by Simon Brett
“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 deadness 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.
“Were there suspects at the time?”
“The usual ones. Everyone vaguely local who featured on the Sex Offenders Register. They couldn’t pin it on anyone, though. Lack of evidence.”
“Did you have any suspicions of anyone?”
Miranda Browning shook her head. “It never occurred to me for a moment that it might be anyone I had met.”
“No.” Jude didn’t raise the fact that in a lot of such cases the perpetrator was someone known to the family.
“Do you think it’ll be a comfort to you when the culprit is found?”
“I really don’t know. Whoever he is, I have hated him very deeply at times. At times I know I have wanted him dead. How I’ll react now, I’ve no idea. I didn’t know how I’d react to Robin’s body being found. And through all the pain I think there may eventually be a positive side to that. Maybe it’ll be the same when they arrest his murderer. As I say, at the moment I just don’t know.”
The healing session, as ever, left Jude wrung out like a damp rag. Miranda Browning was very grateful, saying that it had left her feeling more relaxed. But both women knew that the residue of pain inside her was something that could never be fully healed.
∨ Bones Under The Beach Hut ∧
Twenty-Eight
“Which tennis player was in every final of the Men’s US Open Championship from 1982 to 1989?”
Carole and Jude looked at each other, both with wrinkled brows. “Was it Jimmy Connors?” Carole suggested without much conviction. “Or would he have been earlier than that?”
“What’s the name of that boring one?” asked Jude.
“Pete Sampras?”
“No, the other boring one. Czech, never won Wimbledon.”
“Ivan something…”
“Lendl!”
“Yes, that’s right. Ivan Lendl!”
“Shall I write it down, Carole?” asked Jude.
“Yes, I’m sure it’s right.”
Whether the gruesome discovery of Robin Cutter’s remains had anything to do with it or not, there was a very good turn-out for the SBHA quiz night in the function room of the Crown and Anchor in Fethering. Reginald Flowers was, needless to say, the quizmaster, smart in a blazer and tie, which looked vaguely naval (but probably wasn’t). Needless to say, he had his own neat little portable amplifier and a microphone to talk into.
Beside him at his table sat Dora Pinchbeck, with a pile of forms to fill in and tick off. Her crushed expression suggested that she hadn’t been allowed to forget her lapse over the booking of St Mary’s Church Hall.
Many of the Smalting Beach regulars were there, but there were also quite a lot of faces Carole didn’t recognize. Twenty-two people including Reginald, dividing up into four table teams of four and one of five. Carole and Jude were sitting with a married couple; enthusiastic hutters they hadn’t met before. The husband plumed himself on being Captain of the Smalting Golf Club, and it was a mercy when the start of the quiz stopped him talking about the fact. His wife spoke little, only nodding in admiration at his every pronouncement.
Deborah Wrigley was there, somewhat to Carole’s surprise. She would have thought a quiz night was too common an entertainment for the self-styled grande dame of the Shorelands Estate. But maybe curiosity about the Robin Cutter case had persuaded Deborah to slum a little. She had her son Gavin and his unfortunate wife Nell with her, so at least she was not without people to patronize. Carole reckoned the young couple were probably back on the South Coast to rescue Tristram and Hermione from their grandmother’s rigid tutelage. ‘Quality time’ with Deborah Wrigley somehow seemed unlikely also to be fun time.
Carole hadn’t expected to see Katie Brunswick in the function room either. Again she wouldn’t have thought quizzes were the obsessive rewriter’s kind of thing either. But there she was, sitting rather incongruously at a table with Kelvin Southwest, Curt Holderness and an unfamiliar third man who made up the team.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Carole whispered to the girl as she passed.
“Very important to get local colour,” Katie whispered back. “I was told that at a writing course I went to once in the Dordogne.”
Earlier in the evening Carole had been rather surprised when she and Jude had met Kelvin Southwest in the Crown and Anchor’s main bar. Gone was all his smarm, all his creepy compliments about ‘lovely ladies’. He had almost cut the pair of them dead, immediately turning away to seek out the company of Curt Holderness and some other men Carole hadn’t recognized. At the time she and Jude had exchanged looks of the ‘What’s got into him?’ variety.
The members of the Smalting Beach Hut Association conspicuous by their absence at the quiz night were Lionel and Joyce Oliver. Given the news they had recently received, there was no surprise about that, but Carole and Jude couldn’t help feeling a slight disappointment. Persuading herself that it was not a breach of client confidentiality, Jude had passed on to her neighbour what she had heard from Miranda Browning, and they were both aware that, if they were to advance in their investigation, they would probably have to talk to the Olivers at some point. It was not, however, destined to be that evening.
Another absentee was Philly Rose. But then that was hardly a surprise. Since she’d passed Quiet Harbour over to Carole, she was no longer really a member of the hutters’ community.
“Have you all put down your answers to the question?” asked Reginald Flowers.
“Well, we’ve put down an answer,” said Kelvin Southwest, who, after his earlier frostiness, now seemed determined to be the life and soul of the party. “Whether or not it’s the right answer is another matter.” And he and Curt Holderness guffawed. Even if she hadn’t known what she did about the two men, Carole might still have felt there was something slightly sinister in their complicity.
“Have you ticked that one off, Dora?” Reginald Flowers spoke to ‘his’ secretary as one might to a small child with learning difficulties.
“I have,” she replied humbly.
“Very well, next question…” The quizmaster cleared his throat into the microphone and coughed. “I’m sorry. I think my bronchitis is coming on.” And his voice certainly did have a dry, husky quality. “Right, this is the last question before we have a twenty-minute break when you can go and refill your glasses.”
Good, thought Carole, mindful of Ted Crisp’s demand that the participants in the quiz night should ‘drink lots of booze’.
Reginald Flowers again cleared his clogged throat and asked, “Of which creatures is the collective noun a ‘parliament’?”
“MPs!” shouted Kelvin Southwest raucously. “That wasn’t too tricky, Reg.”
“No, no, I said ‘creatures’, not human beings.”
“MPs are not human beings!” riposted Kelvin, proud of his rapier wit.
“The question is, ‘Of which creatures is the collective noun a ‘parliament’?’ And it’s a creature, not a human being,” Reginald Flowers repeated, clearly put out at what he saw as a challenge to his authority. He made himself feel better by having another go at Dora. “Make a note of that,
please. That question may need rephrasing to deal with the nit-picking fraternity.” The note was duly made, and the quizmaster was siezed by a bout of coughing.
Jude looked blankly at her teammates. “Haven’t a clue.”
“I know it,” whispered Carole. And she mouthed ‘Owls’ at them.
“How on earth do you know that?” asked Jude.
“It came up in a Times crossword clue,” said Carole smugly.
♦
“So how are you two lovely ladies?” asked a leering Kelvin Southwest, more outgoing to them now as he queued at the bar with Curt Holderness. The Crown and Anchor would have been busy that night, even without the sudden influx of the quiz night crowd from the function room. Ted Crisp, Zosia and her girls were kept hard at it.
“We’re very well, thank you,” Carole replied primly. “Curt, this is my neighbour Jude.”
“Very nice to meet you,” said the security officer, with a lazy look of appreciation at Jude’s ample curves.
“Things have developed a bit since we last met,” Carole observed.
“Things?”
“I was referring to the discovery on Smalting Beach.”
“Yes.” A guarded look came into Curt Holderness’s eyes. “Nasty business.”
“Presumably the police have talked to you about it?” asked Carole, possibly pushing her luck.
“Why should they?” came the tart reply.
“Well, I was thinking, since you’re the security officer, they would automatically want to know if you’d seen any disturbance or anything unusual happening.”
“Yes,” he conceded, apparently relieved. Carole wondered what he had thought she was going to ask him about. “I did talk to them, yes. Not that I could be much help. I didn’t see anything odd happening.”
“You didn’t volunteer any information to them, did you, Curt? Because I seem to remember when we last met you were very against the idea of telling the police anything that –”
“Excuse me,” he said, having just attracted Zosia’s attention. But he wasn’t about to give the order. He turned to his friend. “Here, Kel, get the drinks in. Mine’s a pint of Stella.” True to the Curt Holderness principle of never buying a drink for himself. Kelvin Southwest looked slightly sour at being landed with the round, but he didn’t demur. Clearly the Crown and Anchor was not one of the local places that owed the Fether District Council official a favour and wouldn’t charge him.