The Body on the Beach

Twenty-One

They didn’t have far to go through the Shorelands Estate to reach Brigadoon. The front garden’s Victorian lampposts continued to look incongruous in their mock-Spanish surroundings.

“I still don’t understand,” Carole complained as they approached the studded door. “We know Barbara won’t be there. We know her mother won’t be there. And Rory’ll be at work in Brighton.”

“It’s not them we’ve come to see,” said Jude firmly, as she pressed the doorbell.

The woman who came to the door was probably late forties and could have been attractive in different circumstances. She wore jeans and a faded sweat shirt; her greying hair was scraped back into a rubber band at the nape of her neck and her face had the taut, drained look of total exhaustion.

“Good morning,” she said, in a surprisingly cultured voice, and waited for them to state their business.

Jude took the initiative. “Good morning. This is Carole and I’m Jude. We’re both friends of Barbara Turnbull and – ”

“I’m afraid Mrs Turnbull isn’t in.”

“No, we know that. You’re Maggie, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” the woman conceded cautiously.

“It was you we wanted to have a word with.”

Her face closed over. “You’re nothing to do with the Social Services, are you?”

“No, no, we’re not. I promise.”

But that didn’t resolve her suspicions. “I’m sorry. I’m working.” She reached to close the door, but Jude’s next words stopped her.

“We wanted to have a word about your son.”

A new wave of exhaustion flooded the woman’s body. Her shoulders drooped. There was a note of fatalism in her voice as she asked, “What’s he done?”

“That’s what we want to find out.” Jude pressed home her slight advantage. “In particular what he was doing last Monday night.”

This did frighten the woman. Her spoken response, that she had no idea what they were talking about, was belied by a wildness in her eyes.

Some instinct told Carole this was the moment once again to produce the Stanley knife from her raincoat pocket. The woman’s eyes grew wilder.

“What’s that? Where did you find it?”

The telephone on the hall table rang. Indecision flickered in Maggie’s frightened eyes. She didn’t want to invite them in, but equally she didn’t want to let them go until she knew as much as they knew. The phone rang on. It was clearly not going to be picked up by anybody else or by an answering machine. “Wait there,” she said. “I’ll just be a moment.”

She picked up the phone and gave the number. “What? Oh yes. Yes, he is here. I’ll get him to the phone.” She crossed to the foot of the stairs and called up, “Mr Turribull! Telephone!”

She put the receiver down and crossed back to the women at the front door.

“I thought Mr Turnbull would be at work,” said Carole.

“He’s not well.” Dismissing the detail quickly, Maggie came closer and addressed them with a quiet urgency. “Look, I can’t really talk now. But I do want to talk.” Then, with a mixture of dread and pleading in her voice, she said, “You haven’t spoken to anyone else about Nick, have you?”

“No,” replied Jude reassuringly.

“Not yet,” added Carole, who thought their level of menace should be maintained. Maggie had something to tell them; having hooked her, they didn’t want to lose her.

“Carole. Good morning. What’re you doing here?”

Rory Turribull was coming down the stairs. He wore a shapeless towelling dressing gown. He looked raddled, hungover and haunted.

Carole improvised wildly. “We were just calling about a Labrador charity I’m involved in. The Canine Trust.”

“If you’re looking for a handout, I’m afraid dogs come fairly low down my pecking order of good causes.”

“No, we were just…” Not wishing to get tangled up in details of her fictitious charity call, Carole moved on. “You met my new neighbour, Jude, in the pub, didn’t you?”

“Did I?” Rory Turnbull’s bloodshot eyes showed no recognition but took Jude in, as though he were memorizing her features for future reference. “You will excuse me.” He turned to Maggie and asked grace-lessly, “Who did you say was on the phone?”

“The BMW garage. Something about a bill or – ”

“I’ll take it in the study.” Without a word to the two women still standing on his doorstep, Rory Turnbull left the hall.

The urgency remained in Maggie’s voice as she said, “Listen, I can’t talk now. I’m through here at twelve. Could we meet after that?”

“Sure,” said Jude. “Where?”

“You’d better come round to my place. It’s not far. Spindrift Lane – do you know it?”

Carole nodded. “I do.”

“Number 26. Say half-past twelve. I’ll be back by then.”

“Fine.”

“And please don’t say anything to anyone.” There was a naked appeal in Maggie’s eyes as she echoed Theresa Spalding’s words. “Nick’s a good boy. He is, really.”

“I’m wondering why Rory came down,” Carole mused as she drove them back to the High Street. “They must have a phone upstairs in a house that size. In their bedroom certainly.”

“Come to that, why didn’t he answer it in the first place?”

“Asleep? He looked pretty crumpled when he did come downstairs.”

“Yes. Alternatively, he may just have been curious as to who was at the door. He heard our voices and came to have a snoop.”

“He certainly subjected you to a rather searching look, didn’t he?”

Jude nodded and gave a little shudder. “Uncomfortably searching. There’s something very strange happening with that man, isn’t there? He doesn’t seem to be behaving like the pillar of society a Fethering dentist should be.”

“Certainly not. He’s behaving like an alcoholic.”

“Or someone who’s in the throes of a nervous breakdown?”

“Maybe. Still, poor old Rory’s not really our concern. Except for the fact that his boat was possibly used as a temporary morgue, I can’t see that he has anything to do with our body on the beach.”

“No, I guess not.”

“Though Maggie clearly does have something relevant to tell us. How on earth did you know that she would, Jude?”

“It was just a guess. Intuition, if you like. Barbara Turnbull had said something about Maggie’s son having psychological problems and…I put two and two together. You know, sometimes you just have a sense of things being connected, don’t you?”

“No,” replied Carole, who never did.

“Bad luck. Oh, here we are.”

Carole brought the Renault to a halt outside Wood-side Cottage. She looked at her watch. “Spindrift Lane’s only five minutes’ walk away. Hardly worth taking the car. Shall I knock on your door about twenty past twelve?”

“That’d be fine.”

Carole couldn’t help herself from fishing a little. “So you’ll have time for a nice cup of coffee with Brad…”

“No,” said Jude breezily. “I’ll have to empty a few more boxes upstairs, I’m afraid. Brad’s car’s not here. He’s gone.”

“Oh.” Carole couldn’t for the life of her have left it there. “But I dare say you’ll be seeing him again…”

“I dare say,” Jude agreed, with an infuriating, but probably not deliberate, lack of specificity.

Carole parked the car in her garage. As she was doing so, she noticed on the that a little scrape of mud left by Jude’s boot. She got out the dustpan and brush which was used only for the car and swept it up.