Fethering 02 (2001) - Death on the Downs

by Simon Brett

  “So, as you often had done before, you went out into the garden to light up. But it was a cold night. Maybe you’d only got a dressing gown on over your nightie. You knew you’d be more sheltered in the old barn at the bottom of your garden.”

  “I think it’s what you saw when you got into the barn that terrified you, Tamsin.”

  The haggard girl on the bed nodded and almost smiled. Jude’s words seemed to bring relief to her. She no longer had to bear her secret on her own.

  “What was it you saw in the barn?”

  “There was a light set up, fixed on a pole…” The voice was very thin, but quite audible in the intense silence of the room. “There was someone there, digging…”

  “Digging like in a grave?”

  “Yes. But it wasn’t digging to put something in a grave…”

  “It was digging to get something out? Or someone out?”

  Flattened against the pillows the girl’s head could only just manage a nod.

  “It was a skeleton, wasn’t it, Tamsin? The remains of a human body?”

  “Yes.” The word was no more than a breath.

  “And the person saw you, didn’t they? And they knew who you were.”

  “Yes. And he said he’d kill me.”

  “Did he come chasing after you?”

  “Mm. But he had to…put the bones down and…I managed to get back into the house and lock the back door…and he didn’t follow then.” Jude could see the energy demanded by every word, but she could not come to the girl’s rescue until Tamsin had finished what she had to say.

  “The next morning…I just knew…I had to get back here…I had to stay here…It’s the only place I’m safe. So long as he’s around…there’s no way I can ever go back to Weldisham…”

  “Who was it?” asked Jude. “Who was the man you saw digging up the bones?”

  FORTY-ONE

  The vehicle clattered to a halt and its lights were switched off. The darkness around them was thick, almost tangible. They had left the village on the track that led towards South Welling Barn, but soon veered off cross-country, over bumpy fields, through woodland. Carole had quickly lost her bearings. Apart from the fear, all she felt was a desperate desire to pee.

  She had tried talking to him at first, but got no response and soon gave up.

  Carole had no idea where they were. Just before the lights had been switched off, she’d had an impression of something rising up ahead of them, some barrier, but she hadn’t had long enough to identify it.

  She felt a solid point pressing against her side. Not pressed hard enough to pierce her layers of clothes, just enough to remind her that he still had the knife. And wasn’t afraid to use it.

  “We get out here.” He reached to a shelf under the steering column and produced a large rubber torch, which he switched on. He flashed it across into Carole’s face, probably just to blind and disorient her while he got out of the vehicle. Then he opened the door her side.

  “Out. Don’t try anything.”

  “What do you think I’m going to try?” demanded Carole, glad at last of the opportunity for some kind of dialogue. “I don’t make a habit of carrying hidden weapons. I’ve no idea where we are, so I’m hardly going to make a run for it, am I?”

  “I’m sure you’re not. But, in spite of that, I’m afraid I’m going to have to tie you up.”

  A coil of rope was lifted into the cone of light. He must have picked it up at the same time as the torch. Nylon rope, stridently orange. The bright colour brought to Carole’s mind the piercing blue of the fertilizer sacks that she’d found in South Welling Barn. She shivered as she stepped out into the torch-beam.

  But other priorities were more pressing than her fear. “You’re not going to tie me up before I’ve had a pee. Otherwise it could be extremely messy.”

  He hesitated for a moment. Then, “All right.”

  The torch was still focused on her. “I wouldn’t mind a bit of privacy,” Carole snapped. “But I suppose, if you imagine that I’m about to run away with my tights around my ankles, then you’d better keep me fully illuminated…”

  She reached down through the folds of her Burberry to lift her skirt. The torch-beam stayed put, then faltered and moved discreetly away. At least he had some decency.

  The pee was a merciful release, but Carole felt the coldness of the night on her bare flesh. How long was he planning to keep her there? She wondered again where they were, and what he planned to do once she was tied up.

  Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness and, as she straightened her clothes, Carole managed to get some impression of her surroundings.

  There was a cliff ahead of her. Though mostly obscured by scrubby vegetation and dangling tendrils of ivy, here and there a dull white glowed through. They were in an old chalk pit. She knew there were many such workings on the Downs. Some, like the one at Amberley, were even tourist attractions.

  But it was a long time since anyone had visited the forsaken spot where Carole Seddon found herself. Thick woodland had grown right up to the foot of the chalk cliff.

  “Done?”

  “Yes.”

  The torch-beam swung round to frame her as she finished straightening her Burberry.

  “Right. Don’t try anything. I’ve still got the knife. Put your arms behind your back.”

  She could do nothing but what she was told. She felt the rope tightening around first one wrist and then the other as he strapped them together. He wasn’t gratuitously sadistic. He tied the rope over the cushion of her jumper and raincoat, and not so tight as to wrench her shoulder blades.

  But tight enough. There was no way she could free herself.

  He stopped when her wrists were secure.

  “Aren’t you going to do my feet too?” asked Carole, managing to find a note of insolence from somewhere.

  “Not yet,” he replied ominously. “Come on, walk ahead of me. I’ll show you where to go.”

  The beam of the torch marked out the route. They seemed to be heading through a tangle of snagging undergrowth straight towards the cliff face.

  Carole stopped. “I can’t go any further.”

  “Yes, you can. Down on your knees. Push that lot aside.”

  Once again, the torch-beam showed her the way. Pushing through the natural barbed wire of roots and creepers, she saw a narrow horizontal crevice in the chalk. Its lips were stained green with the slime of old vegetation.

  “Inside.”

  A cold recollection came to Carole. She was sitting in the Forbeses’ dining room and Harry Grant was talking to her. “There are some nasty places out on the Downs…Marshy bits…Chalk pits…Caves…We used to scare ourselves witless, some of the games we played. Tying each other up, that kind of stuff. Not very nice to each other, kids…Certainly we lot weren’t.”

  She started to object. “But I—”

  “Inside!”

  Once again, obedience was Carole’s only option. She kneeled, crouched and slid, awkwardly crabwise, into the gap.

  Inside she found herself slipping down, and would have rolled, but for the tension of the rope securing her wrists.

  She didn’t slide far. The cave was bigger than it appeared from outside, but not very big. She felt a sepulchral chill. There was a smell of death, of trapped air, stagnant water, rotted vegetation.

  The space filled with flickering light as he came in after her.

  “Now we do your feet.”

  Again, he wasn’t vindictive as he trussed her ankles together. But he was efficient. There was no way she’d be able to free herself unaided from those knots.

  But Carole’s panicked mind was still circling on thoughts of escape. Though the floor of the chalk cave was lower than its entrance, she still reckoned, if she were left alone, even tied up as she was, she’d be able to work her way back up and out.

  He put paid to the thought even before it had taken proper shape. The low curved ceiling of the natural vault was broken here and there by gna
rled rafters of tree roots. And round one of these thick loops of wood he tied the loose end of the orange rope.

  He left enough slack so that Carole’s legs weren’t actually lifted off the ground, but not enough for her to be able to stand up. She was stuck where she lay until someone decided to untie her.

  “Why’re you doing this?” she demanded. “What do you hope to get out of it? This is only going to make things worse for you.”

  He didn’t answer, just let out a little dry laugh.

  Then he flashed the torch over his handiwork to check the knots were solid and rolled back out of the cave. Leaving total darkness. And the smell of death.

  Carole felt her body trembling uncontrollably.

  It trembled more when she heard the engine spark into life. The noise of the motor receded until it was lost in the silence of the dark.

  FORTY-TWO

  Jude thought it odd that she hadn’t heard from Carole after she got back from Sandalls Manor on the Wednesday evening. There was so much she wanted to discuss. But she knew her neighbour was sometimes spikily unpredictable and assumed that an early night had seemed a more attractive option than staying up late over a bottle of wine spinning theories of murder.

  Jude had been mildly surprised, but unfazed. It was not in her nature to be judgemental about other people’s behaviour. If Carole didn’t want to talk that evening, her decision should be respected.

  Still, perhaps she should make an official report about what she’d heard. Carole had given her Detective Sergeant Baylis’s number. Jude tried it. He didn’t answer. She was invited to leave a message. She asked him to ring her. Nothing else she could do at that point.

  So, although Jude’s mind was seething with the implications of what she had heard from Tamsin Lutteridge, she put those thoughts away and spent the late evening dealing with a much more difficult problem. She’d had a letter that morning from the man she’d met in London the weekend before. He claimed to have seen the error of his ways and claimed to want her back. Though she knew the idea was insane, Jude could not pretend that she wasn’t tempted.

  Couching her reply to his letter in words that were neither dishonest nor misleading took a long time and a lot of concentration.

  She woke the next morning, tired and a little wistful. But she was still convinced that she’d made the right decision. Her long-term sanity demanded that the relationship should be over for good.

  She knew she must post the letter before any hairline cracks appeared in her resolve.

  It was on her slightly melancholy way back from the postbox that Jude decided she would shift her mood by talking to Carole.

  No reply when she rang the doorbell of High Tor. Probably out taking Gulliver for a walk on Fethering Beach.

  Jude had turned back down the path to return to Woodside Cottage when she heard the whimpering. It was the sad sound of a dog who not only hadn’t been fed, but had also, deprived of his morning walk, done what he knew he shouldn’t on the kitchen floor.

  Jude went straight across the front garden to open Carole’s garage. There was no sign of the Renault.

  She wasn’t prone to panic, but she knew this was serious. Before even sorting out Gulliver’s needs, Jude rang led Crisp.

  §

  They stood by the Renault in the car park behind the Hare and Hounds.

  “Doesn’t look good.” Ted Crisp bent down to pick something up off the ground. He held it out. Jude recognized the bunch of keys immediately.

  “She’d never just have dropped them. Carole’s far too organized for that. Someone must’ve surprised her by the car and…”

  “And what?”

  “I don’t know. Taken her off somewhere.”

  “Did she tell you she was going to come up here yesterday evening?”

  “No. I guessed. I knew she’d been doing a lot of thinking about what’s been happening in Weldisham. It seemed a reasonable assumption that she’d come up here to continue her investigations…You know, to meet someone.”

  “Who? Her boyfriend?”

  The hurt in led Crisp’s voice was so overt that Jude looked at him curiously. “Boyfriend? Carole hasn’t got a boyfriend.”

  “Yes, she has. Don’t pretend you don’t know. She’s been going round with some local solicitor.”

  “No, she hasn’t.”

  “She has. His name’s Barry Stillwell. Look, Jude, I know Mario, guy who works as a waiter in an Italian restaurant in Worthing. This Barry bloke took Carole out for dinner there last week.”

  “Yes, he did, but…” A thought struck Jude. “Is that why you were so standoffish to Carole last time we were in the Crown and Anchor?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ted Crisp mumbled. He had his pride.

  “Ted, we haven’t got time to go into all this now, but I can assure you Carole thinks Barry Stillwell is the most boring man on God’s earth.”

  “Oh. Oh, does she?” And he couldn’t help a little grin appearing through the foliage of his beard.

  “Anyway, time enough for that. What we’ve got to do now is to find her. Better check whether she actually was in the pub last night.”

  They couldn’t avoid seeing the blackened shell of Heron Cottage, separated from the road by the police plastic tapes. Neither said anything, but the same dark thoughts were in both their minds as they rang the bell of the Hare and Hounds opposite.

  Though the pub wouldn’t open for another half-hour, Will Maples was already there. He opened the door, but didn’t invite them in. “Don’t open till eleven,” was all he said.

  “I know.” Jude turned on her full charm, which few men could resist. “But a friend of ours has left her car in your car park and we just wonder where she might be.”

  “Usually, when a car gets left overnight in the car park, it’s because someone’s had a skinful and been sensible enough to order a cab. I expect your friend’ll be back later in the morning to collect the car.”

  “I don’t think so in this case.”

  Ted Crisp held out the bunch of keys. “She dropped these by the car.”

  “Are you asking me to look after them until she comes in?”

  “No,” said Jude. “We just want you to confirm that she was in the pub last night.”

  “Well, since I don’t know who you’re talking about, that could be a bit difficult.” Will Maples wasn’t being exactly uncooperative; but equally he wasn’t making things easy for them.

  “Her name’s Carole Seddon…”

  He shrugged. “Not a name I know. Not one of my regulars.”

  “Thin. Glasses. Grey hair. Light blue eyes. Wears a Burberry raincoat. My sort of age.”

  “Oh right, I think I know the one you mean. Yes, she came in before we opened yesterday evening. To talk to Lennie Baylis.”

  “The detective?”

  “Mm.”

  “Do you know what she talked to him about?”

  He was affronted. “What do you take me for? I don’t eavesdrop on other people’s conversations!”

  The response was so vehement that Jude wondered whether the manager was protesting a little too much.

  “And did she leave with Sergeant Baylis?”

  “No. She stayed and had a drink.”

  “On her own?”

  “At first, yes. Then a man joined her.”

  “Who was that? Did you recognize him?” asked Ted.

  “Yes. Name’s Barry Stillwell. Comes into the pub quite often. He’s a solicitor…in Worthing, I think.”

  “Ah,” said Ted Crisp, deflated. Then, unwillingly, he asked, “Did they leave together?”

  “I didn’t notice,” Will Maples replied smugly.

  “But they didn’t stay in the pub all evening?” asked Jude.

  “No. I remember they were sitting in the Snug, and when I looked a bit later, there were some other people in there.”

  “What time are you talking about?”

  “They must’ve both been gone by seven
, seven-fifteen.”

  “Well, thank you.” Jude got out a piece of paper and wrote on it. “That’s my mobile number. Could you give me a call if Carole comes back to collect her car?”

  “Yes, all right,” Will said grudgingly. “But I probably won’t get a chance to look till after three. We tend to be pretty busy at lunchtime.” He smiled at Ted Crisp in a way that must have meant he knew who his visitor was. “I’m running a very successful pub here, you know.”

  The landlord of the Crown and Anchor nearly snapped something back, but was quelled by an urgent look from Jude’s brown eyes.

  “If that’s all,” said the manager of the Hare and Hounds briskly, “I’ve got a lot to get on with.”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you so much for your help,” said Jude charmingly to the closing door.

  They stood for a moment in front of the pub, both still avoiding looking at the wreckage of Heron Cottage.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Ted Crisp.

  “I think you try to contact Detective Sergeant Baylis. Tell him we’re worried about Carole. Try and find out what she talked to him about last night.”

  “I’ll track him down. And what do you do meanwhile?”

  “I talk to some people here in Weldisham,” Jude replied mysteriously.

  §

  Behind the bar of the Hare and Hounds, Will Maples punched in the number of a mobile phone. “Hi,” he said. “Two people came looking for her.”

  FORTY-THREE

  Carole had passed a night of misery, probably as close to despair as she’d even been. Immobilized in her cold prison, she envisaged the slow death that she must suffer. Would hunger get to her first, or would the hypothermia win? Either way, it wouldn’t be an easy passage out of life.

  After the departure of her captor’s vehicle, the total silence had begun to be broken. Not by human sounds, but by the rustling and scuttering of small animals, to whom the night belonged. In their world, Carole was an intruder, an alien presence. At first they would keep a proper distance from her, but then, when they realized she was incapable of movement, they would become bolder. As the strength drained from her body, they might not wait till death to obey their scavenging instincts. It was not a cheering thought.