The Poisoning in the Pub (32 page)

Will Maples made no attempt to pretend that he was pleased to see them. ‘My God, you two busy-bodies get everywhere, don’t you?’

But Kelly-Marie beamed welcome. ‘It’s good that you’ve come, Jude. These gentlemen want Viggo’s mobile. And you’ve got it, haven’t you?’

‘Not any more. I’ve handed it over to the police.’

Will Maples let out a dry laugh. ‘Yes, I’m sure you have. Jude, I suggest you just give it to me. Then this whole affair can be ended without anyone getting hurt.’

‘Without anyone else getting hurt, you mean,’ said Carole combatively.

‘Oh, more allegations do we have here?’ asked Will Maples sardonically. ‘I thought you’d exhausted all of those this morning. I also thought you had taken on board what
Melissa Keats told you. If you persist in this kind of slanderous behaviour, you could both be looking at a very long custodial sentence.’

‘Not as long as the one you could be looking at,’ snapped Carole.

He spread his hands wide in an insufferable gesture of calming. ‘As we established this morning, you have not a shred of evidence against me, no proof of my involvement in any
wrongdoing.’

‘I would say the fact that you’re here,’ asserted Jude, ‘the fact that you’re trying to get Viggo’s mobile, is proof of your involvement.’

‘And we also,’ said Carole, ‘now know about Melissa Keats’s involvement. Very altruistic of her, wasn’t it, to offer to help poor Sylvia Crisp with her
divorce?’

That prompted a reaction. The two men on the sofa exchanged looks, and Dan Poke murmured, ‘I always said that was going too far. We—’

‘Shut it!’ hissed Will Maples. For the first time he did look discomfited by what was being said. But as he turned back to the two women, his expression became threatening.
‘Look, I’ve had it up to here with you two. And if I were capable of even a quarter of the crimes you accuse me of, I’d have thought you would realize how very stupid you’re
being by constantly hounding me. If I was actually responsible for the death of Ray Witchett, or this character called Viggo, do you think I would have any compunction about adding a couple of
middle-aged snoopers to my list of killings?’

A thin smile played about Carole’s lips, as she said, ‘You’re getting into a rather dubious area of logic here, Will. For your threats to have any validity, we must believe
that you did have something to do with the two deaths. If, as you insist, you’re innocent, then we have no cause to be frightened, do we?’

There was a silence. Kelly-Marie looked around her rather full flat in bewilderment. ‘I’m not sure what’s happening. Would anyone like some tea?’

But her instinct as a hostess was ignored. Will Maples dropped his threatening manner and came in on another tack. He sounded very reasonable as he said, ‘Look, I can to some extent see
where you’re coming from. The recent sequence of events at the Crown and Anchor could look suspicious, as though there actually were a campaign to get Ted Crisp out. The food poisoning, the
bad newspaper headlines, the bikers, the fight . . . yes, it does look a bit too organized to be coincidental. But if you imagine that a company of the public profile of Home Hostelries would get
involved in dirty tricks of that kind, you have very little knowledge of the business world. On the other hand, it is possible that someone inside the company might have acted off their own bat,
might have hoped to advance his career by helping to acquire new properties for Home Hostelries . . .’

‘Who’re you talking about?’ asked Carole.

Will Maples looked pityingly at the man next to him on the sofa. ‘I always said it was a bad idea, Dan.’

‘What?’ The comedian’s eyebrows shot up in amazement.

‘But you insisted. You said you could do it undercover, and nobody would ever find out what you were up to.’ The Acquisitions manager turned to the two women. ‘Yes, I’m
afraid you were right about some of the dirty tricks – and there you see the man responsible for them.’

‘You mean he’s “K”?’ asked Jude coolly.

That did stop Will Maples in his tracks. ‘What?’

‘The “K” who gave instructions to Viggo to set up Ray – and to kill him.’

He tried to recapture his former insouciance, but the shot had hit home. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘She is talking about the fact,’ said Carole, ‘that she found Viggo’s mobile, which still had K’s texted instructions on it. Instructions sent by
“K”.’

‘If you’re looking for “K”, then there he is!’ Will Maples swung round and pointed at the comedian.

‘You bastard! I had nothing to do with it!’ Dan Poke’s words came out like a hiss of steam. Suddenly his hands were around his colleague’s throat. The two of them
struggled awkwardly to their feet. Then there was a quick movement from Will Maples’s hand, and Dan Poke recoiled, clutching at his face. Blood spurted through his fingers from a slashed
cheekbone.

‘You bastard!’ he repeated. ‘I told you you were going too far. Yes, Home Hostelries has always been in a competitive market, but we didn’t have to go to the lengths you
took us to. We didn’t have to get involved in murder.’

‘I was never involved in murder. Viggo may have been. Derren Hart may have been. None of it can ever be traced back to me.’

Blood was pouring down the comedian’s hand, soaking into the fabric of his shirt and suit sleeve, but he wasn’t about to back off. ‘No? I think if I stand up in court and give
evidence, something might be traced back to you. And if Derren Hart does the same, your position could look decidedly precarious.’

‘And,’ said Carole, ‘since the police have Viggo’s mobile in their possession, I shouldn’t think it’d be long before they come looking for you.’

‘Shut it!’ shouted Will Maples. Carole and Jude had been watching Dan Poke, so it was only then that they noticed the Stanley knife in the other man’s hand. They also saw him
move swiftly across the room, lift Kelly-Marie out of her chair and hold the bloody blade against her neck.

He had given up on denials. He’d made a quick assessment of his position, and, with the police having been alerted, decided his only option was escape. He edged the girl towards the door.
Kelly-Marie, not quite sure what was happening, smiled hopefully, but with an edge of anxiety.

‘You three stand by the window,’ ordered Will Maples. ‘If I can’t see you there when I get into the car, I’ll kill the girl.’

They moved to the window. He’d devised as good a method as any other of giving himself time to make his getaway.

He backed towards the door, Kelly-Marie still held in front of him. There was a trickle of blood on her throat, but that was Dan Poke’s, dripping off the Stanley knife. It wasn’t
hers. Yet.

She still looked confused rather than upset. And Jude felt deeply wretched. It was her reckless stupidity that had caused this. If she hadn’t succumbed to the temptation to reply to
K’s text . . .

What happened next was very sudden. The open door behind Will Maples was slammed into his back. He swirled in surprise to find himself facing Detective Inspector Wilson, who quickly disarmed
him. Another detective appeared from the landing and the two overpowered the Home Hostelries Acquisitions manager and snapped the cuffs on him.

It wasn’t the moment for long explanations, but Carole and Jude did gather that Detective Inspector Wilson and his colleague, aware of the potential danger to Kelly-Marie, had hidden
themselves in the adjacent room that used to belong to Viggo. They had used listening devices in there and monitored all the conversation from inside Kelly-Marie’s flat.

The Detective Inspector said he’d be in touch, and the two policemen left with their prisoner and his potential chief accuser. They were going to take Dan Poke to hospital to get the gash
in his cheek stitched up. Then there would be a lot of questioning for both men at the Hollingbury Major Crime Unit.

Once again, Kelly-Marie seemed remarkably unfazed by an incidence of violence. After they had watched the departing police car through the window, she turned back to her visitors with a huge
beam on her face. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘would anyone like a cup of tea?’

Will Maples was arrested and charged with a variety of offences, including murder. Viggo’s mobile provided a strong evidential link to him, a chain of command through
Derren Hart and Viggo to Ray. Though he had committed no acts of violence himself, Will Maples had definitely been the one who gave the orders.

With a deeply resentful Dan Poke as a prosecution witness, there was never much doubt about the verdict. Will might have done better with the power of the Home Hostelries legal team behind him,
but he didn’t have it. The company had ignored the allegations of drug-peddling and continued to employ him after his ignominious departure from the Hare and Hounds at Weldisham. He was very
good at his job of ‘persuading’ landlords out of pubs on prime sites, and Home Hostelries had been happy to turn a blind eye to the morality of the methods he used. But a murder charge
was a different matter entirely. They washed their hands of him.

The one person who might have provided the final proof of his guilt wasn’t around to give evidence. Derren Hart, aware that the police were on his trail, had gone to ground. Probably using
techniques from his army training, he had simply disappeared.

Only for a few weeks, though. Then his body was found floating in the sea off Portsmouth. He might have been helped on his way, but that could never be proved. Will Maples might have arranged
from remand prison to help him on his way, but that could never be proved either. Anyway, there were enough drugs and alcohol in Derren Hart’s system for him to have fallen into the sea by
accident. Or indeed on purpose. Either way, he wouldn’t be around to testify against Will Maples. Derren Hart became just another statistic among the thousands of lives destroyed by the
illegal war in Iraq.

And Will Maples became another statistic among prisoners serving life for murder. Meanwhile, at Home Hostelries the job of ‘winkling’ publicans out of properties that the company had
its eyes on was handed over to younger, equally shark-like men built in the Will Maples mould.

Needless to say, there were no charges against anyone else in the company hierarchy. Certainly not against Melissa Keats. She had done nothing wrong. If she wanted to use her spare time to help
an ill-used woman get a decent divorce settlement, well, that was up to her . . . The Home Hostelries PR team moved in and the whole affair was glossed over. Will Maples had been a dangerous
maverick, working on his own without company approval, a bad apple who would soon be very properly paying for his misdeeds.

In the event, though, Melissa Keats did cut all ties with Sylvia Crisp, who ended up using a much less aggressive solicitor. And, since Carole Seddon had meanwhile organized a rather good one to
represent Ted Crisp, the eventual divorce settlement did not do Sylvia many favours. The view of the court was that, since she had done nothing to help her husband build up the business of the
Crown and Anchor, she had little claim on its profits. And Ted was able to pay her off without selling the pub.

During the divorce proceedings, Matt decided that he didn’t like being Sylvia Crisp’s fiancé any more, and dumped her. A very embittered woman, she moved out of the area.

Dan Poke couldn’t be proved to have done anything illegal either. He kept his directorship at Home Hostelries and continued to advise them on suitable properties to target as he trailed
from pub to pub his increasingly tired stand-up material. He still maintained his Jack-the-Lad exterior, proffering cards to all the women he met. But he got very few take-ups. In some ways it was
no surprise when, on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, he was found hanging in his dressing room after a gig in a shabby club in Telford.

There was a happier outcome for Sally Monks. The ‘hot date’ she’d been preparing for when Jude rang her turned out to be more than a ‘hot date’. He was Mr Right,
and by the end of the year Sally Monks was married to him.

Kelly-Marie continued to see her adored family and dogs every Sunday. The rest of the week she managed very well on her own at Copsedown Hall. Which she would continue to do until some misguided
government cost-saving exercise closed the place down.

Meanwhile the people of Fethering went about their daily routine as they always had. There was a bit of a scandal when Greville Tilbrook left his wife and set up house with Beryl. Local feeling
did not allow them to stay long near the footpath which they had fouled, and they moved soon afterwards to a village in Somerset, where Greville Tilbrook took no civic responsibilities at all.

Another casualty of Will Maples’s campaign of harassment survived surprisingly well. Carole and Jude had reckoned Shona Nuttall would probably drink herself to death in her dusty velvet
bungalow in Southwick, but to their surprise, they heard that she had sold up there. She had had her hair redyed and moved out to open a bar in Benalmàdena on the Costa del Sol. There she
became a great favourite with British ex-pats, round whom she frequently threw her flabby arms and with whom she was frequently photographed. And out there, quite cheerfully, she did drink herself
to death.

Her old domain, the made-over Cat and Fiddle, reopened, serving exactly the same ‘hospitality experience’ that customers would get from the Hare and Hounds in Weldisham, the Middy in
Fratton or any other of the ever-increasing number of pubs in the ‘Home Hostelries family’.

But the Crown and Anchor in Fethering did not succumb to such uniformity. It remained defiantly unconventional, reflecting the character of its landlord, Ted Crisp. Zosia ran the bar with
exemplary efficiency, but still managed to get her journalism degree. And the fame of Ed Pollack’s cooking went so wide that booking a table on Fridays and weekends became quite difficult.
Though Ted Crisp loathed the word, more than one newspaper review described the Crown and Anchor as a ‘gastropub’.

For Carole and Jude life in Fethering continued much as before. Jude felt increasingly restless, sensing that she was in desperate need of new stimulus, but she did not share these thoughts with
her neighbour, knowing they would only upset her. And Carole’s life was softened and enlivened by the existence of her granddaughter, who grew more beautiful with every passing day. Carole
felt quite soppy about Lily, and would send the little girl frequent emailed pictures from the laptop which was now such a central feature of High Tor.