The Vinyl Detective--Flip Back, page 25
“They do nice food here, you know,” he said. “Isn’t that right, Desmond?”
“We try, we try.”
“Better than that show-offy crap at the von Humboldt. The Admiral von Humboldt!” He shouted this to Nevada, who responded with a dazzling smile.
“I couldn’t possibly comment,” said Desmond, also smiling.
“Their use of fresh herbs here is particularly awesome,” said Jimmy. “Do you know why?”
“Because you grow them in your own garden?” I said.
“Ah, Valentyna told you, did she? And the vegetables. She’s the one who grows them, mate, she’s the one who does all the work in the garden. And not just in the garden. She’s the one who does all the work of every sort. And don’t I know it? And I’m a lucky man. Lucky to have her. Don’t I just know it?” To my astonishment, his voice was thickening and tears were glinting in his eyes.
“That’s right,” said Desmond, cutting off this monologue. He was apparently no more eager than I was to listen to a drunken and lachrymose paean to the joys of marriage from a man who’d suddenly and rather arbitrarily decided that his wife was a jewel beyond compare. “In fact, Sarah—that’s our girl—she’s up there collecting a basket of veggies and herbs right now,” said Desmond. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “She should have been back ages ago. Honestly, that girl.”
“Oh, it will be Valentyna’s fault,” said Jimmy. “She’ll have started nattering and poor Sarah won’t be able to escape. Or get a word in edgewise. She can talk the hind legs off a donkey, my missus. Never listens, but oh my god, how she can talk.”
Now it was my turn to interrupt a monologue, though one that was rapidly heading in a less happy direction. “Well, my missus has chosen some wine,” I said. Desmond the barman shot me a grateful look. I ordered two glasses of Hedonist Shiraz and Jimmy managed to find a cider based on a combination of exotic fruits that he hadn’t already sampled. I tried to pay but he would have none of it.
“I’ve got my wallet with me this time,” he said, taking it out of his pocket and waving it in my face as if I’d recently and repeatedly questioned its existence. It was a battered fat brown leather wallet with many odd pieces of paper sticking out of it, like bookmarks from a book.
So he must have gone home after all, before coming here for his adventures in the world of cider.
When he set the wallet on the bar and opened it I saw that they were assorted supermarket coupons offering an exciting range of discounts. Jimmy carefully extracted a payment card and handed it to Desmond.
After he’d paid, Jimmy insisted on carrying all three of our drinks back to the table. Which he did with a surprising degree of success, not spilling a drop. Once again I was impressed by the steadiness of a man who had so many legitimate excuses to be stumbling about the place. He set one of the glasses of wine down in front of Nevada with a flourish. “Thank you,” she said. “How lovely.”
“You chose it, love.”
“Ah, but you paid for it, and that’s always the most ticklish part of the transaction.”
Jimmy laughed and sank down happily in his chair. He lifted his bottle in a toast and clinked it against our wine glasses. We sipped the Hedonist, which didn’t surprise me by being fabulous. Both because Nevada had selected it and because it was an old favourite. I made a mental note not to let Jimmy order a bottle of it, though, because it featured a rather charming picture of a pig on the label and I didn’t want it triggering another fucking discussion about hogs from hell.
A cool breeze blew into the pub and I turned to see that the young couple were on their way out the door. No doubt to find a quiet, secluded spot where no one would disturb their further inspection of their phones. Or maybe they’d buck the odds and actually have sex. I hoped so. The door swung shut, but only for a moment. It opened again and another couple came in. These two were older. In their twenties, or perhaps even their early thirties.
The man had short cropped tobacco-coloured hair and a lean, pockmarked face. He wore a business suit but no tie and his collar was unbuttoned. The woman was plump and pretty, though her face had a severe intensity to it. She was also wearing a business suit.
I felt my stomach go cold.
They came all the way into the pub and looked carefully around. They saw us and immediately came over to our table. Jimmy hadn’t seen them yet, and he was chatting happily. But Nevada saw the way I’d been looking and turned and she saw them, too. Her face changed.
The man and the woman stood beside the table, slightly behind Jimmy and on either side of him. “Mr Lynch?” said the woman. “Mr James Lynch?”
Jimmy hitched around in his chair and looked up at her happily. “Jimmy, love. Call me Jimmy. The queue for autographs starts over there.” He indicated some indeterminate, faraway spot. He didn’t seem to realise that everything had changed. Even the air in the pub seemed to have changed. The two darts players were staring at us. The thirsty yellow dog was staring at us alertly. Behind the bar Desmond was staring at us. But then his phone buzzed and he looked at that, instead.
“Mr Lynch,” said the woman. “Will you come with us, please?”
Jimmy was still happy, but now he was also baffled. He raised his bottle and waved it around a bit. “Come with you? No thanks. Come with you where? But no thanks. I’m quite happy here.”
“Mr Lynch, I’m DS Ruth Montague and this is DS Benjamin Riley. Will you come with us now, please?”
“You’re the police?” said Jimmy. He sounded appalled, as if some terrible trick had been played on him. “You want me to come with you? To the police station?”
“Would you come with us now, Mr Lynch.”
“No. No way. No fucking way.” Jimmy looked at us. It was the look of a drowning man who wanted to be pulled out of the water.
“Mr Lynch, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”
“Murder?” said Jimmy. He suddenly rose to his feet as if the national anthem had started playing, and he was a committed patriot. “Murder?”
The cops looked at us as they led him out, but Jimmy didn’t look at us again.
As soon as they were gone Desmond came out from behind the bar. He was still holding his phone, and he was trembling. “The bastard,” he said. “The bastard killed his wife. My girl found her, lying there on the kitchen floor. His wife’s dead. The bastard killed her.”
22. DECKCHAIRS IN THE DARK
I walked out into the dark garden behind Miss Bebbington’s B&B. It was very late, and the whole town, the whole island, was indistinctly spread out around me in silence. In the distance I thought I heard the soft repetitive sound of the sea, but I wasn’t even sure about that.
There was no sound of traffic, no voices, no music. No lone dog barking. Everyone was long since in bed and asleep. But behind me, in the little house, lights were burning at the windows and worried faces were peering out. Tinkler, Clean Head and Miss Bebbington herself.
Nevada was sitting alone in the garden, sprawled in a low deckchair, sitting in the dark and staring up at the night. She didn’t look at me as I sat down in the chair next to hers.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said.
“Of course you do. Because you’re thinking the same thing. Everybody’s thinking the same thing. Because it’s true. He killed her. And it’s entirely my fault.”
“Maybe,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her pale face turn towards me in the darkness.
“Maybe?” she said.
I leaned over so I could look at her, or look at the blur in the darkness that indicated her. “I’ve been thinking about it.”
“So have I. About nothing else.”
“Then you’ll have asked yourself the same questions,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like how could he have gone home, killed her, and then got back to that pub where we found him in time to drink all those fucking bottles of cider. You saw how many there were. He’d settled in for a serious session there.”
“He had time to go home and get his wallet, though, didn’t he?” said Nevada. “He didn’t have that at the Alexander von Humboldt.” I noticed she’d got the name of the pub right. “But he had it with him when you went up to the bar together in The Sea View, though, correct?”
I peered towards her in the darkness. “Yes, but I’d imagine murdering your spouse takes a little more time than just popping back in to the old homestead to retrieve your wallet.”
“Are you sure about that? I imagine it could happen pretty quickly.”
“Well,” I said, “personally I can’t imagine it happening between those two without a great deal of shouting going on first.”
There was silence from the deckchair beside me. I sensed that I was beginning to make progress.
“All of which takes time. And then the act itself. She was strangled, right?” Desmond, the barman at The Sea View, had filled us in on the grisly details, just as his daughter in turn had filled him in. She’d found Valentyna lying on the kitchen floor with one of Jimmy’s scarves knotted around her neck. Desmond had been furious, and deeply shaken at the thought of his teenage girl having witnessed the aftermath of this horror. But that didn’t stop him hungrily telling us every detail of it. Come to think of it, it hadn’t stopped her telling him, either.
“And strangling someone wouldn’t be as quick as you might think,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t think it would be quick at all. Not at all.”
“And then there’s the aftermath. What does he do? Kill her and immediately think, right, that’s done. Now let’s pop to the pub? I don’t think so. I think there would be some considerable time staring at the body and thinking about what he’d just done.”
“Before he pops to the pub.”
“Before he pops to the pub, right.”
“I still think it was doable,” said Nevada. “In the time elapsed.”
“And then there was the way he reacted,” I said. “The way Jimmy reacted when the police came into the pub. He wasn’t at all bothered at first. He had no idea who they were, and when they identified themselves he pretty much told them to piss off. And then, when they did tell him why they were there, he seemed genuinely shocked.”
“He did, didn’t he?” said Nevada, slowly and thoughtfully.
“He looked like a man who’d been struck by a lightning bolt. And I simply don’t think he’s that good an actor.”
I heard Nevada stir in her chair and I saw the pale blur of her face shift as she turned to look at me.
“Neither do I,” she said.
I sensed something, and I reached out my hand towards her in the darkness and found her hand reaching out to me. I took it.
“And then there’s the small matter of him announcing that’s he’s going to murder his wife, loudly and clearly, and in front of dozens of witnesses. Before immediately going home and—guess what?—murdering his wife. And what was the murder weapon?”
“One of his trademark scarves,” said Nevada softly.
We lay there in the dark, side by side in our chairs, holding hands and talking about murder.
“Right,” I said. “Why not just post the whole thing on Facebook, if you’re going to be so obvious about it? I mean, I suppose it could happen that way, and people do give themselves away by being clumsy and obvious like that, but…”
“But?”
“But the whole thing smells wrong to me. The whole thing stinks. You remember how you said these fuckers, whoever they are, are nothing if not thorough? Well, this has all the hallmarks of one of their little projects. I think for some reason they want Jimmy out of the way.”
“And Valentyna. She’s out of the way, too, now… poor Valentyna.” There was a soft, rhythmic sound, which somehow merged with the gentle sound of the sea in the distance.
Nevada was crying.
A shadow rose up as she got out of the chair and got onto mine with me, the firm warm weight of her curled on top of me, her tears falling cold on the side of my neck.
23. HONEY TRAP
Not surprisingly, we slept late the next morning. Finally Nevada got up and went downstairs and, after an unconscionably long interval, came back with cups of coffee and got back into bed with me.
“Something is definitely going on between Gareth and Clean Head,” she announced.
“The Mormon Hipster?”
“Yes. She keeps making excuses to slip off. And when she does, she ends up seeing him. Sort of accidentally on purpose. I’ve been keeping tabs.”
“You don’t think they’re having an affair, do you?”
Nevada snorted. “You heard her. He’s not her type. Besides, if she was, she’d tell me.”
“Are you sure? Maybe she’s ashamed of his beard.”
“And besides, I understand the Mormon Hipster is busy seeing Lakshmi.”
I said, “Tom Pyewell’s girlfriend Lakshmi?” It was a stupid question. Could there be two?
“Well, ex-girlfriend. Apparently that’s why they split up.”
“Wait,” I said. “They split up? Tom and Lakshmi?”
Nevada nodded. “That’s what all the business was in the pub, all the weirdness that Clean Head picked up on. And going out to have a private conversation on the beach and so forth.”
I shook my head. “Tom was pretty calm, though, wasn’t he? It didn’t seem like they were having a serious argument.” Of course, it hadn’t seemed like they were head over heels in love, either.
“They weren’t having a serious argument. They just were splitting up. Apparently it’s been on the cards for a long time. And Lakshmi and Gareth have been seeing each other for a while.”
“What, while she was still with—”
“Tom Pyewell, oh, yes.”
“Well,” I said, “it explains why she was on the phone all the time, anyway.”
“Oh, no, I thinks she’s probably just like that. Shallow, self-absorbed and phone-addicted. Don’t let her off the hook so easily.”
“But why him—I mean why Gareth?” Admittedly Tom Pyewell was vastly older than her. But balanced against that was his wealth, fame and—I suppose some people would call it—charisma. All of which I would have expected to weigh heavily with someone as shallow as Lakshmi. Or at least as shallow as I’d rather arbitrarily decided she must be. But still, if she was going to choose someone to leave him for, “Why the Mormon Hipster?”
Nevada shrugged. “Small island. Limited choice, I guess. Maybe they met when he mended her brakes. Or, knowing Gareth’s standard of workmanship, failed to mend them.”
“By the way,” I said, “how do you suddenly know all this stuff?”
“Miss Bebbington. She runs a first-rate bed and breakfast and is also a clearing house for all the finest local gossip.”
Of course, the real gossip this morning was nothing to do with Tom Pyewell and his love triangle. It was all to do with Jimmy Lynch and his strangled spouse. But we studiously avoided discussing that.
* * *
When we went down to the breakfast room we found Clean Head standing at the window, staring out. Joining her and looking over her shoulder we saw that the pavement outside, which was normally deserted or at best featured a sporadic few pedestrians, now had a steady flow of people walking purposefully towards the centre of town.
It was highly reminiscent of the night of Kind of Blue’s funeral. “Is there another party?” I said.
Clean Head turned and gazed at us. She did not look happy.
“What’s the matter?” said Nevada.
“You better brace yourself,” said Clean Head.
“Christ. What?”
“Stinky Stanmer. He’s just arrived on the island. With a camera crew.”
To simultaneously feel horror and relief is quite an odd sensation, but that is what I experienced now. Certainly the presence of Stinky, indeed just the prospect of it, suddenly threatened to poison the whole experience of Halig Island. Which, despite us having nearly died on its causeway, was turning out to be a very pleasant one. But even so… “When I saw your face,” I said, “I thought it must be something much worse.”
“It is,” said Clean Head. She went and sat at the table and we joined her.
“Well, what is it?” said Nevada. “Spit it out, girl.”
“Ah, well, it turns out that Alicia…”
“Oh, no,” said Nevada.
“Oh, shit,” I said.
“She’s something to do with Stinky?”
Clean Head nodded.
In a horrible way, it all made sense now. Tinkler suddenly and uncharacteristically picking up an attractive young woman with recording equipment, her wanting the two of them to spend every minute together…
“She’s working for him,” said Clean Head.
“Foxy Foxcroft is working for Stinky?” said Nevada. She sounded as unhappy as I felt, and as Clean Head looked.
“Yes. She’s apparently the sound recordist on his film crew. And also a researcher.”
“A researcher,” said Nevada. She looked at me. “And she was researching what?”
“Stinky is here to make a documentary about Black Dog, about burning the money and all that.”
“Gosh, I wonder where he got that idea,” said Nevada.
“So Alicia came here early with her friend, the one who was doing the filming at the beach party. So they could do some groundwork before Stinky arrived.”
“And part of that groundwork was getting close to us,” I said. “Finding out what we were up to, and what we knew.”
“That’s right.”
“You know,” I said, “I never did actually see the friend who was doing the filming that night. The camera person.”
“Well, you can see her now,” said Clean Head.
“What?”
Clean Head got up and went back to the window, and we followed her. “There she is.” Clean Head indicated a tall young woman with short dark brown hair sitting on the sea wall across the street. She wore a sleeveless yellow T-shirt, raggedly cut-off denim shorts and Doc Marten boots. The T-shirt had black lettering, which read WAKE ME UP WHEN IT’S QUITTING TIME. She was seemingly engrossed in looking at her phone.
