Bones Under The Beach Hut

by Simon Brett

  'Alcohol is a good antidote to thought,' he observed lackadaisically. 'I find I often need to curb my thoughts. Otherwise they overpower me. My mind is so ceaselessly active. I suppose that is one of the penalties of the artistic temperament.'

  To Carole's mind instantly came a quotation from G.K. Chesterton that one of her former colleagues at the Home Office had been fond of: 'The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs.' But she didn't say anything, just let the self-appointed genius maunder on.

  'There's a common misconception that, if one has a talent to produce work quickly, that must mean that it comes easily. But no, art is never easy. Art is a very hard taskmaster - or taskmistress is perhaps more accurate.' He gestured across the explosion in a paint factory to his own tidy little creations. 'Each one of those watercolours is torn from my soul, you know.'

  This time Carole felt she had to say something. 'Well, they look very nice.'

  '"Nice"? "Nice"!' Gray Czesky flung a hand up to clutch at his forehead. '"Nice" is the accolade of the bourgeoisie. And of course the aim of the artist is to épater le bourgeois. Call my work anything you wish - challenging, controversial, incompetent even - but never condemn it to the mediocrity of "nice"'.'

  'All right, I won't say it again,' said Carole through tightened lips.

  Wishing to move the conversation into less hazardous waters, Jude observed that the studio had a splendid view.

  'Yes. Though of course I never look at it. An artist does not look outside himself. The art is inside. The art has to be quarried out from within, like a rich seam of ore.'

  'But surely,' said Jude, reasonably enough, 'when you're painting a landscape you have to look at it, don't you?'

  'I don't look while I'm painting. I look before I paint. I memorize, I store the image within my mental gallery. For me the act of composition is always an act of recollection.'

  Carole hadn't liked the lie that had brought them into Gray Czesky's studio, but she reckoned it was time to play along with the subterfuge. 'So have you ever memorized Fethering Beach?'

  'No. Why should I have done?'

  'Oh, of course Sonja Zentner didn't mention the subject of the commission I'm thinking of. I'm looking for someone to do me a watercolour of Fethering Beach.'

  'Ah. Well, no, I haven't memorized Fethering Beach, but it would be a matter of moments for me to do so. I could go along with my camera any day.'

  'Oh, so you take photographs of the views you're going to paint and work from them? Is that what you mean by "memorizing"?' asked Jude.

  This did rather dilute the magic of the creative process that the artist had described, and Gray Czesky seemed to acknowledge that he'd lost ground as he mumbled a yes.

  'Well, I've seen examples of your work, which I like a lot,' Carole lied, 'so the question really is: how much would I have to pay to commission you?'

  Now it came to money, Gray Czesky was suddenly a lot less airy-fairy. He reeled out a list of prices which seemed to vary according to the size of the picture required. And the smallest option would cost over two thousand pounds.

  Carole disguised her real feelings - that if she had a spare two thousand pounds she could think of many things she'd rather spend it on - and said she'd have to mull over her next move. 'I will be checking out the rates of some other artists.'

  'Other artists? Other so-called artists, I think you mean. I know the work of most of the so-called artists in the area, and there are few who aspire to being above competent draughtsmen. If you are looking for a mere wallcovering, you would do better to buy a poster or a reproduction than one of their efforts. If you want your wall to have a work of art hanging on it, then you need to commission Gray Czesky.'

  Jude saw an opportunity to move the conversation in the direction of their investigation. 'You say you know all the local artists. Do you know Mark Dennis?'

  'Yes, of course I do. Good bloke, Mark. Not much talent as an artist, I'm afraid, but still a good bloke. He didn't buy into all the bourgeois crap you get in a place like Smalting any more than I do.'

  'I gather he's left Smalting,' said Carole.

  An expression of crafty caution came into Gray Czesky's face as he responded, 'Yes, I'd heard that.'

  'We know Philly, his girlfriend,' said Jude. 'She's terribly cut up about Mark leaving.'

  The artist shrugged. 'Man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Can't be tied down by bourgeois morality if you're an artist.'

  Carole bit back her instinctive response to that remark, instead asking, 'I don't suppose you have any idea where he went?'

  Gray Czesky grinned roguishly. 'There is a kind of freemasonry among men, you know. We support our mates, but we don't get involved in their love lives. If a bloke splits up with a girlfriend, not our problem. Doesn't matter whether we like the girl or not, we know where our duty lies. We'll support him, go out for a few drinks, help him forget, but we won't offer advice or comment. He's done what he wants to do, he no doubt had good reasons for doing it, it's his business.'

  'You're saying you don't know why Mark walked out on Philly?'

  Another shrug. 'Presumably he didn't want to stay with her any more.'

  'You don't know if he'd met someone else ... or gone back to someone?' asked Jude.

  'No. And if I did know I wouldn't tell you. As I say, there's a freemasonry among blokes about that kind of thing. We leave the Mills and Boon stuff to the gentler sex. Me and Mark were just good drinking mates. We got healthily smashed from time to time and we didn't talk about relationships.' He put a heavy, doom-laden emphasis on the word.

  'And you haven't seen Mark Dennis since he left Smalting?'

  'That's another of those things where if I had I wouldn't tell you.'

  It didn't seem as though their information gathering was going to progress much further. Carole rose to her feet and said, 'Thank you very much for your time, Mr Czesky. I'll make my decision about the commission very soon and get back to you either way. Do you have a card with your phone number on it?'

  'Helga's got some downstairs.'

  'I'll ask her as we go out.'

  'Don't worry, I'll see you down. Don't feel ready to go straight back to the coalface of my art.' This was so melodramatically pronounced that Jude looked to see if Gray Czesky was actually sending himself up. But there was no gleam of humour in his eye. When it came to the subject of himself, he was a man incapable of irony.

  He led the two women out on to the landing, and once again they were struck by the contrast between the manufactured squalor of the artist's workplace and the middle-class neatness of the rest of the house. Just as Jude started down the stairs, Carole suddenly said, 'Oh, will you excuse me? I just want to have one more look at one of the watercolours - to help me make up my mind,' and slipped back into the studio.

  Gray Czesky shrugged and followed Jude down to the hall. He called to his wife as though she were a servant, asking her to bring one of his cards. Moments later Carole joined them.

  'Thank you again, Mr Czesky.' She smiled at Helga. 'And Mrs Czesky.'

  'No point in thanking her,' said the woman's gracious husband. 'She didn't do anything. Never do much, do you, Hel? Except get under my feet and stop me concentrating on my art.'

  Carole and Jude waited for the explosion they reckoned those words must have detonated in any twenty-first-century woman, but none came. Instead, Helga Czesky giggled. And then her husband giggled too. Clearly his insulting of her was some kind of love ritual that seemed to turn them both on.

  Helga was the first to recover her powers of speech. She grinned mischievously at the two women and said, 'I am very lucky, aren't I, to be married to a genius - no?'

  No, thought Carole and Jude in unison.

  Outside Sanditon, Carole became very mysterious, hurrying back to where she had parked the Renault. Jude kept asking what was happening, but she got no reply till they were both inside the car.

  Then, milking the drama from her revelation, Carole announced, 'Wh
en I went back into the studio just now, it wasn't to take another look at the water- colours.'

  'Oh?'

  'It was to pick up this.'

  'What?' asked Jude, playing along with her neighbour's narrative style.

  Carole unclasped the handbag on her lap and produced from it a paint-spattered scrap of cloth. Jude's close inspection revealed it to be a strip of an old tea towel with a design of ponies on it.

  'This,' Carole declared, 'is an exact match to one of the pieces of cloth that was used to set fire to Quiet Harbour.'

  * * *

  Chapter Eighteen

  'So where do you reckon we stand now?' asked Jude. They had got a takeaway baguette lunch from The Copper Kettle and were sitting outside Fowey eating it. Although gathering clouds suggested that they'd had the best of the day, Jude had nonetheless stripped down to her bikini. Gulliver lay panting on the sand, having accepted there was no point in complaining further about being chained to a beach hut.

  'I'm not quite sure,' Carole replied. 'But although he wouldn't tell us, I did get the strong impression that Gray Czesky had seen Mark quite recently.'

  'As recently as the early hours of last Tuesday morning?'

  'Hm, it'd be nice if we could prove that, wouldn't it? Be nice also if we could confirm that the woman with Mark was his wife Nuala.'

  'Well, from what Philly said she sounds quite easy to recognize.'

  'Yes, I'll try to get a description from Curt Holderness of the woman he saw that night. Give him a call when I get home.'

  'Haven't you got your mobile with you?'

  'Yes, I have, but . . .' Carole blushed.

  'What?'

  'I don't really approve of mobile phones being used on beaches.'

  Jude's eyes shot heavenwards. Her neighbour always retained the capacity to surprise her with a new prohibition or neurosis. But she made no comment and asked, 'You know what Philly thought, don't you?'

  'That Mark had done away with his wife, and that they were her remains under Quiet Harbour?'

  'Yes. Does it work for you?'

  Carole screwed up her face as she evaluated the proposition. 'I don't think it does really. "Human remains" ... it all comes back to the definition of "human remains". To me that implies that they're from someone who's been dead quite a while. Wouldn't the media talk about "a dead body" if it was from a recent killing? And I'm sure they'd give the gender. "The body of a woman was discovered under a beach hut at Smalting," that's what they'd say. Not "human remains".'

  'Maybe not.'

  'I must say the police are being very slow to give out any more information, aren't they?'

  'Presumably the remains are undergoing forensic investigation. When they've identified who the remains belong to then they'll announce it in a press conference.'

  'Well, I wish they'd get a move on,' said Carole testily. 'It's been nearly a week.'

  'They just don't think about the necessities of amateur sleuths, do they?'

  'No, they don't.'

  Though the sun was now hidden behind banks of clouds, Jude lay in her lounger as if sunbathing and it took Carole a little while to realize that her neighbour was asleep.

  Quietly Carole detached Gulliver's lead from the hook on Fowey and set out along the shingle with him, following the curve of the beach huts. He gave her only a token look of reproach, recognizing that a walk on a lead was better than no walk at all.

  Shrimphaven was still locked up. Whatever it was that the girl did in there on her laptop, she wasn't doing it that Monday afternoon.

  Outside Mistral, as ever, Lionel Oliver, still apparently dressed for the office, lay back on his deckchair, his suit jacket hanging over its back. There was no sign of his wife but, as Carole approached, he waved down to the shoreline and she saw Joyce walking along with her bare feet in the water.

  'Loves paddling,' the old man observed. 'The wife's always loved paddling. Even now she's whatever age she is.'

  'Well, there's nothing like the feeling of the sand between one's toes,' said Carole, more expansive than usual. The fact that she would do anything to avoid the feeling of the sand between her toes was not relevant. Making conversation with people on Smalting Beach was now part of an ongoing enquiry, and Carole had always been more at ease doing things for a work purpose rather than just in her own persona.

  She was surprised how affable Lionel Oliver appeared. When she'd seen him before, he'd looked detached, 'in a world of his own' as Joyce had put it. But now he seemed ready to talk, and it wasn't an opening that Carole was about to waste. Any of the regular beach hut users were potential witnesses to what had really happened on Smalting Beach.

  She told Lionel her name and he gave her his. Though they had been aware of each other on the beach, this was the first time they had actually spoken. Then Carole moved into investigative mode.

  'Terrible business, wasn't it?' She nodded over towards Quiet Harbour.

  'What's that?'

  She spelled it out. 'What was found under the beach hut there.'

  'Oh yes,' he said. 'Most beaches have had their tragedies. Funny how everyone thinks of a beach as a friendly place and you look out from somewhere like here and the tide goes out so far and you think of the sea as a warm, friendly thing. But it has great power. Even here it has power to wash people away, power to drown them.'

  Carole wasn't quite sure what kind of conversation she'd been expecting from Lionel Oliver, but it hadn't been a disquisition on the qualities of the sea. She didn't make any comment, though. He hadn't finished yet.

  'I worked as an undertaker,' he went on. 'And I suppose in that line of business we do get closer to human tragedy than people in other walks of life. We see people at their most disturbed, and we see the consequences of carelessness and folly . . . and misery.'

  'Well, most people are bound to be miserable when they lose someone,' suggested Carole.

  But that wasn't what he'd meant. 'I mean sometimes it's misery that makes someone do something that requires an undertaker's services. It's very sad, that. I mean, if you're dealing with bodies every day, you get a kind of immunity to the sort of shock most people'd feel. Because most people, what, they see a dead body once, twice in their lives perhaps? But we ... we never get to the point of forgetting that the bodies we deal with are human beings - at least I hope we don't. I hope I never did. But we get so's we can deal with bodies without emotions getting in the way.

  'And most of the bodies we dealt with . . . well, it's clearly a blessing that they come to the end. Bodies that have been worn away by disease and decay and pain . . . that cliché "a merciful release" . . . it's true for many of them. But when there's a body there's nothing wrong with, that's when it gets to you.'

  '"Nothing wrong with"? But they're dead, aren't they?'

  'I'm talking about the ones who needn't be dead, who've made the decision to die.'

  'Suicides?'

  The old man nodded. He looked out over the placid grey-green sea as he continued, 'There was one did it here, you know.'

  'Oh?'

  'Ten years back, maybe not that long. I didn't see it, not when it happened. But obviously I saw the body. They'd got him out of the water quite quickly, so there wasn't a mark on him. Wearing a suit he was, he'd come straight down to the beach from his office. He worked in one of the Smalting estate agents. And the reason he'd done it, well, it wasn't a good enough reason. I'm not sure that anything's ever a good enough reason, not for that. Some girl he was in love with had dumped him, that was all. I mean, all right, I can see you might get upset over something like that, it might take you a few months, even a few years to get over it, but's not a reason to top yourself, is it? Not enough reason.'

  He was silent for a moment, but Carole was confident he'd continue.

  'What he'd done, how he did it . . . he'd just filled his pockets with stones, hardly stones, really. There are not many big stones on the beach here, mostly just shingle. And he'd put the shingle in the pockets of his j
acket and his trousers, and he'd just walked straight out into the sea.

  'It was low tide, I heard, so it took him a long time before the water got up to his knees, a long time till it got up to his waist, a long time till it got up to his neck. So he had plenty of time to think about what he was doing, plenty of time to change his mind. But he didn't.

  'There were quite a lot of people on the beach, apparently, but no one did anything. I don't think any of them realized what he was doing. Yes, perhaps they thought it odd, a man dressed in a suit walking straight into the sea, but maybe they thought it was some stunt, that he'd done it for a bet or something. And by the time they'd realized that he'd disappeared under the sea and someone had phoned the coastguard . . . well, it was too late.

  'And when they brought the body to my parlour, there was, like I say, not a mark on him. He must have worked out in a gym, he was well toned. Could have lasted another fifty years. It was when I had to bury ones like that that it upset me. That and the children too. You never quite get used to burying the children.'

  The old man shrugged, shook his head and relapsed into silence.

  After a few moments, Carole said softly, 'And now there's another dead body on Smalting Beach.'

  'Mm?' He came out of his reverie and looked puzzled.

  'I was meaning the body under Quiet Harbour.'

  'Oh yes.' He spoke without much interest in the subject.

  'You haven't heard any thoughts from anyone as to who it might have been . . . ?'

  'No,' he said, almost sharply. 'Well, that is to say I've heard lots of thoughts from lots of people - all rubbish. I'm sure when the police have identified the remains, they will make an announcement as to who it is.' Again he spoke as if the subject was rather tiresome, not something that impinged on his own life.

  Carole didn't think she would have found out much more from Lionel Oliver, but was in fact prevented from asking further questions by the return of his wife from her paddle. 'Lionel been keeping you amused, has he?'