Bones Under The Beach Hut

'So who did you see?' asked Carole, her throat tense with excitement.

'I saw that painter guy who lives on the prom.'

'Gray Czesky?'

'Yes. He was very drunk. He wandered down on to the beach and staggered off behind the beach huts over there.'

'What? Near Quiet Harbour? Near the one the police are investigating?'

'Yes.'

'Was he carrying anything?'

'Perhaps. I can't remember. I think perhaps he had a plastic carrier bag with him.'

'What time would this have been, Katie?'

'I don't know. I was quite caught up with what I was writing. Early hours, I suppose. One or two in the morning.'

'Did you see him leave the beach?' A shake of the head. 'Did you see anyone else?'

'Yes. A bit later ... I don't know how much later because I was caught up in the book, but I heard voices whispering. A man and a woman.'

'Could you hear what they were saying?'

'No. But I looked out and I saw them both going the same way Gray Czesky had gone.'

'Towards Quiet Harbour?'

'Yes.'

'Who were they, Katie?'

'One was the guy who used to be in Quiet Harbour with his girlfriend.'

'Mark Dennis?'

'I don't know his name, but he's got that small girlfriend with almost white-blond hair. Actually, come to think of it, I haven't seen them down here on the beach much recently.'

'And did you see the woman he was with?' asked Carole.

'Yes. She doesn't go out much, seems to spend most of her time in the house. But I have seen her a couple of times with Gray Czesky. It was his wife, Helga.'

Jude was back at Woodside Cottage when Carole returned to Fethering. They stood tensely together in Jude's sitting room while Carole dialled the number Nuala Cullan had given them.

A machine answered. It requested anyone who wanted to leave a message for Gray or Helga Czesky to speak after the tone.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Carole switched off the phone, then consulted Jude who advised her to leave a message. 'We need to see them, don't we?'

'What should I say? Maintain the pretence that I want Gray to do me a watercolour of Fethering Beach?'

'No, I think we've gone beyond that. Take the direct approach. Say you want to talk about the fire that was started under Quiet Harbour.'

'Strange that they don't answer. I got the impression that they were both in the house most of the time. Katie Brunswick said Helga don't go out much.'

'Maybe they're the sort who always leave the answering machine on. So that they can screen incoming calls.'

So it proved. Carole left a terse message ending with Jude's number, and it was a matter of moments before the phone rang. Jude answered. It was Helga. She sounded cautious and a little distressed.

'Please, who am I talking to?' Over the phone her German accent was thicker.

'My name's Jude.'

'It was not your voice which left the message.'

'No. That was my friend Carole. We did meet on Monday. We were the ones who came to your house to discuss a commission with your husband.'

'Ah.' Helga didn't take issue with them about the subterfuge. She had more pressing priorities. 'You said you knew something about the fire at Quiet Harbour . . . ?'

'Yes. We know who lit it,' said Jude, making what was little more than a conjecture sound like a certainty.

'I see.' Helga was silent for a moment. 'Yes, we must meet,' she said finally, in a voice of long suffering.

They had agreed to come round to Woodside Cottage. Gray Czesky had been tidied up, presumably on his wife's insistence. He was out of his paint-spattered work clothes, and in grey trousers and a blue blazer looked somehow like a large naughty schoolboy waiting for a dressing-down from the headmaster.

It was evident that in the current situation his wife represented that kind of authority figure at least as much as Carole and Jude did. Once the couple had sat down and refused offers of tea and coffee, Helga announced, 'Gray has something he wishes to confess to you.'

He was shamefaced, but still had a bit of his old bravado left. 'It's hell,' he began, 'having an artistic temperament. Nobody really understands, nobody knows what goes on inside my brain.'

None of the three women said anything, leaving him to dig himself out of his own hole. 'I don't really always have control of myself. My emotions are so volatile, I don't know what I'm going to feel from one moment to the next. It's as if I'm being blown all over the place by an unidentifiable power that is stronger than I am.'

'An unidentifiable power like drink?' Carole suggested rather meanly.

'Well, yes,' he conceded, 'I suppose drink is part of it. But that's more a symptom than a cause. I sometimes have to drink to subdue the agonizing thoughts that come unbidden into my mind.'

'Oh yes?'

'And then sometimes I admit that I do things under the influence of drink that I might not do in my more sober moments.'

'Not that you have many of those,' said Helga.

There was an expression of pure shock, almost as though Gray Czesky had been slapped in the face, at this surprising and sudden disloyalty from his wife. Carole and Jude wondered whether they were witnessing the moment of a worm turning, of the final straw being placed upon the overladen camel's back.

'Well, yes, I agree, the drinking does sometimes get out of hand. But I need it. I have some of my best inspirations when I'm drunk.'

Carole and Jude exchanged looks. Both were wondering how much inspiration it took to paint mimsy-pimsy little watercolours of local beaches and the South Downs.

'I think, Gray,' said Helga, 'you had better tell them what happened last week. That evening when Mark came down to see you.'

Her husband nodded his head ruefully.

'Would this have been the Monday?'

'Yes,' said Helga. 'Go on, Gray.'

There was a truculent silence before he obeyed. 'Okay, I'd had a call from Mark that day.'

'Had you been in touch with him ever since he left Smalting?' asked Jude.

'No, it was a long time since I'd last heard from him. When he left Philly, whenever that was . . .'

'Beginning of May,' his wife supplied.

'Yes. At the time he asked if I minded him using our phone number for people who wanted to contact him.'

'And did many people want to contact him?'

A shake of the head. 'Hardly anyone. He gave me a mobile number and—'

'If he'd got a mobile,' Carole objected, 'why did he need to have your number for messages?'

The painter shrugged. 'I don't know. Maybe he wanted to keep people at a distance. Maybe it was a new mobile and he didn't want people to know the number. Anyway, after the first few days he never answered it when I called him. Until suddenly he rang out of the blue last week.'

'What did he say?'

'Just that he was coming down to Smalting, and did I mind if he dropped in. I said fine.'

'He didn't say whether he was coming down to see Philly?'

'No.'

'And how did he seem when you saw him?' asked Carole.

'How do you mean?'

'Did he seem exactly the same as he had when you last saw him?'

Gray Czesky shrugged. 'Pretty much, I guess.'

'No,' said Helga firmly. 'That is not true. He had put on a lot of weight. He seemed to have lost his confidence. Very . . . what's the word? Jittery. No, he was in an extremely strange state when he arrived.'

'Was he?'

'Yes, Gray. Though you were pretty soon too drunk to notice.'

Her husband chuckled with a schoolboy boastfulness. 'True, we did get well stuck into the sauce that night.'