42. SUSPECT 5: King Pete
Tell me you've seen Beetlejuice...
King Pete is, maybe, less a suspect, and more someone just worth talking to. If you can face it. If you can manage it. Why? Yes so he’s a guy who knows everyone’s business, but yeah they are two a penny at this bar, but King Pete, as he’s known to the rare few who have “the knowledge”, has a unique perspective and keener focus.
Pete lives up the way in one of the valleys - who knows which one, nobody ever asked or maybe ;listened when he said. He would drive down in his battered Austin the day after his dole money went in, drink ten pints of lager and drive back. He would draft between tables, drift between groups. He wasn’t without his charms. He was big, gruff, could have been twenty-five, could have been mid-forties, always had this big old coat that would hang off of him. And he would start every entrance with “Hey ______, what have you been up to today?” But it wasn’t until Med noticed something that speculation began. Pete wouldn’t let it lie if you dead batted that salvo. “Hey_____, what have you been up to today?” “Nothing much, Pete, you?” “Oh this and that, but seriously, what have you been up to?” It was never thought about, never commented on. He was an odd guy from the valleys, why wouldn’t he be more interested in your day-to-day than his own?
But then Med said something and suddenly nobody could remember if it was a rumour or if somebody had been to his house once. Yeah, wasn’t that how it went? One of the guys - a gas fitter or a council bloke checking something or other - was shocked one day on a call to be confront with Pete at the door of the address on his clipboard. He had to go into the attic - maybe it was wasps or bats or some metre to read or something. And there he saw it. There it was.
Med told it like this.
“You’ve seen Beetlejuice? Of course you have… tell me you’ve seen Beetlejuice… well, in Pete’s attic he has a gigantic replica of the whole town of New Port, just like Alec Baldwin does in his attic in Beetlejuice. And in this tiny version of the town is tiny versions of us. And when Pete asks us what we’ve been up to, he makes a mental note of that, and when he goes home, his belly full of beer, he moves our little figures to correspond with what we’ve told him. Moses, been to the doctor? Pete moves the little Moses figure to the doctor. Vardaman, went and got a chippy tea? Pete moves you tot he chip shop over by your street. It’s there. Up in the attic. His domain. King fucking Pete.”
Crikey. Nothing’s simple, is it? And now, up there in that attic, Aaron Bailey is being laid across the train track.