? Death under the Dryer ?
Two
“Drink this.” Jude placed a large glass of Chilean Chardonnay on the table in front of her neighbour. “You look as though you need it.”
The extent of Carole’s trauma could be judged from the fact that she didn’t look at her watch and ask, “Isn’t it a bit early in the day…?” It was in fact only two-thirty in the afternoon, but a lifetime seemed to have elapsed since she had entered Connie’s Clip Joint that morning. She hadn’t felt it proper to leave until the police had arrived and, once they were there, she couldn’t leave until she had submitted to some polite, though persistent, questioning. Her training in the Home Office told her that they were only doing their job, and she knew that they were starting from an empty knowledge base, but she did feel frustrated by the depth of information they seemed to require. Though she kept reiterating that it was the first time she had ever entered the salon, the police still wanted her to fill in far more of her personal background than she thought entirely necessary. What business of theirs was it that she was divorced? Surely, rather than following up such fruitless blind alleys, they ought to have been out there finding the murderer. Again she reminded herself of the huge mosaic of facts from which a successful conviction was built up, and managed to endure the questioning with the appearance of cooperation. But she hadn’t enjoyed the experience.
And it had all been made considerably worse by the presence of Sheena. Theo’s client had taken the discovery of the girl’s body as a cue for a full operatic mix of posturing and hysterics. “Something like this was bound to happen!” she had wailed. “I knew when I got up, this was an inauspicious day. I shouldn’t have left the house. I should have stayed in bed. It’s horrible! Though the poor girl may have deserved something, she didn’t deserve this!” But through the woman’s tears and screams, Carole could detect a real relish for the drama of the situation. Kyra’s murder was the most exciting thing that had happened in Sheena’s life for a long time.
Eventually Carole had managed to escape. While the Scene of Crime Officers embarked on their painstaking scrutiny of the premises, the detectives told her they were from the Major Crime Branch, and would be working from the Major Crime Unit in Littlehampton police station. They gave her a list of contact numbers, and urged her to get in touch if she thought of or heard anything which might have relevance to the investigation.
“I’ve done a bacon and avocado salad,” said Jude, and went off to the kitchen to fetch it. That was quick, thought Carole. But then perhaps more time had elapsed from the moment when she had knocked on her neighbour’s door at the end of the interrogation and the moment she had come back to Woodside Cottage. Her recollection was a bit hazy. She had gone to High Tor and taken Gulliver out to do his business on the rough ground behind the house. And she had stood for a moment of abstraction, from which his barking had roused her. Maybe it had been a longer moment than she thought. Maybe that too was a measure of the shock she had suffered.
“So…” said Jude, finally nestled into one of the shapeless armchairs in her untidy front room, “tell me exactly what happened.”
And Carole did. Unaware of the speed at which she was sinking the Chilean Chardonnay, or the readiness with which Jude was replenishing her glass, she told everything. Dealing with unpleasant subject matter during her Home Office days had taught her the value of drily marshalling facts and investing a report with the objective anonymity that made its horror containable.
At the end of the narrative Jude let out a long sigh and sat for a moment with her round face cupped in her chubby hands. As ever, she was swathed in many layers of floaty fabric, which blurred the substantial outlines of her welcoming body. Her blonde hair, which had been innocent of the attentions of a hairdresser for some time, was twisted up into an unlikely topknot, held in place by what looked like a pair of knitting needles.
“So you didn’t get any insight into who might have killed the girl?”
“For heaven’s sake, Jude. This morning was the first time I’ve even stepped inside that place. I don’t know anything about any of the people involved.”
“I wasn’t meaning that. I thought perhaps the police might’ve let something slip about the direction in which their suspicions are moving.”
“So far as I could tell, they’re clueless. When they arrived, they had as little information as I had. Besides, you may recall from past experience that even when the police do start having theories about the identity of a murderer, people like us are the last they’re going to share them with.”
Jude nodded ruefully. “True.”
“In fact, you’re probably a more useful source than I am.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you actually know all the people involved. You’re a regular at Connie’s Clip Joint.”
“Hardly a regular, but I suppose you’re right.”
“And,” Carole went on, unable to keep out of her voice the note of envy that such thoughts usually prompted, “people always confide in you, so probably you actually know a great deal about Connie Rutherford and her set- up.”
“A certain amount, yes.”
“. She isn’t one of your
“You know I prefer to use the word ‘client’,” Jude responded calmly. It wasn’t in her nature to take issue about such matters. She knew that healing worked. Some people shared her opinion; Some were violently opposed to it. Jude was prepared to have her case made by successful results rather than verbal argument. And she knew that depriving Carole of her scepticism about healing would take away one of the pillars of bluster that supported her prickly, fragile personality. “But no,” she went on, “I haven’t treated Connie. I just know her from chatting while I’ve been having my hair done.”
“Well, she volunteered to me that she was divorced – and that the divorce hadn’t taken place under the happiest of circumstances…”
“What divorce does?”
Carole did not pick up on this. Though some ten years old, her own divorce from David was still an area as sensitive as an infected tooth. And lurking at the back of her mind was a new anxiety. Her son Stephen’s wife Gaby was soon to give birth. Grandparenthood might mean that Carole was forced into even more contact with David. Resolutely dispelling such ugly thoughts from her mind, she went on, “And I gather that she and…what was her husband’s name?…Martin, that’s right…used to own Connie’s Clip Joint together, but now he’s got a rather more successful set-up…”
“That’s an understatement. He owns Martin & Martina. You must have seen their salons.”
“Oh, yes, I have. I’d never particularly paid attention to them, but they’ve got that big swirly silver logo, haven’t they? There’s one in Worthing.”
“Worthing, Brighton, Chichester, Horsham, Midhurst, Newhaven, Eastbourne, Hastings. Martin Rutherford seems to have the whole of the South Coast sewn up.”
“So every time Connie sees one of his salons, it must rather rub salt in the wound of the divorce.”
“Yes, Carole. Particularly since the name of the woman he left her for was Martina.”
“Ah. Not so much rubbing salt as rubbing her nose in it.” Carole tapped her chin reflectively. She was relaxing. The Chardonnay and Jude’s calming presence were distancing her from the horrors of the morning. “And has Connie found her equivalent of Martina? Has she got someone else?”
“No one permanent, as far as I know. I think she has had a few tentative encounters, but from what she said, most of them had a lot in common with car crashes. I don’t think Connie’s a great picker when it comes to men.”
“Pity. Because she seems to have a pleasant personality…You know, under the professional hairdresser banter…”
“Yes, she’s a lovely girl. And very pretty. Always beautifully groomed.”
“Well, she wasn’t this morning. No make-up, hair scrunched up any-old-how.”
“Really?” Jude looked thoughtful. “That’s most unlike her. I wonder why…”
“No idea. She implied she would have done her make-up in the salon…you know if Kyra hadn’t been
