The Fethering Mysteries 06; The Witness at the Wedding tfm-6

by Simon Brett

  Robert Coleman shrugged wearily. “That is what no one seems to know.”

  “But he is out of prison? He did finish his sentence?”

  “Oh yes.”

  She digested this unappealing thought. “What would he have had against Howard?”

  “God knows how a mind like his works.”

  “And if Michael Brewer did have something to do with Howard’s death, who else might be at risk from him?”

  “Anyone in the family,” Robert Coleman replied bleakly.

  Which, of course, would include Gaby.

  ∨ The Witness at the Wedding ∧

  Nineteen

  Carole had been surprised when Stephen and Gaby accepted her invitation to join her and Jude for supper at the Crown and Anchor on the Saturday night. She had thought they might want to spend the little precious time they had that weekend alone together. But no, Marie was safe in the Dauncey Hotel, having dinner with her worshipped brother Robert, so Gaby felt safe to leave her. And the engaged couple seemed very happy to join Carole.

  Carole deliberately arrived at the Crown and Anchor early, so that she would have time to bring Jude up to date on what she had heard from Robert Coleman. Gita was in London that evening, seeing a friend, a lawyer she had met while researching a crime story. She was also determined to go to her flat for the first time since her suicide attempt. If she felt up to it, she’d spend the night there. If not, she would stay with her friend. All of which Jude thought were very encouraging developments.

  Although she’d told Jude, Carole had decided to keep quiet to Stephen and Gaby about her recent conversation with Robert Coleman. Though what he had said was of momentous importance to the investigation of Howard Martin’s death, Carole didn’t want to frighten Gaby with the image of an avenging murderer on the loose. If the girl initiated the subject of Michael Brewer, then fine. Carole would find out how much Gaby knew and contribute to the conversation accordingly, but she wasn’t going to be the first to mention the name.

  Both Stephen and Gaby looked tired, he from his work crises, she from the stresses of looking after her mother, but there was still a touching lack of tension between them as a couple. As she looked at them, Carole felt an unfamiliar welling of something she supposed must be maternal warmth. She was determined to do everything she could to remove the cloud that hung lowering over her future daughter-in-law.

  The first thing Gaby said, once they were supplied with drinks, did not concern Michael Brewer, but was still something of a bombshell, “Phil’s coming down this weekend.”

  “Coming down where?”

  “To Fethering.”

  In her bewilderment, Carole couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Why on earth would he want to do that?”

  “He said he thought he should check that Mum’s all right.” Gaby sounded sceptical.

  “I gather Robert told you that the police only had him in for an afternoon.”

  “Yes. I heard that.”

  “So when’s your brother arriving?”

  Gaby looked at her watch. “Any time. He’s comingdown from Hoddesdon on the bike. He’s going to meet us here. I thought that’d be better, so we can have a word before he sees Mum and Robert.”

  That’s good, thought Carole. Though Phil was very much part of the mystery jigsaw, contacting him in Hoddesdon was almost out of the question. But now he, like Robert Coleman before him, was going to appear conveniently on her doorstep.

  There was a break in the conversation as their food order arrived, brought over – they were honoured – by Ted Crisp himself. Before returning behind his bar, the landlord made a bad joke of the ‘Waiter, waiter’ variety (‘Waiter, waiter, do you have frog’s legs?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then jump over the counter and get me a sandwich.’).

  Then the engaged couple started to talk about their wedding plans, and the sparkle came back into Gaby’s eye. For a brief moment, just by keeping off the subject, they could forget the recent tragedy and find a kind of limited normality in a world where people got married and looked forward to sharing happy futures.

  The arrival of Phil put an end to this interval of calm. Even without recent events, the appearance of Phil Martin in the Crown and Anchor at Fethering would have been unsettling. The black leathers and black helmet he wore accentuated his height, and he loomed over the bar-room like some legendary avenging warrior. When he removed the helmet to reveal his scowling face, the image became less mythological, but no less deterrent.

  He quickly identified who he was looking for, and moved across towards the alcove in which they were finishing their meal. Only then did Carole and Jude notice that he had not entered the bar alone.

  Behind Phil, literally in his shadow and looking half his size, followed a man of about the same age. He too carried a crash helmet, and the denim jacket buttoned tightly over a sweatshirt suggested that he had just been riding pillion on Phil’s motorbike. Even in June, he’d have needed to wrap up against the wind on the motorway.

  Carole had a pretty good idea of who the newcomer might be, and her guess was instantly confirmed when Gaby said, without enthusiasm, “Bazza. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Come down with me, didn’t he?” said her brother ungraciously.

  “But I thought the police were looking for him.” Phil shook his head. “Don’t know anything about that, Pascale.”

  “It’s Gaby.”

  Her knee-jerk reaction showed that his use of her given name was part of an ongoing conflict between the siblings. Whenever Phil wanted to rile his sister he used her original name.

  “Hello, Phil. Nice to see you again.” Carole felt that social decorum should be observed. “Now, you haven’t met my friend Jude, have you?”

  Phil agreed that he hadn’t, but didn’t seem that interested in remedying the deficiency. “Where’s the place Mum’s staying then?”

  “Just the other side of the estuary. Ten minutes in the car.”

  “Right. And Robert’s with her there and all?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Are we off then?”

  “Phil, we haven’t finished eating.”

  Stephen recognized his cue to ask Phil and Bazza if they’d like a drink while they waited. Both opted for pints of Stella. At the bar, Ted Crisp gave Stephen a rather old-fashioned look. “Those bikers friends of yours, are they?”

  “Yes. The tall one’s my fiancée’s brother.”

  Ted Crisp didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. His face expressed his disapproval of the connection. He didn’t want the Crown and Anchor to get the reputation of being a haven for bikers.

  Phil and Bazza said very little while they downed their lagers. Both looked ill at ease, keen to be on the move. Bazza looked up in panic each time someone new came into the bar, fearful presumably that the police had tracked him down.

  But when the party for the Dauncey Hotel was ready to leave, Phil made it clear that his friend wasn’t coming with him. “No, you stay here. I’ll sort it out with Robert. There won’t be a problem. I’ll give you a bell on the mobile when it’s sorted.”

  “Leave it out, Phil,” Bazza complained. “I should come with you, otherwise I’m stuck here without any wheels.”

  “I’ll call you,” said Phil, with a menacing firmness that stopped further argument.

  The threesome left sitting at the Crown and Anchor was an unusual one. Though so different in personalities and attitudes, Carole and Jude weren’t an incongruous couple. But the addition of a small-time car thief from Harlow did make for an unusual mix.

  Carole was sorely tempted to go home, but she could recognize the sense of Jude’s offering to buy another round of drinks. Circumstances had brought them together with someone the police wanted to interview in connection with Howard Martin’s death. Sleuthing opportunities rarely came better giftwrapped.

  Bazza consented to another Stella, so Jude bought that and a couple of Chilean Chardonnays from a surly Ted Crisp. Even though the one who
actually wore leathers had gone, he remained suspicious of the other ‘biker’.

  While the drinks were being organized, Carole racked her brains for something she could say to Bazza, but not an idea came. She had to fall back on a polite smile, which was rather wasted because the boy refused to look up at her.

  Needless to say, as Jude sat down, she pitched in with a perfect conversation-opener. It was characteristically direct.

  “Dreadful for Phil and Gaby, isn’t it, their dad having died in that ghastly way?”

  Bazza conceded that it was “a bit of a choker.”

  “You weren’t at the engagement party, were you?”

  “No. I’m more Phil’s mucker than Pascale’s. You know, I’ve met her the odd time, but we’re not, like mates.”

  “And did you know Phil’s parents?”

  “Met them, like, the odd time.”

  “But you can’t think why anyone might have wanted to kill Howard Martin?”

  Carole would never have dared be as direct as that. Bazza looked more uncomfortable than ever. His eyes flickered towards the door, contemplating flight. But some logic within him seemed to argue that he was off his home turf, he had nowhere else to go, and he could be in a worse situation than talking to two old biddies with a nearly full pint of Stella in front of him.

  “No idea,” he replied stolidly.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” Jude went on ingenuously, “Gaby was saying that the police wanted to talk to you about the murder.”

  “Don’t know what the police want, do I? All I know is, if you ever once got the wrong side of them, you never hear the end of it.”

  “And you had got on the wrong side of them?”

  “Look, everyone’s done some iffy stuff when they’re young, haven’t they?” He looked at the two middle-aged ladies he was with, and realized he was asking the wrong audience. “OK, yeah, I’ve knocked off the odd car in my life. I was skint and I only took them from people who could well afford them. I mean, rich people don’t really suffer anything much more than inconvenience when their car’s nicked, because they’ve all got insurance, haven’t they? If you nick a car from some bloke who can’t afford the insurance, then all right, he’s going to suffer.”

  To Carole this was a very bizarre justification for stealing cars, but Bazza seemed to believe what he was saying. He had managed to convince himself that he was committing victimless crimes.

  She took up the conversational baton from Jude, remembering what she’d been told in the car park on the beach. “Gaby said that you’d been very lucky, that you’d got off quite lightly when you’d been caught by the authorities.”

  “Well,” said Bazza, aggrieved, “like I say, I never done that much wrong. And, OK, I been lucky enough to come up before magistrates what’ve given me the benefit of the doubt. I wish more was like that. Most kids when they commit their first crime and get caught. Well, they get sent down the nick, or the Young Offenders Centre, you know, depending on their age – and that’s it. All they learn in places like that is how to commit more crimes, so when they come out, they’re lifetime villains. Much more sensible to give those kids a ticking-off and another chance. That’s what happened to me – and it ain’t done me no harm.”

  Exhausted by this long disquisition on the criminal justice system, Bazza sat back and took a long swill from his pint of Stella.

  Carole had a sudden thought, a synaptic linking of two pieces of information in her brain. “Tell me, Bazza, did you ever come up before Robert Coleman? In the magistrates’ court?”

  “What if I did.”

  “He’s a kind man. Is it possible that you owe your light treatment by the magistrates to him?”

  For a moment, the boy seemed as if he was about to reply more fully, but then he sat back and tookanother swig of lager. “Don’t know what you’re on about.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Jude, who was catching up with the direction of Carole’s thinking. “When Phil was here, he assured you that Robert Coleman was in the Dauncey Hotel with his sister. Is that why you’ve both come all this way – to see whether Robert Coleman can help you out of another hole?”

  “I’m not in a hole. Phil’s come down to see his mum. I’m his mate. He asked me if I fancied a trip down the South Coast. I said yes. That’s all there is to it.”

  “You say you’re not in a hole,” said Carole sternly, “but apparently Inspector Pollard wants to talk to you, and he hasn’t been able to find you.”

  “Don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Inspector Pollard is the officer investigating the death of Howard Martin.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with killing him.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t. But did you have anything to do with procuring the car in which he was killed?”

  “Procuring? What’s this? What do you mean by procuring?”

  “Stealing, Bazza.”

  “I never stolen anything in my life.”

  “Really? But you’ve just told us you’ve nicked the odd car.”

  “Yeah, but when I nick something, it isn’t stealing.” Bizarrely, a high moral tone had crept into his voice. “Look, all right, I have occasionally borrowed a car. Mate needs one for a little while, I’ll sort it out for him. Car almost always goes back undamaged – just a bit less fuel in the tank. Sometimes not even that. Often the owner doesn’t even know it’s been borrowed. So who’s suffering here?” Bazza, it was becoming clear, was something of an expert on the concept of the victimless crime. “OK, maybe it’s not strictly legal, but I don’t see it’s doing much harm to anyone.”

  “Surely,” suggested Jude quietly, “that rather depends on what your mate does while he’s in possession of the car?”

  Bazza had his moral defence ready for that one. “I never ask. That’s not my business, is it?”

  Carole snorted her disapproval. “But presumably your mates pay you for your car supply service?”

  “Well, of course.” He was self-righteously offended by her tone. “I can’t do stuff for nothing, can I? I got to make a living.”

  Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, there was the sound of a dog barking. Carole and Jude – and other pub customers – looked around for the animal in question. With a complacent grin, Bazza drew a mobile phone out of his pocket. “Not a bad ring-tone, that?”

  He pressed a button and the dog ceased to bark. He checked the number on the display, and pressed another button. “Case in point. This mobile’s my office. Another little business call. I’ll get back to them.” He returned the phone to his pocket.

  “Get back to who?” asked Jude hopefully.

  He laughed indulgently at the idea she might even think he’d answer that.

  There was a silence; then, very deliberately, Carolefilled it. “Bazza, did you ‘supply’ the car that took Howard Martin from the hotel the night he died?”

  “Course I didn’t. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “No?” Carole took a risk. “Someone actually saw you driving up the hotel entrance to pick him up.”

  “Nobody could have seen me – because I wasn’t there.” The break between the two parts of his sentence was tantalizing. He could have made a slip and be covering up for himself. Equally – and frustratingly – his words could be perfectly innocent.

  Carole continued with her risk strategy. She didn’t see that it could lose her anything. “You didn’t think anyone could see you, because you had your baseball cap pulled down over your eyes.”

  This did seem to catch him on the hop. There was a definite pause before he said, “Nah, you’re making it up. Nobody could have seen me at the hotel, because I wasn’t there.”

  “My ex-husband was there. He saw you.” Time for the big lie. “You exactly match the description he gave me.”

  The boy looked really worried now. “Has he – your ex-husband – has he talked to the cops?”

  Carole didn’t know that for a fact, but it didn’t stop her saying, “Oh ye
s.”

  Bazza’s eyes darted to the Crown and Anchor’s main entrance, then back to the remaining third of his drink. He wanted to get out, but not before he’d finished his Stella.

  Jude took over the interrogation. “Do you know someone called Michael Brewer?”

  The instinctive flick of the head appeared genuine enough. “Never heard of him. Why should I?”

  “It’s possible that he was the one who organized that car from the hotel.”

  “Well, it wasn’t. Like I said, I only do that kind of job for mates.”

  It took a second for Bazza to realize the implications of what he’d said. When he did, he rose to his feet, downing the last of his drink.

  “And Phil’s your mate,” Jude persisted. “Are you saying that Phil asked you to organize that car to drive his father?”

  “Mind your own bloody business, you nosy cows!” he snapped, as he stumped out of the pub. It wasn’t much of a parting shot, but it caused a little ripple of reaction among the other Saturday night customers. Behind his bar, Ted Crisp smiled with grim satisfaction. He didn’t want any bikers in the Crown and Anchor.

  ∨ The Witness at the Wedding ∧

  Twenty

  When she got back from taking Gulliver for his walk on Fethering Beach the next morning, Carole was surprised to see her son’s BMW parked outside High Tor. Stephen had his own key, and was sitting in the kitchen waiting for her. He came into the hall when she opened the front door.

  “What’s up, Stephen?” she asked, as she used a towel to brush the sand off Gulliver’s paws. “Is Gaby all right?”

  “She’s fine. Well, she’s OK, anyway. No, it’s her brother I’m worried about.”

  Carole closed the door and followed Gulliver through into the kitchen. “Why? Where is he?” Without asking, she started preparing coffee.

  “That’s what we don’t know. After we’d left you in the pub, we went over to the Dauncey Hotel and booked a room for him. He was a bit iffy about that, until I said I’d pay. Then Gaby and Robert and I had a drink in the bar, while Phil went up to talk to his mother. Marie had been feeling tired, so she’d gone up to bed early.