There were bars and pubs along the seafront nestled among the terraced flats and houses, and occasional hotels that still had the aura of a 1950s boardinghouse. Tristan lived at the top end of the seafront, close to the university building, where the esplanade curved sharply away from the beach and then doubled back on itself and became the high street.
He walked in the opposite direction, down toward the end of the esplanade, past a couple of pubs where groups of people sat outside on the pavement eating dinner.
The Boar’s Head was at the very end, and it backed onto the steep hill that led up onto the cliffs.
It was a small pub with a raised stage next to a DJ booth, where Pete the DJ was playing Atomic Kitten’s Spanish cover of “The Tide Is High.” It was still early when Tristan entered, and there was a mix of guys and girls, old and young, standing by the bar.
He noticed his friend Ade playing on an ancient Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? slot machine. He was a large man in his early fifties, wearing baggy jeans, a white T-shirt, and an orange down vest. His black hair was long and lustrously styled, flowing down over his shoulders, and a thick, dark beard.
“Well hello, Miss Marple,” said Ade, looking up from the machine. He leaned over and gave Tristan a hug. Miss Marple was the nickname Ade had coined when he heard Tristan worked as a private detective. “Haven’t seen you for a few days. Has it been busy in Saint Mary Mead?”
“We’ve just started working on a new missing persons case. Very complex. What are you drinking?” asked Tristan.
“Alcohol, Miss Marple!” said Ade, holding up his empty pint glass. “Get me a lager top.”
Tristan ordered a pint of Guinness and another lager for Ade, and they went to sit in one of the booths to the side of the bar.
Their friendship was easy. Ade went drinking most evenings at the Boar’s Head, and they never arranged to meet, but it had become a regular thing for them to meet for drinks a couple of times a week.
Ade had been a police officer for twenty-five years, but then an attack when he was on duty left him with PTSD. At fifty, Ade had taken early retirement, and he was trying to write a science fiction novel. He’d taken Tristan under his wing after Tristan had come out as gay almost three years earlier.
“Did you ever work on the Joanna Duncan missing persons case?” asked Tristan.
Ade took a long pull on his lager. “No. Who was she?”
Tristan had known it was a long shot that Ade might have worked on the case.
“She was a journalist at the West Country News. She went missing in September 2002.”
“Oh yes, I remember. I was working with the Devon and Cornwall vice squad at the time. Which I know probably sounds like a contradiction in terms, but I’m telling you, it’s a hotbed of sex and scandal just like the rest of the country.”
“I wanted to know if you ever heard any gossip about a guy called Noah Huntley? He was the local MP round here. He won his seat in the ’92 election and then lost it in a bribery scandal . . .”
Ade raised an eyebrow and took another sip of his lager. “I know that he’s been ‘happily married’ for twenty years but prefers to spend his nights with handsome young men. Why? Has he given you his number, Miss Marple?”
“No, nothing like that.”
Tristan went on to explain that Joanna Duncan had also been investigating Noah Huntley’s use of rent boys, but that part of the story hadn’t been published.
“I caught him cruising once, years back,” said Ade. “It was August, a few weeks before Princess Diana died, 1997. It was a hot night, and we were doing a big round of two housing estates and some nicer residential areas, and we’d go past a gay pub on the outskirts of Exeter called Peppermintz. It was a bit rough and ready. It was actually my local, and an ex-boyfriend of mine used to do some gigs there. He was a Lorna Luft impersonator . . .”
“Who’s Lorna Luft?” asked Tristan, regretting it the moment he asked.
“Oh my Lord—call yourself gay? Or do you say queer?”
“No. I don’t say queer.”
“Good. Why are the young using queer? Queer is the slur that was hurled at me for most of my younger years. Queer is what the bullies and the homophobes called me when they beat the crap out of me.”
“But some people use that word to describe themselves.”
“And that’s fine, all power to them; just don’t call me queer. I want to be called gay, and I have the right to ask that.”
Tristan could see Ade was getting worked up.