The Witness at the Wedding

Twenty

When she got back from taking Gulliver for his walk on Fethering Beach the next morning, Carole was surprised to see her son’s BMW parked outside High Tor. Stephen had his own key, and was sitting in the kitchen waiting for her. He came into the hall when she opened the front door.

“What’s up, Stephen?” she asked, as she used a towel to brush the sand off Gulliver’s paws. “Is Gaby all right?”

“She’s fine. Well, she’s OK, anyway. No, it’s her brother I’m worried about.”

Carole closed the door and followed Gulliver through into the kitchen. “Why? Where is he?” Without asking, she started preparing coffee.

“That’s what we don’t know. After we’d left you in the pub, we went over to the Dauncey Hotel and booked a room for him. He was a bit iffy about that, until I said I’d pay. Then Gaby and Robert and I had a drink in the bar, while Phil went up to talk to his mother. Marie had been feeling tired, so she’d gone up to bed early.

“Gaby and I were tired too, so we were off to bed after one drink with Robert. Gaby just dropped into her mother’s room to say goodnight, and found Marie in a terrible state. Apparently, she and Phil had had some kind of row, and he’d stormed out. He wasn’t in his room or anywhere else in the hotel. Robert reckoned he’d have just gone off to the nearest pub, and went out to look for him. But I saw Robert at breakfast, and he hadn’t found him. Nobody’s seen Phil since he left his mother’s room.”

“He might just have leapt on his beloved bike and driven back home to Hoddesdon.”

“He might. But there’s no reply from there. Or from his mobile.”

“Oh, come on, it’s still pretty early on a Sunday morning, Stephen. We know Phil has a habit of going on overnight benders. He’s probably passed out in some pub car park somewhere.”

“Yes, maybe.” Her son sighed. “Sorry to bother you with this. It’s just that Gaby’s worried. She’s in such a highly strung state at the moment.”

“Who can blame her?”

“Anyway, Gaby was thinking that, wherever Phil is, he’s probably with his chum Bazza, so she was wondering when you last saw him?”

Briefly Carole detailed the timing of Bazza’s departure from the Crown and Anchor the previous night. “And he did have a call on his mobile while he was there. Said he was going to call back. Maybe that was Phil fixing up to meet?”

“Maybe.” Stephen took an almost despairing sip from his coffee.

“You are all right, are you?” Carole dared to ask. “I mean, you and Gaby?”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re fine. It’s just…well, I don’t need to tell you, Mum, this is all very stressful, particularly for Gaby. All she wants to do is to get back to the work she loves and to plan her wedding, and yet the chances of her doing that just seem to get more and more remote. Every time she thinks she can relax, something else happens to tighten up the screw of tension. I mean, Marie seems to be in a worse state than ever after her row with Phil.”

“Did you discover what that was about?”

Stephen shook his head. “Impossible to get that kind of stuff out of Marie, even when she’s in her normal state. Now she’s totally illogical.”

“Hm. Robert seems to be the only vaguely normal member of that family.” As soon as she’d spoken she realized her tactlessness. “Except for Gaby, of course, when she’s not so stressed.”

Her son smiled bleakly.

“By the way, Jude and I talked to Bazza last night.”

“That must have been an interesting conversation. I’m sure Oscar Wilde wished he could have been there, taking notes.”

“Don’t you believe it, Stephen. Bazza’s not as inarticulate as he might appear. Has some very interesting views on the definition of criminal activity.”

“Oh?”

“The main one being that if he does something, then by definition it’s not a crime.”

“Ah.”

“But, more importantly, I got the pretty firm impression that Bazza was involved in arranging the car for Howard Martin that night.”

“Really?” Stephen was shocked.

“Yes. Can’t prove it, but he virtually admitted as much.”

“No wonder Inspector Pollard’s keen to talk to him.”

“I wonder where he’s been lying low the last few days? Phil clearly had no difficulty contacting him.”

“No. I’ll give Pollard a call. He should be informed that Bazza’s down here.”

“I agree.”

“Mum, you said you thought Bazza arranged the car for Howard, but you don’t think he’s the murderer?”

“No. Murder’s way out of his league. Someone else asked him to arrange the car.”

“Who?”

“Bazza said he only did that kind of work for his mates.”

Stephen sighed wearily. “Things aren’t looking too good for Phil’s innocence, are they?”

Jude sounded excited when she summoned Carole round to Woodside Cottage later that morning, but Gita Millington looked even more excited. She was bouncing and bubbling with energy. Her clothes were not as formal as the black trouser suit, but still very smart casual. The make-up was perfectly in place, and again she looked the epitome of the successful career woman.

As soon as Carole was sat down with a pre-lunch Chardonnay, Gita launched into her routine. “Jude’s probably told you that I went to London last night. In fact, I stayed the night in my flat.” Carole was not aware of what an achievement that represented. “And Jude probably told you that I had dinner with a friend. What she didn’t tell you – because she didn’t know – was that in fact the friend I had dinner with was a solicitor called Jerome Clancy.”

“Oh.”

“I know him,” said Carole, with some surprise. “Really?”

“I used to have quite a lot of dealings with him when I worked at the Home Office. Big on human rights issues, prison reform, that kind of stuff.”

“Exactly. Anyway, I’ve consulted him before when I’ve been doing articles on legal issues or the prison service. Well, I’d talked to Jerome on the phone about the questions you’d put to me…you know, Michael Brewer’s release from prison and his subsequent movements, and last night, over dinner, he told me what he’d found out.”

So animated was Gita as she spelled this out that Carole began to wonder whether there was a romantic element in her friendship with Jerome Clancy. Or maybe it was just the excitement of achieving something concrete after her months of evident depression.

“Michael Brewer was released from Parkhurst Prison in October 2004, having served the full term of his thirty-year sentence for the murder of Janine Buckley. To the end, incidentally, protesting his innocence of the crime.”

Gita Millington left another dramatic pause, and Carole took advantage of it to ask, “But there was never any question of his guilt, was there?”

The journalist shook her head. “No. Brewer’s lawyers made two appeals against the conviction, but both claims were rejected. The amount of evidence against Michael Brewer was overwhelming.”

“All right,” said Jude excitedly. “So where is he now?”

“This is the bizarre bit.” Gita Millington frowned at the incongruity of what she was about to say. “Since his release, Michael Brewer has vanished off the face of the earth.”

“I heard that,” said Carole, “but do you have any detail on what happened to him?”

“From the moment he left Parkhurst, there’s been no sighting of Michael Brewer anywhere.”

“Well,” said Jude reasonably, “after what he’d been through, you could hardly blame him if he just wanted to slip off the radar, settle down somewhere quiet with a new identity or…surely it’s up to him.”

“Yes, it’s up to him, but there are still obligations he has, as an ex-prisoner. He has to keep in touch with the authorities, turn up for appointments with his probation officer. Weekly at first, then at greater intervals.”

“And has he not turned up for any of them?”

“Not a single one, Jude.”

“But surely he can’t just get away with that? Aren’t the police looking for him?”

“Oh yes. There’s been a warrant out for him for some time. But I’m not sure that finding him was that high up the police’s priorities – until recently.”

“So, as you say, he’s vanished off the face of the earth.”

“Yes, he has.”

There was a silence while the two women took in the implications of this news. Then Carole said, “Which could mean one of two things. Either he’s lying low, for reasons of his own – possibly plotting revenge on the people who he believes to have done him wrong…”

“Or?” asked Jude.

“Or he’s lying even lower.”

“How do you mean?”

“In a shallow grave, perhaps? Maybe somebody wanted revenge on Michael Brewer?”

Carole heard it on the early evening news. A man’s body had been found in a burnt-out car on a lonely part of the South Downs near Fedborough.