The Body on the Beach

by Simon Brett

  ‘I suppose so, yes.’

  Brayfield nodded, as if this too was of profound relevance. Then he said, ‘Could we just recap once again exactly what happened this morning?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ She couldn’t help herself. But, feeling the intense scrutiny of the two police officers after her outburst, she took a deep breath before saying, ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  ‘Was there anyone else around on the beach this morning when you took your walk?’

  ‘Apart from the dead body?’

  ‘Apart indeed from the dead body. Do you recall seeing anyone else?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I did . . .’ She screwed up her eyes with the effort of recapturing the scene. ‘Ooh yes, yes, there was someone.’

  Carole was aware of WPC Juster tautening in her chair and realized how guilty she must sound, first forgetting, then remembering. But she was damned if she was going to feel guilty. She had nothing to feel guilty about. She was just doing her duty as a public-spirited citizen. Never again, though. Next time she found a dead body, she’d walk away and leave some other unfortunate passer-by the task of breaking the news to the police.

  ‘So who was this?’ asked Detective Inspector Bray-field evenly. ‘Who did you see?’

  ‘It was someone in a shiny green anorak with the hood tied up tight. They were walking into the wind, you see. They hurried straight past me.’

  ‘Hurried?’

  ‘Almost ran.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And was it a man or a woman?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell.’

  ‘Really?’ Though deliberately ironing out the intonation, he still couldn’t remove the last wrinkle of scepticism. ‘You didn’t speak to this person?’

  ‘No. I just gave them a nod.’

  ‘And did they speak to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or give you a nod?’ Carole shook her head. ‘That’s a pity, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, obviously if we had any means of tracking down this other person on the beach, then we might have another witness of your dead body, mightn’t we?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which might be very useful.’ Before Carole had time to say anything, the Inspector moved abruptly on. ‘So you came straight back here from the beach?’

  ‘As I told you, yes.’

  ‘But before calling the police, you bathed your dog?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he was covered with seaweed and soaked with salt water. If I hadn’t given him a bath, the whole house’d smell.’

  ‘Hm. And then, after washing the dog, you cleaned your kitchen.’ The Inspector ran a hand over his chin, as if checking the quality of his morning’s shave. ‘You don’t often find dead bodies on the beach, do you, Mrs Seddon?’

  ‘No, of course I don’t!’

  ‘So, given the fact that it’s an unusual – and probably rather a shocking – thing to happen to you, can you understand why I’m surprised that you bathed your dog and did some of your housework before reporting it?’

  ‘I can see that, with hindsight, it may sound rather odd, but at the time it seemed the perfectly logical thing to do.’

  ‘Did it?’

  ‘Maybe I was in shock. Maybe I needed to do something mechanical, something mundane, to calm myself down.’

  ‘Or maybe, Mrs Seddon, you just needed time to work things out.’

  ‘Work what out?’

  ‘What you were going to say when you rang the police.’

  ‘I didn’t need to work that out. I just had to say exactly what I’d seen.’

  ‘The body on the beach?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And to direct us to where that body was lying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Seddon, everything you’ve told us this morning makes perfect sense.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘We followed your directions to the letter. They were very clear.’ Carole nodded in acknowledgment of the compliment. ‘We went down to the breakwater you described and everything was absolutely fine . . . except for one small detail.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘When we got to the breakwater, there was nothing there. There was no body on the beach, Mrs Seddon.’

  Chapter Four

  Carole Seddon felt upset after the police’s departure. They had come to the house with an agenda; their semaphore of little nods and eyelid flickers had been prearranged. Having arrived believing her to be a hysterical attention seeker, nothing she could say was going to make them leave with any change in their attitude.

  That’s what hurt – that they had thought her anything less than sensible. Throughout her career in the Home Office, Carole Seddon had prided herself on being a safe pair of hands. Male colleagues had paid her the ultimate compliment of appearing unaware of her gender. Even at times of crisis, when she returned to work after the birth of her son, when her marriage to David was turning horribly sour, she had never let her emotions show in her professional life.

  And here she was faced with a detective and a WPC being understanding about her mental state.

  There was nothing wrong with her mental state. Certainly nothing wrong with her hormonally. What stage she was at with her menopause was nobody’s business but her own. And yet the attitude of the two police officers had undermined her confidence. She knew she wasn’t a hysteric, but the fact that someone could imagine her to be a hysteric upset the carefully maintained equilibrium of her life.

  The unease didn’t dissipate during the course of the day. She went through the motions of her normal routine. Did a bit of housework for the rest of the morning. Forced down some soup and a hunk of granary bread at lunchtime, then settled to the regular mental aerobics of the Times crossword. But her brain was sluggish, slow to dissect words into their component parts, slow to make connections between them. She completed one corner, but could fill in only a few stragglers on the rest of the grid. The crossword, usually finished within half an hour, was set aside for completion later in the day.

  Round four, she took Gulliver out for a shorter walk, through the back gate to do his business in the rough ground behind the row of cottages. Jude and her carpet were no longer in their front garden, but, Carole noted with disapproval, the structure of boxes still was. Her new neighbour would have to learn. People in Fethering didn’t leave anything in their front gardens, except for staddlestones, tasteful statuary and – in one rather regrettable instance – gnomes.

  Gulliver seemed to have caught his mistress’s mood, sloping along by her side with none of his usual frenetic attacks on invisible windmills. The light too was depressing. True to its early promise, the day had never felt like day, and its leaden sky was now thickening into a November night. The cold stung her exposed cheeks and she shivered. Her circulation hadn’t got properly going all day.

  Still Carole Seddon couldn’t lose the unpleasant aftertaste of her morning’s visitation by the police.

  Despite the sour mood they’d engendered, the thought did not for a moment occur to her that she might be in the wrong. There was no doubt that she had seen the body on the beach. The fact that the police hadn’t found it was down either to their incompetence or – more likely – to the interference of some outside agency. Maybe they’d taken too long, arriving after the tide had come in far enough to move the body on. Maybe someone had moved it deliberately.

  Once the body had been found – as she knew it would be – Carole Seddon was determined to get a very full apology from the West Sussex Serious Crimes Squad. Public-spirited citizens should not be treated like criminals.

  Though the prospect of receiving some ultimate moral compensation was a comforting one, when she returned home Carole still felt unsettled. As she put on the lights and drew the curtains, she even asked herself if she was over-reacting, if she actually was in an emotional state. Maybe a delayed response to the shock of seeing the dea
d body and to the implications of the wounds on its neck?

  Uncharacteristically, she wanted to talk to someone about the whole incident. For a brief, irrational moment, she even contemplated confiding in her new neighbour. She couldn’t forget the unusual quality of empathy she’d seen in those wide brown eyes.

  But that was ridiculous. Even if Carole Seddon had been the kind of person who talked to her neighbours about anything more weighty than the weather, she didn’t even know this woman.

  These uncharacteristic thoughts were interrupted when the doorbell rang.

  She had received no early warning over the previous couple of days. No acquaintance was due to come round for tea. It must be someone selling something, Carole concluded as she approached the front door. Probably one of those men with a zip-up bag full of dishcloths, oven gloves and plastic storage boxes who would flash some laminated card of authorization. If it was, she’d send him off with a flea in his ear. There was a consensus view in Fethering that all such visitors were lookouts for criminal gangs. Carole Seddon wasn’t about to have her joint cased for the benefit of burglars.

  By the time she opened the door, she had built up a healthy head of righteous steam against the expected salesman and was surprised to be confronted by a thin, haunted-looking woman she had never seen before.

  ‘Did you find a body on the beach this morning?’

  Now Carole knew why she had let the woman in. Her instinct was always to get rid of unexpected callers – particularly callers in grubby jeans and purple quilted anoraks. But something in the woman’s eyes had indicated that her visit was serious, maybe even important. Carole had ushered her stiffly into the sitting room, sat her down and waited till the reason for her presence was explained.

  Now she knew she’d done the right thing. In the same armchair where Detective Inspector Brayfield had sat that morning, disbelieving her story of having found a body on the beach, here was a woman actually asking about her discovery.

  ‘What makes you think I did?’ Carole responded cautiously.

  ‘I know you did.’ The voice was uneducated South Coast, not from the more discriminating purlieus of Fethering. ‘It was a woman with a beige raincoat and a Labrador,’ she went on. ‘You fit the description.’

  ‘Whose description?’

  ‘Never mind that. Look, I know it was you, so we can cut out the bullshit.’

  Carole Seddon appraised the woman in front of her. The face had about it a deadness the colour and texture of papier mâché. The hair was flat and dull like tobacco. Only the eyes were alive, burning with a desperate energy.

  ‘The police have been to see me this morning,’ said Carole evenly. ‘According to them, when they looked, there was no body on the beach.’

  ‘I’m not interested in the police. You know and I know there was a body on the beach this morning. Down at the end of the breakwater.’

  While it was gratifying to have her story corroborated, Carole still wanted to know where the woman had got her information. ‘Were you watching me? Was it you who I saw walking away from the body?’

  ‘I didn’t go on the beach this morning.’ The woman dismissed these irrelevant details and hurried on to what really concerned her. ‘Did you take something from the body? Something out of his jacket pocket?’

  ‘No, I certainly didn’t. I didn’t touch it.’ Carole spoke with the affront of someone whose upbringing did not countenance theft, least of all from the dead.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure!’

  ‘Listen, it’s important.’

  ‘It may be important, but the fact remains that I did not take anything from the body I found on the beach this morning!’

  ‘There wasn’t no knife?’

  ‘Knife? I didn’t see any knife.’

  This answer seemed to provide a moment of reassurance. The woman was silent, her eyes darting from side to side as she considered the next tack to take. ‘Do you know where it went?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘The body?’

  ‘Of course the body.’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘After you seen it, did you see anyone else go near it?’

  ‘No. I went home and rang the police. And – as I’ve just told you – when they finally came to see me, they said they hadn’t been able to find the body.’

  This news too seemed to reassure the woman, but only for a moment. Her tone changed. There was overt aggression in her next question. ‘What were you doing down on the beach, anyway?’

  ‘I was taking my dog for a walk.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ The woman could do scepticism just as well as Detective Inspector Brayfield. Then, abruptly, she asked, ‘Did the police say they’d come back?’

  ‘To see me again? No.’

  ‘If they do come back, you’re not to tell them anything about it.’

  Carole was getting exasperated. ‘About what, for God’s sake?’

  ‘About what you seen on the beach. About you seeing anyone moving the body.’

  ‘I’ve told you! I didn’t see anyone moving the body!’

  ‘If you’re lying and I find out you snitched to anyone about what you seen, there’ll be trouble.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ asked Carole, almost contemptuously.

  ‘This kind of trouble,’ said the woman with a new, sly menace in her voice.

  As she spoke, she reached inside her quilted anorak and pulled out a gun.

  Chapter Five

  Carole was too affronted to feel any fear. ‘Put that thing away!’ she ordered. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing? This is Fethering, not Miami Beach.’

  The woman waved the gun threateningly. ‘You shut up! I think you’d better cooperate with me.’

  Carole rose from her seat and moved towards the telephone. ‘I’m going to call the police.’

  ‘Do that and I’ll shoot you!’

  The words stopped her in her tracks. Carole turned to look at the woman, assessing the risk of the threat being carried out.

  Something she saw in the wild, darting eyes told her that the danger was real. The woman’s expression wasn’t natural. Perhaps she was under the influence of some drug. Indeed, that would make sense of her erratic behaviour since she’d arrived at the house. She wasn’t entirely in control of her actions.

  Which being the case, she was quite capable of using the gun. Carole returned silently to her seat.

  ‘So tell me what you did see,’ the woman demanded.

  ‘I didn’t see anything other than what I’ve told you about.’

  Apparently coolness wasn’t the best response. It seemed only to inflame the woman more. Waving the gun with increasing – and rather disturbing – abandon, she said, ‘Cut the crap. You’re nothing in this. You get shot, it doesn’t matter. So long as the police never find out who moved the body.’

  Her speech was slurring now, becoming something of a ramble. But that didn’t make its content any less disturbing. Being shot by someone coherent or being shot by someone rambling didn’t make a lot of difference, Carole realized. You were still dead.

  ‘They’ll never find out from me,’ Carole said calmly, ‘because I don’t know who moved the body.’

  The woman looked puzzled. ‘Whose body? My son’s body? My son’s not dead.’ Then, with another worryingly casual wave of the gun, she slurred, ‘You could be lying.’

  ‘Yes, I could be, but I’m not.’

  ‘Does this gun frighten you?’

  ‘Of course it does. I’m not stupid.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ the woman maundered on, ‘people get shot just to keep them quiet. To make sure they don’t say anything.’

  This is ridiculous, thought Carole. I am sitting in my own sitting room – in Fethering of all places – and a woman I’ve never seen before is threatening to shoot me with a gun. People will never believe me when I tell them. On the other hand, of course, I may not be around to tell them.

  Though her brain
was working fast, her body was paralysed. Carole could do nothing. The gun was still pointing straight at her and a new, dangerous focus had come into the woman’s eyes when . . . the front doorbell rang.

  There was a momentary impasse. Then the woman hissed, ‘Don’t answer it.’

  ‘But everyone knows I’m here. The lights are on. If I don’t answer, they’ll get suspicious and call the police.’

  The barrel wavered while the woman weighed this up. Then she relented. Flicking the gun towards the door, she said, ‘See who it is. Don’t invite them in, though.’

  ‘All right. I won’t.’

  As she went towards the front door, Carole reflected wryly on Gulliver’s qualities as a guard dog. Two people – one at least of whom was carrying a gun – had rung her front doorbell in the previous half-hour. And Gulliver hadn’t even stirred from his cosy doze by the Aga.

  Carole opened the front door. The frost had set in fiercely while she’d been indoors and the cold air scoured her face. In the cone of light spreading from the overhead lamp stood Jude. Her blonde hair was covered by a floppy hat and she appeared to be wearing some kind of poncho.

  ‘Carole, hi. I wondered whether you fancied going down to the Crown and Anchor for a drink?’

  Under normal circumstances, the knee-jerk response would have been, ‘No, thank you. I’m afraid I’m not a “pub person”.’ But the presence of a gun-toting, possibly drug-crazed woman in her sitting room disqualified the circumstances from being normal. ‘Well . . .’

  But that was all she had time to say. There was the clatter of a door behind her. Carole rushed back to find her sitting room empty. The sound of the back door slamming shut drew her through into the kitchen. That too was empty. From his position at the foot of the Aga, Gulliver looked up blearily. A real help, he was.

  She moved with caution towards the window over the sink and peered into the encroaching darkness. There was no sign of the woman, but the gate at the end of the garden flapped open.

  Carole turned back to see Jude framed in the kitchen doorway. That wasn’t the Fethering way, her instincts told her. To come into someone’s house without being invited, that wouldn’t do at all.