The Fethering Mysteries 12; Bones Under The Beach Hut

“Well, let’s just say he didn’t get to full retirement age at Edgington Manor School. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he left the place under something of a cloud.”

? Bones Under The Beach Hut ?

Thirty

On the way back from the Crown and Anchor to their respective homes, Carole told Jude what she had just overheard.

“So you reckon Curt Holderness is blackmailing Reginald Flowers?”

“I can’t put any other interpretation on what he said.”

“But you didn’t hear exactly what had happened? Why he’d left the school under a cloud?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Carole, before adding darkly, “but I could make an educated guess. I think we should try to talk to Reginald as soon as possible. Are you free tomorrow morning?”

“Certainly am.”

¦

Carole had reckoned that Reginald Flowers would be an early bird on Smalting Beach. Goodness only knew where he lived, where he spent his nights, but The Bridge was clearly the centre of his daily life. So Carole had decided to get there at half-past seven on the Saturday and give Gulliver his morning walk on Smalting rather than Fethering Beach. Jude, whose body clock favoured a more leisurely getting-up routine, was silent and, by her usually sunny standards, almost grumpy.

Still, both women had the sense that their investigation might finally be getting somewhere. Curt Holderness’s admission the night before that he was blackmailing Reginald Flowers offered intriguing revelations.

But nothing, as it turned out, was going to be revealed that morning. The bar and padlocks on the front of The Bridge were locked in place, and there was no sign of the hut’s owner.

“Staying in bed with his bronchitis,” Jude suggested. “He did sound fairly ropey last night.”

“Yes,” Carole agreed glumly.

They took Gulliver for a long walk along Smalting Beach, as far as the headland that separated it from Fethering. But when they returned to the crescent of beach huts, there was still no sign of Reginald Flowers.

Disconsolately, they returned to the Renault, wondering who they knew who might have an address for the chairman of the SBHA.

As soon as she got back to High Tor, Carole checked her copy of The Hut Parade. There was a landline number for Reginald Flowers, but each time she tried it, the phone just rang and rang. Not even an answering machine message.

Carole Seddon took out her frustration by cleaning High Tor to within an inch of its life.

¦

Next door at Woodside Cottage, Jude was equally restless. She tried to read the manuscript of a friend’s book about the origins of acupuncture, but interesting though she found the subject, she found her mind kept slipping away from the text.

Till they contacted Reginald Flowers, there was nothing they could do on the Robin Cutter case.

It was early afternoon before she realized that there was still something she could try doing on the Mark Dennis case. She retrieved the phone number Gray Czesky had written down two days earlier, and keyed it into her mobile.

To her astonishment it was answered. By Mark Dennis.

He sounded subdued, but not adversarial. Jude didn’t try any subterfuge, no pretence that she was a member of the police force. She just said that she was a friend of Philly’s and she remembered meeting him with her. She said that she and her friend Carole would really like to meet up with him. Without demur, Mark suggested a rendezvous at six that evening in the Boatswain’s Arms in Littlehampton.

“How did he sound?” asked Carole when Jude came rushing round to High Tor with the news.

“A bit sort of tentative. Vague maybe.”

“But not frightened?” She was remembering Nuala Cullan’s description of the last time she saw her husband.

“No, I wouldn’t have said frightened.”

¦

Mark Dennis was not there when they got to the Boatswain’s Arms. It was a roughish pub, the opposite end of the spectrum from The Crab Inn at Smalting. Littlehampton was like that. Although undergoing selective gentrification by expensive new developments of flats near the sea and the trendy modernity of the East Beach cafe, parts of the town remained resolutely tacky. When Carole and Jude asked for Chilean Chardonnay at the counter, the Boatswain’s Arms barman only offered them ‘White Wine’. It was rather too sweet for either of their tastes. Lachrymose country and western music whined away in the background.

They sat down at a sticky round table and were aware of the scrutiny of the pub’s other, silent customers. The atmosphere wasn’t exactly hostile, but it wasn’t welcoming either. Carole and Jude realized at the same time that they were the only women there. The chalkboard ads for Sky Sports suggested the Boatswain’s Arms was a male haven, a place where lugubrious men dropped in after work to sink a silent pint or two, while they put off returning to their wives and other responsibilities.

Carole and Jude were both very excited at the prospect of meeting Mark Dennis. Finally, it seemed, at least one part of their investigation was making headway. Though neither of them could imagine that Mark himself had anything to do with the placing of Robin Cutter’s remains under Quiet Harbour, they were still convinced he had important information to give them.

But as the minutes after their six o’clock agreed meeting time passed, the two women started to worry that he wasn’t going to turn up. In her head Jude tried to analyse exactly how he had sounded on the phone. Not frightened, no, but certainly nervous. Maybe he’d agreed to their meeting on the spur of the moment, and then thought better of the idea as its reality approached. Jude wished she’d asked Gray Czesky for an address as well as a phone number for Mark. Though the painter might well not have known one.

It was nearly six-thirty when the two women exchanged looks. Both were thinking the same thing: it was time to give their proposed meeting up as a bad job. But at that moment Mark Dennis came in through the door.

Had she not been expecting him, had they just passed in the street, Jude would not have recognized the young man. When she’d last seen Mark Dennis, probably in the April, he had been slender and gym-toned. With his sharp features, outdoor tan and straw-coloured hair, he and Philly Rose had made a singularly attractive couple.

But in the intervening months Mark Dennis had put on a lot of weight. The sideways spread of his face had made his eyes, nose and chin look too close together. And the weight gain seemed to have taken him by surprise. He hadn’t yet adjusted his wardrobe to cope with it. The buttons down the front of his short-sleeved shirt strained against their buttonholes, and his thighs were very tight against his jeans.

His expression also was of someone taken by surprise, someone bewildered by what life had done to him. Recognizing Jude, he gazed rather blearily at the two women as she introduced him to Carole.

Asked what he’d like to drink, Mark Dennis opted for mineral water and Carole went to the bar to order it. She wondered for a moment whether the Boatswain’s Arms would stock something as girlie as mineral water, but fortunately they did.

When she rejoined them, Carole found Mark already deep in conversation with Jude, apparently with no inhibitions about discussing his missing months. “It was very odd. I was just out of it.”

“How do you mean ‘out of it’?” asked Jude.

“Not here. On another planet.” His voice still carried the vagueness that she had noticed on the phone.

“Take us back to the beginning of May,” she said. “When you left Philly.” He winced at the reminder. “Tell us what happened, that is, if you don’t mind?”

“No, I don’t mind. I’ve been trying to make sense of it myself for some time. It might help to talk about it.”