The Pandemic Plot

by Scott Mariani

  ‘What can I do for you, officer?’ the barman asked.

  Ben put away the warrant card, took out his phone and brought up the mugshot image that he’d lifted from Carter Duggan’s website earlier that day. Jude had said the man looked like a nasty piece of work, and he hadn’t been entirely wrong: the cold eyes, the high patrician brow, the hooked nose and thin lips all hinted at a tough and arrogant kind of customer.

  ‘I’m making inquiries about whether this man visited the area within the last month or so,’ Ben explained. ‘We have reason to believe that he visited this pub, possibly to meet someone. I’m wondering if you or any of your staff might remember having seen him?’

  The barman scrutinised Duggan’s picture and his female colleague stepped closer to look, cocking her head. ‘I’m pretty good at faces but I don’t recognise him,’ she said. ‘Then again I’m only here three days a week so I could’ve not been working that day. What about you, Harry?’

  Harry seemed keen to help and he was staring holes in Ben’s phone screen, but after a long pause he shook his head. ‘I can’t say for sure. I might have seen him, but … You don’t have any idea when we’re talking about?’

  ‘I don’t have a specific date,’ Ben said, feeling his heart beginning to sink. Maybe this had been too much of a long shot, after all.

  ‘Trixie might know,’ the woman suggested brightly. ‘She’s here almost every hour God sends. Hang on.’ She disappeared through a door behind the bar, calling, ‘Hey, Trixie, got a moment?’

  Trixie emerged soon afterwards, a kitchen apron strapped around her ample middle. She had short, spiky black hair, heavy eye makeup and a ring through her nose. She gave Ben a lingering look that turned to one of surprise when told that he was a police detective. ‘It wasn’t me, I swear,’ she joked, putting up her hands. ‘I had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘I’ll let you off that one, Trixie,’ Ben said. ‘All I want to know is whether anyone here at the Man O’War might have seen this man during the last few weeks.’

  ‘What’s he done?’ Trixie asked, frowning at Duggan’s picture.

  ‘Not much,’ Ben replied. ‘He’s dead. This is a murder inquiry, so anything you can tell me would be much appreciated.’

  ‘No shit,’ Trixie breathed. ‘Ugly sort of dude, wasn’t he? We get a lot of ugly dudes in here. I serve the tables six days a week, so I should know.’ Her eyes narrowed to thin white slits within the pools of black makeup. ‘Wait a minute. I know what’s throwing me off. Did he have a beard?’

  ‘Everybody’s got a sodding beard these days,’ the red-haired barmaid muttered. ‘Disgusting.’

  ‘Takes me back to the seventies,’ Harry said, pulling a pint for a customer who’d come up to the bar. ‘We were a hairy bunch back then. When I still had hair.’ Ben was thrown by Trixie’s question, because he had no idea whether Duggan had had a beard at the time of his death or not. ‘He might have had,’ was all he could reply. The master detective at work.

  Trixie tapped at the phone screen with a fingertip. ‘Yeah, yeah, he had a big old straggly face fungus like a pirate captain or something. Fit right in with the decor in this place. American guy, yeah?’

  With that, Ben felt a tingle of excitement and knew that Trixie was on the right track. ‘Canadian.’

  ‘Whatever. They all sound the same to me. He was here Wednesday before last. May fifth. About twenty past eight in the evening, until around nine-thirty.’

  Which seemed to Ben like an incredibly pinpointed answer to arrive at, from zero information just moments earlier. He asked, ‘Are you sure?’

  Trixie nodded. ‘Uh-huh. The night we had the big birthday party going on. Table three. Jack Curran’s fiftieth.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Harry remembered, now finished with his customer and putting the money in the register. ‘I wasn’t here,’ their red-haired colleague commented, helpfully.

  ‘Lucky you,’ Trixie said. ‘We were run off our bloody feet. Right rowdy lot, they were. That’s how I remember it, because the Yank pirate captain and his buddy made a big deal about all the noise the party were making, and moved to the window table over there’ – pointing – ‘so’s they could hear themselves talk. Jack Curran called them a couple of antisocial such-and-suches. Kept yelling for them to come and join the fun. And what a lot of fun they had, too. They smashed about fifty glasses that night.’

  ‘Right, right,’ Harry said. ‘It’s all coming back to me now. I remember the guy.’

  ‘What can you tell me about the person he was with?’ Ben asked, hoping that might be coming back, too. Apparently not, because Harry looked blank. Trixie shrugged and said, ‘Just a guy. Oldish, nothing I could really tell you. He might’ve been in here before, or he might not.’

  Ben pointed up at the CCTV security camera that was watching them from above the bar. He’d noticed more of them on his way in, positioned around the interior and exterior of the building. Aside from the fact that he was currently being filmed in the criminal act of impersonating a police officer, which wasn’t an ideal arrangement, the damn things might be of some use now that Trixie had helped him to narrow down their time window. He asked, ‘How long do you keep your CCTV security footage?’

  ‘Law says we have to keep it stored for thirty days,’ Harry said.

  Trixie giggled. ‘Even the cops don’t know the law.’

  Busted. ‘I’m not that kind of cop,’ Ben said.

  ‘I’ll say,’ she replied suggestively.

  ‘I’d like to view it, if I may.’

  Harry shrugged. ‘Sure, no problem. Come into the office. Molly, can you cover for me for a few minutes?’ he asked the red-haired barmaid.

  ‘Do you need me?’ Trixie asked, hopeful.

  ‘You’ve been a great help, Trixie,’ Ben told her. ‘I wouldn’t want to keep you from your job.’

  ‘Do I get, like, a medal or something?’

  ‘Can’t do that, but I promise never to arrest you for any crime, no matter how heinous.’

  ‘Cool.’

  Ben went through behind the bar and followed Harry into a little backroom with a cluttered desk, a row of filing cabinets and a computer terminal on a table. He was glad that he didn’t have to be alone in the office with Trixie. A split-screen video monitor showed the live recorded images from the cameras, in real time. ‘The recordings are all kept on that hard drive,’ Harry explained, pointing at a black box plugged into the back of the computer. ‘Pull up a chair, Inspector. Shouldn’t take me long to find the footage you’re looking for.’

  Harry clicked here and there, opened up a program and hovered over the keyboard as an empty search box popped up. ‘What day was it again?’

  ‘May fifth, sometime after eight p.m.,’ Ben reminded him.

  ‘Got it.’ Harry rattled more keys, clicked and tapped again, and said, ‘Okay, here we are.’ He hit a play button and the computer lit up with a similar version of the split-screen image on the other monitor, showing various views of the pub’s interior and exterior. One covered the car park and beer garden, another monitored the front entrance. The inside of the pub and the corridor leading to the toilets were visible from different angles. If there were blind spots, they were minimal. A little time and date counter in the bottom corner read May 5, 8 p.m. Harry asked, ‘You want me to zoom in on any particular screen?’

  Ben pulled his chair closer. ‘No, keep them all open for the moment.’

  At that time of the evening, it seemed that neither Carter Duggan nor his unknown friend had yet arrived. The car park outside was still relatively empty. Inside, Ben could see Trixie and another waitress scurrying about serving food to some diners and preparing a large table that he guessed was for the birthday party.

  He asked Harry if he could fast-forward the footage. At a click of a mouse the time counter started to run at quadruple speed. Trixie and the other waitress became super-animated figures, zipping about like ants. At 8.07, cars began to hurtle into the car park and the first of the bir
thday party arrivals came pouring through the door, crowded the bar and gathered around their table. At nine minutes past, a lone male figure, tall, bearded, broad-shouldered, wearing a tweed sports jacket, appeared on the front door monitor, walking up towards the pub. As he pushed inside he vanished momentarily and then reappeared on the monitors covering the lounge bar area. Ben said to Harry, ‘Bring it back to normal speed.’

  No question about it, the solitary new arrival was a hairier version of the same Carter Duggan whose image Ben had on his phone. Moving normally now, Duggan paused inside the door, checked his watch and glanced around him as though looking for someone; then went to the bar, ordered a pint of beer and made his way back across to an empty table away from the growing crowd of partyers. Ben pointed to the section of the monitor with the best view of Duggan’s table and asked Harry if he could zoom in on that screen.

  Duggan settled in place and quietly sipped his beer, glancing now and again at his watch and keeping an eye on the door. More people were turning up now, mostly in twos and threes, and the place was filling. At 8.12, the door swung open once more and this time another man entered on his own. As Duggan had done, he paused near the doorway, looked around, and his gaze landed on Duggan, who had seen him come in and half-rose to his feet, waving. The man walked over to the table and they shook hands, a little stiffly and formally, not like friends but rather two people who had never met in person before.

  Duggan’s contact was an older man, slightly built with receding grey hair. He wore a neat grey suit and looked fairly affluent. After a brief detour via the bar, the pair settled at their table. The older man pointed at Duggan’s pocket and seemed to say something that Duggan was unhappy about. The Canadian paused a beat, then took out his phone and laid it on the table. The older man picked it up as though checking it, then left it lying between them as they fell into deep conversation.

  Behind them, the party was getting into full swing, centred around its boisterous birthday boy, a red-faced loudmouth who was waving his beer around and looked like he was having a great time. Duggan shot the party table a few disgruntled looks as the volume rose, and after a few more minutes he broke off his conversation and motioned towards the window seat as though suggesting to his contact that they should move there. It was just as Trixie had described. Once reseated further from the partyers, their quiet, private conversation resumed. The older man seemed to be doing much of the talking. Who was he, and what were he and Duggan talking about?

  Ben asked Harry to fast-forward again. The time counter wound onwards at high speed. Nine o’clock came and went. The levels in the men’s glasses were dropping, Duggan’s more slowly than his companion’s. At 9.03 p.m. the older man stood up and returned to the bar for a refill. While he was gone, Duggan reached across the table, slid a beer mat off its edge and into his lap, whipped a pen from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket and was seen to scribble something on the mat.

  Bingo.

  Ben asked Harry to replay that moment at normal speed. As the older man returned from the bar with his second drink, Duggan quickly slipped the beer mat into his pocket.

  ‘Do you know him?’ Ben asked, pointing at the older man.

  ‘I can’t say that I do,’ Harry said, looking doubtful. ‘He’s not exactly what you’d call distinctive looking, is he?’

  Just then the office door opened and Molly, the red-haired barmaid, said, ‘Harry, the Theakston keg needs changing. I can’t get the gas valve thing open.’

  ‘I’ll be there in a moment.’ Harry looked nervously at Ben. ‘I need to take care of this.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Ben replied. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’ Which was true enough, though what had been gained from it was virtually nil. He still had no idea why Carter Duggan had come here to meet the older man, the purpose of their conversation and the meaning of what Duggan had written on the beer mat. Apart from that, it had been a highly successful mission.

  ‘Sorry we couldn’t do more for you, Inspector.’ Harry must have been able to see the disappointment on his face. Ben stood up from his chair and was about to reply when Molly happened to glance across at the computer monitor; something caught her eye and she pointed and said, ‘Hey, that’s Joe.’

  A superbright magnesium flare erupted in pyrotechnic splendour in Ben’s mind. He said, ‘Joe?’

  She nodded casually. ‘Uh-huh. Joe Brewster.’ She was completely sure of it, not a shred of doubt in her eyes. ‘I’ve not seen him in the pub before, but I know him. My mum used to work in his shop.’

  Ben asked, ‘What shop is that?’

  ‘The little antique book place in town. It’s right on the High Street. You can’t miss it.’ Then Molly frowned, suddenly remembering who Ben was, or at any rate who he was pretending to be. ‘Is Joe in trouble?’

  Ben smiled and shook his head. ‘Not at all. I was just eliminating a lead in my inquiry. Routine stuff, happens all the time. Mr Brewster’s got nothing at all to worry about, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ Molly replied, the frown melting.

  ‘I’d better go and get this keg sorted out,’ Harry said. ‘Is there anything else we can do for you, officer?’

  ‘As a matter of fact there is,’ Ben said. ‘Can you grill me a steak, medium rare, with chips, a couple of beers and a double shot of your best single malt scotch?’

  Chapter 27

  Within hours of the fatal stabbing of the inmate whose name had now emerged as Jimmy Leggitt, HMP Bullingdon Prison was in an uproar. The governor and her staff flew aggressively into action, making all the expected sabre-rattling media statements in which they vowed to weed out the perpetrators and tighten up security, threatening a total lockdown of the facility pending a major investigation. There were cell searches for weapons, grillings and interrogations of the usual suspects, and the rumour mill went into overdrive.

  Jude was aware of the curious way Big Dave kept looking at him, as though secretly wondering whether he knew more than he was letting on. ‘You’re kind of quiet,’ he commented during dinner that evening.

  ‘I’m just feeling a bit tired,’ Jude said. ‘This place gets me down.’ As if that even needed mentioning.

  ‘Yeah, well, better get used to it, pal, ’cause you’re gonna be here for a good while yet,’ Dave told him, shovelling food. Jude said no more. He’d noticed that Luan Copja and his men were absent from the mess hall.

  After dinner they had fifteen minutes before the 7 p.m. twelve-hour lock-up. Dave declared that he was going for a walk and had to see someone about something. Jude wandered back to the cell alone, hopped up onto his bunk and was getting immersed in the much-thumbed Clive Cussler thriller he’d borrowed from the prison library when the door opened. ‘Enjoy your evening stroll?’ he asked, without looking up from his book.

  ‘Hey, my friend,’ said a deep, rumbling, heavily accented voice that didn’t belong to big Dave. Jude laid down his book and glanced around, startled, but somehow he wasn’t too surprised to see Luan Copja standing in the cell doorway, flanked by two of his henchmen: the one who’d done the dirty on Jimmy Leggitt and the one who’d whisked Jude away from the scene. Jude wondered if the third one was somewhere outside, keeping Big Dave at bay – because something told him that Copja was here for a private conversation. The Albanian was smiling and looked relaxed, but there was a hard gleam in his eye.

  ‘Been talking to people about you,’ Copja said.

  ‘I hardly know anyone here,’ Jude replied.

  ‘But they know you. I heard you had a problem with some asshole.’

  Jude shrugged. ‘Not really.’

  ‘The guy with the one ear,’ one of Copja’s henchmen said, pointing to the side of his own head. ‘Name is Lowman. Mickey Lowman. He talks too much. Been going around telling folks he made you piss your pants and cry like a baby.’

  ‘He’s full of shit,’ Jude said defensively. ‘I can look after myself.’

  Copja grinned. �
�Sure you can. Sure. But we can all look after each other too, right? That’s what friends are for, no? And you and me are friends now. You do something for me, I do something for you.’

  ‘I’m not asking for anything from you,’ Jude said.

  ‘You are proud,’ Copja said. ‘I like that.’

  Jude sensed they were building up to something. Then out it came. The other henchman, the knife killer, looked penetratingly at him and said, ‘You don’t like it here, right?’

  Which seemed like the strangest question for one prison inmate to ask another. Jude quipped back, ‘Are you kidding? I’m having the time of my life. After the court sets me free, I was thinking maybe I’ll ask to stay on.’

  The crime boss thought that was hilarious. He reached out a fist the size of a pineapple and thumped Jude’s shoulder so hard it would leave a bruise. ‘You’re a funny guy.’ But his knife killer henchman went on looking at him, unsmiling. ‘You could always leave. Would you like that?’

  ‘Sure,’ Jude replied. ‘I’m working on getting out of here just as soon as I can.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Copja said, suddenly serious again. ‘How do you think you will do that?’

  ‘Oh, I have a master plan,’ Jude told him.

  ‘You hear that, boys? He has a plan.’ Copja tapped the side of his nose. ‘Plan is good, my friend. But you got to plan it right.’ Then he winked at Jude. ‘See you around.’

  With that, the three of them turned and walked off. Jude let out a long breath, leaned back down on his bunk and thought, ‘What the hell was that all about?’

  Chapter 28

  Feeling invigorated with half a pound of grilled steak inside him and the pleasant burn of the whisky on his lips, Ben left the Man O’War shortly after ten-thirty and drove around Hunstanton. Passing down High Street he spotted the tiny little shop, sandwiched between a jewellery store and a coffee bar, with a retro painted sign saying BREWSTER’S ANTIQUARIAN BOOKS. The windows were shuttered for the night and there was nothing Ben could do until morning. He drove on until he found a hotel, a grand old house that was just a two-minute walk from the beach and had vacancies.