The Festival Murders

by Mark McCrum

  ‘I think that’s unlikely,’ said Francis.

  ‘Why?’ asked Grace, with just a touch of youthful scorn.

  ‘Because the talk won’t be taking place. Bryce Peabody was found dead in his hotel room at four o’clock this morning.’

  This piece of information had the desired effect. Two mouths gaped open.

  ‘Oh my god!’ said the dark-haired girl; the wooden spoon stalled in the pan.

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Grace.

  ‘Sadly not.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nobody knows. It looked at first like it might have been a massive heart attack. But the police are out in force, so …’

  ‘Not … suicide?’

  Francis shrugged and made a face.

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘All I can tell you is that the cops seem to be checking every angle. All the guests in the hotel are being asked to give statements, there are forensics people everywhere.’

  ‘Oh my god!’ the dark-haired girl repeated, looking sideways at her friend, her hand over her open mouth.

  ‘But he was out here last night,’ said Grace. ‘With his girlfriend. He seemed fine. Didn’t he, Fleur?’

  ‘Actually,’ Fleur replied, ‘he looked shattered. He was yawning his head off. Then Rory had a big go at him and he left the party.’

  ‘Rory being one of your fellow housemates?’

  ‘Yuh. Drug-crazed barrister cum wannabe novelist prat who’s staying out here.’ Grace looked round at the kitchen door, presumably in case the prat in question was about to make a sudden entry. ‘But no, you’re right, Bryce went home early. Because it was only after he’d gone that Priya had that huge row with Conal.’ She looked over at her friend. ‘We’d better scoff these eggs. I need to get into Mold right away. I’m going to have to forget Hilary Mantel. This is a real story.’

  Fleur looked disappointed. ‘Won’t the Sentinel be covering it anyway? I mean, didn’t Bryce work for them?’

  ‘Yuh, but still … I need to be there.’

  ‘I was looking forward to Mantel. Conal said he was going.’

  ‘Then you’ll have him all to yourself, won’t you, darling.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Fleur, if I can get something the others can’t this could be a real break for me.’ She turned to Francis. ‘I don’t suppose you’re driving back into Mold now?’

  ‘I’m sorry, no. I was hoping to talk to your friend Conal.’

  ‘He’s probably asleep upstairs,’ said Fleur. ‘He’s not like a suspect or anything, is he?’

  ‘Not as far as I’m aware. Should he be?’

  ‘No,’ she said, with a little giggle. ‘It was just last night. After his row with Priya he shouted at everyone about how he was going to kill Bryce. Then he vanished.’

  ‘He was totalled, Fleur,’ said Grace.

  ‘But he really hates Bryce.’ Fleur turned back to Francis. ‘We drove down from London with him on Friday and he bent our ears about it for ages. I thought it was quite sweet.’

  ‘Like, er, how?’ said Grace.

  ‘Because he’s like this battle-hardened foreign correspondent type, doing these mad, dangerous expeditions round the West Bank and Somalia and places, and then he comes back to the UK and he’s really upset about his girlfriend.’

  ‘Wounded pride,’ said Grace.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Definitely. Thought his little woman was there for him whatever he did and then was terribly piqued when he discovered she had a mind of her own.’

  ‘He was only away three months. She could have waited.’

  ‘Little Miss Devoted here would have done. She’s basically in training to be a Stepford wife.’

  ‘Ha ha, Grace.’

  ‘You said he was asleep upstairs,’ said Francis. ‘Does that mean you saw him again last night?’

  ‘This morning,’ said Fleur. ‘He reappeared right at the end of the party. We were all on the terrace as the sun came up.’

  The door opened and a curly-haired, dishevelled, slightly chubby figure appeared. ‘Hi,’ he said, holding out a hand to Francis. ‘I’m Conal O’Hare. Who are you?’

  TWELVE

  ‘So the bastard’s dead,’ said Conal, when the young women had gone, taking the laptop with them. ‘I can’t pretend I’m unhappy about that. After everything he did to screw things up for me …’

  Francis said nothing. He stayed sitting at the kitchen table while Conal got on with making his breakfast. Then: ‘You really felt as if he’d stolen Priya from you?’ he asked.

  ‘He knew perfectly well I was her boyfriend. I introduced them, for Christ’s sake! This time last year, here at the feckin’ festival. The next thing I knew she was working for him.’

  ‘Whose idea was that?’

  ‘Priya wrote to him, got herself an interview, and then, lo and behold, he took her on as his PA. He probably couldn’t believe his luck.’

  ‘And then you went away?’

  ‘For three months. It was hardly a lifetime.’

  ‘To Africa?’

  ‘Somalia, yes. To research my current book. I didn’t imagine for one moment that when I got back the old walrus would have enticed her into his bed.’

  ‘It does take two to tango.’

  ‘I appreciate that. But he was on her case non-stop, by all accounts. Taking her out to the smartest places, introducing her to his big name chums. She’s an amazing woman, Priya, but she’s as susceptible to flattery as any other bloody female.’

  ‘So what happened last night?’ asked Francis.

  Conal didn’t reply. He forked his rashers out of the pan, one by one, switched off the gas, and took a long swig of his coffee. ‘What’s it to you?’ he said eventually.

  ‘I had a long chat with Priya this morning and I wanted to hear your side of the story,’ Francis replied. This was stretching it a bit, but he had enough understanding of heartbreak to know that it might do the trick.

  ‘What did she say?’ Conal asked, after a few moments.

  ‘I’m not sure it would be fair to repeat it.’

  ‘She thought I was being ridiculous, I suppose, a jealous twat?’

  ‘I really don’t think I ought …’

  ‘Fine, I respect your discretion.’ He sighed. ‘I’d been drinking tequila shots on top of sparkling wine, never a good idea. When Priya arrived at the party with Bryce I ignored her. But then I saw her standing all on her own at the end of the terrace. She looked lovelier even than I’d remembered, all shining-eyed in this long red dress, like some sort of Hindu goddess. I was drunk enough by then to think that if I told her I loved her she would admit it had all been a horrible mistake with Bryce and fall back into my arms. So when she started putting up objections, I lost it. Then I realised I was making so much noise that everyone was watching. So I ran off, across the lawn and into the fields. I kept going until I got to the river, then I climbed a tree and sat high up in the branches. I was crying like a baby. It was a full moon, the river was lit up silvery white and the shadows in the trees were as black as ink. I was just wishing that we could have been there together. Sharing the beauty. Like we did last year.’ Conal smiled ruefully across at Francis. ‘Pathetic, eh? But that’s how I felt.’

  ‘Nothing pathetic about true feeling,’ said Francis, quietly. ‘Not in my book, anyway.’

  ‘Once I’d sobered up a little and got over my anger,’ Conal went on, ‘I realised there was no point crying over spilt milk. If Bryce really was what Priya wanted, good luck to her. She was heartless when she binned me, and I’d told myself she needed to be like that, to make things clear to me. But I don’t think that now. I saw a dark side of her last night.’

  ‘You can hardly blame her for defending herself. By all accounts you did come at her out of the blue.’

  ‘Maybe I did. But where was the humanity? Where were the womanly tears?’

  ‘Do you remember shouting at her about how you were going to “kill Bryc
e”, just before you walked off?’

  ‘No. What did I say?’

  ‘Exactly that, apparently. That you were going to kill him – you didn’t specify how.’

  ‘And now he’s dead. Oh dear.’ Conal laughed. ‘No one’s going to take that seriously though, when I was off my face.’

  ‘There were plenty of witnesses.’

  ‘It was an explosion of justifiable feeling, m’lud. I thought I was over her. That was part of the reason why I came up to Mold. I knew she was going to be here. With him. I thought I could handle it. I was all set to have a meaningless fling with one of the other literary lovelies that my friend Ranjit invites to this place. Instead, as soon as I set eyes on her, I was finished. What was she doing with this old turd who’s over twenty years her senior? For whom she’s just a trophy.’

  ‘You don’t know that. Presumably he loved her too.’

  ‘Do your research. The man was a serial philanderer. When he met Priya he had a wife and a girlfriend. She was just the latest notch on his bedpost. Something Asian for a change. What was it going to be next year? Jamaican? Oirish?’

  Francis laughed. ‘So what were you offering that was any more than that?’

  Conal didn’t reply. He took the last corner of his bacon sandwich and wiped it into the remains of the dollop of mustard he’d put on his plate. He slid it into his mouth and chewed it slowly, washing it down with a long gulp of coffee.

  ‘I was going to marry her,’ he said eventually. ‘If you must know. It was something I thought about a lot while I was away and I’d made my mind up. Seeing all that chaos and horror out in Somalia made me realise I wanted to build something for myself here. She really loved me, you know. Before I went. Before he put his decrepit snout in the trough …’

  ‘How long were you with her?’

  ‘Five, six months. We got it together in July last year. I went off to Africa in January.’

  Francis let the silence surround them. Outside the bay window, footsteps crunched across the gravel. A car door slammed, an engine started, the noise dwindled away down the drive. Perhaps Grace had got her lift into Mold.

  ‘Did you ever get to meet any of her family?’ Francis asked.

  ‘No. Her dad’s dead and her mum’s up in Derby or somewhere and Priya doesn’t see her much. They don’t really get on.’

  ‘So you never met her?’

  ‘No. It’s no big deal. She hardly ever goes up there.’

  ‘And what about you? Did you ever invite her home?’

  ‘Home home, you mean? No, we hadn’t got to that stage. My folks are back in County Wicklow, heavy duty Catholics. If I’d taken her there they’d have assumed we were heading up the aisle.’

  ‘Would they have had a problem with that?’

  ‘Are they typical Irish racists, d’you mean? No, they take great pride in their charitable Christian open-mindedness. If anything they’d have gone over the top the other way. Cooked her a curry to make her feel welcome, that sort of thing.’ Conal chuckled.

  ‘How long did you stay up in your tree?’ Francis asked, after a few moments.

  ‘No idea. An hour maybe. I lost track of time.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I came down.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘I headed over the fields to the house. I sneaked in the back way and went up to my room. I knew I’d made an arse of myself and I didn’t want to discuss it with anyone. I crashed out for awhile, then I was woken by a high-pitched scream in a room right below me. It was some Aussie girl who thought she was being attacked by one of the other lunatics in this house party. She’d already left by the time I got down there. The rest of them were wasted, sitting around on benches on the terrace watching the dawn.’

  ‘Who was there?’

  ‘Four or five of them. My friend Ranjit, who organises this whole thing; his girlfriend Carly; then Eva, who’s this American poet; Fleur, who you just met … I was mainly talking to Fleur.’

  It was a pretty feeble alibi, Francis thought, as he drove back into Mold. Yet Conal had been seen heading down towards the river and then again on the terrace in the dawn. It didn’t make a lot of sense that he’d somehow got into Mold, done away with Bryce and got back in time for the end of the party – especially if he’d been drunk. Having said that, it was perfectly possible. There were several hours around the critical time when there was only Conal’s word for it that he’d crashed out; and of course he could have been acting drunk.

  THIRTEEN

  The police had now closed down the bar, restaurant, terrace and garden of the White Hart. Resident guests were being allowed to stay in their rooms, but had to keep to the front entrance and main staircase and make arrangements to drink and eat elsewhere. Just down the road The Coffee Cup on the corner was busy with festival goers leafing through Sunday newspapers. But it wasn’t the headlines they were talking about. ‘Dead on the bed’ … ‘statements from everybody’ … ‘but at the peak of his career’… ‘come off it, would he really stoop to …?’ … ‘well, the body’s gone off now, unless that was a giant breadstick I saw’ …

  Back in Francis’s room, there was no sign of Priya. Just the soft leather bag she’d brought along from Room 29 earlier; inside, visible, were her washbag, a couple of colourful T-shirts and a pair of black, shiny plastic trousers. Next to this on the bed was a transparent blue scarf that – hey, hey – was exactly like the one Grace had been wearing when Francis had seen her at Wyveridge, barely two hours before. It looked like she’d already got her interview – and he hadn’t even told her his room number!

  Francis found the note cards for his talk on the chest of drawers by the TV. They were exactly where he’d left them, still bound by the lilac rubber band that had once held a bundle of Peruvian Fairtrade asparagus. Was it his imagination, or were they ever so slightly out of kilter? Francis scooped the little package into his man-bag and headed off downstairs. The bar and dining rooms were empty and silent. The queue for giving statements had abated, so he went in and made the acquaintance of Detective Sergeant Brian Povey, who was sitting alone at a card table in the corner of the guest lounge.

  Francis hadn’t given a police statement before. He found it an intriguingly old-fashioned procedure, with DS Povey writing notes in longhand, then compiling a draft and reading it back, before finally getting the necessary signature. It reduced what had actually happened to a few bland sentences, and how helpful would they be in catching a murderer?

  At four twenty am I was woken from sleep by loud screams outside my bedroom at the White Hart (Room 21). I came out to find Ms Priya Kaur sitting on the stairs at the end of the corridor in a state of considerable distress. I comforted her in the corridor and when other hotel guests appeared took temporary charge of the situation …

  Povey was throughout admirably polite and patient.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it,’ said Francis, at the end, ‘I’m a crime writer by profession and yet I’ve never even seen anyone give a police statement, let alone given one myself.’

  ‘What kind of crime writing is that then?’

  Francis explained; and was then gratified to discover that not only had DS Povey heard of George Braithwaite, he was a fan. ‘I love your denouements,’ he said. ‘Never quite what you expect.’

  ‘I do my best.’

  ‘And the way,’ DS Povey went on enthusiastically, ‘that wife of his, what’s she called …?’

  ‘Martha.’

  ‘Martha, yes, keeps getting in the way with her bright suggestions. Truer to life than you’d imagine, especially round here.’ He raised his eyebrows suggestively. ‘I tell you what though. Her nibs likes your stuff too.’

  ‘Your boss?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  Really, he was. Two real police personnel, approving of his work.

  ‘Of course it bears no relation to the shit we really have to put up with!’ Povey laughed and Francis somehow managed a smile in re
turn.

  Outside, the uniform on the front door was the same sharp young blonde – Wendy – whom Francis had first met at five in the morning.

  ‘Hello again,’ he said. ‘You’re having a long day.’

  ‘Looks like it, sir.’

  ‘They’ve moved the body now, I understand.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not allowed to discuss operational details, sir.’

  Francis turned right down the road out of town, which led past a row of neat bungalows and then a long, dense hedgerow, with a muddy ditch in front and an open field behind, until he came to The Sun Rising, a quaint-looking old pub whose sign featured a cheery yellow orb winking as it rose over the edge of a cartoon-book green hill. The inside lived up to the promise of the exterior: wood-panelled front and back bars, no games machines, and only discreet modernisation. Outside, picnic tables ran down a pretty garden to apple trees at the bottom. The barman was rather a splendid specimen: bald as a billiard ball, with greying mutton-chop sideboards, and an accent that was a little too strainedly posh to be convincing.

  ‘Yes, sir, and what can I do you for?’ he repeated to each customer in turn, like something out of a bad sitcom. Eventually he came to Francis, giving him the sort of super-polite reception that he often got from rural people, to show that whatever might be said elsewhere about the denizens of the English countryside, there was absolutely no racial prejudice here. Francis returned the compliment, giving his host the benefit of his best received English accent as he asked for a pint of ginger beer shandy.

  ‘That’s half ginger beer and half bitter, is it, sir?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘Any particular bitter?’

  ‘Something good and local?’

  ‘I’ll give you the Dewkesbury Demon then.’

  ‘Not too strong?’

  ‘Three point eight. That do you?’

  ‘Fine. It sounded rather stronger.’

  ‘Oh no, sir, he’s a relatively puny demon, the Dewkesbury one.’

  Traditional taproom relations happily established, Francis ordered fishcakes and chips. If you wanted to eat outside, you were given a wooden bird with a number on it, which you placed on your table of choice; but today, he saw, there wasn’t a single one left. He was about to find a dark corner indoors, when a grey-haired couple started to get up from one of the tables down by the apple trees. Francis shot over and asked if they were leaving. They were.