said, “You haven’t spoken to anyone else about Nick, have you?”
“No,” replied Jude reassuringly.
“Not yet,” added Carole, who thought their level of menace should be maintained. Maggie had something to tell them; having hooked her, they didn’t want to lose her.
“Carole. Good morning. What’re you doing here?”
Rory Turribull was coming down the stairs. He wore a shapeless towelling dressing gown. He looked raddled, hungover and haunted.
Carole improvised wildly. “We were just calling about a Labrador charity I’m involved in. The Canine Trust.”
“If you’re looking for a handout, I’m afraid dogs come fairly low down my pecking order of good causes.”
“No, we were just…” Not wishing to get tangled up in details of her fictitious charity call, Carole moved on. “You met my new neighbour, Jude, in the pub, didn’t you?”
“Did I?” Rory Turnbull’s bloodshot eyes showed no recognition but took Jude in, as though he were memorizing her features for future reference. “You will excuse me.” He turned to Maggie and asked grace-lessly, “Who did you say was on the phone?”
“The BMW garage. Something about a bill or – ”
“I’ll take it in the study.” Without a word to the two women still standing on his doorstep, Rory Turnbull left the hall.
The urgency remained in Maggie’s voice as she said, “Listen, I can’t talk now. I’m through here at twelve. Could we meet after that?”
“Sure,” said Jude. “Where?”
“You’d better come round to my place. It’s not far. Spindrift Lane – do you know it?”
Carole nodded. “I do.”
“Number 26. Say half-past twelve. I’ll be back by then.”
“Fine.”
“And please don’t say anything to anyone.” There was a naked appeal in Maggie’s eyes as she echoed Theresa Spalding’s words. “Nick’s a good boy. He is, really.”
¦
“I’m wondering why Rory came down,” Carole mused as she drove them back to the High Street. “They must have a phone upstairs in a house that size. In their bedroom certainly.”
“Come to that, why didn’t he answer it in the first place?”
“Asleep? He looked pretty crumpled when he did come downstairs.”
“Yes. Alternatively, he may just have been curious as to who was at the door. He heard our voices and came to have a snoop.”
“He certainly subjected you to a rather searching look, didn’t he?”
Jude nodded and gave a little shudder. “Uncomfortably searching. There’s something very strange happening with that man, isn’t there? He doesn’t seem to be behaving like the pillar of society a Fethering dentist should be.”
“Certainly not. He’s behaving like an alcoholic.”
“Or someone who’s in the throes of a nervous breakdown?”
“Maybe. Still, poor old Rory’s not really our concern. Except for the fact that his boat was possibly used as a temporary morgue, I can’t see that he has anything to do with our body on the beach.”
“No, I guess not.”
“Though Maggie clearly does have something relevant to tell us. How on earth did you know that she would, Jude?”
“It was just a guess. Intuition, if you like. Barbara Turnbull had said something about Maggie’s son having psychological problems and…I put two and two together. You know, sometimes you just have a sense of things being connected, don’t you?”
“No,” replied Carole, who never did.
“Bad luck. Oh, here we are.”
Carole brought the Renault to a halt outside Wood-side Cottage. She looked at her watch. “Spindrift Lane’s only five minutes’ walk away. Hardly worth taking the car. Shall I knock on your door about twenty past twelve?”
“That’d be fine.”
Carole couldn’t help herself from fishing a little. “So you’ll have time for a nice cup of coffee with Brad…”
“No,” said Jude breezily. “I’ll have to empty a few more boxes upstairs, I’m afraid. Brad’s car’s not here. He’s gone.”
“Oh.” Carole couldn’t for the life of her have left it there. “But I dare say you’ll be seeing him again…”
“I dare say,” Jude agreed, with an infuriating, but probably not deliberate, lack of specificity.
Carole parked the car in her garage. As she was doing so, she noticed on the that a little scrape of mud left by Jude’s boot. She got out the dustpan and brush which was used only for the car and swept it up.
? The Body on the Beach ?
Twenty-Two
Spindrift Lane was part of the residential network which spread out from Fethering High Street. While not aspiring to the wealth-proclaiming grandeur of the Shorelands Estate, the houses there bore witness to lives well spent and money well invested. Paintwork gleamed and anything that could be polished had been polished. Even in November, no front grass was allowed to grow ragged and weeds had been banished from the interstices between flagstones in garden paths. The area was a testament to bourgeois values, which are, for the most part, financial values.
Number 26 Spindrift Lane, however, fell short of these values. The front lawn was unkempt, the paint on the window-frames blistered and split. The garden gate sagged, maintaining only a tenuous contact with its hinges. Carole and Jude exchanged looks as they pushed through and approached the front door.
Maggie had changed out of her working clothes into a navy woollen suit. With hair neatly brushed, her appearance matched the educated accent which had seemed so discordant earlier in the morning. As she ushered her two visitors into the sitting room, her mouth was tight with anxiety. Their welcome was polite – she had been well brought up – but not warm.
Carole and Jude were sat down on a sofa in a room that was sparsely furnished and, like the exterior of the house, could have done with being decorated. The grate in the fireplace was bleakly empty. The bunched curtains in the bay window had faded unevenly. There was a portable television, but no video recorder. The room boasted few ornaments, but those there were looked to be of good quality. The two watercolour seascapes on the wall made Carole want to know the artist’s name. On the mantelpiece stood a pair of rather fine brass candlesticks and a photograph of a boy aged about fourteen. It was a school one, posed against a cloudy background, like the picture of Aaron Spalding featured in the
Maggie stood in front of the fireplace and confronted them. “All right. What is all this? What’s Nick being accused of?”
“We’re not accusing your son of anything,” Jude replied calmly. “May I call you Maggie?”
“Maggie…Mrs Kent…I don’t care. Just tell me what you know.”
“You’ve heard about the death of that boy Aaron Spalding?” A curt nod of acknowledgement. “Well, we have reason to believe that Aaron Spalding, with two other youths, was messing around on the seafront here at Fethering on Monday night.”
“How do you mean, ‘messing around’?”
“They had a few drinks and then they broke into the Fethering Yacht Club.”
Maggie Kent didn’t say anything. She still watched and waited, gauging how much they knew.
“We know that one of the other youths was called Dylan. He’s training as a fitter with J.T. Carpets…”
Carole decided that Jude’s gentle approach was too much Good Cop, so she came in heavily in her Bad Cop persona. “And we have reason to believe that the third youth was your son, Nick.”
