They sat down at a sticky round table and were aware of the scrutiny of the pub's other, silent customers. The atmosphere wasn't exactly hostile, but it wasn't welcoming either. Carole and Jude realized at the same time that they were the only women there. The chalkboard ads for Sky Sports suggested the Boatswain's Arms was a male haven, a place where lugubrious men dropped in after work to sink a silent pint or two, while they put off returning to their wives and other responsibilities.
Carole and Jude were both very excited at the prospect of meeting Mark Dennis. Finally, it seemed, at least one part of their investigation was making headway. Though neither of them could imagine that Mark himself had anything to do with the placing of Robin Cutter's remains under Quiet Harbour, they were still convinced he had important information to give them.
But as the minutes after their six o'clock agreed meeting time passed, the two women started to worry that he wasn't going to turn up. In her head Jude tried to analyse exactly how he had sounded on the phone. Not frightened, no, but certainly nervous. Maybe he'd agreed to their meeting on the spur of the moment, and then thought better of the idea as its reality approached. Jude wished she'd asked Gray Czesky for an address as well as a phone number for Mark. Though the painter might well not have known one.
It was nearly six-thirty when the two women exchanged looks. Both were thinking the same thing: it was time to give their proposed meeting up as a bad job. But at that moment Mark Dennis came in through the door.
Had she not been expecting him, had they just passed in the street, Jude would not have recognized the young man. When she'd last seen Mark Dennis, probably in the April, he had been slender and gym-toned. With his sharp features, outdoor tan and straw-coloured hair, he and Philly Rose had made a singularly attractive couple.
But in the intervening months Mark Dennis had put on a lot of weight. The sideways spread of his face had made his eyes, nose and chin look too close together. And the weight gain seemed to have taken him by surprise. He hadn't yet adjusted his wardrobe to cope with it. The buttons down the front of his short-sleeved shirt strained against their buttonholes, and his thighs were very tight against his jeans.
His expression also was of someone taken by surprise, someone bewildered by what life had done to him. Recognizing Jude, he gazed rather blearily at the two women as she introduced him to Carole.
Asked what he'd like to drink, Mark Dennis opted for mineral water and Carole went to the bar to order it. She wondered for a moment whether the Boatswain's Arms would stock something as girlie as mineral water, but fortunately they did.
When she rejoined them, Carole found Mark already deep in conversation with Jude, apparently with no inhibitions about discussing his missing months. 'It was very odd. I was just out of it.'
'How do you mean "out of it"?' asked Jude.
'Not here. On another planet.' His voice still carried the vagueness that she had noticed on the phone.
'Take us back to the beginning of May,' she said. 'When you left Philly.' He winced at the reminder. 'Tell us what happened, that is, if you don't mind?'
'No, I don't mind. I've been trying to make sense of it myself for some time. It might help to talk about it.'
'Why haven't you talked about it to Philly?' asked Carole, possibly in too sharp a tone.
But Mark Dennis was unfazed by her question. 'I'll come to that. I'll explain it. Well, the main thing is, back in May I was in a pretty strange state, when all that happened. Not behaving very rationally.' He looked at Jude, almost pleadingly. 'I don't know if Philly told you anything about our circumstances . . .'
'A bit. I gather you had money problems.'
'And how. Yes, we'd moved out of London and down to Smalting in January. And then everything was fine. I'd got quite a lot of savings from various bonuses and what have you, then we made a bit of profit from selling our two London places and buying Seashell Cottage. Anyway, I invested all we'd got in various directions. Do you understand derivatives?'
Both women shook their heads.
'Neither, as it turned out, did I. I thought I understood them, but some freak activities in the world markets meant. . . well, effectively I'd lost the lot. Our little seaside idyll was looking very shaky, very much under threat.'
'So why didn't you talk to Philly about it?' asked Carole. 'Why did you just walk out on her?'
Again he didn't react to the aggression in her questions. 'I didn't mean to just walk out on her. I meant to . . . sort things out. In fact, I don't know if you know, but there were other complications in my life. I'm still technically married.'
'We know that,' said Jude.
'Yes,' Carole added. 'We have actually met Nuala.'
'Have you?' Mark Dennis grimaced. 'Something I must do again soon at some point. Not an encounter I look forward to.'
'We gathered from Nuala,' said Jude, 'that she was pressing you for money too.'
'Mm. We had this odd arrangement. I wanted to get divorced. The marriage had been over in everything but name for quite a long time. But Nuala wasn't keen on the idea of divorce.'
Carole nodded. 'We've heard her views on the subject.'
'Anyway, to keep her out of the scene and to let me get on with my life with Philly, I made this arrangement to ... I don't know what you'd say . . .'
'Buy her off?' suggested Carole.
'Yes, that's what it effectively was — buying her off. And she insisted that it was done properly, with a legal agreement, which may give a pointer to the kind of character she is. But at least it got her out of my hair. Anyway, that was all fine, so long as I had this big income, but when things started to go pear-shaped on the money front, oh God, I couldn't keep Philly in our Smalting lifestyle and I couldn't pay what I'd agreed with Nuala, and ... I was very stressed.'
Mark Dennis was silent for a moment. Neither Carole nor Jude said anything, giving him time to gather his thoughts.
'Well,' he said eventually, 'I still thought I could sort things out. I thought I could do it on my own. And I didn't think it would take long. I only intended to leave Philly for a few days. Go up to London, borrow some money from various City friends to dig me out of my financial hole, then meet up with Nuala, somehow get her off my back . . .'
'And what happened?'
He shook his head wryly. 'Should have known, really. Most of my City mates were feeling the squeeze as much as I was. Some of them actually asked to borrow money from me before I could put in my own request. Then I met up with Nuala . . .'
'At the Oxo Tower.'
'Yes, Carole. At the Oxo Tower. Typical of bloody Nuala, that. She knows I haven't got two penny pieces to rub together, so she books in at one of the most expensive bloody restaurants in London.'
'How did you pay for it?'
'Oh, credit cards.' He let out a bitter little laugh. 'Same way I'd been paying for everything else for the previous few months.'
'So there was quite a big debt built up there too, was there?' asked Jude.
'I'll say. And of course I'd been a very high earner, so I had no problem getting new cards or increasing my credit limit, which meant the debts just spiralled upwards and upwards.' He sighed. 'And the pressure on me was getting more and more intense . . .'