‘How?’
‘I wrote down the details before I gave the handbag to the police.’ She pointed. ‘There’s the date of issue. Does that tally with the date of her disappearance?’
Carole nodded. ‘Issued exactly three weeks before. So, it definitely looks as if she was planning some kind of trip abroad.’
‘All right …’ Jude sighed. ‘Let’s follow this theory a little way. Anita, who has never before expressed any interest in leaving the UK, suddenly applies for a passport, with a view to joining lover boy in Cádiz. Her departure is imminent, which is why she has her shiny new passport in her handbag.’
‘But then someone’ – Carole picked up the thread – ‘took that handbag and shut it away behind a panel in Footscrow House for thirty years. Why would they want to do that?’
‘More importantly,’ asked Jude, ‘who would want to do that?’
It was a long time since Jude had been to Fethering Yacht Club but the interior was unchanged. The main feature of the bar was a sea-facing window that filled an entire wall. It muffled the sound of metal cables clacking against masts in the winter wind. And the eternal swishing of the sea. And it enabled the owners to look out at their boats, lined up on the hardstanding between clubhouse and beach.
After dark, the window picked up reflections of the rows of bottles behind the bar opposite. By day, it opened on to the restless vista of the English Channel, rendered more turbulent by the waters of the Fether, which ran along the side wall of the yacht club. The river was tidal until way beyond Fedborough on the edge of the South Downs, which meant that twice a day the phenomenon would be seen of water flowing upstream. (This set up a complex system of currents where the Fether met the sea, a hazard which had caused a good few fatalities over the years. The bodies of those unfortunates who fell in the river tended, within a few days, to wash up on the beach. They had been known for many years as ‘Fethering Floaters’.)
The fascination exerted by the sea was such that, though there were stools by the bar, the most popular seats were lined up in front of the drinks shelf that ran along the big window. There, members could while away the hours, nursing a pint, watching the shifting seascape and thinking whatever thoughts they wished to think. That Saturday, the vista which opened out to them was icy, steel-grey and fretful.
Jude had been surprised when Pete had said he was a member of Fethering Yacht Club. One of her previous contacts there, a former vice-commodore called Denis Woodville, now long dead, had been insistent on the club’s exclusivity and unwillingness to admit ‘riff-raff’. And, though many of the locals would strenuously deny the accusation, there were very rigid social divisions in Fethering. Even in the twenty-first century, there was still a distinction between people in the professions and those in trade. How would the average decorator get through the arcane membership selection process for the yacht club?
The question just made Jude more aware of how different Pete was from ‘the average decorator’. As was often repeated round Fethering, nobody had a bad word to say about Pete. His enthusiasm for sailing and his skill at the sport were unquestioned. Over the years, he had won most of the club’s available trophies. And maybe he had been admitted to membership at a time of less social snobbery.
When Jude entered the bar, Pete was sitting at the counter with a pint in front of him, talking to a couple, one of whom she recognized. It was Lauren Givens, the woman she’d encountered earlier in the week on Fethering Beach. And the way they sat together suggested that the man beside her was her husband, the rich one who reputedly spent his weeks working at marketing in London while his wife crafted ceramic toadstools in Fethering.
Jude saw that, as ever, there were other members by the window, contemplating the unending sequence of the tides, the ever-changing image of the English Channel.
Pete, who’d clearly been on the lookout, rose from his stool to greet her. ‘Glad you could make it, love. What can I get you?’
‘Sauvignon Blanc’d be good. New Zealand if they’ve got it.’
‘Sure they have. Don’t know if you know Fred and Lauren Givens …?’
Jude grinned at the woman, ‘We’ve sort of met, haven’t we?’
Lauren nodded a little awkwardly. While Pete attracted the barmaid’s attention, her husband rose and held out a hand to Jude. Fred Givens was a tall man with expertly groomed grey hair. He wore leisurewear so immaculate that it contrived to look like formalwear.
‘Jude – my husband Fred.’
‘Nice to meet you.’
‘Jude, the pleasure’s all mine.’ His manner was as smooth as his appearance. ‘And I hope to see a lot more of you.’
‘Oh?’ said Jude, slightly puzzled.
‘The fact is, Jude, that I’m hoping to get to know a lot more Fethering residents a lot better. I was just talking to Pete about it.’
‘About what?’ She gratefully took the drink that Pete held out for her.
It was the decorator who answered her question. ‘Fred was telling me about the benefits of “working from home”. During all that lockdown caper he had no choice, no office to go to. And now he’s got a taste for it.’
‘You can say that again,’ Fred Givens enthused. ‘Enlightenment came upon me as I sat in my delightful house in De Vere Road. Why should I have this divided life? Weekdays in London, weekends in Fethering … doesn’t make sense. So, during the lockdown, I got into a very nice routine, turned one of the spare bedrooms into a home office, set up all the technology I need there. Marketing these days is mostly a matter of dealing with figures and you don’t need an office to do that – you just need a laptop. So, now I can move around again, if I’ve got meetings, I go up to London … what, one day, two days a week? And the rest of the time I can benefit from the delights of Fethering. Works a treat. I’ve got my little workstation upstairs, Lauren potters around with her pottery downstairs – it’s the perfect work/life balance.’
The expression on his wife’s face suggested that she didn’t fully share his enthusiasm for the situation. And, also, that she’d heard the witticism ‘potters around with her pottery’ many times before. ‘Perfect for you, maybe, Fred,’ she said.
The level of venom in Lauren’s words made Jude think a change of subject might avert a marital row. So, in classic English style, she fell back on the weather. ‘God, the heavens opened that day when I saw you on the beach, didn’t they, Lauren?’
‘What? When?’ A look of confusion.
‘Thursday. We met just by the beach huts.’
‘Oh yes, of course.’
‘I walked back slowly, getting soaked to the bone. And you ran off home, like a murderer leaving the scene of the crime.’
Lauren still looked confused. Jude chuckled. ‘What’d you been doing that you shouldn’t have been, Lauren?’
But there was no response. This time, Pete came to the conversational rescue. ‘Of course, I was just pointing out to Fred that working from home is all right for some. If I tried it, soon I wouldn’t be able to move for the layers of paint and wallpaper.’
Fred Givens enjoyed the joke. ‘Good one, Pete,’ he said with just a hint of condescension. Jude got the impression that, in his attitude to the decorator, he was very definitely demonstrating his ‘common touch’.
Maybe Pete was aware of the slight because he said, ‘Need to sort out stuff with Jude,’ and steered her away from the couple at the bar. As he did so, he caught the eye of someone he recognized who’d arrived only a few minutes earlier. A tall man with foppishly long grey hair.
‘Hello, Glen,’ said Pete.
Jude couldn’t believe her luck. Carole had fallen on her feet meeting Malk Penberthy and now she was being offered an equivalent moment of serendipity. There couldn’t be that many people in a village like Fethering called Glen. There was a strong chance this must be the financially fortunate Glen Porter, the man who had been at school with Anita Garner and who claimed to have been inside her knickers.