Murder Served Cold

by Paula Williams

  “Then don’t talk about it,” he said gently. “Would you like another drink?”

  “No thanks. To be honest, I’m absolutely whacked. Mum’s had me working in the salon since daybreak. All I want now is to go home and sleep for a week. Not that there’s any chance of that as she’ll have me back in there tomorrow morning. Apparently, there’s a funeral in the village and all the old dears – I mean customers – will be in to have their hair done in honour of the occasion. I’d best be off.”

  “Some other time, then?”

  My heart lifted. “I’d like that very much,” I said demurely, trying not to sound too keen.

  “I would offer to drive you home but…” he held up his drink.

  “That’s ok. I’ll get a cab. Dad gave me the money. I think he’s trying to make it up to me after I had a go at him about giving out my mobile number to strange men in the pub today.”

  I took out my phone and rang for a cab, and must have hit it just right. “There’s one in the Market Place. He’ll be here any minute.”

  “Look, if you’d like to leave that folder of work with me, I’ll take a look at it,” he said. “I’ll be honest, there are no staff jobs going on the paper at the moment. The movement of staff tends to be the other way round, with falling circulation, loss of advertising revenue and threats of redundancy hanging over all our heads. But there may be some chances for freelance work, if you’re up for it? It doesn’t pay a fortune but…”

  “I’m up for it,” I said quickly, handing him my folder.

  “Great. I’ll get back to you on that. Oh, and Kat?”

  “Yes?” His smile was doing funny things to my knees.

  “I’m really glad your dad gave me your number, so I am.”

  So was I – but there was no way I was telling my dad that.

  ***

  “That’s it for a while, Katie,” Mum said around half past eleven next morning, after what had already felt like a ten-hour shift. “The rush is over. I shan’t need you now until one o’clock, if you’d like to take a break for a bit.”

  I didn’t need asking twice. I slipped off my Chez Cheryl tabard and hurried away before she could change her mind. I decided to use the time to call Will but, as always, my call went straight to his voicemail. There was no point leaving a message because he never checked it. I glared at my phone in frustration. Why did he bother having a phone if the wretched thing was never switched on? I wanted to explain how I’d come to be in the pub with Liam last night – and also to ask why he’d stormed off the way he had.

  I’d missed my run that morning, so I collected my bike from the shed. After standing around in the salon for hours, it would be good to stretch my legs by cycling up to the farm. But as I wheeled my bike out on to the pavement I heard someone call my name.

  I turned to see Jules coming down the road. She looked so different from the last time I saw her I did a double-take. Her jeans looked as if they’d been sprayed on and were tucked into a pair of dead cool knee-high boots that made her legs look like they went on forever. With her hair pinned in a high ponytail and made up to the nines, she looked much more like the Jules I remembered.

  “Hiya,” I called. “You’re looking good this morning. Going somewhere nice?”

  “Hardly.” She pulled a face. “I’m going to work. Donald phoned yesterday morning and asked if I wanted my job back. And with the baby and everything, I could hardly say no, could I? Eddie’s on short time at the moment and things are pretty tight.”

  “Donald?” I stared at her. “You mean you’re working in the pub?”

  “Always did catch on quick, didn’t you?” she grinned as she tossed her head, and sent her glossy pony tail swinging.

  “But that was my job – I didn’t realise...” The thought of Jules being the reason Donald had sacked me didn’t sit very comfortably. “Donald, the rat, said I was just cover while his regular barmaid was off sick, a fact he somehow forgot to mention when he took me on.”

  “You’ve been working in the pub? I didn’t know that.” Jules had that look of studied innocence on her face that I remembered only too well. It had got her out of trouble – and, as often as not, me into it – many times in the past. “When?”

  I was going to challenge her. Of course she knew. After all, nothing happened in this village without everyone else knowing and her grandmother was Olive Shrewton, a founder member of the Grumble and Gossip Group, so it was in her genes. But I shrugged and let it go. I hadn’t liked working in the pub anyway and if there was half a chance of some work with The Chronicle, then it was all for the best.

  “Actually, it was probably the quickest sacking on record,” I told her. “I started work on Tuesday and he sacked me on Thursday night. Said I didn’t have what it took to be a barmaid. Oh yes, and I upset the customers.”

  “The pig. He sacked me last Monday when I phoned in to say I was sick again. Which was nothing but the truth, even though I told him I had an appointment with the doctor next day and was hoping he’d give me something to help. Which he did, and I’m beginning to feel half human again now I can keep my food down. Mum reckons I’m carrying a boy this time. She could be right because I was certainly never like this with our Kylie.”

  “So how come you’re working for him again, after he treated you like that?”

  “I just told you. He said he’d been a bit hasty and offered me my job back.”

  “That was once he’d given me my marching orders, of course. Damn it, Jules, you should have told him what to do with his job. I would have.”

  “Yes, well, we don’t all have your good fortune, do we?” she snapped, her cheeks scarlet, her eyes hot and angry. “No wonder you can’t get people round here to think of you as Kat. Because underneath it all, you’re still little Katie Latcham, running home to Mummy and Daddy when the going gets tough, aren’t you? And yes, I dare say you would have told Dippy Donald where to stick his lousy job. You can afford to, seeing as your mum has fixed a job in her salon for you, even though young Millie Chapman really needed it.”

  “I – I didn’t know.” I looked at my old friend in astonishment, completely taken aback by her flash of anger which seemed to come out of nowhere. How stupid I’d been to think we could just pick up our easy-going friendship where we’d left off all those years ago. Was that why Will had been so angry with me last night? Did he, too, feel I’d taken our friendship for granted, assuming I could just move back home and expect everything and everyone would slip back to where they’d been before I left?

  “And that’s another thing,” Jules went on. She’d obviously got up a good head of steam now and was really going for it. “I might as well get it all off my chest, once and for all. I’ve been wanting to say this for ages, even though Eddie tells me it’s none of my business. It’s about you and Will.”

  “Me and Will?” I echoed, gripping the handlebars of my bike like it was a life raft and I’d just jumped off the Titanic.

  “You really hurt him, you know. That last time you were home with lover boy. I’ve never seen Will so cut up.”

  “You mean, the night after he and Nick had a set-to in the bar? I should damn well think I had a go at him. He – well, no, not just him. The pair of them behaved like a couple of complete idiots. I don’t know what came over him.”

  “Don’t you?” she snapped, eyes blazing. “Then you’re blind as well as stupid. For pity’s sake, couldn’t you see? He might as well have had it stamped on his forehead. The guy was eaten up with jealousy.”

  “Will? Don’t be ridiculous. Why would he be jealous?”

  “He’s fancied you for ever. You must have realised. Why else do you think he used to run around after you like a little puppy dog? Grow up. My Kylie shows more sense than you sometimes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go to work.”

  Will fancied me? As if. What was Jules on? I’d heard of pregnancy doing weird things to people, but this time she’d gone completely mad. And too far.

&nb
sp; “Jules?” I called, as she walked away, her smart boots tapping an angry rhythm on the pavement.

  “What?” Her face had that defiant look that I remembered so well. It was usually when she’d said or done something really stupid – or wrong. Or, in this case, both. “If you think I’m going to apologise…”

  “No. I don’t for a moment think that. I just wanted to say that your Eddie was quite right for once in his life. It is none of your damn business.”

  Jules looked as if she was about to say something more but before she could do so, the sound of applause made us both whirl round. It was Gerald Crabshaw. He’d obviously been pinning something on the village noticeboard but must have turned at the sound of our raised voices. He looked like he’d just got the ringside seat at the fight of the century and was determined to enjoy every moment of it.

  “That’s the way, sweetheart,” he called across to me. “That told her. Seconds out. Round two.”

  Jules glared at him. Then at me. “I’m late for work,” she said and stomped away.

  “No lunchtime shift for you, then, Katie?” he said, his fleshy lips pulled back in a horrible leery grin that made my flesh crawl.

  I clenched my fists and stared defiantly at him. “You know full well Donald fired me on Thursday, seeing as you were the one who engineered it.”

  “Me?” He made a very poor fist of looking innocent. “Oh no, sweetheart, no. You’ve got that all wrong. That was nothing to do with me.”

  “Yeah, right. Of course it wasn’t.”

  He sauntered across the road towards me, his little piggy eyes gleaming. “But, as it happens, Donald was quite right.” He lowered his voice as he got closer. “You’re not exactly barmaid material, are you? You don’t have the build for it for one thing. Way too skinny. Whereas young Julie there,” His fleshy hands drew elaborate curves in the air. “Well, she has assets in all the right places, don’t you think?”

  The creep. Without stopping to consider the wisdom of what I was saying, I snapped, “You know, Councillor Crabshaw, I don’t recall you ever did say where you were the afternoon Marjorie was killed.”

  I had the satisfaction of seeing the smirk wiped off his face. “To quote what you said to your friend just now, it’s none of your damn business,” he said frostily.

  “You know the police have let John Manning go, don’t you?” I pressed on recklessly. “Apparently, he didn’t do it. Makes you wonder who did, doesn’t it?”

  I’d heard people say the blood drains from a person’s face but, until that moment, I’d thought it was merely a cliché. But Gerald went from an angry mottled red to sickly grey in seconds. His eyes bulged and he looked as if he was about to keel over.

  “And that’s another thing,” I went on with all the single-mindedness of a boxer who has his opponent on the ropes, and is impatient to deliver the knockout punch. “What were you and Shane Freeman doing, skulking about in the bushes beside the pond on Thursday night? Don’t try to deny it because I saw you. And the way you were acting tells me you weren’t hunting for newts or barn owls. So what was it? Fixing up another dodgy alibi, were you?”

  “If – if you think…” he stammered. “It – it wasn’t…”

  Then, with the worst timing in the world, my pocket started vibrating and the theme music from Doctor Who rang out. As a ring tone, it’s pretty pathetic, but it usually made me smile. Not that day. I took out my phone intending to turn it off. But before I could, Gerald Crabshaw turned tail and scurried off down the street as if a hundred hell hounds were snapping at his heels.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Talk about saved by the bell. Or, in Gerald Crabshaw’s case, Dr Who. For a moment, it had looked as if he’d been going to say something incriminating, before the ringing phone gave him the chance to gather his scattered wits and scuttle away.

  The caller was Liam.

  “Hi there, Kat Latcham.” His voice was as soft and beguiling as ever and went some way towards making up for Crabshaw getting off the hook. Particularly when he went on, “I was wondering if we could meet up? You see, I’ve been thinking about what we were talking about last night. A job with The Chronicle. Would you still be interested? It’s only a one-off, you understand. But who knows?”

  Play it cool, Kat, I reminded myself. Don’t let him know you’re dying to bite his hand off. “I could well be,” I said, trying to make it sound like I had a hundred other fascinating job prospects lined up on the table. And was having trouble deciding which to go for. “About meeting up. When did you have in mind?”

  “Tomorrow lunchtime, if you can make it. We could meet in Dintscombe. Do you have wheels?”

  “Not any more.” I cursed Ratface. I’d forgiven him for running off with my flatmate. I could even, given enough time, forgive him for taking my signed photo of David Tennant and my stash of £2 coins. But I would never, ever forgive him for pinching my car. When I lived near Bristol city centre, I could manage without it, but here in Much Winchmoor, where the local bus ran twice a day if it felt like it and the last one home left Dintscombe at twenty past six, a car was as necessary as breathing if you were going to have any life at all. Which I didn’t. “And tomorrow’s Sunday,” I added. “Which is one of the days when the bus doesn’t feel like it.”

  “I’m sorry? Feel like what?”

  “Running. There are no buses between Dintscombe and Much Winchmoor on a Sunday. There’s one this afternoon, though,” I added hopefully. “I could maybe…?”

  “Sorry. I’ve got a story I’ve got to follow up. Tell you what, I’ll come and collect you tomorrow morning. Will 11.30am be ok for you?”

  OK for me? I’d have agreed to meet him at dawn, if that was what he wanted. “That will be fine,” I said, in a brilliant imitation of a woman in total control of herself, when the reality was that only an iron determination stopped me punching the air like I’d just scored the winning goal in the last second of the Cup Final. “So, what sort of job is it?” I asked, casual-like.

  “Nothing official, I’m afraid, although, as I said, who knows where it may lead? The thing is, Kat, I need someone in the field to do some – well, let’s call it background research.”

  “If it’s background research you want, I’m your woman,” I said quickly. “When I worked for the radio station, I did most of the research for their flagship morning programme.”

  I crossed my fingers tightly behind my back as I spoke. After all, it was only the tiniest of tiny white lies. He didn’t need to know that most of the ‘research’ I actually did consisted of trying to sweet talk the station’s vanishing advertisers into coming back. But I did once do a whole piece on threats to axe the local bus routes that Brad said was ‘sparky and showed promise.’

  “I’ll fill you in tomorrow,” Liam said.

  Despite the fact that I was holed up in Mum’s salon, the rest of the day passed in a happy haze. Happy, that is, apart from the realisation that everybody I talked to denied having seen Marjorie Hampton on the afternoon of her murder. And that I still appeared to be the only person in Much Winchmoor to believe John Manning was innocent – apart from Will, of course.

  I even stayed cool when conversation in the salon reverted yet again to my love life and job prospects. Let them talk, I told myself. This time tomorrow, I could be taking my first steps towards a decent career and getting my life back.

  Not to mention I’d be spending time with a guy who made me forget I was sworn off men forever.

  I didn’t even mind that Will, as usual, wasn’t answering my calls and was ignoring my texts. Or that I had to spend Saturday night with my parents watching an episode of Midsomer Murders that was so old, John Nettles was skipping around like a two-year-old.

  Next morning, I was getting ready to meet Liam – a process that involved trying on everything in my wardrobe, at least twice, and deciding that none of it was right – when my phone rang. I groaned when I saw Liam’s name come up. He was phoning to cancel. I knew it.

  “
I’m terribly sorry, but something’s come up,” he said. There was an edge of excitement in his voice. “A breaking story which I’m going to have to cover. I’m waiting for the photographer now and won’t have time to drive all the way out to pick you up.”

  “But I could drive in?” I said, unwilling to pass up on my big break.

  “I thought you said you didn’t have a car?”

  “I don’t. But I could borrow my mum’s.” Hopefully, I could have added. But didn’t. He seemed to take forever to make up his mind.

  “Ok then,” he said eventually. “You see, there’s something I need you to do for me. And if it all works out, I’ll makes sure the editor knows about your contribution. Maybe we’ll even get to share the by-line, who knows? So, will you do it?”

  “Providing it’s legal.” I refrained from adding that, depending on his definition of illegal, I could perhaps even then be persuaded. Instead, I said: “You haven’t told me what it is yet, Liam.”

  “No time now. I’ll explain when I see you. And of course it’s legal. Trust me, I’m a journalist.” He gave a low chuckle that made my toes curl and got me thinking of chocolate. Rich, dark, and melting slowly on my tongue. I was almost lost in the fantasy when his next words jerked me back. “Do you know Dintscombe Memorial Park?” he asked.

  “I should do,” I laughed. “I had my first cigarette in the bandstand there when I was at school. I was sick for a week.”

  “Well now, if I promise not to ply you with tobacco, would you meet me in the lay-by next to the entrance and I’ll explain? Only it will have to be soonest. Like now. I really do need your help, Kat. So if you could get here as quickly as you can, that’ll be great. And bring a camera if possible. No big deal if you can’t. So, are you up for it?”

  Was I ever! I didn’t waste time trying to find Dad’s precious digital camera, which he’d probably locked away in the bank’s safe deposit box until their next jaunt to the Italian lakes, and hoped my phone would do.