The Body on the Beach

FORTY

The night was still and colder now. A thin moon diffused its watery glow over the snug houses of Feth-ering, in which, one by one, the lights were being switched off.

The BMW stopped outside the gates that led to the Yacht Club launching ramp and gave access to the sea wall. Rory Turnbull calmly got out and opened the lock with his member’s key. Back in the car, he said, “I’ll close the gates when I leave. On foot. And, I’m sorry to say, alone.”

He edged the car forward till it was alongside one of the fishermen’s chests. He was eager now and leapt out, leaving the door ajar.

Jude could not see as Rory took out his keys. Nor could she see him insert one into the new padlock he’d substituted for the one sawn off the previous Tuesday night. The padlock opened and he slipped it out of the hasp that held the chest’s top down.

As he raised the lid, he caught a foul whiff of decay, but he was too near to his goal to be put off by such a detail. Reaching into the chest, he took a grip on the Fethering Yacht Club life-jacket which was still fixed around the torso of the late Sam Kent.

With sudden strength and in one movement, Rory Turribull lifted the body out. For a moment he held the putrid flesh against his own body, almost as if it were a lover. Then he laid the body flat on the cement. With both hands, he forced the stiff dead jaws apart. He reached inside his own mouth and removed his dental plate. He fixed it inside the dead man’s mouth.

The body had bloated and was bursting out of its clothes, but that did not stop the dentist from starting to remove them. The dead man’s clothes would be destroyed and he himself would dress in a spare set he had in the car boot. He had thought it all through. For his plan to work – his precious plan that he had been nurturing for so long – the body when found must be dressed as Rory Turnbull.

“What are you doing, Rory?”

Ted Crisp rose over the side of the sea wall like an avenging fury from the ladder to which he had been clinging. At the same time Carole appeared from the shadows of the Yacht Club. When the landlord had phoned, her curiosity had proved stronger than her exhaustion.

Hearing voices, Jude shouted for help.

“You bastard! I’m not going to be stopped now!”

Rory Turribull launched himself ferociously at the landlord. The initial impetus caught Ted off balance. For a moment he swayed, about to topple back into the Fether.

But somehow he regained his equilibrium and enfolded the furious dentist in a bear hug. Rory’s elbows worked like pistons as he slammed punches into Ted’s substantial paunch. The two men weaved around like one crazed four-legged creature on the edge of the sea wall.

Carole meanwhile had freed Jude from the armrests and manoeuvred her out of the BMW to release her other bonds. As soon as her hands were free, Jude threw her arms around her friend. They stood for a moment, instinctively hugging each other. Then Jude reached into the front seat of the car for her mobile phone. “I’m calling the police!” she said.

There was a grunt and the two fighting men were suddenly apart. Rory Turribull swung a wild haymaker of a punch, which by pure chance caught Ted Crisp on the tip of the chin and sent him flying across the cement.

Freed, the dentist rushed to pick up his precious body. Grasping it under the arms, he dragged it across to the BMW. Carole and Jude watched in amazement as he opened the passenger door and jammed the corpse into its seat. He slammed the door shut and hurried round to the other side.

“You’re mad, Rory!” Jude shouted. “You’ll never get away with it!”

“Yes, I will!” he shrieked back. “I’ve got it all planned out! I told you – I’ve got it all planned out!”

He started the engine and the BMW screeched in reverse back through the Fethering Yacht Club gates. In a howl of tyres he turned it round and shot off fast down the quayside road.

Far too fast. Rory Turribull misjudged the corner and bounced off a concrete bollard. The BMW spun crazily before smashing into the Second World War mine that was used as a charity collecting box. With the impact, the car burst into flames.

When the wreckage was examined by the police, their first impression was that there were two near-identical bodies in the burnt-out car. In the mouth of one of them was a dental plate which had been specially made for Rory Turnbull.

Detailed post-mortem examination, however, revealed that the body with the dental plate had been dead for at least a week before the crash which killed the dentist.