Fethering 01 (2000) - The Body on the Beach

by Simon Brett; Prefers to remain anonymous

  “Certainly not. He’s behaving like an alcoholic.”

  “Or someone who’s in the throes of a nervous breakdown?”

  “Maybe. Still, poor old Rory’s not really our concern. Except for the fact that his boat was possibly used as a temporary morgue, I can’t see that he has anything to do with our body on the beach.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Though Maggie clearly does have something relevant to tell us. How on earth did you know that she would, Jude?”

  “It was just a guess. Intuition, if you like. Barbara Turnbull had said something about Maggie’s son having psychological problems and…I put two and two together. You know, sometimes you just have a sense of things being connected, don’t you?”

  “No,” replied Carole, who never did.

  “Bad luck. Oh, here we are.”

  Carole brought the Renault to a halt outside Wood-side Cottage. She looked at her watch. “Spindrift Lane’s only five minutes’ walk away. Hardly worth taking the car. Shall I knock on your door about twenty past twelve?”

  “That’d be fine.”

  Carole couldn’t help herself from fishing a little. “So you’ll have time for a nice cup of coffee with Brad…”

  “No,” said Jude breezily. “I’ll have to empty a few more boxes upstairs, I’m afraid. Brad’s car’s not here. He’s gone.”

  “Oh.” Carole couldn’t for the life of her have left it there. “But I dare say you’ll be seeing him again…”

  “I dare say,” Jude agreed, with an infuriating, but probably not deliberate, lack of specificity.

  Carole parked the car in her garage. As she was doing so, she noticed on the mat a little scrape of mud left by Jude’s boot. She got out the dustpan and brush which was used only for the car and swept it up.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Spindrift Lane was part of the residential network which spread out from Fethering High Street. While not aspiring to the wealth-proclaiming grandeur of the Shorelands Estate, the houses there bore witness to lives well spent and money well invested. Paintwork gleamed and anything that could be polished had been polished. Even in November, no front grass was allowed to grow ragged and weeds had been banished from the interstices between flagstones in garden paths. The area was a testament to bourgeois values, which are, for the most part, financial values.

  Number 26 Spindrift Lane, however, fell short of these values. The front lawn was unkempt, the paint on the window-frames blistered and split. The garden gate sagged, maintaining only a tenuous contact with its hinges. Carole and Jude exchanged looks as they pushed through and approached the front door.

  Maggie had changed out of her working clothes into a navy woollen suit. With hair neatly brushed, her appearance matched the educated accent which had seemed so discordant earlier in the morning. As she ushered her two visitors into the sitting room, her mouth was tight with anxiety. Their welcome was polite—she had been well brought up—but not warm.

  Carole and Jude were sat down on a sofa in a room that was sparsely furnished and, like the exterior of the house, could have done with being decorated. The grate in the fireplace was bleakly empty. The bunched curtains in the bay window had faded unevenly. There was a portable television, but no video recorder. The room boasted few ornaments, but those there were looked to be of good quality. The two watercolour seascapes on the wall made Carole want to know the artist’s name. On the mantelpiece stood a pair of rather fine brass candlesticks and a photograph of a boy aged about fourteen. It was a school one, posed against a cloudy background, like the picture of Aaron Spalding featured in the Fethering Observer.

  Maggie stood in front of the fireplace and confronted them. “All right. What is all this? What’s Nick being accused of?”

  “We’re not accusing your son of anything,” Jude replied calmly. “May I call you Maggie?”

  “Maggie…Mrs Kent…I don’t care. Just tell me what you know.”

  “You’ve heard about the death of that boy Aaron Spalding?” A curt nod of acknowledgement. “Well, we have reason to believe that Aaron Spalding, with two other youths, was messing around on the seafront here at Fethering on Monday night.”

  “How do you mean, ‘messing around’?”

  “They had a few drinks and then they broke into the Fethering Yacht Club.”

  Maggie Kent didn’t say anything. She still watched and waited, gauging how much they knew.

  “We know that one of the other youths was called Dylan. He’s training as a fitter with J. T. Carpets…”

  Carole decided that Jude’s gentle approach was too much Good Cop, so she came in heavily in her Bad Cop persona. “And we have reason to believe that the third youth was your son, Nick.”

  For the first time in their acquaintance, Jude turned a look of reproof on her neighbour. They were going too fast. Maggie Kent didn’t look like a woman who’d crumple in the face of bullying. They needed to play her very carefully if they were going to get anything out of her.

  Maggie was silent for a moment. The women on the sofa watched her, each afraid that Carole had blown it.

  Eventually she spoke. Her voice was quiet and measured. It was costing her a lot to achieve, but she was in control. “Are you suggesting that my son had anything to do with Aaron Spalding’s death?”

  “No,” Jude hastened to assure her. “Certainly not. Whatever happened to Aaron happened on the Tuesday night. We’re concerned about events on the Monday.”

  “Why? Why are you concerned about them?”

  Carole took this on. “Because I have reason to believe that a crime was committed that night.”

  Anger blazed in Maggie Kent’s eyes. “And you think Nick did it?”

  “No. I’m not quite sure what the crime was and I certainly have no idea at this point who did it. We’re just trying to piece together the events of Monday night.” There was a silence, before Carole went on, “I’ve spoken to the police about this, but they seem unwilling to take me seriously.”

  “Oh? So your aim is not to turn all your information over to the police?”

  “No. Not until we know precisely what happened and have a completely watertight case. I’m not going to be treated like a hysterical woman a second time.”

  “Hm…” Maggie Kent nodded, taking in what she’d been told. Something Carole had said had relaxed her. The tension across her shoulders had lessened. She moved restlessly over towards the window and looked out into the November coldness. Then, seeming to reach a decision, she turned back and lowered herself into an armchair.

  “All right.” There was a new complicity in her voice. “I want to know what happened on Monday night at least as much as you do. But tell me first how you know Nick was involved. Were there witnesses?”

  Jude shook her head. “Not so far as we know. It was guesswork and a bit of luck, really. I’d had coffee with Barbara Turnbull and she’d been complaining about how her cleaning lady couldn’t come in because of some problem with her son. I just made the connection.”

  Maggie Kent’s lip curled. “And I bet the lovely Barbara was really sympathetic about the situation?”

  “From your tone, I don’t get the feeling I need to answer that.”

  “No. I hope she’s not a great friend of yours…In fact, I don’t much care if she is a great friend of yours. So far as I’m concerned, Barbara Turnbull is 100 per cent British cow.”

  Carole had expected Jude to agree with this and was surprised to hear only a demure, “I don’t really know her that well.”

  “Right. Fine. Well, I’ve been working for her for seven or eight months and I do know her—quite well enough. I wouldn’t put up with her patronizing poison if I had any alternative.”

  “Aren’t there many jobs round here?” asked Jude innocently.

  “Not many that don’t involve travelling. I don’t have transport these days. And I don’t want to take on anything full-time yet. I still feel I should be around for Nick…you know, when he comes home from school
.” She bit her lip. “Not that it seems my being around for him is doing that much good.”

  “Adolescence has always been pretty much purgatory.”

  Not for the first time, Carole was struck by Jude’s instinctive ability to get on someone’s wavelength and say exactly the right thing. Maggie Kent nodded, coaxed into confidences. “Yes, and he lost his father at a very difficult time.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that—”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean ‘lost’ in that sense. Nick’s father’s still alive—at least, I assume he is, I haven’t heard anything to the contrary—but for all the use he is to his son—or to me, come to that—he might as well be dead.” She sighed, before launching into a potted history she’d delivered many times before. “Sam—that’s my husband—lost his job about three years ago. He worked in the printing industry—managerial job, good salary, all the accessories that go with a nice middle-class lifestyle. House in a desirable part of Fethering, two cars, son at private school, little wife needn’t go out to work—all sorted. Then suddenly there’s a takeover. Big German conglomerate buys up Sam’s company and there’s major reorganization, restructuring, redeployment, and all those other words beginning with ‘re”—which mean basically that people lose jobs. And Sam’s out with a year’s money.

  “He wasn’t good at being out of work. Sam was always one of those men who felt defined by his job. That was his status, his sense of identity. Take it away and—as I discovered—there wasn’t a lot else there. At first Sam just pretended it hadn’t happened, made no changes to the way we lived our lives, kept Nick on at the private school, all that. He seemed to think something was going to happen, some deus ex machina was going to swoop down from the skies with a large chequebook and make everything all right again..

  “Well—surprise, surprise—that didn’t happen. Sam realized rather belatedly that, unless he did something about it, nothing would happen. So he applied for a few jobs, but he wasn’t good at selling himself. His confidence was so shot to pieces by then, he was going into interviews virtually telling them that he wasn’t what they were looking for. Which—all too readily—they believed.

  “From then on, it just got worse. The money ran out, Sam started drinking and, to make things even worse, he got into drugs. Cannabis at first—“to dull the pain’, he kept saying—but pretty soon he was on to the hard stuff. Heroin. Under those circumstances, the marriage didn’t stand a chance. Rows over money, rows about…about anything. Soon we stopped bothering with subjects to have rows about, we just cut straight to the row.

  “And then my dear husband walked out. In about eighteen months Sam’d gone from executive to dosser. I don’t know where he is now. Living rough somewhere, I imagine. I wouldn’t dare look too closely in shop doorways along the Strand or on street corners in Brighton, in case I recognized my husband…assuming of course that I ever went to London or Brighton, and didn’t spend all my time incarcerated in bloody Fethering!”

  Gently, Jude eased the conversation on. “And you say all this had a bad effect on Nick?”

  “Of course it did. Devastating. For a start, he’d always worshipped his father, and suddenly there’s this pathetic wreck around the house all the time. And Mum and Dad, who’d always seemed to get on so well, stop getting on well at all. And all Nick’s friends are going off on expensive holidays and we can’t afford to. And then one day there’s not even a pathetic wreck round the house. His father’s upped and gone.”

  “And he hasn’t been back since?”

  “Not while Nick’s been around, no. Sam did come back here a few times the first few weeks, but it was only to try and get money off me. Steal money from me if I wasn’t here. He took virtually everything in the house that had any value and sold it off to feed his heroin habit. Even took his passport one time -no doubt he managed to get a few quid for that from illegal-immigrant racketeers. He’s just gone.” Maggie Kent let out a defeated sigh. “When he started going downhill, I felt dreadful, kept thinking I could save him from himself, that I should save him from himself. Now, I haven’t got the energy even to think about him. So far as I’m concerned, Sam no longer exists.”

  “But Nick must’ve been in an awful state when his father left,” Jude persisted gently.

  “Oh yes, it was terrible for him. And Sam’s departure coincided with running out of money for the school fees, so suddenly Nick’s changing schools. I’m not saying anything against state education…well, yes, I am, actually. You grow up middle class and your mind rides along certain tracks for so long that it’s almost impossible to derail it. Nick was much better taught at his private school than he is now, and he mixed with a much less damaging bunch of kids than he does now. There, I’ve said it! Deeply politically incorrect and I don’t give a damn!”

  The outburst had exhausted her further. Maggie Kent sagged in her chair, the anger drained out of her.

  “I don’t know. I suppose I should move out of here—I’ll have to move out of here soon, anyway, the building society will see to that—and buy a little flat somewhere cheaper, and get Nick back into a decent school for his A-levels and…” She sighed. “But I seem to lack the will. I keep thinking something’ll happen, to sort out this whole bloody mess. Maybe I’m not so different from Sam, after all.” She slumped back, defeated.

  “So, going back to Monday night,” Jude prompted tentatively, “what time did Nick get home?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Not that late—one, two, I suppose. I was aware of him coming in, but I didn’t see him. Quite honestly, I get so sick of all the rows about the time he comes in that if I can duck one I do.

  “But he went out again early the next morning and it was what happened then that really affected him. The phone rang when I was hardly awake. Someone wanted to speak to Nick. Young voice, one of his mates I assumed, so I gave the lad an earful about ringing at that hour and got Nick to the phone. I don’t know what was said, but it sure scared the hell out of my son. He threw some clothes on and rushed straight out of the house. I don’t know where he was going, he wouldn’t tell me, but he was shaking like a leaf.”

  “What time would that have been?” asked Carole.

  “Ooh…Five past seven, say.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Anyway, I was worried sick. Though Nick’s given me quite a few nasty frights over the last few months, I’d never seen him in that kind of state. But of course I was due up at Brigadoon to be a dutiful Mrs Mop to the lovely Barbara…so I wait around as long as I can. And then, just when I’m about to leave, Nick comes back. He was in a worse state than ever, sobbing like a baby. No, worse than a baby. He was hysterical.”

  “Did he tell you the reason?”

  “No. Oh, I got bits out of him…that he’d been out with Dylan and Aaron the night before…that they’d had a few drinks…I think they did some drugs too. He didn’t admit it in so many words, but I’m pretty sure they did. And apparently they were talking about black magic, some gobbledegook I didn’t understand, but which seemed to have got Nick pretty scared. Anyway, he told me that they broke into the Yacht Club…said it was just a lark, that they didn’t do any harm.”

  “But you reacted this morning when I showed you the Stanley knife,” Carole pointed out. “He must’ve said something about that.”

  “Yes, Nick mentioned it. He said that Dylan, who works as a carpet-fitter, had his knife with him. But then he seemed to regret saying that and clammed up. I asked if any of the boats had been vandalized and he assured me they hadn’t.”

  “But Dylan was definitely with Nick and Aaron when they broke into the Yacht Club?”

  “Oh yes.”

  Carole and Jude exchanged a look. Neither of them had believed Dylan’s disclaimer at the time he said it.

  “That was all the night before,” said Jude thoughtfully. “But it’s Nick’s trip the following morning that seems really to have upset him. Did you find out anything about that?”

  “Nothing. Not a thi
ng. He kept saying he couldn’t tell anyone about it. That he couldn’t tell me, of all people.”

  “‘You, of all people’ because you were his mother or because what happened had something to do with you?”

  Maggie Kent shrugged helplessly at Jude’s question. “I haven’t a clue. All I know is that my son was in a terrible state of shock…Oh, and I did notice he had sand on his trainers.”

  “So he’d been on the beach.” Carole stated the obvious. “The boy who phoned him that morning, are you sure you didn’t recognize the voice?”

  “I’d never heard it before. I mean, I could tell it was someone round Nick’s age. They all talk ridiculously gruffly. Partly street cred and partly because they haven’t got used to their voices having broken. But this wasn’t one I recognized.”

  “Could it have been Aaron Spalding?”

  “Possibly. But I never heard Aaron Spalding speak, so I wouldn’t know.”

  There was a silence. Carole and Jude’s minds were racing.

  “You’re sure there wasn’t anything else, Maggie?” asked Jude.

  “No, sorry. Nick clammed up again. That was all I could get out of him.”

  “But he didn’t go to school on the Tuesday?”

  “He was in no state to go anywhere. I stayed here with him, tried to calm him down a bit. Wednesday he stayed here again, but he was more his old self. Then we heard about Aaron’s death and I’m afraid Nick just cracked up again.”

  “Is he at home now?” asked Carole.

  Maggie shook her head. “He said he felt up to school this morning. So he went there, and I went to the Shorelands Estate to be patronized by Barbara bloody Turribull.”

  “So you really have no idea what the three of them got up to at the Fethering Yacht Club?”

  “No, but it was something pretty horrifying, if the effect it had on my son is anything to go by…”