A Taste of Death Page 13

I pulled my coat on, locked the kitchen door behind me and went through the yard into the road outside. It had started raining again and the January sky was cold, grey and bleak. There was no one on the common and only the odd car around.

  The pub fronted on to the far end of the common on the left. I could see its sign swaying in the stiff breeze. Opposite the pub was the little access road for the houses where Naomi and Slattery lived that overlooked the common on the far side from where I was standing.

  The quickest way to the Three Bells was diagonally across the grass, but as this was so waterlogged I stuck to the pavements, doing two sides of a triangle, walking past the village hall that doubled as a fitness studio for Naomi’s yoga class. A few doors further on was the pub.

  It had a little strip of grass around it and some rickety garden furniture that looked none too sturdy.

  There was a picket fence, the paint fading and peeling and a short concrete path to the door. There was a snowdrift of discarded cigarette ends outside. Above the door, as if to mock me, and my lack of a liquor licence, it said:

  Malcolm Nowell, Licensed to sell beer and spirits

  I went in and walked across the reddish carpet, sticky with spilt drinks and pockmarked with burns from when smoking was still allowed in pubs.

  ‘Afternoon, Malcolm,’ I said to the cadaverous pub landlord with his very red face. He nodded a silent greeting.

  ‘Usual, Ben,’ his voice hoarsely whispered from beyond the grave. If a film crew ever turned up here to make a zombie film, Malcolm would be a natural fit for one of the undead. His jerky movements, the horrid, hoarse quality of his voice, the way he swivelled his head slowly to look at things, his weird rheumy eyes, all were those of a reanimated corpse.

  He fetched me my usual. I had been in every day since the beginning of January, as it was a convenient five-minute walk away from the Old Forge Café where I was spending far too much time. Horrible it may have been, but it was a welcome break.

  I sipped my Diet Coke, ice and a slice and looked around Malcolm’s shabby, shadowy establishment. The Kingdom of the Dead. The Underworld. There was no sign of the split shift chefs from the King’s Head up the road who were doubtless right now having to hurriedly replace whatever had run low during the lunch service. No break for them today. Split shift had turned into what is known as an AFD shift. All ****ing day. I’d spoken on my mobile earlier to Francis who had driven past at twelve and said that their car park was rammed.

  The only other customer was a girl that I recognised as Craig’s girlfriend, well, former girlfriend now. A widowette.

  She came up to the bar and stood in front of me.

  ‘You’re the chef, right?’ Her voice was slurred and her eyes slightly unfocused. For a moment I thought that she might be going to have a go for poisoning her beau. Either that or collapse, she was swaying slightly on her feet. Then she smiled uncertainly at me and I relaxed slightly, free to assess her as a person rather than a threat.

  She was much younger than Craig, who I think had been in his mid-thirties. She looked about twenty. She was quite small, but voluptuous, with cascading blonde hair and wearing a red dress that showed a lot of cleavage and incongruously (to my eyes) fishnet tights and high blue Dr Marten’s boots. She was half Fifties glamour girl and half punk. It was a look she managed to pull off very successfully. A tattooed snake coiled around a tree ran up her left arm. There were Hebrew (of all things) letters tattooed on her right upper arm and an apple.

  ‘I’m Bryony, with a y.’ She put her hand out, long red-varnished nails the same colour as her dress and her lipstick (how else would you dress up for a village pub in the country?) and we shook hands.

  She said, consolingly, ‘I don’t blame you for Craig, it probably wasn’t your fault … He wasn’t in the best of shape.’

  No, I thought, I’m sure he wasn’t, what with the drugs and the booze and the smoking and, presumably, a reckless lack of exercise. But I felt it wasn’t my place to offer health advice. Bryony blinked huge grey eyes at me. She seemed to have difficulty focussing. Her chest heaved. There was a lot of it, a great deal of it was on view.

  In desperation I stared at the tattoos on her arm, at the intricate Hebrew lettering,

  ‘What does it say?’ I asked, to distract myself from her cleavage.

  She turned her head down to look at the letters, ‘That bit—’ a blood-red fingernail traced the cursive script ‘—says, the serpent beguiled me and I ate—’ how appropriate, I thought ‘—and that bit …’ her finger moved along, ‘says Exodus 3.13.’ She looked at me with her dilated pupils. ‘It’s from the Bible, Eve said it.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice.’ Sunday school had clearly paid off in Bryony’s case.

  ‘I bet I know who poisoned him.’ She lurched a little on her feet and grabbed my arm to steady herself. I could smell strong, musky perfume and sweat and a faint hint of grass.

  Good, I thought to myself, a lead!

  She put a hand on the crown of my head, both to steady herself and pull my head downwards so she could whisper in my ear. I was now staring straight down the front of Bryony’s dress. It was incredibly sexy and faintly embarrassing. I hoped to God that Naomi wouldn’t walk in.

  If she did, I thought, I could truthfully say I was looking for clues.

  ‘Shall I tell you who did it?’ she slurred, her pupils were massive, her eyes looked like they had been double-glazed.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind …’

  ‘The Earl,’ she whispered dramatically. ‘He’s the killer.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Saturday, 23 January, midday

  I looked up the Earl on Google. According to Wikipedia, the title had been created in the nineteenth century by Lord Salisbury for now obscure governmental services. Even then, scandal dogged the family. Seemingly the first Earl had been accused of buying the title, not from Salisbury, who was wealthy enough, but from a fellow minister. There’d also been rumours of actresses, hijinks with the Prince Regent, gambling debts unpaid. The present Earl had led a similarly chequered life.

  James Rupert Harrington Winslow, born in 1951, had been educated at Eton, St John’s College Oxford and had served in the Guards. He had also, during the 1970s, been arrested for drug possession, and had also been found guilty (suspended sentence) of tax evasion and attempted bribery. He had become a bit of a tabloid darling, and, when he was found out to have been a member of the Clermont Club and knew Lord Lucan, the red-tops had a field day.

  The words ‘vice’ and ‘high’ in the newspapers became inextricably linked with his name. ‘Vice Romps at Aristo’s Palace’, ‘High Times at Henley, Earl Hampden caught with joint’, ‘Hippy Birthday to You! Drug Earl in Vice Girl Frolic on Estate!’

  That kind of thing.

  ‘… and that for you out there in radioland was Steppenwolf with “Born to Be Wild”,’ Beech Tree FM, the sound of the Chilterns ‘… next up, put that cigarette out! It’s Smokie and “Living Next Door to Alice”…’

  I had turned off the computer and added the Earl to my list of suspects. I knew it couldn’t have been him the day I had found Whitfield, he was far too old to have run away like the person I had seen. But that would not have prevented him contracting the job out, if he were involved.

  Why would he have wanted Whitfield dead? Maybe because of the housing project, ‘worth millions’ according to Chris. Even earls need money, high-class call girls don’t come cheap.

  Bryony hadn’t said why the Earl killed Whitfield?

  ‘We’ll talk later,’ she’d promised and had stumbled out of the pub.

  Could Bryony be the key to the whole thing? If the Earl had killed or caused Craig Scott to die then I strongly suspected he would be involved in Whitfield’s death. I thought to myself, I’ll get her phone number or address from Jess, she’ll know how to find her.

  In the interim, there was the housing development itself to look at.

  I had gone to bed early that night but before I di
d I texted Jess to see if she was free the following day. It was time to pay a visit to Chandler’s Ford to have a look around.

  At the very least it would give me something to tell Naomi. Jess was free and would be round at eleven a.m.

  It was now Saturday morning and as I drove I brought Jess up to date on developments with the food poisoning investigation.

  ‘I’m hoping to hear from Sandra Burke today,’ I said, ‘but it’s a long shot. The lab require three working days so it’ll probably be Monday before I hear and I’m given the all clear.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ said Jess, checking her phone for messages as she did every few minutes.

  I made a noncommittal noise as the car splashed through puddles.

  ‘I met Craig Scott’s ex yesterday.’ I said, casually. I was curious to get Jess’s opinion of her.

  Jess grimaced. ‘Bryony Mogg, God, that girl.’

  ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘Mm, I was at school with her, she dropped out in year twelve. She was quite bright but …’ There was silence. It was obviously a big ‘but’. Too much to tell.

  ‘Did she show you her tattoos?’ she asked me.

  ‘Yes, they’re very biblical.’

  ‘Aren’t they just,’ said Jess sniffily, ‘I bet she’s got “For what we are about to receive …” tattooed here,’ she indicated just below her navel. ‘Slut,’ she added, for good measure.

  Things were not looking good for casually finding out how to contact Bryony. I could see that Jess would be deeply suspicious of my motives.

  ‘I’m sure she’s a very nice girl, deep down,’ I said, ‘deeply moral, all those Bible studies …’

  ‘And I can assure you,’ said Jess, her thumbs darting over the keypad of her phone, ‘that she is not.’

  We were now on our way to look at the site in Chandler’s Ford, the place where Whitfield had laid his plans to make his fortune with the multi million-pound development. We drove along country roads that would be pretty in the spring but were now lined by brown hedgerows and muddy, stubbly fields. The trees stood gaunt and bare. The only sign of life were depressed, bedraggled crows.

  Jess now filled me in on the Earl. From the village point of view.

  ‘He’s a bit of a scandal, really.’

  ‘Still?’ I asked. I would have thought his grey hairs would have brought respectability.

  ‘Still,’ confirmed Jess, ‘he’s got all these tarty Eastern European girls young enough to be his granddaughters drooling all over him—’ she shook her head in disapproval, her dark curls flying ‘—people say that he hosts these sort of orgies up at the Hall, and he certainly hung around with Craig. I’d say I’d agree with Bryony. If anyone poisoned Craig it’d probably be him.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ I asked.

  ‘Because he’s an evil old bastard,’ was Jess’s reply. It seemed a bit nebulous.

  ‘Does he still do drugs?’ I asked. Perhaps he’d been behind Craig’s punishment beating, perhaps he was Craig’s backer. ‘At his age?’

  ‘Bound to,’ said Jess with youthful certainty, ‘leopards don’t change their spots.’

  We drove on in companionable silence. Occasionally the car juddered badly as we hit another pothole that, filled with water from the recent rains, looked deceptively like just another puddle. Then as we were driving alongside the main railway line that ran to Aylesbury, Jess pointed with her finger.

  ‘You see those trees down there?’

  Across the fields was a line of pollarded willows. I nodded.

  ‘That’s the river Bourne. Chandler’s Ford is about a mile away.’

  A couple of minutes later I drove into the village. To call it a village was a bit misleading, it was more a collection of houses along a road that looped off the main road and rejoined it a mile or so further westwards.

  They didn’t have a green like we did, I thought smugly. This was followed by the thought, Oh my God, I just thought, ‘we’. I’m turning into one of them, a villager.

  There was a church and a car park and a pub. There were two rows of houses, one between the church and the pub, one after the pub. I parked the car and we got out.

  ‘It’s down here,’ said Jess. I followed her down a muddy path to the river. Like ‘village’, ‘river’ was a bit of a misnomer; it was a clear stream, maybe three metres across, if that. It was edged with reeds and the occasional brown, dead, bulrush.

  The drizzle continued to fall and the water flowed fast, swollen by the seemingly endless rain.

  We looked out across the water to the fields on the opposite side. We could see large pools that had formed in the sodden ground.

  That was where, according to the page I had downloaded from the council website, planning permission had been granted to build the two hundred house development.

  I pointed with my finger. ‘It’s supposed to be over there, in those fields.’

  ‘It doesn’t look very suitable for houses,’ Jess commented, ‘it’d be like a rubbish version of Venice.’

  I had to agree. It looked far too watery for building. As if to confirm that, a couple of ducks splashed down on a vast puddle in the middle of one of the fields.

  ‘Look,’ said Jess, ‘they’ve landed smack bang on Number seventeen’s conservatory …’

  ‘Let’s go and ask at the pub,’ I said, ‘see what the locals have to say.’

  If the river flooded much more, you would be able to row up to the Greyhound’s back door. That was no exaggeration. Its beer garden faced on to the Bourne and it was mostly under water. The pub looked dispirited and shabby. It made the Three Bells look like the epitome of luxury drinking. Like the Cavendish Hotel or Harry’s Bar or Mahiki. The paint was flaking away from the grimy windows and the pub sign was cracked and battered. We walked in to the porch.

  The Greyhound, unusual for these days, still had two bars, a saloon and a public bar. When I was a kid there was still this distinction, even then starting to die out, of the saloon for the white-collar drinkers and the ladies, and the public for the blue-collar workers. Mostly all gone now, a thing of the past like schooners of sherry, ‘gin and it’ and packets of peanuts attached to a cardboard cutout of a model so every time a packet was sold a bit more flesh was tantalisingly revealed, offering the promise (never fulfilled) of full nudity. The girl concealed by the nuts was always wearing a bikini.

  I chose the saloon bar. Strangers were rarely welcome in public bars. They were very much a place for locals and interlopers were not made to feel at home. I didn’t want to upset anyone. I looked around as we walked in. Unlike the Three Bells which was like a grotty inner city pub in terms of decor – you could have uprooted it to Kentish Town without anyone being any the wiser – this was a typical grotty country pub, dusty, musty, borderline dirty. It was low-beamed, and bric-a-brac like horse brasses and pieces of old farm machinery whose original function is now long forgotten, adorned the walls, and there was a pervasive smell of damp. Chandler’s Ford certainly didn’t lack for water. If Naomi were here she might have said that it was built under the sign of Pisces.

  There was a man of about fifty behind the bar with a heavy drinker’s reddened features and strawberry nose. He took my order without comment, eyeing me with dislike. What is it with country pub landlords? I thought.

  He poured me a bitter lemon with an icy disdain and leered at Jess as he gave her a J20. I had the feeling that I should have ordered a pint of something or other and that, given his own way, the landlord would have refused to serve non-alcoholic beverages.

  ‘We’re doing food,’ he said (snarled), indicating a blackboard in the corner.

  I glanced at it politely. I’d seen it as I walked in, of course, but ‘liver and bacon’ and ‘sausage casserole’ had sounded more of a threat than a promise as did the ‘all-day Bucks English Breakfast’, which I suspected to be a grease-fest drowned in cheap baked beans. I find food like that quite horrific.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said
, suppressing a shudder.

  ‘I’m fine too,’ said Jess.

  The landlord gave us a venomous stare and went through to the side where the public bar was. It was mostly cut off from our view by a partition wall that ran three-quarters of the length of the bar but I could see his back turned to us and hear the hum of conversation as he chatted to a couple of regulars on the other side.

  ‘Lovely day,’ said the only other customer, an old man sitting in the corner with his dog, an ageing springer spaniel, that banged its tail on the floor in a friendly fashion.

  Jess went over and stroked the dog. The man smiled at her. He must have been in his late seventies, tall and cadaverous, with powerful bony wrists clutching a tall walking stick. He was sitting ramrod straight in his chair. He had one of the old-fashioned Bucks accents that have a country burr to them. Like Pam Ayres. You don’t hear it now in anyone younger than him. I suppose it’s TV that has killed it off.

  ‘What are you two doing here?’ he asked. Strangers were obviously a novelty in the Greyhound. Customers I guess would be a novelty in the Greyhound. It smelt not only of damp, but failure.

  ‘I came to look at the site for the new housing development,’ I said.

  Jess was engrossed with the dog who had rolled over to have his stomach rubbed, wheezing with pleasure. His owner looked at me rather oddly.

  ‘Friend of Paul Harding’s are you?’ he asked, suspiciously.

  ‘Um, I don’t know the gentleman in question,’ I replied, politely.

  He smiled rather grimly. ‘You’ll find him in the churchyard. He was interested in the new houses too.’

  I gave him an inquisitive look. The old man was clearly warning me off the subject, and I was obviously intrigued.

  ‘Who owns the land?’ I asked. The old man looked nervously at the bar. I turned around and, as I had guessed, there was the landlord. It was obvious that the topic of the housing development was not an item of conversation welcome in the Greyhound.

  He rang the bell used to call last orders. Normally it’s rather a cheery sound but it had quite a threatening toll to it. A sound of ominous finality.