The Killing in the Café

EIGHT

Jude was surprised the following morning to have a phone call on the dot of seven. It was rather earlier than she liked to begin the process of waking up.

She was also surprised to find that the caller was Carole.

‘Is everything all right? Has the baby started?’

‘No, I haven’t heard anything from Fulham for three days.’ She sounded upset by this lack of communication.

‘Well, I’m sure in this case no news is good news. They don’t want to ring you until there’s something to say.’

‘Maybe not.’ Carole didn’t sound convinced. ‘Stephen always did have a very secretive streak.’

Congenital? Jude wondered. But she didn’t voice the thought. Instead she said, ‘Everything will be absolutely fine. Gaby had all those tests last week and they all proved that the baby was in excellent form.’

‘Yes. But I still worry.’ This was unusual from Carole. Normally she’d do anything rather than express her feelings – or admit to having any. ‘I’ve been awake most of the night.’

Jude was well practised in supplying comfort to the troubled, but she’d rarely had to offer it to her neighbour. ‘Look, do you want to come round and talk about it?’

‘Well …’ Carole was tempted. ‘But I haven’t taken Gulliver out for his walk yet.’

‘Or had breakfast?’

‘No.’

‘Then I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Just give me time to have a shower and get some clothes on, then I’ll join you for a walk. A good workout for Gulliver should take what … half an hour …?’

‘About that.’

‘Which would mean that at eight o’clock, when Polly’s Cake Shop opens, we could settle down for an indulgently large breakfast there.’

Carole didn’t demur. Which was a measure of how bad a state she was in. Normally she hated being organized by anyone. But on this occasion she needed help. Even more remarkable, she had virtually admitted to Jude that she needed help.

It was nippy on Fethering Beach. The October mornings were cold. Jude had already put Woodside Cottage’s central heating on, timed for a couple of hours early morning and a couple early evening. And if she was at home in the evening, she lit a fire. Carole, who still thought the whole concept of central heating was something of an indulgence, hadn’t switched hers on yet.

As they passed over the dunes on to the beach, Jude looked back at the service road and the gates to Polly’s Cake Shop’s yard. Yes, there would be room for a couple of flats there. Not very big, but with amazing views. She looked along the row of similar yards for the other shops and wondered if any of them might be bought up for similar development. And indeed if that was part of Kent Warboys’ long-term plan.

But she wasn’t there for that kind of speculation. The purpose of the walk was to comfort Carole. ‘It’s natural for you to worry,’ she said, ‘but it will all be all right. Because of the tests she had last week you know more about the health of Gaby’s than you do about most unborn babies. And it’s not as if she had any problems with Lily’s birth, did she?’

‘Well, the labour wasn’t particularly comfortable.’

‘No, but it never is. That’s why it’s called “labour”.’ Though childless herself, through her clients Jude had a wide knowledge of the problems of pregnancy. ‘But is there any particular reason why you’re worrying so much about Gaby?’

‘Why? Should there be?’

‘I don’t know, do I? That’s why I’m asking. I just wondered if there was anything from your own experience of childbirth that might make you especially anxious.’

‘Well …’

‘What?’

But if Carole had been on the verge of some confession, she changed her mind. ‘Nothing,’ she replied briskly. ‘As you say, labour is never a walk in the park, but with Stephen … nothing went wrong.’ And that was all Jude was going to get on the subject.

It was quite cold on the beach. The clocks were due to go back the next weekend, but till then it was still dark at seven thirty in the morning. There was also a bit of sea mist. The tide was going out, exposing vast expanses of sand. Unsurprisingly the two women seemed to be alone on the beach, apart from Gulliver, who’d been released from his lead and was conducting elaborate guerrilla warfare with inanimate lumps of seaweed along the shoreline.

‘Anyway, how was your new committee meeting last night?’ Carole asked, infusing the ‘new’ with the implication that the subject was somehow frivolous and flaky.

‘Oh, like committees always are. Tedious and unnecessary.’

‘They don’t have to be.’ During her time at the Home Office, Carole had prided herself on ‘running a good committee’. ‘It’s all a matter of who’s chairing the thing. If the Chair’s weak, then nothing works.’

‘I don’t think this Chair’s weak so much as self-aggrandizing. Former naval man, pillar of the Fethering Yacht Club, who goes under the unlikely name of Quintus Braithwaite. Have you come across him?’ Carole had, after all, been a Fethering resident longer than Jude had.

‘Doesn’t ring a bell – and it’s not the kind of name you’d be likely to forget. Where does he live?’

‘The Shorelands Estate.’

Carole let out a snort of contempt. ‘Say no more. That lot never leave their gated compound, except to take their 4x4s out to Waitrose. Anyway, you say he’s not a weak Chair?’

‘No, but he seems to think it’s all about him.’

‘Oh yes.’ Carole nodded sagely. ‘That type can be almost as destructive as the weak ones. And this palaver is all in the cause of saving Polly’s Cake Shop for the village, is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t understand why you got on the committee.’

‘Well, it was through a …’ Jude had nearly said ‘friend’, but she knew how shirty Carole could get when friends she didn’t know about were mentioned ‘… a client.’

‘Oh?’ Even with the change of word, Carole sounded a bit frosty.

‘Yes, she’s going through a bad patch; she needs a lot of support.’

‘Huh,’ said Carole Seddon, as only Carole Seddon could say ‘Huh’. ‘I thought you gave your patients support by healing them, not by joining committees you don’t want to be on.’

Jude knew that the use of the word ‘patients’ rather than ‘clients’ was deliberate, an attempt to rile her. She was determined not to react.

But they were interrupted by furious barking from Gulliver. He was over at the shoreline, suspicious and angry, circling something he had found there.

Carole and Jude drew closer. The darkness of the night was paling into grey and they could see quite clearly what had upset the dog.

It was the body of a man, swollen to the point of bursting out of his clothes and hideously discoloured. Ropes tied around his ankles were broken and frayed.

But they could see clearly enough that in his right temple there was a bullet hole.