The Killer in the Choir

by Simon Brett

  ‘Maybe not. Oh well, the vicar will be pleased.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Bob Hinkley was very worried about the Crown & Anchor Choir taking singers away from his church choir.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. Don’t know him that well, actually. Not a regular pub-goer. From what I’ve seen of him, he seems like a camper to me.’

  ‘“Like a camper”? I don’t think he’s gay.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that, Carole.’ Ted chuckled, as he always did before delivering one of his jokes. ‘“Camper” – “In tents”. “Intense”. He always struck me as being very intense.’

  ‘What a loss you were to the stand-up circuit, Ted,’ said Carole drily. ‘Mind you, I agree about our vicar. He does take himself very seriously.’

  ‘I suppose, if you’re the kind of bloke who does take himself seriously, being a vicar is a natural fit, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but some of them do have a lighter side. I think Bob Hinkley sets himself impossibly high standards. He’s an idealist.’

  ‘Not a good thing to be in this day and age,’ said Ted sagely. ‘Can only lead to disappointment.’

  ‘Yes, it can’t be easy for him. Anyway, Ted, I really wanted to ask you about KK Rosser.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘He didn’t turn up on Monday, expecting the choir to be here, did he?’

  ‘No. He rang me, asking if I thought anyone’d turn up. I said no. He wasn’t surprised.’

  ‘You know him quite well, don’t you, Ted?’

  ‘Well, I’ve known him, on and off, for a good few years. But, of course, that’s not the same thing as knowing him well.’

  ‘Do you know if he was married?’

  The landlord shrugged. ‘I think he may have been some time in the past. So far as I know, he’s had a fairly chequered relationship history. Part of the rock ’n’ roll image he so carefully maintains. Used to pick up girls at gigs; he was always talking about groupies, though how much of it was just bullshit I never really knew. Anyway, he’s probably getting a bit old to do too much of that these days. But I’m sure he still thinks of himself as a babe-magnet.’

  ‘Hm. You don’t know what his relationship with Heather was, do you?’

  Ted chuckled knowingly. ‘You’re very transparent, Carole.’

  She reacted as if this was an insult. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Casually coming down here late morning, like you never normally do. Casually bringing the conversation round to the subject of a woman who’s just been murdered. Casually asking about her relationship with someone I know. You’re off on one of your investigations again, aren’t you?’

  Carole coloured. ‘I’m just intrigued. As everyone else in Fethering is. It happened right here on our doorstep. Go on, Ted, you can’t deny it. You’re intrigued too.’

  ‘No, I can’t deny it. We all want to know whodunit. But I think you want to know a bit more than the rest of us.’

  Carole could not fault the accuracy of his assessment. So, she just said, ‘All right, I’m not denying that either.’

  ‘You’re a bit of a Rottweiler when you get your teeth into something like this, aren’t you, Carole?’

  ‘Guilty as charged.’

  ‘You and Jude.’

  ‘Not always with Jude,’ came the frosty response. ‘I am capable of investigating things on my own.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you are.’

  ‘Go on then, Ted. What do you reckon the relationship was between Heather and KK?’

  The landlord shrugged. ‘Well, you know they met because she wanted him to give her singing lessons?’

  Carole nodded. ‘Is that something he’s done often, give singing lessons?’

  ‘I think he’s had an ad in the Fethering Observer for some time. How much take-up he’s got from it, I don’t know. Basically, KK’s always hard up. Being bad with money is another part of the rock god image. If he could have afforded it, KK would’ve been the sort to spend thousands on cocaine and driving sports cars into swimming pools. But he’s never had that kind of cash. And he’s never made much from his gigs. That Rubber Truncheon set-up; I think sometimes he was paying the pubs to let them perform there. And, having a pathological aversion to actually getting a proper job, KK will only allow himself to do stuff that’s music-related. Giving singing lessons, I guess, to his mind kind of qualifies.’

  ‘But it was strange the way Heather did the singing lessons.’

  ‘Howja mean?’

  ‘She kept them secret from her husband. When she went off to see KK, she told Leonard she was just going shopping.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. No reason why I should, mind.’

  ‘No. But the way Heather was behaving was exactly the way a wife would if she was having an affair.’

  ‘Oh, I see where you’re heading. Actually, I’ve seen where you’re heading for the last five minutes. You’re asking me if I know whether KK Rosser and Heather Mallett were having an affair.’

  ‘That’s exactly it.’

  ‘Well, the answer’s no.’

  ‘No, they weren’t having an affair?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t know whether or not they were having an affair.’

  ‘Oh.’ Carole sounded really deflated.

  Ted looked up as the door opened to admit a party of some dozen index-linked pensioners. ‘Business calls.’

  ‘Quickly, before you serve them. Do you have a phone number for KK?’

  ‘Sure.’ He scribbled it down on a menu pad and handed the sheet across to her. ‘Watch yourself, though, Carole. He’s a bit of a ladies’ man.’

  She blushed deeply, as the landlord chuckled and went along the bar to greet his new customers.

  Carole sat at a table with her Sauvignon Blanc. She was aware of her isolation and reminded herself that she never really had been a ‘pub person’. A third of the contents were still in the glass when she returned to High Tor.

  But it was still enough to give her a headache. She castigated herself for drinking so early in the day.

  While she was doing a healing session, Jude was very careful to keep the answering services on her landline and mobile silent. For what she was doing to work required total concentration. So, on the Wednesday afternoon, it wasn’t till after she’d finished treating a retired policewoman with long-term back pain that she picked up the message from the Rev. Bob Hinkley. She rang him straight away, as requested.

  ‘Oh, thank you so much, Jude, for getting back to me. I wanted to talk to you about what’s happened in the village … you know, since last weekend.’

  ‘Heather Mallett’s murder, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I do. It’s just … an event like that is bound to be a terrible shock, not only to those immediately involved, but to the wider community.’

  ‘Undoubtedly.’

  ‘And if the church can’t provide support to people at a time like this, then what is the church for?’

  Jude knew there were cynical answers available to this rhetorical question, but it was not in her nature to voice them.

  ‘I feel it’s a test of me, as a vicar, to provide what succour I can.’ Jude was getting the impression that Bob Hinkley regarded everything as a test of him, ‘as a vicar’.

  ‘I think people do know,’ said Jude soothingly, ‘that the church is there, as a source of support, a place they can turn to in time of need.’

  ‘They do perhaps know that in theory, but their track record for turning to the church in time of need is not great. I don’t feel that I am the first person they turn to. I mean, look at the size of the congregation in All Saints on a Sunday.’

  ‘Well, we do live in an increasingly secular age,’ Jude waffled reassuringly. ‘Traditional habits are changing, and people perhaps have different resources in times of trouble.’ She phrased the next bit carefully. ‘I’m sure the people who believe the church is there for them will turn to it.’

  ‘That’s not good enough,’ said the vicar sha
rply. ‘I feel I have to be more proactive than that. I have to go out into my flock to support them.’

  ‘I’m sure that won’t do any harm,’ said Jude.

  ‘Anyway, the reason I’m contacting you …’ She had been wondering when he would get to this point ‘… is that I believe you know Alice Mallett.’

  ‘Well, I’ve met her a few times. I’d hardly say I know her.’

  ‘You were the first person she came to see after she heard the news of her stepmother’s death.’

  Jude did not question how the vicar knew this. She had lived in Fethering long enough to know that no one could go anywhere there without their movements being observed. It was a constant source of amazement to her that some people managed to conduct extramarital affairs in the village.

  ‘Alice came to see me,’ she said, ‘to discuss something Heather had told me in confidence.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you could let me know what …?’ he fished.

  ‘No. I said, “in confidence”, and that’s what I meant.’

  ‘But now Heather’s dead, surely the situation is different and—’

  ‘In that particular respect, the situation has not changed.’

  Bob Hinkley sighed. ‘It’s so difficult to find out anything in this place. I did contact the police, and I told them it was important that I, as vicar, responsible for the whole parish, should be kept up to date with developments. They were very unhelpful.’

  Jude clucked sympathetically. She herself, on many occasions, had had cause to regret the unwillingness of the ‘proper authorities’ to share their findings with amateurs.

  ‘So, what you’re saying, Jude, is that you can’t give me an inside line to Alice Mallett?’

  ‘No. I can give you her mobile number if you like – you’ve probably got the landline number on the Shorelands Estate – but I can’t do more than that.’

  ‘I’m sure the poor girl must be in a terrible state …’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’

  ‘… and it’s just at such times that people need spiritual support, they need to know that people are thinking of them, that people are praying for them.’

  ‘Maybe,’ was the strongest affirmation of this view that Jude could come up with.

  There was a silence, then the vicar started on another approach. ‘Did you hear that Alice’s fiancé, Roddy, had disappeared?’

  ‘I did hear that, yes.’

  ‘Suspicious, don’t you think?’

  ‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’ She reckoned – though a considerable underestimation of the truth – that was only a white lie.

  ‘I feel so bad,’ said Bob despondently. ‘Saturday was such a happy day. So full of hope.’

  ‘I agree. I think we’re all feeling bad.’

  ‘I’m a solutions man myself,’ he confessed, ‘always have been. Where I worked before, in my previous employment, if there was a problem, I didn’t sit around thinking about it. I’ve never been a navel-gazer. I always took practical steps to improve the situation. I was proactive. Then I received the call to follow Christ and to further His work, and I tried to apply the same thinking to this job. And it just doesn’t work the same way. I keep setting up initiatives and … the energy just keeps slipping away.’

  ‘It’s difficult,’ Jude sympathized, ‘to get anything new happening in a place like Fethering.’

  ‘I’m not trying to introduce anything new! I’m trying to reacquaint people with something that’s been around, that has transformed the world, for over two thousand years. But I just don’t seem to be doing it right.’

  ‘Have the difficulties you’ve encountered,’ asked Jude gently, ‘had any effect on your faith?’

  ‘Have they weakened it, do you mean?’

  ‘Yes, exactly that.’

  ‘Good heavens, no! They’ve made it stronger. Let me tell you, if the early evangelists had let minor setbacks put them off, the Christian Church wouldn’t exist. No, Fethering is a challenge that has been set for me. God is testing His servant. And His servant will, in time, prove equal to the test.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ said Jude soothingly.

  Another silence. Then the vicar said, ‘The music for the wedding on Saturday was wonderful, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘It just shows, if everyone pulls together, if everyone makes an effort, anything can be achieved.’

  Jude nodded. She approved of the principle, though she had not always seen it work out in practice.

  ‘And I don’t suppose the experience of singing with the choir on such a splendid occasion made you think that you might like to participate on a more regular basis …?’ His words slowed down as he spoke them.

  ‘I’m sorry, no.’

  ‘No,’ he echoed, sounding disappointed. Jude was afraid that the Rev. Bob Hinkley was doomed always to be disappointed. ‘I wonder whether I’ll still have a church choir six months from now.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope so.’

  ‘So do I. But …’ His tone grew angry. ‘Heather starting up the pub choir with that layabout guitarist was a real body blow to me. Bet Harrison, who’d only just joined us, left straight away. Which meant that her son Rory went too. And at the wedding, Heather implied she might be doing the same thing. She made me so furious when she said that! She was deliberately trying to undermine everything that I was trying to set up for the parish!’

  Jude was surprised by the vehemence of his anger. Surely, the animus he felt against Heather Mallett wasn’t sufficient for him to have killed her …? It couldn’t be a case of ‘the vicar dunit’ … could it?

  Jude, as a shrewd observer of human psychology, knew that stranger things had happened.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Friend of Jude’s.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Jude from the Crown & Anchor Choir.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘We met Monday before last. In the pub. After your choir session. My name’s Carole.’

  ‘OK.’ KK Rosser still didn’t sound convinced he knew who was at the other end of the line.

  ‘I was ringing about Heather Mallett’s death.’

  He groaned. ‘You and everyone else.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The bloody cops have been pestering me like I was a paedophile. And most of the pub choir lot have been on to me.’

  ‘Oh, has Jude?’ asked Carole, fearful that her friend might be sharing with others the secrets she was withholding from her.

  ‘No, she’s one of the few that hasn’t. They’re all the same, pretending to share condolences, but in fact just trying to find out if I know any more about the subject than they do. Everyone round here’s so bloody nosy. One of the big drawbacks of country life. Are you calling on the same mission?’

  Carole hotly denied the truth of his assessment. ‘I would like to meet up and talk to you, though.’

  ‘About Heather?’

  ‘Well, yes, but—’

  ‘When?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘As soon as possible.’

  He backed off. ‘Bit tricky today. I’m having a new amp delivered, ordered it from Gear4music. Means I’ll have to stay in the flat until it arrives.’

  Whether this was true, or just a device to put her off, KK was clearly taken aback when Carole said, ‘That’s not a problem. I could come to your place.’

  As she got into her immaculately clean Renault, she remembered Ted Crisp’s warning about KK Rosser. But Carole was undaunted. She reckoned she could deal with ‘ladies’ men’. And, anyway, she told herself, not even the most desperate ‘ladies’ man’ wasn’t going to look at her more than once.

  Carole didn’t know exactly what she was expecting to be the habitat of an itinerant musician who embraced the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, but it certainly wasn’t a first-floor flat in a Victorian terrace, whose exterior was painted in smart wedding-cake white. Worthing was full of surprises. Despite its image as a dowdy, bungaloid ‘God’s waiting room’,
there were little pockets of architectural splendour.

  KK buzzed her in on the entryphone. When she got up to the landing, he had already opened the door for her. He was in his uniform denim, and he looked at her with a mixture of defiance, curiosity, and something else which might have been fear.

  He stood back for her to enter the narrow hall and gestured towards the sitting room. She had been anticipating hippy chaos but found the level of tidiness to be almost up to High Tor standards. The flat’s ownership was defined by a row of six guitars fixed neatly on the wall which faced the broad front window. There was a smell in the air of recent smoking, not quite like tobacco, sweeter and more herbal.

  KK pointed her towards a sofa, and made a desultory offer of tea or coffee, which she refused. Then he draped himself over a chair with one leg crooked across the arm, looking almost too elaborately casual. ‘So, what’s all this about?’ he asked.

  ‘As I said on the phone, it’s about Heather’s death.’

  ‘What about her death, and why is it any business of yours?’

  Carole had thought, during the drive from Fethering, how she might answer this question, so she produced her prepared reply. ‘It’s just, there’s a lot of malicious and uninformed talk about the murder going around Fethering, and I feel I have a community duty to put a stop to it.’

  Such a statement might have been plausible coming from the mouth of the Rev. Bob Hinkley, but no one who knew Carole would have thought it genuine coming from her. Using ‘community’ in a positive sense was just not something Carole Seddon did. She reckoned the word was the kiss of death to any project.

  KK Rosser, though, didn’t know her, and took her words at face value. Not that that stopped him from sounding suspicious. ‘Very admirable,’ he said, before adding ironically, ‘what lucky dudes we’d be if everyone else showed the same level of public-spiritedness. “Community duty”, eh? Anyway, this “malicious and uninformed talk” you were on about … presumably it concerns me?’

  ‘A lot of it, yes,’ Carole replied. She had no basis for saying this, really. Her isolation from much of the Fethering ‘community’ meant she was out of the loop on a great deal of village gossip.