The Corpse on the Court (23 page)

Because, if she could, it might offer a whole new perspective on Reggie Playfair's death.

O
enone Playfair was amazing. Though no one doubted the depth of her pain, during the post-funeral party she was a model of affability and good cheer. There was something to be said, Jude thought, for old-fashioned breeding. Oenone Playfair and Felicity Budgen had come out of the same mould. The qualities required of them on public occasions were charm and interest in the doings of others. Emotions should be contained, restricted to the private arena and, in the case of the club chairman's wife, Jude wondered whether they were even expressed there. As for Oenone, she had no doubts about the darkness that would engulf the new widow when she was on her own, when she no longer had the logistics of organizing the funeral to keep her mind occupied. But equally she knew that no other human being would ever be allowed to see Oenone Playfair cry.

George Hazlitt had gone to get some more mineral water (perhaps he never drank alcohol, a necessary deprivation for a professional sportsman). Then Piers went off to top up their glasses with Reggie's excellent claret. Leaving Jude alone in the conservatory with Ned Jackson, who was finishing up a large plate of coronation chicken.

She'd never have a better opportunity. Moving a little closer to the junior pro, she said, ‘Sounded like George was giving you rather a hard time.'

He looked up with some alarm and for the first time Jude noticed how long his eyelashes were. With his straight black hair and his greyhound-thin body, he really was a very attractive young man.

‘What do you mean?' he asked sharply. ‘Jude, isn't it?'

‘That's right. What I mean is that just as I was coming into the conservatory I heard what George was saying to you.'

‘Oh.' Ned Jackson looked positively scared now. ‘But you're not going to tell anyone about it, are you? I mean, if anyone on the committee found out, my job could be on the line.'

Her ploy had worked. He evidently thought that she had heard more of the conversation than she actually had. But how was she going to find out about the bit she'd missed? Jude was going to have to advance with some subtlety.

‘No,' she said breezily. ‘No reason why I should tell anyone on the committee.' She held a silence. ‘I might mention it to Piers, though.'

‘That'd be as bad. He knows everyone on the committee. It'd be sure to get to them.'

‘All right, I won't tell Piers,' she said lightly, as if it couldn't matter less. She played out another silence, then said, ‘I'll keep quiet about it on one condition . . .'

‘Oh?'

‘That you tell me exactly what did happen.'

‘Well, I—'

‘Give me your phone number,' said Jude, her manner more assertive than its default setting of amiability, ‘and I'll call you.'

Silently, Ned Jackson reached into his jacket's breast pocket and handed a card across to her. Piers Targett, re-entering the conservatory with two topped-up glasses of claret, witnessed the action.

‘I see, Jude,' he said. ‘Not content with having had your one lesson from George, you're now booking up more with the junior pro.'

‘Something like that,' said Jude with a giggle.

Ned Jackson echoed her, but his giggle didn't sound so comfortable.

Oenone Playfair was still maintaining her act when Piers and Jude left. As the E-Type scrunched powerfully off the gravel, Jude observed, ‘So she'll never find out what actually caused Reggie's death.'

‘Well, I'm not about to tell her.' He then added, quite sharply, ‘And I hope you're not either.'

Jude was silent, faced by something of a moral dilemma. She and Carole had been specifically asked by Oenone Playfair to find out the reason for Reggie's presence at the tennis court on the night of his death. Now, thanks to Piers' nocturnal revelations, she did have some of that information. But would it help Oenone's peace of mind to know that her husband had jumped instantly at a summons from Jonquil Targett? That she'd asked him to meet her at the court ‘like we used to'? Wouldn't that knowledge be very hurtful to the recently widowed Oenone Playfair?

She decided to mull the decision over for a while and moved the conversation on to the subject of Wally Edgington-Bewley's book. Had Piers read it?

‘Well, not exactly “read”. I've flicked through and looked at the photographs. We're talking a long time ago, though. When he first published it. It's a very Wally kind of book.'

‘Do you mean it's a thumping good read?' asked Jude wryly.

He chuckled. ‘I wouldn't quite go that far. It's a book for the real tennis completist. One man's journey, accompanied by various friends, to virtually all the active tennis courts in the world. Written by a man whose literary style was honed by writing reports on stock-market movements and long-term trends. I don't believe that anyone at the club has actually read every word of it – we've all got copies, mind. Wouldn't dream of not giving Wally our full support.' Another chuckle. ‘Actually, I think you might find
Courts in the Act
a more effective soporific even than me trying to explain chases to you.'

‘So are you saying I shouldn't read it?'

Piers Targett shrugged. ‘Jude, I wouldn't dream of telling you what you should or shouldn't do. You're clearly too much your own woman to be told to do anything by anyone.'

‘Thank you. Silver tongue in action again, I see.'

‘No, it's just that when I'm with a beautiful woman, I cannot help myself from speaking the truth.'

‘You oleaginous smoothie,' said Jude, but couldn't help smiling. She found it very difficult to get angry with Piers Targett. And even more difficult to stay angry with him.

He dropped her at Woodside Cottage about four. He was driving on up to London, where he had an early evening meeting with a business acquaintance, and would then be staying the night in Bayswater, before more meetings on the Thursday and Friday. He had at first suggested that Jude should join him, but she demurred. She wanted a little time on her own to think things through.

One thing she didn't want to put off, though, was talking to Ned Jackson. The junior professional had looked fairly spooked at Winnows and she wanted to contact him before he got too realistic about the level of threat she might pose to him.

For a moment she regretted that Carole wasn't doing this part of the investigation. Jude knew herself to be better at the empathetic ‘Good Cop' kind of interview, but her neighbour's manner had a steeliness she lacked. And she had a feeling the conversation with Ned Jackson might need more of a ‘Bad Cop' quality. Still, there wasn't time to brief Carole for the job. It had to be done straight away.

So, as soon as she was settled back into Woodside Cottage with a cup of herbal tea, Jude took out the card the young man had given her. It featured Ned Jackson's name, describing him as a ‘Real Tennis Professional' and offering his services for lessons in the game. The address was given as Lockleigh House tennis court. Beneath that was a mobile number, which she rang.

‘Ned Jackson.' On the few occasions she'd heard his voice before, there had been a brashness in it. Now he sounded cautious. Jude hoped that might be because he was worried that the call might be from her.

‘Hi, it's Jude.'

‘Yes, I wondered if you were going to ring.' He now sounded a lot younger, a schoolboy who'd been caught in some misdemeanour. ‘Look, I know what you overheard sounded bad, but it really isn't anything that important.'

Jude had to choose her words carefully. She didn't want to give away how little of Ned's conversation with George Hazlitt she'd actually heard. She wanted to lure the young pro into confirming her conjectures about his actual offence.

‘Listen,' she said. ‘I know you're worried that the committee's going to hear about this. As I promised, they won't hear it from me . . . so long as you tell me the details.'

‘There aren't that many details,' said the boy petulantly. ‘It's just that we haven't got anywhere else to go.'

‘Oh?' said Jude, hoping that she sounded more knowing than she was.

‘Look, the fact is, I've got a steady girlfriend, Kelly. We've got a flat together, so there's no way I'm going to take Tonya back there, is there? More than my life's worth, I'd be well in the shit. And Tonya's in an even worse position than me, you know, about having a place to go. She lives with her grandparents and they're so old fashioned that . . . well, there's absolutely no chance we could go there.'

Yesss! You've confirmed exactly what I suspected, thought Jude. ‘So you're saying you've been conducting your relationship with Tonya Grace at the tennis court.'

‘It's not a relationship. That sounds really heavy. It's just a bit of fun.'

‘Does she know that?'

‘Of course she does.' But at least Ned Jackson had the decency to sound embarrassed as he said the words.

‘How do you explain to your girlfriend Kelly about your late hours at the court?'

‘Oh, professionals often play out of hours. With other professionals. Part of the way we train. When the courts are heavily booked, it's the only chance we get . . . you know, and no distractions with phones ringing and that kind of stuff.'

‘And your girlfriend's never questioned what you're doing?'

‘Oh no. I've got Kelly well trained.'

The glibness of his reply grated on Jude. Once or twice in her own life she'd been involved with married or otherwise cohabiting men, and she remembered the instinctive lies with which they had regularly fobbed off their unsuspecting wives. Even the recollection of it made her feel shabby.

‘So you and Tonya meet once the court bookings have finished? After nine thirty?'

‘Yes. Or quite often the eight fifteen court doesn't get booked, particularly during the summer.'

‘So you both have your electronic cards to get into the place?'

‘'Course we do. But I don't bring my car back in. That might draw attention from someone at Lockleigh House. So we just use the keypad entry to the court.'

‘And you don't turn on the main lights, just the ones in the club room?'

‘That's right. If the court lights are on they can be seen from Lockleigh House because of the glass roof. But the club room windows face off down the garden, so there's no danger of anyone knowing we're there, particularly if we've got the curtains drawn.' A cockiness was creeping back into his voice, pride at his own cleverness.

‘So you stay there till . . .?'

‘Well . . .'

‘Till you've had sex?'

‘Yeah, all right.'

‘And how long might that be?'

‘Depends.' There was a hint of a chuckle in his voice. Now he was definitely bragging.

‘Have you ever stayed there all night?'

‘No. Well, once or twice we've gone to sleep and, like, woken up in the small hours, but we've never been there when anyone might catch us in the morning.'

‘So, if you've been covering your tracks so well, how did George Hazlitt find out what you'd been doing?'

Ned Jackson's voice was full of grievance as he said, ‘Mate of mine, guy I often play with, told him.'

‘Nice kind of mate.'

‘Yeah, well, he's like that. Bad loser. Just 'cause I always beat him, even on handicap. And my handicap's going down, and his isn't. I'm now at plus six.' The junior pro's full self-assurance was returning.

‘Does George know that it's Tonya you've been spending out-of-hours time at the court with?'

‘God, no! My mate may be a shit, but he wouldn't want to lose me my job.'

‘Would it be that serious?'

‘If George found out I'd been messing around with a junior member and that was passed on to the committee, I don't think it'd go down very well.'

‘So it sounds like you won't be able to continue these assignations with Tonya?'

‘No, well, there you go.' He didn't sound too upset about the situation. ‘I think her and me were probably getting to the end of the road, anyway.'

‘Does she know that?' Jude asked again.

‘She'll work it out.'

The callousness of his response made her angry, but Jude didn't say anything. Her mind was buzzing with possibilities . . . like, for instance, was Ned Jackson the only person to have thought of using Lockleigh House tennis court for carnal encounters?

But there was another question uppermost in her mind, one that had to be asked out loud. ‘Had you and Tonya been at the court the night Reggie Playfair died?'

O
n the Friday morning Carole found that she had run out of Gulliver's dog biscuits. This was most unusual. Her shopping was normally planned with military efficiency, a monthly run to Sainsbury's at Rustington for the big stuff, and shorter weekly visits for perishables. For running out of dog biscuits she awarded herself a very serious black mark. It offended her image of her own efficiency. She hadn't been concentrating, thinking too much about the Lady in the Lake case.

As a result she had to make one of her rare visits to Allinstore, Fethering's famously inefficient supermarket. And while she was passing the shelves of newspapers in there, she saw a familiar face looking out of one of the front pages.

It was in
The Argus
, Brighton's daily newspaper, and the photograph was of Iain Holland. The headline read: ‘COUNCILLOR SLAMS SOCIAL SERVICES.'

Back at High Tor over a coffee, to the sound of Gulliver demolishing a dog biscuit on the floor, Carole read the article. Iain Holland's outburst had been prompted by the disappearance of a teenage girl in care. Bolstering his credentials as a crusading local politician, he lambasted the inefficiencies of Brighton's Children's Services. He also mentioned how much he empathized with the family of the missing girl, because his own daughter from a previous marriage had disappeared and never been found.