With difficulty, she curbed her imagination and made a decision. Brighton would be the extent of her surveillance. If he went beyond Brighton, then that was it. End of adventure. She’d go back and feed Gulliver.
The possibility of a destination in Brighton or nearer was boosted by the fact that, after leaving the magnificence of Lancing College to his left and climbing the steep incline above Shoreham-on-Sea, Theo left the A27 in favour of the A2770. While the major road led up through a tunnel to all kinds of distant places, the one he had selected led through a variety of overlapping small towns until it reached Brighton.
The traffic was still heavy and slower on the minor road, so keeping the BMW in sight was again no problem. The two cars stopped and started through the suburban sprawl, then took a right turn down towards Hove. Where the road met the sea, Theo turned left, along the magnificent frontage towards Brighton. Carole knew it didn’t really make sense, but she seemed to feel a relaxation in his driving now, as if he were on the home straight.
And so it proved. Taking his tail by surprise, Theo’s BMW suddenly swung left up into a magnificent Regency square of fine houses frosted like wedding cakes. Carole almost overshot the junction, but, to a chorus of annoyed hooting from behind her, managed to manoeuvre the Renault up the same way.
At the top, on the side facing the sea, Theo bedded the car neatly into a reserved space. The lack of other parking left Carole with no choice but to drive past him. She juddered to a halt on yellow lines beyond the row of residents’ cars and looked ahead, trying to find that rarest of phenomena – a parking space in Brighton.
She was so preoccupied with her search that she didn’t look behind her. The tap on her window took her completely by surprise. She turned in the seat to see Theo looking down at her. Sheepishly, she lowered the window.
“So, Carole…” he asked, “why have you been following me?”
Twenty
Jude was let into the Summersdale house by one of the little Locke girls, dressed in a green school jumper and skirt. Whether it was Chloe or Sylvia – or indeed Zebba or Tamil – she had no means of knowing, and the information wasn’t volunteered. All the child did, when the visitor had identified herself, was to say lispingly, “Oh yes, Mummy’s expecting you. She’s upstairs.” Then, turning on her heel and announcing, “I’m playing,” she went back into the sitting room.
As Jude climbed the stairs, she tried to tune in to the atmosphere of the place. Beneath the surface chaos of lovable family life she could feel strong undercurrents of tension and anxiety. Those might be natural, given the Lockes’ current situation, but the impression she got was that they pre-dated the disappearance of Nathan from Marine Villas.
At the top of the stairs she paused, and a weak voice said, “I’m through here.”
Bridget Locke was wearing a plain white nightdress, and was propped up high on pillows in a single bed. But before Jude had a chance to process this information, she was told that this was the spare room. “I’m so uncomfortable in the night that I can’t share a bed with anyone. Rowley wouldn’t get any sleep if I was in our own room.”
Jude, as usual with a new client (she preferred that word to ‘patient’), began by asking a few general questions about Bridget’s medical history. Apparently, back pain was not a recurrent problem for her. This was the first time it had happened, or at least had happened so badly that she needed treatment.
“Why did you come to me? Most people’s first port of call would have been their GP.”
“Yes.” The woman seemed slightly confused by the question. “The fact is, I’ve always favoured alternative therapy over conventional medicine. My experience of doctors has been that, whatever your complaint is, they reckon a drug prescription will sort it out. I’m rather reluctant to cram my body full of chemicals.”
While Jude entirely agreed with the sentiment, she wasn’t convinced that Bridget Locke was telling the truth about her reasons for approaching her. “You said it was Sonia Dalrymple who suggested you call me…?”
“That’s right.”
“How is she?” A bit of general conversation might relax the woman – even, Jude found herself thinking for some reason, put her off her guard.
“She’s fine. Well, I say that…I think the marriage has broken up. Difficult man, Nicky.”
Jude, whose investigations with Carole into a murder at Long Bamber Stables had found out some interesting secrets about Nicky Dalrymple, might have put it more strongly. But she wasn’t about to say more about that. “So, if this is the first time your back’s gone, Bridget, what do you think’s caused it?”
“I don’t know. Lifting something out of the car perhaps? Standing at a funny angle?”
“Was there any moment when you suddenly felt it go?”
“No, it sort of happened gradually.”
“Hmm. You know, a lot of back pain isn’t primarily physical.”
“Are you saying it’s psychosomatic?” The reaction was a common one. No one wanted to have their suffering diminished by being told it was ‘all in the mind’.
“That’s a word you can use, if you want to,” Jude replied soothingly. “The mind and the body are very deeply interrelated. And whether the cause is something mental or something physical, it doesn’t make any difference to how much your back hurts.”
“No.” Bridget Locke sounded mollified.
“What are your normal stress reactions?”
“Sorry?”
“Most of us have some kind of physical response to stress. With some people it’s headaches…stomach upsets…insomnia…”
Bridget Locke seized on the last word. “I don’t sleep that well. I suppose that is my normal stress reaction, yes.”
“And presumably, with your back like this, you’re sleeping even less?”
The woman nodded. She did look exhausted. Under the neatly cut hair, the skin of her face was tight with tiredness and there were dark hollows beneath her eyes.
“You’re worried about Nathan?”
“Oh, you’ve heard about that?” Again something didn’t ring true with Jude. Bridget knew she lived in Fethering, she must have known the level of village gossip that an event like Kyra Bartos’s murder would generate in a place like that. Surely she would have assumed that Jude knew about it.
But this was not the moment for a challenge. “Yes, dreadful business. It must be hard on you…”
“Quite tough.”
“…and of course the rest of the family.” Though from what Carole had said, Bridget was the only one who seemed worried about the boy.
“Yes.”
“Hmm. I gather, Bridget, you’re not Rowland’s first wife?”
“No. How did you know that?”
No point in lying. “A friend of mine told me. Someone you’ve met. Her name’s Carole Seddon.”
“Ah, yes.” Was Jude wrong to detect a note of satisfaction in the response?
“Can I ask you…I’m sorry, you may think it’s being nosy, but it’s a question anyone from Fethering would ask you…”
“Because everyone from Fethering has now become an amateur detective?”
“If you like.”
“Including you and your friend Carole?”
“Maybe. We can’t help being interested.”
“No, only natural. So what was this question that everyone in Fethering would ask me? Do I know who killed Kyra Bartos?”
“No, not that one. They might be intrigued, but the question they’d ask is one that you might be more likely to have an answer to.”
“Which is?”
Jude looked the woman firmly in the eyes. “Do you have any idea what has happened to Nathan?”