The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries

UNCLE HARRY by Reginald Hill

“What I need to make clear and you need to get clear is, any resemblance between me and a real terrorist is purely coincidental.

“We’ve nothing in common, me and those guys. My thing was personal, not ideological. The only common ground was putting the thing together, which did teach me one thing about their line of business that I’d never realized before.

“The trouble with being a terrorist is that you experience a lot of terror!

“Not perhaps if you’re one of those mad sods who reckon that blowing up a busload of people on their way to work is a first-class ticket to a world full of warm sunshine, sweet music, soft couches and doe-eyed virgins.

“But for a middle-aged, rationalist, atheist humanist who claims to believe that this life is all you get -finito - good night Vienna – this is the end, there is no more – then sitting in your flat trying to follow the instructions on your laptop that will turn the motley assembly of chemicals, wires, batteries and clock parts strewn across your kitchen table into a lethal weapon is fraught with terror, believe me.

“You will note I say claims to believe.

“It never really goes away, does it, all that religious stuff you get drummed into you when you’re a kid? Mature logic and experience may seem to wash it all out of your mind, but scrub as hard as you like, if you look carefully under a bright light you can still find the faint outline of an indelible what if?

“And a laptop screen showing a DIY bomb recipe casts a very bright light indeed.

“Now this may not be so bad if your what if? tunes in images of all that sweet music and doe-eyed virgins stuff. The trouble is no matter how I cut it, the what if? my upbringing has left me with produces pictures of fires that burn but do not consume, grinning devils, souls in paroxysms of pain, eternities of agony.

“Killing people is wrong, my dad used to say. Doesn’t matter who, how, why, when or where, take a life and your soul belongs to Satan.

“Of course being a preacher, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

“Not necessarily, you may think. There are plenty of preachers able to trot out any number of exceptions to the sixth commandment. Where would politicians be without them? But my dad was a fundamentalist, which was surprising, seeing that he was C of E from a good old traditional Middle England background. When he got up in the pulpit you’d have looked for skeins of soporific platitude followed by a pre-lunch sherry at the vicarage. Instead he made most Welsh chapel sermons sound like Christopher Robin saying his prayers.

“‘Ten commandments there are!’ he’d thunder. ‘Just ten. Not a lot to remember, not a number to over-tax even the mind of a poor stockbroker wending his weary way home on the five-fifty-five after a long hard day breaking stock. No! God reviewed his Creation and He thought, these humans look all right, most of them, even the stockbrokers, but I’ve got to face it, I did skimp on the brain power. So best keep it simple. Ten fingers they’ve got, so surely they’ll be able to count up to ten? And that’s how we got the Decalogue. Ten simple commandments. No riders, no sub-clauses. You do what they say, or else! There’s no Fifth Amendment saying, honour thy father and thy mother until you become a teenager, then any thing goes. There’s no Six-and-a-halfth Commandment that says, Thou shalt not kill except in the following circumstances. NO! These are God’s rules!! Break them, and, believe me, YOU WILL BURN!!!’

“I found that gem in a bundle of his old sermons which had turned up in the Bombay Mission. They’d been moving premises and Dad’s papers would have been burned with all the other rubbish if Sister Angela, the Mission’s chief administrator, hadn’t spotted them. She always had a soft spot for me and we’ve kept in touch, even though she knows I’ve strayed a long way from my father’s path since last we met. Possibly she thought that forwarding a small selection of the sermons might nudge me back. Sorry, Angela, no deal, though they certainly brought Dad back to me, and that early one at least gave me a laugh as I imagined how sentiments like these must have gone down in the rich Surrey parish where he started his ministry! No wonder it wasn’t long before his bishop suggested his talents might be better employed in a more challenging environment (i.e. one a long way away from Surrey). He probably meant anywhere north of Watford, but Dad never did things by half and that was how he came to be pastor of the Ecumenical Mission settlement in Mumbai, or Bombay as it still was back in the Seventies.

“So if we look for first causes, it was the dear old bishop who was responsible for putting my father into the predatory path of Uncle Harry. He’s dead too, the bishop, so in the unlikely event of their mythology proving true, Dad will have eternity to harangue the poor chap for not letting him continue his God-given task of bashing the brokers.

“I suppose by the same token we could say that ultimately it was the bishop’s pusillanimity that led to me setting out on my long bus journey from Battersea this morning, gingerly clutching an eight by four by two brown paper package on my knee.

“Dad had got it wrong, you see. In my view there definitely is a Six-and-a-halfth Commandment, and what it says is: killing’s OK when the target has enjoyed the rewards of his villainy for decades and looks like he’s heading for the winning post so far ahead of the Law, he no longer even bothers to glance back over his shoulder.

“Religion, if you’ve got it, might be a comfort here. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord, Dad liked to thunder, meaning don’t worry that there’s no justice in this world, there’ll be plenty in the next. Well, I’d like to believe that, Dad, but despite those residual what-ifs I mentioned earlier, I really don’t. Meaning, unless I take care of the bastard, no one else will.

“So there I was carrying a bomb through the streets of London to rid the world of the villain who’d destroyed my family.

“Does that make me a terrorist? In the eyes of the Law, I suppose it does. To me, what I was planning to do was an act of justice, but I suppose that’s what all the doe-eyed virgin boys say too. Though I must confess it did occur to me as I sat on the bus that if I’d got something wrong – an ingredient too volatile, a connection too loose – and we bounced over a pothole a bit deeper than the norm even on this stretch of the Earls Court Road, none of these innocent people around me would be interested in making fine distinctions.

“I had learned to clasp my package a bit tighter as a stop approached. This driver must have missed the bit on his training course about gradually applying the brakes. By this time I only had one more stop to go. I was glad to see most of the other passengers had got out. Only a perspiring bald man and his glossily veneered companion remained, and they didn’t look too innocent.

“I glanced down at my package. It looked good. I never throw anything away and when I decided it would be both convincing and appropriate if the instrument of Uncle Harry’s death seemed to have come from the site of his infamy, I had dug out the brown paper Sister Angela had wrapped the sermons in. Of course I couldn’t simply reuse it, not with my address all over it in the Sister’s fine copperplate. But with infinite care I had been able to remove the stamps and enough of the Mumbai post mark to be convincing, and transfer them to my own parcel.

“An Indian fan, he would think, an admirer on the subcontinent who has remembered my birthday. How terribly kind! And full of anticipation he would rip the package open…

“Surprise!

“I hoped he’d have time to take in the writing on the inside lid of the box before the bang. I’d cut it from the title page of one of my father’s sermons and pasted it there.

“It read: On Divine Retribution by DLP Lachrymate DD.

“Yes, he was a three initial man too. Perhaps that was why it was so easy for Uncle Harry to ensnare him. Three forenames means a man comes from a family with a pride in their past, Dad would say. You can always trust a man with three initials. Never buy a used car from a one initial man. Hesitate to lend money to someone with only two. But give your hand and your trust when you see that third initial!

“Four he felt a little ostentatious except in the case of royalty.

“I have three, of course. PDL. Same as my father’s only the order is changed.

“That’s me all over. All the same elements as my father only the order is changed.

“I too believe in retribution and hellfire, but I want them now!

“I wouldn’t like you to think that I have spent my life obsessing about my poor father’s fate. I was only six when he died. To me, one day he was there, the next he wasn’t. Everyone talked about him being in a better place, but how a place could be better that didn’t have me and Mum in it, I could never fathom. As to how he got there, throughout my youth I was well protected from any real knowledge of what had actually happened. Certainly without him the place we were in seemed a great deal worse. My mother continued to work at the Mission. I don’t think she really had a wage, just the occasional subsistence level hand out. I expect it was the same for the rest of them. It was probably believed that any complaints about wage levels could be answered by pointing to the squalor and abject poverty around us and saying, ‘How can you look at that and still complain?’

“Myself, I don’t think Mother gave a toss about remuneration levels. I don’t even think she had any real interest in the Mission’s work. All she wanted was see me through to the age of independence then, with a sigh of relief, give up the ghost and go to join her lost husband, which is exactly what she did.

“It was after the funeral, in dribs and drabs, that Sister Angela told me the story. She had to support her own memory of events from a report she had written for the Mission Trustees at the time. It was couched in a curious mixture of Indian Civil Service jargon and King James Bible English. It went something like this.

“‘The comprehensive recording procedures installed at the Mission by the present writer acting on the excellent advice of CK Bannerjee (Bachelor of Law-University of Bombay) by the grace of God our legal officer, enable us to trace precisely the first appearance of the subtle serpent, Keating, on our premises. For it is clearly written in the Book of Visitors that he was a guest in our midst at tea-time on the fifteenth day of May in the year of our Lord, 1974, as testified by his own signature, HRS Keating.

“As her narrative unfolded, it took me some time to realise that this serpent she was talking about, the architect of all our woes, was in fact Uncle Harry.

“Not really my uncle, of course. But within a very short time of his first appearance at the Mission, that’s what I was calling him. I remembered him very well, and all my memories were pleasant ones. He was a merry, voluble man in his late forties, always willing to spend time with me and treat me to ices from one of the street vendors that my mother warned me against but whose wares I adored. (In fact I never had any stomach trouble all my life till I came to England and tried a Shepherd’s Pie out of a pub microwave.) I knew vaguely that he was some kind of writer and Sister Angela now confirmed that the fraud by which he gained access to the Mission was that he was gathering material for a book about the disenfranchised, destitute and often criminal classes that my father worked amongst. Certainly he had real creative talent. Often when his visits coincided with my bedtime, he would fill my head with marvellous stories of high adventure and wild excitement. These were a rare treat. Mother had no narrative gift and for Father any story that did not come from the Bible was so much factitious frippery.

“Curiously, it is Dad’s tales of Samson pulling down the temple, and the death of Jezebel, and the slaughter of the Benjamites, that remain with me while Uncle Harry’s marvellous stories have all faded. But at the time I waited like a drug addict for the next instalment.

“But the real evidence of Uncle Harry’s powers of invention lies in the way he took in my father.

“I think the trouble was – and Sister Angela confirmed this – that Dad believed his life was directed by God. When he asked a question, God answered it with the result that in decision he was incisive and in judgment, absolute. And for the twenty years of his adult life, this had worked.

“So when he asked God about Uncle Harry and he thought he heard God telling him Harry’s OK, that was it. In my father’s eyes, friends, and enemies, were forever.

“Thus when Uncle Harry came to him in a distracted state, he didn’t hesitate. The pitch was that Harry’s widowed mother who lived in the States was seriously ill and her only chance of survival lay in a new transplant procedure, which only one hospital in the country could offer. Harry was on his way to see her now. He had realized his assets and managed to raise most of what was needed to pay for the procedure. But he was still short, and though he would have the rest in a fortnight’s time when an investment bond matured, by then it might be too late.

“I can remember Uncle Harry’s distraction, though its alleged cause was of course unknown to me till Sister Angela filled me in. My reason for remembering was purely selfish. It was 19 May, my sixth birthday, and I felt I ought to be the centre of everyone’s attention.

“Not that Harry’s pretended agitation prevented him from bringing me a splendid present, a wooden locomotive big enough for me to straddle which made whooping noises just like the real thing when you pulled a cord.

“It might have been this generosity, plus of course the three initials, that made my father rise to the bait.

“ ‘How much do you need?’ he asked.

“ ‘Fifteen hundred pounds,’ said Harry.

“Now you should understand that the Mission finances were on a very hand-to-mouth basis. Only the big charities could afford to do national appeals in those days, and even they weren’t yet the streamlined corporate machines for extracting money from the public they have since become. So the Mission relied very much on local charitable donations and there was rarely much in the kitty. But just the day before, a rather dodgy local businessman had decided to spring-clean his conscience by donating a couple of lakhs of rupees. He’d been on the brink for a week or so, and the proposed act of charity had almost turned into a bazaar haggle with my father as to how much, or rather how little, would see him right with the Christian God. My father had probably entertained Uncle Harry with a description of the man’s hesitations. Finally the previous day, a threat of police investigation had made the vacillating villain decide he needed help from all the deities available and he’d turned up with the cash which was now in the Mission safe.

“How much cash?

“In sterling, about fifteen hundred pounds.

“Surprise.

“To my father this was evidence of God’s handiwork.

“To Angela, with hindsight, it was evidence of Uncle Harry’s brilliant opportunism.

“Dad, who had a key to the safe – why wouldn’t he? – gave Harry the money on the promise that it would be paid within two weeks. Harry left that night with protestations of eternal gratitude and the cash. Probably his gratitude was genuine enough, or does a con man simply despise his mark? Whatever, Uncle Harry and the fifteen hundred pounds quickly vanished from Bombay and our lives, never to be seen again.

“It evidently took my father a whole month to admit that neither was about to reappear.

“So that was it. A sting. Not a particularly big one in the grand scale of stings, though fifteen hundred was worth a lot more back then. The trustees of the Mission took it, if not in their stride, at least with the resigned philosophy of men long accustomed to dealing with humanity at its worst. They read Sister Angela’s report and, judging that chances of the police catching up with Uncle Harry were remote and of recovering the money non-existent, they decided it was better to hush the whole thing up rather than risk putting off other potential benefactors.

“So, all in all, an unpleasant experience which many men after the first shock might have treated as a rough but salutary lesson.

“Not Dad.

“You see it undermined that supremely confident belief in his own God-backed judgment which had been the mainstay of his being these many years. If he’d got this wrong, what else had he got wrong? It pulled away or at least seriously damaged one of the mainstays of his faith.

“Within a fortnight of recognizing he’d been conned, a fortnight during which by Angela’s account he worked like a man possessed, he went out on some errand of mercy one night and that was all that anyone saw of him till his body was pulled out of the Mazagon Docks a fortnight later. The fish had worked at it so much that cause of death could never be established. Suicide? I don’t like to think so. I want to believe he just took a risk too far and paid the price.

“All these memories rolled through my mind as I sat on that bus, and the violent jolt as the vehicle crashed to a halt at my stop took me by surprise and I almost dropped the package. As I stepped onto the pavement, despite the cool autumn air I was sweating.

“I had walked the route before while making my plans so I set off at a brisk pace towards my destination. Getting the package delivered without arousing suspicion was always going to be the hard part, but I’d worked out a method. It was not without risk, but apart from knocking at Uncle Harry’s door and handing it over to whoever answered, I couldn’t think of anything better.

“Now the end was near, I felt only relief. Like I say, at the time of Dad’s death I’d been a child, and was devastated like a child, and then had adapted like a child. Mother’s death had hit me harder. And when I learned from Angela that Uncle Harry’s chicanery had ultimately been the cause of both of them, I got very angry.

“But I was only eighteen and at eighteen you’re very angry at a lot of things. The main long term effect of learning the true facts was to finally make me dump the religious baggage I’d been dragging after me all my short life. I looked around and saw that the world was full of goodies and the only way to get your share was to go in hot pursuit. So that’s what I did, mainly in the sub-continent where I’d grown up, with occasional forays to Malaysia and the Antipodes.

“Then with youth well behind me and my fortieth birthday lumbering ever closer, I got the chance to come and work in England.

“Why not? After all I was English, that’s what my passport said. So back I came to this cold, damp, unwelcoming country. After six months I was beginning to think it was a mistake. I reached the dreaded fortieth in May and in this dreadful climate, it felt more like fifty. I had to get out, but my contract bound me here at least till Christmas. By the end of September I was feeling desperate. I looked back at my life and it seemed a wasted journey, and I looked forward and saw only a road to nowhere. Then one evening as I travelled back to my lonely apartment, I picked up a bookshop magazine that someone had left on the train.

“Now I’m not a reading man myself, and it was in a mood of cynical mockery that I glanced down a list of newsworthy forthcoming events in the literary calendar. Who the hell could really be interested in dinners to award prizes to novelists or the publication of a ghosted life of some idiot sportsman too thick to write his own biography?

“Then something leapt out at me.

“Notable Anniversaries

“On 31 October, the distinguished crime writer and well known figure on the London literary scene, Mr Harry Keating, best known as the creator of the famous series of books featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay Police, will be celebrating his eightieth birthday, to general rejoicing.

“Keating… Bombay… it couldn’t be coincidence. This had to be Uncle Harry!

“When I arrived at my station I popped into the bookshop.

“Quite a lot of his books were on the shelves. I bought a couple and took them back to my flat.

“I raced through them. The detailed knowledge of Bombay life and topography could only have come from a man who knew the city inside out. And when I looked at the author photo on the back cover of the book, I knew I was right.

“He had attempted to change his appearance by growing a rather fine bushy beard, but there was no disguising that splendid hook nose.

“Uncle Harry. The subtle serpent who had destroyed my family’s personal paradise.

“I thought of my dead parents. Then I thought of this man, approaching eighty, basking in the love of friends and family, acknowledging the applause of the world of literature. And suddenly it seemed to me that here was fate offering me a chance to do at least one meaningful act before I died! I told you that Dad used to believe God spoke directly to him. It must be in the genes. For the first time in my life I heard a voice speak in my head.

“Let him get to eighty. But make sure he gets no further!

“God? I didn’t think so. After all, I don’t believe in God. I refuse to believe in God!

“But as I approached Northumberland Place I found myself thinking, this is the real test, this is where things need to go absolutely smoothly or it’s all in vain. If the Almighty really reckons this is a good idea, then the next few minutes will be a stroll in the park.

“And a few minutes later, I knew I had the divine seal of approval.

“The post van which I’d watched for five mornings on the trot the previous week showed up within the usual fifteen minute range. And about five minutes before it turned into Northumberland Place, it parked in its usual spot outside a block of flats. The driver got out with an armful of letters and packages and went into the building. On previous evidence he would be in there a good five minutes, sometimes longer. Perhaps someone gave him a cup of tea, or something. I moved forward, checked there was no one watching me, opened the van door and leaned inside. There were several bags filled with mail. I pulled a couple of envelopes out of the nearest one. I was really on a divine providence roll, for they both bore Uncle Harry’s name and address! As I’d anticipated from all I’d read about him, the world was so overcome with joy at the great man’s eightieth birthday that his numerous gifts and greetings merited a separate bag.

“I dropped my packet into it, closed the door and went on my way.

“I thought of hanging around to listen for the bang, but there was no way of foretelling how long it would be before he opened his last present, and I didn’t want to be picked up on CCTV loitering in the area. So I came home and waited for the news to come over the airwaves. Famous writer killed by bomb on 80th birthday. That must make the headlines, surely?

“Instead after nearly three hours just as I was getting really impatient, the doorbell rang, I opened the door, and there you were holding up your ID, and I knew things had gone seriously wrong.

“But not so wrong, Detective Inspector Gospill, that you need to treat me as a terrorist! So why not get that out of the way, then perhaps you won’t need to sit here any longer waiting for this Commander Grisewood who seems to be such a very bad time-keeper.

“You could start off by telling me exactly what’s happened. And where did it all go wrong?”

After my arrest, I’d been brought to Scotland Yard and left sitting in an interview room for well over an hour with a blank faced constable for company.

Finally DI Gospill reappeared, the constable left, and I waited for the interview to start. When nothing happened, I asked him what the hold-up was. He said that we were waiting for his superior, Commander Grisewood, who was returning from a conference in the Midlands. I said surely there must be enough senior officers sitting around on their thumbs in Scotland Yard for one of them to deal with the matter. What was so special about this man Grisewood anyway?

And that was when he told me, in a tone of some irritation not totally aimed at me, that Commander Grisewood was in charge of the unit which dealt with terrorist acts by British nationals and that for reasons best known to himself he wanted to conduct my interview personally, to which end he had given strict orders that nothing was to be done until he arrived, which should have been half an hour ago.

I might have been amused by the thought that Gospill was clearly missing a very important date because of this, but one word had caught all my attention and there was nothing amusing about it.

Terrorist!

That’s what had launched me into my long defence and justification.

Gospill tried to interrupt me a couple of times, presumably to point out that the tape wasn’t on and I’d have to say it all again. But once I got started, out it all came, and finally he sat back and listened. He never switched the recorder on but after a while he did start making notes.

When I finished he made no attempt to answer my concluding question but sat with furrowed brow in complete silence.

Then his phone rang.

He listened, said, “Jesus H. Christ!” and switched off.

I said, “What?”

“Accident on the motorway,” he said, not really in answer to me but in accusation against some malevolent fate. “Twenty-mile tailback. Jesus!”

Then he picked his notes and without another word rose and left the room, to be replaced by the silent constable.

Another hour went by. I tried to provoke the constable to speech by requesting a drink. He went to the door and bellowed, “Tea!” and that was all I got for my effort at social intercourse, except for a cup of tea so foul there’d have been a riot if it had been served in India. By the time Gospill returned I was feeling very irritated and ready to be extremely uncooperative.

“Now listen, inspector,” I said. “Either you start answering my questions or you’ll get no answers when you start asking yours.”

To my surprise he smiled.

“Certainly, Mr Lachrymate,” he said. “Now let me see. I seem to recall the last question you asked me was, where did it all go wrong? Where indeed? My problem is knowing where to begin. You made more mistakes than Tony bloody Blair! But let’s start with the biggest one of all, shall we? You clearly didn’t stop for a moment and consider who it was you were dealing with!”

I said weakly, “Sorry, I don’t understand…”

“Clearly! Well, listen and learn. Now, I like watching detective series on the box as much as the next man, and I’ve read quite a lot of crime novels too, and I can tell you, from a professional point of view, they’re mainly very ripe farmyard manure. What most of them writers know about real detection you could write on the end of a gnat’s cock without arousing it.

“But this Mr Keating, he’s different. He’s been at it so long, there’s stuff he could teach us! So there he is, on his eightieth birthday, opening his prezzies, and he sees this package from India. Or at least it looks as if it’s from India. Except that he can’t see a Customs Declaration.

“Funny, he thinks. So he looks closer. Now he gets a lot of mail from India, does Mr Keating. He’s big out there, it seems. And he’s got lots of young relatives and friends who collect stamps so he takes note of the postage. So here’s what his sharp detective mind gets puzzling over. He knows the Indian Post Office Speedpost rates to the UK are 675 rupees for the first 250 grams and 75 for each additional 250 grams. So why should a package which weighs about 1200 grams only have the basic 675 rupees postage on it?”

He paused. If his intention was to alleviate his own irritation by making me feel foolish, he was succeeding. Seeing this, he smiled malevolently and pressed home his advantage.

“But there was something else, something much more basic. The very first thing that attracted his keen detective eye was the fact that you got his name wrong.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said indignantly. “I’m absolutely sure I didn’t misspell Keating.”

“No, you got that right,” he admitted. “It was the initials you cocked up. It’s HRF, not HRS.”

I checked my memory bank which is usually pretty reliable. It definitely printed out Uncle Harry’s initials as HRS.

“Are you quite sure?” I asked.

“Dead sure. Look for yourself.”

From his pocket he produced one of the Keating paperbacks I’d bought and dropped it on the table.

He was quite right.

HRF Keating.

“I don’t know how I got that wrong,” I muttered disconsolately.

“I do,” he said smugly. “As soon as we were alerted to this attempt on Mr Keating’s life, we contacted our colleagues in Mumbai to check if the postmark was genuine and to ask if they might be able to throw any light on the outrage. They got back to us about forty minutes ago. And it was the thing about the wrong initial that put them on to it. Very efficient record keepers, those boys. It seems that about thirty years ago, in 1973 to be precise, they had their eye on a suspected con man who was using the name Keating. Our Mr Keating’s name was already getting to be well known in literary circles over there, and this fellow was obviously trying to cash in on it by implying that he was the distinguished British crime writer, without actually saying it. By using the famous three initials he put the idea into people’s minds, but by changing the last one from F to S (which sounds very much the same if you say it fast) he put himself just out of reach of a charge of personation. Clever that. Of course from what you say, in your parents’ case it probably didn’t matter as they don’t sound the types to be interested in anything so worldly as detective novels.”

“No, I’m pretty sure they thought Agatha Christie was a nun,” I burbled as I tried to come to terms with what he’d just said. “I’m sorry, inspector, but are you telling me that HRF Keating the writer isn’t the same man as HRS Keating, my Uncle Harry, the con man?”

“Of course he’s not, you moron,” snapped Gospill. “Do you think a man like Mr Keating would go around conning people out of money? In any case, what happened to your father happened in 1973, right? Well, it’s on the record that our Mr Keating didn’t make his first visit to India till a couple of years later!”

“No, that can’t be true,” I objected. “From the dates on those books of his, he’d been writing about Inspector Ghote for a whole decade by then. How could a man show such an intimate knowledge of a country without visiting it? Who’s to say he didn’t make an earlier trip before this official one he admits to?”

“You are,” he cried triumphantly. “You mentioned it was your birthday, your sixth birthday, on the day that your father let Uncle Harry con him out of them rupees. And that would be the nineteenth of May, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, by one of those quirks of fate which protect good innocent people and put toe-rags like you in jail, Mr Keating, who is a meticulous record keeper, was able to tell us exactly where he was on that date. He was at a Crime Writers’ Conference in Harrogate on the weekend of Friday 18 to Sunday 20 May 1973, and he was able to give us the names of several other writers of unimpeachable character and unfaultable memory who were delighted to confirm what he said. So there it is. You picked on the wrong man, stupid!”

I was beginning to be seriously annoyed by his attitude. I mean, I might be a murder suspect, but there was no need to be rude!

And in any case, now I thought about it, I wasn’t actually a murder suspect, was I? From the way he was talking, the attempt must certainly have failed.

For the sake of certainty, I continued to ignore his rudeness and asked, “So Mr Keating is all right, is he? I mean, from what you say, the bomb didn’t go off?”

“Yes, I’m glad to say Mr Keating is alive and well and at this very moment no doubt entertaining his friends at his birthday party with the story of the idiot who tried to blow him up. Of course, what he doesn’t know yet because the bomb squad only confirmed it an hour ago was that he never was in any real danger. Don’t know where you got your recipe from, Mr Lachrymate, but the experts say there was as much chance of your bomb going off as there is of Mr Keating’s birthday cake blowing up when they light the candles!”

I suppose I should have felt relieved, but all I felt at that moment was an utter incompetent fool.

“So,” I said wretchedly, “I got the wrong man and I made a dud bomb.”

Then cheering up a little because it’s not in my nature to be down for long, I went on, “But if my bomb wasn’t really a bomb and no one actually got hurt, I can’t have committed a crime, can I? Certainly not a terrorist crime. In fact, nothing more than a slap on the wrist, ASBO, two weeks community service kind of crime!”

He laughed.

If Bloody Judge Jeffreys laughed as he was handing down sentences, it probably sounded like that.

“Never believe it, sunshine. We’ve got you bang to rights. That’s another little error you made. A pro knows that you burn all the stuff that could be evidence against you as you go along. But with you we’ve got the lot. All them notes you made planning out the attack, the hard disk from your computer showing the terrorist sites you accessed, not forgetting the bomb itself. OK, it might be a Mickey Mouse device with as much chance of working as a chocolate teapot, but it’s got your prints all over it. This government may not have done much but they did pass some legislation that makes the intention as culpable as the deed. As the very old bishop said to the actress at the third time of asking, ‘it’s intent that counts, darling’. Way people feel about terrorist threats these days, I’d say you’re looking at ten years minimum.”

The shock nearly made me faint. It’s intent that counts. That’s what my dad used to say about sin. I never knew it applied in law too.

Ten years… I’d be fifty by the time I got out… I’d be an old man!

Gospill’s phone rang.

He growled, “Yeah?”, then suddenly sat up to attention and said, “Yes, Commander! I’m with him now, Commander. No, I haven’t started the interrogation. Definitely not. Yes, I’ve collected all the physical evidence, and I’ve put it on your desk so that you can take a look at it before you start. Yes, sir, it’s confirmed the device is quite safe. Commander, can I suggest… yes… what I meant was… thank you, sir. See you soon. Look forward to it, sir. Goodbye.”

I got the impression the Commander had cut him off short and the last few phrases were for my benefit.

He caught me looking at him and snarled, “That’s happy hour over, Lachrymate. Commander Grisewood’s just coming into the building and he’ll be along here soon as he checks out the evidence bags on his desk. And that’s when your troubles are really going to begin, believe me.”

I believed him. So much so that for the first time since I was a child, I found myself saying a little prayer to God. To Dad’s God. Something on the lines of, “OK, God, after the crap you heaped on my mum and dad, you owe the Lachrymate family. I’d really appreciate it if you could come through now.”

My lips must have moved.

Gospill said, “What?”

I said for the want of anything else to say, “So how did you get on to me so quick?”

“Easy,” he said. “That sermon title you pasted on the lid of the box. Divine Retribution by DLP Lachrymate DD. Not many Lachrymates in London, believe me. In fact, you’re the only one. With the same initials in a different order. And as soon as you opened the door, I saw you were our boy.”

He looked so smug and self satisfied, I offered another little prayer, this time for a thunderbolt to come down and destroy him.

At the same moment we both heard a distant bang, like a birthday balloon being punctured. Perhaps God had taken aim and missed.

For a moment nothing happened, then came the distant shrill of an alarm bell.

Gospill sat looking at me for a moment then he rose.

“Wait there,” he commanded and went to the door.

He closed it firmly behind him but I didn’t hear a lock click.

After a little while I stood up, went to the door and opened it a crack.

I could see Gospill at the end of the corridor. He was talking to a uniformed sergeant who had a phone to his ear.

I opened the door a little further so I could hear them.

“What’s going on, sarge?” I heard Gospill ask.

“Not sure, sir. Just checking it out. Think there’s been an explosion.”

“I gathered that!” snapped the DI. “Where?”

“Hang about, sir, I’m getting something now… yes… yes… you’re sure? So no evacuation… that’s good… that’s very good… OK, thanks.”

He switched off his phone and said to Gospill, “It’s OK, sir, Seems a device went off, and there’s been a bit of a fire and quite a lot of damage, but it’s all been confined to one room and no one’s hurt. So no panic and we can stay put. Reckon someone’s head’s going to roll though. Doesn’t look good, letting a bomber get right into the heart of the Yard!”

A pause, then Gospill asked too casually, “Whose room?”

Even at a distance I could here the tremolo in his voice.

“Not absolutely sure, sir, but they think it was Commander Grisewood’s. Made a right mess from the sound of it. All those lovely water colours his missus did and he was so proud of, they’ll have gone. Oh, someone’s in real trouble, believe me!”

I closed the door quietly and went back to my seat.

Things were looking better. I’d been very stupid but there wasn’t a commandment saying Thou shalt not be stupid. And now with nothing of what I’d said so far on tape, and all the physical evidence against me probably burning merrily away with the Commander’s desk, all I needed to do was continue to look stupid and say nothing.

Thank you, Dad’s God. You came through!

The Ghote novel Gospill had produced still lay on the table.

I picked it up and looked at the author photo.

No longer could I see much resemblance to the plausible crook who all those years ago had touched on my family’s life then gone on his way. Probably he’d been dead for years.