The Body on the Beach

Six

Carole wasn’t a ‘pub person’ and it was a long time since she had been to the Crown and Anchor. When they first bought the cottage, while she still had a husband, they had gone once or twice for a drink before Sunday lunch. But that period of cohabitation with David in Fethering hadn’t lasted, and pub-going didn’t seem appropriate to her single status. Except for a couple of visits on those rare occasions when her son came to see her, Carole hadn’t stepped inside the Crown and Anchor for at least five years.

To someone who didn’t know Fethering, it might seem strange that there was only one pub. Though the Crown and Anchor had been adequate for a fishermen’s village, the residential sprawl that had developed seemed to demand more watering holes. But they had never appeared. The Victorians were puritanical about drinking and later residents had been drawn to Fethering by the attractions of its privacy rather than its communal amenities. When the Downside Estate developed, plans were submitted for a new pub up in that area, but traditionalist influences prevailed and the applications were repeatedly rejected. By then the residents of Fethering were determined to ring-fence their village and prevent further expansion of any kind.

Besides, a short country drive to the east, to the west, or north into the Downs gave access to a wide range of characterful hostelries. There was no need for more pubs in Fethering.

Carole certainly hadn’t been in the Crown and Anchor since the new management took over. Though established for nearly three years, in Fethering they were still known as the ‘new’ management. And even though there was only one of them, that one was always referred to as ‘they’.

In fact, it was a ‘he’, and he was one of the reasons why Carole hadn’t been in the pub recently. Ted Crisp had arrived with a reputation, and since his arrival in the village it had been amplified by local gossip.

Carole knew him by sight. His hair was too long, he had a scruffy beard and shuffled around in jeans and sweat shirts. She had from time to time vouchsafed the most minimal of ‘Fethering Nods’ when meeting him in the village shop, but had never exchanged words. The reputation Ted Crisp carried did not endear him to her.

There was the drinking, for a start. An occupational hazard for publicans, everyone knew, but in Ted Crisp’s case it was rumoured sometimes to get out of hand. Not all the time, to be fair, but every now and then he was said to go on major benders.

Reports of his behaviour towards women were also exchanged in hushed voices among the lady residents of Fethering. Though the village was hardly at the sharp end of the political-correctness debate, Ted Crisp’s attitude was not approved of. It was one thing for a quaint elderly gentleman to call a lady love’ or chivalrously to tell her not to worry her pretty little head about things that didn’t concern her. It was something else entirely for a man hardly even into middle age to make coarse comments of an overtly sexual nature.

And, according to Ted Crisp’s burgeoning reputation, that was what he did. No doubt that kind of thing went down well enough with the younger women, who would snap back at him in kind. But then what did you expect from girls who thought nothing of going into pubs on their own? There was probably no objection from the older brassy divorcees in the village either. But sexual innuendo wasn’t the sort of attention that someone of Carole Seddon’s background and character would appreciate. Her state of shock might have driven her into the Crown and Anchor that evening, but that did not mean that she was about to engage in vulgar badinage with its landlord.

Jude appeared to be untrammelled by such inhibitions. With an, ‘I’ll get these’, she gestured Carole to a table, bustled up to the bar and greeted Ted Crisp as if she’d been a regular for years. Carole looked around the bar with some surprise. She’d expected something more garish, with flashing slot machines. Instead, she could have been in a comfortable family sitting room. And there was no piped music – a surprise, and a blessing.

“How’re you then, young Jude?” Ted Crisp asked, with what Carole categorized as a lecherous leer.

“Not so bad, Ted,” came the easy reply, reinforcing the impression that they’d known each other for years. Maybe they had, thought Carole. Maybe theirs was a relationship which went back a long way. Maybe there was even a ‘history’ between them.

“But the landlord’s next words ruled out that supposition. And how are you liking the upright citizens of Fethering? Or am I the only one you’ve met yet?”

“I’ve talked to a few people.” Jude gestured across to the table. “You know Carole, of course?”

There’s no ‘of course’ about it. He doesn’t know me, thought Carole. He knows who I am, but he doesn’t know me. All he knows is that I’ve never been in his pub before. Could this be a moment of awkwardness?

It wasn’t. Ted Crisp extended a beefy arm in a wave and called, ‘Evening, darlin’’ across the bar. Carole felt a little frisson of embarrassment. She wasn’t anyone’s ‘darlin’’. Still, the bar was fairly empty. She could recognize nobody there likely to spread to other Fethering residents the news that Carole Seddon had allowed herself to be called ‘darlin’’ by Ted Crisp.

“So what’re you going to get pissed on tonight?” the landlord asked.

“Two white wines, please,” said Jude.

“Large ones?”

“Oh yes.”

Carole had a momentary urge to remonstrate. Whenever given the choice between large and small – whatever the commodity on offer – she instinctively opted for small. But she did feel rather shaken and trembly this evening. Maybe it was one of those moments when she needed a large glass of wine.

For the first time she let her mind address itself to what had recently happened in her sitting room. Locking up the house and maintaining small talk with Jude as they walked to the Crown and Anchor had effectively blocked off the encounter. Now she allowed the shock to assert itself.

The main shock was not the behaviour of the woman with the gun but her own reaction to it. Carole Seddon had just been the victim of a serious threat, almost an assault, in the privacy of her own home. It was not the kind of incident that should go unre-ported. If nothing else did, her long experience in the Home Office told her that the police should be informed as soon as possible about unhinged people wandering the countryside with guns.

And yet Carole felt no urgency to contact the police. This morning’s interview had put her off them in a big way. She didn’t relish further scepticism, further aspersions being cast on the state of her hormones.

Besides, when she thought about it, she realized she had as little corroborative evidence for the second incident as she had had for the first. The body on the beach had disappeared. There was only her word for the fact it had ever existed. And exactly the same applied to the woman with the gun. Carole was the only witness of the woman’s arrival, of what she’d said in the sitting room and of her departure. Carole didn’t even know whether her new neighbour had heard the closing of the doors when she arrived at the house. Jude certainly hadn’t said anything about it.

And that was the way things should stay, for the moment at least. There was no point in asking Jude whether she’d heard anything. It would lead only to further questions and explanations. Carole needed time to work out her next move. Whatever had happened was her business, possibly even her problem. It wasn’t something in which she needed to involve anyone else.

There was a roar of raucous laughter from the bar. Ted Crisp had just made a joke which seemed to have amused both Jude and the man slumped on a bar stool beside her. His grey hair was thinning and the way he attacked his large Scotch suggested it wasn’t his first of the evening.

Now she could see his half-turned face, Carole knew who the man was. He’d been living in Fethering longer than she had. Rory Turnbull. Dentist with a practice in Brighton. Lived with a sour-faced wife in one of those huge houses on the Shorelands Estate. Carole knew the couple well enough to bestow upon them more than ‘the Fethering Nod’; she would actually talk if she met them. But the conversations they shared never strayed on to any subject more contentious than the weather.

“It’s the only philosophy worth a fart,” Ted Crisp was saying. “Eat, drink and be merry…”

“Don’t waste time with the eating,” said the dentist. “Drink, drink and be merry” – the landlord chuckled as Rory Turnbull went on – “for tomorrow we die.”

There was a change of tone in his last words, as if he were suddenly aware of their meaning, and that broke the conviviality of the moment. Jude moved away from the bar, cradling the two large glasses of wine and two packets of crisps.

Right, thought Carole, forget the body, forget the woman, now’s my opportunity to find out something about my new neighbour. I don’t know anything. Here’s my chance to fill in the gaps.

Jude placed the wine glasses and dropped the crisps on to the table. “I’m starving,” she said. “lakes it out of you, hoicking all that stuff round the house.”

“I’m sure it does.” Carole wondered whether she should repeat her offer of help, but didn’t.

“I’ll probably order something to eat soon,” Jude went on. “Haven’t begun to get my kitchen up and running yet.”

“Takes time, doesn’t it?” Life in Fethering had refined Carole’s skill in the deployment of meaningless platitudes.

“If you fancy joining me in a bite…”

“No, no, I’ll be eating later,” said Carole quickly.

But the thought of food was appealing. Suddenly very hungry, she opened her bag of crisps and put a greedy handful into her mouth. The lunchtime soup and bread seemed an age ago. She took a long swallow of wine.

“You look as if you could do with that,” said Jude.

“What?” Surely the woman wasn’t suggesting she had a drink problem? But when she looked into the big brown eyes, Carole saw no criticism, only concern.

“You look like you’ve had a bit of a shock.”

“Well, yes, I suppose I have,” Carole found herself saying.

Jude was silent. She didn’t ask any question, she offered no prompt, and yet Carole found herself ineluctably drawn to further revelation. “The fact is,” she said, “I did have rather a shock when I went for my walk on the beach this morning…”

And it all came out. The body. The interview with Detective Inspector Brayfield and WPC Juster. Not only the facts either. She told Jude exactly how diminished the police had made her feel.

And Jude simply responded. She didn’t push, she didn’t probe, she didn’t even appear to be waiting for more. Carole could have stopped at any moment.

But she didn’t. She went on. She went on to tell of the woman who’d arrived on her doorstep earlier that evening. Of their conversation. Of the gun. Of the woman’s disappearance.

“You didn’t hear anything? It was just after I opened the door to you.”

Jude shook her head. Blonde tendrils hanging from the bird’s-nest of hair tickled her shoulders. It must be blonded, Carole thought again. She must be my age. Well, nearly. It can’t be natural.

“No, I didn’t hear anything,” said Jude. “Not a thing.” Surely she’s not disbelieving me too, thought Carole. But the panic was quickly allayed. “Then, you get to know the sounds of your own house, don’t you? You hear things other people wouldn’t notice.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

For the first time since the revelations had started, Jude asked a question. “You say the woman appeared as if she was on drugs?”

“Yes. Well, she was certainly odd. She was on something. I mean, I don’t know much about drugs, except for what I see on the television…”

“No.”

“…but she did seem to be out of control. Which was why I was so worried about what she might do with the gun.”

“I’m sure you were.” And then Jude expressed her first opinion of the evening. “I should think drugs are probably behind the whole thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“The body on the beach. The woman with the gun. There’s a lot of drug business down here. Long tradition of smuggling on the South Coast. Once it was brandy, silks and tobacco. Now it’s cannabis, cocaine and heroin.”

Carole chuckled. “You seem to know a lot about the subject.”

“Yes,” said Jude.