Crooked Herring (19 page)

The police arrived mid-afternoon. One convention of amateur detective fiction is that the police blunder around and ask only the obvious questions. These two, however, a detective inspector and a sergeant, seemed bright and on the ball. They questioned me about Ethelred generally. Since they weren’t critics for any of the major papers, I didn’t bother with words like ‘gripping’ or ‘innovative’ or even ‘reasonably well written’. I just said he was a mid-list author who did mainly police procedurals and a bit of historical, with the occasional slice of romantic fiction thrown in when all else failed. No chick lit and sadly no best-selling blockbusters optioned for Hollywood.

I told them a bit, of course, about what a tosser Henry Holiday was and about how I was certain he had stitched Ethelred up, but they seemed less interested than they might. They wanted something they called ‘firm evidence’,
not ‘baseless speculation bordering on slander’. I told them they could suit themselves.

We talked about Amazon reviews. I explained that most writers didn’t give a toss, except for sensitive little souls like Ethelred, for whom any criticism was a cut to the quick. Not that he’d kill anyone for that, of course. Did I think that Crispin had written the reviews? No, I said, I knew that Henry had written them, I just couldn’t prove it. But Amazon would tell them for sure.

Then we got on to what I had been expecting. Was it likely, they asked, that he was alone on New Year’s Eve, watching David Attenborough? Well, yes, of course it was, because that was roughly what he’d done for the past two or three years – unless he was teaching on some creative writing course in Caithness or Anglesey, designed to attract other people with nothing much to do over the holiday period. So I said: ‘Alone? Oh dear, officer, I’m not sure I should say …’

‘You do realise that if he was with anyone it would be critical to his defence? We just got the impression—’

‘Then you may not be wrong,’ I said. ‘But I couldn’t possibly comment.’

‘Henry Holiday thought it likely.’

‘But Ethelred wouldn’t have told Henry who it was,’ I said. ‘What you have to understand about Ethelred is that he’s an old-fashioned gent.’

‘So, if he had been with somebody that evening he might not tell us? Even at the risk of harming his defence?’

‘His lips would be sealed,’ I said. ‘If there were still gallows, he would probably go to those gallows without breathing the name of his beloved to a soul.’

‘No shit?’ said one of them.

‘No shit,’ I said.

They nodded thoughtfully and made notes.

‘But he fancied Emma Vynall?’

‘He fancied her rotten,’ I said. ‘Would you like another biscuit, Inspector?’

Some of the interviews I had to conduct I rather looked forward to. One I didn’t. But I needed to test the water. So I made the call.

‘Henry Holiday speaking.’

‘It’s Elsie Thirkettle here.’

‘Ah, Ethelred’s agent.’

‘Just a courtesy call to say I’m onto your game, punk.’

‘That won’t help you. In the game you refer to, I happen to hold all the cards, you see.’

‘I know you are Sussexreader and Thrillseeker.’

‘No you don’t. You are guessing I used both names but you don’t know and have no way of finding out.’

‘The police can get Amazon to identify you. I’ve already told them to check.’

‘You haven’t heard of using false identities on the web, then?’

‘I bet Amazon have a way of telling.’

‘Perhaps they do. Thank you for alerting me to that possibility. Very well, if it pleases you, let’s say I wrote reviews on Amazon under both names. It isn’t against the law.’

‘But you claimed to be Crispin Vynall in one post.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. Thrillseeker may have said he was going to some conference or other and it may be that
Crispin Vynall did attend that conference. But I don’t think he said specifically that he was Crispin Vynall.’

‘You aren’t as clever as you think you are, Henry.’

‘Aren’t I?’

‘You created this image for yourself as somebody who had no idea how the Internet worked. In the meantime you were creating false identities and laying a trail of clues to incriminate one of my writers.’

‘Perhaps. In what way does that make me less clever than I imagine?’

‘Because I know you’re Thrillseeker.’

‘Do you? I can promise you you’ll have a great deal of difficulty proving it, even with Amazon’s help, and it won’t save Ethelred even then. He thought Thrillseeker was Crispin. The fact he was mistaken doesn’t change a thing. It was still the reason why he killed him. There’s no law saying I can’t set up accounts on the Internet. I might have just posted the reviews for fun. How could I possibly know that Ethelred would resent them enough to kill Crispin – I mean, it’s not as though I ever claimed the reviews were by Crispin. That was just your vivid imagination. Proving I am Thrillseeker won’t help you at all.’

‘What if I’ve recorded this conversation?’

‘But you haven’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because you wouldn’t have told me that was what you were doing. You’d have kept going until I said something incriminating.’

‘I might already have all I need.’

‘No you don’t.’

‘You can’t be sure.’

‘Yes, I can.’

‘No, you can’t.’

‘Elsie, I do not have all evening to engage in witty banter with you. And don’t tell me I can’t be certain about that. Do you have anything new to say?’

‘Not really,’ I said. Then I added: ‘Yes, actually, I do. You may have won this round, Mr Holiday, but you are still a slimy little toerag. Ethelred’s sales may be a fraction of yours, but he is a gentleman, whereas you are but a pale imitation of one. You lack his compassion, his generosity, his integrity and a good six inches of his height. Even if he goes to prison he will still have all those, but you will just have the mossy stone that you have crawled from under. I despise you utterly.’

Or at least I would have said all that if he hadn’t hung up just after I said ‘not really’. Still, I could always say it some other time.

Anyway, what Henry didn’t know was that I’d done my groundwork for Plan C. Nothing could stop that one. Time to close the deal.

Extract from a tape recording. The two people whose voices feature on the tape would appear to be Elsie Thirkettle (ET) and Mary Devlin Jones (MDJ). It must have been recorded a day or two after the lunch with Tuesday Lane-Smith. The meeting clearly took place in a branch of Café Nero, possibly in Kingsway.

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