No More Lies

by Robert Crouch

  “Sounds like someone with an old grudge. Do you want me to check it out?”

  “I’d rather find out why you joined the police.”

  “I like arresting people,” she says, climbing into the car.

  She maintains a sensible speed on the winding road out of Alfriston. Neither of us speaks until we pass the sale board outside the White Horse Hotel.

  “Birchill owned that place,” she says. “The moment it began to struggle, he bailed out, leaving his business partner to sink. The margins are tight when you offer riding holidays for disabled kids. You need full occupancy to make a profit.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  “I know a lot about Birchill.”

  She speeds up as the road straightens, reaching the roundabout beyond Drusillas Zoo Park in a couple of minutes. She swings right onto the A27 and heads up the hill towards Tollingdon, her expression grim as we join a stream of slower moving traffic.

  “Birchill was born on the Downland Manor estate,” she says. “His father was a former jockey turned stable manager. Birchill became a groom in the Fisher stables until he was thrown out for stealing from some well-heeled friends of your father.

  “But you know all this,” she says, slamming on the brakes. “You know about his crimes in Brighton. You campaigned against his Wild West theme park. How you can go from hating the man to letting him fund your new sanctuary?”

  “We were trapped in a burning building. We saved each other’s lives.”

  “You should have let him burn.” She swings out and accelerates past three vehicles and through Wilmington crossroads. “You’re indebted to each other – is that what you’re saying?”

  “He offered his business experience and contacts to help with Meadow Farm.”

  “What does Niamh think? She’s not exactly a fan of Birchill, is she?”

  We fall silent as we pass the entrance to Downland Manor Hotel, which has a new sign. A minute later we pass the lane that leads to my former sanctuary. When we stop at the traffic lights ahead, she asks me if I want to join her for a nightcap.

  “If you drink, you can’t drive me home,” I say.

  “Would that be such a bad thing?”

  “I have animals to check.”

  She swings right and heads for Jevington. When she pulls up outside Meadow Farm, she turns to me, her eyes full of mischief. “You could always invite me in.”

  I asked Gemma to move in with me. She said she didn’t want to live in a glorified portakabin. She didn’t want me to move into her flat because everyone would know she’d been unfaithful to Richard.

  “You’re forgetting Frances,” I say, getting out of the car.

  “Don’t you want to know how we connected Leila King to the Rosy Lee Café?” Ashley asks, not ready to give up yet.

  I climb back into the car. “You told me she worked at both.”

  “When we attended the fire at Station Diner, DC Susan Richards made the connection. Five years ago, she was the first uniformed officer to reach Sunshine View. She was there when your pal Mike Turner found evidence that linked the body to the Rosy Lee Café.”

  “Details you can’t tell me.”

  “Maybe I talk in my sleep.”

  “I’ll give you points for persistence,” I say, getting out of the car. “But I have no record of Leila King working at the Rosy Lee Café. She wasn’t there when I closed the place.”

  She shrugs. “Then we’ll ask her when we find her.”

  “If Leila’s connected to your body, someone may not want you to find her.”

  Fourteen

  “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.” Frances closes To Kill a Mockingbird and places it on the table beside her empty mug. She lowers her feet from the sofa and sidles out, allowing a frenetic Columbo to leap to the floor and hurtle over to me. I scoop him in my arms, letting him smother my face with kisses.

  “You look beat,” she says, filling the kettle.

  I set Columbo on the floor and open the fridge. “Excellent,” I say, spotting the savouries.

  “Niamh brought them over earlier. She couldn’t wait to tell me about your dinner date with your police friend.”

  Niamh likes anyone who isn’t Gemma.

  Without Gemma I would never have solved any of the cases that came my way. Without her, it’s going to be hard to track down Leila King.

  And Peter Stone, whoever he is.

  Why was his name on a Rosy Lee menu?

  Who wrote it there?

  Maybe Leila knows. If she didn’t work at the café, maybe she was involved in some other way. Maybe she worked as a cleaner. Maybe she designed the menu. Maybe she worked for a supplier.

  Moments later, chilli slice in hand, I’m at the computer, reading through the scanned copies of the inspection reports. Columbo sits at my feet, drooling as he stares at the food. Apart from the owner, Henry Potter, who disappeared shortly after I closed his business, there’s his wife and a waitress called Melanie. No supplier details recorded in the relevant box on the inspection form. It’s the same with the previous two inspections.

  When I examine the third and oldest report, Columbo’s gone. A few moments later, I hear his claws on the vinyl as he races into the bedroom ahead of Frances. She places a mug on the bedside cabinet and hands me a plate, containing two cupcakes.

  “How did you know I was hungry?” I ask.

  “Your stomach’s more communicative than you. I’ll check the dogs before I turn in.”

  I worry about Frances. She’s in her early twenties, attractive, intelligent and practical. She has no regular friends, no partner, and no interest in either. She remains as big a mystery as she did when she arrived at my old sanctuary, dressed in Doc Marten boots, combat trousers and a camouflage jacket. Her long hair, braided into striking dreadlocks and woven with beads gives her a New Age look that some find off putting. Then again, the sanctuary hardly attracts people of her age.

  After giving Columbo some cake, I return to the inspection report on the screen and find an entry for Wright Choice Foods, Arlington.

  ***

  In the office the following morning, I check the database for more information on Wright Choice Foods, but there’s no entry. I ask the team if anyone has come across the company. Charlotte Donavon looks up from her muesli.

  She’s a harassed mother of three unruly teenagers, who inherited her ex-husband’s ‘useless gene’. It’s the one next to the ‘philandering gene’, she told me when I interviewed her. While she looks like she’s thrown on the nearest shirt, trousers and jacket, her clothes are well worn rather than creased. With contract work providing her only income, the kids come first.

  “Wright Choice Foods supplied smaller hotels and restaurants in Brighton,” she says. “It was mainly dairy products, groceries, tinned and dried goods. They ceased trading years ago.”

  I wish I could offer her a full-time post. Bright, bubbly and enthusiastic, she puts in more hours than she’s contracted for. She doesn’t mind the difficult jobs, relishing the complaints about filthy restaurants that Nigel prefers to avoid. She’s happy to work into the evening when necessary and believes a more formal, no nonsense approach improves efficiency, making her popular with Danni.

  “Is this anything to do with Station Diner?” she asks, plucking a blueberry from her breakfast bowl. “Only Tariq Hossain owned a couple of ‘all you can eat for a tenner’ restaurants in Brighton. He bought equipment from people in pubs, employed illegals when he could, and had a fire at one of his restaurants.”

  “You seem to know a lot about him.”

  She smiles. “People who break the rules stick in your memory.”

  “Indeed. What about the fire?”

  “It was an electrical fault on an old fridge, purchased from a man in a pub. A couple of employees upstairs escaped without injury. They disappeared before Border Force officers visited. The fridge vanished after the fire officer had examined it.”

  “Did you meet
any other staff?”

  “There was a woman who worked front of house, but she wasn’t around at the time. As the place never reopened, I never met her.”

  “Leila King?”

  Charlie shrugs. “I can check.”

  “Discreetly,” I say, wondering whether Leila King likes starting fires.

  Fifteen

  When I enter Simply Danish, a small confectioner and café near Eastbourne’s main library, I can’t help checking the refrigerated cabinet to make sure everything’s in order. I’m tempted by cream slices, custard doughnuts and apple turnovers, but each one requires a four or five mile run to burn off the calories. While I enjoy running, it’s simpler to avoid treats, no matter how enticing they look.

  It’s a homely café with polished wooden floors and chunky tables with laminated menus rising from blocks of wood. Hessian wallpaper covers the walls, punctuated by potted plants, prints of plantations and a variety of uplighters. The refrigerated cabinets connect to a coffee counter with a gargantuan chrome machine that grinds and hisses.

  Three women, one a barista according to her polo shirt, look smart in their brown tops and skirts. The youngest, a skinny latte with frothy, platinum blonde hair, welcomes me with a smile that tells me she knows how sexy she looks.

  Unfortunately, nose rings and piercings remind me of cattle.

  I spot Bob Glover, seated at a table that offers a view of the whole shop. He’s dressed in a black shirt with epaulets and East Sussex Fire and Rescue emblazoned in red letters. In his late fifties, with close cropped silver hair, he has a narrow face and a thin beak of a nose that sniffs at the Snegl in his hand. His wide mouth engulfs the Danish pastry, stashing it in the folds of his second chin like a pelican.

  I weave through the tables, occupied by a mixture of young men in suits, who sound like estate agents and women with shopping bags. A mother plays with a baby on her lap, while an adult version sits opposite, looking bored and left out.

  “What’ll you have?” Bob asks, crushing my fingers with his handshake.

  “Decaff skinny latte.”

  Bob calls my order across the room, raising a thumb in thanks. He settles back in the chair, his legs extending beyond the small table. Lean, but muscular, judging by the tightness of his shirt, he has a relaxed, confident air and a kindly smile, echoed in blue eyes that constantly survey the surroundings.

  “Are you sure you won’t try one?” he asks, staring at his plate as if he’s about to lick up the crumbs. “They’re almost as heavenly as Bernice.” He winks at the young woman with frothy hair and sighs. “I could be arrested for what I’m thinking. Mind you, that’s all I can manage these days. I nod off in front of the TV most evenings.”

  “Most programmes have that effect on me.”

  “No one fell asleep during The Sweeney,” he says. “Well, except for my wife. Mona preferred Dallas and Dynasty. They gave her big ideas about going to America. You’ll need to do better than a barmaid if you want to go to Las Vegas, I told her.”

  He straightens when the waitress arrives with my latte and another espresso for him. He waxes lyrical about the Snegl as he passes her the empty plate, telling her he’d like the crumbs in a doggy bag. She smiles and strolls away, unaware of the way he studies her legs.

  “Shall I call the police?” I ask.

  “What for?”

  “To arrest you for what you’re thinking.”

  He laughs before inhaling the aroma of his espresso. “I always wanted to be a barista, you know. Would have made it too if I hadn’t failed the law exams.”

  After a sip of coffee, he reaches down the side of the sofa and pulls a notebook from his leather briefcase. “The final report won’t be available for a week or two, but it looks like staff forgot to turn off the deep fat fryer at the end of the shift. The faulty thermostat meant the oil continued to heat up until it ignited.”

  I scribble a couple of notes, knowing Mike always checks the thermostat before selling a fryer.

  “You’re sure about the faulty thermostat?” I ask.

  “There were so many knocks and dents on the unit, I’m surprised it worked at all.”

  Our fryers were in good repair. “Was there only one fryer?”

  “You’ve seen the kitchen. Hardly room to swing a cat – though that could account for the dents.” He chuckles at his joke and then stops. “Sorry, I forgot you run an animal sanctuary. No offence intended.”

  “None taken. Do you have photographs of the fryer?”

  He pulls a folder from the briefcase and extracts a print. “Even with the damage caused by the heat and flames, you can see the dents and scratches along the side.”

  I focus on the model of fryer rather than its condition. It’s the same as the one Mike sold, but in a much worse condition. I’ll question Hossain about that.

  “You’re satisfied the fire was an accident.”

  “I couldn’t find any evidence of arson.”

  “What if I told you Hossain had a fire in a restaurant he owned in Brighton?”

  “Was that arson?”

  “There are some interesting similarities.”

  “Was it a deep fat fryer?”

  “A fridge. When I have the details I’ll pass them on to you.”

  “I should be able to track down the report.” He sips his espresso and leans closer. “I know Hossain buys cheap, second hand gear, so you’d expect problems.”

  “You’re the expert,” I say.

  “If I suspected arson, I’d tell Ash Goodman. She’s more of an expert than me, telling me what to look for as if I’d never investigated a fire before.”

  “Maybe she knows about the fire in Brighton.”

  “She certainly left there with a scorched arse.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He lowers his voice. “She was screwing one of the top brass. When a big case went tits up, she tried to make it look like his fault, thinking he wouldn’t make a fuss because he was married. He didn’t. He transferred her out to the sticks. Someone told me she’s after a big case to get her career back on track. Hossain’s hardly big, is he?”

  “And it’s not arson,” I say.

  “She’d like it to be.” He pushes the folder back into his briefcase. “Any news on Leila King? I’d like to talk to her before I finalise my report. She might know where the fryer came from.”

  “I’ll ask Hossain.”

  “He told me she has family in Crawley, but he doesn’t have contact details.”

  “Maybe Ashley can track her down.”

  “Ashley?” His look suggests I’m playing with fire. “I’d give her a wide berth if I were you. She’s only interested in what you can do for her career. Get too close, Kent, and you’ll get your fingers burned.”

  If I’m going to find out what happened to Leila King, I may have no choice.

  Sixteen

  That evening, I stroll down to the Eight Bells to meet Mike. With Alice starting a creative writing class at East Sussex College in Eastbourne, Niamh joins me, making me wait for fifteen minutes while she ‘throws something on’.

  She emerges with waves in her thick black hair, a touch of colour to her cheeks, and mascara to highlight her green eyes. Her copper lipstick and nail varnish match her roll neck jumper and high-heeled shoes, which bookend cropped jeans. An emerald pendant on a fine silver chain completes the transformation from weary confectioner to elegant stepmother.

  “I love the way you look at me,” she says, linking her arm through mine. “Like the time when William brought you back to Downland Manor. You were seventeen, bursting with hopes and hormones.”

  “And spots.”

  “You blushed so much I never noticed them.”

  I blushed almost every time I saw her. Only seven years older than me, I was in love with her sophisticated beauty, the natural charm and wit that put me at ease, and the way she softened her husband’s strict, rather austere regime.

  “We were like naughty children breaking
the rules,” I say, guiding her past a puddle, almost invisible in the fading light.

  “We were best friends, Kent. I hope we still are, in spite of the secrets I kept from you.” She looks at me with sad eyes. “I didn’t know how to tell you William wasn’t your father. I couldn’t get past the fact I was never going to have children.”

  “You’ll find someone else,” I say. “You have enough admirers.”

  “What about you, now Gemma’s chosen the bed she wants to lie in? It’s a figure of speech,” she says when I give her a sharp look. “You’re better off without her, Kent. Trust me.”

  “Is that what you told her, Niamh?”

  “I told her you were in love with a fantasy, not her.”

  The scream of a barn owl pierces the air, drowning out my retort.

  “You need a real woman,” she says, using the light from the houses to plot a route through the mud and puddles. “Ashley Goodman knows what she wants. How was dinner last night?”

  It’s like I’m sixteen again, being interrogated by my mother. She was usually slumped in an armchair with a glass of orange, diluted with gin. Her lank, unkempt hair fell about her face, set in a brooding, resentful expression, as if she’d swallowed a wasp.

  “Go out and leave me on my own,” she would say, her tone haughty and dismissive. “See if I care.”

  “I will,” I always said, weary of her emotional blackmail.

  “And what if something happens to me?” she would call as I stepped out of the front door. “What if I have an accident? I could lie here in agony for hours.”

  “The gin will numb the pain,” I called back.

  “I didn’t have dinner with Ashley,” I tell Niamh, aware of her keen interest. “We had things to do.”

  “I saw her drop you back.”

  “Then you’ll know I was early.”

  When we reach the main road, I let Niamh take the narrow pavement. Cars fly past, their headlights cutting through the dark. Ahead, the lights from the Eight Bells spill across the pavement. The walkers and ramblers have long gone, leaving locals and regular visitors like Mike, who enjoys watching the female staff pulling pints.