The Poisoning in the Pub (25 page)

Carole couldn’t resist turning the knife in the wound of his embarrassment. ‘I’m very surprised, Mr Tilbrook, that you, such a stern advocate of civic responsibility, did not
stay to offer the police any assistance they might want from you as a witness to what had happened at the Crown and Anchor that night.’

His mouth opened and closed like that of a goldfish. Greville Tilbrook couldn’t come up with a single word, let alone a subordinate clause.

Carole had played with him long enough. ‘So which way did you escape?’ she asked urgently.

‘I thought if I went past the pub down to the beach, I could walk along to the Fether estuary and go back into the village that way.’

‘So you went past the back door of the Crown and Anchor, the one that leads into the kitchen?’

‘I suppose I must have done.’

Now finally she had an explanation for the sound of retreating footsteps on the shingle that she and Jude had heard that night.

‘And did you see anything?’ He hesitated. ‘Mr Tilbrook, I am prepared to keep quiet about what I know of your shabby escapade with Beryl . . .’ (or rather what you were
generous enough to tell me of your shabby escapade with Beryl) ‘. . . on the condition that you tell me everything you witnessed at the back of the pub last Sunday evening.’

He weighed his options. The process didn’t take long. ‘Very well,’ he capitulated, ‘if you swear you’ll never breathe a word about me and Beryl . . . ?’

‘I swear it.’

‘I saw two figures outside the back door of the Crown and Anchor. I was hurrying past, I couldn’t see much detail. But first there was just one, a small man who seemed to be waiting
for something . . .’

Ray Witchett waiting for his autograph from Dan Poke.

‘. . . and then another man went round the side of the pub towards him.’

‘What did this other man look like?’

‘One of the bikers. Dressed in leather. He was tall with long hair and a dark beard.’

Her breath was tight as Carole asked, ‘Did they seem to know each other?’

‘Oh yes,’ Greville Tilbrook replied. ‘They greeted each other like friends.’

Ray hadn’t known any of the bikers. Only someone who looked like a biker.

Viggo.

It was nearly midnight when the phone at Woodside Cottage rang. Jude was in bed, but not yet asleep. Her mind was still full of the news she had received from Carole, of
Greville Tilbrook nearly witnessing Ray’s murder.

The caller was Kelly-Marie. ‘It’s something bad,’ she said.

Carole hadn’t been asleep either – in fact, she had been sitting in her nightdress, finding her way with increasing fascination around the laptop she had inherited
from her daughter-in-law. When she got Jude’s call, she immediately said that they should both go to Copsedown Hall. Apart from anything else, it would be quicker in the Renault. Not all the
roads in Fethering had street lights, and they didn’t want to be stumbling around in the dark.

So they both threw some clothes back on and set off together.

Kelly-Marie was standing just inside the door, waiting for them. She was wearing a flowered cotton dress, which made her look even more like a child. It was presumably the
Sunday best she had put on in the morning to go and have lunch with her parents.

‘Viggo? Is it something to do with Viggo?’ asked Jude, as the girl let them in.

Kelly-Marie nodded. ‘I wasn’t sure who to call. I thought I’d call you first.’

‘Very sensible.’ Quickly she introduced Carole. ‘Where is he?’

‘In his room.’

She limped ahead of them up the stairs. ‘Are the other residents around?’ asked Jude in a whisper.

‘A sleep. They have to work in the morning. I don’t think they heard it. Only me. His room’s next door to mine.’

There was only a safety light on on the landing, but Jude could see that the door to Kelly-Marie’s room was closed, and the one to Viggo’s was ajar. The girl lingered outside,
unwilling to enter, while Jude and Carole went in.

Given what lay in the armchair, it was surprising that Carole and Jude could take in any other detail of the room, but they were both aware of shelves upon shelves of DVDs and videos, arranged
in a surprisingly organized way. On the table in front of the armchair stood a laptop computer, its screen opened but blank. The floor was littered with empty Stella Artois cans.

The entry wound on Viggo’s right temple was neat and had only dribbled a little. Blood from the exit wound, though, splattered over the armchair, sofa, walls and shelves of DVDs.

His right arm had dropped down over the side of the armchair. Just below it on the floor lay the revolver.

As the two women moved forward, pressure on an uneven floorboard was sufficient to jog the laptop screen out of hibernation. The image on the screen had been frozen, the DVD paused. Carole saw
the haggard faces of men under pressure in a sweaty bamboo cage.

‘
The Deer Hunter
,’ Jude murmured. ‘The Russian roulette scene.’

Carole looked down. She knew nothing of guns, but she could see the number of bullets, the backs of which showed in the revolver’s cylinder. Every chamber appeared to be full.

‘Not very good odds for Russian roulette,’ she observed.

Neither of them got much sleep that night. By the time the police had been called, and by the time the police had arrived and conducted some basic questioning, it was well into
the small hours. And the image of Viggo, still so vivid in their minds, was not conducive to peaceful slumber.

They reassembled blearily next morning over very strong coffee in the sitting room of Woodside Cottage.

‘Typical, isn’t it?’ said Carole. ‘Just when we think we’ve identified our murderer, someone blows him away.’

‘So you think Viggo was murdered too?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I’m not so sure. I mean, he could have been, but then again playing a macho game of Russian roulette . . . well, it would have been in character. He was so obsessed with all that
hard-man stuff. Did you see the titles of all those DVDs and videos? And he did mention Russian roulette when he came here.’

‘Yes, but nobody plays Russian roulette with six bullets loaded into the gun.’

‘They might if they wanted to be sure of the outcome.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Look, let’s say Viggo did murder Ray . . .’

‘Which seems very likely from what Greville Tilbrook saw.’

‘I agree. Well, say he did do it. And he thought he was being brave and macho, living up to the image of all his hard-man heroes, but then slowly he realized what he’d done, that he
had actually killed a man. Not just a man, but someone he knew. For a man like Viggo, who spent so much of his time in fantasy, that reality could be pretty shocking.’

‘And he might have killed himself from remorse?’

‘It’s possible.’

Carole’s sniff made clear how much she thought of that idea. ‘I think it was a set-up. Somebody else shot him. The Russian roulette business was just set-dressing.’

‘Maybe. But why would someone want to kill him?’

‘Well, for the purposes of argument, let’s make two assumptions . . . First, that Viggo did stab Ray and, second, that he didn’t do it off his own bat. That someone set him up
to do it.’

‘Gave him the order by text on his mobile phone?’

‘Quite possibly.’

‘Pity we haven’t got Viggo’s mobile phone to check his messages, isn’t it?’ said Jude ruefully.

‘Yes, very selfish of the police always to keep that kind of evidence to themselves,’ Carole agreed. ‘But, moving on . . . Let’s say we’re talking about one
villain, who, while possibly not actually committing either of the crimes, set them up, in both cases taking advantage of particularly susceptible and pathetic men . . .’

‘All right. I’m with you so far.’

‘So this person takes advantage of Ray’s good nature and desire to make everyone happy, and persuades him unknowingly to introduce the dodgy scallops into the Crown and Anchor
kitchen. But then our villain hears, probably from Viggo, that you’ve been snooping around Copsedown Hall, asking Ray questions. Suddenly poor Ray becomes a security risk, there’s a
danger he might tell you everything. So the same person – our villain – takes advantage of Viggo’s love of cloak-and-dagger stuff, underground operations and all that, and issues
the order for him to kill Ray.’

‘I agree that all of this is possible, but I still don’t see—’

‘I haven’t finished,’ said Carole severely. ‘This person arranged to have Ray killed before he could spill the beans about what had been going on. And he arranged to have
Viggo killed for just the same reason.’

‘So what’s the common factor?’

‘Jude, you are being particularly dense this morning. The common factor is you. Or us, if you like. Ray was murdered just after he’d nearly told you who’d set him up to swap
the scallops. Viggo was murdered just after you and I revealed our suspicions of Viggo – or at least showed an unhealthy interest in him – to Derren Hart in Fratton. I think we should
be very careful from now on, Jude. We’re up against someone ruthless enough to kill two men with mental-health problems. I don’t think he – or she – would be too bothered
about adding a couple of middle-aged women to the list.’

Jude was silent. She took a long sip of coffee. It didn’t dispel the woolliness in her head as much as she had hoped. The she asked, ‘How much do you think Ted is
involved?’

‘I don’t think he’s involved in the murders.’

‘Not in actually committing them, no. But he’s holding out on us. He’s definitely got more information than he’s letting on about. He complicated things at the start by
trying to protect Ray – and look how that ended up. I think he could tell us a lot more.’

‘I’m sure he could, but since he currently won’t talk to us at all, I don’t see how we’re going to get it out of him.’

‘Maybe not, but I think it’s worth another call.’

Jude dialled the number of Ted’s flat, then the Crown and Anchor main line. Answering machines on both. Maybe the landlord wasn’t there. She thought it was more likely that he just
wasn’t taking calls. For a moment she contemplated leaving a message informing him of Viggo’s death, but she decided against it. If Ted Crisp was as involved, as he was in her worst
imaginings, he’d already know what had happened.

Jude, uncharacteristically gloomy – she needed her sleep – looked at Carole and shook her head. ‘I just don’t know where we go next.’

‘Well, I do,’ said her friend. ‘We follow up the only other lead we have.’

‘I didn’t know we’d got another lead.’

‘Something we got from Derren Hart.’ Jude still looked bemused, but the confidence in Carole’s pale blue eyes was growing. ‘Do you fancy a pub lunch, Jude?’

‘I don’t think Ted’s any more likely to talk to us face to face than he is on the phone.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of the Crown and Anchor. I was thinking of another pub.’

‘Oh?’

‘The other one where Derren Hart said Viggo used to go drinking with the bikers.’

‘Ah, yes.’ There was now a matching sparkle in Jude’s brown eyes. ‘Of course, I’d forgotten about that.’

‘So I think lunch at the Cat and Fiddle, don’t you?’

‘Excellent idea.’

‘It’s not as if we don’t know where it is.’

Carole and Jude had been to the Cat and Fiddle before, because Zosia’s brother Tadeusz Jankowski had worked there before his premature death. They remembered how little
they’d liked the place. Though it had a perfect position, right on the banks of the Fether, and did very good business, particularly in the summer, they had recoiled from its phoney,
country-and-western-influenced style. They winced inwardly as they remembered the bar staff, dressed in red-gingham shirts and dungarees.

Carole and Jude also remembered the pub’s over-the-top landlady, Shona Nuttall. She’d had no inhibitions about talking to them before, even though the thing she had most wanted to
talk about was herself. But maybe she’d have some useful recollections of Viggo’s and Derren Hart’s biker crowd.

The interview they were anticipating was, however, not to be. As Carole slowed the Renault down to enter the Cat and Fiddle car park, she found her way barred by a high gate of solid wood. The
frontage of the pub itself was also fenced off and its windows boarded up.

But the site looked very neat and under control. What was happening was a makeover rather than a close-down. This was confirmed by a printed board on the fencing, which read:
THE CAT AND FIDDLE WILL BE RE-OPENING ON 1 OCTOBER AS ANOTHER WELCOMING AND LUXURIOUS HOME HOSTELRIES TAVERN
.

So they did end up having lunch in the Crown and Anchor, exactly two weeks after the food-poisoning incident that had started them on their current investigation. There were a
few more customers – mostly holidaymakers – than there had been on their previous visit, but the pub wasn’t doing anything like the volume of business it should have been in the
middle of a hot July.

Ted Crisp was there, but without being overtly rude, he made it clear that he didn’t want to engage in conversation with them. After a friendly enough wave on their arrival, he suddenly
had urgent things to do in the kitchen.

Zosia served them. She looked tired, her customary brightness dimmed. The stress surrounding the Crown and Anchor was getting to everyone. They got their large Chilean Chardonnays, and both went
for salads, chicken for Carole, salmon for Jude.

‘I see we’re not Ted’s favourite people today,’ Jude observed to Zosia.

‘Not just you. No people are his favourite people. He is in a bad state.’

‘Is he still on the whisky?’ asked Carole.

The Polish girl nodded glumly. ‘I think so. He is very unhappy, but he will not talk about what is making him unhappy. He . . . what is that idiom you have? He puts it in a
bottle?’

‘He bottles it up,’ said Jude.

‘Yes, that is what he does. Which does not help. This “bottling-up”, I think, makes things worse for people.’

Carole, for whom life had been one long process of bottling-up, nodded.