Fethering 01 (2000) - The Body on the Beach

by Simon Brett; Prefers to remain anonymous

  It happened in a split second. Still in the air between boat and cement, he shook his hand free and landed facing away from her. He hit the ground running and weaved his way through the rows of boats towards the Fether.

  “Help!” shouted Carole up towards the clubroom. “Help!” Now she wished she’d brought every member of the Yacht Club with her to trap the boy and seal off his escape.

  Dropping her torch in confusion, she ran as fast as she could, but Nick had a start and was a lot faster. She saw him vault over the far fence and rush towards the sea wall.

  By the time Carole, panting with effort, reached the railings, Nick Kent was standing swaying on one of the blue fishermen’s chests on the sea wall. Is that coincidence, Carole wondered, or does he know something about the whereabouts of the body?

  Such speculation would have to wait. She heard behind her the clatter of feet down wooden steps and men shouting, as she called out, “It’s all right, Nick! Don’t panic! Everything’s all right!”

  But the hue and cry she’d feared had started. One of the Yacht Club members had found a powerful spotlight, which he focused on the trembling boy.

  That was the final straw. Nick Kent recoiled from the beam, as if the light had the physical power to push him.

  Then he turned away and, trailing a thin scream, disappeared over the sea wall into the Fether.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “I still want to know,” said Jude calmly, “what you were doing on Fethering beach before seven in the morning.”

  “And why should I tell you?” Tanya sneered. “You’re not police or anything. I don’t have to answer your questions.”

  “No, you don’t. On the other hand, you did invite me to come here and the only possible reason for that is because I said I wanted to talk about the body on the beach. But now I’m here, you don’t seem to want to talk about it.”

  “Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”

  “You see, I think you do know more about the body than you’re saying. The person who saw you on the beach said you had come running down from the direction of the Fethering Yacht Club. I happen to know that the body you found had been stowed there overnight. In a boat called Brigadoon II.”

  There was an involuntary intake of breath from Tanya. Jude knew more details than she was expecting.

  “A possible interpretation of your actions would be that you knew the body had been put in the boat, but when you went to the Yacht Club to check on it—or possibly to move it—you found it had gone. That’s what made you panic and run off down the beach, where fortunately you found the missing corpse against the breakwater. So maybe then you went off to get help to move it.”

  “You’re talking a load of rubbish.” But it was only a token defiance. Jude could see from the sulky set of the girl’s chin that at least part of her conjecture had been correct.

  “What I still don’t know, though, is how you came to be involved with the body on the beach. What did it have to do with you, Tanya?”

  §

  Carole was well ahead of the others in reaching the sea wall. As she peered fearfully down over the side, the smell and the realization hit her at the same time. The Fether was at low tide and in the thin evening light the mudflats on either side took on the sheen of rotting meat.

  Nick Kent had landed in the mud some feet away from the sea wall. The impetus of his jump had planted him up to his thighs in the ooze. His thin arms flailed around, like the wings of a moth caught on wet paint, as he tried in vain to get a purchase on the slime around him.

  There was the hiss of a large wave washing up the channel from the sea. The level of the Fether was rising fast. And, even as Carole watched, Nick’s body seemed to jolt sideways, sinking deeper into the mire.

  She didn’t think. She acted instinctively. There was a gleaming new metal ladder against the sea wall, which had been fixed in place by the workmen doing the repairs during the previous week. Encumbered as she was by her raincoat, Carole swung herself round to take a foothold on the top rung and shinned quickly down.

  The ladder stopped about a yard above the mud. “It’s all right, Nick. It’s me, Carole,” she called out to the terrified boy.

  In the gloom he seemed aware of her for the first time. “Go away!” he shouted. “I want to die.”

  “No, you don’t. What you’ve done can’t be so terrible.”

  “You don’t know anything about it.”

  Carole had hooked one arm around a ladder rung and stretched the other out, but was still half a yard short of the boy’s hands. She undid the belt of her Burberry, slid it out of the loops and tried to flip it across the void.

  Suddenly there was a flood of light from above. The Fethering Yacht Club regulars had arrived at the edge of the sea wall. “We’ll get a rope to him!” shouted Denis Woodville’s voice, authoritative and confident. It was in times of crisis that Vice-Commodores came into their own.

  But his authority was not unquestioned. There came a rumbling of other elderly voices, offering a wide variety of alternative rescue plans. One of them made comparisons with a similar incident that had happened while he’d been stationed out in Singapore.

  Now that she could see where she was aiming, Carole made another throw with her belt. The buckle landed right by Nick Kent’s hand. He could easily have taken hold of it and had at least some link to the dry land.

  But he didn’t. His hands stayed resolutely on the mud.

  He meant what he had said. He wasn’t going to do anything to help himself. He did want to die.

  The metal ladder boomed and shook as someone else came down to join her. “We can get this rope to him,” said an elderly male voice she didn’t recognize from somewhere above her head.

  Carole squinted upwards. “You’ll have to lasso it round him. He’s not cooperating.”

  “Damn it,” said the voice. “I’ll go and get some duckboards. Perhaps we can get across the mud to him.” The ladder shuddered again as he clambered back up and started shouting, “Get some duckboards! Bloody kid’s on a kamikaze mission! Won’t help himself!”

  These orders prompted more shouting from other elderly male voices. One advocated ringing the coastguard. One recommended a boathook under the boy’s collar. A third said he remembered something similar happening when he’d been stationed out in Singapore. Denis Woodville could be heard saying he’d go to the nearest boat and try saving the boy from the water.

  The reasons why managers need to go on management training courses were all too apparent. There was a serious plethora of chiefs, and a serious deficit of Indians.

  Carole tried another flick across the void with her Burberry belt. It slipped out of her cold fingers and lay, a dead snake, on the mud between them.

  She couldn’t see Nick’s expression. While the old men above argued about the optimum escape plan, they had forgotten about keeping the light pointing down on to the mud.

  But Carole could see less of Nick, there was no question about that. He was now embedded in the ooze up to his chest and had to hold his arms up to keep them free of its embrace. The tide was sending ever stronger waves against the outflow of the Fether, and, with each hissing onrush, the water level crept closer to the stranded boy.

  Carole slipped out of her precious Burberry. “Nick!” she called out, as softly as she dared against the rush of the water. “Grab hold of my coat. Then I can hang on until help comes.”

  She flipped the Burberry out, in the manner patented by Sir Walter Raleigh. It landed, chequered-lining down, flat against the slime. Demonstrating once again that the mind has scant regard for the gravity of situations, Carole found herself thinking of cleaning bills and wondering whether dry-cleaning would remove the waterproof qualities of the material.

  The hem of the Burberry was almost touching Nick. He could easily have reached out and grabbed hold, taken a strong purchase on the cloth and given himself a chance.

  Still, he did nothing.

  “For God’s sake, Nick!” Carol
e shouted in exasperation. “Is this really how you want to die?”

  “I don’t care how it happens, so long as I die!” came back the petulant reply.

  Carole took a deep breath. Once again, the thought came to her that Jude would do this better. But Jude wasn’t here. Carole Seddon was the only person who could make the boy change his mind and start participating in his own rescue. And Carole Seddon was bloody well going to do it.

  “If you die now, Nick,” she began in a firm, no-nonsense way, “what would your father think?”

  “Don’t talk about my father!” he shrieked.

  “Why not? I know he’s not around at the moment…”

  “You can say that again.”

  “…but you used to be close. And if he comes back to find that you gave away your life in such a pathetic way as this, what’s he going to think?”

  “He’s not going to come back! Can’t you understand—he’ll never come back! He’s gone for good!”

  Carole changed tack. “All right. Say that’s true…Say he never does come back…That means your mother will have lost one of the two men in her life for ever, and you’re about to deprive her of the other. Think of her. Think what this’ll do to Mummy.”

  “It’s better than telling her,” the boy countered doggedly. “It’s better than her finding out what happened.”

  “For God’s sake, Nick, she’s your mother! Mothers were put on the earth to forgive their children—whatever they’ve done.”

  “Not this.”

  “Yes, even this, whatever it may be. The one thing a mother won’t forgive is herself, if she allows one of her children to take his own life. She’ll blame herself for that throughout the rest of her days. Is that the fate you want to condemn your mummy to?” There was silence. “The fate that Aaron Spalding’s mother’s condemned to?”

  Carole knew it had been a risk, and the boy definitely flinched at the name. At the same moment, a rogue wave, a bit ahead of itself, broke noisily behind him. The slap sent up a little column of spray which came down over his head, flattening his hair to a shiny skullcap.

  Whether it was the imminent reality of his demise or Carole’s arguments which swayed him, she would never know. All that mattered was that suddenly, convulsively, Nick Kent grabbed hold of the hem of the Burberry. Carole could feel the shock of his weight, the socket-wrenching tug on the arm that grasped the raincoat’s collar, and the equally painful strain on the arm that was hooked round the ladder.

  “OK, we’re coming with the duckboards!” a self-important voice announced from the top of the sea wall. “Easy does it. We’ll just—oh, bugger!”

  Carole heard something heavy rushing through the air, then a sound like a small fart as the object flumped into the mud. A slatted rectangle of duckboarding stuck upright at an angle out of the ooze. It was a good three yards away from both the ladder and the sinking boy.

  Again, Carole’s mind, with its poorly developed sense of occasion, demanded why, in a crisis of this kind, when the best help available was required, the rescue mission seemed to be in the hands of Dad’s Army or the Keystone Cops?

  From above, she could hear more argument. One pompous elderly voice was saying that duckboards weren’t the answer, they should be throwing down a lifebelt. Another argued back that duckboards were the answer, but they needed to be lowered down on ropes. A third announced that a similar thing had happened when he’d been stationed out in Singapore.

  “For Christ’s sake!” Carole bawled upwards. “Throw down a lifebelt, you stupid old fools!”

  This prompted some huffing and puffing of the ‘Not very ladylike’ variety, but after a few seconds there was a cry of, “Mind your heads!”, and a halo of plastic-covered cork whirled down through the air.

  With a squelch, the lifebelt came to rest on the mudflat, between the capsized duckboarding and the stranded boy. Though less than a yard away from him, Nick Kent could no more have reached it than he could have flown. Each inward swirl of water was now lapping over his shoulders.

  There was another, “Bugger!” from above, then, “Let’s see if we can work it round.”

  Manipulating the lifebelt with its rope, an attempt was made to flip it nearer to the boy. The ring rose in the air, complaining against the suction of the mud, and then flopped down again, a yard nearer to the sea wall.

  Carole couldn’t reach it. Still she clutched desperately at her Burberry, feeling the dead weight at the other end. She longed to change her hold, unhook her other arm from the ladder and get a two-handed grip on the coat, but she didn’t dare. There was no hope of pulling him out with the Burberry, but at least they were in contact.

  Another bumptious wave came along and broke right over the boy’s head. She heard him splutter as he got a mouthful of water. Coughing, he said, “It’s not going to work. I’m going to die here.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Carole firmly. “Anyway, a few moments ago that’s what you said you wanted to happen.”

  “Not now.”

  “Good.”

  “We’ll get you out of this,” Carole announced, though she wouldn’t have liked to have the provenance of her confidence investigated.

  There was another splutter from the boy as a new wave caught him. Either because of further slippage into the mud or because of the rising water, only his head was now visible, and that got covered by the crest of each incoming wave.

  Above them on the sea wall, old men, reliving distantly remembered wartime actions, shouted and countermanded each other’s orders. If they ever did get to the point of agreeing a course of action, it would be far too late for Nick Kent.

  Carole was aware of the sound of a boat’s motor putt-putting closer. Craning round from her Burberry tug-of-war posture, she saw a small wooden launch approaching. There were two men in it, though she could not identify them in the gloom.

  The boat was certainly aiming for Nick, but looked unlikely to get there in time. The boy’s head was now only intermittently visible between the waves. No more sounds of spluttering or protest came from his submerged mouth. Only the continuing tension on the Burberry told Carole he was still alive. But for how much longer?

  There was a splash from the approaching boat and she was aware of something moving through the water. It was a man swimming.

  Just as the swimmer approached the spot where Nick had been, Carole felt a jolt through her body. The countertension on the Burberry was gone. Nick Kent had let go.

  The swimmer was splashing around in the water, fixing something. Then he shouted back to the boat. “All right, he’s breathing through the snorkel. Chuck the rope down!”

  Carole knew the voice, but in the tension of the moment could not put a name to it.

  The man on the launch did as he was told. There was a rattle of anchor cable and the note of the motor changed to idling. The swimmer kept bobbing beneath the surface, near where the boy had last been seen.

  “OK,” the swimmer called out. “Take the strain!”

  It’s hopeless, thought Carole. For one thing, the boy’s probably already dead. For another, no elderly member of the Fethering Yacht Club is going to be strong enough to pull a body up against the suction of that mud.

  But she had reckoned without a winch. As soon as she heard the clank of gearing and the screech of ratchets, she knew there was a chance.

  The man on the launch worked the machinery, the swimmer kept the boy’s snorkel upright, as he eased the body out of its clammy prison. Winching and manhandling, they flipped the inert mass over the stern of the boat. At that moment there was a cheer from the armchair admirals on top of the sea wall. With remarkable agility, the swimmer then pulled himself up on board as well.

  “Is he all right?” Carole called across the void. “Is Nick all right?”

  “Will be,” called the swimmer’s familiar voice. “Just get the water out of his lungs. He’ll be fine.”

  As the tension drained out of her, Carole realized that she had no strengt
h left in her arms. It was all she could do to cling on to the ladder. The challenge of climbing back up it was insuperable.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Could someone give me a hand up the ladder?”

  This request seemed set to start a new debate as to which Fethering Yacht Club member should take on the task, and what would be the best way of approaching it, but fortunately a rough voice cut through the cackle. “I’ll get her.”

  Carole felt the ringing through the tubes of the ladder as a heavy body descended. When she felt his strong arms safely cradling her, she said tartly, “You were supposed to meet me at seven, Ted Crisp.”

  “Oh, really? I thought you said eight.”

  “Honestly!”

  “Why? Did I miss much?”

  There are some questions, Carole thought, that aren’t worth answering.

  Looking down at the Burberry still gripped firmly in her hand, Tfed Crisp said, “Aren’t you going to chuck that filthy old thing?”

  “Certainly not! Ooh, and could you manage to reach the belt down there?”

  By swinging ape-like from the bottom rung and trailing his large foot across the mud, he managed to hook up the belt. He handed it across to her. “There you are, madam. Your natural elegance restored.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Though it’s about to be shot to pieces again by me giving you a fireman’s lift.” And he slung her over his shoulder.

  Carole got a little cheer from Dad’s Navy when she was dumped unceremoniously on top of the sea wall. But her immediate concern was what was happening in the boat below.

  One of the Fethering Yacht Club members proved he could do something right by turning the broad beam of his torch down to the little launch.

  The bedraggled figure of Nick Kent looked very unsteady, but at least he was upright. He gave Carole a wave and a sheepish little grin.

  Standing either side of him were Denis Woodville and, soaked to the skin but triumphant, Bill Chilcott.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “My friend Carole and I have been working it out, you see,” Jude explained. “We’ve got these two deaths and a disappearance. There’s the body you found, Tanya -the one you refuse to tell me more about. There’s Aaron Spalding, who committed suicide. And then there’s the dentist, Rory Turnbull, who we’re meant to think has committed suicide.”