‘Did you know her?’
‘We’d navver spoken to har before all this happened,’ said Shelley, ‘but we knew her ahter that. She told the police she’d seen Cherie carrying the little gal out the truck and off down the beach. She thowt it was stupid, that time in the morning, seeing Cherie with towels and that.’
‘Muriel was in her café very early,’ commented Strike. ‘This must have all been – what, five in the morning?’
‘Coffee machine wus on the blink,’ said Leonard. ‘She’n har husband wus in there tryina fix it before opening time.’
‘Ah, right,’ said Strike, making a note.
‘Muriel said the kid wus sleepy,’ said Shelley. ‘I said to Leonard ahter, “So she warn’t pestering har for a paddle, then, thass just an excuse.” I thenk it wus Cherie who wanted to go swimming, not the little gal.’
‘Do you give it a rest, woman,’ said Leonard before saying to Strike, ‘Th’only reason Muriel thowt the kid wus sleepy wus ’cause Cherie was carrying har. Kids like being carried, that don’t mean nothen.’
‘Wut about wut come out at the inquest?’ Shelley asked Leonard sharply. ‘About har swimming? Tell’m.’ But before Leonard could do so, Shelley said,
‘Cherie wus a champion swimmer. She said it at the inquest, in the dock.’
‘Champion,’ said Leonard, with an eye roll, ‘she warn’t a champion, she wus juss good at it whan she wus a kid.’
‘She wus on a team,’ said Shelley, still speaking to Strike. ‘She’d won medals.’
‘So?’ said Leonard. ‘Thass not a bloody crime.’
‘If I wus a bloody champion swimmer I’d’ve stayed out thar to halp the little gal, not gawn back to the beach,’ said Shelley firmly, to a murmur of agreement from the sofa.
‘Don’t matter how many medals you’ve got, a rip tide’s a rip tide,’ said Leonard, now looking disgruntled.
‘This is interesting,’ said Strike, and Shelley looked excited. ‘How did the subject of Cherie’s swimming come up at the inquest, can you remember?’
‘Ah, I can,’ said Shelley, ‘because she wus tryin’ to make out it wusn’t irresponsible, takin’ the little gal into the sea, because she wus a strong swimmer harself. I said to Len after, “Medals make you see in the dark, do they?” “Medals make it ollright to take a little gal who can’t swim into the North Sea, do they?”’
‘So it was established at the inquest that Daiyu couldn’t swim, was it?’
‘Ah,’ said Leonard. ‘Har mother said she’d navver larned.’
‘I didn’t take to that mother,’ said Shelley. ‘Looked like a witch.’
‘Wearin’ robes, Shell, warn’t she?’ piped up Suzy from the sofa.
‘Long black robes,’ said Shelley, nodding. ‘You’d thenk, ef you were going to court, you’d put on proper clothes. Juss respectful.’
‘Iss their religion,’ said Leonard, forgetting that he’d just described the church members as weirdos. ‘You carn’t stop people following thar religion.’
‘Ef you ask me, Cherie wus the one who wanted the swim,’ Shelley told Strike, disregarding her husband’s interjection. ‘The kid was sleepy, she warn’t asking to go. It was Cherie’s idea.’
‘You don’t know that,’ said Leonard.
‘Navver said I knew it,’ said Shelley loftily. ‘Suspected.’
‘Can you remember any details Cherie gave about her swimming career?’ asked Strike. ‘The name of a club? Where she trained? I’m trying to trace Cherie and if I could find old teammates, or a coach—’
‘Hang on,’ said Leonard, perking up.
‘What?’ said Shelley.
‘I might be able to ’elp thar.’
‘’Ow?’ said Shelley sceptically.
‘’Cause after court, I spoke to har. She wus crying outside. One of the little gal’s family had just been talking to har – havin’ a go, probably. He walked off quick enough when I gone over to har,’ said Leonard, with a slight swelling of the chest. ‘I felt sorry fur har, an’ I towd her, “I know you done averything you could, love.” You warn’t thar, you wus in the bog,’ said Leonard, forestalling Shelley. ‘She said to me, crying, like, “But I could’ve stopped it”, and—’
‘Hang on,’ said Strike. ‘She said, “But I could’ve stopped it”?’
‘Ah,’ said Leonard.
‘Those exact words? “I could’ve stopped it”, not “I could have saved her”?’
Leonard hesitated, absent-mindedly smoothing down the few strands of greying hair doing such a poor job of disguising his baldness.
‘Ah, it wus “I could’ve stopped it”,’ he said.
‘You can’t remember th’exact words, not after all this time,’ said Shelley scornfully.
‘Do you shet up, woman,’ said Leonard, for the second time, no longer smiling. ‘I can, an’ I’ll tell you why, because I said back to her: “Nothing on earth’ll stop a rip tide.” Thass wut I said. An’ then she said, “I’ll navvar go swimming again” or sumthing, an’ I said, “Thass juss silly, after all tham medals,” an’ she kinda laughed—’
‘Laughed!’ said Shelley indignantly. ‘Laughed, an’ there’s a kid dead!’
‘—an’ she started telling me a bit about what she’d won, an’ then you come outta the bog,’ Leonard told Shelley, ‘an’ said we needed to get back to Betty, so off we went. But I know whar she practised wus open air, ’cause—’
‘’Cause you started picturing har in har undies again, probably,’ said Shelley, eyes on her audience, but nobody sniggered: they were all now interested in Leonard’s story.
‘—cause she said she trained at a lido. I remember that. You’ve olluz been hard on that gal,’ he said, looking sideways at his wife. ‘She warn’t as bad as you make out.’
‘It wus her fault,’ said Shelley implacably, with a supporting murmur from the two women on the sofa. ‘Bloody stupid thing to do, take a kid who can’t swim to the beach, that time in the morning. I spoke to the little gal’s aunt in the bathroom,’ she added, possibly to even up the score between herself and Leonard, who’d just excited so much interest from Strike, ‘an’ she agreed the blame wus what it belonged an’ she thanked me an’ Leonard fur whut we’d done, gettin’ the coastguard an’ oll that, an’ she said it wus a relief it wus oll over. Posh woman,’ Shelley added judiciously, ‘but very nice.’
‘Nearly there, just a few more questions,’ said Strike, casting an eye over his notes to check he hadn’t missed anything. ‘Did either of you see anyone else on the beach, before the police got there?’
‘No, there warn’t—’ began Shelley, but Leonard spoke over her.
‘There wus. There wus tha’ jogger.’
‘Oh, yeah, there wus him,’ said Shelley grudgingly. ‘But he warn’t nothing to do with it.’
‘When did you see him?’ asked Strike.
‘He run past us,’ said Leonard. ‘Not long after we got on the beach.’
‘Running towards the place where you met Cherie, or away from it?’ asked Strike.
‘Away,’ said Leonard.
‘Can you remember what he looked like?’
‘Big guy, I thenk,’ said Leonard, ‘but it wus dark.’
‘And he was on his own? Jogging, not carrying anything?’
‘No, he warn’t carrying nothing,’ said Leonard.
‘Given the timings, would he have passed Cherie and Daiyu when they were still on the beach, do you think? Or after they entered the water?’
The Heatons looked at each other.
‘Ahter,’ said Leonard. ‘Can’t’ve been more’n five minutes after we seen him, she come out the sea, screaming.’
Strike made a note, then asked,
‘Did you see or hear any boats in the area – before the coastguard went out, I mean?’
Both Heatons shook their heads.
‘And the van was empty when you got there?’
‘Ah, empty and locked up,’ said Leonard.
‘And how long did the coastguard look for the body, d’you know?’
‘Ah, they give it a good few days,’ said Leonard.
‘They said at the inquest she must’ve got dragged down and got stuck somewhar,’ said Shelley. ‘’S’orful, really,’ she said, fondling her tiny dog’s ears. ‘Whan you thenk about it… poor little gal.’
‘One last thing,’ said Strike, ‘would you happen to remember another drowning off the beach, back in 1988? A woman had a seizure in the water, not far from the shore.’
‘’Ang on a mo,’ piped up the wheezy George from the sofa. ‘’Eighty-eight? I remember that. I was thar!’
His companions all looked round at him, surprised.
‘Ah,’ said George excitedly, ‘if iss the one I’m thenking of, she wus with a little gal, too!’
‘That sounds right,’ said Strike. ‘The drowned woman was there with her husband and daughter. Did you see what happened?’
‘I seen a bloke with long har a-running into the sea and then him an’ another bloke dragging her up along the beach. The little gal wus crying and screaming. Tarrible business. The firs’ man gev har mouth to mouth until the ambulance came, but I hard after it was no good, she died. It wus in the paper. Epileptic. Tarrible business.’
‘Wut’s that got to do with our little gal?’ asked a curious Shelley.
‘The man whose wife died of the seizure in the water was Daiyu’s stepfather,’ said Strike.
‘No!’ said Shelley and Suzy together.
‘Yes,’ said Strike, closing his notebook.
‘Thass a funny coincidence,’ said the wide-eyed Shelley.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ said Strike. ‘Well, I think that’s everything. You’ve been very helpful, thank you. I wonder whether you could give me directions to the bit of beach where you met Cherie?’
‘Straight down th’end of our road, turn left,’ said Leonard, pointing. ‘You can’t miss it, the old café and car park’s still thar.’
‘And where—?’ began Strike, turning to George, but the latter anticipated the question.
‘Same place,’ he said, and the three women gasped. ‘Exact same place.’
63
The heart thinks constantly. This cannot be changed, but the movements of the heart—that is, a man’s thoughts—should restrict themselves to the immediate situation. All thinking that goes beyond this only makes the heart sore.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
It took Strike a further twenty minutes to extricate himself from the Heatons and their friends, but he did so as tactfully and pleasantly as he could manage, in case he needed to speak to them again. Once outside, he relaxed his facial muscles with relief, walked to the end of Garden Street and onto the esplanade.