The Shooting in the Shop (12 page)

‘Interesting,’ said Jude at the end of the narration.
‘Particularly the areas she didn’t want to go into.’

‘Yes. Extremely cagey when we got on to anything
about her past, it seemed. She’s a very private person.’

‘And you say she was expecting a phone call?’

‘Seemed to be. She certainly pounced on the
mobile, and looked disappointed when she saw who it
was.’

‘Waiting for a call from a lover . . .’ Jude mused.

‘We have no basis for saying that. Could have been
a friend, a member of her family, anyone. We know
hardly anything about her.’

‘No, but we do at least now know who has keys to
Gallimaufry.’

‘Yes,’ Carole agreed, with a modest swell of pride
at her investigative achievement.

‘So what we want to find out now is—’ There was
a trilling noise in the background. ‘Sorry, that’s my
mobile going.’

‘Call me back.’

Jude phoned back about ten minutes later.
‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘The call on my mobile was
from Ricky Le Bonnier.’

‘Oh?’

‘He wants to come and talk to me.’

‘About what?’

‘Anything I noticed unusual in Polly’s behaviour
at my party. He’s got an interview with the police
coming up later in the morning. I think he’s trying to
keep one step ahead of them.’

‘Get to you before they do, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hm.’ There was a slightly peeved silence before
Carole said, ‘Of course, at the party Polly did, in fact,
talk to me more than she talked to you.’

‘I know that. Which is why I suggested that you
should also be here when Ricky comes.’

‘Oh. Oh, did you?’ Carole couldn’t keep the
pleasure out of her voice. ‘When’s he coming?’

‘In about half an hour.’

‘I’ll be there.’

‘How’s Lola taking it?’ asked Jude.

‘She’s not too bad. Got the kids to keep her
occupied; she doesn’t have much time to brood. No, it’s my mother who’s really cut up about what’s
happened.’

‘And you, Ricky? How’re you coping?’

He wrinkled his nose. ‘I don’t think it’s really hit
me yet. So many practical things need doing. Then
there’s the police sniffing around. And they’re still
doing forensic investigations on . . . on . . .’ he couldn’t
bring himself to mention his stepdaughter’s body –
‘you know, so we can’t even make funeral plans. It
just seems to be one practical thing after the other at
the moment. But I think it’s going to hit me quite hard
when things settle down.’

‘Yes,’ said Jude.

‘Any idea why your mother’s taking it so hard?’
asked Carole. ‘From the brief time I saw the two of
them together, she and Polly didn’t seem particularly
close.’

‘No.’ Ricky Le Bonnier was silent for quite a long
time, dwarfing the draped armchair on which he was
sitting. He was dressed in khaki chinos and a brown
leather jacket, cut long. The day’s choice of glasses
were large and owl-like with orange plastic frames.
In spite of his adverse circumstances, there was still a
compelling energy about the man.

When he finally spoke, it was with caution. ‘I
think the reason Mother’s reacting like she is is
because she’s kind of got the feeling what’s happened
to Polly could have happened to her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Carole, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Look, Mum’s generation was a lot less open about
depression than we are now.’

‘Are you saying Polly was depressed?’ asked Jude.

‘Of course I am. Look, she had no real reason to
top herself. Not now. I mean, she was very affected by
my breaking up with her mum, and then her mum
dying.’

‘A drug overdose, Lola said.’

‘Did she?’ He grimaced, as though he didn’t want
his wife passing on that kind of information. ‘Well,
yes, it was. And, obviously, that affected Polly at the
time – or at least I was told it did. And I wasn’t there
for her then, so maybe I’ve got to hold my hand up
and take a bit of blame. But it’s not like she’s my own
daughter. Not my own flesh and blood. Not like Mabel
and Henry.’ He couldn’t disguise the pride he felt for
his new family. ‘I mean, I like to think I did my duty
by the kid when Vanessa and me were together,
but . . .’

He coloured, as if he didn’t want to have that
claim examined too closely. ‘Anyway, we’re talking
a long time ago. Last few years, Polly’s life has
been fine. OK, she wasn’t getting much acting work
and I don’t know how healthy her relationship with
Piers was, but basically she had no material or logical
reason to take her own life. So she must’ve done it
because she was depressed.’

‘You’re sure she did take her own life?’

‘What else is there to think?’

Carole was tempted to reply that there were
quite a lot of other things to think, even tempted to
mention the word ‘murder’, but she restrained herself.
And she did feel a little guilty for never having considered the possibility of suicide. ‘So what about
the fire? You reckon Polly started that?’

‘Again, what else can I think?’

‘But from what she said to me, she appeared to
like Lola. Why would she want to destroy her friend’s
business?’

‘Carole, people suffering from severe depression
are not at their most logical. I’m sure it all made some
kind of sense to Polly’s poor, tortured mind.’ For the
first time his voice broke. The emotion was getting to
him. ‘I’m sorry.’

Jude found herself wondering unworthily how
much of his reaction was real. She had spent time
with a lot of actors, and Ricky Le Bonnier shared with
them a flamboyance which could all too easily turn to
self-dramatization.

‘I still don’t quite see,’ said Carole, ‘why your stepdaughter’s
committing suicide should have such an
effect on your mother.’

‘It’s relevant,’ he replied, ‘because Mother has
been a depressive all her life. And, as I say, in her
generation, it was a hard thing to own up to. You had
to hide it. There was a stigma about mental illness,
you had to pretend everything was OK. You’d couldn’t
succumb to it, then you’d be thought of as “not having
any backbone”, “letting the side down”. You’d be told
to “snap out of it”. And the kind of medication you
could get for depression in those days – assuming
you ever plucked up courage to seek medical help –
well, it was pretty scary stuff. I mean, I’ve dabbled
in the odd recreational substance in my time . . .’ As ever, when he referred to drugs, there was a kind
of sheepish pride in his tone – ‘but I wouldn’t have
touched any of the prescription drugs they used to
dish out for depression in those days. They’d literally
blow your mind.

‘Anyway, Mum was always terrified that people in
the family might be depressives. She even used to
worry about me – though she certainly had no need
to. I’m glad to say I’m fine. I’ve never had a depressed
thought in my life. I’m too bloody cheerful, if anything,
some people would say almost bumptious.
But then Polly became part of the family circle. And
she was never a relaxed child to have around the
house. I think she’d been upset when her parents
split up, and then perhaps I didn’t give her as much
time as I should have done. And I think Mum, you
know, having been there herself, recognized that
depressive streak in Polly and now feels she should
have done more to help the girl before . . . what
happened happened. That’s why she’s so upset.’

‘Did Polly seem depressed to you, Ricky, when
she came down before Christmas?’

‘I don’t know, Jude.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m not really
an expert on the subject. I’ve been told she’s a depressive,
but I’m not sure what the signs of that are. We’ve
always had quite a sparky relationship – not to say
a spiky one. She still blames me for leaving her
mother . . . and, as I’ve said, I’m sorry for that. And
maybe there was something I could have done to get
her mother off the heroin. After all, I managed to do
it. But we were divorced by then, she was kind of out of my life. Anyway, I’m not going to go on beating
myself up about stuff like that. Life’s too short, you
have to move on, you have to get over things. So, in
answer to your question, no, I didn’t notice anything
particularly different about Polly last week. But, you
know, I was busy, and I’ve often been told I’m not
very sensitive to other people’s feelings.’

He announced this more as if it were a badge of
honour than a criticism. ‘I mean, I’m not proud of it,’
he lied, ‘but sometimes going into things with hobnail
boots flying can have its advantages. Like when dealing
with hypersensitive artistes . . . either you accept
their egos at their own evaluation, you know, a lot of
people kind of bend over backwards trying to answer
their every whim, whereas with me, I’m the original
WYSIWYG . . . “What you see is what you get”. I don’t
act differently with different people, whatever size
stars they may be. I’m just Ricky Le Bonnier – take it
or leave it. And a lot of supposedly difficult artistes
were prepared to take it. I mean, when Elton John
was upset, it was always me they used to send in to
sort him out. And, though I say it myself, it usually
worked out pretty well . . .’

And he was off on another of his name-dropping
recollections. Jude asked herself why she didn’t find
him repellent. However great his egocentricity and
habit of blowing his own trumpet, he never quite lost
touch with his charm. And he was annoyingly well
aware of that fact.

Towards the end of his monologue, when he
spoke of Polly, he got a little tearful, and again Jude suspected artifice. But there was no doubting his
sincerity when he turned to Carole and asked, ‘Was
there anything in what she said to you at the party
that gave a hint of what she was planning to do?’

In spite of her own doubts, Carole decided this
was not the moment to question whether the girl had
suicidal intentions, so all she said by way of reply
was, ‘Nothing specific, no. She seemed a bit cynical
about life in general, but I think a lot of young people
are. And she seemed quite excited about this book she
was writing.’

‘Ah.’ Ricky nodded. ‘The book. Maybe it was something
to do with that.’

‘In what way, something to do with that?’

‘As you say, she was excited about it. I think
maybe she’d been investing too much hope in . . .’ His
fingers mimed quotation marks ‘“the book”. She
thought that it would be the cure-all, the thing that
would set her on a level with Piers in terms of
success, that would make her enough money so that
she didn’t have to continue traipsing around auditioning
for parts she very rarely got.’

‘And you think, maybe,’ Jude suggested, ‘that she
just had some bad news on the book . . . that a publisher
had turned it down, perhaps? And that was
what prompted her to take her own life?’

‘It could have been that.’ He seemed glad to seize
on the idea. ‘Yes, that might make sense. I’ll check
with Piers whether she’d had any news on that front.’

‘You know that Piers came to see us?’ asked
Carole.

‘I heard that, yes. I think Lola was quite glad to get
him out of the house. She’d got enough on her plate,
what with Mum in the state she’s in and everything
else that was going on.’

‘Piers told us that he was about to break up with
Polly, that he’d found someone else. Did you know
that, Ricky?’

He nodded. ‘I’d suspected things weren’t too rosy
between them for some time.’

‘Do you think Polly knew she was about to be
dumped?’

‘She must’ve done. She must’ve known it was only
a matter of time. Another reason for her to think life
wasn’t worth living.’ His voice broke again, and again
Jude couldn’t be sure how genuine the emotion was.
‘Poor kid.’

‘Yes, poor kid,’ she echoed.

‘Ricky,’ said Carole briskly, ‘you keep talking
about Polly’s suicide. Has the possibility occurred to
you that she might have been murdered?’ Good old
Carole, thought Jude, getting straight to the point.

He looked genuinely shocked at the suggestion.
‘But why would anyone want to murder her?’

Carole shrugged. ‘Why does anyone want to
murder anyone? There is a fairly well-known list of
traditional motives.’

‘Well, I can’t think any of them would have been
applicable to my stepdaughter!’ There was a new
harshness in his tone as he said this. ‘And, whatever
you do, if the police want to talk to you, don’t start
planting ideas of murder in their minds.’

‘Of course we wouldn’t,’ said Jude at her most
palliative.

‘Incidentally,’ Ricky went on, ‘there is quite a
strong likelihood that the police will be in touch with
you. Lola and I have been interviewed, and, as I told
you, Jude, I’ll be talking to them again shortly. From
what I can work out, they’re trying to reconstruct
the hours before Polly’s . . . death.’ He didn’t like
using the word, but his momentary lapse into grief
was quickly replaced by a more businesslike tone.
‘Anyway, if they do get in touch, I’d be grateful if you
could let me know. We’ve got each other’s mobile and
landline numbers, so you can get through to me
wherever I am. And please remember – if you do
have to say anything to the investigating officers,
what we’re talking about here is a suicide.’

Ricky Le Bonnier didn’t stay much longer. With a
look at his watch, he announced that he must get to
his own meeting with the police.

From the front door the women watched him
stride to his large black Mercedes 4×4. ‘Would you
have described Polly as a lifelong depressive, Jude?’

‘No. And Piers told us how she went on about
what a happy childhood she had had.’

As Ricky clicked his key fob to open the car, a
figure who must have been waiting for him by the
gate stepped into view. She looked very small beside
Ricky’s bulk. Seeing her, his body language changed.
He snapped some apparently dismissive remark, got
into his car and drove off.