“And as soon as we announced our engagement,” Olivia picked up, returning to what was clearly her favourite topic, “The poison pen letters started to arrive. Vile things suggesting that Kent’s a murderer.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time someone called me that,” he said.
“Kent said to just ignore them; then whoever was sending them would just get bored and go away. But it’s the outright cheek that bothers me. How anyone can be so nasty? It’s just not on.”
“So, we thought…”
“Well, I did. Kenty’s been totally against bringing anyone in to look into it. He wouldn’t even hear of having the police round, would you dear?”
“It’s a poison pen letter. Probably some dried up old spinster somewhere. I figure the police have got bigger things on their plate.”
“But then, today, he’s had a Damascene conversion, haven’t you sweetie?”
“Listening to Lady Caroline, singing your praises.”
“I must remember to thank her,” I murmured, unenthusiastically.
“And it just struck me that…” Kent began, before Olivia finished his sentence.
“Maybe you could hunt down whoever’s been sending the horrid things, and get them to stop.”
“Stop? How?”
“It’s my experience,” said Kent, “That the sort of people who send these things thrive on the anonymity. Their power comes from you not knowing who’s saying these things, not from whether the things they’re saying are true or not.”
“And they’re not!” Olivia interjected.
“You’ve had a lot of experience with poison pen letters?” I asked.
“Some,” he admitted. “When Sophie vanished, I received my share of hate mail. But in every case, once the sender was identified, they – usually after some furious denials – tended to vanish back into the forest.”
“So you want me to find the sender?”
“Oh, we’ll pay for your help, of course,” Olivia smiled.
“Umm… I’ll need to get today out of the way.”
“Won’t we all,” murmured Kent. “If that cousin of yours stirs up one more argument…”
“I’ll deal with Anthony,” Olivia replied, a steely look in her eyes.
“How frequently have these letters been arriving?”
“One – sometimes two - a week,” Olivia said, “But the last one was about three weeks ago.”
“So they’ve stopped,” I said.
“For now,” Kent murmured, “But I suspect they haven’t stopped for good.”
I looked from one to the other, a million reasons to say No running through my head, and at that moment, there was a knock, and Filip opened the door.
“Sorry to interrupt, Danny,” he said, “But have you seen Dave?”
I looked around the parlour, at the print on the wall – some sort of mashup between The Hay Wain and the Fighting Temeraire - the standard that had a pink shade so dusty it might have come out of Tutankhamun’s tomb if Tut had had a decorator with a taste for kitsch and frills, and the wallpaper that, had Wilde ever staggered in here on a night out with Bosie, would have killed him off before all the trouble could begin.
“Not lately,” I answered Filip, “But he’ll be around somewhere. Probably keeping an eye on Elaine. Try the bar.”
Filip said he’d looked there. “Maybe he’s outside on the phone again,” he said, in a tone that left no doubt he was dobbing Dave in.
I really, at this stage, didn’t care if he was outside shooting up, so long as the food was served, the empties cleared, and we could get through the rest of today without my staff killing each other, but instead of saying so, I just smiled, said, “Maybe,” let Filip withdraw, looked, once again around my dusty dingy parlour, turned back to Olivia and Kent, and smiled.
“How much?” I said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
On our return to the bar, it was immediately clear that the atmosphere had shifted from Overheated but somewhat jovial drunken wake to Dinner with the Borgias.
Anthony Taylor, a large and spreading wet patch covering the entire left hand side of his white shirt, was dabbing at his face with a paper napkin, which was quickly decomposing and leaving clumps of white tissue all over his forehead.
“…Didn’t think you had it in you, old chap,” he was smiling, as though to a great friend, while Desmond Everett, a look of fury still painted on his face, stood glaring at him.
Ali, lumbering out from behind the bar, came around to stand between them, proffering a bar towel to the still dripping Taylor, whilst simultaneously fixing Everett with a withering stare. “Try that again, and you’re out,” she advised him, with an attitude that suggested he’d be neutered prior to ejection.
“We had quieter days when we did Shitfaced Mondays,” she muttered to me as she passed en route to her place behind the bar.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Olivia Wright demanded, taking Ali’s place between the two men.
Taylor shrugged, grinning sheepishly at her. “I appear to have upset poor Dozy Des. Sorry Doze – I mean Desmond.”
Everett seethed, “Rotter,” he spat between clenched teeth. “Sorry Olivia. Tried to keep out of it. But…” he scrabbled desperately for a way to explain his actions, before putting his empty wine glass down on a passing tray, finishing with “Rotter,” once again, and walking out of the bar.
“Well,” Taylor waved to the closing door, “That was unexpected. I genuinely didn’t think he had it in him. Was always such a completely placid little man.”
Olivia, eyes blazing, turned on Anthony, and physically pushed him into the farthest corner of the bar.
This was clearly going to be a strong and private conversation, so I did what anyone else would have done: I followed them both under cover of collecting empties, so I could eavesdrop on it.
“…Entirely your own fault,” Olivia was saying, each word punctuated with a jabbing finger. “He’s the gentlest soul, and you’re back minutes before you’re laying into him.”
“Oh take a break, cousin dearest. Dopy Des and his loyal puppy act may fool you, but I’m wearing the proof that he’s an angry little nipper. And all I did was give him the excuse to let it out. It’s not good, you know, bottling things up. Not healthy at all.”
“Is everything OK?” Monica Vale’s Colonel Saunders Lookalike date – the man who had already, today, been rolling round the floor with Anthony Taylor – approached the two.
Taylor turned his glance to the new arrival. “Talking of unhealthy,” he muttered. “Did anyone call for an ambulance chaser?”
“Oh not again,” the other groaned. “Grow up, Anthony.”
“Ah James,” Taylor smiled nastily. “Tell me, Mr Kane, What's the difference between a lawyer and a leech?”
“Look,” James Kane placed his hand protectively on Olivia Wright’s left shoulder as Kent took up his place on her right, “I don’t know what your game is, Anthony, but you’re wasting your time here. And you’re not wanted,” he added somewhat unnecessarily.
Taylor’s smile widened. “After you die, a leech stops sucking your blood,” he answered his own question. “And, wanted or not, I am here. And I’m staying.”
Olivia shook her head in exasperation. “Why couldn’t you have just stayed away?” She demanded.
Taylor shrugged, his cocky look fading momentarily, before he noticed me earwigging, looked back at Olivia, put the triumphalist Patrician mask back on, and – as though relishing the fact that, between Kent Benson, James Kane and I, he had an audience for his performance – laughed in her face. “Because everyone, cousin dearest, is entitled to a second act.
“Me, Olivia, you; even your delightful fiancée here. Not sure about James. Do Lawyers get second Acts, James? Or do they just get to go on and on till they’re found out? Either way, we’re none of us saints; but sometimes we change.”
Olivia’s stabbing finger froze. She stared at him in confusion for a moment, before her eyes re
focussed, and a smirk flickered across her lips. “There’ll be no money in it for you, you know. What wasn’t left to me, she gave to animal shelters and drug rehabs.”
“Well, that was Maggie for you: Waifs, strays and losers. She had time for them all.” Taylor shrugged disinterestedly. “Let’s hope she’s got some money left to leave them, hey James,” he smiled at the solicitor, who bristled.
“She tried to help you,” Olivia said.
“And she did, Olivia. She did. Getting me away from here was the best thing she could ever have done.”
“And now?”
Anthony spread his arms wide, gesturing at the throng, half of whom – it seemed – wished he would simply vanish in a puff of smoke. “Now, dear cousin, I’m back. But right now, I’m wet, and I need to dry off,” and so saying, he pushed past the trio, before smiling a dazzling smile at me, and saying “Loo?”
I pointed him towards the only working loo, and watched as he passed through the room, went behind the bar, and vanished from view.
When I turned back, I realised that almost everyone else in the room had watched his exit.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I put the empty glasses I’d gathered on the bar, and caught Ali’s eye.
“How are we doing?” I asked, and received her most withering stare in response.
“We,” she said, “Are doing just fine. There’s nothing I like more on a boiling hot day than a coach load of pissed up ponces going off at each other in my pub. You better be making a shitload of money out of this.”
“A few quid,” I muttered noncommittally, “But there’s a lot of exposure to be had as well.”
Ali snorted dismissively, “I had a cousin once, died of exposure.”
“Was he a mountain climber?”
“Nah,” she said, a puzzled look on her face “He was a flasher. Till Betty Glass belted him with her handbag and started screaming blue murder. So ‘e runs away from her, and – tackle ahoy – runs right in front of a Tesco delivery van. Goes arse over tit, straight through the window. Scarred that driver for live, I heard.”
Now it was my turn to be puzzled. “Surely he died by being hit by a van,” I said.
“Exactly!” Ali announced triumphantly, “But he wouldn’t have been hit by the fucking van if he hadn’t been exposin’ hisself to old ladies. So the moral is: Be careful what you wish for. Sometimes exposure aint worth the pain.”
I nodded, marvelling at the weird and wonderful wisdom of my Bar manager, and wondering if this afternoon could get any weirder, before I remembered the person who had persuaded me that this affair would be good exposure for the pub.
“Have you seen Caz anywhere?” I asked.
“Her?” Ali did her bull with a crew cut snort again, and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “She aint gonna be out here getting her hands dirty with us lot. Said she had a headache, was going upstairs for a lie down.
“I’d fetch her some tea and biscuits,” Ali finished, sarcasm dripping from every word, “Only I’m a bit busy here what with running a pub and stopping your posh punters from attacking each other.”
“Fair point,” I admitted, as my phone vibrated in my pocket.
I took the phone out and glanced at it. It was an incoming text from Nick.
KNOW YOU STILL MAD AT ME, it said , BUT CAN I COME ROUND 2NITE? I WANT TO TALK 2 U.
I froze. Talk to me? What about? I looked around the bar, feeling a gnawing in the pit of my stomach. Some might have thought it was the result of not having eaten since the night before, but I knew it for what it was:
A sense of doom.
Nick and I had been getting on well since the start of the year. I’d begun by rebutting his approach; I’d been through a messy breakup, and I really didn’t want another relationship. But he’d persevered, calling me in early January and asking me to come to dinner with him. Then we’d gone to the pictures, the theatre, and the ice skating and Somerset house, and before I knew what was happening, I was spending all the time our schedules allowed with him.
I worried that Caz, who was my best friend, would feel rejected, but she’d been fine with the whole thing: “Sweetheart,” she’d said, “I may be doomed to a life of spinsterism, but there’s no reason at least one of us old donkeys can’t get their, if you’ll pardon the expression, oats. Enjoy. Because,” she’d finished, “I’m off to Miami for a few weeks with Dante.”
“Dante?” I’d racked my brain, coming up, only, with the Italian who wrote Inferno. And – though she wasn’t fussy when it came to who paid for her winter breaks – I figured even Caz would have been unable to screw the cost of a villa and first class flights out of a long dead poet. “Dante who?”
Caz sighed, and, as though speaking to the terminally slow, clarified herself: “Not Dante. Dom T. He’s a rapper. I think. Or a DJ. Something musical. And he has a house out there, so I’m popping over to escape this vile weather.”
“Do you even know this person?” I asked.
“Know him?” She’d laughed heartily down the phone at me. “Oh sweetheart, you don’t have to know someone to stay in their house and use their facilities.”
“Well where I come from, using the facilities of people you don’t know is referred to as Breaking and Entering,” I updated her, and she’d laughed again.
“I love how genuinely proletariat you are, Sweetheart. It’s charming, really. But I have to go, cos Dom T is sending a car around, and I haven’t even decided what bikinis to pack. Have fun with your little policeman. I’ll call you when I’m back, and I shall expect all the juicy details.”
And, so saying, she’d rung off.
Imagine my disappointment when, a week later, Nick had announced, excitedly, that he was being sent to Albania on what sounded, when he explained it to me, like some sort of exchange programme.
“You’re going to live with an Albanian family and absorb their culture?” I ‘d asked, wondering what on earth Albanian culture was, and how it would affect my not-a-boyfriend.
Nick had smiled, “I’m not twelve, you know. It’s an exchange program where the Albanian’s get to hear about some of our policing methods, and we get to build better links with them.”
“Links? Why would you want to build links with the Albanians?” I asked, before rushing home to call Caz, who I luckily caught in the first class lounge at T5.
“Is Albania even a real country?” She asked. “I mean: isn’t that only in books with endless winter, the snow queen and all that?”
I sighed deeply.
“No, Caz, you’re thinking of Narnia. Albania’s definitely a country; I looked it up.”
“Well where is it?”
“Eastern Europe, but that’s not relevant.”
“Be bloody relevant if you had to walk there,” she returned. “So what’s the pretty policeman’s rationale for going?”
I told her about the exchange of ideas, then added “Plus, there’s a couple of villains the Met have been after for a while, only every time they think they have them, they vanish to Albania, where the local law and the whole extradition setup is a bit dodgy. So the hope is that, by building some bridges, it’ll make it easier to nab them next time they pop up.”
There was a silence at the end of the line, then: “Nope, sorry. You lost me when you started talking like a character from a Linda La Plante. I heard villains, dodgy, and nab ‘em, and none of it made as much sense as an Opera in Esperanto to me.”
“Whatever,” I waved her objections aside, “The thing is that he’s going away and I’ll be all alone. So we can play.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she murmured sympathetically, “I see where this is going.”
“Don’t go,” I pleaded with her. “Stay here and we can do fun stuff.”
“But I’m already checked in,” she answered, “And besides, this is good: You have lots of work you need to do.”
“I do?”
“Certainly: You can sort out that bloody Barmaid for a start. Put her through char
m school. And you can draw up some menus for the coming months. I’ll only be away for a few weeks.”
“A few weeks?”
“Oh, they’re calling me,” she said, “for my massage.”
“Massage? I thought you were in the airport?”
“I am. But I couldn’t very well get on a long haul flight without having things loosened up, could I? And besides, your tale of woe has stressed me so much I need my chakra realigning or something. Toodles.”
That had been then.
This was now.
I looked at my phone again. I WANT TO TALK 2 U.
What about¸ I wondered.
“Oi, Delia,” Ali was back, “Can you have a word with her,” she jerked her head towards the end of the bar, where a clearly shitfaced Monica Vale sat in front of an empty glass.
“Paralytic.” Ali said, “And wants serving. If you OK it, I’ll do her another, but if she turns into one of our merry band of brawlers, I’ll have every last one of ‘em out on the street and shut the doors on ‘em.”
I headed over to Monica. “Miss Vale,” I smiled, “How are you doing?”
Monica Vale looked up from the spot on the bar where her eyes had been fixed, and worked hard to focus on me.
“I’ve had a bit of a shock,” she slurred. “James throwing a punch like that – made me remember…” She shuddered, and clammed up. I’d been running a pub just long enough to know not to ask what she remembered, whilst fervently hoping she wouldn’t elaborate.
She didn’t. “Where is James?” She suddenly asked, turning round and squinting at the crowd. “Have you seen him?”
I hadn’t, and I said so. “Perhaps he’s outside having a fag.”
“Doesn’t smoke,” she shook her head.
“He’ll turn up.”
“Yes.” She sighed deeply, and stared vacantly at the empty glass in front of her. “Most people do, don’t they. Just when you think you’ll never have to see them again, there they are in front of you.”
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