Bones Under The Beach Hut (28 page)

    The
lights were off in the function room, but enough illumination came from outside
for her to see the way to her table and pick up the offending cardigan from the
back of the chair. As she moved towards the main pub she was stopped by the
sound of voices she recognized.

    Between
the function room and the bar ran a narrow corridor that led to the toilets.
Carole shrank back into the shadows to listen. The two men, she reckoned, must
have just been using the facilities, and fortunately the first words she heard
from Kelvin Southwest were exactly the question she would have wished to put to
Curt Holderness.

    'What
was all that about the school? You know, what you shouted out to old Reg?'

    'You
get a lot of useful information when you work for the police, Kel. Some of it
information that people would rather never became public knowledge.'

    'Are
you saying you've got something on Reg Flowers?'

    'You
bet I have.'

    'Something
he'd pay for you to keep quiet about?'

    'He's
already made one payment, yes. But now he's not quite so forthcoming. So I
think I need to have another chat with Mr Flowers rather soon. See if we can
sort out some . . . more regular arrangement. I don't think he'll argue. Did
you see how he reacted when I mentioned the name of the school?'

    'Mm.
I'd heard he was a teacher. That where he used to work?'

    'Edgington
Manor School, yes.'

    'I
haven't heard of it. Is it local?'

    'Oh
no. Up in the Midlands. But someone I knew on the force worked up there before
he was transferred to West Sussex. And I met the bloke at someone's retirement
do, and I told him I'd got this security officer job for the beach huts, and I
was telling him about the set-up with the SBHA and what have you, and when by
chance I mentioned the name of Reginald Flowers . . . well, he pounced on it
and gave me chapter and verse.'

    'Yeah?
So what had old Reg been up to?'

    'Well,
let's just say he didn't get to full retirement age at Edgington Manor School.
In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he left the place under something
of a cloud.'

    On
the way back from the Crown and Anchor to their respective homes, Carole told
Jude what she had just overheard.

    'So
you reckon Curt Holderness is blackmailing Reginald Flowers?'

    'I
can't put any other interpretation on what he said.'

    'But
you didn't hear exactly what had happened? Why he'd left the school under a
cloud?'

    'No,
I didn't,' said Carole, before adding darkly, 'but I could make an educated
guess. I think we should try to talk to Reginald as soon as possible. Are you
free tomorrow morning?'

    'Certainly
am.'

    Carole
had reckoned that Reginald Flowers would be an early bird on Smalting Beach.
Goodness only knew where he lived, where he spent his nights, but
The Bridge
was clearly the centre of his daily life. So Carole had decided to get there at
half-past seven on the Saturday and give Gulliver his morning walk on Smalting
rather than Fethering Beach. Jude, whose body clock favoured a more leisurely
getting-up routine, was silent and, by her usually sunny standards, almost
grumpy.

    Still,
both women had the sense that their investigation might finally be getting
somewhere. Curt Holderness's admission the night before that he was
blackmailing Reginald Flowers offered intriguing revelations.

    But
nothing, as it turned out, was going to be revealed that morning. The bar and
padlocks on the front of
The Bridge
were locked in place, and there was
no sign of the hut's owner.

    'Staying
in bed with his bronchitis,' Jude suggested. 'He did sound fairly ropey last
night.'

    'Yes,'
Carole agreed glumly.

    They
took Gulliver for a long walk along Smalting Beach, as far as the headland that
separated it from Fethering. But when they returned to the crescent of beach
huts, there was still no sign of Reginald Flowers.

    Disconsolately,
they returned to the Renault, wondering who they knew who might have an address
for the chairman of the SBHA.

    As
soon as she got back to High Tor, Carole checked her copy of
The Hut Parade.
There was a landline number for Reginald Flowers, but each time she tried it,
the phone just rang and rang. Not even an answering machine message.

    Carole
Seddon took out her frustration by cleaning High Tor to within an inch of its
life.

    Next
door at Woodside Cottage, Jude was equally restless. She tried to read the
manuscript of a friend's book about the origins of acupuncture, but interesting
though she found the subject, she found her mind kept slipping away from the
text.

    Till
they contacted Reginald Flowers, there was nothing they could do on the Robin
Cutter case.

    It
was early afternoon before she realized that there was still something she
could try doing on the Mark Dennis case. She retrieved the phone number Gray
Czesky had written down two days earlier, and keyed it into her mobile.

    To
her astonishment it was answered. By Mark Dennis.

    He
sounded subdued, but not adversarial. Jude didn't try any subterfuge, no
pretence that she was a member of the police force. She just said that she was
a friend of Philly's and she remembered meeting him with her. She said that she
and her friend Carole would really like to meet up with him. Without demur,
Mark suggested a rendezvous at six that evening in the Boatswain's Arms in
Littlehampton.

    'How
did he sound?' asked Carole when Jude came rushing round to High Tor with the
news.

    'A
bit sort of tentative. Vague maybe.'

    'But not
frightened?' She was remembering Nuala Cullan's description of the last time
she saw her husband.

    'No,
I wouldn't have said frightened.'

    Mark
Dennis was not there when they got to the Boatswain's Arms. It was a roughish pub,
the opposite end of the spectrum from The Crab Inn at Smalting. Littlehampton
was like that. Although undergoing selective gentrification by expensive new
developments of flats near the sea and the trendy modernity of the East Beach
Cafe, parts of the town remained resolutely tacky. When Carole and Jude asked
for Chilean Chardonnay at the counter, the Boatswain's Arms barman only offered
them 'White Wine'. It was rather too sweet for either of their tastes.
Lachrymose country and western music whined away in the background.

    They
sat down at a sticky round table and were aware of the scrutiny of the pub's
other, silent customers. The atmosphere wasn't exactly hostile, but it wasn't
welcoming either. Carole and Jude realized at the same time that they were the
only women there. The chalkboard ads for Sky Sports suggested the Boatswain's
Arms was a male haven, a place where lugubrious men dropped in after work to
sink a silent pint or two, while they put off returning to their wives and
other responsibilities.

    Carole
and Jude were both very excited at the prospect of meeting Mark Dennis.
Finally, it seemed, at least one part of their investigation was making
headway. Though neither of them could imagine that Mark himself had anything to
do with the placing of Robin Cutter's remains under
Quiet Harbour,
they
were still convinced he had important information to give them.

    But
as the minutes after their six o'clock agreed meeting time passed, the two
women started to worry that he wasn't going to turn up. In her head Jude tried
to analyse exactly how he had sounded on the phone. Not frightened, no, but
certainly nervous. Maybe he'd agreed to their meeting on the spur of the
moment, and then thought better of the idea as its reality approached. Jude wished
she'd asked Gray Czesky for an address as well as a phone number for Mark.
Though the painter might well not have known one.

    It
was nearly six-thirty when the two women exchanged looks. Both were thinking
the same thing: it was time to give their proposed meeting up as a bad job. But
at that moment Mark Dennis came in through the door.

    Had
she not been expecting him, had they just passed in the street, Jude would not
have recognized the young man. When she'd last seen Mark Dennis, probably in the
April, he had been slender and gym-toned. With his sharp features, outdoor tan
and straw-coloured hair, he and Philly Rose had made a singularly attractive
couple.

    But
in the intervening months Mark Dennis had put on a lot of weight. The sideways
spread of his face had made his eyes, nose and chin look too close together.
And the weight gain seemed to have taken him by surprise. He hadn't yet
adjusted his wardrobe to cope with it. The buttons down the front of his
short-sleeved shirt strained against their buttonholes, and his thighs were
very tight against his jeans.

    His
expression also was of someone taken by surprise, someone bewildered by what
life had done to him. Recognizing Jude, he gazed rather blearily at the two
women as she introduced him to Carole.

    Asked
what he'd like to drink, Mark Dennis opted for mineral water and Carole went to
the bar to order it. She wondered for a moment whether the Boatswain's Arms
would stock something as girlie as mineral water, but fortunately they did.

    When
she rejoined them, Carole found Mark already deep in conversation with Jude,
apparently with no inhibitions about discussing his missing months. 'It was
very odd. I was just out of it.'

    'How
do you mean "out of it"?' asked Jude.

    'Not
here. On another planet.' His voice still carried the vagueness that she had
noticed on the phone.

    'Take
us back to the beginning of May,' she said. 'When you left Philly.' He winced
at the reminder. 'Tell us what happened, that is, if you don't mind?'

    'No,
I don't mind. I've been trying to make sense of it myself for some time. It
might help to talk about it.'

    'Why
haven't you talked about it to Philly?' asked Carole, possibly in too sharp a
tone.

    But
Mark Dennis was unfazed by her question. 'I'll come to that. I'll explain it.
Well, the main thing is, back in May I was in a pretty strange state, when all
that happened. Not behaving very rationally.' He looked at Jude, almost
pleadingly. 'I don't know if Philly told you anything about our circumstances .
. .'

    'A
bit. I gather you had money problems.'

    'And
how. Yes, we'd moved out of London and down to Smalting in January. And then
everything was fine. I'd got quite a lot of savings from various bonuses and
what have you, then we made a bit of profit from selling our two London places
and buying Seashell Cottage. Anyway, I invested all we'd got in various
directions. Do you understand derivatives?'

    Both
women shook their heads.

    'Neither,
as it turned out, did I. I thought I understood them, but some freak activities
in the world markets meant. . . well, effectively I'd lost the lot. Our little
seaside idyll was looking very shaky, very much under threat.'

    'So
why didn't you talk to Philly about it?' asked Carole. 'Why did you just walk
out on her?'

    Again
he didn't react to the aggression in her questions. 'I didn't mean to just walk
out on her. I meant to . . . sort things out. In fact, I don't know if you
know, but there were other complications in my life. I'm still technically
married.'

    'We
know that,' said Jude.

    'Yes,'
Carole added. 'We have actually met Nuala.'

    'Have
you?' Mark Dennis grimaced. 'Something I must do again soon at some point. Not
an encounter I look forward to.'

    'We gathered
from Nuala,' said Jude, 'that she was pressing you for money too.'

    'Mm.
We had this odd arrangement. I wanted to get divorced. The marriage had been
over in everything but name for quite a long time. But Nuala wasn't keen on the
idea of divorce.'