The Herring Seller's Apprentice (23 page)

But knowing precisely where Mary Jones was did not help me know where Geraldine had vanished to. The days passed and I heard nothing. No messages on my phone – no messages on Geraldine’s phone (which I kept going, just in case). You helped me discover that the money had been removed from the Swiss bank, so I knew that Geraldine had made it safely to Switzerland at least – but where then?

You were also quite right in believing that I was neither searching for Geraldine’s killer (she wasn’t dead) nor for the money (that was with Geraldine), but you couldn’t work out what I was after. What I wanted to know was where Geraldine had gone and with whom. My growing fears were heightened by jealousy. I gave a number of people a tough time, I am sorry to say, as a result. That is why I did revel for a while in Smith’s discomfort. Your well-timed (though wholly inaccurate) suggestion that they had actually been lovers did not help his cause in this respect one little bit. Young Darren Oxtoby was an unexpected possibility. So certain was I that he must know something that I actually demanded openly to know where Geraldine was. When his bafflement at my question confirmed that he was as ignorant as I was, I quickly covered up by pretending that I had been referring to Charlotte. My questioning of Dennis was equally direct, though you and he must have thought that I was crazy. Yet he
was
a possible accomplice and I had to take some risks to be certain that he was not involved. Rupert was the only one I was certain of and whom I consistently felt sorry for.

No, that’s not true. I also felt extremely sorry for me. As the leads gave out and no call came through I found myself with nothing to do except potter around and tie up the loose ends. I dealt with the estate, such as it was, and told the creditors to expect the worst. The photograph albums and other items that Geraldine had marked with her yellow dots (well done for spotting them, by the way) were boxed up for safekeeping. You have them now yourself, apart from one or two large non-perishable items that are still at my flat.

It was not until December that Geraldine finally contacted me: a postcard from Bradford, as it happened. I was to catch a particular plane on a particular date in January. No other instruction. No promise that she would be there. Just that.

Just that.

I hope I am not boring you, Elsie? You are very quiet. Just drowsy? I’d open a window, but the rain is so heavy at the moment.

Not much more to tell though: just Geraldine’s story, and I don’t really know much more than you do. I can’t tell you why she decided to leave Rupert. I can’t tell you how she got the money out of Smith, except that I am quite, quite certain, that she didn’t sleep with him. I can’t tell you where she is. All I do know is that she is out there somewhere, and that I should be meeting up with her soon, if this isn’t just another red herring. Good old Geraldine, the queen of herring sellers, compared to whom I am a mere apprentice.

I don’t expect you to approve. Fairfax has certainly made his views clear. You see, I’ve committed a crime – several, in all likelihood. Of course, I can argue that, technically, I didn’t mislead the police: they chose to mislead themselves. I can also argue, from a practical point of view, that what I did was harmless. Peters is dead and one bit of evidence more or less makes no difference now to the case. But I didn’t know that at the time. I have withheld a vital piece of evidence from the police. What if Peters had killed again? I have also knowingly aided and abetted Geraldine in goodness knows how many frauds. These are not things that Fairfax is likely to overlook or forgive. I’ll never write another Fairfax story.

But you at least should know not to judge me by Fairfax’s standards, though I have to point out that here was your
other
mistake. You thought that this was a detective story. In fact, it was a love story all along. What I did, I did for her. The rules are different for love stories. Romeo can kill Tybalt and still be a good guy. At least I’ve never knowingly stabbed anyone’s cousin in a drunken brawl.

Asleep yet? Almost? Yes, Elsie, that’s right: I did put something in the hot chocolate. Not poison, obviously – I want somebody to drive the car back to Findon. One thing we crime writers know about is what constitutes a lethal dose. So it’s just enough to put you out for a few hours. After all, I don’t want you following me to the check-in to see where I am going, do I? Once I knew that you were onto me I also knew that I had to be absolutely sure where you were when I was catching the plane. You’ll be safe enough in the car until you wake up – in time for a good breakfast, hopefully. They do chocolate croissants at the airport cafeteria, I believe. I’ll leave you the spare set of car keys and the money for the car park. There’s enough petrol in the tank to get you home. And by that time, I’ll be … where, I wonder?

Don’t try to fight it. What I’ve given you is harmless but pretty strong. We’re almost onto the motorway now. And look, do you see that? The rain’s almost stopped now. There are stars up there, Elsie. Plenty of clouds, but here and there a bright star.

Of course, I don’t know what I’m going to find when I get to Gatwick. Geraldine in person? Another instruction? Then another? Or will I find nothing at all?

I don’t know, and for the moment I don’t care. All I know is that I feel marvellously alive, as I haven’t for years. Whatever I find at the check-in desk, nothing can take away from me the thrill that I have felt since I got that card from Geraldine. Perhaps she’ll be there. Perhaps I’ll have to pursue her halfway round the world.

But whichever it is, Elsie, I’ve made up my mind. I’ve always wanted one. Plenty of other people seem to have them and I really don’t see why I shouldn’t have one too. I’m going to get a life, Elsie. It’s a happy ending.

I’m going to get a life.

Or, then again, not.

That’s the problem with two narrators. (Crap idea, as I may have observed before.) Two narratives, two truths, two endings.

Of course Ethelred may have said all that stuff to me as he drove to his doom, but how would I know? I remember getting into his car and feeling a bit woozy.Then there was this dream about penguins. My next clear recollection is waking up in the short-stay car park with a couple of kids outside yelling, ‘The dead witch moved! The dead witch moved!’I rolled down the passenger window and taught them a few witch-words, which would result in a slap round the face if they repeated them within striking distance of a responsible parent or guardian. Then I worked out how to extract myself from the car and went off and had a healthy chocolate-rich breakfast.

I was aware from the moment I got into the terminal that all was not quite as it should be – with hindsight it was a sort of shocked hush, but at the time it didn’t mean much and I was looking for a coffee shop rather than a television screen. It was only as I was on my way back to the car park that I stopped to catch the latest news and just caught a blurred image of a plane tumbling from the sky in a mess of smoke.‘Amateur photograph,’ it read, which didn’t give much of a clue as to who was on it. Even then I worked out the percentage chances of it being Ethelred (low) and passed on with a shrug. It was only when they published a passenger list that I was certain – but that was days later.

I drove back to Sussex listening to the radio. The early reports were of an engine failure on a plane taking off from Gatwick. The later reports said it was a bomb. Then some smug bastard popped up to say that we should not jump to conclusions, but he could have saved his breath because we all had. I listened for a bit, then switched it off. Back at Ethelred’s I did a quick search for clues, chocolate etc. and found his latest work, which (with a few amendments and improvements by yours truly) you have just read.The final chapter had clearly been written in advance of his actual journey to the airport, while he waited for me to drive down from London. Good old Ethelred – a writer to the very end.

In a strange way modern life caught up with Ethelred only with his death. He scarcely belonged to the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first. Take his books – the historical ones were historical (obviously) but even the Fairfax ones contained nothing that Agatha Christie could not have written. His criminals were white working-class villains or toffs who had gone to the bad. Nobody used a mobile. Nobody seemed to have heard of the Internet. He wore clothes his father might have discarded in the fifties. He holidayed at old-fashioned hotels in the Loire. Ironic then that he should have died in such an up-to-the-minute way – blown up by a terrorist’s bomb in mid-air. They never found his body, of course.

What more is there to say?

Not much, but there is still one thing that I need to explain – there never was a chance of the poor sod having a happy ending. I think Ethelred had some sort of fixation about his Penkwen and Hedhog story. He saw himself as the Penkwen and Geraldine as the Hedhog to whom he would eventually be reconciled – ‘in a faraway land’, as he wrote. But that was never going to happen. If he had caught up with her, she would just have led him the same dance thatshe did before. Do you watch those wildlife programmes, where penguins get dragged off the ice floe and devoured by killer whales? No tender reconciliations there, I think you’ll find. If there’s one thing Geraldine isn’t, it’s a round cuddly Hedhog. If Ethelred wanted the genuine article he should have looked closer to home.

Sorry – I don’t know quite why I said that. It’s not as though I fancied Ethelred or anything. And vice versa, I assume. And love’s all bollocks, as we have cordially agreed on several occasions in the past. But he needed looking after and I could have done that. Couldn’t I? I could have followed him to his faraway land and been his Hedhog.Too late for that now.

And then again … I can’t quite get it out of my mind … what if he wasn’t on the plane? It’s possible, isn’t it? What if to throw me off the scent, he booked two flights.The final red herring. What if he’d checked in for that flight, hand luggage only, then slipped away clutching a clever little false passport and caught another one entirely? And the first airline never amended their passenger list? Because they never found a body and (as all good crime writers know) until you’ve found the body, anything might have happened. So maybe there’s a third ending to the story.

Maybe one day an unsigned card will turn up from Belize or Brisbane with instructions on how to adjust the central-heating system for the winter. Or maybe I’ll be checking his mail and I’ll see that somebody has used his credit card in Bogotá or Bombay.And I’ll get straight on a plane and check it out.

Of course, that will never happen. But in the meantime, for some reason I can’t quite pin down, I sit here, and I watch, and I wait.

And one day the penkwen and the hedhog met again in a faraway land

Olrite sed the penkwen I am sory I sed you were too small and spiky

Olrite sed the hedhog I am sory I sed you were too big and flappy I would like to be your friend all wace Will you all wace be my friend?

They sed I should not trust you sed the penkwen

No, you can trust me sed the hedhog

Truly sed the penkwen?

Yes sed the hedhog and the hedhog smiled

Then I will be your friend sed the penkwen All wace

And that is all I know abut the hedhog and the penkwen

So that is the end of my story

I am grateful to all those who have given me help during the production of
The Herring Seller’s Apprentice.
In particular I would like to thank Will and the team at MNW for their advice and support. I should also like to thank my son Tom, who (many years ago) produced the original and best version of ‘The Penkwen and the Hedhog’.