Brought to Book by Tim Heald

Author:Tim Heald [Heald, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2015-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

Six

Parkinson was his usual lugubrious, unamused self.

‘A crippled publisher in a magenta tracksuit, eh?’ he said; ‘made his getaway in a helicopter, whereupon a poet in a black leotard came swinging in from a nearby monkey puzzle tree crying out “Me Byron! You Bognor!’”

‘You’re exaggerating,’ said Bognor.

‘I’m exaggerating, laddie,’ Parkinson’s voice could have corroded copper, ‘I’m exaggerating. Baron Munchausen to you too. Listen, Bognor, this was a routine low-key exercise. You were required to produce a Mauve Paper on the Publishing Industry, not a Yellow Book. You are a Board of Trade minion, a penpusher, a low form of life. Yet you come to me with a tale of two murders. You tell me you have been hit on the head outside the Russian Embassy, that one of our bestseller writers is about to blow the gaffe on the sainted memory of Daisy Butskell-Godunov, casting aspersions on half White’s, Trinity and the Brigade or Guards at the same time, and now you give me a space-age wheelchair which whisks this limbless pornographer into a CIA helicopter and off to the flight deck of the USS Brontosaurus from which doubtless to the very Oval Office itself. “Aw, shucks, Bognor.” Isn’t that what the President of the United States will say next time you bump into him? Dear God, what have I done to deserve you?’

‘There’s no need to be like that,’ said Bognor, none too amused himself.

‘I’ve had that tiresome little man, your old friend Weinstube, trying to wheedle his way past the secretaries every hour of the day and night. He appears to think that a junior minister is entitled to do that. A very junior minister indeed. But I have to tell you, Bognor, that I have had senior ministers on the telephone to me about this one. Very senior ministers indeed. Not to mention the Cabinet Secretary herself. The Dame is not amused. Nor am I. I want you back in the office a.s.a.p. Then I shall have you chained to your desk and deprived of the telephone. There are mountains of correspondence relating to petty fraud in the postal service. That should keep you gainfully employed until you take early retirement.’

‘But there are murders to be solved,’ protested Parkinson’s Special Investigator. ‘A Mauve Paper to get out. A book to write. Work to be done.’

‘Not by you, sunshine.’ Bognor’s boss was at his most adamant. ‘Your time is finally up. I want you back here under lock and key. There are quite enough people involved already. We appear to have the police and the security authorities all charging around the countryside attempting to solve crimes. It’s my view and the minister’s view that this is no longer a Board of Trade matter. My purpose in life has long been to ensure that this Department has gravitas and what the political commentators like to call “bottom”. It has to be said, Bognor, that on present form you seem to have neither gravitas nor bottom. It is painful for me to have to say these things but I will not shrink from the truth.

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