Bones Under The Beach Hut

by Simon Brett

  'Done that. Apparently I was once married to an Egyptian Pharaoh.'

  'And how was that?' asked Carole sceptically.

  'He was a bit of a Mummy's boy.'

  'Oh, do shut up.'

  'Anyway, tell me what's been happening. I'm agog.'

  'So you should be. There's so much to tell you. All roads seem to lead to the Olivers.'

  'Have you spoken to them?'

  'Not yet.' Then in a rather small voice Carole added, 'I'd rather do it with you.'

  'All right. I'll come straight away.'

  'Where are you now?'

  'Still in Brighton.'

  'But how're you going to—?'

  'I'll get a cab.'

  'That'll be terribly expensive to—'

  Jude had rung off.

  Carole tried to concentrate on The Times, but her eyes kept slipping off the newsprint and homing in on the couple in front of Mistral. She didn't know what she would do if the Olivers moved before Jude arrived.

  She tried to get her mind engaged by the crossword, but without success. Anyway, the prize crossword on a Saturday was always subtly different and Carole rarely bothered with it, even though completing the weekday ones was an essential part of her ritual. Maybe it was a kind of intellectual snobbery that kept her from the Saturday crossword. Even though she'd never enter for it, the idea of there being a prize seemed to cheapen the experience. Whereas by doing the weekday crossword she was engaging in a purely intellectual activity.

  Jude arrived within the half-hour. 'I'm starving,' she announced. 'You can bring me up to date while we have something to eat.'

  Rather than expose themselves again to the high prices of The Crab Inn, Carole and Jude went to one of the many cafes on the Smalting prom. They selected one which gave them a perfect view of the back of Mistral, so that they could see if the Olivers made any kind of move, and they sat outside in the sunlight. Jude said she was desperate for fish and chips and Carole found the idea rather appealed to her as well.

  While they waited for the food, Carole gave Jude a virtually verbatim report of her interviews with Kelvin Southwest and Curt Holderness.

  'I knew there was something odd about our Kel,' said Jude. 'I couldn't put my finger on it, but I sensed that women weren't his thing.'

  With respect for her sensitivities in such areas, Carole asked Jude if she'd got the same feeling with Curt Holderness.

  'No, he's very definitely normal hetero. Possibly a rather aggressive and bullying normal hetero - actually probably a rather aggressive and bullying normal hetero - but no way is he a paedophile.'

  Their fish and chips arrived. Beautiful. Plump fillets robustly battered and dripping with oil, not those cardboard-like scabbards of dry fish flakes which get served in so many pubs and coastal restaurants. And the chips they were served had had encounters with genuine potatoes quite recently, not in some Past Life Regression.

  'Bliss,' said Jude. 'Is there anything in the world to beat sitting in the sun at an English seaside resort and eating good fish and chips?'

  But they both knew there was still a cloud over their idyll - the death of Robin Cutter and the need for its circumstances to be explained.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Lionel Oliver was, as ever, gazing abstractedly out to sea, but he looked up as they approached. He recognized Carole and rose politely from his chair when introduced to Jude.

  His wife's chair was empty. He raised a finger to his lips and pointed to the inside of Mistral. 'Joyce is having a little zizz in there. Always does after lunch.' Carole and Jude could see her stretched out on the towel-covered bench seat at the back of the hut.

  'We wanted to talk to you about Robin,' said Jude gently.

  'Everyone suddenly wants to talk to me about Robin.' He gestured to Joyce's chair. 'If one of you wants to sit. . .'

  'You take it, Carole. I'll be quite happy on the shingle.'

  'Yes,' Lionel Oliver went on, 'there's been a lot of interest in Robin since . . . since what was found under Quiet Harbour.'

  'Interest from the police?'

  'Oh yes. From the police.'

  He was silent. Carole wasn't sure how to move the conversation along, but Jude's instinct was sure. 'You loved Robin, didn't you, Lionel?'

  'Oh yes. I loved him very much. Still do love him, even though he's not here to love any more.'

  'And you've talked a lot about him to the police?'

  'I certainly have. A lot around the time he disappeared. And now a lot more. They rang this morning. They want to talk to me again.' He looked at his watch. 'They're going to pick me up here this afternoon. Inspector Fyfield's going to come. In a car. Very thoughtful of them to send a car for me, isn't it? But then of course you probably know that, don't you?'

  Jude flashed a puzzled look at Carole, who sent a no-don't-say-anything one back. It seemed that Helga Czesky's assumption that they were police officers had spread as far as the Olivers.

  'Different department I suppose you'd be,' the old man went on. 'They use a lot of women in this area, I believe, you know, when it concerns the death of a child.'

  There was a strange calm about him, a kind of resignation, as if some great weight had just been removed from his shoulders.

  'We heard about the fact that you didn't put Robin's car seat in the car.'

  'No, I should have thought of that. In the panic I forgot. Invented some story on the spur of the moment that seemed to convince the police, but maybe they've been suspicious all that time.'

  'And no one in Smalting saw him, did they, when he waited for you outside the ice-cream shop?'

  'No.'

  'I think I know why,' said Jude softly.

  Carole looked at her neighbour in astonishment. She knew Jude was capable of making great - almost magical - leaps of logic, but had no idea what she was about to reveal this time.

  'Robin never came to Smalting that afternoon, did he, Lionel?'

  Slowly the old man shook his head.

  'That's why he didn't need the car seat. He was already dead, wasn't he?'

  A nod confirmed this. Carole couldn't work out how Jude had reached the conclusion she had, but it did make sense of a lot of anomalies in the case.

  'When I saw he was dead,' said Lionel, 'I knew I had to hide the body. I couldn't leave him there. Miranda would never have forgiven us. I had to hide him somewhere temporarily, until the furore died down and I could make a more permanent resting place for him.'

  'So what did you do?'

  'I put his body on the back seat of my car. I knew it wouldn't matter if traces of him were found there, he'd been in the car with me often enough. And I drove him to work.'

  'To the funeral parlour?'

  'Yes. It was lunch hour. I knew the girl on reception, who was meant to stay there right through while all the others were out ... I knew she was in the habit of sneaking off to the pub to meet her boyfriend and shutting the parlour up for an hour.

  I'd been about to take her to task for it, but that day I was glad she was skyving. I drove in the back entrance, where we take the bodies in. Nobody saw me arrive and there's a big shutter comes down so nobody saw what I was doing.

  'I took Robin's body out of the car. I'd wanted to embalm him, but I knew there wasn't time. So I wrapped him up tight in plastic sheeting and I took him through to the room where we display the coffins. There was a small one we had there, you know, for young children who die . . . like Robin. It's sad, that, always sad showing it to the parents.

  'Anyway, I put him in and sealed the coffin lid. I thought he'd be safe there. After all, the last place anyone would look for a dead body would be in a funeral parlour.' He let out a dry, humourless chuckle. 'After I'd finished, I went back to the car and drove here to Smalting. I was in the parlour ten minutes top-weight.

  'I parked the car near the prom. There were a lot of people around, all caught up in their own business. No one looked at me. I went into the shop to buy the ice cre
am. When I came out, I rang the police and told them my story, about Robin having been abducted, or at least having disappeared. I never thought they'd believe it, but they seemed to, and the more they questioned me about it, the clearer the details came in my mind. After a time I almost came to believe it myself.

  'Obviously I couldn't leave Robin in the parlour for too long, but a week later I came in at night-time and embalmed him. That would preserve the body for a while.

  'And all the publicity and the press conferences and the pleas on television from Rory and Miranda . . . well, that all died down after a time. And I was doing some work in the garden at home. Previously we'd just had the one pond, you know, but I was adding to that, making a great big water feature and that involved a lot of digging and—'

  'So you took Robin's body from the funeral parlour back to your garden and buried him there?' suggested Jude.

  The old man nodded a weary nod. He seemed to have aged during his narrative. 'So Robin was always close to me. I knew where he was. He was there, and it gave me comfort to know he was there.'

  'And everything was fine,' said Carole, joining up the dots, 'until you had to move house?'

  'Yes. I couldn't leave Robin in the garden there. Partly I was worried about a new owner finding his remains, though I didn't care so much about that. It's more I couldn't be parted from the child, from the boy I loved. We've no garden with the new flat we're going to, just a window box. So . . .' He gestured rather feebly towards Quiet Harbour. 'I knew we'd still come here. I knew if I put him under one of the beach huts he'd still be near me.' He let out a little mirthless laugh. 'I think I also knew that it couldn't last, that very soon I'd be found out. Which is, of course, what's happened.

  'In fact, I was nearly found out earlier. Only a few nights after I'd taken the bones from our garden and reburied them under the beach hut, some idiot tried to set fire to it. Fortunately the fire didn't spread far - or someone put it out, I don't know.'

  'And you put down an old offcut of carpet so that the damage wouldn't show from the inside,' said Carole, pleased to be filling in the gaps in the case.

  'Yes, I did that.' Lionel Oliver sighed. 'I'm a stupid old man. I don't know why I thought I'd get away with it. Or perhaps I didn't think I'd get away with it. Perhaps I was just so tired of holding the secret inside me that I wanted to be found out. Yes, I think that's probably it.'

  Jude broke the long silence that ensued by saying, very gently, 'You still haven't told us how Robin died.'

  'No.'

  'Are you going to?'

  'Why not? You know everything else. I'd taken the day off work, that day we were going to look after Robin. I enjoyed playing with him.'

  'When you say "playing with him" . . . ?' asked Carole tentatively.

  That did make him angry. 'Oh, for God's sake! Don't you start! I went through all that with the police, time and time and time again. What I meant by "playing with him" was kicking a ball about in the back garden, hide and seek, showing him the goldfish in the pond, the kind of things you do with a five-year-old child. The games grandfathers and grandsons have played down the centuries.

  'Anyway, it was a hot day and I'd been busy at work the last few weeks and I wasn't as young as I used to be, so I was very tired. And we were playing hide and seek, and it was a big garden and so Robin had introduced this rule that we had to count up to two hundred. He was a bright boy, very advanced for his age. He could count up to two hundred, no problems. And then he'd shout at the top of his voice, "Coming, ready or not!'"

  For a moment the recollection was almost too emotional for him, but he managed to control himself and went on, 'Well, it was my turn to count and Robin's to hide. And, as I say, I started counting and ... I fell asleep. Don't know how long it was for, probably only a quarter of an hour, but when I woke up, there was no sign of Robin.

  'It didn't take me long to find him. I knew he was fascinated by the goldfish. He must have been peering down at them and lost his footing. There was a kind of rockery at the side, with a little waterfall running down it, and when he fell he must have hit his head on one of the rocks. It was only a small pond, but big enough to drown my grandson.'

  The long silence which followed this was finally broken by the voice of Joyce Oliver from inside the beach hut. 'Except,' she said, 'that isn't what happened at all.'

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The expression on Lionel Oliver's face as he watched his wife walk out of the beach hut was a complex one, combining puzzlement, annoyance and protective- ness. 'What are you on about, Joyce? Of course that's what happened.'

  'No, it isn't. I think it must be true that Robin drowned in the pond, as you said he did. I didn't know that till just now, Lionel. But if he did, it wasn't you who was meant to be looking after him. It happened on my watch.'

  'That's ridiculous, Joyce.'

  'It happened on my watch,' his wife repeated. She looked at Lionel, daring him to interrupt her, then turned firmly to Carole and Jude. 'I didn't know the half of what he's just told you. I just woke up and heard almost all of it. Lionel, why couldn't you have told me before?'

  'There wasn't any point,' he mumbled. 'Why should you suffer too?'

  'I should suffer because I deserved to suffer. I should suffer because it was my fault.'

  'No.'

  'Yes, it was. I don't know why you two are here, but since you've heard the rest of it, I think that you should hear the truth. My daughter-in-law, Miranda, didn't trust me. She didn't like me looking after Robin. And she was right. Because back then I had a serious problem. A drink problem. We tried to keep it quiet from everyone, but the family knew. Miranda certainly knew and that was why she would only let Robin stay with us if she knew Lionel was going to be there, that it wasn't just me on my own.

  'Well, that day, the day that Rory and Miranda were going up to London to see the matinee of Les Miserables, I'd had a real blinder the night before. I was on more than a bottle of gin a day then, and that morning I woke up having slept very badly and with the kind of crushing hangover that can only be alleviated by a very large hair of the dog. But I'd drunk the house dry the night before. I was desperate for a bottle of gin. I managed to disguise how I was feeling from Rory and Miranda when they came to bring Robin over, but as soon as they'd gone I ordered Lionel to go and buy me a bottle of gin. I'm not proud of how I was in those days. I was a monster.'

  'No, you weren't, love,' her husband protested feebly. 'You couldn't help yourself. It's an illness.'

  'I was a monster,' Joyce reiterated. Jude began to understand the great hatred Miranda Browning had felt against her mother-in-law. 'So, I ordered Lionel to go and replenish my stocks of gin and I was in sole charge of Robin. Except I wasn't in a state to be in charge of anything or anyone. I remember that

  I fell asleep at the kitchen table. Robin was around before I fell asleep, and I know the door to the garden was open, and the next thing I remember was Lionel waking me up.

  'He seemed a bit agitated, but I didn't ask him why. All I cared about was the fact that he'd brought me a bottle of gin. I got stuck into that. Lionel said he was going to take Robin down to Smalting, get him an ice cream, maybe spend some time with the boy here at Mistral. The next thing I'm aware of is the news that Robin's been abducted and the police are coming round and...'

  There was a long moment before Joyce Oliver turned back to her husband and said, 'Tell me the truth, Lionel. Did you come back that morning from buying the gin and find Robin drowned in the pond?'

  There was nothing he could do but nod abjectly.

  'But why did you do all you did? Why?'

  'If Miranda had ever found out that I'd left Robin alone with you ... If she'd found out that you were dead drunk and had let him go near the pond on his own . . .'He shook his head, unable to say out loud what would have happened.

  Joyce Oliver looked at her husband with an expression of infinite pain and infinite respect. She realized the extent of his
love for her. To put himself through all the trauma of police questioning, the inevitable suspicions that he might be a paedophile . . . all that for the woman who had allowed the child he adored to die.

  'The only good thing to come out of any of it,' Joyce said, 'was that, although I didn't know the details of what had really happened, the shock of Robin's disappearance did stop me drinking. Maybe I felt guilty for the fact that the last time I'd seen him, I'd been almost comatose from the gin, I don't know.' A deep sigh trembled through her body. 'All of this is going to take a long time to come to terms with.'

  They were aware of a young man in a crumpled beige suit hovering on the edge of their charmed circle in front of the beach hut. Lionel Oliver looked up and recognized him. 'Ah, Inspector Fyfield. The car's here, is it?'

  'Yes, Mr Oliver. The Superintendant would like to talk to you back at the station.'

  'Of course.'

  'I think he ought to talk to me too,' said Joyce.

  'I'm sure that'd be fine. If you wish to accompany your husband, Mrs Oliver . . .'

  'Yes, I do. Lionel, if you'll just lock up Mistral. . .'

  'Of course, love.'

  'Carole and Jude,' Joyce went on, 'if you don't mind just walking up to the car with me, I'd like to get your contact numbers. I think there are a few things we're going to need to talk about.'

  The two women reckoned that was probably an understatement. Joyce Oliver picked up her beach bag and the three of them followed Inspector Fyfield up the beach.

  On the edge of the prom Joyce stopped by a bench, which faced away from the sea, and sat down. 'If I could just get those numbers from you . . .'

  The simple process seemed to take a long time.

  Joyce Oliver shuffled through the contents of her bag in search of pen and paper, but her hands were shaking so much Jude had to help her. In spite of her earlier apparent calmness, she was clearly in a state of shock.

  But eventually one of her wordsearch books was found. Carole and Jude wrote down their contact numbers on the back of it. Then they followed the route taken by Inspector Fyfield, who was by now leaning against his car. Though he had his back to them, the women could detect the impatience in his body language.