by Issy Brooke
* * * *
The carol singing began that week. They were now halfway through the Advent period, and even the most curmudgeonly person was embracing the festive cheer. The carollers, Penny included, toured the local and district nursing homes and were plied with far more boozy mince pies than they should have had, although the alcohol certainly helped the singers’ enthusiasm even if it affected their harmony. They sang in the various local churches and at the inter-faith group. They also went from door to door, raising funds to be split between funding the Christmas lights and market, with a proportion of the money going to the stray dogs’ home.
Their biggest night out was to be Friday. That evening, the carollers started at the High School, and worked their way through the back streets of town, with the eventual aim of finishing at the market square. Most people opened their doors and windows to hear them, and soon their collecting tin was rattling nicely. It was lovely to bring smiles to everyone’s faces.
The air was crisp and Ginni kept saying that it smelled as if it was going to snow. It hardly ever snowed in Lincolnshire, Penny had been told, so that would be an exciting and unusual event.
They worked their way along a row of terraced houses, and Penny saw a skip up ahead. The man next to her muttered something about the lack of mandatory yellow and orange beacons because it was on a public road, and Penny realised they were near to Haydn’s house. They were approaching it from an unfamiliar direction.
She wondered how many houses he owned in the area, and why he wasn’t getting contractors in to do the work for him. Perhaps he was an embryonic wannabe property developer, expanding his empire on a shoestring. She peered at the house as they approached.
The door next to Haydn’s house opened, and a family peeked out. The carollers stopped, gathered on the pavement, and launched into a fine – and rather loud – rendition of O Little Town of Bethlehem.
The three small children were wide-eyed as they watched the singers, but Penny thought it looked unusual because the parents were dressed in the bright, colourful clothing of India or Pakistan. The woman had a red and yellow scarf over her black hair, but they all applauded when the singing finished, and the husband came forward with some money for their tin.
“It reminds me of school,” he said in the distinctive accent of Birmingham. “I went to a Catholic school, because my parents wanted me to have a religious education, and there weren’t any Muslim schools back then. Happy Christmas.”
“Oh … thank you very much,” the woman holding the collecting tin said. “Merry Christmas to you too!”
The kids waved and were ushered back inside.
The group turned to the left, but their way along the pavement was impeded by the skip which was partly blocking their path.
The woman with the collecting tin was called Karen. She thrust the tin at the nearest person, and fished out her mobile phone to take a photo of the offending skip.
“I’m reporting this to the council,” she said.
“No point, love. I reported it two weeks ago and nothing’s been done,” someone else said.
“Hey, what’s going on here?”
Haydn skidded up to them. He was on his bicycle, a road bike with dropped handlebars and a terrifying array of lights across the front and back. Some were flashing, some were blinking, and altogether he was giving Blackpool Illuminations a run for its money.
“Your skip is in the way,” the woman with the camera phone said as she snapped away from various angles.
“It’s temporary. Hey, stop taking photos! And anyway, what’s stopping you from simply walking around it? You’ve got legs, haven’t you?”
“It’s illegal,” someone else said. “You need a beacon on it. Hey, just swap one of your lights from your bike! That would work.”
“I don’t think so,” Haydn snapped back. “Do you know how much these lights cost?”
“Probably three times as much as your bike,” the man quipped. “That looks like a proper classic, that does. And by classic, I mean ancient. Ha ha.”
“It’s vintage,” Haydn said defensively.
“Nah, don’t get me wrong,” the man continued, moving forwards to peer at Haydn’s bike more closely. “It’s all right, like. Steel is real and all that. Did you restore it yourself?”
Penny felt like she, and the rest of the carollers, were somehow excluded from the strange turn the conversation had taken.
Haydn was saying, “I did, yeah. I sourced all the authentic parts.”
“I like the frame pump,” the man said. “Nice touch. Isn’t it heavy, though? Don’t you fancy a nice new carbon-fibre thing?”
“What, bike or pump?”
“Well, both. I’ve got a carbon bike and I don’t ever use a pump any more. No, I’ve moved onto those CO2 canisters. They’re brilliant.”
Ginni coughed very loudly and deliberately. “We need to move on towards the market,” she said.
The door to a house a few doors down opened and an old lady called out, “Can you sing We Wish You A Merry Christmas? I do love that one. I’ve got some brandy snaps for you all.”
“Mrs Lacey! Of course we can. Come along, everyone…”
They shuffled around the skip and arranged themselves in front of Mrs Lacey, and launched into the carol. Penny was at the back and she noticed that Haydn hadn’t gone into the house yet. She inched back towards where he stood with his bike.
“Are you staying there in that house?” she asked in a quiet voice.
He frowned. “Why?”
“Sorry. I was only curious.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I’m so stressed right now that I just bite people’s heads off for no reason. Yeah, I’m spending a few days here to get the tiling finished, then I can let it out to some new tenants.”
“I know what you mean about the stress,” she said. “I’m up and down myself. The questioning … ugh. I don’t know what to think any more.”
“Yeah. Cycling helps me,” he replied.
“I used to ride a bike,” she said, looking at it with a strange and unexpected feeling of longing. “Is there a club around here?”
He snorted with laughter and a few of the carollers turned around and tutted in between their verses. “There’s a road club,” he said. “It’s not really for … women like you.”
That set off all of Penny’s alarms. And their conversation had been going so well, too. He seemed programmed to ruin everything. She took a deep breath and said, very calmly, “Oh, do tell me more about women like me.”
Haydn seemed to miss the edge in her voice. He waved a gloved hand. “It’s not a social club. It’s heads down, bottoms up, no chatting.”
“And why would you assume that a woman could not do that? And why would you assume that a woman wants to chat?”
Finally it dawned on him that he was about to step out into a crocodile-infested part of the conversation.
He paused, and stepped right into it anyway.
“Well, that’s women, isn’t it? I’m not being funny. I’m just saying like it is. I mean, there’s no female Tour de France, is there?”
The carol singers had stopped. Someone was handing out some throat sweets to try to unclog the crumbly brandy snaps from their throats, and they were making ready to move on.
But Penny had an argument to finish. She stepped closer to Haydn and told herself to be restrained, calm and logical. Yes, it would be easier to just bash him over the head with something, but that was not the way forward. She had to approach a debate in a mature and reasonable manner. She said, evenly, “That’s entirely down to sponsorship and money and has nothing to do with female ability. We’re designed to be endurance creatures. Look up Annie Londonderry. Do your research. As the distance increases, we actually outperform men. And don’t even get me started on equal pay for sportspeople. I was reading an article last week which said–”
“Penny! Come on!” Ginni called.
It was going to be quicker to smack
him on the head, especially as he was grinning.
“Well,” she finished lamely, “it said you were wrong. Anyway, I’ve got to go.”
He laughed, as if he had won the discussion. Penny was torn, but she saw that the carol singers were waiting for her.
She flounced away from Haydn with as much panache as she could muster. She was simmering inside. The man blew so hot and cold, and was too quick to anger.
She didn’t like him.
Chapter Twelve
“I was off it and then I was on it and now I’m off it again,” Cath said. “Because of you.”
Penny and Cath were sitting in a café that was in one far corner of the indoor market in Upper Glenfield. It was a cheap and cheerful sort of place, the rickety tables jammed close together so it became an elaborate dance to ease one’s way from one end to the other. The chairs all seemed to be slightly wobbly, and the table-tops were sticky with old ketchup and vinegar, in spite of the ministrations of the woman in the checked apron who came and wiped everything down regularly. It was possible that she was actually wiping the tables down with ketchup.
The daily specials were written up on a whiteboard behind the counter. Saturday lunchtime was busy and with only one more weekend to go before Christmas, there was a definite festive atmosphere. There were four Christmas songs on an endless loop, and everyone was carrying large bags with rolls of colourful wrapping paper poking out of the tops.
Penny had ordered a turkey, cranberry sauce and stuffing panini and it turned out to be rather nice, though that combination would have made an Italian blanche. Still, it was the British way to take another culture’s delicious food and make something new and occasionally horrifying out of it. Cath had played it safe with a simple jacket potato and side salad.
“Off what? On what? What are you talking about? I’m lost already,” Penny said.
“The case,” Cath said. “They kept me away from it because of being the liaison support for the planning committee. Then a few days ago, Inspector Travis asked for my input. A day after that, when his boss realised I’d still been seeing you socially, I got moved off it again. I told them from the start there was a conflict of interest.”
“Bother,” Penny said. “You should have tried to stay on it, to find out what was going on. Do you know who the main suspect is?” She tried to bite into her panini but the interior was still at a temperature most commonly found in nuclear reactors. She cut it open to let it cool down.
“I’m not sure who is at the top,” Cath said. “I was looking into Haydn, though.”
“Ah! I was talking to that rat yesterday.”
“That rat? What do you mean?”
“Huh. He’s got this way of winding me up, much like Clive did,” Penny said. “Actually, I’m trying to imagine those two working together. That would have been a recipe for disaster. They are both argumentative in different ways. Clive was more arrogant and in-your-face but Haydn is really quick to get riled up, and he has some outdated dinosaur ideas, too.”
“Tell me what happened,” Cath said with a weary tone in her voice.
“No need to be like that! I didn’t hit him or anything.”
“Did you perhaps poison him with a cake? Stake out the top of a ladder to surprise him by bursting out of an upstairs window? Follow him across Lincoln? You’ve got previous form, you know.”
It was true. Penny had, indeed, done all of those things. But she shook her head, and gave Cath a brief rundown of the previous evening’s conversation.
Listening to herself giving a hasty, dry summary, Penny had to concede that she sounded somewhat petty.
“You really don’t know when to pick your battles,” Cath said.
“There is something dodgy about him, though, don’t you think?”
Cath leaned forward and dropped her voice. “You’re right about that. Listen to this. We know what Clive and Haydn really disagreed about.”
“Ooh, go on.”
They both looked around like bad actors in a spy movie, then Cath said, “We found out that Haydn lied on his cv and application form for his job at the utilities company.”
“What sort of lie? I mean, I once said that I was proficient with spreadsheets because I could make it add up a whole column of numbers without using the help thing. We all polish the truth a little.”
“This is a bit more serious than that. He claimed to have qualifications that he didn’t have, and the recruitment process didn’t spot it. Clive found out, because Clive is – was – a control freak. He liked to be in charge of everything, and this meant he also double-checked Haydn’s certifications when Haydn transferred into Clive’s department.”
“I’m guessing that Clive confronted Haydn about this?”
“It seems so,” Cath said. “But, interestingly, there is no record of him approaching the official channels with his discovery. The Human Resources department at the company knew nothing about it, and were pretty embarrassed when we could show them that Haydn was there on a lie.”
“Oh no! Does Haydn know this yet? Will he lose his job?” Penny might not have liked the guy, but she didn’t wish to see anyone lose their employment.
“Haydn was called in for more questioning earlier in the week,” Cath told her.
That would explain why he said he was so stressed, Penny thought. “And his job?”
“I don’t know what will happen there,” Cath said.
Penny was finally able to eat her lunch. She worked her way through half of the panini while she thought about the latest revelations.
“Cath, was Clive blackmailing Haydn? Clive knew Haydn’s secret. He didn’t pass it on to the proper authorities. And Haydn kept on working under Clive, even though they argued. That seems suspicious, to me.”
“And to me. But they often argued. Surely if Haydn was completely under Clive’s thumb, he would not have dared to answer back?”
“Maybe he didn’t – while Clive was still working,” Penny said. “Did they argue a lot at work?”
“I don’t know.”
“But yes, they certainly argued afterwards.” Penny remembered the first time she’d encountered Haydn. She cast her memory back. “Clive said something to Haydn about some people that shouldn’t have been promoted at all.”
“We’ve got similar reports,” Cath said. “When he was questioned, Haydn said that Clive was not blackmailing him. Of course, he might be lying. He could think that if he admits to being blackmailed, it looks like more of a motive against him.”
“And he’d be right.”
“Still,” Cath went on, “once Clive had retired, he had far less of a hold over Haydn. If Haydn was going to kill Clive, it would make more sense to kill him while they worked together.”
“Clive was well known for meddling long after he had any right to meddle, though,” Penny pointed out. “He had retired when he put in that phone call to his old place of work to get them to stop his sister’s campaign to open up the footpath.”
“What?”
Penny explained about Linda and her latest passion, including the way she’d turned into a shoulder-padded-bulldozer and forced Penny into helping design and create some flyers.
Cath pondered the information. “And I suppose that if Haydn thought he was free of Clive at last, and he relaxed at work, it would have come as a huge shock to find that Clive was still interfering.”
“And Haydn is impulsive and rash. He speaks before he thinks.”
“Hmm.”
They ordered some dessert. The choice was between homemade fruit cake with cream, or a dry slice of millionaires’ shortbread. They both went for fruit cake.
“Oh,” Cath said, dropping her voice again. “They have established that Clive was definitely deliberately pushed off the ladder. Did I tell you that?”
“Yes,” Penny said. She felt suddenly sick again. “But I’m still culpable, aren’t I.”
“No, there’s more. They have checked the ladder and it wasn’t faulty. Okay, yo
u should have locked it away but you’re pretty much in the clear.”
“Oh my goodness!” Penny exclaimed, her sickness turning to hot relief. “Why on earth didn’t you tell me this first?”
“Sorry. I had more important things to talk about.”
“More important than that?”
“Yeah, we were deciding on our food order, remember?”
Penny leaned over and stabbed her fork into a corner of Cath’s cake, and stole a lump of it.
Cath nodded. “Yeah. Sorry. I guess I deserved that.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I wish Drew was here,” Penny said with a low sigh.
“Oh, charming. I’m not good enough for you, am I?” Cath replied huffily. “I see.”
They were sitting next to one another at the last minute Christmas Planning Committee meeting on Saturday night. The chairs were arranged in a large circle, which was supposed to be democratic and inclusive.
But everyone was looking at one another through narrowed eyes, and Penny could almost taste the feeling of suspicion that hung in the chilly air.
“Sorry,” Penny said airily. “Can you feel that atmosphere, or is it just me over-reacting?”
Cath looked around the room. She leaned closer to Penny and said, “No, I don’t think it’s just you. Everyone is quieter than usual. It’s because of Clive. Remember, the murder happened after the last meeting.”
“Oh goodness, yes, so it did.”
“Thank you all for coming,” Ginni said in her loud voice, and the whispers and murmurs died instantly. She was the chairperson of the committee.
She took a moment to glance around the room. People shuffled awkwardly in their seats. Ginni had a school-mistress air about her at the best of times, and even Penny felt under scrutiny.
Ginni’s eyes came to rest on Penny. Penny squirmed but Ginni gave her a small smile before addressing the group.