by Simon Brett
‘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 strength 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, Ted 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.
Chapter 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.’
The girl had looked frankly bored throughout the speech, but the last words lit a spark of interest. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You know Rory Turnbull, don’t you, Tanya?’
‘Sure.’ She was about to say more, but changed her mind. Sullenly, she went on, ‘He was Treasurer down the Yacht Club. I saw him there quite often.’
‘And he sometimes gave you a lift from Brighton to Fethering for your evening shifts, didn’t he?’
She was surprised. ‘How’d you know that?’
Jude shrugged. ‘You can find out most things if you ask around enough. Tanya, when did you last see Rory Turnbull?’
The girl coloured. ‘I don’t know. I finished working at the Yacht Club Friday before last . . . Round then, I suppose.’
‘You’re sure you haven’t seen him since?’
‘No. Where would I have seen him?’
The answers sounded clumsy, but then the girl’s normal manner was clumsy. Jude couldn’t be absolutely certain that she was lying.
‘Anyway,’ Tanya went on, ‘I couldn’t have seen him the last f
ew days, ’cause he gone missing, hasn’t he?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘It’s common knowledge.’
‘Common knowledge in Fethering. I wouldn’t have thought it got talked about much in Brighton.’
‘I’m still in touch with people from Fethering. Denis Woodville told me.’
‘I see.’
Petulantly, the girl kicked at the carpet with one black-booted foot. ‘Anyway, what’s all this about? Where’s it all leading? Is there something you definitely know about this body I saw on the beach?’
‘There are two things I definitely know. One is that there is a connection between the body on the beach and Rory Turnbull. And the other is that Rory Turnbull is still alive.’
‘Well, you’re right in at least one of those.’
The bathroom door had opened silently and there was a third person in the room.
Rory Turnbull.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Maggie Kent arrived at the sea wall just after Carole had been deposited there by Ted Crisp. Which was probably just as well. In time she would hear the details of how close her son had come to death, but at least she had not had to witness the agony of the previous half-hour.
Moments later, the three from the motor launch disembarked at the floating jetty a little further upstream and Nick Kent, with a grubby blanket wrapped around him, was led by Denis Woodville and Bill Chilcott towards the waiting group. Carole and Maggie hurried forward to greet him. The mother, oblivious to the filth in which he was covered, threw her arms around her son. Both of them sobbed.
‘You two did brilliantly,’ said Carole to the rescuers. ‘Amazing bit of cooperation and coordination.’
‘Only did it because my boat was the closest,’ said Bill Chilcott gruffly.
The Vice-Commodore’s reaction was equally ungracious. ‘Yes, in an emergency you can’t choose the people you have to work with.’
There was a silence. A moment of potential rapprochement between the two sides of the feud . . .?
It seemed not. ‘I must get this incident entered in the club log.’ Denis Woodville turned abruptly on his heel and set off towards his cronies.
‘And I must get out of these wet clothes.’ Equally abruptly, Bill Chilcott turned in the opposite direction and strutted off squelching on his way back home.
Carole moved across to the muddy embrace of mother and son. Nick had stopped sobbing, but his breath was coming out in little jerky wheezes. ‘Should I call an ambulance, Maggie, or get him to a doctor?’
‘No, I don’t want him to get caught up in hospitals and all that. Nick’s freezing cold and he’s had a terrible shock. I just want to get him home, get him into a hot bath and clean him up. Then, if there’s anything wrong with him, I’ll call the GP.’ Maggie Kent looked dubiously at the crowd of elderly campaigners still clustered by the Yacht Club. ‘Wish I could smuggle him away without talking to anyone.’
‘I’ll give you a lift,’ said Carole.
She fixed a meeting point and five minutes later was back in the Renault to pick them up. Carole hadn’t even wiped the mud off her own shoes and she made no demur as the slime-covered boy in his filthy blanket was laid across the precious upholstery of her back seat.
Maggie Kent ushered Carole into the bleak front room. ‘Would you like a coffee or something? I’d offer you a real drink, but I’m afraid I don’t have anything.’
‘Don’t worry. You just go and sort Nick out.’
‘Yes. He’s gone up to start the bath. There’s lots of hot water. I’ll give him a good scrubbing.’
‘And, Maggie . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s not my business, but if I were you I wouldn’t ask him about what happened. He’ll tell you when he wants to.’
The mother nodded. ‘I’d already decided that.’
‘Good.’
‘But would you mind staying till I’ve put him to bed? I’d like to hear your account of what happened.’
Carole couldn’t say no, could she? ‘That’s fine.’ She took a look at her watch. ‘But may I use your telephone?’
It was the moment after Rory Turnbull had appeared from the bathroom, before Jude had had time to recover from her surprise and say anything, that her mobile rang. She snatched the phone immediately out of her pocket. ‘Hello?’
‘Jude, it’s Carole. Nick Kent’s all right.’
‘Thank God. Listen, I’ve found—’
But the mobile was ripped from her hand and switched off. ‘I don’t think you need tell anyone what you’ve found,’ Rory Turnbull said coolly.
As someone who’d never possessed a mobile phone, Carole’s image of their technology was out of date. They were unreliable machines, prone to constant loss of signal and other breakdowns. So she wasn’t that surprised to have been cut off.
She used the last-number redial on Maggie’s phone. The ringing went on for some time, then a bloodlessly polite voice informed her that the caller was not responding, but she had the option of leaving a message.
There didn’t seem much point. Jude had definitely heard her say that Nick was all right. That was the important news. Anything else would keep.
Odd, though. One moment Jude was answering her phone; a moment later, even though their conversation had been unfinished, she’d switched it off.
Maybe another vagary of mobile-phone technology . . . The explanation gave Carole reassurance. Partial reassurance.
Three-quarters of an hour had elapsed before Maggie Kent came back downstairs. ‘I’ve got the worst of it off him. It’ll take another few weeks of baths – or possibly a course of sandblasting – to get it all out of his pores, but he’s OK.’
‘You don’t need to call the doctor?’
‘I think all Nick needs is a lot of sleep. He’s tucked up in bed and I’ve given him one of my sleeping pills. I’ll get him a hot-water bottle. But he did want to have a word with you – just to say thank you.’
‘Fine.’ Carole rose to her feet, but Maggie still lingered in the doorway, not yet ready to lead her upstairs. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s just . . . tell me . . . did Nick really try to kill himself?’
Carole answered with complete honesty. ‘He thought that’s what he wanted to do, yes. But when he got close to the reality, he changed his mind. He thought of the effect it would have on you and he couldn’t allow himself to do it.’
‘Good.’ Some of the tension eased from Maggie Kent’s shoulders and a warmth came into her tired face. ‘Let’s go up and see him.’
The decor of Nick Kent’s room was the perfect illustration of a life poised uneasily between the pulls of the child and the adult. A poster of the Manchester United football team on one wall was having a face-off with the pouting images of the latest girl band on the other. A copy of GFH lay on top of an Asterix. Flashy deodorants and ‘men’s toiletries’ stood side by side with Coca-Cola bottles.
Nick was propped up on pillows under a duvet with a Manchester United cover. He looked exhausted but calm. His scrubbed face bore the soft glow of childhood. His eyelids flickered. He would soon be asleep.
‘I just wanted to say thank you very much,’ he slurred. ‘Wanted to thank you . . . should’ve thanked the men who pulled me out . . . didn’t thank them properly . . .’
‘Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of time to do that.’
There was a shelf of treasures by the boy’s bedhead and on it Carole saw something which unleashed a landslide of explanations. Among Subbuteo footballers, swimming certificates and snaps of leering boys from some long-past school trip stood a framed photograph.
It showed a smiling, grey-haired man in his late forties. Undoubtedly the missing Sam Kent.
And also undoubtedly, in spite of the fact that in the photograph he had no tooth missing, the man whose body Carole Seddon had found on Fethering beach.
Chapter Thirty-eight
‘Well, thank you,’ said Jude, ‘for interrupting my p
hone call.’
Rory Turnbull put the turned-off mobile down on a table. ‘Some people believe it’s bad manners to take calls on mobiles in other people’s homes.’
‘Possibly. But that’s not why you switched it off, was it?’
‘No.’ He moved to stand, almost protectively, behind Tanya’s chair.
Jude took in the pair of them. The dentist looked less raddled than he had when she last saw him in the Crown and Anchor. For the first time, there was some confidence about him, the successful professional in his early fifties. Beside him, the lumpen girl in her crumpled black, surprisingly, did not look out of place.
‘So you two are an item,’ said Jude.
Rory looked as if he might have denied it, but Tanya responded instantly, ‘Yeah, all right, and what if we are? He’s a good man, first man I ever met who actually cares about me, isn’t just trying to use me. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with love.’
‘Then why are you here . . . what’s your name – Jude?’ asked Rory.
‘Jude, yes. There could be a lot of answers to why I’m here, but let’s start with the fact that everyone who knows you thinks you’ve committed suicide. You did leave a note to that effect. The police have been searching for you for days.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, wouldn’t you say that justifies a degree of curiosity? Why does someone want to stage his own death? And what might that deception have to do with the body that was found on Fethering Beach last Tuesday? I assume I don’t have to explain to you which body I’m talking about? I’m taking it for granted you were listening from behind the bathroom door?’
‘You’re right. I encouraged Tanya to get you talking to find out how much you knew.’
A couple of details at least were explained – why Tanya had changed her reaction the second time Jude had phoned and the girl’s long absence in the bathroom early on in their interview.
