The Body on the Beach

by Simon Brett

  Praying that the hygienist’s diversion into the professional hadn’t derailed her train of thought, Jude gave a gurgled assent to being hurt.

  She needn’t have worried. While the point of her pick probed away, Holly Draper continued seamlessly, ‘I mean, I’d never thought Rory was a particularly happy man, had you? And it was no secret that his marriage wasn’t made in heaven, was it? But I’d never in a million years have thought he was the kind to do away with himself, would you? Mind you, you never know with people, do you?

  ‘And, after what came out last week, well, it was perhaps a little less surprising, wasn’t it? I mean, he must’ve known the Dental Estimates Board at Eastbourne would catch up with him in time. And when the Regional Dental Officer came to inspect on Thursday, it was clear something was seriously wrong and—’ An uncharacteristic moment of caution stopped her. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be talking about this . . . Could you just shift your chin down a bit please?’

  Jude took the opportunity of this movement to manufacture a choking fit. As she spluttered, Holly swiftly removed the plastic tube from her mouth, pulled her upright and patted her back. ‘Ooh, sorry about that. All right, are we? Take a rinse, why don’t you? There, good. Spit it out, mm?’

  Jude did as she was told and took advantage of another narrow window in Holly’s monologue. She decided the best way to get further information would be to pretend more knowledge than she had. ‘Yes, somebody in Fethering was talking about the Regional Dental Officer’s inspection. I was really surprised to hear about that.’

  It had been the right approach. The hygienist picked up her cue perfectly. ‘Well, it was the scale of it that was so amazing, wasn’t it? I mean, getting on for ten thousand pounds of dental work he’d claimed for, but never carried out. He was never going to get away with that in the long term, was he?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem as though he was thinking in the long term.’

  The fact that Jude had managed to slip another line in made Holly Draper realize she shouldn’t have left her patient’s mouth empty for so long. ‘Right, could you hold this in place again? There, good. And I’ll just keep working round the ones at the back, shall I? Then, when I’ve finished this, we’ll give them a nice clean, shall we?’

  Jude was momentarily anxious that the hygienist wouldn’t get back to the subject, but once again she needn’t have worried. ‘I mean, it makes you wonder what Rory could possibly have needed all that money for, doesn’t it? There’s been talk round here of drugs, but he didn’t seem the type, did he? You don’t associate that with middle-class dentists, do you? And you’d have thought he and his wife’d be very well set up, wouldn’t you? Apparently, they’ve got this great big house over at Fethering – but you probably know that, don’t you? And they don’t have any kids, so where did all that money go? Maybe it was drugs. What do you think? Or perhaps he had another “secret vice”, eh? Another woman? Ooh, I don’t think so, do you?

  ‘Mind you, we shouldn’t really be surprised that he did away with himself. I’ve been told that dentists are one of the highest-risk professions for suicide. Did you know that?’ She giggled. ‘Not hygienists, though. We aren’t daft, are we? Right, now we’ll just give them all a nice clean-up, shall we?’

  She turned to an articulated drill-like machine and fitted a small circular brush into its socket. This she dipped into a tub of paste. These actions did not for a moment interrupt her monologue.

  ‘No, I don’t think he was a bad man, though it was difficult to get close to him. Could you put your teeth together please? OK, take that out. Now this’ll taste orangy and it may tickle a little bit. All right? No, as I say, Rory wasn’t a bad man. He did some charity work, I believe. One of the girls on reception said he sometimes did free dentistry for down-and-outs out of hours, but he never talked about it. And he could be generous. There was this girl he quite often used to give a lift back to Fethering after work.’

  ‘Who was that?’ Fortunately Holly had just moved the electric brush away to get a different angle on Jude’s mouth.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Girl about twenty, I suppose. Short hair, sort of hennaed. I think she worked evenings in Fethering, which was why he sometimes gave her a lift. Well, she’ll have to find someone else to do it for her now, won’t she?

  ‘There, all done, nice and clean, lovely. Look in the mirror. Doesn’t that look better, eh? But now I’m going to be a real bully and give you a big lecture about flossing. All right? Can you cope? Are you feeling strong enough?’

  Carole’s frustration mounted through the Monday morning. What really annoyed her was knowing that the discovery of Rory’s body might already have been made but she’d have to wait till the news filtered through to her. Though the Fethering grapevine, based on interconnecting substations like Allinstore, All Saints’ Church and the Crown and Anchor, was extremely efficient, it wasn’t the same as having a direct line to the police computers.

  Still, within the guidelines of Fethering protocol, there was one approach she could make which might lead to further information. She looked up the number in the local directory and rang it.

  ‘Hello?’ The voice contrived to sound suspicious and malicious at the same time. In the background something yapped.

  ‘Winnie, it’s Carole Seddon.’

  ‘Hello, dear.’

  ‘I was just ringing to say thank you so much for the coffee on Saturday morning.’

  ‘Oh, it was nothing. A pleasure to see you. Be quiet, Churchill, it’s only your friend Carole.’

  ‘And I just wondered . . . is there any sign of an end to poor Barbara’s ordeal?’

  ‘Poor Barbara’s ordeal gets worse by the minute. Do you know what she’s discovered now? That so-called husband of hers has virtually ruined her financially. Do you know, he’d remortgaged the house without telling her. And goodness only knows where all the money he raised has gone. There’s nothing in any of the savings accounts. It’s almost as if he was deliberately trying to make life difficult for Barbara. And then to commit suicide, so that she doesn’t even get any of the insurance . . . Huh, I always said he was a dubious factor.’

  ‘Oh, how awful, Winnie. But when you talk about suicide, I mean, that is definite now, is it? They’ve found his body?’

  ‘Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Typical of him to do away with himself somewhere inconvenient, though, isn’t it? That man never gave a thought to another human being from the moment he was born. I mean, to have left Barbara destitute . . . Thank goodness my poor little baby’s got my money to fall back on. There’s my investment income and then, needless to say, I made quite a lot when I sold the big house after my husband died. That’s when I started slumming down here, you know – though, mind you, I do like to think I slum in some style.’ She chuckled, but then her tone darkened as she said, ‘Thank goodness I never made any of my money over to that man, or no doubt he’d have squandered that too to feed his disgusting habits.’

  ‘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.

  Chapter 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 dat
e 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 Turnbull. 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!’

  Chapter 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?’