Bones Under The Beach Hut (34 page)

    'Exactly
that, yes. The reason we spend time together is because we don't trust each
other. He's keeping an eye on me and I'm keeping an eye on him.'

    'Curt,
you say you're not a paedophile—'

    'Too
bloody right I'm not.'

    'But
your police career was ended early and in disgrace because you'd been accessing
child pornography.'

    
'Accessing
it, yes. Not bloody using it for my own purposes! God, at times I had to watch
some of the stuff for professional reasons, you know, when we were trying to
nail some pervy schoolteacher or someone like that . . . and it bloody turned
my stomach. I'm glad I don't even have to copy the stuff any more. My mate
who's still in the force does that. He hands over the CDs to me, I pass them on
to Kel. Thank God, I don't see any of the content now.'

    'But,'
Carole persisted, 'you were turned out of the police force for—'

    'I
was turned out of the police force for copying and selling the stuff. How many
times do I have to tell you? I don't get any kick from watching filth like
that. It's disgusting!'

    'Then
why did you come here so promptly when I reported what Kelvin Southwest had
told me?'

    'I
came because I've got a good little business going, and I don't want a nosy
bitch like you to bugger it up. The police wouldn't have any interest in
prosecuting me - I'm ancient history - but if they found out about my mate on
the inside who's keeping up the supply for me . . . well, they'd close down the
operation sharpish, and I could lose a lot of money out of that.'

    'Are
you implying that Kelvin Southwest isn't the only client you supply?'

    'What
if he isn't? The important point you seem to be failing to take on board is
that I deal in the stuff, I don't use it myself.'

    Carole
found herself in a familiar dilemma. What Curt Holderness said sounded very
plausible. His repulsion at the thought of watching child pornography seemed
genuine. But then again, as with Kelvin Southwest, someone who really was a
paedophile would make himself sound just as plausible.

    'So,'
she asked rather desperately, 'you have no idea what happened to Robin Cutter?'

    'Not
until his bones were found under that beach hut over there, no.' Curt
Holderness suddenly turned businesslike. 'Listen, Carole, I've got to know what
you're planning to do. That's why I came here. Are you going to keep the information
about my mate supplying the porn to yourself? And if so, on what terms? You say
you're not a blackmailer—'

    'And
I'm not.'

    'Then
what do you want?'

    'I
want to find out what happened to Robin Cutter.'

    He
was silent for a moment, calculating. Then he said, 'So if there was a piece of
information I could give you - something I'd found out while I was working on
the case, something no one else knows - if I were to give you that, would you
get off my back?'

    'I
certainly would, Curt.' She wasn't sure whether what she said was true, but she
knew it was the answer he required at that moment.

    'Right.'
Again he was silent, assessing his situation. 'Okay, try this,' he said at
length. 'You know the boy was being looked after by his grandparents when he
disappeared?' Carole nodded. Curt Holderness pointed along the row of beach
huts. 'Those two old dears over there, as it happens - you know them?'

    'Yes,
we've talked to each other.'

    'Okay,
so you know that the old geezer brought the boy down here and he was snatched
outside the ice-cream shop up on the prom.'

    'I
heard the circumstances.'

    'Well,
needless to say, the forensic boys pulled in the old man's car as soon as
possible - took it from right here where he'd parked it in Smalting - and they ran
every test they could on it. Of course they found Robin Cutter's DNA all over
the interior. Well, they would, wouldn't they? Kid saw a lot of his
grandparents, Lionel Oliver would have driven him around all over the place.

    'Nothing
odd in that. But there was something one of the forensic boys thought was odd
and I remember chatting to him in the canteen about it.' He paused, fully aware
of the command he had on Carole's attention. 'Now the boy - Robin Cutter - was
like five, wasn't he, at the time he disappeared - and his Mum was always
insistent that when he went in the car he was clipped into a child seat, you
know, for safety reasons. She'd taken Robin's seat out of her car when she
dropped the boy with his grandparents that morning and said, if they drove him
anywhere, they were to make sure they used it. But when Lionel Oliver's car was
taken from here to the labs, straight after the boy had been abducted, there
was no car seat fixed in it.

    'Okay,
the old boy had an explanation. He said he was from a different generation,
that he wasn't mollycoddled when he was a nipper . . . you know how that
generation go on about stuff. There weren't any car seats around when he was
growing up and it'd never done him any harm. And he said the boy Robin liked
being free to move around in the car, and it was their little secret and he
wasn't to tell his Mum, but his Granddad reckoned he was grown up enough not to
need a car seat. Okay, the old boy's explanation could have been the truth,
certainly everything else in his account tallied and rang true, but at the time
I did think it a little odd.'

    It
was funny, Carole had always had a feeling that at some point the investigation
would entail talking further to the Olivers.

    Curt
Holderness didn't exactly threaten her when he left, but Carole felt the undercurrent
of menace in him. She wouldn't volunteer to spend any more time with him in the
future, and was glad there was no reason why she should. A little shudder of
relief ran through her body as he set off back up the beach to his motorbike.

    Her morning
in the
Fowey
'Incident Room' had taken longer than she expected. When
she looked at her watch once the security officer was out of sight, she was
surprised to see it was ten past twelve. She looked along the row of beach
huts. Outside
Mistral
the Olivers sat in their usual positions. Carole
was undecided as to how her next step should be taken. In spite of her desire
to solve the case and crow over Jude, she found herself wishing her friend was
there. Dealing with the Olivers was likely to require a level of delicacy which
she wasn't confident that she possessed.

    With
a synchronicity that Jude would have recognized and Carole herself pooh-poohed,
at that moment her mobile phone rang. And of course it was Jude.

    'Oh,
I thought you were regressing to a past life?'

    'Done
that. Apparently I was once married to an Egyptian Pharaoh.'

    'And
how was that?' asked Carole sceptically.

    'He
was a bit of a Mummy's boy.'

    'Oh,
do shut up.'

    'Anyway,
tell me what's been happening. I'm agog.'

    'So
you should be. There's so much to tell you. All roads seem to lead to the
Olivers.'

    'Have
you spoken to them?'

    'Not
yet.' Then in a rather small voice Carole added, 'I'd rather do it with you.'

    'All
right. I'll come straight away.'

    'Where
are you now?'

    'Still
in Brighton.'

    'But
how're you going to—?'

    'I'll
get a cab.'

    'That'll
be terribly expensive to—'

    Jude
had rung off.

    Carole
tried to concentrate on
The Times,
but her eyes kept slipping off the
newsprint and homing in on the couple in front of
Mistral.
She didn't
know what she would do if the Olivers moved before Jude arrived.

    She
tried to get her mind engaged by the crossword, but without success. Anyway,
the prize crossword on a Saturday was always subtly different and Carole rarely
bothered with it, even though completing the weekday ones was an essential part
of her ritual. Maybe it was a kind of intellectual snobbery that kept her from
the Saturday crossword. Even though she'd never enter for it, the idea of there
being a prize seemed to cheapen the experience. Whereas by doing the weekday
crossword she was engaging in a purely intellectual activity.

    Jude
arrived within the half-hour. 'I'm starving,' she announced. 'You can bring me
up to date while we have something to eat.'

    Rather
than expose themselves again to the high prices of The Crab Inn, Carole and
Jude went to one of the many cafes on the Smalting prom. They selected one
which gave them a perfect view of the back of
Mistral,
so that they
could see if the Olivers made any kind of move, and they sat outside in the
sunlight. Jude said she was desperate for fish and chips and Carole found the
idea rather appealed to her as well.

    While
they waited for the food, Carole gave Jude a virtually verbatim report of her
interviews with Kelvin Southwest and Curt Holderness.

    'I
knew there was something odd about our Kel,' said Jude. 'I couldn't put my
finger on it, but I sensed that women weren't his thing.'

    With respect
for her sensitivities in such areas, Carole asked Jude if she'd got the same
feeling with Curt Holderness.

    'No,
he's very definitely normal hetero. Possibly a rather aggressive and bullying
normal hetero - actually
probably
a rather aggressive and bullying
normal hetero - but no way is he a paedophile.'

    Their
fish and chips arrived. Beautiful. Plump fillets robustly battered and dripping
with oil, not those cardboard-like scabbards of dry fish flakes which get
served in so many pubs and coastal restaurants. And the chips they were served
had had encounters with genuine potatoes quite recently, not in some Past Life
Regression.

    'Bliss,'
said Jude. 'Is there anything in the world to beat sitting in the sun at an
English seaside resort and eating good fish and chips?'

    But
they both knew there was still a cloud over their idyll - the death of Robin
Cutter and the need for its circumstances to be explained.

    Lionel
Oliver was, as ever, gazing abstractedly out to sea, but he looked up as they
approached. He recognized Carole and rose politely from his chair when
introduced to Jude.

    His
wife's chair was empty. He raised a finger to his lips and pointed to the
inside of
Mistral.
'Joyce is having a little zizz in there. Always does
after lunch.' Carole and Jude could see her stretched out on the towel-covered
bench seat at the back of the hut.

    'We
wanted to talk to you about Robin,' said Jude gently.

    'Everyone
suddenly wants to talk to me about Robin.' He gestured to Joyce's chair. 'If
one of you wants to sit. . .'

    'You
take it, Carole. I'll be quite happy on the shingle.'

    'Yes,'
Lionel Oliver went on, 'there's been a lot of interest in Robin since . . .
since what was found under
Quiet Harbour.'

    'Interest
from the police?'

    'Oh
yes. From the police.'

    He
was silent. Carole wasn't sure how to move the conversation along, but Jude's
instinct was sure. 'You loved Robin, didn't you, Lionel?'

    'Oh
yes. I loved him very much. Still do love him, even though he's not here to
love any more.'

    'And
you've talked a lot about him to the police?'

    'I
certainly have. A lot around the time he disappeared. And now a lot more. They
rang this morning. They want to talk to me again.' He looked at his watch.
'They're going to pick me up here this afternoon. Inspector Fyfield's going to
come. In a car. Very thoughtful of them to send a car for me, isn't it? But
then of course you probably know that, don't you?'

    Jude
flashed a puzzled look at Carole, who sent a no-don't-say-anything one back. It
seemed that Helga Czesky's assumption that they were police officers had spread
as far as the Olivers.