improve the service. Carole Seddon had become inured to the third-world squalor of her local railway system and so travelled up to London as little as possible.
They didn’t say much on the train. This was partly because the compartments were so full, loud with the hubbub of shrieking adolescents and businessmen on mobile phones.
But their silence was also, in a way, because there was nothing to say. The links of logic, so durable on the Friday, had been shattered by a single blow. The connection between the freshly turned earth in one old barn and the bones in another had been destroyed the instant Sebastian Trent said he’d travelled out to Kuala Lumpur with Graham Forbes and his wife.
Carole and Jude’s investigation had run into a brick wall.
¦
They could both have gone back to their separate houses in Fethering High Street, but the Crown and Anchor seemed a more cheerful prospect. Not that it felt particularly cheerful when they arrived. Apart from anything else, the landlord was in subdued mood.
“You two been having a good time then, have you?” he asked gloomily.
“Not bad,” said Jude.
“Carole?”
She was so caught up in her thoughts, trying to make new connections in the case, that it took her a moment to realize he was addressing her.
“What? Oh yes. You know, all right.”
Her tone must have sounded more deterrent than she’d intended, because led Crisp went off to serve another customer before returning to take their order. And then he was distinctly offhand, particularly with Carole. She couldn’t think what she’d done to offend him, but Ted’s behaviour seemed just another symptom of her uncanny ability to read signals wrong.
She sat down with Jude at a table some way away from the bar. Her friend yawned and raked her fingers through her blonde hair. Carole wondered what she’d been doing in London all weekend. Needless to say, Jude hadn’t volunteered anything about the person whom she ‘ought to see’.
But something seemed to have got her down. Carole had never seen Jude so subdued. Her customary energy had been replaced by a kind of lethargy.
“Is anything the matter?” Carole asked.
“What? Oh, nothing that won’t get better.”
“Is it what happened with Sebastian Trent?”
Jude let out a little wry laugh. “No, no. Obviously that was disappointing, but…No, that’s not what’s got me down.”
“What then?”
“Oh, a bloody man. It usually is a bloody man, isn’t it?”
This was closer to a confessional mood than any other moment Carole had shared with Jude. “If you want to talk about it…” she said.
For a moment, Jude looked undecided. Then she shook her head. “No. No need to burden you with my troubles.”
“I don’t mind. And you’re always saying that troubles should be shared.”
“Yes, thanks, Carole, but…not in this case, I think.” Another brisk shake of the head. “No, there’s a certain kind of man who gets pleasure from knowing he’s upset you. It’s some kind of validation of his masculinity, the fact that he can make women suffer…”
“Yes,” agreed Carole, hoping for more.
“And so talking about how much that kind of man has upset you is really just playing into his hands, joining his conspiracy, building up his self-image as a heart-breaker…”
“Well…”
“Which means the best thing is to think very deliberately about something else.” She swept her hands back from her nose, as if wiping away unpleasant memories. “OK. Let’s get back to your bones.”
“All right,” said Carole, disappointed.
“Well, it seems like your wonderful Graham Forbes wife-murderer theory is shot out of the water…”
“I’m afraid so.”
“But don’t worry. Some of the thinking you’ve done may still be relevant. I mean, that newly dug earth in the barn…It can’t have anything to do with Graham Forbes, but it still might be where the bones were buried. And, if that is the case, then we’ve got to work out who else it was who dug them up.”
“Right.”
“Ooh, and there’s one thing I can certainly follow up on.” Jude’s vitality may not have been spontaneous, but she was willing it back with renewed energy as she took out her mobile phone and punched in a number. “I can ask Tamsin Lutteridge what she saw in the barn that night when she was back in Weldisham. I should have done that earlier, but I was so caught up in thoughts of – Ah, hello,” she said, as she got through on the phone. “Could I speak to Charles Hilton, please? How long will he be there? Right. Is that Anne? This is Jude. Jude. We met the other week when I came over to Sandalls Manor. Yes. In fact, it’s not really Charles I’m trying to contact. I’d like to speak to Tamsin Lutteridge. No, as a matter of fact, Anne, I know she’s there. I – ”
But the phone had been put down on her. Jude grimaced as she switched off.
“Hung up on me. Charles’s wife’s maintaining the fiction that lamsin’s not there. I’ll have to speak to Charles himself.”
“You can get round him?”
“Oh yes.”
Jude rubbed her hands over her brown eyes. Carole noticed how tired she looked. Her weekend had been tough. Whoever the man was, he had caused her a lot of stress.
Carole was about to make solicitous enquiries, but Jude steepled her hands up to her mouth and puffed through them in an irritated way. “Right. What else can we do about the case? What other leads have we got to follow?”
“Nothing very definite. I’m afraid I’ve been so caught up in the Graham Forbes scenario, I haven’t really considered any other options.”
“No…But, whatever really happened, the whole thing does go back quite a long time in the history of Weldisham…”
“Probably.”
“So we need to talk to people who’ve been around the village a long time.”
“Not that there are many of those. The majority of residents only moved there to retire.”
“Yes, but we still have the ones who grew up there…”
“Lennie Baylis and Harry Grant.”
“And wasn’t there someone else? I’m sure when I met Harry in the Hare and Hounds, he said…” But Jude’s thought was overtaken by a more urgent one. “What about Brian Helling?”
Carole shuddered. She didn’t want to be reminded of their encounter on the previous Friday. The wildness in Brian Helling’s eyes still disturbed her. “I’m not sure whether he actually did grow up in Weldisham. I think he was probably an adult by the time his mother had her pools win and bought Heron Cottage.”
“Hm. So she…what’s her name?”
“Pauline Helling.”
“She didn’t live in the village before that?”
“Don’t think so. Mind you, Brian did say that she used to work there.”
“Really?” There was now almost a sparkle in Jude’s eyes. “Well, if the way she snooped at you is anything to go by, I should think Pauline Helling knows everything that’s ever gone on in Weldisham.”
“Possibly.”
“So it’s obvious what you have to do next, isn’t it, Carole?”
“Is it? What?”
“You have to go and see Pauline Helling.”
¦
Carole had spent the rest of the evening trying to find a reason that might justify a visit to the owner of
