The Corpse on the Court

by Simon Brett

‘And none of this was to do with Reggie Playfair’s death?’

  He looked totally shocked by the question. ‘No. Why should my putting this place on the market have anything to do with poor old Reggie?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant has any of the other “stuff” you’ve been doing had anything to do with his death?’

  Piers Targett shook his head in a manner that contained puzzlement and also some other emotion that Jude could not quite identify.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘Going up a blind alley. But there is one thing I do want to ask.’

  ‘Ask away.’

  ‘Why have you suddenly decided you want to put this house on the market? From all accounts, you’ve owned it for quite a while, not used it much, spent an increasing amount of time in London. So why now? Why do you suddenly want to sell now?’

  He grinned wryly. ‘Partly it’s financial. Some of my investments – some of my “pies” as Oenone calls them – have proved to have less filling in them than I’d hoped. So realizing a bit of capital and then going off to find more lucrative pies to dip my fingers into, well, that’s part of the reason.

  ‘The other bit –’ he turned the full beam of his deep blue eyes on her – ‘is to do with you.’

  ‘In what way to do with me?’

  ‘Look, Jude, this place represents a different part of my life. This is where I lived when . . .’ The supremely articulate Piers Targett seemed to run out of words.

  ‘When you were married?’ Jude suggested.

  ‘Yes. And well, as I told you, I still am technically married. Not divorced, anyway. But I couldn’t move on. I couldn’t get rid of this place, even though I was hardly ever here, even though I’ve let it become such a tip. Every time I considered doing something about the place, inertia overcame me. It was all too much effort. Then I met you, and suddenly I had a reason for wanting to close that chapter of my life. Suddenly I had a reason to want to move on. And I felt I had to set that whole process in motion before I could get back in touch with you. Does that make any kind of sense, Jude?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice thick with emotion. ‘Yes, it does, Piers.’

  Their eyes interlocked and they were drawn ineluctably towards each other. But before they touched, they both froze at the sound of the front door clattering open and shut.

  A woman with long blonded hair appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘So this is the new one, Piers?’ She looked Jude appraisingly up and down. ‘First time you’ve gone for bulk.’ And almost before the insult had had time to sink in, she announced, ‘I’m Jonquil Targett. Piers’ wife.’

  SIXTEEN

  ‘So what’s he told you about me?’ demanded Jonquil Targett. ‘Nothing, if I know Piers. Presenting himself as the poor, suffering divorcé, finally having got over the trauma of the relationship in which he’d invested so much emotional capital and at last ready to take the first stumbling steps towards a new one? Only needing the love of a good woman? Is that the image he’s projected to you?’

  ‘No,’ replied Jude with more coolness than she felt. ‘Piers has not told me he’s divorced. He’s made no secret of the fact that he’s still technically married.’

  ‘Technically? Huh, I like that. Reducing me to a small technicality in his life. I hope he hasn’t pretended to you that you’re the first of his girlfriends.’

  ‘No, he’s never suggested that.’

  ‘Though I think you’re the first he’s brought back to this house, the house that we jointly own.’

  Jude tried to think back to what Piers had actually said about his emotional history and realized that it had been very little. They’d been so caught up in the happiness they’d found in each other that most other things had seemed irrelevant. They’d both known that there were big subjects that they would have to deal with eventually if their relationship progressed. But shelving such discussions for the time being had suited both of them.

  ‘Jonquil, just leave her alone,’ said Piers in a voice Jude hadn’t heard from him before. There was a note of despair in it. Gone was the urbane articulacy. In his wife’s presence Piers Targett seemed immobilized, struck down by the same inertia that he had said prevented him from selling the house.

  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 diamanté 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?’

  ‘I’ve got one.’ The girl indicated what looked like a Coke in front of her.

  ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have—’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve started a tab for you with Vin at the bar.’

  ‘Oh?’

  The girl took a long swig from her drink. ‘And actually I’m ready for another.’

  ‘Coke, is it?’

  ‘With a large voddy in, yes.’

  Vin, the girl at the bar, knew about ‘Donna’s tab’ and knew she’d want a ‘large voddy and Coke’. Carole wondered idly what ‘Vin’ might stand for. The girl didn’t look like her idea of a ‘Lavinia’, but she couldn’t think of anything else.

  Carole had by now decided that she was definitely going to need a drink. To her surprise the George’s Head turned out to have an extensive wine list and she got her Chilean Chardonnay.

  Back at the table she found Donna Grodsky studying the huge A3-size menu. ‘Better order quick. Hell trying to eat once the little bugger wakes up.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked Carole.

  ‘Kyle.’ The girl looked at her defiantly. ‘And I love him to bits.’ She put down the menu. ‘I’ll get the sirloin steak, medium rare, with everything and extra onion rings.’

  It was the most expensive item on the menu. Carole wondered briefly if she was being taken for a ride. On the other hand, all of the prices at the George’s Head were extraordinarily cheap. And if Donna Grodsky did have any useful information . . . She gave in the order at the bar, adding a tuna and cucumber baguette for herself.

  Carole was disarmed when she returned to the table by Donna saying, ‘Thanks for picking up the tab and that. I used to be quite a girl for the clubs and the pubs, but since I’ve had Kyle . . .’ She raised her unfinished first glass, said ‘Cheers’ and gulped down what was left. ‘Real treat for me these days, this is,’ she went on. ‘Getting out of the flat, seeing people who aren’t Kyle or my mum.’

  ‘His father . . .?’ asked Carole tentatively.

  The girl let out a bitter chuckle. ‘What do you think? He scarpered soon as he knew I was up the duff. Not that I mind. I wasn’t in love or anything like that. He was quite fit but, anyway, he served his purpose.’

  ‘You mean you wanted to get pregnant?’

  ‘Too right I did. Always wanted to have something I could really call my own. Now I’ve got Kyle. Anyway, council wouldn’t have given me the flat if I hadn’t got the baby.’

  Carole bit back various Daily Mail responses that were rising up towards her lips. ‘If we could talk about Marina . . .’

  ‘Sure. I liked her. That’s why I hope nothing bad’s happened to her.’

  ‘Her mother thinks she was murdered.’

  ‘I know. But there’s lots of things that can happen to girls of her age that aren’t murder.’

  ‘That would cause her to disappear?’

  ‘Yeah. I know plenty of girls down here in Brighton who just moved out of their homes. Mostly from a long way away, Scotland, the North. They just couldn’t stand the way their parents kept going on at them. Nobody knows where they are, but they haven’t been murdered. They’ve just started leading different lives.’

  ‘And you think that’s what happened with Marina?’

  ‘I think it’s more likely than her being murdered.’

  ‘You’re probably right. Susan – Marina’s mother – talked about her having a lot of sleepovers with her school friends . . .’

  ‘Nothing odd in that. We all did.’

  ‘Did she stay at your place?’

  ‘Coupla times. Look, I know what you’re going to ask next.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Did she stay with me the night before she went missing?’

  The girl was brighter than her appearance might suggest. ‘How did you know I was going to ask that?’

  ‘Because the police did too. It’s the obvious question t
o ask.’

  ‘You said on the phone you weren’t very impressed with the police’s enquiries into Marina’s disappearance.’

  ‘No, well, they just went through the motions. Don’t blame them really. Marina was sixteen, over the age of consent. If she wanted to move in with a boyfriend, well, that was her business, wasn’t it?’

  Carole was very quick to pick up on that. ‘And is that what she did? Move in with a boyfriend?’

  Donna Grodsky blushed. She’d said more than she intended. ‘I don’t know,’ she stuttered. ‘I mean, that’s what she said she wanted to do, but I don’t know if it was kind of just an idea or if she’d actually got someone in mind.’

  ‘Did you tell the police what she’d said?’

  ‘No, of course I bloody didn’t!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because she was my mate. Look, if she’s moved in with some bloke to get away from her mum, I’m not being much of a mate if I set the police off investigating that possibility, am I?’

  ‘And for the same reason you didn’t tell her mother?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t.’

  They were interrupted at that moment by the arrival of Vin with their food. The portions were massive. Donna’s steak and accompaniments hardly fitted on her plate. And Carole’s baguette was served with chips, which she hadn’t expected. But they did look rather good chips.

  Carole noticed that both their glasses were empty. ‘I don’t know if you . . .?’

  ‘Yeah. Vin, get me another large voddy and Coke. And same again for Carole.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure that I—’

  ‘Go on, get ’em, Vin.’ As the barmaid went off, Donna Grodsky demanded, ‘Why’re you looking at me like that, Carole?’

  ‘I’m not looking at you like anything.’

  ‘Yes, you are, and I know exactly what you’re thinking. Third double vodka and she’s meant to be in charge of a baby.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t—’

  ‘You don’t think I’m breastfeeding the little bugger, do you?’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘Look, I’ll have you know this is the first drink I’ve had for three weeks. I can’t afford booze on the pittance of a handout the government gives me. So when someone offers me a drink, I’m not going to say no, am I? And it’s not like you’re not getting what you asked for. I’m answering your questions, aren’t I?’