, lit a cigarette and leaned back in her chair. ‘Agents are powerful people,’ she said. ‘They say everyone has a book in them, and maybe they do, but very few can keep the pace of a story going for long enough. That’s why fiction writing is more demanding than factual stuff. You have to keep on flogging your imagination, keep the reader engaged. It’s a craft, you know, and it can be taught. A good agent will spot someone they think has talent and guide them: what to write, and how to write it. If you can get a good agent, you will almost certainly succeed one day, but it can take an awfully long time, and an agent will want to really believe in an author before taking them on. The publishing business is going through challenging times at the moment, with e-books and Kindle, so there are a lot of writers with real talent who will never get published, conventionally anyway.’

‘That must be very frustrating,’ Flick said.

‘Yes. I’m lucky to have such a good agent, and to have got in when I did. Of course, it’s like most other things: the more you do, the better you get, and I feel my latest book is my best. Most reviewers seem to agree, I’m glad to say.’

Back in the sitting room, they discussed practicalities. There were over five hundred entries for the competition, about half in e-form. With less than a fortnight before the closing date, more were expected. Each entry consisted of the first three thousand words of the book plus a synopsis, about fifteen A4 pages in all. Mrs Smith had dismissed nearly three hundred entries as hopeless, but the rest awaited the selection of a shortlist. She was happy to give the officers the three hundred hopeless ones as soon as they had the warrant, but wanted to give them copies of the rest later, in dribs and drabs, with the competition going ahead as scheduled.

Flick pursed her lips.

‘We don’t want to tip anyone the wink, and it’ll take us a fortnight to check three hundred,’ Baggo whispered in her ear.

‘All right. Since you’ve been so cooperative,’ Flick said.

‘Splendid. Now I suggest you should sit on the sofa and I’ll bring you some reading material. Unofficially, of course. You’ll see that a lot of entries come from abroad or from distant parts of Britain. You might be able to whittle them down geographically.’

‘Will they know that they are among the rejects?’ Baggo asked.

‘No. We acknowledge each entry but reveal nothing until we announce the shortlist. So all these poor devils will think they’re still in with a chance.’

‘When does the shortlist come out?’ Flick asked.

‘About the end of March. We do some checks before we make the announcement. We couldn’t allow the Crime Writers’ Association to be conned, could we?’

‘Quite,’ Flick said, not understanding why Baggo was sniggering.

Two hours later, with only thirty-five entries read between them, the warrant came through and they drove away, the boot weighed down by two heavy mailbags. Mrs Smith promised to start sending the e-mail entries the next day.

‘Before you go,’ Mrs Smith said, her voice catching. ‘Jessica Stanhope was a friend. Do you think she suffered terribly?’

‘It was probably quite quick,’ Flick replied. She was lying. The room showed signs of a struggle and the dead woman’s face had been horribly contorted. As Flick drove up the M2 she wondered if she had said the right thing.

‘Some character, Mrs Smith,’ Baggo commented. ‘Quite up-to-date yet reassuringly old-fashioned.’

‘Absolutely. It must be a challenge to write historical novels. If you find one of hers, could you lend it to me?’

‘Of course, Sarge.’ He glanced at her. ‘Er, talking about the past, did you see that there’s a season of old Hitchcock movies showing in town? In colour, now, but with the magic of the big screen. All my friends are away this weekend, but I was thinking of going anyway.’

Flick showed no reaction. ‘Well I hope you enjoy yourself.’

‘Might you go?’

‘Doubt it. Do you have many friends in London?’

‘Yes. I spent three years at school in Slough, and most of my contemporaries found jobs here. One of them is getting married, but I didn’t know him so well, and I have not been invited.’

Flick did not comment. She had smooth skin and a good figure. Baggo wondered what she did at weekends. Whatever it was, she showed no interest in making him part of it.

6

Osborne watched morosely as the clear fat that had dripped from his two pies congealed into a white, glacial skin on the plate. He stubbed out his cigarette in the middle and tried to make the butt stand upright in the greasy sludge. He had waited in the alcove at the back of the pub in Mile End Road for over an hour and there had been no sign of Weasel. The investigation was going nowhere, and Palfrey had been giving him grief. Peters was checking and re-checking ground already well-covered, while Fortune and Baggo spent their time reading Debut Dagger entries. Osborne knew he needed a break, and hoped one would come soon. Most of the villains he had caught had made stupid mistakes, and confessions had been more easily come by in the days before interviews were recorded. This killer, assuming it was one person, was almost certainly clever. Too clever, perhaps.

Retirement couldn’t come quickly enough. Alone at his table, he closed his eyes and imagined easy days in Spain and a pension. Would he jeopardise that if he gave Fortune’s pert arse a playful slap on his last day? Not worth the risk, more’s the pity. He checked his watch, got up and left. The barman pointedly ignored him.

Hunching his shoulders against a biting wind and sleety rain, he had nearly reached his car when he heard a familiar voice behind him: ‘Where do you think you’re going, Noelly? You’re going to like this.’

* * *

‘That’s old-fashioned police work for you,’ Osborne gloated, as he wrote ‘Willie Johnson’ on the whiteboard. ‘No photo yet. But before Peters and I go to see him, just check to see if you’ve been completely wasting your time, Felicity.’

Trying to conceal her annoyance, Flick went to her desk. Baggo made coffee then scanned the e-files Mrs Smith had sent.

It took Flick nearly quarter of an hour to find what she was looking for. Osborne put his feet on the desk, opened a bag of doughnuts and embarked on one of his Thumper Binks stories. If Peters was bored, he hid it well. Baggo looked from narrator to audience and smiled.

‘Willie Johnson is on Stanhope’s list,’ Flick said, cutting across Osborne’s punch-line. ‘He’s also one of the Debut Dagger rejects. He entered in hard copy: paper, not e-mail, as you’d expect. Revenge is the theme of his book.’

‘Give us the short version,’ Osborne snapped.

‘Well the first part is set fifteen years ago. A CID sergeant goes to a murder scene and takes an ornamental box and smears it with blood. He plants it on the victim’s business partner. The rest of the book is in the present. The business partner is serving life. He admits the murder to impress the Parole Board. When he’s released he takes his revenge on the victim’s wife, the real murderer, and the corrupt policeman, who was sleeping with her. Not a bad story, really, but the writing’s terrible.’