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

by Simon Brett

  “So you really reckoned you could start over?”

  “Not reckoned – reckon. It’s still going to happen. Tanya and I are going to live together in France and bring up our babies there. I’ve been salting away the money for months.”

  The gleam in Rory’s eyes showed Jude how much he was caught up in his fantasies, how long he’d been nursing them, and how potent to the middle-aged was the chimera of one last chance, the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and make a fresh start. It also showed Jude that the man she was dealing with was not entirely sane.

  “Tanya was meant to come into my life,” he went on. “It’s been a long time coming, and there’s been a lot of shit along the way, but she was meant to happen to me. She’s wonderful. She’s the first woman I’ve ever known who hasn’t expected anything from me. Anything I give her she regards as a bonus. She has no aspirations for me.”

  The fervour with which he said the word bore witness to the agony of the years Barbara and her mother had spent trying to ‘make something’ of Rory Turnbull. Part of Jude could empathize with his need to take action, do anything that would break him out of that straitjacket, out of the suffocating aspirational gentility of the Shorelands Estate.

  “Me and Tanya,” Rory Turnbull concluded proudly, “is a love match.”

  And Jude could see how it was. Two damaged people who had asked for very little and been more abundantly rewarded than they’d ever dared to hope.

  Appealing though this image was, it did not change the facts. “I’m sure it is a love match,” said Jude, “but does that justify murder?”

  He gave her a pained look. “Tanya told you. The man died of an overdose.”

  “No. Tanya may well believe that, because it doesn’t occur to her to question anything you tell her, but it doesn’t work for me. The logic isn’t there. This whole business has taken months of planning. Your cheating the NHS, your fiddling the Yacht Club accounts, planting the idea of your heroin habit, that’s all long-term stuff. I’m afraid I don’t believe you set it all up, on the off chance that, when the time came – the Monday before last – you’d stumble across a body the right age and shape who’d just conveniently died of an overdose. Sorry, call me old–fashioned, but I don’t buy that. You’d targeted the man for months.”

  “All right.” He made the confession lightly. “Yes, I saw him first in the summer, down by the pier when I went for a walk one lunchtime. He asked me for money. I gave him some and thought how wretched he was – a man about my age, about my size, and he was reduced to that. And then I thought that, though I’d got all the things he hadn’t – the money, the job, the house – I was even more wretched than he was. It was round the time I’d started seeing Tanya. I was still at that stage trying to behave correctly, trying to do the decent thing – and it was tearing me apart.

  “I saw the man a few times after that – just walked past him, maybe gave him money, maybe didn’t – but it was only when I knew Tanya was pregnant that the plan began to form in my mind. And, the more I thought about it, the more it started to obsess me.”

  Yes, thought Jude, that’s the word – obsess.

  “And, of course, because Tanya was pregnant, there was a time pressure. There were a lot of time pressures.”

  “The Dental Estimates Board, the Fethering Yacht Club accountants…”

  “All that.”

  “So how did you kill him? Where did you kill him?”

  “Here. I’d sent Tanya out to the cinema. She loves movies – particularly weepies. I’d given him the money for a lot of heroin. He’d had a hit. He was feeling good. I smothered him” – he gestured to the bed – “with that pillow.” Rory read disapproval in Jude’s expression. “Go on, he died happy. Better than the way it would have happened otherwise. Contaminated drugs…a fight with another addict…an infected needle…with someone like that it was only a matter of time. He was already lost.”

  “No one’s lost, Rory. Not even at the very end. Anyway, didn’t you think who he was?”

  “I didn’t know who he was.”

  “He was a human being.”

  “He didn’t matter.”

  She was silent for a moment before asking, “And what made you change your plans?”

  “Change my plans?”

  “Yes. For your plan to work, the suicide in the car had to be staged as soon as possible after the man had died. The longer you left it, the more the body would decay and the more open your deception would be to exposure by forensic examination. Why didn’t you do it the night you killed him?”

  Rory Turnbull grimaced. “Because of the bloody police.”

  “What? Surely they didn’t know what you were up to?”

  “No. The trouble was I wanted to leave it fairly late, so that there wouldn’t be many people around. But he’d died about six and – ”

  “You mean you’d killed him about six.”

  “Whatever. There’s a garage in this block that’s hardly used – that’s where my car is at the moment, actually. By midnight, which was the time intended to take the body down there, it had started to stiffen up.”

  “Rigor mortis.”

  “Yes. I’d meant to put him in the boot, but I didn’t want to risk giving the body any unexplained injuries by bending the joints, so I just laid him on the back seat with a coat over him. I left lanya here, as we’d agreed – we were going to meet in France a week or so later – and I set off. Just on the outskirts of Feth-ering, a car came towards me, flashing its lights.”

  “Bill Chilcott.”

  “Yes. I thought driving off at speed would draw more attention than stopping, so I stopped. Bill was just being charitable. He told me there were police staking out Seaview Road and stopping every car that came along. Random breath-tests – Sussex Police are very hot on drink-driving. Well, that really got me scared, because there’s no other way to the Shorelands Estate except via Seaview Road.”

  “But why did you have to go home?”

  “Because that’s how I’d planned it!” he snapped petulantly. “The petrol and the rags and stuff I was going to use were all in the garage at Brigadoon.”

  “Were you actually planning to stage your suicide in your own home?”

  “Yes. On the paved area in front of the house.” A vindictive light burned in his eye. “Very fitting – show all the tight-arsed snobs of the Shorelands Estate what Barbara and her bloody mother had driven me to. I thought that’d be very funny. A social indiscretion on that scale…they’d really find hard to live down.”

  No, thought Jude, I am not dealing here with someone who’s even mildly sane.

  “Anyway, I panicked. I daren’t risk the police looking inside the car. I decided I couldn’t go through with the plan that night, so – ”

  “So you hid the body inside your boat at the Feth-ering Yacht Club.”

  “Yes, I – How the hell did you know that?”

  “Call it educated guesswork. And did you put the life-jacket on it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought, if anyone found the body, it might look more like an accident. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “You certainly weren’t,” said Jude coolly. “My next educated guess, incidentally, would be that you went home and the following morning early, terrified that someone might have found the body overnight, rang Tanya and asked her to go to Fethering and check it was where you’d left it.”

  The dentist looked bewildered. “Did she tell you this?”

  “No. I think lanya looked and the body was missing. But shortly afterwards she found it washed up on the beach. She went to ring you and tell you what had happened. Then two small boys – ”

  “What?” He turned pale. “How do you know all this stuff? Are you psychic?”

  “A bit,” said Jude, with a self-effacing grin, “though, as it happens, that’s not how I know. So, did Tanya see the boys had put the body back in the boat?”

 
; “Yes.”

  “Which meant your plan was all set to happen again, a mere twenty-four hours late. Body back in place, no police breathalyzer traps…Why didn’t you do it on the Tuesday night?”

  “Because I was disturbed by somebody. I’d just got the body out of the boat when I heard a noise. There was someone snooping around. A boy.”

  “Do you think he saw you?”

  “Yes. Just as I was lifting the body out of the boat. I was holding it in front of me and I came face to face with the boy. He screamed.”

  Yes, he would have done, thought Jude. Poor Aaron Spalding, his head filled with half-digested stories of black magic and the Undead. The boy, tortured by guilt, had come back to check the scene of his crime and seen the dead body apparently moving. The Undead had come back to claim its victim. That could easily have been enough to unhinge the terrified Aaron, to make him throw himself into the Fether. Unless, of course…“You didn’t harm the boy, did you, Rory?”

  “No, of course I didn’t! I don’t know what happened to him. He ran off along the river bank. He’d got me rattled, though, so I put my plans off for another twenty-four hours.”

  “But because other people knew the body had been stowed inside Brigadoon II, you moved it to another hiding place.”

  Once again he gave her a look as if she had unnatural powers. “Are you sure Tanya didn’t tell you all this?”

  “Positive. Don’t worry, she’d never betray you.”

  “More educated guesswork then?”

  “If you like. I’d say you put the body inside one of those blue fishermen’s boxes near the Yacht Club…” A hissed intake of breath told her she’d hit another mark “…little knowing that the next morning that whole area would be cordoned off and under the blaze of spotlights while the workmen carried out repairs on the sea wall.”

  Rory’s expression acknowledged the accuracy of this conjecture too.

  “So, what with one thing and another,” Jude concluded lightly, “it wasn’t really that great a plan, was it?”

  She’d caught him on the raw. “It was a brilliant plan!” he spat back.

  “Oh, I don’t think you can use the word ‘brilliant’ for any plan that has to be aborted.”

  “This one’s not going to be aborted.”

  “You mean you’re still thinking of going ahead with it?”

  “Oh yes. I’m going ahead with it. Tonight. Only this time, Jude…” He savoured the name as if it had an unfamiliar but not unpleasant taste “…you’re going to be part of the plan.”

  ∨ The Body on the Beach ∧

  Thirty-Nine

  When Carole got back home from Maggie Kent’s house, she felt quite shaken. Having garaged the Renault – and not even considered cleaning its interior until the morning – she found she was shivering as she walked the short distance to the house. Inside, even before attending to Gulliver’s needs, she turned up the central heating and lit the log-effect gas fire. Then, once the dog was sorted, she poured herself an uncharacteristically large Scotch from the bottle which she kept for guests and which sometimes went untouched from one Christmas to the next.

  It wasn’t only her physical ordeal that had shaken her up. It was the discovery she had made in Nick Kent’s bedroom. Now she knew the identity of the body she’d found, she could understand the reasons for the boy’s mental collapse. To have been involved in a black magic ritual with a corpse was bad enough, but to discover in the cold light of the following morning that the body you had seen mutilated was that of your idolized father would have unhinged the most stable of adults. The effect it had had on a confused adolescent was all too predictable.

  Thank God at least that Nick had held back from wielding the Stanley knife himself.

  Carole hadn’t said anything to Maggie. The awful truth would have to be faced at some point, but it should wait until the body had once again been found. And then the news should be broken to the unknowing widow by the proper authorities.

  Carole was reminded that she had intended to spend that evening with Ted Crisp trying to find the body, but after all she been through another visit to the sea wall in search of a week-old corpse held little appeal. While the body on the beach remained anonymous, there had been an almost game-like quality to the investigations she and Jude had undertaken. But now the dead man possessed an identity and a family context, the idea of further probing became distasteful.

  She decided she’d done quite enough for that evening. Maybe Jude would ring her or call round when she got back from Brighton. In the meantime, however, Carole Seddon was going to have a very long soak in a very hot bath.

  ♦

  Jude lay on the back seat of the BMW, where the body she did not know to be that of Sam Kent had lain a week before.

  When Tanya had returned to her bedsitter with the whisky, Rory had got her to help tie Jude up. With soft scarves, over her clothes, so as not to leave any marks on her body.

  Then Rory and Tanya had manhandled her down to the garage and into the BMW. More scarves had been used to tie her wrists and ankles to the armrests, so that she couldn’t sit up and attract attention to herself when they were driving. Rory had not bothered to gag her. The car was soundproof.

  Jude had been left in the garage for nearly an hour, while the two conspirators presumably went through the final details of their forthcoming elopement, their separate journeys and their blissful reunion in France.

  As she lay immobile in the dark, Jude could not feel optimistic. Assessing the feasibility of escape did not take long. Once she’d given up on that, she tried, with limited success, to focus on more spiritual matters. But anger kept getting in the way. This was neither the time nor the manner in which Jude wanted to die.

  ♦

  Bill Chilcott appeared in the Crown and Anchor a little later than usual that evening for his customary half. And, also uncharacteristically, he brought his wife with him. He looked sleekly bathed, the white bits of his turnip head gleaming from a recent shampooing. Sandra was also carefully groomed and both looked smug. They had clearly come to receive the plaudits of a grateful nation.

  Over in the Fethering Yacht Club, Ted Crisp reckoned, Denis Woodville would also be reliving his triumphant part in the rescue. And no doubt being upstaged by other ideas of how it should have been done and recollections of similar incidents out in Singapore.

  Bill Chilcott was a little miffed to find the Crown and Anchor bar rather empty. And no evidence of anyone who knew about his heroism.

  Ted Crisp did his best to make up the deficiency. “Full marks for what you done out there, Bill. What is it – your ‘customary half’? Or will you go mad and make it a pint?”

  “Well, as it is a rather special occasion…”

  “Sure. Have this on me. And what about you, Sandra?”

  “Ooh, a dry sherry, please, Ted.”

  “None the worse for your adventure, Bill?”

  “Good heavens, no. Sandra and I do work hard on our fitness. All that regular swimming down at the Leisure Centre has certainly paid off tonight.”

  “Not to mention our line–dancing.”

  “No, no, don’t let’s forget the line–dancing. No, Sandra and I don’t give in to anno domini. Did you hear how that dreadful man Denis Woodville was wheezing during the rescue? And he didn’t swim. He only worked the mechanical winch.”

  “Well, he smokes like a chimney, doesn’t he, Bill?”

  “Yes, Sandra, filthy habit. So unhealthy. All his arteries must be totally furred up. If you want my opinion, he’ll just keel over one day.”

  “And good riddance, that’s what Bill and I say!”

  “Thought you might,” Ted Crisp murmured. “But the boy was all right, was he? None the worse for his ordeal?”

  “I don’t know,” Bill Chilcott replied. “He went off with his mother in Carole Seddon’s car.”

  “Oh, is that what happened?” The landlord scratched his chin through the thickets of his beard. “You know, I might
just give Carole a call to see that the lad’s OK…”

  ♦

  When Rory Turnbull finally did return to his prisoner in the car, he seemed blithe, almost euphoric. He was alone. He opened the garage doors, drove the BMW out and closed them again, before setting off at a steady pace west out of Brighton.

  At least Jude could speak. She could try to reason for her life. Anything was worth trying. Without much hope, she announced, “It won’t work, you know, Rory.”

  “Oh, it will.”

  “The body’s been dead a week.”

  “But the weather’s been on my side. Below freezing most of the last few days.”

  “It’ll still be obvious he died a week ago. The most basic of post-mortems’ll show that – regardless of how much the body’s disfigured by the fire.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. No, it wouldn’t work…if fire was the method I was going to use.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. Change of plan, due to change of circumstances. Always pays to be flexible in one’s planning, you know.” There was a heady, almost manic, confidence about him now. “By the time the body’s found, nobody’ll be able to give a precise date of death. All they’ll have to identify him by will be the fact he’s in my car, he’s wearing my clothes…and, of course,” he concluded smugly, “they’ll be able to check his dental work.”

  “My God! The missing tooth. Did you…”

  “Oh yes.” He was very full of himself now. “I told you, I’ve been planning this for a long time. I don’t know how he’d lost his tooth, but as soon as I noticed it I knew what I had to do.”

  “You actually took out one of your own teeth?”

  “Not difficult for someone of my profession. I made up some story to Barbara about having been in a fight, which fitted in well with the image of general social collapse that I was creating. And then I had a rather distinctive chromium cobalt denture made for me by our usual lab. They always put their own identification mark on all the stuff they make, so there’d be no question it was mine. And the plate also fits into the dead man’s mouth well enough.”