The Body on the Beach

Four

Carole Seddon felt upset after the police’s departure. They had come to the house with an agenda; their semaphore of little nods and eyelid flickers had been prearranged. Having arrived believing her to be a hysterical attention seeker, nothing she could say was going to make them leave with any change in their attitude.

That’s what hurt – that they had thought her anything less than sensible. Throughout her career in the Home Office, Carole Seddon had prided herself on being a safe pair of hands. Male colleagues had paid her the ultimate compliment of appearing unaware of her gender. Even at times of crisis, when she returned to work after the birth of her son, when her marriage to David was turning horribly sour, she had never let her emotions show in her professional life.

And here she was faced with a detective and a WPG being understanding about her mental state.

There was nothing wrong with her mental state. Certainly nothing wrong with her hormonally. What stage she was at with her menopause was nobody’s business but her own. And yet the attitude of the two police officers had undermined her confidence. She knew she wasn’t a hysteric, but the fact that someone could imagine her to be a hysteric upset the carefully maintained equilibrium of her life.

The unease didn’t dissipate during the course of the day. She went through the motions of her normal routine. Did a bit of housework for the rest of the morning. Forced down some soup and a hunk of granary bread at lunchtime, then settled to the regular mental aerobics of the Times crossword. But her brain was sluggish, slow to dissect words into their component parts, slow to make connections between them. She completed one corner, but could fill in only a few stragglers on the rest of the grid. The crossword, usually finished within half an hour, was set aside for completion later in the day.

Round four, she took Gulliver out for a shorter walk, through the back gate to do his business in the rough ground behind the row of cottages. Jude and her carpet were no longer in their front garden, but, Carole noted with disapproval, the structure of boxes still was. Her new neighbour would have to learn. People in Fethering didn’t leave anything in their front gardens, except for staddlestones, tasteful statuary and – in one rather regrettable instance – gnomes.

Gulliver seemed to have caught his mistress’s mood, sloping along by her side with none of his usual frenetic attacks on invisible windmills. The light too was depressing. True to its early promise, the day had never felt like day, and its leaden sky was now thickening into a November night. The cold stung her exposed cheeks and she shivered. Her circulation hadn’t got properly going all day.

Still Carole Seddon couldn’t lose the unpleasant aftertaste of her morning’s visitation by the police.

Despite the sour mood they’d engendered, the thought did not for a moment occur to her that she might be in the wrong. There was no doubt that she had seen the body on the beach. The fact that the police hadn’t found it was down either to their incompetence or – more likely – to the interference of some outside agency. Maybe they’d taken too long, arriving after the tide had come in far enough to move the body on. Maybe someone had moved it deliberately.

Once the body had been found – as she knew it would be – Carole Seddon was determined to get a very full apology from the West Sussex Serious Crimes Squad. Public-spirited citizens should not be treated like criminals.

Though the prospect of receiving some ultimate moral compensation was a comforting one, when she returned home Carole still felt unsettled. As she put on the lights and drew the curtains, she even asked herself if she was over-reacting, if she actually was in an emotional state. Maybe a delayed response to the shock of seeing the dead body and to the implications of the wounds on its neck?

Uncharacteristically, she wanted to talk to someone about the whole incident. For a brief, irrational moment, she even contemplated confiding in her new neighbour. She couldn’t forget the unusual quality of empathy she’d seen in those wide brown eyes.

But that was ridiculous. Even if Carole Seddon had been the kind of person who talked to her neighbours about anything more weighty than the weather, she didn’t even know this woman.

These uncharacteristic thoughts were interrupted when the doorbell rang.

She had received no early warning over the previous couple of days. No acquaintance was due to come round for tea. It must be someone selling something, Carole concluded as she approached the front door. Probably one of those men with a zip-up bag full of dishcloths, oven gloves and plastic storage boxes who would flash some laminated card of authorization. If it was, she’d send him off with a flea in his ear. There was a consensus view in Fethering that all such visitors were lookouts for criminal gangs. Carole Seddon wasn’t about to have her joint cased for the benefit of burglars.

By the time she opened the door, she had built up a healthy head of righteous steam against the expected salesman and was surprised to be confronted by a thin, haunted-looking woman she had never seen before.

“Did you find a body on the beach this morning?”

Now Carole knew why she had let the woman in. Her instinct was always to get rid of unexpected callers – particularly callers in grubby jeans and purple quilted anoraks. But something in the woman’s eyes had indicated that her visit was serious, maybe even important. Carole had ushered her stiffly into the sitting room, sat her down and waited till the reason for her presence was explained.

Now she knew she’d done the right thing. In the same armchair where Detective Inspector Brayfield had sat that morning, disbelieving her story of having found a body on the beach, here was a woman actually asking about her discovery.

“What makes you think I did?” Carole responded cautiously.

“I know you did.” The voice was uneducated South Coast, not from the more discriminating purlieus of Fethering. “It was a woman with a beige raincoat and a Labrador,” she went on. “You fit the description.”

“Whose description?”

“Never mind that. Look, I know it was you, so we can cut out the bullshit.”

Carole Seddon appraised the woman in front of her. The face had about it a deadness the colour and texture of papier mache. The hair was flat and dull like tobacco. Only the eyes were alive, burning with a desperate energy.

“The police have been to see me this morning,” said Carole evenly. “According to them, when they looked, there was no body on the beach.”

“I’m not interested in the police. You know and I know there was a body on the beach this morning. Down at the end of the breakwater.”

While it was gratifying to have her story corroborated, Carole still wanted to know where the woman had got her information. “Were you watching me? Was it you who I saw walking away from the body?”

“I didn’t go on the beach this morning.” The woman dismissed these irrelevant details and hurried on to what really concerned her. “Did you take something from the body? Something out of his jacket pocket?”

“No, I certainly didn’t. I didn’t touch it.” Carole spoke with the affront of someone whose upbringing did not countenance theft, least of all from the dead.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!”

“Listen, it’s important.”

“It may be important, but the fact remains that I did not take anything from the body I found on the beach this morning!”

“There wasn’t no knife?”

“Knife? I didn’t see any knife.”

This answer seemed to provide a moment of reassurance. The woman was silent, her eyes darting from side to side as she considered the next tack to take. “Do you know where it went?” she asked eventually.

“The body?”

“Of course the body.”

“I’ve no idea.”

“After you seen it, did you see anyone else go near it?”

“No. I went home and rang the police. And – as I’ve just told you – when they finally came to see me, they said they hadn’t been able to find the body.”

This news too seemed to reassure the woman, but only for a moment. Her tone changed. There was overt aggression in her next question. “What were you doing down on the beach, anyway?”

“I was taking my dog for a walk.”

“Oh yes?” The woman could do scepticism just as well as Detective Inspector Brayfield. Then, abruptly, she asked, “Did the police say they’d come back?”

“To see me again? No.”

“If they do come back, you’re not to tell them anything about it.”

Carole was getting exasperated. “About what, for God’s sake?”

“About what you seen on the beach. About you seeing anyone moving the body.”

“I’ve told you! I didn’t see anyone moving the body!”

“If you’re lying and I find out you snitched to anyone about what you seen, there’ll be trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” asked Carole, almost contemptuously.

“This kind of trouble,” said the woman with a new, sly menace in her voice.

As she spoke, she reached inside her quilted anorak and pulled out a gun.