Jonquil knew the power she had over him, and gloried in it. She was an attractive woman, probably about the same age as Jude, but thin as a rake. The long blonded hair, though perhaps a bit too young for her, had been expertly done. She was dressed in the kind of tight sweater and jeans that people with her figure could get away with.
‘Piers,’ said Jude, ‘I think I’ll go now.’
‘No, don’t.’
‘I think I should.’
He didn’t argue any further. Jonquil had drained the will out of him. ‘Look, I’ll give you a call,’ he said. ‘I can explain.’
As she went out through the front door, Jude wondered how many men had used that pathetic, hopeless expression over the years. ‘I can explain.’ And how many women had accepted those explanations, knowing all the time that they were as false as the lies that had got the man into the position of needing to explain in the first place?
It was nearly dark, but at least the rain from earlier in the afternoon had stopped. Jude didn’t know exactly where she was, but she remembered the car going through the small village of Goffham just before they reached their destination. And in that small village there had been a pub. She’d walk back there, have a glass of wine — no, a large Scotch — and phone for a cab to take her back to Fethering.
Untidily parked on the gravel outside the house there was now a Nissan Figaro, presumably the car in which Jonquil Targett had arrived. Its baby-blue paint looked somehow ineffectual beside the classic scarlet of the E-Type. As she walked past, Jude noticed something white draped haphazardly across the Figaro’s back seat.
It was a wedding dress.
Mid morning on the Sunday, Carole rang the number Susan Holland had given her for Donna Grodsky. When the phone was answered there was a baby crying in the background. She explained that she was trying to find out what had happened to Marina.
‘Are you police or something?’ asked the suspicious voice from the other end of the line.
Carole was only fleetingly tempted to lie. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Good. Because they were bloody useless when Marina originally disappeared.’
‘I was wondering if you would be prepared to talk to me about what might have happened to her?’
Donna Grodsky didn’t sound keen. ‘What do I get out of it?’ she asked.
The only answer Carole could come up with sounded a bit feeble to her. ‘I could buy you lunch.’
As it turned out, that was spot on. ‘Yeah, all right. I never get out of the bloody house these days, what with the baby and everything.’
She gave the name of a pub, the George’s Head in the Moulsecoomb area of Brighton, and they agreed that Carole would appear there the following morning at twelve. ‘It’s a good time, because sometimes the little bugger has a kip round then.’
As she put the phone down, Carole felt a warm glow. She did get a charge out of conducting an investigation independently of Jude. Yes, they worked very well together, but Carole didn’t really need Jude. With her Home Office background, it was Carole Seddon who supplied the intellectual rigour in their investigations. Her neighbour’s method had always been based more on intuition and outrageous good luck. Not that she was jealous, of course, but Jude did just swan through life so easily.
Little did Carole suspect that next door at Woodside Cottage her neighbour was still crying.
Jude’s mobile rang on the Sunday evening. The number calling was Piers Targett’s. She answered it instantly, but it wasn’t Piers at the other end.
‘Hello. I’m calling on Piers’ mobile. It’s Jonquil. We met earlier.’
‘I remember.’ What on earth did the woman want? To pour out more poison about her husband? To hurt Jude even more?
‘I gather you were with Piers when he found Reggie Playfair’s body at the tennis court. .’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you see him take the poor old bugger’s mobile phone?’
‘What? No, I didn’t.’
But the scene came back very vividly. Finding Reggie lying on the court. . Then Piers sending her off to fetch his iPhone from the car. . because he wanted a moment alone with the corpse of his old friend. . If he planned to purloin the dead man’s mobile, he’d created the perfect opportunity.
‘Well, Piers has got it. I saw it in his jacket pocket, recognized it straight away — Reggie had this case specially made for it in purple and green stripes — the Lockleigh House club colours.’
And Jonquil Targett echoed Jude’s thoughts exactly as she went on, ‘Now, why on earth would Piers want to take Reggie’s mobile?’
SEVENTEEN
Brighton is a big city and Carole Seddon only really knew the centre of it. The sea front, the Pier, the Royal Pavilion, the intricate trendy thoroughfares of The Lanes, the Marina, all of those were familiar to her. But she’d never been to Moulsecoomb before.
She was characteristically early for her meeting with Donna Grodsky, drawing the Renault neatly into the pub car park just before eleven forty-five. The George’s Head did not look at all Carole Seddon’s sort of pub. It was painted white, but every outside feature — window frames and surrounds, doorways, mock-Tudor beams and guttering were picked out in a garish red. An array of colourfully chalked blackboard signs stood outside, offering happy hours, meal deals, senior specials, karaoke nights and the inevitable Sky Sports.
Carole, whose attitudes had changed since she became a regular at Fethering’s Crown and Anchor, went instantly back to her default position of not being ‘a pub person’. Still, she was at the George’s Head in Moulsecoomb in the cause of investigation, so she swallowed her prejudices and entered.
She was surprised by how noisy it was at that time of day. Part of the sound came from the massive screens at each end of the bar, one of them apparently tuned to sport and the other to a pop-music channel. But there were also a lot of customers in there, all talking loudly and none paying any attention to either of the televisions.
Elderly couples sat at tables, consulting menus with great concentration as they tried to decide which senior special to opt for when orders started to be taken at twelve. Standing at the bar were quite a few of what Carole thought of as ‘workmen’ (in other words men with faded tattoos in sleeveless T-shirts), but also around the tables a good few of what she thought of as ‘single mothers’ (with buggies and rather newer tattoos). It was this demographic that Carole expected shortly to be joined by Donna Grodsky.
She advanced awkwardly to the bar, feeling every eye in the place was on her (though actually nobody showed any interest). Agonizing over whether a pub like the George’s Head in Moulsecoomb would stock Chilean Chardonnay, and indeed whether she should have an alcoholic drink when she was not only driving but also investigating, her thoughts were interrupted by a shout of ‘Hi! Are you Carole?’
She turned to face what had to be Donna Grodsky. The girl, as she had said she would be on the phone, was dressed in a gold hoodie and jeans with a lot of diamante on them. Her hair with blonde highlights was scraped back into a scrunchy so tight that it was flat against her head. The face was heavily made up with eyelashes too long to be real, and a silver stud pierced her lower lip.
In the buggy beside her, in immaculately clean blankets and Babygro, with a tiny blue baseball cap on his head, lay her baby, angelically sleeping. Carole wouldn’t in the past have been much good at estimating infant’s ages, but up to speed thanks to Lily’s appearance in her life, she would have estimated he was about four months old.
‘Hello, you must be Donna.’
‘Dead right.’
‘How did you know it was me?’
Donna Grodsky looked around the pub and grinned. No one else was wearing a Burberry raincoat. Or such sensible shoes. ‘I just knew.’
‘Now, can I get you a drink?’
