by Simon Brett
Of course there wasn’t. The local news reported the story with characteristic ineptitude, but added nothing to what had been seen on the national bulletin. They showed the same shot of a smiling Robin Cutter, wearing a very new blue uniform, in one of those school photographs taken against a backdrop of cloud effects. They showed the same library footage of the boy’s distraught parents – Rory and Miranda – banked by police at a press conference, begging anyone who knew anything to come forward, and sending hopeless love to their son. The woman was slender with long bottle-blond hair, the husband chunky and bewildered. They faltered and were so overcome with emotion that one of the policemen had to finish reading their prepared statement.
“The mother looks vaguely familiar,” said Jude.
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know. It’ll come to me.”
They switched off the television. At the time Robin Cutter disappeared, Jude had not yet moved to Fethering and had only been aware of the national reaction to the case. That had been strong, but as nothing compared to the frenzy in West Sussex. Carole could vividly recall the local furore and hysteria about what was assumed to be another paedophile atrocity. “We must find out more about it,” she announced.
“What, now?”
“Yes, Jude. I’m sure there’ll be lots more on the internet.”
“You’re right. Will you bring your laptop down?”
Carole was given a moment’s pause by this novel idea. Though, after a slow and sceptical start, she had now embraced computer technology with considerable enthusiasm, she still somehow had not accepted the concept of her laptop’s portability. It never moved from the spare bedroom, which she used as a kind of study. “No, I think we’d better go upstairs,” she said.
Jude converted an incipient giggle into a sigh and followed her neighbour.
Carole’s view that there would be ‘lots more on the internet’ proved to be an understatement. There were literally hundreds of thousands of references to Robin Cutter, ranging from the straight facts of his disappearance on Wikipedia, newspaper and BBC websites, to the homicidal ravings of anti-paedophile fanatics. Though at the time of his supposed abduction bloggers had hardly existed, the contemporary ones still included his names in their lists of victims. As ever, the internet offered opportunities to the kind of people who used to write letters in block capitals with lots of underlining. It had become the soapbox of the unhinged bigot.
“God, it’s nasty,” said Jude, as they both looked at one of the wilder polemics. “I suppose paedophiles are about the only minority left that everyone feels justified in denouncing.”
“I’m sorry? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, it’s no longer politically acceptable to discriminate against women or foreigners or lesbians or gays. About the only targets left to criticize are paedophiles.”
Carole was appalled. “Jude, are you saying you support what they do?”
“Of course I’m not. I’m just saying it must be terrible to grow up with those kind of impulses.”
“What, you think they can’t help themselves?”
“Possibly not.”
Carole Seddon was so shocked to the core of her being that she could hardly get her words out. “But the things they do! You’re not going to try to defend those on the grounds that the poor paedophiles can’t help themselves?”
“No, no. I’m just saying that it must be very difficult to grow up discovering that the only way you can get sexual satisfaction is by committing an act that society reckons to be the ultimate taboo.”
Carole shuddered. “I am sorry. There are times when I just don’t understand you, Jude.” Which was true. There were many subjects on which the two of them were never going to think alike. Which perhaps made their friendship all the more remarkable. And strong.
“What I’m saying is that people lose all sense of proportion when paedophilia is mentioned. And there’s a lot of ignorance about the subject. I mean, do you remember that case of the paediatrician who had graffiti scrawled over her house?”
“Jude, paedophilia remains a horrible and unforgivable crime.”
“Yes, Carole, but…” Jude decided it wasn’t the moment to pursue her argument. She was as appalled as anyone by the crimes perpetrated by paedophiles, but her healer’s instinct was always to look inside personalities, to try to understand what triggered their behaviour. But explaining what she meant to Carole would not have been an easy task, so she turned her attention back to the laptop. “Anyway, let’s just see how much basic information we can get about the case.”
“Very well,” said Carole, still looking at her neighbour in a rather old-fashioned way.
They returned to Wikipedia. “With that name I’m surprised they haven’t been attacked too,” Jude observed.
The basic information was quite simple, almost banal in its simplicity. Robin Cutter had been spending a day with his grandparents near Fedborough while his mother and father had gone to London to see a matinee of Les Miserables. In the morning his grandfather had driven the boy down to Smalting Beach. After they’d parked the car, Robin had asked for an ice cream. While his grandfather went into the shop, the boy had asked to stay outside and watch the windsurfers. When his grandfather came out of the shop, Robin Cutter had disappeared. And he had never been seen again.
But it was the name of the grandfather that made Carole and Jude gasp.
Lionel Oliver.
∨ Bones Under The Beach Hut ∧
Twenty-Six
The identity of the victim whose bones had been discovered under Quiet Harbour led to a predictable media frenzy. The Robin Cutter story was again on the front pages of many of the Thursday morning’s national newspapers. The red tops didn’t need any encouragement to go into anti-paedophile overdrive, and even Carole’s more sedate Times gave wide coverage to the revelation. As ever in such instances, much was made of previous cases of similar atrocities, turning knives in the wounds of other families who had already suffered enough.
Carole and Jude watched the lunchtime television news in Woodside Cottage. There had been little development overnight, so they found out little more than they had been told in the Wednesday evening bulletin. The last part of the report, however, was an interview with the dead boy’s mother.
Miranda Cutter had changed considerably in the years since her son’s disappearance. The slender blond had morphed into a plump woman with dyed red curls. And her surname had changed to Browning.
In the interview she said what all bereaved parents say in such situations, that at least now she finally knew Robin was dead, that now he could have a proper funeral, and she could try to move forward with her life. Miranda Browning didn’t say anything about her son’s killer and the need for him to be brought to justice. She didn’t need to. Every newspaper in the country was doing the job for her.
As soon as the interview had finished Carole looked across at Jude and saw a strange expression on her neighbour’s face. “What is it?”
“I know her. Miranda Browning. She’s one of my clients.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Someone referred her to me last year because she’d been getting these terrible headaches. I managed to alleviate the symptoms, but I knew what was really causing them was some deep inner tension, some powerful emotion she was holding in. She wouldn’t tell me what it was. Now I know, though.”
“When you say she’s a client, Jude…”
“Hm?”
“…do you mean she’s a friend too?”
“I don’t know her that well.”
“Well enough to ring her with condolences, you know, about what’s happened?”
“I wouldn’t want to trouble her at a time like this.”
“A time when she probably needs your healing services more than ever,” Carole suggested. “If our investigation’s going to get any further…”
“What do you mean?”
“If we find out who killed her son, then we�
�ll help her get that psychological thing Americans go on about so much.”
“Closure?”
“Yes. Look, she probably knows more about the case than anyone else, and you’ve got a direct line to her.”
Jude felt uneasy. When it came to client confidentiality, she had strict boundaries. To contact Miranda Browning at a time like this simply to find out more about her son’s disappearance would definitely be a step too far. On the other hand, if her intervention as a healer could help ease the woman’s suffering…
“What do you say, Jude?”
“I say that at times you can be surprisingly unsentimental.”
Carole Seddon smiled. She took what her friend had just said as a compliment.
♦
On the following morning, the Friday, the phone rang in High Tor. It was a very flustered-sounding Reginald Flowers. “Carole, I’m ringing about the quiz night tonight.”
“Oh yes?” She had forgotten all about the event, but quickly prepared a battery of excuses as to why she couldn’t attend. Then she had a moment of uncertainty. The Smalting Beach Hut Association quiz night would quite possibly gather together many of the principals who might have information about the grisly discovery under Quiet Harbour. Maybe if she and Jude were to attend, they might advance the course of their investigation.
But this thought became immediately irrelevant, as Reginald Flowers went on, “Anyway, I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel it.”
“The quiz? Oh dear. Is that out of respect?”
“I’m sorry? What do you mean?”
“Out of respect for Robin Cutter, you know, now he’s been identified as –”
“For heaven’s sake, it’s nothing to do with Robin Cutter,” he responded testily. “I wouldn’t change my plans because of something like that. I thought all that was safely dead and buried – in every sense. If some silly child chooses to put himself in danger’s way…”
This was a novel reaction to the tragedy, one that Carole certainly hadn’t heard before. “No, the reason the quiz night is going to have to be cancelled is that I have once again been guilty of assuming that other people are as efficient in the basic, simple things of life as I am myself. The SBHA has a secretary – or at least someone who has the title of secretary –”
“Yes, I met her with you on Smalting Beach the other day. Dora Pinchbeck.”
“Dora Pinchbeck, exactly. Dora, who, as I say has the title of secretary of the Smalting Beach Hut Association, but who turns out to be totally incompetent. She undertook to make the booking for tonight’s quiz night at St Mary’s Church Hall, but when I rang the caretaker there this morning to check some details, it turns out she hadn’t done it. Not a difficult task to undertake, you might think, but clearly beyond the capacity of our secretary Dora. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot,’ she said when I rang her about it this morning. Forgot! And, needless to say, there’s now something else booked into St Mary’s Hall for tonight. A meeting of the Smalting Local History Society, would you believe? I am, needless to say, extremely angry. It’s the old thing, isn’t it – if you want a job done properly, do it yourself. Dora, my so-called secretary, offered to ring round all the members of the SBHA, but I said, ‘No, thank you, Dora. I want to ensure that everyone gets the message, so I’ll do it myself.’ Which is why I’m calling you, Carole,” he concluded, on a note of affronted martyrdom.
“So all we lack for this evening’s quiz night is a venue?”
“You say ‘all we lack’, Carole, but it is a rather major lack. There’s nowhere else suitable in Smalting, except for one of the rooms at The Crab Inn and, as I may have said, the prices there are now quite extortionate…” Belatedly he seemed to catch on to something in her intonation. “Why, you’re not suggesting that you might know of a suitable alternative venue?”
“There’s somewhere I could try. I’ll ring you back if I have any luck. Well, I’ll let you know either away.”
She rang straight through to the Crown and Anchor. Ted Crisp was initially grouchy at her suggestion, but then it was a point of honour with him to be initially grouchy to most suggestions. And his attitude quickly softened. Though Carole Seddon didn’t have the natural charm of her neighbour, in her background was the unlikely fact that she and Ted Crisp had once had a brief affair, and he was still more indulgent to her than he might have been to other supplicants.
Within three minutes he had agreed that the Smalting Beach Hut Association could use his function room that evening at no charge, ‘so long as they all drink lots of booze’.
Carole immediately rang back Reginald Flowers to pass on the good news.
♦
Jude was still tussling with her moral dilemma. Part of her wanted to ring Miranda Browning, to offer condolences and, if required, some healing treatment. But another part accused her of shabby opportunism for even thinking of the idea. Was it born out of compassion or, as Carole had baldly suggested, to help them advance on their investigation? Jude couldn’t decide.
While she was going through this uncharacteristic agonizing, her phone rang. The woman at the other end identified herself as Miranda Browning.
“I was desperately sorry to hear the news,” said Jude. “I hadn’t realized that you were the poor boy’s mother, you know, when I met you before under that name.”
“Browning’s the name of my second husband.” The woman’s voice was strong. Though there was tension in her tone, there was no self-pity. She wasn’t about to give way to tears.
“So you are Lionel and Joyce Oliver’s daughter and you first married someone called Cutter?”
“No, Cutter’s my maiden name. His father’s Rory Oliver.”
“But why was Robin’s surname not Oliver?”
“Rory and I weren’t married when Robin was born. We weren’t together at the time. I didn’t think it likely we ever would be again, so I registered Robin under my surname. All his documentation was as ‘Cutter’, when he started at play school he was ‘Robin Cutter’. By the time Rory and I had got back together and married, the name had stuck. I’m sure in time we would have changed it, but…” Her voice wavered for the first time, “…we weren’t given that opportunity.”
“No.” Jude spoke softly, already in therapist mode. “As I say, I’m desperately sorry…about what happened eight years ago…and about what’s happened now.”
“Thank you,” said Miranda Browning, with considerable grace. “Obviously this has brought it all back, and, inevitably perhaps, the headaches have started again. I could hardly get out of bed or stand up this morning. And I can’t imagine the stress is going to get any less over the next few weeks, so I just wondered…the treatment you gave me last time worked so well…if you’ve got a spare appointment you could slot me into?”
“I’m free this afternoon,” said Jude.
They fixed a time. As she put the phone down Jude beamed, unsurprised by what had happened. But she wouldn’t tell her neighbour whether she had made the call to Miranda Browning or Miranda had called her. Unlike Jude, Carole Seddon didn’t believe in synchronicity.
∨ Bones Under The Beach Hut ∧
Twenty-Seven
Miranda Browning arrived at the gate of Woodside Cottage in a taxi. In spite of the June heat, she had a scarf tied over her hair and wore dark glasses. She looked anxiously from side to side as she paid the cabbie and was still casting nervous glances back to the road when Jude opened the door to her.
After welcoming her client and leading her into the sitting room, Jude gestured to the glasses and asked, “For the headaches?”
“Not really,” replied Miranda Browning, taking them off. “More so’s I’m not recognized. It’s all started again. Bloody press camped outside my front door. They’re quite capable of following me here and door-stepping you as well.”
“So how did you get away?”
“Practice,” came the wry response. “I’ve got a cab firm I trust completely. They pick me up in the alley at the back of my g
arden. So far the press pack haven’t caught on to that yet. Early days, though, this time round.”
Again Jude was aware of the lack of self-pity in Miranda Browning’s tone. The woman had had to develop a stoicism, a survivor’s instinct. Whatever she was feeling inside, she was damned if she was going to expose her emotions to the world. Which was probably why her deep, suppressed pain manifested itself in physical symptoms, like headaches.
Jude uncovered her treatment bench, another draped shape in her sitting room of swathed furniture. The windows were all open, letting in a light breeze that set her bamboo wind chimes tinkling. She pulled out paper sheeting from a roll at the end of the bench and laid it over the plastic surface. Then she set down a pillow shaped like a fat horseshoe. “Take off as much as you feel comfortable with, Miranda. And then lie on your front.”
The woman stripped down to bra and pants. Though she had put on weight in the eight years since she’d appeared on television after her son’s disappearance, her skin was still firm and her muscles well toned.
“Just lie still, relax as far as you can and I’ll check where the trouble’s originating from.” Jude’s eyes fixed in an expression of intense concentration as she ran her hands up and down the woman’s body, not quite touching, sensitive to the variations of temperature she could feel. The hands lingered a while over the small of the back, then moved up and hovered around the shoulders. Jude’s fingers tensed. Although they still made no contact, they seemed to be pressing against some resistance.
“We both now know what’s been causing the headaches, don’t we, Miranda? The problem is convincing your body of what’s really going on. Stop it from expressing your grief in this physical way.”
“I don’t know that it is grief now, Jude. Oh, I’ve had my share of grieving, but that’s been kind of subsumed. Since the remains were identified as Robin’s I haven’t cried at all.”
