Bones Under The Beach Hut (32 page)

    'Did
he tell you that I'd screwed up the booking at St Mary's Church Hall?'

    'Yes,
he did.'

    'Typical.
That's how control freaks always come unstuck. Incapable of delegating, on the
rare occasions when they do make mistakes, they always have to find someone
else to blame. And in Reg's case it's nearly always Little Me.'

    She
spoke with remarkable lack of rancour, given the way her 'boss' treated her.
Carole began to wonder if the efficient master/incompetent secretary routine
was some kind of game they played, and whether their relationship was in fact
rather closer than it appeared on the outside.

    'Anyway,'
she said, 'good to see you, Dora. Come along, Gulliver.'

    She
was stopped by a question from Dora that was spoken so softly that she hardly
heard it. But it sounded like, 'Any developments on the case?'

    She
turned back. 'I beg your pardon?'

    'The
investigation into Robin Cutter's death.'

    Oh dear,
thought Carole, are Jude and I that transparent? There we are, imagining we're
conducting our enquiry secretly and it seems that the whole of Smalting - and
quite possibly Fethering too - knows all about our endeavours. She tried to
think of some appropriately enigmatic response, but before she could say it,
Dora Pinchbeck went on, in a confidential tone, 'I'm a friend of Helga Czesky .
. .'

    'Oh?'

    '. .
. and she told me . . . you know, who you really are.'

    'Ah.'
It took Carole a moment to realize the significance of this. It was only a few
days since she and Jude had had the confrontation with Gray and Helga Czesky at
Woodside Cottage, but so much had happened since that it felt a lifetime away.
Of course, as she recalled with some pleasure, the Czeskys had left that
meeting convinced that Carole and Jude were both plain-clothes policewomen. If
that was the information that Helga had imparted to Dora Pinchbeck, then Carole
was in a situation of which she could take advantage.

    She
tested it out by saying, 'I'm afraid I'm not allowed to give out any
information about the case until there's an official press conference.'

    'No,
no, of course I can see that.' Dora sounded disappointed but realistic. It had just
been a punt. She hadn't really been expecting to be given the inside track on
the investigation.

    'And
in fact,' Carole went on, gaining confidence in her new spurious role, 'I would
rather you kept the information that Helga Czesky gave you under wraps. The
work we do is kind of undercover, so we don't want everyone in Smalting to know
about it.'

    'I
understand completely.'

    Carole
fixed Dora Pinchbeck with a beady eye. 'May I ask whether you have told anyone
else what Jude and I really do.'

    The
embarrassed expression on the woman's face told Carole that she had struck
gold. 'Well, I'm sorry,' Dora Pinchbeck floundered. 'I shouldn't have, I
suppose, but, you know, if you're in conversation with someone, well, it is quite
easy to let things slip.'

    'Who
have you told?' came the implacable question.

    There
was a long silence, during which Carole suddenly became aware of a moral
dilemma. Given her background in the Home Office, she knew full well how
serious was the crime of impersonating a member of the police force. That was
black and white. But considerably greyer was the ethical position of someone
being assumed to be a policewoman and not putting right the person who had made
the assumption. Jude, she knew, would have had no worries at all about the
situation, regarding it as an instance of serendipity, of some cosmic force
displaying generosity, a gift from the gods, which it would be bad manners to
turn down, or some other New Age mumbo-jumbo. But Carole Seddon was wary of
such casuistry.

    Fortunately,
her moral meanderings were cut short when Dora Pinchbeck gave her the name of
the person she had told about her supposed status as a plain-clothes
policewoman. And the minute she heard the name, all qualms vanished.

    'Kelvin
Southwest.'

    'When
did you tell him?'

    'Thursday
night. Just after he arrived at the Crown and Anchor. I was chatting to him and
then when you and your friend came in, he said something about the two of you,
and I told him what I'd heard from Helga. I'm terribly sorry.'

    'Don't
worry about it,' said Carole with magisterial generosity.

    She
couldn't believe her luck. Now she knew why Kelvin Southwest had avoided her at
the beginning of the previous evening. And now she had a hold over him. If
Kelvin Southwest thought she was a member of the police force, then he wasn't
going to refuse to answer her questions about what he got up to in an empty
beach hut with binoculars, was he?

    There
was no 'lovely lady' flirtatiousness from the Fether District Council official when
Carole rang his mobile number. The tension in his voice suggested that he had
been expecting her call, and he proved to be very biddable. Yes, of course he
would meet her whenever she liked. He'd rather not make it at his house,
because he didn't want his mother to get upset. On Smalting Beach would be
fine. Yes, at
Fowey.
He'd be with her in as long as it took.

    Carole
Seddon felt a glow of satisfaction as she sat outside the beach hut waiting for
him. The odds on her getting a solution to the case seemed suddenly to have
shortened considerably. And she relished the prospect of telling her neighbour
how she solved it single-handedly while Jude was in Brighton. Past Life
Regression Workshop - huh.

    She
looked along the row of beach huts and felt as if she belonged there. She was
almost a hutter, and would be more than competent to welcome Gaby and Lily to
Fowey
the next day. Or would she be able finally to return to her original
beach hut?

    Carole
had noticed earlier that all traces of the police presence around
Quiet
Harbour
had now been removed. Maybe she could reclaim it? Architecturally
the two beach huts were absolutely identical, but, in spite of everything that
had happened there, Carole did have a sneaking preference for
Quiet Harbour
over
Fowey.
It felt more hers.

    Smalting
Beach was getting back to normal, though. The doors to
Shrimphaven
were
open. Inside no doubt Katie Brunswick was continuing the Sisyphean task of
rewriting her novel.

    And
further along the Olivers had taken up their customary positions: Joyce on her
lounger with another wordsearch book, Lionel, as ever dressed for work with his
suit jacket over the back of his chair, looking out to sea. Carole could only
conjecture what thoughts might be going through their heads, and the extent to
which memories of their lost grandson filled them. She felt something
approaching a crusading zeal at the prospect of her interview with Kelvin
Southwest. At last she might be able to unearth some information that might
help the Olivers and Miranda Browning come to terms with their family tragedy.

    'Good
morning.'

    Carole
looked up to see that her quarry had arrived. As a concession to the weekend,
he was not in his Fether District Council livery, but still dressed in virtually
identical style. A green polo shirt and much-pocketed khaki shorts strained
over his chubby body. His footwear remained leather sandals over short white
socks.

    He
looked ill at ease, his right hand tugging nervously at his silky goatee.

    'Good
morning. Do sit down.' Carole gestured to the other director's chair she'd set
out for him. Shiftily he did as she suggested, looking anxiously to the beach
huts on either side. Both were closed up.

    'Nobody
will hear what we're saying,' continued Carole, 'but of course if you'd rather
go inside the hut or move somewhere more private . . .'

    'No,
this'll be fine.' Kelvin Southwest perched uncomfortably on the edge of his
seat, as though suffering from a bad case of piles. 'Incidentally,' he said,
'we've had the all-clear from the police. They've finished their investigations
in
Quiet Harbour,
so you can go back there if you want to.'

    'Oh,
thank you. I might go back there tomorrow. That's when my daughter-in-law and
granddaughter are arriving. Do you have the key?'

    He
had come prepared and passed it across.

    There
was a rather awkward silence. Having actually got the man there, Carole was
beginning to wish she'd given a bit more thought to how she intended to conduct
their interview. But fortunately Kelvin Southwest made it easy for her by
saying, 'Look, I haven't done anything that's harmed anyone.'

    'No?'

    Happily
this was sufficient prompt for him to continue, 'Who told you about me using
the binoculars? Who shopped me?'

    'I don't
think it's relevant for me to disclose that information at this point,' said
Carole, amazed at how instinctively she had once again dropped into
police-speak.

    'Look,
all right, I'm attracted to kids, but I'd never do anything that'd harm them,'
he reiterated.

    'I'm
not sure that you're necessarily the best judge of that, Mr Southwest.' She was
damned if she was going to go back to calling him 'Kel'.

    'I
can't help the feelings I have,' he said, hoping - unsuccessfully - to engage
her sympathy. 'And I have now got much better control over them.'

    'Could
you explain to me what you mean by that?'

    'Listen,
all right, a few years ago, yes, I did sometimes take my binoculars into one of
the empty beach huts. I actually made spy holes in it, so's I could . . . Look,
I'm not proud of what I've done, but back then I couldn't control my urges.' He
reverted to another thought that still nagged at him. 'I bet I know who it was
who shopped me to you. It'd be that Dora Pinchbeck. I'd put money on it. She's
always been a nosy cow.'

    'I
will neither confirm nor deny your conjectures, Mr Southwest,' Carole
pronounced in magnificent police-speak. 'The identity of the person who, as you
put it, "shopped" you is not important, and will only become important
if that person needs to be called as a witness in court.'

    In a
less excited mood Carole wouldn't have gone so far. Threatening someone with
legal action was taking the crime of impersonating a member of the police force
to another level. But she was in no mood for caution. She was determined to get
some kind of confession out of Kelvin Southwest.

    And
the approach did pay off, because he responded, 'Yes, all right, I used to look
at kids undressing through binoculars, but that's not a police matter.'

    And
I'm not a policewoman, thought Carole, but what she actually said was, 'If you
seriously believe that, Mr Southwest, then you haven't read a newspaper or
watched the television news for the past twenty years.'

    All
right,' he whined. 'But you don't know what it's like, having these urges that
can't find satisfaction in a way that's publicly acceptable.'

    Thank
goodness Jude isn't here, thought Carole. His words echoed what her neighbour
had said on the subject of paedophilia. Jude was quite capable of ending up
feeling sorry for the little worm.

    'I'd
like,' Carole proceeded magisterially, 'to talk to you about Robin Cutter.'

    'What?
Look, for God's sake, you're not going to try and pin that on me, are you?'

    'Were
you questioned by the police at the time of his disappearance?'

    'No,
of course I wasn't! Why should I have been?'

    'Mr
Southwest, you have just admitted that you have paedophiliac tendencies.'

    'Yes,
but I'd never give them expression in that way. And, besides, I'm not on any
register or anything. Nobody else knows that I have . . . you know, what you
said.'

    'If
that were true, Mr Southwest, we wouldn't be having this conversation now. The
person who "shopped" you knows. Why shouldn't a lot of other people?'

    'But
nobody knew back then, you know, when Robin Cutter disappeared.'

    'And
that was why the police didn't question you at the time?'

    'Yes.'