Murder on the Menu

by Fiona Leitch

  As we walked away Tony muttered, ‘That Withers is a right flash git. Fancies himself, don’t he?’ I shrugged. ‘He fancies you, too. You can do better than him.’

  The rest of the day passed quietly. Tony took us home then went home himself, despite Mum inviting him to stay for dinner. Finding Craig like that had shocked all of us, not least because we’d all been so certain that he’d been the killer and Roger had been hiding him somewhere. Tony had been very quiet on the short drive home, and I realised that, despite the fact he hated Craig, finding his dead body had not given him any satisfaction.

  We spent what was left of the afternoon in the garden, Mum and I weeding (actually, me weeding, Mum pointing out where I’d missed them) while Daisy sat on the wall, legs dangling over the other side, talking to the sheep. Germaine lay in the shade behind her, tongue lolling out, hot but not wanting to leave her young mistress’s side. It was so cute and just one more thing that made me think we’d made the right move. If you ignored the fact that the body count had shot up since we’d got here, Penstowan was a great place to raise your kids…

  We had a leisurely dinner of pasta carbonara and salad – I did think about doing bangers and mash, but I felt like if I never saw another sausage in my life it would be too soon – then sat in front of the telly. At 9.30pm Daisy took herself up to bed; I went up and tucked her in, not that she needed it (I still needed it though, as well as really missing reading her a bedtime story; why do our children have to grow up so fast?), and then I took Germaine for a last quick walk around the block.

  It was a lovely warm night still, and the sun had only just started to go down; it set later down in this southwest corner of the country than in London. I waited as Germaine sniffed around a lamppost, deciding whether or not this was the one she was going to grace with her wee or if we’d have to move on to the one further down, and drifted off into thought.

  ‘Jodie.’ His voice made me jump. I turned around to see Withers watching me. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to creep up on you. You busy?’

  I gestured to Germaine, who had lifted her leg experimentally, obviously working out her angle of urination and, finding it wanting, put her leg down again and moved on. ‘Not exactly. I’m waiting for her to get busy.’

  He smiled and together we strolled along to the next lamppost.

  ‘I thought you might want an update,’ he said.

  ‘I do, but…’ I stopped and turned to him. ‘Why are you telling me everything? You wouldn’t give me the time of day before, but now…’

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that…’ He ran his fingers through his hair. It messed it up, but if anything it just made him look even hotter. Damn. ‘It helps to talk it through with someone. In the past I’d have talked to my DSU or something, but there isn’t one here. Most of the time I’m the highest-ranking officer at the station, unless I want to go to Barnstaple. And there’s not really anyone else I can talk to.’

  He must be single. Mum would be pleased to hear that. I didn’t care in the least, of course.

  ‘Then fire away.’

  We walked on, letting Germaine run ahead, the lead spooling out behind her.

  ‘I went to see Roger and Pauline Laity,’ said Withers. ‘Broke the bad news.’

  ‘Pauline’s back? How did she take it?’

  ‘She’s devastated, of course. It looked to me like she genuinely thought he’d gone back to Oxfordshire.’

  ‘What about Roger? Did you get a warrant to look in the garage?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I didn’t want him to think we were onto him.’ He sighed. ‘If we are onto him. I don’t know what to think. I asked him what happened when Craig left, what time he went, did he drive, what route he would’ve taken, did he mention stopping to see anyone.’

  ‘And?’ Germaine’s ears pricked up as another dog walker turned into our road; I recognised one of our neighbours with their pet, an elderly Labrador who would bark furiously when you passed their house, but would go quiet and look a bit embarrassed if you stopped and walked up the path, as if they couldn’t remember what they were supposed to do next.

  ‘He said that Craig had left on Saturday, while they were at the hotel for the wedding. Pauline had been quite upset because he left without saying goodbye; he just left a note which they found on Saturday afternoon when they got home. I asked if they still had the note but Roger said no, he’d thrown it away before Pauline had seen it because she was already upset.’ He looked at me. ‘Seem legit to you?’

  ‘Not even slightly, but then not everyone gets on with their parents, do they?’ I said. ‘Had they argued?’

  ‘Pauline said no, but Roger admitted he’d had words with him the night before.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About him coming along to the wedding uninvited.’

  I laughed shortly. ‘He didn’t care about Craig not being invited when they turned up at the party together on Friday. Tony was really embarrassed and Cheryl was obviously not very happy about it either. It was quite clear even to me how uncomfortable they both were, but Roger seemed to think it was hilarious. So, he basically said, as far as he knew, Craig had left and gone home, perfectly fine, on Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘Not exactly. He said that Craig’s car wouldn’t start, so he left it behind.’

  ‘Likely. Not.’

  ‘I did ask him how Craig would have got home without it, and wouldn’t he need it back in Oxfordshire, but he just said he’d promised to get it fixed and that Craig often used to hitchhike, so he’d probably planned to get to Exeter that way and then get the train.’

  ‘The suggestion being, he’d accepted a lift from the wrong person?’

  Withers nodded. ‘I don’t buy that for a second. But I also don’t buy that Roger killed him and then dumped his body in the marsh.’

  ‘But he was at the marsh. The yellow cross-thingy, the flower, proves it.’

  ‘But we don’t have the yellow crosswort. Apart from anything else, his car wasn’t there this afternoon for me to look at.’

  ‘No, it’s at Trevarrow’s. The garage on Ghyll Street? I took my van in there earlier and it was there. Apparently it’s got a leaky hose.’

  Withers smiled. ‘So you were right about the stain, then? Unfortunately, Scene of Crime didn’t take a photo of the lay-by, just the fence Craig’s shirt got caught on.’

  ‘Bugger.’

  ‘Yep. Bugger.’

  We walked to the end of the road. Germaine finally cocked her leg and got on with the job in hand, while we discreetly averted our eyes. Withers turned to look at me.

  ‘I do believe you, about the stain in the lay-by and how Roger’s car could have made it, and about the flower too for that matter. And if you remember, when we went to see him on Sunday, Roger told me Craig had left that morning. So he was either lying then or he’s lying now. But none of it proves he did anything wrong. He still has no motive for killing Mel, or Craig. And then there’s Cheryl; if something’s happened to her, what’s his motive there? Like you said before, he had more to gain from the wedding going ahead than from stopping it, even if he didn’t like Tony much. If he had plans that involved using the Penhaligons’ shop then Cheryl was his best hope of influencing them to let him. There’s still only one person who really had the motive and opportunity for all of that.’

  ‘You can’t still suspect Tony?’

  ‘Look at it from my point of view. We know Cheryl was cheating on him—’

  ‘We found pawn tickets belonging to her!’ I realised I hadn’t told him about our latest discovery. ‘We think she was blackmailed, that someone – probably Craig himself – was threatening to show Tony the photos of their affair, and she was selling her stuff off to raise money in a hurry.’

  ‘Who’s to say it wasn’t Mel blackmailing her? Cheryl doesn’t come up with enough money to shut her up, so Mel tells Tony, who goes mad and kills Cheryl and Craig in a fit of jealous rage, and then has to kill Mel so she can’t drop him in it. It makes perfec
t sense.’

  ‘Not if you know Tony, it doesn’t.’

  ‘And that’s what we come back to, isn’t it? You know the people involved. I don’t. I’m objective, you’re not.’

  I wasn’t having that. ‘My dad used to say that being a police officer somewhere like Penstowan was both a blessing and a curse, because you always knew the people you were investigating. He said it was a curse because sometimes you absolutely knew someone was guilty, because you knew what kind of a person they were, but you couldn’t prove it so they would get away with it and it would drive you mad. And other times, with other people, you absolutely could not stop searching for a way to clear them, because you knew no matter how bad it looked, they were not capable of committing the crime.’

  Withers raised his eyebrows. ‘And when was it a blessing?’

  ‘Blowed if I know. Why do you think I joined the Met? But the point is—’

  ‘The point is, you don’t think Tony’s capable of one murder, let alone two or possibly even three, and to be honest, as clear-cut as it looks, neither do I.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No. And that’s your bloody fault. I’d have had him banged up by now if it wasn’t for you.’

  ‘Good job I’m here, then.’ I grinned. ‘I’d hate for you to be involved in a miscarriage of justice.’ I glanced down at Germaine, who sat there next to her puddle looking very pleased with herself, and then back up at Withers. ‘The question is, where do we – sorry, you – go from here?’

  Where do we go from here?

  That was the question. And it definitely was ‘we’, regardless of what I’d said to DCI Withers, because there was no way I was backing down now.

  I lay in bed, listening to Germaine snore in Daisy’s room next door. She had crept onto the foot of her bed, making her murmur and reach a sleepy hand down to pat her on the fluffy noggin. Now both of them were fast asleep, and at least one of them was dreaming about chasing rabbits, going by the restless paws.

  ‘Where do we go from here?’ To my mind there was only one place left to go: back to the beginning. Back to Saturday morning, before we’d even discovered Mel or Craig were dead. Back to Cheryl’s disappearance. Where was she? And was she still alive?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I woke up the next morning still asking myself that same question. Was Cheryl alive? Withers was convinced she was dead and that they were now looking for a body, rather than a missing person, a body they might never find. We were surrounded by sea and cliffs and moors – all kinds of remote places where a body could lie undiscovered for years, depending on the weather and the tides. I had asked him about it the night before, before we’d said goodnight.

  ‘Do I think she’s dead? Put it this way.’ Withers held up a hand and ticked things off on his fingers as he spoke. ‘One, she disappeared wearing a red silk cocktail dress and high heels; Tony wasn’t able to identify any other items of clothing missing from her wardrobe and it wasn’t in her suitcase or hotel room, so we’re pretty certain that’s what she was wearing. Not an outfit particularly suited to either murdering two people or doing a disappearing act in. Two, as far as we can work out, she took absolutely nothing with her, other than her phone. She left all her clothes, her purse with all her bank cards in it, and her passport. There’s been no activity in her bank account and she’s not taken any money out, so unless she had a completely separate, secret account somewhere else, she’s penniless. Three, there’s no CCTV of her anywhere nearby. There’re no cameras at the hotel because it’s a listed building and apparently that’s more important than guests’’ safety’ – we both rolled our eyes at that – ‘but there are cameras in town, at cashpoints, at the train stations in Exeter and Barnstaple, a few at bus stops, and there’s no sign of her.’

  ‘And she’d show up in that dress,’ I said.

  He smiled. ‘Yeah, not many people wandering around Penstowan in cocktail dresses. And four, we think she had her phone with her – we certainly haven’t found it – and after that last text to Tony at around 11pm, nothing. It’s been turned off, so we can’t trace it. If she killed Mel and Craig in order to hide her affair from Tony, why run away? At the very least, if she was still alive, I would have expected her to let him know she was all right and then maybe bin the phone.’

  So who did that leave as the murderer? I knew deep in my heart that it wasn’t Tony. He was kind, and funny, and had a big heart; I’d seen him cry at movies, and he was a closet birdwatcher, for Christ’s sake! But…

  Who else had a motive to kill all three of those people? I would not trust Roger Laity as far as I could throw him; he’d lied to DCI Withers about when Craig had left to go home, and I was ninety-nine per cent certain he’d been in the lay-by on Friday night and on the marsh at some point too. But Withers was right; Tony was the only one with a motive. If I didn’t know Tony, would I still believe he was innocent? And that voice in my head, the one that had been too preoccupied with noticing Withers’s biceps and stubble and speculating about his marital status, finally asked, Would I still think Tony was innocent if I’d spent the last twenty years in Penstowan rather than London?

  I ignored that voice as I made breakfast for me, Mum, and Daisy; I paid it no heed as I stood in the shower and I shoved it to the back of my mind as I got dressed. But I couldn’t quite forget that it was there, and it was beginning to drive me mad.

  I was surprised to discover that it was only Wednesday; it felt like weeks had passed since the Wedding That Never Was. So much had happened since I’d moved back from London, just three weeks ago. To think I’d been worried about being bored, about the pace of life down here being too slow!

  Daisy wolfed down her toast. She was meeting up with her new pal Jade, and together with some of her friends they were getting one of the infrequent buses into Barnstaple. She would be out most of the day. I was pleased – she needed friends her own age, and it meant she would know some of the kids when she started her new school in September – but it left me with nothing much to do. I supposed that, technically, I could make a start on the Banquets and Bakes website, or make some flyers, or do something that might actually lead to me getting some more paying work. Technically, now would be the perfect time to do it. Technically.

  ‘You can come to the coffee club with me,’ said Mum. ‘Come and meet the gang.’

  The thought of sitting in a church hall drinking lukewarm instant coffee with a bunch of geriatrics did not exactly (for some reason) make me quiver with anticipation, but then maybe I’d had more than enough excitement over the last few days. Maybe a calm (boring) morning listening to my mum and her mates talk about varicose veins and avoiding anything that felt like work was just what I needed to clear my mind and make me see things more objectively. And maybe inane gossip was exactly what I needed to drown out that nagging little voice, trying to convince me of Tony’s guilt.

  It wasn’t that long a walk to the church hall, but it was a bit too far for Mum after the exertions of the last couple of days so I drove us, Germaine sitting in the back seat with her head poking out of the window. I’d managed to squeeze in a visit to the local pet shop on Monday and had bought a special harness thingy that clipped onto the seat belt, so she couldn’t indulge in her love of escapology while the car was moving. She had to settle for feeling the wind in her fur and tasting the sea salt on her tongue as it lolled out, dribbling slightly.

  We parked up as close to the church hall as we could. The street outside was full of cars; this was obviously the place to be on a Wednesday morning. As I unclipped Germaine, I felt my phone vibrate. It was a text message from Tony:

  Morning, how are you today?

  I didn’t reply. I just needed some time away from him, away from the investigation, and away from that traitorous little voice in my head.

  ‘I didn’t think this place was your style!’ I looked up and saw Debbie grinning at me. Behind her, Callum wrangled the two kids, who were obviously sick of having to behave them
selves, towards their car, which was parked nearby. She leaned in to hug me. ‘I heard about yesterday. By ’eck, that must’ve been a shock, finding Craig like that! How you feeling?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, and I almost was. It was hardly the first dead body I’d seen. It was the first one I’d had a personal interest in, though. ‘I think it shook Tony a bit.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll bet it did,’ she said. ‘Poor Tony. He’s not having a good time of it. What did that dishy DCI of yours say about it?’

  ‘He’s not my DCI—’

  ‘He’s right dishy though, isn’t he?’

  I laughed. ‘Well, yeah… I don’t know. He says that Tony is still the most obvious suspect, but he can’t prove it and he doesn’t even know whether he believes it himself now.’

  Callum joined us. ‘All right, Jodie? We gotta go, my lover; he’ll be waiting for us…’

  ‘Ooh, that sounds intriguing!’ Mum was openly eavesdropping on our conversation. ‘Who’s waiting?’

  ‘I’m sorry about her,’ I said. ‘She has no concept of privacy or personal space.’

  Debbie laughed and exchanged looks with Callum. ‘It’s fine. We’re going to meet an estate agent.’

  ‘Does that mean you’re moving back down here?’ I hoped it did. Having Debbie as a neighbour would be fun.

  ‘It’s early days yet, but … you never know. We’re looking at a house out towards Widemouth Bay.’

  ‘Let me know how it goes!’ I called after her, as Callum steered her and the two kids away.

  We went through the big glass doors into the church hall, paid our entry fee – £3, with all profits going to the church fund – and made our way into the main meeting room, where tables and chairs were set out. I followed Mum, feeling like a spare part as she spoke to everyone in passing, waved at people across the other side of the hall, and basically worked the room like a networking pro. Various people stopped me to pat Germaine, and a few mentioned Mel and the ‘terrible business’ that had led to me inheriting the dog.