Kelly-Marie clearly hadn’t considered this possibility before. “Yes, I suppose it could have been.”
“But he didn’t say who had told him about this threat, about the people who were trying to do harm?”
The girl shook her head very slowly. “No, he didn’t tell me that.”
“Well, had Ray had any unexpected visitors in the weeks before he died?”
Another slow shake of the head. “I don’t think so. But I’m not here when I’m at work.” The idea seemed to strike her as funny, and another huge infectious beam spread across her broad face. “None of us have many visitors here, except for family people…well, the ones who’ve got family people.”
Jude gestured to the photographs. “Are those yours?”
Kelly-Marie nodded eagerly. “Mummy and Daddy and Rob and Daniel. My brothers.” She was clearly proud of them.
“And the dogs?”
“Marks and Spencer. That’s a shop,” she explained.
“Yes, I have heard of it,” said Jude, with a smile.
“Do you have a dog?”
“No. My neighbour does.”
“What kind is it?” The sparkle in her eye showed they had definitely got on to Kelly-Marie’s favourite subject.
“A Labrador. But he’s got a poorly foot at the moment.”
“Oh dear.” The girl seemed more upset by this news than she had when talking about Ray.
“It’s getting better,” Jude reassured her.
“And what’s the dog’s name?”
“Gulliver.”
“That’s a funny name.”
“Haven’t you heard of Gulliver? He’s a character from a book.”
The girl solemnly shook her head. Jude noticed there was something missing in the room. No books. She wondered how developed Kelly-Marie’s reading skills were.
“Do you mind if we go back to what Ray said about thinking someone was going to do harm to someone?”
“Fine.”
“You said you didn’t know who was under threat from whatever the harm was, but do you know what the actual threatened harm was?” The girl looked blank. “What harm was going to be done…did Ray mention that?”
Another firm shake of the head. “The police asked me that too, and I couldn’t tell them either. I would tell if I knew. But I can’t.”
The girl sounded so pathetically apologetic that Jude hastened to assure her there was no problem. “You can’t give me information you haven’t got, can you?”
Kelly-Marie agreed that she couldn’t, but still looked disappointed.
“So we know Ray was worried about some harm being done. We don’t know what the harm was, who it was going to be done to, or who had told Ray about it. Is there anything else you can remember from the conversations you had with him?”
“Well,” the girl replied slowly, “I think Ray thought it would be all right.”
“Sorry? What would be all right?”
“Whatever the harm was. He said there was a way of stopping it happening…”
“Yes?”
“…and he was worried about that.”
“Do you know why?”
“I think it was because it was something he had to do.”
“Ah.” The thought went through Jude’s mind that that something might be changing round two trays of scallops…as he thought, the safe one for the unsafe one…though in the event it had been the other way round.
“And that was what worried him,” Kelly-Marie went on. “Ray always worried when people wanted him to do things, when he had to take…what’s that word?”
“Responsibility?”
“Yes. Responsibility.” She repeated the word slowly, savouring it. “Ray was always worried he’d do things wrong, he’d let people down.”
“Can you remember when you had this conversation with him, Kelly-Marie?”
Her broad brow wrinkled with the effort of recollection. Then it cleared. “Yes. Not last weekend, the weekend before. Because I was here on the Sunday. Usually I go to Mummy and Daddy’s for Sunday lunch, but that weekend they’d had to go to Shropshire for a wedding. Ray told me about him having to take…responsibility…” she enunciated the word with great caution “…on that Sunday.”
The timing worked perfectly. They had had the conversation the day before the poisoning at the Crown and Anchor. But who on earth had set Ray up? Who had told him to take responsibility for the switching of the scallop trays? Who had convinced him that his actions would save the pub from an outburst of food poisoning?
Jude stayed with Kelly-Marie for a half-hour or so longer, but didn’t get much more useful information. Soon she stopped trying and allowed the conversation to move on to Kelly-Marie’s beloved family and dogs. She found herself making comparisons with Ray’s situation. The girl clearly had loving parents and when they died, she would still have the support of her two brothers. Also her experience of sheltered housing at Copsedown Hall was much more successful than Ray’s had been. She was managing very well.
“Have you got plans for the rest of the weekend?” asked Jude, as she rose to leave.
Kelly-Marie beamed. “I’ll see Mummy and Daddy tomorrow. And the boys. And the dogs.” It was the best prospect she could imagine.
Jude said she’d see herself out, but Kelly-Marie insisted on accompanying her to the main door. She knew her manners.
As she opened the front door, Kelly-Marie turned at a sound from the kitchen. In the doorway lounged a bulky figure with shaved head, combat trousers and a camouflage-patterned T-shirt. In his hand was a shiny new mobile phone. There was something familiar about the man, but Jude was astonished when Kelly-Marie said, “Morning, Viggo.”
He had had a complete makeover. Gone were long hair and beard, gone the biker’s leather kit. Jude could hardly prevent herself from gaping at the transformation.
He didn’t respond to Kelly-Marie’s greeting, but stared hard at Jude and said, “On your way then, are you?”
She said she was, exchanged fond farewells with Kelly-Marie and, as she walked out into the stifling outside air, could sense Viggo’s eyes boring into the back of her head. She didn’t lose the feeling of being watched until she got back to Woodside Cottage.
? The Poisoning in the Pub ?
Twenty-Four
Jude felt sure she was missing something. It was like one of Carole’s precious
Jude thought back over the last week, from the time that she’d arrived at the Crown and Anchor to see Dan Poke the previous Sunday. There were a lot of loose ends, but some which, she was convinced, being joined up in the right way could form a revealing pattern of logic.
Thinking of missing links made her, rather uncharitably, think of Viggo. What could be the explanation for the dramatic change in his appearance? Well, there was only one person Jude knew who might have any information about Viggo. She rang Sally Monks.
