Bones Under The Beach Hut (23 page)

    'Yes.
Or when inspiration
might
strike me.'

    'Ah.'

    'Curt
Holderness only charged me a hundred quid for the concession. It still makes
this a jolly cheap office, doesn't it?'

    'Yes.
Well, I hope inspiration didn't strike much in the last few days.'

    'What
do you mean?'

    'The
most recent couple of times I've been here, this place was locked up.'

    'Yes.'
Katie Brunswick looked a little embarrassed. 'The fact was, when the police
started investigating here on the beach, well, I didn't particularly want to be
around.'

    'Squeamishness?'

    'No,
I just didn't want to be questioned . . . you know, in case the fact that I was
sometimes staying here overnight came up.'

    'Ah.
I understand.' Carole looked beadily at her. 'So when was the last time you
spent the night here?'

    Katie
Brunswick screwed up her eyes as she tried to remember. 'Last Monday. I mean,
not the Monday just gone, the one before.'

    A
little charge of excitement ran through Carole. 'And did you see anything that
night?'

    'What
sort of thing?' came the cautious response.

    'Any
people on the beach?'

    'I
did see some actually.'

    'Oh?'

    'Normally
if I stay overnight I close the doors, so that it's not so obvious that I'm in here.
But it had been a hot day and was still pretty warm in the small hours. It was
very stuffy in here, so I reckoned I could risk leaving the doors open.'

    'So
who did you see?' asked Carole, her throat tense with excitement.

    'I
saw that painter guy who lives on the prom.'

    'Gray
Czesky?'

    'Yes.
He was very drunk. He wandered down on to the beach and staggered off behind
the beach huts over there.'

    'What?
Near
Quiet Harbour?
Near the one the police are investigating?'

    'Yes.'

    'Was
he carrying anything?'

    'Perhaps.
I can't remember. I think perhaps he had a plastic carrier bag with him.'

    'What
time would this have been, Katie?'

    'I
don't know. I was quite caught up with what I was writing. Early hours, I
suppose. One or two in the morning.'

    'Did
you see him leave the beach?' A shake of the head. 'Did you see anyone else?'

    'Yes.
A bit later ... I don't know how much later because I was caught up in the
book, but I heard voices whispering. A man and a woman.'

    'Could
you hear what they were saying?'

    'No.
But I looked out and I saw them both going the same way Gray Czesky had gone.'

    
'Towards
Quiet Harbour?'

    'Yes.'

    'Who
were they, Katie?'

    'One
was the guy who used to be in
Quiet Harbour
with his girlfriend.'

    'Mark
Dennis?'

    'I
don't know his name, but he's got that small girlfriend with almost white-blond
hair. Actually, come to think of it, I haven't seen them down here on the beach
much recently.'

    'And
did you see the woman he was with?' asked Carole.

    'Yes.
She doesn't go out much, seems to spend most of her time in the house. But I
have seen her a couple of times with Gray Czesky. It was his wife, Helga.'

    Jude
was back at Woodside Cottage when Carole returned to Fethering. They stood
tensely together in Jude's sitting room while Carole dialled the number Nuala
Cullan had given them.

    A
machine answered. It requested anyone who wanted to leave a message for Gray or
Helga Czesky to speak after the tone.

    Carole
switched off the phone, then consulted Jude who advised her to leave a message.
'We need to see them, don't we?'

    'What
should I say? Maintain the pretence that I want Gray to do me a watercolour of
Fethering Beach?'

    'No,
I think we've gone beyond that. Take the direct approach. Say you want to talk
about the fire that was started under
Quiet Harbour.'

    'Strange
that they don't answer. I got the impression that they were both in the house
most of the time. Katie Brunswick said Helga don't go out much.'

    'Maybe
they're the sort who always leave the answering machine on. So that they can
screen incoming calls.'

    So it
proved. Carole left a terse message ending with Jude's number, and it was a
matter of moments before the phone rang. Jude answered. It was Helga. She
sounded cautious and a little distressed.

    'Please,
who am I talking to?' Over the phone her German accent was thicker.

    'My
name's Jude.'

    'It
was not your voice which left the message.'

    'No.
That was my friend Carole. We did meet on Monday. We were the ones who came to
your house to discuss a commission with your husband.'

    'Ah.'
Helga didn't take issue with them about the subterfuge. She had more pressing
priorities. 'You said you knew something about the fire at
Quiet Harbour . .
. ?'

    'Yes.
We know who lit it,' said Jude, making what was little more than a conjecture
sound like a certainty.

    'I
see.' Helga was silent for a moment. 'Yes, we must meet,' she said finally, in
a voice of long suffering.

    They
had agreed to come round to Woodside Cottage. Gray Czesky had been tidied up,
presumably on his wife's insistence. He was out of his paint-spattered work
clothes, and in grey trousers and a blue blazer looked somehow like a large naughty
schoolboy waiting for a dressing-down from the headmaster.

    It
was evident that in the current situation his wife represented that kind of
authority figure at least as much as Carole and Jude did. Once the couple had
sat down and refused offers of tea and coffee, Helga announced, 'Gray has
something he wishes to confess to you.'

    He
was shamefaced, but still had a bit of his old bravado left. 'It's hell,' he
began, 'having an artistic temperament. Nobody really understands, nobody knows
what goes on inside my brain.'

    None
of the three women said anything, leaving him to dig himself out of his own
hole. 'I don't really always have control of myself. My emotions are so
volatile, I don't know what I'm going to feel from one moment to the next. It's
as if I'm being blown all over the place by an unidentifiable power that is
stronger than I am.'

    'An
unidentifiable power like drink?' Carole suggested rather meanly.

    'Well,
yes,' he conceded, 'I suppose drink is part of it. But that's more a symptom
than a cause. I sometimes have to drink to subdue the agonizing thoughts that
come unbidden into my mind.'

    'Oh
yes?'

    'And
then sometimes I admit that I do things under the influence of drink that I
might not do in my more sober moments.'

    'Not
that you have many of those,' said Helga.

    There
was an expression of pure shock, almost as though Gray Czesky had been slapped
in the face, at this surprising and sudden disloyalty from his wife. Carole and
Jude wondered whether they were witnessing the moment of a worm turning, of the
final straw being placed upon the overladen camel's back.

    'Well,
yes, I agree, the drinking does sometimes get out of hand. But I need it. I
have some of my best inspirations when I'm drunk.'

    Carole
and Jude exchanged looks. Both were wondering how much inspiration it took to
paint mimsy-pimsy little watercolours of local beaches and the South Downs.

    'I
think, Gray,' said Helga, 'you had better tell them what happened last week.
That evening when Mark came down to see you.'

    Her
husband nodded his head ruefully.

    'Would
this have been the Monday?'

    'Yes,'
said Helga. 'Go on, Gray.'

    There
was a truculent silence before he obeyed. 'Okay, I'd had a call from Mark that
day.'

    'Had
you been in touch with him ever since he left Smalting?' asked Jude.

    'No,
it was a long time since I'd last heard from him. When he left Philly, whenever
that was . . .'

    'Beginning
of May,' his wife supplied.

    'Yes.
At the time he asked if I minded him using our phone number for people who
wanted to contact him.'

    'And
did many people want to contact him?'

    A
shake of the head. 'Hardly anyone. He gave me a mobile number and—'

    'If
he'd got a mobile,' Carole objected, 'why did he need to have your number for
messages?'

    The
painter shrugged. 'I don't know. Maybe he wanted to keep people at a distance.
Maybe it was a new mobile and he didn't want people to know the number. Anyway,
after the first few days he never answered it when I called him. Until suddenly
he rang out of the blue last week.'

    'What
did he say?'

    'Just
that he was coming down to Smalting, and did I mind if he dropped in. I said
fine.'

    'He
didn't say whether he was coming down to see Philly?'

    'No.'

    'And how
did he seem when you saw him?' asked Carole.

    'How
do you mean?'

    'Did
he seem exactly the same as he had when you last saw him?'

    Gray
Czesky shrugged. 'Pretty much, I guess.'

    'No,'
said Helga firmly. 'That is not true. He had put on a lot of weight. He seemed
to have lost his confidence. Very . . . what's the word? Jittery. No, he was in
an extremely strange state when he arrived.'

    'Was
he?'

    'Yes,
Gray. Though you were pretty soon too drunk to notice.'

    Her
husband chuckled with a schoolboy boastful- ness. 'True, we did get well stuck
into the sauce that night.'

    'Which
of course led to you doing something rather stupid, didn't it?' Helga prompted
implacably.

    'Yes.'
His face took on a hangdog expression, which, if it was meant to curry sympathy
for him, did not have the desired effect with the three women. 'Okay, well . .
. Mark and I got into a kind of argument . . . not really an argument, more a
sort of. . .'

    'Drunken
shouting match,' suggested Helga.

    'All right.
Anyway, I was telling him that artists have to be free and that bourgeois
values were a trap to prevent artists from a true expression of themselves, and
he was defending the smug middle-class life, saying all he wanted was to live
like what he called "a normal human being" - by which he meant an
inhibited, tight-arsed wage-slave with a bloody pension and life insurance and
a nice neat little beach hut in Smalting. And I said that going down that route
was the surest way to stifling artistic talent and nobody who gave a stuff
about a beach hut could possibly be any kind of artist, and so I went out and .
. .'

    He
shrugged again, as Carole completed the sentence for him. 'Set fire to the
beach hut that Mark and Philly used to use.'

    There
was a long silence before Gray Czesky admitted that yes, that was exactly what
he had done. 'As I say, I was pretty well plastered,' he added, as though that
might be some kind of mitigation.

    His
wife took up the narrative. 'And Gray comes back home and he is boasting about
what he has done, so Mark and I rush back to the beach hut to put out the
fire.'

    Carole
looked at Jude, who gave a little nod. Yes, that must have been when the two of
them were seen by Curt Holderness. Odd, though, that Curt hadn't noticed that
the beach hut was burning. Or perhaps not so odd, given how laxly the man
interpreted his duties as a security officer.