him.
Then he turned away and, trailing a thin scream, disappeared over the sea wall into the Fether.
? The Body on the Beach ?
Thirty-Five
“I still want to know,” said Jude calmly, “what you were doing on Fethering beach before seven in the morning.”
“And why should I tell you?” Tanya sneered. “You’re not police or anything. I don’t have to answer your questions.”
“No, you don’t. On the other hand, you did invite me to come here and the only possible reason for that is because I said I wanted to talk about the body on the beach. But now I’m here, you don’t seem to want to talk about it.”
“Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”
“You see, I think you do know more about the body than you’re saying. The person who saw you on the beach said you had come running down from the direction of the Fethering Yacht Club. I happen to know that the body you found had been stowed there overnight. In a boat called
There was an involuntary intake of breath from Tanya. Jude knew more details than she was expecting.
“A possible interpretation of your actions would be that you knew the body had been put in the boat, but when you went to the Yacht Club to check on it – or possibly to move it – you found it had gone. That’s what made you panic and run off down the beach, where fortunately you found the missing corpse against the breakwater. So maybe then you went off to get help to move it.”
“You’re talking a load of rubbish.” But it was only a token defiance. Jude could see from the sulky set of the girl’s chin that at least part of her conjecture had been correct.
“What I still don’t know, though, is how you came to be involved with the body on the beach. What did it have to do with you, Tanya?”
¦
Carole was well ahead of the others in reaching the sea wall. As she peered fearfully down over the side, the smell and the realization hit her at the same time. The Fether was at low tide and in the thin evening light the mudflats on either side took on the sheen of rotting meat.
Nick Kent had landed in the mud some feet away from the sea wall. The impetus of his jump had planted him up to his thighs in the ooze. His thin arms flailed around, like the wings of a moth caught on wet paint, as he tried in vain to get a purchase on the slime around him.
There was the hiss of a large wave washing up the channel from the sea. The level of the Fether was rising fast. And, even as Carole watched, Nick’s body seemed to jolt sideways, sinking deeper into the mire.
She didn’t think. She acted instinctively. There was a gleaming new metal ladder against the sea wall, which had been fixed in place by the workmen doing the repairs during the previous week. Encumbered as she was by her raincoat, Carole swung herself round to take a foothold on the top rung and shinned quickly down.
The ladder stopped about a yard above the mud. “It’s all right, Nick. It’s me, Carole,” she called out to the terrified boy.
In the gloom he seemed aware of her for the first time. “Go away!” he shouted. “I want to die.”
“No, you don’t. What you’ve done can’t be so terrible.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
Carole had hooked one arm around a ladder rung and stretched the other out, but was still half a yard short of the boy’s hands. She undid the belt of her Burberry, slid it out of the loops and tried to flip it across the void.
Suddenly there was a flood of light from above. The Fethering Yacht Club regulars had arrived at the edge of the sea wall. “We’ll get a rope to him!” shouted Denis Woodville’s voice, authoritative and confident. It was in times of crisis that Vice-Commodores came into their own.
But his authority was not unquestioned. There came a rumbling of other elderly voices, offering a wide variety of alternative rescue plans. One of them made comparisons with a similar incident that had happened while he’d been stationed out in Singapore.
Now that she could see where she was aiming, Carole made another throw with her belt. The buckle landed right by Nick Kent’s hand. He could easily have taken hold of it and had at least some link to the dry land.
But he didn’t. His hands stayed resolutely on the mud.
He meant what he had said. He wasn’t going to do anything to help himself. He did want to die.
The metal ladder boomed and shook as someone else came down to join her. “We can get this rope to him,” said an elderly male voice she didn’t recognize from somewhere above her head.
Carole squinted upwards. “You’ll have to lasso it round him. He’s not cooperating.”
“Damn it,” said the voice. “I’ll go and get some duckboards. Perhaps we can get across the mud to him.” The ladder shuddered again as he clambered back up and started shouting, “Get some duckboards! Bloody kid’s on a kamikaze mission! Won’t help himself!”
These orders prompted more shouting from other elderly male voices. One advocated ringing the coastguard. One recommended a boathook under the boy’s collar. A third said he remembered something similar happening when he’d been stationed out in Singapore. Denis Woodville could be heard saying he’d go to the nearest boat and try saving the boy from the water.
The reasons why managers need to go on management training courses were all too apparent. There was a serious plethora of chiefs, and a serious deficit of Indians.
Carole tried another flick across the void with her Burberry belt. It slipped out of her cold fingers and lay, a dead snake, on the mud between them.
She couldn’t see Nick’s expression. While the old men above argued about the optimum escape plan, they had forgotten about keeping the light pointing down on to the mud.
But Carole could see less of Nick, there was no question about that. He was now embedded in the ooze up to his chest and had to hold his arms up to keep them free of its embrace. The tide was sending ever stronger waves against the outflow of the Fether, and, with each hissing onrush, the water level crept closer to the stranded boy.
Carole slipped out of her precious Burberry. “Nick!” she called out, as softly as she dared against the rush of the water. “Grab hold of my coat. Then I can hang on until help comes.”
She flipped the Burberry out, in the manner patented by Sir Walter Raleigh. It landed, chequered-lining down, flat against the slime. Demonstrating once again that the mind has scant regard for the gravity of situations, Carole found herself thinking of cleaning bills and wondering whether dry-cleaning would remove the waterproof qualities of the material.
The hem of the Burberry was almost touching Nick. He could easily have reached out and grabbed hold, taken a strong purchase on the cloth and given himself a chance.
Still, he did nothing.
“For God’s sake, Nick!” Carole shouted in exasperation. “Is this really how you want to die?”
“I don’t care how it happens, so long as I die!” came back the petulant reply.
Carole took a deep breath. Once again, the thought came to her that Jude would do this better. But Jude wasn’t here. Carole Seddon was the only person who could make the boy change his mind and start participating in his own rescue. And Carole Seddon was bloody well going to do it.
“If you die now, Nick,” she began in a firm, no-nonsense way, “what would your father think?”
“Don’t talk about my father!” he shrieked.
“Why not? I know he’s not around at the moment…”
“You can say that again.”
“…but you used to be close. And if he comes back to find that you gave away your life in such a pathetic way as this, what’s he going to think?”
“He’s not going to come back! Can’t you understand – he’ll never come back! He’s gone for good!”
Carole changed tack. “All right. Say that’s true…Say he never does come back…That means your mother will have lost one of the two men in her life for ever, and you’re about to deprive her of the other. Think of her. Think
