Murder on the Menu

by Fiona Leitch

  ‘So what now?’ he said. He had shadows under his eyes and he needed a shave, but he was looking more awake.

  ‘What now?’ said Brenda. ‘Now you sit here and wait for the police to find the real killer.’

  ‘And for Cheryl to turn up,’ said Callum.

  ‘You look like you need a kip,’ said Debbie. Tony shook his head.

  ‘I’ll be all right after I have a shower. I just feel like I need to do something.’

  I could hardly argue with that; I’d felt the same when he’d been languishing in police custody. But I wasn’t sure if I should share all my deductions – okay, suspicions and wild conjecture – with him. Would that make him feel better or worse?

  As if he was reading my mind he said, ‘The worst thing is not knowing. I don’t know if Cheryl’s dead or alive. I don’t know if she left me or someone took her away. I don’t know if I should be angry, or hurt, or grieving. I just want to know how I should feel.’

  I had to tell him everything I knew, or everything I thought I knew, anyway. But not yet.

  ‘How about you go and have a shower,’ I said, ‘and then we’ll have another Council of War.’

  Fifteen minutes later he was sitting in front of us, clean-shaven, smelling a lot better than he had earlier, wearing a clean T-shirt and cargo shorts, and clutching another mug of tea. He was starting to look like his old self again. Did I really want to upset him?

  But I didn’t get the chance to, because he started to speak before I did. He pulled some thin sheets of paper from his pocket and put them on the coffee table between us.

  ‘I just found these,’ he said. ‘I looked through Cheryl’s bedside drawer as I was getting dressed, just in case … I dunno … and they were tucked down the back.’

  I looked at them. They were receipts, headed Nancarrow Cash Exchange.

  ‘That’s the pawn shop on Nancarrow Street,’ said Malcolm.

  ‘Yeah.’ Tony looked at me. ‘So I was right. She did sell all that stuff.’

  ‘What stuff?’ Brenda looked confused. He handed her the wad of papers and she began to sift through them. I leaned over and read them as best as I could as they were upside down to me.

  ‘These are the tickets you need to get your stuff back, aren’t they?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So she didn’t actually sell anything,’ I said. I had the feeling this changed everything. ‘She pawned them. She kept the pawn tickets. Why would she keep them?’

  He shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘It’s all here: the laptop, the figurine, even the kitchen stuff.’ I was getting a crick in my neck trying to read it all. Debbie leaned over and took a receipt from Brenda’s hand.

  ‘Flipping ’eck! She got a grand for a ring?’

  ‘Yeah, the day before the party, going by the date on the receipt. I know which one it was and all. Her mum left her an engagement ring. She was going to wear it at the wedding as “something old”, you know? But you remember, Mum, you said you’d lend her the pearl necklace you wore to your wedding? Cheryl said that would take care of something borrowed and something old.’ He fingered the flimsy slip of pale-yellow paper. ‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time, although I was surprised she weren’t wearing her mum’s ring. But so what? How does this change anything?"

  ‘Because she kept the pawn tickets. It means she wanted to get her stuff back, don’t you see?’ I leaned forward and grabbed his hand. ‘You know what this means? She planned to still be around to go down the pawn shop and get what she could back. Certainly her laptop and her ring. She wasn’t planning to leave you! She must’ve needed money quickly.’

  ‘But she could’ve just asked me—’

  ‘Not if she needed it for summat she didn’t want you to know about,’ said Debbie.

  He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I'm starting to think I didn’t know her at all. What with the affair, and now this. I just don’t get any of it.’

  ‘Of course!’ I said, sitting bolt upright and spilling my tea. ‘The affair! Those pictures you got. How closely did you look at them?’

  The others all looked at me like I was mad or at least completely insensitive.

  ‘Believe or not, I didn’t want to study them too closely,’ Tony said, sourly.

  ‘No, no, I know, but what I mean is, how can you tell when they were taken? Did her hair look different, or…’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Again, believe it or not, her hair was the last thing I noticed. And anyway, she’s had it in the same style for years.’

  ‘Since about 1987 by the looks of it,’ muttered Debbie under her breath, and Callum nudged her hard.

  ‘So they could have been taken a while ago, before you were even together? When did you meet?’

  ‘Two years ago.’ Tony looked thoughtful. ‘Yeah, they could have been taken before then, I suppose…’

  ‘So she wasn’t having an affair after all,’ I said. ‘Think about it. She’s getting married to the man of her dreams’ – Tony smiled sadly at me – ‘and suddenly someone from her past pops up.’

  ‘Poor choice of words, given what was happening in those photos, but yeah.’

  ‘He shows up, with proof, threatening to ruin her wedding day. Tony, she wasn’t raising money to escape you, she was being blackmailed!’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Tony looked at me steadily for a moment, then shook his head.

  ‘No. No, I don’t get that. Why would I care what she got up to before we got together? It’s not like she’d told me she was a nun or something. I knew she had a past, just like I do.’

  ‘Did she tell you about it?’

  He shook his head again. ‘No. I’ve never got this whole thing about telling your partner about all your exes or the number of people you’ve slept with. Why do I need to know that? She did start to tell me once, before we moved in together, but I told her I honestly didn’t care if she’d had one boyfriend before me or a hundred. Don’t look at me like that, I mean it.’

  ‘No, I believe you, it’s very … Tony. I was just thinking about Richard—’

  ‘Dick,’ he interrupted. He’d never liked my ex.

  ‘He hated having his name shortened—’ I saw Tony raise an eyebrow. ‘Oh, right, you weren’t referring to his name. Anyway, Dick went on and on at me when we started seeing each other, wanting to know how many men I’d slept with and saying it didn’t matter, and when I gave in and told him he got all moody.’ I laughed. ‘God knows what he would’ve done if I’d told him the real number.’

  Debbie laughed. ‘I know what you mean…’ She noticed Callum looking at her anxiously and smiled brightly and insincerely. ‘Of course, I didn’t need to lie to Callum because I really was a virgin when we met…’

  I sniggered.

  Brenda laughed as well. ‘Oh, yes, they don’t always get that what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,’ she said. Malcolm looked at her, mildly horrified, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t think he dared.

  Tony smiled and stirred his tea with a finger; a thin film of milk fat had started to form on top of it (and this is why I hate full fat milk). ‘So how could this guy be blackmailing her, if she knew I didn’t care about that? She was thirty-one years old; she was always going to have a past.’

  I thought about the car hidden in Roger Laity’s garage, and the tell-tale anti-freeze, or whatever it was, stain in the lay-by the day Mel was found, which matched the one outside the Laitys’ house.

  ‘I suppose it wasn’t so much what she’d done as who she’d done it with,’ I said carefully. He looked at me, not understanding.

  ‘What, like she was with a married man, or another woman or something?’ said Callum.

  ‘But I wouldn’t have cared,’ protested Tony. I waited for him to say something like, I’d have wanted to see a few more pictures if she was with another woman, hehehe, and was quietly gratified when he didn’t. Although, given that Mel had left him for her female drivi
ng instructor, maybe that wasn’t surprising. Still, Richard/Dick/that cheating swine would never have let an opportunity to be both crass and sexist – or basically just an idiot – pass him by. God, I’d had bad taste in men back then.

  ‘No, but someone else, like … her brother?’

  ‘She didn’t have a brother,’ said Malcolm, but Tony and Callum exchanged looks and I knew I’d hit a nerve.

  ‘Craig.’ Tony laughed bitterly. ‘Bloody Craig.’

  ‘Do you think that might be possible? I mean, I know technically he wasn’t actually her brother, but her uncle and aunty wouldn’t have been pleased, would they? They did bring them up together, like siblings, so it does feel a bit…’ The only word I could think of was the one DCI Withers had used last night. ‘Ewww.’

  ‘Oh yeah, it sounds plausible all right,’ said Tony. ‘He was always sniffing around her. They were really close before she moved in here, then he got a big old strop on and we hardly saw him again, which was fine by me. When we first met, she took me round to meet her uncle and aunty and he was there, and he and Roger spent the whole night belittling me, about Mel leaving me for a woman, about the shop, about everything really. Pauline, her aunty, she was all right, but she was a bit of mouse. Barely said anything. You could tell that Craig had her wound around his little finger. Yeah, Craig is just about the only person in the world I would really have been upset about her being with. But even then, I’d have been upset, but I’d have got over it! Did she not realise that?’

  I reached out and touched his hand. He really was one of the good guys and he deserved so much better than this.

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t just you she was hiding it from. I’m not the only one who thinks it’s a bit yucky,’ I began, but then stopped as I realised what I was saying. He probably wouldn’t want the affair or whatever it was broadcast all over town. I backpedalled madly. ‘I mean, you lot think it’s wrong as well, don’t you?’

  The others nodded, but Tony knew that wasn’t what I’d meant.

  ‘Bloody hell, Jodie, who else knows? Who have you been speaking to?’

  ‘Just DCI Withers,’ I said. I tried not to notice the way Debbie’s eyebrows rose at his name. God, she was worse than my mum. ‘Sorry, I saw him last night and I told him what I suspected. I didn’t know about the blackmail though; I thought maybe they’d run off together or something…’ I didn’t need to tell them what I meant by the ‘or something’: that Cheryl was dead.

  Tony took a deep breath to calm himself down. ‘So what makes you think Craig has anything to do with this? I hate the bloke, but as far as I know he doesn’t – didn’t – even know Mel.’

  ‘I know he was there at the party on Friday night,’ I said. ‘I don’t remember seeing him in the bar when I left but, to be fair, I wasn’t looking. Was he there on Saturday? I don’t remember seeing any of the Laitys.’

  ‘Roger was there,’ said Callum. ‘I was doing my best-man duties, trying to herd the early arrivals into the bar for a welcome drink. He said Craig was running late but he’d be there for the reception.’

  ‘Except Roger knew he wouldn’t be, because…’

  ‘Because what? What do you know?’ Tony leaned forward. ‘Jodie, you have to tell me. I’m going mad here.’

  ‘Okay, first of all I don’t know anything. This is just what I think might have happened.’ I took a breath, giving myself a moment to get it straight in my head. ‘Okay, you know the police found Cheryl’s earring?’ They all nodded. ‘Well, actually, it was me that found it. There was a trail in the grass, leading through the grounds to a lay-by on the A39. Her earring was not far from the fence. Do you remember what Craig was wearing on Friday?’

  Tony looked mystified. ‘Not a clue.’ But Malcolm reached into his pocket and took out his phone.

  ‘I took some photos,’ he said. ‘I think Craig and Roger were standing near us at the time. Here, I can’t see. I left my glasses at home…’

  Malcolm handed me his phone and I looked at the pictures on his camera roll. There were several of someone’s feet (presumably Malcolm’s) and, for some reason, a random photo of Brenda’s back, but I finally found one of the party. A group of men standing by the bar, Tony in the centre laughing at something Callum (who had been there, and I hadn’t even recognised him) had just said, and behind them, scowling, Craig Laity in a white shirt with a thin blue or grey stripe running through it. Just like the scrap of material that had been caught on the fence.

  ‘Oh, Tony,’ I said, my voice starting to wobble. ‘I’m beginning to think I’m right. I think he might have killed Cheryl.’

  I told the assembled Council of War about the trail through the grass, which might have been caused by a suitcase but I thought was more likely to have been the result of someone dragging a body through the undergrowth. I told them about the unidentified stain, and the stain which might be a complete coincidence but which suggested to me that Roger Laity’s Range Rover, with its anti-freeze-leaking hose, had been parked there recently. I told them about Craig’s car, parked (hidden) in a garage in Boscastle when he was apparently back in Oxfordshire (to which everyone agreed there was no way you’d choose to get the train from down here when you had your own transport), with his mum conveniently out of the way in Helston. I told them about Roger Laity and his sports bag, which might have just contained saucy pants and the odd battery-powered toy (the thought of which was apparently even more ewww than Craig and Cheryl getting it on), but could equally have contained clothes and money for Craig, to help him get away.

  ‘You think Craig’ – Tony swallowed hard, unable to say it – ‘you think he did something stupid and then he told Roger and asked for help?’

  ‘Wouldn’t he have rung his mum, rather than Roger?’ asked Brenda. To be fair, had Tony been in that position, he definitely would have rung her rather than his dad, who was lovely but who embodied the laidback Cornish temperament too much to be of any use in such circumstances.

  ‘I thought about that,’ I said. ‘Out of the two of them, who would be more likely to come up with the goods? Who would have the contacts, who would know how to get hold of cash in a hurry without drawing attention to themselves, and who would know how to get a false passport or ID?’

  ‘Roger.’ Tony nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Pauline would do anything for him, but in reality, she wouldn’t be able to help him.’

  ‘So, what?’ said Debbie. ‘You reckon he’s done a runner?’

  I shook my head. ‘I think it would be a bit quick. I think it would take a good few days to come up with fake ID. Unless he had it all planned, and I don’t think he would’ve planned to kill Mel. Why would he? He didn’t even know her. All I can guess is she came across him with Cheryl and tried to stop whatever was happening. No, I think he’s lying low somewhere.’

  ‘Roger’s hiding him.’ Debbie looked militant.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He’s got him holed up in a caravan on one of his campsites,’ said Callum.

  ‘It’s possible,’ I said. ‘But which one? He’s got a whole chain of them.’

  Tony suddenly looked down, then around the room. ‘Where’s the dog?’

  ‘Germaine? She’s at home, why?’

  He grinned at me, a mad gleam in his eye. ‘Fancy taking her for a walk?’

  I wasn’t entirely convinced that taking Tony on a trek around the various Laity-owned campsites was a brilliant idea – God knows what he would do if we actually found Craig – but he was in a restless, slightly manic mood brought on by being stuck in a cell, aware that the real killer was out there somewhere, and I had the feeling that if I didn’t go with him he’d venture out on his own and do something reckless. Even more reckless than I was likely to.

  We googled the Laitys’ camping empire and made a list of the ones within a fifteen-mile radius of Boscastle, for the simple reason that we couldn’t search all of them in one afternoon. We discounted the ones that were tents only – in a hurry to hide from the police, who stops to
put up a tent? – and concentrated on the ones that had static caravans already on site.

  That left us with four campsites, all of which had public footpaths crossing or running alongside them.

  ‘We’ll do the one at Trebarwith,’ said Debbie. ‘We want to take the kids to Tintagel anyway.’

  ‘We’ll look at the one at St Juliot,’ said Brenda. ‘We can stop for a cream tea at that nice pub on the way back.’

  ‘You and I can handle the last two,’ said Tony.

  I still had my doubts, but everyone was hellbent on finding Craig now I’d let the cat out of the bag with my suspicions, and there was no way I could stop them.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But remember, you’re not there to make a citizen’s arrest; you’re just there to have a look around. Be discreet and don’t put yourself in any danger.’ I looked at my troops: two old-age pensioners, a fat bald guy and a mouthy Northerner, all of whom were treating this as a bit of a jolly. I suddenly missed my old colleagues at the Met very much. I sighed. ‘Just be careful.’

  Tony drove us back to my house to pick up the dog. Mum and Daisy both wanted to come with us, which I at first had my doubts about. But the sight of the two of them, and the dog, seemed to calm Tony down a bit, and I thought that their presence might help him control his behaviour. I didn’t think we’d actually find Craig, to be honest – there were too many places for him to be hidden and, despite my gut instinct that he would still be holed up, there was always the possibility that Roger would have made him move on after my visit yesterday. I began to realise that just blundering in without thinking it through properly might not always be the best course of action. Not that I would ever admit that to DCI Withers, even under torture.

  ‘Let’s go to Millook Haven,’ said Tony, as if he’d spontaneously thought of it. Mum looked at him, then at me, curiously; she might be daft but she certainly wasn’t stupid, and she knew we were up to something. But she let it go.