Guilt at the Garage

SEVEN

What happened next was something of a blur for Carole. Billy Shefford didn’t want to stay with his father’s body. Almost catatonic with shock, he sat silently on the threadbare sofa in the reception area, incapable of any action. It was Frankie who made some calls, presumably summoning an ambulance, though it was obvious that it would be doing the service of a hearse rather than of life-saving transport. Her voice was steady, but unnoticed tears smudged her mascara and made dark runnels down the thick make-up of her face. Carole had the inappropriate thought that, with the jet-black hair, they made her look like a Goth.

As well as the emergency services, Frankie must have made other calls, because fairly soon after, Shannon arrived at the garage. She immediately went to her husband and threw her arms around him. He did not react, still isolated by trauma. Getting no response, Shannon went through to view the crushed body of her father-in-law.

She was absent some ten minutes, then returned. Her eyes were bright with tears. She went to sit on the sagging sofa next to Billy, cradling him like an unresponding baby.

A short while later, Malee entered from the forecourt. Shannon showed no signs of having seen her. Bill Shefford’s wife went straight through to Frankie’s office. She closed the door, so that Carole could not hear what the two women said to each other. It was a short conversation, then Malee emerged and went into the workshop.

Like her daughter-in-law, she spent some ten minutes with her husband’s corpse. Then she came back into the front office and sat on the remaining plastic chair. Nobody said anything.

Still pretending to toy with her crossword, Carole looked covertly sideways at Malee. It was impossible to read what emotions lay behind the impassive, but rather beautiful, Oriental face. Certainly, there were no tears.

Carole now realized there was no role for her to fulfil. In fact, there hadn’t been since the accident had happened. With unacknowledged waves to Billy and Frankie, she went out by the front doors. She told herself she didn’t go out through the workshop out of respect for the recently deceased, but the real reason was squeamishness. The single glimpse she had caught of Bill Shefford’s body in the inspection pit had been quite enough for her.

The Renault was still out the back, exactly where she’d parked it. The new windscreen-wiper blades would have to wait for another day.

‘So, he was killed by a falling gearbox?’

‘That’s what Billy said. And Bill himself told me he had to go and remove a gearbox, so it makes sense.’

‘And what might cause a gearbox to fall?’

‘Don’t look at me, Jude. I know absolutely nothing about mechanics.’ The thought struck Carole for the first time that she had now lost her go-to man for such services. Would Billy be as tolerant of her ignorance as his father had been? The thought of not having somewhere to take all her anxieties about the Renault was a worrying one. But she did not voice her anxiety.

‘Desperately sad.’ Jude sighed. ‘From all accounts, Bill had been in a bad way since his first wife died and that’s what? Seven years ago. Then he’d just got his life back on track with Malee …’

‘The “Mail Order Bride”,’ was Carole’s kneejerk interjection.

‘I wish you’d stop saying that,’ said Jude sharply. ‘It’s deeply insensitive.’

Carole was used to Jude disagreeing with her, but rarely with such overt criticism. She was subdued by the attack.

They were in an alcove near the welcoming open fire of the Crown and Anchor. Carole had felt disoriented when she returned from Shefford’s and had immediately rung Jude. (Going round and knocking on her neighbour’s door was not Carole’s way. To her, such behaviour had something Northern about it, like the worst excesses of Coronation Street.) Jude had suggested lunch at the pub and Carole, who always had to justify everything to herself, thought she deserved it after the traumas of the morning.

It had been only just twelve when they’d arrived at the Crown and Anchor, which felt very odd to Carole. Shock had played tricks with time and she felt sure it must be later than that. Arriving at Shefford’s that morning seemed like part of a different lifetime.

They’d both ordered fish and chips, good comfort food for a February lunchtime. (And in Ted Crisp’s pub, they knew the fish had been locally sourced.) Each woman had a glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Carole had protested she only wanted a small one, but didn’t put up much resistance when Jude ordered large. Warmth and company, she found, were diluting the aftershock of the morning’s events.

But Jude’s rebuke did still sting. Carole couldn’t think of a way of apologizing for what she’d said about Malee Shefford, but fortunately Jude, never one to bear grudges, had moved on. ‘I wonder how Rhona will react to the news.’

‘Rhona?’

‘Rhona Hampton. Shannon’s mother. I told you I’d been seeing her.’

‘Oh yes. For healing.’ Still disbelief in the word.

‘She certainly has it in for Billy Shefford. I haven’t heard her express an opinion on his father. But she’s sure to have one. Rhona Hampton is one of those women who has an opinion on everything.’

‘Did you know Bill well?’ asked Carole tentatively, prepared for potential jealousy. She always had the vague fear that Jude would turn out to know Fethering locals better than she did.

‘No. I’ve met him round the village once or twice – in Allinstore, you know … But, obviously, not having a car, I’ve never had any professional dealings with him.’

‘No, of course not.’ Carole looked pensive. ‘I wonder what will happen …?’

‘What will happen where?’

‘With the garage. Apparently, Bill had been talking about retirement recently. And if Billy took it over, he had plans for turning the place into a dealership for one of the big companies.’

‘Yes, I’d heard that from Rhona.’

‘But what’ll happen now?’ Carole repeated. ‘I wonder whether Bill had got round to making a new will … and whether Malee will become the sole beneficiary and inherit everything …?’

Jude looked at her friend, wary of another gibe about ‘Mail Order Brides’. But there wasn’t. Instead, Carole stood up briskly and said, ‘I see your glass is empty. Can I get you another?’

‘You going to have one?’

‘I’ll probably just have a coffee.’

‘Will you?’ Jude looked at Carole again, a small smile lurking round the corner of her mouth. It had the desired effect. Carole said, ‘No, I’ll have another Sauvignon Blanc.’ And they both went up to the bar.

This was partly because Ted Crisp had just appeared from the kitchen. Jude had given their first drinks order to Zosia, his Polish bar manager, but now the landlord was there, in his winter garb of faded sweatshirt and jeans. Maybe in acknowledgement of the cold weather, his beard hadn’t been trimmed for a long time. Carole wanted to give him her news. ‘Have you heard what’s happened up at Shefford’s, Ted?’

‘That Bill Shefford’s had an accident in his inspection pit and died? Yes, I heard about it.’

That was the infuriating thing about Fethering, Carole fumed inwardly. Even if you were the sole witness of an event in the village, it was almost impossible to be the first to tell people. There was a strange telepathy, a kind of bush telegraph, that spread news – particularly bad news – at a speed which most broadband providers could only aspire to. And which regularly frustrated Carole’s attempts get there first.

‘And,’ Ted went on, ‘I haven’t yet had the lunchtime rush of conspiracy theorists.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, come on, Carole. Man dies in suspicious circumstances in Fethering – only a matter of time before half the village have come in here with their ideas of who murdered him.’

‘But he wasn’t murdered. It was an accident.’

‘I’m sure it was. But how many people in Fethering are going to believe that? Anyway, how do you come to be so well informed?’

‘Because I was actually at Shefford’s when the accident happened.’

‘Were you? Respect.’ He nodded his head appropriately. ‘So, we’ve got someone in the Crown and Anchor who has an informed opinion about what actually happened in a case of unnatural death. That has to be a first.’

‘I don’t know why you call it “unnatural death”.’

‘Having a gearbox fall on your head could hardly be described as “natural”, Carole, could it?’

‘Well, maybe not.’

‘And from what I’ve heard, there are a few people who could benefit from poor old Bill Shefford being out of the way.’

‘What do you mean – from what you’ve heard?’ asked Jude.

‘I hear a lot in here. Apart from anything else, Billy Shefford’s quite a regular of an evening. And he doesn’t keep his opinions to himself. To put it mildly, he’s not a fan of his stepmother.’

‘Or his mother-in-law?’ Jude suggested.

‘You’re right there. It’s difficult to know with Billy, though. I think it’s mostly talk, but he’s got a short fuse. Quick-tempered. Typical redhead, I suppose. And he doesn’t hold his drink well.’

‘You mean he gets violent?’ asked Carole.

‘No, no, he’s a harmless drunk. Gets maudlin rather than violent. Sorry for himself. More likely to weep on someone’s shoulder than hit them. Sounds off while he drinks his first pint, gets more and more miserable with the second one.’

Carole hadn’t thought of it before, but of course Ted Crisp must be in a unique position to classify the kind of drinkers who came through the Crown and Anchor. Over the years he might have built up dossiers on all of them. She hoped he hadn’t fitted her drinking behaviour into any category.

The landlord turned a beady eye on her. ‘Anyway, Carole, you reckon Bill Shefford is another of your murders?’

‘What do you mean – my murders. I don’t have murders.’

‘No? Well, all right, not your own. You share them with Jude.’

He chuckled and Jude joined in. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think this is one of them. Sounds like a straightforward accident to me.’

‘Yeah?’ asked Ted. ‘Gearboxes are substantial bits of kit. Don’t just fall off. If they did, our highways’d be cluttered up with them.’

‘Bill did say he was going to remove one,’ Carole pointed out. ‘So, I suppose he loosened the … screws or whatever holds the thing in position and then it slipped or … I don’t know. Do you know how a gearbox is fixed into a car, Ted?’

‘Search me. I’m afraid I never was one of those kids who always wanted to know what went on under a car’s bonnet. More interested in what went on under a lady’s bonnet!’ He guffawed, demonstrating once again perhaps why his career as a stand-up comic had been short-lived.

‘Tell you, though,’ he went on, ‘there’s a bloke been coming in recently who’d know all about gearbox fixings.’

‘Oh?’

‘Just moved down here. Ex-car salesman. Got a crippled wife. Adrian something-or-other.’

Carole felt a small pang. She had known that her exclusive friendship with Adrian Greenford wouldn’t last long. He’d found his way to the Crown and Anchor without her help.

‘He’s in most nights,’ said Ted. ‘I’ll ask whether a gearbox is any good as a murder weapon. Oooh, and while I think of new people coming in, there was a bloke the other day asking after you, Jude.’

‘Oh?’

Carole another little pang. No doubt this would be another of her neighbour’s ex-lovers.

‘Some kind of therapist, I think … I gave him your number. Hope you don’t mind.’

‘No, that’s fine, Ted. Presumably he gave you a name?’

Ted grinned. ‘Jeremiah … which is a name and a half, if you ask me.’

‘Oh, I have actually had a call from him. We’re meeting up next week. Did he say why he wanted to contact me?’

‘I didn’t really get the details. There were a lot of customers in. But I gathered he wants to set up some clinic here in Fethering, bringing together lots of alternative therapists.’

‘I thought it might be something like that. I’m not sure whether that kind of thing would work here.’

There was no surprise that Carole should say, very frostily, ‘Nor am I.’

‘Well …’ Ted shrugged. ‘When you meet the amazing Jeremiah, Jude, that’s what it’ll be about. And, incidentally, I wanted to ask—’

But they didn’t find out what he wanted to ask, because at that moment the main door of the pub clattered open to admit a man wearing a yellow oilskin over a fuzzy jumper. Barney Poulton, a self-appointed Sage of Fethering, enjoyed propping up the bar of the Crown and Anchor, pontificating on everything and, generally, being one of the banes of Ted Crisp’s life.

‘Well,’ he announced as he entered, ‘I hear there’s been a murder up at Shefford’s Garage.’

And, once again, the Fethering rumour-mill was set in motion.