‘Five hours seems quite a long time for just that.’
‘Ah,’ chipped in James Lister, who felt he had been silent too long, ‘that’s because Roddy’s their number one suspect. The police’d heard some of the things he’d got up to with his South Downs Sausage, you see, so they reckoned the torso was the result of a sex game that went wrong.’
This tastelessness triggered another bark of male laughter. Roddy, to give him his due, did not participate. Despite his drunkenness, he seemed to have slightly more sensitivity than his companions.
‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘they didn’t question me as if I was a suspect. The reason that it took so long is that I have a terrible memory for dates. Just about tell you when my own birthday is, but that’s it. So all these “when exactly did you take possession of Pelling House, and when exactly did you sell it?” questions got me rather confused. Because I’m afraid the whole period while I was selling up is a bit of a blur.’
‘Like every day for you, eh?’ guffawed James Lister.
In a practised way, Roddy again ignored this, and amplified his comments. His friends knew the story, had heard it many times, but he needed to tell the newcomer what had happened to him. There was a note of self-justification in his voice. ‘I went through a bad patch round then. I’d invested a lot in the pleasure-boat franchise down by Fedborough Bridge . . . do you know where I mean?’ Jude nodded. Ruefully he continued, ‘Bit of a mess down there now, I know, but I did have big plans for it. Bought the site from Bob Bracken, old bloke who was retiring . . .’
‘Still lives in Fedborough, though.’ James Lister was ready with the information. As Debbie Carlton had said to Carole, nobody ever left Fedborough. Or perhaps the memory of those who did was immediately erased from the collective consciousness.
‘Yes, and Bob’d run it as a nice simple business, selling ice creams and teas, taking tourists on his motor boat up and down the Fether.’ Roddy Hargreaves sighed. ‘But of course that wasn’t good enough for me. I had much bigger ambitions. I was going to have rowing boats, motor launches, trips down to the sea at Fethering, even hoped to build a small marina. But the Town Committee were against it . . . or against me, I’ll never know . . . so they got the planners to back-pedal – never a difficult thing to achieve round here and . . . well . . . My money was trickling away as fast as the little harbour I’d dredged out was silting up again. And it was round that time the marriage was breaking up, so . . .’
The gesture which faded away with his words seemed to express the futility of all ambitions.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jude.
‘Very nice of you, but you don’t need to be. My own fault. What, when I was in the Navy, they would have called “a self-inflicted wound” . . . like getting an infection from a tattooist’s dirty needle. Fact is, I’ve always been crap with money. Lost a packet in the Lloyd’s crash and . . .’ a shrug ‘ . . . so it goes on. Money and me can’t wait to be parted. Just seems to trickle away.’
‘Mostly down the urinal here.’ James Lister was inevitably ready with his quip. And, equally inevitably, the laugh followed.
‘Did the police ask you if you had any idea who the torso might have been?’
‘Oh yes, Jude, they did. And I’m afraid I couldn’t give any very helpful answers. As I said, that whole period’s a bit of a blur. Mind you,’ he continued, as if suddenly thinking of the idea, ‘I don’t know what other answer they were expecting me to give. “Oh yes, officer, of course I knew there was a dismembered corpse down in the cellar all the time I lived there. I just didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to cause any trouble.”’
This too got a laugh from the other three men, but Jude was not certain Roddy had delivered it as a joke. There was a pain behind his words, perhaps an awareness of what he had become. Roddy Hargreaves had once had higher ambitions than ending up as a barfly in a Fedborough pub, recycling stale conversation and jokes with three old bores.
‘Good Lord, my glass is empty! That’s a nasty shock for a chap! Emergency – pint transfusion, please!’ James Lister got his grunt of laughter. ‘Your shout, I think, Roddy.’
The ordering of another round coincided with the appearance from the kitchen of a waitress bearing heaped plates of food. ‘Two South Downs Sausages!’ she called out.
‘Two?’ James Lister winked at Jude. ‘Sure you can manage two at the same time?’
At other times she might have given the innuendo a sharp answer, but on this occasion she just smiled and turned to Roddy Hargreaves, who was having trouble getting his wallet out of his jeans’ back pocket. Once again he swayed perilously on the bar stool.
Just before moving across to join Carole with their South Downs Sausages, she looked straight into Roddy Hargreaves’s eyes, her brown ones probing the bloodshot blue of his.
‘So you really have no idea who the torso might be?’
The bleary eyes became focused in a moment of intelligence and caution.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No idea at all.’
Chapter Nine
Their meal was slightly awkward. They could not be unaware of Roddy Hargreaves and his chortling coterie at the bar, and Jude was not offended but rather puzzled by Carole’s standoffishness when she’d been invited to join them. Carole herself was painfully aware of yet another example of the spikiness in her character. Just being in a pub had started up again the cycle of recrimination about having made a fool of herself with Ted Crisp.
And it wasn’t the moment for Jude to give a resumé of the little information she had got from Roddy Hargreaves.
So they didn’t talk much as they waded through their plates of South Downs Sausages. Jude had two large Chilean Chardonnays to drink, but Carole refused the offer of a second for herself. She didn’t even finish her first, feeling that the punishment she deserved was not yet complete. Jude, not usually bothered about waste, still didn’t like to see alcohol going undrunk, so she downed the remains of Carole’s glass as they rose from the table.
‘Oh, just a minute,’ she said.
Carole hovered by the pub door, feeling more than ever a social outcast, as Jude went back to the group of men.
‘Pleasure to meet you all,’ she said. ‘And it’s suddenly struck me . . . are you the James Lister who I’ve heard does Town Walks round Fedborough . . .?’
He beamed. ‘The very same, at your service. Always at the service of the ladies,’ he smirked.
‘When do they happen?’
‘Sunday morning at eleven. I always service the ladies at eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning.’ He winked in a manner which was intended to be roguish rather than repellent, but failed to achieve its object. ‘Allow me to present my card.’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Jude. ‘I’d really like to find out more about Fedborough.’
‘Let’s go the long way round,’ she said when they got outside the pub. The June day was dwindling to twilight, but the tall frontages of Fedborough’s houses still looked unimpeachably respectable.
‘Did you find out much?’
‘Not a lot. You could have heard anything I did find out.’
‘Yes.’ A blush suffused Carole’s pale cheeks. ‘I’m sorry. There are certain situations when . . .’
‘It’s all right,’ said Jude easily. ‘Don’t worry. Roddy Hargreaves denied knowing the torso was there while he owned the house.’