Fethering 08 (2007) - Death under the Dryer

by Simon Brett

  She paused for breath, and her husband ventured, “Similar thing happened to me as happened to Mim when I went to Tesco’s in—”

  “Don’t talk while she’s cutting your hair, Wally.”

  He was obediently silent again. But in the few words he had spoken Jude was aware of a long-buried accent. The ‘w’ of ‘went’ had contained undertones of a ‘v’.

  “I don’t know what young people are coming to today,” Mim went on. “Makes me glad Wally and I was never blessed with children…well, though I don’t think ‘blessed’ is probably the right word. ‘Cursed’ with children might be a better word, the way some of them behave these days. Because, of course, you had that terrible business here, didn’t you, Connie?”

  “Yes.”

  If Mim was surprised by someone actually responding to one of her rhetorical appeals, she didn’t show it. “Drugs at the back of it,” she announced knowingly. “Drugs at the back of most of this stuff, you know.”

  “I don’t actually think Kyra ever had anything to do with drugs, Mim,” said Connie.

  “No, her old man wouldn’t let her do anything like that,” Wally agreed. “Was very angry when she had her ears and nose pierced. He always had standards, Joe.”

  Mim looked a little miffed, as though allowing her husband space to inject three sentences into the conversation was somehow a failing on her part, and quickly resumed her monologue. “Yes, more parents should have standards, and they don’t. What are kids brought up on these days? Fast food, discotheques and video games…that’s what they’re brought up on, aren’t they, Wally?”

  Her husband, still basking in the glow of his recent conversational triumph, didn’t feel the need to respond.

  “I think bringing back National Service would do them all a lot of good. Your time in the Army didn’t do you any harm, did it, Wally? Then these kids wouldn’t go round smoking stuff and sticking needles in themselves and stuffing substances up their noses. Me and Wally worked in the music industry, where there was supposed to be lots of drugs going round, and we never saw any of them, did we, Wally? No…whereas these days the kids can buy drugs as easy as ice lollies—and they don’t think no more of taking them than they would of eating an ice lolly. No wonder it all ends up with violence and murder.”

  “But as I said,” Connie repeated patiently, “Kyra didn’t have anything to do with drugs.”

  “I’m not saying she did. But the boy…the boy must’ve done. People don’t go round strangling people for no reason. The boy must’ve been on drugs.”

  “We have no means of knowing that,” said Connie, trying to bring a little rationality into the conversation. “And nor, indeed, do we know that Kyra’s boyfriend is the guilty party.”

  But Mim’s prejudices weren’t so easily shifted. “Oh, come on, if he didn’t do it, why’s he disappeared? If he’s innocent, if he’s got an alibi, why doesn’t he come forward and tell the police about it? No, I’m sure he was on drugs.”

  “Now let’s blow it into shape, shall we?” said Theo, and started fluttering around Mim with the hairdryer.

  “On drugs,” said Wally, taking advantage of the diversion to continue dramatically, “or in the grip of a passion that he could not control.”

  Mim once again seemed to regret the lapse that had allowed her husband to get a word in. “Don’t talk, Wally. You always move your head when you talk, and that makes it very difficult for Connie to cut your hair. Doesn’t it, Connie? You come out of here with a cut on your ear, Wally, and it’ll be your fault, not Connie’s. Won’t it, Connie? Incidentally, Connie, did you know the boy…you know, this Nathan, the one who killed the girl?”

  Jude, who’d been taking in everything, listened with even greater attention.

  “Yes, I had met him,” the hairdresser replied, “and you really must stop saying that he killed her.”

  “That’s what everyone else in Fethering is saying.”

  “I know, Mim, but in this country everyone is innocent until they’re proven guilty.”

  “That’s nonsense. Was Hitler innocent? He never went to trial, he was never proved guilty, but are you telling me he wasn’t?”

  “No, I’m not. But that wasn’t in this country and—”

  “I think it’s rubbish, that business about people being innocent until proven guilty. There’s some people who should be locked away from birth. Paedophiles, and some of those illegal immigrants.”

  Realizing that she wasn’t participating in the most rational of arguments, Connie contented herself with saying, “Well, as I told you, I did meet Nathan a few times. He’d sometimes pick Kyra up after work, and to me he seemed a very nice boy. Shy, not very sure of himself—only sixteen, I think—but I wouldn’t have said he had a violent bone in his body.”

  “It’s the quiet ones you have to watch.” Mim pronounced the words as if they were an incontrovertible truth that clinched her argument.

  “There,” said Theo, showing off his handiwork to his client in the mirror. “That’s how we like it, isn’t it?”

  She responded admiringly. “Back to my natural look, yes.”

  “Just a little whoosh of spray to fix it, and we can unleash you onto the streets of Fethering to break all the men’s hearts, eh?”

  “Yes.” Mim preened in the mirror. “I could do with a few compliments. Never get any compliments from you, do I, Wally?”

  “There—you’re done too.” Connie stood back from her client, the coordinated timing of the haircuts having worked to perfection. “Look all right, does it?”

  The question had, inevitably, been put to Mim rather than Wally. She looked appraisingly at her husband’s hair. “Little more off the back. Don’t want it trailing over his collar like some errand boy.”

  While Theo made a big production of the final primping of his client, Connie duly did as she was told to hers. The couple were pampered into their coats. They paid their money, with Mim duly tipping both stylists. (Jude wondered whether Wally was allowed to carry any money of his own.) Then Connie crossed to the appointments book. “Usual five weeks, shall we say? The Tuesday again. Same time?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “So that’ll be nine-thirty for you, and the ten forty-five slot for the gentleman.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ll come at the same time, and you’ll sit and wait, won’t you, Wally?”

  Once again long experience told her husband that no response was required.

  §

  “Grenston’s their surname,” said Connie. “Wally and Mim Grenston. He was quite a successful musician—had his own band and did a lot of arranging, I believe. And she was a singer—also a very good career, but she gave it up when they got married…as women often did in those days.”

  “But she said they didn’t have children.”

  “Maybe she didn’t need them, the way she treats Wally. They’re absolutely devoted to each other, you know.”

  “I could see that,” said Jude thoughtfully. “And Wally implied that he knew Kyra’s father…”

  FIVE

  Like Carole, Jude had the privilege of having her hair washed by the salon’s owner. “I must get another junior soon,” Connie had said, “but it seems, I don’t know…so recent after what happened to Kyra.”

  “Yes. Will it be hard to find someone?”

  “God, no. Hundreds of girls still want to be hairdressers…in spite of the rotten pay. I get a dozen letters a week from kids asking to be a junior here, some with a bit of training, some not even left school yet. But the problem is getting the right one, one who’s going to take the job seriously and actually be of some use to me.”

  “Was Kyra one of those?”

  “I think she could have become quite good. I mean, she was only seventeen. Like most girls of her age, she was easily distracted, mind often away somewhere else, not concentrating on the job in hand. But she was interested in the hairdressing business, and she definitely wanted to make something of herself. Get a bit of indepe
ndence…her home life wasn’t that easy.”

  “As Wally implied.”

  “Yes. Her father’s very old. Kyra was the product of his second marriage, but then her mother died a few years back. If she didn’t get something of her own going, Kyra could see the prospect of being stuck here in Fethering as a carer for her old dad.”

  “He must have taken it hard…you know, what happened to her.”

  “I assume so. I don’t know. Although he lives only in the next street to me, I’ve never actually spoken to him. I don’t think he goes out much.”

  Jude’s hair was now towel-dry. Connie appraised it in the mirror. “You’re lucky, you know, not to need colouring…”

  “At my age.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, but you thought it. You’re right, though. I am lucky. I think I’ve got the kind of hair where I won’t suddenly start finding grey ones. I think it’ll just get paler and paler until one day I look at it in the mirror, and it’s all white.”

  “Maybe.” Connie grinned. “Now, is today going to be the day?”

  “The day I look at it in the mirror and—?”

  “No, no.”

  “The day for what then?” Jude asked innocently.

  “You know perfectly well. The day you decide to do something different with your hair.”

  “Are you about to use the dreaded ‘short’ word, Connie?”

  “Look, it’s lovely hair. It should be shown to advantage. It’s funny, Jude, I don’t think of you as someone who’s afraid to take risks.”

  “I’m not. And let me tell you, my hair has probably been through more metamorphoses than Madonna’s. Back when I was modelling…God, it was a new style every couple of days. Which is why I really feel I’ve done my experimenting. I’m happy with it the way it is.”

  “But you could look so much smarter. With it like this you look like…I don’t know…”

  Perhaps delicacy prevented Connie from continuing, but Jude provided a suggestion. “A superannuated hippy?”

  “You said it. Come on, Jude, make today the day.”

  Firmly, the client shook her head. “Nope. Don’t feel like it. One day I will feel like it, and I promise you, when that happens, I will have the transformation done at Connie’s Clip Joint. But today is not the day.”

  “Huh.” Connie picked up her scissors without enthusiasm. “So today it’s just like your neighbour’s, is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Same shape, but shorter.”

  The impression wasn’t perfect, but it did capture something of Carole’s manner, and Jude chuckled. “That’s right.”

  Connie started cutting, and her client relaxed into the experience. Theo didn’t have an appointment for a while and sat reading a motor-racing magazine, a choice that seemed butchly at odds with his public demeanour. Jude was once again amazed at how people in certain jobs coped with the waiting. Shop assistants, restaurant staff and hairdressers had an ability to slip into a half-life, go inert and yet come immediately to energetic life when a customer entered. That was another part of the job, she reflected, that a salon junior like Kyra might have found hard to cope with.

  “Ooh, Jude, something I was going to ask you…”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re into alternative therapies and that, aren’t you?”

  “Well, to some extent,” Jude replied cautiously.

  “I’d really like to talk about that at some point.”

  “Why? Have you got some problem that you need help with?”

  “No, no, it’s not for that, not for me. It’s just increasingly salons are offering other services, apart from the straight hairdressing. Manicure, ear-piercing, massage, all that stuff. Lot of modern salons are getting more like beauty spas. Sunbeds, detox wraps, you name it. That’s certainly the way Martin & Martina are going.” She couldn’t keep the resentment out of her voice when she mentioned her ex-husband’s business. “I just wondered if you were into any of that stuff, Jude…?”

  “Not really. What I do is therapeutic…you know, helping people feel better.”

  Connie grinned. “So you’re just like a hairdresser. I tell you, we’re very definitely therapists—for all the listening we do, apart from anything else.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you are.”

  “Well, if there were some service, you know, that I could refer my clients to you for…we’d make it a business deal. Look, take one of my cards. That’s got my mobile number on it too. And give me a call if you can think of a way we can make it work.”

  “I will.” Jude couldn’t envisage anything coming of it. She didn’t want her healing services to become part of anyone’s pampering regime, but discussion of the project might be another way of keeping in touch with the hairdresser and maybe, eventually, rinding out more about what had happened at Connie’s Clip Joint. In the meantime, the best way of eliciting information remained the direct question.

  “Have you had any more contact from the police, Connie, you know, since you reopened?”

  “No, thank God. The amount of questioning I had to go through in the first couple of days…it was pretty wearing. They wanted to know all kinds of things that I wouldn’t have thought could be relevant in a million years…asking about my marriage and a whole lot of other private stuff.”

  “Did they talk to your ex-husband as well?”

  “Yes, I gather Martin went through quite a grilling. But after the first couple of days, they seemed to decide there was nothing more I could tell them.”

  “Did they lay off him too?”

  She seemed about to make a different answer, but then said brusquely, “That I wouldn’t know. Anyway, the good thing was that quite suddenly they seemed to lose interest in me. Maybe that was when they got more news about Nathan Locke disappearing…I don’t know. The detectives in charge told me to stay in touch, but—thank God—since then they’ve left me alone. Oh, they’ve given me lots of numbers to ring if I remember anything else, or if anything happens that might have a bearing on the crime. But then I can’t imagine that anything is going to happen that has a bearing on the crime.”

  “Unless Nathan Locke suddenly turned up on your doorstep one day…?”

  “I can’t think that’s very likely.”

  “Do you mean you share the general Fethering view that he’s committed suicide?”

  “It’d be an explanation, wouldn’t it?”

  “Mmm.” There was a silence, disturbed only by the snipping of Connie’s scissors. Eventually Jude broke it. “You said you hadn’t met Kyra’s father?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But Wally Grenston knows him. Talked about him as Joe, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. When Wally was last in he said hello to Kyra like he’d met her somewhere before. Probably seen her round her old man’s place. From what he says, he’s one of the privileged few who’s allowed in there. The Bartos place backs on to my garden, but I’ve never had so much as a ‘How do you do?’ from the old boy.”

  “Mmm.” Jude looked thoughtful. “Do you still live in the house you did when you were married?”

  “Yes. Part of my settlement. That and this place…” she smiled ruefully “…while Martin went on to greater things.”

  After a few moments’ silence, Jude said, “You know, I’d like to talk to Wally Grenston…”

  She had no inhibitions about saying this. You could tell everything to a hairdresser. Whatever you said, they’d always heard worse. And generally speaking, they were discreet about keeping things to themselves.

  “He’s in the phone book.”

  “Right.”

  “Mind you, Jude, if you’re going to call him, I’d recommend you do it on a Thursday morning.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “That’s when Mini goes out to her flower arranging club.”

  SIX

  “Is that Mrs Seddon?” The voice on the telephone was male, cultured, even slightly academic.
>
  “Yes.”

  “You don’t know me. My name is Rowley Locke. I am the uncle of Nathan Locke.”

  “Ah.”

  “And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that my nephew is currently the subject of a lot of local gossip.”

  “No. It’s hard to escape it.”

  “The fact is that, without any evidence, without any trial, Nathan is being spoken of as the murderer of that poor girl in the hairdresser’s.”

  “I had heard that suggestion, yes.”

  “Well, I apologize for troubling you, Mrs Seddon…” He was extremely polite in his approach “…but, from the perspective of our family, this is very distressing…”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “And…I hesitate to ask you this, but I understand you were at the hairdresser’s when the murder victim was discovered…?”

  Carole confirmed that she had been.

  “Look, you may think this is an awful cheek…and I will fully understand if that is your view…but I wondered if we could talk to you about what you saw…?” Carole wondered who the ‘we’ was. “The fact is, Mrs Seddon, that, apart from constantly questioning us about Nathan’s whereabouts, the police are giving us nothing in the way of information about what happened…which makes it very difficult for us to build up a defence for the poor boy…when he finally does turn up again.”

  “You are confident that he will turn up again?”

  “Yes, of course.”