The Torso in the Town

by Simon Brett

  ‘Five hours seems quite a long time for just that.’

  ‘Ah,’ chipped in James Lister, who felt he had been silent too long, ‘that’s because Roddy’s their number one suspect. The police’d heard some of the things he’d got up to with his South Downs Sausage, you see, so they reckoned the torso was the result of a sex game that went wrong.’

  This tastelessness triggered another bark of male laughter. Roddy, to give him his due, did not participate. Despite his drunkenness, he seemed to have slightly more sensitivity than his companions.

  ‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘they didn’t question me as if I was a suspect. The reason that it took so long is that I have a terrible memory for dates. Just about tell you when my own birthday is, but that’s it. So all these “when exactly did you take possession of Pelling House, and when exactly did you sell it?” questions got me rather confused. Because I’m afraid the whole period while I was selling up is a bit of a blur.’

  ‘Like every day for you, eh?’ guffawed James Lister.

  In a practised way, Roddy again ignored this, and amplified his comments. His friends knew the story, had heard it many times, but he needed to tell the newcomer what had happened to him. There was a note of self-justification in his voice. ‘I went through a bad patch round then. I’d invested a lot in the pleasure-boat franchise down by Fedborough Bridge . . . do you know where I mean?’ Jude nodded. Ruefully he continued, ‘Bit of a mess down there now, I know, but I did have big plans for it. Bought the site from Bob Bracken, old bloke who was retiring . . .’

  ‘Still lives in Fedborough, though.’ James Lister was ready with the information. As Debbie Carlton had said to Carole, nobody ever left Fedborough. Or perhaps the memory of those who did was immediately erased from the collective consciousness.

  ‘Yes, and Bob’d run it as a nice simple business, selling ice creams and teas, taking tourists on his motor boat up and down the Fether.’ Roddy Hargreaves sighed. ‘But of course that wasn’t good enough for me. I had much bigger ambitions. I was going to have rowing boats, motor launches, trips down to the sea at Fethering, even hoped to build a small marina. But the Town Committee were against it . . . or against me, I’ll never know . . . so they got the planners to back-pedal – never a difficult thing to achieve round here and . . . well . . . My money was trickling away as fast as the little harbour I’d dredged out was silting up again. And it was round that time the marriage was breaking up, so . . .’

  The gesture which faded away with his words seemed to express the futility of all ambitions.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jude.

  ‘Very nice of you, but you don’t need to be. My own fault. What, when I was in the Navy, they would have called “a self-inflicted wound” . . . like getting an infection from a tattooist’s dirty needle. Fact is, I’ve always been crap with money. Lost a packet in the Lloyd’s crash and . . .’ a shrug ‘ . . . so it goes on. Money and me can’t wait to be parted. Just seems to trickle away.’

  ‘Mostly down the urinal here.’ James Lister was inevitably ready with his quip. And, equally inevitably, the laugh followed.

  ‘Did the police ask you if you had any idea who the torso might have been?’

  ‘Oh yes, Jude, they did. And I’m afraid I couldn’t give any very helpful answers. As I said, that whole period’s a bit of a blur. Mind you,’ he continued, as if suddenly thinking of the idea, ‘I don’t know what other answer they were expecting me to give. “Oh yes, officer, of course I knew there was a dismembered corpse down in the cellar all the time I lived there. I just didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to cause any trouble.”’

  This too got a laugh from the other three men, but Jude was not certain Roddy had delivered it as a joke. There was a pain behind his words, perhaps an awareness of what he had become. Roddy Hargreaves had once had higher ambitions than ending up as a barfly in a Fedborough pub, recycling stale conversation and jokes with three old bores.

  ‘Good Lord, my glass is empty! That’s a nasty shock for a chap! Emergency – pint transfusion, please!’ James Lister got his grunt of laughter. ‘Your shout, I think, Roddy.’

  The ordering of another round coincided with the appearance from the kitchen of a waitress bearing heaped plates of food. ‘Two South Downs Sausages!’ she called out.

  ‘Two?’ James Lister winked at Jude. ‘Sure you can manage two at the same time?’

  At other times she might have given the innuendo a sharp answer, but on this occasion she just smiled and turned to Roddy Hargreaves, who was having trouble getting his wallet out of his jeans’ back pocket. Once again he swayed perilously on the bar stool.

  Just before moving across to join Carole with their South Downs Sausages, she looked straight into Roddy Hargreaves’s eyes, her brown ones probing the bloodshot blue of his.

  ‘So you really have no idea who the torso might be?’

  The bleary eyes became focused in a moment of intelligence and caution.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No idea at all.’

  Chapter Nine

  Their meal was slightly awkward. They could not be unaware of Roddy Hargreaves and his chortling coterie at the bar, and Jude was not offended but rather puzzled by Carole’s standoffishness when she’d been invited to join them. Carole herself was painfully aware of yet another example of the spikiness in her character. Just being in a pub had started up again the cycle of recrimination about having made a fool of herself with Ted Crisp.

  And it wasn’t the moment for Jude to give a resumé of the little information she had got from Roddy Hargreaves.

  So they didn’t talk much as they waded through their plates of South Downs Sausages. Jude had two large Chilean Chardonnays to drink, but Carole refused the offer of a second for herself. She didn’t even finish her first, feeling that the punishment she deserved was not yet complete. Jude, not usually bothered about waste, still didn’t like to see alcohol going undrunk, so she downed the remains of Carole’s glass as they rose from the table.

  ‘Oh, just a minute,’ she said.

  Carole hovered by the pub door, feeling more than ever a social outcast, as Jude went back to the group of men.

  ‘Pleasure to meet you all,’ she said. ‘And it’s suddenly struck me . . . are you the James Lister who I’ve heard does Town Walks round Fedborough . . .?’

  He beamed. ‘The very same, at your service. Always at the service of the ladies,’ he smirked.

  ‘When do they happen?’

  ‘Sunday morning at eleven. I always service the ladies at eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning.’ He winked in a manner which was intended to be roguish rather than repellent, but failed to achieve its object. ‘Allow me to present my card.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Jude. ‘I’d really like to find out more about Fedborough.’

  ‘Let’s go the long way round,’ she said when they got outside the pub. The June day was dwindling to twilight, but the tall frontages of Fedborough’s houses still looked unimpeachably respectable.

  ‘Did you find out much?’

  ‘Not a lot. You could have heard anything I did find out.’

  ‘Yes.’ A blush suffused Carole’s pale cheeks. ‘I’m sorry. There are certain situations when . . .’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Jude easily. ‘Don’t worry. Roddy Hargreaves denied knowing the torso was there while he owned the house.’

  ‘Presumably he would have made that denial, whether it was true or even if he had killed and dismembered the body himself.’

  ‘Exactly. Still, we’ve made contact. If we need to follow up—’ Jude looked at the card in her hand. ‘Do you fancy doing a guided walk round Fedborough on Sunday morning?’

  ‘Well, I . . . What would be achieved by that?’

  Jude shrugged. ‘Bit of background. Get to know the place. Find out perhaps what horrors lurk behind all this middle-class respectability.’

  ‘All right. I’m game for it. Why’re we going this way?’

  ‘Th
is is Pelling Street, which in the perverse way of English country towns is not where one will find the Pelling Arms, that being in the High Street, but is, however, where one will find Pelling House.’

  ‘Ah. We’re joining the ghouls, are we?’

  ‘If you want to put it that way, Carole, yes. Though I doubt if there’ll be many of those around now. Unless the police release more information soon, I think this murder will be very much less than a nine days’ wonder.’

  ‘The gossip won’t stop.’

  ‘Not in Fedborough, no. But I don’t think many more out-of-towners will bother to come down here in search of cheap thrills.’

  They were now within sight of the house. A Land Rover Discovery was parked opposite. ‘Ah, they’re back,’ said Jude.

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Kim and Grant. That’s their car. They must have been allowed back into the house.’

  They walked past the red-brick façade and the fine white portico without breaking step. No bloodthirsty onlookers stood drooling outside. There was no police tape, no notices visible. Pelling House had lost all signs of its recent notoriety and reverted to being just an expensive, respectable dwelling in Fedborough.

  ‘Police didn’t really stay long,’ Carole observed thoughtfully. ‘Body discovered on Saturday night and by Tuesday the house is no longer sealed up. Well, maybe the cellar’s still closed, but otherwise the police would appear to have finished their on-site investigations.’

  ‘So, from the knowledge of their ways you gleaned in the Home Office, what would you say that indicated?’

  ‘One of two things,’ Carole replied. ‘Perhaps they’ve found no signs of anything untoward in the rest of the house and therefore concluded that the body was either killed in the cellar or moved to the cellar post mortem. So the cellar is the only part of the house they’re continuing to examine . . .’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or the police have already reached their conclusions as to who the torso belonged to, and how she was killed. Which would mean that their investigation is at an end.’

  Chapter Ten

  The beach was the only place in Fethering where Carole Seddon felt secure. Ted Crisp never went on the beach. Indeed, he managed to conduct his whole life as if ignorant of the fact that Fethering was on the coast. His base was inside the Crown and Anchor, and for all the difference its location made to his lifestyle, the pub could have been in any part of the British Isles.

  To get to the beach, though, now involved a detour for Carole. The direct route from High Tor went too close for comfort to the Crown and Anchor, so, resisting Gulliver’s pulling the other way in his enthusiasm to be amongst the delectable smells of the shoreline, she walked determinedly along to the banks of the Fether, and followed the river to the shingle by Fethering Yacht Club.

  Carole’s spirits were low again that Wednesday morning. The detour made her feel foolish, bringing back the bilious taste of all her other foolishness. And the revival of excitement brought on by thinking about the Fedborough torso now seemed another example of over-reaction. She and Jude had so little to go on, so little information, there was no point in even thinking about the mystery. The fact that the Roxbys had been allowed back into Pelling House probably meant that the police already had the investigation neatly tied up with a bow on top.

  And now she couldn’t even discuss it. With characteristic casualness, as they parted the evening before, Jude had said, ‘I’m going to be away for a few days. Back Saturday, I should think. So hope we’re on for the Town Walk on Sunday.’

  It was typical. Jude was always making remarks like that, and never backing them up with any detail. Where was she going to be ‘away for a few days’? Was it work or pleasure? Who was she going to be with? Would that be work or pleasure? But, as ever, before these supplementary questions could be posed, the moment had passed.

  What increased Carole’s frustration was the knowledge that if she had managed to ask any of them, Jude would have given straight, truthful answers. The lack of precision which surrounded her life was not a result of deliberate concealment; but opportunities to ask about its basics were rare and, when they arose, seemed to flash by. After many months of what, by Carole’s standards, was close friendship, the sum total of the facts she knew about her neighbour was distressingly small.

  Jude had done a lot of varied things in her life. She had almost certainly been married at some point, and had had a lot of lovers. She might still have a lot of lovers, for all Carole knew. Jude had possibly once been an actress, she may have worked in catering, she’d certainly lived abroad for a while. She showed sympathy for New Age ideas, and may have done some work as an alternative therapist. She was fifty-five years old.

  And that was it. A pathetically meagre haul of information. Carole didn’t know where Jude had been brought up, where she had gone to school, whether she’d had further education of any kind. She didn’t even know her neighbour’s surname, for God’s sake. Or what Jude lived on. Though her home, Woodside Cottage, was filled with second-hand furniture and gave the impression that money was tight, she was still capable of sudden generosity and extravagance.

  For Carole, who liked everything in her life defined by detail, this ignorance was extremely galling. Jude’s personal history was like the horizon; all the time you felt you were getting closer, it remained exactly the same distance away.

  Carole let Gulliver off his lead, and he dashed off over the heaped pebbles to the flat sand, kicking up little flurries in his excitement. The tide was receding, exposing expanses of deep grey which in the June sunlight gradually turned lighter and crustier. Maybe there would be a good summer this year . . . Maybe not . . . Global warming had recently made such changes to the climate that even the weather-wise fishermen of Fethering no longer trusted their own predictions.

  Carole found herself looking up towards the Yacht Club and the adjacent seawall that protected the beach against the fast tidal flow of the Fether. From what seemed like another life, her mind instantly pictured Ted Crisp helping in the rescue of a teenage boy from the river mud. Resolutely, she turned her back on the scene and strode across the crunchy sand, searching for new thoughts to drive out the unwelcome image.

  The only subject that would engage her mind was the limbless body in Fedborough. If the police had reached a solution, then there would be something about it on the news. But if they hadn’t . . . maybe continuing her investigation would be worthwhile after all . . .

  But how? Because of her standoffishness in the Coach and Horses the previous evening, Carole still had only one contact with any connection to the case. Debbie Carlton. But the interior designer seemed to have told her everything she knew that might be relevant. How could Carole justify further questioning, and indeed what further questions could she ask?

  Behind her glasses the pale blue eyes scrunched up with the effort of concentration as she tried to get her thoughts in order and to draw a line of logic through them.

  Jude’s description of the state of the body made Carole increasingly sure that it had not been killed in the cellar of Pelling House. The crime – or accident, it could still just be an accident – had happened elsewhere and the body had then been moved. If she’d seen the torso herself, Carole might have been able to judge whether the dismemberment had also taken place elsewhere. Her ex-Home Office reference library contained some pretty gruesome photographs of pre-mortem and post-mortem injuries. But the description relayed by Jude hadn’t been detailed enough for her to form a reliable opinion. All she knew was that the removal of the limbs had been a neat job.

  Another argument for the death taking place elsewhere was the collapse of the cardboard box which had contained the remains. The damp, or rising water, in the Pelling House cellar had got to that, but had little effect on the torso, suggesting that mummification had taken place before the body was put in the box. Carole wished she could have seen that box. Once again she felt unreasoning resentment against the advantages the police for
ce have over the enthusiastic amateur.

  The movement of the body to Pelling House could have happened during the ownership of the Roxbys (which was very unlikely), the Carltons, or of Roddy Hargreaves . . . and maybe of his wife. He’d talked about a marriage breaking up, which might well have coincided with his moving from the marital home . . . She must try to find out something about Mrs Hargreaves.

  Carole strained for other connections, for other pointers, other clues. All she could come up with was the moment of hesitation before Debbie Carlton had said her husband rarely went down to the cellar, and the flash of caution exchanged between Debbie and her mother when Carole had asked if they knew who the dead woman might be.

  Not much, but it was all she had. Carole called to a reluctant Gulliver and set off back up the beach to make a phone call.

  ‘Debbie, I just wanted to say thank you so much for coffee yesterday . . .’

  ‘My pleasure. It was nice to see you.’

  ‘And I also wanted to apologize . . .’

  ‘I told you there’s no need. In my line of business people are always blowing hot and cold. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I wanted to apologize for. I’m sorry that I went on so much about the . . . you know, the discovery in Pelling House.’

  ‘If I hadn’t wanted to talk about it, I wouldn’t have done.’

  ‘No, but I’m sorry. I got a bit carried away,’ said Carole, who had spent her entire life in avoidance of getting carried away. And, she thought bitterly, regretting it on the rare occasions when I do.

  ‘You’re not the only one. Nobody in Fedborough seems to be talking about anything else. And everyone’s got their own pet theories about who the body is, and who killed her. All kinds of dreadful old prejudices are rising to the surface. Sometimes it’s hard to believe the depths of resentment you get in a place like this.’