Читать книгу The Killer in the Choir - Simon Brett - Страница 12

The other drinkers melted away into the late afternoon. Carole and Jude found themselves alone with Bet Harrison. They noticed, when Jude went to get more Sauvignon Blanc, that she was only drinking mineral water (so it hadn’t been alcohol that made her so forthcoming, it was her normal manner). ‘And thanks,’ she said, when offered a top-up, ‘but I don’t need any more.’

‘Bit of a bugger,’ she went on to Carole while Jude was at the bar, ‘not drinking on an occasion like this, but Rory needs ferrying somewhere this evening. I’m stuck in the driving years, which seem to be going on for ever, and without having a partner to share the burden, I daren’t risk losing my licence, particularly living down here and … well … Do you have children?’

Though this was, by her standards, a rather over-direct question, Carole could not deny that she had a son Stephen, who was married with two daughters. It was not in her nature to mention to a new acquaintance how much joy her grandchildren had brought into her life.

‘Ah, well, you must have done the driving years bit, too.’

‘Yes, but we were living in London back then, so it probably wasn’t so bad. Stephen could go most places on public transport.’

‘Right. What does your husband do?’

‘I’m divorced,’ said Carole, in a tone which she hoped would deter further enquiry.

It failed. ‘Join the club,’ said Bet. ‘Though if I was still married, I wouldn’t be getting much help with ferrying Rory around. Waste of space, my husband was, when it came to anything practical. Great skill men have, avoiding responsibility, don’t they? Even in this day and age—’

Fortunately, the arrival of Jude with two large Sauvignon Blancs stemmed the feminist flow. ‘Just talking about children,’ said Bet.

‘Ah. I don’t have any.’ Jude was always very easy about getting that bit of information into a conversation. When they first met, Carole thought her neighbour must feel some level of sadness about her childlessness, but now she had come round to the view that it genuinely didn’t worry her. Jude had always been better than Carole at accepting the hand life had dealt her. And, perhaps as a result, in Carole’s view her neighbour always seemed to have better cards.

‘Well,’ said Bet, ‘that means you’re missing out on the dubious pleasure of being a glorified taxi service.’ She looked suddenly at Jude. ‘Incidentally, I know you weren’t at the funeral – or the church hall – but do you know Heather Mallett?’ A shake of the head by way of response. ‘I was just interested in what Russ was saying, you know, about when he gave her the lift. Sounds like she was stuck in a really abusive marriage.’

‘Hard to be sure without knowing more detail,’ said Jude diplomatically. ‘Verbal abuse doesn’t definitely mean there’s also physical abuse. Some couples just are combative. They seem to get off on it.’

‘Well, he was combative, we know that. Doesn’t sound like Heather did much in the way of getting back at him.’

‘Who can say?’

‘Unless, of course, she actually did help him on his way down those stairs.’

‘We have no means of knowing—’

‘If she did,’ Bet interrupted, ‘I’d say good for her. Women have been victims of male aggression for far too long. Do you know, it wasn’t until the 1878 Matrimonial Causes Act that women in this country could seek legal separation from an abusive husband. Up until then they were just chattels. It’s amazing how today’s women suffer from that legacy of discrimination. And there are still …’

Maybe it was Carole’s discreet throat-clearing that got her down off her soapbox, or just a glance at her watch. ‘God! I must go. Get back to Rory. I’ve left him on his own for quite long enough.’

‘He’s not at school?’ asked Jude.

‘No, I got him out for the funeral.’

‘But surely he didn’t know Leonard Mallett?’

‘No, no, of course he didn’t. Oh, you weren’t there, so you wouldn’t have seen him. Rory sings in the church choir with me, and I thought it was better for him to miss a day’s school and get some social interaction locally.’ She giggled guiltily. ‘I just said to the school that he had to go to a funeral, and they assumed it must’ve been someone close, so there were no problems about it. I took the day off, too.’ She took another look at her watch. ‘And now my small window of freedom is about to close again.’

‘Where do you work?’ asked Carole.

The thin face grimaced. ‘Starbucks on the Parade.’

‘Oh?’ This was another of Carole’s deeply layered monosyllables. She didn’t approve of Starbucks, or any other international chain. She had preferred it when the café on the Parade had been Polly’s Cake Shop. She was generally suspicious of change.

Possibly prompted by Carole’s disapproval, Bet felt the need to apologize for her job. ‘It’s only temporary, until I get something better, but it’s difficult in a place like this. The trouble is, I got married too young, you know, before I had any qualifications. It didn’t seem important at the time, but back then, of course, I thought the marriage was going to be for life. It didn’t occur to me that my bastard husband …’

Maybe she caught the exasperated look that Carole flicked at Jude, or maybe she just recollected that she was up against time, but Bet Harrison stopped herself there. She made a big deal of saying how much she’d enjoyed meeting them, and how much she looked forward to seeing them again.

‘Huh,’ said Carole, when the woman was out of earshot. ‘I do resent people who feel that they have to spill out their entire life history the moment you meet them.’

Jude knew this was just one of many things her neighbour resented, but all she said, very casually, was, ‘She’s just lonely. Coming to a new place, not knowing anyone, she’s only trying to make contact.’

‘Well,’ said Carole beadily, ‘you’ve always had a more generous view of humanity than I have.’

This was so self-evidently true as to require no comment.

As they walked through the interior of the pub, it was still fairly empty. Ted Crisp often bemoaned the fact that there were fewer casual drinkers than there used to be. ‘Never been the same since breathalyser came in,’ he frequently stated. ‘Lovely girl, Breath Eliza, she had this way of blowing in your ear, you know,’ he always added, demonstrating once again why his career in stand-up had struggled to get off the ground.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the dearth of casual drinkers was that the identity of the Crown & Anchor had changed since Ted engaged a chef called Ed Pollack, whose cooking had raised the profile of the pub’s restaurant considerably. In fact, the place was now frequently referred to – in an expression the landlord loathed – as a ‘gastropub’. In its new incarnation, booking was essential, and the busy time had shifted from early evening to dinner. A lot of the local drinkers felt it was no longer the place for a quiet pint.

With Ed in the kitchen, and the bars under the expert management of the pigtailed Polish Zosia, the Crown & Anchor had undoubtedly become ‘a success’. But Ted Crisp didn’t let a detail like that alter his customary lugubrious demeanour. And he would never let the pub’s gentrification affect his wardrobe choices.

As Carole and Jude passed, he was leaning over the bar, talking to a fiftyish man, whose thinning hair was pulled back into a sparse ponytail. The man wore a pale denim jacket, shirt and jeans, clasped with a broad brown leather belt, and scuffed cowboy boots. There was a half-empty pint glass of Guinness in front of him.

‘Ah. Carole,’ said Ted, ‘I don’t think you’ve met …’

‘Hello, KK,’ said Jude.

A little tug of annoyance pulled at Carole’s lower lip. This happened far too often in Fethering, she thought, Jude knowing more people than she did. And Carole had lived there longer. Registering the man’s scruffiness, she reckoned he must be one of the flaky types her neighbour had met through the healing practice.

‘Hi, Jude.’ He got off his bar stool and enveloped her in a huge hug.

‘Good to see you.’ The hug was returned with reciprocal warmth. Carole’s first thought was that this must be another of Jude’s lovers. There had certainly been a good few of them (though not nearly as many as there were in Carole’s imagination).

When she had disengaged herself from the bear hug, Jude said, ‘This is Carole, my neighbour.’

‘Hi.’ The denim-clad creature extended the monosyllable into something long and languid.

‘Oh, I thought you’d know each other,’ said Ted.

‘No, said Carole frostily.

‘KK’s a musician,’ said Jude.

‘Ah,’ said Carole, as if that explained everything.

‘“A wandering minstrel, I …”’ The words, spoken rather than sung, were a surprise. KK’s image was more Bruce Springsteen than Gilbert & Sullivan.

Ted Crisp picked up his cue, ‘Available for every kind of function – birthdays, christenings, bar mitzvahs, weddings, divorces … You name it, KK’s up for the gig.’

‘Yeah,’ the musician agreed. ‘Up for anything that pays the bills … Though there’s not much work around at the minute.’

‘Never is, is there?’ Ted sympathized, perhaps thinking back to his stand-up days.

‘I’m based in Worthing,’ KK went on, ‘and I used to do a lot of gigs round all the pubs in the area, into Hampshire, Kent even. My band’s called Rubber Truncheon.’ He paused for a nanosecond, like all performers do, but receiving no flicker of name recognition, went on, ‘I used to do regular gigs here, didn’t I, Ted?’

‘Yeah, all right, don’t go on about it.’

‘I mean, Monday evenings, they’re always quiet. Hardly worth you opening up then. But, like I’ve said before, if you had a bit of live music, that’d bring the punters in, always has done. Then they get loyal to the band and you find you’ve built up a fan-base in no time. Bit of social media coverage, lots of bands have got relaunched that way. And, of course, the pub that’s their venue, they benefit from it, and all. Sales of booze go up. I’m sure, Ted, if you tried, you could—’

‘I’ve told you a thousand times, KK. It’s not my fault. Government changed the laws, didn’t they? Got to have a licence for music now. Made it too expensive to have the live stuff. Days of a couple of blokes with guitars strumming away in the corner, they’re long gone.’

‘You could afford it, Ted,’ said the musician. ‘Now your restaurant’s in all those guides and everything, you must be sitting on a little goldmine here.’

‘Whether that’s true or not – and actually it’s not – I’m still not convinced that my restaurant guests want to be serenaded by the music of Rubber Truncheon.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my music!’

The landlord backed down quickly. ‘I didn’t say there was, KK. And it’s not your music I’m objecting to. Will you get it into your head – it’s nothing personal, it’s the price of a bloody music licence!’

Carole looked at Jude, trying to indicate with her eyebrows that there was really no need for them to be further involved in this exchange. But, infuriatingly, Jude indicated with a slight head movement that she wanted to stay. Even more infuriatingly, she said, ‘I think perhaps we’d better have another drink, Ted.’

Three large Sauvignon Blancs so early in the evening did not accord with Carole’s proprieties. But then again, if she said no, or asked for a mineral water, or went home on her own, that would definitely look like a snub to Jude. It was yet another social quandary. To her surprise, her lips formed the words, ‘I’ll get these. It’s my turn.’

So, a few minutes later, she found herself sitting down in an alcove with Jude and KK. Annoyingly, though the light way the two talked suggested they knew each other well, they gave no indication of how they had met, or how long ago. Nor did they give any indication of the level of intimacy at which their friendship had been conducted. And there was no way Carole was going to ask.

Despite his uncouth appearance, KK seemed to have been well brought up. His laid-back vowels occasionally slipped into something which might have been the product of private education. And he was conscious that Carole shouldn’t be left out of the conversation. After giving Jude an update on the doings of a drummer called Miff who they apparently both knew, and who KK had been working with in Holland until a few days previously, he turned the considerable charm of his smile on to her neighbour.

‘You’re looking very smart, Carole, for a visit down to the old C & A. Have you come straight from work?’

‘I’m retired,’ she replied awkwardly. ‘I was actually at a funeral this morning.’

‘Oh?’ KK’s face took on a suitably compassionate expression. ‘I hope it wasn’t someone close.’

‘No, no. I hardly knew him. Just someone from the village.’

‘Anyone I’d know?’

‘I very much doubt it.’ Carole doubted that the two men would have had much in common. ‘Man called Leonard Mallett.’

The effect her words had on KK was a total surprise. He looked as if he’d been hit by a lead-filled sock. He managed to gasp out the question, ‘How did he die?’

‘Fell down the stairs.’

‘My God.’ The musician shook his head slowly. ‘So, Heather finally did it.’