Murder on the Menu

by Fiona Leitch

‘We don’t need to,’ I said. I remembered spotting Cheryl’s keys on the dressing table when Tony had taken me to her room. ‘But we might need to sneak past Mr Bloom…’

  We parked outside the hotel. We were in Debbie and Callum’s car; Debbie had taken one look at the Gimpmobile, shaken her head, and gone back to get the car keys from her unresisting husband. She had a point. We were trying to be inconspicuous and I could only imagine what DCI Withers would say if he went back to the crime scene and saw me there. Part of me relished the thought of crossing swords with him again – he really wound me up – but the bigger, more sensible part knew that it was unwise to antagonise him, at least while Tony was still in the frame for Mel’s murder.

  We strolled into the foyer. I did have a legitimate excuse to be there; I still hadn’t got everything out of the hotel kitchen, having been so rudely interrupted by Tony’s epic cake-throwing tizzy. But I really wanted us to get a look at Cheryl’s room, to see if she’d left anything behind to suggest that her disappearance hadn’t been planned after all and to get hold of her car keys, if they were still there.

  Debbie strode confidently up to the receptionist and I remembered that they’d been having a natter when I’d arrived earlier that day. It seemed incredible that so much had happened so quickly, and I had to remind myself that Mel’s body had only been discovered the day before.

  ‘Hiya,’ she said. ‘Can we get the key to Cheryl’s room? Tony said everyone was supposed to be checking out today, so we thought we’d come and get her stuff.’ She leaned in towards the receptionist. ‘Poor bloke, he’s heartbroken. We thought, anything we could do to make it easier for him, you know.’

  The receptionist lifted her phone. ‘I’d better ask Mr Bloom if it’s OK—’

  ‘We don’t want to disturb him,’ I said quickly, ‘and to be honest, we’re a bit embarrassed after what happened earlier…’

  The receptionist smiled but didn’t put the phone down. ‘I do understand, but Mr Bloom said I have to check with him if anyone connected with the … the goings-on turned up. We’ve already had Mr Laity here wanting to get Miss Laity’s things, but the policeman that was here earlier said no one was allowed in.’

  Dammit. I had hoped that as she was still just a missing person, rather than a victim, the local police might have been concentrating more on Mel, but then Withers had seemed convinced that Cheryl was dead too and it was just a matter of time before they found her body. Why was I not so sure? Everything Withers had said earlier about Tony killing Cheryl after finding the photographs made sense. Tony had an obvious motive, and there was no denying that she had apparently disappeared off the face of the earth. And yet…

  And yet I knew Tony. We’d been so close as teenagers, even after those ill-fated two weeks of being boyfriend and girlfriend. And, even though I had been away for such a long time, he’d always been among the small group of old friends I’d looked up whenever I visited. Most of the others had moved away or just fallen by the wayside, but we had the sort of friendship where it didn’t matter how long it had been since we’d last seen each other, we’d just carry on from where we left off. And I knew he wouldn’t – couldn’t – kill anyone, least of all Mel or even Cheryl, however much I disliked her.

  ‘The policeman—’ I started, and the receptionist got a dreamy look in her eyes.

  ‘The good-looking one,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember his name.’

  ‘DCI Withers,’ I said immediately. I didn’t know why Debbie looked at me with an amused grin on her face. ‘He’s not here now, is he?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, with a hint of regret.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Debbie, still grinning at me. ‘Go on, let us just sneak in. We won’t be any trouble.’

  ‘You could always go up and ask the policeman outside her room,’ she said, thoughtfully. She laughed. ‘Old Davey’s not quite as good to look at as the other one, mind you, but he’s a nice bloke.’

  I gave a start. ‘Old Davey? You don’t mean Davey Trelawney?’ She nodded. Bingo, I thought, only just resisting a fist-pump. I smiled. ‘Thank you, we’ll pop up and have a word with him.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  PC David Trelawney, or Old Davey as he was locally known, had been another one of my dad’s recruits. Son of one of the local pub landlords, he’d been fond of a drink and had spent a good few nights in the cells drunk before my dad had told him that if he liked the station that much, maybe he should work there. Except, of course, he doubted that Davey had it in him to pass the physical fitness test.

  Local legend had it that that had been like a red rag to a bull, which Davey resembled in terms of his build, and had made him challenge my dad to a race along Penstowan beach.

  Dad had beaten him easily. In front of most of the town.

  Davey had not been happy, but instead of going off and getting drunk again on the local scrumpy (which had been rumoured to cause blindness in large doses), he went into training. Davey challenged him to another race … which Dad also won, but only just.

  That still wasn’t good enough for Davey. He gave up the booze completely and started running every morning and using the beer barrels at his dad’s pub as weights. He challenged Dad to another race, this time along the beach carrying a barrel over his head.

  Dad lost – he could barely lift the barrel over his head, let alone run with it – and turned up at the pub the next morning (where Davey was nursing a very bad victory hangover) clutching an application for police college with his name on it. And the rest, as they say, was history. Old Davey had a been a copper rather than an alcoholic (although the two are by no means mutually exclusive) ever since.

  Davey was loyal, built like an ox on steroids, and just about the straightest cop you could hope to meet. One thing he wasn’t was particularly old, even now.

  We turned into the corridor where Cheryl’s room was and stopped as we saw the uniformed slab of muscle standing outside. He must’ve been approaching sixty but you could tell he was still impressively ripped under that uniform, and you’d certainly think twice before mentioning retirement to him. Debbie looked at me in surprise and whispered, ‘Why’s he called Old Davey? I was expecting some doddery old fella…’

  ‘Morning,’ said Old Davey. ‘Gonna have to stop you there, my lover. You can’t go in.’

  ‘Hi, Davey, remember me?’ I said. He looked closely at me.

  ‘Can’t say as I do, me duck,’ he said. Then suddenly his expression cleared. ‘No! It ain’t Little Jodie?’ I smiled and nodded. I had been ‘Little Jodie’ among Dad’s police colleagues for almost as long as he’d been Old Davey, despite not having been little for years.

  ‘It is. How’re you doing? Can’t believe they haven’t put you out to pasture yet…’

  He laughed. ‘She’s proper cheeky, this un! Always has been. I heard you were back. What you doing here, though?’

  ‘Terrible business, innit?’ I said, and he nodded.

  ‘Aye, it is that.’

  ‘And they think Tony Penhaligon did it!’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘Yeah, well, he had a motive all right, didn’t he? Still, I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him to do that. Not kill someone.’

  ‘No, me neither. So we were hoping to get Cheryl’s stuff. The hotel’s got more guests coming and they need the room…’

  Old Davey shook his head. ‘No, they haven’t. What are you up to?’ He grinned. ‘You wouldn’t be the bloody irritating, nosey woman the guvnor’s been moaning about, would you?’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s me,’ I said, brightly. ‘You going to let us in or what?’

  ‘What,’ he said. ‘I can’t, as much as I’d like to.’

  ‘Oh, come on…’ I smiled at him but it didn’t work. It always works in movies.

  ‘What you hoping to find?’ he asked, suspiciously. Debbie and I exchanged looks and she shrugged. Might as well tell him.

  ‘Cheryl’s disappeared, yeah? The happy couple were meant to be
going away on honeymoon and we thought, if she’s left her passport behind in the room, or in the car, then that shows she wasn’t planning to disappear, ’cos you’d take something important like that, wouldn’t you? And credit cards, and all that. So that could mean that maybe she was murdered too. Which is what DCI Withers thinks, isn’t it?’ Davey didn’t speak, so I carried on. ‘But of course, if we search everywhere and we can’t find her passport and purse, then she must’ve had them on her, which makes it more likely that she planned her disappearance and is still alive. And therefore Tony didn’t kill her.’

  Davey looked at us thoughtfully. ‘You know of course that I can’t give you any information on this case? Seeing as you ain’t a member of the local constabulary or Mr Penhaligon’s legal counsel?’

  ‘I know that. But maybe…’

  ‘I wouldn’t be able to tell you if we’d already thought of that, and had searched Miss Laity’s belongings both here and in the car.’ He looked at me meaningfully. So they’d already done that. Withers was so convinced of Tony’s guilt that he was looking for evidence to prove it was him, instead of looking for evidence to find Mel’s killer – a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless. ‘Of course, if we had already searched her stuff, the last thing you’d want to hear is that we’d found Miss Laity’s passport, because that would make it look like something nasty’s happened to her. You understand I can’t do that, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I understand. Is there anything else you can’t tell me?’

  Davey looked confused. ‘No, when I said I can’t tell you, I actually meant—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know what you meant!’ I said quickly. Davey was a nice bloke but he was definitely more brawn than brain, and this was akin to doing mental gymnastics for him. ‘Look, if I ask you some questions you can just say yes or no if you like, but if you did decide to tell me anything I won’t let on it was you. Withers will never know, okay?’

  Old Davey hesitated.

  ‘Eddie was really proud of you, you know,’ I said, shamelessly playing on his loyalty to my dad. Sorry, Dad, but it’s for a good cause.

  Old Davey smiled, with a hint of resignation. ‘Go on then, but only ’cos I owed your dad.’

  ‘Cool. Okay … what about time of death?’

  ‘Now that’s a tricky one, I heard. It’s all because of the dog.’

  It was my turn to look confused. ‘Germaine? Mel’s dog?’

  ‘Aye. The lady on reception said when she got to work at 6am the dog was barking. There were no reports or complaints of a dog barking before that.’

  ‘So you think Mel could have been killed in the morning? What would she have been doing here that early?’

  Davey shook his head slowly. ‘We don’t know. Maybe she could have come back to have another go at stopping the wedding. But the DCI still thinks she was killed the night before, during the party. The doc said he’d normally be able to go by body temperature versus ambient temperature—'

  Debbie looked at me; now she was confused. It was catching.

  ‘Human body temperature is normally roughly thirty-seven and a half degrees,’ I explained. ‘After death the body loses heat at the rate of around one and a half degrees an hour until it reaches ambient temperature – the temperature of the environment around it. So you can normally work out fairly accurately how long someone’s been dead.’

  She still looked bewildered but said, ‘Oh. Right…’

  I turned to Davey. ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘If the body had been left outside overnight, like the guvnor thinks, it would have been pretty cold, and that would have slowed down the rate of heat loss. But by the time it was found it was a hot day, plus the dog had been sitting on her chest, guarding her and keeping her warm for God knows how long.’

  ‘Meaning the rate of heat loss would have been all over the place, and really buggering up time of death.’

  Davey nodded.

  ‘But if she’d been killed at night, surely someone would have heard the dog barking well before 6am? There’s a hotel full of people; some of them must have been light sleepers,’ said Debbie.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Which suggests the dog wasn’t there all night, but Mel still could have been. She told me herself that the dog is basically Houdini. She’s always escaping, so Mel could only leave the window open a tiny bit when she left her in the car, otherwise she’d wriggle through the gap. When I picked the dog up yesterday I noticed the window of Mel’s car was open more than when I last saw it. So maybe she was killed the night before, but the dog was in the car and only got out and went to find her the next morning?’

  Davey shrugged. ‘Could be. I’ll mention it to the guvnor. I won’t say where it came from. Don’t know how much difference that will make to the case, though.’

  I thought hard. ‘When I left Mel, she said she was going to give the dog a walk round the grounds as she’d been shut up in the car for too long. I went back to the party for about fifteen minutes, then I went to see Cheryl. Tony left soon after me. He says he went out to talk to Mel after seeing her through the window, walking the dog. There are witnesses who saw him leave the party then, and that’s one of the things Withers is basing his evidence on. It’s not unreasonable to believe that she was walking the dog for fifteen minutes, is it? But she can’t have been killed then because if she’d been killed in front of the dog it would have barked and it would have carried on barking all night. And as we’ve established, no one heard it until 6am. The dog must’ve been in the car when she was killed.’

  ‘Yes…’ Davey looked doubtful. ‘That don’t mean he didn’t sneak out and kill her later on.’

  I sighed. ‘No, I know. But there are no witnesses that say they saw him leave the hotel again later, are there?’

  ‘No.’ Davey shifted uncomfortably. ‘Look, I can’t really tell you anything else. I don’t know much else for a start, but I do know that Withers’d have my guts for garters if he knew I’d been talking to you.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘And thank you. I really appreciate it.’

  ‘I’ve got a question,’ said Debbie. I glanced at her in surprise. ‘Why are you called Old Davey when you’re not that old?’

  He laughed. ‘Truth is, I been called Old Davey most of my life, on account of my grandpa. He was a Davey too. My dad was the youngest of six children, and I was the youngest of his children, so by the time I came along Grandpa Davey was pretty old. They called him Young Davey for a joke, you know, like they call big blokes ‘Titch’ or something. So of course they had to call me Old Davey, so they knew which one of us they was talking about.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Debbie. ‘That makes perfect sense…’

  ‘It does if you’re Cornish,’ I said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  We left the hotel and went outside. I tried not to look at Mel’s car in the car park, surrounded by police tape, and now Cheryl’s was cordoned off, too.

  We sat in Debbie’s car.

  ‘So what have we learnt?’ I asked.

  ‘Bugger all?’ suggested Debbie. I shook my head.

  ‘No. We’ve learnt roughly what time Mel was killed.’

  She looked amazed. ‘We have?’

  ‘Yes. Tony saw her at 9.30pm. It sounds like they must have had quite a chat, if they made up enough to have a hug, and then she would have put the dog back in the car, so say that took half an hour? At least. So it was after 10pm and before 6am, when the dog started barking.’ I looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I went and talked to Cheryl at about the same time, and she was still in her room. As far as I can make out, I was the last person to see her, as everyone thought she was having an early night before her big day. Tony sent her a text when he went to bed, about midnight, but she never replied. So she could easily have done it between, say, 10pm and midnight – assuming she murdered Mel and then did a runner – otherwise why not answer her phone?’

  Debbie looked at me in complete astonishment. ‘You
think Cheryl murdered Mel? Why would she do that?’

  ‘Why not? If Mel knew about her affair, Cheryl would have had just as much motive to shut her up as Tony – more, in fact. Tony only really has a motive if Cheryl’s dead and he killed her too.’

  ‘But we don’t know if Cheryl is dead.’

  ‘Exactly! Withers is acting like she is, even without a body. It’s the only way Tony being the murderer makes sense.’

  Debbie thought about it. ‘Okay … but like we said earlier, why would Cheryl leave her passport and all her stuff behind? Unless she wanted it to look like she’d been bumped off, too… Do we know for certain that Mel even knew about the affair? She didn’t tell you she did, did she?’

  ‘No, she— Oh, bugger!’

  A black car had just pulled into the hotel car park: Withers. I glanced at Debbie and slid down in my seat, and she followed suit.

  ‘Who are we hiding from?’ she whispered.

  ‘DCI Withers,’ I said, and she grinned at me. I ignored it. ‘He’s already told me off twice today; I don’t want him to see me here again.’

  ‘Okay… I’m sure I’ve seen people do this in movies though, and just when they think they’ve got away with it—’

  A tap on the window next to me made us both jump. I sighed; I knew who it was before I looked up.

  ‘Yep,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve seen those movies too.’

  I sat up and wound down the window. Withers bent down and stuck his gorgeous, irritating face level with mine.

  ‘Ah, DCI—’

  ‘Out of the car, please, Jodie.’

  ‘Actually, we were leaving; I just came back to get my sausages…’ I could feel my cheeks burning. Why the hell was I burbling on about sausages to this man?

  ‘Ms Parker, please.’ He gave me a please-don’t-demean-yourself-by-trying-to-wriggle-out-of-it look. I looked at Debbie, then opened the car door.

  Debbie started to get out too.

  ‘No, not you, Mrs … Ms…’ DCI Withers shot me the tiniest of glances before he could stop himself, as if my presence had reminded him not to just assume someone’s title (something we’d been taught in the Met, which clearly hadn’t caught on here yet).