by Brett, Simon
But the work had stopped. The Bracketts Volunteers in their faded blue overalls were clustered round a corner near the gate, and turned uneasily at the approach of Jonny Tyson and the two women.
‘I found it,’ said Jonny, with a mixture of pride and trepidation. Then, treating the words as if they were too big for his mouth, he confirmed, ‘Yes, I found it.’
The Volunteers moved back, Gina and Carole looked down at the ‘it’ they revealed.
Though only partially uncovered by Jonny’s spade, ‘it’ was undoubtedly a human skull.
Chapter Four
‘Right, can we just deal with this calmly, please?’
Carole turned to see the tall figure of Sheila Cartwright approaching through the kitchen garden gates.
‘Of course, we’ll deal with it calmly,’ said Gina Locke, determined not to allow another usurpation of her authority. ‘Has anyone notified the police yet?’
The Volunteers shook their heads, and instinctively looked to Sheila Cartwright for their next instruction. At Bracketts old habits died hard.
‘And does the Estate Manager know?’
More shaking of heads. ‘Jonny only just found it,’ said one of the girl Volunteers.
‘Well, could you go and tell him?’ The girl set off obediently towards the stable block.
While Sheila Cartwright issued further instructions, Carole looked down at the skull and tried to analyse her reactions. The way it lay suggested that further digging would show the skull to be attached to an entire skeleton. And the neat circular hole in the back of the cranial dome raised the possibility that its owner had met an untimely end. But to her surprise, Carole realized she felt only the mildest shock at the sight. The predominant emotion she felt was curiosity, a need for explanations.
Another incipient conflict between Sheila Cartwright and Gina Locke brought her back to the present. The fuse was lit by Sheila’s assertion that she would notify the police of what had happened.
Gina instantly dug her toes in. ‘I don’t think that’s your job.’
‘Why?’ The older woman withered the younger one with her stare. ‘I rather doubt whether you know the Chief Constable as well as I do.’
‘This is hardly a matter to go up to Chief Constable level.’
‘If I may say so, Gina, that shows how little you know. The finding of a dead body somewhere like Bracketts is the kind of thing that must be kept from the press for as long as possible. If it can be kept quiet till the house closes for the end of the season, that will save a lot of disruption. Paul – the Chief Constable – will know exactly how to control the publicity. I’ll go and make the call.’
Then she turned her dominant eye on the little group that stood around the skull. ‘I need hardly say that this is something you keep entirely to yourselves. No information must be allowed to leak out before I release an authorized press statement.’
‘It isn’t you who will be issuing a press statement.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Gina! This is important. And dangerous. This is no time for petty demarcation disputes.’
The Director’s mouth was open for her response to that, but she didn’t manage to get it out, before Sheila Cartwright turned the beam of her disapproval on to one of the Volunteers. ‘Mervyn. How is it you always seem to be on the scene when there’s trouble?’
He was a thin man in his thirties with a shaven head, and the effect of her words was unexpected. Suddenly he started to sob; his whole body shook with the strength of his emotions. Jonny Tyson moved to the man, and enfolded him in an instinctive hug, the comfort given by one child to another who had just fallen over in the school playground.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ snapped Sheila Cartwright. ‘This is a serious situation. We’ve got enough on our plates without you having hysterics!’
‘I’m sorry, it’s just . . .’ The man called Mervyn’s thin, Northern voice trembled. ‘ . . . Seeing a dead body . . . I’ve never been able to stand that . . .’
‘Must make life difficult for you,’ said Sheila Cartwright unsympathetically, ‘ . . . given your past history.’
Chapter Five
‘I’ve been sworn to secrecy . . .’
‘Carole, I just love openings like that.’ Jude rubbed her hands together with glee. ‘The ones which mean the exact opposite of what’s being said. “I’d be the last one to criticize . . .”, but that’s exactly what I’m about to do. “To be perfectly honest . . .” – always sets the alarm bells ringing for me. And, of course, “I’ve been sworn to secrecy . . ”, but that’s not going to stop me telling you every gory detail.’
‘Well, perhaps I shouldn’t.’
‘Oh, come on. You know you’re going to tell me eventually. Just get on and do it.’
It was two days after the discovery of the skull. They were sitting in the bar of the Crown and Anchor, which was full of Saturday seaside visitors, bulbous parents bursting out of sweatshirts, children with sand in their plastic sandals. The tables outside were even busier. The day was hot for late October, the kind of weather that made local residents talk darkly of ‘global warming’.
Fethering’s only pub had about it the feeling of a well-used armchair, and the same could be said for its landlord. Ted Crisp’s shaggy hair and beard were the same all the year round, but now he was in his summer uniform of grubby T-shirt rather than his grubby winter sweatshirt. Carole had an uncomfortable feeling that he might be wearing shorts too, but since Jude had been the one to buy their glasses of Chilean Chardonnay and Ted hadn’t emerged from behind the bar yet, she had no proof of this.
There was an air of ease about Jude too, a lightness that was unusual in a woman of her ample dimensions and fifty-five years. The sun had generously toasted her broad face and bare arms; the blonde hair, secured by an insufficiency of pins, made a gravity-defying structure on top of her head. As ever, she breathed serenity, a quality which Carole recognized her own more uptight personality could never hope to attain.
The two women could not have been more different, and yet, ever since Jude had moved into Wood-side Cottage next door to Carole, their friendship had flourished.
‘So tell me,’ said Jude.
‘There’s not much to tell. Just the finding of a skeleton.’
‘That doesn’t happen every day.’
‘Not to most people. I think you and I are bringing up the national average, though.’
Jude chuckled. ‘But we are talking about a murder, aren’t we? Please say yes.’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘You haven’t heard anything from the police?’
‘No. They were around Bracketts, of course. Still are around, I imagine. They interviewed all of us, told us not to tell anyone anything . . .’
This prompted a grin. ‘An instruction which, I’m glad to say, you, Carole, have ignored completely.’
‘Look, this goes no further. OK?’
‘Of course not.’ Jude grinned innocently. ‘What do you take me for?’
Carole didn’t bother to answer that.
‘I’m sure it’s a murder,’ Jude persisted. ‘You said that there was a hole in the skull.’
‘You can get a hole in your skull from something falling on it. Doesn’t have to be foul play.’
‘But if someone dies accidentally, you don’t hide their body in a kitchen garden, do you?’ Jude’s face took on an expression of childlike insistence. ‘Go on, say it was a murder.’
‘I can’t say that,’ Carole responded primly. ‘The person who owned the skull is dead; beyond that I haven’t got anything definite to go on. Everyone at Bracketts has clammed up. Certainly no information coming out of there.’
‘Not even to a Trustee?’
‘Particularly not to a Trustee. Or particularly not to this Trustee. The Director was acutely embarrassed that I even saw as much as I did.’
‘Who is the Director? Sheila somebody?’
‘No, you’re thinking of Sheila Cartwright, the one w
ho got the place going as a literary shrine.’
‘Yes, that’s the name.’
‘So do you know Bracketts?’
‘I did the Guided Tour soon after I moved down here. I had a friend staying who’s interested in that period of literary history.’
‘Oh, did I meet her?’
‘Him. No.’ Carole would have liked more information about the friend, but Jude had already moved on. ‘We saw Sheila Cartwright then. She was pointed out to us by the guide, almost as if she was one of the remarkable exhibits. Very much Lady of the Manor, I thought.’
‘Well, she’s no longer in charge of the place . . . though you’d never know it from the way she goes on.’ Jude raised interrogative eyebrows, but Carole shook her head. ‘Complex management politics which I’m not going to go into at the moment. I’ll fill you in soon enough.’
‘Then what are you going to go into at the moment?’
‘Just the discovery of the skull.’
‘You used the word “skeleton” earlier.’
‘Yes, there were other bones around. Certainly part of a spinal column. Only the top bit had been unearthed, but it was lying as if it was still with the rest of the skeleton.’
There was a silence. Jude prompted, ‘There was something you thought odd, though, wasn’t there?’
‘I told you. There was a hole in the skull.’
‘Yes. Must be murder. Did it look like a bullet-hole?’
‘Jude, I’ve no idea.’
‘Hole made by surgery? Or by an ice-pick, as in the case of Trotsky?’
‘I just don’t know.’ Carole looked thoughtful and took a long sip from her Chardonnay. ‘It wasn’t the skull itself so much . . . it was the people’s reaction to it.’
‘Like . . .?’
‘Well, Sheila Cartwright was desperate that no publicity should leak out about the find.’
‘Fair enough. She didn’t want the status quo at Bracketts disrupted.’
‘Her reaction seemed more than that. She said it was dangerous. She actually used the word “dangerous”.’
Jude shrugged. ‘Just meant that bad publicity could be dangerous”.’
‘Possibly.’ But there was something else nagging at Carole. ‘Then there was this man who broke down in tears.’
‘At the sight of the skull?’
‘That’s right. He said that he couldn’t stand seeing dead bodies, but his reaction was very violent.’
‘Some people are spooked by that kind of stuff. It’s a nasty shock for anyone.’
‘Yes.’ Carole sighed and nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Do you know who this man was?’
‘One of the day-release prisoners from Austen. Do you know Austen, the Open Prison?’
‘I know it,’ replied Jude, with a new seriousness in her manner. ‘Did you get the man’s name?’
‘Sheila Cartwright called him Mervyn. And – this was the strange thing – she implied that this man was used to seeing dead bodies.’
‘Was that explained at all?’
‘No. That’s all I got, before I was summarily whisked off the premises.’
Jude looked thoughtful.
‘Why, do you know an Austen prisoner called Mervyn?’
‘No. I don’t.’ Introspection was swept away with a toss of the blonde hair. ‘Come on, we’re going to have lunch here, aren’t we?’
‘Well, I’ve got a cottage cheese salad in the fridge.’
‘In that case, we are definitely going to have lunch here. Cottage cheese is an abomination in the sight of God and Man. Ted!’ Jude called across to the bar, ‘What do you recommend today?’
Instantly ignoring the queues of the thirsty in front of him, the landlord turned to his favoured customers and replied, ‘Well, putting my good self on one side, I don’t think you’d go far wrong with the Fillet of Fresh Cod. Tell you, this morning that fish was still in the sea at Littlehampton, worrying about paying the mortgage on its special piece of seaweed.’
‘Right, I’ll go for it.’ On a nod from Carole, ‘Make that two.’
‘Two Fillet of Fresh Cod it is, ladies.’ Ted Crisp called the order through to some unknown person in the kitchen. Then he turned back to the two women and emerged from behind the bar.
He was wearing shorts. They might once have been blue and didn’t, it has to be said, do a lot for him. His stomach sat on the ledge of their belt like a jelly on a plate.
‘You two been finding any more dead bodies, have you?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Carole replied primly.
‘Oh well, there you go,’ said Ted Crisp, and returned to serve the holiday hordes.
‘So that’s it,’ said Carole flatly. ‘I was present at the unearthing of a skull. Full stop.’
‘In that case, maybe you’d better go through the boring stuff now.’
‘Boring stuff?’
‘ “Complex management politics” was the phrase you used.’
‘Oh. All right.’
And so Carole Seddon outlined to her friend the conflict between the former and current Directors of Bracketts, thinking – wrongly, as it turned out – she’d never hear any more about the skeleton that had been found there.
Chapter Six
Jude didn’t have strong feelings about lying, when it was necessary. She felt no guilt for having lied to Carole about not knowing anyone locally called Mervyn. Even given the detail that the Mervyn she knew was currently serving time in HMP Austen.
Nor did she feel any guilt for keeping her own connection with the prison a secret from her neighbour.
Jude’s work at Austen was voluntary and semiofficial. The prison had a very imaginative Education Officer called Sandy Fairbarns, who was always doing her best to extend the definition of the word ‘education’ and to introduce new activities to alleviate the boredom of the prisoners. Since her budget was small and getting smaller, this meant that she was constantly listening out for opportunities, homing in on people who might have a skill they could share, and pursuing them with relentless charm until they agreed to do a session or series of sessions at the jail. She had built up a good relationship with the Governor who, recognizing that the more the prisoners had to do, the less trouble they were likely to cause, encouraged Sandy’s alternative programme.
As a result, Austen Prison became the destination for a disparate group of writers, musicians, artists and local historians. Some found the working conditions impossible; prisoners would wander in and out at will; it was difficult to impose any structure on the sessions. For others the experience was very positive, and they pressed Sandy Fairbarns to organize further courses for them.
The continuity of the programme was always under threat. Only one disciplinary problem was required, one whiff of adverse publicity, and the Governor would put a stop to it. But the Education Officer walked her tightrope with skill, and the project prospered.
Jude had met Sandy at a Mind, Body and Spirit Fair in Brighton, and Sandy had immediately responded to Jude’s aura of equanimity. Within minutes she had suggested involving her new acquaintance in the Austen courses and over a drink that evening, Jude had agreed to do an exploratory session on ‘New Approaches’.
The vagueness of the subject had suited her well, and she’d launched into the first visit to Austen with an open mind, prepared to go where the participants led her. Seven prisoners had been there at the beginning of the session, three left during it, and two more wandered in. Sandy said that was par for the course, and pressed Jude to do another session a few weeks later. The sequence had now continued, more or less on a monthly basis, for nearly nine months.
Though there were one or two faces that recurred, Jude got used to being confronted on each occasion by a roomful of strangers. The shifting nature of the prison population made her realize how acute was the problem of continuity in Sandy Fairbarns’ job. Individuals might be encouraged and nurtured towards individual goals – exams and qualifications – but a lot of the education
al effort was regarded by the prisoners as an optional entertainment, to be assessed against the rival attractions of the television, the gym or a kickaround with a football.
The subject-matter of Jude’s sessions usually started with her talking about some alternative therapy – be it yoga or acupuncture – but very soon the conversation moved away from the medical to the more general. There was usually resistance to be overcome. Jude was an attractive woman, so she had to survive an initial onslaught of sexist banter from men starved of female company. There was a lot of swearing, and frequently aggression between the prisoners, reviving old quarrels.
But each time her good sense, good humour and serenity would gradually allow discussion to flow. Amongst the shifting group of multi-ethnic, multi-faith prisoners, discussion quickly homed in on human psychology and belief systems. Because Austen was an open prison, there were a good few highly educated prisoners – mostly solicitors, as it happened – who were skilled in reasoned argument, but Jude was usually more impressed by the articulacy of the less privileged. Many of them, unused to discussion of abstract concepts, quickly caught on to the idea, and more than held their own with the more highly trained debaters.
Each session creaked for the first twenty minutes, then gained fluency. There was a lot of laughter, too, and the arrival of the warder to announce the two hours were up always came as a surprise. ‘New Approaches’ frequently ended up as philosophy, and always as a form of therapy.
And each time Jude was escorted by Sandy back across the compound to the Austen main gate, where she would hand in her visitor badge, Jude felt a sadness. She was going back out into the real world. The men whose ideas had flowed, whose identities had been so alive for the previous two hours, were going back to the stultifying, imagination-cramping repetitions of prison routine.
The reason Jude kept her activities at Austen secret was not the false modesty of philanthropy. It was the respect that she had for what Sandy Fairbarns was trying to achieve, and an unwillingness for knowledge of it to get to the wrong people. She could imagine the mileage in newsprint that a hang-’em-and-flog-’em right-wing politician could get out of the news that prisoners were being given instruction in healing and alternative therapies.