After her morning of hard work, she felt she deserved an omelette and a glass of mineral water with the lunchtime news. There was nothing much on the international front. Reports of atrocities in the Balkans or Africa, where she got confused about which side was which – who the aggressors, who the victims – had little power to engage her interest.
The weatherman promised more of the same. The apparent improvement of that morning had been an illusion. More frost was coming. More wind. More gloom as the evenings darkened earlier and the year spiralled down to its close.
At the start of the strident signature tune of the local news, Carole reached for the remote control. But before she pressed the off-button, she heard the voice-over menu of headlines: “Drowned boy’s mother blames drug culture.”
Carole’s button-finger froze.
Another newsreader who’d never make it on to national television appeared in shot. “The mother of teenager Aaron Spalding” – once again the name was pronounced ‘Arran’ – “today blamed the ready accessibility of drugs to young people on the South Coast for her son’s death.”
A woman’s distraught face filled the screen. “Aaron was a good boy. Then he got mixed up with a crowd who was doing a lot of drugs and I’m sure that’s what caused his death. He was a good boy…” Her mouth wobbled as the tears took over.
But it wasn’t what was said that kept Carole frozen in her chair. It was the fact that she’d seen the woman before.
In that very sitting room. Holding a gun.
? The Body on the Beach ?
Seventeen
Any thoughts of giving up trying to be a detective evaporated as if they’d never been there. Now there was something positive to link the two fatalities. The woman who’d come to Carole’s house to ask her about the body she’d found on the beach was the mother of the boy whose body had been found on the beach the following day. Also she’d asked about a knife. There had to be a connection.
Carole rushed out of High Tor, not even bothering to lock the front door, and hurried up the garden path of Woodside Cottage. When the bell prompted no response, she hammered on the dark wooden door.
But there was no one in. For a moment she contemplated going down to the Crown and Anchor to see if Jude was having lunch there (which would have been a very good idea, because that was precisely what Jude was doing). But Carole’s sensible side prevailed. If she didn’t find Jude, she reasoned, then she’d have to stay in the Crown and Anchor and have a mineral water to justify her going in there. And if she did that, there was a real danger it might appear to the other residents of Fethering that she’d become the kind of woman who went into pubs on her own.
(The option of just going in and asking Ted Crisp if he’d seen Jude did not occur to her.)
So Carole left a message on Jude’s answering machine, asking her to phone back as soon as possible. And then she sat waiting in an agony of frustration, once again made aware of how little she knew about Jude’s life. Her neighbour could be anywhere. Maybe she did have a job and was off at work? Maybe she was visiting a family member…or a long-term lover? Maybe she owned a second home and had gone there? The possibilities were infinite.
¦
To speed up the passage of time, Carole went to her bookshelves and consulted her reference library. Various works of criminology reflected different Home Office initiatives in which she had been involved. The volume she was looking for had come her way when she had been investigating police training methods. It was a manual about scene-of-crime techniques.
Carole looked dispassionately at the rows of photographs of those who’d come to violent ends. There was nothing gruesome about the task; this scientific layout of wounded bodies detached them from any humanity of which they might once have been part.
At the same time Carole focused on the image of the body she had found on Fethering beach. In particular, on the two cuts that she had seen on the man’s neck.
She compared the picture in her mind with the picture on the page, and it confirmed a tiny doubt which had stayed with her since she first saw the corpse.
The two cuts on the man’s neck were not deep enough. They were little more than flesh wounds and had not reached any major arteries. He might even have received the injuries post-mortem.
Whatever had killed the man, it hadn’t been the wounds to his neck.
Carole had hardly reached this conclusion before there was a furious ringing at her doorbell. Jude was back from the Crown and Anchor.
¦
“We’ve got to talk to her.”
“But, Jude, she’ll be in a terrible state. She’s only recently lost her son.”
“She’s also only recently threatened you with a gun. Anyway, I’d have thought the one thing anyone would want to know if they’ve just lost their son is how it happened. We may be able to help her answer that question.”
“She may know already.”
“If she does, she can tell us. And also maybe tell us the connection between her son’s death and the body you found. Come on, we’ve got to get to the bottom of what happened, haven’t we?”
“Yes, of course we have.” Carole had by now completely forgotten her morning’s doubts about the wisdom of pursuing the case. “So how’re we going to find her?”
“If she’s local, she might be in the phone book. The dead boy’s called Aaron Spalding, so let’s assume she’s a Spalding too. Do we have a first name for her?”
Carole screwed up her pale-blue eyes with the effort of recollection. “There was a caption up over the bit of interview they showed. Um…began with a ‘T’, I think. Yes, it’s coming. Theresa. That’s right – Theresa.”
“Though presumably,” said Jude, grabbing the Worthing Area telephone directory and flicking through it, “the entry would be in her husband’s name.”
“If she’s got a husband. You never know these days, do you?”
There were ten Spaldings, none of them with the initial T. Carole and Jude took turns to phone them all and ask to speak to Theresa. None had anyone of that name on the premises. And all of them seemed to regard a wrong number as an infringement of their human rights.
“So where do we go next?” asked Jude. “Ring the television company who did the interview?”
“No, local paper,” said Carole firmly. “Comes out today. Always on a Thursday. There’s no way they wouldn’t cover a story like this.”
They negotiated the pillars of Allinstore to buy a copy of the
“Wonder why it’s spelt ‘Aaron’ and pronounced ‘Arran’?” Jude mused.
“Maybe it’s a local variation. Influenced by living so near the Arun Valley.”
“Maybe. Oh, look, there’s the address. It says, “Mrs Theresa Spalding, of Drake Crescent, Fethering.” Where’s that?”
“Up on the Downside Estate, I’m sure. A lot of the roads there are named after famous Elizabethans. Marlowe…Sidney…Raleigh…Meant to give a bit of class when they were built. Mind you, I think it’s the only bit of class they’ve still got left.”
“Not the most desirable part of Fethering then?”
A wrinkle of Carole’s nose gave all the answer that was required. “So,” she said, “when do we go up to Downside and try to talk to Mrs Theresa Spalding?”
“No time like the present,” replied Jude. “How do we get there?”
