The Filey Connection

by David W Robinson

  “Maybe he already ate them,” Brenda suggested. “Or maybe someone took them after he fell in.”

  “Oh naturally,” Joe sneered. “You see someone fall in the sea and the first thing you think is, ‘right, I’m having his sandwiches.’ Talk bloody sense, woman.”

  “Perhaps,” Sheila ventured, “he intended coming back from the Brigg to get something to eat.”

  Joe waved a frantic arm at the searing day and clear sky. The sun glistened on his leathery skin, and added weight to his irritation. “So what you’re saying is, he goes out for eight hours’ fishing, it’s a scorching hot day, and yet he doesn’t even have a bottle of water with him? It doesn’t make sense. And have you ever walked out onto the Brigg?”

  Sheila nodded. “Years ago, when the children were young and Peter and I brought them here on holiday.”

  “Then you should know how bad it is underfoot,” said Joe. “It’s a good half-mile from the shore, and like that cop said, the rocks are jagged, slippery, and difficult to get across. It’s not the kind of journey you wanna make twice or three times in a day. You think he’s gonna walk out, walk back to get a brew and a butty, walk back again, walk to the shore for a pee and another brew a couple of hours later? Naw. He knew he wasn’t coming back, and that says he was out to commit hari kari.”

  “I think you’ll find it’s called hara-kiri,” Sheila corrected him, “and in Japanese it’s a vulgar term for the practice of seppuku.”

  Joe snorted. “I’ve got a puzzle on my hands and she gives me a lecture on Oriental etiquette. Whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t make any sense. Everything he did tells us he was going to commit suicide, but if he was going to top himself, why did he pester Brenda for his ticket?”

  Brenda blushed. “Well, he didn’t really pester me. It just… sort of… came up in the conversation. At the disco, last night.”

  Joe understood at once and fumed. “I had it right the first time, didn’t I? You hit on him and nagged the pants off him. What did you say?” Joe put on a high, squeaky voice, supposedly imitating Brenda. “I’ll get you a seat next to me at the show.” In his normal voice, he went on, “the bloke got so fed up of it, he asked if he could have his ticket so he could make his own way there and keep away from your clutches.”

  Brenda’s rose colour deepened. “Something like that.”

  Joe shook his head and began to scan the bag’s contents once more. “No wonder the poor sod felt like committing suicide. With Sheila nagging him to join the club and you trying to get him between your sheets, I’m surprised he didn’t throw himself under the bus before we left Sanford.”

  Brenda took instant umbrage. “For your information, I wasn’t trying to get him between my bed-sheets. What do you take me for?”

  “Man mad.”

  “I am not man mad,” Brenda defended herself. “I’m just young for my years.”

  Joe disagreed again. “You’re a randy old widow.”

  “I am not old.”

  “What the hell makes you think he’d be interested in you, anyway?”

  Brenda stared defiantly. “I knew about him and Nicola, and I may not be in her league, but I could give her a run for her money.”

  Joe suppressed further comment and concentrated more finely on the bag’s contents. He scanned them, checked the bag again, looked through the collection of fishing accessories, opened up the plastic case of bite alarms and checked that too, before turning his attention back to the bag, running his hand around the interior to feel for hidden compartments.

  “What are you looking for, Joe?” asked Brenda, determined to get back at him. “His will?”

  “You’re a woman,” Joe replied, still scanning the items. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “That,” Sheila disapproved, “is sexist.”

  Without looking up from his search, Joe said, “Don’t use that word in front of Brenda. Don’t use any word that has the letters s-e-x in them. You’ll distract her.”

  Sheila giggled. “Good job she doesn’t come from Middlesex then, isn’t it?”

  Brenda took the jibes in good part and chuckled fatly. Smacking her lips, she looked hungrily at Joe. “One night with me, Joe Murray, and…”

  Joe cut her off as he sat down again. “You know, I’ve never been into fishing, but this bag of tricks is all wrong. There’s no bait and no knife.”

  “Knife?”

  He nodded, sucked on his cigarette and found that once more, it had gone out. “Every fisherman carries a good, sharp knife.” Raising his backside slightly off the chair, he fished into his trouser pocket for the Zippo lighter. “You need it for gutting the fish, you need it for cutting away tangled lines. That kind of thing. A good, fisherman’s knife makes a Swiss army knife look as common as a hacksaw blade.” He lit the cigarette.

  “Well perhaps it was in his pocket,” suggested Sheila.

  “Could be,” Joe conceded, “but like I said, there’s no bait. What do you think he planned? The fish would come up and shout ‘take me, I’m next’? You don’t go fishing without giving the little tykes something to chew on. I’m telling you, this guy was no fisherman. He just wanted to look like one so he could throw himself off the Brigg.” Crushing out his cigarette, he went on, “This stuff looks brand new, too. Yesterday, when we were wandering round Filey, I spotted him going into a fishing tackle shop and…” He slapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh my God, that’s it.”

  The women were surprised. “What?” Brenda demanded. “What’s it?”

  “Remember something was bothering me yesterday? Well that was it.” The excitement of a successful deduction building in him, Joe rolled a fresh cigarette. “When I spoke to him in the Miner’s Arms the other night, I commented on how keen he was to come to Filey, and he said he was a fisherman. Yet, when he got of the bus yesterday, he had only the one suitcase with him. If he was a fisherman, where was his gear?”

  “In his case?” Brenda suggested, more in hope than conviction.

  “Brenda,” Sheila said, “you do not pack an eight foot fishing rod in a three foot suitcase.”

  “Correct,” Joe agreed. “These are expensive toys, and even the sort that break down into short sections won’t fit into a case. So he bought it all yesterday, and looking at it, he hadn’t much of a clue what he was buying. He was no angler, which means he had another reason for wanting to be on the Filey bus.” He stared meaningfully at them. “Perhaps he was so desperate to be on the bus that he arranged for Nicola Leach to be mowed down.”

  The two women greeted this announcement with shocked stares.

  Joe was unmoved. “Think about it. You’ve just reminded us, Brenda, that Knickers-off had a bit of a thing with him. He’s been pestering to get on the Filey trip since the day he joined the club. Knickers-off gets it, and the same evening he’s there chasing her seat.”

  He stared out across Filey Bay from Speeton Point a few miles to the south to Carr Naze and the Brigg a mile or so north of them. Carr Naze jutted out half a mile, a low hill, dropping off sharply at the seaward end where it became the Brigg and continued for several hundred more yards barely scratching the surface of the sea. At the landward end, the bay waters were flat, mirror calm, but beyond the Brigg, the sea splashed and frothed over the projecting rocks, and anglers could be seen perched among the rock pools waiting patiently for that telltale waggle of the float to signal a bite.

  The fine, sandy beach was busy with families, children building sandcastles, chasing Frisbees, paddling in the safe shallow waters. Along the smart promenade, groups of people made their way slowly along in the baking sun, and out to sea a fishing coble plodded towards the bay, bobbing on the slight swell.

  “Why would he be so desperate to come here?”

  Sheila’s question brought Joe back from his mental impasse. “What? I don’t know. We need more information on Eddie Dobson and I think we should start at the shop where he bought this gear.” He gestured at the rucksack.

  “This i
s all a bit, er, airy fairy,” Brenda commented.

  Sheila agreed but only so far. “It does seem odd, but I think Joe is extrapolating too much when he links Nicola’s death to Eddie’s.”

  Brenda grinned. “I didn’t know you could extrapolate, Joe.”

  “Yeah, well, I have hidden depths.”

  Sheila half turned in her seat and like Joe, she took in the view, but concentrated her gaze on the far reaches of the Brigg where the anglers sat. She could see several men, police divers presumably, busying themselves at the water’s edge. “Perhaps,” she suggested, “the knife and bait are still out there. On the Brigg.”

  Joe followed her gaze. “Yeah, and maybe they’re in the pockets of those navy blue uniforms.”

  The moment he said it, Joe regretted it. Inspector Peter Riley had died suddenly and unexpectedly of a double heart attack five years previously. Sheila had put it down to the pressure of modern policing. The widow rounded on Joe, her soft brown eyes blazing, and he became humbly apologetic.

  “Sorry, Sheila.”

  She wagged a disapproving finger at him. “The vast majority of police officers are honest, Joe. Peter was, and I’ve no doubts that constable Flowers and his colleagues are too.”

  Pouring oil on troubled waters, Brenda reminded them, “We don’t actually know that Eddie did commit suicide, do we? Like Sheila said, we don’t actually know that he’s dead.”

  Her intervention was unnecessary. Having committed thefaux pas, Joe would take Sheila’s rebuke without response. He would not, however, accept Brenda’s mindless optimism.

  “Right, so what do we have? A guy who’s been desperate to get to Filey with the club ever since he joined, and the minute he gets here, what does he do? He wanders a mile out towards Belgium, short of food, water and essential tackle, carrying newly bought fishing gear that wouldn’t hook a goldfish from a bowl. Now assuming the cops haven’t nicked it all, what could he have been doing? I know; he was spying on Scarborough. He was in the navy, wasn’t he? But do we know which navy? Maybe he worked for the Russians, and he wanted to keep his eye on the Yorkshire Belle. Make sure she wasn’t carrying sixteen inch guns on the foredeck.”

  “Grow up, Joe.”

  “No, you grow up. Eddie Dobson is dead. That’s for sure. The cop didn’t want to say it because he’s not allowed to. Isn’t that right, Sheila?” Joe paused to let Sheila nod. “I’m not saying for sure that he committed suicide, I’m simply saying it doesn’t add up. None of it. And when I think about the circumstances of Nicola’s death, it makes it all the more suspicious. It may all be perfectly innocent. He may not be involved in the hit and run, and he may have had a legitimate reason for going out there like he did, and it may have been an accident.” He laid a gimlet eye on Brenda. “Maybe he was just getting away from you. All I’m saying is, he was no more a fisherman than me and I think the plod ought to be told, because for my money it really does look like murder back in Sanford followed by suicide here.” He paused a moment. “Why don’t we go into town, check with the fishing tackle shop, then go out onto the Brigg, and see what’s going on?”

  Neither woman looked particularly enthusiastic.

  “I don’t think the law would let us,” said Sheila.

  Joe waved at the far off Brigg. “They’re not stopping the other fishermen, are they? This is England, remember. A free country. We can go where we like. Come on. It’ll liven the weekend up.”

  Sheila and Brenda were saved the immediate decision when Sarah Pringle stepped out of the dining room and onto the terrace.

  “May I just take those tea things?” she asked.

  The two women stood up and back, away from the table. Joe hurriedly repacked Dobson’s belongings back in the carryall.

  “I was terribly sorry to hear about your friend,” Sarah said.

  “It’s frightening, isn’t it,” gossiped Brenda. “I always say you never know what’s round the corner.”

  Joe snorted but suppressed a sarcastic rejoinder about lorries and buses. “Sarah…” he trailed off under an amused stare from Brenda. “Mrs Pringle, did you see Eddie this morning?”

  “He was the gentleman who ordered the packed lunch?”

  With a smug grin at Sheila and Brenda, Joe silently congratulated himself on his perspicacity. “The very man,” he declared.

  “I didn’t see him this morning,” said the manageress. “He ordered his lunch yesterday, but he never came to collect it. However, I served seventy-one breakfasts to your party this morning, Mr Murray, so he must have been there.”

  Noting that Sarah employed the same level of formality as she had when addressing him as Chair of the Sanford 3rd Age Club, rather than the informal level of the previous night on the terrace, Joe racked his memory, trying to recall whether he had seen Eddie at breakfast. Then he remembered that he had been busy counting the theatre tickets and checking them against the passenger list.

  He pressed Sarah. “And there’s nowhere out on the Brigg where a man could get food or drink?”

  The woman nodded to the view across the bay. “You can see for yourself. There’s nothing beyond Coble Landing.” She picked up the tray of tea things.

  Joe stayed her. “Mrs Pringle, what would you say about a man who went out onto the Brigg for a day’s fishing and took nothing to eat or drink.”

  “In this weather?” Her face was prim and stern. She looked sharply at Joe. “I’d say he was either out of his mind or on a very severe diet. Excuse me.” She disappeared with the tray.

  “See,” Joe challenged his companions. “Even she thinks there’s something odd about Eddie if he went out there without sandwiches and a flask. We should talk to the police about this.”

  Sheila tentatively agreed. “It does look as if he intended to commit suicide, and there’s certainly something odd about it all, even if the link to Nicola is only spurious. Perhaps Joe’s right and the police should be made aware.” She looked to Brenda for agreement.

  “Then let’s go for a walk along Filey Brigg,” Joe persuaded them. “If nothing else, it’s cheaper than shopping in Scarborough.”

  Brenda sighed. “What do we have to do to get you to spend some of that money, Joe?”

  Joe collected Eddie Dobson’s belongings. “I’ve told you before. Money isn’t for spending. It’s for counting by candlelight at night as you eat your bowl of gruel. I’ll just take these up to my room.”

  “Joe,” suggested Sheila as they stepped back into the darker and cooler air of the dining room, “hadn’t we better get Eddie’s cases and clothing out of his room? The hotel may want it vacated.”

  “You can’t smoke that in there,” Brenda warned before Joe could answer Sheila.

  Joe paused just inside the doorway, and threw his cigarette back out onto the paved terrace. With an impatient, ‘tsk’ Brenda picked it up and left it to burn out on an ashtray.

  “Sheila,” she said, “we don’t really know that he’s dead.”

  “No, he’s dead,” Joe asserted, “and Sheila is right. We should pack his cases.” After a moment of thought, he moderated his opinion. “Even if he has survived, he’s likely to be in hospital for a day or three, so we still need to get his stuff together. Come on. I’ll have a word with Mrs Pringle.”

  Shuffling the rucksack to a more comfortable position on his shoulder, he walked through the dining room and into reception, where Mrs Pringle was on the telephone while her son, Kieran sat watching TV.

  “Yes, sir?” the young man greeted Joe.

  “Sorry to be a pain, but we thought you might need Eddie Dobson’s room clearing out.” Joe gave short, sharp, cynical laugh. “He’s not gonna need it no more, is he? I wonder if I could have the key? We’ll get his gear together and move it into my room.”

  Kieran vacillated a moment and looked to his mother for guidance.

  “I’m terribly sorry to hear that, sir,” said Mrs Pringle into the telephone, casting a glance in her son’s direction. “Leave it with me and I’ll g
et it arranged for you.” She put the receiver down, gave Joe a surly half smile and raised her eyebrows at Kieran, who proceeded to explain Joe’s request. Picking the key from the rack behind her, she smiled again in a sweet and wholly false manner. “I’m sorry, sir, but there are times when I despair of him.” She nodded to indicate her son.

  “You don’t need to explain, Mrs Pringle,” Joe assured her. “My brother’s kid works for me and he’s about as much use as chocolate teapot.”

  She handed over the key to room 102. “If you’d be so kind as to let me have it back when you’ve finished.”

  “No problem,” he agreed. “Twenty minutes.”

  Sheila and Brenda emerged from the dining room as Joe made his way to the lift. Cramming into it, Sheila pressed the button for the first floor, and a minute later they emerged onto a broad, richly carpeted corridor, their footsteps muffled in that curious silence that was the hallmark of hotel landings.

  Along the corridor, Joe turned the key in the lock and they stepped in.

  Aside from a suitcase resting on top of the wardrobe, there was nothing to indicate that the room had been occupied. The bed was neatly made, and when Joe checked the small bathroom, it too was pristine, shaving gear and toothbrush neatly stacked in tumblers on the washbasin.

  He took down a bottle ofGivenchy Pour Hommeaftershave lotion, removed the cap and sniffed at it. He recoiled in disgust. “Expensive crap,” he muttered. “Give meOld Spice any day.”

  While Sheila opened the single wardrobe and Brenda concentrated on the three drawers of the dresser, Joe dragged the suitcase down onto the bed, and opened it up. He allowed the women to begin packing Eddie Dobson’s few items of clothing, while he strode to the window and looked out over the rear of the hotel.

  It was exactly the same as the view from his room, one floor above, and the only difference he could see now was a fire extinguisher left near the gates. As he looked down, one of the chambermaids, the same blonde he had seen from his window 24 hours previously, came out, tossed a bag into the large capacity bins, and looked up at the hotel. Joe almost waved to her, but changed his mind. That kind of gesture was too easy to misinterpret.