The Body on the Beach

Thirty-Seven

Maggie Kent arrived at the sea wall just after Carole had been deposited there by Ted Crisp. Which was probably just as well. In time she would hear the details of how close her son had come to death, but at least she had not had to witness the agony of the previous half-hour.

Moments later, the three from the motor launch disembarked at the floating jetty a little further upstream and Nick Kent, with a grubby blanket wrapped around him, was led by Denis Woodville and Bill Chilcott towards the waiting group. Carole and Maggie hurried forward to greet him. The mother, oblivious to the filth in which he was covered, threw her arms around her son. Both of them sobbed.

“You two did brilliantly,” said Carole to the rescuers. “Amazing bit of cooperation and coordination.”

“Only did it because my boat was the closest,” said Bill Chilcott gruffly.

The Vice-Commodore’s reaction was equally ungracious. “Yes, in an emergency you can’t choose the people you have to work with.”

There was a silence. A moment of potential rapprochement between the two sides of the feud…?

It seemed not. “I must get this incident entered in the club log.” Denis Woodville turned abruptly on his heel and set off towards his cronies.

“And I must get out of these wet clothes.” Equally abruptly, Bill Chilcott turned in the opposite direction and strutted off squelching on his way back home.

Carole moved across to the muddy embrace of mother and son. Nick had stopped sobbing, but his breath was coming out in little jerky wheezes. “Should I call an ambulance, Maggie, or get him to a doctor?”

“No, I don’t want him to get caught up in hospitals and all that. Nick’s freezing cold and he’s had a terrible shock. I just want to get him home, get him into a hot bath and clean him up. Then, if there’s anything wrong with him, I’ll call the GP.” Maggie Kent looked dubiously at the crowd of elderly campaigners still clustered by the Yacht Club. “Wish I could smuggle him away without talking to anyone.”

“I’ll give you a lift,” said Carole.

She fixed a meeting point and five minutes later was back in the Renault to pick them up. Carole hadn’t even wiped the mud off her own shoes and she made no demur as the slime-covered boy in his filthy blanket was laid across the precious upholstery of her back seat.

Maggie Kent ushered Carole into the bleak front room. “Would you like a coffee or something? I’d offer you a real drink, but I’m afraid I don’t have anything.”

“Don’t worry. You just go and sort Nick out.”

“Yes. He’s gone up to start the bath. There’s lots of hot water. I’ll give him a good scrubbing.”

“And, Maggie…”

“Yes?”

“It’s not my business, but if I were you I wouldn’t ask him about what happened. He’ll tell you when he wants to.”

The mother nodded. “I’d already decided that.”

“Good.”

“But would you mind staying till I’ve put him to bed? I’d like to hear your account of what happened.”

Carole couldn’t say no, could she? “That’s fine.” She took a look at her watch. “But may I use your telephone?”

It was the moment after Rory Turnbull had appeared from the bathroom, before Jude had had time to recover from her surprise and say anything, that her mobile rang. She snatched the phone immediately out of her pocket. “Hello?”

“Jude, it’s Carole. Nick Kent’s all right.”

“Thank God. Listen, I’ve found – ”

But the mobile was ripped from her hand and switched off. “I don’t think you need tell anyone what you’ve found,” Rory Turnbull said coolly.

As someone who’d never possessed a mobile phone, Carole’s image of their technology was out of date. They were unreliable machines, prone to constant loss of signal and other breakdowns. So she wasn’t that surprised to have been cut off.

She used the last-number redial on Maggie’s phone. The ringing went on for some time, then a bloodlessly polite voice informed her that the caller was not responding, but she had the option of leaving a message.

There didn’t seem much point. Jude had definitely heard her say that Nick was all right. That was the important news. Anything else would keep.

Odd, though. One moment Jude was answering her phone; a moment later, even though their conversation had been unfinished, she’d switched it off.

Maybe another vagary of mobile-phone technology…The explanation gave Carole reassurance. Partial reassurance.

Three-quarters of an hour had elapsed before Maggie Kent came back downstairs. “I’ve got the worst of it off him. It’ll take another few weeks of baths – or possibly a course of sandblasting – to get it all out of his pores, but he’s OK.”

“You don’t need to call the doctor?”

“I think all Nick needs is a lot of sleep. He’s tucked up in bed and I’ve given him one of my sleeping pills. I’ll get him a hot-water bottle. But he did want to have a word with you – just to say thank you.”

“Fine.” Carole rose to her feet, but Maggie still lingered in the doorway, not yet ready to lead her upstairs. “What is it?”

“It’s just…tell me…did Nick really try to kill himself?”

Carole answered with complete honesty. “He thought that’s what he wanted to do, yes. But when he got close to the reality, he changed his mind. He thought of the effect it would have on you and he couldn’t allow himself to do it.”

“Good.” Some of the tension eased from Maggie Kent’s shoulders and a warmth came into her tired face. “Let’s go up and see him.”

The decor of Nick Kent’s room was the perfect illustration of a life poised uneasily between the pulls of the child and the adult. A poster of the Manchester United football team on one wall was having a face-off with the pouting images of the latest girl band on the other. A copy of GFH lay on top of an Asterix. Flashy deodorants and ‘men’s toiletries’ stood side by side with Coca-Cola bottles.

Nick was propped up on pillows under a duvet with a Manchester United cover. He looked exhausted but calm. His scrubbed face bore the soft glow of childhood. His eyelids flickered. He would soon be asleep.

“I just wanted to say thank you very much,” he slurred. “Wanted to thank you…should’ve thanked the men who pulled me out…didn’t thank them properly…”

“Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of time to do that.”

There was a shelf of treasures by the boy’s bedhead and on it Carole saw something which unleashed a landslide of explanations. Among Subbuteo footballers, swimming certificates and snaps of leering boys from some long-past school trip stood a framed photograph.

It showed a smiling, grey-haired man in his late forties. Undoubtedly the missing Sam Kent.

And also undoubtedly, in spite of the fact that in the photograph he had no tooth missing, the man whose body Carole Seddon had found on Fethering beach.