The Torso in the Town. Simon Brett

Chapter Two

      Professional priorities might have dictated that Dr Durrington would be first to the body, but he showed a marked reluctance to move from the dinner table. It was Kim Roxby who led the way into the hall, where she immediately stopped to comfort her hysterical daughters.

      Her husband took the torch from his son and set off through the door that led down to the cellar. He was grim-faced, determined not to appear panicked. If the commotion turned out to be a practical joke perpetrated by his children, they were about to be severely reprimanded. Disrupting their parents’ social life, they would learn, was not funny.

      It seemed natural for Jude to follow Grant down the stairs into the darkness. Harry, half-fascinated, half-repelled, trailed after them.

      The beam of the torch waved around in the gloom. Jude had difficulty judging the precise dimensions of the space, but it felt low-ceilinged and smelt of mildew.

      ‘Where is it, Harry – this thing you claim you’ve seen?’ The father’s voice was taut with contained emotion.

      ‘I didn’t claim to see it, Dad,’ the boy protested weakly. ‘It’s there – over through that partition.’

      The torch beam landed on a discoloured sheet of chipboard, bloated with damp, which had been nailed across one end of the cellar space. The top corner had been pulled away and flapped down like a piece of torn paper.

      ‘Did you do that, Harry?’ asked Grant sharply. ‘Pull it down?’

      ‘Yes,’ came the grudging admission from behind Jude.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Just to see what space there was down here – see if we can turn this into something.’

      ‘Into what, Harry?’

      ‘I don’t know. Computer room . . . ? Den . . . ? Some place where I can go, somewhere I can be on my own . . .’

      Jude was struck, given the situation, by the incongruity of the father questioning his son in this way. For a moment she wondered if Grant was just delaying the sight of the horror that lay ahead, but then she decided the exchange was simply a reflection of their relationship. Grant Roxby still wanted to know about – possibly even control – everything his son did. And Harry resented this constant monitoring of his life.

      Grant raised the torch through the exposed triangle to illuminate the void beyond. From behind her, Jude heard a sudden dry retching sound.

      ‘I think I’m going to be—’

      ‘It’s all right, Harry! Let’s get you out of here!’ Grant put his arm around the boy’s shoulders and hurried him towards the light at the top of the stairs. The father seemed empowered by his son’s weakness, more confident when he could treat Harry as a child. Passing her, he thrust the torch into Jude’s hands.

      Some people would not have wanted to look, but squeamishness had no part in Jude’s nature. She redirected the torch to where Grant had been pointing, and peered over the broken chipboard partition.

      Any notion that the children’s hysteria might have been prompted by an anthropomorphic dummy was quickly dispelled. What the torchlight revealed was very definitely human.

      The body lay horizontally at the foot of the wall, dark, almost black, with leathery skin tight over the bones. Beaky, reminiscent of an unwrapped mummy whose photograph Jude had once seen in a National Geographical Magazine, the face was still topped by a straggle of mud-coloured hair.

      Rotted round about on the floor were the remains of the box in which the corpse must have lain hidden. From the soggy corrugated debris, this appeared to have been made of no more than stout cardboard. The angled plastic strips which had reinforced its corners lay splayed out on the floor.

      There was no evidence of clothes. The object’s shrivelled breasts and pudenda showed that what Jude was looking at had once been a woman.

      The body had no limbs. The arms had been neatly removed at the shoulders, and the legs at the hip joint.

Chapter Three

      When Carole Seddon opened her front door the next morning, the Sunday, she looked frosty. Her pale, thin face did frosty rather well. The sensibly cut steel-grey hair offered no concessions, and when she wanted them to, her light blue eyes could look as dead as the glass in her rimless spectacles. The fact that it was a fine June day, that seagulls were doing exploratory aerobatics across the Fethering sky, did not penetrate her gloom.

      ‘Hello,’ she said, without enthusiasm.

      There was a momentary impasse before Jude asked, ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

      ‘Oh, very well.’ Carole drew back, still making no pretence at a welcome. That someone normally so punctilious in her social usages should behave like this indicated she was in the grip of some powerful emotion.

      Jude knew that. She also knew what the emotion was, and what had caused it. For the last few weeks she had been aware of Carole retreating into her shell and, from the experience of luring her friend out of it once before, Jude knew how tough and impregnable that shell could be. She herself had been away and busy and hadn’t had time to concentrate on fence-mending with her neighbour. But now she was back, determined that a rapprochement should be effected. And she had a feeling that the news of the torso in Fedborough might, perversely, be just the thing to restore the health of their relationship.

      Carole closed the door behind them. ‘Would you like coffee?’ She was aware of how boorish she was being, and that knowledge compounded the darkness of her mood.

      ‘Listen,’ said Jude. ‘Forget coffee. Let’s get things sorted. I know exactly why you’re behaving like this with me, and I promise you – you don’t have to.’

      ‘Would you like to sit down?’ asked Carole with icy politeness, gesturing towards the sitting room.

      ‘No, I bloody wouldn’t like to sit down! I’d like to take hold of you, shake all this nonsense out of you, then give you a big hug.’

      ‘Oh.’ Carole almost visibly shuddered. Every disciplined middle-class fibre of her being recoiled at the concept of big hugs.

      They stood facing each other, Jude poised for a hug, Carole prepared to repel any such approach.

      ‘You’re just making things worse by cutting yourself off.’

      ‘I would have thought that was my business,’ came the tart reply.

      ‘Oh, come on . . .’ Jude took her neighbour’s hand. Carole, on hug alert, was unprepared for this, and did not immediately snatch the hand away. ‘Let’s go into your kitchen, make some coffee, and get this sorted.’

      Carole felt another twinge of middle-class resistance. She was the hostess. She should serve coffee in her sitting room. Women huddling cosily in the kitchen had overtones of northern soap operas. Which reminded her, she never had found out where her neighbour came from. In fact, given how close at times they had been, she knew remarkably little about Jude’s past.

      Carole switched on an electric kettle. She had decided it was now warm enough to turn the Aga off for the summer. It wasn’t, quite, and the kitchen felt chill, a deserved reflection of Carole’s mood. Gulliver, her Labrador, rose from his stupor in front of the regrettably cold stove to greet their guest with bleary delight. Whatever may have happened to the mistress, the dog hadn’t lost his social graces.

      Gulliver had a bandage round the thick end of his tail, but Jude knew this wasn’t the moment to enquire what had happened to him. There was another, more demanding, priority.

      ‘I know it’s because of Ted,’ she announced. ‘That didn’t work out, and you feel really low as a result. We’ve all been there.’

      ‘I