The Poisoning in the Pub

by Simon Brett

  “Well,” the girl replied slowly, “I think Ray thought it would be all right.”

  “Sorry? What would be all right?”

  “Whatever the harm was. He said there was a way of stopping it happening…”

  “Yes?”

  “…and he was worried about that.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I think it was because it was something he had to do.”

  “Ah.” The thought went through Jude’s mind that that something might be changing round two trays of scallops…as he thought, the safe one for the unsafe one…though in the event it had been the other way round.

  “And that was what worried him,” Kelly-Marie went on. “Ray always worried when people wanted him to do things, when he had to take…what’s that word?”

  “Responsibility?”

  “Yes. Responsibility.” She repeated the word slowly, savouring it. “Ray was always worried he’d do things wrong, he’d let people down.”

  “Can you remember when you had this conversation with him, Kelly-Marie?”

  Her broad brow wrinkled with the effort of recollection. Then it cleared. “Yes. Not last weekend, the weekend before. Because I was here on the Sunday. Usually I go to Mummy and Daddy’s for Sunday lunch, but that weekend they’d had to go to Shropshire for a wedding. Ray told me about him having to take…responsibility…” she enunciated the word with great caution “…on that Sunday.”

  The timing worked perfectly. They had had the conversation the day before the poisoning at the Crown and Anchor. But who on earth had set Ray up? Who had told him to take responsibility for the switching of the scallop trays? Who had convinced him that his actions would save the pub from an outburst of food poisoning?

  Jude stayed with Kelly-Marie for a half-hour or so longer, but didn’t get much more useful information. Soon she stopped trying and allowed the conversation to move on to Kelly-Marie’s beloved family and dogs. She found herself making comparisons with Ray’s situation. The girl clearly had loving parents and when they died, she would still have the support of her two brothers. Also her experience of sheltered housing at Copsedown Hall was much more successful than Ray’s had been. She was managing very well.

  “Have you got plans for the rest of the weekend?” asked Jude, as she rose to leave.

  Kelly-Marie beamed. “I’ll see Mummy and Daddy tomorrow. And the boys. And the dogs.” It was the best prospect she could imagine.

  Jude said she’d see herself out, but Kelly-Marie insisted on accompanying her to the main door. She knew her manners.

  As she opened the front door, Kelly-Marie turned at a sound from the kitchen. In the doorway lounged a bulky figure with shaved head, combat trousers and a camouflage-patterned T-shirt. In his hand was a shiny new mobile phone. There was something familiar about the man, but Jude was astonished when Kelly-Marie said, “Morning, Viggo.”

  He had had a complete makeover. Gone were long hair and beard, gone the biker’s leather kit. Jude could hardly prevent herself from gaping at the transformation.

  He didn’t respond to Kelly-Marie’s greeting, but stared hard at Jude and said, “On your way then, are you?”

  She said she was, exchanged fond farewells with Kelly-Marie and, as she walked out into the stifling outside air, could sense Viggo’s eyes boring into the back of her head. She didn’t lose the feeling of being watched until she got back to Woodside Cottage.

  Twenty-Four

  Jude felt sure she was missing something. It was like one of Carole’s precious Times crosswords – all the information was there, it was just a matter of getting the details into the right order, of looking at the problem from that other perspective which would instantly provide the answer.

  Jude thought back over the last week, from the time that she’d arrived at the Crown and Anchor to see Dan Poke the previous Sunday. There were a lot of loose ends, but some which, she was convinced, being joined up in the right way could form a revealing pattern of logic.

  Thinking of missing links made her, rather uncharitably, think of Viggo. What could be the explanation for the dramatic change in his appearance? Well, there was only one person Jude knew who might have any information about Viggo. She rang Sally Monks.

  “Sorry to trouble you at the weekend. Is it a bad time?”

  “I’m cooking.”

  “Oh well, if you’re busy…”

  “No, it’s something that’s going to take so long to cook, I can leave it for whole half-hours. It’s for this evening.”

  “A dinner party?”

  “Rather low on personnel to qualify as a dinner party. There’ll just be two of us.”

  “Oh?”

  “What I hope will be the original hot date, Jude.”

  “Good luck.”

  “I don’t rely on luck. Just a visit to the hairdresser’s first thing this morning, this rather spectacular fish dish, lots of Pinot Grigio and…” she giggled “…my natural charms.”

  “Sounds an infallible combination.”

  “I’m hoping so. Anyway, what can I do for you this steamy July morning?”

  Jude was once again aware of the boundaries in her relationship with Sally. They would share a certain amount about their private lives, but always in general terms. No named individuals. It was a system that suited both of them very well.

  “I was ringing about Viggo…”

  “Up at Copsedown Hall?”

  “Yes.” And briefly Jude told the social worker about the young man’s sudden metamorphosis.

  Sally Monks registered no surprise at the news. “That’s very much in character. Viggo was part of my caseload for a while, and he was always very suggestible. His sense of his own identity is very weak, so he identifies with other people. He feels safer if he’s dressed like other people. Doesn’t want to stick out in the crowd, and as a result really does stick out in the crowd. Because he’s never part of that crowd. Always on the periphery. It’s a stage most of us go through to some extent, usually in adolescence. You know, “The reason why my life is so terrible, why I’m so out of joint with the rest of the world, is that I haven’t got the right clothes, the right hair style, the right make-up, I’m not listening to the right music…” You recognize what I’m talking about?”

  “I certainly do.” Despite her exterior serenity, there were still memories of her teenage years which could make Jude cringe with agony.

  “Anyway,” Sally went on, “as I say, most of us grow out of it. Most of us at some level come to terms with what we are, and home in on a style of behaviour, a look, which we think suits us. Someone like Viggo, though, is still searching. And it’s not just his appearance he changes. His name too. He hasn’t been Viggo that long. He was Rambo when I first met him, then Conan for a while. I think he got Viggo from that actor in The Lord of the Rings.”

  “And do the characters and names he takes on have anything in common?”

  “Well, I suppose they all tend to be heroic at some level. Men of action. Secret agents. Heroes, even superheroes. ‘Aspirational role models’ might be the technical jargon. Though, since most of them are famous for fighting and causing mayhem, I’m not sure that they are particularly good role models.”

  “And where does he get the role models from? Are they people he meets?”

  “Some are.”

  “So he might meet someone, a man who impresses him with his masculinity, his toughness-, and then Viggo will try to turn himself into a clone of that person?”

  “I guess it could happen like that, but I don’t think he meets that many people. Most of his heroes are people he sees on television, or in movies. Rambo – Viggo has always had an obsession with action movies. The more blood and violence, the more he likes them.”

  “And do you think they’d have the effect of making him violent?”

  Sally Monks hmmed at the other end of the line as she thought about her answer. “I’m not absolutely sure about that. He’s certainly suggestible, so I suppose he
might fit the profile of the kind of young men who become suicide bombers. But I can’t really see him going that far. I’d have to check out the psychiatrist’s reports in the office, but my recollection is that he wouldn’t be violent…unless under great provocation. Certainly he has no police record and I can’t remember him being reported for violence at any of the institutions where he’s been over the years.”

  “Has he been in some kind of care a long time?”

  “Most of his life. Fractured family background, the usual story. Viggo’s the kind of person who’s always going to need special help. God knows what’ll happen to him if Copsedown Hall is closed down, and he’s thrown out to the tender mercies of ‘the community’.”

  “Has he got a job?”

  “No.”

  “Ever had a job?”

  “He’s been tried at various things, but it’s never worked out. Even tried to join the army at one point, but he could never have hacked it. He’s got very poor concentration. Starts things, but can’t see them through.”

  “So what does he live on?”

  “That catch-all word ‘benefits’.”

  “Ah. I was just thinking…”

  “Yes, Jude?”

  “…that this habit – or obsession – he has for sudden makeovers…well, it can’t come cheap, can it?”

  “We’re just talking about clothes, aren’t we? Not too expensive.”

  “Well, I don’t know if it is just clothes. I mean, when he was a biker, would he have felt he needed to have a Harley Davidson too?”

  “I’d be surprised if he got one. I’m fairly sure he doesn’t have any kind of driving licence. He’s – .” There was a sudden shriek down the line. “Must go, Jude! My sauce is separating!”

  “Well, bless you for talking. And good luck with the hot date!”

  ♦

  Carole arrived at her son’s Fulham house promptly in time for lunch. Stephen seemed more relaxed than usual. Marriage and fatherhood had diluted the seriousness with which he took life, a characteristic which Carole knew he had inherited from her. Motherhood suited Gaby too. She hadn’t lost all of the weight the pregnancy had put on, but was as effervescently cheerful as ever. And they both patently adored Lily.

  Which was a feeling with which her grandmother could empathize. There was something so uncomplicated about the emotion engendered by that tiny little bundle of flesh. Her relationship to her son, Carole had always felt, had been made stressful by her own anxieties, but her reaction to Lily was much simpler. The little girl was easy to love.

  Over lunch Gaby talked about the new laptop she was planning to buy that afternoon, and Stephen generously suggested that his mother might like to have the one it was replacing. “Nothing wrong with it, just not as state-of-the-art as Gaby feels is necessary for a twenty-first-century woman like her.”

  “You can talk, Steve. You change computers more often than I change my knickers.”

  This badinage relaxed Carole even more. To be with a daughter-in-law who talked like that, and called her son ‘Steve’…well, it must be almost like being in a normal family.

  “That’s because it’s my work, Gabs darling. Anyway, Mum, it’s a good offer.” Even better, Stephen had called her ‘Mum’. “If you want to have the old laptop, you can take it with you today.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. You know me and computers…” Carole had always had a resistance to them.

  As usual with her, it was a fear of the unknown. She was not yet ready to take on a Faustian contract with Information Technology.

  “Up to you,” said Gaby. “But if you change your mind, it’s all set up and switched on in the study.”

  That afternoon, while Lily slept and her parents were off at PC World, to her surprise Carole did find herself drawn towards the study. And, rather tentatively, touching the keys of the laptop.

  ♦

  Jude sat that afternoon in the garden of Woodside Cottage under the shade of an apple tree. The clouds had rolled away, removing the pressure-cooker feeling of the day, but it was still unbearably hot.

  Unusually for her, Jude was feeling restless. Though never quite as serene as she appeared to outsiders, she was a woman who normally had control of her emotions. Only love and compassion had the power to upset her inner calm, but neither of those was causing her current restlessness. It was still the feeling that she was missing something.

  She wished Carole was there, so that they could toothcomb through the events of the last couple of weeks. Two memories might do better than one. But Carole, of course, was hopefully bonding in a one-to-one situation with her granddaughter. Jude would have to work it out on her own.

  She felt sure that what she was missing was a detail from the previous Sunday, the night of Dan Poke’s gig at the Crown and Anchor and its terrible aftermath. She focused her mind in video-camera mode, and tried to replay the sequence of events that she had witnessed. She made mental notes, ticking off the names of everyone who had been there and what they’d been doing.

  Pretty soon she remembered a person neither Carole nor she had considered up to that point. Greville Tilbrook. He’d certainly been at the Crown and Anchor at the beginning of the evening, in the car park with his protesting acolytes. Jude remembered the almost unhinged fury with which he had reacted to the sight of the girl with ‘Fancy a Poke?’ across her bosom. Surely Greville Tilbrook’s obsession hadn’t been enough for him to kill Ray for wearing the same T-shirt? Still, it might be worth checking out the whereabouts of Fethering’s Mr Civic Responsibility on the relevant evening.

  But the thought was a new one, and a distraction. Not the missing detail which she was sure she had overlooked.

  It took a while, but then she remembered, in a blinding flash. And flash was the operative word, because what she remembered was the fact that many of the audience at the gig had been using their mobile phones to take photographs. And one of the people her mind’s eye could see distinctly doing just that was Zosia.

  Jude’s call found the Polish girl in her flat, between shifts at the Crown and Anchor. She was using her few hours of Saturday-afternoon freedom to work on her journalism course. Jude was constantly impressed by Zosia’s unobtrusive industry. She was really making something of herself.

  Jude’s first question was about the Crown and Anchor. Had there been any more trouble?

  “No. Not much business, but no trouble.”

  “Were the bikers back yesterday evening?”

  “Thank goodness, no. I think because the police got involved on Sunday that must have frightened them off.”

  Then Jude moved on to the main purpose of her call. Zosia confirmed that she had indeed taken some photos at Dan Poke’s gig. And that fortunately they were still in her phone.

  “That’s brilliant,” said Jude. “Could I come round and have a look at them straight away?”

  “Well, you could, but it might be simpler if I just sent them to your mobile.”

  “Ah. Yes.” Jude felt slightly ashamed of her ignorance of the possibilities offered by new technology. “Is it easy to do that?”

  “Very easy,” replied Zosia, with that amused tolerance which the young reserve for their dealings with the old. “I’ll just check on my phone to see how many I took. It wasn’t many, just I think when Dan Poke was beginning his act. For most of it I was back behind the bar, serving drinks.” There was a brief silence. “Just four. Four photos is all I took. I will send them to you as picture messages.”

  “Do you have my mobile number?”

  “Of course I have,” said Zosia patiently.

  The pictures arrived with a speed that made Jude again feel guilty for not having explored her mobile’s potential before. And though the screen on which they appeared was tiny, their quality and clarity-was remarkable.

  The first one showed Ted Crisp introducing his so-called friend Dan Poke. The landlord’s expression of pained bafflement brought back to Jude the sympathy she had felt at the time for his humilia
tion. More interesting, though, than Ted were the other people who were in shot. Sylvia, near the ‘stage’ area, her arms draped round Matt.

  The second picture was Dan Poke beginning his act.

  Jude looked at the third photograph. This time Zosia had focused on the audience rather than the star. Amongst the busy crowd Jude saw herself and Carole, both caught at those mouth-opening, eyelid-drooping moments which are such a feature of most amateur photography. Standing just behind them, with his pre-makeover leather jacket, long hair and beard look, was Viggo. Nearest to the camera, poignantly, sat Ray, his eyes alight at the prospect of seeing ‘someone from off the television’. Little more than an hour later his difficult bewildered life would have ended.

  The fourth photograph was of the bikers. Jude didn’t know why Zosia had taken it. Maybe for identification, a rogue’s gallery, in case of further rowdiness at the Crown and Anchor. This idea immediately made her think of the police. Given Ted Crisp’s resistance to the idea of having CCTV at the Crown and Anchor, surely the official investigation must have sought out any photographs taken on mobiles that Sunday night? She’d have to check that with Zosia.

  In the crowd of bikers a figure stood out. Though clearly one of them – and in fact from his body language he looked to be one of their leaders – he wasn’t in their livery of leather. He was the man with whom Jude had nearly had an altercation at the bar, the man with a scarred face and two and a half missing fingers. She remembered the rank body odour that came off him.

  The photograph also provided the missing connection that had been troubling her all day. The man was wearing combat trousers and a sleeveless T-shirt with a camouflage design. As if to reinforce the point, on the edge of the frame Viggo was visible, looking at the scarred man with an expression that verged on the idolatrous.

  Jude rang Zosia back straight away. First she asked if the police had seen the photographs.