The young man looked up at her with a professional grin. “What can I get for you, madam?”
“Another Maipo Valley Chardonnay, please. It’s very good.”
“All our Home Hostelries wines are carefully selected, madam. Will that be a large one or a small?”
“Small, thank you.”
Fortunately for Carole, there wasn’t an open bottle of the Maipo Valley Chardonnay, so the manager had to take a corkscrew to one. This gave her a little window of opportunity to say, “I met someone recently from Home Hostelries…”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, we were introduced, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten his name. I wonder if you might know him?”
“Without a name it’s going to be pretty difficult for me to – ”
“I do have a photograph.” Carole proffered her mobile to the manager and pointed to the man she thought was Will Maples.
“Oh yes, I know him all right. Well, you have been moving in the upper echelons of the company. That’s one of Home Hostelries’ very big cheeses.”
“A director?”
“No, he’s not actually a director yet, but I should think it’s on the cards that he will be soon.”
“What’s his name?” asked Carole, trying to hide the tension she was feeling.
“Will Maples. In charge of Acquisitions.”
Carole could have kicked herself. Now she’d had it confirmed, the likeness was so obvious. But men’s looks change, particularly in their early forties. Suddenly bodies you could never imagine with an ounce of fat on them spread sideways. Entire contours are re-formed. Add to that Will Maples’s dyed hair and the thick-framed glasses and he had become unrecognizable. Carole wondered whether he’d recognized her as one of the busybodies who had caused his abrupt departure from his previous job at the Hare and Hounds.
Though she thought she knew the answer to her question, she asked the current manager to spell out what that meant by ‘in charge of Acquisitions’.
“Will Maples is in charge of selecting and purchasing new pubs to add to the Home Hostelries family.”
“Ah,” said Carole Seddon. “Thank you.”
“What is this?” asked Dan Poke. “What the hell are you up to?”
Jude looked straight into his eyes. “Are you denying that, under your real name of Richard Farrelly, you are a director of Home Hostelries, the pub group?”
He let his anger dissipate and took a deep breath. When he replied, he was cautious. He wanted to know how much she knew. “Very well,” he said calmly. “I don’t deny it. But since when has it been illegal for people to have more than one job?”
“Never. How long have you been a director?”
“Seven or eight years. When I was doing all that telly, I made a lot of bread. I wanted to invest it somewhere, somebody mentioned Home Hostelries, and I was interested to find out more about them. I am a bit of an expert in pubs, you know.”
“Oh?”
“Come on, darling. Doing stand-up, you spend half your life in pubs. You get to know the good ones from the bad, you get an idea of what kind of business they’re doing.”
“So Home Hostelries took you on as a kind of consultant?”
“You could say that. An investor too. Television’s a very fickle medium. I was flavour of the month for a while, but I knew it could end at any minute, so I wanted to make myself financially secure. Doing that through a business that really interested me…what’s the harm in that?”
“I don’t think there’s any harm in that.”
“Good.” He looked at his watch. “Well, I think I’m about to go back to mine. Are you coming or not?”
“No.”
“Right. Well, thank you, Jude, for a totally fucking wasted evening.”
He rose to leave, but her next words changed his mind. “I want to talk about the involvement of Home Hostelries in the murder of Ray Witchett.”
Dan Poke froze, then sank back into his chair and said in what was little more than a whisper, “What?”
“It’s my belief,” said Jude evenly, “that Home Hostelries had been trying for some time to add the Crown and Anchor in Fethering to their chain of pubs.”
“So?”
“In spite of the fact that Ted Crisp had no desire to sell. I think he became the victim of a campaign of harassment which was organized by Home Hostelries.”
“Come off it, Jude. You’re talking about a pukka company here. Home Hostelries doesn’t need to organize campaigns of harassment. There are pubs closing every week all over the country. If we want to buy places, we’re spoiled for choice.”
“Except that you are very picky in your choice of where you buy. You only want places with the best possible locations. Like the Crown and Anchor. Like the Cat and Fiddle on the Fedborough road out of Littlehampton.”
Dan Poke looked puzzled.
“You’re not denying that the Cat and Fiddle has been bought by Home Hostelries?”
“Certainly not. It’s undergoing major refurbishment. Reopening as a Home Hostelries pub in October, if my memory serves me right.”
“It does. And before she gave in and agreed to sell to Home Hostelries, the landlady had suffered almost exactly the same kind of harassment as Ted Crisp’s been getting at the Crown and Anchor.”
“Where’ve you got this from?”
“Shona Nuttall herself,” Jude replied implacably. “The ex-landlady of the Cat and Fiddle.”
“Have you worked all this out off your own bat?”
“I have been working on it with a friend.”
“Male friend?”
“Female friend.”
“Nobody else involved?”
Jude thought quickly before answering that. If she was sitting opposite a man capable of murder, then she and Carole might well be at risk. Time perhaps for a tactical lie. “We have kept the police up to date with our investigations.”
Dan Poke laughed and Jude realized it had been a silly thing to say. He didn’t believe her, and as a consequence any threat she might have represented to him had been diluted. “Oh yes, I’m sure the police have been really grateful for the input of two old biddies from Fethering.”
Ten minutes before Dan Poke had been keen to get her into bed; now suddenly she was an old biddy from Fethering.
“Tell you what,” he went on, “even though you’re talking rubbish, it’s potentially dangerous rubbish.”
“Dangerous to whom?”
“To the reputation of Home Hostelries. Who’ve you talked about this to – apart from your friend?”
“And the police,” Jude offered feebly.
“Oh yes, of course. And the police.” His tone ridiculed the idea. He drummed his fingernails on the arm of his chair. “We need a meeting.”
“What? Who?”
“You, your friend, me…”
“Down some dark alley?”
“Don’t be fucking stupid! I’m talking in the Home Hostelries boardroom. You have to realize just how serious the allegations you’re making are. I’ve got your number. I’ll give you a call.”
And with that Dan Poke left the bar. And left Jude with the feeling that she hadn’t managed the encounter very well.
She asked Garcia to lend one of his bouncers to see her to Notting Hill tube station, which he did without demur. But on the short walk there, she didn’t see any homicidal stand-up comedians lurking in the bushes. And all the way back on the tube and train to Fethering, Jude felt rather stupid.