The Stabbing in the Stables (6 page)

As they walked back along the Fether through the gathering dusk, overtures about school, tastes in music and television, even her beloved Conker, were cut short by curt monosyllables. The girl kept just to the right side of rudeness, but she left no doubt that she'd rather be on her own. Her instinct was to run off and leave Jude; only the fear of her behaviour being reported to Sonia Dalrymple and ending her riding rights prevented her from doing so.

Imogen had started by trailing behind her minder, swinging her battered riding hat at her side, but, soon realising that this formation opened up too much danger of Jude looking back and making eye contact, she now marched resolutely ahead.

“Will there be someone at home when you get there?”

The girl couldn't refuse to answer such a direct question. “I think my Dad'll be there. Mum works late on a Thursday.”

“What does your mother do?”

“She serves at Allinstore.” Fethering's only—and highly inefficient—supermarket. “Money's been tight since they started the divorce proceedings. Mum thinks the work is very definitely beneath her.” Imogen seemed to derive some satisfaction from her mother's discomfiture.

“So what time will she be back?”

But the brief window of communication was closing. All Jude got was a terse “Later.”

“Well, look, if you have any problems, or you're left on your own too long this evening, give me a call.” Jude stopped for a moment and scribbled down her mobile number. The girl hadn't waited for her and Jude had to hurry to catch up and hand it across. Silently Imogen shoved the scrap of paper into the pocket of her puffa jacket, but not in the manner of someone who was ever going to use it.

Jude tried again. Surely the murder of Walter Fleet would get some reaction from the girl.

“Horrible, that business up at Long Bamber, wasn't it?” Silence. “You know, the reason why Conker and Chieftain have been moved back to the Dalrymples'.”

“I do know what you're talking about,” said Imogen pityingly.

“It must have been a shock for you.” Jude persevered. “I mean, because you spent so much time up at the stables.”

“I didn't spend much time there.”

“But I thought you looked after Conker, helped with the mucking out?”

“Not very often.”

This seemed a direct contradiction to what Sonia Dalrymple had said, but Jude didn't question it.

“And you must have known Walter Fleet quite well.”

“Not that well. He was just an old guy who was around, that's all.”

Old? Early forties. Jude wondered how old Imogen thought she was. “But he and his wife ran the place. You must have had quite a bit to do with him and—”

“I didn't know him well,” the girl said firmly, and to emphasise the ending of the conversation, ran a few steps ahead. “We're nearly there.”

The River Road destination to which Imogen led the way was a substantial family house, probably with four or five bedrooms. Though Sonia Dalrymple had dismissed Alec Potton's earning potential, and it was as nothing compared to her husband, he must have been doing pretty well to buy a property like that in Fethering. But the house was showing signs of neglect. The exterior paintwork was blistered and flaking, and the front garden had grown shaggy. Its lack of maintenance seemed all too straightforward a symbol for the dividing family within. The blank stare of the unlit windows with undrawn curtains was distinctly unwelcoming.

“It's all right. You can leave me here,” said Imogen when they reached the garden gate.

“No, I'll see you in, check there's someone there.”

“I am fourteen, you know. I am capable of being in the house on my own. In fact, I spend most of my time in the house on my own. It's not a problem.”

“Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

“No.”

“Well, let's just see if there's anyone in.”

“For heaven's sake, I can be left alone! You sound just like my mum, not letting me be on my own for a single minute. Either she's got to be there, or she's got to fix up for Dad to be there or…”

Imogen let out one of those exasperated sighs that only teenage girls can do properly, and stomped off up the garden path, reaching for her house key. She opened the front door, turning to bar entrance to Jude. Her unwanted escort was being given a very definite message to leave.

“So, is there someone in?”

“Yes, of course there is. Da-ad!”

But the only answer to her long call was an echo in the empty house. Imogen looked taken aback, then let out another louder wail, which again produced no response.

“He said he'd be here. He promised to be here.” But resignation quickly overcame disappointment. “Don't worry. I'll be all right. You can go.”

“But couldn't you give your father a call on your mobile to—”

“If he's not here, he's doing something else,” said Imogen sharply. “Work probably. He's on the road somewhere. I can't disturb him when he's working.”

“But surely he's…”

Jude's words trailed away at the sound of a car drawing up behind her and Imogen's eyes brightening with recognition.

“He's here. You can go.” Even the pretence of politeness in her words had now slipped away.

Jude turned to see a tall man emerging from a rather grubby BMW. “Sorry, Immy love, got delayed.”

Alec Potton was in his early forties, louchely stylish in a shapeless corduroy suit. In spite of his receding hair, he was an attractive man, and the warmth of his handshake to Jude after she had been grudgingly introduced showed that he was well aware of his attractiveness. Over the years of being what could only be described as fanciable, she knew all too well the subtext of extra hand pressure and extended contact by which men expressed sexual interest. The instant thought came into her mind that perhaps Alec Potton's relish for other women was the cause of the divorce currently in progress.

“Can't thank you enough for looking after Immy,” he said enthusiastically. Closer to, Jude could see that his good looks were marred by nervous anxiety. He was a man under stress. And a lot of the stress seemed to be related to his daughter. He looked at her with something approaching fear, as though afraid she might crumble to dust at any moment.

“It was no problem. Virtually on my way back.”

“Anyway, thank you…Jude—was that the name?”

“That's right—Jude.”

“Well, thank you for holding the fort. I'm back in time to get my daughter some supper. What do you fancy, Immy? What have we got in the house?”

“The usual boring rubbish.”

“Oh. Well, maybe I'd better take you down the Crown and Anchor, hadn't I?”

“Mum said we should stop eating out all the time. We've got to economise.” It was said piously, but with an edge of humour. Imogen relished the idea of a meal out with her father.

“Ah,” Alec began soberly, “if Mum said that…” He was silent before continuing wickedly. “All the more reason to have supper at the Crown and Anchor.”

Putting his arm around his daughter's shoulders, he led her towards the car. As he did so, he looked closely at the jumper she was wearing under her puffa jacket. “Is that mine?” She nodded. “You cheeky cow.”

Though she hadn't yet seen Imogen with her mother, Jude felt pretty sure she knew which side the girl was taking in the divorce contest. The eyes with which she looked at her father were full of adoration.

 

“Hello. Stephen?”

“Who is this?”

“It's your mother.”

“Oh, look, I'm sorry. I'm right in the middle of something. Can I call you back?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

And that was that.

“Y
OU SAID THEY
were going to have supper at the Crown and Anchor. Maybe we should do the same?”

Jude was amazed. The suggestion was a most unlikely one, considering who it came from. Carole was always reticent, even shy. The idea of her volunteering to manufacture an encounter with Alec Potton and his daughter was totally out of character.

“I think that might look a bit obvious, don't you? I mean, given that I've only just met him, and that I'm not Imogen's favourite person.”

“Yes, I suppose it might.” But Carole was desperate to find out more about the circumstances of Walter Fleet's death. A murder investigation was the only thing that promised to take her mind off the subject of Stephen's marriage. “I'm just so intrigued by it all.”

“Me too. Mind you, no doubt we'll soon hear that the police have made an arrest and the case is solved.”

“Well, we haven't heard it yet, have we?”

“No.”

“Oh, but there was something. On the news.” And Carole related what she had heard about the Horse Ripper's activities near Horsham. “It's such a horrible crime. Why do people do it, Jude?”

“I don't know. I'm quite interested in it, though.”

“What a disgusting thing to be interested in.”

“Maybe. But human behaviour fascinates me, what brings people to do the things they, and particularly the appalling things. I've been making a note of the dates for these local horse mutilations and collecting the newspaper cuttings. I must get the
Fethering Observer
—it's sure to report this latest one.”

“But why are you doing it?”

“I'm just getting data together, trying to see if any pattern emerges.”

“What kind of pattern?”

“I don't know. Responses to the lunar cycle, international events…anything that might make sense of the senseless.”

“But horses…horses never do anyone any harm. Why on earth do these people do it?”

“There are as many theories as there are psychologists. Some researches have suggested there's a link to paedophilia. Personally, I find that quite convincing.”

Carole shuddered. “There are some disgusting people about, aren't there?”

“Oh yes.” But Jude was always going to take a less rigid view of such matters. “There are also a lot of people about who suffer enormously from instincts that the world finds unacceptable, and over which they themselves have very little control.”

“What—are you making excuses for paedophilia?”

“I'm not making excuses for it. I'm just saying it must be very difficult to go through life with feelings the entire world despises.”

“Huh.” Although Carole was a
Times
reader, there was, at bottom, a lot of
Daily Mail
in her.

But she was still hungry for the displacement activity of investigation. “Isn't there anyone else we know who's got something to do with the Long Bamber Stables set-up? Don't we have any other contacts?”

“Don't think we do, I'm afraid. We could ask Ted Crisp. A lot of people come and go through the Crown and Anchor. He might have heard something.”

“Yes…”

“Or, of course, we do know where we can find Imogen's mother.”

“Oh, really? How do we know that?”

“Sorry, I forgot to tell you. Imogen told me that her mother works at the checkout at Allinstore.”

Carole's knee-jerk reaction was characteristically snobbish. “Really? I thought, from what you'd said, that they were a nice middle-class family.”

“Divorce has unfortunate effects even on nice middle-class families. I gather Imogen's mother is doing it for the money.”

“But it's an extremely public way of earning money. I mean, everyone in Fethering sees you sitting at a checkout. It's very humiliating.”

Jude thought about this. From what she'd heard of Hilary Potton, she wouldn't be surprised if she'd sought out that kind of humiliation, a public martyrdom to show all of Fethering the straits to which her husband's behaviour had reduced her. She shared the thought with Carole. “Anyway,” she concluded, “Mrs. Potton, so far as we know, has only the most tenuous of links to Walter Fleet. I mean, her daughter rides at Long Bamber, but that's about it.”

“Maybe, Jude, but tenuous links are all we seem to have at the moment.” Carole rose and picked up her handbag. “Anyway, as it happens, there are a few things I need from Allinstore. I'm going straight down there.”

 

The building must have been converted from something else; it couldn't have been designed as a supermarket, unless by an architect who was either incompetent or had a wicked sense of humour. The large pillars that supported the roof seemed to have been placed where they would cause maximum obstruction to the smooth flow of shoppers. Some vindictive expert in space management had elected to put the tills directly behind two of them, so that most people seemed destined to make their purchases sideways.

An equally dead hand was in charge of the supermarket's stock. Shelves were either overloaded with the things nobody ever wanted, or empty of the products everyone required. Carole Seddon used Allinstore infrequently. Her major shopping was done in one weekly foray to Sainsbury's. She only resorted to the local supermarket when she had run out of something. And, given the strict way in which she organised her life, she very rarely did run out of anything. Jude, amongst whose priorities housekeeping took a much lower rank, was a more regular visitor to Allinstore.

Still, there are certain rules of domestic life. You can never have too many tins of chopped tomatoes on your shelves. And an extra pack of kitchen rolls never goes amiss. More important, these were both products that could be little harmed by the supermarket's erratic buying policy.

Carole put a four-pack of each into her basket and then, in a fit of wild spontaneity, added a bottle of fizzy spring water. It wasn't a brand she had heard of, but it was commensurately cheap.

Identifying Hilary Potton was not too challenging a task. Only two of the tills were manned, and there was no way the spotty teenager with variegated hair and a nose stud had given birth to Imogen. So, even though the girl's queue was shorter, Carole deliberately took her basket to the other one. Once there, the polite middle-class tones she heard as totals were announced left her in no doubt that she was on the right track.

Hilary Potton was strong-featured with thick, carefully shaped eyebrows and black hair cut fashionably short, the kind of woman to whom the words “striking” and “handsome” rather than “beautiful” would be applied. The blue Allinstore tabard didn't do her any favours, but in a suit or well-cut leisurewear she would have looked very good.

There was only one customer in front of her before Carole, angling herself awkwardly around a pillar, had a little moment of panic. What was she going to say to this woman? What possible advance in her tenuous murder investigation did she hope she was going to achieve? Jude should have come; she'd be much better at creating a conversational bond. Why on earth had Carole decided to come to Allinstore in the first place?

Of course it didn't matter. If she made her purchases without a word being exchanged, nobody would think anything odd. That was why people went into supermarkets. On the other hand, she wouldn't have any trophy of information to take back in triumph to Jude. And Carole's hypersensitive nature was beginning to think that Jude was already having the lion's share of this investigation.

The other customer had left. Carole placed her basket in the bay designed for it and said fatuously, “Just essentials.”

“Ah, but those are the very things that are essential,” Hilary Potton responded.

This was promising. Not only a response, but one with an element of levity in it. Must build on this start.

“Mind you, I can never find all the essentials I need in here.”

The words came out stilted, and Carole regretted them as soon as they were spoken. Criticising the supermarket was probably not the best way of engaging in conversation with one of its employees.

Serendipitously, however, she had managed to say exactly the right thing. “Tell me about it,” said Hilary Potton, raising her eyes to heaven as she scanned Carole's purchases. “I'm afraid I hardly ever shop here—can never find the stuff I want.”

“No, I'd got the impression Allinstore wasn't the greatest supermarket on the planet.”

“That is an understatement.”

“And what are they like as employers?”

A shrug. “Probably no worse than most. Anyway, beggars can't be choosers.”

“Oh?”

But the prompt was not needed. “Hard to find part-time work round here. You know, that'll fit in with the demands of a teenage daughter.”

“Yes, I'm sure it must be.”

“Still, if your husband walks out on you, what choice do you have?”

There was an impatient shuffling sound from someone lurking behind the pillar. Further extension of the conversation was impossible. Carole was told the total for her purchases and paid in exact change.

But she didn't think the exercise had been wasted. If nothing else, it had confirmed Jude's conjecture about Hilary Potton setting herself up as a public martyr. The readiness with which she had started denigrating her husband had been striking. And Carole felt sure there was a lot more where that came from.

 

When she relayed the information she had obtained to Jude back in Woodside Cottage, it did seem pretty meagre. Basically what it came down to was that Hilary and Alec Potton were going through a very sticky divorce, and there was no love lost between them. Which everyone in Fethering already knew.

But Jude was characteristically positive about the contribution to their investigation. “Though whether we should dignify what we're doing with the name of ‘investigation' is a moot point.”

“Well, there's been a murder—no question about that.”

“No. And we were the first people on the scene, so we definitely do have an involvement. But we have no information of real relevance. We haven't even got any suspects.”

“Jude, are you suggesting we should give up our nonexistent investigation?”

“Of course I'm not, you idiot.”

The thought, before she'd met Jude, of anyone calling Carole Seddon an “idiot” without losing her goodwill forever, was an unlikely one. Now she found the use of the word rather comforting. Yes, it was possible for a personality even as frozen as Carole's to thaw.

“No, we'll press on, in the face of total ignorance, until we find out who killed Walter Fleet.”

“Unless, of course, the police get there first.”

“Phooey. No chance. It would take away the fun if they did, though, wouldn't it?” Before Carole had time to respond, Jude went on. “Now look, I was about to knock up a prawn salad. You will stay and have some, won't you?”

“Well…” Carole's first instinct was to say no. When she came to think of it, her first instinct in response to any invitation was to say no. But Jude had lit a fire whose light flickered pleasingly onto the chaos of her sitting room, and the second glass of Chilean chardonnay was slipping down a treat. The offer was certainly more appealing than the remains of a fish pie sitting in the fridge at High Tor. And Carole had already done Gulliver's evening routine of feeding and a trip out to the rough ground behind the house to do his business. Besides, sitting at home, she'd knew she'd worry about the fact that Stephen hadn't rung her back, or feel that she should ring her ex-husband David to find out if he knew anything about the state of their son's marriage.

“If it's no trouble, Jude.”

“Of course not. I'm going to do it for myself, so…Help yourself to more wine. I won't be long.”

After her friend had disappeared to the kitchen, Carole looked around the room, and tried to work out how there could be comfort in such confusion. Jude's approach to interior design reflected her wardrobe. Everywhere firm outlines were softened by swathes of drapery. What logic dictated must be sofas and armchairs became vague shapes under accumulations of throws, rugs and cushions. Even the horizontal lines of mantelpiece, tables and shelves were rendered irregular by the bizarre collection of objects that were placed on, or suspended from them.

Such untidiness went against Carole's every instinct, but she couldn't deny the room was a relaxing environment to inhabit. Whatever she was sitting on seemed to cosset and blur the angularities of her body. From the kitchen, the reassuring mumble of Radio 4 could be half heard. Carole leant forward to the bottle on the table in front of her, and topped up her glass.

“We spoke too soon.”

Jude was standing in the kitchen doorway.

“What?”

“We were guilty of underestimating the police.”