Saddled with buying the drinks, Kelvin Southwest all of a sudden became elaborately chivalrous and asked if he could treat ‘the lovely ladies’ as well. To Carole’s surprise, Jude responded quite sharply that they were fine, ‘thank you very much’.
When they eventually got their Chilean Chardonnays and were walking back to the function room, Carole asked her neighbour why she had bitten off Kelvin Southwest’s head. “It’s unlike you, Jude.”
“Yes. There’s just something I find rather creepy about him.”
“I agree. All that smarm about ‘lovely ladies’.”
“And from someone who really loathes women.”
“What?”
“Kelvin Southwest is not attracted to women.”
“But all his going on about ‘lovely ladies’…”
“It’s a front. Women don’t turn him on sexually.”
“How do you know, Jude?”
“I just know.”
Carole didn’t argue. She knew there were certain areas of life in which Jude’s instincts were much more accurate than her own. So maybe the fact that Kelvin Southwest appeared to fancy her more than he fancied Jude wasn’t such great news after all. “Then what do you think does turn him on sexually?”
“I don’t know,” replied Jude. And she shuddered.
? Bones Under The Beach Hut ?
Twenty-Nine
“Now you’ve all heard of scuba diving but the next question is: what do the letters ‘S – C – U – B – A’ stand for?”
At the tables around Reginald Flowers and his microphone, discussions erupted and a few confident contenders started writing down answers. Jude puffed out her cheeks in an expression of ignorance and looked around at her teammates. “Sea Coast…Underwater…Breath Aid…?” she hazarded.
“Not bad,” said the Captain of Smalting Golf Club. “But not right, I’m afraid. In fact, the correct answer is: ‘Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus’.”
“How do you know that?” asked Jude. “Have you ever done it?”
“Oh yes,” he assured her. “I used to do a lot of other sports before golf took over my life. I don’t know if I happened to mention it, but I am currently Captain of Smalting Golf Club.”
“Yes, you did mention it,” said Carole testily. “Quite a few times.”
The golf captain and his wife looked at her open-mouthed, as Carole, who had been appointed team scribe, wrote the answer down. There were still a distressing number of blanks on the form. She had hoped, with her crossword expertise, to be doing rather better on the quiz. But then she hadn’t really been anticipating questions on the names of the Arsenal team who won the 1994 European Cup Winners’ Cup. And German aircraft of the Second World War could hardly be described as her specialist subject. Nor indeed could the hits of Beyonce.
Though slightly soured by the fact that she knew so few answers, Carole was grudgingly impressed by the range of questions. It was fair enough, she supposed, that the subject matter covered should be broad. That ensured that no one – including, unfortunately, her – had any special advantage.
She wondered whether Reginald Flowers had taken his list from a book or the internet, or whether he’d done his own research. From her assessment of the man’s character, she thought the latter was probably the answer.
Reginald coughed again into his microphone. “Right, you’ve all had enough time on that one. Let’s move on. The next question is a literary one.” There was groaning from some of the tables, which encouraged Carole. She reckoned here was a subject on which she was in with a chance. “What is the name of the terrible school run by Wackford Squeers in Charles Dickens’s novel
As she smugly wrote down the answer, Carole was cheered by the sound of more groans. Through which sounded a raucous shout from Curt Holderness. “Was it maybe Edgington Manor School? I heard some well dodgy things went on there.”
Few of the quiz contestants took any notice of what he’d said. It was lost in the general badinage of disappointment about having another literary question. But the effect of the security officer’s words on the quizmaster was astonishing. Reginald Flowers’s face went suddenly red and he reached up to loosen his naval- looking tie. For a moment he looked as if he was about to throw up. Dora Pinchbeck stared at him with a mixture of alarm and compassion. When Reginald next spoke there was a distinct wobble in his husky voice.
“Right, have you all got that one? The school in
Carole raised her eyes to heaven. How could any normal human being be expected to answer that?
Jude nudged her and whispered, “Dave Davies.” Carole wrote it down. But then she’d never thought of Jude as being quite a
¦
They hadn’t won. In fact, when the answers were read out, the combined intellects of Carole, Jude, the Captain of Smalting Golf Club and his silent wife had only managed to beat one other table. Carole left the Crown and Anchor feeling a little disgruntled. Of course, the quiz had been just for fun. It didn’t matter who won. But she had rather prided herself on her general knowledge and was disappointed not to have done better. Though she hid it well, Carole Seddon did have a surprisingly competitive instinct.
She and Jude were in the car park on their way home when Carole suddenly remembered she’d left her cardigan in the function room. She went back to fetch it, annoyed at having forgotten it and equally annoyed at having brought it in the first place. Sometimes the instinctive caution in her own nature infuriated Carole. Nobody else had taken a cardigan. Everyone else had trusted the warmth of the June evening, without worries about the fact ‘that it might get a bit nippy later’. Sometimes just being Carole Seddon was an extraordinarily exhausting experience.
The lights were off in the function room, but enough illumination came from outside for her to see the way to her table and pick up the offending cardigan from the back of the chair. As she moved towards the main pub she was stopped by the sound of voices she recognized.
Between the function room and the bar ran a narrow corridor that led to the toilets. Carole shrank back into the shadows to listen. The two men, she reckoned, must have just been using the facilities, and fortunately the first words she heard from Kelvin Southwest were exactly the question she would have wished to put to Curt Holderness.
“What was all that about the school? You know, what you shouted out to old Reg?”
“You get a lot of useful information when you work for the police, Kel. Some of it information that people would rather never became public knowledge.”
“Are you saying you’ve got something on Reg Flowers?”
“You bet I have.”
“Something he’d pay for you to keep quiet about?”
“He’s already made one payment, yes. But now he’s not quite so forthcoming. So I think I need to have another chat with Mr Flowers rather soon. See if we can sort out some…more regular arrangement. I don’t think he’ll argue. Did you see how he reacted when I mentioned the name of the school?”
“Mm. I’d heard he was a teacher. That where he used to work?”
“Edgington Manor School, yes.”
“I haven’t heard of it. Is it local?”
“Oh no. Up in the Midlands. But someone I knew on the force worked up there before he was transferred to West Sussex. And I met the bloke at someone’s retirement do, and I told him I’d got this security officer job for the beach huts, and I was telling him about the set-up with the SBHA and what have you, and when by chance I mentioned the name of Reginald Flowers…well, he pounced on it and gave me chapter and verse.”
“Yeah? So what had old Reg been up to?”
