painted stage had been set up at the far end of the bar. Hired spotlights, currently switched off, but focused on the area, left no one in any doubt that that was where Dan Poke would be doing his act.
Fortunately, just as they were looking for a seat, a short man appeared from the kitchen, weaving his way through the crowd with a pile of chairs held up in front of him. Only when he put them down could Jude see his face and recognize Ray. He was wearing a black T-shirt, so new its packing creases were still visible. On its front was printed the inevitable catch-phrase: FANCY A POKE? Clearly, as with Lyra Mackenzie, he liked buying merchandise connected with his idols.
“Ray, can we grab a couple of those?” asked Jude, lifting two of the chairs off the pile.
She desperately wanted to talk further to him, but Ray looked busy and harassed. “Got to get some more chairs,” he said, on his way to the kitchen. Then he turned back. “Could you save a seat for me, and all? I want to have a good view of Dan Poke.” His voice dropped as he confided to Jude, “He’s off the telly. I’m going round the back to get his autograph after.”
Jude appropriated a third chair before they were all snatched up. She and Carole sat down and placed Carole’s handbag firmly on the empty one. Jude grinned. “That’s a bit of luck, getting him sitting next to us.”
“You going to pick up where you left off with him yesterday?”
“Do my best. Have to choose my moment, though. I think this could be rather a rowdy occasion for intimate interrogation.”
She was right. The noise level was by now very high. There was a buzz in the Crown and Anchor of something about to happen. The customers from outside were pressing in, squeezing up against each other. The room was steamy with odours of sweat and beer. Thank God, both women thought, smoking was no longer allowed in pubs.
Thank God, too, that they’d been lucky enough to get seats. It was a real problem hanging on to the one they’d saved for Ray. People kept coming up and asking if it was taken. One man unceremoniously removed Carole’s handbag and was only just prevented from plonking down his large backside. Eventually Jude just raised her legs and laid them across the chair.
Carole looked around, still surprised to see so many faces in the Crown and Anchor that she didn’t recognize. There were a couple, though, that she had seen before. One was the tall man she’d recently observed getting into his BMW in the pub car park. Black hair was still swept back from his chubby face, and he had thick-rimmed glasses like the young Michael Caine. Maybe as a concession to the weekend, he wore no jacket, but he still contrived to look as though he was wearing a suit. He sat at a table with a group of equally well-tailored young men. They were all drinking Belgian beers from the bottle. The atmosphere amongst them was raucous, but the tall man seemed removed from the action, observing, not missing anything that was going on.
Again, he looked very familiar, but again, frus-tratingly, Carole couldn’t recall the context in which they had previously met.
The other person Carole recognized was over by the bar. Ted Crisp’s ex-wife Sylvia had taken up position on a tall stool near the stage area. She was dressed in tight jeans and a skimpy white blouse, showing a deep cleavage and distinct signs of intoxication. The way she draped herself over the tall man on an adjacent stool looked proprietorial, but whether he was a long-term partner or that evening’s pick-up Carole could not guess. He wore black leather jeans and had a black leather jacket slung over his T-shirted shoulder, so maybe he was one of the bikers.
Ray scuttled out of the kitchen and claimed his seat next to Jude. He was sweating heavily and jittery with excitement. “They’re going to start,” he said, “any minute. I actually saw Dan Poke back in the kitchen there. He’s on the telly. I’m going round to get his autograph later.”
He looked up as a huge figure in black leather elbowed his way through the crowd to stand behind him. Jude recognized Viggo from Copsedown Hall. Though the man moved with a swagger, his pose didn’t look quite convincing. He lacked the raucous ease of the other bikers. None of them took any notice of him. He was not part of their gang. But his presence could still impress – or possibly frighten – Ray, who stopped talking and kept looking up towards his housemate, as if searching for approval.
Viggo, like most of the men in the pub, had a pint in his hand. He raised it in a toasting gesture towards the scarred man, who was now in the centre of the group of bikers, but he received no acknowledgement. Viggo looked momentarily hurt by the lack of reaction.
Carole could see Zosia worming her way through the churning crowd – and a barrage of sexist banter – towards the light controls. Though the spotlights were on a dimmer, the pub’s ordinary lighting could only be snapped off. But when Zosia pulled the switches, the blackout was far from complete. It was one of those July evenings that never got properly dark. The crowd, aware of the lighting change, shouted and barracked as they tried to nestle themselves into slightly more comfortable watching positions, craning towards the stage area.
Slowly Zosia faded up the spotlights to reveal Ted Crisp.
? The Poisoning in the Pub ?
Eleven
The landlord of the Crown and Anchor was sweating heavily, no surprise perhaps in a crammed-full pub on a July evening, but to Carole the sheen on his forehead looked more like nerves. And when he spoke, it was with nothing like his usual fluency. He seemed inhibited by the presence of his more successful former colleague. Or maybe of his ex-wife and the man she was nuzzling?
“Good evening,” Ted began, “and welcome, all of you, to the Crown and Anchor, Fethering, for a very special evening. Yes, tonight is the very first Crown and Anchor Comedy Night!”
“It’s not the first! Bloody place has always been a joke!” shouted a heckler whom Ted couldn’t identify because of the lights in his eyes. His bearded jaw set firm as he continued, “And I’m very lucky to have here, to entertain us this evening, someone I used to work with back in my days as a stand-up comic. Back then they used to say about me that I was…” He spoke the words as a set-up to a joke, but then seemed to lose his nerve and trickled away into confusion. “Er, that is to say…anyway, the bloke I’m going to introduce has come a long way from those early days when…he, um, he’s done a lot of television, he’s – ”
“Oh, get on with it, for God’s sake!” a voice called out from the darkness somewhere behind the bar. “We haven’t got all bloody night!”
The audience roared their appreciative recognition of Dan Poke’s distinctive tones. Ted Crisp looked even more wretchedly uncomfortable. Carole felt an uncharacteristic urge to rush across the room and give him a big hug.
“Yeah, anyway,” Ted stuttered on, “he’s now a big star on the television, he gets paid for single gigs more than most of us earn in a year, but he’s agreed to be here tonight, just for the price of his travel expenses.”
“Don’t forget the merchandising!” Dan Poke’s voice bellowed again, to the audience’s delight.
“Ah, no, sorry,” Ted Crisp floundered. “You can buy lots of Dan Poke merchandise, if you want to. Badges, T- shirts, CDs, DVDs…so if any of you – ”
“Don’t forget the book!” came the prompt from its author.
“Yes, of course. Not forgetting Dan’s book. I don’t know if you call it an autobiography, but it had massive sales a few Christmases back. And the book’s called – inevitably – A
“No just introduce me and get off the bloody stage!”
The audience was rendered ecstatic by this charming shaft of wit, and the humiliated landlord continued, “Right…Ladies and gentlemen, will you give a big hand for one of the original naughty boys of stand-up comedy – Mr…Dan…Poke!”
Ted Crisp scuttled back into the darkness like a rabbit relieved to escape the headlights, and Dan Poke slowly moved into the glare. His lip curled into his trademark sneer, and the audience erupted into screams of ecstatic recognition. At the back of the crowd, caught up in the communal excitement, Zosia had her mobile phone to her eye in photographic mode. She may not have known who Dan Poke was before that evening, but she wasn’t going to miss getting a shot of him. Round the room other mobiles flashed.
