The Fethering Mysteries 01; The Body on the Beach tfm-1

by Simon Brett

  “No, thank you. I’ve just had some.”

  “Well, excuse me if I continue munching.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do sit down,” said Brad, as he lowered himself on to a chair and took a bite of toast.

  “Yes, thank you.” Carole knew she sounded ridiculously formal. “So, Brad, have you known Jude long?”

  “Oh yes. We go way back.”

  “Ah.” Bubbling to the surface of Carole’s mind were a whole lot of other questions she wanted to ask. How far back? Where did you meet? Where do you live? Are you a fixture in Jude’s life? What is the precise nature of your relationship?

  “Great place she’s got here, hasn’t she?” said Brad.

  “Yes, yes, it’s very nice. Needs a bit of work, of course.”

  He didn’t seem to hear the second part of this response. “No, good old Jude,” he said with easy admiration. “Always lands on her feet.”

  “Does she?”

  “Oh yes.”

  At that moment the subject of their conversation swept into the room in her customary swirl of drapery. She was twisting the blonde hair into a knot on top of her head. “Morning, Carole,” she called out blithely. “Brad’s introduced himself, I hope.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry I wasn’t ready. You know how it is.”

  Carole didn’t know how it was, and wouldn’t have minded a few background details to tell her how it was. But she didn’t get any.

  “We’d better be off then,” said Jude. She leant across the table and planted a smacking kiss on Brad’s marm-alady lips. “Don’t know how long we’ll be, but if you’re not here when I get back, it’s been good to see you.”

  “You too. Always is.”

  “The door’s on the latch. Just click the thing up and close it behind you.”

  “Sure. Nice to meet you, Carole.”

  “And you, Brad.” Though she didn’t feel that she’d met him at all.

  In the immaculate Renault, as they drove off, Carole said, “Brad seemed very pleasant.”

  “Yes, he’s good news.”

  “He said you and he go way back…”

  “That’s right. He’s a good friend.”

  And Jude snuggled back into her seat, leaving Carole desperately in need of a definition of the word ‘friend’. But Jude didn’t volunteer one, and Carole couldn’t see any way of getting one, short of actually asking straight out what her neighbour’s relationship with Brad was. And she would never in a million years have done that.

  ♦

  The Shorelands Estate house which was receiving the benefit of J.T. fitted carpets was an Elizabethan pastiche with tall windows and bunches of thin, imaginatively topped chimneys. With the inappropriate nomenclature which seemed de rigueur in Shore-lands, its name, Bali-Hai, was spelled out in rustic pokerwork on an asymmetrical piece of driftwood. In the driveway, behind closed railings, a large green Jaguar squatted, toad-like.

  “I think we’re in time,” said Carole, as she brought the Renault to a halt opposite the house. “No sign of a van yet.”

  She looked at her watch. Ten to nine. They’d just sit and wait. And chat. Maybe she’d find out a little more about Jude’s visitor.

  “Brad was the friend you rushed back from the pub to see last night, was he?”

  “That’s right, yes.”

  “So he stayed over?”

  “Yes. Well, it’s a long way back for him.”

  Back where? Though desperate to know the answer, that was another question Carole could never have brought herself to ask.

  “He seemed very at home, Jude.”

  “It’s nice when friends feel relaxed staying with you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Jude looked across and gave Carole a sweet smile. Was there a trace of irony in it? Was Jude actually teasing her, deliberately withholding information, knowing how desperate she was to know about the relationship with Brad? It was impossible to tell.

  Jude smiled inwardly. She was having a little game with her neighbour. If Carole had come out with direct questions, she’d have answered them. Jude had no secrets. But if she wasn’t asked, it had never been her habit to volunteer information.

  She felt good, though. It was always a pleasure to see Brad, catch up on what he was doing. Old friends, Jude found, became more valuable with the passage of the years.

  There was a sudden tapping at the passenger side window. Jude wound it down.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re doing parked here! This is a Neighbourhood Watch area and…Oh. Oh, Jude, good morning.”

  The righteous resident of Shorelands bending down to the car window turned out to be Barbara Turnbull, her large frame swaddled up in an expensive tweed coat.

  “Barbara, how nice to see you. You know Carole?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course we know each other. Morning, Carole.”

  “Morning.”

  “I’m very sorry to have spoken to you like that, Jude, but you can’t be too careful. There’s been quite a spate of burglaries here in Shorelands and, since there’s a bit of an element in Fethering these days, we’ve all been encouraged to accost anyone we see lurking around.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize we were lurking,” said Jude.

  “No, obviously you weren’t. But it’s an unfamiliar car and, since I didn’t know who was in it, it did look as though someone was lurking. Apparently, these criminal gangs send people down to check out potential targets. ‘Casing the joint’, I believe they call it.” Having shared this piece of underworld know-how with her acquaintances, she straightened up. “Anyway, I was just off to my mother’s for a cup of coffee and to take her dog for a walk. First chance I’ve had to get out for days. Been tied up with housework. But thank goodness my cleaning lady’s deigned to come back this morning.” Barbara Turnbull put a large smile in place over her features. “So nice to see you both.”

  “And you, Barbara,” said Carole. “How’s Rory?”

  The smile froze in position. “Rory’s absolutely fine,” asserted Barbara Turnbull, daring anyone to contradict her. “Goodbye.”

  And with that she navigated her large, top-heavy body off down the road.

  “Funny,” Jude observed. “When she didn’t know who we were, she thought we might be criminals lurking. As soon as she recognizes us, her suspicions cease. How does she know we’re not ‘casing the joint’?”

  “Because we’re Fethering residents,” replied Carole stoutly.

  “Still, I think it’s good…” Jude mused.

  “What’s good?”

  “All this security-consciousness. All this Neighbourhood Watch stuff.”

  “I didn’t think you’d approve of that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you seem to have rather a hippyish attitude to property” was the answer that came instinctively to Carole’s mind. But all she said was, “I thought you’d regard it as snooping.”

  “Oh, I do. And that’s the beauty of it. Everyone in Fethering seems to snoop. I’m sure it’s impossible to do anything in this place without someone having seen you at it…”

  “Well…”

  “Which makes me very optimistic that we’re going to find out how our two bodies came to end up on the beach. Someone must’ve seen what happened. It’s just a matter of finding out who that someone is. And I think we – ”

  “Ssh! Look.”

  A yellow Transit van had just drawn up outside Bali-Hai. Lettering on the side read ‘J. T. CARPETS’.

  “Here we go,” said Carole, her hand tightening round the Stanley knife in her raincoat pocket.

  Two men got out of the van and went round to open the doors at the back. Both were middle-aged, one almost completely bald, the other with grizzled grey hair.

  Jude shook her head ruefully. “Neither of those looks like Dylan.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you read the duty roster wrong?”

  Carole was offended. “I di
d not! There were three of them allocated to this job. Dave, Ken and Dylan.”

  “Well, there go Dave and Ken.” Jude watched the two men, now carrying toolboxes, open the gates to Bali-Hai and go up to the front door. “Looks like Dylan’s called in sick.”

  But, as she spoke, they were aware of the sound of a car approaching fast. It was a Golf Gti, a good ten years old, tarted up with extra chrome and decals. The way it was being driven gave two fingers to the demure ‘20 mph’ signs of Shorelands.

  “I think this could be our quarry,” said Carole, as she opened the car door.

  They were both standing in front of Bali-Hai’s railings by the time the boy emerged from his Golf. He fitted Ted Crisp’s description perfectly. Bleached hair, single earring, ‘a nasty bit of work’.

  He looked through them as he came up to the gates.

  “Are you Dylan?” asked Carole.

  “What if I am?”

  “I’ve got something that belongs to you.”

  “Oh yes?”

  Carole took the Stanley knife out of her pocket and held it in her open palm, with the painted ‘j. T. CARPETS’ uppermost. Both women watched the boy closely. Though he quickly covered it up, his first reaction was undoubtedly one of shock.

  “Oh, well, thanks,” he said casually, reaching out for the knife. “I can take it in to work with me.”

  Carole withdrew her hand. “Don’t you want to know where we found it?”

  “Not particularly.” After the initial giveaway response, his manner had become cocky, on the edge of insolence.

  “We found it in a boat at the Fethering Yacht Club,” said Jude.

  A flicker of the eyelid showed he hadn’t been expecting that. But again he recovered quickly. “Wonder how it got there…”

  Carole took over the attack. “We know that you were there on Monday night with Aaron Spalding and another boy.”

  Dylan’s lip curled. “You know a lot. Nosy pair of old tarts, aren’t you?”

  “Being offensive isn’t going to help, Dylan. This is serious. And you know it’s serious. Aaron Spalding’s dead.”

  “Yes, I do know that. Stupid kid. Should have known better than to muck around on the banks of the Fether, shouldn’t he?”

  “And he’s not the only one who’s dead.”

  The young man’s face became a rigid mask. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve got to get to work.” And he made to push past them.

  Jude put her hand on his sleeve. “The police might be very interested to talk to you about what happened on Monday night.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “We have proof that you were with Aaron,” Jude went on, lying through her teeth.

  Dylan turned back to look her straight in the face. “All right, yes, I was with Aaron. That’s not a crime, is it?”

  “No.”

  “We went down the Crown and Anchor, but that tight-arsed bastard of a landlord wouldn’t serve the other two, so we pissed off down Nowtinstore and got some cans. We sank a few in one of them shelters on the front and Aaron asked me if I’d lend him my Stanley knife. So I did.”

  “What did he want it for?”

  “I don’t know, do I?” Dylan replied, with a shrug of aggrieved innocence. “And then I went home. I didn’t go down the Yacht Club. What the other two done after I gone, I’ve no idea.”

  “I think the police would want a rather fuller explanation than that, Dylan.”

  But Carole’s bid to frighten him didn’t work.

  “Maybe they would. But you’re not the police, are you?” he sneered. “And I don’t quite honestly think the police’d be that interested in what a pair of old biddies like you have to say.”

  Carole and Jude were rather afraid he was right. Their bluff had been called.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do have work to do.” Dylan put his hand on the railings of Bali-Hai’s gates.

  “Don’t you want your knife back?” asked Carole.

  “Not that bothered. We get through a lot of those. Ibols of the trade.”

  “Then I’ll keep it…”

  “Please yourself.”

  “…as evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?” Suddenly he’d seized the lapel of Carole’s raincoat and brought his face close up to hers. Her nostrils were filled by a sickly musk-flavoured aftershave. “You two harass me any more and things could get very unpleasant for you. I’ve seen you around. Fethering’s a small place. Wouldn’t be that hard for me to find out where you live. I’d advise you both to get off my bloody back!”

  There was no doubting the reality of the threat in his last words. He raised his free hand to Carole’s face. She flinched. Dylan chuckled and touched her cheek. Just one touch, very brief, very gentle and very menacing. Then he let go of her coat and turned towards Bali-Hai.

  “Who was the third boy?” asked Jude.

  “Who indeed?”

  “There was you, and Aaron Spalding, and somebody else.”

  “Spot on.”

  “Who was it?”

  “That’s for you to find out. Mind you, I don’t think you will.”

  “Why? Is he dead too?” Jude called after the retreating back as Dylan strode up the drive.

  But there was no answer. And the Stanley knife remained in Carole’s hand.

  “He’s lying,” Jude hissed, the first time that Carole had seen her angry. “He was with them at the Yacht Club.”

  “I know.”

  “But how’re we going to prove it?”

  “That,” said Carole pompously, “has been the problem with crime investigation since records began.”

  “Yes.”

  “Having an instinct for what’s happened, having a flash of inspiration – that’s the easy bit. It’s when you try to make the charges stick that most cases collapse.”

  Jude nodded thoughtfully. Then a slow smile spread across her broad features.

  “What is it?” asked Carole.

  “You talked about flashes of inspiration. I think I’ve just had one.”

  “About what?”

  “About finding the third boy. I may be wrong, but at least I’ve an idea where we can start looking.”

  ∨ The Body on the Beach ∧

  Twenty-One

  They didn’t have far to go through the Shorelands Estate to reach Brigadoon. The front garden’s Victorian lampposts continued to look incongruous in their mock-Spanish surroundings.

  “I still don’t understand,” Carole complained as they approached the studded door. “We know Barbara won’t be there. We know her mother won’t be there. And Rory’ll be at work in Brighton.”

  “It’s not them we’ve come to see,” said Jude firmly, as she pressed the doorbell.

  The woman who came to the door was probably late forties and could have been attractive in different circumstances. She wore jeans and a faded sweat shirt; her greying hair was scraped back into a rubber band at the nape of her neck and her face had the taut, drained look of total exhaustion.

  “Good morning,” she said, in a surprisingly cultured voice, and waited for them to state their business.

  Jude took the initiative. “Good morning. This is Carole and I’m Jude. We’re both friends of Barbara Turnbull and – ”

  “I’m afraid Mrs Turnbull isn’t in.”

  “No, we know that. You’re Maggie, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” the woman conceded cautiously.

  “It was you we wanted to have a word with.”

  Her face closed over. “You’re nothing to do with the Social Services, are you?”

  “No, no, we’re not. I promise.”

  But that didn’t resolve her suspicions. “I’m sorry. I’m working.” She reached to close the door, but Jude’s next words stopped her.

  “We wanted to have a word about your son.”

  A new wave of exhaustion flooded the woman’s body. Her shoulders drooped. There was a note of fatalism in her voice as she asked, “What’s h
e done?”

  “That’s what we want to find out.” Jude pressed home her slight advantage. “In particular what he was doing last Monday night.”

  This did frighten the woman. Her spoken response, that she had no idea what they were talking about, was belied by a wildness in her eyes.

  Some instinct told Carole this was the moment once again to produce the Stanley knife from her raincoat pocket. The woman’s eyes grew wilder.

  “What’s that? Where did you find it?”

  The telephone on the hall table rang. Indecision flickered in Maggie’s frightened eyes. She didn’t want to invite them in, but equally she didn’t want to let them go until she knew as much as they knew. The phone rang on. It was clearly not going to be picked up by anybody else or by an answering machine. “Wait there,” she said. “I’ll just be a moment.”

  She picked up the phone and gave the number. “What? Oh yes. Yes, he is here. I’ll get him to the phone.” She crossed to the foot of the stairs and called up, “Mr Turribull! Telephone!”

  She put the receiver down and crossed back to the women at the front door.

  “I thought Mr Turnbull would be at work,” said Carole.

  “He’s not well.” Dismissing the detail quickly, Maggie came closer and addressed them with a quiet urgency. “Look, I can’t really talk now. But I do want to talk.” Then, with a mixture of dread and pleading in her voice, she said, “You haven’t spoken to anyone else about Nick, have you?”

  “No,” replied Jude reassuringly.

  “Not yet,” added Carole, who thought their level of menace should be maintained. Maggie had something to tell them; having hooked her, they didn’t want to lose her.

  “Carole. Good morning. What’re you doing here?”

  Rory Turribull was coming down the stairs. He wore a shapeless towelling dressing gown. He looked raddled, hungover and haunted.

  Carole improvised wildly. “We were just calling about a Labrador charity I’m involved in. The Canine Trust.”

  “If you’re looking for a handout, I’m afraid dogs come fairly low down my pecking order of good causes.”

  “No, we were just…” Not wishing to get tangled up in details of her fictitious charity call, Carole moved on. “You met my new neighbour, Jude, in the pub, didn’t you?”

  “Did I?” Rory Turnbull’s bloodshot eyes showed no recognition but took Jude in, as though he were memorizing her features for future reference. “You will excuse me.” He turned to Maggie and asked grace-lessly, “Who did you say was on the phone?”