There was a long pause before Feeney nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
***
The bar was crowded for the last night. While the DJ set up his equipment and allowed a Beatles album to run through its tracks, Joe, Sheila and Brenda sat by the windows reflecting on the last four days, and the prospect of getting back to normal after the long journey back to Sanford.
“I said before, I’m looking forward to it,” Joe told them.
“Looking forward to getting back into profit, you mean,” Brenda said.
Sheila backed her up. “And while you’re taking all that money, you’ll be telling the draymen what a hero you were in Weston. How you saved the innocent man from the clutches of the police, and helped put the guilty away.”
Feeney had called before dinner and brought Freddie back to the hotel.
Sitting outside, she explained, “I did like you said and gave him a verbal warning. It should be enough. By the way, you were right about those two. Freddie paid them fifty pounds initially. We don’t know how Gil learned of it. They were probably talking their drunken heads off and he overheard, so he offered them a hundred each to follow you to Bath and do the job properly. But one condition was they had to ring Freddie and tell him. Our guess is that Gil was trying to deal with you and incriminate Freddie even further.”
Joe nodded. “I think Freddie is a good guy at heart.” Lighting a cigarette, he asked, “So did you check the memory stick?”
“Just as we suspected.” Feeney narrowed her eyes on him. “Just as you already knew. It’s a detailed history of their blackmail. The victims, the information they had on those people, the amounts… right down to the level of intimidation employed by Gil and Terry. Even if we don’t get them for the murders, both Gil and Elaine are going down for a long time.”
“But they’re not admitting anything? With regard to the murders, I mean.”
Feeney, too, lit a cigarette and blew a fine stream of smoke into the evening air. “They’re hardened, career criminals, Joe. They know the value of keeping their mouths shut. We’re going to need testimony from the victims. A part of the deal I came to with Freddie was a full statement on what Diane had done to him in the past. She took him for five thousand pounds, you know. We’ll need more than that, of course, but it’s a start. If we can persuade one or two more victims to speak out, we’ll have them.”
“And the murders?” Joe asked.
Feeney took another drag on her cigarette and shook her head. “Different proposition. They’ve both denied everything, so it’s down to forensics.” Abruptly she changed the subject. “I hope this hasn’t put you off Weston-super-Mare.”
He laughed. “It should do, but no, it hasn’t. Actually, I find it a pleasant little place. Maybe I’ll think about retiring here.”
She chuckled. “A Yorkshireman leaving his precious homeland? It doesn’t sound likely.” Feeney stood and shook hands. “Thanks, Joe. For everything.”
She left and soon after, Joe had joined his friends in the bar for the last night disco. It was an event which Joe often ran, but here, as in other hotels where they had stayed, the management preferred to get their own people.
And it was while waiting for the DJ to begin that Freddie and Hazel both left the bar and, carrying a bottle of champagne, joined the trio by the windows.
“A little thank you, Joe,” Freddie said, placing the bottle and three glasses on the table.
“Oh goody,” said Brenda. “I love bubbly.”
“You didn’t have to,” Joe protested, but the Delaneys overrode his protest and poured for them.
“You’ll join us?” Sheila invited.
Hazel shook her head. “Busy night, we can’t afford to get drunk yet. Maybe later, if you fancy a nightcap.”
They nevertheless sat down.
“You two are okay now, are you?” Joe asked.
Hazel nodded. “Freddie has told me everything. The truth this time. And I’ve told him he’s sleeping in the attic for the next three months for lying to me.” She winked to show she was only joking.
Joe laughed. “Serves you right, too.” More seriously, he went on, “You know, Freddie, I’m a total stranger to the kind of life you’ve led, but I’ve had people try to blackmail me in the past.”
“His ex-wife,” Brenda teased. “She threatened to tell the absolute truth about him unless he bought her a diamond ring.”
“Ignore her,” Joe advised. “One glass of champagne and she’s anybody’s.”
“I haven’t touched the shampoo yet,” Brenda protested.
“All right, so one glass of Campari and she’s anybody’s.” Joe smiled at Brenda. “I was saying, I’ve had people try to intimidate me, too. I haven’t suffered the way you did, but I’ve had them threaten to call Environmental Health if I didn’t hand over a hundred. Know how I got round it?”
Freddie grinned. “No, but I bet you’re gonna tell me.”
“Yep. And it’s easy. You just be up front about everything. I don’t know what happened all those years ago, but I do know you’re not the same man now as you were then.” Joe smiled at Hazel. “Your missus persuaded me of that. Tell me something. What did you expect to gain by keeping your mouth shut?”
“The way I had it figured, Feeney would have nicked Gil and Elaine eventually, I’d have appealed, they would have let me out again. And Hazel would never have been any the wiser.”
“Just as I told Feeney,” Joe commented with a glow of pride.
Sheila wagged a finger at Freddie. “No secrets. Not between a man and his wife.”
“I know about it all, now,” Hazel said. “And I forgive him.” She hung onto her husband’s arm.
“You should be honest with others about it, too,” Joe said. “If the people of this town knew about you, it might make them wary, but it would also make them study you, and once they knew you were to be trusted, they’d come round. And when everybody knows about you, no blackmailer can ever have a hold over you.”
A deafening blast from the speakers heralded the opening bars of Abba’s Dancing Queen, calling Sheila and Brenda to the dance floor, and drowning out Freddie’s response.
“Say again,” Joe shouted.
Freddie frowned in the direction of the DJ, then leaned closer to Joe. “I said, you make sense, but I’ll have to give it some thought. When me and a few others hit that security van, I was a young man. I needed the money and I wasn’t too fussy where or how I got it. None of us meant for the security bloke to die, but he did, and I have to live with that and the shadow of the nick hanging over me for the rest of my life. That’s hard enough, Joe. Whether I can ride out the wagging tongues on the back of it, I don’t know.”
“Think about it.” Joe smiled at Hazel. “There’s a lady who’ll stand by you.” Putting down his glass, he asked, “Why did you go to see Diane last night?”
“To ask her to take that bloody Easter egg back,” Freddie replied. “I got jittery after Ginny was killed, and then when Feeney arrested those two idiots in Bath, I got really nervous, so I took the egg with me.” He smiled wanly. “Course, when I got there and saw the place crawling with cops, and I found out what had happened, I panicked. I thought I’d better disappear, quick.”
“I can understand that,” Joe said. “That doesn’t make it sensible or right, but I can understand it. Did you know what was in the egg?”
Freddie shook his head. “Didn’t have a clue. I thought it might contain incriminating evidence, sure, but I didn’t know. Then I heard you prattling about how she’d put the other egg on the charity stand in the Winter Gardens, and I figured she was playing some kinda bluff, but I didn’t know which egg was which, so I was going to insist she take it back. As long as we had it, we were in danger… well, Hazel was.”
“Why didn’t you just hand it over?” Joe asked. “Even when the law came to pick you up, you still kept quiet.”
“I wasn’t thinking straight, Joe,” Freddie confessed. “First off, like I say
, I didn’t know which egg was which. What if I’d given it to Feeney and there was nothing in it? It could have made things worse for me. Then, I figured with Diane dead, it was insurance of a kind. As long as I had it, I could hold Gil at arm’s length. I mean, if I didn’t know what was in it, neither did he, and if there was nothing in it, he wouldn’t ever have bothered me anyway.”
“Yet you gave me a hint. What changed your mind?” Joe asked.
“You did. You pointed out that Hazel was the best thing ever to happen to me, and she was ready to face the future. So I took the chance that you’d find it and know how to use it.” Freddie’s beamed his broad smile again. “Twenty years back, I’d have ripped Gil Shipton and Terry Badger apart, Joe, and it would never have been an issue. These days…” He patted his belly. “Let’s just say, I ain’t the man I was.”
Joe smiled and eyed Brenda and Sheila dancing with George Robson. “That goes for most of us, mate. You two look after yourselves.”
Freddie wandered off, couples took to the dance floor and with the end of Dancing Queen, the women returned to the table and Brenda took a healthy hit of champagne.
“You don’t half tell some tall stories, Joe.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Sheila disapproved with a cheeky smile. “Blackmail? You’ve never been blackmailed in your life.”
“Yes I have. That bloke—”
“He was from Environmental Health,” Sheila interrupted, “and he didn’t ask for a hundred pounds. He warned you if you didn’t clean up your act, you’d be fined a hundred pounds.”
“It amounts to the same thing in my book. Demanding money with menaces.”
Chapter Fifteen
With a gaping yawn, Joe unlocked the door to let in Sheila and Brenda.
“Morning, boss,” Sheila greeted.
“Shut your mouth, there’s a bus coming,” Brenda said.
Joe closed the door and returned to table five, to read the morning newspaper.
It was seven o’clock on Tuesday morning, and the Lazy Luncheonette was open for business after the Easter break. But so far, there had been no customers.
Joe had spent much of the six-hour journey back to Sanford the previous day alternately sleeping and running the netbook on battery to bring his notes up to date.
He joined his friends at the Miner’s Arms for a few drinks, and Alec Staines had pestered him again regarding his son’s forthcoming wedding. Joe had promised to put the proposition to the membership at the earliest opportunity. At ten o’clock, almost exhausted, he had walked home, and by eleven, he was in bed sound asleep.
The alarm terrorised him at five in the morning and he dragged his weary bones into the shower, before coming down to the café and letting Lee in at six.
Banging and clanging about in the kitchen, Lee was his usual sunny self, and when they arrived, it seemed to Joe that Sheila and Brenda were just as tired as he, yet they maintained their air of indefatigable good cheer. He often wondered how they did it. The Lazy Luncheonette was his business, and it was successful, but it did little to cheer him up.
Once changed into their tabards, the two women began to busy themselves around the café, putting out sauces and condiments. Joe folded away his newspaper, disappeared into the back for a moment and came out with the float for the till.
Opening the drawer, he began dropping coppers and silver into the compartments, and under the clip for the notes, he found a receipt.
Studying it, he called out, “Lee, what’s this receipt in the till?”
His giant nephew appeared at the kitchen door his chef’s hat cocked at a jaunty angle. He looked at the receipt and passed it back to Joe. “It’s for Danny’s Easter egg. Remember, you told me to take some money out of the till and buy him one cos you’d forgot.”
Joe studied the faded print. His features paled, his face took on its usual mask of irritation. “A tenner? You spent a tenner on a bloody chocolate egg?”
“Well you never said how much, Uncle Joe, so I just went into Mr Patel’s next door and bought the biggest egg I could find.”
“Ten pounds on a chocolate, bloody egg? You half-wit. You brainless, stupid, gormless…”
Across the café, Sheila watched the argument develop. “Nice to be home, isn’t it, Brenda?”
Brenda, too, watched their friend and boss berating his nephew. “Yep. Everything back to normal.”
THE END
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The Chocolate Egg Murders Page 17