A Christmas Cracker: The only festive romance to curl up with this Christmas!. Trisha Ashley

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СКАЧАТЬ a friend, now she’s blabbed to you?’ I suggested.

      ‘Tabitha Coombs thinks she is, that’s why she confided in her. But Kate says she and her husband were friends with Tabitha’s fiancé, Jeremy, for years before they got engaged and though they didn’t much like her they just had to put up with her.’

      ‘Generous of them,’ I commented drily.

      ‘She said Tabitha was probably cheating on her fiancé with the owner of Champers&Chocs, as well as being involved in the scam, so maybe she’s got some kind of axe to grind. But I don’t really care what’s driving her, so long as she’s willing to introduce us. Then the rest is up to me.’

      Before Kate had contacted him, Charlie had already had a tip-off from a disgruntled Champers&Chocs customer about cheap fizzy wine being sold for vintage champagne, so she had given him an easy way into his investigation.

      ‘Never look a gift-snitch in the mouth,’ I said.

      The two women parted company and Kate slowly drifted across in our direction in a casual sort of way, talking to one or two people en route.

      When she reached us, Charlie introduced us.

      ‘This is my friend Randal Hesketh – his family home is nearby, so I invited him along just for the ride. Randal, this is Kate.’

      ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Kate said, all flirty smiles and big, pale blue eyes with fluttering eyelashes. I supposed she was pretty enough, but since she wasn’t in the least my type her flirting didn’t have any effect on me. This seemed to disconcert her.

      ‘Are you ready to introduce us to your friend?’ Charlie asked.

      She made a moue that looked so cutesy she’d probably practised it in the mirror a million times. ‘As I’ve already said, she’s not a friend, it was just that Luke and I had to tolerate her after she and Jeremy got engaged. But I always felt there was something wrong about her – and my instincts are usually right.’

      ‘Then let’s get on and find out the truth,’ he said. ‘Do you remember your story, about how we got talking and you found out I was a journalist for Lively Lancashire magazine, though I’d walked into the gallery by chance?’

      Kate nodded. ‘So I told you a bit about the artist and her day job as a packer in a warehouse, and then offered to introduce you. Got it,’ she said.

      She gave me another of those flirty glances. ‘Are you coming, too, Randal?’

      ‘No, I’ll stay here; it’s none of my business,’ I said, feeling a distaste for the whole Judas situation. I may be in a similar line of work, going undercover to get film footage for the independent TV programme I work for, Hellish Holidays, but it’s more impersonal.

      ‘See you later,’ I added to Charlie.

      I took a glass of water from a passing tray, since fizz wasn’t my thing, whatever it was labelled as, and surveyed the gallery. It was still crowded and buzzing, so the exhibition seemed to be a success. I noticed red ‘Sold’ stickers had been affixed to several picture frames too and, on impulse, bought one myself that had taken my fancy as we entered. It was of a helmeted woman in a chariot-like wheelchair, entombed in a Sleeping Beauty tangle of flowering briars. A figure was hacking his way in, but he looked more like the Grim Reaper than a handsome prince.

      I’d just paid and arranged to have it delivered to my family home in the nearby hamlet of Godsend after the exhibition had ended, when Charlie came back looking pleased with himself.

      ‘Got what you wanted?’

      He nodded. ‘She’s agreed to ask her boss if I can have a tour of Champers&Chocs and do a short interview, so I can include it in an article on local entrepreneurs. He won’t be able to resist the publicity, but I could see she wasn’t keen on the idea. Then the fiancé – that bloke she’s talking to now – showed up and monopolised the conversation, so I left it at that. Bit of a know-it-all tosser, I’d say, too fond of his own voice.’

      The man was thin and not much taller than Tabitha, with an arty lock of marmalade-coloured hair falling over his eyes in a very doomed-poet kind of way. He seemed to be lecturing her about something.

      ‘If that’s the fiancé, then your Kate was all over him like treacle when he arrived a few minutes ago,’ I said. ‘I assumed he was her husband. So, maybe he’s the axe she’s grinding?’

      Charlie grinned. ‘You could be right. She told me her husband couldn’t make it tonight, but that didn’t stop her flirting with you earlier, too, I noticed.’

      ‘Do you think she’s telling the truth about Tabitha’s involvement?’

      ‘No idea. The scam’s certainly going on, because we’ve had champagne samples analysed, but I’ve taken what she said with a pinch of salt,’ he said. ‘Innocent until proven guilty. Tabby – everyone calls her that, apparently – was certainly uneasy as soon as Champers&Chocs was mentioned and suspiciously unenthusiastic about the company being featured in a magazine.’

      ‘That’s all right: it’s not going to be,’ I said drily. ‘Though of course she may be even less keen on it appearing all over a TV programme exposing what’s been going on.’

      I looked over my shoulder at Tabitha Coombs as we left. The crowd had begun to thin a little and she was staring after Charlie with those startlingly light grey eyes under brows drawn together into a formidable Frida Kahlo frown. Then the fiancé said something and put a proprietorial arm around her and she looked up at him with such a loving smile that her face was quite transformed.

      I felt a sudden pang: she looked like a woman in love and I found it hard to believe that she was having an affair with another man.

      But, whether she was or not, if she was involved in the label-swapping scam, then she was risking her happiness for some easy money and her house of cards was about to come tumbling down.

       Chapter 3: Bang to Rights

      ‘So Harry, my boss at Champers&Chocs, told me to show the reporter the packing room and give him some information about the business, because it would be good publicity,’ I told Emma, my best and, as it turned out, only friend. It was only my second phone call out since I’d been sent to prison and it was good to unburden myself of the whole sorry story.

      I’d have rung her and told her everything the moment I was first arrested, had her husband, Des, not been back from his latest foreign contract. He’d turned into such a possessive control freak he even resented sharing Emma with her female friends.

      ‘And I suppose the reporter snooped?’ she said.

      ‘Yes, when I had to leave him for a few minutes to go to the office to answer an urgent phone call. The line was dead when I got there and I was so naïve, it never occurred to me that this Charlie Clancy had set up the call to distract me. As soon as I was out of sight, he somehow got into the back room, even though it was usually locked when Harry wasn’t there, and photographed the crates of fake champagne.’

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ