The Shooting in the Shop (26 page)

‘That sounds good. What things do you hide?’

‘Well, Daddy says there’s a game where people
hide slippers, but his game is better than that. We
hide Woolly Monkey.’ And from her array of dolls she
took down a toy whose name described him perfectly.
He was about six inches high and knitted from dark
and light brown wools. Attached to one hand was a
knitted banana. ‘This is Woolly Monkey,’ said Mabel
unnecessarily.

‘Right, so what do we do? One person closes their
eyes and counts to a hundred?’

‘I can’t count to a hundred. I can only count to
twenty. So we count to twenty. And then we say
“Coming, ready or not”. And then we have to find
Woolly Monkey. And the person who’s hidden him
has to say “warm” if you’re near him.’

‘All right, I think I understand the rules. And do
we just do it in this room?’

‘No, in this room and the hall and the sitting
room.’

‘So who’s going to hide Woolly Monkey first?’

‘You do, because you’re a guest,’ said Mabel, who
had clearly studied protocol. ‘So I close my eyes and
you hide Woolly Monkey. One . . . two . . . three . . .’

Fortunately, Mabel counted slowly. Jude decided
that her best policy might be to hide Woolly Monkey
in full sight, so she put him in a different position
amongst the toys on the windowsill.

‘Twenty!’ Mabel crowed. ‘Coming, ready or not!’
She looked at Jude, sitting innocently on the sofa. ‘I
wonder if it’s in this room or—’

‘Yes, it’s—’

‘No, you mustn’t make clues. You just say if I’m
warm.’

Mabel set off towards the hall. ‘You’re getting
colder.’ She came back into the room. ‘You’re getting
warmer.’ To the toy cupboard. ‘Colder again.’
Towards Jude. ‘Still cold.’ Then in the direction of
the window. ‘Warm. Warmer. Ooh, very warm. You’re
going to burn your fingers.’

Triumphantly, Mabel picked Woolly Monkey off
the windowsill. Then, patiently, she explained to
Jude, ‘He doesn’t go there. His place is between
Fluffy Ted and Pollyanna.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘He doesn’t like sitting anywhere else.’

‘I’m doubly sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Mabel magnanimously. ‘You
didn’t know. Now it’s my turn to do Hiding Things.’

‘I’ll stay here and close my eyes and count up to
twenty.’

‘Don’t do it fast. Daddy sometimes does it too fast,
and that’s cheating.’

‘I won’t do it too fast.’ Jude closed her eyes and
started to count, very slowly. She heard Mabel’s footsteps
scampering off into the hall. When she reached
twenty, Jude shouted, ‘Coming, ready or not!’

She made a great play of walking around the playroom,
saying, ‘Ooh, I wonder if Woolly Monkey could
be under the sofa . . . or could he be in the toy cupboard?’

Mabel appeared in the doorway. ‘He’s not in here,’
she announced.

‘I thought he might be.’

‘I’m not in here. Daddy says there’s a clue in
where the person who’s hidden Woolly Monkey is
when you stop counting.’

‘I see. Because they might have only just hidden
him and not had time to go anywhere else?’

Mabel nodded gravely. ‘Yes. So I was in the sitting
room. That’s a clue.’

Taking the hint that had been proffered, Jude
went through into the sitting room. In the crush of
the party the night before she hadn’t taken in its full
splendour. It was a tall room, panelled and roofed in
old, dark oak, which was studded with carved wooden
roses. A large fireplace in what looked like Cotswold
stone dominated the space. Huge logs flared in the
grate, in front of which stood a fire guard with the
dimensions of a portcullis.

As Jude moved towards the fire, Mabel said,
‘Warm . . . warmer . . . very warm . . .’

‘Well, I know that, because the fire’s warm.’

The child didn’t approve of any part of her game
being treated with such levity. ‘That’s not what I
mean. I mean, you’re warmer because you’re near
Woolly Monkey.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry.’ The heat from the fire was
intense. Jude made a cursory examination of the log
basket and the coal scuttle, but there was no sign of
the hidden toy.

She moved away from the fireplace. ‘Colder,
colder,’ crowed Mabel.

‘Well, I can’t think where . . . You didn’t throw
Woolly Monkey on the fire, did you?’

‘No, I didn’t. I love Woolly Monkey.’

‘Then I’ve no idea . . .’

‘It’s a very good Hiding Things place. A special
Hiding Things place. Daddy’s used it.’

‘What, when Daddy was playing Hiding Things
with you?’

‘No, we weren’t playing the game.’

‘Oh?’ Jude was suddenly alert.

‘But Daddy used it as a Hiding Things place. I
don’t think he knew I was watching. I think he
thought I was asleep on the sofa. Mummy had
brought me down to sleep on the sofa, because I was
uncomfy in my bed. And I was asleep, but I kept
waking up, because I was hot and my head hurt.’

‘When was this, Mabel?’

‘It was when I had
my ear infection
.’ As before, she
said the words correctly, and with pride. ‘Before the
doctor gave me the . . . anti-things.’

‘Which day? Do you remember which day it was?’

‘It was before Christmas Day.’

‘Do you remember anything about the day? Did
Mummy and Daddy go to a party that day?’ asked
Jude, trying to keep the tension she was feeling out of
her voice.

Mabel shook her head. ‘No, they didn’t go to a
party.’ Jude’s level of excitement plummeted, but
Mabel continued solemnly, ‘Daddy went to an open
house. But Mummy didn’t go to the open house
because I had an ear infection.’

‘So it was the evening after he’d been to the open
house,’ said Jude, keeping her voice as even as she
could, ‘and you saw Daddy come and use his special
Hiding Things place?’ The girl nodded deliberately.
‘Can you show me where it is, Mabel?’

‘You give up?’

‘Yes, I give up. You’ve won this game. You’ll have
to show me where you’ve hidden Woolly Monkey.’

‘All right. That means I’ve won twice. Because I
found Woolly Monkey where you’d hidden him in the
playroom.’

‘Yes, you did, Mabel.’ Jude was having great
difficulty in not trying to speed up the child’s revelation.
‘Well done. And where is he now?’

Mabel pointed to the panelling to the right of
the fireplace. ‘The rose there. That rose. No, the one
under.’

Jude touched the smooth old wood of the carved
Tudor rose. ‘This one?’

‘Yes. Daddy turned it and there was a little Hiding
Things place.’

Jude turned it. The mechanism moved smoothly.
A section of dark skirting board projected into the
room, revealing a drawer about the size of a shoebox.

Inside, as anticipated, was Woolly Monkey.

But beneath him was something Jude could not
have anticipated – a fluorescent pink mobile phone
sock.

Carole had dropped Jude a little way up the road from
the Le Bonniers’ house. She didn’t want to be seen
as she delivered their babysitter. Driving back to
Fethering in the Renault she was weighed down by a
deep sense of frustration. She felt sure the secrets
that might unlock the case lay with the inhabitants
of Fedingham Court House, and she feared she was
being excluded from a vital stage of the investigation.

Back at High Tor Gulliver, the eternal optimist,
looked up at her in hope of a walk, but he was
unlucky. His mistress didn’t seem even to see him as
she sat with a coffee at the kitchen table, her brows
furrowed with concentration.

It wasn’t that she didn’t have another lead to
follow up. Jude’s conjecture in the car meant that the
next port of call had to be Kath. The idea that Ricky’s
loopy ex-wife was harbouring Old Garge in her flat
might be nonsense, but all other investigative routes
passed through Fedingham Court House. Jude might
well be making great advances there, but, for Carole,
Kath offered the only way forward.

Short of sitting in the Crown and Anchor every
lunchtime on the off-chance that the woman might
turn up, the only potential contact they had was
through Kath’s work at Ayland’s. And was there
anyone in this idle and benighted country, thought
Carole, who still worked on New Year’s Day?

On the other hand, though very few people
worked between Christmas and New Year, Ayland’s
bookkeeper had been there on the Monday. Keen
sailors would need access to the boatyard on New
Year’s Day – indeed, it might be quite busy on a
public holiday – so there was a reasonable chance
that Kath might be on duty again. The problem was:
what cover story could Carole invent to justify her
enquiries? This worried her, because the only solutions
she could think of involved lying, and Carole
Seddon didn’t have her neighbour’s glib facility in that
dark art.

Still, if it came to a choice between lying and
making no further progress on the case . . . All she
needed was the woman’s address. Carole picked up
the phone.

Her luck was in, at first. The phone at Ayland’s
was answered, and it was answered by a woman. We
haven’t talked to each other, so she won’t recognize
my voice, Carole reassured herself. A ‘Kath’ must be
short for Katherine, mustn’t it? But it might not be, so
safer not to take the risk. From Jude’s reports of the
woman’s continuing attachment to her ex-husband,
she was bound to have kept his surname. Carole took
a deep breath and went into unfamiliar lying mode.

‘Is that Mrs Le Bonnier?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry to trouble you on a public holiday . . .’

‘Don’t worry. As you can gather, I’m in at work.’

‘Yes.’ Time for the big lie (though it was something
that had once been true). ‘I’m from the Home
Office . . .’ Time for the even bigger lie – ‘and I’m
running a check on an asylum seeker.’

‘I don’t know any asylum seekers.’

‘No, I thought you probably wouldn’t, but I’m
running this check because the man in question, who
comes from Somalia, has given your address as where
he will be staying in the UK.’

‘That’s absurd. I’ve never met anyone from
Somalia. How on earth would he have got my name
and address?’

‘From the phone book. It’s quite a common trick.
They just pick a name and address in the area where
they hope to settle. Some chancers got away with it a
few years back, but we’re wise to them now.’ Carole
sighed wearily. ‘But we still have to run these checks.
Even on public holidays.’

‘Well, as I say, I have never offered shelter to an
asylum seeker – from Somalia or anywhere else. Is
that all you need me to say?’

‘Yes, thank you. All I have to do now is confirm
your address.’

‘Flat two, seventy-three River Road, Fethering. I
can never remember the post code.’

‘Don’t worry. I can check that out to complete
the paperwork. Well, thank you very much for your
co-operation, Mrs Le Bonnier. And may I wish you a
happy New Year.’

She’d done it! She’d lied at least as successfully as
Jude would have done. Now a trip to River Road was
in order.

Ignoring Gulliver’s pathetic pleas to be taken
with her, Carole went into the hall to get her coat.
Replacing the handset on the telephone table, she
had a thought. If a fictional Somalian asylum seeker
could find Kath’s address in the phonebook . . .

‘K Le Bonnier’ and her address were listed in the
Worthing telephone directory. As she left High Tor
Carole Seddon felt rather sheepish.

River Road, as its name might suggest, ran along
the side of the Fether. Though defended by a highly
embanked towpath, the roadway occasionally got
flooded at times of heavy rain and freak tides.
Acknowledging this danger, some of the houses had
protective low stone barriers across their front gateways.

Carole eased the Renault into a parking space a
little way away from number seventy-three, and
looked across at the building. It had a thatched roof,
and many layers of whitewash had smoothed the
irregularities of what were almost definitely flint
walls. The building was very low and Carole was
struck by how cramped the two flats into which it
had been divided must be. Fine, perhaps, for Kath,
who was very short, but less comfortable for people of
standard size.

As she had this thought, she saw the shadow of
someone cross in front of one of the cottage’s tiny
upstairs windows.

The question Carole hadn’t considered was, if
Old Garge was in Kath’s flat, was he there of his
own volition or was he a prisoner? The windows
looked too small to let a grown man’s body through,
so maybe he was locked in.

Only one way to find out. She got out of the
Renault, wrapped her coat firmly round her, and
marched across the road to the entrance of seventy-three
River Road. Stepping over the flood defence,
she found herself faced by two identical black doors,
both with well-polished brass knockers. She raised the
one belonging to Flat Two and heard the reverberations
of her summons echo through the cottage.

There was a long silence, so long that she thought
maybe her quarry had been given instructions to lie
low. But then she heard the creaking thud of heavy
footsteps coming down the stairs. The door opened
and Old Garge stood facing her.

‘Carole, we meet again. Am I to assume that you
want our conversation to pick up from when we were
so rudely interrupted?’

‘If that’s agreeable to you, Rupert,’ she said, deciding
that she’d had enough of the Old Garge business.

‘That would rather depend, Carole, on the reason
for your interest.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I would be breaking the terms of my residence
here if you were anything to do with the police.’

‘I can assure you I have nothing to do with the
police.’

‘I was assuming that was the case, but I had to be
certain.’ He backed away from the small doorway,
through which he could not have passed without
stooping, and gestured to Carole to precede him on
the way upstairs.