Bones Under The Beach Hut

by Simon Brett

  Jude felt uneasy. When it came to client confidentiality, she had strict boundaries. To contact Miranda Browning at a time like this simply to find out more about her son's disappearance would definitely be a step too far. On the other hand, if her intervention as a healer could help ease the woman's suffering . . .

  'What do you say, Jude?'

  'I say that at times you can be surprisingly unsentimental.'

  Carole Seddon smiled. She took what her friend had just said as a compliment.

  On the following morning, the Friday, the phone rang in High Tor. It was a very flustered-sounding Reginald Flowers. 'Carole, I'm ringing about the quiz night tonight.'

  'Oh yes?' She had forgotten all about the event, but quickly prepared a battery of excuses as to why she couldn't attend. Then she had a moment of uncertainty. The Smalting Beach Hut Association quiz night would quite possibly gather together many of the principals who might have information about the grisly discovery under Quiet Harbour. Maybe if she and Jude were to attend, they might advance the course of their investigation.

  But this thought became immediately irrelevant, as Reginald Flowers went on, 'Anyway, I'm afraid I'm going to have to cancel it.'

  'The quiz? Oh dear. Is that out of respect?'

  'I'm sorry? What do you mean?'

  'Out of respect for Robin Cutter, you know, now he's been identified as—'

  'For heaven's sake, it's nothing to do with Robin Cutter,' he responded testily. 'I wouldn't change my plans because of something like that. I thought all that was safely dead and buried - in every sense. If some silly child chooses to put himself in danger's way. This was a novel reaction to the tragedy, one that Carole certainly hadn't heard before. 'No, the reason the quiz night is going to have to be cancelled is that I have once again been guilty of assuming that other people are as efficient in the basic, simple things of life as I am myself. The SBHA has a secretary - or at least someone who has the title of secretary—'

  'Yes, I met her with you on Smalting Beach the other day. Dora Pinchbeck.'

  'Dora Pinchbeck, exactly. Dora, who, as I say has the title of secretary of the Smalting Beach Hut Association, but who turns out to be totally incompetent. She undertook to make the booking for tonight's quiz night at St Mary's Church Hall, but when I rang the caretaker there this morning to check some details, it turns out she hadn't done it. Not a difficult task to undertake, you might think, but clearly beyond the capacity of our secretary Dora. "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot," she said when I rang her about it this morning.

  Forgot! And, needless to say, there's now something else booked into St Mary's Hall for tonight. A meeting of the Smalting Local History Society, would you believe? I am, needless to say, extremely angry. It's the old thing, isn't it - if you want a job done properly, do it yourself. Dora, my so-called secretary, offered to ring round all the members of the SBHA, but I said, "No, thank you, Dora. I want to ensure that everyone gets the message, so I'll do it myself." Which is why I'm calling you, Carole,' he concluded, on a note of affronted martyrdom.

  'So all we lack for this evening's quiz night is a venue?'

  'You say "all we lack", Carole, but it is a rather major lack. There's nowhere else suitable in Smalting, except for one of the rooms at The Crab Inn and, as I may have said, the prices there are now quite extortionate . . .' Belatedly he seemed to catch on to something in her intonation. 'Why, you're not suggesting that you might know of a suitable alternative venue?'

  'There's somewhere I could try. I'll ring you back if I have any luck. Well, I'll let you know either away.'

  She rang straight through to the Crown and Anchor. Ted Crisp was initially grouchy at her suggestion, but then it was a point of honour with him to be initially grouchy to most suggestions. And his attitude quickly softened. Though Carole Seddon didn't have the natural charm of her neighbour, in her background was the unlikely fact that she and Ted Crisp had once had a brief affair, and he was still more indulgent to her than he might have been to other supplicants.

  Within three minutes he had agreed that the Smalting Beach Hut Association could use his function room that evening at no charge, 'so long as they all drink lots of booze'.

  Carole immediately rang back Reginald Flowers to pass on the good news.

  Jude was still tussling with her moral dilemma. Part of her wanted to ring Miranda Browning, to offer condolences and, if required, some healing treatment. But another part accused her of shabby opportunism for even thinking of the idea. Was it born out of compassion or, as Carole had baldly suggested, to help them advance on their investigation? Jude couldn't decide.

  While she was going through this uncharacteristic agonizing, her phone rang. The woman at the other end identified herself as Miranda Browning.

  'I was desperately sorry to hear the news,' said Jude. 'I hadn't realized that you were the poor boy's mother, you know, when I met you before under that name.'

  'Browning's the name of my second husband.' The woman's voice was strong. Though there was tension in her tone, there was no self-pity. She wasn't about to give way to tears.

  'So you are Lionel and Joyce Oliver's daughter and you first married someone called Cutter?'

  'No, Cutter's my maiden name. His father's Rory Oliver.'

  'But why was Robin's surname not Oliver?'

  'Rory and I weren't married when Robin was born.

  We weren't together at the time. I didn't think it likely we ever would be again, so I registered Robin under my surname. All his documentation was as "Cutter", when he started at play school he was "Robin Cutter'. By the time Rory and I had got back together and married, the name had stuck. I'm sure in time we would have changed it, but . . .' Her voice wavered for the first time, '. . . we weren't given that opportunity.'

  'No.' Jude spoke softly, already in therapist mode. 'As I say, I'm desperately sorry . . . about what happened eight years ago . . . and about what's happened now.'

  'Thank you,' said Miranda Browning, with considerable grace. 'Obviously this has brought it all back, and, inevitably perhaps, the headaches have started again. I could hardly get out of bed or stand up this morning. And I can't imagine the stress is going to get any less over the next few weeks, so I just wondered . . . the treatment you gave me last time worked so well . . . if you've got a spare appointment you could slot me into?'

  'I'm free this afternoon,' said Jude.

  They fixed a time. As she put the phone down Jude beamed, unsurprised by what had happened. But she wouldn't tell her neighbour whether she had made the call to Miranda Browning or Miranda had called her. Unlike Jude, Carole Seddon didn't believe in synchronicity.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Miranda Browning arrived at the gate of Woodside Cottage in a taxi. In spite of the June heat, she had a scarf tied over her hair and wore dark glasses. She looked anxiously from side to side as she paid the cabbie and was still casting nervous glances back to the road when Jude opened the door to her.

  After welcoming her client and leading her into the sitting room, Jude gestured to the glasses and asked, 'For the headaches?'

  'Not really,' replied Miranda Browning, taking them off. 'More so's I'm not recognized. It's all started again. Bloody press camped outside my front door. They're quite capable of following me here and door- stepping you as well.'

  'So how did you get away?'

  'Practice,' came the wry response. 'I've got a cab firm I trust completely. They pick me up in the alley at the back of my garden. So far the press pack haven't caught on to that yet. Early days, though, this time round.'

  Again Jude was aware of the lack of self-pity in Miranda Browning's tone. The woman had had to develop a stoicism, a survivor's instinct. Whatever she was feeling inside, she was damned if she was going to expose her emotions to the world. Which was probably why her deep, suppressed pain manifested itself in physical symptoms, like headaches.

  Jude uncovered her treatment bench, another draped shape in her sitti
ng room of swathed furniture. The windows were all open, letting in a light breeze that set her bamboo wind chimes tinkling. She pulled out paper sheeting from a roll at the end of the bench and laid it over the plastic surface. Then she set down a pillow shaped like a fat horseshoe. 'Take off as much as you feel comfortable with, Miranda. And then lie on your front.'

  The woman stripped down to bra and pants. Though she had put on weight in the eight years since she'd appeared on television after her son's disappearance, her skin was still firm and her muscles well toned.

  'Just lie still, relax as far as you can and I'll check where the trouble's originating from.' Jude's eyes fixed in an expression of intense concentration as she ran her hands up and down the woman's body, not quite touching, sensitive to the variations of temperature she could feel. The hands lingered a while over the small of the back, then moved up and hovered around the shoulders. Jude's fingers tensed. Although they still made no contact, they seemed to be pressing against some resistance.

  'We both now know what's been causing the headaches, don't we, Miranda? The problem is convincing your body of what's really going on. Stop it from expressing your grief in this physical way.'

  'I don't know that it is grief now, Jude. Oh, I've had my share of grieving, but that's been kind of subsumed. Since the remains were identified as Robin's I haven't cried at all.'

  'Maybe it'd be better if you did?'

  'I don't know. I've certainly served my time on the crying front. But now . . . there's a kind of dead- ness in me. Not the wild mood swings I used to have after it first happened. I think, except for the bloody headaches, I feel better now I know there's no hope. I suppose, so long as there was a possibility that somewhere in the world a thirteen-year-old Robin was walking around, so long as there was this vague, vague chance that I might one day see him again . . .'

  Miranda's words were heavy with the deadness of which she had spoken. Jude didn't say anything, but she began to feel less guilty about the possible prurience of her interest in the woman's tragedy. Talking, she knew, would be part of the healing process for Miranda Browning. And if what the woman said helped Carole and Jude in their investigation, well, that was just a bonus. But she wasn't going to prompt, just let Miranda Browning talk if she wanted to.

  And evidently she did want to. 'Now I know, you see. I am a woman whose child died. A mother whose son died. It's not a nice thing to know, but it's now a fact. Soon we'll have to have a funeral and all that entails. And presumably that'll involve Rory and his parents ... it won't be easy.

  'Some women who've lost children say it helps having the physical remains to mourn and a grave to visit. Mothers of boys killed in war, that kind of thing. I don't know whether that'll make much difference for me. I'm certainly not expecting ever to feel . . . closure,' she said, echoing Carole. 'I don't think I'll ever achieve closure. The loss of a child is like an open wound. It'll never heal properly, but perhaps it can be dressed in such a way that you are not in constant pain.'

  Jude moved her hands to touch the sides of the woman's neck. 'I'm just going to do a bit of ordinary massage. The muscles here are very knotted. And then we'll try the proper healing.'

  Miranda Browning submitted meekly as the fingers and thumbs probed into the taut flesh. 'Yes, I can feel that releasing something,' she said.

  Jude feared that her interruption might have stemmed the woman's flow, but it hadn't. 'What I hope will change is the amount of blaming I've done over the last eight years. Blaming my ex-husband, blaming his parents, most of all blaming myself. I must say I can't see that ever going away.'

  'Why do you blame your husband's parents?' asked Jude, feigning a little more ignorance than she actually had.

  'Oh, don't you know the circumstances of Robin's disappearance? Sorry, there was so much media coverage down here at the time I thought everyone knew every last detail.'

  'I wasn't living in Fethering when it happened.'

  'Ah. Well, I've told it so many times, another telling won't hurt. I can almost do it without getting upset now, so I suppose that's progress. Right. . .' And Miranda Browning reiterated the information that Carole and Jude had found on Wikipedia.

  But she did add a few details that hadn't been available online. Yes, she and Rory had gone to London to see a matinee of Les Miserables, leaving Robin in the care of her husband's parents.

  'Joyce and I never really got on. If she'd been in charge when Robin was abducted I don't think I'd ever have forgiven her. With Lionel, well, it was a terrible thing, but I liked him and he really adored Robin. No amount of blame from me could equal the way he blamed himself for what happened. I don't think it'd be overstating it to say that his life really stopped at that moment. He's been kind of going through the motions ever since.'

  'And what about Joyce?'

  Miranda Browning shrugged. 'I don't think it made a lot of difference to her. She only ever thinks about herself.'

  Jude wondered whether this was just traditional daughter-in-law/mother-in-law antipathy. It didn't fit in with what she had heard from Carole, though. Granted, her neighbour hadn't spent much time with Joyce Oliver, but the comfortable woman she had spoken of seemed to be at odds with Miranda's description.

  'And it was on Smalting Beach that the abduction happened?'

  'Well, on the prom. On June the fifteenth. Just a little over eight years ago. I don't know why anniversaries have such significance, but I'm afraid they do.' For the first time the woman's emotions threatened to overwhelm her. Her voice wobbled for a moment, but she was quick to reassert control. 'Smalting Beach was quite crowded. And Robin loved boats of all kinds, windsurfers in particular. I can understand why Lionel let him stay outside the shop while he bought the ice cream. I'm sure I would have done the same.'

  'But if the beach was crowded, why didn't anyone witness the abduction?'

  Jude's massaging fingers felt the shaking of Miranda's head. 'I thought that was strange at first. But I think the fact that it was so crowded was the reason why nobody noticed. Robin was a very trusting little boy - too trusting probably. If a stranger had started talking to him, he wouldn't have been shy about replying.'

  'Presumably the police talked to your father-in-law about what had happened?'

  'Endlessly. And he had to suffer the agony of being a suspect, all kinds of probing into his private life, having his car forensically examined. It was very tough for him. But he never changed a single detail of his story. Which shows it must have been true - not that Lionel is capable of lying, anyway. He's a rather splendid man, I think - certainly given what he's had to put up with from Joyce.'

  Again the apparently disproportionate animus against her mother-in-law. Jude would have liked to have found out more about the reasons for that, but it wasn't the moment to divert the course of Miranda's narrative.

  'No, that's one of my great sadnesses about the whole thing - the estrangement from Lionel. There are terribly destructive aftershocks from an event like what happened to Robin.'

  'Presumably it was that that broke up your marriage?'

  'Yes. It had always been an on-off sort of relationship. But once he came back to me and we got married, I'd hoped . . . Then Robin disappeared. There were a lot of other things too. Small fault lines in the relationship that might, I suppose, in other circumstances, have been papered over. But with Robin gone they became huge great rifts. I don't really blame Rory. I just can't imagine any marriage surviving something like that. All the time you spend together there's this one huge subject looming over you. The elephant in the room. If you talk about it, it's painful. If you don't talk about it, it's equally painful. Eventually you just don't want to be together, you don't want to have the constant reminder of your shared pain.

  'And, of course, had circumstances been different, I suppose we might have had another child. Been a proper little family. Still, it's too late to think about that now.' She allowed herself a small sigh of frustration.

  'I hope your second marriage
has been happier.'

  Jude's words were greeted by a grunt of cynicism.

  'No, that one didn't last either. Less than a year. I was stupid to think it would work. I'm afraid I'm not marriage material at the moment. I'm still just an emotional minefield.'

  There was a silence. Then Jude removed her hands from Miranda's neck and shoulders. 'Does that feel easier? Just move your head from side to side. See if it's less tight.'

  The client did as she was told. 'Yes, it is much better.'

  'That's only alleviated the symptoms. Now I'll see if I can heal what's causing it.'

  'Good luck,' said Miranda Browning, with a hint of bitterness. 'Sadly I don't think healing can change history.'

  'No, I agree. But it maybe can change the way you react to history.'

  'Diminish how much I blame myself?'

  'Maybe a bit. If you turn over and lie on your front, Miranda.'

  An expression of intense concentration came into Jude's brown eyes as she ran her hands along the contours of the woman's body. Once again there was no contact made, but the effort was more intense and exhausting than it had been for the actual massage.

  'Did it actually help last time I did this?' Jude asked.

  'Yes, it did for a few days. In fact I have felt generally better since then. That is . . . until recent events.'

  'Yes, it must be ghastly having it all brought back to you.'

  'Still, maybe I will be able to find a workable modus vivendi, now there's no longer any uncertainty.' But she didn't sound over-optimistic about the prospect.

  'Presumably . . .' Jude chose her words with sensitivity '. . . now the police actually have a body, there's a stronger chance they may be able to track down the perpetrator, you know, the person who actually abducted Robin?'

  'Maybe. They certainly seem in no hurry to release the body. So presumably every kind of forensic test is being . . .' The images this prompted were too graphic for her to finish the sentence.