The Sinking Admiral. Simon Brett

and felt a little frisson, knowing the delights that lay ahead for her that evening… if she played her cards right… and Meriel Dane was always confident in her ability to play her cards right. In the meantime, flirting with Ben Milne was a reasonably pleasant way of passing the time. He was quite attractive in an angular way, and Meriel Dane always rather fancied herself in the role of cougar.

      And then Ben went and spoiled it all by asking her about the budgetary restrictions on the Admiral Byng’s food operation.

      Because they had driven up from London that morning, Ben Milne’s cameraman Stan, according to some abstruse ruling known only to his union, had to stop work at five for a three-hour break. He left then, and went to the B & B in a nearby village, which he’d booked in preference to one of the Admiral Byng’s bedrooms. Ben, though, was staying in the pub. Unable to shoot any further footage for the time being, he bought himself a large glass of Chilean Merlot and sat in a corner of the bar, drinking as though he’d earned it. Amy Walpole still didn’t trust him. Though without his cameraman he couldn’t actually record anything that happened, she still sensed that he was vigilant, listening out for those telling details that might contribute something to his eventual hatchet job.

      But the absence of the camera had an immediate effect on the day’s business. All of those locals who kept away from the Admiral Byng most of the year but had ‘just happened to drop in’ that day suddenly vanished when there was no further chance of them being immortalised on video. Though Amy was in no doubt that a lot of them would be back the following morning.

      The stresses of the day were catching up on her. She’d been so busy that she hadn’t had a chance to get any lunch and she felt headachey. What she needed was a brisk walk along the Crabwell front to blow away the cobwebs. And Ben Milne was now the only customer in the bar.

      Grabbing from its hook the beaten-up Barbour jacket that Fitz had given her, Amy Walpole told him she had to go out for a while. If he needed a refill or anything else before she was back, he should call through to Meriel in the kitchen. She’d help him out.

      The wind from the Urals was predictably invigorating once she got outside, but Amy was used to it. All the Crabwell locals instinctively adopted a particular stance, leaning into the wind as they walked. Amy comforted herself with the thought that at least it wasn’t raining. But the weather was dull and miserable, almost impossible to see where the slate grey of the sky met the slate grey of the sea. It was one of those Suffolk afternoons when there wouldn’t really be a dusk, just a darkening of the grey until it was imperceptibly transformed into black.

      There weren’t many people about, though a little way up the beach Amy could see a group of Girl Guides struggling against the wind to erect some tents on the shingle. She remembered the girls’ leader Greta Knox telling her they had some camping exercise planned, though it didn’t look much fun on a cold March evening. She recognised Greta’s stocky outline amongst the girls, and waved vaguely in her direction. Whether Greta saw her or not, she couldn’t judge.

      Amy also saw, lingering on the edge of the group, trying to avoid doing anything useful, a girl called Tracy Crofts to whom she had more than once refused service at the bar of the Admiral Byng. In spite of her protestations, Amy knew the girl to be underage. There was a general view in Crabwell that it was only a matter of time before Tracy Crofts, a seething mass of teenage hormones, came to no good.

      Amy Walpole lived in a dilapidated little seafront cottage only five minutes’ walk from the pub, and she felt a strong temptation to go home, however briefly. Just to put her feet up, have a cup of tea. But she resisted the impulse. She knew how much more difficult it would be to force herself back to work if she succumbed to home comforts.

      So she walked determinedly in the opposite direction from her cottage. Towards the end of the beach where, drawn up on the sand, there were a lot of boats. Including the dinghy owned by her boss. No surprise really that its name, picked out in silver stick-on letters across the stern, was The Admiral.

      More of a surprise, though, that afternoon, was that the boat’s owner was standing by it, checking the cords that tied down the tarpaulin cover from which the mast protruded. He wore no overcoat, just his usual blazer.

      ‘Evening, Admiral,’ said Amy.

      ‘Hello there.’ There was an uncharacteristic air of complacency in his smile, of relief almost, as if he had just achieved something very necessary.

      ‘Problems with the cover?’

      ‘Just checking it, Amy. There have been rather too many thefts from boats on the beach here recently.’

      ‘Have you got much of value in there?’

      ‘Now that’d be telling,’ he replied with an enigmatic grin.

      ‘I’ve hardly seen you today.’

      ‘No, I’ve been busy in the Bridge.’

      ‘So I gathered. And you haven’t talked yet to Ben Milne, the Grand Inquisitor?’

      ‘No. That pleasure is scheduled for tomorrow. Seems to me to be a rather cocky young man.’

      ‘I think if you work in television that goes with the territory.’

      He grinned, then his face clouded as he said, ‘Also, Amy, you and I need to have a long talk.’

      ‘Really?’ She spread her hands wide. ‘Well, I’m happy to talk now.’

      ‘No, no.’ The Admiral shook his grey head. ‘That will keep till tomorrow too. I have other plans for tonight.’

      ‘And what do they involve?’

      ‘Tonight, Amy, is to be my “Last Hurrah”. I plan to get extremely drunk.’

      ‘Oh. Drunker than usual?’

      ‘Very definitely.’

      ‘Are you celebrating?’

      ‘Something like that,’ replied the Admiral, with a teasing hint of mischief in his voice.

      But as it turned out, he never did have an inquisition from Ben Milne. Or his long talk with Amy Walpole. Because, by the next morning, the Admiral was dead.

       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘Amy, my dear, another round for everyone, please,’ said the Admiral, placing a steadying hand on the bar. His silk handkerchief drooped drunkenly out of his blazer breast pocket, and his silver hair looked as though someone had been running their fingers through it.

      Amy knew better than to query her boss’s request, however unusual it was. ‘What’ll it be, folks?’ she shouted.

      The peace of the late afternoon had vanished. With the return of Stan, Ben’s cameraman, word had spread via the usual jungle drums that kept the inhabitants of Crabwell up to speed with the latest developments, and the bar was once again full. Incongruously out of place among the regulars were a bunch of Viking re-enactors, dressed in the full kit and waving rustic-looking tankards. Amy had been a bar manager far too long to find anything strange about their presence. In her line of work you served everyone and didn’t ask questions.

      She looked around for other locals and saw Crabwell’s GP, Dr Alice Kennedy, who quite often dropped in at the end of evening surgery. She was, as ever, smartly but unobtrusively dressed, on this occasion in black trousers and a navy blue blazer. Amy never quite knew whether Alice came in just for a relaxing drink or to monitor the intake of her patients. Though perfectly friendly, the doctor always seemed slightly aloof from the other barroom regulars. But maybe a level of professional detachment went with the job.

      The same could have been said of Crabwell’s vicar, the Rev Victoria Whitechurch. She wasn’t a regular in the pub, but she had been there for the ‘Last Hurrah’. Maybe she was on the lookout to see which of her parishioners overindulged. Or perhaps she was on a proselytising mission, hoping to enlist more