detail. But first there was just one, a small man who seemed to be waiting for something…”
Ray Witchett waiting for his autograph from Dan Poke.
“…and then another man went round the side of the pub towards him.”
“What did this other man look like?”
“One of the bikers. Dressed in leather. He was tall with long hair and a dark beard.”
Her breath was tight as Carole asked, “Did they seem to know each other?”
“Oh yes,” Greville Tilbrook replied. “They greeted each other like friends.”
Ray hadn’t known any of the bikers. Only someone who looked like a biker.
Viggo.
? The Poisoning in the Pub ?
Twenty-Nine
It was nearly midnight when the phone at Woodside Cottage rang. Jude was in bed, but not yet asleep. Her mind was still full of the news she had received from Carole, of Greville Tilbrook nearly witnessing Ray’s murder.
The caller was Kelly-Marie. “It’s something bad,” she said.
¦
Carole hadn’t been asleep either – in fact, she had been sitting in her nightdress, finding her way with increasing fascination around the laptop she had inherited from her daughter-in-law. When she got Jude’s call, she immediately said that they should both go to Copsedown Hall. Apart from anything else, it would be quicker in the Renault. Not all the roads in Fethering had street lights, and they didn’t want to be stumbling around in the dark.
So they both threw some clothes back on and set off together.
Kelly-Marie was standing just inside the door, waiting for them. She was wearing a flowered cotton dress, which made her look even more like a child. It was presumably the Sunday best she had put on in the morning to go and have lunch with her parents.
“Viggo? Is it something to do with Viggo?” asked Jude, as the girl let them in.
Kelly-Marie nodded. “I wasn’t sure who to call. I thought I’d call you first.”
“Very sensible.” Quickly she introduced Carole. “Where is he?”
“In his room.”
She limped ahead of them up the stairs. “Are the other residents around?” asked Jude in a whisper.
“Asleep. They have to work in the morning. I don’t think they heard it. Only me. His room’s next door to mine.”
There was only a safety light on on the landing, but Jude could see that the door to Kelly-Marie’s room was closed, and the one to Viggo’s was ajar. The girl lingered outside, unwilling to enter, while Jude and Carole went in.
Given what lay in the armchair, it was surprising that Carole and Jude could take in any other detail of the room, but they were both aware of shelves upon shelves of DVDs and videos, arranged in a surprisingly organized way. On the table in front of the armchair stood a laptop computer, its screen opened but blank. The floor was littered with empty Stella Artois cans.
The entry wound on Viggo’s right temple was neat and had only dribbled a little. Blood from the exit wound, though, splattered over the armchair, sofa, walls and shelves of DVDs.
His right arm had dropped down over the side of the armchair. Just below it on the floor lay the revolver.
As the two women moved forward, pressure on an uneven floorboard was sufficient to jog the laptop screen out of hibernation. The image on the screen had been frozen, the DVD paused. Carole saw the haggard faces of men under pressure in a sweaty bamboo cage.
“
Carole looked down. She knew nothing of guns, but she could see the number of bullets, the backs of which showed in the revolver’s cylinder. Every chamber appeared to be full.
“Not very good odds for Russian roulette,” she observed.
? The Poisoning in the Pub ?
Thirty
Neither of them got much sleep that night. By the time the police had been called, and by the time the police had arrived and conducted some basic questioning, it was well into the small hours. And the image of Viggo, still so vivid in their minds, was not conducive to peaceful slumber.
They reassembled blearily next morning over very strong coffee in the sitting room of Woodside Cottage.
“Typical, isn’t it?” said Carole. “Just when we think we’ve identified our murderer, someone blows him away.”
“So you think Viggo was murdered too?”
“Don’t you?”
“I’m not so sure. I mean, he could have been, but then again playing a macho game of Russian roulette… well, it would have been in character. He was so obsessed with all that hard-man stuff. Did you see the titles of all those DVDs and videos? And he did mention Russian roulette when he came here.”
“Yes, but nobody plays Russian roulette with six bullets loaded into the gun.”
“They might if they wanted to be sure of the outcome.”
“How do you mean?”
“Look, let’s say Viggo did murder Ray…”
“Which seems very likely from what Greville Tilbrook saw.”
“I agree. Well, say he did do it. And he thought he was being brave and macho, living up to the image of all his hard-man heroes, but then slowly he realized what he’d done, that he had actually killed a man. Not just a man, but someone he knew. For a man like Viggo, who spent so much of his time in fantasy, that reality could be pretty shocking.”
“And he might have killed himself from remorse?”
“It’s possible.”
Carole’s sniff made clear how much she thought of that idea. “I think it was a set-up. Somebody else shot him. The Russian roulette business was just set-dressing.”
“Maybe. But why would someone want to kill him?”
“Well, for the purposes of argument, let’s make two assumptions…First, that Viggo did stab Ray and, second, that he didn’t do it off his own bat. That someone set him up to do it.”
“Gave him the order by text on his mobile phone?”
“Quite possibly.”
“Pity we haven’t got Viggo’s mobile phone to check his messages, isn’t it?” said Jude ruefully.
“Yes, very selfish of the police always to keep that kind of evidence to themselves,” Carole agreed. “But, moving on…Let’s say we’re talking about one villain, who, while possibly not actually committing either of the crimes, set them up, in both cases taking advantage of particularly susceptible and pathetic men…”
“All right. I’m with you so far.”
“So this person takes advantage of Ray’s good nature and desire to make everyone happy, and persuades him unknowingly to introduce the dodgy scallops into the Crown and Anchor kitchen. But then our villain hears, probably from Viggo, that you’ve been snooping around Copsedown Hall, asking Ray questions. Suddenly poor Ray becomes a security risk, there’s a danger he might tell you everything. So the same person – our villain – takes advantage of Viggo’s love of cloak-and-dagger stuff, underground operations and all that, and issues the order for him to kill Ray.”
