The Killing in the Café

by Simon Brett

  ‘No. The affair continued until the divorce was final. Then he disappeared again. Never good at taking responsibility for his actions. When one of his women got serious it frightened him. As your friend said, not good “husband material”.’

  ‘Well, at least he’s not hurting any more women now.’

  ‘No.’ And to the surprise of both Carole and Jude, a tear glinted at the corner of Josie Achter’s eye.

  ‘So,’ asked Jude, ‘you didn’t see him the day he died? That Saturday, the third of October?’

  ‘No, I was spending the Shabbat – the Sabbath – with my widowed mother in Brighton. I didn’t get back to Fethering till nearly eleven.’

  ‘And you didn’t look in the store room?’

  ‘Why would I do that? At that time of night?’

  ‘So you’ve no idea when the body was moved?’

  ‘For God’s sake! I didn’t know there was a body there. The first I knew about Amos’s death was when I saw a photograph of him on the television news.’

  ‘And how did you react?’

  ‘I was devastated. I had long since reconciled myself to the fact that we’d never be together, but I was amazed how much it hurt to know that I would never see him again.’

  ‘And did you think he had committed suicide?’

  ‘Never for a moment. Amos did not hate himself. He loved himself.’

  ‘So who do you think killed him?’ asked Jude.

  ‘Assuming, that is, that you didn’t?’ Carole dared to add.

  Josie Achter looked at her bleakly. ‘You don’t understand, do you? I loved Amos. He had hurt me more than anyone I knew, but that didn’t stop me loving him.’

  ‘So who do you think killed him?’ Jude repeated.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Josie replied wearily.

  ‘Where was Rosalie that day?’ asked Carole.

  ‘She was with me in Brighton.’

  ‘Really?’ Carole looked unconvinced. ‘Sharing the Shabbat with your widowed mother? Rosalie told me she’d given up what she called “all that Jewish crap”.’

  ‘She was always very close to her grandmother. She bonded more with her than she ever did with me. For her grandmother, Rosalie would pretend that she still believed “all that Jewish crap”.’

  ‘But she didn’t come back to Fethering with you that night?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Josie wrinkled her nose. ‘She stayed in her squalid little flat in Brighton, surrounded by all her druggie friends.’

  ‘What we haven’t talked about …’ said Jude gently, ‘is the first time you met Amos Green.’

  ‘No, we haven’t,’ Josie agreed shortly.

  ‘How did you meet?’

  ‘It was fairly soon after Hudson and I got married. We had just bought the house in Esher and he was using one of the spare bedrooms to work in. Which wasn’t ideal because he couldn’t really see clients there. So we had plans drawn up for a proper studio to be built on the back of the house.’

  ‘We were in it yesterday morning,’ said Carole.

  ‘Oh, yes. Anyway, Hudson was very busy as ever, so we agreed that I’d sort of follow through the progress of the planning application, which involved a lot of trips to Kingston and …’

  ‘And Amos Green was on the planning committee,’ Carole completed the sentence for her.

  ‘Yes. And we fell for each other just like that. It was a terribly difficult time for me. Because I realized what a massive mistake I had made in marrying Hudson. I had thought what I felt for him was as good as love got, and then when I met Amos … this sounds terribly corny, but I knew it was the real thing.’

  ‘And you didn’t consider just cutting your losses and moving in together?’

  ‘Oh, we talked about it, yes. But we were both so recently married and we felt we had loyalties and … In retrospect we were very stupid. We should have followed our instincts, but … we didn’t. And then life got complicated.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Amos got into trouble in connection with the planning committee. There were allegations that he had been accepting bribes from some architects to give favourable responses to their planning applications.’

  ‘Do you know if they were true?’

  Josie shrugged. ‘I didn’t quite honestly care. All I knew at the time was that it meant I could see even less of Amos. Our time was tight enough, what with the demands of our spouses, and then Amos had to keep going off to give evidence at enquiries and … It was a very difficult time for both of us.

  ‘And then I fell pregnant with Rosalie and that seemed to be a sign for me. A sign that we should end it. If we’d set up together, Amos would never have coped with the responsibility of bringing up a child. Hudson would clearly provide a much more stable background. He’d be a much better father for Rosalie.’

  Jude looked steadily into the woman’s dark eyes. ‘Even if he wasn’t actually her father?’

  Josie Achter gave the words exactly the same emphasis as she repeated, ‘Even if he wasn’t actually her father.’

  ‘Did Amos Green even know you were pregnant?’ asked Carole.

  Josie shook her head. ‘He was under so much pressure at the time … I couldn’t have added to it.’

  ‘And do you know if he was ever prosecuted for taking bribes?’

  ‘I don’t know. I do know that he had to resign as a councillor.’

  ‘Did he talk to you about the details of the case against him?’

  ‘Not much. All he did say was that if he ever decided to take up blackmail he’d got a lot of information on a lot of architects’ practices that could be extremely valuable one day.’

  ‘Did he name any of those companies?’ asked Jude.

  ‘I’m sure he did, but it’s a long time ago and it was at a pretty stressful time for me. Oh, actually I do remember one – and only because it was such a dreadful name. “Fit The Build”.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jude, remembering when Kent Warboys had told her the really bad name of one of his former companies.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Jude rang Kent from the Renault on the way back from Brighton. The rain had eased off but it was still a truculent-looking day. Dark clouds augured more bad weather to come.

  Maybe Kent had been anticipating a call. He certainly seemed to recognize the seriousness of what they wanted to talk to him about. He was at home. Sara was out doing a major shop at Sainsbury’s. Carole and Jude were welcome to drop by for ‘a drink and a chat’.

  As they approached the house, they were aware again of how close it was to the Fethering Yacht Club. The two buildings stood either side of the Fether estuary, both with large windows facing out to sea and smaller ones looking directly at each other.

  Kent led them up to his magnificent sitting room and again made the offer of ‘coffee or’ – gesturing to a drinks cupboard – ‘something stronger; it’s certainly time for a Sunday lunchtime drink.’ But both women refused. They wanted to get on with the conversation that was no longer avoidable.

  ‘It goes back to the night of the third of October,’ said Carole.

  ‘And it also goes back a lot further,’ Jude added. ‘To the time when you had an architectural company in the Kingston area.’

  ‘Ah yes. Rather a messy period of my professional life. And presumably it also goes back to any dealings I might have had with Amos Green?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carole, in stern, avenging angel mode.

  ‘Right.’ He looked across towards the drinks cupboard. ‘I’m going to get myself a drink. Are you sure you …?’

  Both women shook their heads. Kent Warboys sighed and went to pour himself a large scotch. Then he turned to face them, his back to the picture window and the turbulent sea. ‘I don’t know how much you know already.’

  ‘We know that you used to have a company called “Fit The Build” in the Kingston area,’ said Carole.

  He winced. ‘I’ll never get over what a terrible name it was.’

  ‘And at that stage
you had some dealings with Amos Green, who was on the planning committee.’

  ‘And who subsequently had to resign from the planning committee,’ Jude pointed out.

  ‘Yes, okay. Well, it was the usual thing. Shabby, small-town corruption. Amos Green was found to have been guilty of taking bribes to ease through planning applications. We’re not talking big sums of money here, just the occasional small incentive. Often it wasn’t even money. Tickets for Wimbledon, major golf events, expensive meals out, cases of vintage wine delivered. Where is the point when backscratching becomes bribery?’

  ‘And Fit The Build was involved in this?’ asked Carole implacably.

  ‘Yes, most of the companies round there were. It was a more relaxed time. You’d find the same sort of stuff going on in most local planning authorities. Fit The Build was wound up very soon after all this happened. I needed to start out again with a clean slate.’

  ‘But,’ asked Jude, ‘did Amos Green have information about his dealings with Fit The Build that you would rather never came out into the open?’

  ‘Well, I suppose there was some stuff that could have been harmful to the company’s image at the time but, as I said, Fit The Build was very quickly wound up.’

  Carole’s eyes were still fixed on his face. ‘So did Amos Green have information about the running of Fit The Build that could still cause you trouble if he spilled the beans?’

  ‘I’m sure if he ever did want to make the information public, my lawyers could have sorted out some deal agreeable to both parties.’

  ‘Paid him off, you mean?’

  Kent Warboys shrugged. ‘I don’t like the expression, but yes, I’m sure something could have been sorted out.’

  ‘But the question is,’ said Jude, ‘did Amos Green ever threaten to blackmail you?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘He didn’t approach you recently?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not at any time round the third of October last year?’

  ‘Absolutely not. I haven’t seen anything of Amos Green from the time he resigned from the Kingston planning committee. Hadn’t thought about him, either, until I saw his photo on the television news and heard his body had been found here in Fethering.’

  He sounded convincing, but then again, whatever his agenda, Kent Warboys was the kind of man who would always make himself sound convincing.

  ‘Going back to that third of October weekend …’ said Carole.

  ‘Yes?’

  She gestured towards the garden. ‘Your boat down there, the rubber dinghy, was used on the evening of that Saturday.’

  ‘Huh,’ he said bitterly. ‘You can’t do anything unseen in a place like Fethering. Always some old biddy watching out.’

  Neither Carole nor Jude chose to identify the ‘old biddy’ in question.

  ‘There is not definite proof,’ Carole went on, ‘but it seems quite likely that your rubber dinghy was used to dispose of Amos Green’s body at sea.’

  Now their words were getting too close to accusation. ‘I have no idea if that’s what happened or not. She just asked if she could borrow the dinghy and I said yes. She didn’t tell me what she wanted it for.’

  ‘So you didn’t help. You didn’t row the boat out or—?’

  ‘I didn’t touch the dinghy that evening. I just gave her permission to use it. I knew she was in a terrible state emotionally, and when it’s someone to whom you’ve been really close, well …’

  There was a sound from downstairs of the front door opening and Sara’s voice called out, ‘Car’s absolutely filled to the gunwales, Kent. Could you come and give me a hand unloading it?’

  The architect put his finger to his lips. ‘Don’t mention anything we’ve talked about to Sara.’

  ‘I think perhaps we should,’ said Carole.

  THIRTY

  Sara still had the mobile number on her contacts list from the time when she had been working at Polly’s Cake Shop. It was answered rather blearily on the fourth ring.

  And without argument a meeting was agreed. Carole and Jude got back into the Renault and retraced their route eastwards along the A27.

  The area certainly lived up to its ‘manky’ description. Brighton is famous for its splendid seafront, the Regency Pavilion and the trendy chaos of the Lanes; but there’s another side to the town, a warren of dilapidated houses, whose boards of non-matching bell-pushes signify transient multi-occupancy.

  Rosalie Achter was subdued as she let them in. It was a one-bedroom flat with a door leading off presumably to a bathroom. There was no separate kitchen. A basin, a kettle and a Calor Gas ring supplied her cooking needs. An empty and a half-full bottle of vodka stood beside them. The bed was a mattress on the floor with a sleeping bag on top, scrumpled as if its occupant had only just emerged. The whole place looked very studenty, in marked contrast to the impersonal tidiness of the flat over Polly’s Cake Shop.

  There were no pleasantries, no offers of drinks. Picking up from the conversation she’d had on the phone, Jude said, ‘Your mother gave you an alibi for the whole of Saturday the third of October.’

  ‘Oh, what did she say I was doing?’

  ‘Spending the Sabbath with her at your grandmother’s house.’

  ‘Huh, the day you catch me doing that … Still, my mother is trying to help me for once, so perhaps I should be grateful for that.’

  ‘If you weren’t in Brighton that day,’ asked Carole, ‘then where were you?’

  ‘I was actually here in the flat most of the day. Wish I’d stayed, given how things turned out, rather than going to Fethering.’

  ‘And what made you go to Fethering?’

  ‘A phone call. From Amos Green.’

  ‘Had you spoken to him before?’

  ‘No. I didn’t recognize the name. But then he explained who he was.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He told me that he was trying to contact my mother, because they had been very close at one time. And he was in the Fethering area and he thought it’d be nice for them to meet up again “for old time’s sake”.’

  ‘But he hadn’t managed to contact her?’

  ‘No. When she spends the Shabbat with Granny, she keeps her mobile phone switched off.’

  ‘And then …?’ Carole prompted.

  ‘And then he started boasting about how close he’d been to my mother. He said they’d had an affair more than twenty years ago, but when she was already married to my father. And then they’d re-met in Fethering … eleven years later. And because my mother claimed she was in love with Amos, she told my father she wanted a divorce. Amos Green was the cause of my parents splitting up. But then he didn’t stay around and he was the cause of my mother becoming so bitter and destructive. Amos Green was the cause of her breaking up any chance I had of keeping a relationship with my father.’

  ‘Hudson Vale?’ asked Jude.

  ‘Of course Hudson Vale! So virtually everything that has been screwed up in my life has been caused by Amos Green.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ asked Carole quietly.

  ‘I fixed to meet him at Polly’s Cake Shop after closing time. And before I left here I got a gun.’

  ‘How on earth did you do that? It’s not easy just to pick up a gun.’

  ‘It’s easy if you’ve got the kind of friends I have in Brighton.’ She spoke with a degree of pride; the pride of a middle-class girl who had reacted against the values of her upbringing. ‘There are a couple of guys I used to hang around with who’re very into the drug scene here.’

  ‘Gang members?’

  ‘You bet. No problem for one of them to lay their hands on a gun. He owed me a favour, anyway.’

  ‘So,’ asked Carole, ‘you went to Fethering with the firm intention of killing Amos Green?’

  ‘Yes,’ the girl replied coolly. ‘He had to pay for all the evil he had caused. But for him, my mother and father wouldn’t have divorced. I’d still have a proper relationship with the father I love.’<
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  Jude was tempted to say that that father loved her too, but didn’t think it was quite the moment.

  ‘So you duly met Amos Green at Polly’s?’

  ‘Yes. After everyone else had gone home.’

  Carole and Jude exchanged looks. That had been a miscalculation on Rosalie’s part, but again it wasn’t the right moment to raise the matter.

  ‘And when you met …?’

  ‘I took him into the store room. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought shooting him in there would make less mess.’

  ‘And did you talk to him?’

  ‘There wasn’t much to say. I shot him through the temple. I was amazed how little blood there was.’

  ‘Did you deliberately shoot him through the temple so that it could look like suicide?’ asked Carole.

  ‘I hadn’t thought that far. All I knew was that I wanted him dead.’

  ‘And what did you feel when you’d killed him?’

  ‘I felt strange. Shocked perhaps, but also relieved. It was like a great weight had been lifted off my back.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I put the gun on the window sill … not for any particular reason. I wasn’t thinking of anyone finding it and wondering how it got there. I went out of the store room into the yard at the back, then through to the beach. I’d got the keys, of course. And then I just walked along the sands for a while. Feeling numb, really, but also euphoric. I don’t know how long I was there.’

  Long enough, thought Carole and Jude, for both Sara and Binnie to have time to look in the store room and see the body.

  ‘Anyway, after a while I started thinking more practically. I had achieved what I’d wanted to achieve, I’d killed Amos Green. But now I needed to get rid of his body.

  ‘Well, of course the sea was the obvious place. If I weighed his body down. But I couldn’t just chuck him in from the shore. He’d get washed back on to the sand straight away. So I realized I’d need a boat to take him out to the deeper water. I could handle a boat. I used to be a member of the yacht club, until my mother decided I was meeting “the wrong kind of people” there.