Page 188 of The Running Grave

‘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.

‘“I thenk she’s drowned”,’ said Shelley.

‘We thowt she meant a dog. Who goes swimming, five a.m. in the North Sea? She wus in her undies. Soaking wet,’ said Leonard with a smirk and a waggle of his eyebrows. Shelley cuffed her husband with the back of her ringed hand.

‘Behave yoursalf,’ said Shelley, smirking at Strike, while the sofa-sitters snorted with renewed laughter.

‘She wasn’t in a swimsuit?’

‘Undies,’ repeated Leonard, smirking. ‘Freezing cold.’

Shelley cuffed him again while the sofa-sitters laughed.

‘I thowt at fust she’d stripped off to go in ahter the dog,’ said Shelley. ‘Navver dreamed she’d been swimming.’