Bones Under The Beach Hut

by Simon Brett

  Carole and Jude didn't reckon they were going to get much more out of him on Deborah Wrigley, but Jude made a mental note to check whether Philly Rose had had anything to do with the grandmother from hell. After all, Seagull's Nest was directly next door to Quiet Harbour.

  Carole had meanwhile moved on to the subject of the SBHA's security officer. 'You haven't had any insights from him, have you, Reginald, you know, about what happened at Quiet Harbour?'

  'No. And I don't expect any.' Curt Holderness was clearly another on the list of people disapproved of by Reginald Flowers. 'I regret that his powers of vigilance leave a lot to be desired. Not very punctilious in the discharge of his duties, I'm afraid. But then Kelvin Southwest had a considerable influence on the appointment.'

  Carole immediately picked up the subtext of this. 'A bit of mutual backscratching involved - is that what you're saying?'

  'It's exactly what I'm saying, yes.'

  Interesting how whenever Kelvin Southwest's name came up, it brought with it the slight whiff of minor corruption.

  There was a hiatus while their sweets were delivered, but after a brief discussion about the enduring appeal of nursery foods like spotted dick, Carole resumed her fact-finding mission. 'Actually, Reginald, there's another hut user I—'

  'Not "hut user", Carole, "hutter".'

  'Hutter,' she repeated, unconvinced that the word would ever trip naturally off her tongue. 'Anyway, there was another one I wanted to ask you about. I don't know if you'll know who I mean . . .'

  'I think, Carole,' he said with quiet complacency, 'you will find that, as President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association, I know about the people in all of the huts.'

  'Yes, well, the hut I'm interested in is called Shrimphaven.' Slight annoyance crossed his face at the name. 'It's right next door to Fowey, the one I'm currently using. There's a young woman in it.'

  'Yes, I know the one you mean. Sits there all day and half the night with one of those laptops.'

  'Do you know what she's doing there?'

  'No. I've asked her on more than one occasion and she won't tell me.' It clearly irked him that he couldn't provide a more complete answer. 'I think I may have to take my enquiries further. You know, as President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association. I may even have to involve Kelvin Southwest.' He spoke the name with distaste. 'I mean, there are regulations about the proper uses of these beach huts. If we were to discover that someone was running a business from one of them . . . well, action would have to be taken.'

  'What kind of action would there—?' But Carole's question was interrupted by the sound from the bar of a glass smashing.

  Reginald Flowers looked across to the source of the noise, shook his head knowingly and said, 'Oh dear, here comes trouble.'

  * * *

  Chapter Thirteen

  The cause of the commotion at the bar of The Crab Inn was a tall man with long, greying hair. Dressed in paint-spattered denim shirt and jeans, he was swaying slightly as he took issue with the black-clad French greeter.

  'Look, all I want to do is buy a drink,' he was remonstrating in an aggrieved, languid upper-class accent.

  'And I've told you, Mr Czesky, that I can't allow you to do that. The manager has banned you from this pub.'

  'Yes, but you're not the manager. I bet the manager isn't even in today.'

  'No, he isn't as it happens.'

  'See, taking Sunday off. Your manager doesn't want to let work spoil his weekend, does he? So, since he's not here, he need never know that you've let me buy a drink.' The man pulled a crumpled pile of banknotes out of his pocket and scattered them on the counter. 'Look, my money's as good as anyone else's. Legal tender, got Her Majesty's face plastered all over it.'

  'Mr Czesky, you've already broken a wine glass. There are a lot of other people waiting to be served.' It was true. While Carole and Jude had been talking to Reginald Flowers the pub had filled up considerably. 'I must ask you to leave.'

  'Well, where else am I supposed to go? This is the only pub in Smalting, and pubs, you know, by tradition used to be places that would welcome anyone, particularly locals. Everyone in the village would come in and have a pint, the toffs mixing with the fisherman. Now suddenly The Crab Inn has become the exclusive preserve of the tight-arsed upper middle class - is that what you think is happening? Well, it isn't. This lot . . .'he gestured wildly round the bar ' . . . this lot haven't got any real class. Add all the real class in the bar together and the lump you'd come up with would be smaller than my little finger.'

  The greeter in black kept trying to interrupt, but the tall man seemed only just to be getting into his flow. 'This whole area is so bloody up itself. Oh, it's all right if you've spent your life in some bloody office, working in insurance or banking or some other way of screwing money out of people. But no one has interest in the individuals who really add something to the value of this world. Look at all these people . . .' Another uncoordinated gesture round the bar. 'Forget their class - if you added together all the artistic talent they've got, it wouldn't be enough to cover my bloody fingernail. But you're happy to sell drinks to these talent-free clones, aren't you? Whereas someone like me, someone who's slightly different, someone with a bit of artistic talent, who doesn't fit into one of the moulds that you've—'

  How long he might have gone on who could say - he certainly seemed to have got into his groove - but he was at this point interrupted by a woman who had just entered the bar. She was a short plump blond in her forties of rather faded beauty and with permanent worry lines between her eyebrows. Her dress was blue cotton with white broderie anglaise trimmings.

  'Gray,' she said, with a hint of a foreign accent. 'Come on, you must come home.'

  'Why should I?' he asked truculently. But it was the truculence of a little boy who had already conceded victory. He could have protested to the pub's greeter all day, but this woman - presumably wife or girlfriend - had instant control over him. With a gesture of contempt to everyone in the room, the man turned and meekly followed the woman out of The Crab Inn.

  Carole and Jude, who had been too absorbed by the scene at the bar to speak up until this point, both turned to Reginald Flowers for some explanation.

  'Gray Czesky,' he announced. 'Calls himself an artist.'

  'And has he got one of the beach huts?' asked Carole.

  'Good heavens, no. We don't want people like that in the Smalting Beach Hut Association. He's got a house on the front.'

  'What, here in Smalting?' asked Carole, surprised.

  'But those houses on the front are all rather splendid. He doesn't look the sort to own one of them. Unless he's a very successful artist.'

  'So far as I know,' said Reginald Flowers, 'he's completely unsuccessful. I've no idea whether he has any talent or not.'

  'Those are his watercolours on the wall over there. I noticed the name while we were getting the drinks.'

  'Are they? Well, maybe he makes a few bob selling those.'

  'Perhaps he's got a private income?'

  'Of a kind. You see, the one thing Gray Czesky does have is a rich wife. That's why he can afford to live on the seafront at Smalting.'

  'Presumably it was his wife who took him out just now?'

  'Yes. Helga. Constantly having to bail him out of somewhere. God, what some women are prepared to put up with.'

  'It must be lurve,' Jude suggested.

  That got a very dismissive snort from the President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association. The two women got the impression that love in any of its forms did not register highly on his list of priorities.

  For the rest of their meal Reginald Flowers moved back into ranting anti-immigrant mode, so that Carole and Jude were quite relieved when it was time to settle up and return to the beach. Their lunch companion didn't leave at the same time. He had been nursing the contents of his second pint and clearly planned to eke it out a little longer. Saying their goodbyes, both women were again aware of the deep loneliness in his eyes. He
couldn't really function properly without his haven of The Bridge to go to.

  As they walked back towards Fowey with Gulliver, Carole looked up at the three or four splendid houses on the Smalting promenade. Someone who lived in one of them - like Gray Czesky - had a perfect observation point to see everything that happened on the beach. It was worth bearing in mind.

  The other thought that struck her was that in just a week's time she'd have Gaby and Lily with her.

  They didn't stay long in front of Fowey after lunch. With sad British predictability, the weather had turned. While they had been inside The Crab Inn the cloudless sky of the morning had become overcast with dull clouds and the rain was starting to spit down.

  In the Renault on the way back to Fethering, Carole and Jude assessed the new information they had got from Reginald Flowers and were forced to admit it wasn't very much. They were faced by an impasse, which would probably remain until the police revealed more about the human remains that had been discovered. Carole felt a bit headachey after the lunchtime wine and the two women parted at the gate of High Tor. By then it was raining heavily.

  Once she'd brushed the sand off Gulliver, Carole sat down in her front room with the Sunday Times, and was annoyed to find half an hour later that she had dozed off. She disapproved strongly of going to sleep during the day, regarding it as one of the many slippery slopes towards old age that must be avoided at all costs.

  She tried to concentrate on the paper, but couldn't. Her headache was worse and she went upstairs to take a couple of paracetamol. While up there she switched on her laptop and checked the BBC website in the forlorn hope that there might be some more news about the discovery on Smalting Beach. Needless to say, there wasn't.

  She felt restless, slightly anxious about the following Sunday. The frustration she and Jude had come up against in the car was still with her. Despite the poverty of their information on the subject, her mind kept circling round what had been found under Quiet Harbour. She felt she needed to do something to move their investigation forward, but she couldn't think what.

  Then she remembered the mobile phone number that she had squeezed out of Kelvin Southwest. A contact for Curt Holderness. She didn't know what hours security officers worked, but she could at least leave a message asking him to call her. She rang the number.

  To her surprise, it was answered instantly. 'Curt Holderness,' he said in a voice of lazy confidence.

  'Good afternoon. You don't know me. My name's Carole Seddon.'

  'Oh, I think I've heard the name. Wasn't it you who discovered the charring at the bottom of the beach hut at Smalting, you know, the one where a rather nasty discovery was made?'

  'Yes, that was me.'

  'Well, what can I do for you?'

  'It was actually in connection with the beach huts that I was calling you.'

  'Did Kelvin Southwest put you on to me?' The way he said it, the question was clearly an important one.

  'Yes.'

  Curt Holderness's voice seemed to relax. 'Good old Kel. We work very well together, you know, Kel and me.'

  'Oh?'

  'Anyone's got a problem with the beach huts, we can usually sort it out between us.'

  'Good.'

  'Rules are there to be bent, after all, aren't they?' Carole wasn't quite sure what he was talking about, so she waited while he elucidated. 'Someone needs something done - or something not done. A blind eye turned perhaps . . . ? Kel and I can usually sort something out. Someone wants to stay overnight in one of the huts, maybe use it as an office . . . well, it's not doing anyone any harm, is it? Kel and I can usually see our way to being accommodating about things.'

  'So you bend the rules in exchange for favours from people?' asked Carole, remembering Kelvin Southwest's favoured method of doing business.

  'Yes, favours.' He relished the word, then chuckled. 'Sometimes favours of the folding variety. So, what is it you would like me to fix for you, Carole? Want to install a little generator, do you, so's you can run a little fridge off it? That's what a lot of people ask for this time of year. Strictly against the Fether

  District Council rules, but when you come down to it, what harm's it going to do anyone? Why shouldn't people be comfortable in their beach huts?'

  Illuminating though this diversion had been, Carole thought she should perhaps get back to the real purpose of her phone call. 'I don't actually want you to bend any rules for me, Mr Holderness.'

  He looked puzzled. 'Oh? But I thought you said Kel put you on to me.'

  'I did.'

  'But usually when Kel puts people on to me . . .' Embarrassed about how much of himself he had given away, the security officer changed tack. 'What is it you want from me then, Carole?'

  Carole thought of various subterfuges, but rejected them. Try the direct approach first. 'I just wondered if you had any more information about what happened?

  'How do you mean?'

  'Well, whether you had been told anything by the police, you know, anything that isn't public knowledge.'

  The man at the other end of the phone laughed. 'You don't ask a lot, do you? You are aware that I have a part-time job as security officer for the Smalting Beach Hut Association?'

  'Yes, of course.'

  'Well, some people might reckon the word "Security" covers keeping schtum about anything the police might have told me that isn't public knowledge.'

  'So are you one of those people, Mr Holderness?'

  'Sometimes I am, yes. Depends on the circumstances.' There was a teasing quality in his voice. 'What are you really asking me to do, Mrs Seddon?'

  She took her courage in both hands. 'I'm asking whether you'd agree to meet up for a drink and talk to me about what happened.'

  He laughed again. 'I see. It's the Miss Marple Mafia of Fethering, is it?'

  'Well, it's-'

  'All right, I'll meet up with you.'

  * * *

  Chapter Fourteen

  It turned out that Curt Holderness also lived in Fethering and was happy to meet in the Crown and Anchor. He said he quite often dropped in there on a Sunday evening for a pint, so if Carole cared to join him . . .

  Rather ashamed of the muzziness she had felt after lunch, she was determined not to have any more alcohol, but somehow that resolve vanished when she was faced by the lugubrious face of Ted Crisp behind the bar. She succumbed to a Chilean Chardonnay, though she did ask him to make it a small one.

  'I'm meeting someone called Curt Holderness. Do you know him?'

  'Goodness, yes. He's been a regular for quite a while. Sometimes used to drink in here back when he was a copper.'

  'Oh well, if you can point him out to me when he comes in—'

  'He's come in.' Ted nodded his shaggy head towards one of the alcoves. 'Over there. And he's drinking a pint of Stella.'

  Carole looked across. There was no drink on the table in front of the man Ted had pointed out. 'No, he isn't.'

  'What I meant was that you are buying him a pint of Stella.'

  'Oh, right, I see. A pint of Stella too then, Ted.'

  As he pulled the pint, the landlord observed, 'I don't think I've ever seen Curt buy a drink. There's always someone there to buy it for him.'

  'Like who?'

  'Someone who perhaps wants a favour from him.' Yes, and I know how he likes to be repaid - with a favour of the folding variety, thought Carole as Ted went on, 'Can't imagine what favour you might be wanting from Curt - and I'm not going to ask.' Then, to Carole's annoyance, he winked at her.

  The afternoon's rain had cleansed the air and Fethering was enjoying a beautiful summer evening. As a result, most of the pub's customers were once again at the tables outside, which pleased Carole. She didn't want people eavesdropping on her conversation with Curt Holderness.

  He was a thickset man with thinning hair cut very short, and he still looked like the policeman he had once been. In spite of the warmth he wore black leather trousers and there was a matching blouson lying on the seat b
eside him. Presumably outside in the Crown and Anchor car park was a motorbike.

  He half-rose in his seat when Carole introduced herself. His handshake was almost aggressively strong. But despite his macho manner, there was a wariness about him, almost an anxiety.

  'Ted said a pint of Stella would be appropriate, Mr Holderness?'

  'How right Ted was. Thanks.' He took a long draught of the lager. 'And please call me Curt.'

  'Thank you. Please call me Carole.' She sat down and took a sip of wine. Now she was actually at a table opposite him, the burst of self-assertiveness with which she had set up the meeting had dissipated. She couldn't think where to start.

  He seemed to sense her discomfiture and smiled a teasing smile. 'I know Miss Marple was famous for just sitting on the sidelines and observing everything, but I think you're going to have to be a little more proactive than that, Carole.'

  'Yes. I'm sorry, Curt. Well, first, thank you very much for agreeing to meet me.' He inclined his head graciously. 'And yes, as you implied, I'm probably just another nosey middle-aged woman, but because it was my discovering evidence of the fire in Quiet Harbour that led to . . . well, you know . . .' His steady gaze unsettled her, and he seemed to know it. Carole got the feeling that he was playing with her, but also assessing the situation, trying to work out what she really wanted from him. 'I mentioned on the phone,' she floundered on, 'that you might have some new information from the police that—'

  'And what made you think that might be the case?'

  'Well, I gather you used to be in the force yourself.'

  'Yes, and so you think I might ring one of my old muckers who would give me the up-to-date SP on the exact stage their investigations have reached?'