Bones Under The Beach Hut

'Terrible business, wasn't it?' She nodded over towards Quiet Harbour.

'What's that?'

She spelled it out. 'What was found under the beach hut there.'

'Oh yes,' he said. 'Most beaches have had their tragedies. Funny how everyone thinks of a beach as a friendly place and you look out from somewhere like here and the tide goes out so far and you think of the sea as a warm, friendly thing. But it has great power. Even here it has power to wash people away, power to drown them.'

Carole wasn't quite sure what kind of conversation she'd been expecting from Lionel Oliver, but it hadn't been a disquisition on the qualities of the sea. She didn't make any comment, though. He hadn't finished yet.

'I worked as an undertaker,' he went on. 'And I suppose in that line of business we do get closer to human tragedy than people in other walks of life. We see people at their most disturbed, and we see the consequences of carelessness and folly . . . and misery.'

'Well, most people are bound to be miserable when they lose someone,' suggested Carole.

But that wasn't what he'd meant. 'I mean sometimes it's misery that makes someone do something that requires an undertaker's services. It's very sad, that. I mean, if you're dealing with bodies every day, you get a kind of immunity to the sort of shock most people'd feel. Because most people, what, they see a dead body once, twice in their lives perhaps? But we ... we never get to the point of forgetting that the bodies we deal with are human beings — at least I hope we don't. I hope I never did. But we get so's we can deal with bodies without emotions getting in the way.

'And most of the bodies we dealt with . . . well, it's clearly a blessing that they come to the end. Bodies that have been worn away by disease and decay and pain . . . that cliché "a merciful release" . . . it's true for many of them. But when there's a body there's nothing wrong with, that's when it gets to you.'

'"Nothing wrong with"? But they're dead, aren't they?'

'I'm talking about the ones who needn't be dead, who've made the decision to die.'

'Suicides?'

The old man nodded. He looked out over the placid grey-green sea as he continued, 'There was one did it here, you know.'

'Oh?'

'Ten years back, maybe not that long. I didn't see it, not when it happened. But obviously I saw the body. They'd got him out of the water quite quickly, so there wasn't a mark on him. Wearing a suit he was, he'd come straight down to the beach from his office. He worked in one of the Smalting estate agents. And the reason he'd done it, well, it wasn't a good enough reason. I'm not sure that anything's ever a good enough reason, not for that. Some girl he was in love with had dumped him, that was all. I mean, all right, I can see you might get upset over something like that, it might take you a few months, even a few years to get over it, but's not a reason to top yourself, is it? Not enough reason.'

He was silent for a moment, but Carole was confident he'd continue.

'What he'd done, how he did it . . . he'd just filled his pockets with stones, hardly stones, really. There are not many big stones on the beach here, mostly just shingle. And he'd put the shingle in the pockets of his jacket and his trousers, and he'd just walked straight out into the sea.

'It was low tide, I heard, so it took him a long time before the water got up to his knees, a long time till it got up to his waist, a long time till it got up to his neck. So he had plenty of time to think about what he was doing, plenty of time to change his mind. But he didn't.

'There were quite a lot of people on the beach, apparently, but no one did anything. I don't think any of them realized what he was doing. Yes, perhaps they thought it odd, a man dressed in a suit walking straight into the sea, but maybe they thought it was some stunt, that he'd done it for a bet or something. And by the time they'd realized that he'd disappeared under the sea and someone had phoned the coastguard . . . well, it was too late.

'And when they brought the body to my parlour, there was, like I say, not a mark on him. He must have worked out in a gym, he was well toned. Could have lasted another fifty years. It was when I had to bury ones like that that it upset me. That and the children too. You never quite get used to burying the children.'

The old man shrugged, shook his head and relapsed into silence.

After a few moments, Carole said softly, 'And now there's another dead body on Smalting Beach.'

'Mm?' He came out of his reverie and looked puzzled.

'I was meaning the body under Quiet Harbour.'

'Oh yes.' He spoke without much interest in the subject.

'You haven't heard any thoughts from anyone as to who it might have been . . . ?'

'No,' he said, almost sharply. 'Well, that is to say I've heard lots of thoughts from lots of people — all rubbish. I'm sure when the police have identified the remains, they will make an announcement as to who it is.' Again he spoke as if the subject was rather tiresome, not something that impinged on his own life.

Carole didn't think she would have found out much more from Lionel Oliver, but was in fact prevented from asking further questions by the return of his wife from her paddle. 'Lionel been keeping you amused, has he?'

'He's been very interesting.'

'Oh yes? That probably means he's been talking to you about undertaking. It's a subject that was never very interesting while he was doing the job, and hasn't got any more interesting since he's retired.' But Joyce Oliver spoke with affection and no rancour.

After his surprisingly personal monologue, her husband seemed to have dropped back into a kind of torpor. Maybe he was only talkative when his wife was absent.

Joyce got back into her chair and picked up one of her wordsearch books.

'I must be on my way. Nice to see you,' said Carole. 'Come on, Gulliver.'

Chapter Nineteen

Carole moved on to Seagull's Nest, the hut directly next to the still-cocooned Quiet Harbour. Outside it sat the matriarch who, thanks to Reginald Flowers, she now knew to be called Deborah Wrigley. Dressed in a designer towelling beach-robe, the widow had on her head another wide straw hat tied with a scarf and on her feet golden rubber sandals. She wore sunglasses with elaborate gold rims and an accumulation of rings sparkled on her bony brown fingers.

There was no sign of her son or daughter-in-law, but nearby her grandchildren Tristram and Hermione were deeply involved in patting crumbling sandcastles out of plastic buckets.

Carole did the Smalting equivalent of the 'Fethering nod', a slight inclination of the head to acknowledge someone one knew by sight but did not necessarily want to engage in conversation with.

Deborah Wrigley smiled graciously back. 'We've had the best of the day, I fear,' she observed.

'Yes, be rain before the evening's out,' said Carole, wondering what kind of Pavlovian reaction it was that prompted her at such moments into talking like a Central Casting Sussex fisherman. She nodded towards Quiet Harbour. 'Nasty business, what they found there, wasn't it?'

'Oh yes. I have to be very careful with the grandchildren, making sure they don't overhear people on the beach talking about it.'

'Mm. Are their parents not around? Last time I saw you here they were with them.'

'No, my son and daughter-in-law have gone back to London. I always insist on having a couple of days' quality time with the grandchildren when they come down here. I think it's good for them. Their parents indulge the little ones so much, you know, and so they get tantrums and what have you. But Tristram and Hermione behave very well when they're with me. They don't play up at all.'