Joe gave a brief account of the mugging. Sarah tut-tutted in all the right places and he sensed that the incident held no real interest for her.
“Well I hope the police get him,” she said when Joe concluded the tale. “That kind of man is a scourge on our community.”
Joe detected no conviction in her voice. She was, he guessed, echoing standard platitudes.
“Pardon me,” she went on, “but you mentioned Nicola. Your wife?”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Me? Married to Knickers-off, er, sorry, Nicola? Not likely. I’m divorced, Sarah, and while Nicola wasn’t a bad woman, she was a little too free with her favours, if you see what I mean, to make any man a good wife. Even her husband thought so.” He sucked on his cigarette and picked up his lighter. “No, no. She was the member of our club killed in a hit and run on Tuesday night. I think I told you about her last night.”
“So you did,” Sarah agreed. “Good Lord. What is this world coming to?”
Slightly more sincerity this time, but still not enough to persuade Joe that Sarah was doing anything but making small talk.
Sarah crushed out her cigarette and swirled the brandy around in the glass. “This poor woman sounds a little like my ex-husband. He was, how did you put it, free with his favours, too.”
“That’s bad news,” Joe responded with a lack of interest that matched Sarah’s. “At least it’s one problem I didn’t have with Alison.”
“No?”
“No. She just got fed up of working, working, working. I tried to tell her it goes with the small business territory, but she wouldn’t have it. Walked out on me about ten years ago. I’ve been on my own ever since.”
“Alone?” With a naughty smile, Sarah took a slug of brandy. “With two fine women hanging on your arm?” There was a hint of more enthusiasm in her voice this time. She laughed. “Oh, I’ve seen you with your lady friends. Enough to make me jealous.”
He smiled modestly. “I’m known for my powers of deduction, Sarah. Surprisingly, they’re not difficult to develop, but yours are leading you to the wrong conclusion. Sheila, Brenda and I are good friends. They work for me and between us we run the Sanford 3rd Age Club, but you have my personal assurance that’s as far as it goes.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “One glance from Sheila would be enough to skewer any potential suitor, and Brenda… well Brenda is a smashing woman, but she prefers to keep more than one man dancing on a string at any given time. She’s a lot more discreet than Nicola, but I know she’s only looking for a good time, not a relationship, and I’ve never been a puppet for anyone. Apart from that, it would compromise our working relationship if I were involved with either of them.”
Sarah’s smile was more demure this time. “So there’s hope for me yet.”
With a broad grin, Joe wagged a warning finger at her. “Never trifle with an old fool, Sarah, or the old fool might be tempted to mix up a trifle with you.”
“Who’s trifling?” she asked. “It’s not often that I get a good looking and available man like you staying here.”
Joe laughed out loud and sipped more beer. “Good looking? Do me a favour. I’m a shortarsed, crinkly-haired, bad-tempered old bugger, and I don’t have muscles in places where people don’t know they have places. James Bond I am not. And I might run a busy café, but all the money I’m supposed to be worth is on paper, not in the bank.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Joe,” Sarah advised.
“Difficult, considering how short I am.” he chuckled. “Five foot six, not six foot five.”
Sarah swallowed her brandy. “Drink up and let me show you something.”
Puzzled, Joe swallowed the last of his beer and followed her into the bar. They crossed the room under the watchful eye of Billy, through reception, and took the lift to the first floor. Unhooking the keychain at her waist, Sarah opened the door to room 101.
“Room 101,” Joe noted. “Orwell.”
Sarah faced him. “It’s not your nightmares waiting in this room 101, Joe, but your desires.”
And to his surprise, she kissed him.
***
Beyond the panoramic windows, the Sunday morning sky showed no trace of cloud, and the sun blazed onto the deserted beach, promising yet another day of unbearable heat.
It was a refreshed and rejuvenated Joe who joined Sheila and Brenda for breakfast at eight o’clock.
“You’re looking very chipper this morning,” Sheila commented.
Brenda, never one to resist a joke at Joe’s expense, smiled savagely. “Remember that shilling he lost at the youth club Christmas party in 1971? He’s found it.”
Joe refused to rise. “For your information, I had a rather interesting night, last night, after you two cleared off to bed.”
“Ooh,” Sheila giggled. “Who was the lucky woman?”
“I’m saying nothing more than that,” Joe replied tucking into his full English.
Joe had declined Sarah’s invitation, despite her efforts to press him.
“I’m flattered,” he told her, “but you’ve had one or two drinks and it’s not the best way for two people to get to know each other.”
Instead, they returned to the ground floor, and he sat with her in the hotel office, and dazzled her with accounts of his previous cases. And Sarah did not appear too disappointed. She was rapt with interest in his progress, or rather lack of it, in the killing of Nicola Leach and the supposed death of Eddie Dobson.
Making his way quietly back to his own room just after one in the morning, he’d slept well and woke full of determination to get on with the task at hand. He knew Eddie was still alive and since Joe had the key to his Sanford flat, he had to be somewhere in the Filey area.
First however, there were formalities to be dealt with. After finishing his breakfast, pushing his plate to one side, he stood up and rattled a knife against a carafe of water in the centre of the table.
Across the Beachside Hotel’s dining room, having dispensed with their morning meal, the members of the Sanford 3rd Age Club fell silent and honed their collective attention on their chairman.
“As you know, I don’t go much on speechifying, but I have a couple of announcements to make. First, coming back on the bus last night, a few of you were asking about the bag snatch. Let me assure you, Brenda is fine and the thief got away with nothing.”
“He was probably after the recipe for your meat pies, Joe,” called out Alec Staines, and many people laughed.
“Waste of time,” commented George Robson. “The recipe’s divided into three. Sheila has half, Brenda has half and Joe has the Pedigree Chum.”
Joe rattled the glass again through the laughter. “Yeah, yeah, all right. Let’s get serious, people. I have another announcement to make, and this one isn’t so pleasant.” He cleared his throat. “Yesterday morning, there was an, er, accident out on the Brigg. Eddie Dobson was out there fishing when he apparently slipped and fell into the sea. I’m sorry to have to say that his body was not found.”
As he anticipated, the announcement was greeted with various gasps of astonishment, but mostly by awed silence.
“We have been asked to ensure his personal effects get to his family, such as he had, so if anyone knows of any relatives, we’d be grateful if they’d let us have the names and addresses. This is the second member we’ve lost over the last few days, and we’ve already decided that there should be a memorial service to both Nicola and Eddie when we get back to Sanford. We’ll let you know where and when once we’ve made the arrangements. I’m sorry if the news puts a bit of a damper on your day, but we felt that you had a right to know, especially as one or two people were asking about him yesterday.”
Joe allowed a few moments for the members to take in the announcements.
Clearing his throat, he went on, “Can I just take this opportunity to remind you all that there’s a seventies themed disco in here tonight, and we have to vacate the rooms by ten o’clock tomorrow morning. The bus will be here to pi
ck up the luggage from nine thirty. Beyond that, the bus will be back in Filey bus station from about half past eleven in the morning for a twelve noon departure. Thank you, everyone.”
Joe sat down once more and the dining room was filled with the hum of seventy plus patrons dissolving into their own conversational arenas.
“Very professional, Joe,” said Sheila, giving him a small, soft round of applause as he sat down again.
“Yeah, well, some of us have it, some don’t. We’ve gotta get a move on. We have to get down to the police station, hand that balaclava in.”
Brenda chuckled fatly. “You don’t think it’ll identify him, do you?”
“He was wearing it, he breathed onto it, they can get DNA from it.”
“I hardly think the police will go to such trouble,” said Sheila, “but nevertheless, we should report the incident, even though he got away with nothing.”
Brenda poured more tea for them. “You don’t even know that it was his, Joe. It’s just a balaclava you found outside the dunnies.”
“It was his. Listen, it was hot as hell out there last night, how many people do you think were wandering up and down the seafront wearing woolly helmets? Only muggers pretending to be joggers. I tell you, it was his.” He stirred his tea irritably. “Only he wasn’t no mugger, he was pretending to be a mugger pretending to be a jogger.”
Sheila sipped her tea delicately while Joe and Brenda slurped theirs. “This key, you still don’t know what it’s for and you’re simply speculating that it’s to do with Eddie.”
“Because I found it on Eddie’s windowsill. It had been discreetly hidden where it could be found only if you knew it was there and you were looking for it.”
“You don’t know what it fits, either,” Brenda pointed out.
“I know what it doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit his hotel room or his suitcase. It’s not from a left luggage office, either.”
“How do you know?” Sheila asked.
“First, it’s for a double deadlock, second it’s hooked onto a rabbit’s foot fob. The Beachside’s room keys aren’t, and how many left luggage lockers do you know that fit the bill? No, I’m sure it’s nothing to do with Filey. I think it’s for his Sanford flat, but we won’t find the answer to that until we get home.”
“Are you going to tell the police about it?”
Joe lapsed into brooding thought for a moment. “No,” he declared. “No I’m not. If I did, they’d simply laugh it off, just like you two. So I found a key in a hotel room. People are always losing things in hotel rooms. See, the key on its own doesn’t make much sense, and it could literally be nothing. It’s only when I add it to someone going through my gear and then someone trying to take Brenda’s bag, searching through it and throwing everything away that it begins to look suspicious.”
Sheila was dismissive. “Even then, you’re still speculating.”
“Of course I am, but look at it logically. Suppose, just suppose, that someone knows that the key is for Eddie’s flat in Sanford. And all right, so you shot me down on Eddie coming back for it yesterday, but suppose that same someone helped Eddie off the end of the Brigg. They hid the key in the room, knowing that we would have to remove his personal effects. Then when they realised one of us had found and taken the key, they raided my room, couldn’t find it and followed us to Scarborough, possibly sat through the show last night and tailed us outta there, ready to snatch Brenda’s bag, hoping it might be there. If I’m right, then it means they’ll try again today.” He smiled grimly. “Only this time, we’ll be ready for them.”
Sheila laughed pleasantly. “You’ve been watching too many late night cops and robbers movies, Joe. Logically, if someone murdered Eddie, they would have taken the key with them, not hidden it in the room to collect later. It’s much more likely that, if it is his door key, Eddie left it there so that he wouldn’t lose it while he was out and about Filey and Scarborough, and he probably hid it behind the curtains to ensure that the chambermaids didn’t steal it. Do get a sense of proportion about these things.”
Taking out his tobacco tin and rolling a cigarette, Joe disagreed. “Sheila, you do not hide a key on a window sill, even if you are worried about losing it or making sure the chambermaids don’t nick it. You do remember how hot it’s been? You tend toopen windows in this weather, and that would run the risk of the key dropping over the windowsill and into the yard out back. All right, all right, so I can see what you’re saying and no one who was up to no good would hide it there, but where does that get us? Eddie put it there himself? When he was on his way out to top himself? It doesn’t sound likely.”
“Except that he was doo-lally.”
Brenda’s interjection brought the debate to an abrupt halt.
“What?”
“Come again.”
“You see,” Brenda went on, “if Eddie was going to commit suicide, it’s a safe bet that his mind was disturbed. Why would you expect him to behave logically when he was obviously not being logical? He probably put the key there thinking it was a good idea, but we don’t know why he thought it was a good idea.”
“In that case,” demanded Joe, “why has someone tried to get it back twice since Eddie died?”
“But we don’t know that they have,” Brenda asserted. “You’re assuming the two incidents were attempts to get the key back. They could have been completely innocent thefts.”
Sheila tittered. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an innocent theft.”
“I need a smoke.” Joe gulped down his tea. “Whatever the score, we have to go to the cop shop and I’d like to get a bit of time for sightseeing and stuff today.”
They stepped out onto the terrace where the Staineses were seated enjoying the morning sun.
“Grand night last night, Joe,” Alec Staines called out.
“The news about Eddie took the shine off it a bit, though,” his wife commented.
“How do you think we feel?” Joe asked. “We knew about it first thing yesterday morning.”
“We didn’t want to spoil your evening.” Brenda said, taking a table several yards from the Staineses.
“Curious coming a few days after Nicola’s death, isn’t it?” Julia Staines said. “You did know they were having a bit of a fling?”
“Brenda mentioned it,” Sheila reported.
“Sounds like a problem for you, Joe,” Alec Staines chuckled. “Another mystery to get your dentures into.”
“See,” Joe said, keeping his voice low as he sat with his two friends. “Even they think there’s something iffy about it all.”
“The human tendency to draw lines where there are none,” Sheila said.
Joe frowned. “What?”
Sheila dug into her bag and took out a paper napkin and a pen on which she drew two circles.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Brenda shrugged. “Two circles.”
Sheila drew a vertical line between them.
“Now what is it?”
Joe frowned again. “Two circles with a line between them. Could be, I dunno, a pair of binoculars.
Sheila took her pen again and drew a curved line under the existing drawing.
Turning it so they could both see, she asked, “Now what is it?”
“A smiley face,” Brenda cried with glee.
“Joe?”
“All right,” he agreed, “so it’s a face.”
“No it isn’t,” Sheila argued. “It’s two circles with a line between them and a curve underneath. Your brain makes the connections and draws line that are not there, such as a circle round the whole lot which would turn it into a true smiley face. Well, it’s the same with other connections. Nicola died in tragic circumstances a few days ago. Her latest gentleman friend, Eddie, died yesterday. Our minds automatically link the two events, even though there is not the slightest shred of evidence to support such a link.”
“In other words, it’s all coincidental.”
“In other words, Joe
,” Sheila corrected him, “you’ve built a fairly convincing case on evidence which is purely circumstantial.”
“We’ll have to see what John law say about that, eh?”
“You might not have long to wait to find out,” Brenda said, nodding at the expanse of road drifting away from the front of the Beachside towards the town centre.
Following her gaze, Joe had a distinct feeling of déjà vu. A police car was cruising along towards the hotel. From this distance Joe could not say whether it was driven by Constable Flowers but there was a passenger in the car, visible thanks to his white shirt and dark tie.
“A detective?” Joe asked.
“Perhaps,” Sheila said as the car turned into the drive and crunched to a halt on the gravel.
Mike Flowers climbed out and put his hat on. On the far side of the car, partially blocked by Flowers, the other individual climbed out and reached back in for his jacket. Joe, Sheila and Brenda all exchanged glances.
“That can’t be Terry Cummins,” Brenda said.
“It could be,” Joe replied. “It’s a good eight or nine years since he was our community constable, maybe longer. And I remember him telling me he was moving into CID.” He frowned. “Mind, I’m sure he said he was going to York, not Scarborough.”
Again they watched while the two officers entered the hotel, and still they had not seen the plain clothes man’s face.
“I think it is, you know,” Sheila said.
Joe disagreed again. “You’re the expert on the cops. Why would he be working here when he’s based in York?”
Sheila answered vaguely. “I don’t know. Perhaps he transferred again. Or maybe…” She gave up the ghost. “Constable Flowers is with him. That means it must be about Eddie.”
Several minutes passed before Sarah Pringle ushered Flowers and his colleague out onto the terrace.
From his seated position, Joe looked up into a slim, lugubrious face. Brown eyes gazed from beneath a receding hairline, regarding him with curiosity and the pleasure of recognition. Beneath an aquiline nose, thin, almost cruel lips spread in a smile, which gradually broadened into a grin.
The Filey Connection Page 15
