Chapters (31)
‘No, it wasn’t like that so much. When Bill went off to Thailand that New Year, we said cheerio and looked forward to picking up the Sunday fishing when he got back. Then he was away longer than he’d planned but I didn’t think too much about it. Early February I get a text from him. He’s back in England and are we all right for Sunday? I say yes, and he says he’ll pick up the bait.’
This tallied with what Jude had found in the diary.
‘Then, on the Sunday he appears, usual time, pleased as punch – and he’s brought the Chink with him!’
‘What, was he suggesting that she should join you on the fishing trip?’
‘No. He’d just brought her along to introduce her. Well, I was shocked. Beyond shocked, I was. I’d known Valerie – that’s Bill’s first wife – since we was all at school together. And I couldn’t believe that he’d be so disloyal to her.’
‘She had been dead quite a few years,’ said Jude. ‘Seven or eight, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s not the point! I wouldn’t have minded if Bill’d hitched up with some nice English girl, a local from Fethering perhaps. There were plenty of them interested after Valerie died but he didn’t take no notice. That would have been all right, though. But for him to get caught up with a gold-digger … a “Mail Order Bride” … a Chink … I wasn’t standing for that!’
‘So, it was you who called a halt to the fishing trips, not Malee?’
‘Of course it was! What business would it be of hers? You’d have done the same in my position, wouldn’t you?’
Fortunately, the question was rhetorical and Red went straight on, ‘Bill’d betrayed Valerie’s memory – and I didn’t want to have anything more to do with him!’
‘So that was the last time you saw him?’ Carole had reported there had been a more recent encounter, but Jude wanted to see whether Red would volunteer the information again. ‘That Sunday in February?’
‘No, I did see him again. Not a Sunday. Only a few weeks back. He come here to the boat. He was very low, said he didn’t want us to part on bad terms.’
‘Rather a strange thing to say, given you’d parted on bad terms nearly a year ago.’
‘Wasn’t so strange when he told me the reason.’
‘Oh?’
‘That’s why I wasn’t surprised when I heard about his death.’
‘What did he tell you, Red?’
‘Bill said he’d been diagnosed with cancer.’