The Poisoning in the Pub (11 page)

From somewhere on the seaward side of the pub came the sound of running footsteps departing across the shingle at the top of the beach.

The door to the kitchen was open, letting out a very white rectangle of light on to the rough dune grass. Approaching, Carole and Jude saw there was someone standing in the doorway. As he turned
to rush inside, they saw the anguish on Ed Pollack’s face. And the blood spattered down the front of his white chef’s jacket.

Unblocked by his shadow, the shaft of light was stronger still. It illuminated a small body lying on its back.

The T-shirt retained its newly purchased creases, but some of the white letters of ‘Fancy a Poke?’ were now red. From Ray’s still chest protruded the white handle of a kitchen
knife.

Carole Seddon was faced with an ethical dilemma which challenged everything she had accepted as gospel when she worked in the Home Office. She and Jude had discovered
Ray’s body. They were possibly the first people to discover Ray’s body. And as such, they had a duty to tell the police what they had seen.

On the other hand, part of her – a part encouraged into unethical behaviour by Jude, who didn’t suffer from such niceties of conscience – didn’t want to tell the police
anything. This part of her produced the very convincing, but casuistic, argument that the police had got quite enough on their plates with their investigation into Ray’s death. They
didn’t need the interference of two middle-aged women. If someone who’d seen them at the Crown and Anchor had suggested the police should interview them, then that would be different.
In those circumstances they would of course cooperate. But she and Jude didn’t want to be responsible for adding to the workload of the investigating officers.

Carole felt considerably relieved – and rather virtuous – when she had reached this conclusion.

When she and Jude discussed what they had witnessed that evening, they found that at every turn they faced unanswered questions.

Where had the bikers come from? Where did they go back to after their getaway across the dunes of Fethering Beach? Come to that, who was in the Smart car that escaped by the same route?

But the most important question of all was: who had killed Ray?

From circumstantial evidence, the obvious conclusion was that Ed Pollack was the perpetrator. The knife was from his kitchen. They had seen him covered in blood. The easy solution would appear
to be that Ed Pollack had done it. But surely that couldn’t be true? For a start, what motive did the chef have?

Carole and Jude both had the feeling that the murder was part of a bigger campaign, a campaign that was being waged against the landlord of the Crown and Anchor.

Ted Crisp looked out of place in the Seaview Café. In fact, it struck Carole for the first time, he looked out of place everywhere except behind the counter of his pub.
That, she suddenly realized, had been one of the problems with their brief relationship. Ted felt awkward going to restaurants for meals, he’d always rather be at his home base, but sitting
at the bar of the Crown and Anchor had never been Carole Seddon’s idea of an evening out. Which was one of the many reasons why the affair was doomed to failure.

He just didn’t look right, though, sitting in a Fethering Beach café whose frontage opened on to the shingle and where hordes of holidaymakers queued up for tea, burgers and ice
cream. Amid all the tanned and sunburnt skin on display, Ted Crisp had a prisoner’s pallor. But then he never did go outside the pub much. Whether entirely true or not, it was his proud boast
that he’d never before set foot on Fethering Beach. And it was only twenty yards from the front of the Crown and Anchor.

But Ted Crisp couldn’t be at his home base now. The whole of the pub, including his flat upstairs, the area for the outside tables and the car park, was now a crime scene.

It was the Tuesday, and the police showed no signs of moving on their collection of white cars and vans around the Crown and Anchor. The area behind the kitchen where Ray’s body had been
found was still shrouded by a white tent-like structure, and there was police tape everywhere. Fethering opinion was that the forensic team had had plenty of time to search every nook and cranny of
the place, and that their continued presence meant that they had found ‘something very suspicious’. Old prejudices surfaced in conversations outside the High Street shops. The people
who weren’t ‘pub people’ shared the views of Greville Tilbrook. They had never really taken to Ted Crisp. He was scruffy and was automatically assigned the role of an alcoholic.
Publicans drank, everyone knew that. Then again, his manners were a bit rough. And, though he was welcoming enough – in his own way – to visitors to the pub, he never did anything to
help the wider community of Fethering. He wasn’t ‘part of the village’.

Add to all that the fact that his bar manager was an immigrant . . . Polish . . . Some of their pilots were very helpful to us during the war, but . . . well, they were foreign. Someone Polish
couldn’t be expected to understand the fine nuances of society in a place like Fethering.

Ted Crisp looked as if he’d personally heard and suffered from all of these slights and taunts. Carole had never seen him so down.

It was the first time they’d met since the confused ending of the Sunday night. And she’d had some difficulty tracking him down. The Crown and Anchor telephone had been answered by
an anonymous policewoman, whose brief was clearly to give out no information about anything. And Carole had got no reply from Ted’s mobile. But then Jude had made contact with Zosia, and it
was through the Polish girl they had found out that Ted Crisp was staying at the Travelodge up on the Fedborough bypass, ‘with a bottle of Famous Grouse’. Messages left there had either
not been passed on to Ted or ignored by him, and eventually on the Tuesday Carole had decided she would drive to the Travelodge and force him to talk to her. Jude was busy that morning with a
healing appointment for a woman with a dodgy hip, otherwise she would have gone along too.

Ted Crisp had taken a while to answer the phone call from reception, and only grudgingly agreed to come down and see Carole. He had quickly vetoed her suggestion that she should come up to his
room. Maybe too many empty whisky bottles lying around?

He had looked pretty rough when he finally emerged into the dispiriting foyer. He said he didn’t want to go out anywhere, but was in such a diminished state that he put up no resistance
when Carole virtually frogmarched him out to her neat little Renault. And he raised only token resistance when she said she was going to take him to the Seaview Café.

Once they were settled down with cups of black coffee, Carole’s first question was: ‘Presumably you’ve talked to the police?’

‘And how. Talked to them into the small hours of Monday morning.’

‘At the station?’

‘No, in the pub. Then about four in the morning they told me to leave. I asked if I could go up to the flat and get some clothes and stuff, but they said no, the whole place was a crime
scene. They wouldn’t even let me go up and get my mobile.’

‘So where did you go?’

‘Well, they asked if I had any friends I could stay with, but I said no and—’

‘Ted, you could have stayed with me.’ Carole was embarrassed by this possible reference to their shortlived relationship. ‘Or Jude.’

‘No, I don’t want to dump on my friends. This is my mess, and it’s down to me to find a way out of it.’ Though he didn’t sound optimistic about his chances.

‘So where did you go?’

‘The police booked me into the Travelodge – though with no mention of who was going to pick up the tab.’

‘And have they given any indication of when you’re likely to be allowed back in the pub?’

Ted Crisp shrugged with weary resignation. ‘Not a thing. They came to talk to me at the Travelodge yesterday and I asked them again and again. Nothing. Wo uldn’t even give me a clue
when they’re likely to leave, so what with last week’s closure and the loss of goodwill from everything that’s been happening . . . my whole business is going down the
toilet.’

Carole didn’t want to get sidetracked by Ted’s financial problems. She had more urgent matters on her mind. ‘Presumably the police also asked you if you’d seen anything
round the back of the pub . . . you know, where Ray’s body . . . ?

‘Yes.’ He was about to continue, but then almost seemed to choke. He converted the sound into a cough, but Carole could tell he had really been affected by the reminder of his
protégé’s death. Ted cleared his throat and went on with increased aggression to cover up his lapse into sentiment. ‘Anyway, if I had seen anything, I’d have told
the bloody police, wouldn’t I? But I was out the front, dealing with those bastards who were smashing up the place. God knows what all that’s going to cost to put right.’

‘Are n’t you insured?’

‘Oh yes, I’m insured. Everyone’s insured until the moment they make a claim. Then suddenly, miraculously, there turns out to be something in the bloody small print of your
contract that says your coverage sadly doesn’t include the one thing you’re claiming for.’

‘You don’t know that for a fact, Ted. I’m certain your insurance will cover the damage.’

‘I doubt it . . . given the way my luck’s going at the moment. And will the insurance cover damage done during a fight? I’ll bet there’s some clause in there that says
they won’t pay up if I’ve been found to have been keeping a “rowdy house” or . . . Oh, God knows . . .’ He spiralled further down into despair.

‘And what about Ed?’

‘
What
about Ed?’

‘Well . . .’ Carole had to phrase her words carefully. The last time she and Jude had seen the chef on the Sunday night he had looked extremely guilty. In fact, he had looked like
Ray’s murderer. But she didn’t know how much Ted Crisp already knew about that, and she didn’t want to plant potentially slanderous ideas in his head. ‘I just wondered if
the police had talked to him?’

‘Yes. They did take Ed down to the station. Which is where he may still be, for all I know.’

‘So he’s under suspicion?’

‘I think everyone’s under bloody suspicion,’ Ted replied apathetically.

Now she could risk a direct question. ‘Do you think he killed Ray?’

‘No!’ It was the most animated response she’d had from him all morning. ‘No. Look, I’ve known that boy since he helped me out when he was a student. He’s one
of the most honest kids I’ve ever known. He’s as harmless as that poor bugger Ray was, hasn’t got a violent bone in his body. He’s almost
too
much of a gentleman
– certainly lives up to his posh accent. And he’d certainly never hurt Ray, of all people. He was very kind with that guy, really patient. You know, Ray was slow on the uptake and could
sometimes get in the way when the kitchen was busy, but I never once heard Ed mouth off at him. No, whoever did kill Ray, I’d swear on . . . on anything you like, that it wasn’t Ed
Pollack.’

‘Then why did the police take him down to the station?’

‘God knows.’

‘Did you see Ed that evening, you know, after the fight?’

‘Of course I bloody did.’

‘When Jude and I saw him, he had blood all over the front of his jacket. He looked as if he had just been where Ray was and he was moving back into the kitchen.’

‘Ed had got blood all over his whites because he’d been punched in the face by one of those sodding bikers. I don’t think his nose was actually broken, but there was blood
pouring out of it.’

Carole was surprised at the depth of her relief at this news. She too had warmed to Ed Pollack, and the thought that he might have been responsible for Ray’s death had clouded her mind for
the past couple of days.

‘And you say you don’t know whether Ed’s still with the police or not?’

‘No. I haven’t been in touch with anyone since I went to that Travelodge place. I said, the police wouldn’t let me take my mobile and . . . anyway, I . . . well, I didn’t
feel like talking to anyone . . .’ Carole got an inkling of the depths of his depression. She had a mental image of him just sitting in the anonymous space of his tiny Travelodge room,
contemplating the collapse of everything he’d worked for. Not wanting to make any communication – except with a bottle of Famous Grouse.

He seemed to intuit what she was thinking, and made an effort to shift himself out of his mood. ‘I must ring Ed. And Zosia. Find out what’s happened. This has got to be as tough for
them as it is for me.’ He groaned. ‘And if the Crown and Anchor’s closed for any length of time, I’m going to have to lay them off. God, I hate doing that.’

‘The police can’t be there that much longer.’

‘Don’t you believe it. They can stay as long as they like. They’ll probably start digging into the foundations to see if any bodies were cemented in there when the bloody place
was built.’

‘Oh, now you’re just being paranoid.’

‘And do you blame me for being paranoid?’ This was spoken with such vehemence that a few nearby tourists looked up from their burgers and ice cream. In a lower, but no less
impassioned voice, Ted Crisp went on, ‘Look at what’s happened to me in the last ten days. First, the food poisoning – closed down by Health and Safety. Damaging headlines in the
Fethering Observer
. Then when I do reopen, the pub’s suddenly full of bikers who alienate the whole bloody village – and of course I get blamed for it. Then we have a full-scale
riot and, to top it all, a murder. Call it paranoia if you like, but I reckon I’m justified in thinking there’s some kind of campaign against me!’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Carole soothingly. She wanted to reach across to stroke his hand, but that seemed to her too intimate a gesture for a public place. ‘Well, Ted, if that is the
case – and I can see why you might think so – who do you think’s behind it?’

‘Someone who wants me to sell up the Crown and Anchor and get the hell out of Fethering.’

‘And do you know who that might be?’

‘I’m sure there are plenty of candidates.’ He sighed and rubbed a bear-like paw across his tired eyes.