that morning, disbelieving her story of having found a body on the beach, here was a woman actually asking about her discovery.
“What makes you think I did?” Carole responded cautiously.
“I know you did.” The voice was uneducated South Coast, not from the more discriminating purlieus of Fethering. “It was a woman with a beige raincoat and a Labrador,” she went on. “You fit the description.”
“Whose description?”
“Never mind that. Look, I know it was you, so we can cut out the bullshit.”
Carole Seddon appraised the woman in front of her. The face had about it a deadness the colour and texture of papier mache. The hair was flat and dull like tobacco. Only the eyes were alive, burning with a desperate energy.
“The police have been to see me this morning,” said Carole evenly. “According to them, when they looked, there was no body on the beach.”
“I’m not interested in the police. You know and I know there was a body on the beach this morning. Down at the end of the breakwater.”
While it was gratifying to have her story corroborated, Carole still wanted to know where the woman had got her information. “Were you watching me? Was it you who I saw walking away from the body?”
“I didn’t go on the beach this morning.” The woman dismissed these irrelevant details and hurried on to what really concerned her. “Did you take something from the body? Something out of his jacket pocket?”
“No, I certainly didn’t. I didn’t touch it.” Carole spoke with the affront of someone whose upbringing did not countenance theft, least of all from the dead.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!”
“Listen, it’s important.”
“It may be important, but the fact remains that I did not take anything from the body I found on the beach this morning!”
“There wasn’t no knife?”
“Knife? I didn’t see any knife.”
This answer seemed to provide a moment of reassurance. The woman was silent, her eyes darting from side to side as she considered the next tack to take. “Do you know where it went?” she asked eventually.
“The body?”
“Of course the body.”
“I’ve no idea.”
“After you seen it, did you see anyone else go near it?”
“No. I went home and rang the police. And – as I’ve just told you – when they finally came to see me, they said they hadn’t been able to find the body.”
This news too seemed to reassure the woman, but only for a moment. Her tone changed. There was overt aggression in her next question. “What were you doing down on the beach, anyway?”
“I was taking my dog for a walk.”
“Oh yes?” The woman could do scepticism just as well as Detective Inspector Brayfield. Then, abruptly, she asked, “Did the police say they’d come back?”
“To see me again? No.”
“If they do come back, you’re not to tell them anything about it.”
Carole was getting exasperated. “About what, for God’s sake?”
“About what you seen on the beach. About you seeing anyone moving the body.”
“I’ve told you! I didn’t see anyone moving the body!”
“If you’re lying and I find out you snitched to anyone about what you seen, there’ll be trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” asked Carole, almost contemptuously.
“This kind of trouble,” said the woman with a new, sly menace in her voice.
As she spoke, she reached inside her quilted anorak and pulled out a gun.
? The Body on the Beach ?
Five
Carole was too affronted to feel any fear. “Put that thing away!” she ordered. “What on earth do you think you’re doing? This is Fethering, not Miami Beach.”
The woman waved the gun threateningly. “You shut up! I think you’d better cooperate with me.”
Carole rose from her seat and moved towards the telephone. “I’m going to call the police.”
“Do that and I’ll shoot you!”
The words stopped her in her tracks. Carole turned to look at the woman, assessing the risk of the threat being carried out.
Something she saw in the wild, darting eyes told her that the danger was real. The woman’s expression wasn’t natural. Perhaps she was under the influence of some drug. Indeed, that would make sense of her erratic behaviour since she’d arrived at the house. She wasn’t entirely in control of her actions.
Which being the case, she was quite capable of using the gun. Carole returned silently to her seat.
“So tell me what you did see,” the woman demanded.
“I didn’t see anything other than what I’ve told you about.”
Apparently coolness wasn’t the best response. It seemed only to inflame the woman more. Waving the gun with increasing – and rather disturbing – abandon, she said, “Cut the crap. You’re nothing in this. You get shot, it doesn’t matter. So long as the police never find out who moved the body.”
Her speech was slurring now, becoming something of a ramble. But that didn’t make its content any less disturbing. Being shot by someone coherent or being shot by someone rambling didn’t make a lot of difference, Carole realized. You were still dead.
“They’ll never find out from me,” Carole said calmly, “because I don’t know who moved the body.”
The woman looked puzzled. “Whose body? My son’s body? My son’s not dead.” Then, with another worryingly casual wave of the gun, she slurred, “You could be lying.”
“Yes, I could be, but I’m not.”
“Does this gun frighten you?”
“Of course it does. I’m not stupid.”
“Sometimes,” the woman maundered on, “people get shot just to keep them quiet. To make sure they don’t say anything.”
This is ridiculous, thought Carole. I am sitting in my own sitting room – in Fethering of all places – and a woman I’ve never seen before is threatening to shoot me with a gun. People will never believe me when I tell them. On the other hand, of course, I may not be around to tell them.
Though her brain was working fast, her body was paralysed. Carole could do nothing. The gun was still pointing straight at her and a new, dangerous focus had come into the woman’s eyes when…the front doorbell rang.
There was a momentary impasse. Then the woman hissed, “Don’t answer it.”
“But everyone knows I’m here. The lights are on. If I don’t answer, they’ll get suspicious and call the police.”
The barrel wavered while the woman weighed this up. Then she relented. Flicking the gun towards the door, she said, “See who it is. Don’t invite them in, though.”
“All right. I won’t.”
As she went towards the front door, Carole reflected wryly on Gulliver’s qualities as a guard dog. Two people – one at least of whom was carrying a gun – had rung her front doorbell in the previous half-hour. And Gulliver hadn’t even stirred from his cosy doze by the Aga.
Carole opened the front door. The frost had set in fiercely while she’d been indoors and the cold air scoured her face. In the cone of light spreading from the overhead lamp stood Jude. Her blonde hair was covered by a floppy hat and she appeared to be wearing some kind of poncho.
