The Body on the Beach

Twenty-Seven

As she’d mentioned, Jude had done some acting in her time. She’d done a lot of things in her time. Hers had been a rich and varied life.

On the Saturday morning, while Carole went off to do her bit with Winnie Norton, Jude decided she’d have to call on her acting skills to further her own research. She rang through to J.T. Carpets. Even if no carpet-fitting went on at the weekend, the showroom was bound to be open. And there must be someone working in the office.

There was. Jude put on a voice of excruciating gentility (school of Barbara Turribull) and went into her prepared spiel. “Good morning. I’m trying to contact one of your carpet-fitters. Named Dylan.”

“I’m sorry. The fitters don’t work at the weekend.”

“Well, could you give me his home address and phone number?” she demanded imperiously.

“I’m afraid it’s not company policy to give out our employees’ private details over the telephone.”

“Then in this case you must make an exception to company policy. My name is Mrs Grant-Edwards.” Jude was taking a risk that the girl in the office had never spoken directly to the real Mrs Grant-Edwards. And perhaps less of a risk in assuming that the real Mrs Grant-Edwards would talk the way she was talking. “I live in a house called Bali-Hai on the Shorelands Estate, where your people have just been fitting a carpet.”

“Oh yes?”

“And one of the fitters was this young man called Dylan.”

“You haven’t found anything missing, have you?”

The anxiety in her voice was a real giveaway. Clearly Dylan didn’t have a reputation as the most trustworthy of employees. Jude wondered how many little pilferings had occurred in the houses where he had fitted carpets. And wondered how much longer he would keep his job.

“No, no, it’s not that. It’s rather the reverse. I’ve found something of his in the house.”

“What?”

Jude had thought long and hard what her cover story should be. She wasn’t going to get anywhere with a complaint about Dylan. Inventing some domestic crisis was too risky; his employers were bound to know more about his family circumstances than she did. What was needed was something urgent, but unthreatening, something that would sound as though Mrs Grant-Edwards was actually doing him a good turn. Jude felt pleased with the solution she’d finally come up with.

“It’s a wallet containing his credit cards. And since he hasn’t come back to our house looking, I assume he doesn’t know where he left it. Well, I know how tiresome it can be to lose one’s credit cards. It happened to me last year and caused an awful kerfuffle. So I just wanted to ring him to put his mind at rest.”

The approach worked with the girl at J.T. Carpets. “That’s very kind of you, Mrs Grant-Edwards.”

“If we don’t all help each other out in this life, what will become of us?”

“What indeed? Right, just a moment. I’ll find Dylan’s home number for you.”

The girl gave it. Jude had asked for his address too, but she couldn’t justify pressing for that. Her cover story didn’t require her knowing where he lived. So she just thanked the girl for her help and put the phone down.

The number had a Worthing code, which meant it was local, and the first two digits were the same as Jude’s own, which meant it was very local. Dylan probably lived in Fethering. But whether with his family, a girlfriend or on his own she had no means of knowing.

The next call was going to need a change of persona and she had to get it right. Jude made herself a cup of peppermint tea while she focused on the role she was about to play. In spite of her floaty dress style, Jude was far from being a superannuated hippy, but she had met plenty of the breed. Indeed, during the time she’d lived on Majorca, people who didn’t know her well might have reckoned her as one of their number. Most of her acquaintances from that period of her life had long since settled into the worlds of domesticity and employment, often as school-teachers or in the social services. They remained harmless idealists, benignly ineffectual, posing no threat to society at any level. True, they did break the law on a regular basis, but the one they broke Jude didn’t think should be a law anyway.

She concentrated on getting the voice right. Laid-back, lazy, full of trailing vowels, that was it. And she’d use her mobile phone, so that the precise location she was calling from wouldn’t be revealed if Dylan checked 1471.

She waited till half-past eleven, which she reckoned gave a lad-about-Fethering – assuming that’s what Dylan was – time to wake up after the excesses of Friday night, and keyed in his number. She was in luck. He was at home.

“Hi.” He managed to invest the single syllable with insolence and menace.

“Is that Dylan?” Jude got exactly the right relaxed diffidence into her voice.

“Yeah. Who wants him?”

“I was given your name by someone. I want to get hold of some gear.”

“What kind of gear?”

“Pot.” She knew that’s what most users of her generation would still call it. “Cannabis.”

Dylan laughed harshly. “So you’re after some weed, eh? And what makes you think I might be able to help you?”

“I told you. A friend gave me your name.”

“I think you’d better tell me who the friend is. Otherwise I might suspect this is some kind of set-up.”

Jude took the risk. If Dylan didn’t bite, then she knew she’d have lost him. She backed her hunch. “Rory Turnbull.”

The silence lasted so long she thought she must’ve miscalculated. Then Dylan repeated, “Rory Turribull, eh? Our fine upstanding dentist?”

He didn’t mention the fine upstanding dentist’s recent disappearance. Which was good news, because it almost definitely meant he didn’t know about it. When he did, he’d be on his guard, knowing the inevitability of police investigations into all aspects of Rory Turnbull’s life.

“Yes. He said he was a customer of yours.”

“Not much of a customer. He bought very little from me. Just a bit of weed on a couple of occasions.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t carry the stuff he was after.”

“He wanted hard drugs?”

“Yes. Smack. I gave him the name of a contact in Brighton and didn’t hear from him again. So I guess that’s where he took his business.”

“Who was that contact?”

Jude realized she had been over-eager even before Dylan responded. “Hey, just a minute, just a minute. I thought you said it was weed – or was it ‘pot’? – you were after.”

“Yes,” she agreed contritely. “Can you help me?”

“Maybe. It depends how much you’re prepared to pay – ” He quoted her prices for the various grades of goods he had available. She agreed his terms without haggling, and he fixed to meet her in the seafront shelter nearest to the Fethering Yacht Club at seven o’clock that evening.

“How will I recognize you?” he asked.

“I’m very tall, nearly six foot. Thinnish, black hair. I’ll be wearing a long brown leather coat and a brown fur hat.” Jude felt fairly safe with this anti-description of herself. And, for ethical reasons, her wardrobe contained nothing made of either leather or fur.

“OK. And a name? Or at least something you can identify yourself by, in case there’s more than one tall bird in a leather coat down on the seafront tonight.”

“Caroline,” said Jude.

“OK, Caroline. See you later.”

And he put the phone down. As she switched off her mobile, a little tremor of distaste ran through Jude’s body.

One thing she knew for certain, though. She would not be anywhere near a Fethering seafront shelter at seven o’clock that evening.

For a moment she contemplated ringing the police and suggesting they make a rendezvous with Dylan at a Fethering seafront shelter at seven o’clock that evening.

But no. Deep though her hatred for the boy was, shopping him to the authorities would have been a very un-Jude thing to do.