The Shooting in the Shop (29 page)

Carole parked the Renault, and Jude was first to
the Mercedes. She could see Ricky Le Bonnier
slumped in the driver’s seat.

The door was unlocked and when Jude opened it
the interior light went on. There was no sign of any
injury on Ricky’s body, no blood, no evidence of a
weapon.

And yet neither Jude nor Carole had any doubt
that he was dead.

‘I just don’t know what to tell Mabel. She adored
Ricky. He was her Daddy and nobody could replace
him. I haven’t told her about Polly yet, but she didn’t
see Polly that often, so I can break that to her gently.
But Ricky . . .’

Lola was very near to tears. Jude had rung through
to Fedingham Court House on Saturday morning. Her
motive had little to do with criminal investigation.
She just knew from previous encounters how fragile
Lola was beneath her glamorous carapace.

‘Mabel will survive,’ she said. ‘Children are very
resilient. But what about you, Lola? How are you feeling?’

‘Numb at the moment. Every now and then I
almost forget what’s happened, my imagination can’t
cope with the idea of it being true. But then the
reality crashes back in with a hideous thump and I’m
left winded and weepy and . . . Ricky was the love of
my life, Jude. There’ll never be anyone else. I daren’t
think what the future’s going to be like.’

‘Like Mabel, you will survive. It’ll be grim, but you
will come through this.’

‘It’s hard to believe that at the moment.’

‘I’m sure it is, but what I say is true. And, in the
meantime, you’ll have a lot of practical things to
do . . .’

‘Yes. Arranging the funeral.’ A sob caught Lola
unawares. ‘I suppose I always knew that I’d outlive
Ricky, that at some point I would have to face life
without him. But not so soon. Not so soon.’

‘Presumably, you’ll have to wait a bit before fixing
a date for the funeral, won’t you?’ asked Jude, with all
the delicacy of which she was capable.

‘Why?’

‘Well, until the police allow you to have Ricky’s
body.’

‘What have the police got to do with it?’ Lola
sounded appalled at the idea of their being involved.

‘When there’s a suspicious death . . .’

‘There’s nothing suspicious about Ricky’s death.
There’ll have to be a post mortem, yes . . .’ The image
of her husband’s body being carved up shook her for
a moment. ‘But all that the post mortem will find is
that he died of a heart attack.’

‘Oh?’

‘There’d always been a risk of that happening.
Before we got married, Ricky told me that he’d had
a couple of minor heart attacks, that his heart was
weak. He was very honest with me, he didn’t want me
to go into the marriage not knowing everything about
him.’

‘So he had congenital heart disease, did he?’

‘No, not congenital. Again, he was very honest. There was one stage in his life when Ricky did a lot of
drugs. Heroin, mostly. And I think there’s medical
evidence – there’s certainly anecdotal evidence –
that heroin buggers up the system, particularly the
heart. There are plenty of examples of rock stars
dying of heart attacks in their late fifties, early sixties.
So Ricky’s heart was fatally damaged by his early
excesses. It was a time-bomb ticking away. Then with
all the stress he’s been under since Polly’s death –
and his bloody mother being as demanding as ever,
putting pressure on him every way she knew how –
which is quite a lot of ways . . .’ The last sentence was
spoken with deep bitterness.

‘Anyway . . .’ At the end of the line Jude could hear
Lola take a deep breath as she struggled for control.
‘What’s heartbreaking about it is that Ricky had really
changed. He hasn’t touched any kind of drug for
eleven years, he’s clean. Even the drinking, even
though he talks it up a lot, he’s cut back hugely on
that. And then marrying me, and having Mabel and
Henry. It was a new start . . . it was . . .’ Emotion
robbed her of speech.

‘Well, look, Lola, if there’s anything I can do . . .
Are you on your own there? Because I could come up
and—’

‘I’m fine, thank you, Jude. Varya’s looking after
the kids. And Piers is here again . . . though that is
something of a mixed blessing.’

‘Oh?’

‘Piers has always had a tendency to self-dramatize.
And he’s overreacting like mad to Ricky’s death. In a way, that’s almost helping me. Seeing how ridiculous
Piers looks being all weepy and hysterical is stopping
me from going down the same route.’

‘OK, well, you’ve got my number, Lola. If there’s
anything I can do . . .’

‘I’ll let you know.’

‘And when you’ve got details of the funeral
sorted . . .’

‘I’ll see to it you’re informed. Everything should
be pretty straightforward once the post mortem’s
been done. It’s tragic and it’s heartbreaking, but it was
a natural death.’

Jude wasn’t quite as convinced as Lola about that.

On the spur of the moment – which was rare, Carole
Seddon was very wary of anything that happened on
the spur of the moment – she invited Jude round for
lunch. She was keen to use up the remains of the
Christmas Day turkey which she’d frozen. The old
year had passed and Carole wanted to tidy things up
by removing all traces of it.

She did the turkey in a white sauce, served up
with mashed potatoes and peas. Though she said it
herself, it did taste rather good. And there was still
a bottle of the Christmas Chilean Chardonnay left to
accompany the meal.

Inevitably the women’s conversation soon moved
to the murder – or what both of them felt convinced
now was a double murder.

‘The main question,’ said Carole, ‘is who Ricky was coming to see in Fethering before he came to
see us.’

Jude nodded. ‘Well, the two obvious contenders
are his ex-wife and his lover. Kath and Anna.’

‘And don’t forget Rupert Sonning. He clearly had
had some dealings with Ricky . . . well, Rupert
jumped when Ricky told him to.’

‘Yes. I take it we’re assuming a connection
between the two deaths?’

‘We have to, Jude. Otherwise the coincidence is
just too great. And I think we can also assume that
Ricky was killed to stop him from divulging what he
knew about Polly’s death to us, or to the police, or
indeed to anyone else.’

‘That’s certainly the most likely scenario. Pity, I
was absolutely convinced he was our murderer –
particularly after we found that text from him on
Polly’s mobile.’

‘You say “text from him”, Carole. But, in fact, we
should be saying “text from his mobile”. We don’t
know who pressed the buttons.’

‘No. Say he’d left it at Fedingham Court House
when he went to take Polly to Fedborough Station,
then it could have been used by Lola . . . or Flora . . .
or Varya, come to that.’

‘What about Piers, though, Carole?’

‘Piers sending the text? How on earth would he
have got hold of Ricky’s mobile? He claims to have
been in his London flat that evening, waiting for Polly
to join him.’

‘He also says he spent the night with his new girlfriend.’

‘Yes, I’m not certain that we can accept everything
said by Piers Duncton as gospel truth.’

Jude took a pensive mouthful of turkey, then said,
‘If Ricky isn’t guilty of killing Polly, he’s still in the
frame for torching Gallimaufry.’

‘More than in the frame. He did it. Rupert Sonning
witnessed him doing it.’

‘Assuming Rupert Sonning’s telling the truth.’

‘Yes, he’s an odd man, spending the declining
years of his life masquerading as a beachcomber.
And he has a very strange sense of morality. He
apparently doesn’t see anything wrong with burning
down a business to claim on the insurance. He called
it “a victimless crime”.’

‘All right, Carole. So, moving on from the hypothesis
that Ricky didn’t kill his stepdaughter, but did
start the fire . . . he did that because he found Polly in
the shop dead, and he set the shop alight in the hope
of protecting the person who he knew had killed her.’

This gave Carole a new idea. Her eyes sparkled
with excitement as she announced, ‘And that person
must be his mother. Flora’s such a powerful personality
that Ricky would do anything to appease her.
Yes, that makes sense. She had some animus against
Polly . . . I don’t know what, but we can work that out
later. Ricky left his mobile at home and Flora used
it to send the text which lured Polly back to Gallimaufry.
Flora met her there and shot her!’

Carole sat back, glowing with the satisfaction of having solved the case. She raised her glass to toast
the success, but lowered it when she saw the expression
on Jude’s face.

‘What’s wrong? I’ve just provided the perfect
theory of what happened.’

‘It’s a good theory,’ said Jude, ‘but it does suffer
from one major flaw.’

‘I don’t think it does.’ Carole’s confidence began to
drain away. ‘What major flaw?’

‘Flora’s hands. You’ve seen how arthritic they are.
They’re as useless as flippers. She can’t grip anything.
She has to use both hands to hold a wine glass.
There’s no way she could send a text message with
those hands. And, by the same token, there was no
way she could have held a gun to shoot Polly.’

‘Oh, damn.’ It was very rare for Carole to utter
even the mildest swear word, but she had been
severely provoked. Her splendid edifice of a solution
had been undermined by one tiny detail. What made
her even more annoyed was the knowledge that Jude
was right.

Her mouth set in an expression of petulance as
her friend mused, ‘I wonder if there’s more than one
person involved? Someone sent the text from Ricky’s
mobile, someone else met Polly at Gallimaufry and
shot her.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Well, it widens our range of suspects, for one
thing. Also, if we’re assuming the text was sent by
someone at Fedingham Court House . . . though it
needn’t have been, because somebody might have stolen Ricky’s mobile or he might have given it to
someone or—’

‘Just for the moment, Jude,’ said Carole tartly,
‘let’s assume that the text was sent from Fedingham
Court House.’

‘All right. Well, if that is the case, it wasn’t sent by
anyone in Fethering – in other words, it wasn’t sent
by any of the three people Ricky might have come
here to see yesterday afternoon . . .’

‘Kath, Anna or Rupert Sonning.’

‘Exactly.’ Jude sipped at her Chardonnay. ‘The
fact that Ricky had Polly’s mobile phone suggests to
me that he definitely did find her dead in the shop.
He took it to avoid anyone who was investigating the
crime finding the message we found on it.’

‘If he knew that message was there.’

‘Yes. I wonder if, when he found her body, he also
found the gun that had been used to kill her . . .’

‘Well, if he did, he would have left it there.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, come on, Jude, keep up. He’d have left it
there, so that the police would find it – or at least the
charred remains of it – thus supporting the suicide
theory that he was so keen to persuade us to accept.’

‘I’d forgotten about that. It seems such a long time
ago.’ Jude finished up the last of her turkey and
aligned her knife and fork on the plate.

‘If you’d like a sweet, there’s a bit of Christmas
pudding left . . . or some mince pies.’

Jude’s brown eyes gleamed. ‘Mince pies with
brandy butter?’ Carole nodded. ‘Yes, please!’

As they settled down to their final Christmas
indulgence, Jude began, ‘Of the three people Ricky
might have been coming to see yesterday . . .’

‘Kath, Anna or Rupert Sonning.’

‘Yes. We don’t have an address for Anna . . .’

‘We know her surname. Carter. Maybe she’s in the
phone book?’ Carole checked and she wasn’t. ‘Probably
moved into the area too recently.’

‘Well, you can try another of your dog-walking
missions tomorrow morning.’

‘Yes.’

‘I wonder if she’s heard about Ricky’s death yet.
And what effect it’ll have on her when she does. In
the long term, I think she’ll probably feel relief. The
relationship was never going to go anywhere.’

‘From what she said to me, she was quite deeply
entangled with him. He meant a lot to her, as part of
her reinvention of herself.’ But Carole didn’t want to
spend long on psychological speculation. ‘Anyway,
we can’t find Anna today, so that leaves Kath and
Rupert Sonning.’

‘Who may still be living at her place. I suppose
we’ll have to try Ayland’s again, though whether
Kath’ll be there, who knows? She must take a day off
sometime.’

A call to the boatyard produced nothing but an
answering machine message. Jude sighed despondently.
‘If only we had a home number or a mobile
for her . . .’

Her neighbour beamed. ‘But we do. I made a point of getting both from Rupert when I visited him
on Thursday.’

‘Oh, well done, Carole. I think a call might be in
order, don’t you?’

‘A call saying what?’

‘A call asking whether Kath Le Bonnier would care
to join us in the Crown and Anchor for an early
evening pint of Guinness.’

Kath did not seem fazed by the request for a meeting,
nor, when she arrived at the Crown and Anchor, was
she fazed by the fact that Jude had brought Carole
along. And, remarkably for someone who had just lost
the love of her life, she did not show any signs of
grief.

After her introduction, Carole went to the bar to
get the drinks and Jude expressed her condolences
about Ricky’s death.

‘Yes, but he hasn’t really gone,’ said Kath. ‘He’s just
in a different dimension.’

‘Ah. And where is that dimension?’

‘It’s around us.’ The woman smiled beatifically.
‘It’s all around us.’

‘So is Ricky in a better place than he was when he
was alive?’

‘Oh yes.’ Kath giggled. ‘The Devil Women can’t get
at him where he is now. Only I can get at him now.’