“Well,” the girl replied slowly, “I think Ray thought it would be all right.”
“Sorry? What would be all right?”
“Whatever the harm was. He said there was a way of stopping it happening…”
“Yes?”
“…and he was worried about that.”
“Do you know why?”
“I think it was because it was something he had to do.”
“Ah.” The thought went through Jude’s mind that that something might be changing round two trays of scallops…as he thought, the safe one for the unsafe one…though in the event it had been the other way round.
“And that was what worried him,” Kelly-Marie went on. “Ray always worried when people wanted him to do things, when he had to take…what’s that word?”
“Responsibility?”
“Yes. Responsibility.” She repeated the word slowly, savouring it. “Ray was always worried he’d do things wrong, he’d let people down.”
“Can you remember when you had this conversation with him, Kelly-Marie?”
Her broad brow wrinkled with the effort of recollection. Then it cleared. “Yes. Not last weekend, the weekend before. Because I was here on the Sunday. Usually I go to Mummy and Daddy’s for Sunday lunch, but that weekend they’d had to go to Shropshire for a wedding. Ray told me about him having to take…responsibility…” she enunciated the word with great caution “…on that Sunday.”
The timing worked perfectly. They had had the conversation the day before the poisoning at the Crown and Anchor. But who on earth had set Ray up? Who had told him to take responsibility for the switching of the scallop trays? Who had convinced him that his actions would save the pub from an outburst of food poisoning?
Jude stayed with Kelly-Marie for a half-hour or so longer, but didn’t get much more useful information. Soon she stopped trying and allowed the conversation to move on to Kelly-Marie’s beloved family and dogs. She found herself making comparisons with Ray’s situation. The girl clearly had loving parents and when they died, she would still have the support of her two brothers. Also her experience of sheltered housing at Copsedown Hall was much more successful than Ray’s had been. She was managing very well.
“Have you got plans for the rest of the weekend?” asked Jude, as she rose to leave.
Kelly-Marie beamed. “I’ll see Mummy and Daddy tomorrow. And the boys. And the dogs.” It was the best prospect she could imagine.
Jude said she’d see herself out, but Kelly-Marie insisted on accompanying her to the main door. She knew her manners.
As she opened the front door, Kelly-Marie turned at a sound from the kitchen. In the doorway lounged a bulky figure with shaved head, combat trousers and a camouflage-patterned T-shirt. In his hand was a shiny new mobile phone. There was something familiar about the man, but Jude was astonished when Kelly-Marie said, “Morning, Viggo.”
He had had a complete makeover. Gone were long hair and beard, gone the biker’s leather kit. Jude could hardly prevent herself from gaping at the transformation.
He didn’t respond to Kelly-Marie’s greeting, but stared hard at Jude and said, “On your way then, are you?”
She said she was, exchanged fond farewells with Kelly-Marie and, as she walked out into the stifling outside air, could sense Viggo’s eyes boring into the back of her head. She didn’t lose the feeling of being watched until she got back to Woodside Cottage.
Twenty-Four
Jude felt sure she was missing something. It was like one of Carole’s precious Times crosswords – all the information was there, it was just a matter of getting the details into the right order, of looking at the problem from that other perspective which would instantly provide the answer.
Jude thought back over the last week, from the time that she’d arrived at the Crown and Anchor to see Dan Poke the previous Sunday. There were a lot of loose ends, but some which, she was convinced, being joined up in the right way could form a revealing pattern of logic.
Thinking of missing links made her, rather uncharitably, think of Viggo. What could be the explanation for the dramatic change in his appearance? Well, there was only one person Jude knew who might have any information about Viggo. She rang Sally Monks.
“Sorry to trouble you at the weekend. Is it a bad time?”
“I’m cooking.”
“Oh well, if you’re busy…”
“No, it’s something that’s going to take so long to cook, I can leave it for whole half-hours. It’s for this evening.”
“A dinner party?”
“Rather low on personnel to qualify as a dinner party. There’ll just be two of us.”
“Oh?”
“What I hope will be the original hot date, Jude.”
“Good luck.”
“I don’t rely on luck. Just a visit to the hairdresser’s first thing this morning, this rather spectacular fish dish, lots of Pinot Grigio and…” she giggled “…my natural charms.”
“Sounds an infallible combination.”
“I’m hoping so. Anyway, what can I do for you this steamy July morning?”
Jude was once again aware of the boundaries in her relationship with Sally. They would share a certain amount about their private lives, but always in general terms. No named individuals. It was a system that suited both of them very well.
“I was ringing about Viggo…”
“Up at Copsedown Hall?”
“Yes.” And briefly Jude told the social worker about the young man’s sudden metamorphosis.
Sally Monks registered no surprise at the news. “That’s very much in character. Viggo was part of my caseload for a while, and he was always very suggestible. His sense of his own identity is very weak, so he identifies with other people. He feels safer if he’s dressed like other people. Doesn’t want to stick out in the crowd, and as a result really does stick out in the crowd. Because he’s never part of that crowd. Always on the periphery. It’s a stage most of us go through to some extent, usually in adolescence. You know, “The reason why my life is so terrible, why I’m so out of joint with the rest of the world, is that I haven’t got the right clothes, the right hair style, the right make-up, I’m not listening to the right music…” You recognize what I’m talking about?”
“I certainly do.” Despite her exterior serenity, there were still memories of her teenage years which could make Jude cringe with agony.
“Anyway,” Sally went on, “as I say, most of us grow out of it. Most of us at some level come to terms with what we are, and home in on a style of behaviour, a look, which we think suits us. Someone like Viggo, though, is still searching. And it’s not just his appearance he changes. His name too. He hasn’t been Viggo that long. He was Rambo when I first met him, then Conan for a while. I think he got Viggo from that actor in The Lord of the Rings.”
“And do the characters and names he takes on have anything in common?”
“Well, I suppose they all tend to be heroic at some level. Men of action. Secret agents. Heroes, even superheroes. ‘Aspirational role models’ might be the technical jargon. Though, since most of them are famous for fighting and causing mayhem, I’m not sure that they are particularly good role models.”
“And where does he get the role models from? Are they people he meets?”
“Some are.”
“So he might meet someone, a man who impresses him with his masculinity, his toughness-, and then Viggo will try to turn himself into a clone of that person?”
“I guess it could happen like that, but I don’t think he meets that many people. Most of his heroes are people he sees on television, or in movies. Rambo – Viggo has always had an obsession with action movies. The more blood and violence, the more he likes them.”