Ted called the order through to an unseen presence in the kitchen, then turned back to her. “What you been up to, then?”
When asked direct questions, Jude always answered. Carole was the only one whose gentility made her think she’d gone too far into their friendship to start asking.
“I’ve been with a friend who’s just lost her husband. Very cut-up, needless to say. I’ve been hand-holding to get her through the funeral.”
“Ah. I see. There you are.” Ted pushed across her glass of wine. There was a silence. The ghost of Carole seemed to hover between them, and could only be exorcized by the mention of her name.
Ted took a clumsy run at it. “Thought I might have lost your custom too.”
“Hm?”
“You know, when I put your friend’s back up. Thought I might get the old sisterly solidarity reaction.”
Jude shook her head and sighed in exasperation. “No I wouldn’t behave like that. And you haven’t exactly put Carole’s back up. She just feels embarrassed, that’s all. Oh come on, Ted, it’s not as if you treated her badly.”
“Didn’t I?”
“No. It just didn’t work out between you, that’s all. You were looking for different things.”
“You can say that again.” Ted Crisp wearily ran a hand through the foliage of his beard. “Carole…” There, he’d managed to say it. “Carole kept wanting to define everything. Where were we going? What was the nature of our relationship?” He let out a defeated sigh. “Why is it that men think in terms of enjoying things right now and are never in any hurry to see what happens next, whereas women are always thinking in terms of bloody relationships?”
“That’s been one of the great gender issues since time began,” said Jude.
“Yes, in the bloody garden of Eden I bet Adam was just thinking ‘This is all very nice’, while Eve was working out how many fig-leaves it’d take to make the curtains. Well, I’m afraid, in terms of what me and Carole were thinking, we could have been on two different planets.”
Jude grinned. “Might be a good idea for a book in that.” She went on, “You have to remember, of course, Ted, that I don’t think Carole’s ever before been in a casual relationship.”
“You’re right. Seems like the marriage was about it for her. Funny, ‘cause she’s a bloody attractive woman.”
“I’m not sure that she thinks that.”
“No. The husband – bloody David – when he left her, he drained away any little bit of confidence she might have had. Really knocked her sideways, that. She never opened up to me much, you know, like emotionally, butshe said something once that indicated just how much he’d hurt her.”
“Anyway, I’m sure soon you and Carole’ll be able to…you know…see each other without any pressure or recrimination.”
“Just be friends’?” He grimaced cynically. “Yeah. Sounds simple. Trouble is, it never turns out like that, does it?” Having performed the ceremony of exorcism, he now wanted to put it behind him. “Anyway, what you been up to? Apart from comforting the bereaved?”
“Been having some thoughts about that business up in Fedborough…”
“‘The Torso in the Town’. Yeah, lot of the old codgers in here been maundering on about that. Heard every kind of theory about who the body might’ve been – names ranging from Eva Braun, who somehow survived the bunker in Berlin, to Lord Lucan after a sex change. One old geezer even reckoned she was a serial killer…who got into a feud with another serial killer. Mind you, I don’t believe that.”
“Why not?” asked Jude, stepping straight into the trap he had prepared for her.
“Because I know she was totally ‘armless.”
She groaned. “God, I do set them up for you, don’t I, Ted?”
“Sorry. Old habits die hard. When you done the standup circuit as long as I did, you’re always looking for the comic angle.”
“And the tasteless angle?”
“Oh, got to be tasteless in comedy these days. If you don’t offend a few people, then you’re not cutting-edge.” Jude took a long swallow from her glass. Isn’t wine wonderful, she thought. And now doctors are even saying it’s good for us. Maybe there is a God, after all.
“So, Ted, apart from the speculations of the Fethering old fogeys, have you heard any intelligent ideas about what might have happened in Fedborough? I’m sure you’ve been keeping your ears open.”
“You bet I have. And I dare say you have too…you and…” Unable to say Carole’s name again, he moved swiftly on. “Even got a theory of my own, and all…”
“What’s that?”
He made a self-deprecating shrug. “Well, not so much a theory, more an idea of where I might start investigating if I was in charge of the case.”
“Really? I didn’t know you knew anyone in Fed-borough.”
“ A few people. In this business you tend to know who runs the local boozers. Meet them from time to time, chat on the phone, keep tabs on dangerous elements, you know.”
“I didn’t think there were any dangerous elements in Fethering.”
“Don’t believe everything you read in the brochure, darling. They’re not all old farts come in here, you know. And even the old ones can be troublemakers. Be amazed how much carnage you can cause with a Zimmer frame.”
Jude chuckled. “So…who? Where would you start your investigations, Superintendent Crisp?”
“Two or three years back,” said Ted, scratching at his beard, “just after I took over this place, geezer came to see me. Wanted to organize pleasure trips down the Fether from Fedborough, and was trying to get some deal to include lunch in the pub here. He’d just bought up the old boatsheds and café from an old geezer called Bob Bracken, who I know from way back. And he was working on the project with an architect who sometimes comes in here, so I’d heard a bit about what was going on. Anyway, the new owner’s figures didn’t work out, the discount he was asking would have eaten up any profit so far as I was concerned, so the idea’s a complete non-starter…but he was a nice bloke. Bit of a boozer, but, you know, very well-spoken, real gentleman of the old school.”
“Roddy Hargreaves,” Jude murmured.
“You know him?”
“Met him earlier in the week.”
“Right. Anyway, we had a few drinks together and he started pouring his troubles out, way people do. Occupational hazard in my line of business. And he tells me the lot, how his parents left him with a load of Catholic guilt and a load of money, but how he’s never had much of a business brain. Got stung badly when Lloyd’s crashed, and that seemed fairly typical of the level of his investment success. Sounded like his plans to set up this pleasure-boat deal was going the same way, and all. Just couldn’t grasp the basics of running a business, no mind for detail.
“And the way these things happen, when everything financial’s crashing round his ears, he’s got problems with his marriage and all. He wasn’t vindictive about the wife – quite nice about her, actually – but, reading between the lines of what he’s saying, she – called Virginia, some bone-headed deb ten years younger than him – anyway, I got the pretty firm impression she liked him well enough while he’d got the dosh, but rapidly lost interest once that started trickling away.
“Next thing I hear, through Keith and Janet, the couple who run the Coach and Horses in Pelling Street – that used to be our Roddy’s favourite drinking-hole – ”
“Still is.”
“Anyway, they tell me his wife’s suddenly upped and left him.”
“Where did she go?”
“That’s what nobody in Fedborough seems to know. And if I was in charge of the case,” said Ted Crisp, “that’s the first question I’d be asking now…”