The Fethering Mysteries 12; Bones Under The Beach Hut

tight-arsed upper middle class – is that what you think is happening? Well, it isn’t. This lot…” he gestured wildly round the bar “…this lot haven’t got any real class. Add all the real class in the bar together and the lump you’d come up with would be smaller than my little finger.”

The greeter in black kept trying to interrupt, but the tall man seemed only just to be getting into his flow. “This whole area is so bloody up itself. Oh, it’s all right if you’ve spent your life in some bloody office, working in insurance or banking or some other way of screwing money out of people. But no one has interest in the individuals who really add something to the value of this world. Look at all these people…” Another uncoordinated gesture round the bar. “Forget their class – if you added together all the artistic talent they’ve got, it wouldn’t be enough to cover my bloody fingernail. But you’re happy to sell drinks to these talent-free clones, aren’t you? Whereas someone like me, someone who’s slightly different, someone with a bit of artistic talent, who doesn’t fit into one of the moulds that you’ve –”

How long he might have gone on who could say – he certainly seemed to have got into his groove – but he was at this point interrupted by a woman who had just entered the bar. She was a short plump blond in her forties of rather faded beauty and with permanent worry lines between her eyebrows. Her dress was blue cotton with white broderie anglaise trimmings.

“Gray,” she said, with a hint of a foreign accent. “Come on, you must come home.”

“Why should I?” he asked truculently. But it was the truculence of a little boy who had already conceded victory. He could have protested to the pub’s greeter all day, but this woman – presumably wife or girlfriend – had instant control over him. With a gesture of contempt to everyone in the room, the man turned and meekly followed the woman out of The Crab Inn.

Carole and Jude, who had been too absorbed by the scene at the bar to speak up until this point, both turned to Reginald Flowers for some explanation.

“Gray Czesky,” he announced. “Calls himself an artist.”

“And has he got one of the beach huts?” asked Carole.

“Good heavens, no. We don’t want people like that in the Smalting Beach Hut Association. He’s got a house on the front.”

“What, here in Smalting?” asked Carole, surprised.

“But those houses on the front are all rather splendid. He doesn’t look the sort to own one of them. Unless he’s a very successful artist.”

“So far as I know,” said Reginald Flowers, “he’s completely unsuccessful. I’ve no idea whether he has any talent or not.”

“Those are his watercolours on the wall over there. I noticed the name while we were getting the drinks.”

“Are they? Well, maybe he makes a few bob selling those.”

“Perhaps he’s got a private income?”

“Of a kind. You see, the one thing Gray Czesky does have is a rich wife. That’s why he can afford to live on the seafront at Smalting.”

“Presumably it was his wife who took him out just now?”

“Yes. Helga. Constantly having to bail him out of somewhere. God, what some women are prepared to put up with.”

“It must be lurve,” Jude suggested.

That got a very dismissive snort from the President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association. The two women got the impression that love in any of its forms did not register highly on his list of priorities.

For the rest of their meal Reginald Flowers moved back into ranting anti-immigrant mode, so that Carole and Jude were quite relieved when it was time to settle up and return to the beach. Their lunch companion didn’t leave at the same time. He had been nursing the contents of his second pint and clearly planned to eke it out a little longer. Saying their goodbyes, both women were again aware of the deep loneliness in his eyes. He couldn’t really function properly without his haven of The Bridge to go to.

As they walked back towards Fowey with Gulliver, Carole looked up at the three or four splendid houses on the Smalting promenade. Someone who lived in one of them – like Gray Czesky – had a perfect observation point to see everything that happened on the beach. It was worth bearing in mind.

The other thought that struck her was that in just a week’s time she’d have Gaby and Lily with her.

¦

They didn’t stay long in front of Fowey after lunch. With sad British predictability, the weather had turned. While they had been inside The Crab Inn the cloudless sky of the morning had become overcast with dull clouds and the rain was starting to spit down.

In the Renault on the way back to Fethering, Carole and Jude assessed the new information they had got from Reginald Flowers and were forced to admit it wasn’t very much. They were faced by an impasse, which would probably remain until the police revealed more about the human remains that had been discovered. Carole felt a bit headachey after the lunchtime wine and the two women parted at the gate of High Tor. By then it was raining heavily.

Once she’d brushed the sand off Gulliver, Carole sat down in her front room with the Sunday Times, and was annoyed to find half an hour later that she had dozed off. She disapproved strongly of going to sleep during the day, regarding it as one of the many slippery slopes towards old age that must be avoided at all costs.

She tried to concentrate on the paper, but couldn’t. Her headache was worse and she went upstairs to take a couple of paracetamol. While up there she switched on her laptop and checked the BBC website in the forlorn hope that there might be some more news about the discovery on Smalting Beach. Needless to say, there wasn’t.

She felt restless, slightly anxious about the following Sunday. The frustration she and Jude had come up against in the car was still with her. Despite the poverty of their information on the subject, her mind kept circling round what had been found under Quiet Harbour. She felt she needed to do something to move their investigation forward, but she couldn’t think what.

Then she remembered the mobile phone number that she had squeezed out of Kelvin Southwest. A contact for Curt Holderness. She didn’t know what hours security officers worked, but she could at least leave a message asking him to call her. She rang the number.

To her surprise, it was answered instantly. “Curt Holderness,” he said in a voice of lazy confidence.

“Good afternoon. You don’t know me. My name’s Carole Seddon.”

“Oh, I think I’ve heard the name. Wasn’t it you who discovered the charring at the bottom of the beach hut at Smalting, you know, the one where a rather nasty discovery was made?”

“Yes, that was me.”

“Well, what can I do for you?”

“It was actually in connection with the beach huts that I was calling you.”

“Did Kelvin Southwest put you on to me?” The way he said it, the question was clearly an important one.

“Yes.”

Curt Holderness’s voice seemed to relax. “Good old Kel. We work very well together, you know, Kel and me.”

“Oh?”

“Anyone’s got a problem with the beach huts, we can usually sort it out between us.”

“Good.”

“Rules are there to be bent, after all, aren’t they?” Carole wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about, so she waited while he elucidated. “Someone needs something done – or something not done. A blind eye turned perhaps…? Kel and I can usually sort something out. Someone wants to stay overnight in one of the huts, maybe use it as an office…well, it’s not doing anyone any harm, is it? Kel and I can usually see our way to being accommodating about things.”

“So you bend the rules in exchange for favours from people?” asked Carole, remembering Kelvin Southwest’s favoured method of doing business.

“Yes, favours.” He relished the word, then chuckled. “Sometimes favours of the folding variety. So, what is it you would like me to fix for you, Carole? Want to install a little generator, do you, so’s you can run a little fridge off