so I gave the lad an earful about ringing at that hour and got Nick to the phone. I don’t know what was said, but it sure scared the hell out of my son. He threw some clothes on and rushed straight out of the house. I don’t know where he was going, he wouldn’t tell me, but he was shaking like a leaf.”
“What time would that have been?” asked Carole.
“Ooh…Five past seven, say.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Anyway, I was worried sick. Though Nick’s given me quite a few nasty frights over the last few months, I’d never seen him in that kind of state. But of course I was due up at Brigadoon to be a dutiful Mrs Mop to the lovely Barbara…so I wait around as long as I can. And then, just when I’m about to leave, Nick comes back. He was in a worse state than ever, sobbing like a baby. No, worse than a baby. He was hysterical.”
“Did he tell you the reason?”
“No. Oh, I got bits out of him…that he’d been out with Dylan and Aaron the night before…that they’d had a few drinks…I think they did some drugs too. He didn’t admit it in so many words, but I’m pretty sure they did. And apparently they were talking about black magic, some gobbledegook I didn’t understand, but which seemed to have got Nick pretty scared. Anyway, he told me that they broke into the Yacht Club…said it was just a lark, that they didn’t do any harm.”
“But you reacted this morning when I showed you the Stanley knife,” Carole pointed out. “He must’ve said something about that.”
“Yes, Nick mentioned it. He said that Dylan, who works as a carpet-fitter, had his knife with him. But then he seemed to regret saying that and clammed up. I asked if any of the boats had been vandalized and he assured me they hadn’t.”
“But Dylan was definitely with Nick and Aaron when they broke into the Yacht Club?”
“Oh yes.”
Carole and Jude exchanged a look. Neither of them had believed Dylan’s disclaimer at the time he said it.
“That was all the night before,” said Jude thoughtfully. “But it’s Nick’s trip the following morning that seems really to have upset him. Did you find out anything about that?”
“Nothing. Not a thing. He kept saying he couldn’t tell anyone about it. That he couldn’t tell me, of all people.”
“‘You, of all people’ because you were his mother or because what happened had something to do with you?”
Maggie Kent shrugged helplessly at Jude’s question. “I haven’t a clue. All I know is that my son was in a terrible state of shock…Oh, and I did notice he had sand on his trainers.”
“So he’d been on the beach.” Carole stated the obvious. “The boy who phoned him that morning, are you sure you didn’t recognize the voice?”
“I’d never heard it before. I mean, I could tell it was someone round Nick’s age. They all talk ridiculously gruffly. Partly street cred and partly because they haven’t got used to their voices having broken. But this wasn’t one I recognized.”
“Could it have been Aaron Spalding?”
“Possibly. But I never heard Aaron Spalding speak, so I wouldn’t know.”
There was a silence. Carole and Jude’s minds were racing.
“You’re sure there wasn’t anything else, Maggie?” asked Jude.
“No, sorry. Nick clammed up again. That was all I could get out of him.”
“But he didn’t go to school on the Tuesday?”
“He was in no state to go anywhere. I stayed here with him, tried to calm him down a bit. Wednesday he stayed here again, but he was more his old self. Then we heard about Aaron’s death and I’m afraid Nick just cracked up again.”
“Is he at home now?” asked Carole.
Maggie shook her head. “He said he felt up to school this morning. So he went there, and I went to the Shorelands Estate to be patronized by Barbara bloody Turribull.”
“So you really have no idea what the three of them got up to at the Fethering Yacht Club?”
“No, but it was something pretty horrifying, if the effect it had on my son is anything to go by…”
“Not to mention the effect it had on Aaron Spalding,” Jude murmured.
“What do you mean?”
“There seems a very strong chance that Aaron Spalding killed himself.”
Maggie Kent nodded slowly, taking this in. It wasn’t an entirely new thought to her. “Yes.” Panic flared in her eyes. “I hope to God Nick’s all right!”
“He will be…He will be.”
“If only he’d tell me what happened.”
“You still haven’t got anything beyond the fact that the three of them broke into the Yacht Club?”
“No, not a thing. And, God knows, it’s not for want of trying.”
“Do you think,” Jude suggested diffidently, “he might tell more to someone who wasn’t his mother?”
“He might well, but I think it’d rather depend on who it was who asked him.”
“What about me?” asked Jude. “Do you think he might tell something more to me?”
Maggie Kent looked at the blonde-haired stranger on her sofa with amazement, which gave way to deliberation and then assent. “Do you know,” she said, “I think he might.”
? The Body on the Beach ?
Twenty-Three
Carole knew Jude was right about seeing Nick on her own, but that didn’t take away her sense of frustration. It wasn’t jealousy – in the short period of their acquaintance, Carole had come to accept her new neighbour had people skills that she lacked – it was more annoyance at being excluded from any part of the investigation. The feeling brought home to Carole how totally absorbed she had become by the body on the beach. In less than a week the imperatives of her normal, sensible routine had been swept away by the overwhelming need to explain its mystery.
Still, she wasn’t going to let her frustration have completely negative effects. Gulliver at least should benefit from her enforced idleness. She would take him for a long walk on the beach.
The dog responded enthusiastically to her attention, making Carole feel guilty that he’d suffered from her recent preoccupations. He scampered about on the sand, scurrying back and forth, covering four times as much ground as his mistress. She walked along parallel to the sea, just below the pebble line, while Gulliver made his sudden, quixotic forays to challenge the unknown foes of flotsam and jetsam.
It was a beautiful afternoon. The weather, as if in apology for its recent bad behaviour, put on a perfect display – white winter sun, evenly pale-blue sky, the full works. It still felt cold – the lack of cloud cover ensured that – but the wind had dropped and the air no longer stung the cheeks. The heavy frosts of the previous days seemed a distant memory. Carole didn’t think the night ahead would drop below freezing.
As she walked along, her restlessness eased. Life wasn’t so bad after all, she reflected. Looking up to the crystal-clear contours of the South Downs in one direction and, the other way, across the beige sea to the distinct line where it became blue sky, Carole Seddon thought how lucky she was to live in such a beautiful place as Fethering. Amidst the crude cacophony of gulls, she heard the cry of a single curlew, like a piece of tape being wound backwards.
She seemed to see everything with new eyes. The seaweed clusters, stranded along the pebble line, weren’t a uniform dull brown; they were a tangle of russets and copper, with the occasional unexpected burst of pimento red and fresh spinach green. Even the reminders of man’s presence did not spoil the picture. An abandoned winching mechanism, encrusted with flaking rust and leaning drunkenly sideways, had its own beauty too.
Carole couldn’t explain why she was thinking like this. She had many fallibilities, but lyricism was not among them. Yet somehow the combination of the sparkling afternoon, the susurration of the sea and Gulliver’s ecstatic barking brought her to a feeling as near peace as her tightly constrained mind ever admitted. She had a feeling the
