by Simon Brett
‘Had you seen them in here recently?’
‘Yes, three of them was in one evening this week. Monday, I think.’
The night they went on to the Fethering Yacht Club and found the body in Rory Turnbull’s boat, thought Carole. ‘Who were the other two?’ she asked.
‘One I’d never seen before. Young kid, looked even younger than Aaron. But I know the one they sent up for the drinks.’ He spoke without enthusiasm. ‘He comes in here quite often. Eighteen, nineteen I guess, so he can drink legally. But when he comes up and asks for three pints of lager on Monday night, I says to him, “I’ll pull one for you, no problem, but it’s going to be soft drinks for your two underage mates over there.” Then he gets dead stroppy and starts swearing at me, so I tell him to get out. He’s a nasty bit of work, that one. Deals a bit in drugs and all. I can do without that sort in here.
‘Anyway, out they go, no doubt straight down to Nowtinstore, where he buys a dozen cans perfectly legally and they go off and drink them in one of the shelters on the front. At least they wasn’t doing it on my premises. I hope they froze their bollocks off out there.’
‘The police haven’t come and asked you whether you saw Aaron, have they?’
‘No, but presumably if they was retracing his movements they’d be interested in the next night, wouldn’t they? Not the Monday. His body was found on the Wednesday morning, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right,’ Carole agreed thoughtfully.
‘So who was this older boy?’ asked Jude. ‘Do you know his name?’
‘Don’t know his second name, but his first name’s Dylan.’
‘Ah.’ The two women exchanged significant looks.
‘What does he look like?’
‘Tallish. Thin. Short bleached hair. One big earring.’
‘Sounds a real charmer,’ Carole observed frostily.
Jude looked down at her large watch-face and her expression suddenly changed. ‘Oh, Lord!’ she cried. ‘I’d completely forgotten! I’ve got a friend coming round this evening! I must dash!’
‘So we’ll go to the Shorelands Estate first thing?’
‘Yes, fine. Communicate in the morning!’ And, having gulped down the remains of her wine, Jude rushed out of the pub.
Carole finished her drink more sedately, as Ted Crisp chatted inconsequentially of this and that. She didn’t feel relaxed alone with him. Carole Seddon would never really be a ‘pub person’.
She tried not to be interested in who Jude’s ‘friend’ might be. They were only neighbours, after all. There was no reason why they should know everything about each other’s lives.
‘Another one of those?’ asked Ted Crisp, as she sipped down the last of her wine.
‘No, thanks. I must get back home.’ But at the door she did manage to stop and say, ‘Good night, Ted.’ Just like a regular ‘pub person’ might have done.
Chapter Twenty
It was after eight the following morning, the Friday. Gulliver had been duly walked and Carole still hadn’t heard anything from Jude. They’d agreed to go to the Shorelands Estate early and intercept Dylan when he arrived for work at Bali-Hai. According to the duty roster Carole had snooped at, all fitters were meant to pick up their carpets from the depot at eight in the morning and be at the properties where they were scheduled to lay them by nine.
Her hand reached for the telephone to call Jude, but then she thought, this is stupid, the woman’s only next door and I must make an effort to be a little less formal. Something in Jude’s casual approach to life was secretly appealing. Carole knew that the ramparts of inhibition she had built around herself would never allow her to progress far down that road, but maybe she could take a few tentative steps.
Going round to Woodside Cottage rather than telephoning would be one such step. So Carole Seddon put on her Burberry and went to knock on her next-door neighbour’s door.
To her considerable amazement, it was opened by a man. He had a head of black curly hair, more of which sprouted out of the top of his Guernsey sweater. Between was heavy dark stubble. He had jeans, trainers, blue eyes and a huge grin.
‘Morning,’ he said cheerily. ‘I’m Brad. You must be Carole.’
‘Yes, yes, I am.’
‘Do come in. Jude’s just dressing. She won’t be a moment.’
‘Oh, thank you.’ In a state of bewilderment, Carole followed the man through the cluttered sitting room into the kitchen.
He indicated a plate of toast and marmalade. ‘I was having some breakfast. Would you like a coffee or something?’
‘No, thank you. I’ve just had some.’
‘Well, excuse me if I continue munching.’
‘Of course.’
‘Do sit down,’ said Brad, as he lowered himself on to a chair and took a bite of toast.
‘Yes, thank you.’ Carole knew she sounded ridiculously formal. ‘So, Brad, have you known Jude long?’
‘Oh yes. We go way back.’
‘Ah.’ Bubbling to the surface of Carole’s mind were a whole lot of other questions she wanted to ask. How far back? Where did you meet? Where do you live? Are you a fixture in Jude’s life? What is the precise nature of your relationship?
‘Great place she’s got here, hasn’t she?’ said Brad.
‘Yes, yes, it’s very nice. Needs a bit of work, of course.’
He didn’t seem to hear the second part of this response. ‘No, good old Jude,’ he said with easy admiration. ‘Always lands on her feet.’
‘Does she?’
‘Oh yes.’
At that moment the subject of their conversation swept into the room in her customary swirl of drapery. She was twisting the blonde hair into a knot on top of her head. ‘Morning, Carole,’ she called out blithely. ‘Brad’s introduced himself, I hope.’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry I wasn’t ready. You know how it is.’
Carole didn’t know how it was, and wouldn’t have minded a few background details to tell her how it was. But she didn’t get any.
‘We’d better be off then,’ said Jude. She leant across the table and planted a smacking kiss on Brad’s marmalady lips. ‘Don’t know how long we’ll be, but if you’re not here when I get back, it’s been good to see you.’
‘You too. Always is.’
‘The door’s on the latch. Just click the thing up and close it behind you.’
‘Sure. Nice to meet you, Carole.’
‘And you, Brad.’ Though she didn’t feel that she’d met him at all.
In the immaculate Renault, as they drove off, Carole said, ‘Brad seemed very pleasant.’
‘Yes, he’s good news.’
‘He said you and he go way back . . .’
‘That’s right. He’s a good friend.’
And Jude snuggled back into her seat, leaving Carole desperately in need of a definition of the word ‘friend’. But Jude didn’t volunteer one, and Carole couldn’t see any way of getting one, short of actually asking straight out what her neighbour’s relationship with Brad was. And she would never in a million years have done that.
The Shorelands Estate house which was receiving the benefit of J. T. fitted carpets was an Elizabethan pastiche with tall windows and bunches of thin, imaginatively topped chimneys. With the inappropriate nomenclature which seemed de rigueur in Shore-lands, its name, Bali-Hai, was spelled out in rustic pokerwork on an asymmetrical piece of driftwood. In the driveway, behind closed railings, a large green Jaguar squatted, toad-like.
‘I think we’re in time,’ said Carole, as she brought the Renault to a halt opposite the house. ‘No sign of a van yet.’
She looked at her watch. Ten to nine. They’d just sit and wait. And chat. Maybe she’d find out a little more about Jude’s visitor.
‘Brad was the friend you rushed back from the pub to see last night, was he?’
‘That’s right, yes.’
‘So he stayed over?’
‘Yes. Well, it’s a long way back for him.’
Back where? Though desperate to know the answer, that was another question Carole could never have brought herself to ask.
‘He seemed very at home, Jude.’
‘It’s nice when friends feel relaxed staying with you, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
Jude looked across and gave Carole a sweet smile. Was there a trace of irony in it? Was Jude actually teasing her, deliberately withholding information, knowing how desperate she was to know about the relationship with Brad? It was impossible to tell.
Jude smiled inwardly. She was having a little game with her neighbour. If Carole had come out with direct questions, she’d have answered them. Jude had no secrets. But if she wasn’t asked, it had never been her habit to volunteer information.
She felt good, though. It was always a pleasure to see Brad, catch up on what he was doing. Old friends, Jude found, became more valuable with the passage of the years.
There was a sudden tapping at the passenger side window. Jude wound it down.
‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing parked here! This is a Neighbourhood Watch area and . . . Oh. Oh, Jude, good morning.’
The righteous resident of Shorelands bending down to the car window turned out to be Barbara Turnbull, her large frame swaddled up in an expensive tweed coat.
‘Barbara, how nice to see you. You know Carole?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course we know each other. Morning, Carole.’
‘Morning.’
‘I’m very sorry to have spoken to you like that, Jude, but you can’t be too careful. There’s been quite a spate of burglaries here in Shorelands and, since there’s a bit of an element in Fethering these days, we’ve all been encouraged to accost anyone we see lurking around.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t realize we were lurking,’ said Jude.
‘No, obviously you weren’t. But it’s an unfamiliar car and, since I didn’t know who was in it, it did look as though someone was lurking. Apparently, these criminal gangs send people down to check out potential targets. “Casing the joint”, I believe they call it.’ Having shared this piece of underworld know-how with her acquaintances, she straightened up. ‘Anyway, I was just off to my mother’s for a cup of coffee and to take her dog for a walk. First chance I’ve had to get out for days. Been tied up with housework. But thank goodness my cleaning lady’s deigned to come back this morning.’ Barbara Turnbull put a large smile in place over her features. ‘So nice to see you both.’
‘And you, Barbara,’ said Carole. ‘How’s Rory?’
The smile froze in position. ‘Rory’s absolutely fine,’ asserted Barbara Turnbull, daring anyone to contradict her. ‘Goodbye.’
And with that she navigated her large, top-heavy body off down the road.
‘Funny,’ Jude observed. ‘When she didn’t know who we were, she thought we might be criminals lurking. As soon as she recognizes us, her suspicions cease. How does she know we’re not “casing the joint”?’
‘Because we’re Fethering residents,’ replied Carole stoutly.
‘Still, I think it’s good . . .’ Jude mused.
‘What’s good?’
‘All this security-consciousness. All this Neighbourhood Watch stuff.’
‘I didn’t think you’d approve of that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you seem to have rather a hippyish attitude to property’ was the answer that came instinctively to Carole’s mind. But all she said was, ‘I thought you’d regard it as snooping.’
‘Oh, I do. And that’s the beauty of it. Everyone in Fethering seems to snoop. I’m sure it’s impossible to do anything in this place without someone having seen you at it . . .’
‘Well . . .’
‘Which makes me very optimistic that we’re going to find out how our two bodies came to end up on the beach. Someone must’ve seen what happened. It’s just a matter of finding out who that someone is. And I think we—’
‘Ssh! Look.’
A yellow Transit van had just drawn up outside Bali-Hai. Lettering on the side read ‘J. T. CARPETS’.
‘Here we go,’ said Carole, her hand tightening round the Stanley knife in her raincoat pocket.
Two men got out of the van and went round to open the doors at the back. Both were middle-aged, one almost completely bald, the other with grizzled grey hair.
Jude shook her head ruefully. ‘Neither of those looks like Dylan.’
‘No.’
‘Maybe you read the duty roster wrong?’
Carole was offended. ‘I did not! There were three of them allocated to this job. Dave, Ken and Dylan.’
‘Well, there go Dave and Ken.’ Jude watched the two men, now carrying toolboxes, open the gates to Bali-Hai and go up to the front door. ‘Looks like Dylan’s called in sick.’
But, as she spoke, they were aware of the sound of a car approaching fast. It was a Golf Gti, a good ten years old, tarted up with extra chrome and decals. The way it was being driven gave two fingers to the demure ‘20 mph’ signs of Shorelands.
‘I think this could be our quarry,’ said Carole, as she opened the car door.
They were both standing in front of Bali-Hai’s railings by the time the boy emerged from his Golf. He fitted Ted Crisp’s description perfectly. Bleached hair, single earring, ‘a nasty bit of work’.
He looked through them as he came up to the gates.
‘Are you Dylan?’ asked Carole.
‘What if I am?’
‘I’ve got something that belongs to you.’
‘Oh yes?’
Carole took the Stanley knife out of her pocket and held it in her open palm, with the painted ‘J. T. CARPETS’ uppermost. Both women watched the boy closely. Though he quickly covered it up, his first reaction was undoubtedly one of shock.
‘Oh, well, thanks,’ he said casually, reaching out for the knife. ‘I can take it in to work with me.’
Carole withdrew her hand. ‘Don’t you want to know where we found it?’
‘Not particularly.’ After the initial giveaway response, his manner had become cocky, on the edge of insolence.
‘We found it in a boat at the Fethering Yacht Club,’ said Jude.
A flicker of the eyelid showed he hadn’t been expecting that. But again he recovered quickly. ‘Wonder how it got there . . .’
Carole took over the attack. ‘We know that you were there on Monday night with Aaron Spalding and another boy.’
Dylan’s lip curled. ‘You know a lot. Nosy pair of old tarts, aren’t you?’
‘Being offensive isn’t going to help, Dylan. This is serious. And you know it’s serious. Aaron Spalding’s dead.’
‘Yes, I do know that. Stupid kid. Should have known better than to muck around on the banks of the Fether, shouldn’t he?’
‘And he’s not the only one who’s dead.’
The young man’s face became a rigid mask. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve got to get to work.’ And he made to push past them.
Jude put her hand on his sleeve. ‘The police might be very interested to talk to you about what happened on Monday night.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘We have proof that you were with Aaron,’ Jude went on, lying through her teeth.
Dylan turned back to look her straight in the face. ‘All right, yes, I was with Aaron. That’s not a crime, is it?’
‘No.’
‘We went down the Crown and Anchor, but that tight-arsed bastard of a landlord wouldn’t serve the other two, so we pissed off down Nowtinstore and got some cans. We sank a few in one of them shelters on the front and Aaron asked me if I’d lend him my Stanley knife. So I did.’
‘What did he want it for?’
‘I don’t know, do I?’ Dylan replied, with a shrug of aggrieved innocence. ‘And then I went home. I didn’t go down the Yacht Club. What the other two done after I gone, I’ve no idea.’
‘I think the police would want a rather fuller explanation than that, D
ylan.’
But Carole’s bid to frighten him didn’t work.
‘Maybe they would. But you’re not the police, are you?’ he sneered. ‘And I don’t quite honestly think the police’d be that interested in what a pair of old biddies like you have to say.’
Carole and Jude were rather afraid he was right. Their bluff had been called.
‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do have work to do.’ Dylan put his hand on the railings of Bali-Hai’s gates.
‘Don’t you want your knife back?’ asked Carole.
‘Not that bothered. We get through a lot of those. Tools of the trade.’
‘Then I’ll keep it . . .’
‘Please yourself.’
‘. . . as evidence.’
‘Evidence of what?’ Suddenly he’d seized the lapel of Carole’s raincoat and brought his face close up to hers. Her nostrils were filled by a sickly musk-flavoured aftershave. ‘You two harass me any more and things could get very unpleasant for you. I’ve seen you around. Fethering’s a small place. Wouldn’t be that hard for me to find out where you live. I’d advise you both to get off my bloody back!’
There was no doubting the reality of the threat in his last words. He raised his free hand to Carole’s face. She flinched. Dylan chuckled and touched her cheek. Just one touch, very brief, very gentle and very menacing. Then he let go of her coat and turned towards Bali-Hai.
‘Who was the third boy?’ asked Jude.
‘Who indeed?’
‘There was you, and Aaron Spalding, and somebody else.’
‘Spot on.’
‘Who was it?’
‘That’s for you to find out. Mind you, I don’t think you will.’
‘Why? Is he dead too?’ Jude called after the retreating back as Dylan strode up the drive.
But there was no answer. And the Stanley knife remained in Carole’s hand.
‘He’s lying,’ Jude hissed, the first time that Carole had seen her angry. ‘He was with them at the Yacht Club.’
‘I know.’
‘But how’re we going to prove it?’
‘That,’ said Carole pompously, ‘has been the problem with crime investigation since records began.’