The Death on the Downs. Simon Brett

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      The man shook himself like a dog, as if to remove stray raindrops, though in fact there were none on the waxed shoulders of his jacket. He gave a quick nod to Carole through in the Snug, though with an air of puzzlement, almost of affront. How did she come to be there? He had the look of a man who prided himself on being first into the Hare and Hounds at six every evening.

      ‘Evening, Freddie,’ said Will Maples with automatic bonhomie. ‘How’s your week been?’

      Carole corrected her surmise. It wasn’t every evening that the regular made his appearance. Perhaps just Friday evenings.

      ‘Bloody awful,’ the man called Freddie replied. ‘Up in the Smoke, dealing with bloody idiots all the time. Wonderful to be back down here. Minute I get off the train at Barnham, I feel my lungs opening up for the first time in a week. Bloody great to be back in Weldisham.’

      On a day like this, thought Carole, in pitch darkness?

      ‘Oh, it’s a beautiful village,’ the manager agreed, in a tone that made not even the smallest attempt at sincerity. ‘There you are.’ He placed the pint on the counter. ‘In a jug, as per usual.’ But his next words went even further to undermine his customer’s status as a genuine ‘regular’. ‘Settling in all right then, are you?’

      The man called Freddie raised his hand dramatically to freeze the conversation and took a long swallow from his tankard. He smacked his lips in a cartoon manner and licked the little line of froth from the upper one. ‘Sorry, old man. Best moment of the week. Can’t talk till I’ve done that, eh?’

      He chuckled fruitily. Will Maples joined in, a meaningless echo.

      ‘Oh, we’re getting there,’ Freddie went on. ‘Pam has the worst of it, of course. She’s been up and down from town like a bloody yo-yo this week. Trying to stop the builders treading wet footprints all over the bloody kitchen. Waiting in for deliveries of fridges and what have you from men who never bloody turn up when they say they’re going to.’

      ‘Still, early days.’

      Carole was beginning to wonder whether Will Maples had a stock of bland responses to every kind of customer’s remark and moved a mental dial round to the right one as required. Maybe it was a skill all landlords had to develop. She wondered whether Ted Crisp, owner of the Crown and Anchor in Fethering, had a similar range of programmed responses. Not for use with her, of course, but with the general run of his customers. Though she wasn’t by nature a ‘pub person’, Carole Seddon tentatively liked to think of Ted Crisp as a friend.

      ‘Oh yes,’ Freddie agreed. ‘Less than a month since we moved in. Rome wasn’t built in a day, eh?’ Once again the ‘eh?’ cued a fruity laugh, and a dutiful echo from the landlord.

      The duologue was then opened up by the arrival of another regular, though this one’s credentials seemed more authentic than Freddie’s. Dressed in jeans and a thick plaid workshirt, the newcomer had a thin face, scoured red by exposure to the elements, over which hung a hank of tobacco-like hair. The fingernails of his large hands were rimmed with black. His mouth was a lipless line that didn’t look as if it opened more than it had to. His age could have been anything between thirty and fifty.

      ‘Evening, Will.’ The words were the minimum politeness required, and were delivered with a nasal West Sussex twang.

      ‘Nick, hi.’ No order was given, but the landlord reached instinctively to a tall glass which he started to fill with Heineken lager.

      ‘Hello, Nick.’ Freddie’s voice was full of common touch. ‘Now let me get you that drink.’

      ‘I buy my own, thanks.’

      Freddie’s face got even redder in the silence that continued until the pint of lager was placed on the counter. The man called Nick put down the right money, picked up his drink and moved to a stool as far away from Freddie as possible, at the end of the bar nearest to the Snug. He showed no signs of having seen Carole.

      She looked across at Will Maples as Freddie embarked on a monologue about how careful you had to be with companies who did fitted kitchens. ‘Always offer you special offers and discounts, but when you come down to it, you end up paying through the bloody nose for all kinds of extras, things they never actually thought to mention until it’s too late for you to tell them to get packing.’

      On the manager’s face, too thin to be quite handsome, Carole could identify an expression of deep boredom. That, coupled with the young man’s smart suit and metropolitan manner, suggested that he didn’t see the future of his career in pulling pints. The Hare and Hounds was a temporary measure, a stopgap, or perhaps an essential staging post to the next promotion.

      The disguised gas fire and the brandy were having their effect. Carole still felt sodden, but it was now a warm dampness. Though she could see no sign of it, she felt as though she were quietly steaming. Drowsy, but more as though she were drugged than about to fall asleep. Sleep, she knew, would not come easily that night. She would keep waking to the image of bones in fertilizer bags, a picture made more disturbing by its simplicity and anonymity. She would be haunted not by what she had seen, but by the implications of what she had seen. Detective Sergeant Baylis had been right. Carole Seddon was in shock.

      The pub door clattered open again. The new arrival was thin and so tall that he had to stoop under the low entrance. He wore a three-piece suit in greenish tweed. It had cost a lot when collected from the tailor’s. But that had been many years before. The elbows and the cuffs were protected with leather patches.

      ‘Evening, young Will.’ It was the patrician, slightly lazy voice of someone who didn’t think he had anything to prove. But there was also tension in the voice, even a kind of suppressed excitement. Ungainly as a giraffe, the man propped himself on a tall bar stool and pulled a pipe out of his jacket pocket.

      ‘Evening, Graham. Large Grouse, is it?’

      ‘With a splash of soda, that’s right. Hello, Nick.’

      This latest arrival had received a nod of acknowledgement from the lager drinker by the Snug. Carole got the feeling that, had the offer been made, Nick might have accepted a drink from the man called Graham, whose manner was easily superior and didn’t carry the patronizing overtones of Freddie’s. The newcomer to Weldisham was too eager to please, too eager to be thought generous. Someone like Nick would take his time before accepting charity from such a source.

      As he looked across to the Snug, Graham caught Carole’s eye. He smiled courteously. The eyes had been brown but were now faded in his lined face. He was quite old, probably well into his seventies.

      ‘Graham Forbes, isn’t it? We met in here last week.’ Freddie seemed anxious to receive his own acknowledgement. There was an air of power about the older man, something that, as a new boy in Weldisham, Freddie needed to tap into.

      ‘Did we?’ It wasn’t said rudely, but without a great deal of interest.

      ‘Yes. Freddie Pointon. I was in last Friday with my wife, Pam. Had dinner in the restaurant.’ This did not seem to be a sufficient aide-memoire. The old eyes concentrated on tamping down tobacco in the pipe bowl. ‘We’ve recently moved into Hunter’s Cottage.’

      ‘Oh yes, of course.’ Graham flashed a smile of professional charm. ‘The Pointons. Irene and I were only just talking about you. You must come to dinner СКАЧАТЬ