The Torso in the Town

by Simon Brett

  Francis Carlton made no reference to what had just happened. Instead, he walked across to a coat rack and said, ‘Must’ve left the mobile in my raincoat pocket.’ He retrieved it, and looked again at his watch. ‘Still a bit early to ring Florida. Want to check how Jonelle is. She’s been feeling pretty ropey in the mornings . . . you know, with the morning sickness . . . because of the baby.’

  He moved to the door. ‘I’ll be back later.’

  No gesture this time at a polite farewell to Carole. He didn’t want to lessen the impact of his parting shot. Carole felt sure it was the first time the baby had been mentioned, and a look at Debbie’s face confirmed that. She was almost as pale as her hair, her red lips a wound-like gash in the whiteness. Tears sparkled in the dark blue eyes.

  Carole had no idea of Debbie Carlton’s gynaecological history, whether she had ever tried to have a child, whether she had been unable to, whether even that had been the reason for the failure of their marriage. All she knew was that Francis Carlton’s announcement had hurt his ex-wife deeply. And also that breaking the news that way, casually, with a stranger present, had been a deliberate act of vindictiveness.

  ‘I’d better be on my way,’ she said. She couldn’t think of any help to offer that wouldn’t be emotionally intrusive. Jude would have been fine in such a situation, she’d have found the right words, she’d have provided comfort. But Carole Seddon didn’t have those skills.

  Fortunately, Debbie Carlton’s shock and self-pity didn’t last. Quickly, she converted them into anger. ‘God, he’s a bastard!’

  ‘Well, I’m not really in a position to—’

  ‘If I’d still had a sneaking residual shred of affection for him, what he just said would have removed it. That was the first time he’d told me Jonelle was pregnant.’

  ‘I rather thought it might have been.’

  ‘He did it simply to hurt me, to see me react with pain.’ Debbie rose from her chair, seething. ‘Well, I’m not going to give him the satisfaction. Francis thinks he’s destroyed me. He hasn’t! I’m a lot tougher – and a lot more determined – than he’s ever imagined. While we were married, I did play the doormat for him – I thought that’s what wives did – but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anything he does get to me now!’

  ‘Good for you, Debbie.’

  ‘I put up with all his arrogance and infidelities . . .’

  Casually, Carole picked up the word. ‘Yes, your mother mentioned infidelities . . .’

  ‘For a long time I didn’t realize what was going on. Traditional wifely role of “being the last to know”. And when I did find out, I even kind of accepted it. He met them in London, didn’t foul our own footpath down here. He wouldn’t have liked that, tarnishing his image in Fedborough. You know, Francis has always had a rather chilling ability to divide his life into compartments. Me down here, lovers in London, and never the twain shall meet.’

  ‘And what if the twain had met?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What if someone from his London life had come down here, a woman had appeared, threatening his respectable Fedborough image?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have let that happen. If any woman came down here after him, Francis would have just got rid of her.’

  Debbie Carlton’s hand leapt up to her mouth, as she realized the appalling implication of what she had just said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jude had suggested that they meet on Fedborough Bridge at twelve. Carole was there first. The water was high, flowing perversely upstream, as the tide from the sea was at its strongest. Occasional spars of wood and plastic bottles swirled on the green-grey surface. What lay beneath was as unknown and secret as Fedborough itself.

  She looked upstream to the cluster of boatsheds and the silting-up excavation which Roddy Hargreaves had apparently once envisioned as a marina. The dilapidated buildings looked bleak and hopeless. Surely the local authority wouldn’t allow the site to stay that way much longer, an ugly canker on Fedborough’s ‘West Sussex Calendar’ charm.

  The abandoned business brought a sudden chill of melancholy into Carole’s heart.

  Then she saw Jude coming down the High Street, her clothes – today a thin Indian print skirt and long chiffon scarf over a blue T-shirt – drifting as ever around her. She looked untroubled, benign, as though living in the world she should be living in. Not for the first time, Carole envied that certitude. For her, life had always been a process of adjustment, trying to match her angular contours to the ill-fitting frame in which she found herself.

  Like the child holding the bag of sweets, she decided to ration out her own revelations and hear Jude’s first. ‘How was Harry?’

  ‘Getting better. Now I’ve given him the freedom actually to talk about what he saw in the cellar, he’s turned into the complete Hercule Poirot.’

  ‘And have his “little grey cells” come up with anything useful?’

  ‘Not really. I’m afraid his theories feature too many aliens for my taste. One interesting thing he did tell me, though . . .’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Well, Harry had been worried about the police. You know, Grant went on at him about how irresponsible he’d been cutting the seals on the cellar door, so Harry was expecting a big rocket when the police came back to Pelling House to continue their investigations.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they haven’t come back. Which might suggest that, so far as the police are concerned, they’ve got all the information they want. Even that they might be close to solving the case.’

  Which coincides, Carole thought, with them talking to Francis Carlton. But she didn’t voice the connection yet. She was still rationing out her sweeties.

  ‘I find talking to Harry useful,’ Jude went on. ‘He helps as a sounding-board, helping me to sort out my own thinking about the case.’

  ‘I thought that was my role,’ said Carole in a moment of potential spikiness.

  Easy as ever, Jude defused the situation. ‘You are. You both are. The more input of ideas we get, the better. Being a sounding-board isn’t a competitive activity. If one person’s doing it, doesn’t mean that nobody else can.’

  ‘No.’ Carole wondered for a moment whether her life had always sought for exclusivity. Even from school days she’d wanted a one-to-one ‘best friend’, not a wide social group. And the difficulty of achieving that goal had maybe turned her inward, made her appear standoffish. In her marriage it had been the same, wanting David exclusively for herself. His desire to mix with more people was one of the elements which had started the frost between them. Even with Ted Crisp there had been—

  Fortunately, Jude’s voice cut through the cycle of self-recrimination. ‘You get anything interesting from Debbie?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ And it struck Carole that she had really had a rather constructive morning. ‘For a start, I met Francis.’

  ‘The ex-husband?’

  She nodded. ‘And I found out that, throughout their marriage, he was a serial philanderer.’

  ‘Ooh.’ Jude rubbed her hands together with glee. ‘This sounds terrific. Lovely stuff. You know what we need?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A couple of large white wines and some South Downs Something-or-other from the menu at the Coach and Horses. Once we’re equipped with those, you can give me all the dirt.’

  Giving the dirt about Francis Carlton had to be deferred. When they entered the pub, they found it full of lunch-time eaters and drinkers, but alone at the bar sat Roddy Hargreaves.

  Oblivious to the weather, he was still wearing his Guernsey sweater, and he looked isolated. Presumably that day his cronies all had wives or jobs to go to. Without their support, he slumped on his stool. There was whisky in front of him rather than beer, and the intense way he concentrated on the glass suggested he’d been drinking for some time.

  ‘Hello,’ said Jude, as they waited for a barman to be free. ‘How’re you, Roddy?’

  Very slowly, he removed h
is gaze from the whisky, but found it more difficult to focus on her.

  ‘Jude,’ she supplied. ‘Remember, we met here last week. And this is my friend Carole.’ (This time, Carole was too intrigued to find the introduction embarrassing.)

  ‘Ah.’ He seemed puzzled to be given the information, but was instinctively courteous. ‘Good afternoon, ladies.’

  A barman, the same one as on their previous visit, had arrived. ‘Two large Chilean Chardonnay, please,’ said Jude. ‘And can I get you one, Roddy?’

  ‘Wouldn’t say no to the same again.’

  ‘Large Johnnie Walker,’ the barman noted impassively.

  ‘Do you mind if we join you?’ said Jude, drawing up a barstool before Roddy had time to answer. ‘Are we going to get something to eat?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a sandwich,’ Carole replied primly.

  ‘You eating?’

  Roddy shook his head. ‘Some days eating seems rather to slip down my list of priorities. Today is one such day.’

  They got in an order for ‘Generous Sussex-style Tuna Sandwiches’, without pursuing the interesting question of where one might catch a ‘Sussex-style Tuna’. Both of them wondered whether Roddy Hargreaves would need a prompt to continue talking. He didn’t.

  ‘Seem to remember you said you didn’t come from Fedborough.’

  ‘Fethering.’

  ‘Ah, right. Thought you must be from out of town.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you came right up and talked to me.’

  Jude looked puzzled. ‘Why shouldn’t we?’

  He took a long swallow of whisky. ‘Have you ever lived in a small country town?’

  ‘Fethering’s not very big.’

  ‘No, it’s virtually a village. But it’s on the sea, which somehow makes it different. Lets in some air. Different in a land-locked little country town like Fedborough.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Carole, once again demonstrating her lack of people-skills, ‘but what on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about gossip. Have you any idea how corrosive gossip can be in a place like this? I’m used to it – or I should be. Soon as Virginia and I moved here, we very quickly got used to the idea that we couldn’t clear our throats without everyone knowing. It was a bit of a shock, because we’d come down from London. You can be anonymous in a city. Forget that down here. Whatever we did in Fedborough, we just fed the local piranhas a bit more of ourselves. I heard about my plans for converting the old boatsheds down by the bridge almost before I’d made the decision to do it.

  ‘And, of course, when all that started to go wrong, the gossips were in seventh heaven. What a lot of new scandal Fiona Lister and her coven had to get their teeth into. And then my marriage crumbled – partly because of all the gossip, let me tell you – and they were even more ecstatic. When Virginia walked out on me, they all thought Christmas and their birthdays had come at the same time.’

  Gloomily he emptied his whisky glass. ‘But all that’ll be as nothing to what’s about to happen now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Jude.

  ‘I’ll be shunned. At the moment they think I’m just an old piss-artist . . . not very admirable, perhaps, but nice and safe. A cautionary tale to bolster the harpies’ rectitude. “There but for the grace of God we will never go.” A mess, but a harmless mess. They won’t think that any more. Nobody’ll want to talk to me.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Carole snapped. ‘Your friend James Lister has invited us to dinner tomorrow night. And he said it was your birthday, and you’d definitely be there too.’

  ‘Did he? Oh yes, I remember. He managed to persuade the lovely Fiona that I would behave myself.’ The bleary eyes looked sceptical. ‘I wonder if my invitation will still stand tomorrow.’

  ‘What’s happening tomorrow?’ asked Jude softly.

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’ He tapped his glass sharply on the counter. ‘Could you give me another of those, please. Lee? Are you two ladies ready for another?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘It’s a mess,’ Roddy Hargreaves went on, ‘a total bloody mess. Drink gets you into it, and drink’s the only way out of it.’ He shuddered. ‘Imagine what life would be like if you were sober all the time, if you had to face the reality without alcohol blurring the edges a bit. Intolerable.’ He took a long pull from his whisky glass. ‘Oblivion’s the only hope.’

  ‘When you talk about drink getting you into a mess . . .’ Jude began cautiously, ‘are you talking about the time when your wife left you? You said last week that all that period was a blur.’

  He focused on her for a moment of stillness. ‘You’re a very intelligent woman. You’re exactly right. That is the time I’m talking about. That’s the time I can’t remember anything about. But that’s the time they keep asking me about.’

  ‘ “They” being the police?’ asked Carole.

  He nodded, rubbing a large hand over his purple nose. ‘Yes. I’m a coward, really. I was brought up to believe in honour and bravery and facing up to things. Whatever questions arose in life, the Jesuits had an answer to them. Just a matter of having faith. Faith and character. That’s the kind of school my parents sent me to. But every time my character was put to the test, it proved unequal to the challenge. Same goes for my faith too, I’m afraid. I just always escaped into this.’ He looked down at the glass.

  ‘When did Virginia walk out?’ Jude asked softly.

  Whatever his vagueness about other details, he knew that instantly. ‘Three and a half years ago. February it was.’

  ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He seemed near to tears. ‘She needn’t have gone. I still loved her. We could have made it work . . . if only I had been there.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  He chuckled bitterly. ‘Drunk. Oh, geographically I was there, but so far as being actually on hand, I . . .’ The sentence petered out. ‘Everything had gone wrong with the business. I’d had to sell what was left, just the strip of land on the riverbank and the buildings there. Got less than I’d paid for them, and I never saw back anything for the money I’d spent on dredging and . . . Anyway, that was collapsing, and there were all kinds of practical things I should have been arranging, but I couldn’t face it. The new owner wanted all my stuff out of the boatsheds, so I paid Bob Bracken – the old bloke I’d bought the business from in the first place – to clear them for me, and I . . . I just escaped . . .’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘France. I just couldn’t face this place. Fedborough.’ He spoke the name with undisguised distaste. ‘I couldn’t stand the thought of all those smug bastards sniggering behind their hands at me, so I just got a lift to Newhaven, caught the first available ferry, and got stuck into the duty-free.’

  ‘How long were you away?’

  Roddy Hargreaves let out a sigh of uncertainty. ‘I don’t know, three days, four days. A real bender. A real escapist’s bender.’ His head sagged on to his chest. ‘And when I came back, Virginia had gone.’

  ‘Leaving a note?’ asked Jude.

  ‘Leaving nothing, except a big hole in my life.’

  ‘And she hasn’t contacted you since?’

  He shook his head wearily. ‘Why should she? She’d given me enough chances, I’d rejected all of them. I knew what she was telling me. The message got across all right. Actions, as they say, speak louder than words.’

  ‘Are you telling us,’ said Carole in her sensible, practical voice, ‘that the people in Fedborough are suggesting you had something to do with Virginia’s disappearance?’

  Roddy laughed, without humour. ‘Of course they’re suggesting that. And they’re right. I let her down, I let down my faith too. I was an inadequate husband to Virginia, so she disappeared. I caused it all right.’

  ‘But are people in Fedborough saying more than that – that you actually did away with your wife?’

  A silence followed
Carole’s question. He looked at her for a long moment, apparently having difficulty understanding. Then, choosing the words carefully, as if speaking a foreign language, he said, ‘It’s very hard to answer questions about something you genuinely can’t remember. We’re talking about a lost weekend here . . . rather longer than a weekend, in fact. And all I know is that I went to France, and I was blind drunk for some days, and when I came back, Virginia had gone. Not a cast-iron alibi, is it? Happens to be true, but I’ve got no one who can . . .’ He negotiated the word with great care. ‘ . . . corroborate that for me. So I’ve neatly set everything up for the Fedborough gossips to have a bloody field day.’

  He slammed his empty glass down on the counter in frustration. ‘Lee! Could you fill this up for me, please?’

  The young barman looked awkward and mumbled, ‘Erm, Janet said we shouldn’t serve you any more . . .’

  ‘Well, thank you very much.’ Some alcoholics would have made this the start of a furious tirade, but Roddy Hargreaves wasn’t that kind of drunk. His anger vanquished by upbringing, he spoke the words of thanks with great courtesy, then stumbled off his stool and swayed like a sailor finding his land-legs. ‘Fortunately I do have alternative supplies at home, so am not entirely dependent on the Coach and Horses’ service policy to maintain my necessary intake.’

  He smiled at the squirming barman, turned and gravely touched his forehead to Carole and Jude. ‘Excuse me, ladies. I hope you understand I have to leave. A great pleasure talking to you.’

  Then, with eccentric dignity, he tottered out into the sun of Pelling Street. Curious tourist eyes followed him. There was a ripple of nervous laughter. So far as they were concerned, he was just another small-town drunk, but Carole and Jude knew that Roddy Hargreaves was – or could have been – so much more.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As James Lister had said, he and his wife lived in Dauncey Street, far away – well, at least fifty yards – from the Bohemian excesses of Pelling Street. The house was a three-storey Victorian edifice, unadorned almost to the point of being forbidding. Indeed, when Carole and Jude arrived in the rain of the Friday evening, the house looked positively unwelcoming. But it was solid, respectable and undoubtedly worth a lot. There had been money in being a butcher in Fedborough.