Simon Brett - The Corpse on the Court

‘And your girlfriend’s never questioned what you’re doing?’

‘Oh no. I’ve got Kelly well trained.’

The glibness of his reply grated on Jude. Once or twice in her own life she’d been involved with married or otherwise cohabiting men, and she remembered the instinctive lies with which they had regularly fobbed off their unsuspecting wives. Even the recollection of it made her feel shabby.

‘So you and Tonya meet once the court bookings have finished? After nine thirty?’

‘Yes. Or quite often the eight fifteen court doesn’t get booked, particularly during the summer.’

‘So you both have your electronic cards to get into the place?’

‘’Course we do. But I don’t bring my car back in. That might draw attention from someone at Lockleigh House. So we just use the keypad entry to the court.’

‘And you don’t turn on the main lights, just the ones in the club room?’

‘That’s right. If the court lights are on they can be seen from Lockleigh House because of the glass roof. But the club room windows face off down the garden, so there’s no danger of anyone knowing we’re there, particularly if we’ve got the curtains drawn.’ A cockiness was creeping back into his voice, pride at his own cleverness.

‘So you stay there till. .?’

‘Well. .’

‘Till you’ve had sex?’

‘Yeah, all right.’

‘And how long might that be?’

‘Depends.’ There was a hint of a chuckle in his voice. Now he was definitely bragging.

‘Have you ever stayed there all night?’

‘No. Well, once or twice we’ve gone to sleep and, like, woken up in the small hours, but we’ve never been there when anyone might catch us in the morning.’

‘So, if you’ve been covering your tracks so well, how did George Hazlitt find out what you’d been doing?’

Ned Jackson’s voice was full of grievance as he said, ‘Mate of mine, guy I often play with, told him.’

‘Nice kind of mate.’

‘Yeah, well, he’s like that. Bad loser. Just ’cause I always beat him, even on handicap. And my handicap’s going down, and his isn’t. I’m now at plus six.’ The junior pro’s full self-assurance was returning.

‘Does George know that it’s Tonya you’ve been spending out-of-hours time at the court with?’

‘God, no! My mate may be a shit, but he wouldn’t want to lose me my job.’

‘Would it be that serious?’

‘If George found out I’d been messing around with a junior member and that was passed on to the committee, I don’t think it’d go down very well.’

‘So it sounds like you won’t be able to continue these assignations with Tonya?’

‘No, well, there you go.’ He didn’t sound too upset about the situation. ‘I think her and me were probably getting to the end of the road, anyway.’

‘Does she know that?’ Jude asked again.

‘She’ll work it out.’

The callousness of his response made her angry, but Jude didn’t say anything. Her mind was buzzing with possibilities. . like, for instance, was Ned Jackson the only person to have thought of using Lockleigh House tennis court for carnal encounters?

But there was another question uppermost in her mind, one that had to be asked out loud. ‘Had you and Tonya been at the court the night Reggie Playfair died?’

On the Friday morning Carole found that she had run out of Gulliver’s dog biscuits. This was most unusual. Her shopping was normally planned with military efficiency, a monthly run to Sainsbury’s at Rustington for the big stuff, and shorter weekly visits for perishables. For running out of dog biscuits she awarded herself a very serious black mark. It offended her image of her own efficiency. She hadn’t been concentrating, thinking too much about the Lady in the Lake case.

As a result she had to make one of her rare visits to Allinstore, Fethering’s famously inefficient supermarket. And while she was passing the shelves of newspapers in there, she saw a familiar face looking out of one of the front pages.

It was in The Argus , Brighton’s daily newspaper, and the photograph was of Iain Holland. The headline read: ‘COUNCILLOR SLAMS SOCIAL SERVICES.’

Back at High Tor over a coffee, to the sound of Gulliver demolishing a dog biscuit on the floor, Carole read the article. Iain Holland’s outburst had been prompted by the disappearance of a teenage girl in care. Bolstering his credentials as a crusading local politician, he lambasted the inefficiencies of Brighton’s Children’s Services. He also mentioned how much he empathized with the family of the missing girl, because his own daughter from a previous marriage had disappeared and never been found.

Carole checked out the time-line. The report had been published the previous day. So when she’d met Iain Holland in the Two Ducks on the Wednesday he must have known it was about to appear. No wonder he had been so ready to see her. If there was anyone out there who knew that Marina was still alive he’d obviously wanted to keep them quiet rather than reveal how he had used her disappearance for his own political ends.

Carole thought back to how their Wednesday meeting had ended. Of course she had refused his offer to buy her silence, but the fact that he had made it seemed to confirm that Iain Holland knew Marina to be still alive. Where, though? Why hadn’t she contacted her mother in all these years? Was she being imprisoned in some way? Abroad? In Russia? Or had her father bought her silence in the same way he tried to buy Carole’s?

But more important than all these questions was the big one: how was Carole Seddon going to find out where Marina Holland was?

Gulliver got the bonus of another walk on Fethering Beach as his mistress tried to work out her options. There weren’t many. The big advance she had made was in deducing from Iain Holland’s behaviour the certainty that his daughter was alive. Otherwise, the only clue she had to Marina’s whereabouts was still just the name. Vladimir.

Carole decided the only thing she could do was to put through another call to Donna Grodsky. Having made that decision halfway through their customary circuit of the beach she turned and headed straight back to High Tor. Gulliver was extremely disgruntled by this disruption to his routine.

The baby was gurgling happily in the background when Carole got through. Once she’d identified herself, she said, ‘Kyle sounds happy.’

‘Yes,’ Donna Grodsky agreed. ‘I’ve been piling up his beakers for him and knocking them down. He loves that. So then I do it again. And again. Terrific job for a grown woman, isn’t it?’

‘I think it’s something most mothers have to go through.’

‘Yes. Are you calling about Marina again?’

‘I am. You remember you talked about this boy called Vladimir. .?

‘Uh-huh.’

‘. . and you couldn’t remember his second name. Well, I know it’s a long shot, but I was just wondering whether, by any chance, something’s jogged your memory. .?’

‘And I’ve suddenly remembered what it was?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wouldn’t that be wonderfully neat?’

‘It would,’ Carole agreed, feeling a little foolish.

‘Well, as it happens, you’re in luck.’

‘Really?’

‘That night, the night after we met at the George’s Head, Kyle woke me about two, like he usually does — and suddenly I remembered.’

‘Oh, that’s brilliant!’

‘It came back to me, because I remembered Marina talking to me about this guy she really fancied who she’d met down the Russian club and she said it was a coincidence that his name started with the same letter as mine.’

‘So what was it?’

‘Gretchenko. Vladimir Gretchenko,’ said Donna Grodsky.