The Poisoning in the Pub (31 page)

‘In the cause of feminist solidarity?’ Jude suggested.

‘I’m sure that’s how she presented it to Sylvia, but come on, you don’t believe that’s true, do you?’

Jude admitted that she didn’t really, no.

‘Ooh, this is so frustrating!’ Carole pressed her knuckles hard against her forehead. ‘We’ve now got yet another definite link between Home Hostelries and the harassment
of Ted Crisp, and yet we still don’t have a shred of proof! I just can’t think of anything else we can do. I suppose we could try to find Derren Hart again, see if we can get anything
more out of him, though I very much doubt if he’ll talk to us. He certainly won’t if he’s had a warning call from Will Maples or Dan Poke. But what else can we do?’

‘One thing I could do,’ said Jude, ‘is to have a word with Kelly-Marie. I haven’t talked to her since the day Viggo died. She might have some news from Copsedown Hall. I
mean, the police must’ve been there investigating Viggo’s death, apart from anything else. It’s worth trying.’

She rang through. Kelly-Marie had done a morning shift at the retirement home that day. She was back at home. And she’d love to see Jude.

‘The policemen talked to me a lot about Viggo,’ said the girl. They were once again in her neat flat with all its dog pictures and figurines.

Jude had noticed on the landing that the young man’s room was still sealed off with scene-of-crime tape. ‘Did the police let you stay here while they were investigating?’

‘They said it’d be better if I went to my parents. Then they called this morning to say I could come back if I wanted to. And I did want to. I like it here. I like it at Mummy and
Daddy’s too, but here I’m more independent.’

Jude was amazed by the girl’s calm. Here she was in a flat right next door to the scene of a particularly messy death, and yet she seemed to have a method of processing shock that would be
the envy of other, more traditionally ‘normal’ people.

‘Did you get any impression of what the police thought about Viggo’s death?’

‘They thought he was playing a game of Russian roulette.’ She spoke the words carefully, as if she had only recently learned them.

‘But they didn’t say whether they thought he’d been playing it on his own?’

‘I didn’t know more than one person could play Russian roulette.’ The girl’s broad earnest face looked puzzled. Clearly the idea hadn’t entered her head that anyone
else might have been involved in Viggo’s death.

‘Did you tell the police about the man with the scarred face coming to see Viggo?’

‘Oh yes. I told them about both times he came.’

‘Both times? You told me he came here before Ray died, but when was the other time?’

‘He came that evening, the evening Viggo died.’

Jude’s brown eyes sparkled with amazement. ‘Really? And was he still here when you heard the shot?’

Kelly-Marie shook her head. ‘No, he had left about half an hour earlier. I was in the kitchen when he went. He talked to me.’

Jude’s mind was racing as she pieced the scenario together. Derren Hart had come to see Viggo, primed him with beer and put the suggestion of Russian roulette into that most suggestible of
minds. He had also perhaps loaded the revolver, telling the poor deluded victim that Russian roulette should be played with all the chambers full, or maybe only one empty. The ex-soldier
hadn’t actually done the killing, but he had set it up.

But surely he hadn’t done it off his own bat? Derren Hart must have been obeying orders, just as surely as Viggo had obeyed orders to kill Ray. A trail of orders which had to lead back
– though probably not in a way that could be traced – to Will Maples at Home Hostelries.

Suddenly Jude remembered details of Viggo’s rambling fantasies, tough-guy talk about orders arriving by text on a mobile phone, the mobile phone being jettisoned and the job done. Was that
how he had received the order to kill Ray? And maybe, after Derren Hart’s visit, it had been another text message that had finally persuaded him to pull the trigger of the revolver pointing
at his temple?

Hard on the heels of that came another recollection, of something Kelly-Marie had said, about how Viggo had always been throwing away perfectly good stuff, clothes and things, as he underwent
his latest makeover. And how the girl had salvaged some of his cast-offs and taken them to the Oxfam shop.

Scarcely daring to hope that her intuition was right, and yet at the same time robustly confident, Jude asked, ‘Kelly-Marie, did you ever see Viggo throw away a mobile phone?’

‘Yes, I did,’ came the most welcome of replies.

‘When?’

‘It was a Sunday. I remember. Because I’d been to have lunch with Mummy and Daddy and they’d just dropped me back here.’

‘Do you remember which Sunday it was, Kelly-Marie?’

‘Not last Sunday . . .’ She looked confused as she tried to work it out. Then her face cleared. ‘It was the Sunday that Ray was going to see Dan Poke from off the
television.’

Ray Witchett’s last day on earth.

‘I remember,’ Kelly-Marie went on, ‘as I came into the hall that Sunday from saying goodbye to Mummy and Daddy, I saw Viggo coming downstairs. And he looked, I don’t
know, like he was doing something wrong . . . there’s a word . . . ?’

‘Furtive?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know that word. Anyway, when I got back up here, I looked out of the window and I saw Viggo walking along the street, down that way. And there was one of those big
boxes for rubbish . . .’

‘A skip?’

‘Yes. A skip. Like in skipping.’ Kelly-Marie smiled, pleased at the notion.

‘And you saw Viggo drop something in it?’

‘Yes. And I thought it was probably something that was still valuable, because Viggo was always throwing away good stuff. So later in the evening, I went down to the . . . skip . . . and I
found what he’d dropped. It’d had gone quite deep down the side, but I managed to pull it out.’

‘It was a mobile phone?’ asked Jude, hardly daring to hope.

She was rewarded with a huge beam and a nod.

‘I don’t suppose, Kelly-Marie . . . that you’ve still got it?’

The beam grew broader as the girl crossed to a drawer and produced from it a brand-new-looking mobile phone. She handed it across to Jude. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I know
Oxfam take clothes, but I don’t know whether they take mobile phones. I was going to ask Mummy and Daddy, but I forgot.’

Jude looked with disbelief at the phone in her hand. Could it be that she finally held in her hand the evidence she had despaired of ever finding?

She was initially frustrated, because, of course, the phone, sitting in a drawer for over a fortnight, had no power. But fortunately it fitted the same charger as Kelly-Marie’s mobile, so
they soon had the handset plugged in and active.

Jude went into the ‘Short Messages’ menu and selected ‘Inbox’. There were two messages. Jude opened the more recent one first, the last communication Viggo had received
before he threw the mobile away. It was timed at 15.17 on the Sunday of Dan Poke’s gig at the Crown and Anchor, and couched in the sort of espionage-movie language which held such a fatal
attraction for Viggo.

Now perhaps they had some proof.

Then Jude checked the first text message. It had been sent the day before the poisoning in the Crown and Anchor that had started their investigation. It read:

So who the hell was ‘K’?

As she walked back to Woodside Cottage, Jude was aware of a huge temptation. The enquiries she and Carole had made so far in this case had been deeply frustrating. They had been reacting to
events, to new information. Rarely had they been proactive.

And now Jude had a chance to be just that. She switched on the precious mobile and checked its power. Yes, it had just enough juice from its time on Kelly-Marie’s charger. She summoned up
one of K’s text messages and, before she had time to change her mind, keyed in a reply.

That should flush him out.

In previous investigations Carole and Jude had had a somewhat unsatisfactory relationship with the police. They had either been warned off or patronized. The impression had
certainly been given that the police were quite capable of doing their job on their own, and the last thing they wanted was offers of help from enthusiastic amateurs, particularly from women of a
certain age.

But the detective Jude was put on to when she rang the Hollingbury Major Crime Unit was polite and, even more gratifying, interested in what she had to tell him. His name was Detective Inspector
Wilson, and he was absolutely up to speed on the investigations into the deaths of Ray Witchett and Viggo. He knew about Copsedown Hall and Kelly-Marie, and he responded instantly to the mention of
Derren Hart. ‘Yes, he’s someone we very definitely want to speak to. He’s gone to ground for the moment, but don’t worry, we’ll track him down.’

Jude felt a little silly. The detective’s knowledgeable manner reminded her that, all the time she and Carole had been stumbling in the dark, the official enquiries had been proceeding,
using the full resources of manpower and forensic expertise. Though Detective Inspector Wilson remained polite, she didn’t get the feeling she was telling him anything that he didn’t
know.

Until she came to Viggo’s mobile phone. That was a surprise, and it interested him very much. He wanted her to spell out exactly how it had come into her possession. Then he asked where
she lived, and said he would be with her in as long as it took. As soon as she ended that call, Jude rang Carole. It was their joint investigation, they should both be present to hand over their
findings to the police.

When he arrived, Detective Inspector Wilson was courteous, but didn’t want to hear too much about their theories of the crimes. It was only the mobile that interested him. He asked again
how Jude had discovered it. By now feeling rather childish about the text reply she’d sent, she didn’t mention that. But they’d surely find a record of it when they examined the
mobile. She was only putting off the inevitable rapping of her knuckles.

Detective Inspector Wilson took the mobile away, with assurances that he’d keep Carole and Jude updated on any new developments on the case. This they did not really believe. They
reckoned, if they did hear more, it would be from the news media along with everyone else, rather than in a personalized call from Detective Inspector Wilson.

As a result, after his departure, both Carole and Jude felt extremely flat. They had ridden the roller coaster of the investigation and, now they were so close to the end of the ride, someone
else was going to enjoy the fun of the denouement. Rotten life sometimes, being an amateur detective.

They went back to their separate houses. At a loose end, unable to decide what to do next, Jude put a call through to Kelly-Marie. Just to assure the girl how much the police had appreciated her
discovery of the mobile phone. And to warn her that they were quite likely to come to question her again.

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said the girl. ‘The policemen were very friendly when they talked to me before.’

‘Well, you definitely did the right thing keeping that mobile of Viggo’s.’

‘Thank you.’ Kelly-Marie sounded disproportionately grateful for the commendation.

‘Incidentally, you said you’d forgotten to tell your parents about the mobile. Did you mention to anyone else that you’d got it?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’ Then she remembered. ‘Oh, just one person.’

‘Who was that?’

‘The scarred man.’

‘The one who came to see Viggo?’

‘Yes. That night, before Viggo died, I told you I was in the kitchen, and he talked to me. He asked if I’d ever seen a mobile of Viggo’s and I told him.’

So Derren Hart knew of the mobile’s existence. Which almost definitely meant that his paymasters did too. An icy chill spread over Jude’s shoulders as she asked, ‘Did he ask to
see it?’

‘He did, but then a couple of the other men from the house came into the hall, and he went away.’

‘Kelly-Marie, just stay where you are.’ Jude tried to keep the panic out of her voice. God, she’d been so stupid. Her impulsive text reply had alerted ‘K’. If
Derren Hart was K, then he’d reckon the text had come from Kelly-Marie, who so far as he knew still had Viggo’s mobile. If Derren wasn’t K himself, then he’d pretty soon
pass on the information to the person who was.

‘My friend and I are coming to see you straight away,’ said Jude, as calmly as she could. ‘And I’m sure the police will be there soon too.’

‘There’s someone arriving now,’ said Kelly-Marie casually. ‘There’s a car parking outside.’

‘A police car?’

‘No,’ the girl replied. ‘It’s pale blue.’

There was no mistaking Will Maples’s BMW, conspicuously outgleaming the other shabby vehicles parked on the Downside Road. Its presence at least meant that he
hadn’t abducted Kelly-Marie. But that small bonus was wiped out by the deduction that he was still inside the building with her.

The main door to Copsedown Hall was on the latch, which, while convenient for Carole and Jude, was also potentially worrying. Maybe Will Maples had left it like that for reinforcements to
arrive. He had a habit of delegating his dirty work. Was Derren Hart about to arrive? Or was the ex-squaddie thug already in the building?

Carole and Jude sped up the stairs. There were voices coming from Kelly-Marie’s flat. Jude flung the door open.

The scene revealed looked surprisingly unthreatening. Kelly-Marie was sitting in her usual chair. On the sofa sat Will Maples, still dressed in the suit they had seen that morning. Beside him,
to the women’s surprise, was Dan Poke. Though none of the three actually had drinks, Carole and Jude got the incongruous feeling that they had interrupted a polite tea party.