here…? You said at the stables that you needed to come down to Fethering. So if it’s, as you say, your only meal ticket, maybe your secret involves people who live round-”
“Will you shut up!” He was rattled now. It might be something she had said that had so suddenly changed his mood. Or it might be the return of his hangover. His hands twitched and once again there was a sheen of sweat on his brow. He was in desperate need of another infusion of alcohol. “Will you hurry along with that drink, you silly cow!” he shouted.
Carole was prepared to put up with a lot in the cause of criminal investigation, but not to be called names in a public place in Fethering. Whatever would people think of her? She was unable to stop herself from shouting back, “I’ll thank you not to be so appallingly rude!”
The customers who hadn’t been silenced by Donal’s outburst certainly were by Carole’s response. Raised voices were not common in Fethering. It was a very long time since anything so interesting had happened in the Crown and Anchor.
The shouting had another effect too. The door from the kitchen burst open, and framed in it stood the shaggy outline of Ted Crisp. “All right, what’s going on here?” he bellowed.
His eyes moved round the room, and very quickly fixed on the source of the disturbance. “Why, you little swine!” he said, as he moved forward. “Are you too Irish to understand plain English? You’re banned from this pub! Get out!”
Donal rose to his-remarkably steady-feet. For a small man, he carried a lot of menace. “And who’s going to make me get out?”
“I am.” Ted Crisp’s huge body loomed over his opponent. If there was going to be a fight, it looked like an unequal one.
But Donal was fast. Feinting with his right hand up towards the landlord’s face, he flicked a hard left fist straight into the bulging midriff. As Ted folded in the middle, Donal’s bunched right hand caught him full in the nose. Instantly, blood spattered.
But, in spite of his injuries, Ted Crisp was surprisingly speedy in his response. His huge arms swung forward and the hands caught on the shoulders of his retreating assailant. Quickly, they closed together around the stubbly neck.
Donal twisted and wriggled, raining blows into the unprotected stomach in front of him. Dripping blood from his opponent’s nose flecked his face and clothes. But still Ted did not release his grip.
“All right, you asked for it, you stupid bastard!” the Irishman gasped through his constricted throat.
The movement was so fast that none of the appalled audience could have described what happened. Just suddenly there was a small knife in Donal’s right hand. Jerked upwards, the blade disappeared into the folds of Ted Crisp’s fleece.
That did make him release his grip. Tottering backwards, the landlord fell against the support of his bar. His opponent, without even wiping it, slid the bloody knife back into its hiding place. He looked around the silent onlookers with something approaching glee. Then, with a defiant laugh, he rushed out of the pub.
20
The appalled silence continued. Then, to her surprise, Carole found herself rushing forward to Ted Crisp’s side. A patch of red, almost black against the dark blue of his fleece, was spreading on his chest. “Are you all right? Ted, are you all right?”
His eyes looked wearily down at the spreading blood, then seemed to swim for a moment, unseeing. Oh God, Carole found herself thinking, don’t let me lose him. She was surprised by the strength of the emotion. In the past she had had an incongruous relationship with Ted, and like most incongruous relationships it had been brief. And yet, now his life was threatened, she felt this surge of panicked desperation at the thought of his dying.
The moment passed. Refusing Carole’s offered arm, Ted Crisp pushed himself against the counter back up to a standing position. “God, that Donal’s a stupid bastard.” Then, looking round at the hushed circle of Fethering pensioners, he said firmly, “No one gets to hear about this, okay? I’m not going to mention it to the police, and I’ll be bloody angry if I hear anyone else has done so. I don’t want the Crown and Anchor getting a reputation for violence, just because of one lunatic Irishman. He’s had a grudge against me for a long time, that’s all. So I’ll thank you all to forget this ever happened-have you got that?”
Without waiting for a response-and rather magnificently-the landlord turned on his heel and walked round the counter into the pub kitchen. Even if she’d wanted to, Carole could not have stopped herself from following. And Jude went along too. Behind them they heard the shocked silence give way to twitterings of excited conversation.
The chef, who had been blithely heating up crumbly cod pies during the recent altercation, looked up in surprise at the invasion of his kitchen. His eyes widened as he saw the stain on Ted’s chest.
“Don’t worry about it. Only a flesh wound. Get back to your cooking.”
Unwillingly, the chef did as he was told. Ted subsided into a wooden chair.
“Do you have a first aid kit?” asked Jude practically.
“Over in that cupboard by the window.”
Carole moved towards him, reaching to unzip the perforated fleece. He brushed her hand away. “I can do it.”
But he couldn’t. After a couple of attempts, he let his arms flop to his sides and offered no resistance as Carole cautiously unzipped the garment and eased it off his shoulders. On the dirty grey of the sweatshirt beneath, the bloodstain was much bigger, seeping down towards the waistband of his jeans.
“Going to have to get that off too.”
He nodded, grimacing at the promise of pain. First Jude used a dampened tea cloth to wipe away the blood from his nose. After that, she stood ready, the plastic first aid box open on a table beside her, while Carole first pulled the fabric away from the stickiness around the wound, then lifted the sweatshirt up from the bottom. His face set in a determination not to cry out, Ted raised his arms and let her slip it away from his body.
Jude moved in, towel at the ready. “Stop me if it hurts.”
“Doesn’t make much difference if it hurts or not,” said Ted, reasonably enough. “Got to be done.”
There was a second of stillness, while the two women looked at his torso. There was a lot of blood, its source apparently just below the left breast, still flowing through the matted hair of his paunch till it darkened into the top of his jeans.
All Carole could think was how near the knife had gone to Ted’s heart, how nearly he had been killed.
Jude moved the damp towel determinedly forward, and starting from the bottom, swept upward over his skin in gentle but firm strokes, mopping away the blood. For a moment the flow threatened to drench the flesh again, but then it slowed to a trickle. Jude wiped the gory towel around the area of the wound itself, finally revealing a one-inch open line of puncture in a fold of skin.
“See,” said Ted Crisp, who couldn’t see it. “Just a flesh wound. Thank God he’d only got a Stanley knife. The blade’s too short to do any serious damage.”
Jude looked closely. “Might benefit from a couple of stitches.”
“No. Just slap a dressing on. It’ll be fine.”
Dubiously, Jude did as he suggested. A bit of gauze over the cut, a rectangular dressing of lint, held in place by strips of semitransparent white tape.
“Well, you’re patched up.”
“Sure,” said Ted. “I’m fine. Pass me that T-shirt hanging on the back of the door.”
Carole did as instructed. The T-shirt had been printed for a lager promotion some several summers before and, from the smell of it, had hung on its peg ever since, absorbing the aromas of the kitchen.
Carole pulled the neckband wide to fit over his shaggy head, guided his arms into the armholes and pulled the T-shirt down to cover him.
All three of them looked anxiously at the site of the wound to see if any telltale blood would seep through.
None did. Disguising the effort it cost him, Ted Crisp rose to his feet. “Well, I don’t know about you two, but
