The Poisoning in the Pub

Fifteen

The healing had worked. The woman with the dodgy hip had left Woodside Cottage walking more easily and in a lot less pain. As always at such moments, Jude felt a mix of satisfaction and sheer exhaustion. Only someone who has done healing can know how much the process and concentration involved drains one’s energy.

She was infusing a restorative herbal tea when the phone rang. It was Sally Monks, the social worker who had provided Ray’s address for her. Her voice sounded tense. “I’ve only just heard the news.”

“About Ray?”

“Yes. Obviously I knew that there had been a death down at the Crown and Anchor, but I’ve only just heard that it was Ray who died. Wondered if you knew any more about it.”

“A bit. Not a lot.”

“Well, look, I can’t talk now. I’m on my way to an appointment and talking in the car – which I know I shouldn’t be – but I’ve got to drive through Fethering later this afternoon. Might you be around then?”

“Sure. What sort of time?”

“I can never be quite sure because my visits can get complicated, but hopefully fourish. That be OK?”

“Fine,” said Jude.

In fact it was after five when a black Golf parked outside Woodside Cottage and Sally Monks came bustling out. She was a tall redhead of striking looks. All Jude knew of her private life was that she didn’t wear a wedding ring, but someone who looked like that couldn’t lack for masculine attention. Jude had come across a good few social workers in the course of her working life, and found they fitted into three main categories. There were the ones who were simply bossy and always knew better than their clients. There were the ones who got so personally involved with the people they were meant to be looking after that they almost ended up needing social workers themselves. And there were the buck-passers, dedicated to the covering of their own backs, so that wherever responsibility ended up, it wasn’t with them.

Sally Monks was an exception who didn’t fit into any of the categories. She was the ultimate pragma-tist. The moment she encountered a problem, she started thinking of solutions to it. But she didn’t impose these solutions, she worked with her clients, so that they felt part of the process of finding a way forward. She was also very direct, she didn’t dress up the truth with vague reassurances. This characteristic, as well as an allergy to paperwork, frequently brought her into conflict with her employers. She had been the subject of any number of disciplinary meetings and reprimands, but the social services always stopped short of sacking her. They couldn’t afford to lose anyone who was that good at her job.

“Sorry to be late,” she said as she came through the front door (which Jude had left open to get some air moving round the house). “Client was an old boy who’s just moved into a nursing home, and who hates watching television in the communal telly room. I’ve tracked down his son to get a set into the old guy’s bedroom.”

“Are the residents allowed to have their own televisions?”

“No.” Sally Monks grinned. “But I’ve fixed that with the managers of the place.”

She put down her leather bag and flopped on to one of Jude’s heavily draped sofas, glowing not only with the heat, but also with another small victory over bureaucracy. She wore a black linen shirt and trousers, creased from too long spent in the car, but still looking pretty damned elegant.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“Love one.”

“Virtuously cooling or alcoholic?”

Sally Monks glanced at the watch on her slender wrist. “Oh, go on, you’ve twisted my arm. I was full of honourable intentions to write up three weeks’ backlog of case notes tonight, but…what the hell?”

“White wine be OK?”

“White wine would be perfect. Pinot Grigio for preference.”

“Sorry, don’t have that. Can you make do with a Chilean Chardonnay?”

“Oh, yes,” said Sally with a grin. “I’ve always been prepared to slum.”

As she got the drinks, Jude reflected how easily she and Sally always slipped back into relaxed banter. They didn’t really know each other that well, but there had never been any strain in their relationship. And some things – like their love lives – they just never discussed.

Jude also felt a slight guilt at how much less relaxed the atmosphere might have been had Carole been there. Much as she loved her neighbour, she knew there was always a necessary period of awkwardness when Carole was introduced to someone new. So it had been some relief to hear that that afternoon had been earmarked for one of her neighbour’s monthly Sainsbury shops. (Carole had forgotten her fabricated excuse of doing a big shop the previous Saturday.)

The sitting room of Woodside Cottage felt as warm as the day outside. There was no doubt the weather was getting hotter. Fethering residents mumbled darkly about global warming, with a complacent ignorance and the comfortable feeling that they’d probably be dead before it got really bad.

The two women sipped their wine gratefully. “So…” said Sally, “anything you can tell me that isn’t the usual Fethering inflated gossip?”

“Perhaps a bit. Carole and I were almost the first people to see the body.”

“Almost?”

“The chef at the Crown and Anchor, Ed Pollack, I think he probably saw Ray dead before we did.”

Sally Monks shook her head in pained disbelief. “I’m still having a problem taking it in. Ray, of all people. I can’t think of anyone who’s done less harm in his life.”

“That’s what everyone seems to say about him. Incidentally, what was his surname? I never heard anyone refer to him as anything other than ‘Ray’.”

“Witchett. Ray Witchett. He was one of the gentlest men I ever knew. I mean he was never going to be playing with a full deck, he’d got serious problems, but they didn’t manifest themselves in violence. I suppose he had a mental age of, I don’t know, under ten, but so long as he had his football and his television and all his magazines about people from the telly, he was fine. And that independent living scheme up at Copsedown Hall seemed to work very well for him. For all the people there. No, it’s a great set-up…” her brow darkened “…for as long as it lasts.”

“Oh?” asked Jude, picking up the hint.

“Funding threatened there, as well as everywhere else. Central government and local government both trying to close down places like that. Get more people out ‘into the community’…regardless of the fact that most of the people in places like that can’t cope ‘in the community’.” The social worker sighed with frustration. “Oh, don’t get me started on that. I’m afraid I very quickly lose my sense of proportion.”

“All right,” said Jude hastily. “Let’s not go there. Tell me, what actually was wrong with Ray? Is there a technical term for what he had?”

“Yes, there are lots of technical terms, lots of ‘syndromes’ describing various aspects of his condition, but basically he suffered the effects of being deprived of oxygen at birth. That’s where it all sprang from, his stunted growth, impairment of his motor functions and the mental incapacity.” Sally shook her head again. “I can’t believe he’s dead. Still, from all accounts it was total chaos up at the Crown and Anchor on Sunday. In that kind of mêlée anything can happen. I guess poor Ray was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I’m not so sure…”

Sally Monks looked up sharply. “What do you mean? Are you suggesting it wasn’t just a ghastly accident?”

“Well, there are a few odd facts about what happened. For a start, all of the fighting was round the front of the pub, and Ray’s body was found round the back. Carole and I looked, but there was no trail of blood. He hadn’t been moved. His body was lying where he had been killed. Also the weapon used was one of the knives from the pub’s kitchen. Well, all right, in the chaos it’s possible that some of the fighters out the front had raided the kitchen for weapons, but I don’t think it’s likely.”

“So you’re saying that Ray was deliberately murdered?”

“It looks that way.”

“But why?” Sally Monks’ pretty forehead wrinkled with confusion. “As I said, he hadn’t got an enemy in the world. He wouldn’t have knowingly done anything to upset anyone.”

“But he might have known something that somebody wanted kept quiet. I can’t imagine that Ray was the most discreet person when it came to keeping secrets.”

“No. He’d blurt out anything to anyone.”

“You seem to know him very well, Sally.”

“Yes, he was part of my caseload while he was still living with his mother. I used to visit them a lot. But she was getting so infirm that the situation couldn’t continue. So I arranged for him to go to Copsedown Hall, which, after a few initial hiccups, suited him very well. I thought I’d really got a result there, you know, giving him some independence before the old girl did finally pop her clogs. Copsedown Hall comes under another social worker’s remit…you wouldn’t believe the tangles of bureaucracy in our world…so I stopped seeing Ray on a regular basis, but I gather it was really working out for him.” She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, suddenly teary. “And now this has happened.” But she quickly halted any potential slide into melancholy. “Anyway, Jude, you implied Ray might have known something that someone wanted to keep quiet. Am I allowed to know more?”

Briefly Jude filled Sally Monks in on her visit to Copsedown Hall the previous Saturday.

“So he admitted changing the trays of scallops round?”

“Yes. But he thought he was doing good. Whoever persuaded him to make the switch convinced him that he would be saving the Crown and Anchor from an outburst of food poisoning.”

“Whereas in fact he was doing the exact opposite. God, what kind of person would take advantage of someone like Ray in that way? Must have been someone who knew something about his character. The bastard was appealing to one of Ray’s most basic instincts. Ray was always trying to help out, trying to make things better. If he had a fault, it was his desire to please everyone. Which is why he hated it so when people lost their tempers with him. That used to upset him terribly.”

“And when he got upset, he went to his mother’s?” said Jude, thinking of the effect of Ted Crisp’s uncharacteristic outburst against Ray.

“Yes,” said Sally. But she sounded preoccupied as she continued with the chain of logic she had been constructing. “So Ray was stopped from telling you the name of the person behind the poisoning by the appearance of Viggo?”

“Yes. Do you know Viggo?”

“Come across him a few times. Fantasist, and I’d have thought pretty harmless. But I may be wrong about that. As I recall, he had an obsession with guns, watched lots of violent movies. I think he wanted to go into the army, but they wouldn’t have him. Big disappointment for him, I seem to remember. But are you suggesting that he deliberately stopped Ray from spilling the beans to you?”

“No, I think his appearance in the Copsedown Hall kitchen at that moment was just coincidence.”

“But you reckon whoever it was who got Ray to swap the trays of scallops was also the person who killed him to keep him quiet?”

Jude shrugged. “It’s a vaguely plausible theory. Only one I’ve got, anyway. Mind you, I don’t have anything in the way of proof…”

“Don’t be picky,” said Sally Monks. Her red hair swung as she shook her head at the enormity of what had happened. “God, I’d like to get the bastard who did this.”

“So would I.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help in any investigation you may be carrying out…?”

“Thank you. I’m sure there’ll be other things I want to ask you,” said Jude, ever mindful of the danger of Carole’s extremely sensitive nose being put out of joint. “And one thing I can ask you right now. Do you think Ray’s mother would talk to me?”

“I’m sure she would.” Sally Monks produced a Post-it note and scribbled a phone number down on it. “Nell will be absolutely devastated by what’s happened. I must go and see her too, but I can’t for a couple of days. Ray was her world, you know.”