‘Well, don’t worry, you won’t have to see either of us again now, will you?’
‘Good riddance. You bloody deserve each other.’
With that she got up and went to the door, but Danny and Tina were blocking her path.
‘No rush to give Father Christmas a lift; he’s long gone,’ Danny said, rubbing his knuckles, his face like thunder.
‘As for you thinking we didn’t realise that Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer was just a big dog with antlers on, give us some bloody credit,’ Lucas added. ‘We thought it was quite funny at first. The younger kids didn’t realise, and the parents thought it a hoot, but that’s four hundred quid I want back off you.’ He looked Davina up and down with scorn on his face. ‘It all makes sense now. I remember Rosa telling me that creep had a Great Dane. I can’t believe I didn’t realise what you were up to.’
Davina opened her cross-over bag and pulled out a wodge of cash. She thrust it at him. ‘Here! There’s your money. That’s it, I’m going now.’
‘And the rest, you lousy thief,’ Tina said. ‘I’ve been watching you, milady, saying you could only take cash and then putting “one for the money tin, one for me” as you loaded as many notes as you could in there.’ The tough East Ender pointed to the policewoman’s bag.
‘That’s a lie,’ Davina hissed, fronting up to her. ‘Bloody prove it.’
Lucas began to play the video that Tina had taken earlier from her viewpoint in the Mary Rose. ‘I think in your game that’s called strong evidence, isn’t it, WPC Hunt? And this was just from today. Maybe it would have been cleverer to cut the camera’s wire, rather than just pull it out, eh? Call yourself a detective,’ he sneered.
Davina angrily emptied her handbag of notes and threw them down on to the desk. ‘I don’t want your bloody money.’
Lucas laughed sarcastically. ‘Of course you don’t, not now you’ve been rumbled.’ He shook his head. ‘Money makes the world go round and I can see why, aided and abetted by that scumbag Fox, you thought you’d make a fast buck for Christmas – but why sabotage my chance with the Seaside Stars too? I just don’t get it.’
‘Now you really are going mad. That woman was pissed, she made all that up. You know she didn’t have prawns, she just wanted to cause a fuss.’
‘The thing is, officer – or should I say “former officer”, since your career will be well and truly over when word gets round – as it will. You see, we’ve got proof of you putting the prawn in her food too. As you coppers say, we’ve got you bang to rights. You could have killed her – did you think of that?’
As he spoke, Lucas saw the blood draining from Davina’s (to him now ugly) face.
‘I was never one for security cameras until Rosa got done over last year in the Corner Shop,’ Lucas carried on. ‘So in every room downstairs, including of course the kitchen, I put a hidden one which links directly to the computer up here. Once Tina told me that you were stealing on the main cameras, I thought I’d have a little look on here too.’
Danny, praying that his boss hadn’t secretly put them in the bedrooms too, looked intently at the screen. Lucas set the footage on his computer screen running, and there for all to see, clear as daylight, was Danny at the back of the bar getting the attention of a barman and Davina opening the fridge, taking a prawn from the plastic box in there, cutting a tiny piece off and pushing it under the tuna steak, mixing it in the sauce with her finger as she did so. Then wiping the sides of the plate as Danny had asked, she smugly took it out to Alabaster Anna.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Davina said quietly. Her face was now a deathly white.
Danny’s mouth nearly dropped to the floor. ‘Sorry could be a starter for ten, you rotten bitch!’ he roared. ‘I could have lost my job because of you – my family could have lost their home!’
Tina, seething with fury, and longing to get the horrible woman by the hair and slap her face hard, nearly had to walk out of the room at that point for fear of what she might say or do.
‘That’s enough, now,’ Lucas interjected. ‘Tina and Danny, you’ve been great and I can never thank you enough, but you two can go back downstairs now. We’ve got a hotel to run and I need to ask WPC Charlatan here just one more important question.’
CHAPTER 48
Christopher opened the door to Seaspray Cottage with a beaming smile.
‘Hello, girl. How was the rehearsal?’
Rosa started to laugh. ‘Honestly, it’s like a farce. Felix Carlisle has taken over and I don’t mind really. He has got the best voice – although I’m not sure that whoever wrote “Jingle Bells” had in mind an operatic version.’
‘He is a one, isn’t he? Well, at least it’s fun, and that’s what we all need a bit of in this life.’
‘Shut that door and stop that cold coming in!’ Mary shouted from the kitchen.
‘I was saying fun, that’s what we all need, isn’t it, Mary?’ he repeated, walking back into the kitchen and smacking her bottom.
‘That’s enough of that,’ Mary chided him as Hot in his usual routine scampered over to Merlin’s metal food bowl and thoroughly licked it, chasing the bowl over the kitchen tiles.
‘Get a room, you two,’ Rosa said and wished she hadn’t as it immediately brought back the sounds that she could never unhear from the other day.
‘Your hair looks amazing, Mum,’ she added quickly. Mary had had it cut to just over shoulder length, which suited her so much better than having it just heavy and long down to her waist. ‘You had it tied back earlier so I didn’t notice.’
‘She looks ten years younger, I reckon,’ Kit said. ‘You always were a beauty, Polly Cobb, you just never realised it.’
Mary blushed, giving a look to the tall, white-haired man in front of her that said more than any words ever could. Rosa felt warm inside. Mary Cobb had found her peace, at last. Just like Rosa herself had when, helped by others, she had come to realise her own worth. This, in turn, had allowed her to let Josh in and continue on an equal footing in the relationship they had with each other.
Rosa peered into the pram at her sleeping child. ‘Has he been good?’
‘When your mother actually let him go to sleep, he has,’ Kit grassed on her.
Rosa grinned. ‘Well, thank you both, so much. Right, I’d better get him home, it’s late for all of us on a school night.’
Mary packed everything back in the baby bag. ‘There’s some banana bread in there for you too, duck. Good for your energy.’ She then suddenly clutched her stomach, doubled over and made a moaning noise.
Christopher jumped to her side. ‘Polly, oh God, what’s the matter, my love?’
‘What is it, Mum?’ Rosa, used to her mother’s sixth sense, stayed calm.
Mary was upright again in seconds. ‘I can see Titch. How was she when you left her?’
CHAPTER 49
When they were left alone, Lucas asked Davina to follow him downstairs to the office. ‘Why did you do it?’ he wanted to know. His anger had died away and was replaced with a tinge of sadness. ‘I’ve been nothing but good to you,’ he added, sighing deeply.