different view were you not to co-operate fully with us.”
“Of course we will,” said Helga earnestly. “In what way do you wish us to co-operate?”
“We will require you to inform us…” Where had that ‘require’ come from? Carole realized she was dropping into ‘police-speak’. “We will require you to inform us of anything else you may know that might be of relevance to our investigation into the discoveries on Smalting Beach.”
She chose her words with care. With her background in the Home Office, Carole Seddon was well aware how serious a crime impersonating a police officer could be. So she deliberately hadn’t confirmed Helga’s assumption that their enquiries were official ones. As she walked her casuist’s tightrope, Carole curbed her natural instinct towards guilt.
“Oh, of course,” said Helga. “If there’s anything we know that’s relevant, of course we will tell you.”
Jude nodded with satisfaction. “Right. Good. Well, the first thing we want to know is: where is Mark Dennis? Do you have a way of contacting him?”
? Bones Under The Beach Hut ?
Twenty-Four
It turned out to be remarkably simple. Gray provided Carole and Jude with a new mobile number for Mark Dennis. The moment the Czeskys had left Woodside Cottage, Jude, trembling with excitement, keyed it into her phone.
A brief ringing tone was quickly replaced by a message informing her that the phone she was calling was switched off. She tried again. With exactly the same result.
Neither Carole nor Jude could disguise their disappointment. To have come so close to making contact with Mark Dennis and then to…
“I’ll keep trying it,” said Jude defiantly.
“Yes, of course. He’ll answer it soon.”
But neither of them really believed the optimism in Carole’s words.
¦
Smalting was the lead story on the television news that evening. The human remains that had been found buried under a beach hut there had been identified by the police. They had belonged to a small boy called Robin Cutter.
? Bones Under The Beach Hut ?
Twenty-Five
The name was familiar, but in front of their separate televisions Carole and Jude both needed reminding where they had heard it before. The news bulletin supplied all the promptings their memories required.
The story of Robin Cutter was a sad and painful one. He had been five at the time of his disappearance, and nothing had been seen of him in the intervening eight years. At the time, relatively soon after the high-profile abduction and murder of a local schoolgirl, there had been a huge uproar in West Sussex about the case. It aroused all the country’s latent visceral horror of paedophilia.
Though it was nearly ten-thirty at night, Jude went straight round to knock on the door of High Tor. The evening air was quite cool, reminding the denizens of Fethering that they were still only in June, not yet August.
Carole and Jude stayed watching television after the main bulletin, because the disappearance of Robin Cutter had happened in the area and there remained a very distant possibility that more information might be available on the local news.
Of course there wasn’t. The local news reported the story with characteristic ineptitude, but added nothing to what had been seen on the national bulletin. They showed the same shot of a smiling Robin Cutter, wearing a very new blue uniform, in one of those school photographs taken against a backdrop of cloud effects. They showed the same library footage of the boy’s distraught parents – Rory and Miranda – banked by police at a press conference, begging anyone who knew anything to come forward, and sending hopeless love to their son. The woman was slender with long bottle-blond hair, the husband chunky and bewildered. They faltered and were so overcome with emotion that one of the policemen had to finish reading their prepared statement.
“The mother looks vaguely familiar,” said Jude.
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know. It’ll come to me.”
They switched off the television. At the time Robin Cutter disappeared, Jude had not yet moved to Fethering and had only been aware of the national reaction to the case. That had been strong, but as nothing compared to the frenzy in West Sussex. Carole could vividly recall the local furore and hysteria about what was assumed to be another paedophile atrocity. “We must find out more about it,” she announced.
“What, now?”
“Yes, Jude. I’m sure there’ll be lots more on the internet.”
“You’re right. Will you bring your laptop down?”
Carole was given a moment’s pause by this novel idea. Though, after a slow and sceptical start, she had now embraced computer technology with considerable enthusiasm, she still somehow had not accepted the concept of her laptop’s portability. It never moved from the spare bedroom, which she used as a kind of study. “No, I think we’d better go upstairs,” she said.
Jude converted an incipient giggle into a sigh and followed her neighbour.
Carole’s view that there would be ‘lots more on the internet’ proved to be an understatement. There were literally hundreds of thousands of references to Robin Cutter, ranging from the straight facts of his disappearance on Wikipedia, newspaper and BBC websites, to the homicidal ravings of anti-paedophile fanatics. Though at the time of his supposed abduction bloggers had hardly existed, the contemporary ones still included his names in their lists of victims. As ever, the internet offered opportunities to the kind of people who used to write letters in block capitals with lots of underlining. It had become the soapbox of the unhinged bigot.
“God, it’s nasty,” said Jude, as they both looked at one of the wilder polemics. “I suppose paedophiles are about the only minority left that everyone feels justified in denouncing.”
“I’m sorry? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, it’s no longer politically acceptable to discriminate against women or foreigners or lesbians or gays. About the only targets left to criticize are paedophiles.”
Carole was appalled. “Jude, are you saying you support what they do?”
“Of course I’m not. I’m just saying it must be terrible to grow up with those kind of impulses.”
“What, you think they can’t help themselves?”
“Possibly not.”
Carole Seddon was so shocked to the core of her being that she could hardly get her words out. “But the things they do! You’re not going to try to defend those on the grounds that the poor paedophiles can’t help themselves?”
“No, no. I’m just saying that it must be very difficult to grow up discovering that the only way you can get sexual satisfaction is by committing an act that society reckons to be the ultimate taboo.”
Carole shuddered. “I am sorry. There are times when I just don’t understand you, Jude.” Which was true. There were many subjects on which the two of them were never going to think alike. Which perhaps made their friendship all the more remarkable. And strong.
“What I’m saying is that people lose all sense of proportion when paedophilia is mentioned. And there’s a lot of ignorance about the subject. I mean, do you remember that case of the paediatrician who had graffiti scrawled over her house?”
“Jude, paedophilia remains a horrible and unforgivable crime.”
“Yes, Carole, but…” Jude decided it wasn’t the moment to pursue her argument. She was as appalled as
