As Carole and Jude sat over their Chilean Chardonnay in the bar that evening they tried for the umpteenth time to think of a single scrap of evidence against Bob Hartson. ‘There must be something we’ve forgotten,’ Jude insisted. ‘Something that hasn’t been explained.’
Carole removed her rimless glasses and polished them thoughtfully with a handkerchief. ‘Well, I suppose the only thing that hasn’t been explained is what happened to the note Donald Chew left in Nigel Ackford’s bedroom.’
‘That’s true.’ Jude perked up instantly. ‘Yes. Kerry found it, and gave it to Suzy. She showed it to me, and then later in the evening it had disappeared from her apron pocket.’
‘There’s probably some perfectly simple—’
But before Carole had time to defuse the idea, Jude had her mobile phone out and was moving excitedly towards the pub door. ‘I’m going to ring Suzy. Too noisy in here.’ And she was gone.
‘You look like a cat that’s had its mouse taken away.’
At the sound, Carole looked up to register that Ted Crisp had joined her.
‘Yes, I’m sorry, I . . . Jude’s just finding something out for me.’
‘Oh yeah? Well, if you’re trying to nail Bob Hartson, you have my full support.’
Carole looked puzzled. Ted nodded his head towards the old milk depot behind the pub. ‘Work starts on that site Monday week.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘And it’s one of Bob Hartson’s companies that’ll be doing it.’
The landlord’s news did nothing to improve Carole’s mood.
But at that moment, Jude came rushing back into the pub, and her bubbling manner suggested that maybe all hope was not completely lost.
‘I talked to Suzy. She knows what happened to the missing note!’
‘Really!’
Ted Crisp hadn’t a clue what was going on, but he wasn’t about to interrupt their euphoria by seeking explanations.
‘Yes. Kerry talked to her about it some time last week. It was Kerry who removed the note from the apron!’
‘Why?’
‘This is the good bit . . .’ Excitement sparkled in Jude’s brown eyes. ‘Kerry mentioned to her father she’d found the note, when she saw him at the dinner, and Bob Hartson insisted she should take the note back and destroy it. Well, don’t you see what that means?’
‘What?’ asked Carole, confused, but beginning to catch her friend’s childlike elation.
‘Bob Hartson didn’t want anything suspicious connected with Nigel Ackford’s room! That apparently threatening note was bound to alert the police to something funny going on. The fact that he asked Kerry to destroy the note means Bob Hartson knew that the murder was going to take place!’
‘Yes,’ Carole sighed with satisfaction.
‘Yes,’ Jude echoed.
‘Erm . . .’ Ted Crisp broke into their microclimate of mutual bliss, ‘I don’t fully know what you’re talking about, and I don’t want to put a damper on proceedings or anything but are you saying you’ve now actually got proof against Bob Hartson?’
‘Yes.’
‘Proof that would stand up in court?’
‘Well . . .’ But Jude was in no mood to have her enthusiasm dented. ‘Yes, we have. If the police only use their imagination and —’
‘Inspector Goodchild use his imagination?’ asked Carole, beginning to absorb the moisture from Ted’s wet blanket.
‘Of course,’ Jude brazened on. ‘Then if we can get Kerry to stand up in court and repeat what she told Suzy . . .’
‘And what’s the likelihood of that happening?’ Carole’s question was bleak. ‘Kerry shopping her own father, after all this?’
The sudden flare of excitement had fizzled out. The atmosphere of disappointment reasserted itself. All three of them found themselves looking out through the pub window to the old milk depot.
Seeing the site of Bob Hartson’s next highly profitable project served only to turn the knife in their wounds. There had to be some way they could nail him.
Karl Floyd was out of hospital when Carole and Jude went to visit him, but he moved with difficulty, his arm was still in plaster, and the healing scabs on his face would leave him scarred for life.
He hadn’t been keen on the idea of a meeting, and pretty soon after their arrival he made clear why. As soon as Carole mentioned the names Bob Hartson and Geoffrey Gardner, Karl stopped her. ‘I don’t want to have anything more to do with that.’
‘What? But come on, I thought it was your ambition to be a crusading journalist?’
‘Yes, it was. It’s not now.’
‘Why ever not?’ asked Jude.
The young man made a painful, open-armed gesture, as if his broken body was answer enough.
Carole tried to bring him back to a proper sense of duty. ‘You’ve got all that information. All that stuff on your computer about Renton and Chew, about the Pillars of Sussex and—’
‘I’ve wiped it.’
‘All?’
‘Yes. I’m giving up journalism.’
‘What does your father think about that?’ asked Carole. ‘I thought you were named after Carl Bernstein.’
‘My father doesn’t know yet.’
‘But, Karl,’ Carole insisted, ‘you’ve got nothing to be frightened of. The man who beat you up is in prison, and will be staying there for a long, long time.’
The boy looked at her sardonically. ‘And you think Bob Hartson isn’t capable of finding another heavy?’
There was disbelief in Carole’s voice as she asked, ‘Are you actually saying the beating you received has frightened you off?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
There was a silence before Jude spoke. ‘What are you going to do instead of journalism?’
‘Nothing for a while.’ Karl Floyd spoke with new confidence. ‘I’m going to buy a couple of flats – live in one, get rent from the other – and spend a bit of time working out the next stage of my career.’
‘And where are you getting the money to do that?’ asked Carole huffily. ‘As I recall, you told me this flat was rented.’
‘Yes,’ he replied coolly. ‘I came into some money.’
‘Where from?’
‘An aunt died.’
However much they questioned him further, the dead aunt was the story he stuck with. And in that way maybe the career of another fledgling property tycoon began.
The one unarguable fact that came out of their encounter with Karl Floyd was the sad reality that bullying – and, come to that, bribery – are often very effective.
So Bob Hartson thrived. The Pillars of Sussex and all his other local connections closed ranks around him and, as ever, by the judicious application of influence and incentives, his profits continued to grow.
Local business continued to be conducted in the way it always had been conducted. Very little was done that was actually against the law, nobody was so indelicate as to use words like ‘bribery’, but the skills of knowing and nurturing the right people continued to work their timeless magic.
Suzy Longthorne kept on running Hopwicke Country House Hotel and gradually her hard work turned its fortunes round. Max Townley continued as her chef, and continued to complain that his talents were under-appreciated. Rick Hendry had fulfilled the promise to help Max’s television career through Korfilia Productions, but after one screen-test had been shown to the BBC, Max was dropped as being ‘too like all the other television chefs’. So he had to confine his tantrums and his cheery singing to the audience of his own kitchen.
Kerry Hartson didn’t fare much better in the new series of Pop Crop. The format had been changed so that, though a hundred hopefuls were shown in the first programme, a mere ten went through to the next stage. Only the chosen ten were seen and heard singing on television. Kerry was not one of them. She was just in the ensemble shots, queuing for her precious audition.