The Corpse on the Court

by Simon Brett

  Carole thought he had clocked her when he first entered the pub, but Iain Holland waited until he’d got his drink before turning and moving towards her. ‘You must be Carole,’ he said.

  His handshake was firm, his expression bluff and honest, demonstrating the automatic charm of a politician. He called across to the barman, ‘Is the upstairs room unlocked?’

  ‘Sure, Iain.’

  As he led her up the narrow staircase, Iain Holland told Carole how useful this room had been to him. ‘You know, when I’m meeting someone in my ward who’s got a problem, a lot of them prefer an informal chat in a pub. Less intimidating than coming to my office or attending one of my official surgeries. Oh, by the way, here’s one of my cards, got all my contact details on it.’

  He very effectively projected the image of a councillor who could not do enough for the people he represented. Iain Holland was all concern, altruism and transparency.

  But the minute he had closed the door and they were alone inside the small function room, his manner changed. Immediately he demanded, ‘Do you know where she is?’

  There are two ways in which that question could be posed by the father of a missing child. The first is with eager anticipation, hoping against hope that there might be some prospect of being reunited with someone believed to be lost forever. The second is with an edge of fear, frightened that the secret of where the missing child is might have been breached. Iain Holland’s intonation was definitely of the second kind.

  Carole really was flying by the seat of her pants. She had known that question – or something very like it – was bound to arise, but though she had tried to plan a response, nothing had offered itself.

  So, outwardly calm, she said, based on no evidence at all, ‘Well, I certainly don’t think she’s dead.’

  ‘You’re in the minority there. The general consensus seems to be that she is.’

  ‘And what is your view?’

  Iain Holland shrugged. He was doing quite a good impression of nonchalance, but Carole could sense the tension in him. He was probing at her, trying to find out whether she did genuinely know anything. ‘My view,’ he said at length, ‘is that Marina probably is dead.’

  ‘You don’t know how or where?’

  ‘No. It’s just in this day and age, with all the means of contact and surveillance we now have, it’s difficult for someone to vanish off the face of the earth.’ More or less the exact opposite of what Donna Grodsky had said.

  Iain Holland looked at her sternly. He wasn’t bothering with the politician’s charm any more. His voice took on the bullying tone of someone used to getting his own way as he said, ‘Look, I’m a busy man. If you’ve got anything to tell me, tell me. If not, I think we should both conclude that this meeting has been a waste of time.’

  ‘Then why did you so readily agree to meet me?’

  ‘Because I didn’t at the time know that you didn’t have any new information.’

  ‘Ah, but perhaps I have,’ said Carole. She was floundering, and it was only a matter of time before he realized just how much she was floundering.

  But she was let off the hook for a moment. Still worried that she might actually know something, Iain Holland’s manner changed again. He became more conciliatory. ‘Listen, obviously if there is any prospect of finding Marina alive, well, that would be great news for me. Great news for any father. But I’ve written off the possibility for so long that it’s hard for me to take the idea on board. My situation’s changed since I split up with Marina’s mother. And I’m sorry that went wrong, but I’m not the first person in the world who’s got married too young. Now I’m in a new relationship, got two lovely kids, business going well. I’m all right. And I don’t want to go back to how things were before.’

  ‘Are you saying that finding Marina alive would take you back to those times?’

  ‘No, of course I’m not. It’d be brilliant. Like I say, every father’s dream. But it would take some adjustment. Not everyone knows much about my past, but there is a kind of acknowledgement that there has been some great sadness there.’

  ‘The loss of your daughter?’

  ‘Exactly. And if that situation changes, well, yes, obviously there’d be some adjustments.’

  ‘You mean you might lose some people’s sympathy?’

  ‘No. Not exactly that. Look, Carole, the fact is that I’m increasingly interested in politics, hoping to spend more of my time, you know, doing some good, helping people out.’

  ‘Do you mean on the national stage?’

  ‘It’s not impossible. Some high-ups in the Conservative Party have been quite impressed by the difference I’ve been making down here in Brighton. It’s not impossible that I might be short-listed as a candidate at the next election.’ He couldn’t keep the note of pride out of his voice.

  ‘And you’re afraid,’ said Carole, ‘that your perfect image with the “high-ups in the Conservative Party” might be a little tarnished if they found out you had a living daughter from a previous marriage, a daughter who perhaps has gone to the bad?’

  ‘No!’ Iain Holland blustered. ‘Of course that’s not what I mean.’

  But Carole Seddon knew that it was.

  ‘Anyway, you’ve still said nothing that convinces me you have any proof Marina’s alive.’ He looked at his watch. ‘And unless you do have something new to tell me, I think we should draw this meeting to a close.’

  She had been let off the hook once, but she couldn’t see history about to repeat itself. Iain Holland had risen from his chair and was moving towards the door. Carole thought back desperately to her conversation with Donna Grodsky and blurted out, ‘What intrigues me is Marina’s Russian connection.’

  It had been a complete shot in the dark, but it found its target. Iain Holland froze, then slowly turned back to face her. The slick confidence of his expression had been replaced by something very close to fear. ‘What do you know about Marina’s Russian connection?’

  Absolutely nothing was the answer inside Carole’s head, but what she said was, ‘I know that she suspected her origins to be Russian. I know that she was very much drawn towards the Russian community here in Brighton.’

  Iain Holland processed this information for a moment. He was considerably shaken by what she had said. Then he asked, ‘What more do you know?’

  The only tenuous piece of information she’d gleaned from all her investigations was one first name. Still, she had nothing to lose by mentioning it. ‘I know about Vladimir.’

  His immediate reaction showed Carole that she had hit home, but he quickly covered it up and asked sceptically, ‘Vladimir who?’

  It was the question she had been afraid he might ask. And of course the one to which she had no answer. Realizing that, though she’d got Iain Holland on the back foot, her only hope was to bluff her way out, Carole Seddon smiled smugly. ‘I think that’s enough for the time being.’

  ‘But you’ve told me nothing.’

  ‘I know about the Russian connection. And Vladimir.’ So confident was she now of the power reversal that had taken place that she rose to her feet. ‘Maybe I should be on my way.’

  ‘No, no!’ Iain Holland put a hand on her arm to stop her. ‘Just sit down again for a moment. Please.’

  Carole did as he requested. He sat too and put his hands flat on the table as if to begin a process of negotiation. ‘Presumably,’ he said, ‘you want money to make you keep quiet about this?’

  ‘Actually, I—’

  ‘How much?’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Piers Targett came back to Woodside Cottage after his London meetings and wanted a full debrief on Jude’s experience of a real tennis lesson. It seemed really to matter to him that she should like the game and she found his enthusiasm infectious. If anyone had suggested a month before that she might seriously be about to take up a game she’d hardly heard of, she would have laughed in their faces. But it was strange how quickly things could change when love was involved.r />
  Their relationship took another step forward that evening, in that Jude cooked a meal for Piers. Up until then all their eating had been done out – in fact, Piers always ate out. The idea of his pristine kitchen in Bayswater being sullied by anything other than wine bottles and a corkscrew was unthinkable. Jude wondered if he ever had cooked for himself, whether indeed he had any domestic skills. Maybe when he and Jonquil were cohabiting, they had had a normal home life, but it was a subject she did not yet want to discuss. There’d be time enough for that, particularly since this new domestic phase of their relationship somehow seemed to promise a longer future.

  She cooked a Thai green chicken curry, one of her specialities. Jude’s range of cooking was wide and random. She was just as likely to do a fry-up as something more exotic. And whereas in the next-door kitchen at High Tor every ingredient would be weighed out exactly to the last scruple, Jude’s approach was instinctive. She didn’t have a recipe book in the house. On the other hand, she had for a while run a restaurant, so she did possess all of the necessary skills.

  They drank a lot of wine with the dinner. Indeed, they always seemed to drink a lot of wine when they were together, Piers probably downing a couple of glasses to every one of hers. But she had never seen him drunk. He just seemed cheerfully to go on topping himself up. And he didn’t go in for any of that what he called ‘nonsense about not drinking and driving’. She’d often seen him take the wheel of the E-Type with a bottle of wine inside him, but she never felt in any danger.

  That evening she lit a fire in the Woodside Cottage sitting room. The October night wasn’t really cold enough to justify it, but the warmth and the glow were comforting. After they had eaten (and Jude, with a laxness that would have appalled Carole, had not even thought about taking their dirty plates through to the kitchen), Piers had removed his jacket and they’d slipped naturally down from the sofa to the floor. Equally naturally, snuggling and sipping wine had led to lazy love-making.

  Which, later, they continued upstairs. Then, in what was now becoming a jokey ritual for them, Jude asked Piers to explain how a chase was laid on a real tennis court. And she was soon blissfully asleep.

  Jude didn’t know what time it was when she woke up. Having someone sharing her bed at Woodside Cottage felt strange. Not unpleasantly strange, just unfamiliar.

  She lay there, still, drinking in the welcome unfamiliarity of Piers’ presence, his breathing, steady, deep, just on the edge of a snore. She thought back over the day, particularly the evening, and everything felt good.

  But she was wakeful. She knew she wouldn’t go back to sleep for at least half an hour. Had she been on her own, she might have switched on the bedside light and read. Or done some of the personalized stretching exercises that she had developed from yoga. Even gone downstairs and made a cup of herbal tea. But she didn’t want to wake Piers.

  Inevitably, as she lay there, she found herself thinking about Reggie Playfair’s funeral in the morning. And from there it didn’t take long for her thoughts to home back in on the circumstances of his death.

  That, however, prompted an unwelcome memory, which for the past few days she had been, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, suppressing. The call she’d had from Jonquil Targett about Reggie Playfair’s mobile phone. Probably nothing, probably just an attempt by a severely unstable woman to plant suspicions about her estranged husband. Or was there more to it than that . . .?

  Jonquil said she’d seen the phone in Piers’ possession. And it had a distinctive cover, specially made in the colours of the Lockleigh House tennis club.

  She said she’d seen it in the pocket of Piers’ jacket. And Piers’ jacket was at that moment lying downstairs in the sitting room of Woodside Cottage.

  Jude hated the direction in which her thoughts were turning. It went against her every instinct to be suspicious of someone she loved. And particularly now, when she had just regained a feeling of reassurance after her doubts of the weekend. She tried to shift concentration on to some other subject, but still Jonquil Targett’s words sawed away at her mind.

  She tried to reason against what the woman had said. Even if Piers had had Reggie’s mobile in his jacket pocket, he was likely to have moved it by now. Or he’d be wearing a different jacket. And even if she did find the mobile, its battery would have run down during the past week, so she wouldn’t be able to gather any information from it.

  Jude now knew that she would have no peace until she had behaved like some archetype of the jealous lover, till she had gone downstairs and checked through Piers Targett’s jacket pockets. Hating herself for what she was doing, she edged out from under the duvet. When she was standing by the side of the bed, she froze for a moment, but there was no interruption to the easy regularity of her lover’s breathing.

  She slipped on a towelling dressing gown and crept from the bedroom, knowing how to move the half-open door without making it squeak, knowing which creaking step to avoid on the staircase.

  The last embers of the fire still cast a meagre glow around her sitting room. Jude moved straight to the sofa on the arm of which Piers’ jacket had been casually abandoned. Now she had made the decision of what she was about to do, there was no point in delaying the inevitable.

  She felt in one pocket and her hand closed on the hard rectangle of a mobile. Extracting it, she was relieved to recognize the counters of Piers’ iPhone.

  She replaced that and felt in the other jacket pocket. There too she felt a familiar shape and weight. She took it out. The dying glow of the fire gave enough light for her to see the coloured stripes of the cover.

  While Piers Targett had sent her on an errand to his E-Type outside the tennis court, he’d taken Reggie Playfair’s mobile.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Jude put the light on and inspected the phone. Switched it on, nothing happened. Of course it would have run out of power. She almost didn’t want to find out that the mobile was a Nokia, like her own. And that her charger would fit it. But it did.

  Grimly she plugged the charger in. The screen took a moment to come to life. No password was required, she just had to press a function key to unlock the phone.

  She went straight to Messaging, and opened the in-box. The last text Reggie Playfair had received was sent at 12.37 am on the day of his death.

  It read: ‘Something important’s come up. Meet me on the court as soon as you can, like we used to.’

  The sender had not identified him- or herself. Nor did the number the text had been sent from mean anything to Jude. But she made a note of it.

  As she was scribbling the number down on the back of an Allinstore receipt, she looked up to see Piers standing the doorway from the hall. He had thrown on an orange silk dressing gown of hers. Far too small, it made him look faintly ridiculous.

  ‘Ah. So you found the phone,’ he said.

  ‘You hadn’t made much attempt to hide it.’

  ‘True.’ He sounded weary as he came across to sit at one end of the sofa. She sat at the other end. The void between them seemed incongruous after the intimacy they had shared there only a few hours earlier.

  ‘I suppose you want some explanations,’ said Piers Targett.

  ‘Wouldn’t hurt.’

  ‘No.’ He sighed. ‘Well, I took it from Reggie’s pocket when I sent you out to get my mobile from the E-Type.’

  ‘I assumed that was what had happened.’

  ‘But of course you want to know why.’

  ‘Wouldn’t hurt either.’

  ‘I did it to protect Reggie.’

  ‘Bit late for that. He was already dead.’

  ‘True. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I did it to protect Oenone.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘If the mobile had come back to her and she had found the text message which had summoned him to the court . . .’ He grimaced at the thought of the consequences.

  ‘On the other hand, Piers, you could simply have erased the text message before t
he phone got back to Oenone, and your problem would have been solved.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that now. At the time I wasn’t thinking very straight. The urgent thing seemed to be to prevent Oenone from getting the phone.’

  ‘Hm.’ Jude didn’t disbelieve him. His behaviour was consistent with the kind of messy, illogical ways people react in a crisis. ‘You’ve presumably read the text message that summoned Reggie down to the court?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you presumably know who it was from?’

  ‘Yes.’ He gave her a shrewd look. ‘Why, don’t you?’

  ‘There was no name, the number didn’t mean anything to me and I hadn’t had a chance to check through the phone’s address book before you came down.’

  ‘Right.’ Slowly, with deliberation, Piers Targett rose from the sofa. He unplugged the stripy-jacketed mobile and put it back into the jacket pocket whence Jude had taken it.

  ‘The text message,’ he said slowly, ‘was from Jonquil.’

  ‘Really?’ Jude hadn’t been expecting that.

  ‘So she told me.’ Piers spread his hands against his forehead and pressed them sideways as if trying to wipe away some memory. ‘Look, as I’ve said before, Jonquil is never the most rational of beings. In her down periods she’s almost catatonic. When she’s up, she’s capable of all kinds of bizarre behaviour.’

  ‘I thought you said the medication controls that.’

  ‘It does – providing she takes it. But she always thinks the time will come when she doesn’t need any medication. So when she’s feeling good, like when she’s at the beginning of a new relationship – like she has been recently – she won’t touch the stuff.’

  ‘And that makes her behaviour even more bizarre?’

  ‘Precisely. Anyway, there’s a bit of history between Jonquil and Reggie.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I told you fidelity was never her strong suit. And after the few months of honeymoon period after we got married . . . well, her promiscuous side took over.’