mystery was nearing some kind of resolution.
Carole Seddon looked at her watch. It was nearly four. In a couple of hours, Jude had suggested, they should meet in the Crown and Anchor and she’d bring Carole up to date. Meanwhile, any moment now, less than half a mile away, Jude would be confronting Nick Kent.
“He’s coming,” Maggie Kent hissed.
¦
She was looking out of the window in Spindrift Lane. Jude rose from the sofa to join her. Three boys in dark trousers and navy anoraks, school bags hanging single-strapped from their shoulders, were running down the middle of the road, tossing a plastic American football between them. They were red-faced from the cold and the exertion.
“I always tell him he mustn’t play in the street.” But Maggie spoke indulgently; she didn’t sound too angry about it. “Not that there’s that much traffic down here.”
One of the boys stopped by the sagging gate of number 26. He was holding the ball, which he tossed with some unheard but raucous comment to one of his mates. He received a cheerful gibe back and grimaced some response. Jude recognized the face from the photograph on the mantelpiece, though it was at least two years out of date. Nick Kent’s features had thickened since and his hair darkened a few shades, but he still looked a child.
As he parted from his friends and turned in at the gate, his persona changed. Quick as the flick of a switch, the jokey face-pulling gave way to an expression of deep anxiety.
There was the sound of the front door opening and slamming shut, the thump of his school bag dropped on the hall floor and the thud of footsteps starting up the stairs.
“Hi, Nick. Could you come in here a minute?”
“Just going to the loo,” he called back to Maggie’s summons. His voice was roughened by the local accent and the gruffness which his mother had mentioned.
The footsteps thundered on upstairs. A door opened and closed. After what seemed a long time, a lavatory flushed. The door opened and, with seeming reluctance, the footsteps dawdled back down again.
The boy stood in the doorway, registering shock at the unexpected visitor in the sitting room. “What is this?” he asked on a note of panic.
“Nick, this is Jude.”
“Oh?”
“She wants to talk to you.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk to her!”
He turned to bolt, but was stopped by Jude’s even voice saying, “I want to talk to you about this knife, Nick.”
He wheeled slowly round on his heel, unwillingly drawn to the Stanley knife that Jude held out towards him. When he saw it, his worst fears seemed to be confirmed. The colour left his face and tears welled in his eyes. He collapsed on to the sofa. “Is she from the police?” he asked dully.
“No.” Maggie Kent looked as though she wanted to rush across and cradle her son in her arms, protect him from all the evil in the world. But she restrained herself.
“No,” Jude confirmed. “I’m not from the police. I’m not trying to cause any trouble for you. In fact, I want to save you from trouble. I want to find out what happened on Monday night. I want to find out what it was that got you so upset on Monday night and Tuesday morning. I think you’ll feel better if you talk about it.”
Maggie Kent listened with increasing surprise. There was a strange, almost hypnotic quality in her visitor’s voice. It relaxed her own tensions a little, and seemed to be having the same effect on her son.
The boy on the sofa was silent, but his crumpled face betrayed complex emotions. He did want to talk, he wanted to end the pain he was going through, blot out the memories which were causing him such anguish. But at the same time he was afraid of the consequences that confession might unleash.
“Where did you get that knife?” he asked finally, his voice clotted with confusion.
“I found it in the bottom of a boat at Fethering Yacht Club. A boat called
There was a long silence. Nick looked drained, his will sapped.
“I think you’d better tell me about it,” said Jude.
“I can’t…”
“Or perhaps I should take this knife to the police…”
Threatening wasn’t her usual style but at that moment seemed justified. Its instantaneous effect proved her right. Nick Kent broke down, shedding about five years along with the tears that coursed down his cheeks. Jude could feel the urge within Maggie to go and hug her son, but restrained her by a little shake of the head. With difficulty, the mother stayed where she was.
“So, will you tell me?” Jude gently maintained the pressure.
“I can’t…” The emotion had eroded the roughness of his voice. His accent now matched his mother’s. “I can’t…not with Mummy here.”
Jude looked into Maggie’s eyes and could see the hurt there. It was only a small rejection, but Nick was definitely rejecting her.
Maggie Kent, however, was a brave woman, and she accepted the priorities of the situation. “Right. I’ll go and put the kettle on.” She crossed to the door. “Give me a call when I can come in again.” She managed to exclude sarcasm, but she couldn’t keep the pain out of her voice.
The door shut behind her. “So, Nick…”
“How much do you know?” The tears had stopped. He seemed to have accepted the inevitability of talking.
“I know what you told your mother…and a bit more that we worked out for ourselves.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“I’ve been investigating this with a friend of mine called Carole Seddon.”
The name meant nothing to him, but it brought a new anxiety. “She’s not with the police either?”
“No. If anything, she’s extremely anti the police.” Another silence. “Come on, Nick. I know you were with Dylan and Aaron. I know you had some beers. I think you probably had some drugs too…”
“It was only cannabis,” he retorted, his use of the botanical name rather than any slang term making him sound younger than ever. “Dylan had it with him.”
“I thought he might have done.”
“And he, Dylan, was getting at Aaron and me. Saying we were just kids, that we were mother’s boys, that we were chicken…”
“Chicken of doing what?”
“Smoking the…the cannabis…the weed.”
“But you did that. So what else did he say you were scared of doing?”
“Breaking the law. He said we were goody-goodies.”
“He said that, for instance, you wouldn’t dare break into the Yacht Club?”
There was a hesitation before Nick Kent admitted that this was indeed what Dylan had said.
“And you proved him wrong, and you broke in – or just climbed over the railings, that wasn’t too difficult – and you chose a boat at random, which happened to be
“How do you know all this?” Panic flared again in the boy’s eyes. “You didn’t see us, did you?”
“No, I didn’t see you. But you told most of that stuff to your mother.”
Nick nodded, partially reassured.
“Of course, what you didn’t tell your mother was what you found in the boat.”
“No.” For a moment he looked defiant. “And there’s no reason why I should tell you either!”
“No reason, I agree. Though of course I could still take the Stanley knife to the police.”
This time the threat wasn’t so potent. “So, you take it to the police! That doesn’t prove anything.”
“No,” Jude agreed softly. “Not until they find the body.”
This really did shock him. “How did you know about the body?” he murmured in horrified fascination.
Jude heaved a mental sigh of relief. He’d fallen for it. He’d conceded that there had been a body in the boat.
