Bones Under The Beach Hut (9 page)

    'Did
you see the news?' asked Carole.

    'No.
I'm still hardly awake.'

    Carole
relayed the minimum of information the television had provided. 'But it must
have something to do with the fire,' she went on. 'If there were human remains
in
Quiet Harbour,
then someone must've tried to set fire to the place to
remove evidence of their crime.'

    'What
crime?'

    'Well,
murder obviously.'

    Jude
smiled indulgently at her friend. 'You don't think you're getting a bit ahead
of yourself here, do you? Human remains don't have to be the result of a
murder.'

    'Oh,
but in this case they must be.'

    'Why?'

    'Well,
because . . .' Carole was nonplussed, but only for a moment. 'Because that's
why there were new nails in the floorboards. The murderer had taken the
floorboards up so that he could reach down to bury his victim in the sand and
shingle underneath the beach hut, then he'd replaced them and lit the fire to
destroy the evidence of what he'd done.'

    Jude
grinned in a rather infuriating way. 'Just a minute, Carole. I thought you were
supposed to be the logical one in our relationship, and the logic in what
you've just said contains serious faults.'

    'No,
it doesn't,' protested Carole, frustrated by Jude's atypical unwillingness to
catch her enthusiasm.

    'Listen.
Let's just for a moment accept your unlikely assertion that there is a murder -
and therefore a murderer - involved. Now he could have done one of two things.
He could, yes, have taken up the floorboards to bury his victim in the sand and
shingle under the beach hut. But if he'd done that, the last thing he would
have wanted to do would be to set fire to the place. By doing that he would
immediately be drawing attention to where he'd hidden his victim.'

    'Well,
I-'

    'Oh,
come on, Carole. If the fire had taken hold and
Quiet Harbour
had gone
up in flames, whoever cleared up the debris would almost definitely have
discovered evidence of recent digging and investigated that - and found the
body.'

    'So
what are you saying?' asked a rather disgruntled Carole. She knew Jude was
right and felt sheepish about having let her excitement outrun her logic. It
was a very un-Carole Seddon thing to do.

    'I
would say that there are definitely two perpetrators involved. That the person
who lit the fire was not the same as the one who buried the human remains.'

    'I
suppose you're right,' said Carole grudgingly. 'Oh, it's very frustrating not
to have more information.'

    'It's
early days. At this stage I doubt whether the police have any more information
than what's been on the news bulletin.'

    'And
even if they have, I don't think they're about to share it with us.'

    'No.
As we've found out before, they're funny that way, the police, aren't they?'

    'So
all we can do,' said Carole grumpily, 'is to sit and wait for the next news
bulletin.'

    'Oh,
I wouldn't say that's
all
we can do.'

    'What
do you mean?'

    'I'm
going to ring Philly.'

    'What
a great idea. See if she's got any more information.'

    'I
had actually thought,' said Jude with a hint of reprimand in her tone, 'of
checking whether she's all right. The news about the human remains being found
in the beach hut that she's only recently vacated must have been a terrible
shock to her.'

    'Oh
yes, fine. Check that she's all right, of course,' said Carole solicitously.
But her tone changed as she went on, 'Then see if she's got any more
information.'

    'I
assume you've heard the news about
Quiet Harbour,'
said Jude on the
phone to Philly.

    'Yes.
It's horrible. It makes me feel ... I don't know . . . spooked out.' The girl
did sound very emotional, almost as though she were in shock.

    'What,
the thought that the human remains may have been under the floorboards while
you were actually in the hut?'

    'Not
that, really, no. As I say, I haven't been inside
Quiet Harbour
for
about a month.'

    'You
did say you'd been in to put down the carpet,' Jude reminded her gently. 'You
said you went in there last week when you were walking the dogs.'

    'Yes.'
There was a silence from the other end of the line, as though Philly Rose was
trying to decide what to say. 'The fact is, Jude, that wasn't true.'

    'Oh?'

    'I
only said it because your friend Carole was kind of badgering me about it.'
Jude would make a point of telling her neighbour that. Philly had accused
Carole of the same thing as she had - 'badgering'.

    Jude
said nothing, waiting for the explanation. Which duly came. 'I haven't actually
been in
Quiet Harbour
since Mark left. I just . . . somehow, I don't
know . . . We'd been so happy there. It all seemed too ... I couldn't.'

    'So
you hadn't seen the piece of carpet Carole mentioned?'

    'No.
The fact is, I wanted Carole to take over the rental, not just because I needed
the money, but also because I never wanted to see the place again. I don't take
the dogs for their walk on Smalting Beach now. I try to avoid it.'

    'And
that was because it contained
happy
memories?'

    'As
opposed to what?'

    
'Quiet
Harbour
didn't prompt unhappy memories? You and Mark didn't have rows in
there?'

    'No.'

    'It
wasn't in there that he told you he was leaving?'

    'No.
Anyway, he didn't tell me he was leaving. He just left. That's what made it
doubly hurtful.'

    'Well,
are you sure he has left you?'

    'What
do you mean?'

    'Are
you sure Mark hasn't had an accident? If he didn't discuss leaving you, perhaps
you should report him as a missing person?'

    'I
know he walked out on me.'

    The
words were said with such pained certainty that Jude didn't attempt to seek
further explanation. Philly Rose must have had reasons to know that she had
been dumped by Mark Dennis.

    'I
suppose you should prepare yourself, Philly,' Jude suggested tentatively, 'for
the possibility that the police will want to talk to you.'

    'They
have already.'

    'Oh?'

    'Last
night. Obviously they came to me as the person who was renting
Quiet
Harbour.'

    'So
they didn't know you'd handed it over to Carole?'

    'No.
And I didn't tell them.'

    'Why
not?'

    'Look,
I don't particularly like Kelvin Southwest - or indeed the little games he
plays - but I'm not about to get him into trouble with his employers.'

    'You
mean Fether District Council didn't know about the change of rental?'

    'I'm
sure they didn't. It's just a little deal he set up privately.'

    'Right.
But the police are sure to speak to Kelvin Southwest, aren't they? Since he's
in charge of all the beach huts. He's bound to tell them about the handover to
Carole, isn't he?'

    'Not
if he can help it. He called me yesterday evening before the police arrived and
swore me to secrecy about the arrangement.' Jude looked across her cluttered
sitting room to her neighbour, grateful that Carole couldn't hear Philly's end
of the conversation. It would have started up again all her anxieties about the
legality of her using the beach hut.

    'And
did you get much information out of the police, Philly?'

    'They
were doing the questioning, not me.'

    'I
know that. I just wondered if they let slip anything of interest.'

    'What
kind of thing?'

    'Well,
whether they had any suspicion as to the identity of the human remains that
were found, whether the remains were of a male or female, how long they'd been
there, that kind of thing.'

    'If
they did have that sort of information, they certainly didn't share it with
me.'

    Jude
thought it had been too much to hope for. 'By the way,' she said, 'do you know
if Smalting Beach is open to the public again? They can't keep the whole area
as a crime scene for long, can they?'

    'No,
it is open. When I was walking the dogs this morning I met someone who'd been
down there. She said the row of twelve beach huts including
Quiet Harbour
is cordoned off, but the rest of the beach is open.'

    'And will
no doubt, as the day goes on, gather its share of snooping locals, indulging
their curiosity.'

    'Yes.'
Apparently that idea was repellent to the young woman. She seemed to shudder as
she spoke.

    'Are
you all right, Philly?'

    'Well,
as you know, I wasn't feeling great even before all this. And Smalting is such
a gossipy area. With what's happened now . . .' She sounded perilously close to
tears.

    'Would
you like me to come round? I could do you a massage or—'

    'No.
Thanks. It's sweet of you, Jude, but I'll be fine.'

    Philly
Rose sounded far from fine, however. And after their conversation finished,
Jude had the feeling that the discovery beneath
Quiet Harbour
had
stirred some very deep dread in the girl.

    Kelvin
Southwest's attempts to cover up the arrangement he had made about passing on
the rental of the beach hut had clearly been unsuccessful, because within the
hour Carole had had a call from the police. They understood she had been the
first person to find the charred floorboards in
Quiet Harbour
and they
would be at High Tor shortly to talk to her about exactly what she'd seen.

    There
were two of them, a Detective Sergeant in very dressed-down plain clothes and a
uniformed WPC. The woman didn't say much, and Carole wondered whether she was
just there as some kind of regulation chaperone to her senior colleague. Or
maybe to provide a compassionate touch should their interviewee become
hysterical.

    Though
Carole was far from hysterical. She felt very controlled as she recounted what
she had found on the Tuesday when she opened up
Quiet Harbour.
She told
the Detective Sergeant about her conversation with Philly Rose in the Crown and
Anchor, and about her dealings with Kelvin Southwest. As she completed each section
of her narrative, she waited for the Detective Sergeant to volunteer some
comment or let slip some vital piece of information. But he was a pro. Each
time he just finished making a note of her last answer and moved on to his next
enquiry.

    Eventually,
as he seemed to be winding up the interview, Carole had to resort to direct
questioning.

    'So
do you know yet how long the human remains had been under the beach hut? And
indeed whether they are the remains of a man or a woman?'

    'I
can assure you, Mrs Seddon, that when it is appropriate for such information to
be released to the general public, you will hear about it in the news media.'

    'But
I just wondered whether—'

    'I am
sure a lot of people - particularly in the Smalting area - are wondering a
great deal about what's just happened. I am sure the coffee mornings of
Fethering are busy with gossip and speculation. But I would remind you, Mrs
Seddon, that when an official police investigation is under way, we are not in
the habit of reporting on its progress to anyone who happens to be interested.'

    Well,
that was a fairly unequivocal put-down. And Carole hadn't liked the reference
to 'coffee mornings', which seemed to consign her to the category of 'gossipy
old woman who has nothing better to do with her time'. What spoilsports the
police could be.