The Sinking Admiral. Simon Brett

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СКАЧАТЬ was halfway back to her cottage, the wind no less brutal than it had been in the middle of the night, the sky only slightly less lowering, when a new thought occurred to her. Ben Milne and his cameraman Stan had been filming most of yesterday afternoon. Cutaways of the pub, close-ups of the dust caught in the nautical ceiling decoration – ‘for atmosphere only, love’, Stan had assured her, with a wink to Ben – long shots of the desolate seascape beyond the small windows, and plenty of vox pops, where Ben – as producer-presenter – had his own style, simultaneously enthused but also laid-back, just this side of too cocky, yet not quite as charming as he no doubt thought himself. They must have taken at least a couple of hours of video footage, and not all of it could have been her own or Meriel’s cleavage, despite Stan’s obvious interest in the female form. She’d been too busy with the influx of non-regulars, all of them keenly hoping to get caught on camera, to pay much attention to the people who’d visited Fitz yesterday afternoon, but Amy was aware that the stairs up to the Bridge had been busier than usual. And somewhere in all that footage there might well be a clue to what else had been planned yesterday, something that would make the police look more closely into their suicide theory, something that would help her help them – even if they clearly did not want her help.

      Amy turned on her heel and headed back to the pub. The last she’d seen of him, Ben was stomping upstairs to his room, with dire threats about suing the pub if the promised Wi-Fi didn’t work, and how the hell was he supposed to copy all their film in the time the police had given him. Amy knew enough about technology to know he needed neither Wi-Fi nor a great deal of time to copy from the camera memory card to his own laptop’s hard disc or a memory stick, but she’d assumed he was using the tantrum to get himself off and back into bed, making up for lost sleep and last night’s hangover.

      She let herself back into the pub and checked in the kitchen. She was pleased to see Meriel appeared to have tidied everything well enough, and then went upstairs to Ben’s door. She knocked, and was surprised when Ben opened up almost immediately.

      ‘About bloody time,’ he said, walking away, neither looking at her, nor removing his headphones, ‘just put it on the bed, I asked for that over an hour ago.’

      ‘Asked for what?’ Amy said, standing in the doorway.

      ‘Huh?’ Ben turned and was clearly surprised to see Amy. His frown burrowed even further into his forehead for a moment, until he remembered he was frowning at Amy, and he fancied her, or he would do if she’d shown any sign of fancying him back, as most women did. He tried – too late – to offer his lopsided grin, the one his viewers seemed to find so attractive.

      ‘Who were you expecting?’ Amy asked.

      ‘That woman, in the kitchen, the one who thinks she’s the next voluptuous telly cook.’

      ‘Meriel,’ Amy prompted

      ‘Merry hell, yes.’ Ben chuckled, pleased with his own joke, no doubt planning something similar for the documentary voiceover. ‘I went down over an hour ago, you were scrubbing hell out of that old table in the corner, I asked her if I could have a sandwich and a cup of coffee. If I have to waste good filming time copying stuff for the police, I might as well have some food after all. She said she’d bring me something up.’

      ‘She must have forgotten.’

      ‘I thought she wanted to get a series out of me?’

      ‘Maybe she’s realised you don’t do “shows”,’ Amy said with a grin, copying Ben’s earlier tone to the policemen.

      ‘Yeah, or maybe she’s gone off to kill a fatted calf and present it to me, apple in mouth and fat glistening.’

      ‘When I last saw her she was putting the stuff she’d been prepping into the freezer. The police have insisted the pub’s closed for business.’

      ‘They’re not about to turn me out of my room, are they?’

      ‘No. Actually, another thought… Fish market.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Tuesday. Fish market, well, more of an old transit van, comes all along the coastal villages, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, around about this time of day. That’s where Meriel’ll probably be.’

      ‘Whole poached sea bass I’ll be getting then?’

      ‘More than likely.’

      They both smiled, and then Amy was suddenly aware that she was standing in Ben’s bedroom, the unmade bed astonishingly inviting, no doubt due to her lack of sleep, not at all to the lopsided grin Ben was trying out on her again.

      ‘I was wondering…’ she said.

      ‘Yes?’

      The grin again; Amy wondered if his cheek ever ached. ‘The police are pretty sure Fitz committed suicide.’

      ‘The note’s a bit of a clue there.’

      No grin this time, and Amy ignored him. ‘But I doubt Fitz even knew where the envelopes where in the office, let alone how to type and print a note as well as an envelope. He is – he was – a complete technophobe. Actually, worse than that, not phobic, he honestly didn’t care, one way or the other, he wasn’t interested in learning. I don’t believe he wrote that note.’

      ‘Then…’

      ‘Then someone else did. And that someone else may well have visited Fitz yesterday afternoon, the place was heaving, I have no idea who went up and down those steps to the Bridge. But what I do know is that Fitz was very much himself, and truly excited about what he had planned for his “Last Hurrah” as he called it. Something happened between him and one of his visitors – maybe more than one of them, I don’t know – but something must have happened. Either something that did make him kill himself – even though I can’t see him doing that, or…?’

      ‘Or indeed. And you think some of my footage might show who went up to see the old man?’

      ‘I do.’

      Try as he might, Ben just couldn’t stop his dark eyes lighting up. Amy watched him as he worked it all out, in the sharpest televisual terms, she was sure – a derelict old pub, a ‘character’ of a publican, a potential suicide that segued neatly into murder. She couldn’t really blame him, he’d come all this way hoping to make a perfectly ordinary little programme that gently mocked local characters and made people up and down the country feel better about their own stolid lives from the safety of their own soft sofas, and now he’d been handed a real life actual drama. No wonder his dark eyes gleamed. To his credit, he didn’t leap up and punch his fist in the air – not that the low beams of the room would have allowed it – he simply nodded.

      ‘Good point. We can have a look if you like – as soon as I’ve given the copy of the footage to the police. And maybe we could have a coffee and a bite to eat while we do it?’ He looked around the bedroom, perhaps thinking of it as a suitable venue for their investigation, but something he saw in Amy’s eye prevented him from making the suggestion. ‘I’ll bring the laptop down to the bar and get set up, while you go and see what treats the lovely Meriel might have left in the fridge.’

      Amy went back down to the kitchen, while Ben quickly gathered together his gear. At least her suggestion had wiped the lopsided grin off his face.

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