“Yes. Everyone needs a dentist, don’t they?”
This struck Rory Turnbull as very funny. “I’ll say. Oh yes, everyone needs a dentist. Everyone needs someone with a steady hand to probe around their smelly mouth. Everyone needs that frisson of lying in a high-tech chair and just waiting to be hurt. And nobody thinks what the dentist needs. Nobody thinks how much it costs him to be there in the surgery every morning, there with the steady hand and the fixed grin and the knowledge that what he’s doing is so stressful it’s lopping the years off his life, one by one. How many dentists get to enjoy the wonderful pensions they salt away so much for through their working lives? Very few, very few. Because they drop dead, you see. Or if they don’t drop dead, they top themselves. Did you know that dentists have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession? And why do you think that is? It’s because what they do manages to be both deadly boring and agonizingly stressful at the same time. It’s because being a dentist combines – ”
But here the maudlin aria was interrupted by a voice from across the pub. “Rory. I only just noticed you were in here. I wonder if you could…”
It was Denis Woodville. He was standing next to an alcove where, unnoticed by Jude, he had been lunching with a large young woman dressed in black, who had also risen to her feet. On the seat behind her, where it had been cast off, lay the semicircle of a green anorak.
“No, sorry, Vice-Commodore,” said Rory Turnbull. “Can’t stay. Have to finish my drink” – he gulped down what remained in one – “and do some very important things.” Shovelling a pocketful of small change on to the bar counter, he set off unsteadily towards the door, repeating to himself, “Very important things.”
“But what I need to talk about’s important too!” Denis Woodville turned back to his guest as he made for the door. “Sorry, Tanya. Be with you in a moment.”
The girl had risen from her booth, a lumpen creature in black sweat shirt, leggings and Doc Martens. Hair dyed reddish and cut short, a lot of silver dangling from the perforations in her ears. A silver stud in her nose. She looked anxious.
“It’s all right, Tanya, love,” Ted Crisp called across.
“The Vice-Commodore’ll be back. You won’t be left to pick up the tab.”
“I hope not.” Her voice had those slack local vowels which sound uninterested even at moments of excitement. She drifted uneasily towards the bar.
“Though it’s not like our Denis to be pushing the boat out like this,” Ted went on. “Bit of a tightwad usually.”
“Lunch is on Fethering Yacht Club expenses,” the girl explained. “He wanted to say thank-you now I’ve left, and since I didn’t have anything else on today, I thought, ‘Well, it’s a free lunch’.”
“No such thing,” said Ted Crisp.
“Sorry?” The girl looked at him curiously.
“A free lunch. No such thing.”
“What?”
He spelled it out. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
“No. You have to pay. In a pub or a restaurant, you always have to pay.”
Ted Crisp recognized he wasn’t getting anywhere. Tanya was unaware of the reference. “You like some coffee, would you? Seem to remember when you worked behind the bar here, you were virtually on an intravenous drip of coffee.”
The girl wrinkled her nose, a manoeuvre which the silver stud made look hazardous. “No, thanks.” She looked across to the door. “I hope he’s all right.”
The landlord chuckled. “I think the Vice-Commodore can look after himself in the face of drunken dentists. Don’t you worry. He’ll be back in a minute.”
No sooner had he said the words than Denis Woodville returned. He was lighting up another Gauloise and looked rather miffed. “Tanya, I’ll just sort out the bill for this lot and then we’ll be off – all right?”
“Fine,” said the girl without interest.
The Vice-Commodore reached into a pocket for an envelope full of petty cash. “Right, Ted, what’s the damage?”
While he settled up, Jude attacked her baguette, which was excellent. After the unlikely couple, thin septuagenarian and broad twenty-year-old, had left, she said, “You said Tanya used to work for you too, Ted?”
“That’s right. Not of the brightest, as you might’ve gathered from our exchange about free lunches. No, Tanya’s not a bad girl. Been in care, had a tough time when she was growing up, I gathered. But she did the job all right. And a good barmaid is hard to find.” His eyes narrowed as he looked across at Jude. “Don’t suppose you fancy doing the odd shift in here, do you?”
She chuckled. “Not at the moment. Maybe, if I get desperate…”
“Yeah, nobody works for me unless they’re desperate.” He sighed. “Nobody does anything for me unless they’re desperate.”
“Talking of desperation, Ted…”
“Hm?”
“How long’s Rory Turribull been drinking like that?”
“Only the last few months. Well, only the last few months he’s been drinking like that in here. Maybe in the privacy of the Shorelands Estate he’s been doing it for years.”
“Can’t see the lovely Barbara being too keen on that.”
“No, nor the old witch, her mother.” He shuddered. “That Winnie. One of the best arguments for misogyny I’ve ever encountered.”
“Do you know them well?”
“Hardly. Only by reputation, gossip, what-have-you. You hear a lot stuck behind the bar of a pub.”
“I bet you do.”
“And not much of it’s very charitable.”
“No. So what have you heard from Rory Turnbull while you’ve been stuck behind the bar?”
“Well, it’s all the same, really. You heard the full routine today. Goes on and on round the same things – how miserable life is, what hell it is being a dentist, what hell it is being married…usual cheery stuff. Tell you, after an evening spent with Rory, my own life seems a bed of blooming roses.”
A new thought struck Jude. “Ooh, and he has a boat, doesn’t he?”
“That’s right. Called
Good, thought Jude. At least one of our conjectures has proved to be right.
But it still doesn’t prove any link between the owner of
? The Body on the Beach ?
Sixteen
Carole Seddon had woken that Thursday morning with a change of attitude. In Jude’s company, caught up in the excitement Jude generated, the idea of playing at detectives had seemed a seductive one. Finding an explanation for the body on the beach had been imperative. On her own, though, Carole found it less compelling. Life, she reflected, is full of loose ends. There are many questions that will never be answered, and a sensible person will recognize that fact and get on with things.
So that morning Carole got on with things. She reestablished the routine of her life that her discovery of the body and her meeting with Jude had briefly interrupted.
The weather was better, though still astringently cold and heavily overcast. She took Gulliver for his early- morning walk on the beach, striding resolutely past Woodside Cottage without a sideways glance. On her way back up the High Street, she did slow for a moment by the gate, contemplating a brief call to see if Jude’s thinking had progressed at all. But, in spite of the ambient gloom, there were no lights on, so Carole went straight into her own house and started a major cleaning offensive.
The telephone didn’t ring all morning. This was not unusual, but that particular morning Carole kept half expecting it might.
She was very sensible and virtuous. She even emptied out the fridge and defrosted it.
