“But did it work?”
“Not really. I didn’t get any information out of him. I’ve probably just forfeited his goodwill and made him very suspicious of me. If any further investigative approaches need to be made to Martin Rutherford, I think you’d better take them on, Carole.”
“Right.” She fingered the steel-grey helmet of her hair. “I can’t really pretend this needs doing again.”
“No, and I think we must find a different sleuthing modus operandi. Having constant haircuts is very expensive, apart from anything else. Martin & Martina was nearly double the price of Connie’s Clip Joint.”
“Hmm.” There was a silence. Both sipped their Chilean Chardonnays. They’d agreed to meet in the Crown and Anchor when they returned from their respective Saturday morning expeditions. Just for a drink, they’d said, but Ted Crisp’s recommendation of the Cheesy-lopped Fisherman’s Pie had proved too tempting.
Carole idly flicked through the Martin & Martina promotional brochure that Jude had brought back from the salon. Expensively produced, it featured news from the branches, ideas for hairstyles, a photograph of the Stylist of the Month, and so on. The publication gloried in the company’s achievements. Again Carole was aware of the contrast with the small-scale operation that was Connie’s Clip Joint. At the back of the brochure, portraits of the owners framed a message of welcome to their customers. A good-looking couple, glowing in their shared success.
“I think I behaved as I did,” Jude said thoughtfully, “because I feel we’re getting nowhere on this case. We’re surrounded by blind alleys. We can’t get anywhere on the Locke side of the case until Nathan is found. Getting in touch with Joe Bartos seems to be impossible.”
“Did you talk to Wally Grenston again?”
“I did – gave him a call to thank him for my coffee. He didn’t have any ideas. I think he got rather protective of his friend Joe. The old man’s mourning the death of his daughter. Wally implied that if he doesn’t want to speak to us, that’s his right, and his wishes should be respected.”
“Which is of course true.”
“Yes. So I suppose I just wanted to shake things up. I thought maybe being rude to Martin Rutherford, possibly even frightening him with reference to Kyra’s proposed legal action might…I don’t know…make something happen.”
“Rather a risky strategy,” said Carole primly.
“Yes.” Jude looked contrite and uncharacteristically down.
Then their attention was drawn by a raucous shout from the bar. “You owe me a fiver!” roared Ted Crisp. Jude giggled.
“What is it?”
“Before you arrived, I was talking to Ted. I told him this way of making money by betting which fingers hairdressers use to hold their scissors.”
“Really?” Carole looked down at her hand and moved the digits around. “So which fingers are they?”
“Ah,” said Jude. “That’d be telling.”
Eleven
There were a lot of dog owners in Fethering, but Carole Seddon prided herself on usually being on the beach with Gulliver before any of them. Waking early was a habit dinned into her all her life, to be ready for her daily train journey to school, and then her commute to the Home Office. During the relatively brief period she took off work after Stephen’s birth, the baby’s imperatives had also ensured early rising and, though in retirement the demands on her time were less, the habit was engrained. For Carole, rising late would have been an unacceptable indulgence, on a par with watching breakfast television. And getting up early on a Sunday, when most of the world was having a lie-in, gave her an even greater sense of being on the moral high ground.
Besides, Carole liked to be active as soon as she woke up. Lying in bed, being immobile even for a moment, was dangerous. It was at such moments that she could be ambushed by unwelcome thoughts. Her mind was a pressure cooker, whose lid needed to be firmly tightened down.
Gulliver didn’t care when she got him up, so long as there was a walk involved. He still became puppyishly exuberant at the prospect of being taken out, particularly to Fethering Beach, where the melange of sharp smells and the range of flotsam and jetsam represented a canine nirvana.
That Sunday dog and owner were on the beach before six o’clock. The early morning air was a cold breath of impending winter. It was hardly light when she had left High Tor and, as September gave way to October, she knew she would have to start her walks later, unless she wanted to set off in total darkness. There’d be a brief respite when Summer Time ended, and then winter would once again inexorably put its squeeze on the early mornings.
End of October the clocks changed. Carole always remembered details like that. In retirement she needed more than ever to have her year delineated, to have fixed points in the potentially unstructured void of her life. And also by the end of October, she remembered suddenly, Stephen and Gaby’s baby will probably have arrived. I will be a grandmother. The thought filled her with an uneasy mixture of excitement and apprehension.
Gulliver had the personality of all Labradors, which meant that at times he could be exceptionally soppy. But on Fethering Beach he became a hero. Beleaguered on all sides by potential attacks from waves, stones, swathes of bladderwrack, ends of rope, water-smoothed spars and broken plastic bottles, he triumphed over them all, scampering off in sudden sallies, only to return breathless to his mistress’s side with the gleam of victory in his eye. King Arthur never had a more gallant knight errant than Gulliver on Fethering Beach.
Carole didn’t always take him on the same route. Like all creatures of habit, she hated to be thought of as a creature of habit. Where the road met the beach, she would sometimes turn left towards the Yacht Club and the mouth of the Fether; other times she would go right, where the dunes stretched as far as the eye could see. Coming back, too, there were alternative routes possible. They could either take the High Street directly to High Tor, or they could walk along the bank of the river and cut back along one of the little roads parallel to the sea. Or then again, if she felt like it, having curtailed Gulliver’s freedom by putting his lead back on, Carole could take him along the little service road which ran behind the High Street shops.
For no very good reason, this was the route she chose that morning. Though busy with deliveries during the week, the road was virtually unused at weekends because there were no houses there. On one side was an area of scrubland, its surface a mixture of sand and earth, from which the local residents discouraged summer picnickers. And on the other were the backyards of the shops: some double-gated parking bays for major delivery vehicles, others like the ends of gardens, wooden-fenced with small doors. The back of Connie’s Clip Joint was of the second kind, and as Carole led Gulliver along the road that Sunday morning, she saw a man come through the door and hurry to a gleaming new Mini. Something about his movement was furtive. Just before he got into the driver’s seat, he gave a quick look around, and Carole recognized a face whose photograph she’d seen only the day before.
It was Martin Rutherford.
Twelve
“Well, what does that suggest? Why was he there, do you think?”
Jude pinched her upper lip between thumb and forefinger for a moment, then said, “It suggests he’s still got keys to the place.”
“Connie’s Clip Joint?”
“Yes.”
“But Connie said the only spare keys were the ones she gave to Kyra.”
Jude shrugged. “Maybe Martin copied a set before he handed them back to her…? Maybe he handed over the keys to the front, but hung on to the one for the back door…?”