The Fethering Mysteries 10; The Poisoning in the Pub

since he helped me out when he was a student. He’s one of the most honest kids I’ve ever known. He’s as harmless as that poor bugger Ray was, hasn’t got a violent bone in his body. He’s almost too much of a gentleman – certainly lives up to his posh accent. And he’d certainly never hurt Ray, of all people. He was very kind with that guy, really patient. You know, Ray was slow on the uptake and could sometimes get in the way when the kitchen was busy, but I never once heard Ed mouth off at him. No, whoever did kill Ray, I’d swear on…on anything you like, that it wasn’t Ed Pollack.”

“Then why did the police take him down to the station?”

“God knows.”

“Did you see Ed that evening, you know, after the fight?”

“Of course I bloody did.”

“When Jude and I saw him, he had blood all over the front of his jacket. He looked as if he had just been where Ray was and he was moving back into the kitchen.”

“Ed had got blood all over his whites because he’d been punched in the face by one of those sodding bikers. I don’t think his nose was actually broken, but there was blood pouring out of it.”

Carole was surprised at the depth of her relief at this news. She too had warmed to Ed Pollack, and the thought that he might have been responsible for Ray’s death had clouded her mind for the past couple of days.

“And you say you don’t know whether Ed’s still with the police or not?”

“No. I haven’t been in touch with anyone since I went to that Travelodge place. I said, the police wouldn’t let me take my mobile and…anyway, I…well, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone…” Carole got an inkling of the depths of his depression. She had a mental image of him just sitting in the anonymous space of his tiny Iravelodge room, contemplating the collapse of everything he’d worked for. Not wanting to make any communication – except with a bottle of Famous Grouse.

He seemed to intuit what she was thinking, and made an effort to shift himself out of his mood. “I must ring Ed. And Zosia. Find out what’s happened. This has got to be as tough for them as it is for me.” He groaned. “And if the Crown and Anchor’s closed for any length of time, I’m going to have to lay them off. God, I hate doing that.”

“The police can’t be there that much longer.”

“Don’t you believe it. They can stay as long as they like. They’ll probably start digging into the foundations to see if any bodies were cemented in there when the bloody place was built.”

“Oh, now you’re just being paranoid.”

“And do you blame me for being paranoid?” This was spoken with such vehemence that a few nearby tourists looked up from their burgers and ice cream. In a lower, but no less impassioned voice, Ted Crisp went on, “Look at what’s happened to me in the last ten days. First, the food poisoning – closed down by Health and Safety. Damaging headlines in the Fethering Observer. Then when I do reopen, the pub’s suddenly full of bikers who alienate the whole bloody village – and of course I get blamed for it. Then we have a full-scale riot and, to top it all, a murder. Call it paranoia if you like, but I reckon I’m justified in thinking there’s some kind of campaign against me!”

“Yes, yes,” said Carole soothingly. She wanted to reach across to stroke his hand, but that seemed to her too intimate a gesture for a public place. “Well, Ted, if that is the case – and I can see why you might think so – who do you think’s behind it?”

“Someone who wants me to sell up the Crown and Anchor and get the hell out of Fethering.”

“And do you know who that might be?”

“I’m sure there are plenty of candidates.” He sighed and rubbed a bear-like paw across his tired eyes.

“Any names?”

“No,” he replied brusquely.

“Ted, there’s a man I’ve seen a couple of times at the pub…”

“Not recently you haven’t. The bloody place is closed.”

“A man,” Carole persisted patiently, “who drives a pale blue BMW. He was watching Dan Poke’s act – and he spoke to Dan afterwards. I thought I recognized him. Tall, running to fat, thick-rimmed glasses, black hair that has to be dyed and – ”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“But he was in the pub and – ”

“OK, so he’s a guy who was in the pub. People like that are called ‘customers’. They come in, they buy a drink, they drink it, they go out. I don’t bloody know all of them!”

Carole had a feeling that Ted Crisp was hiding something. He knew the man she was referring to, but he wasn’t about to give that information to her. With Ted sarcasm was always the precursor of sheer bloody- mindedness. No point in antagonizing him further. Her tone was more gentle as she said, “You won’t have to sell the Crown and Anchor, you know. Things’ll turn round for you.”

“Oh yes?” He let out the sigh of a man at the end of his tether. “In some ways it’d be a relief just to get shot of the bloody place. The pub business is tough.”

“But you love it.”

“Don’t know. Maybe there was a time when I loved it. I’m not so sure I’ve loved it much during the past few months.”

“Are you saying there’ve been problems before the last couple of weeks?”

“Yes. Financial problems, certainly. The economics of a place like the Crown and Anchor are always going to be pretty dicey – particularly if you borrowed as much to buy the place as I did. You’re always on a knife edge of profit and loss in this business. It doesn’t take much to push you down the wrong way. And there are always sharks out there, ready to snap up a business that’s on the downward slide. A lot of pubs may be closing, but there’s always demand for the ones in prime sites. Like the Crown and Anchor.”

“You mean you have actually had offers?”

“There are always offers. None of them offering anything like what I reckon to be the market value of the place. Like I say, there are plenty of sharks out there. The business is getting tougher every day. No two ways about it, the smoking ban has cut down the number of punters, then you get another hike in interest rates so I’m paying more on the bloody mortgage and…” Listlessly, he concluded, “Yeah, maybe I should just cut my losses and sell up.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“At the moment I bloody do!” He tried to sound rough and dismissive, but he just couldn’t do it. Beneath the beard his mouth trembled and there was even a gleam of moisture in his eye. “I just feel so bloody responsible for Ray. I was meant to be helping him. The Crown and Anchor was one of the few places where he felt vaguely secure and…look what I let happen to him.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Ted.”

“No? At the moment I feel that everything that’s wrong in this bloody world is my bloody fault. Ray never knowingly did any harm to anyone in his life, and then I went and shouted at him, and…”

Carole had been about to move the conversation on to what Jude had told her about Ray’s involvement in the substitution of the dodgy scallops, but Ted’s expression of total defeat gave her pause. And the opportunity passed all too quickly. The next thing she heard was a nasal voice saying, “So this is where you’re hiding out, Ted. With your girlfriend.”

It was Sylvia. Her tall boyfriend had his arm protectively resting on her tight-shorted buttocks. He was again wearing black leather trousers, and his biceps bulged out of a sleeveless T-shirt.

Ted Crisp looked up with the expression of a man who didn’t think his day could get any worse, and had suddenly found out that it could.

? The Poisoning in the Pub ?

Fourteen

In his diminished state Ted Crisp seemed incapable of speech. Carole stood up and said, “Sylvia, I’m Carole Seddon. We met briefly in the Crown and Anchor last week.”

She felt herself being appraised, then Sylvia said, “This is a new thing for you, Ted – going for the older