“And he’s not the only one who’s dead.”
The young man’s face became a rigid mask. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve got to get to work.” And he made to push past them.
Jude put her hand on his sleeve. “The police might be very interested to talk to you about what happened on Monday night.”
“Oh yeah?”
“We have proof that you were with Aaron,” Jude went on, lying through her teeth.
Dylan turned back to look her straight in the face. “All right, yes, I was with Aaron. That’s not a crime, is it?”
“No.”
“We went down the Crown and Anchor, but that tight-arsed bastard of a landlord wouldn’t serve the other two, so we pissed off down Nowtinstore and got some cans. We sank a few in one of them shelters on the front and Aaron asked me if I’d lend him my Stanley knife. So I did.”
“What did he want it for?”
“I don’t know, do I?” Dylan replied, with a shrug of aggrieved innocence. “And then I went home. I didn’t go down the Yacht Club. What the other two done after I gone, I’ve no idea.”
“I think the police would want a rather fuller explanation than that, Dylan.”
But Carole’s bid to frighten him didn’t work.
“Maybe they would. But you’re not the police, are you?” he sneered. “And I don’t quite honestly think the police’d be that interested in what a pair of old biddies like you have to say.”
Carole and Jude were rather afraid he was right. Their bluff had been called.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do have work to do.” Dylan put his hand on the railings of Bali-Hai’s gates.
“Don’t you want your knife back?” asked Carole.
“Not that bothered. We get through a lot of those. Ibols of the trade.”
“Then I’ll keep it…”
“Please yourself.”
“…as evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” Suddenly he’d seized the lapel of Carole’s raincoat and brought his face close up to hers. Her nostrils were filled by a sickly musk-flavoured aftershave. “You two harass me any more and things could get very unpleasant for you. I’ve seen you around. Fethering’s a small place. Wouldn’t be that hard for me to find out where you live. I’d advise you both to get off my bloody back!”
There was no doubting the reality of the threat in his last words. He raised his free hand to Carole’s face. She flinched. Dylan chuckled and touched her cheek. Just one touch, very brief, very gentle and very menacing. Then he let go of her coat and turned towards Bali-Hai.
“Who was the third boy?” asked Jude.
“Who indeed?”
“There was you, and Aaron Spalding, and somebody else.”
“Spot on.”
“Who was it?”
“That’s for you to find out. Mind you, I don’t think you will.”
“Why? Is he dead too?” Jude called after the retreating back as Dylan strode up the drive.
But there was no answer. And the Stanley knife remained in Carole’s hand.
“He’s lying,” Jude hissed, the first time that Carole had seen her angry. “He was with them at the Yacht Club.”
“I know.”
“But how’re we going to prove it?”
“That,” said Carole pompously, “has been the problem with crime investigation since records began.”
“Yes.”
“Having an instinct for what’s happened, having a flash of inspiration – that’s the easy bit. It’s when you try to make the charges stick that most cases collapse.”
Jude nodded thoughtfully. Then a slow smile spread across her broad features.
“What is it?” asked Carole.
“You talked about flashes of inspiration. I think I’ve just had one.”
“About what?”
“About finding the third boy. I may be wrong, but at least I’ve an idea where we can start looking.”
? The Body on the Beach ?
Twenty-One
They didn’t have far to go through the Shorelands Estate to reach Brigadoon. The front garden’s Victorian lampposts continued to look incongruous in their mock-Spanish surroundings.
“I still don’t understand,” Carole complained as they approached the studded door. “We know Barbara won’t be there. We know her mother won’t be there. And Rory’ll be at work in Brighton.”
“It’s not them we’ve come to see,” said Jude firmly, as she pressed the doorbell.
The woman who came to the door was probably late forties and could have been attractive in different circumstances. She wore jeans and a faded sweat shirt; her greying hair was scraped back into a rubber band at the nape of her neck and her face had the taut, drained look of total exhaustion.
“Good morning,” she said, in a surprisingly cultured voice, and waited for them to state their business.
Jude took the initiative. “Good morning. This is Carole and I’m Jude. We’re both friends of Barbara Turnbull and – ”
“I’m afraid Mrs Turnbull isn’t in.”
“No, we know that. You’re Maggie, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” the woman conceded cautiously.
“It was you we wanted to have a word with.”
Her face closed over. “You’re nothing to do with the Social Services, are you?”
“No, no, we’re not. I promise.”
But that didn’t resolve her suspicions. “I’m sorry. I’m working.” She reached to close the door, but Jude’s next words stopped her.
“We wanted to have a word about your son.”
A new wave of exhaustion flooded the woman’s body. Her shoulders drooped. There was a note of fatalism in her voice as she asked, “What’s he done?”
“That’s what we want to find out.” Jude pressed home her slight advantage. “In particular what he was doing last Monday night.”
This did frighten the woman. Her spoken response, that she had no idea what they were talking about, was belied by a wildness in her eyes.
Some instinct told Carole this was the moment once again to produce the Stanley knife from her raincoat pocket. The woman’s eyes grew wilder.
“What’s that? Where did you find it?”
The telephone on the hall table rang. Indecision flickered in Maggie’s frightened eyes. She didn’t want to invite them in, but equally she didn’t want to let them go until she knew as much as they knew. The phone rang on. It was clearly not going to be picked up by anybody else or by an answering machine. “Wait there,” she said. “I’ll just be a moment.”
She picked up the phone and gave the number. “What? Oh yes. Yes, he is here. I’ll get him to the phone.” She crossed to the foot of the stairs and called up, “Mr Turribull! Telephone!”
She put the receiver down and crossed back to the women at the front door.
“I thought Mr Turnbull would be at work,” said Carole.
“He’s not well.” Dismissing the detail quickly, Maggie came closer and addressed them with a quiet urgency. “Look, I can’t really talk now. But I do want to talk.” Then, with a mixture of dread and pleading in her voice, she
