The Fethering Mysteries 12; Bones Under The Beach Hut tfm-12

by Simon Brett

  “So what did you do?”

  “I put his body on the back seat of my car. I knew it wouldn’t matter if traces of him were found there, he’d been in the car with me often enough. And I drove him to work.”

  “To the funeral parlour?”

  “Yes. It was lunch hour. I knew the girl on reception, who was meant to stay there right through while all the others were out…I knew she was in the habit of sneaking off to the pub to meet her boyfriend and shutting the parlour up for an hour.

  “I’d been about to take her to task for it, but that day I was glad she was skyving. I drove in the back entrance, where we take the bodies in. Nobody saw me arrive and there’s a big shutter comes down so nobody saw what I was doing.

  “I took Robin’s body out of the car. I’d wanted to embalm him, but I knew there wasn’t time. So I wrapped him up tight in plastic sheeting and I took him through to the room where we display the coffins. There was a small one we had there, you know, for young children who die…like Robin. It’s sad, that, always sad showing it to the parents.

  “Anyway, I put him in and sealed the coffin lid. I thought he’d be safe there. After all, the last place anyone would look for a dead body would be in a funeral parlour.” He let out a dry, humourless chuckle. “After I’d finished, I went back to the car and drove here to Smalting. I was in the parlour ten minutes top-weight.

  “I parked the car near the prom. There were a lot of people around, all caught up in their own business. No one looked at me. I went into the shop to buy the ice cream. When I came out, I rang the police and told them my story, about Robin having been abducted, or at least having disappeared. I never thought they’d believe it, but they seemed to, and the more they questioned me about it, the clearer the details came in my mind. After a time I almost came to believe it myself.

  “Obviously I couldn’t leave Robin in the parlour for too long, but a week later I came in at night-time and embalmed him. That would preserve the body for a while.

  “And all the publicity and the press conferences and the pleas on television from Rory and Miranda…well, that all died down after a time. And I was doing some work in the garden at home. Previously we’d just had the one pond, you know, but I was adding to that, making a great big water feature and that involved a lot of digging and –”

  “So you took Robin’s body from the funeral parlour back to your garden and buried him there?” suggested Jude.

  The old man nodded a weary nod. He seemed to have aged during his narrative. “So Robin was always close to me. I knew where he was. He was there, and it gave me comfort to know he was there.”

  “And everything was fine,” said Carole, joining up the dots, “until you had to move house?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t leave Robin in the garden there. Partly I was worried about a new owner finding his remains, though I didn’t care so much about that. It’s more I couldn’t be parted from the child, from the boy I loved. We’ve no garden with the new flat we’re going to, just a window box. So…” He gestured rather feebly towards Quiet Harbour. “I knew we’d still come here. I knew if I put him under one of the beach huts he’d still be near me.” He let out a little mirthless laugh. “I think I also knew that it couldn’t last, that very soon I’d be found out. Which is, of course, what’s happened.

  “In fact, I was nearly found out earlier. Only a few nights after I’d taken the bones from our garden and reburied them under the beach hut, some idiot tried to set fire to it. Fortunately the fire didn’t spread far – or someone put it out, I don’t know.”

  “And you put down an old offcut of carpet so that the damage wouldn’t show from the inside,” said Carole, pleased to be filling in the gaps in the case.

  “Yes, I did that.” Lionel Oliver sighed. “I’m a stupid old man. I don’t know why I thought I’d get away with it. Or perhaps I didn’t think I’d get away with it. Perhaps I was just so tired of holding the secret inside me that I wanted to be found out. Yes, I think that’s probably it.”

  Jude broke the long silence that ensued by saying, very gently, “You still haven’t told us how Robin died.”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “Why not? You know everything else. I’d taken the day off work, that day we were going to look after Robin. I enjoyed playing with him.”

  “When you say ‘playing with him’…?” asked Carole tentatively.

  That did make him angry. “Oh, for God’s sake! Don’t you start! I went through all that with the police, time and time and time again. What I meant by ‘playing with him’ was kicking a ball about in the back garden, hide and seek, showing him the goldfish in the pond, the kind of things you do with a five-year-old child. The games grandfathers and grandsons have played down the centuries.

  “Anyway, it was a hot day and I’d been busy at work the last few weeks and I wasn’t as young as I used to be, so I was very tired. And we were playing hide and seek, and it was a big garden and so Robin had introduced this rule that we had to count up to two hundred. He was a bright boy, very advanced for his age. He could count up to two hundred, no problems. And then he’d shout at the top of his voice, ‘Coming, ready or not!’”

  For a moment the recollection was almost too emotional for him, but he managed to control himself and went on, “Well, it was my turn to count and Robin’s to hide. And, as I say, I started counting and…I fell asleep. Don’t know how long it was for, probably only a quarter of an hour, but when I woke up, there was no sign of Robin.

  “It didn’t take me long to find him. I knew he was fascinated by the goldfish. He must have been peering down at them and lost his footing. There was a kind of rockery at the side, with a little waterfall running down it, and when he fell he must have hit his head on one of the rocks. It was only a small pond, but big enough to drown my grandson.”

  The long silence which followed this was finally broken by the voice of Joyce Oliver from inside the beach hut. “Except,” she said, “that isn’t what happened at all.”

  ∨ Bones Under The Beach Hut ∧

  Thirty-Eight

  The expression on Lionel Oliver’s face as he watched his wife walk out of the beach hut was a complex one, combining puzzlement, annoyance and protectiveness. “What are you on about, Joyce? Of course that’s what happened.”

  “No, it isn’t. I think it must be true that Robin drowned in the pond, as you said he did. I didn’t know that till just now, Lionel. But if he did, it wasn’t you who was meant to be looking after him. It happened on my watch.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Joyce.”

  “It happened on my watch,” his wife repeated. She looked at Lionel, daring him to interrupt her, then turned firmly to Carole and Jude. “I didn’t know the half of what he’s just told you. I just woke up and heard almost all of it. Lionel, why couldn’t you have told me before?”

  “There wasn’t any point,” he mumbled. “Why should you suffer too?”

  “I should suffer because I deserved to suffer. I should suffer because it was my fault.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, it was. I don’t know why you two are here, but since you’ve heard the rest of it, I think that you should hear the truth. My daughter-in-law, Miranda, didn’t trust me. She didn’t like me looking after Robin. And she was right. Because back then I had a serious problem. A drink problem. We tried to keep it quiet from everyone, but the family knew. Miranda certainly knew and that was why she would only let Robin stay with us if she knew Lionel was going to be there, that it wasn’t just me on my own.

  “Well, that day, the day that Rory and Miranda were going up to London to see the matinee of Les Miserables, I’d had a real blinder the night before. I was on more than a bottle of gin a day then, and that morning I woke up having slept very badly and with the kind of crushing hangover that can only be alleviated by a very large hair of the dog. But I’d drunk the house dry the night before. I was desperate for a bottle of gin. I managed to disguise
how I was feeling from Rory and Miranda when they came to bring Robin over, but as soon as they’d gone I ordered Lionel to go and buy me a bottle of gin. I’m not proud of how I was in those days. I was a monster.”

  “No, you weren’t, love,” her husband protested feebly. “You couldn’t help yourself. It’s an illness.”

  “I was a monster,” Joyce reiterated. Jude began to understand the great hatred Miranda Browning had felt against her mother-in-law. “So, I ordered Lionel to go and replenish my stocks of gin and I was in sole charge of Robin. Except I wasn’t in a state to be in charge of anything or anyone. I remember that I fell asleep at the kitchen table. Robin was around before I fell asleep, and I know the door to the garden was open, and the next thing I remember was Lionel waking me up.

  “He seemed a bit agitated, but I didn’t ask him why. All I cared about was the fact that he’d brought me a bottle of gin. I got stuck into that. Lionel said he was going to take Robin down to Smalting, get him an ice cream, maybe spend some time with the boy here at Mistral. The next thing I’m aware of is the news that Robin’s been abducted and the police are coming round and…”

  There was a long moment before Joyce Oliver turned back to her husband and said, “Tell me the truth, Lionel. Did you come back that morning from buying the gin and find Robin drowned in the pond?”

  There was nothing he could do but nod abjectly.

  “But why did you do all you did? Why?”

  “If Miranda had ever found out that I’d left Robin alone with you…If she’d found out that you were dead drunk and had let him go near the pond on his own…” He shook his head, unable to say out loud what would have happened.

  Joyce Oliver looked at her husband with an expression of infinite pain and infinite respect. She realized the extent of his love for her. To put himself through all the trauma of police questioning, the inevitable suspicions that he might be a paedophile…all that for the woman who had allowed the child he adored to die.

  “The only good thing to come out of any of it,” Joyce said, “was that, although I didn’t know the details of what had really happened, the shock of Robin’s disappearance did stop me drinking. Maybe I felt guilty for the fact that the last time I’d seen him, I’d been almost comatose from the gin, I don’t know.” A deep sigh trembled through her body. “All of this is going to take a long time to come to terms with.”

  They were aware of a young man in a crumpled beige suit hovering on the edge of their charmed circle in front of the beach hut. Lionel Oliver looked up and recognized him. “Ah, Inspector Fyfield. The car’s here, is it?”

  “Yes, Mr Oliver. The Superintendant would like to talk to you back at the station.”

  “Of course.”

  “I think he ought to talk to me too,” said Joyce.

  “I’m sure that’d be fine. If you wish to accompany your husband, Mrs Oliver…”

  “Yes, I do. Lionel, if you’ll just lock up Mistral…”

  “Of course, love.”

  “Carole and Jude,” Joyce went on, “if you don’t mind just walking up to the car with me, I’d like to get your contact numbers. I think there are a few things we’re going to need to talk about.”

  The two women reckoned that was probably an understatement. Joyce Oliver picked up her beach bag and the three of them followed Inspector Fyfield up the beach.

  On the edge of the prom Joyce stopped by a bench, which faced away from the sea, and sat down. “If I could just get those numbers from you…”

  The simple process seemed to take a long time.

  Joyce Oliver shuffled through the contents of her bag in search of pen and paper, but her hands were shaking so much Jude had to help her. In spite of her earlier apparent calmness, she was clearly in a state of shock.

  But eventually one of her wordsearch books was found. Carole and Jude wrote down their contact numbers on the back of it. Then they followed the route taken by Inspector Fyfield, who was by now leaning against his car. Though he had his back to them, the women could detect the impatience in his body language.

  It was an unmarked police car with a driver in civilian clothes, not a patrol car. After the shock of being a scene of crime, Smalting was not about to suffer any further affronts to its middle-class respectability.

  Or was it? Jude, as ever hypersensitive to the mood of her environment, experienced a feeling almost of dread. She tapped Carole on the sleeve. Both looked out to sea. Lionel Oliver had put his suit jacket on, as if dressed for work. The water was already up to his chest as he continued to march steadily forward away from Smalting Beach. Carole and Jude knew that his suit pockets would be full of shingle.

  Jude looked at Joyce Oliver, but the old woman’s powdered face was unreadable. Had she deliberately created the delay in taking their phone numbers so that her husband would have the opportunity to make his escape before anyone could stop him? Had some secret message passed between the couple as they parted for the last time? Those were questions that Jude felt sure would never be answered.

  Inspector Fyfield contacted the coastguard. A rescue helicopter was immediately mobilized. But of course it arrived too late.

  ∨ Bones Under The Beach Hut ∧

  Thirty-Nine

  The following day, as arranged, Carole Seddon’s daughter-in-law and granddaughter arrived at High Tor just before lunch. Lily had slept in the car and was very lively. She had become much more mobile since Carole had last seen her and climbed the stairs unaided to inspect her bedroom, of which she approved. She was very excited by the folding cot that her grandmother had bought and by the two new cuddlies that had been put in it.

  Lily’s speech had also developed. She could now vocalize a very convincing ‘Mummy’, ‘Biscuit’ and ‘No’. Gaby had clearly been tutoring her to say ‘Granny’, but she had only got as far as ‘Gaga’. Which, Carole reckoned, would soon not be a million miles from the truth.

  Her concentration over the previous week on the investigations into Mark Dennis’s disappearance and Robin Cutter’s death had had the beneficial effect of stopping her from worrying about Gaby’s visit, and the two women were very relaxed over their Sunday lunch. Lily also ate well and when they had all finished Carole announced that they were going to a nearby village called Smalting, where she ‘had a beach hut’.

  Lily of course had no idea what a beach hut was, but as soon as she saw Quiet Harbour she caught on very quickly. She liked the idea of their having their own little house to live in, and she loved her own little pink director’s chair. And she was even more pleased with the new red and yellow bathing costume that Gaby put her into. Even at that age, Lily had a real girlie fascination with clothes.

  But of course she had no idea what a significant event she was witnessing when her grandmother stripped off her outer garments to reveal a sedate Marks & Spencer one-piece bathing costume in a flattering, deep red colour. Nor was the little girl aware how privileged she was to witness Carole Seddon removing her shoes and socks and letting the sand get between her toes.

  Anyway, Lily was far too preoccupied to notice what anyone else was doing. She had become instantly busy with the plastic buckets, spade and shapes that her doting grandmother had bought for her. In no time she had worked out what the sea and the sand were for, and was trekking back and forth from the shoreline spilling buckets of water and preparing elaborate tea parties with sand pies for the two dolls she had brought with her.

  Carole Seddon took in the scene and couldn’t have been happier. It was all so archetypally English – except of course for the fine weather.

  And as she watched Lily busily playing, it seemed incongruous that that same beach had so recently been a witness to such tragedy.

  ♦

  There were a few changes in the world of Smalting that summer. Following complaints about misuse of his authority and an internal enquiry, Kelvin Southwest was relieved of his job at Fether District Council and someone else took over the administration of the beach huts. No complai
nts were made about his paedophile tendencies, but then very few people knew about those. And perhaps his use of child pornography did keep him from committing worse crimes.

  But he had to find another source of such material. The same Fether District Council internal investigation removed Curt Holderness from his sinecure as security officer. And following an enquiry and a clean-up, Curt’s pornography-copying friend in the local police also lost his job.

  Kelvin Southwest (with his mother) and Curt Holderness both moved from the area.

  So did Mark Dennis and Philly Rose. Their country idyll no longer seemed as attractive to either of them. Mark returned to work in the City, though at a much less high-powered level. The breakdown had burnt out most of his early promise.

  Philly found more work as a graphic designer back in London. But she had genuinely loved Seashell Cottage and had been unhappy about moving.

  Then, perhaps inevitably, her relationship with Mark broke up. It was a long time before either of them found anyone else. Mark certainly made no attempt to reignite his marriage, but Nuala would never completely let go of him. While she exploited other men, she would still come back to her undivorced husband from time to time, usually demanding more money.

  A happier, though unlikely, romance did, however, come to fruition. It was announced in the September edition of The Hut Parade (with complimentary tide table for new members of the SBHA) that Reginald Flowers had married Dora Pinchbeck. So now he could dictate to her whenever he wanted to and she could polish his brass fittings.

  Not a lot changed with the other members of the Smalting Beach Hut Association. Deborah Wrigley continued to use Seagull’s Nest as just another chamber in which to torture her family.

  And in Shrimphaven Katie Brunswick continued endlessly to rewrite her novel (except of course when she was off on courses instructing her about different ways of rewriting it).