The Body on the Beach (12 page)

‘Now, open wide again please.’

So Jude was unable to find out more about the workings of Regional Dental Officers. And Mr Frobisher gave her little opportunity for further conversation when the examination was concluded.

‘Good. No serious problems at the moment. Couple of places where the gums’re looking a bit red, though. Look after your gums and it makes my job of looking after your teeth a lot
simpler.’

‘Yes,’ said Jude contritely.

‘Make an appointment to see one of our hygienists on your way out, will you?’

‘Sure. I—’

‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better go and sort out this RDO.’

She couldn’t make him stay. And even if she had been able to make him stay, Jude wasn’t sure what questions she would have wanted to ask Mr Frobisher.

‘Tell reception to apologize to the next appointment,’ he told the nurse as he left the room. ‘Only be about five minutes.’

On the coastline train that rattled through an unbelievable number of small stations and rattled past an even more unbelievable number of bungalows on its way back to Fethering, Jude tried to
comfort herself with the fact that there was nothing wrong with her teeth. But the predominant feeling in her mind was one she shared with Carole – that she had a lot to learn about being a
detective.

The Crown and Anchor was on the way back from Fethering Station. Jude knew she shouldn’t really, but the thought of grabbing a bite to eat there rather than knocking
something together at home was appealing. She could be an excellent cook when she felt like it, but she very rarely did feel like it.

Jude knew she shouldn’t really spend the money either. But what the hell? Tomorrow would be soon enough to start her economy regime. She went into the pub.

There were maybe half a dozen people scattered around the sitting room that was the Crown and Anchor’s interior. Most were tucked away in alcoves, their presence betrayed by a glimpse of
elbow or a murmur of chatter. The room looked comforting, as did the lugubrious grin Ted Crisp gave her from behind the bar.

‘Couldn’t keep away from me, eh, young Jude? My old animal magnetism doing its stuff?’

‘Something like that.’

‘So what can I do you for? Or are you just after my body?’

‘I was thinking of lunch.’

He accepted this philosophically. ‘First things first. And first thing’s got to be a drink, hasn’t it? Wodger fancy – apart from me, of course?’

‘Glass of white wine.’

‘Large, I take it?’

‘Why not? And something to eat. Nothing very big. Do you do sandwiches?’

‘We not only do sandwiches, we also do baguettes. Bread rolls with delusions of grandeur, no less. List of fillings on the board.’

Jude looked at the selection written out in multicoloured chalk. ‘I’ll have the tuna and sweet corn, please.’

‘You won’t regret it. Good choice, that. One tuna and sweet corn baguette!’ he shouted out towards the kitchen. ‘Normally write the orders down. Not when we’re
slack like this, though.’

‘Who’ve you got cooking today?’

‘No idea. She’s a woman. Knows her place. Never comes out of the kitchen.’

Jude could sense a degree of calculation in his words. Ted Crisp was sizing her up, testing the level at which she’d be offended.

She denied him the satisfaction of a response. ‘You ever been married, Ted?’

‘Used to be. You can tell. I’m still round-shouldered. Didn’t take, though.’ The landlord shook his shaggy head gloomily. ‘Like an unsuccessful heart transplant. My
body rejected it.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Actually, that’s not true. My body didn’t reject her. She rejected me. Walked out after three months. With a double-glazing
salesman. “But he’s so transparent,” I said. “Can’t you see right through him?” She didn’t listen. Said she wanted the security. Wanted to be with someone
who didn’t always come staggering in at four in the morning . . .’

‘Having been out drinking?’

‘Having been out
working
, I’ll thank you very much, young Jude. And maybe a bit of drinking after the working. But the human body is like an old clock, you know. It needs to
unwind.’

‘So what did you do that kept you out till four every morning?’

‘Stand-up. I was on the circuit. When I moved here was the first time I’d ever been in a
downstairs
room in a pub.’

‘That explains a lot, Ted.’

‘Like what?’

‘Your jokes. They sound like they come from someone who
used
to be a comedian.’

He screwed up his face in a mock-wince. ‘Ooh, you know how to hurt, don’t you? Anyway, you’re right. I wasn’t a huge success on the circuit. It’s a business where
you’re only as good as your last joke, and, as you’ve so diplomatically pointed out, my last joke was bloody terrible. So . . . about four years too late, I saw the wisdom of
what my former wife’d said and went for security. Sold up the house, borrowed far too much from the brewery to get this place and . . . here I am.’

‘Do you miss it?’

‘Stand-up?’ He screwed his lips into a little purse of disagreement. ‘Nah. No different here. As a pub landlord, I still get heckled and shouted at and have glasses thrown at
me by a bunch of drunkards.’

‘Not in Fethering, surely?’

‘Don’t you believe it. Come Saturday night, they’ve all tanked up at home on the old Sanatogen Tonic Wine, they’ve got their pensions in their pockets and evil in their
hearts. I tell you, you can hardly move in here for the flying zimmer frames. Ooh, here’s your baguette.’ He reached out through the hatch to a disembodied hand from the kitchen.
‘Get outside of that and you won’t hurt, young lady.’

There was a clatter from the front door and Jude turned to see Rory Turnbull making a clumsy entrance. He hadn’t shaved that morning and looked unkempt.

The dentist weaved his way up to the bar. ‘Large Scotch please, Ted.’

‘If you’re sure . . .’

The note of warning in the landlord’s voice hit a raw nerve. ‘Of course I’m bloody sure! Otherwise I wouldn’t have bloody asked you for it, would I?’

As Ted Crisp turned to get the drink, Jude ventured a, ‘Hello. We sort of met in here the other night, didn’t we?’

‘Hm?’ Rory Turnbull’s eyes had difficulty in focusing on her.

‘And actually I went to your surgery this morning. Mr Frobisher looked after me.’ Just as well it wasn’t you, thought Jude, or my mouth’d be bearing the scars.
‘Your wife put me in touch.’

‘My wife?’ He seemed puzzled by the alien concept.

‘Yes, Barbara.’

‘Oh,
that
wife.’ He let out a bark of laughter, as though this were some huge joke. ‘Thanks, Ted.’ He took a long swallow from the glass.

‘Why, you got another wife, Rory?’ asked the landlord. ‘Little totty tucked away somewhere?’

The dentist smiled slyly. ‘I should be so lucky. Don’t think you can get away with that kind of thing in Fethering.’

‘Don’t you believe it.’ Ted Crisp struck his forehead in a mock moment of revelation. ‘I just realized. Jude! You suddenly appear here in Fethering, nobody has a clue who
you are, why you’re here . . . You’re Rory Turnbull’s bit of stuff, aren’t you?’

She smiled ruefully. ‘Sorry. I’m afraid my only connection with Rory is professional – not even that, actually, because I saw his partner rather than him.’

‘And you say my wife put you in touch?’

‘Yes. Everyone needs a dentist, don’t they?’

This struck Rory Turnbull as very funny. ‘I’ll say. Oh yes, everyone needs a dentist. Everyone needs someone with a steady hand to probe around their smelly mouth. Everyone needs
that frisson of lying in a high-tech chair and just waiting to be
hurt
. And nobody thinks what the dentist needs. Nobody thinks how much it costs him to be there in the surgery every
morning, there with the steady hand and the fixed grin and the knowledge that what he’s doing is so stressful it’s lopping the years off his life, one by one. How many dentists get to
enjoy the wonderful pensions they salt away so much for through their working lives? Very few, very few. Because they drop dead, you see. Or if they don’t drop dead, they top themselves. Did
you know that dentists have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession? And why do you think that is? It’s because what they do manages to be both deadly boring and agonizingly
stressful at the same time. It’s because being a dentist combines—’

But here the maudlin aria was interrupted by a voice from across the pub. ‘Rory. I only just noticed you were in here. I wonder if you could . . .’

It was Denis Woodville. He was standing next to an alcove where, unnoticed by Jude, he had been lunching with a large young woman dressed in black, who had also risen to her feet. On the seat
behind her, where it had been cast off, lay the semicircle of a green anorak.

‘No, sorry, Vice-Commodore,’ said Rory Turnbull. ‘Can’t stay. Have to finish my drink –’ he gulped down what remained in one ‘and do some very important
things.’ Shovelling a pocketful of small change on to the bar counter, he set off unsteadily towards the door, repeating to himself, ‘Very important things.’

‘But what I need to talk about’s important too!’ Denis Woodville turned back to his guest as he made for the door. ‘Sorry, Tanya. Be with you in a moment.’

The girl had risen from her booth, a lumpen creature in black sweat shirt, leggings and Doc Martens. Hair dyed reddish and cut short, a lot of silver dangling from the perforations in her ears.
A silver stud in her nose. She looked anxious.

‘It’s all right, Tanya, love,’ Ted Crisp called across. ‘The Vice-Commodore’ll be back. You won’t be left to pick up the tab.’

‘I hope not.’ Her voice had those slack local vowels which sound uninterested even at moments of excitement. She drifted uneasily towards the bar.

‘Though it’s not like our Denis to be pushing the boat out like this,’ Ted went on. ‘Bit of a tightwad usually.’

‘Lunch is on Fethering Yacht Club expenses,’ the girl explained. ‘He wanted to say thank-you now I’ve left, and since I didn’t have anything else on today, I
thought, “Well, it’s a free lunch.”’

‘No such thing,’ said Ted Crisp.

‘Sorry?’ The girl looked at him curiously.

‘A free lunch. No such thing.’

‘What?’

He spelled it out. ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch.’

‘No. You have to pay. In a pub or a restaurant, you always have to pay.’

Ted Crisp recognized he wasn’t getting anywhere. Tanya was unaware of the reference. ‘You like some coffee, would you? Seem to remember when you worked behind the bar here, you were
virtually on an intravenous drip of coffee.’

The girl wrinkled her nose, a manoeuvre which the silver stud made look hazardous. ‘No, thanks.’ She looked across to the door. ‘I hope he’s all right.’

Thelandlordchuckled.‘IthinktheVice-Commodore can look after himself in the face of drunken dentists. Don’t you worry. He’ll be back in a minute.’

No sooner had he said the words than Denis Woodville returned. He was lighting up another Gauloise and looked rather miffed. ‘Tanya, I’ll just sort out the bill for this lot and then
we’ll be off – all right?’

‘Fine,’ said the girl without interest.

The Vice-Commodore reached into a pocket for an envelope full of petty cash. ‘Right, Ted, what’s the damage?’

While he settled up, Jude attacked her baguette, which was excellent. After the unlikely couple, thin septuagenarian and broad twenty-year-old, had left, she said, ‘You said Tanya used to
work for you too, Ted?’

‘That’s right. Not of the brightest, as you might’ve gathered from our exchange about free lunches. No, Tanya’s not a bad girl. Been in care, had a tough time when she
was growing up, I gathered. But she did the job all right. And a good barmaid is hard to find.’ His eyes narrowed as he looked across at Jude. ‘Don’t suppose you fancy doing the
odd shift in here, do you?’

She chuckled. ‘Not at the moment. Maybe, if I get desperate . . .’

‘Yeah, nobody works for me unless they’re desperate.’ He sighed. ‘Nobody does anything for me unless they’re desperate.’

‘Talking of desperation, Ted . . .’

‘Hm?’

‘How long’s Rory Turnbull been drinking like that?’

‘Only the last few months. Well, only the last few months he’s been drinking like that in
here
. Maybe in the privacy of the Shorelands Estate he’s been doing it for
years.’

‘Can’t see the lovely Barbara being too keen on that.’

‘No, nor the old witch, her mother.’ He shuddered. ‘That Winnie. One of the best arguments for misogyny I’ve ever encountered.’

‘Do you know them well?’

‘Hardly. Only by reputation, gossip, what-have-you. You hear a lot stuck behind the bar of a pub.’

‘I bet you do.’

‘And not much of it’s very charitable.’

‘No. So what have you heard from Rory Turnbull while you’ve been stuck behind the bar?’

‘Well, it’s all the same, really. You heard the full routine today. Goes on and on round the same things – how miserable life is, what hell it is being a dentist, what hell it
is being married . . . usual cheery stuff. Tell you, after an evening spent with Rory, my own life seems a bed of blooming roses.’

A new thought struck Jude. ‘Ooh, and he has a boat, doesn’t he?’

‘That’s right. Called
Brigadoon
. Same as his house.’

Good, thought Jude. At least one of our conjectures has proved to be right.

But it still doesn’t prove any link between the owner of
Brigadoon II
and the body on the beach.

Carole Seddon had woken that Thursday morning with a change of attitude. In Jude’s company, caught up in the excitement Jude generated, the idea of playing at detectives
had seemed a seductive one. Finding an explanation for the body on the beach had been imperative. On her own, though, Carole found it less compelling. Life, she reflected, is full of loose ends.
There are many questions that will never be answered, and a sensible person will recognize that fact and get on with things.

So that morning Carole got on with things. She reestablished the routine of her life that her discovery of the body and her meeting with Jude had briefly interrupted.