“You may make that observation, lady. I can neither confirm nor deny it.”
“Even under torture?”
He seemed unaware of the ribbing tone in her voice, as he solemnly confirmed, “Even under torture.”
“So you wouldn’t confirm whether you have also received orders from the man in the photograph?”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t.”
“Would you tell us whether the man in the photograph ever came to Copsedown Hall to talk to you?”
He smiled arrogantly. “Some of us don’t need face-to-face contact to get our orders.”
The way he looked at his mobile while he said this prompted Jude’s next question. “You mean you get your orders on the phone?”
That appealed to his self-importance. “Text,” he said. “Text received. Mobile discarded so there’s no record of the message. Operative obeys order. Job done.”
“And what kind of job are you talking about?”
“Any job.”
“A hitman’s job?”
“That, lady, I would never reveal.”
Carole and Jude looked at each other, raised their eyebrows and both mouthed, “Even under torture.”
Viggo – or maybe Chuck – departed soon after. He left the two women feeling confused. Why had he come? He appeared to be threatening them, warning them off. But quite what he was warning them off was difficult to tell through all his posturing and secondhand dialogue.
“Why should he suddenly want to see you?” asked Carole. “Why today?”
Jude spoke slowly as she pieced together a possible motivation. “He saw me at Copsedown Hall yesterday. He saw that I had been talking to Kelly-Marie. Maybe he thinks I’m getting close to the truth of what happened to Ray, and he comes here to warn me off?”
“Do you think he’d work that out on his own initiative?”
There was a firm shake of Jude’s head. “I don’t think he does much on his own initiative. Beneath all that swagger and bravado, Viggo’s is a very weak personality. I reckon he reported my visit to Kelly-Marie to someone else, and that someone else gave him instructions to come and put the frighteners on me.”
“And who is that ‘someone else’? The scarred man?”
“We don’t seem to have many other candidates for the role.”
In spite of the heat, a shiver ran through Jude. Inept though he had been, Viggo’s visit had got her rattled. Both she and Carole were left with the uneasy sense that under certain circumstances the man could be dangerous.
Twenty-Seven
The first surprise about the Midshipman Inn was how smart it was. The references in Dan Poke’s act had suggested a very rough pub in a very rough area, but the exterior was neat and recently decorated. Decorated in exactly the same style as the Weldisham Hare and Hounds.
The same mulberry colour predominated, with the doors and window frames in pigeon-feather grey. The inn sign showed no representation of a young naval officer; instead the pub’s name was written in neat grey calligraphy on a mulberry-coloured board. And the name on the sign had actually been shortened to ‘the Middy’. The image was much more gastropub than old boozer.
The area where the building stood was also less rundown than Carole and Jude had expected from Dan Poke’s jokes. Small Victorian cottages showed recent signs of renovation. Though a few they passed from where they parked the car were still shabby and sported the boards of bell-pushes that signified multiple occupancy, some had been turned into brightly coloured designer homes. Because it was a Sunday there were no workmen visible, but loaded skips in the road showed that local improvement was an ongoing process.
And in the middle of all this gentrification the Middy had a perfect location.
Stepping into the pub, Carole and Jude felt the welcome blast of air conditioning, icy after the July heat. The interior of the Middy maintained the mulberry-and-grey theme, though the floor, tables and chairs were solid chunky pine. So was the one long bar. Despite the pub’s proximity to Fratton Park, home of Portsmouth Football Club, there were no big plasma screens for Sky Sports. On blackboards menu choices were displayed in italic chalk writing. Painted boards listed The Middy’s theme nights, Monday, Curry Club. Tuesday, Quiz Night. Wednesday, Two-For-One Steak Special. Thursday, Comedy Club. Friday and Saturday, Live Music. Sunday nights appeared to have no theme. Nor from a quick look around the various bays separated by pine uprights, did they appear to have many customers.
As in the Hare and Hounds, the bar staff wore mulberry shirts with the grey logo of the pub’s name across the breast pockets. At the bar Jude picked up a wine list, turned it over and pointed out to Carole a logo and a name.
“Look,” she said, “Home Hostelries. We should have remembered. The Hare and Hounds at Weld-isham was a Home Hostelries pub back when Will Maples used to run it.”
“Yes, of course.”
Jude turned the list the right way round and, from the surprisingly good selection of white wines, ordered two large Maipo Valley Chardonnays. Exactly what they’d had in Weldisham. In every detail, Home Hostelries pubs were clones of each other.
When Jude turned back to Carole with the drinks, her friend was making little nodding gestures over to a dark corner of the pub.
Where sat the man with a scarred face and missing fingers whom they had last seen fighting outside the front of the Crown and Anchor.
This was easier than they had dared hope, but the situation also presented difficulties. They were guilty of the same lack of planning as Viggo had demonstrated the day before. The logic of coming to the Middy had seemed obvious to both of them, but neither had given any thought to what they should do when they found their quarry. For Carole the scenario was particularly perplexing. She didn’t think she was very good with new people even when she’d been introduced to them. And the thought of just walking up to a man of whose propensity to violence she had been a witness was very alien.
Characteristically, Jude did not suffer from such hang-ups. Nodding for Carole to follow her, she walked straight towards the alcove where the scarred man was sitting. He looked up at her with some puzzlement, but like most men approached by Jude, didn’t object to what he was seeing.
“I think we’ve met before,” Jude announced, taking possession of a chair opposite him. Carole scuttled awkwardly to an adjacent one.
“Oh yeah?” The man looked fuddled. The pint whose remains he was spinning out was clearly not his first of the day.
Jude gestured towards it. “Get you another of those?”
He nodded. “Stella.”
Carole looked at her friend in desperation. Don’t leave me alone with him, the pale blue eyes pleaded. But by then Jude was back at the bar.
Carole cleared her throat, trying to think of an appropriate pleasantry for the occasion, but couldn’t come up with anything. The only sentence that came into her mind was: “That was a very good fight you got involved in at the Crown and Anchor last week.” But she didn’t think that would have been right.
Still, her silence didn’t seem to bother the man. His eyes remained fixed somewhere in the middle distance. Perhaps he didn’t care who approached him, so long as they bought him a pint of Stella.
Jude handed over what he required and the man thanked her, though without taking much notice of the supplier. His interest in her as an attractive woman had been eclipsed by the more urgent priority of a drink in his hand. He took a long swallow.
Jude continued her frontal approach. “We saw you at the Crown and Anchor in Fethering, a week ago today, when that fight broke out.”
He wasn’t as drunk as he had appeared to be. A light of caution came into his eye as he put his pint down on the table. “So?”
“That was the night a man called Ray got stabbed.”