Fethering 01 (2000) - The Body on the Beach

by Simon Brett; Prefers to remain anonymous

  “Did Rory ever ask you to make money over to him?”

  “Not in so many words,” Winnie replied, with a wealth of implied subtext.

  “Oh. Well, look, I hope you do get some good news soon.”

  “The only good news I can get is the confirmation that that man is dead.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better news to hear that he’s still alive—that he hasn’t killed himself?”

  Winnie Norton was rather stumped by that question. It caught her between the opposite pulls of the polite usages of Fethering society and her own seething hatred. The conventionally humanitarian response she managed to patch together left no doubt as to the true state of her feelings.

  THIRTY

  “It’s all too easy,” Jude announced.

  They were walking along the beach on the Monday afternoon. The tide was low, the soft sand, sucking at their feet, made progress hard and slow. Gulliver scampered around them, off on more of his terribly important fool’s errands. The two women had brought each other up to date on their individual researches.

  “What do you mean, Jude?”

  “Look, forget the body you found for the moment. Forget Aaron Spalding and the other boys. Let’s just concentrate on Rory Turribull. Now, the assumption is that he’s committed suicide…”

  “And it seems a very reasonable assumption. He left a note, for a start, saying that that was what he intended to do. And the more we discover about his circumstances, the more impossible his situation seems to have been. His marriage must always have been unhappy—certainly if Barbara had the same kind of attitude to him as his mother-in-law has. And his finances were getting totally out of control. I mean, now we’ve discovered he’d remortgaged the house and he had no savings left. He must’ve been really desperate to start fiddling the Yacht Club accounts. And making false claims for dental work on the NHS, that had to be a short-term thing. He knew he’d get found out in time.”

  “And why was he doing all this? Why did he need all that money?”

  “To feed his heroin habit.”

  “And on what basis do we say he had a heroin habit?”

  “Come on, Jude. You got that from Dylan, didn’t you?”

  “Not really. All I got from Dylan was the fact that he gave Rory a contact name for hard drugs. Rory came to him because he was the Fethering local drug dealer—well known to be, Ted Crisp told us as much. Didn’t take us long, did it? Two not-very-streetwise women, and we get on to Dylan straight away, don’t we? And all we actually know is that Rory bought a bit of weed from Dylan, and then asked for a contact name to get hold of the smack. We have no proof he ever followed up on that contact.”

  “But we do. Rory’s mother-in-law found evidence -she found the drug equipment in his study. Oh, come on, Jude, we can’t argue with this. It all stacks up.”

  “Yes, it all stacks up.” Jude stopped and narrowed her brown eyes to look out over the sea. Now the weather had changed, there was even a trace of blue in the waves. “And I think it all stacks up too conveniently.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve known a few drug addicts in my time,” said Jude, “and the one thing that distinguishes them is secrecy about their habit. Not when they’re with other junkies perhaps, but they don’t want the outside world to know. And yet we’re being asked to believe that a middle-class dentist leaves evidence of his drug habit round the house where his mother-in-law can find it. And where his wife could easily have found it if his mother-in-law hadn’t. Winnie told you that Barbara snooped around in the loft and found the pornography he’d stashed away—and he’d made a much bigger effort to hide that. So Rory knew full well that anything left round his house was a serious security risk.”

  “But surely—”

  Jude seemed unaware of the interruption as she went on, “Besides, what Winnie found was so obvious. What—a syringe, some tinfoil and a packet of white powder?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “And she also said that she recognized what it was because she’d seen stuff like that on television. What she saw was like an identikit shorthand for drug addiction—something that even a genteel, middle-class lady in her seventies was bound to recognize. No, I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. There’s something going on here.”

  “But what?”

  Jude let out a wry little laugh. “If we knew that, wouldn’t life be simple? The only thing I do know, though, is that Rory Turnbull isn’t dead.”

  “How do you know that? All the evidence points to the fact that he definitely is dead.”

  “And that’s how I know it. There’s too much evidence. I detect a bit of overkill in the planning here.”

  “Whose planning?”

  “Rory Turnbull’s, I would imagine. Though what he was planning and why, I have no idea.”

  “Well, even if he’s not dead,” said Carole, “it’s no surprise that he’s off the scene right now, is it?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Retribution was getting dangerously close. He must’ve known when the Regional Dental Officer would be coming to make his inspection. And when Denis Woodville would be talking to the accountants, come to that.”

  “Yes.” Jude rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “It might in fact have been better from Rory’s point of view if those things had come out after his apparent suicide. I wonder…”

  “What?”

  “Dunno. Just wonder if he had to change his plans for some reason. But since we don’t know what his plans were, such speculation becomes rather difficult. Oh, what the hell? I’m going to paddle.”

  And suddenly Jude was running down to the sea’s edge.

  “You’re not going to take off your shoes, are you?” Carole called after her. “The water’ll freeze your toes off.”

  “No, no, these boots are supposed to be waterproof!”

  Jude jumped into the shallows and kicked about in frustration, raising flurries of spray around her. Gulliver, identifying the kind of game he never got to play with his owner, leapt into the water to join her, barking joyously. Carole stood a few yards above the tide mark, looking old-fashioned.

  She gave covert looks along the beach in both directions and up towards the pebbles. There was no one in sight. Thank goodness. Flamboyance of the kind Jude was manifesting wasn’t quite the thing in Fethering. Carole reminded herself how glad she was that she wasn’t prone to such childish displays. But still she felt a little wistful.

  “It’s not true!” Jude called out through the spray.

  “What’s not true?”

  “The manufacturer’s claim for these boots. They’re not waterproof.”

  “Oh. Well…” Carole couldn’t think of a response that wouldn’t sound smug, so she said nothing.

  Jude came out of the sea with a broad grin across her face. “There,” she said. “Feel better for that.”

  Gulliver followed her out. Stopping alongside, he shook himself, covering her with fine spray.

  “Gulliver, you naughty boy!”

  “It’s all right, Carole. I’m so wet already, it doesn’t matter. Stay cool.”

  Carole wasn’t sure that she’d ever been cool, so staying cool might have been a problem. But again she didn’t say anything.

  Jude stood at the sea’s edge, unaware of the wavelets lapping away at her heels. She looked up towards Fethering and her brow wrinkled. “I’m sure the solution’s very simple…if only we could work it out.”

  “Huh.” Carole turned to face in the same direction, but stayed in front of Jude. Although her gumboots were infallibly waterproof, she didn’t want to get them wet.

  Jude looked across towards the Yacht Club. Behind it, the men who’d been repairing the sea wall were dismantling their site. The cranes had already gone and other equipment was being loaded on to large flatbed trucks. The builders’ work had been done. The wall was shored up and the quick-flowing Fether once again properly contained.

  “Let’s just think about your body,�
�� she said. “What we know of the movements of your body.”

  “All right. Well, how it got there we have no idea, but we do know that it was lying in Brigadoon II on the Monday night when it was found by Dylan, Aaron Spalding and Nick Kent…”

  “Then they did their black magic ritual with it and chucked it into the Fether…”

  “But, true to form, it became a ‘Fethering Floater’ and was washed up on the beach the next morning, where I found it…”

  “Though the ‘someone else’ you saw walking away from the breakwater may have found it before you did.”

  “Possibly.”

  “And then Aaron Spalding found it, presumably after you did.”

  “I imagine so.”

  “He rang Nick Kent and together the two boys manhandled the body back to where they’d found it. By the time the police started looking, the body was back in Brigadoon II.”

  “Yes, though it wasn’t there on the Wednesday afternoon when we looked inside the boat.”

  “No.” Jude tugged pensively at an errant strand of her blonde hair. “So, given the fact that moving dead bodies around during the daytime tends to attract attention, it seems reasonable to assume that the body was moved out of the boat on the Tuesday night.”

  “The same night that Aaron Spalding jumped—or fell—into the Fether.”

  “Yes. Are those two events connected? Hm…” Jude tapped her chin in frustration. “So where did the body go? Where, come to that, is the body now?”

  Her eyes moved restlessly across the horizon of Fethering, and stopped focused on a high thirties house with glass-fronted top floor. As she looked a flash of reflected sunlight caught on something behind the glass. “Who lives there?”

  “What?”

  “That tall house, Carole. Who lives there?”

  “Old bloke. I don’t know his name. He’s completely housebound, I think.”

  “But from the top of that house, he can see everything that happens on the beach.”

  “Well, yes, he probably can, but—”

  “Come on!” And Jude had started running up the sand, her wet shoes squelching protests at every step. Gulliver, having recognized another game, also ran, barking enthusiastically.

  “But, Jude,” Carole wailed, “we can’t just burst into his house!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t know him.”

  “Oh, Carole! For heaven’s sake!”

  THIRTY-ONE

  The house that overlooked the beach must once have been in single ownership but had been divided into flats, one on each of its four storeys. Assuming a correlation between the flats and the entryphone buttons, Jude boldly pressed the top one.

  There was no response. She was about to press again when an electronic voice from the little speaker said, “Hello?”

  “Good afternoon. Are you the gentleman in the top flat?”

  “Yes.”

  “We wondered if we could come and talk to you.”

  “Might I ask who you are?”

  “My name’s Jude, and I’m with my friend Carole Seddon. We both live in Fethering. In the High Street. Please. We would like to talk to you.”

  “About what?” the voice crackled back.

  “About things you may have seen on the beach over the last week.”

  “Uh-huh.” There was a silence while the voice seemed to assess the proposition. Then it went on, “So you are asking me, an elderly, housebound cripple, to open my door to two people I’ve never seen before…”

  “Yes.”

  “…in spite of the fact that the majority of crimes against the elderly are committed by malefactors who have infiltrated themselves into pensioners’ houses on some spurious pretext?”

  “Yes,” said Jude, with less confidence.

  “Come on up,” the voice from the box intoned. Then the door buzzed its release. Jude pushed and held it, while Carole sorted out Gulliver. He wasn’t going to enjoy being tied by his lead to a garden seat—particularly when he reckoned he was being taken out for a walk—but there was no alternative. As they went inside the building, he gave a couple of reproachful barks at the eternal perfidy of women.

  The entrance was at the back, at the foot of a tower which housed a lift and had presumably been added at the time of the conversion into flats. Without the lift, surely no one in a wheelchair would live on the top floor.

  “But we don’t even know his name,” Carole complained as they rose up through the building.

  “Then we’ll ask him what it is.” Jude’s tone came as near as it ever did to exasperation.

  They emerged on to a small landing. Framed in the doorway opposite, which he had opened ready for them, was a small man in a wheelchair.

  Perhaps he wouldn’t have looked small if he could have stood up, but, crumpled down as he was, there seemed to be very little of him. He was partially paralysed, his head propped back at a strange angle. His left hand was strapped against the arm of his chair, while his right hovered over a control panel of buttons and levers. He wore a crested blazer and a cravat high around his neck. On his head was an incongruous navy corduroy cap.

  “Good afternoon…Carole and Jude, was it?”

  When he spoke, they realized that not only the entryphone had made his voice sound electronic. He talked through some kind of voicebox. The cravat must have been there to hide a tracheotomy scar.

  “Come on in,” he said, flicking a control and going into sharp reverse. “Close the door behind you.”

  “Isn’t that a risk?” asked Jude, as they came into his sitting room. “If we were going to rob you or beat you up, nobody would hear your cries.”

  Carole gave her neighbour a reproving look. What appalling bad taste. Had Jude no sense of the right remark for the right occasion?

  But apparently it was exactly the right remark for their host. He let out a bark of electronic laughter and said, “I’m prepared to take my chance with you two. I know appearances can be deceptive, but you don’t project the traditional image of teenage tearaways.

  “My name’s Gordon Lithgoe, by the way. I’d offer to make you tea, but I’m so cack-handed, you’d be better off doing it for yourself. The makings are over there.”

  “No, thank you. We don’t require tea.” Carole didn’t want the atmosphere to become too relaxed. When they started asking him questions, Gordon Lithgoe might decide to throw them out.

  “This is a pretty stunning little eyrie you’ve got here,” said Jude.

  It was. The window that took up the entire front wall dominated the space, as if the sea were part of the decor. The original thirties metal-framed panes were still intact, but outside a more modern set of sliding windows protected them from the worst of the weather. The glow of the bright November afternoon permeated the whole room. There was little furniture; someone in a wheelchair had more use for space than armchairs and sofas. On the walls were pinned large-scale maps of shorelines, creeks and channels; there were a few plaques commemorating various ships; and in rows of bookcases stood the serried blue spines of books that looked as if they must have something to do with navigation.

  Most interesting, though, from the point of view of the two women, was the area directly in front of the window. A platform had been built up there, and from it a ramp led down for the wheelchair. On the platform stood a telescope on a tripod. Two pairs of powerful binoculars lay on a nearby table, as well as an open ledger with a fountain pen lying down its middle crease. Some notes were written on the left-hand page.

  “Very nautical flavour,” Jude went on. “Were you in the Navy?”

  “No, no,” said Gordon Lithgoe. “No chance of someone like me passing the medical. So I’ve always had to remain as just an interested amateur.”

  “Still”—Jude looked around the room again—“this is a wonderful place.”

  “Just as well,” his voice crackled back, “since the only times I leave it these days is to have operations.” There was another rasp of lau
ghter. “Apropos of which, ladies, sorry about the cap, but it’s prettier than the scars underneath.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it is,” said Carole, ever ready with the required Fethering platitude.

  Her recourse to what passed locally for good manners reminded him of his own. “Do sit down.” He pointed to two upright kitchen chairs. “Sorry, not very comfortable, but then I have few visitors. The woman who brings my meals never stays. Otherwise, it’s the nurse, the occasional social worker, very rarely the doctor and, even more rarely, the odd friend. Have to be odd to come and see someone like me—half man, half electronic gadget—wouldn’t they?”

  There was not a nuance of self-pity in his words. There hadn’t been in anything he had said. He seemed, if anything, amused by his plight.

  “Anyway,” he said, signalling the end of social niceties, “you are here for a purpose. I saw you deciding to come up here.”

  “You saw us?” said Carole.

  “Oh yes.” He suddenly spun the chair on its wheels and shot like a rocket towards the platform by the window. He seemed to be going up the ramp far too fast, but, rather than smashing into the telescope, he came to a neat halt inches away from it. He’d practised the trick many times before.

  He didn’t need to move the telescope. It was already focused. He edged the wheelchair a fraction closer and his eye was at the lens. “I could see you just like you were in the room with me. Pity I can’t lip-read. But anyway your body language told me you’d decided to come up here.”

  “Do you spend most of the day watching the beach?” asked Jude.