Carole said instinctively, ‘Oh, surely it’s a bit early in the day to be—?’
‘We’ve earned it,’ Jude interrupted. ‘A reward for surviving that scrum at Polly’s.’
‘Well, I just thought that maybe …’ And with that Carole’s objections trickled away.
As they moved across to their regular alcove, someone called out Jude’s name. She looked across to the source of the sound and saw the waitress Binnie Swales and the chef Hammo whom she’d met with Sara Courtney at Polly’s some weeks before. Both had pints of Guinness in front of them.
‘I see you were there then,’ Binnie continued accusingly.
Jude couldn’t think what was meant until, looking down at her coat, she saw the ‘WELCOME TO POLLY’S COMMUNITY CAFÉ’ was still stuck there. Carole, needless to say, had removed hers at the first opportunity after they’d left the café.
‘Yes, we were there,’ Jude admitted. ‘Were you not invited?’
‘God, no.’ Binnie chuckled. ‘We would have lowered the tone far too much. We’re never going to fit in with Phoebe Braithwaite’s Bitch Brigade, are we?’
‘What about Sara?’ Jude suddenly remembered she hadn’t seen her at the relaunch.
‘She wasn’t invited either.’
‘Besides,’ said Hammo sarcastically, ‘having people there who actually know how to run a café … well, that would have spoiled the image, wouldn’t it?’
Jude chuckled wryly. ‘Oh, this, by the way, is my friend Carole.’
Carole flashed a short smile at them and was set to continue to their alcove. On the whole she tried to avoid meeting Jude’s friends – they too often turned out to be rather flaky, New Age people. But she got more interested when Jude said the two in the pub worked at Polly’s Cake Shop. ‘Or should that be – “used to work at Polly’s Cake Shop”?’
‘No, we’re still there,’ replied Binnie. She was wearing a fiercely yellow cardigan and green trousers decorated with a design of large red peonies. Hammo had on jeans and a dark hoodie.
‘Oh yes,’ Hammo agreed. ‘Working out our notice.’
‘Ah.’
‘Do join us,’ offered Binnie, pushing back into her bun some grey hair that had escaped. Jude’s eyes checked quickly with Carole’s and received permission so they sat down at Binnie and Hammo’s table.
‘Working out your notice?’ Jude picked up.
‘Yes, just a month,’ Binnie replied. ‘We were told last week. Means we’ll be out of a job in the middle of January.’
‘Which is just about the worst possible time of year in the catering business,’ said Hammo. ‘Everyone takes on extra staff running up to Christmas, then they let them all go after New Year’s Eve. So there’s lots of people out there looking for jobs, and business is such crap during January and February that no one’s hiring.’
‘No,’ Binnie agreed. ‘I’ve worked in a lot of the local pubs and they never take on anyone in January. Used to be a regular behind the bar of the Fethering Yacht Club – nice easy job that was, did it for years – but there’s someone else who’s got her feet under the table there now. I’m never going to get another job at my age.’
‘So you’re neither of you keen on the concept of Polly’s Community Café?’ asked Carole.
‘You could say that.’ Hammo grinned wryly. ‘I’d tend to use stronger language, but not in the company of three ladies.’
‘Your delicacy is appreciated,’ said Jude. ‘But you’ve made me feel rather guilty. I did raise the issue at committee of what would happen to the existing staff, but the meeting moved on to other topics. I’m sorry I should have pursued it further. I didn’t think through the ramifications.’
‘You are not alone,’ said Hammo, ‘in not having thought through the ramifications. I am extremely …’ he was about to use a stronger word but curbed the instinct ‘… extremely annoyed about it. Just moved down from “the Smoke” to Littlehampton six months ago with the girlfriend and the little one. Got a flat. And a mortgage. So you are right. I am less than enthused about Polly’s Cake Shop becoming a Community Project.’
‘Don’t you have any legal redress?’
Hammo shook his head and Binnie explained, ‘Our contracts specify a month’s notice on either side. Josie Achter wasn’t the friendliest of bosses, but at least she was straight. And I’d known for a while that she was thinking of selling up, so I thought that’d just mean a new boss and everything would continue working in just the same way. Never occurred to me that the place would be taken over by the community.’ The distaste with which she spoke the word was worthy of Carole.
‘If it’s any comfort,’ said Jude, ‘I don’t think the café will run for very long as a Community Project.’ What she’d seen at the morning’s launch did not suggest that the new venture was on a very sound financial footing. ‘Initiatives like that do have a habit of coming unstuck quite quickly.’
‘Not quickly enough for us,’ said Binnie gloomily. ‘So I’m afraid no, Jude, it’s not any comfort.’
‘Of course,’ said Carole, ‘it’ll be the same for your friend too, won’t it?’
‘Which friend?’ asked Jude, not very quick on the uptake.
‘Sara Courtney. She’ll be out of a job too, won’t she?’
Binnie snorted derisively. ‘Don’t you worry about her. She’ll be all right.’
‘Oh?’
‘Got this new boyfriend, hasn’t she?’
Hammo was incensed by the reminder. ‘Only the bastard who’s shafted us, isn’t he? Kent Bloody Warboys! Oh, don’t you worry about Sara. She’ll be all right with Kent Warboys paying her bills.’
Jude wondered whether that was true. Until her mental breakdown, Sara had been a very self-reliant woman, always running her own businesses. She wouldn’t take kindly to the idea of being a kept woman. But it wasn’t worth raising that with Binnie and Hammo in their current mood.
Carole suddenly realized that, in the context of their decelerating investigation into Amos Green’s death, she was in the presence of two potentially valuable witnesses. Still rather miffed that Jude hadn’t told her earlier about Sara Courtney’s sighting of the body in Polly’s Cake Shop, she felt she had some catching up to do. And now she was being presented with the perfect opportunity to do it.
‘Going off at something of a tangent,’ she said, ‘you two presumably heard about Jude and me finding a body on the beach?’
‘Of course we did,’ said Binnie. ‘Come on, we do live in Fethering. Round here everyone knows if an empty suntan-cream bottle is found on Fethering Beach, let alone a dead body.’
‘So did the police talk to you about it?’
Both Binnie and Hammo looked puzzled. ‘Why should they?’ asked Binnie.
Of course. Only Sara herself, Jude and now Carole knew what had been found in the store room. ‘Sorry, I gathered they’d talked to everyone locally.’
‘Not everyone.’
‘No, obviously not everyone. But I thought they might have come to Polly’s, you know, being a social centre of the village, to see if anyone there recognized the man.’
‘Well, they didn’t,’ said Hammo.
When she thought about it, Carole realized that this made sense. The police of course were in that great majority of people who were unaware of any connection between Amos Green and Polly’s Cake Shop.
‘Mind you,’ said Binnie Swales, ‘if they had asked, I could have told them a thing or two.’
‘Oh? Do you mean you recognized the man?’
‘When his photo was on the front of the Fethering Observer, oh yes, I recognized him.’
‘What, had you known him a long time?’