He parked the BMW in a car park in the middle of town and got out beneath an overcast sky. The Heatons lived in Garden Street, which lay within walking distance, and narrowed into a pedestrian alley as it approached the seafront, the ocean framed between old houses as a small square of teal beneath a cloudy grey sky. Their house lay on the left side of the street: a solid-looking terraced residence with a dark green front door that opened directly onto the pavement. Strike imagined it would be a noisy place to live, with pedestrians tramping up and down from the beach to the shops and the Wellington pub.
When he rapped on the door using a knocker shaped like a horseshoe, a dog started yapping furiously from the interior. The door was opened by a woman in her early sixties, whose platinum hair was cut short and whose skin was the colour and texture of old leather. The dog, which was tiny, fluffy and white, was clutched to her sizeable bosom. For a split second, Strike thought he must have come to the wrong house, because gales of laughter issued from behind her, audible even over the still-yapping dog.
‘Got friends over,’ she said, beaming. ‘They wanted to meet you. Averyone’s excited.’
You have to be kidding me.
‘I take it you’re—?’
‘Shelley Heaton,’ she said, extending a hand, on which a heavy gold charm bracelet tinkled. ‘Come on in. Len’s through there with the rest of ’em. Do you shet up, Dilly.’
The dog’s yapping subsided. Shelley led Strike down a dark hallway and left into a comfortable but not over-large sitting room, which seemed to be full of people. Hazy shadows of holiday-makers drifted to and fro behind the net curtains: as Strike had expected, the noise from the street was constant.
‘Thass Len,’ said Shelley, pointing at a large, ruddy-faced man with the most obvious comb-over Strike had seen in years. Leonard Heaton’s right leg, which was encased in a surgical boot, was resting on a squat pouffe. The table beside him was crammed with framed photographs, many of them featuring the dog in Shelley’s arms.
‘Hare he is,’ said Len Heaton loudly, offering a sweaty paw embellished with a large signet ring. ‘Cameron Strike, I presume?’
‘That’s me,’ said Strike, shaking hands.
‘I’ll juss make the tea,’ said Shelley, looking hungrily at Strike. ‘Don’t go starting without me!’
She set down the small dog and left with a jangle of jewellery. The dog trotted after her.
‘This is our friends George and Gillian Cox,’ said Leonard Heaton, pointing at the sofa, where three plump people, also in their sixties, were tightly wedged, ‘and thass Suzy, Shell’s sister.’
Suzy’s eager eyes looked like raisins in her doughy face. George, whose paunch rested almost on his knees, was entirely bald and wheezing slightly, even though he was stationary. Gillian, who had curly grey hair and wore silver spectacles, said proudly,
‘I’m the one you spoke to, on the phone.’
‘Do you set down,’ Heaton told Strike comfortably, pointing at the armchair with its back to the window, facing his own. ‘Happy about the referendum?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Strike, who judged from Len Heaton’s expression that this was the correct answer.
During the few minutes Heaton’s wife moved in and out of the kitchen carrying tea, cups, plates and lemon drizzle cake, regularly crying ‘Wait fur me, I wanna hear it all!’, Strike had ample time to realise that the three blondes who’d cornered him at his godson’s christening had been mere amateurs in nosiness. The sofa-dwellers bombarded him with questions, not only about all his most newsworthy cases, but also about his parentage, his missing half leg and even – here, his determined good nature nearly failed – his relationship with Charlotte Campbell.
‘That was a long time ago,’ he said as firmly as was compatible with politeness, before turning to Leonard Heaton. ‘So you’re just back from Spain?’
‘Ah, thass right,’ said Leonard, whose forehead was peeling. ‘Got ourselves a little place in Fuengirola ahter I sowd my business. We’re normally there November through to April, but—’
‘He broke his bloody leg,’ said Shelley, finally sitting down on a chair beside her husband, perching the tiny white dog on her knee and looking greedily at Strike.
‘Liss of the “bloody”, you,’ said Leonard, smirking. He had the air of a joker used to commanding the room, but he didn’t seem to resent Strike’s temporary hogging of centre stage, perhaps because he and his wife were enjoying playing the role of impresarios who’d brought this impressive exhibit for their friends’ amusement.
‘Tell him what you was up to whan you broke it,’ Shelley instructed her husband.
‘Thass neither hare nor there,’ said a smirking Leonard, clearly wanting to be prompted.
‘Go on, Leonard, tell him,’ said Gillian, giggling.
‘I’ll tell’m, then,’ said Shelley. ‘Minigolf.’
‘Really?’ said Strike, smiling politely.
‘Bloody minigolf!’ said Shelley. ‘I said to him, “How the hell d’you manage to break a leg doing minigolf?”’
‘Tripped,’ said Leonard.
‘Pissed,’ said Shelley, and the audience on the sofa chortled more loudly.
‘Do you shet up, woman,’ said Leonard, archly innocent. ‘Tripped. Could’ve happened to anyone.’
‘Funny how it olluz happens to you,’ said Shelley.
‘They’re olluz like this!’ the giggling Gillian told Strike, inviting him to enjoy the Heatons’ madcap humour. ‘They never stop!’
‘We stayed out in Fuengirola till he could walk better,’ said Shelley. ‘He didn’t fancy the plane and tryina manage the steps down the esplanade at home. We had to miss out on a couple of summer bookings, but thass the price you pay for marrying a man who breaks his leg tryina git a golf ball into a clown’s mouth.’
The trio on the sofa roared with laughter, darting eager looks at Strike to see whether he was suitably entertained, and Strike continued to smile as sincerely as he could manage while drawing out his notebook and pen, at which a silence tingling with excitement fell over the room. Far from dampening anyone’s spirits, the prospect of raking back over the accidental death of a child seemed to be having a stimulating effect on all present.
‘Well, it’s very good of you to agree to see me,’ Strike told the Heatons. ‘As I said, I’m really just after an eyewitness account of what happened that day on the beach. It’s a long time ago now, I know, but—’
‘Well, we were up right arly,’ said Shelley eagerly.
‘Ah, crack of dawn,’ said Leonard.
‘Before dawn,’ Shelley corrected him. ‘Still dark.’
‘We were s’pposed to be driving up to Leicester—’
‘Fur me auntie’s funeral,’ interjected Shelley.
‘You can’t leave a Maltese,’ said Leonard. ‘They do howl the place down if you leave ’em, so we needed t’ampty har before we got in the car. You’re not s’posed to take dogs down on the beach in th’oliday season—’
‘But Betty was like Dilly, she wus only tiny, and we always pick up,’ said Shelley comfortably. After a split second’s confusion, Strike realised she was referring to dog shit.
‘So we took har along the beach, just out there,’ said Leonard, pointing left. ‘And the gal come a-runnin’ out of the dark, screaming.’
‘Give me a hell of a tann,’ said Shelley.
‘We thowt she’d had a sex attack or something,’ said Leonard, not without a certain relish.
‘Can you remember what she said?’
‘“Hilp me, hilp me, she’s gone under” sorta thing,’ said Leonard.