The Shooting in the Shop (28 page)

As soon as Mabel’s light was off Jude went back
downstairs. She had no moral qualms about reopening
the secret drawer and removing the fluorescent
pink sock, which, as she had hoped, did still contain
a mobile phone. She hadn’t decided yet what she
would do with this vital piece of evidence, but was
glad her neighbour wasn’t with her. Carole would
undoubtedly say that they should hand it straight
over to the police. Jude was quite prepared to do
that . . . eventually . . . but certainly not until she had
checked out the phone for any information it could
provide. The odds are always so heavily stacked in
favour of the police over the amateur investigator that
she was not about to look this particular gift horse in
the mouth.

She tried switching it on, but the battery had run
down. So, having put the phone and its sock safely
into her handbag, Jude did as Lola had suggested and
poured herself a glass of white wine from the well-stocked
fridge. Then she sat in front of the open fire
in the sitting room, very near to the hidden drawer,
and tried to control the excesses of her speculation
until the Le Bonniers returned home.

At about eight she had a phone call from Lola,
apologizing that they were only just then leaving St
John’s Wood. Flora had been ‘at her most demanding.
I had to unpack for her. She claims she can’t do that
with her hands in the state they are. And then she
found plenty of small jobs for Ricky, which, of course,
he did for her without complaint.’

Lola sounded pretty fed up. Then she asked after
the kids, and was relieved to hear that bath and
bedtime had gone without a hitch. She said she and
Ricky would get back as quickly as they could, but it
was unlikely to be before ten. The fridge, though, was
full of food left over from the party and Jude was
encouraged to help herself to anything she wanted.

In fact, the babysitting vigil didn’t last as long as it
might have done. At about twenty to nine, just when
Jude was thinking of making a foraging raid on the
fridge, the au pair Varya arrived back at Fedingham
Court House. She looked pretty wan – the vodka in
Southampton had evidently flowed with Russian
generosity – but she was quite capable of taking over
the babysitting duties. So Jude rang for a cab to take
her home.

When she got back to High Tor after her encounter
with Rupert Sonning, Carole had started googling. She
still hadn’t got far with the thousands of references to
Flora Le Bonnier, and going through all of them in
search of one particular article would be a deterrently
laborious process. So, instead, she typed in the name
Biff Carpenter.

For him, too, there was a surprisingly large
number of entries. Clearly, though few of the names
he wrote about meant anything to Carole, he had
been quite a significant commentator on popular
music in the sixties and seventies. ‘Had been’ were
the operative words, according to his very brief
Wikipedia entry. Born in 1941, Biff Carpenter had
died in 1977.

There was very little other information. Carole
wondered whether life was actually long enough for
her to trawl through endless articles about Jethro Tull
and Procul Harum and King Crimson.

Then she had the thought of googling Biff Carpenter
and Flora Le Bonnier together. No relevant
references. (Well, she didn’t think a nineteenth-century
family tree from Ontario featuring a ‘Biff ’
and a ‘Flora’ was relevant.)

Carole then tried Biff Carpenter and Ricky Le
Bonnier together, and that did produce a result. She
was directed to the blog of someone who’d clearly
been a drummer with various bands in the early
seventies. The rambling style suggested that most of
his writing was done under the influence of some
powerful narcotic.

She was about to give up on the blogger’s turgid
and misspelt prose when she spotted Ricky Le
Bonnier’s name. She read the pertinent paragraph:

. . . Like back then we was getting the
Cameleon
Haze
album together and we was working with
Rickie Le Bonier as producer and having some
great all-niters kind of open party scene in the
studio while we was recording and doing a lot of,
like, wacky backy and a lot of real heavy stuff too.
And Biff Carpenter who was, like, the journo for
our kind of music used to hang out at the studio
which was good cos if he wrote about a band well
you knew that like ment youd made it. Biff was
writing for
NME
and all over including a new
magasine called
Prog Printz
and he said he was
going to do somthing about us for that which would
have been like great. And Biff was good mates with
all of us especially Rickie and they were smoking
some seriously good shit together and injecting too
but then, like, they had some bust-up which was
bad karma for us because, like, suddenly Biff ’s off
writing a peace for
Prog Printz
that is not about the
band but is, like, rubbishing Rickie Le Bonier, not
only Ricky but his mother whose, like, some
actress or somthing. And Biff really has a go and
when the magasine comes out Rickie really loses
his cool and suddenly he’s not producing our
album any more and we’re halfway thro and the
bread’s running out and we’re totally buggerred.
And then later we hear
Prog Printz
has folded and
Biff Carpenter’s snuffed it o/ded on the old horse
and I’m not talking geegees here and were well up
shit creak with no sign of any like padels . . .

Thereafter, the blog seemed to maunder off into
incoherent self-pity. Carole thought it reasonable to
assume that Biff Carpenter’s exposé of Flora Le
Bonnier’s past was included in the article he wrote
attacking Ricky, but she wasn’t optimistic about tracking
it down. She googled up a couple of references
to
Prog Printz
, but they weren’t very helpful. The
magazine had only run for three editions, and copies
were now valuable collector’s items. There was no
means of accessing their content online.

Carole was thoughtful as she closed down her
laptop. Suddenly there were two drug-related deaths
in Ricky Le Bonnier’s life – Polly’s mother and now
Biff Carpenter. Of course, it could just be coincidence,
a reflection of the lifestyle that Ricky indulged in at
that time.

But Carole, being Carole, as she went next door to
share her findings with Jude, wondered whether
there was more to it than that.

Of course there was still no display on the screen of
the mobile. Assuming it was Polly’s – and every indication
supported that idea – the phone hadn’t been
used for nearly a fortnight. Its battery was extremely
dead. And, frustratingly, neither Jude nor Carole had
a charger that fitted it.

They would have to wait till the morning. Fethering
didn’t boast a mobile phone shop. It was even
doubtful whether there was one in Fedborough.
Unlocking the secrets held in Polly’s mobile might
require a trip to Worthing or Chichester. It was profoundly
annoying, but there was nothing else they
could do but wait.

And what Carole had found out about Ricky Le
Bonnier and Biff Carpenter was also frustratingly
incomplete. Neither woman slept well that night.

*

Worthing was marginally closer than Chichester, so
on Friday morning they made it their destination.
Even though Carole had pinpointed the phone shop
they wanted to go to from researches on the Internet,
their purchase took them a long time. Worthing was
extremely full of people who, released from the chore
of being nice to relatives over Christmas, were
desperate for retail therapy. And most of the residents
of Worthing seemed to be in that one phone shop.
Those who didn’t want to change the mobile they’d
been given as a Christmas present were bent on
upgrading their handset to the latest model which
offered even more technological bells and whistles
than their previous one. Transactions like that with
the sharp-suited teenage salesmen took an inordinately
long time and, though all Carole and Jude
wanted to buy was a charger, they had to wait in a
queue which threatened to redefine the concept of
eternity.

They hadn’t risked just memorizing the details of
the phone’s make and model; they actually took the
handset with them to ensure that there should be no
mistake in the charger they bought.

When they finally reached the front of the queue,
their purchase was quickly completed, though the
sharp-suited teenage salesman who served them
seemed very disappointed they didn’t want to upgrade
anything.

Back at Woodside Cottage Jude intended to plug in
the phone charger straight away, but was diverted
when she noticed that the indicator light on her
answering machine was flickering.

The message was from Ricky Le Bonnier. His
voice sounded taut with stress. He asked Jude to ring
him as soon as possible.

‘I think you’ve got something of mine,’ he said
when she got through.

‘Oh?’

‘You know what I mean. Mabel told me you
played the Hiding Things game.’

‘Ah.’

‘I’m going to come round to your place and, when
I do, Jude, I think you’d better give me back my
property.’

‘Are you sure we aren’t talking about your stepdaughter’s
property?’

‘Don’t split hairs. I’ve got to see someone in
Fethering this afternoon, then I’ll come to your place.
Half past four, five, I should think it would be. Don’t
try and do anything clever with the phone. You’re
involved in something much bigger than you realize,
Jude.’

She must have looked shaken when she finished
the call, because Carole asked if she was all right.
Jude repeated what Ricky had said.

‘Then I’m going to be here when he comes,’
announced Carole.

‘I’m sure it’ll be all right.’

‘Jude, a person who has killed once to keep something
quiet may not be troubled by the thought of
killing again for the same reason.’

‘I find it hard to think of Ricky as a killer.’

‘It’s hard to think of anyone as a killer, but there
are still a lot of people who have been sent to prison
for murder.’

‘Yes, I know. I’ll get us some lunch.’

‘Not before you’ve checked that mobile, you
won’t.’

The charger was so secure in its packaging that
Jude had to take a pair of scissors to the obdurate
plastic. When she’d finally freed it, she pushed the
three-pin plug into a wall socket and pressed the
small connector into the bottom of Polly’s phone.
She switched the handset on and navigated through
to the voicemail.

Only a couple of messages had been saved. One
was from Piers, another from one of Polly’s actress
friends. Both dated from before Ricky’s daughter had
come down to Fethering, and concerned arrangements
for social meetings. It was hard to imagine
that either could have any relevance to the girl’s
death.

‘That’s very disappointing,’ said Carole glumly. ‘I
really thought we were going to get a breakthrough
there.’

‘Don’t give up hope. We haven’t checked her text
messages yet.’

These were stored in the in-box with the most
recently received message first. That had been sent at
7.29 p.m. on the Sunday before Christmas, the date of
Jude’s open house. The message read:

SOMETHING REALLY IMPORTANT HAS COME UP

ABOUT THE BOOK. DON’T GO TO LONDON.

MEET ME IN GALLIMAUFRY AT NINE THIS

EVENING. DON’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT YOUR

CHANGE OF PLANS UNTIL WE’VE SPOKEN.

Jude checked the number from which the text
had been sent against the mobile number on the card
Ricky Le Bonnier had given her. They were identical.

Four-thirty passed, so did five and five-thirty, and
there was still no sign of Ricky. After six Jude tried
ringing his mobile number, but was only asked to
leave a message. She didn’t.

They discussed having a drink. Carole was of the
opinion that a drink might weaken their defences for
the confrontation that lay ahead. Jude reckoned that
a drink would strengthen them for the confrontation
that lay ahead. Her counsel prevailed. She poured out
two large glasses of Chilean Chardonnay. (The booze
for the open house still showed no signs of running
out.)

Soon after a quarter past eight, Jude’s landline
rang. She snatched at the handset, expecting to hear
Ricky, but the voice at the other end was a woman’s.

‘Jude, I have some news for you, strange news.’
The voice sounded so weird and ethereal that Jude
took a moment to recognize it as Kath’s. ‘Do you wish
to know where Ricky Le Bonnier is?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘I felt his aura. I knew he was coming to Fethering
today.’

‘He was coming to see me, but he hasn’t arrived.’

‘I will tell you where you will find him. He is in
his car near the Fethering Yacht Club. He has parked
it in the same place as where I saw him the Sunday
before Christmas.’

Immediately, Jude had a vision of Ricky once
again taking risks to see Anna. ‘Is he alone?’ she
asked.

‘Oh yes,’ replied Kath with considerable satisfaction.
‘He is alone. The Devil Women have no power
over him any more. Their power is broken. I am the
only one who now has power over Ricky.’

The woman was beginning to sound as nutty as an
entire fruit cake factory, but there was something
in her words that disturbed Jude. She felt a sudden
urgency to find Ricky Le Bonnier, to check that he
wasn’t in danger. She ended the phone call.

Walking to the Yacht Club would not have taken
long, but they went in the car. Jude’s sense of emergency
had communicated itself to Carole and neither
of them spoke as the Renault hurtled through Fethering.

The Mercedes 4x4 was exactly where Kath had
said it would be. Parked facing the sea between the
end of the shopping parade and the entrance to
Fethering Yacht Club. Its lights were on, sending
strips of brightness out across the shingle of the beach
until their glare faded into darkness.