Small Town Suspicions (Some Very English Murders Book 3) (12 page)

“Come up here.” He led her
up a bank that divided the road from a dyke. “Aha! I had hoped to spot
kingfishers, but there is something almost as good. In those rushes, there. Do
you see it?”

Penny peered until the grey
statue made sense to her vision. “Oh, a heron!”

“A hernshaw. Yes, a heron. I
always think they look like little wizards, cloaked and waiting…”

“You poet, you.”

“There he goes.”

They waited until the great
bird had slowly flapped away. A few hundred yards along, there were two swans
bobbing idly in the water. A green flash shot past, and she jumped.

“Dragonfly,” Drew said.
“There.”

Once she knew what to look
for, the air was alive with things. Now she knew why Drew had stopped. All the
Fens’ empty nothing was positively teeming with life, but you couldn’t see it
from a car window.

“Well, let’s get on,” Drew
said at last. “Ready to meet Carl Fredericks?”

“Yes. I hope he’s in.”

* * * *

He was in.

They drove into a large,
neat courtyard, bounded on three and a half sides by large sheds with brick
walls and corrugated iron roofs. One of the sheds had its roller shutter open,
and a small white van was backed up to it. There was a man with thinning brown
hair loading plastic trays into the back of it, and he looked up as he heard
their vehicle approach.

Penny wiped her palms on her
trousers, and Drew caught the nervous movement. “Are you okay?” he asked. “I
thought you were used to all this.”

“It’s always gone wrong
before,” she pointed out.

The man was walking towards
them now, so they got out of the car. Drew stayed back, leaning against the
bonnet, and Penny forced herself forward. She channelled all her confidence,
remembering that she had once arm-wrestled a Russian oligarch in a nightclub in
St Petersburg.

She had lost, but she’d won
some respect.

Hopefully, this wouldn’t
come to arm-wrestling
, she thought.
She thrust out her hand. “Hi! I’m Penny May.”

“Now then,” he said, his
Lincolnshire accent adding in a few extra vowels. “What can I do for you?”

“Are you Carl Fredericks?”

“Ar. I am.”

She bit back her smile at
his piratical assertion. “I’m pleased to meet you. I understand you knew Alec
Goodwin?”

“Ar.” Carl folded his arms
but he kept his smile on his face.
That was odd. It should have faded by
now.
“Can I ask what capacity you’re acting in?”

It was a tricky question to
answer. She was only unofficially linked to the police, after all, and they
would deny all knowledge if she got herself into bother. She hated to lie, but
it didn’t harm to fudge the truth a little. She said, brightly, “I’m involved
in Upper Glenfield’s arts and crafts scene and Alec was working with us on the
Sculpture Trail.”

Carl’s facial expression was
tight and fixed. He seemed to realise this, and rubbed at his cheeks. Finally
his smile faded. “And what has the Sculpture Trail to do with me?” he said.
“I’m sorry if that sounds rude. But…”

He tailed off. Penny decided
to capitalise on his uncertainty, and just go for the steamroller option. She
said, “Of course, of course, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with
us.”
You have no choice
, she thought.
I shall simply act as if you’ve
already agreed.
“As you and Alec were old friends, we hoped you could offer
some insight into his art and work and character.” A blast of inspiration hit
out of nowhere. “We – the residents of Upper Glenfield – are so grateful to the
work he did in our community and the recognition he brought that we intend to
create a fitting memorial to the man, and we were hoping you might offer some
background to his life before he came to Glenfield.” She didn’t dare look
around at Drew. His mouth would be hanging open. He’d never seen her in full
flow; her verbal flights of fancy had got her out of trouble in every continent
in the world.

“And you’re asking
me,”
he said, somewhat flatly. There was no hint of a smile now.

“Yes. You were friends,
weren’t you…?”

“Ar. Yes. Yes!” Carl forced
a new and fake grin onto his face, and brushed his hands together as if he’d
been doing something messy. “We were. But, you see, I don’t think I can help
you. I had heard of his death. It do sound tragic and I don’t wish ill on no
one, but we weren’t friends much lately, really, you know, you see?”

In amongst the flim-flam,
Penny hunted for real information. “Had you lost touch?”

He nodded furiously. “We
had, we had. Ar. Yes, we had.”

“What a shame. He used to be
a court artist, didn’t he?”

“Ar. He did.”

“And have you always worked
in the bulb business?”

“Oh, I started up about
twenty-five years ago. Bit unusual really, not being born into it. I knew I
wanted to be in business, and this came along, as an opportunity, like. So I
took it.”

“I admire that,” Penny said.
“That solid sense of entrepreneurship. Well done. And so you and Alec lost
touch and he never got to see all your success, then? Or did he? When was the
last time that you did meet?”

He had been relaxing but her
move into more questioning caught him off guard. “I, er, well. You know, it is
funny you should ask, really. He rang me up, he did, not so long back. Um,
Friday gone, it was.”

“Oh! He just got in touch,
out of the blue?”

He was nodding, then shaking
his head, then nodding again. “Yes, ar, yes. But not to speak to me, though, no.
He was after Mandy, really.”

“Mandy?” Penny said. The
name nagged at her. She’d heard of a Mandy recently.
Where, who?

Carl turned away. “It’s all
in the past. Mandy, my ex-wife. You’ll understand if I don’t want to talk about
it. I’m sorry I can’t be of any help. I don’t think I’m the man you’re looking
for, but good luck and all that, with the memorial. To be honest, I’m pretty
surprised about that. I didn’t reckon he were a community sort of man, living
like he did.”

Mandy.
Amanda.
Penny
couldn’t let it lie, not now. “Oh, he was still something of a local celebrity.
Quite well-known, really. Your ex-wife, Mandy … does she live around here?”

“That’s what he wanted to
know. Nah, she’s in Lincoln.”

“So you’re still in touch
with her? That’s so good, you know, when divorces can be amicable…”

The look that Carl shot her
was not one of amity. “We ain’t in touch. Nah.”

“Do you have her address or
anything? Perhaps she can help us with Alec and the memorial.”

That made Carl laugh in a
dry and unsettling way. “I doubt it. Ar, doubt it.” He swore and wrinkled his
nose. “Nah, I don’t have her details. Look her up yourself.”

“Mandy Fredericks…” Penny
said, angling.

He responded almost
automatically. “Jones. She went back to Jones.”

And that was why they
couldn’t find Amanda Fredericks listed anyway.
She wanted to punch the air. “Thank you so much.
You’ve been very helpful.”

He shrugged. “Nah, I ain’t,
but that’s how it goes. Good luck with the memorial thing. I suppose he
probably was the most exciting thing to have happened in Upper Glenfield.”

“Do you know it?”

He shook his head. “I been
through it. Just another nothing town in the middle of nowhere. Take care,
now.”

He waved and half-turned,
and she knew it was time to go before she overstepped the mark and increased
his suspicion. Drew slipped into the driver’s seat and she was just opening the
passenger door when Carl surprised her by speaking again.

 “Seeing as you live there,
and that, you might have heard whether his death was accidental or not. Do you
know?”

It had been in the regional
papers, but maybe he didn’t read them. “They aren’t one hundred per cent sure
but they are currently treating it as suspicious.”

“Suspicious? What, like
murder?”

She nodded, and watched his
face carefully. He looked genuinely shocked. “Yes, like murder,” she said. And,
because it had been in the paper too, she added, “Poisoned.”

He actually gasped, and
swore again. “No way. What with?”

“They don’t know yet. But
they will find out, I’m sure.”

“Ar, no doubt, no doubt. So
who could have done it, though? Murder’s got to have suspects, ain’t it?”

“Well,” she said, deciding
on an impetuous risk, “He spoke to you on Friday, didn’t he?”

“Nah, nah, it ain’t me you
should be thinking of there. Remember he wanted to speak to
her.
So you
wanna be looking there. Had he annoyed anyone in the town, though?”

She couldn’t now say that he
had kept himself to himself, after having claimed he was an active pillar of the
community. So she said, “Hmm, no, not really. Anyway, thank you again for your
time. Good luck with your, um, bulbs.”

“Right. Ar. Thanks.”

She slid into the passenger
seat and turned to smile broadly at Drew. “Let’s go.”

They didn’t discuss it until
they had driven about a mile. Penny let her eyes unfocus as the landscape
blurred past. “He was pretty cagey, don’t you think?”

“Ar,” he said, and she
laughed at his imitation.

“And now we know that Amanda
Fredericks is Mandy Jones. That will help.”

“Ar. Sorry, yes. And what
about that stuff about not having had anything to do with Alec lately?”

“Well, they’d only spoken on
the phone.”

Drew shook his head. “I
don’t believe that,” he said. “Because of when he said he was surprised at him
being a ‘community sort of man’ because of ‘living like he did’. How did he
know how Alec lived?”

“Oh. You’re right,” Penny
said. She let her eyes close and replayed the whole conversation with Carl. “He
knew a lot more than he was saying, didn’t he?”

The driving and the knock-on
effect of her late night conspired against Penny and she awoke with a start
when the car engine died.

“Aroughahh,” she mumbled.
“Oh.”

“Good evening, sleepy head,”
Drew said. “You were away with the fairies there.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s gone five. I took the
long way home because you looked so peaceful there, and your snoring was hardly
distracting me from the road at all.”

“I don’t snore.”

He laughed. “It must be like
sweating, then. Men perspire and women merely glow? Men snore and women simply
… loudly snuffle. Anyway. Here we are. Thank you for asking me to come along. I
want to say that I was pretty impressed at how you handled him. You do have a
knack. I can see why Cath asked you to get involved.”

She was inordinately pleased
at his praise. “Thank you, and thanks for coming with me.”

“It’s all right. It was an
adventure. Now, get yourself inside and if I were you, I would go straight to
bed.”

* * * *

She didn’t go to bed, of
course. As soon as she let herself in, she was besieged by both Kali and
Francine. Kali wanted her belly rubbing, and Francine wanted every detail about
her meeting with Carl Fredericks – and her journey with Drew.

“He showed me a heron,”
Penny said.

“What else did you do?”

“We talked.”

“What
else
did you
do?”

Penny sighed with
exasperation. “It’s not like that.”

“But you want it to be.”

“Sometimes I do, and
sometimes I don’t. Anyway, listen. You know we couldn’t find out about Amanda
Fredericks, except that she’d gone to prison twenty years ago? She’s divorced
now, and called Mandy Jones.”

“Excellent!” Francine picked
up her coat from the back of the sofa. “It’s starting to come together. Right.
Are you ready, or do you want to eat first?”

“Ready for what?”

“Well, you said yesterday
that a trip was on the cards. Carl Fredericks, and Barry Neville. You’ve been
to see Carl, so now let’s go and see Barry.”

“Now?”

“Well, like I said, we
could
eat first…”

Penny saw that Francine was
too excited. She had probably been daydreaming about it all day while Penny was
out.

She conceded defeat, and said,
“Let me get a sweatshirt to put on. I’ll be ready in a moment. Shall we walk
down or do you want to drive?”

“Let’s walk.”

* * * *

It was a pleasant evening.
Francine chattered as they walked.

“Steve is totally changing
everything that Alec had planned for the Sculpture Trail, apparently,” she
said. “I got talking to that woman that you know, Mary. She asked after you, by
the way.”