The Poisoning in the Pub (28 page)

‘Are there?’ Carole pondered this. ‘Erm . . . you’ve never been a groupie, have you?’

‘Not exactly,’ replied Jude, simply for the devilment of watching her neighbour’s reaction. And maybe adding one more to the manifold mysteries of her past.

Awkwardly, Carole moved the subject on. ‘Well, I find it most odd. I thought celebrities were meant to guard their privacy, not give out their home phone numbers to all and
sundry.’

‘The number I’ve got won’t be his landline. It’s probably a mobile he keeps just for the purpose of women ringing him. His totty hotline.’

That drew a predictable wince from Carole.

‘Anyway,’ Jude announced, ‘I’m going to ring him. See if he does want to meet.’

‘Isn’t that rather dangerous . . . I mean, if he’s involved in the kind of thing we think he may be involved in?’

‘I won’t agree to meet him anywhere except a public place of my choosing. Treat it like it was a blind date, you know, meeting someone through online dating.’

‘Have you ever actually done that, Jude?’ asked Carole, her eyes owlishly large behind the rimless glasses.

‘Not very often,’ came the mischievous reply.

‘Oh. Well, I think you’ll be taking a big risk meeting Dan Poke – or Richard Farrelly or whatever he’s called. And if it’s sex he’s after, as you suggest,
though he may agree to meet you in a pub, he’s not going to want to stay in the pub, is he? He’s going to want to take you back to his place.’

‘Carole, I am quite capable of saying “No” to men. It’s something in which I have had a lot of experience.’

‘Have you?’ said Carole rather wistfully. She had always felt that with most men her looks had said ‘No’ long before any verbal response had become necessary.

‘Anyway, come on, Carole, we both want to get to the bottom of what’s been going on. We want to find out if there really has been an organized campaign of harassment against the Cat
and Fiddle and the Crown and Anchor. We also want to know who killed Ray and Viggo. And do we have any other leads at the moment apart from talking to Dan Poke?’

Carole was forced to concede that they didn’t.

‘Then I’ll call him.’

‘Yes. Erm . . . Jude, you don’t think you should suggest that I should come and meet him as well, do you?’

‘For the kind of encounter he’s envisaging, I don’t think he’d want a gooseberry there, no.’

Carole Seddon blushed.

Dan Poke didn’t answer the phone, but he rang back later in response to the message. Yes, he remembered Jude. If she wanted to meet up with him – ‘That could
be quite enjoyable.’ He was starting ‘a little mini-tour of gigs’ on the Wednesday, but he would be free the next evening. He’d got a flat at Notting Hill. If she got out of
the tube station and went along Pembridge Road—

Jude interrupted him and suggested they meet in a bar she knew just near the tube station. He came up with predictable lines about how difficult he found being in public places, how ordinary
people regarded celebrities as common property. Jude insisted; they would meet in the bar or not at all. Dan Poke seemed eventually to be amused by what he took as a show of coyness on her part,
but he did agree to meet her there at six-thirty the following evening.

As soon as she had finished that call, she rang through to the bar which was to be their rendezvous. It was a place she had often frequented in the company of an actor with whom she’d
lived in Notting Hill for a couple of years. She was relieved when the phone was answered by a voice she recognized. Yes, it was Garcia, and he was still running the place. And of course he
remembered Jude. Was she still with . . .? Silly man, said Garcia, always was rather immature, didn’t realize what he was giving up.

It would be wonderful to see her the following evening. Jude was always welcome at Garcia’s place. And yes, though they weren’t the same individuals, his bouncers were as tough as
they had ever been.

Jude put the phone down, confident that her security was in place for the following evening’s meeting.

Jude was going to catch the first cheap train up to Victoria the next morning. When she heard this plan, Carole had objected, ‘But you’re not meeting him till the
evening.’

‘No, but there’s some shopping I want to do.’

‘What? Clothes?’ In Carole’s view, it wouldn’t hurt if her neighbour bought some different clothes, to make herself look a bit less of a hippy. Though, mind you, she
didn’t have to go up to London to do that. The Marks & Spencer’s in Worthing would, in Carole’s view, have been perfectly adequate.

But no, Jude said it wasn’t clothes. What then? It was with an impish grin that Jude revealed that there were some shops round Covent Garden she wanted to look at. They specialized in
crystals.

‘Oh,’ said Carole dismissively. ‘Well, I suppose if you want to spend a steaming hot day traipsing round Covent Garden looking at crystals . . .’

In her neighbour’s absence, Carole felt restless. As a result, Gulliver got an extra walk, which he was almost too hot to appreciate. And he had the dressing changed on his leg, which had
nearly healed. But Carole still felt ill at ease. Even though she had found a rather good free online computer course, her attention kept straying from the screen. She was keen to learn more about
the mysteries of the laptop, which she no longer even pretended to resist, but she just couldn’t sustain her concentration.

Partly, she knew that she was a little jealous of Jude. Carole Seddon had amazingly sensitive antennae for slights, particularly in the area of criminal investigation. Although she fully
accepted the logic of Jude’s meeting Dan Poke on her own, she didn’t like feeling excluded from any part of their enquiry.

There was also an unease in her mind, similar to that which Jude had felt over the weekend, a sense that there was something obvious she wasn’t seeing. There was another connection to be
made somewhere in relation to the deaths of Ray and Viggo, but she couldn’t for the life of her work out what it was.

It was in the early evening, after a long, hot and frustrating day, that the lightbulb finally came on in Carole Seddon’s brain. She had once again Googled Home Hostelries and was
ploughing through the endless links offered when she came to a reference to another local pub.

The Hare and Hounds in Weldisham. Of course! That had been made over in exactly the same way as the Middy in Portsmouth. And in fact it had been in the Hare and Hounds that she’d first
heard the words Home Hostelries some years before. It must have been one of the first pubs bought by the chain.

Carole decided that she would take Gulliver for yet another walk, this time on the Downs near Weldisham. And then she would have a drink in the Hare and Hounds. She didn’t know what she
was expecting to find there, but it was the nearest place with a Home Hostelries connection. And going there would give her the illusion of contributing as much as Jude to their investigation.

The bar run by Garcia had been exclusive before Notting Hill attained maximum trendiness, and it had become more exclusive as the area became richer. The decor hadn’t
changed in all that time; it was still predominantly black, the contours broken up by darkly tinted mirrors and the gleaming steel of the bar.

A famous television actress was sharing a bottle of wine – and by the appearance of their intimacy would soon be sharing more – with a very recognizable
Newsnight
anchor. They
were relaxed; they knew no publicity stories ever made their way out of the club. Jude congratulated herself on her choice of venue.

Garcia greeted her like a long-lost sister and, once she had caught up with news of his very extended family, Jude took her drink to a shadowy corner table and sat down to wait for Dan Poke.

While she was walking an ecstatic Gulliver on the Downs near Weldisham, Carole asked herself why she had come there. And the only answer she could come up with was the feeble
one of ‘instinct’. Oh dear, she was beginning to think like Jude. Next thing she’d be talking about the ‘auras’ and ‘atmospheres’ of places, about
‘synchronicity’ and other mumbo-jumbo.

But something still told her she was right to have come to the village. Going to another Home Hostelries pub might provide some clue, some connection to ease the confusion of her speculations.
The trip was a form of research.

There were already quite a few customers at the pub, but because of the heat most of them were sitting at tables outside. The wine list was, of course, identical to that they had consulted in
the Middy, so Carole once again ordered Maipo Valley Chardonnay. She went for a small one this time, righteous because she was driving.

The girl who served her, purple-haired, nose-studded and wearing a mulberry shirt with grey logo across the breast, was perfectly friendly, but not much use as a research source. She handed over
the change and Carole had just started on, ‘I used to come to this pub a long time ago . . .’ when the girl said, ‘Sorry, I must serve that customer over there.’ Carole took
her drink to a table near the bar.

‘Hello, darling.’ Dan Poke arrived in the bar and, as he kissed Jude full on the lips, he squeezed the flesh of her waist. He confirmed she was all right for a
drink – she had hardly touched hers – and moved towards the bar.

‘One of the girls will take your order,’ said Jude.

‘Oh. Right.’ He came to sit opposite her. Jude felt she had scored a small victory. Dan Poke clearly hadn’t been to the club before, and he did look slightly ill at ease in the
unfamiliar environment. Jude had a minimal territorial advantage.

He was dressed in grubby jeans and T-shirt. The grey ponytail hung lankly, greasy with sweat, and there was thick stubble round the square of his beard. He’d certainly not made any effort
to smarten himself up for her. Once again, Jude was struck by what an unattractive man he was.

As promised, one of the waitresses appeared and he ordered a Belgian beer. ‘Don’t bother with a glass, love. And, to save you asking, yes, I am Dan Poke.’

‘Oh,’ said the girl without interest, and returned to the bar.

‘I’m surprised you don’t offer her one of your cards,’ said Jude.

‘Oh, come on, darling, I do have standards.’

‘She looks very pretty to me.’

‘I don’t mean standards about that. I mean I have standards about not handing out my cards when I’m actually on a date with another woman.’

‘How very gracious of you.’

‘Yeah, one of the last old-fashioned gentlemen.’ He smiled what some woman must once have told him was a seductive smile. ‘I’m very glad you rang me.’

‘Well, you interest me.’

‘Yeah, a lot of women find that,’ he said complacently. ‘And they tend to get even more interested after I’ve shagged them.’

An experiment I am not going to put to the test, thought Jude. But she said, ‘I found your act very interesting when I heard it in Fethering.’

‘Probably a bit naughty for a sleepy little shithole like that. But I was only doing it to help out an old mate.’

‘Ted Crisp.’

‘Right.’

‘You heard about the murder that happened that night, didn’t you?’

‘’Course I did. All over the bloody media, wasn’t it?’

‘What did you feel about it?’

‘Feel about it? Why should I feel anything?’

‘Well, it did happen straight after your gig.’

‘So what? Doesn’t make me responsible for it, does it? Hot night, people had drunk a lot, a fight broke out. At least, that’s how I heard it happened. Anyway, you start
fighting, people are going to get hurt. Reflection of the society we live in. Binge-drinking and all that. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but it’s nothing to do with me. That
night I just done me act and pissed off before the trouble started.’

‘Off to a woman in Brighton, I heard.’

‘Yeah.’ He smiled at her lecherously. ‘I’m afraid I do suffer from an overactive libido.’

‘Bad luck,’ Jude commiserated as though she were sharing his joke.

‘Fortunately, though, I know how to get treatment for the condition.’ As he said this, he placed a hand unambiguously on her thigh and moved it upwards.

Jude shuddered inwardly. He really was such a repellent little creature. She could never understand men who, in the teeth of the evidence, regard themselves as irresistible to women. Dan Poke,
she felt sure, was the sort who, when she did finally express her deep lack of interest in going to bed with him, would mark her down as a lesbian. No woman of normal tendencies could resist his
charms.

On the other hand, she had to admit that she had played up to his self-image. Ringing him had been tantamount to presenting herself as a piece of meat for his enjoyment. And she would probably
need to maintain that front until she could get the information she wanted out of him.

Jude didn’t remove his hand, but he took it away when she asked, ‘Did you hear that there was another violent death in Fethering?’

‘The Russian roulette bloke? Yes, I heard about it. Now you’re not going to blame me for that one too, are you? I was nowhere near the place when it happened.’

‘No. I just wondered if you knew the man.’

Dan Poke shook his head vigorously; the lank ponytail flipped to one side. Was Jude imagining it, or was there a new caution in his manner? She went on, ‘He was in the audience at the
Crown and Anchor the night you appeared.’

‘So? Darling, I do a lot of gigs. They’re attended by a lot of punters. They all know what I look like. I haven’t a clue what any of them look like. People in the street often
think they know me because they’ve seen me on the telly. Think they bloody own you, and all. It’s just one of the things that happens when you’re a celeb.’

‘So you were never introduced to Viggo?’

‘Look, what is this? Some kind of third degree? I thought you were here because you wanted a shag. Quick, uncomplicated sex. I get my rocks off, you get the thrill of shagging a celeb. Or
have I misunderstood the reason why we’re meeting here?’

Jude’s cover wasn’t quite blown, but she didn’t think she could sustain the pretence much longer. So she opted for the truth. ‘The reason we are meeting here is that I
want to talk to you about your role as a director of Home Hostelries.’