by Simon Brett
“All right, it didn’t work out, but the only casualties were a few uncomfortable feelings and maybe a few adolescent dreams. We may both have been guilty of crass insensitivity – I’m sure I was – but we didn’t deliberately try to hurt each other.”
“I know that.”
“So all I’m saying is, let’s stop this stupid stand-off. We started out by liking each other. That was the basic feeling. OK, different backgrounds, different attitudes, different priorities, but we felt an attraction. That became stronger, and we perhaps misinterpreted it as love. Now we know it wasn’t love, but that doesn’t mean the attraction between our personalities has just disappeared.” He pushed both hands through his beard in a gesture of exasperation. “What I want to say is probably the biggest cliché in the book, Carole. Can’t we still be friends?”
He slumped back in his seat, exhausted by one of the longest speeches she had ever heard him deliver, exhausted also by the release of so much bottled-up emotion.
“Yes,” said Carole softly, “I’d like to.”
“Thank God for that.” Brusquely, he turned the key in the ignition. “Now let’s find Jude.”
∨ The Torso in the Town ∧
Thirty-Eight
It was near to the longest day of the year, and the light was slow to give in to night. There were no longer dappling reflections on the ceiling of her prison, but Jude could still see out through the porthole windows. They were set in polished brass and far too small to let her body through even if she could open them. Which she couldn’t. She had tried, but they seemed designed to stay closed. So she couldn’t call out to attract anyone’s attention.
She’d seen people walking by, few on the houseboat side, a lot more on the Bracken’s Boatyard side. Carefree families with dogs and picnic baskets trailing back to the car parks, then, as the light dwindled, furtive young lovers going the other way towards the openness and licence of the Downs. Pleasure boats had chugged downstream towards their moorings in Fethering, passing within inches of her. Jude had tried tapping on the porthole glass to attract attention, but her small sounds had been lost against the rush of the fast-flowing river.
Although apparently inaudible herself, she could hear tantalizing noises from outside, the hum of traffic crossing Fedborough Bridge, a raucous shout of laughter from one of the nearby pubs, distant brass music from some Fed-borough Festival open-air concert, the clock of All Souls Church delineating the quarter-hours of her incarceration.
In the first hour, she had looked around the room for a heavy object with which to smash one of the portholes, so that she could shout for help. But there was nothing in sight. The space she was in was a slice across the back of the boat, a low-ceilinged tapering room with a row of three portholes each side. All the wood had been punctiliously stripped down and varnished to a high sheen. The brass fittings also gleamed immaculately.
The space seemed to be used as some kind of office. On the far wall was a honeycomb of pigeon-holes, from which rolled-up charts neatly protruded. There was a manual typewriter and a pack of Basildon Bond notepaper, the source of the anonymous letter she had received that morning.
In the middle of the room was a large box-like structure, presumably engine-housing from the days when the vessel had been seaworthy. Either side of this were benches screwed down to the floor against inclement weather. More benches ran along the curved sides of the space. Realizing these were storage lockers, Jude had opened them with gleeful anticipation. But they were empty. No convenient blunt instruments in there. It made her wonder whether her imprisonment had been planned.
She had another surge of hope when she found the door on the end wall was not locked, but there too disappointment soon followed. The space behind, in the boat’s tapered stern, had been converted to a washroom, with toilet and basin. While Jude was glad to take advantage of the facility, this room offered her no more than the other had. Two even smaller portholes either side, and nothing more substantial than a plastic lavatory brush with which to attack their thick glass.
There was no way out until her captor wanted her out. And after the reference to what had happened to Roddy Hargreaves, Jude hoped that moment lay a long way away.
Carole would realize something was wrong. Caroled come looking for her. Pity her neighbour wasn’t on speaking terms with Ted Crisp, thought Jude ruefully. He’d be invaluable in a situation like this.
After the first shouted exchanges, Jude’s captor had gone silent, refusing to answer her questions and pleadings. Whether she was now alone on the boat, she didn’t know. It had been a long time since she had heard any sounds from the other part of the vessel.
There was nothing she could do but sit in the office area and wait. Jude hated the sense of impotence. She was used to making her own decisions, organizing her life in her own idiosyncratic way. Now her plans – and even the life itself – were in the hands of someone else.
Before being locked in, Jude would not have thought her captor capable of murder. Now she was less sure. The need to silence her was a very compelling motive – as had been the need to silence Roddy Hargreaves. His fate gave an air of hopelessness to hers.
The July day was almost giving up its struggle against darkness when Jude heard footsteps walking along the towpath towards her prison. She pressed her face against a porthole, but because of the angle couldn’t see much until the walkers were directly alongside her.
Two pairs of feet walking from Fedborough Bridge to the houseboats beyond. Male grubby sweatpants leadingdown to even grubbier trainers. Female leather walking shoes so sensible she recognized them instantly. Carole and Ted. It was Carole and Ted!
Jude hammered against the glass of the porthole until her hand hurt. But the noise didn’t reach them. The footsteps receded.
Never mind, thought Jude, as she sat back, nursing her bruised hand. The direction in which they were walking was a dead end. At some point they’d walk back. Somehow she’d manage to attract their attention then. It was simply a matter of waiting.
A bubble of hope rose within her.
Then she heard a banging on the door which had been locked behind her.
“We’ll be moving soon,” said the voice of her captor.
∨ The Torso in the Town ∧
Thirty-Nine
It was the furthest of the houseboats. No lights showed inside, and the rickety structure looked so uneven in the water that Carole found it hard to believe anyone lived there. But Ted Crisp stepped confidently on to the deck and knocked on the sagging half-open door.
“Suppose he’s not there?” Carole whispered.
“He’ll be there.”
Proving his point, a rough old voice from the gloom inside asked, “Who’s that?”
“It’s me, Ted.”
“What’re you doing here, you old bugger? Have you brought me some whisky?”
“Yes, of course I have,” replied Ted, who’d prudently raided the Crown and Anchor’s stock before leaving Fethering.
“Then you’re very welcome. Come on in.”
“I’ve brought a friend with me. Carole Seddon.” She liked the ease with which he said that.
“She’s welcome, and all,” said the voice, “so long as she’s a whisky drinker.”
Carole was about to say she didn’t really care for spirits, but realized it wasn’t the moment.
“Can we have some light?” asked Ted, as he stepped down into the interior of the boat.
“Oh yes, of course. I keep forgetting how dependent you lot are on seeing things.”
“Can I help, Bob?”
“No, no. Matter of moments.”
Carole, who was still waiting on the deck, heard the clatter of metal and glass as an oil-lamp was primed, then the scrape of a match as it was lit. A warm glow spread through the interior of the space ahead of her.
“Let me give you a hand down.” She felt Ted Crisp’s strong hand around hers as he led her down the few steps into the houseboat.
What the oil-lamp revealed to her blinking eyes was a space whose side walls had been neatly boxed in with chipboard panels. But the dominant impression was not of neatness; the interior was rendered grotto-like by objects hanging from every strut and rafter. There were rowlocks and rusty tools, pieces of leather harness and lengths of chain, greenish bottles and sheep skulls, bicycle wheels and old boots. Without being told, she knew that everything she could see had been scavenged from the river. And that wasn’t only because the interior of the houseboat smelt more like the Fether than the Fether itself.
The one part of the décor that didn’t look as if it had been fished out of the water was a small shrine set on a table against the wall. A plaster statuette of the Madonna and Child stood sentried by white candles in brass holders. In front of it was a well-thumbed Bible.
The man at the centre of this grotto, seated by the table from which the oil-lamp glowed, was dressed, in spite of the July weather, in thick denim jacket, jeans and short gumboots. All had faded or were stained to the same colour, somewhere between navy and black, but lighter than either. The man’s hair was white, tidied more often by a hand than a brush, and his sightless eyes were a cloudy blue.
Remarkably, though shabby, Bob Bracken contrived to look very clean. Though the houseboat smelt deeply of the Fether, there were no human odours.
The other thing that was obvious the minute Carole entered was that Jude wasn’t there. While Ted busied himself finding glasses, she said urgently, “We’re looking for a friend of mine – of ours. We thought she might have come to see you.”
“What friend would this be?” the old man asked. “Her name’s Jude. Quite plump, blonde hair.”
“Colour of her hair wouldn’t mean much to me, would it?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry.” He let out a genial cackle. “I can still remember what a pretty blonde looks like. You’re not a blonde, are you?”
“No,” replied Carole, taken aback by the suddenness of the question.
“I can always tell. Lot of things I see better now I can’t see. There’s a special intonation a woman who isn’t blonde puts on the word ‘blonde’ when she says it.” The old man cackled again.
“So have you seen Jude?” asked Ted. “I’ve put your glass down there beside you.”
“I’ll find that, don’t you worry. My nose is a highly sophisticated whisky-seeking device.”
He reached out and, sure enough, his hand immediately circled the glass on the table. He lifted it to his lips and took a long swallow before speaking again. Carole watched him, the tension building inside her.
At last he put the glass down. “No. No Jude. Haven’t seen any Jude.”
“I was afraid of this!” Carole murmured. “It’s the only lead I had.”
“Don’t worry.” Ted put a reassuring hand on her forearm. “Bob still might have something useful to, tell us.” The old man heard this and smiled knowingly, but said nothing. “You’ve been in Fedborough all your life, haven’t you, Bob?”
“Oh yes, born a Chub, and I’ll die a Chub.”
“And there’s not much happens in the town you don’t know about?”
“That’s true. Used to watch what went on from one side of the Fether when I had the boatyard. Now I watch what goes on from the other side of the Fether.” He laughed and then explained to Carole something he assumed Ted Crisp already knew. “I say ‘watch’, but of course it’s a different kind of watching from what it used to be. When you’re blind, you can’t watch in quite the traditional way. But I still know everything. Got a lot of friends in Fedborough. They still come and tell me things.” He turned to where he thought Carole was, and one of the blue eyes winked.
“Carole and her friend Jude – the one we’re looking for,” said Ted, “have been trying to find out what actually happened to Virginia Hargreaves.”
“Ah. Yes. Popular topic that’s been round the town these last few weeks.”
“The general view,” said Carole, “seems to be that her husband killed her and, when the police got close to pinning it on him, took his own life.”
Bob Bracken snorted. “Rubbish! Roddy’d never kill himself, however bad things were.” He gestured in the direction of the Madonna and Child. “Good Catholic, Roddy. Like me. He wouldn’t commit a mortal sin.”
“Then are you saying it must’ve been an accident? He just fell in the Fether?”
A shake of the head. “He knows this river almost as well as I do. However much booze he’d got inside him, I’d be very surprised if Roddy fell in by accident.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Someone pushed him in, didn’t they?”
“Who?”
“That’s the big question. You want everything at once, don’t you, young lady? I think you may have to wait a bit for the full story. Pains me to say it, but I don’t know everything.”
“You do know something, though, Bob.” Ted Crisp leaned forward to refill the old man’s whisky glass, which had unaccountably become empty. “You know something that might be relevant to the case.”
“Yes, I think I do.” Again, playing the scene at his own pace, he instinctively found his glass, and took a long, contemplative swallow. “Virginia Hargreaves…” he said thoughtfully. “She was a right little madam. Nasty bit of work. A man should wed someone his own age, I always say. Think Miss Virginia – or Lady Virginia did she call herself – made it clear to Roddy early on that their marriage wasn’t going to work.”
“Why didn’t they split up?” asked Carole.
“From his point of view, he never would have done.”
“Because of his Catholicism?”
“Right. And with her, I don’t know…Reckon she wanted to stay around him. Perhaps for financial reasons, as much as anything. She had this title, but I don’t think there was much money on her side.”
“She owned a flat in London.”
“Yes, I remember her mentioning that. But Roddy had bought the place for her. He was quite well-heeled, you see, before he started pouring all his money away into the Fether.” He was silent for a moment, letting the threatening gurgle of water against the boatside provide an illustration for his words. “Anyway, I’m not sure that Virginia had anywhere else to go, apart from the London flat. Not on speaking terms with any of her family, I believe.”
“And once Roddy had lost all his money, she lost interest in him?”
“I think that was it.” Bob Bracken drained his second glass of whisky, and Ted Crisp immediately refilled it. He recognized his role, and was happy to let Carole ask the questions. “Roddy was in a bad way round that time,” Bob went on, “with the booze, what have you. And he was having to cut his losses on the boatyard and sell up.”
“How long was it in his possession?”
“Less than a year. Eight, nine months.”
“Who owns it now?”
“ Some property developer.” The old man spoke the words with contempt for the breed. “He’s been waiting to build a row of nice riverside town houses. Had the plans all drawn up for years…”
“Who did the plans? Who was the architect?”
“Local guy called Alan Burnethorpe. Got his office on the posh houseboat you must’ve come past.”
“Funny, he seems to get everywhere.”
“Oh, his family’ve been round here for ages. Always had lots of fingers in Fedborough pies, they have. Related to half the people in the town, for a start. His mother was one of the real characters of Fedborough. I remember, she always – ”
But Carole had no time for folksy reminiscence. “So when are the houses going to be built?”
“Not yet, that’s for certain. Developer can’t get planning permission. Still, he’s not losing money, like Roddy did. Roddy spent a lot on the place. This guy’s just letting it collapse slowly into the river.” The unseeing blue eyes were pained. “Sometimes quite relieved I can’t witness what’s happened to the place. I can sit here and imag
ine how it used to be. And I won’t have to see the ‘attractive riverside development’ when it finally is put up.”
“You think it will be?”
“No doubt at all. Local planners round Fedborough…well, it’s like everywhere else. The right politicians get their ears bent, the right palms get greased. Alan Burnethorpe’s very good at all that stuff. It’ll happen…though with a bit of luck when I’m no longer around to see it.”
You wouldn’t be able to see it, anyway, thought the instinctive logician in Carole. But she knew what he meant.
“That weekend,” she began, “the weekend Virginia Hargreaves disappeared…”
“Three years back we’re talking…Februaryish?”
“That’s right. Do you remember anything about it?”
“I remember I was very busy, that’s all. Still had my sight back then, and I was quite fit. Spend a lifetime doing manual work, you don’t get all flabby minute you stop. Anyway, that weekend I had a heavy job on.”
“What was it?”
“Told you Roddy had sold up. Well, suddenly the whole deal had gone through quick and the guy who’s buying the site says he wants it cleared by the following Monday. Roddy wasn’t in no state to do anything useful – and he said something about he was going away to France – so he offers me a hundred quid to empty everything out of the sheds. ‘What shall I do with it all?’ I says. ‘Just chuck it down the dump?’ And he says, ‘Yes. But if there’s anything you’re not sure about, take it up to Pelling House and leave it there. But make sure it’s tidy. Virginia likes things tidy’.”
Bob Bracken was fully aware of the effect his words were having. Carole’s pale eyes were sparkling with anticipation. Slowly he continued, “Most of the stuff was easy. Straight down the Amenity Tip. Couple of things, though, I didn’t know what they was, didn’t know whether Roddy’d want them or not…”
Carole could not keep silent any longer. “And one of them was a large box? A large heavy box?”
“That’s right. Made of strengthened cardboard with, like, plastic corners. Kind of box bulk frozen meat gets delivered in. I didn’t know what was in it, but I put it on my handcart and pushed it up to Pelling Street.”