Now that was intriguing.
‘You’re sure Kerry wasn’t with you? Bob Hartson’s stepdaughter?’
‘No,’ Barry Stilwell replied with surprising vehemence. ‘She certainly wasn’t.’
Carole didn’t reckon she was going to get much more relevant information, but what she had was good enough. Either Bob Hartson or Barry Stilwell was lying. Maybe they both were. Bob Hartson had possibly plucked Barry Stilwell’s name out of the air to support his alibi, not knowing that Jude had a friend with a connection to the solicitor. Barry’s reactions had suggested he knew nothing about the story he was supposed to be backing up, but had supported it out of solidarity to another Pillar of Sussex. Maybe he would soon get a phone call from Bob Hartson spelling out the party line on the events of that evening.
So, as Carole nibbled at her insalata di frutti di mare and Barry worked his way through his bresaola, vitello alla Genovese and tartufi di cioccolota, the conversation became more general, though the solicitor did constantly revert to his potential offices in Shoreham. He kept saying how pleasant and quiet they were, detailing the excellent amenities they offered, and emphasizing that they offered vacant possession.
It was only in the car park, when a leering Barry Stilwell actually dangled the keys to the offices in front of her, that Carole’s rather slow perception caught up with his meaning. He had no interest in her views on the suitability of the premises for a solicitor’s office; he saw it simply as a means of being alone with her. The excellent amenities, he spelled out, included a bed.
At this point, in the traditional style of the investigative journalist, Carole Seddon made her excuses and left.
Barry Stilwell, having seen her previous performance in the role, thought she was just once again being coy. And he determined to follow the old axiom of Robert the Bruce watching that extremely pertinacious spider: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ She’d come round. Of course she would. There was no possibility that she didn’t find him attractive.
Chapter Eighteen
The Crown and Anchor had seats and tables at the front, looking across to where the River Fether ran out into the sea, but there was also an overgrown garden at the back, which Ted Crisp kept saying he was going to get tidied up and open for customers. But all that seemed to happen was that the garden, like his beard and his hair, just got more matted and messy.
‘Hardly worth doing,’ he said to Carole and Jude, as they looked through the window at the patch that Monday evening. ‘Soon be next door to a building site, anyway.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Carole.
The landlord pointed to the crumbling wall of a long, low structure on the other side of the pub garden. ‘Old milk depot, that was. Used to be full of tankers and floats. Been empty for five years now. Soon be a nice shooshed-up residential estate, though.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, I’ve seen the plans. Go on, have a guess how many houses they’re going to fit on to that site.’
‘Eight?’ Jude hazarded.
He gave a derisory laugh. ‘If only. The answer is twenty-four.’
‘Twenty-four? On that space? Is there a lot of land the other side of the depot?’ asked Carole.
‘No. What you see is what you get. Within the perimeter of that existing building they are going to fit twenty-four residences. Starter homes, I think they call them. Two bedrooms and a pocket handkerchief of garden each.’
‘Garages?’
‘No. Won’t be room for that.’
‘So where are they going to park?’ Carole instinctively asked the question any local would ask. ‘Fethering High Street’s already jammed solid. If High Tor didn’t have a garage, I don’t know what I’d do.’
‘This is quite funny, actually,’ said Ted, as he led them gloomily back across to the bar. ‘Or at least it would be funny, if it weren’t so bloody insane.’ He took a bottle of Chilean Chardonnay out of the fridge. ‘Come on, let me top you up. On the house.’
‘You’re pouring away all your profits,’ Jude reprimanded him, as he filled the glasses.
‘No way. Don’t do this for everyone, you know. Only special customers.’ He guffawed. ‘And don’t worry, I overcharge the rest, so it all evens up in the end.’
‘You were talking about these starter homes,’ Carole reminded him.
‘Right. OK, well, what I’m about to tell you is government policy – if that’s not a contradiction in terms with this lot in charge. One of the local architects comes to drink in here, he was telling me about it. You’ve probably heard there’s a housing shortage in the south-east?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, the various possible solutions to that are: build new towns; extend the outskirts of existing towns and villages; start nibbling away at the Green Belt. But no. What the government, in its wisdom, has decided to do is not extend the area of existing housing, but to develop brown-field sites.’
‘Like the old milk depot?’
‘Exactly, Carole. And on these sites they want a greater density of housing.’
‘More people living per square metre?’
‘That’s the idea, yes. But, of course, if you’re going to do that, then you’ve got to keep the footprint of each house pretty damned small. No room for fripperies like garages.’
‘Mind you,’ Jude pointed out, ‘it’s not all bad, from your point of view. If you’ve got twenty-four new houses right behind you, that’s not going to do any harm to your business, is it?’
Ted didn’t seem to be persuaded. ‘Maybe, maybe not. It’ll certainly mean complaints about noise, kids thieving from my premises, cars clogging access to my car park.’
‘Yes,’ Carole, the proud Renault-owner insisted, ‘where are the new residents supposed to put their cars?’
Ted Crisp grinned sardonically. ‘Ah, now this is the clever bit. This is where the government suddenly does a little nod to the green lobby.’ He pronounced his next words as though imparting the secret of life. ‘Apparently, the fact that the new residents have nowhere to park will encourage them to make greater use of public transport!’
‘But public transport round here’s dreadful,’ Jude objected.
‘Yes,’ Ted agreed. ‘That is the small miscalculation the government has made. You’d think they’d realize they’d got the whole thing arse-about-face. The sensible plan, a naive person might imagine, would be first to get good public transport, then build houses without garages to attract people without cars. But no, that’s not the way this government does things.’ He ran an exasperated hand through his beard. ‘Don’t get me started on this government.’
‘No, no, fine,’ said Jude hastily. Ted Crisp had suffered a lot since the election of New Labour. A lifelong socialist, faced with a government of decidedly Tory tendencies, he had nobody left to vote for. Jude, herself without politics of any colour, could nonetheless sympathize with his frustration.
‘Still,’ he went on savagely, ‘all be good news for the developers, won’t it? They’ll get a very cushy ride indeed – as ever. Nothing like a nice housing boom to boost the building trade, is there? Lots of profit for the developers, and the builders, and the decorators, and the plumbers, and the electricians, and their attendant army of local planners, and solicitors, and accountants and Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. God, don’t get me started!’
Though he kept asking to be stopped, Ted Crisp was clearly about to get started. ‘When I think I grew up believing the Labour Party was the party of equality, that its principles encouraged the distribution of wealth to the less privileged members of—’