Joe said, ‘What are you doing, coming in here?’
‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Percy. ‘The police kept me waiting.’
‘You’ve been to the police?’ said Joe in a shrill voice. ‘What did you tell them?’
Frank said, ‘Listen, I’ve just thought of something. I’d better go and fetch it.’ He started untying his apron.
But he was slower than Joe, who was already out of his. He said, ‘You stay. I’ll go.’
While Frank was saying, ‘But you don’t know where I put it,’ Joe was round the corner and out to the street.
He didn’t get far. Apparently from nowhere, two policemen grabbed him. A squad car drew up and he was bundled into the back. It drove away, its blue light flashing.
‘Who’s next?’ said Percy, who had taken Joe’s place at the counter.
An hour or so later, when there was no queue left and Frank and Percy had the shop to themselves, Frank said, ‘What’s going to happen to Joe?’
‘Plenty of questions, I should think,’ answered Percy. ‘You know about Mr Pugh being found dead, don’t you?’
‘I was the one who found him.’
‘Well, Joe must have murdered him.’
‘Joe? We thought it was you.’
Percy blinked. ‘Me, son?’
‘When you didn’t come in this morning, we thought you must have bunked off to Spain with that ticket Mr Pugh left on the counter.’
‘But why should I want to kill Mr Pugh after all these years?’
‘Well, because of the bad time he gives you, all those long hours without a word of thanks. Exploitation, Joe called it.’
‘Did he, by George?’ said Percy with a smile.
‘He said there was a bit of a scene on Saturday because you left the freezer door open. He said he felt so embarrassed that he cleared off home while Mr Pugh was still laying into you.’
Percy shook his head. ‘Son, that isn’t true. I left before Joe on Friday. Mr Pugh had told me it might be better if I wasn’t around while he did some stocktaking with Joe. We had our suspicions about Joe, you see. The books weren’t right. There were big discrepancies. Mr Pugh and I decided to check things carefully for a week and confront Joe with the evidence on Saturday after we closed.’
Frank’s eyes widened. ‘Mr Pugh and you?’
‘Yes, you weren’t to know this, and nor was Joe, but Mr Pugh made me a partner last year, after I’d done fifty years in the shop. Nice of him, wasn’t it? I told him I wouldn’t ever make a manager, and I certainly didn’t want to upset Joe, so we agreed to keep the partnership a secret, just between Mr Pugh and me, and I carried on the same as ever, with the work I know best. But as things have turned out, with me the surviving partner, I can’t keep it a secret any longer, can I? It’s my shop now. I’m the boss.’
Frank was shaking his head, trying to understand. ‘So did you put the police on to Joe?’
Percy nodded. ‘But I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know what had happened. On Sunday morning Joe drove over to see me. He told me Mr Pugh had changed his mind about going to Spain because the auditors were coming to look at the books. He had asked Joe to offer the ticket to me. I believed him. I thought he wanted me out of the way to spare me any unpleasantness.’
‘When it was really Joe who wanted you out of the way,’ said Frank. He recollected the events of the morning, the way Joe had tricked him into covering up the crime out of sympathy for Percy, when in reality Percy was innocent. The trick had almost succeeded too. The police had gone away convinced that Mr Pugh had died by misadventure. They had not suspected murder, and they certainly had not suspected Joe of committing it. But now he was under arrest. ‘Well, if you weren’t suspicious of Joe,’ Frank said to Percy, ‘why aren’t you in Spain? What made you go to the police?’
Percy picked up Joe’s straw boater. ‘You know how it is with me, son. I haven’t had a holiday in years, let alone a holiday abroad. I haven’t got a passport. I dropped in at the police station to ask where I can get one, and...’ He handed the boater to Frank. ‘I need a new manager now, don’t I?’
Vandals
Miss Parmenter disliked the young man on sight. He shocked her. She took it as a personal offence that he stood at her door in a black leather jacket, faded blue denim trousers and what she had been brought up to think of as tennis shoes.
Of an evening, she had got into the habit of standing at her window and staring down at the courtyard. The hotel brochure described it as the piazza. Piazza! Pigsty was nearer the truth ever since the thugs and hooligans had started meeting there in the evenings. They had ruined it. They sat on their motorcycles swilling beer and picking at food from the takeaway shop, and littering the ground with the cans and cardboard boxes it came in. Most of the food ended up on the floor. Often they threw it at each other. Sometimes they threw bottles, and the place was strewn with broken glass. They had vandalised the walls with words sprayed three or four feet high — the names, she was told, of pop groups they admired. And the worst of it was that they had no right to be there. They weren’t hotel guests. The manager should have seen them off months ago, but he was weak. He claimed he had spoken to them several times.
Now here at her door was this young man dressed no differently from the thugs.
Miss Parmenter wrestled mentally with her fear. She knew she led a cloistered existence at the Ocean View. He was probably a decent young man who happened to favour leather and denim. Perhaps they all did nowadays.
She drew back from the secret eye and drew a long, uneven breath, then rubbed distractedly at her fingernails, pressing back the skin until it hurt. She could easily get rid of him by pretending she was out.
Yet she had waited twenty years for this opportunity. She would not let it pass.
She checked her hair. A wayward strand needed repinning under the coil.
He rang again.
It had to be him. There was no reason for anyone else to call.
She slotted the end of the safety chain into its notch and opened the door the couple of inches it allowed, half-hoping she would miraculously find the young man dressed in a three-piece suit and striped tie.
There was no miracle, but at least the jacket looked cleaner than some she had seen.
He grinned. ‘I’m Paul Yarrow. Not late, am I?’
He had remarkably even teeth. They were so perfect that they could have been artificial. Perhaps he was not so young as his style of dress suggested. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of large sunglasses.
‘Remember?’ he said. ‘I phoned last week.’
‘Yes.’
She thought she had caught a whiff of liquor on his breath. It might have been something else, that after-shave they advertised on television. She tightened her grip on the door. ‘How do I know who you are?’
He gave a shrug and a smile. ‘I just said. I’m the guy that phoned.’
‘Don’t you have a card or something?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Some kind of identification?’
‘You’ll have to take my word for it.’
‘I would have thought a firm as highly regarded as yours...’
‘I’m not in the firm. I’m kind of, er, freelance, if you see what I mean. They called me up and asked me to do this one. Shall I come in, or would you fancy a drink somewhere?’
She didn’t care at all for his manner, but she told herself it sounded like an educated accent. Really she wanted to be convinced. She wanted passionately to go through with this.