Fethering 01 (2000) - The Body on the Beach

by Simon Brett; Prefers to remain anonymous

  “Who was that contact?”

  Jude realized she had been over-eager even before Dylan responded. “Hey, just a minute, just a minute. I thought you said it was weed—or was it ‘pot’? -you were after.”

  “Yes,” she agreed contritely. “Can you help me?”

  “Maybe. It depends how much you’re prepared to pay—” He quoted her prices for the various grades of goods he had available. She agreed his terms without haggling, and he fixed to meet her in the seafront shelter nearest to the Fethering Yacht Club at seven o’clock that evening.

  “How will I recognize you?” he asked.

  “I’m very tall, nearly six foot. Thinnish, black hair. I’ll be wearing a long brown leather coat and a brown fur hat.” Jude felt fairly safe with this anti-description of herself. And, for ethical reasons, her wardrobe contained nothing made of either leather or fur.

  “OK. And a name? Or at least something you can identify yourself by, in case there’s more than one tall bird in a leather coat down on the seafront tonight.”

  “Caroline,” said Jude.

  “OK, Caroline. See you later.”

  And he put the phone down. As she switched off her mobile, a little tremor of distaste ran through Jude’s body.

  One thing she knew for certain, though. She would not be anywhere near a Fethering seafront shelter at seven o’clock that evening.

  For a moment she contemplated ringing the police and suggesting they make a rendezvous with Dylan at a Fethering seafront shelter at seven o’clock that evening.

  But no. Deep though her hatred for the boy was, shopping him to the authorities would have been a very un-Jude thing to do.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  That afternoon, over a cup of tea at Carole’s, the two women pooled the information they had gleaned. Both had a lot to tell. They had unearthed pretty convincing evidence that Rory Turnbull had been a heroin user. That expensive habit might well have led to his embezzling the funds of the Fethering Yacht Club.

  And yet, when they had told each other all their findings, both Carole and Jude were left feeling flat. They had found reasons why Rory Turnbull might have wanted to take his own life, but they’d found nothing that linked him with the body Carole had found on Fethering beach. True, the dentist had had contact with Dylan the drug dealer, and Dylan had been the initiator of the black magic mutilation of the corpse in Brigadoon II, but that still did not provide a direct connection. They had no proof that Rory Turnbull knew the body was in his boat, and there seemed no obvious way of getting any.

  As they shuffled through the possibilities, even Jude’s customary good-natured calm gave way to despondency. All they were left with was that it had been a bad week for the Fethering body-count. Three deaths, and though Aaron Spalding’s might well have been prompted by guilt for what he’d done to the unnamed corpse, Rory lurnbull’s seemed to stand on its own.

  “Of course, we don’t actually know it’s a death yet, do we?” reasoned Carole.

  “No, not till they’ve found his body.”

  “Yes, and who knows how long that’ll take? He might have driven out to some disused barn, or into the woods, or driven the car into a pond or into the sea…” Carole sighed hopelessly.

  “Right.” Jude screwed up her eyes and tapped with irritation at her furrowed brow. “Is there something obvious we’re missing? Some information we have that we haven’t followed through?”

  They both concentrated. There was a long silence, then Carole said, “Theresa Spalding!”

  “What about her?”

  “I’ve suddenly realized there’s something I should have asked her and didn’t.”

  “Hm?”

  “I was concentrating too much on Aaron, and I forgot to ask her why she came here in the first place. How did she know I’d found the body? She said I ‘matched the description’. She must’ve talked to someone who saw me. Who though?”

  “Hey!” A smile slowly irradiated Jude’s features. It was a great improvement. Gloom didn’t suit her. “Of course! Why on earth didn’t we think of that at the time? Come on, let’s go and ask her now!”

  They went straight up to Downside in the Renault. The estate didn’t look any more welcoming in the dark than it had in daylight and Carole was glad there were two of them in the car. In spite of the cold, a bunch of early teens loitered in Drake Crescent, sorting out plans for where they’d go for their Saturday night—or where they could go for their Saturday night without any money.

  A car stopping in the road seemed to qualify as an excitement. The kids moved closer, watching the women get out and approach Theresa Spalding’s front door. Two of them leaned against the Renault’s doors, their exaggerated outlines menacing in puffa jackets. They watched in silence as Carole repeatedly pressed the bell. Only when she banged on the door did one of the kids shout out, “She’s not there. They’ve taken her away.”

  “Who’s taken her away? Where to?”

  They all seemed keen to pitch in with information.

  “An ambulance come.”

  “They took her to where the crazy people go.”

  “She’d totally lost it.”

  “She’s in the nuthouse.”

  “In the looney bin.”

  Carole and Jude exchanged rueful looks. They’d got the impression that Theresa Spalding’s level of neurosis was pretty high at the best of times. She’d spoken of always being ‘on some medication’. It was no surprise that her son’s death should have destabilized the woman’s precarious sanity.

  They went back to the car. The two kids in puffa jackets stayed, insolently leaning against the doors till the last possible moment, then eased themselves upright and slouched away. As she started the engine, Carole heard some raucous remark at their expense, followed by a burst of derisive laughter. She shivered.

  §

  The Saturday evening and the Sunday compounded their frustration. Both of them kept contemplating calling round next door to discuss their investigation further. But both of them knew there was nothing else to say.

  So Carole watched Saturday evening television, which only went to confirm her opinion that there never was anything on the television on Saturday evening. On the Sunday she took Gulliver out for longer walks than usual and virtuously tidied the cupboard under the stairs, packing into bin liners a lot of what she now designated rubbish. These activities, preparing a couple of plain meals and reading the Sunday papers served to fill the void of the day.

  It was like any other Sunday. As if none of the excitements of the previous week had happened.

  Next door, Jude unpacked a couple of boxes of books and stacked them upright in old wine-crates in her bedroom. She did her yoga. She cooked a rather adventurous prawn curry for her one meal of the day, taken round four o’clock. With it she drank half a bottle- of wine. She drank the other half during the evening, much of which she spent reading in an aromatic bath, her toe reaching out every now and again to top up the hot water.

  Though it was not in her nature to be as uptight as Carole, Jude too felt the tension of unfulfilment.

  Nothing could happen until Rory Turribull’s suicide was confirmed to have taken place.

  IWENTY-NINE

  It was a different receptionist at the Brighton dental surgery the following morning, and Jude was directed to a different waiting room for her appointment with the hygienist. The plate on the closed door read ‘Holly Draper’, and from inside came sounds of girlish chatter.

  Jude sat and read a woman’s magazine of the kind she didn’t know still existed. There was even a special offer for knitting patterns. She wondered how long it had been there.

  Then the door opened and the previous appointment was ushered out by a woman who must be Holly Draper. A short unnatural blonde with large honey-coloured eyes, she wore a white overall and latex gloves. A disposable face-mask had been pulled down beneath her chin, perhaps to enable her to talk, though from the way she was talking it looked like it’d take a lot mor
e than a face-mask to stop her.

  “But that kind of thing seems to happen all the time these days, doesn’t it? I mean, who can you trust? You read about all these MPs putting their hands in the till, and they’re meant to be our elected representatives, aren’t they? And then there are solicitors and…”

  Jude instantly identified Holly Draper’s conversational method. It involved firing out a fusillade of questions and giving her collocutor no time to answer any of them. Perhaps this derived from the fact that most of the people she spoke to in her professional life had their mouths so full of metalwork and saliva-siphons that they couldn’t have replied even if they’d wanted to.

  Whatever its cause, Holly Draper’s monologue style was excellent news for Jude. Just get her on to the right subject.

  And even that might not prove to be too difficult. As her previous appointment sidled along the wall in desperate hope of escape, the hygienist was saying, “Well, you’d never have thought it to look at him, would you? Still, it’s often the quiet ones, isn’t it? Mind you, I can’t imagine doing that to myself, can you? Well, I’ve never wanted to, as it happens. Just as well, isn’t it? Have you ever—Oh, right, if you have to be off. Give those notes in at reception and make another appointment for three months’ time—all right?”

  She turned and flashed a hygienic smile at her next appointment. “Well, hello. You must be—”

  “Everyone calls me Jude.”

  “Oh, right you are. I’m Holly. Jude as in ‘Judith’, is that right? It’s nice. Nicer that ‘Judy’, isn’t it? So many Judys around, aren’t there? If you’d just like to come through into my little room…Lovely. And make yourself comfortable in the chair, will you? And I’ll just have a glance at your notes, if I may? Hm, ooh, Mr Frobisher says we’ve got a bit of inflammation round our gums, haven’t we? Dear oh dear, aren’t we a naughty girl? Right, well, I’d better have a look, hadn’t I?”

  Turning to pick up her examination mirror and toothpick brought a fractional pause, into which Jude managed to insert a line. “Dreadful news about Rory Turnbull, wasn’t it?”

  “You heard about that, did you? Did you know him?”

  Jude once again leapt into the minimal breech. “I’ve just moved to Fethering and I did meet him briefly.”

  “Ooh yes, well, as you can imagine, everyone here was gobsmacked when we heard the news—absolutely gobsmacked. Weren’t you?”

  “I didn’t know him that well.”

  “Didn’t you? Still, after what’s happened, we’re all asking ourselves if any of us knew him that well, aren’t we? It’s a terrible thing for someone to do, isn’t it?” Before Jude could offer an opinion on the ethics of suicide, silverware approached her mouth. “Now if you could just open for me, could you? And can we pop this in? Could you just hold it, yes? We don’t want our mouth filling up with saliva, do we?”

  Further conversational prompts would be difficult. But Jude reckoned, having got Holly on to the right rails, the hygienist, in a state of permanently woundup readiness, could be allowed to run.

  “Ooh yes, a few places here where the gums are a bit red. Do you floss at all?” Jude let out a strangled response. Whether it was in the affirmative or negative didn’t seem to affect Holly Draper’s flow. “Well, you should, because if your gums are healthy then there’s a much better chance of your teeth being healthy, isn’t there? Now I’m just going to go round and pick out a bit of the muck you’ve got between your teeth. OK? I’ll try not to hurt, but round some of the inflamed bits, I may not be able to avoid it. All right with you?”

  Praying that the hygienist’s diversion into the professional hadn’t derailed her train of thought, Jude gave a gurgled assent to being hurt.

  She needn’t have worried. While the point of her pick probed away, Holly Draper continued seamlessly, “I mean, I’d never thought Rory was a particularly happy man, had you? And it was no secret that his marriage wasn’t made in heaven, was it? But I’d never in a million years have thought he was the kind to do away with himself, would you? Mind you, you never know with people, do you?

  “And, after what came out last week, well, it was perhaps a little less surprising, wasn’t it? I mean, he must’ve known the Dental Estimates Board at Eastbourne would catch up with him in time. And when the Regional Dental Officer came to inspect on Thursday, it was clear something was seriously wrong and”—An uncharacteristic moment of caution stopped her. “Maybe I shouldn’t be talking about this…Could you just shift your chin down a bit please?”

  Jude took the opportunity of this movement to manufacture a choking fit. As she spluttered, Holly swiftly removed the plastic tube from her mouth, pulled her upright and patted her back. “Ooh, sorry about that. All right, are we? Take a rinse, why don’t you? There, good. Spit it out, mm?”

  Jude did as she was told and took advantage of another narrow window in Holly’s monologue. She decided the best way to get further information would be to pretend more knowledge than she had. “Yes, somebody in Fethering was talking about the Regional Dental Officer’s inspection. I was really surprised to hear about that.”

  It had been the right approach. The hygienist picked up her cue perfectly. “Well, it was the scale of it that was so amazing, wasn’t it? I mean, getting on for ten thousand pounds of dental work he’d claimed for, but never carried out. He was never going to get away with that in the long term, was he?”

  “It doesn’t seem as though he was thinking in the long term.”

  The fact that Jude had managed to slip another line in made Holly Draper realize she shouldn’t have left her patient’s mouth empty for so long. “Right, could you hold this in place again? There, good. And I’ll just keep working round the ones at the back, shall I? Then, when I’ve finished this, we’ll give them a nice clean, shall we?”

  Jude was momentarily anxious that the hygienist wouldn’t get back to the subject, but once again she needn’t have worried. “I mean, it makes you wonder what Rory could possibly have needed all that money for, doesn’t it? There’s been talk round here of drugs, but he didn’t seem the type, did he? You don’t associate that with middle-class dentists, do you? And you’d have thought he and his wife’d be very well set up, wouldn’t you? Apparently, they’ve got this great big house over at Fethering—but you probably know that, don’t you? And they don’t have any kids, so where did all that money go? Maybe it was drugs. What do you think? Or perhaps he had another ‘secret vice’, eh? Another woman? Ooh, I don’t think so, do you?

  “Mind you, we shouldn’t really be surprised that he did away with himself. I’ve been told that dentists are one of the highest-risk professions for suicide. Did you know that?” She giggled. “Not hygienists, though. We aren’t daft, are we? Right, now we’ll just give them all a nice clean-up, shall we?”

  She turned to an articulated drill-like machine and fitted a small circular brush into its socket. This she dipped into a tub of paste. These actions did not for a moment interrupt her monologue.

  “No, I don’t think he was a bad man, though it was difficult to get close to him. Could you put your teeth together please? OK, take that out. Now this’11 taste orangy and it may tickle a little bit. All right? No, as I say, Rory wasn’t a bad man. He did some charity work, I believe. One of the girls on reception said he sometimes did free dentistry for down-and-outs out of hours, but he never talked about it. And he could be generous. There was this girl he quite often used to give a lift back to Fethering after work.”

  “Who was that?” Fortunately Holly had just moved the electric brush away to get a different angle on Jude’s mouth.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Girl about twenty, I suppose. Short hair, sort of hennaed. I think she worked evenings in Fethering, which was why he sometimes gave her a lift. Well, she’ll have to find someone else to do it for her now, won’t she?

  “There, all done, nice and clean, lovely. Look in the mirror. Doesn’t that look better, eh? But now I’m going to be a real bully and give y
ou a big lecture about flossing. All right? Can you cope? Are you feeling strong enough?”

  §

  Carole’s frustration mounted through the Monday morning. What really annoyed her was knowing that the discovery of Rory’s body might already have been made but she’d have to wait till the news filtered through to her. Though the Fethering grapevine, based on interconnecting substations like Allinstore, All Saints’ Church and the Crown and Anchor, was extremely efficient, it wasn’t the same as having a direct line to the police computers.

  Still, within the guidelines of Fethering protocol, there was one approach she could make which might lead to further information. She looked up the number in the local directory and rang it.

  “Hello?” The voice contrived to sound suspicious and malicious at the same time. In the background something yapped.

  “Winnie, it’s Carole Seddon.”

  “Hello, dear.”

  “I was just ringing to say thank you so much for the coffee on Saturday morning.”

  “Oh, it was nothing. A pleasure to see you. Be quiet, Churchill, it’s only your friend Carole.”

  “And I just wondered…is there any sign of an end to poor Barbara’s ordeal?”

  “Poor Barbara’s ordeal gets worse by the minute. Do you know what she’s discovered now? That so-called husband of hers has virtually ruined her financially. Do you know, he’d remortgaged the house without telling her. And goodness only knows where all the money he raised has gone. There’s nothing in any of the savings accounts. It’s almost as if he was deliberately trying to make life difficult for Barbara. And then to commit suicide, so that she doesn’t even get any of the insurance…Huh, I always said he was a dubious factor.”

  “Oh, how awful, Winnie. But when you talk about suicide, I mean, that is definite now, is it? They’ve found his body?”

  “Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Typical of him to do away with himself somewhere inconvenient, though, isn’t it? That man never gave a thought to another human being from the moment he was born. I mean, to have left Barbara destitute…Thank goodness my poor little baby’s got my money to fall back on. There’s my investment income and then, needless to say, I made quite a lot when I sold the big house after my husband died. That’s when I started slumming down here, you know—though, mind you, I do like to think I slum in some style.” She chuckled, but then her tone darkened as she said, “Thank goodness I never made any of my money over to that man, or no doubt he’d have squandered that too to feed his disgusting habits.”