by Simon Brett
“Off to a woman in Brighton, I heard.”
“Yeah.” He smiled at her lecherously. “I’m afraid I do suffer from an overactive libido.”
“Bad luck,” Jude commiserated as though she were sharing his joke.
“Fortunately, though, I know how to get treatment for the condition.” As he said this, he placed a hand unambiguously on her thigh and moved it upwards.
Jude shuddered inwardly. He really was such a repellent little creature. She could never understand men who, in the teeth of the evidence, regard themselves as irresistible to women. Dan Poke, she felt sure, was the sort who, when she did finally express her deep lack of interest in going to bed with him, would mark her down as a lesbian. No woman of normal tendencies could resist his charms.
On the other hand, she had to admit that she had played up to his self-image. Ringing him had been tantamount to presenting herself as a piece of meat for his enjoyment. And she would probably need to maintain that front until she could get the information she wanted out of him.
Jude didn’t remove his hand, but he took it away when she asked, “Did you hear that there was another violent death in Fethering?”
“The Russian roulette bloke? Yes, I heard about it. Now you’re not going to blame me for that one too, are you? I was nowhere near the place when it happened.”
“No. I just wondered if you knew the man.”
Dan Poke shook his head vigorously; the lank ponytail flipped to one side. Was Jude imagining it, or was there a new caution in his manner? She went on, “He was in the audience at the Crown and Anchor the night you appeared.”
“So? Darling, I do a lot of gigs. They’re attended by a lot of punters. They all know what I look like. I haven’t a clue what any of them look like. People in the street often think they know me because they’ve seen me on the telly. Think they bloody own you, and all. It’s just one of the things that happens when you’re a celeb.”
“So you were never introduced to Viggo?”
“Look, what is this? Some kind of third degree? I thought you were here because you wanted a shag. Quick, uncomplicated sex. I get my rocks off, you get the thrill of shagging a celeb. Or have I misunderstood the reason why we’re meeting here?”
Jude’s cover wasn’t quite blown, but she didn’t think she could sustain the pretence much longer. So she opted for the truth. “The reason we are meeting here is that I want to talk to you about your role as a director of Home Hostelries.”
Thirty-Five
While she drank her Maipo Valley Chardonnay, Carole was kicking herself for not bringing The Times with her. She felt exposed sitting alone drinking in the Hare and Hounds. She never had thought of herself as a ‘pub person’, and doing the crossword would make her look much less awkward. Besides, that day’s was a rather difficult one. She hadn’t filled in many clues over her lunch of soup and bread and she wanted to re-engage with its intellectual challenge. But her copy of The Times was sitting on the kitchen table at High Tor.
So she sat and sipped, trying to give the impression of the kind of person whose rich and busy mental life stopped her from looking like a woman in a pub drinking on her own. And meanwhile, she observed the behaviour of the bar staff. Apart from the purple-haired one who had served her, there was another girl and two young men. The older of the two, from the way he ordered the others around, was clearly the manager. And in fact there was a sharpness, a shifty alertness about him, which reminded Carole of the previous incumbent of the job, Will Maples.
Carole decided that he was the one she should talk to. Achieving that goal meant careful management of her Chardonnay. She had noticed that the manager only served at the bar as a last resort. His juniors had first call on the customers and, only when they were all fully occupied, would he actually dispense drinks.
She watched and waited until he was free. In the meantime she took out her mobile, to give the illusion of busyness. Idly she summoned up the photographs which Zosia had taken and Jude had forwarded on.
She found the shot of the bikers watching Dan Poke’s act, the one with Derren Hart in the middle of the group. And for the first time, because she was trying to look as though she had something to do, she scrutinized all of the people in the photograph. She saw the tall man called William who had spoken to Dan Poke after the gig. The man who had been sitting drinking Belgian beer with a group of other smartly dressed young men.
And suddenly she realized where she had seen him before. Shadowed by the effects of the flash, his face had lost its chubbiness. And Carole Seddon recognized the man she had last seen some years before behind the bar of the very pub she was sitting in. It was Will Maples. The Home Hostelries manager who had disappeared after being unmasked as a drug dealer.
A new thought burgeoned in Carole’s mind, a thought that needed confirmation. And she might be able to get that confirmation from the current manager of the Hare and Hounds. Fortunately, on a hot summer evening, a lot of people relished the idea of a drink on the fringes of the South Downs, so the pub was filling up. Carole waited till all four bar staff were busy serving customers, then slurped down the remains of her drink and positioned herself behind the man who’d just been served his round by the manager.
The young man looked up at her with a professional grin. “What can I get for you, madam?”
“Another Maipo Valley Chardonnay, please. It’s very good.”
“All our Home Hostelries wines are carefully selected, madam. Will that be a large one or a small?”
“Small, thank you.”
Fortunately for Carole, there wasn’t an open bottle of the Maipo Valley Chardonnay, so the manager had to take a corkscrew to one. This gave her a little window of opportunity to say, “I met someone recently from Home Hostelries…”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, we were introduced, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten his name. I wonder if you might know him?”
“Without a name it’s going to be pretty difficult for me to – ”
“I do have a photograph.” Carole proffered her mobile to the manager and pointed to the man she thought was Will Maples.
“Oh yes, I know him all right. Well, you have been moving in the upper echelons of the company. That’s one of Home Hostelries’ very big cheeses.”
“A director?”
“No, he’s not actually a director yet, but I should think it’s on the cards that he will be soon.”
“What’s his name?” asked Carole, trying to hide the tension she was feeling.
“Will Maples. In charge of Acquisitions.”
Carole could have kicked herself. Now she’d had it confirmed, the likeness was so obvious. But men’s looks change, particularly in their early forties. Suddenly bodies you could never imagine with an ounce of fat on them spread sideways. Entire contours are re-formed. Add to that Will Maples’s dyed hair and the thick-framed glasses and he had become unrecognizable. Carole wondered whether he’d recognized her as one of the busybodies who had caused his abrupt departure from his previous job at the Hare and Hounds.
Though she thought she knew the answer to her question, she asked the current manager to spell out what that meant by ‘in charge of Acquisitions’.
“Will Maples is in charge of selecting and purchasing new pubs to add to the Home Hostelries family.”
“Ah,” said Carole Seddon. “Thank you.”
♦
“What is this?” asked Dan Poke. “What the hell are you up to?”
Jude looked straight into his eyes. “Are you denying that, under your real name of Richard Farrelly, you are a director of Home Hostelries, the pub group?”
He let his anger dissipate and took a deep breath. When he replied, he was cautious. He wanted to know how much she knew. “Very well,” he said calmly. “I don’t deny it. But since when has it been illegal for people to have more than one job?”
“Never. How long have you been a director?”
“Seven or eight years. When I was do
ing all that telly, I made a lot of bread. I wanted to invest it somewhere, somebody mentioned Home Hostelries, and I was interested to find out more about them. I am a bit of an expert in pubs, you know.”
“Oh?”
“Come on, darling. Doing stand-up, you spend half your life in pubs. You get to know the good ones from the bad, you get an idea of what kind of business they’re doing.”
“So Home Hostelries took you on as a kind of consultant?”
“You could say that. An investor too. Television’s a very fickle medium. I was flavour of the month for a while, but I knew it could end at any minute, so I wanted to make myself financially secure. Doing that through a business that really interested me…what’s the harm in that?”
“I don’t think there’s any harm in that.”
“Good.” He looked at his watch. “Well, I think I’m about to go back to mine. Are you coming or not?”
“No.”
“Right. Well, thank you, Jude, for a totally fucking wasted evening.”
He rose to leave, but her next words changed his mind. “I want to talk about the involvement of Home Hostelries in the murder of Ray Witchett.”
Dan Poke froze, then sank back into his chair and said in what was little more than a whisper, “What?”
“It’s my belief,” said Jude evenly, “that Home Hostelries had been trying for some time to add the Crown and Anchor in Fethering to their chain of pubs.”
“So?”
“In spite of the fact that Ted Crisp had no desire to sell. I think he became the victim of a campaign of harassment which was organized by Home Hostelries.”
“Come off it, Jude. You’re talking about a pukka company here. Home Hostelries doesn’t need to organize campaigns of harassment. There are pubs closing every week all over the country. If we want to buy places, we’re spoiled for choice.”
“Except that you are very picky in your choice of where you buy. You only want places with the best possible locations. Like the Crown and Anchor. Like the Cat and Fiddle on the Fedborough road out of Littlehampton.”
Dan Poke looked puzzled.
“You’re not denying that the Cat and Fiddle has been bought by Home Hostelries?”
“Certainly not. It’s undergoing major refurbishment. Reopening as a Home Hostelries pub in October, if my memory serves me right.”
“It does. And before she gave in and agreed to sell to Home Hostelries, the landlady had suffered almost exactly the same kind of harassment as Ted Crisp’s been getting at the Crown and Anchor.”
“Where’ve you got this from?”
“Shona Nuttall herself,” Jude replied implacably. “The ex-landlady of the Cat and Fiddle.”
“Have you worked all this out off your own bat?”
“I have been working on it with a friend.”
“Male friend?”
“Female friend.”
“Nobody else involved?”
Jude thought quickly before answering that. If she was sitting opposite a man capable of murder, then she and Carole might well be at risk. Time perhaps for a tactical lie. “We have kept the police up to date with our investigations.”
Dan Poke laughed and Jude realized it had been a silly thing to say. He didn’t believe her, and as a consequence any threat she might have represented to him had been diluted. “Oh yes, I’m sure the police have been really grateful for the input of two old biddies from Fethering.”
Ten minutes before Dan Poke had been keen to get her into bed; now suddenly she was an old biddy from Fethering.
“Tell you what,” he went on, “even though you’re talking rubbish, it’s potentially dangerous rubbish.”
“Dangerous to whom?”
“To the reputation of Home Hostelries. Who’ve you talked about this to – apart from your friend?”
“And the police,” Jude offered feebly.
“Oh yes, of course. And the police.” His tone ridiculed the idea. He drummed his fingernails on the arm of his chair. “We need a meeting.”
“What? Who?”
“You, your friend, me…”
“Down some dark alley?”
“Don’t be fucking stupid! I’m talking in the Home Hostelries boardroom. You have to realize just how serious the allegations you’re making are. I’ve got your number. I’ll give you a call.”
And with that Dan Poke left the bar. And left Jude with the feeling that she hadn’t managed the encounter very well.
She asked Garcia to lend one of his bouncers to see her to Notting Hill tube station, which he did without demur. But on the short walk there, she didn’t see any homicidal stand-up comedians lurking in the bushes. And all the way back on the tube and train to Fethering, Jude felt rather stupid.
Thirty-Six
The summons came in a phone call the following morning at nine-thirty sharp. Dan Poke, sounding very businesslike and making no mention of their encounter the previous evening, invited Jude and her friend to a meeting at the Home Hostelries headquarters in Horsham. He said he would like to make the meeting as soon as possible, “because of the nature of the situation’. They agreed to meet that very morning at eleven-thirty.
Carole had told her the previous evening what she had discovered about Will Maples’s role in the Home Hostelries company, and on the way up to Horsham in the Renault they discussed the likelihood of his also being at the meeting.
Dan Poke had given very precise instructions and also told Jude that parking would be reserved for them. This was a considerable relief to Carole, who knew of old that Horsham was one of those towns in which it was impossible to find a parking space. The slot allocated for them was right next to Will Maples’s distinctive pale-blue BMW.
The Home Hostelries building breathed success from every shiny glass storey. The air-conditioned atrium where they approached Reception was high and daunting, a temple to corporate achievement. They were expected and, moments after their arrival, a girl in a mulberry business suit with feather grey trim escorted them to the lift, in which they were whisked up to boardroom level.
Their question in the car was answered immediately. Will Maples was there, as well as Dan Poke, who looked incongruous in a dark suit and tie. He had shaved since the night before. The little square of beard on his chin looked like some form of scouring pad.
The third member of the greeting party Carole and Jude had not met before. A woman in her thirties with square-cut blonde hair and a pinstriped trouser suit was introduced to them as ‘Melissa Keats, a member of the company legal team’.
They sat at one end of a long boardroom table, Carole and Jude on one side, the other three opposite them. The atmosphere was that of a rather daunting job interview, and the two women felt certain that that was the intention. They were being subjected to a course of corporate intimidation. The girl who’d brought them up in the lift poured coffee for those who required it, and then left the room, closing the door behind her.
His colleagues seemed to expect Will Maples to take charge, which he duly did. Dan Poke was uncharacteristically quiet in this business environment; he seemed to be waiting for his colleague to give him permission to speak.
Carole and Jude had seen plenty of Will Maples’s smarmy smiles in his days at the Hare and Hounds, but there was none on his face that morning. “We’ve called this meeting because you two ladies have been spreading rumours about the business activities of Home Hostelries which we believe to have no basis in truth. So it seemed sensible to meet to find out where you got these ideas from and maybe to clear the air. Now I believe, Mrs Seddon and, er…” he looked down at some notes in front of him “…Jude, that the allegations you have made concern recent events at the Crown and Anchor pub in Fethering…?”
“Which Home Hostelries wishes to buy,” said Carole.
“I don’t deny that we have expressed an interest in the property,” Will Maples purred smoothly. “It is the sort of public house that would fit well into our portfolio. But we have no immediate plan
s to buy it, because the owner does not wish to sell.”
“Ah, but this is the point,” said Jude.
“What is the point?”
“You’ve been putting pressure on Ted Crisp so that he will sell to you, and at a lower price than the pub is worth.”
“Really?” asked Will Maples.
Melissa Keats chipped in, “I think I should point out that it is against the law to make allegations against people – ”
But the solicitor was silenced by an upraised hand from her superior. “If you don’t mind, Melissa, let’s hear everything the ladies have to say first. Then I think we will be in a better position to judge whether there is any truth at all in their allegations.”
“Very well, Will,” she said, duly submissive.
“So, Mrs Seddon and Jude, could you define this ‘pressure’ which you claim Home Hostelries has put on the landlord of the Crown and Anchor?”
“It started with the food-poisoning,” Carole replied. “Some scallops that weren’t fresh were introduced into the Crown and Anchor kitchen.”
“But not by anyone from Home Hostelries.”
“We believe,” Carole went on, “that the scallops came in a delivery from KWS warehouse, which, as you know, holds stock for Snug Pubs, which are now a part of the Home Hostelries group. The delivery man’s name is Matt.”
While her friend talked, Jude was studying Dan Poke’s face intently. She was sure she saw a reaction when the name of Sylvia Crisp’s fiancé was mentioned. But he quickly covered it up.
“If what you say was correct,” said Will Maples, “then there should be some record of it in the KWS office. Nothing gets delivered without an order form.”
“The paperwork has disappeared.”
“Has it, Mrs Seddon? Well, well, well. How unfortunate.” Now there was a smile on Will Maples’s face. An infuriatingly complacent one. He made a note on a pad in front of him. “So…this food-poisoning from…scallops was it you said? You believe it to have been deliberately engineered, but you have no proof of that. Isn’t it more likely that the outbreak arose because of some carelessness, some lapse of hygiene in the Crown and Anchor kitchen? The weather has been exceptionally hot.”