by Simon Brett
“You mean ‘Dan Poke’ is a pseudonym? Dan Poke is really Richard Farrelly?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Oh, Ited, while you’re here, could we just have a word about – ?”
But Carole was cut short. “Sorry, a lot to get on with.” And the landlord vanished back into the kitchen.
Jude sighed and looked across at her friend with sympathy. She’d detected that Carole was taking Ted’s brusqueness more personally than she was. But then Carole Seddon took everything personally. “Don’t worry. We’ll soon all be friends again.”
“I’m not worried,” Carole lied. “If he wants to play games, well, it doesn’t bother me. What I’m much more concerned about is where we go next in our investigation, having drawn a blank at the Cat and Fiddle.”
“Yes.” Jude took a mouthful of her excellent salmon salad and looked thoughtful. Then she said, “I wonder if we have drawn a complete blank at the Cat and Fiddle…”
“Hm?”
“OK, the pub appears to be under new ownership, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the old owner’s vanished off the face of the earth.”
“Shona Nuttall,” said Carole.
“Exactly. I mean, she may have sold up the pub and taken off to spend the proceeds in well-heeled retirement in Tenerife or somewhere.” The recollection of the woman with her deep perma-tan encouraged this image. “On the other hand, she might still be living locally.”
“Who’d know that? Ted?”
“Possibly. Though in his current mood he wouldn’t tell us.” The skin around Jude’s brown eyes crinkled as she tried to nail down an elusive memory. Suddenly it came to her. “Zosia might have a contact number for Shona Nuttall. They certainly met when she was trying to find out what had happened to her brother.”
Given the slackness of custom in the Crown and Anchor, it wasn’t difficult to attract the bar manager’s attention. And yes, she did still have a home number for Shona Nuttall stored in her mobile. Though whether the ex-landlady was still living there, Zosia couldn’t say.
Jude rang the number straight away. It was answered by Shona Nuttall. When told that her caller wanted to know the circumstances of her selling the Cat and Fiddle, she said yes, she was more than happy for them to come and talk to her about it.
Thirty-Two
“What’s your recollection of Shona Nuttall?” asked Jude, as the Renault purred sedately towards Southwick.
“Pushy. Full of herself.”
“You didn’t take to her?”
“Certainly not. She’s far from being my kind of person.”
Jude smiled inwardly. What Carole was saying was that she didn’t normally mix with pub landladies. And this from a woman who’d had a brief affair with a pub landlord. But Jude knew better than to make any comment on the anomaly.
“Anyway, you didn’t take to her either, Jude.”
“No, I agree.”
“Well, since we both feel the same on the subject, why did you raise it?” asked Carole, almost petulantly. The effects of the lunchtime Chardonnay had dissipated. Their lack of sleep the night before was catching up with both of them.
“It was just, talking to her on the phone…”
“Yes?”
“…she sounded different.”
The address Jude had been given was probably not far from the sea, but you wouldn’t have known it. Southwick was another of the interlocking sprawl of villages which make the area between Brighton and Worthing a virtually continuous suburb. And the house which Shona Nuttall owned was, like so many in that part of the world, a bungalow. Its dimensions were adequate for one person, but not lavish.
Carole and Jude were both shocked by the appearance of the woman who opened the door to them. She was undoubtedly Shona Nuttall, but totally transformed from the Shona Nuttall they had met not so long ago as the queen of the Cat and Fiddle. She was still of ample proportions, but whereas her body had previously been restricted by corsetry, everything had now been allowed to hang loose, and gravity had exacted its revenge.
Her large cleavage was still on display, but, without the engineering which had formerly thrust it upwards, had the texture of muslin and slumped like an old ridge tent. Her style of dress had changed too. Carole and Jude remembered her in a spangly top and tight trousers. Now she shuffled around in a sweatshirt and jogging bottoms. And she was wearing none of her bulky gold jewellery.
But it was in her face and hair that the change was greatest. Without any make-up, the skin was sallow and sagging. The flash of a gold tooth in her unlipsticked mouth looked somehow grotesque. And, unmonitored by regular visits to the salon, the colouring had grown out of her hair. Some had been carelessly swept back into a scrunchie, the rest hung, lank and grey, around her face.
When Carole and Jude introduced themselves, Shona Nuttall claimed to remember their previous encounter, but seemed to have little detailed recollection of the occasion. Still, that was perhaps to be expected, given the number of customers who pass through a pub, particularly a well-situated one like the Cat and Fiddle.
She ushered them through into her sitting room and seemed relieved when they refused her halfhearted offer of tea or coffee. On a small table beside her seat on the sofa was a large glass of colourless fluid. The way Shona Nuttall subsequently drank from it suggested the contents were stronger than water. Probably vodka, the almost odourless favourite of alcoholics everywhere.
The impression that Carole and Jude received from the room was of universal velvet. The heavy bottle-green curtains were velvet. The pinkish chairs they sat in, though actually covered in Dralon, had the feeling of velvet. Even the olive-coloured carpet looked like velvet. And on various surfaces stood photographs in frames of burgundy velvet. All of them featured Shona hugging glazed-eyed customers at the Cat and Fiddle. There seemed to be no family photographs.
The room was not exactly untidy, but it gave off a’ feeling of dusty disuse. Despite the July heat, all of the windows were shut, and it took Carole and Jude a little while to realize that there was air conditioning – an unusual feature in a bungalow on the South Coast. But the air conditioning couldn’t completely flush out the smell of old cigarette smoke.
Once various inconsequential pleasantries had been exchanged, Carole announced, “What we are really interested in, Mrs Nuttall – ”
“It’s Shona, please, love. Everyone calls me Shona. And, actually, I never was ‘Mrs’. Only ‘Miss’. Ploughed my own furrow,” she added, with an attempt at her old heartiness.
“Very well, Shona, Jude and I were interested in why you sold the Cat and Fiddle. When we were last there, it all seemed very well set up and thriving.” This was a slight exaggeration. On the winter evening when they had visited business had been slack. But the pub was well known for doing a brisk trade in the summer. That was ensured, if by nothing else, by its location, perched on the river outside Fed-borough. In one direction was a view of the rolling South Downs; in the other the tidal waters of the Fether swelled down towards the English Channel.
“Yes, yes, I was doing very well,” Shona agreed. “And I’d always planned to sell up and retire at some point. The Cat and Fiddle was my nest egg, going to fund my retirement. It was just…well, I hadn’t planned to do it quite so early.”
“So why did you – ?”
But the ex-landlady wasn’t ready to answer that kind of question so soon. “I mean,” she went on, “without false modesty, I think I made a bloody good publican. I brought a bit of atmosphere to that place, everyone said so. And I also think publicans can do some good. You know, people come in weighed down with their problems…trouble at home, trouble at work, all their little worries about health and that…and after a drink or two they realize that life’s not all bad.” She took a breath. Carole tried to get in, but wasn’t quick enough. “You know, the job of running a pub involves a lot of different skills, but I think one of the most important is acting as a kind of therapist. God, the stuff you have t
o listen to behind the jump…”
“‘Behind the jump’?” Carole echoed curiously.
“Means ‘behind the bar’. Expression publicans use.”
“Where does it come from?”
“No idea. Anyway, as I was saying, I reckon we publicans take a lot of burden off the NHS, you know, and the social services. The amount of listening we do, it’s got to help people, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, I’m sure lots of people have cause to be very grateful to you,” said Jude.
“But you still haven’t told us why you sold the pub earlier than you intended,” insisted Carole.
“Had a good offer.” Shona Nuttall shrugged. “Recession supposed to be coming. Smoking ban had hit business a bit. Pubs closing down all over the country. So I got out at the right time, as it turned out.”
Despite the positive nature of her words, there was a wistfulness in the woman’s delivery which made Carole press harder. “Was that all there was to it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think Carole’s asking whether you found yourself under any pressure to sell.”
The blowsy ex-landlady looked at both of her interrogators in turn, as though assessing how much she should tell them. Then she conceded, “Yes, there was a bit of pressure, yes.”
“What kind of pressure?”
She sighed, took a sip of her drink and reached forward to a packet on the table in front of her. “Sorry, I need a cigarette. Better have it quickly before the bloody government bans people from smoking in their own homes.”
She lit up, took a long drag, sighed again and began. “Look, pub business is a funny old world. You can be taking it in hand over fist one day, next nobody wants to know. It’s all to do with reputation and goodwill. Keep the image of your premises right and you can be sitting on a goldmine. And I think I done well with the Cat and Fiddle over the years. ‘Course I started off with a lot going for me. For a start, I came into some family money, so I didn’t have to mortgage myself up to the hilt. And then again the location’s hard to beat, this is an area where there’s always going to be a lot of tourists. Anyone who managed to lose money at the Cat and Fiddle during the summer must be an idiot.
“But I built the business up slowly. Built up my staff, built up the reputation of the place, got it into the right pub guides, on the right websites. Though I say so myself, I done a good job.
“And yes, I always planned to retire some time, but obviously I wanted to do it when the time was right, when I’d get the maximum payback on my investment. And I did have offers. Location like the Cat and Fiddle, the big chains are bound to be interested. But I didn’t like the idea of my pub just going the way of all the others, being branded, looking exactly the same. I wanted the Cat and Fiddle to keep its individuality.”
Which was rather ironic, because, to Carole and Jude’s minds, she had created an environment that had made the Cat and Fiddle look exactly like a cloned pub owned by a big chain. But of course neither of them said anything as she went on, “I had a lot of the big boys look at the place over the years. I mean, it was never going to go to a Wetherspoon’s or an All Bar One, they always concentrate on urban locations, but there are quite a lot of chains that deal with country pubs and, as I say, the offers were there. The most persistent came from a set-up called Home Hostelries…you heard of them?”
Carole and Jude nodded. The name was all too familiar to them.
“Well, they started off small and then got bigger by taking over other smaller chains. Took over Snug Pubsa few years back.”
“I’ve heard of them,” said Carole, immediately making the connection with the KWS warehouse in Worthing that had handled their deliveries. And with Sylvia’s fiancé, Matt.
And quite recently Home Hostelries swallowed up the Foaming Flagon Group. They are becoming very big players indeed. And they kept making offers to me, but I always thought the offers were too low. I was hanging on for more, and I was sure I could get it, though as time went by all the other interests seemed to fall away, and it was only Home Hostelries who wanted to buy.
“Then, what, about nine months ago…running up to Christmas it was, I started to get trouble at the pub.”
“What do you mean by trouble?” asked Carole.
“Rowdiness. Youngsters drinking too much. Fights. Had to call the police more than once. And it was a bad time of year for that to happen. Got lots of tables booked for staff Christmas dos, that kind of stuff and yes, they’re all drinking more than they should, but it wasn’t the business clientele who was starting the fights. Though some of them did get involved.”
“So who was starting the fights?” asked Jude.
“A whole new crowd started coming into the pub. Bikers.” Carole and Jude exchanged looks and almost imperceptible nods. And once that kind of thing starts, it’s difficult to stop. You know, the whole point of a pub is that it’s open to anyone, and, yes, you can bar individuals, but it’s difficult to shut out a whole group. And you might end up just antagonizing them, which would only make things worse. So I was trying to keep control of the place, but there were a lot of scuffles breaking out in the car park at closing time. And, somehow, every one of them, however minor, ended up getting reported in the Fedborough Gazette!
Again Carole and Jude exchanged brief eye contact. A pattern was starting to emerge.
“You didn’t have any incidences of food poisoning at the pub during this period, did you?”
“Funny you should mention that, because yes, a couple of weeks before Christmas, like when we’re at our absolute busiest…a whole practice of solicitors got sick after their Christmas party.” Potentially entertaining though this image was, neither Carole nor Jude laughed. “They blamed the Coquille St Jacques starter that they’d had, but I’m sure it couldn’t have been that. I always maintained the highest standards of hygiene in my kitchen – I was almost obsessive about it, and the Health and Safety inspectors have never found anything to complain of – so I’ve no idea how it happened. I think those solicitors all got one of those vomiting bugs which seem to be around in the winter so much these days. But that was not the way they saw it. And, needless to say, the incident didn’t do anything to help the image of the Cat and Fiddle.”
“Presumably,” said Carole, “the food poisoning also got coverage in the local paper?”
“Oh yes. Front page of the Gazette. I was even asked to be interviewed for the local television news. But of course I said no. I’m a very private person.”
Carole and Jude both recalled that on their last encounter with Shona Nuttall she had demonstrated a very different attitude to the media, crowing about her recent appearance on the television news, but neither of them commented on the inconsistency.
“Anyway,” Shona went on, “all this was having a disastrous effect on the business. Lots of firms ringing in to cancel their Christmas parties. Families with small children – who used to be quite a staple of the lunchtime trade – well, they kept away from a place that was getting a reputation for violence. And the pensioners, who’d always come in for their special-rate meals, they stopped coming.
“Within a couple of months, the Cat and Fiddle, from being one of the most popular, must-visit pubs in the area, had virtually emptied. And I was so stressed, I thought I was going to have a breakdown.”
At this recollection an involuntary tear trickled down her wrinkled cheek. She dashed it away, took a large swallow from her drink and busied herself lighting another cigarette.
“And it was because you were so stressed,” Jude suggested gently, “that you agreed to accept Home Hostelries’ offer for the Cat and Fiddle?”
Shona Nuttall nodded, then filled her lungs and blew the cigarette smoke out in a grey line which wavered with the tension in her body. “Yes,” she agreed, “though by then they were offering less than they had been before. Less than I’d previously thought was not enough. But by then I was so…I don’t know…Tired? Battered? All I wanted to do w
as to get away from the place.”
“And who did you deal with at Home Hostelries?” asked Carole. “Was it always the same person?”
A note of caution came into Shona Nuttall’s eyes. “I didn’t deal with anyone in particular. The sale of the Cat and Fiddle was all done through my solicitors.”
“But you mentioned there had been offers for the pub from Home Hostelries before. Were none of those direct to you?”
She shook her head and reiterated, “All through the solicitors.”
Carole and Jude both had the instinct that she was lying, but they couldn’t see any way of making her reveal information she was determined to withhold. In both their minds the same thought arose: that whoever Shona Nuttall had dealt with at Home Hostelries, he or she had really put the frighteners on her. The ex-landlady wasn’t going to risk further trouble by giving them a name.
But there was one other detail that could be checked. Jude got out her mobile and found the photograph Zosia had taken on the comedy night at the Crown and Anchor. “About these bikers who came…” she held out the picture of Derren Hunt “…was this man with them?”
Shona Nuttall looked at the image with distaste. “Yes, he used to come. Was one of the ringleaders, I think.”
“Did you ever find out his name?”
“Good heavens, no!” The very idea shocked her.
“Or speak to him?”
“I may have served him a drink. I certainly never had a conversation with him.”
Jude clicked on to another photo, the one which featured Viggo, and proffered it to Shona. “Do you recognize him?”
The ex-landlady shrugged. “Looks vaguely familiar. But I couldn’t be sure. That lot in their leather gear…” she shuddered at the recollection “…they all looked alike to me.”
“And what about the small man beside him?”
No, she had never seen Ray Witchett before. She hadn’t seen photos of him on television or in the papers either. Carole and Jude got the impression that not much news filtered through into the velvet fastness of that Southwick bungalow.
