by Simon Brett
Carole had reckoned that Reginald Flowers would be an early bird on Smalting Beach. Goodness only knew where he lived, where he spent his nights, but The Bridge was clearly the centre of his daily life. So Carole had decided to get there at half-past seven on the Saturday and give Gulliver his morning walk on Smalting rather than Fethering Beach. Jude, whose body clock favoured a more leisurely getting-up routine, was silent and, by her usually sunny standards, almost grumpy.
Still, both women had the sense that their investigation might finally be getting somewhere. Curt Holderness's admission the night before that he was blackmailing Reginald Flowers offered intriguing revelations.
But nothing, as it turned out, was going to be revealed that morning. The bar and padlocks on the front of The Bridge were locked in place, and there was no sign of the hut's owner.
'Staying in bed with his bronchitis,' Jude suggested. 'He did sound fairly ropey last night.'
'Yes,' Carole agreed glumly.
They took Gulliver for a long walk along Smalting Beach, as far as the headland that separated it from Fethering. But when they returned to the crescent of beach huts, there was still no sign of Reginald Flowers.
Disconsolately, they returned to the Renault, wondering who they knew who might have an address for the chairman of the SBHA.
As soon as she got back to High Tor, Carole checked her copy of The Hut Parade. There was a landline number for Reginald Flowers, but each time she tried it, the phone just rang and rang. Not even an answering machine message.
Carole Seddon took out her frustration by cleaning High Tor to within an inch of its life.
Next door at Woodside Cottage, Jude was equally restless. She tried to read the manuscript of a friend's book about the origins of acupuncture, but interesting though she found the subject, she found her mind kept slipping away from the text.
Till they contacted Reginald Flowers, there was nothing they could do on the Robin Cutter case.
It was early afternoon before she realized that there was still something she could try doing on the Mark Dennis case. She retrieved the phone number Gray Czesky had written down two days earlier, and keyed it into her mobile.
To her astonishment it was answered. By Mark Dennis.
He sounded subdued, but not adversarial. Jude didn't try any subterfuge, no pretence that she was a member of the police force. She just said that she was a friend of Philly's and she remembered meeting him with her. She said that she and her friend Carole would really like to meet up with him. Without demur, Mark suggested a rendezvous at six that evening in the Boatswain's Arms in Littlehampton.
'How did he sound?' asked Carole when Jude came rushing round to High Tor with the news.
'A bit sort of tentative. Vague maybe.'
'But not frightened?' She was remembering Nuala Cullan's description of the last time she saw her husband.
'No, I wouldn't have said frightened.'
Mark Dennis was not there when they got to the Boatswain's Arms. It was a roughish pub, the opposite end of the spectrum from The Crab Inn at Smalting. Littlehampton was like that. Although undergoing selective gentrification by expensive new developments of flats near the sea and the trendy modernity of the East Beach Cafe, parts of the town remained resolutely tacky. When Carole and Jude asked for Chilean Chardonnay at the counter, the Boatswain's Arms barman only offered them 'White Wine'. It was rather too sweet for either of their tastes. Lachrymose country and western music whined away in the background.
They sat down at a sticky round table and were aware of the scrutiny of the pub's other, silent customers. The atmosphere wasn't exactly hostile, but it wasn't welcoming either. Carole and Jude realized at the same time that they were the only women there. The chalkboard ads for Sky Sports suggested the Boatswain's Arms was a male haven, a place where lugubrious men dropped in after work to sink a silent pint or two, while they put off returning to their wives and other responsibilities.
Carole and Jude were both very excited at the prospect of meeting Mark Dennis. Finally, it seemed, at least one part of their investigation was making headway. Though neither of them could imagine that Mark himself had anything to do with the placing of Robin Cutter's remains under Quiet Harbour, they were still convinced he had important information to give them.
But as the minutes after their six o'clock agreed meeting time passed, the two women started to worry that he wasn't going to turn up. In her head Jude tried to analyse exactly how he had sounded on the phone. Not frightened, no, but certainly nervous. Maybe he'd agreed to their meeting on the spur of the moment, and then thought better of the idea as its reality approached. Jude wished she'd asked Gray Czesky for an address as well as a phone number for Mark. Though the painter might well not have known one.
It was nearly six-thirty when the two women exchanged looks. Both were thinking the same thing: it was time to give their proposed meeting up as a bad job. But at that moment Mark Dennis came in through the door.
Had she not been expecting him, had they just passed in the street, Jude would not have recognized the young man. When she'd last seen Mark Dennis, probably in the April, he had been slender and gym-toned. With his sharp features, outdoor tan and straw-coloured hair, he and Philly Rose had made a singularly attractive couple.
But in the intervening months Mark Dennis had put on a lot of weight. The sideways spread of his face had made his eyes, nose and chin look too close together. And the weight gain seemed to have taken him by surprise. He hadn't yet adjusted his wardrobe to cope with it. The buttons down the front of his short-sleeved shirt strained against their buttonholes, and his thighs were very tight against his jeans.
His expression also was of someone taken by surprise, someone bewildered by what life had done to him. Recognizing Jude, he gazed rather blearily at the two women as she introduced him to Carole.
Asked what he'd like to drink, Mark Dennis opted for mineral water and Carole went to the bar to order it. She wondered for a moment whether the Boatswain's Arms would stock something as girlie as mineral water, but fortunately they did.
When she rejoined them, Carole found Mark already deep in conversation with Jude, apparently with no inhibitions about discussing his missing months. 'It was very odd. I was just out of it.'
'How do you mean "out of it"?' asked Jude.
'Not here. On another planet.' His voice still carried the vagueness that she had noticed on the phone.
'Take us back to the beginning of May,' she said. 'When you left Philly.' He winced at the reminder. 'Tell us what happened, that is, if you don't mind?'
'No, I don't mind. I've been trying to make sense of it myself for some time. It might help to talk about it.'
'Why haven't you talked about it to Philly?' asked Carole, possibly in too sharp a tone.
But Mark Dennis was unfazed by her question. 'I'll come to that. I'll explain it. Well, the main thing is, back in May I was in a pretty strange state, when all that happened. Not behaving very rationally.' He looked at Jude, almost pleadingly. 'I don't know if Philly told you anything about our circumstances . . .'
'A bit. I gather you had money problems.'
'And how. Yes, we'd moved out of London and down to Smalting in January. And then everything was fine. I'd got quite a lot of savings from various bonuses and what have you, then we made a bit of profit from selling our two London places and buying Seashell Cottage. Anyway, I invested all we'd got in various directions. Do you understand derivatives?'
Both women shook their heads.
'Neither, as it turned out, did I. I thought I understood them, but some freak activities in the world markets meant. . . well, effectively I'd lost the lot. Our little seaside idyll was looking very shaky, very much under threat.'
'So why didn't you talk to Philly about it?' asked Carole. 'Why did you just walk out on her?'
Again he didn't react to the aggression in her questions. 'I didn't mean to just walk out on her. I meant to . . . sort things out. In fact, I don'
t know if you know, but there were other complications in my life. I'm still technically married.'
'We know that,' said Jude.
'Yes,' Carole added. 'We have actually met Nuala.'
'Have you?' Mark Dennis grimaced. 'Something I must do again soon at some point. Not an encounter I look forward to.'
'We gathered from Nuala,' said Jude, 'that she was pressing you for money too.'
'Mm. We had this odd arrangement. I wanted to get divorced. The marriage had been over in everything but name for quite a long time. But Nuala wasn't keen on the idea of divorce.'
Carole nodded. 'We've heard her views on the subject.'
'Anyway, to keep her out of the scene and to let me get on with my life with Philly, I made this arrangement to ... I don't know what you'd say . . .'
'Buy her off?' suggested Carole.
'Yes, that's what it effectively was - buying her off. And she insisted that it was done properly, with a legal agreement, which may give a pointer to the kind of character she is. But at least it got her out of my hair. Anyway, that was all fine, so long as I had this big income, but when things started to go pear-shaped on the money front, oh God, I couldn't keep Philly in our Smalting lifestyle and I couldn't pay what I'd agreed with Nuala, and ... I was very stressed.'
Mark Dennis was silent for a moment. Neither Carole nor Jude said anything, giving him time to gather his thoughts.
'Well,' he said eventually, 'I still thought I could sort things out. I thought I could do it on my own. And I didn't think it would take long. I only intended to leave Philly for a few days. Go up to London, borrow some money from various City friends to dig me out of my financial hole, then meet up with Nuala, somehow get her off my back . . .'
'And what happened?'
He shook his head wryly. 'Should have known, really. Most of my City mates were feeling the squeeze as much as I was. Some of them actually asked to borrow money from me before I could put in my own request. Then I met up with Nuala . . .'
'At the Oxo Tower.'
'Yes, Carole. At the Oxo Tower. Typical of bloody Nuala, that. She knows I haven't got two penny pieces to rub together, so she books in at one of the most expensive bloody restaurants in London.'
'How did you pay for it?'
'Oh, credit cards.' He let out a bitter little laugh. 'Same way I'd been paying for everything else for the previous few months.'
'So there was quite a big debt built up there too, was there?' asked Jude.
'I'll say. And of course I'd been a very high earner, so I had no problem getting new cards or increasing my credit limit, which meant the debts just spiralled upwards and upwards.' He sighed. 'And the pressure on me was getting more and more intense . . .'
Carole broke the silence that followed this. 'What happened?'
Mark Dennis shook his head in bewilderment. 'I don't know.'
'What do you mean - you don't know?'
He sighed. 'I literally don't know. I had ... I suppose you'd have to call it some kind of breakdown. I mean, when I left Philly, I can remember that happening. And I can remember having dinner with Nuala at the Oxo Tower - that was on the eighth of May - but . . .' He shook his head again, unable to fill in the gaps in his recollection.
'So where have you been for the last few weeks?' asked Jude gently.
'I've been in a psychiatric hospital for most of it. Only came out a couple of weeks ago.'
'How did you get in there? Did you go in voluntarily?'
'No, I was sent there. Look, I can't actually remember a lot of this stuff myself, but from what the doctors and nurses have told me, I've kind of pieced together what happened. As I say, the last thing I can clearly remember was having that dinner with Nuala at the Oxo Tower on the eighth of May. What I did for the next few days I have no idea, but I was found on Dover Beach on the morning of the eleventh. I had been in the sea, was drenched through and was only wearing a pair of boxer shorts. What was more, I couldn't speak.'
'And you have no recollection of how you got there?'
'None at all. And only hazy recollections of the following weeks. Because of the location, because I had apparently come out of the sea, and because I couldn't - or perhaps wouldn't - speak English, the fairly reasonable assumption was made that I must be an illegal immigrant, who had been shipwrecked, or perhaps dumped in the English Channel by some unscrupulous trafficker. So I was handed over to the police, who apparently questioned me for some time.'
'Do you remember any of that?'
'Only vague sort of impressions - and not very pleasant ones at that. I think the police thought I was holding out on them, that I actually could speak but was just pretending to be traumatized to conceal my identity. So they didn't exactly treat me with kid gloves.'
'Are you saying they beat you up?' asked Carole, whose Home Office background made her particularly sensitive about criticisms of the police.
'No, I'm not saying that. I don't think there was any violence involved, just a lot of suspicion. And my recollections are so hazy that I don't know which bits really happened and which I've invented. Anyway, after a few days the police must have decided that I was suffering from some genuine psychological condition - amnesia at the very least, and possibly some other arcanely named syndromes. So I was then sent to this secure psychiatric hospital in Lewes. Which is where I've been until a fortnight ago.'
'But clearly your memory's come back. You know who you are now, don't you?'
'Yes, Jude, I do. The process was gradual. The psychiatrists who worked with me were very good. And I had a lot of medication too.' He gestured to his flabby body. 'I think that's probably why I put on so much weight. The medication and lack of exercise.'
'Did the psychiatrists have any explanation for what had happened to you?'
'Conjectures, nothing concrete. They reckon that I'd just got to a point of stress where my system couldn't cope, so everything kind of shut down. I couldn't deal with the world around me and so my body reacted by excluding me from that world, shutting me off from it.'
The two women exchanged looks. Something in Jude's expression prevented Carole from expressing the scepticism Mark Dennis's words had engendered in her.
He shrugged. 'Anyway, that was what the psychiatrists reckoned. Whether it's true I've no idea, but I suppose it sounds like a kind of explanation.'
'When you went down to Dover Beach,' asked Carole, 'do you think it was with the intention of drowning yourself, of escaping your problems that way?'
Mark Dennis pursed his lips. 'To be honest I don't know. I don't think so. During the last few months I've never contemplated suicide, however bad things have been. And before that, when I was normal, if that's the right word . . . well, the idea of me topping myself would have been laughable. I've never suffered from depression. I've always been told I'm a rather annoyingly positive person.'
Jude nodded. 'Yes, but depression can lie low in someone for a very long time. And your lifestyle had always been pretty pressured, hadn't it?'
'That's exactly what one of the psychiatrists said to me. Almost word for word. Do you have special expertise in that area, Jude?'
'I do a bit of healing.'
'Ah.' He looked at her appreciatively. 'I would imagine you're very good at it.'
'Thank you.'
'What I can't understand,' said Carole, 'is when you did finally begin to remember who you were, why you didn't make contact with anyone?'
'I hadn't got many people to make contact with. My parents are both dead. There was no way I wanted to see Nuala again until I was sure I was firing on all cylinders.'
'But what about Philly?'
'Yes.' Mark Dennis looked sad and confused. 'Yes, I know I should have got in touch with Philly as soon as I could, but . . . it's complicated. I guess it's something to do with our relationship. Philly . . . she's . . . well, she hasn't got a lot of confidence. She doesn't show it, she always seems bright and bouncy, but her self-esteem is actually very low.'
Ju
de, who knew this all too well, didn't say anything, as he went on, 'And the previous men in her life haven't done much good for her. From what I can gather, they were mostly inadequates, needy emotional vampires who monopolized all of her energy with their problems rather than her giving any time to her own.
'But when we met, it was different. I was used to being in charge, I was full - perhaps over-full - of confidence, and I loved her. And the fact that someone like me loved her, that gave her a lot of confidence. And the fact that I enjoyed being in charge, and that I sort of protected her, she liked that too. Then of course I'm that much older, so a bit of a father figure maybe. I was like her rock. She knew that, whatever happened, she could rely on me.'
Carole and Jude guessed more or less what he was about to say, but they did not break the silence. 'Well, when our finances started to go belly up, I wasn't so much of a rock, was I? No more Mr Reliable.'
'But Philly didn't take it out on you for what had happened?' asked Carole.
'Good Lord, no. It's not in her nature to do that. No, she was very understanding and supportive. And very practical. She said we'd have to sell Seashell Cottage, and I knew how much she loved the place, but she didn't put any pressure on me. Philly is entirely incapable of emotional blackmail.'
'Which, after Nuala,' Carole suggested tartly, 'must have been quite a relief for you.'
'God, you can say that again.'
'So, when you got your memory back, the reason you didn't contact Philly,' said Jude perceptively, 'was because you were afraid you had become needy, like all her previous men.'
'Exactly that. I wanted to wait till my own confidence had built up a bit, till I could once again be the person she needs. But I'm afraid getting to that situation promises to be a horribly slow process.'
'You could at least have just given Philly a call, though.' There was a note of reproach in Carole's voice. 'Assured her you were still alive. She's been worried sick about you.'
Mark Dennis looked shamefacedly down at the sticky table top. 'I know. I should have done it. But I didn't want her to see me . . . damaged.'