CHAPTER 16
‘How are you this morning?’ asked Pat as she walked into her garden carrying a hot mug of strong, milky, sugary tea.
Caroline checked her watch. ‘Is it still morning? Almost twelve, just about. I’m fine. You? Good swim?’
Caroline was Pat’s Lady Gardener – at least that was what her company was called – and she came once a week to mow the lawn and try and keep on top of the weeds, as well as maintain the small vegetable garden.
In her mid-forties, with long copper curls, freckles and the hearty complexion of someone who spent all day outside, she mowed quite a few of the lawns in the village.
She was a font of knowledge and possessed a guileless indiscretion.
‘Cold,’ replied Pat.
‘Well, yes, it would be,’ agreed Caroline.
‘I don’t understand the appeal myself, freezing your nipples off in the grey English Channel every day.
I know it’s supposed to be good for you, but so is being vegan, and they always look so unwell.
I went to one of those healthy food places in Southbourne the other day to get some Burt’s Bees for my chapped lips, and this skinny bloke on the till was so white, so pale, like he’d just been dug up.
Honestly.’ She shook her mass of hair and shoved a thick chunk of it behind her ear.
‘What’s wrong with a bacon sandwich? Do you want me to plant out those lettuces?
’ She pointed to a black plastic tray of seedlings that she’d planted a few weeks ago. ‘Or are you worried about a frost?’
‘Not unless you are,’ replied Pat, handing over the tea.
‘Nah,’ said Caroline, taking the mug in her large mud-stained hands with their short blackened fingernails.
‘I put Mal and Fi’s in early this morning, before I came to you.
Not that they were up, or I don’t think they were.
The state of their garden, though.’ She blew on the tea and took a large gulp.
‘I mean, the hot tub.’ She scrunched up her face.
‘It was full of bottles, plastic wine glasses and the weirdest-looking things … you know,’ she dropped her voice, ‘sex toys. Everywhere!’
‘Really?’ said Pat. ‘Go on.’
‘I don’t know what half of them do, Pat.
That’s not my bag. But even so, I had to tidy them up.
They made me feel quite unwell, and you know me, I’m not the squeamish type.
I’m happy with a spider, a rat, a dead fox, a rabid old badger, but one of those pink plastic rabbit things from Ann Summers.
Please!’ Caroline mimed putting her fingers down her throat to make her point.
‘And there was this young man lying on a sunbed the whole time, covered in baby oil like he was on Love Island or something, and he did bugger all to help. Bugger all!’
‘Oh, what did he look like?’ Pat didn’t really need to ask, but she thought she’d make sure, just in case.
‘Blonde, good-looking, tanned, blue eyes. I mean, he was a handsome lad, that’s for sure.’
‘Too handsome to help.’ Pat laughed. ‘I’ve come across that combination before.’
‘I’m sure you have.’ Caroline smiled.
‘What was he doing there, I wonder?’
‘I asked him that.’
‘Go on …’
‘He said he was an old friend of Malcolm and Fiona’s. That he knows them from Brighton.’
‘How does he know them from Brighton?’ wondered Pat.
‘That’s what I wanted to know. They met at some place called Hotel du Cocktail. I think that’s right. He said it like I should know where it was. Like it was well known or something. Never heard of it myself. Have you?’
‘It’s not a place I have come across,’ said Pat. ‘It’s the sort of terrible name I would remember.’
‘Yeah,’ Caroline agreed. ‘Is it supposed to make you think of something else, d’you think?’ She winked and laughed.
Pat smiled. ‘I think yes to the lettuces.’
Back inside, she began to pace around her kitchen.
What was she not getting? What had Mal and Fi and Hotel du Cocktail have to do with any of this?
And why on earth was Derek now staying next door?
It made her feel deeply uncomfortable. There was something hugely disconcerting about someone she had in the frame for Henry’s murder sunbathing in plain sight through her avocado-green bathroom window.
It was like a weird, warped modern take on Rear Window, with sex toys.
She climbed the stairs just to check on exactly what was happening in Fi and Malcolm’s garden.
It was one of those rare warm spring days when the blossoms rocked gently in the breeze and the sky was a perfect cornflower blue.
Standing on the bath with her binoculars, she could see Derek cooking himself in the sun, his oiled body catching the light like polished bronze.
He seemed to be wearing earphones, feet tapping to a beat, one hand occasionally conducting an invisible orchestra.
Pat was transfixed. There were as many circles of grief, she sometimes thought, as there were circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno, and she’d seen most of them.
The manic. The catatonic. The mute. The crumpled figure in the foetal position.
The bottle as confessional. The textbook Kübler-Ross cycle: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
But Derek seemed to have whipped through the lot at astonishing speed and landed somehow in what looked suspiciously like acceptance, glossy, tanned and musically inclined.
Grief took many forms, she reminded herself. But this was a new one on her.
Fi suddenly appeared, dressed in what could only be described as a black dental-floss bikini.
Pat had to give her her due. All the athleisure-wearing had clearly paid off, because from the angle of the avocado bathroom, Fiona looked lean, toned and definitely younger.
Derek patted the sunbed cushion. Fi sat down and ran her hand over his chest. It could have been a finger, but Pat couldn’t quite see due to the top of the leylandii that kept frustratingly swinging in and out of her view.
Whatever was going on, it looked intimate.
So, Derek apparently played for every team, she concluded.
Henry, Fiona, whoever he fancied. Perhaps he was a hobosexual, any gender so long as it came with a roof, or indeed fancied him, and he seemed to have very little problem mixing marketing and pleasure.
And judging by the spring in her step, the constant flicking of her hair and the brevity of her bikini, Fiona had been working very hard on her brand all morning.
Pat’s mobile suddenly rang at full volume, its cacophonous bell echoing around the bathroom, and likely outside too. Fi turned to look up at her neighbour’s window just as Pat slipped, swore and landed flat on her back in her bath. Writhing in pain, she answered.
‘Argghghg. Yes?’
‘It’s me,’ said Sue. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Oh God, I’ve just slipped over and hit my coccyx.’
‘Ouch. That sounds bad. Are you in the bath? It’s all very echoey.’
‘I am. God, that hurts.’
‘Oh, OK. It’s an odd time of day to be having a bath.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Oh? Well, anyway …’ True to form, Sue didn’t have time to ask more questions; she was at work, on the clock and busy. ‘I’ve just had a phone call from Henry’s mum. She called to say that his bank accounts have been emptied. Cheque account and savings account, both empty.’
‘Really?’ Pat sat up slowly in the bath.
‘Thousands of pounds.’
‘How many thousands?’
‘Tens of thousands. About a hundred and twenty grand in all.’
‘Wow,’ said Pat. ‘That’s a lot for a young man.’
‘He worked hard, he was successful; that’s why Derek targeted him, I suppose.’
‘True. But how did they get the money? Surely everything was frozen as soon as he died? Isn’t that what happens?’
‘Normally. As soon as the bank is informed, the account is shut. But these accounts were emptied just before he died, hours, maybe minutes …’
‘And his mum has only just noticed?’
‘Well, she’s been grieving the loss of her beautiful son, hasn’t she?’
‘And the police? What do the police say? Or the bank, how about the bank?’
‘Priya, my trainee solicitor, is working on that, but I suspect they will only care if we can prove fraud. Who’s to say that he didn’t just spend it?’
‘Has it all gone to the same account?’
‘Yes, but it’s not easy to trace, it just seems like a holding company. It’s really quite sophisticated. I’m bizarrely impressed.’
Pat sat in the empty bath and scratched her head. Her silver-grey bob was still damp from her swim. ‘Murder and fraud. That is some charge sheet.’
‘Well, yes,’ agreed Sue. ‘The problem is, you need proof. We need proof. Otherwise they will simply get away with it. Got to go. I’ve got a meeting. Speak later.’
She hung up, leaving Pat in the bath, the base of her spine still pulsing with pain.
However, as she lay back down against the cold, hard plastic and stared up at the white swirl-patterned Artex ceiling, she found comfort in the knowledge that more evidence was piling up against Derek.
Much as she disliked Dorna Braddon and her bustling energy and her bloody lead-less, sheep-worrying dog and her complete disregard for the beauty of the Downs, or bats, or nature of any kind, Derek remained the prime suspect.
She grabbed her phone and dialled.
‘Prichard Knowles,’ he answered in a sing-song voice.
‘It’s me.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake Prichard, it’s Pat.’
‘Sorry, Pat. I’m driving, you see, and I have all eyes on the road. I just pressed a button and your voice came through, rather loudly I might add.’
‘Where are you?’
Pat immediately regretted asking the question, as Prichard launched into a protracted explanation of his exact whereabouts on the A259, right down to the bridge and which junction he’d just driven past.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Pat.
‘To Brighton,’ he replied. ‘The doctor.’
‘Right. OK.’ Prichard was being remarkably coy. He had not mentioned an appointment at all, which was unusual; Pat was mostly across all his appointments, be they the hairdresser or the hygienist. ‘Well, I hope everything’s all right.’ She paused. ‘How long will you be?’
‘I can’t really talk, Pat. I’m driving.’
‘Sure,’ agreed Pat.
‘But I’ve been having a few problems with my prostate.’
‘Prostate? Good. I mean, not good.’
‘Well, it’s the age, my age, you see. I mean, it’s not serious, but I need to keep it monitored.
I’m having a scan and a blood test just to check PSA levels and all that.
Every man should have one, you know, like breast cancer screening for ladies.
“A scan for every man” would make a great slogan.
Anyway, that’s where I’m off to. My doctor is such a nice chap, he really is, and it’s not that big a deal, as I said.
I just have to keep monitoring it and all that jazz, as they say.
’ He laughed. ‘I tell you, the traffic on the A259 is so much better than I thought. I was going to take the A27, but it looked like it was going to be eight minutes slower. So I’m on the A259, and I have to agree the traffic is moving surprisingly well … ’
Pat lay and listened to Prichard describe his journey, the number of caravans and lorries; he always liked an update on the lorries he saw.
None of them were ever driving up to the standard of his old fleet of three hundred vehicles.
Mr Stobart had something like two thousand seven hundred lorries at his peak, so Prichard was never quite in his league.
Anyway, for a man who could not apparently talk, thought Pat as she shifted in the bath, Prichard sounded as if he had enough chat in him to power him all the way to Brighton.
‘Prichard,’ she said eventually, interrupting his flow.
‘Yes? Sorry.’ He paused. ‘I might have to hang up soon as I’m approaching the outskirts. I’m through Rottingdean and just coming up to the Brighton Marina.’
‘Listen,’ said Pat. ‘Sue just called me. Apparently all Henry’s money has disappeared.’
‘Stone the starlings!’ exclaimed Prichard.
‘I know. It vanished a matter of hours before he died, and his mum has just discovered it.’
‘Hours?’
‘Yes. So that puts Derek more in the frame than Dorna.’
‘Do you think?’
‘Well, Dorna doesn’t need a hundred and twenty thousand pounds, which is the amount of money taken, when she has a thirty-seven-million-pound deal on her doorstep.’
‘And judging by his car, Derek certainly could do with some cash,’ chipped in Prichard.
‘He’s still at Fi’s,’ Pat told him. ‘It’s like he’s moved in or something. He’s lying on a sunbed covered in baby oil and she’s flirting with him and wearing the tiniest bikini I have ever seen!’
‘Is it itsy bitsy teenie weenie?’ chortled Prichard.
‘Something like that, yes,’ replied Pat. ‘But could you do me a favour while you’re in Brighton, if it’s not too much trouble and you’re all right after your tests and all that?’
‘Sure.’
‘Apparently Derek met Fiona and Malcolm in this place called Hotel du Cocktail. Have you heard of it?’
‘Do they sell cocktails, hahaha?’ Prichard’s machine-gun laugh came hammering down the line, and Pat winced and moved her phone away from her ear.
‘Probably,’ she replied.
‘Leave it with me,’ he said. ‘I have to go now.’
‘Thank you, and good luck.’