by Simon Brett
“And what about the pub? How does she run that?”
“Not the way I would,” Ted Crisp replied eloquently.
♦
The Cat and Fiddle’s perfect riverside position ensured continuous trade throughout the summer, but it wasn’t so busy on a cold Tuesday evening in February. Even before Carole and Jude entered, they were aware of why it wasn’t the sort of pub Ted Crisp would have liked. The inn sign was a Disneyfied version of a cute cat with bulbous eyes playing the fiddle to a group of goofy-toothed square-dancing rabbits. Notices in the vast car park bore the same motif, as did the signs on the children’s play area. Whether the Cat and Fiddle was a one-off business or not, it gave the Impression of being part of a franchise.
This was intensified by the interior, open-plan with lots of pine divisions which were reminiscent of some immaculate stable-yard, an image encouraged by the romantic country music that filled the air. Pointless rosettes were pinned to pillars; halters and unused riding tack hung from hooks. The narrow awning over the bar was thatched, and the bar staff, male and female, wore dungarees over red gingham shirts. On the wall-mounted menus another incarnation of the goggle-eyed cat pointed down to a sign reading ‘Good Ol’ Country Cookin’.
The few customers did not sit on their show-home pine stools with the ease that identifies the true pub regular. Suited businessmen at single tables worked silently through meals piled high with orange chips. An unspeaking couple in a stable-like booth looked as if they were mentally checking through the final details of their suicide pact.
Behind the bar stood a large woman whose lack of dungaree livery meant she must be the landlady. Tight cream trousers outlined the contours of her substantial bottom and thighs, while a spangly black and gold top gave a generous view of her vertiginously deep cleavage. She had a tan that looked as if it had just returned from the Canary Islands and wore a lot of chunky gold. Earrings, necklaces, bracelets and a jeweller’s windowful of rings. When she flashed a greeting to the two women, a gold tooth was exposed at the corner of her smile.
“Good evening. Welcome to the Cat and Fiddle.” Her voice was brash and slightly nasal. “What can I get you? We do have a Special Winter Warmer Mulled Wine for these winter evenings.”
Carole and Jude, who shared the view that nothing spoiled wine so much as heating it up and shoving in herbs and sugar, both opted for a Chilean Chardonnay. Carole had intended not to drink alcohol on this rare second visit to a pub in the same day, but the atmosphere of the place seemed to require some form of anaesthetic.
They had wondered in the car how they were going to get round to the subject of Tadeusz Jankowski, but they needn’t have worried. The landlady, who must be the Shona Nuttall Ted had referred to, brought it up almost immediately.
“You local, are you?” she began.
“Fethering.”
“Oh, very close. I haven’t seen you in here before, though.” She beamed so far that the gold tooth glinted again. “Well, now you’ve found us, I hope you’ll get the Cat and Fiddle habit.”
Both women, while mentally forswearing the place for ever, made some polite reaction.
“It’s a real old·fashioned friendly pub. Got lots of atmosphere,” said Shona Nuttall, in the teeth of the evidence. The many photographs pinned behind the bar all featured the landlady grinning hugely and crushing some hapless customer in her flabby arms.
“Mind you, though,” she went on, saving them the effort of even the most basic probing, “we have had our sadnesses here recently…”
“Oh?” asked Carole, providing a prompt which probably wasn’t needed.
“I don’t know if you heard on the telly about that poor young man who was stabbed…?”
“Yes, we did,” said Jude.
“Course you would have done, living right there in Fethering. Well, do you know…” She gathered up her bosom in her arms as she prepared to make the revelation “…that boy only worked in here.”
“Really?” Jude sounded suitably surprised. “Tadeusz Jankowski?”
“Yes, him. Mind you, I could never pronounce his name, so I just called him Teddy.”
“What did he actually do for you…? Sorry, I don’t know your name…?” Carole lied.
First names were exchanged, then the landlady went on with what was clearly becoming her party piece. “I’d got an ad in the Littlehampton Gazette for staff. I always need extra bodies running up to Christmas and New Year, then it slackens off, but some of my real stalwarts tend to take their holidays this time of year, so I’m still a bit short. Well, Teddy saw the ad and came along.”
“When would this have been?”
“Middle of October. That’s when I have to start thinking about Christmas. Anyway, Teddy seemed a nice enough lad…well, considering he was Polish…so I thought I’d give him a try.”
“Was he working behind the bar?” Jude tried with difficulty to visualize the young man she’d seen in dungarees and red gingham.
“No, no. His English wasn’t good enough for that. And, you know, handling the money, you can’t be too careful…particularly with foreigners.” As she had been with Ewan Urquhart, Jude was struck by the endemic mild racism of West Sussex. “My staff do a kind of probation period before I let them behind the bar.”
“What work did he do then?” asked Carole.
“Washing up mostly. You know, clearing the rubbish from the kitchen, helping the chef. No cooking, mind. Kitchen porter kind of thing.”
“But not mixing with the customers?”
“No.”
“Was he friendly with the other staff?”
“Oh yes, yes, he was a nice boy. Such a tragedy, somebody so young,” Shona said automatically. “Look, that’s how friendly he was.” She pointed to one of the photographs behind the bar. Out of deference to the deceased, somebody had pinned a black ribbon bow over it. Tadeusz Jankowski looked very small and embarrassed in his employer’s all-consuming embrace. The photograph may have shown how friendly Shona Nuttall was; it didn’t look as though the boy had had much choice in the matter.
“Any particular friends amongst the other staff?” Carole persisted.
“No, not really. Not that I noticed. He only did two-hour shifts, and he was kept pretty busy, so he didn’t have much time to socialize.”
“Did he ever mention having a girlfriend? Or did you see him with one?”
The landlady shook her head. “I was asked all these questions by the police, you know.” This was not said to make them desist in their interrogation; it was spoken with pride. The death of Tadeusz Jankowski had given Shona Nuttall a starring role in her own drama and she was going to enjoy every moment of it.
“Did he say anything about other friends?” asked Jude. “Or why he had come to England?”
“The police asked me that too, but I wasn’t able to help them, you know. I mean, I’m very good to all the people who work for me, but I do have a business to run, so that has to be my first priority. Not too much time for idle chatter with the kitchen staff, particularly when they don’t speak much English.”
“Did the police question you for long?”
“Oh, quite a while. Half an hour, probably. And…”
Shona Nuttall slowed down as she prepared to produce her biggest bombshell: “…I was actually on the television.”
“Were you?”
“Yes. You may have seen me. Friday I was on the news.”
Carole looked puzzled. “I’m fairly sure I did see the news on Friday evening. I had flu, but I got out of bed specially to watch it. I don’t remember seeing you, though.”
“Ah, well, I was just on the local news.” The landlady seemed put out to have to make this admission. “Six-thirty in the evening.”
“No, then I wouldn’t have seen that.”
“I do have the video.” Not only did she have it, she had it set up in the VCR on the bar. She pressed the relevant controls and told them to look up at the big screen. The practised ease with which s
he went through these motions suggested that Carole and Jude weren’t the first Cat and Fiddle customers who had been shown the recording.
Shona Nuttall’s moment of television fame was very short. A brief shot of the exterior of the pub was shown, followed by a close-up of her behind the bar saying, “He seemed a nice boy. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt him.” Then, with one of those bad edits so beloved of local television news, they cut back to the studio and the presenter talking about the increase of the rat population in Worthing.
“You came across very well,” said Jude, and Shona Nuttall glowed with the compliment. What a sycophantic remark, thought Carole, but she was still envious of the way her neighbour could always say the right thing to put people at their ease.
“And did Tad…Teddy ever talk to you about his music?”
“Sorry?”
“He was a very keen musician. He wrote songs and played guitar.”
“I didn’t know that. He wasn’t into country music, was he?”
“I don’t think so. More sort of folk.”
“Oh. Because we do have regular Country Evenings here at the Cat and Fiddle. Line Dancing too. I don’t know if that’s your sort of thing…?”
“Not really,” said Carole, suppressing a shudder.
They continued their conversation with Shona a little longer. Relishing her moment in the spotlight, she was happy to talk for as long as they wanted. But it soon became obvious that she had almost nothing to tell them. ‘Teddy’ had been employed as cheap labour in the kitchen of the Cat and Fiddle. She had had no interest in him apart from that. Though happy after his death to project the image of the big-hearted employer struck by tragedy, Shona Nuttall actually knew nothing about the young man.
And when in the course of conversation Jude revealed that she was the one who had been present at his death, the landlady could not hide her annoyance. She didn’t want anyone else muscling in on her fifteen minutes of fame.
∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧
Ten
“You want me to go into a betting shop?” said Carole, appalled.
“The betting shop is, if not the Scene of the Crime, at least the only place we know related to the crime. It’s going to be rather hard to find out anything about the case if we don’t go back there. Shona Nuttall proved to be something of a dead end – not to say a dead loss – so the betting shop must be our next port of call.”
“But, Jude, what on earth will people think I’m doing?”
“They’ll think you’re going into the betting shop, that’s all. People wander in and out all the time. Nobody’ll take any notice of you.”
“But supposing there was someone I knew in there? Or someone I knew saw me going in there?”
“So?”
“What would they think?”
“They would think that you were going into the betting shop. Full stop. It’s only a betting shop, Carole. It’s not an opium den in Limehouse.”
“No, but – ”
“I’m going there right now. Picking up Harold Peskett’s bets on the way. Are you coming?”
“Yes,” Carole replied meekly. But not without misgiving.
♦
As it turned out, Carole and Jude went to the betting shop that Wednesday morning before seeing Harold Peskett. They didn’t go inside, but to the small alley where Jude had witnessed the young man’s death. She’d had the thought as they were walking along Fethering High Street that revisiting the scene might spark some recollection, might set her mind going in a different direction.
Though the day was dry, the alley looked drab and uninviting, littered with burger wrappers and plastic bottles. A smell of urine hung in the air. It had been used as a comfort station by many beerful customers taking a short cut back from the Crown and Anchor.
Tied to a drainpipe near where Tadeusz Jankowski had died was a bunch of flowers. Though not yet wilting, they looked infinitely pathetic. Attached to the stalks was a card with words in a language that neither woman understood.
“Zofia’s tribute to her brother,” said Jude softly.
Carole was silent. Though not as sensitive to atmospheres as her neighbour, she could still feel the piercing melancholy of the location.
“So why did he come down here?” asked Jude, as if thinking out loud. “Why did he go into the betting shop? What was he looking for?”
“Maybe he was going to meet someone on the beach? Or round the back of one of the shops?” The alley led to a little service road behind the parade.
“We could look.” Jude tried unsuccessfully to banish the sadness from her face. “Maybe we’ll see something obvious that he was making for?”
But no. There was nothing obvious. Nothing unusual at all. A lorry was delivering what was undoubtedly the wrong stock to the loading bay behind Allinstore. There was no other sign of human activity. Towards the sea was an area of scrubland, rough grass snaking its way over sandy soil, too flat to be called a dune.
“Nothing springs to mind,” said Carole dispiritedly.
“No.” Jude turned away from the beach to face the overgrown back yard of the betting shop. Through wire-netting gates, she found herself looking straight at Ryan the Manager. He looked as shocked to see her as she did him.
Jude raised her hand in a little half-wave of acknowledgement, but the young man did not respond. Instead, shoving the bulky contents of a brown paper bag into his pocket, he turned on his heel and disappeared through the back door of the shop.
♦
Harold Peskett lived in sheltered accommodation, a tiny flat in a purpose-built block with views over Fethering Beach. Though still suffering from the flu, he was up and dressed by the time Jude and Carole arrived.
A small, birdlike man, ninety-two years had whitled away at him, so that now there seemed to be only one layer of skin on his prominent bones. There was no hair on the blotched cranium, and he peered at the world through thick-lensed tortoiseshell glasses. In spite of the considerable warmth of central heating turned up high, he wore two jumpers under a tweed jacket whose elbows and cuffs had been reinforced with leather. His shoes were polished to a high gloss and he wore a thin, greasy dark tie with some insignia on it.
His room was meticulously tidy, the bed neatly squared off and lots of box files regimented on shelves. Only on the table in the window facing the sea was there disarray, an untidy spread of the day’s racing papers, from which he had been working out his latest foolproof fortune-bringing strategy.
He was very glad to see Carole. Any friend of Jude’s was a friend of his. And he was sick of the wretched flu. “I still wake up every morning as weak as a kitten. Mind you, even when I’m a hundred per cent, I’m not much stronger than a kitten these days.” He chuckled, and through the lenses there was a sparkle in his clouded eyes.
“Carole’s just recovered from the flu too.”
“Oh, have you, love?” Carole didn’t really like being called ‘love’, but the ninety-two-year-old’s charm enabled him to get away with it. “Then you have my sympathy. Rotten one, this is. Hangs on like the smell of damp in an empty house. Nasty.”
“Yes, it certainly took it out of me.”
“Well, I’m glad to see you’re on the mend. Hope I will be soon. Then you won’t have to come collecting my bets every day, Jude.”
“It’s no hardship. I really don’t mind.”
“That’s very kind of you to say so, but I hope it won’t be for much longer. Anyway, I like putting the bets on myself. Then I can say my own special little prayer to Lady Luck. “Come on, love, today you’re going to give me the big win, aren’t you?””
“And does she usually oblige?” asked Carole.
“Oh, no. Never. Well, I’ll get the odd little double, but never the big one I’m really after. Still…” He chuckled again “…at ninety-two, what would I do with all the money if I did have a big win? No, no, it’s not the money that’s really the attraction for me. It’s pitting myself against the
system, against the whole random universe, trying to impose order on total chaos.”
“You’re a bit of a philosopher in your quiet way, aren’t you?” said Jude.
“Guilty as charged.” The little man placed his frail hands on his chest in a gesture of submission. “Now, can I offer you ladies a cup of tea or something?”
“No, really, we’ve just had some coffee. Anyway, Harold, you’re not fit enough to be doing that sort of thing. Can I get you a cup of tea?”
“Well, Jude, if you don’t mind…” This exchange had become a part of their morning ritual. Harold would make the offer of tea, Jude would refuse and offer to make some for him, and he’d accept.
While she busied herself in the tiny kitchen, Carole said to the old man, “So you’re normally a regular at the betting shop?”
“Never miss a day. Been doing the horses all my life. Back when I started the bookie’s were on the street corners with their clock bags.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Clock bags. They had to be closed at a certain time before the race started, so’s no one could cheat by knowing the result. While now…well, very plush all the stuff they got in those betting shops these days. Comfy chairs, get a cup of tea, everything.”
“But over the years, Harold…you know, the years you’ve been betting, do you think you’re up or down?”
“In financial terms?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, down. Definitely down.”
An expression of puzzlement settled on Carole’s face. But rather than actually vocalizing the thought, “Then why on earth do you do it?” she moved the subject on. “So, if you’re in the betting shop every day, Harold, maybe you saw the poor man who was killed?”
“No. Didn’t Jude say? I was ill last week.”
“I know that. I just thought you might have seen him before.”
“No idea. I don’t know what he looks like.”
“Haven’t you seen the pictures on the news?”
He gestured around the room. “Don’t have a telly, do I? There’s one downstairs in what they call one of the ‘communal rooms’. But I’m not going to spend my time sitting with those old biddies. They never put the racing on, anyway. Just watch these endless soaps and chat shows with everyone spilling their guts about everything. No one’s got any shame any more. I don’t need the television.”