The Shooting in the Shop

Twenty-Nine

Their champagne glasses recharged and delicious nibbles supplied by the black-clad waitresses, the two women wandered towards the source of the music. In the hall Ricky Le Bonnier, his arm round Lola’s waist, was, as ever, the centre of attention, regaling the group around him with more of his stories. Seeing him there and seeing the look of adoration in his wife’s eyes, Carole felt another surge of anger. She thought of her conversation with Anna, the details of which she had told Jude on the drive over to Fedborough. What was it with men, particularly men of Ricky’s age, that stopped them from being content with what they had? Why would men like him betray a beautiful, intelligent girl like Lola with a sad, neurotic widow like Anna? Was it the galloping approach of death that motivated them? Was it a feeling that in some conjectural heaven their score would be marked down for not having bedded enough women? Carole Seddon would never understand men.

From what Ricky was saying, the band performing in his sitting room were extremely famous. Carole hadn’t heard of them, but Jude had and was suitably impressed to find them playing in a private house. Their host was talking about the band as the two women joined the circle around him.

“Of course, I knew them when they were just five pimply-faced lads from Droitwich. Sent a demo and I summoned them up to my office in…I think it was Chrysalis I was working for then. Anyway, I could see they had potential, and I could see that Jed was going to be one hell of a charismatic front man…as soon as he had run a brush through his hair and done a major bombardment of his mush with Clearasil. The girls in the office were drooling at him even with the state he in was then. So I gave the lads a bit of advice on their repertoire. They were still too much folk-influenced then to chart in a major way, but I got them to move more into the soft-rock world. I also had the disagreeable task of telling them their keyboard player wasn’t up to the job. Always nasty doing that, particularly when you’ve got a group who’ve been together since school. But if you want to hit the top, you can’t carry passengers. Just the same with the Beatles. I remember telling my old mate Ringo that he was the luckiest bugger in the entire world and, you know, he said…”

So Ricky Le Bonnier continued his routine. From his demeanour no one would ever have known that he’d lost a stepdaughter only ten days before. Jude looked at Carole, who immediately understood her rueful grimace. It wasn’t going to be easy to get Ricky on his own that evening. So far as grilling him was concerned, their investigation might have to be put on hold.

The same would probably be true of Lola, but just as Carole and Jude were edging away from Ricky’s circle, she detached herself from her husband and hurried up to them. “Jude, you know I talked to you about possibly babysitting Mabel and Henry one day…”

“Sure.”

“Well, it might be sooner rather than later.”

“When?”

Lola grimaced apologetically. “Tomorrow afternoon. It may not happen, but Flora’s suddenly announcing that she has to go back to her flat tomorrow. I hope we’ll be able to persuade her to stay a little longer, but she can be stubborn and if she insists, Ricky’ll have to drive her back up to London and I may have to go too…and Varya’s seeing in the New Year with some Russians and copious amounts of vodka in Southampton and I’m not sure when she’ll be back…”

“I’d be happy to do it.”

“As I say, it may not happen.”

“Call me on the mobile in the morning if you need me.”

“OK. Bless you, Jude.” And Lola slipped back to join her husband, whose arm instinctively once again encircled her waist.

Jude announced she wanted to see the famous group at closer quarters, so they drifted into the sitting room. There were people dancing. A lot of young people and, to Carole’s distaste, a lot of old people too. She didn’t enjoy seeing her contemporaries gyrating and waving their arms about in the air, it was undignified. Beside her, Jude’s body was already swaying to the heavy rock beat. Carole, who was too inhibited ever to have ventured on to a dance floor, felt even more envious of her neighbour’s instinctive responses.

A tall man with long grey hair in a ponytail moved towards Jude and grinned at her. She grinned back and without any words they started dancing together. They didn’t actually touch, but the way their bodies mirrored each other’s movements seemed somehow more intimate than touching. Carole edged her way back to the hall. A waitress offered to top up her glass, but she put her hand over it. She had to navigate the Renault safely back to Fethering, and the Sussex police were notoriously vigilant on New Year’s Eve.

From long experience, Carole knew there were two available options at a party where you didn’t know anyone. One was to stand alone with your drink, possibly showing excessive interest in the contents of your host’s bookshelves, but still looking like a social outcast. The other was to stride purposely about the place, as if you were looking for someone. The larger the gathering and the more rooms it took place in, the better this second approach worked. Because if you kept doing circuits of the entire party, you didn’t keep walking past the same people, and when you did see them a second time you could pretend that you’d just finished talking to one very interesting person you knew, and you were making your way to talk to another even more interesting person you knew.

There was no contest. Carole Seddon opted for the second approach. Wearing a look of intense intellectual concentration, she sallied forth through the throng in the hall to a room which she had not yet explored. There was a considerable crush inside, which suited her purposes admirably. Squeezing past people reinforced the false impression of having somewhere to go to. And apologizing to them as she squeezed past produced the illusion of conversation.

At the end of the room an archway led into another, equally heaving with guests, and from this one glass doors opened on to a garden terrace. In spite of the winter cold, there were a few people standing there, so Carole, arguing to herself that the fictional person she was looking for was as likely to be on the terrace as anywhere else, went out to join them.

And, contrary to her expectation, she saw someone she did know: Piers Duncton. No great surprise that he should have gone out into the open air to have a cigarette. He was on his own, his angular figure propped against the terrace railings, looking into the garden. Out there strings of fairy lights cascaded from tall trees, lending an aura of magic to the scene.

Carole had no hesitation in going straight up to him and saying, “Good evening, Piers.”

He turned, squinting against the light from the room she had just left, and it took him a moment to identify her. “Ah, Carole,” he said eventually.

“How are you, Piers?”

“Oh, you know.” He took a swig from the wine glass in his hand and looked disappointed to find it was already empty. There was something glassy about his stare, and Carole realized that he was very drunk.

“I suppose I should say: Happy New Year,” she said conventionally.

“Happy New Year?” He thought about it. “I don’t see much happiness in this New Year, I must say.” He raised his empty glass. “Look, I’ve got to find some more booze.”

Fortunately, at that moment one of the diligent waitresses appeared on the terrace armed with bottles, so Carole didn’t immediately lose her quarry. Piers took a long swig from his refilled glass and looked at her. “Happy New Year,” he repeated. “Polly’s dead, and you’re wishing me a happy New Year.”

“It’s very sad, I know, but you said your relationship was about to end.”

“Yes, but I didn’t want it to end like this, not with her remains lying in some police morgue being picked over by forensic pathologists.” Spurred on by drunkenness, Piers Duncton was wallowing in his grief. “Nobody deserves that, least of all a bright, lovely girl like Polly.”

“No. I was surprised to see you at Old Garge’s hut yesterday.”

“I wasn’t expecting to find you there either.”

“Can I ask why you went there, Piers?”

“You don’t have to ask. You heard what I told the old fart. That the police wanted to talk to him. For reasons of his own, he wasn’t keen on the idea of that, so he decided he’d make himself scarce.”

“But why did you take it upon yourself to tell him? Do you know him well?”

“I’d met him once before. On the beach with Ricky.”

“And it was your idea to go and warn Old Garge about the police coming?”

Piers looked uncomfortable. “No. Ricky wanted me to.”

“Wasn’t Ricky in London on Tuesday?”

“Yes, but Lola had apparently rung him to tell him about the police being keen on interviewing Old Garge, and she said Ricky wanted me to go and warn him.”

Carole mentally squirrelled away that information. Her suspicious mind registered that Lola could have made up the instruction from her husband. It could have been her own initiative to send Piers down to the hut on Fethering Beach.

“So do you know where Old Garge is now?” Carole asked directly.

The young man’s glazed eyes narrowed and he looked rather sly as he replied, “Oh, he’s quite safe for the time being. Out of the way in a nice little flat. It’ll take the police a while to find him there.” He smiled complacently as he downed the remains of his wine. “Ex-wives have their uses.”

“What do you mean? Whose ex-wife are you – ?”

But she’d lost him. Muttering that he needed to get more wine, Piers Duncton brushed past her and was quickly absorbed by the throng inside.

Carole stayed on the terrace for a moment, piecing together the information she had just received. And the more she thought about it, the more excited she became. Her suspicion had been proved right. Old Garge – back in his Rupert Sonning days – must have been married to Flora Le Bonnier. He was Ricky’s father. And he was now safely ensconced in his ex-wife’s flat up in St John’s Wood.

Which was maybe why Flora was so keen to get back to London.

Carole looked for the old actress as she went back through the house, but there was no sign of her. She asked Lola, who happened to be passing and was told that Flora had gone up to bed. She was too tired to stay up and see the New Year in.

Carole checked her watch. Only eleven-twenty. The thought of staying in Fedingham Court House till midnight, and then enduring the excesses of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and everyone hugging and kissing each other and…She wouldn’t mind slipping away before all that happened. Was there a chance that Jude would be equally keen to leave?

She found her neighbour still in the room with the music. Still dancing with the same tall man, though dancing rather closer now. As Jude caught her eye, Carole mouthed, “Think I might be off. Do you want to come?”

“Oh, I’m not sure…”

“Is this your lift?” asked the man, looking at Carole as though she were an unlicensed minicab driver. He winked at her. “Don’t worry, love. I’ll see Jude gets back home safely.”

Carole looked around for her host and hostess, but didn’t try that hard. Better just to slip away and then thank them in a day or two. Not on the phone. She was sure they wouldn’t even recognize her name if she rang to thank them. No, she’d post a well-chosen card saying something like: “it was such a wonderfully lively party that I simply couldn’t find you to say thank you at the end, but I did want to say how much…” She’d done it many times before.

She also wondered for a moment whether Anna had fulfilled her intention of attending. There hadn’t been any sign of her, but in a crush like that it would have been easy to miss someone. On reflection, though, Carole thought that actually facing the prospect of seeing Ricky and Lola together in their home, Anna would have chickened out.

On the gravel outside the house a minivan was decanting a small band of men with kilts and bagpipes. Carole felt even more relieved that she was escaping the midnight rituals.

As celebratory fireworks from Fedingham Court House garden illuminated the West Sussex sky, it was a very stony-faced Carole Seddon who drove back to Fethering and High Tor.