The Body on the Beach

by Simon Brett

  Carole smiled graciously. Churchill emerged from behind the sofa and started yapping at her.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  As she’d mentioned, Jude had done some acting in her time. She’d done a lot of things in her time. Hers had been a rich and varied life.

  On the Saturday morning, while Carole went off to do her bit with Winnie Norton, Jude decided she’d have to call on her acting skills to further her own research. She rang through to J. T. Carpets. Even if no carpet-fitting went on at the weekend, the showroom was bound to be open. And there must be someone working in the office.

  There was. Jude put on a voice of excruciating gentility (school of Barbara Turnbull) and went into her prepared spiel. ‘Good morning. I’m trying to contact one of your carpet-fitters. Named Dylan.’

  ‘I’m sorry. The fitters don’t work at the weekend.’

  ‘Well, could you give me his home address and phone number?’ she demanded imperiously.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not company policy to give out our employees’ private details over the telephone.’

  ‘Then in this case you must make an exception to company policy. My name is Mrs Grant-Edwards.’ Jude was taking a risk that the girl in the office had never spoken directly to the real Mrs Grant-Edwards. And perhaps less of a risk in assuming that the real Mrs Grant-Edwards would talk the way she was talking. ‘I live in a house called Bali-Hai on the Shorelands Estate, where your people have just been fitting a carpet.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘And one of the fitters was this young man called Dylan.’

  ‘You haven’t found anything missing, have you?’

  The anxiety in her voice was a real giveaway. Clearly Dylan didn’t have a reputation as the most trustworthy of employees. Jude wondered how many little pilferings had occurred in the houses where he had fitted carpets. And wondered how much longer he would keep his job.

  ‘No, no, it’s not that. It’s rather the reverse. I’ve found something of his in the house.’

  ‘What?’

  Jude had thought long and hard what her cover story should be. She wasn’t going to get anywhere with a complaint about Dylan. Inventing some domestic crisis was too risky; his employers were bound to know more about his family circumstances than she did. What was needed was something urgent, but unthreatening, something that would sound as though Mrs Grant-Edwards was actually doing him a good turn. Jude felt pleased with the solution she’d finally come up with.

  ‘It’s a wallet containing his credit cards. And since he hasn’t come back to our house looking, I assume he doesn’t know where he left it. Well, I know how tiresome it can be to lose one’s credit cards. It happened to me last year and caused an awful kerfuffle. So I just wanted to ring him to put his mind at rest.’

  The approach worked with the girl at J. T. Carpets. ‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Grant-Edwards.’

  ‘If we don’t all help each other out in this life, what will become of us?’

  ‘What indeed? Right, just a moment. I’ll find Dylan’s home number for you.’

  The girl gave it. Jude had asked for his address too, but she couldn’t justify pressing for that. Her cover story didn’t require her knowing where he lived. So she just thanked the girl for her help and put the phone down.

  The number had a Worthing code, which meant it was local, and the first two digits were the same as Jude’s own, which meant it was very local. Dylan probably lived in Fethering. But whether with his family, a girlfriend or on his own she had no means of knowing.

  The next call was going to need a change of persona and she had to get it right. Jude made herself a cup of peppermint tea while she focused on the role she was about to play. In spite of her floaty dress style, Jude was far from being a superannuated hippy, but she had met plenty of the breed. Indeed, during the time she’d lived on Majorca, people who didn’t know her well might have reckoned her as one of their number. Most of her acquaintances from that period of her life had long since settled into the worlds of domesticity and employment, often as schoolteachers or in the social services. They remained harmless idealists, benignly ineffectual, posing no threat to society at any level. True, they did break the law on a regular basis, but the one they broke Jude didn’t think should be a law anyway.

  She concentrated on getting the voice right. Laid-back, lazy, full of trailing vowels, that was it. And she’d use her mobile phone, so that the precise location she was calling from wouldn’t be revealed if Dylan checked 1471.

  She waited till half-past eleven, which she reckoned gave a lad-about-Fethering – assuming that’s what Dylan was – time to wake up after the excesses of Friday night, and keyed in his number. She was in luck. He was at home.

  ‘Hi.’ He managed to invest the single syllable with insolence and menace.

  ‘Is that Dylan?’ Jude got exactly the right relaxed diffidence into her voice.

  ‘Yeah. Who wants him?’

  ‘I was given your name by someone. I want to get hold of some gear.’

  ‘What kind of gear?’

  ‘Pot.’ She knew that’s what most users of her generation would still call it. ‘Cannabis.’

  Dylan laughed harshly. ‘So you’re after some weed, eh? And what makes you think I might be able to help you?’

  ‘I told you. A friend gave me your name.’

  ‘I think you’d better tell me who the friend is. Otherwise I might suspect this is some kind of set-up.’

  Jude took the risk. If Dylan didn’t bite, then she knew she’d have lost him. She backed her hunch. ‘Rory Turnbull.’

  The silence lasted so long she thought she must’ve miscalculated. Then Dylan repeated, ‘Rory Turnbull, eh? Our fine upstanding dentist?’

  He didn’t mention the fine upstanding dentist’s recent disappearance. Which was good news, because it almost definitely meant he didn’t know about it. When he did, he’d be on his guard, knowing the inevitability of police investigations into all aspects of Rory Turnbull’s life.

  ‘Yes. He said he was a customer of yours.’

  ‘Not much of a customer. He bought very little from me. Just a bit of weed on a couple of occasions.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I don’t carry the stuff he was after.’

  ‘He wanted hard drugs?’

  ‘Yes. Smack. I gave him the name of a contact in Brighton and didn’t hear from him again. So I guess that’s where he took his business.’

  ‘Who was that contact?’

  Jude realized she had been over-eager even before Dylan responded. ‘Hey, just a minute, just a minute. I thought you said it was weed – or was it “pot”? – you were after.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed contritely. ‘Can you help me?’

  ‘Maybe. It depends how much you’re prepared to pay.’

  He quoted her prices for the various grades of goods he had available. She agreed his terms without haggling, and he fixed to meet her in the seafront shelter nearest to the Fethering Yacht Club at seven o’clock that evening.

  ‘How will I recognize you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m very tall, nearly six foot. Thinnish, black hair. I’ll be wearing a long brown leather coat and a brown fur hat.’ Jude felt fairly safe with this anti-description of herself. And, for ethical reasons, her wardrobe contained nothing made of either leather or fur.

  ‘OK. And a name? Or at least something you can identify yourself by, in case there’s more than one tall bird in a leather coat down on the seafront tonight.’

  ‘Caroline,’ said Jude.

  ‘OK, Caroline. See you later.’

  And he put the phone down. As she switched off her mobile, a little tremor of distaste ran through Jude’s body.

  One thing she knew for certain, though. She would not be anywhere near a Fethering seafront shelter at seven o’clock that evening.

  For a moment she contemplated ringing the police and suggesting they make a rendezvous with Dylan at a Fethering seafront shelter at seven o’cl
ock that evening.

  But no. Deep though her hatred for the boy was, shopping him to the authorities would have been a very unJude thing to do.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  That afternoon, over a cup of tea at Carole’s, the two women pooled the information they had gleaned. Both had a lot to tell. They had unearthed pretty convincing evidence that Rory Turnbull had been a heroin user. That expensive habit might well have led to his embezzling the funds of the Fethering Yacht Club.

  And yet, when they had told each other all their findings, both Carole and Jude were left feeling flat. They had found reasons why Rory Turnbull might have wanted to take his own life, but they’d found nothing that linked him with the body Carole had found on Fethering beach. True, the dentist had had contact with Dylan the drug dealer, and Dylan had been the initiator of the black magic mutilation of the corpse in Brigadoon II, but that still did not provide a direct connection. They had no proof that Rory Turnbull knew the body was in his boat, and there seemed no obvious way of getting any.

  As they shuffled through the possibilities, even Jude’s customary good-natured calm gave way to despondency. All they were left with was that it had been a bad week for the Fethering body-count. Three deaths, and though Aaron Spalding’s might well have been prompted by guilt for what he’d done to the unnamed corpse, Rory Turnbull’s seemed to stand on its own.

  ‘Of course, we don’t actually know it’s a death yet, do we?’ reasoned Carole.

  ‘No, not till they’ve found his body.’

  ‘Yes, and who knows how long that’ll take? He might have driven out to some disused barn, or into the woods, or driven the car into a pond or into the sea . . .’ Carole sighed hopelessly.

  ‘Right.’ Jude screwed up her eyes and tapped with irritation at her furrowed brow. ‘Is there something obvious we’re missing? Some information we have that we haven’t followed through?’

  They both concentrated. There was a long silence, then Carole said, ‘Theresa Spalding!’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I’ve suddenly realized there’s something I should have asked her and didn’t.’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘I was concentrating too much on Aaron, and I forgot to ask her why she came here in the first place. How did she know I’d found the body? She said I “matched the description”. She must’ve talked to someone who saw me. Who though?’

  ‘Hey!’ A smile slowly irradiated Jude’s features. It was a great improvement. Gloom didn’t suit her. ‘Of course! Why on earth didn’t we think of that at the time? Come on, let’s go and ask her now!’

  They went straight up to Downside in the Renault. The estate didn’t look any more welcoming in the dark than it had in daylight and Carole was glad there were two of them in the car. In spite of the cold, a bunch of early teens loitered in Drake Crescent, sorting out plans for where they’d go for their Saturday night – or where they could go for their Saturday night without any money.

  A car stopping in the road seemed to qualify as an excitement. The kids moved closer, watching the women get out and approach Theresa Spalding’s front door. Two of them leaned against the Renault’s doors, their exaggerated outlines menacing in puffa jackets. They watched in silence as Carole repeatedly pressed the bell. Only when she banged on the door did one of the kids shout out, ‘She’s not there. They’ve taken her away.’

  ‘Who’s taken her away? Where to?’

  They all seemed keen to pitch in with information.

  ‘An ambulance come.’

  ‘They took her to where the crazy people go.’

  ‘She’d totally lost it.’

  ‘She’s in the nuthouse.’

  ‘In the looney bin.’

  Carole and Jude exchanged rueful looks. They’d got the impression that Theresa Spalding’s level of neurosis was pretty high at the best of times. She’d spoken of always being ‘on some medication’. It was no surprise that her son’s death should have destabilized the woman’s precarious sanity.

  They went back to the car. The two kids in puffa jackets stayed, insolently leaning against the doors till the last possible moment, then eased themselves upright and slouched away. As she started the engine, Carole heard some raucous remark at their expense, followed by a burst of derisive laughter. She shivered.

  The Saturday evening and the Sunday compounded their frustration. Both of them kept contemplating calling round next door to discuss their investigation further. But both of them knew there was nothing else to say.

  So Carole watched Saturday evening television, which only went to confirm her opinion that there never was anything on the television on Saturday evening. On the Sunday she took Gulliver out for longer walks than usual and virtuously tidied the cupboard under the stairs, packing into bin liners a lot of what she now designated rubbish. These activities, preparing a couple of plain meals and reading the Sunday papers served to fill the void of the day.

  It was like any other Sunday. As if none of the excitements of the previous week had happened.

  Next door, Jude unpacked a couple of boxes of books and stacked them upright in old wine-crates in her bedroom. She did her yoga. She cooked a rather adventurous prawn curry for her one meal of the day, taken round four o’clock. With it she drank half a bottle of wine. She drank the other half during the evening, much of which she spent reading in an aromatic bath, her toe reaching out every now and again to top up the hot water.

  Though it was not in her nature to be as uptight as Carole, Jude too felt the tension of unfulfilment.

  Nothing could happen until Rory Turnbull’s suicide was confirmed to have taken place.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  It was a different receptionist at the Brighton dental surgery the following morning, and Jude was directed to a different waiting room for her appointment with the hygienist. The plate on the closed door read ‘Holly Draper’, and from inside came sounds of girlish chatter.

  Jude sat and read a woman’s magazine of the kind she didn’t know still existed. There was even a special offer for knitting patterns. She wondered how long it had been there.

  Then the door opened and the previous appointment was ushered out by a woman who must be Holly Draper. A short unnatural blonde with large honey-coloured eyes, she wore a white overall and latex gloves. A disposable face-mask had been pulled down beneath her chin, perhaps to enable her to talk, though from the way she was talking it looked like it’d take a lot more than a face-mask to stop her.

  ‘But that kind of thing seems to happen all the time these days, doesn’t it? I mean, who can you trust? You read about all these MPs putting their hands in the till, and they’re meant to be our elected representatives, aren’t they? And then there are solicitors and . . .’

  Jude instantly identified Holly Draper’s conversational method. It involved firing out a fusillade of questions and giving her collocutor no time to answer any of them. Perhaps this derived from the fact that most of the people she spoke to in her professional life had their mouths so full of metalwork and saliva-siphons that they couldn’t have replied even if they’d wanted to.

  Whatever its cause, Holly Draper’s monologue style was excellent news for Jude. Just get her on to the right subject.

  And even that might not prove to be too difficult. As her previous appointment sidled along the wall in desperate hope of escape, the hygienist was saying, ‘Well, you’d never have thought it to look at him, would you? Still, it’s often the quiet ones, isn’t it? Mind you, I can’t imagine doing that to myself, can you? Well, I’ve never wanted to, as it happens. Just as well, isn’t it? Have you ever—Oh, right, if you have to be off. Give those notes in at reception and make another appointment for three months’ time – all right?’

  She turned and flashed a hygienic smile at her next appointment. ‘Well, hello. You must be—’

  ‘Everyone calls me Jude.’

  ‘Oh, right you are. I’m Holly. Jude as in “Judith”, is that right? It’s n
ice. Nicer that “Judy”, isn’t it? So many Judys around, aren’t there? If you’d just like to come through into my little room . . . Lovely. And make yourself comfortable in the chair, will you? And I’ll just have a glance at your notes, if I may? Hm, ooh, Mr Frobisher says we’ve got a bit of inflammation round our gums, haven’t we? Dear oh dear, aren’t we a naughty girl? Right, well, I’d better have a look, hadn’t I?’

  Turning to pick up her examination mirror and toothpick brought a fractional pause, into which Jude managed to insert a line. ‘Dreadful news about Rory Turnbull, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You heard about that, did you? Did you know him?’

  Jude once again leapt into the minimal breech. ‘I’ve just moved to Fethering and I did meet him briefly.’

  ‘Ooh yes, well, as you can imagine, everyone here was gobsmacked when we heard the news – absolutely gobsmacked. Weren’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t know him that well.’

  ‘Didn’t you? Still, after what’s happened, we’re all asking ourselves if any of us knew him that well, aren’t we? It’s a terrible thing for someone to do, isn’t it?’ Before Jude could offer an opinion on the ethics of suicide, silverware approached her mouth. ‘Now if you could just open for me, could you? And can we pop this in? Could you just hold it, yes? We don’t want our mouth filling up with saliva, do we?’

  Further conversational prompts would be difficult. But Jude reckoned, having got Holly on to the right rails, the hygienist, in a state of permanently woundup readiness, could be allowed to run.

  ‘Ooh yes, a few places here where the gums are a bit red. Do you floss at all?’ Jude let out a strangled response. Whether it was in the affirmative or negative didn’t seem to affect Holly Draper’s flow. ‘Well, you should, because if your gums are healthy then there’s a much better chance of your teeth being healthy, isn’t there? Now I’m just going to go round and pick out a bit of the muck you’ve got between your teeth. OK? I’ll try not to hurt, but round some of the inflamed bits, I may not be able to avoid it. All right with you?’