by Rhys Bowen
“That’s what they do all the time in movies,” Terry went on. “I saw him, Mr. Evans. He was all foreign-looking and he was carrying a gun in his car. I saw it on the seat beside him, Mr. Evans. He was driving a red car, wasn’t he? He stopped me and asked me where the restaurant was. He spoke funny—foreign like.”
“What did he look like?”
“I dunno.” Terry frowned. “Foreign looking. He was wearing a leather jacket, I remember that. And dark curly hair. And he looked really creepy. I bet he was a Mafia hit man.”
Evan wasn’t sure how much of this was Terry’s imagination. It was a pretty accurate description of the man in the restaurant, the probable victim. And the car had been maroon. It was quite possible that Terry had indeed spoken to him, but had added the gun and the sinister appearance for effect. No gun had been found in the car or on the body.
“Thanks for the tip, Terry,” Evan said. He didn’t like to tell the boy that the man he had seen was now almost certainly dead.
“Right, Mr. Evans. I’ll keep my eyes open while you’re away,” Terry said. “In case he comes around again.”
“Just one thing,” Evan said. “I don’t want you roaming around while I’m away. I want you to stay inside after dark. One of these days you might be hit by a car, so be a good boy and don’t give your mother any grief while I’m not here, all right?”
“All right, Mr. Evans.” Terry grinned. Then he demanded, “Are you going to marry Miss Price, then?” He went on grinning. “I saw you kissing her.”
“You are too inquisitive by half, young man,” Evan said, forcibly shepherding the boy to his own front door. “One of these days you’re going to find yourself in big trouble if you’re not careful.”
“I’m just practicing to be a detective,” Terry said. He opened his front door. “You should marry Miss Price. She’s very pretty.”
He darted inside, leaving Evan standing alone in the cool darkness.
Chapter 15
“We’re here,” Evan said. He had been driving since they switched positions when they joined the M25 and had made good time while Sergeant Watkins dozed.
Watkins roused himself from the passenger seat. They were driving along a wide boulevard beside a serene blue sea. Beds of late flowers separated the road from the broad promenade, along which elderly couples strolled arm in arm, and proud fathers were pushing prams. A military band was playing in the bandstand while pensioners relaxed in deck chairs. There were even a few brave children paddling at the edge of the waves or building castles in tiny patches of sand between the pebbles. Watkins blinked in the late afternoon sunlight.
“Are you sure you didn’t overshoot and land us on the Riviera? This can’t be England. I’ve been on holiday in England enough times. It always rains.”
“That’s because you always go in the summer time. You know August is the monsoon month.” Evan looked around with approval. “It looks nice, doesn’t it? Maybe we can stretch this investigation out to a couple of weeks. I rather fancy lying there in a deck chair and reading a good book, or staying at one of these posh hotels and having tea in the conservatory.”
“We’re on an NWP expense account. You’re lucky they didn’t provide us with a tent.”
Evan chuckled. “So the first thing to do is find a place to stay and then a meal. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
Watkins nodded. “My thoughts exactly. We’re too late to do any business today, anyway. We’ll get an early start in the morning.”
“Do you think we should make a courtesy call on the local police before we start poking around on their turf?”
“Yeah, I suppose we’ll have to do that, but I’d rather get my facts straight first. I want to get all the details on this restaurant, so that it looks as if we know what we’re talking about.”
“The town hall will have the records of business licenses, won’t they? Maybe we should start there.”
“Good idea. We’ll see what they’ve got and go on from there.” Watkins sucked air through his teeth. “I wish I knew what we were looking for.”
“We’re checking out Madame Yvette’s past, aren’t we? We’re trying to find out why a man with a false identity should choose her restaurant to be murdered in.”
“I just hope we can come up with something substantial.” Watkins sighed. “If we come back with facts we could have got over the phone, we’ll never hear the last of it.”
“There has to be something here, Sarge.” Evan pulled up at a zebra crossing and waited patiently while an elderly couple shuffled across the broad esplanade. It seemed to take forever. “People don’t suddenly show up in a remote part of North Wales for no reason. Yvette must have had a good reason for opening her restaurant there. And I bet our victim had a good reason for seeking out her restaurant. Something more than wanting a lobster dinner. Once we’ve established a connection, it will all fall into place.”
“You and your connections,” Watkins said dryly. “So you’re saying it was something more than educating the Welsh peasants in the culinary delights of French cooking that made her choose that site?”
The crosswalk cleared and Evan drove on, past elegant hotels with pillared porches and glassed-in lounges. The sort of places that would be serving tea on silver trays at this very moment, Evan thought wistfully. He wrenched his thoughts back to the matter at hand. “If you were French and you had to close one restaurant, you’d open up another one nearby or go back to France, wouldn’t you? Why would anyone choose Wales without any Welsh connections?”
Watkins nodded. “I think you’re right. Just say your prayers that we stumble across the answer down here. It’s about time we got a lucky break.”
Half an hour later they checked into the Seaview Hotel.
It was an old-fashioned establishment on a back street, half a mile from the seafront. “We could report them for violating the trades description act,” Watkins muttered as they went up the front steps. “You certainly can’t see the sea from here!”
“And it’s not really a hotel,” Evan added. “When I was a kid we called a place like this a boarding house.”
The woman who opened the door reminded Evan instantly of the old landladies he had encountered at those boarding houses during childhood holidays.
“No noise after ten o’clock,” she informed them, eying them as if she suspected they might be all-night ravers, “and the front door is locked at eleven sharp. There’s no reason to be out after that in Eastbourne. We’re a quiet, refined establishment.” She took a key from the rack and led them up a flight of carpeted stairs. “The bathroom rules are posted on the inside of the door,” she went on, puffing a little from the exertion. “Basically it’s no baths after ten o’clock at night. The geyser makes a noise, you see, and people like to sleep.” She reached the landing and put a key in one of the doors. “You’re here on a late holiday, are you?”
“No, actually we’re police officers,” Watkins said.
“Police?” She looked horrified. “There’s nothing underhand going on here, I can assure you. We’re a respectable establishment.”
“I’m sure you are, madam,” Watkins said. “We’re investigating a case.”
“How exciting. Just like on the telly.” Her whole face lit up. “Is it something juicy? Murder or spies maybe?”
“No, we’re checking on establishments that are trying to evade paying their VAT,” Watkins said and grinned to Evan as she suddenly remembered something she had left cooking on the stove and beat a very hasty retreat.
The next morning the full English breakfast was rather on the meager side, with two strips of very thin bacon, a fried egg and one grilled tomato slice.
“At least the wife can’t complain I’m getting too much cholesterol,” Watkins said as they left the dining room.
“Of course, she didn’t see that steak you had last night,” Evan pointed out.
Watkins grinned. “Bloody good, wasn’t it? You can keep your French food. Ju
st give me a good piece of red meat any day.”
They had checked the yellow pages to see if Madame Yvette’s French restaurant still existed under new ownership, but there were no establishments listed which sounded promising. The only one that described itself as French was called the Oasis, and it was in a new shopping center.
In the end they had eaten at a nearby pub. The food had been cheap and well prepared, the waitress friendly. They had asked her if she remembered a French couple who had run a restaurant just outside of the town, but she shook her head. “We never eat in places like that. And Eastbourne’s a big town, you know. There are always new restaurants opening up and closing again.”
After breakfast they tried the borough council offices, but the clerk couldn’t come up with anything that sounded remotely like the place they were looking for.
“She said it was just outside of the town,” Evan pointed out. “Would those records be kept somewhere else?”
“If it wasn’t actually in Eastbourne proper, they’d be kept in the county offices at Lewes, wouldn’t they?” the girl said.
They drove half an hour to the old town of Lewes, nestled in the South Downs.
“Nice place,” Evan commented, looking with approval at the green hills that ringed the town.
“Can’t do without your bloody mountains, can you?” Watkins chuckled.
At county hall a young girl in the records office eyed Evan with interest and became instantly helpful. She helped them check through ledgers until finally Evan pointed at an entry halfway down a page. “Here it is. Chez Yvette in Alfriston. License granted . . . let’s see . . . six years ago.”
“We’re not much the wiser, are we? It just gives the owners’ names as Jean-Jacques and Yvette Bouchard. Residence address at the restaurant.” He beckoned the young clerk over. “Do you have any details on when this place closed?”
She shrugged. “Sorry, that’s all we have. All we can tell is that the license wasn’t renewed. Restaurants come and go all the time, I’m afraid.”
“So where exactly is this place?” Watkins asked.
“Alfriston?” the girl asked. “It’s not far from Newhaven. Sort of between Eastbourne and Newhaven. It’s a little village on the Downs—very pretty, actually.”
“Between Eastbourne and Newhaven, eh?” Watkins asked as they left the building. “Is that where the ferries go from to France?”
“Right. Newhaven—Dieppe. I went that way once.”
“Very convenient, I’d say—near a major port if you wanted to smuggle drugs into the country.”
“Maybe they needed to pop across to France to get supplies they couldn’t get in England,” Evan suggested. “Or they liked to visit the family.”
“Okay, I won’t say any more until we know some details,” Watkins said with a smile. “I’ll drive and you navigate or we’ll take all day to get there.”
Alfriston was a pretty village with old-world charm. Some of the cottages were thatched and it looked as if it might appear on a calendar of Beautiful Britain.
“Nice spot,” Watkins said. “But I don’t see any restaurants. A couple of tea rooms and the pub. Let’s ask in the Copper Kettle over there. They look as if they’ve been around since the year one, and I could do with a coffee.”
They crossed the street and took a table by the wall. Watkins waited until the girl had brought two coffees before he asked, “Do you happen to remember a French restaurant that used to be in this village?”
“Chez Yvette, you mean?” She had a pleasing country burr to her voice and a fresh-scrubbed, red-cheeked face. “It’s been gone about two years now.”
“Where was it? We couldn’t find where it might have been.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” She looked puzzled. “The new bank’s on the site now. The Westminster on the corner over there.”
“Oh, I see. Did they pull it down?”
A shocked look came over her face. “Oh no, sir. It burned down, didn’t it? Burned to the ground.”
Chapter 16
“Two restaurants burning down!” Sergeant Watkins stood in the village street, staring at the modern glass and concrete structure of the Westminster Bank. It looked completely out of place next to an old-world white-washed antique shop and a solid Georgian redbrick house with a brass plate outside, announcing it as a doctor’s surgery. “Now that’s too much of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
Evan nodded. “I’d say there were pretty high odds against it happening twice, unless she was a very careless cook who was always leaving pans of hot fat on the stove unattended.”
“And you don’t think she was a careless cook?”
“The kitchen was spotless when I saw it,” Evan said. “She strikes me as the sort of person who always knows exactly what she’s doing.”
“I reckon now’s a good time to go and talk to the local police,” Watkins said. “I’ll be very interested to hear what conclusions they reached about the fire.”
They returned to their car and drove slowly down the village street until they were back among the green hills again.
“Oh, and Evans, let me do the talking, okay?” Watkins said. “You know how touchy some people can be if they think you’re treading on their turf. They’ll want to know why we didn’t call them and ask them to take over this investigation.”
“And why didn’t we?” Evan asked.
“Because we don’t know what we’re bloody well looking for yet,” Watkins growled.
The closest police station turned out to be in Seaford, a small town on the coast, about five miles away. The desk sergeant shook hands as Watkins introduced himself and Evan. “North Wales Police, eh? You’re a long way from home. What brings you down to this part of the world?”
“We’re following up on a restaurant fire that happened earlier this week,” Watkins said. “The restaurant owner was a Madame Yvette Bouchard. We’ve just discovered that she was involved in a restaurant fire down here, in the village of Alfriston.”
The sergeant’s face suddenly showed interest. “A couple of years ago in Alfriston? Yes, I remember it.”
“Would you happen to have the incident report lying around? We’d appreciate it if we could take a look at it.”
The sergeant got up. “I’ll just go and check,” he said, “but it’s my recollection that we don’t have anything on that fire.”
“Wasn’t it your station that would have handled it?”
“Oh yes. It was our CID man that was sent out right enough, but if I recall correctly, the fire was deemed to be accidental in nature, so there were no criminal charges to follow up on.”
“The fire was an accident? Were they sure?” Evan asked, forgetting that Watkins had warned him to keep quiet.
“As far as they could tell,” the sergeant said. “It was a listed building, dating from the sixteenth century. Thatched roof, half timbered, very quaint but a real tinderbox. God knows what rubbish was stuffed into those walls. Of course it went up like a torch. There was nothing left by the time they put it out—burned right to the ground. I saw it myself. The fire had been so hot that the stove and the fridge looked like melted lumps of metal. Horrible it was. But they couldn’t find any evidence of an outside agent being used to start it, and they couldn’t come up with any kind of motive either.”
“Madame Yvette hadn’t received any kind of threatening letters?” Evan asked, making Watkins look sharply in his direction. “She hadn’t come to you for protection?”
“Threatening letters? Nothing like that, as far as I can remember.” The sergeant looked a little baffled. “Hold on and I’ll go and check. I think the inspector’s in his office. He’d know more than I would.”
He returned a few minutes later with a hollow, tired-looking man with graying hair and a bristly mustache. “This is Detective Inspector Morris. He was in charge at the time of the incident.”
Inspector Morris shook hands. “I don’t know if I can be of much help,” he said in an a
ccent that betrayed a long-ago stint at a public school. “We all took it to be a simple accident—the kind of thing that tends to happen to old buildings. Are you saying it wasn’t?”
“We don’t know yet,” Watkins said. “But Madame Bouchard’s restaurant in North Wales has just burned down—which is a coincidence, don’t you think?”
The inspector was now clearly interested. “I’d say so,” he agreed.
“Of course, it could have been the latest in a string of arson fires,” Watkins continued. “The others appear to be the work of an extremist group—you know, Wales for the Welsh, that kind of thing. But this one doesn’t seem to fit the pattern.” He paused, glanced at Evan and then said, “And there was another element involved. A body was found in this fire.”
“A body? So it’s a murder investigation, then?”
“It looks that way,” Watkins said.
The inspector looked at them with new respect. “I see. Well, there was no suspicion of anything like that down here. We had our arson boys check it over and they came to the conclusion that it was probably faulty wiring. The owners had been told to replace the wiring when they first took over the building. Apparently they didn’t do so. And they didn’t have a working sprinkler system in place, which was a violation of code, but we didn’t cite them, considering the circumstances.”
“Circumstances? Was there any loss of life involved in your fire?” Evan asked.
“Luckily no. There could well have been if the firemen hadn’t responded so quickly. They found the owner just inside the door. She’d collapsed, overcome with smoke, trying to get out. Another couple of minutes and she’d have been a goner. As it was she was pretty badly burned. I remember seeing her—God she was a mess. Hair all burned off . . . I think she spent a long time in the burn trauma unit at the Brighton infirmary and she had to have a lot of plastic surgery.”
An image swam into Evan’s head—Yvette’s luxuriant hair piled on her head and no sign of burns. She’d apparently made a remarkable recovery.
