The Poisoning in the Pub

by Simon Brett

  He just didn’t look right, though, sitting in a Fethering Beach café whose frontage opened on to the shingle and where hordes of holidaymakers queued up for tea, burgers and ice cream. Amid all the tanned and sunburnt skin on display, Ted Crisp had a prisoner’s pallor. But then he never did go outside the pub much. Whether entirely true or not, it was his proud boast that he’d never before set foot on Fethering Beach. And it was only twenty yards from the front of the Crown and Anchor.

  But Ted Crisp couldn’t be at his home base now. The whole of the pub, including his flat upstairs, the area for the outside tables and the car park, was now a crime scene.

  It was the Tuesday, and the police showed no signs of moving on their collection of white cars and vans around the Crown and Anchor. The area behind the kitchen where Ray’s body had been found was still shrouded by a white tent-like structure, and there was police tape everywhere. Fethering opinion was that the forensic team had had plenty of time to search every nook and cranny of the place, and that their continued presence meant that they had found ‘something very suspicious’. Old prejudices surfaced in conversations outside the High Street shops. The people who weren’t ‘pub people’ shared the views of Greville Tilbrook. They had never really taken to Ted Crisp. He was scruffy and was automatically assigned the role of an alcoholic. Publicans drank, everyone knew that. Then again, his manners were a bit rough. And, though he was welcoming enough – in his own way – to visitors to the pub, he never did anything to help the wider community of Fethering. He wasn’t ‘part of the village’.

  Add to all that the fact that his bar manager was an immigrant…Polish…Some of their pilots were very helpful to us during the war, but…well, they were foreign. Someone Polish couldn’t be expected to understand the fine nuances of society in a place like Fethering.

  Ted Crisp looked as if he’d personally heard and suffered from all of these slights and taunts. Carole had never seen him so down.

  It was the first time they’d met since the confused ending of the Sunday night. And she’d had some difficulty tracking him down. The Crown and Anchor telephone had been answered by an anonymous policewoman, whose brief was clearly to give out no information about anything. And Carole had got no reply from Ted’s mobile. But then Jude had made contact with Zosia, and it was through the Polish girl they had found out that Ted Crisp was staying at the Travelodge up on the Fedborough bypass, ‘with a bottle of Famous Grouse’. Messages left there had either not been passed on to Ted or ignored by him, and eventually on the Tuesday Carole had decided she would drive to the Travelodge and force him to talk to her. Jude was busy that morning with a healing appointment for a woman with a dodgy hip, otherwise she would have gone along too.

  Ted Crisp had taken a while to answer the phone call from reception, and only grudgingly agreed to come down and see Carole. He had quickly vetoed her suggestion that she should come up to his room. Maybe too many empty whisky bottles lying around?

  He had looked pretty rough when he finally emerged into the dispiriting foyer. He said he didn’t want to go out anywhere, but was in such a diminished state that he put up no resistance when Carole virtually frogmarched him out to her neat little Renault. And he raised only token resistance when she said she was going to take him to the Seaview Café.

  Once they were settled down with cups of black coffee, Carole’s first question was: “Presumably you’ve talked to the police?”

  “And how. Talked to them into the small hours of Monday morning.”

  “At the station?”

  “No, in the pub. Then about four in the morning they told me to leave. I asked if I could go up to the flat and get some clothes and stuff, but they said no, the whole place was a crime scene. They wouldn’t even let me go up and get my mobile.”

  “So where did you go?”

  “Well, they asked if I had any friends I could stay with, but I said no and – ”

  “Ted, you could have stayed with me.” Carole was embarrassed by this possible reference to their shortlived relationship. “Or Jude.”

  “No, I don’t want to dump on my friends. This is my mess, and it’s down to me to find a way out of it.” Though he didn’t sound optimistic about his chances.

  “So where did you go?”

  “The police booked me into the Travelodge – though with no mention of who was going to pick up the tab.”

  “And have they given any indication of when you’re likely to be allowed back in the pub?”

  Ted Crisp shrugged with weary resignation. “Not a thing. They came to talk to me at the Travelodge yesterday and I asked them again and again. Nothing. Wouldn’t even give me a clue when they’re likely to leave, so what with last week’s closure and the loss of goodwill from everything that’s been happening…my whole business is going down the toilet.”

  Carole didn’t want to get sidetracked by Ted’s financial problems. She had more urgent matters on her mind. “Presumably the police also asked you if you’d seen anything round the back of the pub…you know, where Ray’s body…?”

  “Yes.” He was about to continue, but then almost seemed to choke. He converted the sound into a cough, but Carole could tell he had really been affected by the reminder of his protege’s death. Ted cleared his throat and went on with increased aggression to cover up his lapse into sentiment. “Anyway, if I had seen anything, I’d have told the bloody police, wouldn’t I? But I was out the front, dealing with those bastards who were smashing up the place. God knows what all that’s going to cost to put right.”

  “Aren’t you insured?”

  “Oh yes, I’m insured. Everyone’s insured until the moment they make a claim. Then suddenly, miraculously, there turns out to be something in the bloody small print of your contract that says your coverage sadly doesn’t include the one thing you’re claiming for.”

  “You don’t know that for a fact, Ted. I’m certain your insurance will cover the damage.”

  “I doubt it…given the way my luck’s going at the moment. And will the insurance cover damage done during a fight? I’ll bet there’s some clause in there that says they won’t pay up if I’ve been found to have been keeping a ‘rowdy house’ or…Oh, God knows…” He spiralled further down into despair.

  “And what about Ed?”

  “What about Ed?”

  “Well…” Carole had to phrase her words carefully. The last time she and Jude had seen the chef on the Sunday night he had looked extremely guilty. In fact, he had looked like Ray’s murderer. But she didn’t know how much Ted Crisp already knew about that, and she didn’t want to plant potentially slanderous ideas in his head. “I just wondered if the police had talked to him?”

  “Yes. They did take Ed down to the station. Which is where he may still be, for all I know.”

  “So he’s under suspicion?”

  “I think everyone’s under bloody suspicion,” Ted replied apathetically.

  Now she could risk a direct question. “Do you think he killed Ray?”

  “No!” It was the most animated response she’d had from him all morning. “No. Look, I’ve known that boy since he helped me out when he was a student. He’s one of the most honest kids I’ve ever known. He’s as harmless as that poor bugger Ray was, hasn’t got a violent bone in his body. He’s almost too much of a gentleman – certainly lives up to his posh accent. And he’d certainly never hurt Ray, of all people. He was very kind with that guy, really patient. You know, Ray was slow on the uptake and could sometimes get in the way when the kitchen was busy, but I never once heard Ed mouth off at him. No, whoever did kill Ray, I’d swear on…on anything you like, that it wasn’t Ed Pollack.”

  “Then why did the police take him down to the station?”

  “God knows.”

  “Did you see Ed that evening, you know, after the fight?”

  “Of course I bloody did.”

  “When Jude and I saw him, he had blood all over the front of his jacket. He looked as if he had just been
where Ray was and he was moving back into the kitchen.”

  “Ed had got blood all over his whites because he’d been punched in the face by one of those sodding bikers. I don’t think his nose was actually broken, but there was blood pouring out of it.”

  Carole was surprised at the depth of her relief at this news. She too had warmed to Ed Pollack, and the thought that he might have been responsible for Ray’s death had clouded her mind for the past couple of days.

  “And you say you don’t know whether Ed’s still with the police or not?”

  “No. I haven’t been in touch with anyone since I went to that Travelodge place. I said, the police wouldn’t let me take my mobile and…anyway, I…well, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone…” Carole got an inkling of the depths of his depression. She had a mental image of him just sitting in the anonymous space of his tiny Iravelodge room, contemplating the collapse of everything he’d worked for. Not wanting to make any communication – except with a bottle of Famous Grouse.

  He seemed to intuit what she was thinking, and made an effort to shift himself out of his mood. “I must ring Ed. And Zosia. Find out what’s happened. This has got to be as tough for them as it is for me.” He groaned. “And if the Crown and Anchor’s closed for any length of time, I’m going to have to lay them off. God, I hate doing that.”

  “The police can’t be there that much longer.”

  “Don’t you believe it. They can stay as long as they like. They’ll probably start digging into the foundations to see if any bodies were cemented in there when the bloody place was built.”

  “Oh, now you’re just being paranoid.”

  “And do you blame me for being paranoid?” This was spoken with such vehemence that a few nearby tourists looked up from their burgers and ice cream. In a lower, but no less impassioned voice, Ted Crisp went on, “Look at what’s happened to me in the last ten days. First, the food poisoning – closed down by Health and Safety. Damaging headlines in the Fethering Observer. Then when I do reopen, the pub’s suddenly full of bikers who alienate the whole bloody village – and of course I get blamed for it. Then we have a full-scale riot and, to top it all, a murder. Call it paranoia if you like, but I reckon I’m justified in thinking there’s some kind of campaign against me!”

  “Yes, yes,” said Carole soothingly. She wanted to reach across to stroke his hand, but that seemed to her too intimate a gesture for a public place. “Well, Ted, if that is the case – and I can see why you might think so – who do you think’s behind it?”

  “Someone who wants me to sell up the Crown and Anchor and get the hell out of Fethering.”

  “And do you know who that might be?”

  “I’m sure there are plenty of candidates.” He sighed and rubbed a bear-like paw across his tired eyes.

  “Any names?”

  “No,” he replied brusquely.

  “Ted, there’s a man I’ve seen a couple of times at the pub…”

  “Not recently you haven’t. The bloody place is closed.”

  “A man,” Carole persisted patiently, “who drives a pale blue BMW. He was watching Dan Poke’s act – and he spoke to Dan afterwards. I thought I recognized him. Tall, running to fat, thick-rimmed glasses, black hair that has to be dyed and – ”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “But he was in the pub and – ”

  “OK, so he’s a guy who was in the pub. People like that are called ‘customers’. They come in, they buy a drink, they drink it, they go out. I don’t bloody know all of them!”

  Carole had a feeling that Ted Crisp was hiding something. He knew the man she was referring to, but he wasn’t about to give that information to her. With Ted sarcasm was always the precursor of sheer bloody-mindedness. No point in antagonizing him further. Her tone was more gentle as she said, “You won’t have to sell the Crown and Anchor, you know. Things’ll turn round for you.”

  “Oh yes?” He let out the sigh of a man at the end of his tether. “In some ways it’d be a relief just to get shot of the bloody place. The pub business is tough.”

  “But you love it.”

  “Don’t know. Maybe there was a time when I loved it. I’m not so sure I’ve loved it much during the past few months.”

  “Are you saying there’ve been problems before the last couple of weeks?”

  “Yes. Financial problems, certainly. The economics of a place like the Crown and Anchor are always going to be pretty dicey – particularly if you borrowed as much to buy the place as I did. You’re always on a knife edge of profit and loss in this business. It doesn’t take much to push you down the wrong way. And there are always sharks out there, ready to snap up a business that’s on the downward slide. A lot of pubs may be closing, but there’s always demand for the ones in prime sites. Like the Crown and Anchor.”

  “You mean you have actually had offers?”

  “There are always offers. None of them offering anything like what I reckon to be the market value of the place. Like I say, there are plenty of sharks out there. The business is getting tougher every day. No two ways about it, the smoking ban has cut down the number of punters, then you get another hike in interest rates so I’m paying more on the bloody mortgage and…” Listlessly, he concluded, “Yeah, maybe I should just cut my losses and sell up.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “At the moment I bloody do!” He tried to sound rough and dismissive, but he just couldn’t do it. Beneath the beard his mouth trembled and there was even a gleam of moisture in his eye. “I just feel so bloody responsible for Ray. I was meant to be helping him. The Crown and Anchor was one of the few places where he felt vaguely secure and…look what I let happen to him.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Ted.”

  “No? At the moment I feel that everything that’s wrong in this bloody world is my bloody fault. Ray never knowingly did any harm to anyone in his life, and then I went and shouted at him, and…”

  Carole had been about to move the conversation on to what Jude had told her about Ray’s involvement in the substitution of the dodgy scallops, but Ted’s expression of total defeat gave her pause. And the opportunity passed all too quickly. The next thing she heard was a nasal voice saying, “So this is where you’re hiding out, Ted. With your girlfriend.”

  It was Sylvia. Her tall boyfriend had his arm protectively resting on her tight-shorted buttocks. He was again wearing black leather trousers, and his biceps bulged out of a sleeveless T-shirt.

  Ted Crisp looked up with the expression of a man who didn’t think his day could get any worse, and had suddenly found out that it could.

  Fourteen

  In his diminished state Ted Crisp seemed incapable of speech. Carole stood up and said, “Sylvia, I’m Carole Seddon. We met briefly in the Crown and Anchor last week.”

  She felt herself being appraised, then Sylvia said, “This is a new thing for you, Ted – going for the older woman.”

  Carole was so unused to direct insults on that scale that the words took a moment or two to register. Probably just as well. The delay prevented her from coming back with an equally sharp response. Ted Crisp didn’t need more grief that morning.

  “And this is Matt.” Sylvia flicked her head towards the boyfriend. “My fiancé.”

  Matt acknowledged them with a curt nod. He didn’t seem to think words were necessary. His physical bulk made enough of a statement, and clearly Sylvia was articulate enough for the two of them.

  “We know each other,” said Ted, without enthusiasm.

  So, thought Carole, Sylvia must have introduced them on the Sunday evening before Dan Poke’s act.

  Just to add to Ted’s embarrassment. Still, although she didn’t warm to either Sylvia or Matt, Carole remembered her manners and indicated two empty chairs. “If you’d like to sit down…”

  “Won’t be necessary. We’re not staying,” snapped Sylvia. She was looking very sexy that morning and knew it. Her arms, legs and
cleavage – of which there was plenty on view – were a rich honey colour. Matt also had a high tan, though because of the number of tattoos on his arms, his didn’t show so much.

  They made an attractive couple (in what Carole couldn’t help thinking of as ‘a rather downmarket style’). Sylvia must have been quite a bit younger than Ted. Ten years, perhaps…though it was difficult to know precisely how old he was. The ragged beard and hair didn’t help, but Carole felt certain Ted was younger than she was. She recalled the subject coming up during their brief affair. He must be approaching the fifty mark. In Sylvia’s and Mart’s body language there was an element of flaunting themselves, rubbing Ted Crisp’s face in the fact of their youth and togetherness. But Carole felt sure that wasn’t the only reason why they’d accosted him.

  So it proved. “My solicitor’s been phoning you and phoning you for the last couple of days,” said Sylvia accusingly. “You never rung her back.”

  “That’s because I haven’t been in the pub. In case you hadn’t realized, the Crown and Anchor’s still being treated as a crime scene.”

  “Yes, that’s not going to do much good for its image, is it?” Sylvia smiled an infuriatingly satisfied smile. “Anyway, she’s left messages on your mobile too. You haven’t answered any of them either.”

  “That might be because my mobile’s still in the flat above the pub. The police wouldn’t let me take it.”

  “Oh, come on, Ted, you’re not going to make me believe that. The cops must’ve let you pick up some stuff before they took you off the premises.”

  Carole had also thought this odd, that the police should not have allowed him even to take his most basic necessities. But Sylvia caught on to the reason quicker than she did. “Oh, I get it, Ted. You’d put their backs up so much they weren’t going to do you any favours. Drunk, were you? Have a bit of a shouting match with the cops when they wanted to question you?”

  The way her ex-husband hung his head showed that Sylvia had scored a bull’s eye. The satisfaction in her expression grew. “So you’ve alienated the local police too, have you? Another triumph for your Crown and Anchor public relations campaign.” Her voice became hard and businesslike as she went on, “Anyway, ring my solicitor. Or get your solicitor to ring mine. I’ve had enough of this faffing around. Matt and I want to get married as soon as possible.” She looked up at her fiancé. He grinned like a huge stallion being offered a carrot. “If you need to contact us, well, you’ve got my mobile number. And we’re not far away. Staying at Matt’s place in Worthing. Though we may go away to a hotel next weekend. Yeomansdyke I’ve heard is nice.” She referred to about the most expensive hotel in the area. “For a nice bit of a premarital honeymoon…” Sylvia concluded, delivering another stab of sexual one-upmanship.