Bones Under The Beach Hut (15 page)

    'I
got that impression in The Crab,' said Carole.

    'There
was a woman who came in and sort of rescued him,' Jude remembered.

    'His
wife Helga.' Philly sighed with exasperation. 'What she puts up with from Gray
you wouldn't believe. Helga Czesky is the kind of woman who sets back the cause
of feminism by about a century. Seems actually to get a charge from spending
her life as a doormat.'

    Carole
looked at the watercolour more closely. 'He's not a bad painter, is he, if you
like that sort of thing.'

    'Yes,
maybe. I myself don't particularly like that sort of thing. Too bland for my
taste. Mark ended up buying that one at the end of a long drinking session with
Gray.' A new thought struck her. 'I wonder if I could sell it?'

    'Worth
trying,' said Jude. 'Are Gray Czesky water- colours popular?'

    'He
seems to sell quite a few. Mostly through that place on the prom, the Zentner
Gallery.'

    Carole
salted away the information. It might be useful at some point.

    'If
they were friends,' said Jude, 'have you asked whether Gray's had any contact
from Mark since you last heard from him?'

    'No,'
came the terse reply. 'It wasn't a friendship I encouraged.'

    'Oh?'

    'Mark
used to have a drink problem. A lot of City high-flyers do - their way of
coping with the stress. And he could turn quite nasty when he'd had a few. But
since we moved to Smalting and out of that City environment, Mark'd really got
back in control of the drinking. Except when he met up with Gray Czesky. One evening
with Gray could undo all the good of the previous month. It was one of the few
things Mark and I used to argue about.'

    'Did
you have a row about his drinking just before he left?' asked Carole. 'I mean,
was that perhaps the reason why—?'

    'No.'
Philly spoke firmly, closing down that particular topic of conversation, and
brought the coffee over to them. She and Carole had black. Jude took milk.
Seeming to assume that the question about her work and the discussion of Gray
Czesky had just been small talk, Philly Rose got straight down to business.
'Jude, you said on the phone you had some information for me.'

    'Yes.
It's something Carole was told.'

    She
looked across at her neighbour, who began by recapping, 'It was the beginning
of May when Mark walked out?'

    'May
the third.' Philly had thought about the date so often that there was a dull
ritual quality to her words.

    'And
you haven't seen him since?'

    'No.
I told you.'

    'Or
had any contact from him?'

    'No.'

    There
was in her answer a hint of hesitation, on to which Carole pounced. 'Is that
true, Philly?' A silence. 'Look, I'm sorry, I'm not badgering you - or at least
I'm not meaning to - but the significance of what I was told does depend on
whether you were telling the truth about having no contact with Mark.'

    This
prompted an even longer silence before Philly Rose admitted, 'We have exchanged
a few texts.'

    'But
you haven't seen him?' The young woman shook her head. 'And you have no idea
where he is or what he's doing?' The head shake this time was not so definite.
'Are you sure about that?'

    'Look,
what is this?' Philly demanded petulantly. 'You say you want to see me because
you've got some information, so you come here and then start giving me the third
degree.'

    Jude
was instantly in there, good cop to her neighbour's bad cop. 'Philly, it's all
right. Carole just wanted to know the background because what she has to tell
you concerns Mark.'

    'Really?'
The girl looked frightened now. It was with a sense of foreboding that she
turned to Carole and asked, 'Have you seen him? Do you know where he is?'

    'I
haven't seen him myself, but he has been seen. Here in Smalting.'

    'Oh
my God.' The words came out quiet and dead. 'When?'

    'About
one o'clock last Tuesday morning. The day before I found out there'd been a
fire at
Quiet Harbour.'

    Philly
Rose's pallor increased. 'Who saw him?'

    Carole
passed on what she had been told by Curt Holderness. The shock when Philly
heard that Mark had been in the company of a woman made her gasp and start to
tremble uncontrollably. Jude was instantly at her side, cradling the girl,
stroking her shoulders.

    It
took some minutes for the hysterics to subside. Carole drank her coffee,
feeling rather guilty for precipitating this reaction. But Philly had wanted
the information.

    When
she was calmer, Jude said, 'There's clearly quite a lot you're not telling us,
isn't there, Philly?' This prompted a feeble nod. 'And if you don't want to
tell us any more, that's fine. But what you know is clearly troubling you, and
if you think sharing it might help . . . ?'

    The
suggestion dangled in the air for what seemed like a long time before Philly
tore off a sheet of kitchen roll and wiped her nose firmly before saying, 'All
right, I'll tell you. It'll be useful practice for me, because no doubt I'll
have to repeat it all for the police sometime soon.'

    Neither
woman responded, unwilling to break the confessional atmosphere. Philly took a
deep breath and started. 'Mark's life has always been complicated. Basically
he's married. He was married when we first met - and he didn't make any secret
of the fact. He wasn't one of those men who passes himself off as a bachelor
and only reveals his real status when the woman's too involved to back out. No,
he told me early on that he was married, but he told me things had been
difficult with his wife for a long time. She's Irish, very temperamental,
called Nuala. Drank a lot, and encouraged him to drink a lot too. Very much
part of that City drinking culture. Obviously I was only hearing Mark's side of
things, but she did sound an absolute nightmare, a real emotional vampire.

    'So
when we first started seeing each other, he was having a terrible time. He kept
telling her he was leaving and every time she'd overreact.'

    'In
what way?' asked Jude.

    'She'd
get ill - or pretend to get ill.'

    'Any
suicide attempts?'

    'Yes,
but those were no more real than the illnesses.

    She'd
take enough pills to make her woozy, but not enough to do any permanent harm.
She'd announce on the phone to Mark that she'd slashed her wrists, but when it
came to it, she just got a little scratch, something that would heal up without
even leaving a scar.'

    'Was
she ever hospitalised after these attempts?'

    'No
way. She didn't want a doctor to see how far she'd been from doing herself any
real damage. It was all just for Mark's benefit.'

    'And
did he respond to these "cries for help"?' asked Carole.

    'He did
at first, yes. After a while, he came to recognize them for what they were -
just straightforward emotional blackmail. And then things got better.'

    'How?'

    'Two
things. One, Mark settled some money on her.'

    'Bought
her off?'

    'You
could call it that. Anyway, Mark could afford it. He'd saved a lot from his
bonuses while he'd been in the City and he'd made what seemed at the time to be
some pretty shrewd investments. So Nuala got a monthly payment for keeping out
of his hair, and she seemed quite happy with that.'

    'If
she was reconciled to the ending of their relationship, why didn't they get a
divorce?' asked Carole.

    'Nuala
refused that. She said it was because of her Catholic upbringing, though she
had no faith at all. I think it was just a way of keeping an element of control
for the moment when she might need it.'

    'You
said there were two things that improved the situation,' Jude reminded her.

    'Yes.
The money was the first. The second was even better. Nuala met someone else.
She got into a new relationship. Suddenly she didn't care anything about Mark .
. . though actually I don't reckon she ever did. Anyway, it left him and me
free to make our move down here. Everything seemed fine.'

    'So
what went wrong?' asked Carole.

    Philly's
face screwed up into an expression of wry despair. 'What didn't? The company in
which Mark had most of his investments suddenly went belly up. You know how
volatile the stock market's been recently and his were pretty high-risk
companies. He lost a packet. Keeping our lifestyle going down here
and
making the payments to Nuala . . . well, there just wasn't enough money in the
bank. And then to add to the problems, Nuala's new relationship broke up. Her
bloke found out - just as Mark had done - what she was really like, and he got
out as quickly as he could. So suddenly Mark's not only getting financial
demands from Nuala, she's also back on the emotional blackmail routine.'

    'Illness,
suicide attempts?'

    'All
that, Jude. And Mark . . . well, he's a decent bloke. She could still get to
him. I kept saying he should ignore her. Call her bluff. Let the spoilt bitch
go ahead with one of her threats. I knew she'd never really top herself. But
Mark didn't see it that way.'

    'And
is that why he walked out?' Jude asked gently.

    'Yes.
He was under so much pressure - from the money, from everything else - that he
said he just needed a bit of time to sort things out.'

    'So
do you actually know where he is?' Carole's question was less delicately put
than Jude's.

    Philly
shook her head. 'If I did, I'd go and find him, tell him he doesn't owe that
crazy bitch anything. Tell him that he should be with me, not with her.' The
tears, which she had been controlling very well, threatened once again to break
through.

    'You're
suggesting,' Jude observed, 'that Mark has gone back to Nuala.'

    'Well,
what else am I meant to think? He says he's going away to sort himself out, for
about a week I get regular texts from him, then suddenly nothing. Nuala's got
her talons into him again.'

    'Was
that the first explanation you thought of?' asked Carole. 'You didn't worry
that he might have had an accident or something?'

    'I
did at first. But after a while I thought if he had - even if he was dead - I
would probably have heard about it, from the police, from the media, from
somewhere. People don't just suddenly vanish from off the face of the earth.'

    'It
happens more often than you might think,' said Jude.

    'Well,
that wasn't my reading of the situation. I reckoned he'd probably gone back to
Nuala. Back to the vicious spiral of drinking and emotional blackmail and . . .
The alternative was that he'd gone abroad, just cut loose from everything and
arranged a disappearing act. Either way, I wasn't ever going to see him again.'
The thought was so painful that again tears welled at her eyelids.

    'Well,
at least now you know that he's alive,' said Carole. 'If he was seen down here
only last week.'

    'Yes.
But that's not much comfort. Particularly if he was down here with another
woman. I'd put money on the fact that that was Nuala.'

    'Do
you know what she looks like?'

    'I've
never met her, if that's what you mean. But from what Mark said, I gather she
was very tall. Taller than him, nearly six foot. Very slim, and with long black
hair. And those blue eyes Irish girls have.'

    Carole
made a mental note to check out that description with Curt Holderness if she
got the opportunity.

    'But
why would they come down here?' asked Jude. 'Do you think they wanted to meet
up with you, actually talk through the situation?'

    'No,
I wouldn't have thought that was why they came. I bet Nuala made him come down
here, just so that she could crow over me. "So here's the nice little seaside
idyll you set up with Philly, is it? Well, it was never going to last, was it,
because you're back with me now, Mark." I can just hear her saying it.'
And indeed for Nuala's imagined words Philly had taken on a hint of an Irish
accent.