that front until she could get the information she wanted out of him.
Jude didn’t remove his hand, but he took it away when she asked, “Did you hear that there was another violent death in Fethering?”
“The Russian roulette bloke? Yes, I heard about it. Now you’re not going to blame me for that one too, are you? I was nowhere near the place when it happened.”
“No. I just wondered if you knew the man.”
Dan Poke shook his head vigorously; the lank ponytail flipped to one side. Was Jude imagining it, or was there a new caution in his manner? She went on, “He was in the audience at the Crown and Anchor the night you appeared.”
“So? Darling, I do a lot of gigs. They’re attended by a lot of punters. They all know what I look like. I haven’t a clue what any of them look like. People in the street often think they know me because they’ve seen me on the telly. Think they bloody own you, and all. It’s just one of the things that happens when you’re a celeb.”
“So you were never introduced to Viggo?”
“Look, what is this? Some kind of third degree? I thought you were here because you wanted a shag. Quick, uncomplicated sex. I get my rocks off, you get the thrill of shagging a celeb. Or have I misunderstood the reason why we’re meeting here?”
Jude’s cover wasn’t quite blown, but she didn’t think she could sustain the pretence much longer. So she opted for the truth. “The reason we are meeting here is that I want to talk to you about your role as a director of Home Hostelries.”
? The Poisoning in the Pub ?
Thirty-Five
While she drank her Maipo Valley Chardonnay, Carole was kicking herself for not bringing
So she sat and sipped, trying to give the impression of the kind of person whose rich and busy mental life stopped her from looking like a woman in a pub drinking on her own. And meanwhile, she observed the behaviour of the bar staff. Apart from the purple-haired one who had served her, there was another girl and two young men. The older of the two, from the way he ordered the others around, was clearly the manager. And in fact there was a sharpness, a shifty alertness about him, which reminded Carole of the previous incumbent of the job, Will Maples.
Carole decided that he was the one she should talk to. Achieving that goal meant careful management of her Chardonnay. She had noticed that the manager only served at the bar as a last resort. His juniors had first call on the customers and, only when they were all fully occupied, would he actually dispense drinks.
She watched and waited until he was free. In the meantime she took out her mobile, to give the illusion of busyness. Idly she summoned up the photographs which Zosia had taken and Jude had forwarded on.
She found the shot of the bikers watching Dan Poke’s act, the one with Derren Hart in the middle of the group. And for the first time, because she was trying to look as though she had something to do, she scrutinized all of the people in the photograph. She saw the tall man called William who had spoken to Dan Poke after the gig. The man who had been sitting drinking Belgian beer with a group of other smartly dressed young men.
And suddenly she realized where she had seen him before. Shadowed by the effects of the flash, his face had lost its chubbiness. And Carole Seddon recognized the man she had last seen some years before behind the bar of the very pub she was sitting in. It was Will Maples. The Home Hostelries manager who had disappeared after being unmasked as a drug dealer.
A new thought burgeoned in Carole’s mind, a thought that needed confirmation. And she might be able to get that confirmation from the current manager of the Hare and Hounds. Fortunately, on a hot summer evening, a lot of people relished the idea of a drink on the fringes of the South Downs, so the pub was filling up. Carole waited till all four bar staff were busy serving customers, then slurped down the remains of her drink and positioned herself behind the man who’d just been served his round by the manager.
The young man looked up at her with a professional grin. “What can I get for you, madam?”
“Another Maipo Valley Chardonnay, please. It’s very good.”
“All our Home Hostelries wines are carefully selected, madam. Will that be a large one or a small?”
“Small, thank you.”
Fortunately for Carole, there wasn’t an open bottle of the Maipo Valley Chardonnay, so the manager had to take a corkscrew to one. This gave her a little window of opportunity to say, “I met someone recently from Home Hostelries…”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, we were introduced, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten his name. I wonder if you might know him?”
“Without a name it’s going to be pretty difficult for me to – ”
“I do have a photograph.” Carole proffered her mobile to the manager and pointed to the man she thought was Will Maples.
“Oh yes, I know him all right. Well, you have been moving in the upper echelons of the company. That’s one of Home Hostelries’ very big cheeses.”
“A director?”
“No, he’s not actually a director yet, but I should think it’s on the cards that he will be soon.”
“What’s his name?” asked Carole, trying to hide the tension she was feeling.
“Will Maples. In charge of Acquisitions.”
Carole could have kicked herself. Now she’d had it confirmed, the likeness was so obvious. But men’s looks change, particularly in their early forties. Suddenly bodies you could never imagine with an ounce of fat on them spread sideways. Entire contours are re-formed. Add to that Will Maples’s dyed hair and the thick-framed glasses and he had become unrecognizable. Carole wondered whether he’d recognized her as one of the busybodies who had caused his abrupt departure from his previous job at the Hare and Hounds.
Though she thought she knew the answer to her question, she asked the current manager to spell out what that meant by ‘in charge of Acquisitions’.
“Will Maples is in charge of selecting and purchasing new pubs to add to the Home Hostelries family.”
“Ah,” said Carole Seddon. “Thank you.”
¦
“What is this?” asked Dan Poke. “What the hell are you up to?”
Jude looked straight into his eyes. “Are you denying that, under your real name of Richard Farrelly, you are a director of Home Hostelries, the pub group?”
He let his anger dissipate and took a deep breath. When he replied, he was cautious. He wanted to know how much she knew. “Very well,” he said calmly. “I don’t deny it. But since when has it been illegal for people to have more than one job?”
“Never. How long have you been a director?”
“Seven or eight years. When I was doing all that telly, I made a lot of bread. I wanted to invest it somewhere, somebody mentioned Home Hostelries, and I was interested to find out more about them. I am a bit of an expert in pubs, you know.”
“Oh?”
“Come on, darling. Doing stand-up, you spend half your life in pubs. You get to know the good ones from the bad, you get an idea of what kind of business they’re doing.”
“So Home Hostelries took you on as a kind of consultant?”
“You could say that. An investor too. Television’s a very fickle medium. I was flavour of the month for a while, but I knew it could end at any minute, so I wanted to make myself financially secure. Doing that through a business that really interested me…what’s the harm in that?”
