‘So what’s he told you about me?’ demanded Jonquil Targett. ‘Nothing, if I know Piers. Presenting himself as the poor, suffering divorce, finally having got over the trauma of the relationship in which he’d invested so much emotional capital and at last ready to take the first stumbling steps towards a new one? Only needing the love of a good woman? Is that the image he’s projected to you?’
‘No,’ replied Jude with more coolness than she felt. ‘Piers has not told me he’s divorced. He’s made no secret of the fact that he’s still technically married.’
‘Technically? Huh, I like that. Reducing me to a small technicality in his life. I hope he hasn’t pretended to you that you’re the first of his girlfriends.’
‘No, he’s never suggested that.’
‘Though I think you’re the first he’s brought back to this house, the house that we jointly own.’
Jude tried to think back to what Piers had actually said about his emotional history and realized that it had been very little. They’d been so caught up in the happiness they’d found in each other that most other things had seemed irrelevant. They’d both known that there were big subjects that they would have to deal with eventually if their relationship progressed. But shelving such discussions for the time being had suited both of them.
‘Jonquil, just leave her alone,’ said Piers in a voice Jude hadn’t heard from him before. There was a note of despair in it. Gone was the urbane articulacy. In his wife’s presence Piers Targett seemed immobilized, struck down by the same inertia that he had said prevented him from selling the house.
Jonquil knew the power she had over him, and gloried in it. She was an attractive woman, probably about the same age as Jude, but thin as a rake. The long blonded hair, though perhaps a bit too young for her, had been expertly done. She was dressed in the kind of tight sweater and jeans that people with her figure could get away with.
‘Piers,’ said Jude, ‘I think I’ll go now.’
‘No, don’t.’
‘I think I should.’
He didn’t argue any further. Jonquil had drained the will out of him. ‘Look, I’ll give you a call,’ he said. ‘I can explain.’
As she went out through the front door, Jude wondered how many men had used that pathetic, hopeless expression over the years. ‘I can explain.’ And how many women had accepted those explanations, knowing all the time that they were as false as the lies that had got the man into the position of needing to explain in the first place?
It was nearly dark, but at least the rain from earlier in the afternoon had stopped. Jude didn’t know exactly where she was, but she remembered the car going through the small village of Goffham just before they reached their destination. And in that small village there had been a pub. She’d walk back there, have a glass of wine — no, a large Scotch — and phone for a cab to take her back to Fethering.
Untidily parked on the gravel outside the house there was now a Nissan Figaro, presumably the car in which Jonquil Targett had arrived. Its baby-blue paint looked somehow ineffectual beside the classic scarlet of the E-Type. As she walked past, Jude noticed something white draped haphazardly across the Figaro’s back seat.
It was a wedding dress.
Mid morning on the Sunday, Carole rang the number Susan Holland had given her for Donna Grodsky. When the phone was answered there was a baby crying in the background. She explained that she was trying to find out what had happened to Marina.
‘Are you police or something?’ asked the suspicious voice from the other end of the line.
Carole was only fleetingly tempted to lie. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Good. Because they were bloody useless when Marina originally disappeared.’
‘I was wondering if you would be prepared to talk to me about what might have happened to her?’
Donna Grodsky didn’t sound keen. ‘What do I get out of it?’ she asked.
The only answer Carole could come up with sounded a bit feeble to her. ‘I could buy you lunch.’
As it turned out, that was spot on. ‘Yeah, all right. I never get out of the bloody house these days, what with the baby and everything.’
She gave the name of a pub, the George’s Head in the Moulsecoomb area of Brighton, and they agreed that Carole would appear there the following morning at twelve. ‘It’s a good time, because sometimes the little bugger has a kip round then.’
As she put the phone down, Carole felt a warm glow. She did get a charge out of conducting an investigation independently of Jude. Yes, they worked very well together, but Carole didn’t really need Jude. With her Home Office background, it was Carole Seddon who supplied the intellectual rigour in their investigations. Her neighbour’s method had always been based more on intuition and outrageous good luck. Not that she was jealous, of course, but Jude did just swan through life so easily.
Little did Carole suspect that next door at Woodside Cottage her neighbour was still crying.
Jude’s mobile rang on the Sunday evening. The number calling was Piers Targett’s. She answered it instantly, but it wasn’t Piers at the other end.
‘Hello. I’m calling on Piers’ mobile. It’s Jonquil. We met earlier.’
‘I remember.’ What on earth did the woman want? To pour out more poison about her husband? To hurt Jude even more?
‘I gather you were with Piers when he found Reggie Playfair’s body at the tennis court. .’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you see him take the poor old bugger’s mobile phone?’
‘What? No, I didn’t.’
But the scene came back very vividly. Finding Reggie lying on the court. . Then Piers sending her off to fetch his iPhone from the car. . because he wanted a moment alone with the corpse of his old friend. . If he planned to purloin the dead man’s mobile, he’d created the perfect opportunity.
‘Well, Piers has got it. I saw it in his jacket pocket, recognized it straight away — Reggie had this case specially made for it in purple and green stripes — the Lockleigh House club colours.’
And Jonquil Targett echoed Jude’s thoughts exactly as she went on, ‘Now, why on earth would Piers want to take Reggie’s mobile?’