The Killing in the Café

by Simon Brett

  It was hard to discover what the format of the relaunch was. The people of Fethering, all intrigued to inspect the makeover, drifted in to be fed coffee and cupcakes. Phoebe Braithwaite’s blue-liveried Joannas or Samanthas were very efficient at serving these. The café’s Italian coffee machine did not present any problems for them – they all had much more advanced versions in their own kitchens. And serving a cupcake on a plate with a doily on it was not rocket science. ‘Just for the launch,’ Phoebe Braithwaite explained later, ‘we did buy in the cupcakes. Of course we’ll bake everything on site when the café’s up and running. But with all the decorating going on, it was difficult to get into the kitchen at Polly’s. And I do know this very clever little woman in Brighton who does the most splendid bakery of all kinds. And I thought having the words “Welcome to Polly’s Community Café” in icing on them was a justifiable expense … as a one-off for this very special occasion. And also I thought it’d be good publicity … you know, a photo of one of the cupcakes in the local press – or, even better, on the telly-box – would be just massive free publicity.’

  For the relaunch Polly’s doors had opened at ten thirty. Tasteful Vivaldi played in the background, though it was soon inaudible against the clash of voices. Phoebe’s Volunteer Rota of Joannas or Samanthas were squeakily loud in their high-pitched chatter, and their husbands, all dressed in crushed strawberry corduroy trousers and quilted khaki gilets, brayed constant hilarities to each other. The locals, as usual, exchanged the latest Fethering gossip.

  One person who hoped to be conspicuous by his absence was Arnold Bloom. He boycotted the relaunch as an expression of his protest against the changing of the café’s name. But, sadly for him, nobody noticed he wasn’t there.

  A long time elapsed before it became clear whether there was going to be any focus for the morning’s activities. Or was everyone just going to sit around all morning sipping coffee and eating expensively iced cupcakes? Eventually it was established that Quintus Braithwaite would be saying a few words of welcome at twelve noon. Having heard enough of his oratory to last a lifetime, Jude didn’t feel tempted to stay that long.

  The one thing there was no sign of amongst the throng of cupcake-munchers was a strong media presence. Certainly no sign of television cameras, not even radio reporters with microphones. And among the guests whom Carole and Jude did not recognize, none had the looks – or indeed the notebooks – of press reporters.

  They were close enough to hear a rather fretful Quintus raise this issue with his publicity officer and to hear the reply from Lesley Tarquin, dressed for the occasion in purple leggings, orange baseball boots and a dress that appeared to be made of lametta. Apparently Vince at the Fethering Observer had started his Christmas break early and nobody from the West Sussex Gazette or Sussex Life was interested. Jezza from FOAM FM was tied up with a Secret Santa Charity Foam-Fight, Will at Radio Solent was hosting a Twenty-Four-Hour Christmas Carol-a-Thon, and Flick at Radios Surrey and Sussex hadn’t got back to her, in spite of …

  Jude caught Carole’s eye. ‘Shall we slip away to the pub?’ she said.

  The Crown and Anchor would fill up later with weary shoppers whose Christmas spirit was already draining away, but at half past eleven when Carole and Jude got there they were among the first customers. Zosia, who was in charge of the bar, greeted them warmly and, without waiting for an order, poured two large glasses of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

  Carole said instinctively, ‘Oh, surely it’s a bit early in the day to be—?’

  ‘We’ve earned it,’ Jude interrupted. ‘A reward for surviving that scrum at Polly’s.’

  ‘Well, I just thought that maybe …’ And with that Carole’s objections trickled away.

  As they moved across to their regular alcove, someone called out Jude’s name. She looked across to the source of the sound and saw the waitress Binnie Swales and the chef Hammo whom she’d met with Sara Courtney at Polly’s some weeks before. Both had pints of Guinness in front of them.

  ‘I see you were there then,’ Binnie continued accusingly.

  Jude couldn’t think what was meant until, looking down at her coat, she saw the ‘WELCOME TO POLLY’S COMMUNITY CAFÉ’ was still stuck there. Carole, needless to say, had removed hers at the first opportunity after they’d left the café.

  ‘Yes, we were there,’ Jude admitted. ‘Were you not invited?’

  ‘God, no.’ Binnie chuckled. ‘We would have lowered the tone far too much. We’re never going to fit in with Phoebe Braithwaite’s Bitch Brigade, are we?’

  ‘What about Sara?’ Jude suddenly remembered she hadn’t seen her at the relaunch.

  ‘She wasn’t invited either.’

  ‘Besides,’ said Hammo sarcastically, ‘having people there who actually know how to run a café … well, that would have spoiled the image, wouldn’t it?’

  Jude chuckled wryly. ‘Oh, this, by the way, is my friend Carole.’

  Carole flashed a short smile at them and was set to continue to their alcove. On the whole she tried to avoid meeting Jude’s friends – they too often turned out to be rather flaky, New Age people. But she got more interested when Jude said the two in the pub worked at Polly’s Cake Shop. ‘Or should that be – “used to work at Polly’s Cake Shop”?’

  ‘No, we’re still there,’ replied Binnie. She was wearing a fiercely yellow cardigan and green trousers decorated with a design of large red peonies. Hammo had on jeans and a dark hoodie.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Hammo agreed. ‘Working out our notice.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Do join us,’ offered Binnie, pushing back into her bun some grey hair that had escaped. Jude’s eyes checked quickly with Carole’s and received permission so they sat down at Binnie and Hammo’s table.

  ‘Working out your notice?’ Jude picked up.

  ‘Yes, just a month,’ Binnie replied. ‘We were told last week. Means we’ll be out of a job in the middle of January.’

  ‘Which is just about the worst possible time of year in the catering business,’ said Hammo. ‘Everyone takes on extra staff running up to Christmas, then they let them all go after New Year’s Eve. So there’s lots of people out there looking for jobs, and business is such crap during January and February that no one’s hiring.’

  ‘No,’ Binnie agreed. ‘I’ve worked in a lot of the local pubs and they never take on anyone in January. Used to be a regular behind the bar of the Fethering Yacht Club – nice easy job that was, did it for years – but there’s someone else who’s got her feet under the table there now. I’m never going to get another job at my age.’

  ‘So you’re neither of you keen on the concept of Polly’s Community Café?’ asked Carole.

  ‘You could say that.’ Hammo grinned wryly. ‘I’d tend to use stronger language, but not in the company of three ladies.’

  ‘Your delicacy is appreciated,’ said Jude. ‘But you’ve made me feel rather guilty. I did raise the issue at committee of what would happen to the existing staff, but the meeting moved on to other topics. I’m sorry I should have pursued it further. I didn’t think through the ramifications.’

  ‘You are not alone,’ said Hammo, ‘in not having thought through the ramifications. I am extremely …’ he was about to use a stronger word but curbed the instinct ‘… extremely annoyed about it. Just moved down from “the Smoke” to Littlehampton six months ago with the girlfriend and the little one. Got a flat. And a mortgage. So you are right. I am less than enthused about Polly’s Cake Shop becoming a Community Project.’

  ‘Don’t you have any legal redress?’

  Hammo shook his head and Binnie explained, ‘Our contracts specify a month’s notice on either side. Josie Achter wasn’t the friendliest of bosses, but at least she was straight. And I’d known for a while that she was thinking of selling up, so I thought that’d just mean a new boss and everything would continue working in just the same way. Never occurred to me that the place would be taken over by the community.’ The distas
te with which she spoke the word was worthy of Carole.

  ‘If it’s any comfort,’ said Jude, ‘I don’t think the café will run for very long as a Community Project.’ What she’d seen at the morning’s launch did not suggest that the new venture was on a very sound financial footing. ‘Initiatives like that do have a habit of coming unstuck quite quickly.’

  ‘Not quickly enough for us,’ said Binnie gloomily. ‘So I’m afraid no, Jude, it’s not any comfort.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Carole, ‘it’ll be the same for your friend too, won’t it?’

  ‘Which friend?’ asked Jude, not very quick on the uptake.

  ‘Sara Courtney. She’ll be out of a job too, won’t she?’

  Binnie snorted derisively. ‘Don’t you worry about her. She’ll be all right.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Got this new boyfriend, hasn’t she?’

  Hammo was incensed by the reminder. ‘Only the bastard who’s shafted us, isn’t he? Kent Bloody Warboys! Oh, don’t you worry about Sara. She’ll be all right with Kent Warboys paying her bills.’

  Jude wondered whether that was true. Until her mental breakdown, Sara had been a very self-reliant woman, always running her own businesses. She wouldn’t take kindly to the idea of being a kept woman. But it wasn’t worth raising that with Binnie and Hammo in their current mood.

  Carole suddenly realized that, in the context of their decelerating investigation into Amos Green’s death, she was in the presence of two potentially valuable witnesses. Still rather miffed that Jude hadn’t told her earlier about Sara Courtney’s sighting of the body in Polly’s Cake Shop, she felt she had some catching up to do. And now she was being presented with the perfect opportunity to do it.

  ‘Going off at something of a tangent,’ she said, ‘you two presumably heard about Jude and me finding a body on the beach?’

  ‘Of course we did,’ said Binnie. ‘Come on, we do live in Fethering. Round here everyone knows if an empty suntan-cream bottle is found on Fethering Beach, let alone a dead body.’

  ‘So did the police talk to you about it?’

  Both Binnie and Hammo looked puzzled. ‘Why should they?’ asked Binnie.

  Of course. Only Sara herself, Jude and now Carole knew what had been found in the store room. ‘Sorry, I gathered they’d talked to everyone locally.’

  ‘Not everyone.’

  ‘No, obviously not everyone. But I thought they might have come to Polly’s, you know, being a social centre of the village, to see if anyone there recognized the man.’

  ‘Well, they didn’t,’ said Hammo.

  When she thought about it, Carole realized that this made sense. The police of course were in that great majority of people who were unaware of any connection between Amos Green and Polly’s Cake Shop.

  ‘Mind you,’ said Binnie Swales, ‘if they had asked, I could have told them a thing or two.’

  ‘Oh? Do you mean you recognized the man?’

  ‘When his photo was on the front of the Fethering Observer, oh yes, I recognized him.’

  ‘What, had you known him a long time?’

  ‘No. Only saw him the once.’

  ‘When was that?’ asked Jude.

  ‘Saturday, a couple of months back.’

  ‘Would that have been the third of October?’

  Binnie did a quick calculation. ‘Yes, you’re right.’

  ‘And where did you see him?’

  ‘In Polly’s. He ordered a large Americano. Very charming he was; had a way with him. One of those men who can make a woman feel not quite so old for a moment or two.’

  ‘Did you see him too, Hammo?’ asked Carole.

  The chef shook his head. ‘Busy in the kitchen, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Did he say anything to you, Binnie? Apart from the compliments, that is.’

  ‘Yes. When he paid his bill – and he tipped a whole quid, which is a lot for an Americano, even a large one – he asked if Josie Achter was around.’

  ‘But she wasn’t.’

  ‘No, I told him she was in Brighton. I gave him her mobile number – and Rosalie’s. Thought he might be able to track her down.’

  ‘But you don’t know whether he did or not?’

  ‘No idea.’

  NINETEEN

  Unfortunately that seemed to be the full extent of Binnie’s information. Having been told that Josie was in Brighton for the day, Amos Green had left Polly’s Cake Shop. Where he went next, nobody knew. Whether he then met the person who shot him in some prearranged venue, or returned to Polly’s to be murdered there, were questions that raised considerable frustration in Carole and Jude.

  Before Christmas intervened they did make a couple of investigation-related phone calls. Jude rang the flat above the café, hoping to make contact with Josie Achter, but only got an answering machine. Later in the day she got a response to her message from Rosalie. Her mother was not in a rented flat, she was in a hotel in Hove. She didn’t want Rosalie to tell anyone which hotel and she had just changed the number of her mobile phone. The meaning was pretty clear – Josie Achter did not wish to be contacted, least of all by anyone from Fethering.

  ‘It’s just,’ said Jude, ‘in connection with the body that was found on Fethering Beach.’

  ‘Oh?’ asked Rosalie. ‘In what way?’

  ‘On the afternoon of Saturday the third of October, the dead man was actually seen in Polly’s Cake Shop.’

  ‘Was he?’ Rosalie Achter’s voice was bleached of all emotion. ‘Do the police know that?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Hm. Are you going to tell them?

  ‘Don’t feel any great urgency to.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘Why do you say that, Rosalie?’

  ‘Oh, I got into a bit of trouble with the police while I was a student. Let’s just say I don’t have a very high opinion of them and certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to give them any help.’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  ‘Who is your witness, though? Who saw him in Polly’s?’

  Instinctive caution made Jude reply, ‘I don’t think that’s important.’

  ‘I think it could be very important.’

  ‘Perhaps. My contacting your mother about it could also be important.’

  ‘What do you mean, Jude? What game are you playing?’

  And Jude realized that she was playing a game. Which was out of character for her. Normally she went at things directly. But having started on this unfamiliar route, she pursued it. ‘I was just thinking, Rosalie … I would trade you the name of my witness … for your mother’s new mobile number.’

  ‘Forget it!’ said Rosalie Achter. And the phone was slammed down.

  Carole and Jude did briefly discuss whether they should pass on their new information to Janice Green. ‘But she was so adamant about wanting that chapter of her life closed,’ said Carole.

  ‘Yes. Alternatively she did suggest we give any new information we get to the police.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Carole was torn between the principles which had been inculcated into her at the Home Office and her natural instinct for secrecy. ‘I suppose we should.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Jude, letting her friend off the hook, ‘it’d be a bit rotten for Binnie to have the police hassling her, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Carole with gratitude. ‘You’re right.’

  And then Christmas intervened. And though Jude had hoped for a low-key celebration, spending the inside of ‘The Big Day’ with some friends in Hastings, there still seemed to be a lot of preparations that required making. And a lot of clients who needed alternative therapy to strengthen them for the invasion of uncongenial relatives which lay ahead.

  For Carole, always a bit wary that Christmas would draw attention to the essential loneliness of her life, this year was different. She had been asked by Stephen and Gaby to come up to Fulham on Christmas morning and to stay until Boxing Day evening. This would mean spen
ding the best part of two days with her pair of beautiful grandchildren. Though she wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, Carole was chuffed to bits at the prospect.

  In the few days running up to Christmas, Polly’s Cake Shop did a roaring trade. Phoebe Braithwaite’s Volunteer Rota worked an absolute treat, and the many locals who went to check out the new facilities were delighted by the efficient (and rather classier than before) service provided by the Joannas or Samanthas in their trim French navy tunics.

  Hammo, working out his notice, was as efficient as ever – and generously helpful too in showing the volunteers who’d be taking over from him how everything worked. Binnie, however (who Phoebe Braithwaite thought did not suit the new image for Polly’s waitresses), was delegated to work out her notice washing up out of sight in the kitchen. Though she made no visible demur at this demotion, people who knew Binnie Swales well would recognize exactly how much she was seething beneath her placid exterior.

  And Sara Courtney hadn’t been seen in Polly’s Cake Shop since the relaunch.

  So Jude was only slightly surprised when, the day after Boxing Day, she had a call from her. ‘I’m sorry, Jude. I’ve got this terrible back pain.’

  ‘But mentally okay?’

  ‘Yes … yes,’ came the uncertain reply. ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘All still good with Kent?’

  ‘Yes. Very good. We spent Christmas together. With his kids as well. And I met his ex-wife briefly when she handed them over.’

  Jude hadn’t known that Kent was a father. Or a divorcé. But few men were going to get to Kent Warboys’ age without carrying the baggage of some marriage or long-term relationship. Jude reckoned she knew what had caused the tension in Sara Courtney’s back. They made an appointment for the next day, the Thursday.

  Her client’s back was very tense, but Jude could feel the tightness was already going. The stress which had caused the pain arose from seeing Kent Warboys’ wife and spending time with his children. It had been quite a lot to ask of Sara so early into their relationship. Now that she was no longer in their presence, the tension was draining naturally out of her.