Bones Under The Beach Hut (27 page)

    Carole
hadn't expected to see Katie Brunswick in the function room either. Again she
wouldn't have thought quizzes were the obsessive rewriter's kind of thing
either. But there she was, sitting rather incongruously at a table with Kelvin
Southwest, Curt Holderness and an unfamiliar third man who made up the team.

    'I
didn't expect to see you here,' Carole whispered to the girl as she passed.

    'Very
important to get local colour,' Katie whispered back. 'I was told that at a
writing course I went to once in the Dordogne.'

    Earlier
in the evening Carole had been rather surprised when she and Jude had met
Kelvin Southwest in the Crown and Anchor's main bar. Gone was all his smarm,
all his creepy compliments about 'lovely ladies'. He had almost cut the pair of
them dead, immediately turning away to seek out the company of Curt Holderness
and some other men Carole hadn't recognized. At the time she and Jude had
exchanged looks of the 'What's got into him?' variety.

    The
members of the Smalting Beach Hut Association conspicuous by their absence at
the quiz night were Lionel and Joyce Oliver. Given the news they had recently
received, there was no surprise about that, but Carole and Jude couldn't help
feeling a slight disappointment. Persuading herself that it was not a breach of
client confidentiality, Jude had passed on to her neighbour what she had heard
from Miranda Browning, and they were both aware that, if they were to advance
in their investigation, they would probably have to talk to the Olivers at some
point. It was not, however, destined to be that evening.

    Another
absentee was Philly Rose. But then that was hardly a surprise. Since she'd
passed
Quiet Harbour
over to Carole, she was no longer really a member
of the hutters' community.

    'Have
you all put down your answers to the question?' asked Reginald Flowers.

    'Well,
we've put down
an
answer,' said Kelvin Southwest, who, after his earlier
frostiness, now seemed determined to be the life and soul of the party.
'Whether or not it's the right answer is another matter.' And he and Curt
Holderness guffawed. Even if she hadn't known what she did about the two men,
Carole might still have felt there was something slightly sinister in their
complicity.

    'Have
you ticked that one off, Dora?' Reginald Flowers spoke to 'his' secretary as
one might to a small child with learning difficulties.

    'I
have,' she replied humbly.

    'Very
well, next question . . .' The quizmaster cleared his throat into the
microphone and coughed. 'I'm sorry. I think my bronchitis is coming on.' And
his voice certainly did have a dry, husky quality. 'Right, this is the last
question before we have a twenty-minute break when you can go and refill your
glasses.'

    Good,
thought Carole, mindful of Ted Crisp's demand that the participants in the quiz
night should 'drink lots of booze'.

    Reginald
Flowers again cleared his clogged throat and asked, 'Of which creatures is the
collective noun a "parliament"?'

    'MPs!'
shouted Kelvin Southwest raucously. 'That wasn't too tricky, Reg.'

    'No,
no, I said "creatures", not human beings.'

    'MPs
are not human beings!' riposted Kelvin, proud of his rapier wit.

    'The
question is, "Of which
creatures
is the collective noun a
'parliament'?" And it's a
creature,
not a human being,' Reginald
Flowers repeated, clearly put out at what he saw as a challenge to his
authority. He made himself feel better by having another go at Dora. 'Make a
note of that, please. That question may need rephrasing to deal with the
nit-picking fraternity.' The note was duly made, and the quizmaster was siezed
by a bout of coughing.

    Jude
looked blankly at her teammates. 'Haven't a clue.'

    'I
know it,' whispered Carole. And she mouthed 'Owls' at them.

    'How
on earth do you know that?' asked Jude.

    'It
came up in a
Times
crossword clue,' said Carole smugly.

    'So
how are you two lovely ladies?' asked a leering Kelvin Southwest, more outgoing
to them now as he queued at the bar with Curt Holderness. The Crown and Anchor
would have been busy that night, even without the sudden influx of the quiz
night crowd from the function room. Ted Crisp, Zosia and her girls were kept
hard at it.

    'We're
very well, thank you,' Carole replied primly. 'Curt, this is my neighbour
Jude.'

    'Very
nice to meet you,' said the security officer, with a lazy look of appreciation
at Jude's ample curves.

    'Things
have developed a bit since we last met,' Carole observed.

    'Things?'

    'I
was referring to the discovery on Smalting Beach.'

    'Yes.'
A guarded look came into Curt Holderness's eyes. 'Nasty business.'

    'Presumably
the police have talked to you about it?' asked Carole, possibly pushing her
luck.

    'Why
should they?' came the tart reply.

    'Well,
I was thinking, since you're the security officer, they would automatically
want to know if you'd seen any disturbance or anything unusual happening.'

    'Yes,'
he conceded, apparently relieved. Carole wondered what he had thought she was
going to ask him about. 'I did talk to them, yes. Not that I could be much
help. I didn't see anything odd happening.'

    'You
didn't volunteer any information to them, did you, Curt? Because I seem to remember
when we last met you were very against the idea of telling the police anything
that—'

    'Excuse
me,' he said, having just attracted Zosia's attention. But he wasn't about to
give the order. He turned to his friend. 'Here, Kel, get the drinks in. Mine's
a pint of Stella.' True to the Curt Holderness principle of never buying a
drink for himself. Kelvin Southwest looked slightly sour at being landed with
the round, but he didn't demur. Clearly the Crown and

    Anchor
was not one of the local places that owed the Fether District Council official
a favour and wouldn't charge him.

    Carole
was intrigued by the relationship between the two men. They clearly knew each
other well, yet there didn't seem to be much affection between them. And Curt
Holderness appeared to hold the balance of power. She wondered what favours
they had done each other in the past.

    Saddled
with buying the drinks, Kelvin Southwest all of a sudden became elaborately
chivalrous and asked if he could treat 'the lovely ladies' as well. To Carole's
surprise, Jude responded quite sharply that they were fine, 'thank you very
much'.

    When
they eventually got their Chilean Chardon- nays and were walking back to the
function room, Carole asked her neighbour why she had bitten off Kelvin
Southwest's head. 'It's unlike you, Jude.'

    'Yes.
There's just something I find rather creepy about him'.

    'I
agree. All that smarm about "lovely ladies".'

    'And
from someone who really loathes women.'

    'What?'

    'Kelvin
Southwest is not attracted to women.'

    'But
all his going on about "lovely ladies" . . .'

    'It's
a front. Women don't turn him on sexually.'

    'How
do you know, Jude?'

    'I
just know.'

    Carole
didn't argue. She knew there were certain areas of life in which Jude's
instincts were much more accurate than her own. So maybe the fact that Kelvin

    Southwest
appeared to fancy her more than he fancied Jude wasn't such great news after
all. 'Then what do you think does turn him on sexually?'

    'I
don't know,' replied Jude. And she shuddered.

    'Now
you've all heard of scuba diving but the next question is: what do the letters
"S - C - U - B - A" stand for?'

    At
the tables around Reginald Flowers and his microphone, discussions erupted and
a few confident contenders started writing down answers. Jude puffed out her
cheeks in an expression of ignorance and looked around at her teammates. 'Sea
Coast . . . Underwater . . . Breath Aid . . . ?' she hazarded.

    'Not
bad,' said the Captain of Smalting Golf Club. 'But not right, I'm afraid. In
fact, the correct answer is: "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing
Apparatus".'

    'How
do you know that?' asked Jude. 'Have you ever done it?'

    'Oh
yes,' he assured her. 'I used to do a lot of other sports before golf took over
my life. I don't know if I happened to mention it, but I am currently Captain
of Smalting Golf Club.'

    'Yes,
you did mention it,' said Carole testily. 'Quite a few times.'

    The
golf captain and his wife looked at her open-mouthed, as Carole, who had been
appointed team scribe, wrote the answer down. There were still a distressing number
of blanks on the form. She had hoped, with her crossword expertise, to be doing
rather better on the quiz. But then she hadn't really been anticipating
questions on the names of the Arsenal team who won the 1994 European Cup
Winners' Cup. And German aircraft of the Second World War could hardly be
described as her specialist subject. Nor indeed could the hits of Beyonce.

    Though
slightly soured by the fact that she knew so few answers, Carole was grudgingly
impressed by the range of questions. It was fair enough, she supposed, that the
subject matter covered should be broad. That ensured that no one - including,
unfortunately, her - had any special advantage.

    She
wondered whether Reginald Flowers had taken his list from a book or the
internet, or whether he'd done his own research. From her assessment of the
man's character, she thought the latter was probably the answer.

    Reginald
coughed again into his microphone. 'Right, you've all had enough time on that
one. Let's move on. The next question is a literary one.' There was groaning
from some of the tables, which encouraged Carole. She reckoned here was a
subject on which she was in with a chance. 'What is the name of the terrible
school run by Wackford Squeers in Charles Dickens's novel
Nicholas
Nickleby?'

    As
she smugly wrote down the answer, Carole was cheered by the sound of more
groans. Through which sounded a raucous shout from Curt Holderness. 'Was it
maybe Edgington Manor School? I heard some well dodgy things went on there.'

    Few
of the quiz contestants took any notice of what he'd said. It was lost in the
general badinage of disappointment about having another literary question. But
the effect of the security officer's words on the quizmaster was astonishing.
Reginald Flowers's face went suddenly red and he reached up to loosen his
naval-looking tie. For a moment he looked as if he was about to throw up. Dora
Pinchbeck stared at him with a mixture of alarm and compassion. When Reginald
next spoke there was a distinct wobble in his husky voice.

    'Right,
have you all got that one? The school in
Nicholas Nickleby?
And we'll
move on. Next question: what is the name of the guitarist brother of the Kinks'
main songwriter, who co-wrote and took the vocal on
Death of a Clown?'

    Carole
raised her eyes to heaven. How could any normal human being be expected to
answer that?

    Jude
nudged her and whispered, 'Dave Davies.' Carole wrote it down. But then she'd
never thought of Jude as being quite a
normal
person.

    They
hadn't won. In fact, when the answers were read out, the combined intellects of
Carole, Jude, the Captain of Smalting Golf Club and his silent wife had only
managed to beat one other table. Carole left the Crown and Anchor feeling a
little disgruntled. Of course, the quiz had been just for fun. It didn't matter
who won. But she had rather prided herself on her general knowledge and was
disappointed not to have done better. Though she hid it well, Carole Seddon did
have a surprisingly competitive instinct.

    She
and Jude were in the car park on their way home when Carole suddenly remembered
she'd left her cardigan in the function room. She went back to fetch it,
annoyed at having forgotten it and equally annoyed at having brought it in the
first place. Sometimes the instinctive caution in her own nature infuriated
Carole. Nobody else had taken a cardigan. Everyone else had trusted the warmth
of the June evening, without worries about the fact 'that it might get a bit
nippy later'. Sometimes just being Carole Seddon was an extraordinarily
exhausting experience.