The Torso in the Town

by Simon Brett

  Harry’s instructions had been very specific. She was to stop before she reached the houseboats, exactly opposite the centre of the inlet dug out for Roddy’s ill-fated marina. This she did with some annoyance. There was no sign of anyone. Was the boy having her on? Had he got too deeply into his role-playing espionage game? Was she part of some adolescent practical joke?

  Jude decided to give him five minutes, then see if Carole had found James Lister in the Coach and Horses. She looked down at the swollen khaki of the river, at that time of day flowing resolutely, but bizarrely, upstream.

  ‘Hello, Jude.’

  Harry’s voice, definitely his voice, but she had no idea where it was coming from.

  ‘Where are you?’

  He let out a little crowing giggle. ‘I can see you, but you can’t see me.’ The sound seemed to be emerging from the river itself.

  Jude stepped forward towards the edge. Suddenly there was a rustling of grass in front of her, and she saw Harry Roxby’s head.

  He showed her the hiding place. A walkway had been dug down into the bank, presumably to connect with some long-vanished landing stage. There were the remains of wooden steps, but tall grass had grown over to conceal the entrance completely.

  ‘I found it,’ said Harry proudly, sounding nearer ten than fifteen. ‘It’s my secret hideaway. Nobody knows when I’m down here.’

  Jude was in no mood to play Peter Pan games. ‘You said you had something to tell me.’

  ‘Yes. It’s something that I think could have a bearing on our investigation,’ he said portentously.

  ‘Come on, Harry, get on with it.’

  His expression showed he’d rather have spun the suspense out longer, but he succumbed to the strength of her will. ‘The thing is, Jude, I’d never met Mr Hargreaves . . . you know, the one who’s supposed to have killed his wife.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I didn’t know what he looked like. Then yesterday I saw the local paper. Probably been lying round the house for days, but I never bother looking at it, because nothing interesting ever happens down here.’ He still needed to maintain his pose of the uprooted and misunderstood metropolitan. ‘But there was a photograph of him in it, of Mr Hargreaves, and I realized I had seen him.’

  ‘That’s not surprising,’ said Jude, who was getting a little sick of Harry’s conspiratorial game-playing. ‘Roddy Hargreaves was quite a familiar figure around the town.’

  ‘No, but I saw him recently. The day he died. Last Saturday. I could have been the last person to see him alive.’

  He had Jude’s full attention now. ‘Where did you see him, Harry?’

  ‘Exactly where you’re standing.’ The boy knew she was hooked, and now dared to extend his dramatic pauses. ‘I was down here in my hideaway . . .’

  ‘What time of day was this?’

  ‘Early evening. Half-past seven, eight o’clock, maybe.’

  ‘What were you doing here?’

  ‘Oh, I’d had a row at home. Dad was being impossible, as ever, asking when I was going to start “making something of my life”. So I came down here. I do that quite often. Nobody knows I’m here and—’

  ‘Yes, all right. What happened?’

  ‘Well, I heard voices. On this side of the river. Which is quite unusual, because the only people who come along here are the ones who live in the houseboats, and they come and go at different times, so you don’t often hear them talking.’

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘I looked up through the grass. They couldn’t see me . . .’ Recognizing the exasperation in Jude’s face, he speeded up. ‘And I saw this man with a purple nose, who I now know was Roddy Hargreaves.’

  ‘Who was he with?’ murmured Jude. ‘Did you recognize who he was with?’

  ‘Yes. Someone you know too.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ She was unable to maintain her customary serenity. ‘Who was it, Harry?’

  ‘That man who came to dinner at our place the same night you did, the night I found the . . . the torso.’

  ‘Which man?’

  ‘The one who was dressed in black.’

  ‘Alan Burnethorpe?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Harry Roxby.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Harry hadn’t had a lot more to say. The only conversation he’d overheard had been the two men bemoaning the unhappy fate of their plans for Bracken’s Boatyard. Interestingly, though, Roddy Hargreaves had sounded more genuine in his sadness than Alan Burnethorpe. Roddy Hargreaves had also sounded drunk. According to Harry, he had been walking very unsteadily.

  Which could, Jude reflected, support the theory that his death had been accidental. It had rained on the previous Saturday – Harry said his hideaway had been very damp and uncomfortable – so the towpath would have been slippery. A drunken man, despairing at the sight of the project which had ruined him financially, totters on the muddy bank of a fast-flowing river . . . maybe the slip that landed him in the current had been half willed, half involuntary . . . ?

  But, if that was the case, why had he been talking to Alan Burnethorpe?

  Harry said he’d seen the two men walking back towards the town, saying something about needing a drink. Then, because he was wet and hungry, he’d gone back to Pelling House for the next round of the ongoing row with his father. And, looking at his watch a week later, he concluded he’d better do the same thing now. Mum did lunch at half-past one on a Saturday.

  Jude walked back to the bridge with him, lost in thought. She waved distracted thanks and goodbye and watched him scamper off up the High Street through the rabble of performance artists. Harry Roxby’d be all right, she decided. Just going through a difficult stage of his life, which had been exacerbated by the move out of London. His real problem was the relationship with his father. If Grant could be persuaded to be less competitive, things’d be smoother. Jude knew the situation was archetypal. Grant Roxby was less secure than he appeared, aware that he was ageing, aware of the inevitable dwindling of his powers. A new rising generation would take over from him in time, and Harry represented that generation. By constantly diminishing his son’s achievements, Grant was trying to extend his period of control.

  Maybe, in time, Jude thought, she might be able to help the easing of that relationship. But she had two more pressing priorities at that moment. One was working out how Virginia and Roddy Hargreaves had met their ends.

  The other was getting something to eat. She’d only had coffee at breakfast and the white wine had sharpened the pangs of hunger. Jude was starving.

  Fortunately there was a fish and chip shop on the other side of the road. She looked at her watch. One-twenty. She had an idea of paying a return visit to Debbie Carlton’s when the Art Crawl opened again at two. In the meantime, a large cod and chips, open, with lashings of salt and vinegar.

  Jude ate her lunch on a bench overlooking the Fether. As she licked the last delicious fishiness off her fingers, she took another look at the large face of her watch. Only twenty-five to. Still a little time to kill.

  Oh, the post she’d snatched up as she left Woodside Cottage. The post which, unbeknownst to her, had caused Carole such moral angst.

  Jude looked at the three letters. She had a pretty good idea what two of them would be, but the third, the one just addressed to ‘Jude’, could have come from anywhere. It wasn’t unusual for her to get letters like that. In the world of therapies and alternative medicine everyone knew her as simply ‘Jude’. Her surnames were used only on more official communications.

  Using a finger as paperknife, she opened the letter. On a small blue sheet were typed the following words:

  If you think you know how Virginia Hargreaves died, meet me on the towpath opposite Bracken’s Boatyard on Saturday afternoon at four o’clock.

  Jude looked along the towpath. The rendezvous appointed in the letter was only yards from where she was sitting. Exactly where she had met Harry Roxby less than an hour ago. She didn’t find this odd. Jude w
as a great believer in synchronicity. She’d seen its workings too often to have any doubts as to its authenticity. Events did not happen randomly.

  This had to be Harry playing his espionage games again. The coincidence of the location was too great for any other explanation. He must’ve posted the letter the day before, then that morning, unable to cope with the suspense he’d created for himself, used the phone to call Jude and move the rendezvous forward. It would have been completely in character.

  Jude looked at the paper. Small, blue, with matching envelope. Probably Basildon Bond or something like that. The kind of notepaper that is sold in packs by newsagents throughout the country. But not the kind of notepaper to be used by Harry’s computerized generation. They’d have their printers permanently set for A4 copier sheets and print out everything on that.

  She held the note up to the sunlight. Yes, definitely typed, she could see the indentation of the keys. Different quality from the smoothness produced by a laser or bubblejet printer.

  On the other hand, given the enthusiasm Harry Roxby was investing into his game of espionage, he was quite capable of disguising an anonymous communication, giving it a deliberately misleading appearance.

  Yes, Jude would put money on the fact that the letter came from Harry. Still, she’d probably come back to the towpath at four. Just to be sure.

  The downstairs door was unlocked, but when Jude climbed up to Debbie Carlton’s sitting room/gallery, the space was empty. Still, it was two o’clock sharp. Maybe Debbie had been delayed.

  Jude moved across to look at the picture she owned, noting with pleasure that a couple of the other frames nearby had red dots on them. The Fedborough Festival promised to be a deservedly profitable period for Debbie Carlton.

  The terracotta urn still looked wonderful, full of the warm South. It would bring a breath of Italy into Wood-side Cottage. Of all the pictures on display, this remained the one Jude would have chosen.

  A door opened behind her, and she turned to see a rather flustered Debbie Carlton coming into the room. She was straightening her pale blue shirt and running a tidying hand through her ash-blonde hair. ‘Oh. Jude. Hi.’

  ‘Sorry. I was in town, and I just couldn’t resist having another look at my purchase.’ That was the cover story she had prepared. What she really wanted to get the conversation around to was the anonymous letter sent to the police. Jude had pondered the strangeness of that a good few times. Debbie’s assertion that she’d assumed the letter to be a product of Francis’s paranoia had sounded genuine at the time, and yet she remained the only person with a motive for disrupting her ex-husband’s life. Jude wanted to find out more.

  The pretended reason for her presence was, however, one that no artist could resist. Debbie Carlton coloured prettily and said, ‘It’s yours. You’ve paid for it. You can look at it as much as you want.’

  ‘Glad to see you’ve sold a few others.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ Debbie appeared distracted, nervous, rather as Carole had described her when Francis was on the scene. Surely he hadn’t come back.

  But no, it wasn’t him causing her unease. The door she had come through opened again, and Alan Burnethorpe entered. He was too smooth an operator actually to look flustered, but he wasn’t at his ease.

  ‘Well,’ he said, seeing Jude, ‘what an art-lover you are.’

  ‘Yes. Did you know I’d bought this one?’

  ‘No. Debbie hadn’t mentioned it. Perhaps I should be offended.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You buy art here. But from the way you were looking at them, my drawings apparently leave you cold.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you say female nudes appeal more to men?’

  ‘Not exclusively. Some women like them a lot.’ There was a slyness in his voice. Clearly Fiona Lister’s slur on Jude’s relationship with Carole had spread right through Fedborough. Jude felt relieved Carole wasn’t present.

  Alan Burnethorpe showed no signs of moving, so Jude reckoned it was her cue to beat a retreat. Maybe she’d get another chance to discuss the anonymous letter to the police.

  As she opened the door at the foot of the stairs, Jude heard Debbie’s tense voice whisper, ‘What’s she going to think?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter too much what she thinks.’ Alan Burnethorpe sounded sardonically smooth as ever. ‘She doesn’t know many people in Fedborough. I think our secret’s safe with her.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Carole had chosen a good day to find James Lister. He was propping up the bar when she entered the Coach and Horses, because, as he soon explained with a confidential wink, ‘Fiona’s organizing a charity lunch and, while the cat’s away . . .’

  Carole wondered if he’d realized how apposite in the context the word ‘cat’ was.

  In his wife’s absence, James was once again all flirtatious bravado, and he was clearly very pleased when Carole agreed to have lunch with him ‘in a little French place I know just round the corner’.

  She was totally unworried about him making any sexual advances to her. Fiona Lister might not actually be present, but the deterrent qualities of her personality spread outwards like radiation from Chernobyl, guaranteeing her husband wouldn’t – probably couldn’t – do anything physical. And, in the cause of advancing her investigation, Carole was prepared to put up with any amount of clumsy verbal innuendo.

  The ‘little French place’ seemed pretty ordinary to her, but James Lister made an elaborate routine of chatting up the owner and insisting on a table in the window, overlooking the High Street. With a wink, as he ushered Carole to her seat, he told her that ‘Jean-Pierre’s always got a table for me’. Since the restaurant was only a quarter full, this didn’t seem such a big deal.

  She was slightly annoyed, though, when James, with a sideways look at her as he edged her chair in, and another wink to the proprietor, whispered, ‘Not a word to the wife, eh, Jean-Pierre?’

  ‘Of course not,’ the owner murmured back, ‘you dog.’

  James Lister looked very pleased with himself as he took his seat. Oh well, thought Carole, if that’s how he gets his kicks . . . If he’s making the outrageous assumption that I might have any sexual interest in him, I suppose it doesn’t do any harm. All I’m here for is to pick his brains, and the more relaxed and intimate we are for that, the better.

  ‘Now what’s the lovely lady going to drink? Stay with the white wine, eh? Jean-Pierre does a very fine Graves.’ He pronounced it like the things found in churchyards.

  ‘Bit sweet for me. If he’s got a Chardonnay or something . . .’

  ‘Very well Jean-Pierre, a bottle of your finest—’

  ‘Just a glass. I’ve got to drive later.’

  He seemed relieved. If they’d got a bottle, he’d have felt obliged to drink wine too, and he really wanted to stay with the beer. He asked for a Stella Artois. Then there was a food-ordering routine with Jean-Pierre, involving a lot of ‘Do you have any of that wonderful casserole with the truffles and . . . ?’

  James ended up ordering a rare steak and chips – ‘or whatever the French is for French Fries.’ Carole chose a mushroom omelette. Unlike Jude, she’d had an adequate breakfast. James went into the masculine knee-jerk reaction of trying to get her to order something more elaborate and expensive, but soon gave up.

  Their drinks arrived. He took a long swallow, wiped the froth off his white moustache and then seemed to think he should have made a toast. ‘What shall it be – to us?’

  Carole wriggled out of that by saying, ‘How about – to the success of the Fedborough Festival?’

  Though not what he’d had in mind, as a dutiful burgher of the town he couldn’t fault the worthiness of her suggestion. He raised his glass to hers. ‘I’m not sure what to make of all this Street Theatre business . . .’

  ‘It’s not my idea of entertainment,’ said Carole tartly. ‘I take the rather old-fashioned view that the proper venue for theatre is inside a theatre.’

  ‘I wouldn’t disagr
ee with that.’ He seemed relieved that he wasn’t lunching with a fervent advocate of the avant garde. ‘Are you going to see any of the proper theatre in the Festival?’

  ‘I don’t think so. We—’ She remembered Fedborough’s view of her relationship with Jude. ‘I’ve done a bit of the Art Crawl, but nothing else. Are you seeing much?’

  ‘Oh yes. Fiona’s on various committees and is a Director of the Festival.’ She would be, thought Carole. ‘So we’ll be doing the Mozart in All Souls on Monday, and then The Cherry Orchard on Wednesday.’ He made it sound as though root-canal work would be a more attractive option.

  ‘Still, enough about me.’ He wiped his moustache again, roguishly this time. ‘Let’s talk about you, Carole. I hardly know anything about you. Tell me everything.’

  That was the last thing Carole ever intended to do. Least of all to James Lister. She shrugged. ‘I took early retirement from the Home Office.’ Still sounded the wrong verb. ‘I was given early retirement from the Home Office’ would be nearer the truth. But never mind that. ‘And I’m divorced.’

  ‘Ah.’ This seemed to confirm something in his mind. ‘I knew Fiona was wrong.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Oh.’ He coloured. ‘Oh, she was just saying . . . she just thought . . .’

  Carole knew exactly what he meant. Maybe now he’d go back to his wife and tell her she’d got the wrong end of the stick about Carole and Jude’s relationship. James Lister was a straightforward soul. In his scheme of things, the fact that a woman had once been married automatically excluded the possibility that she might be lesbian.

  There was an edge of disappointment in his expression, though. No doubt, like a lot of men, he had been intrigued by the chance of finding out what lesbians actually did to each other.

  ‘So your marriage didn’t work out?’ he blundered on.