Random breath-tests – Sussex Police are very hot on drink-driving. Well, that really got me scared, because there’s no other way to the Shorelands Estate except via Seaview Road.”
“But why did you have to go home?”
“Because that’s how I’d planned it!” he snapped petulantly. “The petrol and the rags and stuff I was going to use were all in the garage at Brigadoon.”
“Were you actually planning to stage your suicide in your own home?”
“Yes. On the paved area in front of the house.” A vindictive light burned in his eye. “Very fitting – show all the tight-arsed snobs of the Shorelands Estate what Barbara and her bloody mother had driven me to. I thought that’d be very funny. A social indiscretion on that scale…they’d really find hard to live down.”
No, thought Jude, I am not dealing here with someone who’s even mildly sane.
“Anyway, I panicked. I daren’t risk the police looking inside the car. I decided I couldn’t go through with the plan that night, so – ”
“So you hid the body inside your boat at the Feth-ering Yacht Club.”
“Yes, I – How the hell did you know that?”
“Call it educated guesswork. And did you put the life-jacket on it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just thought, if anyone found the body, it might look more like an accident. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“You certainly weren’t,” said Jude coolly. “My next educated guess, incidentally, would be that you went home and the following morning early, terrified that someone might have found the body overnight, rang Tanya and asked her to go to Fethering and check it was where you’d left it.”
The dentist looked bewildered. “Did she tell you this?”
“No. I think lanya looked and the body was missing. But shortly afterwards she found it washed up on the beach. She went to ring you and tell you what had happened. Then two small boys – ”
“What?” He turned pale. “How do you know all this stuff? Are you psychic?”
“A bit,” said Jude, with a self-effacing grin, “though, as it happens, that’s not how I know. So, did Tanya see the boys had put the body back in the boat?”
“Yes.”
“Which meant your plan was all set to happen again, a mere twenty-four hours late. Body back in place, no police breathalyzer traps…Why didn’t you do it on the Tuesday night?”
“Because I was disturbed by somebody. I’d just got the body out of the boat when I heard a noise. There was someone snooping around. A boy.”
“Do you think he saw you?”
“Yes. Just as I was lifting the body out of the boat. I was holding it in front of me and I came face to face with the boy. He screamed.”
Yes, he would have done, thought Jude. Poor Aaron Spalding, his head filled with half-digested stories of black magic and the Undead. The boy, tortured by guilt, had come back to check the scene of his crime and seen the dead body apparently moving. The Undead had come back to claim its victim. That could easily have been enough to unhinge the terrified Aaron, to make him throw himself into the Fether. Unless, of course…“You didn’t harm the boy, did you, Rory?”
“No, of course I didn’t! I don’t know what happened to him. He ran off along the river bank. He’d got me rattled, though, so I put my plans off for another twenty-four hours.”
“But because other people knew the body had been stowed inside
Once again he gave her a look as if she had unnatural powers. “Are you sure Tanya didn’t tell you all this?”
“Positive. Don’t worry, she’d never betray you.”
“More educated guesswork then?”
“If you like. I’d say you put the body inside one of those blue fishermen’s boxes near the Yacht Club…” A hissed intake of breath told her she’d hit another mark “…little knowing that the next morning that whole area would be cordoned off and under the blaze of spotlights while the workmen carried out repairs on the sea wall.”
Rory’s expression acknowledged the accuracy of this conjecture too.
“So, what with one thing and another,” Jude concluded lightly, “it wasn’t really that great a plan, was it?”
She’d caught him on the raw. “It was a brilliant plan!” he spat back.
“Oh, I don’t think you can use the word ‘brilliant’ for any plan that has to be aborted.”
“This one’s not going to be aborted.”
“You mean you’re still thinking of going ahead with it?”
“Oh yes. I’m going ahead with it. Tonight. Only this time, Jude…” He savoured the name as if it had an unfamiliar but not unpleasant taste “…you’re going to be part of the plan.”
? The Body on the Beach ?
Thirty-Nine
When Carole got back home from Maggie Kent’s house, she felt quite shaken. Having garaged the Renault – and not even considered cleaning its interior until the morning – she found she was shivering as she walked the short distance to the house. Inside, even before attending to Gulliver’s needs, she turned up the central heating and lit the log-effect gas fire. Then, once the dog was sorted, she poured herself an uncharacteristically large Scotch from the bottle which she kept for guests and which sometimes went untouched from one Christmas to the next.
It wasn’t only her physical ordeal that had shaken her up. It was the discovery she had made in Nick Kent’s bedroom. Now she knew the identity of the body she’d found, she could understand the reasons for the boy’s mental collapse. To have been involved in a black magic ritual with a corpse was bad enough, but to discover in the cold light of the following morning that the body you had seen mutilated was that of your idolized father would have unhinged the most stable of adults. The effect it had had on a confused adolescent was all too predictable.
Thank God at least that Nick had held back from wielding the Stanley knife himself.
Carole hadn’t said anything to Maggie. The awful truth would have to be faced at some point, but it should wait until the body had once again been found. And then the news should be broken to the unknowing widow by the proper authorities.
Carole was reminded that she had intended to spend that evening with Ted Crisp trying to find the body, but after all she been through another visit to the sea wall in search of a week-old corpse held little appeal. While the body on the beach remained anonymous, there had been an almost game-like quality to the investigations she and Jude had undertaken. But now the dead man possessed an identity and a family context, the idea of further probing became distasteful.
She decided she’d done quite enough for that evening. Maybe Jude would ring her or call round when she got back from Brighton. In the meantime, however, Carole Seddon was going to have a very long soak in a very hot bath.
¦
Jude lay on the back seat of the BMW, where the body she did not know to be that of Sam Kent had lain a week before.
When Tanya had returned to her bedsitter with the whisky, Rory had got her to help tie Jude up. With soft scarves, over her clothes, so as not to leave any marks on her body.
Then Rory and Tanya had manhandled her down to the garage and into the BMW. More scarves had been used to tie her wrists and ankles to the armrests, so that she couldn’t sit up and attract attention to herself when they were driving. Rory had not bothered to gag her. The car was soundproof.
Jude had been left in the garage for nearly an hour, while the two conspirators presumably went through the
