Publish and Be Murdered (24 page)

‘I thought you liked tough and amoral broads,’ said Amiss.

‘I do, I do, but they should recognize that Jack Troutbeck is not a purchasable commodity.’

‘So it’s the end of your brief friendship?’

‘Let’s say she’s gone off me too, though only for the moment, I hope. I retain some optimism that we’ll get back together after this battle is over and make beautiful music again. After all, if she wants to climb socially, she could do worse than rope me in. She’d have a good time.’

‘Do you think she or Piers Papworth tried to bribe Henry?’ asked Milton.

‘That would have been more difficult,’ said Amiss, ‘in that it would have been personal, whereas with Jack, because of St Martha’s, it’s not so blatant.’

‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ said Milton. ‘I think someone had a very good reason to murder Henry Potbury. I’m looking forward to a useful conversation with Miss McGregor and with young Papworth when he returns. Just one question, Jack.’

‘What?’

‘If I think it necessary with McGregor, can I mention the bribe?’

There was a silence. ‘Oh, fuck it,’ she said, when she came out of her reverie. ‘Yes, I suppose so. If it was only to do with finding fucking Lambie Crump’s murderer, I wouldn’t. But I don’t mind queering my pitch as far as the McGregor millions are concerned if it’ll help with the Henry business. We old lags must stick together. Dead or alive.’

‘Listen, Mr Milton, I’ve companies to buy and investments to make and nothing to do with the murder of some obscure bastards on a piddling rag.’

‘As I understand it, Miss McGregor, this is a “piddling rag” that you wish to buy.’

‘Oh sure. And when I buy it, it won’t be a piddling rag for long. It’ll be a journal of international significance.’ A faraway look came into her eye. ‘Of course, it’ll have to change. Its gotta have zap and wham and pizazz. Maybe the name’ll have to go too.
The Wrangler
isn’t a name would mean much in LA or Sydney or downtown Singapore. Thing’d be to keep the spirit of
The Wrangler
but find another word – something like argument, combat, conflict, challenge, discord, dissent. Do you get the idea?’

‘Yes, indeed. Clearly you are serious about this, Miss McGregor. In fact, I understand that some time ago you had a management consultant in to look it over to assess the prospects for rationalization.’

‘Sure, sure. I called in Walter Bett – guy I used to sort out some bus companies. Stupid bastard came a cropper. Frightened the Abos by talking about firing everyone and replacing them with robots. Headbanger. Fired him. Robots are OK doing robots’ jobs. Different in magazines.’ She snorted. ‘Bastard just didn’t understand and he didn’t help me one bit by getting them all in such a stew.’

‘I gather that though you want
The Wrangler
, you’re not happy with its present legal status.’

‘That’s right. I’m not taking on a company where three old bastards well beyond their sell-by date can tell me who to hire and fire.’

She smiled dazzlingly at Milton. The crimson lipstick was as threatening as it was brilliant and matched the stunningly simple silk suit that screamed money, even to someone sartorially blind.

‘So you wanted the trust scrapped.’

‘Sure did. Scrapped or castrated – its balls broken. Don’t care if it’s there or not as long as I can do as I like.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Milton observed that Tewkesbury was gaping at Sharon McGregor like a child looking in awe at a ringmaster in a circus. He sympathized with him. It was all he could do himself to stay calm and on course. Her energy was curiously enervating.

‘I’d be grateful for your help,’ he said gently. ‘I appreciate that your interest in
The Wrangler
is commercial, but my job is to find out who murdered Mr Lambie Crump and possibly Mr Potbury, and I need all the help I can get. You may be able to shed some light on tensions within the paper.’

‘OK. What do you want?’

‘Perhaps you could begin at the beginning and tell me how you got to know of
The Wrangler
, when you thought about acquiring it, something about your relationships with people connected with the paper and how things stand now.’

She shot back her left cuff and scrutinized her diamond-encrusted Rolex. ‘OK. It’s the seventh today. Makes just four months since I went to my first dinner party in London and met Piers Papworth. We kidded about. He asked me what it was like to own half Australia. I asked him about the joys of being a belted earl. He said by the time he got to be one he wouldn’t have two pennies to rub together.

‘So I say maybe we should get married. You know, like the old tradition of rich foreign heiresses marrying English upper-class poms, though I’m better than an heiress because I have the stuff already. He says sorry, he’s married already. Points across the room to some Sheila with a face like a horse. I say why hadn’t he married money? He said he’d married some, but if he was doing it again he’d need much more to compensate for all the estate had lost through his pa being so bloody high-minded.

‘That sounds really interesting to me. It’s not often you hear about people like that. Usually people are complaining about being screwed by greedy bastards. So I ask him what he’s going on about and he tells me about
The Wrangler
and how his old man has spent a fortune on it because he thinks it’s his duty.’

She looked squarely at Milton. ‘Now I’ll tell you something about myself. I want to make more money, but I want to enjoy myself as well. Seems to me that a daft magazine associated with nobs might be just the right way into society here. Of course, being rich I’ll get lots of invitations, but they’ll mostly be from people who want you just for your money. You know the kind. They’re either on the fund-raising circuit or they’re after you to invest in their business. I wouldn’t mind meeting journalists and intellectuals and all those as well.

‘So next day I send for a heap of back copies of the mag, tell my lawyer to find out all about it, get a researcher on to the background and by evening I’ve decided to buy it if the business can be done with the trust. I call in Piers and tell him to get to work and he tells me he’s got no influence with the trustees. I say what about his pa and he says pa doesn’t either, and even if he did, he wouldn’t. He’s a nobleman of the old school, apparently, generally full of old-fashioned crap. But then he says if I really want to pursue it I should try going through
The Wrangler
’s editor, Willie Lambie Crump. “Willie,” says Piers with a wink, “might be persuadable.”

‘So Piers brings Lambie Crump along to drinks at my hotel and then bows out tactfully after half an hour. I’ve got the measure of Lambie Crump by then. He’s a sponger and he’s a dickhead, but I need him. The only question is what’s his price, and I know it can’t be used fivers: he’s too dishonestly corrupt for that. We’ve got to do it the English way and be subtle. Then he can keep feeling superior even though he’s taking the money to sell out his own paper.

‘So I talk to him about my big plans to build up a media empire. I talk about being inspired by Aussies like Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch, but say too that I know that since I’m so inexperienced in Britain I’ll need wise counsel. In fact, I say, what I really need is someone I can trust who will help me to get started and who can then be chairman of the board of this big, ambitious, expansionist company. And where better to start than
The Wrangler
and Lambie Crump.

‘He’s purring by now, especially when I get across the idea that this is all going to be big and money’s no object. This chairman will be my guru. He’ll be non-executive, of course: won’t have to spend much time on the job except for advising me and helping me network. I’m painting a picture of a guy who has big influence, big income, big status and big perks, and Lambie Crump’s getting orgasmic.

‘ ’Course along with all this he’s got to keep his shabby little conscience quiet by admiring my vision and smarming that with my sensitivity and intelligence I’d be different from those other foreign proprietors from hell. “I say, my dear,” he says, “together we could be a winning team.” Kisses my hand and talks about how we’re beauty and the beast. How we’ll shake up the British press and then move in overseas. And nowhere better to start than
The Wrangler
, though I’ll appreciate how difficult it will be to bring the trustees on board.

‘So it’s all understood. As far as he’s concerned, he’s going to be rich and powerful if he delivers. Doesn’t have the balls to demand a written agreement, more fool him. Doesn’t realize that I’d shit on him the moment I could, because I despise people who are that easily bought, especially if they’ve got no loyalty. What sort of a drongo would I be to trust someone who rats?

‘Off he goes to work on the trustees and delivers two proudly within forty-eight hours. But try as he might, he can’t get anywhere with that fat, drunken bastard Potbury. Piers tries too but there’s nothing doing. I put a private eye on to him and he reports we’ve hit a real roadblock here. Bugger’s got brains and principles and he’s honest. No sign he’s greedy for anything. Already got plenty of money to get pissed with every day, no higher ambitions: even has all the women he wants.

‘Seems we’re stymied. I tell the lawyers to get on with it as fast as possible without him. Then it gets worse, ’cos Piers tells me Potbury and old man Papworth are now in cahoots and Papworth’s lawyers are going to fight me all the way on what they describe as the high moral ground.’

She paused for breath and Milton nipped into the aural void. ‘What I don’t quite understand, Miss McGregor, is what is the point in going ahead, since presumably whatever happened with the trust Lord Papworth wouldn’t sell to you anyway.’

‘But he’s very old and Piers says we should be ready for when he goes for the high jump. Might be now, might be next year, might be in ten years’ time. But Piers reckons, considering the family history, he won’t be around that much longer. And he wants to sell up the day his pa is buried.’

‘But you’re investing a lot on a gamble, aren’t you, if you’re fighting a law case?’

‘Sure. It could cost a lot. And the old man might hang around for years and I can’t afford to wait that long. But that’s business. Gotta gamble.’

‘What I also don’t understand is how anyone can be meddling in the terms of the trust without the consent of the owner.’

‘Only through the heir. It’s one of the safeguards that either the proprietor or the heir can challenge the trust if they can show sufficient reason. Kind of insurance in case one of them’s a fruitcake.’

‘How complicated. But I think I understand. Now back to Mr Potbury. There’s no denying that it was good news for you and Piers Papworth that Potbury died.’

‘Yes, sure, but don’t waste your time on me, Mr Milton. If you’re worth close on a billion bucks you’re not going to go murdering people over a small business hiccup like this.’

‘How much were you offering Piers Papworth for an unencumbered
Wrangler
?’

‘Five million.’

‘Five million pounds?’

‘Yeah, sure. I know it’s a lot, but I kinda want it. Like some people want a yacht. It’s a fun investment and could be good. It’s got the name – until I change it – it’s got the age, it’s got the kudos and it gives me a great jumping-off ground here. And anyway, it’ll be a handy tax loss. Besides, Piers drove a hard bargain. Pointed out the grief it’d be causing in the family. And it sure has. His pa’s mad. His ma’s mad. And though they’re being kinda English and civilized, it’s a big strain. Piers said, and I agreed, that he deserved a big bonus for fucking up his relationship with his parents.’

‘You’re not going to renege on him the way you would have on Lambie Crump?’

‘Renege on the Honourable Piers Papworth? Fat chance. He got it in writing that if the journal’s available and free of the trust within two years, I’ll buy it for five mill.’ She grinned happily. ‘Anyway, the other bonus is that with money like that at stake Piers’ll really try.’

‘Do you think he might have gone so far as to murder Potbury?’

She shrugged. ‘Never thought about it. Thought the guy just fell into the punch. Gave me a good laugh.’

‘Do you think Mr Papworth would be capable of murder?’

‘How do I know? I hardly know the guy. Hard bastard, I’d say, but wouldn’t have thought he was as hard as that. And I wouldn’t approve of it either. You don’t want to bring murder into legit business. I’m not running a fucking Mafia operation.’

‘What about Lambie Crump as a possible murderer?’

‘Jeez, I wouldn’t expect that guy to know how to kill a kitten. But what do I know? Sometimes that kind’s the worst.’ She glanced at the Rolex again. ‘Is that it?’

‘Almost, Miss McGregor. But I’d like to know what happened after Potbury’s death.’

‘Oh, that was pretty pissy. Thought it was going to be OK then, but the old man pulls a fast one and puts on that Troutbeck broad instead of him. I wasn’t bothered at first. I’d met her and thought she was OK. Sure, I knew she was tough. But she was on the make as well. Wanted big bucks for that college of hers. So I thought I had her.’ She snorted. ‘Canyabelieve I offered her one hundred K just like that to buy the land she wanted and when I make it clear there’s a string attached, she turns me down flat?’

‘Do you mean you tried to bribe her?’

‘I don’t bribe, Mr Milton. You can get into trouble bribing. I pay people for their help and I pay them well. That’s why I get so much help.’

‘But not from Lady Troutbeck.’

‘No. Who’d have thought it? She’s just as soft in the head as the Potbury bastard when it comes to funny old notions:
noblesse oblige
and all that, Piers says it’s called. And now Lambie Crump’s dead so I’m worse off than before. I’ll bet old Jack Troutbeck’ll be beating up those gaga trustees even as we speak. Well, may the best woman win. Now, is that OK? Have you got all you want?’

‘That’s fine for now, Miss McGregor. We’re grateful to you for being such an admirably frank witness.’

‘Frankness saves time: bullshit costs money.’ And with a nod she got up and strode from the room.