woods, or driven the car into a pond or into the sea…” Carole sighed hopelessly.
“Right.” Jude screwed up her eyes and tapped with irritation at her furrowed brow. “Is there something obvious we’re missing? Some information we have that we haven’t followed through?”
They both concentrated. There was a long silence, then Carole said, “Theresa Spalding!”
“What about her?”
“I’ve suddenly realized there’s something I should have asked her and didn’t.”
“Hm?”
“I was concentrating too much on Aaron, and I forgot to ask her why she came here in the first place. How did she know I’d found the body? She said I ‘matched the description’. She must’ve talked to someone who saw me. Who though?”
“Hey!” A smile slowly irradiated Jude’s features. It was a great improvement. Gloom didn’t suit her. “Of course! Why on earth didn’t we think of that at the time? Come on, let’s go and ask her now!”
They went straight up to Downside in the Renault. The estate didn’t look any more welcoming in the dark than it had in daylight and Carole was glad there were two of them in the car. In spite of the cold, a bunch of early teens loitered in Drake Crescent, sorting out plans for where they’d go for their Saturday night – or where they could go for their Saturday night without any money.
A car stopping in the road seemed to qualify as an excitement. The kids moved closer, watching the women get out and approach Theresa Spalding’s front door. Two of them leaned against the Renault’s doors, their exaggerated outlines menacing in puffa jackets. They watched in silence as Carole repeatedly pressed the bell. Only when she banged on the door did one of the kids shout out, “She’s not there. They’ve taken her away.”
“Who’s taken her away? Where to?”
They all seemed keen to pitch in with information.
“An ambulance come.”
“They took her to where the crazy people go.”
“She’d totally lost it.”
“She’s in the nuthouse.”
“In the looney bin.”
Carole and Jude exchanged rueful looks. They’d got the impression that Theresa Spalding’s level of neurosis was pretty high at the best of times. She’d spoken of always being ‘on some medication’. It was no surprise that her son’s death should have destabilized the woman’s precarious sanity.
They went back to the car. The two kids in puffa jackets stayed, insolently leaning against the doors till the last possible moment, then eased themselves upright and slouched away. As she started the engine, Carole heard some raucous remark at their expense, followed by a burst of derisive laughter. She shivered.
¦
The Saturday evening and the Sunday compounded their frustration. Both of them kept contemplating calling round next door to discuss their investigation further. But both of them knew there was nothing else to say.
So Carole watched Saturday evening television, which only went to confirm her opinion that there never was anything on the television on Saturday evening. On the Sunday she took Gulliver out for longer walks than usual and virtuously tidied the cupboard under the stairs, packing into bin liners a lot of what she now designated rubbish. These activities, preparing a couple of plain meals and reading the Sunday papers served to fill the void of the day.
It was like any other Sunday. As if none of the excitements of the previous week had happened.
Next door, Jude unpacked a couple of boxes of books and stacked them upright in old wine-crates in her bedroom. She did her yoga. She cooked a rather adventurous prawn curry for her one meal of the day, taken round four o’clock. With it she drank half a bottle- of wine. She drank the other half during the evening, much of which she spent reading in an aromatic bath, her toe reaching out every now and again to top up the hot water.
Though it was not in her nature to be as uptight as Carole, Jude too felt the tension of unfulfilment.
Nothing could happen until Rory Turribull’s suicide was confirmed to have taken place.
? The Body on the Beach ?
Twenty-Nine
It was a different receptionist at the Brighton dental surgery the following morning, and Jude was directed to a different waiting room for her appointment with the hygienist. The plate on the closed door read ‘Holly Draper’, and from inside came sounds of girlish chatter.
Jude sat and read a woman’s magazine of the kind she didn’t know still existed. There was even a special offer for knitting patterns. She wondered how long it had been there.
Then the door opened and the previous appointment was ushered out by a woman who must be Holly Draper. A short unnatural blonde with large honey-coloured eyes, she wore a white overall and latex gloves. A disposable face-mask had been pulled down beneath her chin, perhaps to enable her to talk, though from the way she was talking it looked like it’d take a lot more than a face-mask to stop her.
“But that kind of thing seems to happen all the time these days, doesn’t it? I mean, who can you trust? You read about all these MPs putting their hands in the till, and they’re meant to be our elected representatives, aren’t they? And then there are solicitors and…”
Jude instantly identified Holly Draper’s conversational method. It involved firing out a fusillade of questions and giving her collocutor no time to answer any of them. Perhaps this derived from the fact that most of the people she spoke to in her professional life had their mouths so full of metalwork and saliva-siphons that they couldn’t have replied even if they’d wanted to.
Whatever its cause, Holly Draper’s monologue style was excellent news for Jude. Just get her on to the right subject.
And even that might not prove to be too difficult. As her previous appointment sidled along the wall in desperate hope of escape, the hygienist was saying, “Well, you’d never have thought it to look at him, would you? Still, it’s often the quiet ones, isn’t it? Mind you, I can’t imagine doing that to myself, can you? Well, I’ve never wanted to, as it happens. Just as well, isn’t it? Have you ever – Oh, right, if you have to be off. Give those notes in at reception and make another appointment for three months’ time – all right?”
She turned and flashed a hygienic smile at her next appointment. “Well, hello. You must be – ”
“Everyone calls me Jude.”
“Oh, right you are. I’m Holly. Jude as in ‘Judith’, is that right? It’s nice. Nicer that ‘Judy’, isn’t it? So many Judys around, aren’t there? If you’d just like to come through into my little room…Lovely. And make yourself comfortable in the chair, will you? And I’ll just have a glance at your notes, if I may? Hm, ooh, Mr Frobisher says we’ve got a bit of inflammation round our gums, haven’t we? Dear oh dear, aren’t we a naughty girl? Right, well, I’d better have a look, hadn’t I?”
Turning to pick up her examination mirror and toothpick brought a fractional pause, into which Jude managed to insert a line. “Dreadful news about Rory Turnbull, wasn’t it?”
“You heard about that, did you? Did you know him?”
Jude once again leapt into the minimal breech. “I’ve just moved to Fethering and I did meet him briefly.”
“Ooh yes, well, as you can imagine, everyone here was gobsmacked when we heard the news – absolutely gobsmacked. Weren’t you?”
“I didn’t know him that well.”
“Didn’t you? Still, after what’s happened, we’re all asking ourselves if any of us knew him that well, aren’t we? It’s a terrible thing for someone to do, isn’t it?” Before Jude could offer an opinion on the ethics of suicide, silverware approached her mouth. “Now if you could just open for me, could you? And can we pop this in? Could you just hold it, yes? We don’t want our mouth filling up with saliva, do we?”
Further conversational prompts would be difficult. But Jude reckoned, having got Holly on to the right rails, the hygienist, in a state of permanently woundup readiness, could be allowed to run.
“Ooh yes, a few places here where the gums are a bit red. Do you floss at all?” Jude let out a strangled response. Whether it was in the affirmative or negative didn’t seem to affect Holly Draper’s flow. “Well, you should, because if your gums are healthy then there’s a much better chance of your teeth being healthy, isn’t there? Now
