suicide pact.
Behind the bar stood a large woman whose lack of dungaree livery meant she must be the landlady. Tight cream trousers outlined the contours of her substantial bottom and thighs, while a spangly black and gold top gave a generous view of her vertiginously deep cleavage. She had a tan that looked as if it had just returned from the Canary Islands and wore a lot of chunky gold. Earrings, necklaces, bracelets and a jeweller’s windowful of rings. When she flashed a greeting to the two women, a gold tooth was exposed at the corner of her smile.
“Good evening. Welcome to the Cat and Fiddle.” Her voice was brash and slightly nasal. “What can I get you? We do have a Special Winter Warmer Mulled Wine for these winter evenings.”
Carole and Jude, who shared the view that nothing spoiled wine so much as heating it up and shoving in herbs and sugar, both opted for a Chilean Chardonnay. Carole had intended not to drink alcohol on this rare second visit to a pub in the same day, but the atmosphere of the place seemed to require some form of anaesthetic.
They had wondered in the car how they were going to get round to the subject of Tadeusz Jankowski, but they needn’t have worried. The landlady, who must be the Shona Nuttall Ted had referred to, brought it up almost immediately.
“You local, are you?” she began.
“Fethering.”
“Oh, very close. I haven’t seen you in here before, though.” She beamed so far that the gold tooth glinted again. “Well, now you’ve found us, I hope you’ll get the Cat and Fiddle habit.”
Both women, while mentally forswearing the place for ever, made some polite reaction.
“It’s a real old·fashioned friendly pub. Got lots of atmosphere,” said Shona Nuttall, in the teeth of the evidence. The many photographs pinned behind the bar all featured the landlady grinning hugely and crushing some hapless customer in her flabby arms.
“Mind you, though,” she went on, saving them the effort of even the most basic probing, “we have had our sadnesses here recently…”
“Oh?” asked Carole, providing a prompt which probably wasn’t needed.
“I don’t know if you heard on the telly about that poor young man who was stabbed…?”
“Yes, we did,” said Jude.
“Course you would have done, living right there in Fethering. Well, do you know…” She gathered up her bosom in her arms as she prepared to make the revelation “…that boy only worked in here.”
“Really?” Jude sounded suitably surprised. “Tadeusz Jankowski?”
“Yes, him. Mind you, I could never pronounce his name, so I just called him Teddy.”
“What did he actually do for you…? Sorry, I don’t know your name…?” Carole lied.
First names were exchanged, then the landlady went on with what was clearly becoming her party piece. “I’d got an ad in the
“When would this have been?”
“Middle of October. That’s when I have to start thinking about Christmas. Anyway, Teddy seemed a nice enough lad…well, considering he was Polish…so I thought I’d give him a try.”
“Was he working behind the bar?” Jude tried with difficulty to visualize the young man she’d seen in dungarees and red gingham.
“No, no. His English wasn’t good enough for that. And, you know, handling the money, you can’t be too careful…particularly with foreigners.” As she had been with Ewan Urquhart, Jude was struck by the endemic mild racism of West Sussex. “My staff do a kind of probation period before I let them behind the bar.”
“What work did he do then?” asked Carole.
“Washing up mostly. You know, clearing the rubbish from the kitchen, helping the chef. No cooking, mind. Kitchen porter kind of thing.”
“But not mixing with the customers?”
“No.”
“Was he friendly with the other staff?”
“Oh yes, yes, he was a nice boy. Such a tragedy, somebody so young,” Shona said automatically. “Look, that’s how friendly he was.” She pointed to one of the photographs behind the bar. Out of deference to the deceased, somebody had pinned a black ribbon bow over it. Tadeusz Jankowski looked very small and embarrassed in his employer’s all-consuming embrace. The photograph may have shown how friendly Shona Nuttall was; it didn’t look as though the boy had had much choice in the matter.
“Any particular friends amongst the other staff?” Carole persisted.
“No, not really. Not that I noticed. He only did two-hour shifts, and he was kept pretty busy, so he didn’t have much time to socialize.”
“Did he ever mention having a girlfriend? Or did you see him with one?”
The landlady shook her head. “I was asked all these questions by the police, you know.” This was not said to make them desist in their interrogation; it was spoken with pride. The death of Tadeusz Jankowski had given Shona Nuttall a starring role in her own drama and she was going to enjoy every moment of it.
“Did he say anything about other friends?” asked Jude. “Or why he had come to England?”
“The police asked me that too, but I wasn’t able to help them, you know. I mean, I’m very good to all the people who work for me, but I do have a business to run, so that has to be my first priority. Not too much time for idle chatter with the kitchen staff, particularly when they don’t speak much English.”
“Did the police question you for long?”
“Oh, quite a while. Half an hour, probably. And…”
Shona Nuttall slowed down as she prepared to produce her biggest bombshell: “…I was actually on the television.”
“Were you?”
“Yes. You may have seen me. Friday I was on the news.”
Carole looked puzzled. “I’m fairly sure I did see the news on Friday evening. I had flu, but I got out of bed specially to watch it. I don’t remember seeing you, though.”
“Ah, well, I was just on the local news.” The landlady seemed put out to have to make this admission. “Six- thirty in the evening.”
“No, then I wouldn’t have seen that.”
“I do have the video.” Not only did she have it, she had it set up in the VCR on the bar. She pressed the relevant controls and told them to look up at the big screen. The practised ease with which she went through these motions suggested that Carole and Jude weren’t the first Cat and Fiddle customers who had been shown the recording.
Shona Nuttall’s moment of television fame was very short. A brief shot of the exterior of the pub was shown, followed by a close-up of her behind the bar saying, “He seemed a nice boy. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt him.” Then, with one of those bad edits so beloved of local television news, they cut back to the studio and the presenter talking about the increase of the rat population in Worthing.
“You came across very well,” said Jude, and Shona Nuttall glowed with the compliment. What a sycophantic remark, thought Carole, but she was still envious of the way her neighbour could always say the right thing to put people at their ease.
“And did Tad…Teddy ever talk to you about his music?”
“Sorry?”
“He was a very keen musician. He wrote songs and played guitar.”
“I didn’t know that. He wasn’t into country music, was he?”
“I don’t think so. More sort of folk.”
“Oh. Because we do have regular Country Evenings here at the Cat and Fiddle. Line Dancing too. I don’t know if that’s your sort of thing…?”
“Not really,” said Carole, suppressing a shudder.
They continued their conversation with Shona a little longer. Relishing her moment in the spotlight, she was happy to talk for as long as they wanted. But it soon became obvious that she had almost nothing to tell them. ‘Teddy’ had been employed as cheap labour in the kitchen of the Cat and Fiddle. She had had no interest in him
