“Her car.”
The image of the highly respectable Greville Tilbrook and Black Watch Beryl grappling in the confined space of a Smart car was irresistibly funny. Carole had difficulty restraining her laughter, as she asked, “And your canoodling took place, I assume, after the two other lady protesters had gone home?” He nodded. “Well, unfortunately, on that very evening there was a fight at the Crown and Anchor, which led to someone being stabbed to death.”
“I know that, Mrs Seddon! That is why I am so concerned that my, as it were, peccadillo should be kept quiet.”
Carole nodded sagely, enjoying her complete control of the situation. “I can see that, yes.” She let him agonize through another silence. “So was it the outbreak of the fight that caused you to leave Beryl’s car?”
“No. I took the view, as it were, that during the fighting, it might be a better plan of action for me to, not to put too fine a point on it, lie low.”
“In Beryl’s car?”
“Yes.”
“With Beryl?”
“Yes.”
“So what did you do when the police arrived?”
“As soon as I heard what can only be described as the sirens, and saw the, as it were, blue lights, I took the decision that discretion was, not for the first time in my life, the better part of valour and, not wishing to beat about the bush, I made my escape.”
“With Beryl? I saw a Smart car driving like crazy across the dunes with all the bikers.”
“No, I thought it might be exacerbating the, as it were, risk, if I were to stay in the car. Beryl drove off on her own.”
Carole was suddenly alert. “So which way did you escape? You didn’t go back along the road into the village?”
“No, I thought that, since that was the direction from which the police were arriving, it might perhaps not be the wisest of courses – and might indeed prompt questioning of a kind that I was anxious to avoid, should I have taken that route…”
Carole couldn’t resist turning the knife in the wound of his embarrassment. “I’m very surprised, Mr Tilbrook, that you, such a stern advocate of civic responsibility, did not stay to offer the police any assistance they might want from you as a witness to what had happened at the Crown and Anchor that night.”
His mouth opened and closed like that of a goldfish. Greville Tilbrook couldn’t come up with a single word, let alone a subordinate clause.
Carole had played with him long enough. “So which way did you escape?” she asked urgently.
“I thought if I went past the pub down to the beach, I could walk along to the Fether estuary and go back into the village that way.”
“So you went past the back door of the Crown and Anchor, the one that leads into the kitchen?”
“I suppose I must have done.”
Now finally she had an explanation for the sound of retreating footsteps on the shingle that she and Jude had heard that night.
“And did you see anything?” He hesitated. “Mr Tilbrook, I am prepared to keep quiet about what I know of your shabby escapade with Beryl…” (or rather what you were generous enough to tell me of your shabby escapade with Beryl) “…on the condition that you tell me everything you witnessed at the back of the pub last Sunday evening.”
He weighed his options. The process didn’t take long. “Very well,” he capitulated, “if you swear you’ll never breathe a word about me and Beryl…?”
“I swear it.”
“I saw two figures outside the back door of the Crown and Anchor. I was hurrying past, I couldn’t see much detail. But first there was just one, a small man who seemed to be waiting for something…”
Ray Witchett waiting for his autograph from Dan Poke.
“…and then another man went round the side of the pub towards him.”
“What did this other man look like?”
“One of the bikers. Dressed in leather. He was tall with long hair and a dark beard.”
Her breath was tight as Carole asked, “Did they seem to know each other?”
“Oh yes,” Greville Tilbrook replied. “They greeted each other like friends.”
Ray hadn’t known any of the bikers. Only someone who looked like a biker.
Viggo.
Twenty-Nine
It was nearly midnight when the phone at Woodside Cottage rang. Jude was in bed, but not yet asleep. Her mind was still full of the news she had received from Carole, of Greville Tilbrook nearly witnessing Ray’s murder.
The caller was Kelly-Marie. “It’s something bad,” she said.
Carole hadn’t been asleep either – in fact, she had been sitting in her nightdress, finding her way with increasing fascination around the laptop she had inherited from her daughter-in-law. When she got Jude’s call, she immediately said that they should both go to Copsedown Hall. Apart from anything else, it would be quicker in the Renault. Not all the roads in Fethering had street lights, and they didn’t want to be stumbling around in the dark.
So they both threw some clothes back on and set off together.
Kelly-Marie was standing just inside the door, waiting for them. She was wearing a flowered cotton dress, which made her look even more like a child. It was presumably the Sunday best she had put on in the morning to go and have lunch with her parents.
“Viggo? Is it something to do with Viggo?” asked Jude, as the girl let them in.
Kelly-Marie nodded. “I wasn’t sure who to call. I thought I’d call you first.”
“Very sensible.” Quickly she introduced Carole. “Where is he?”
“In his room.”
She limped ahead of them up the stairs. “Are the other residents around?” asked Jude in a whisper.
“Asleep. They have to work in the morning. I don’t think they heard it. Only me. His room’s next door to mine.”
There was only a safety light on on the landing, but Jude could see that the door to Kelly-Marie’s room was closed, and the one to Viggo’s was ajar. The girl lingered outside, unwilling to enter, while Jude and Carole went in.
Given what lay in the armchair, it was surprising that Carole and Jude could take in any other detail of the room, but they were both aware of shelves upon shelves of DVDs and videos, arranged in a surprisingly organized way. On the table in front of the armchair stood a laptop computer, its screen opened but blank. The floor was littered with empty Stella Artois cans.
The entry wound on Viggo’s right temple was neat and had only dribbled a little. Blood from the exit wound, though, splattered over the armchair, sofa, walls and shelves of DVDs.
His right arm had dropped down over the side of the armchair. Just below it on the floor lay the revolver.
As the two women moved forward, pressure on an uneven floorboard was sufficient to jog the laptop screen out of hibernation. The image on the screen had been frozen, the DVD paused. Carole saw the haggard faces of men under pressure in a sweaty bamboo cage.
“The Deer Hunter”, Jude murmured. “The Russian roulette scene.”
Carole looked down. She knew nothing of guns, but she could see the number of bullets, the backs of which showed in the revolver’s cylinder. Every chamber appeared to be full.
“Not very good odds for Russian roulette,” she observed.
Thirty
Neither of them got much sleep that night. By the time the police had been called, and by the time the police had arrived and conducted some basic questioning, it was well into the small hours. And the image of Viggo, still so vivid in their minds, was not conducive to peaceful slumber.
They reassembled blearily next morning over very strong coffee in the sitting room of Woodside Cottage.