The Shooting in the Shop (24 page)

‘So Brown wasn’t his father’s surname?’

Carole’s suggestion was greeted by a sardonic
smile. ‘A nice try, but I think you’ll have to be a bit
subtler than that. As I said, the identity of Ricky’s
father is something I have never revealed and I firmly
intend to take that secret with me to the grave.’

‘So when did he start calling himself Ricky Le
Bonnier?’ asked Jude.

‘That was when he began to work in the music
business. His feeling was – and it was one with which
I heartily agreed – that having a famous name might
help to get his career under way. Which is exactly
what happened.’ She smiled complacently, as if her
words had ended that particular topic of conversation.

But Jude persisted. ‘When he was a boy down
here in Fethering, he was looked after by someone
called “Auntie Vi”. I was wondering—’

But wondering was as far as she got. With a flamboyant
squeal of ‘Flora – darling!’ an elderly man with
a rather beautiful younger one in tow swooped down
on the actress to initiate an exchange of scurrilous
theatrical gossip. After a few minutes Carole and
Jude drifted away, their departure unacknowledged
by the grande dame of British theatre.

Their champagne glasses recharged and delicious
nibbles supplied by the black-clad waitresses, the
two women wandered towards the source of the
music. In the hall Ricky Le Bonnier, his arm round
Lola’s waist, was, as ever, the centre of attention,
regaling the group around him with more of his
stories. Seeing him there and seeing the look of
adoration in his wife’s eyes, Carole felt another surge
of anger. She thought of her conversation with Anna,
the details of which she had told Jude on the drive
over to Fedborough. What was it with men, particularly
men of Ricky’s age, that stopped them from
being content with what they had? Why would men
like him betray a beautiful, intelligent girl like Lola
with a sad, neurotic widow like Anna? Was it the
galloping approach of death that motivated them?
Was it a feeling that in some conjectural heaven their
score would be marked down for not having bedded
enough women? Carole Seddon would never understand
men.

From what Ricky was saying, the band performing
in his sitting room were extremely famous. Carole
hadn’t heard of them, but Jude had and was suitably
impressed to find them playing in a private house.
Their host was talking about the band as the two
women joined the circle around him.

‘Of course, I knew them when they were just five
pimply-faced lads from Droitwich. Sent a demo and I
summoned them up to my office in . . . I think it was
Chrysalis I was working for then. Anyway, I could see
they had potential, and I could see that Jed was going
to be one hell of a charismatic front man . . . as soon
as he had run a brush through his hair and done a
major bombardment of his mush with Clearasil. The
girls in the office were drooling at him even with the
state he in was then. So I gave the lads a bit of advice
on their repertoire. They were still too much folk-influenced
then to chart in a major way, but I got
them to move more into the soft-rock world. I also
had the disagreeable task of telling them their keyboard
player wasn’t up to the job. Always nasty doing
that, particularly when you’ve got a group who’ve
been together since school. But if you want to hit the
top, you can’t carry passengers. Just the same with
the Beatles. I remember telling my old mate Ringo
that he was the luckiest bugger in the entire world
and, you know, he said . . .’

So Ricky Le Bonnier continued his routine. From
his demeanour no one would ever have known that
he’d lost a stepdaughter only ten days before. Jude
looked at Carole, who immediately understood her
rueful grimace. It wasn’t going to be easy to get Ricky
on his own that evening. So far as grilling him was
concerned, their investigation might have to be put
on hold.

The same would probably be true of Lola, but just
as Carole and Jude were edging away from Ricky’s
circle, she detached herself from her husband and
hurried up to them. ‘Jude, you know I talked to you
about possibly babysitting Mabel and Henry one
day . . .’

‘Sure.’

‘Well, it might be sooner rather than later.’

‘When?’

Lola grimaced apologetically. ‘Tomorrow afternoon.
It may not happen, but Flora’s suddenly
announcing that she has to go back to her flat
tomorrow. I hope we’ll be able to persuade her to stay
a little longer, but she can be stubborn and if she
insists, Ricky’ll have to drive her back up to London
and I may have to go too . . . and Varya’s seeing in the
New Year with some Russians and copious amounts
of vodka in Southampton and I’m not sure when she’ll
be back . . .’

‘I’d be happy to do it.’

‘As I say, it may not happen.’

‘Call me on the mobile in the morning if you need
me.’

‘OK. Bless you, Jude.’ And Lola slipped back to
join her husband, whose arm instinctively once again
encircled her waist.

Jude announced she wanted to see the famous
group at closer quarters, so they drifted into the
sitting room. There were people dancing. A lot of
young people and, to Carole’s distaste, a lot of old
people too. She didn’t enjoy seeing her contemporaries
gyrating and waving their arms about in the
air, it was undignified. Beside her, Jude’s body was
already swaying to the heavy rock beat. Carole, who
was too inhibited ever to have ventured on to a
dance floor, felt even more envious of her neighbour’s
instinctive responses.

A tall man with long grey hair in a ponytail moved
towards Jude and grinned at her. She grinned back
and without any words they started dancing together.
They didn’t actually touch, but the way their bodies
mirrored each other’s movements seemed somehow
more intimate than touching. Carole edged her way
back to the hall. A waitress offered to top up her glass,
but she put her hand over it. She had to navigate
the Renault safely back to Fethering, and the Sussex
police were notoriously vigilant on New Year’s Eve.

From long experience, Carole knew there were
two available options at a party where you didn’t
know anyone. One was to stand alone with your
drink, possibly showing excessive interest in the contents
of your host’s bookshelves, but still looking like
a social outcast. The other was to stride purposely
about the place, as if you were looking for someone.
The larger the gathering and the more rooms it took
place in, the better this second approach worked.
Because if you kept doing circuits of the entire party,
you didn’t keep walking past the same people, and
when you did see them a second time you could
pretend that you’d just finished talking to one very
interesting person you knew, and you were making
your way to talk to another even more interesting
person you knew.

There was no contest. Carole Seddon opted for
the second approach. Wearing a look of intense
intellectual concentration, she sallied forth through
the throng in the hall to a room which she had not
yet explored. There was a considerable crush inside,
which suited her purposes admirably. Squeezing past
people reinforced the false impression of having
somewhere to go to. And apologizing to them as she
squeezed past produced the illusion of conversation.

At the end of the room an archway led into
another, equally heaving with guests, and from this
one glass doors opened on to a garden terrace. In
spite of the winter cold, there were a few people
standing there, so Carole, arguing to herself that the
fictional person she was looking for was as likely to
be on the terrace as anywhere else, went out to join
them.

And, contrary to her expectation, she saw someone
she did know: Piers Duncton. No great surprise
that he should have gone out into the open air to have
a cigarette. He was on his own, his angular figure
propped against the terrace railings, looking into the
garden. Out there strings of fairy lights cascaded from
tall trees, lending an aura of magic to the scene.

Carole had no hesitation in going straight up to
him and saying, ‘Good evening, Piers.’

He turned, squinting against the light from the
room she had just left, and it took him a moment to
identify her. ‘Ah, Carole,’ he said eventually.

‘How are you, Piers?’

‘Oh, you know.’ He took a swig from the wine
glass in his hand and looked disappointed to find it
was already empty. There was something glassy
about his stare, and Carole realized that he was very
drunk.

‘I suppose I should say: Happy New Year,’ she said
conventionally.

‘Happy New Year?’ He thought about it. ‘I don’t
see much happiness in this New Year, I must say.’ He
raised his empty glass. ‘Look, I’ve got to find some
more booze.’

Fortunately, at that moment one of the diligent
waitresses appeared on the terrace armed with
bottles, so Carole didn’t immediately lose her quarry.
Piers took a long swig from his refilled glass and
looked at her. ‘Happy New Year,’ he repeated. ‘Polly’s
dead, and you’re wishing me a happy New Year.’

‘It’s very sad, I know, but you said your relationship
was about to end.’

‘Yes, but I didn’t want it to end like this, not with
her remains lying in some police morgue being
picked over by forensic pathologists.’ Spurred on by
drunkenness, Piers Duncton was wallowing in his
grief. ‘Nobody deserves that, least of all a bright,
lovely girl like Polly.’

‘No. I was surprised to see you at Old Garge’s hut
yesterday.’

‘I wasn’t expecting to find you there either.’

‘Can I ask why you went there, Piers?’

‘You don’t have to ask. You heard what I told the
old fart. That the police wanted to talk to him. For
reasons of his own, he wasn’t keen on the idea of that,
so he decided he’d make himself scarce.’

‘But why did you take it upon yourself to tell him?
Do you know him well?’

‘I’d met him once before. On the beach with
Ricky.’

‘And it was your idea to go and warn Old Garge
about the police coming?’

Piers looked uncomfortable. ‘No. Ricky wanted
me to.’

‘Wasn’t Ricky in London on Tuesday?’

‘Yes, but Lola had apparently rung him to tell him
about the police being keen on interviewing Old
Garge, and she said Ricky wanted me to go and warn
him.’

Carole mentally squirrelled away that information.
Her suspicious mind registered that Lola could
have made up the instruction from her husband. It
could have been her own initiative to send Piers
down to the hut on Fethering Beach.

‘So do you know where Old Garge is now?’ Carole
asked directly.

The young man’s glazed eyes narrowed and he
looked rather sly as he replied, ‘Oh, he’s quite safe for
the time being. Out of the way in a nice little flat. It’ll
take the police a while to find him there.’ He smiled
complacently as he downed the remains of his wine.
‘Ex-wives have their uses.’

‘What do you mean? Whose ex-wife are you—?’

But she’d lost him. Muttering that he needed to
get more wine, Piers Duncton brushed past her and
was quickly absorbed by the throng inside.

Carole stayed on the terrace for a moment,
piecing together the information she had just received.
And the more she thought about it, the more
excited she became. Her suspicion had been proved
right. Old Garge – back in his Rupert Sonning days
– must have been married to Flora Le Bonnier. He
was Ricky’s father. And he was now safely ensconced
in his ex-wife’s flat up in St John’s Wood.

Which was maybe why Flora was so keen to get
back to London.

Carole looked for the old actress as she went back
through the house, but there was no sign of her. She
asked Lola, who happened to be passing and was told
that Flora had gone up to bed. She was too tired to
stay up and see the New Year in.

Carole checked her watch. Only eleven-twenty.
The thought of staying in Fedingham Court House till
midnight, and then enduring the excesses of ‘Auld
Lang Syne’ and everyone hugging and kissing each
other and . . . She wouldn’t mind slipping away before
all that happened. Was there a chance that Jude
would be equally keen to leave?

She found her neighbour still in the room with the
music. Still dancing with the same tall man, though
dancing rather closer now. As Jude caught her eye,
Carole mouthed, ‘Think I might be off. Do you want
to come?’

‘Oh, I’m not sure . . .’

‘Is this your lift?’ asked the man, looking at Carole
as though she were an unlicensed minicab driver. He
winked at her. ‘Don’t worry, love. I’ll see Jude gets
back home safely.’

Carole looked around for her host and hostess, but
didn’t try that hard. Better just to slip away and then
thank them in a day or two. Not on the phone. She
was sure they wouldn’t even recognize her name if
she rang to thank them. No, she’d post a well-chosen
card saying something like: ‘it was such a wonderfully
lively party that I simply couldn’t find you to
say thank you at the end, but I did want to say how
much . . .’ She’d done it many times before.

She also wondered for a moment whether Anna
had fulfilled her intention of attending. There hadn’t
been any sign of her, but in a crush like that it
would have been easy to miss someone. On reflection,
though, Carole thought that actually facing the
prospect of seeing Ricky and Lola together in their
home, Anna would have chickened out.

On the gravel outside the house a minivan was
decanting a small band of men with kilts and bagpipes.
Carole felt even more relieved that she was
escaping the midnight rituals.

As celebratory fireworks from Fedingham Court
House garden illuminated the West Sussex sky, it was
a very stony-faced Carole Seddon who drove back to
Fethering and High Tor.