Carole was sorely tempted to go home, but she could recognize the sense of Jude’s offering to buy another round of drinks. Circumstances had brought them together with someone the police wanted to interview in connection with Howard Martin’s death. Sleuthing opportunities rarely came better giftwrapped.
Bazza consented to another Stella, so Jude bought that and a couple of Chilean Chardonnays from a surly Ted Crisp. Even though the one who actually wore leathers had gone, he remained suspicious of the other ‘biker’.
While the drinks were being organized, Carole racked her brains for something she could say to Bazza, but not an idea came. She had to fall back on a polite smile, which was rather wasted because the boy refused to look up at her.
Needless to say, as Jude sat down, she pitched in with a perfect conversation-opener. It was characteristically direct.
“Dreadful for Phil and Gaby, isn’t it, their dad having died in that ghastly way?”
Bazza conceded that it was “a bit of a choker.”
“You weren’t at the engagement party, were you?”
“No. I’m more Phil’s mucker than Pascale’s. You know, I’ve met her the odd time, but we’re not, like mates.”
“And did you know Phil’s parents?”
“Met them, like, the odd time.”
“But you can’t think why anyone might have wanted to kill Howard Martin?”
Carole would never have dared be as direct as that. Bazza looked more uncomfortable than ever. His eyes flickered towards the door, contemplating flight. But some logic within him seemed to argue that he was off his home turf, he had nowhere else to go, and he could be in a worse situation than talking to two old biddies with a nearly full pint of Stella in front of him.
“No idea,” he replied stolidly.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Jude went on ingenuously, “Gaby was saying that the police wanted to talk to you about the murder.”
“Don’t know what the police want, do I? All I know is, if you ever once got the wrong side of them, you never hear the end of it.”
“And you had got on the wrong side of them?”
“Look, everyone’s done some iffy stuff when they’re young, haven’t they?” He looked at the two middle-aged ladies he was with, and realized he was asking the wrong audience. “OK, yeah, I’ve knocked off the odd car in my life. I was skint and I only took them from people who could well afford them. I mean, rich people don’t really suffer anything much more than inconvenience when their car’s nicked, because they’ve all got insurance, haven’t they? If you nick a car from some bloke who can’t afford the insurance, then all right, he’s going to suffer.”
To Carole this was a very bizarre justification for stealing cars, but Bazza seemed to believe what he was saying. He had managed to convince himself that he was committing victimless crimes.
She took up the conversational baton from Jude, remembering what she’d been told in the car park on the beach. “Gaby said that you’d been very lucky, that you’d got off quite lightly when you’d been caught by the authorities.”
“Well,” said Bazza, aggrieved, “like I say, I never done that much wrong. And, OK, I been lucky enough to come up before magistrates what’ve given me the benefit of the doubt. I wish more was like that. Most kids when they commit their first crime and get caught. Well, they get sent down the nick, or the Young Offenders Centre, you know, depending on their age – and that’s it. All they learn in places like that is how to commit more crimes, so when they come out, they’re lifetime villains. Much more sensible to give those kids a ticking-off and another chance. That’s what happened to me – and it ain’t done me no harm.”
Exhausted by this long disquisition on the criminal justice system, Bazza sat back and took a long swill from his pint of Stella.
Carole had a sudden thought, a synaptic linking of two pieces of information in her brain. “Tell me, Bazza, did you ever come up before Robert Coleman? In the magistrates’ court?”
“What if I did.”
“He’s a kind man. Is it possible that you owe your light treatment by the magistrates to him?”
For a moment, the boy seemed as if he was about to reply more fully, but then he sat back and tookanother swig of lager. “Don’t know what you’re on about.”
“Are you sure?” asked Jude, who was catching up with the direction of Carole’s thinking. “When Phil was here, he assured you that Robert Coleman was in the Dauncey Hotel with his sister. Is that why you’ve both come all this way – to see whether Robert Coleman can help you out of another hole?”
“I’m not in a hole. Phil’s come down to see his mum. I’m his mate. He asked me if I fancied a trip down the South Coast. I said yes. That’s all there is to it.”
“You say you’re not in a hole,” said Carole sternly, “but apparently Inspector Pollard wants to talk to you, and he hasn’t been able to find you.”
“Don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Inspector Pollard is the officer investigating the death of Howard Martin.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with killing him.”
“I’m sure you didn’t. But did you have anything to do with procuring the car in which he was killed?”
“Procuring? What’s this? What do you mean by procuring?”
“Stealing, Bazza.”
“I never stolen anything in my life.”
“Really? But you’ve just told us you’ve nicked the odd car.”
“Yeah, but when I nick something, it isn’t stealing.” Bizarrely, a high moral tone had crept into his voice. “Look, all right, I have occasionally borrowed a car. Mate needs one for a little while, I’ll sort it out for him. Car almost always goes back undamaged – just a bit less fuel in the tank. Sometimes not even that. Often the owner doesn’t even know it’s been borrowed. So who’s suffering here?” Bazza, it was becoming clear, was something of an expert on the concept of the victimless crime. “OK, maybe it’s not strictly legal, but I don’t see it’s doing much harm to anyone.”
“Surely,” suggested Jude quietly, “that rather depends on what your mate does while he’s in possession of the car?”
Bazza had his moral defence ready for that one. “I never ask. That’s not my business, is it?”
Carole snorted her disapproval. “But presumably your mates pay you for your car supply service?”
“Well, of course.” He was self-righteously offended by her tone. “I can’t do stuff for nothing, can I? I got to make a living.”
Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, there was the sound of a dog barking. Carole and Jude – and other pub customers – looked around for the animal in question. With a complacent grin, Bazza drew a mobile phone out of his pocket. “Not a bad ring-tone, that?”
He pressed a button and the dog ceased to bark. He checked the number on the display, and pressed another button. “Case in point. This mobile’s my office. Another little business call. I’ll get back to them.” He returned the phone to his pocket.
“Get back to who?” asked Jude hopefully.
He laughed indulgently at the idea she might even think he’d answer that.
There was a silence; then, very deliberately, Carolefilled it. “Bazza, did you ‘supply’ the car that took Howard Martin from the hotel the night he died?”
“Course I didn’t. I had nothing to do with it.”
“No?” Carole took a risk. “Someone actually saw you driving up the hotel entrance to pick him up.”
“Nobody could have seen me – because I wasn’t there.” The break between the two parts of his sentence was tantalizing. He could have made a slip and be covering up for himself. Equally – and frustratingly – his words could be perfectly innocent.