‘Or maybe he’s heading for the channel from the quay,’ Lowry said, thinking aloud. ‘Either way, Mersea will have a better vantage point. We’ll catch him there, and anyone who’s helping him.’
Lowry weaved through the brambles, thorns catching on the sleeve of his coat. They studied the landscape for signs of a possible fugitive. The ploughed field on whose perimeter they stood eased gently towards the salt marsh several pastures beyond, and the channel itself was just discernible, a dull glint in the distance under a swirl of mist which encompassed the land like a protective covering. Kenton pulled his anorak tight as they made their way back.
‘Hey, what’s that?’ A bright red, rotund bird flickered in front of him through the hedgerow.
‘That I do know – a bullfinch. As a lad, I saw them everywhere here,’ Lowry remarked. ‘Funny, they’re here all year round but they’re only seen in winter, when the landscape is leafless. If only a man in a snorkel jacket was as easy to see as a bird.’
‘Is Mersea really our best bet?’ said Kenton. ‘It’ll be tricky to cover the beach with any degree of accuracy . . .’
‘We don’t have much choice. It’ll be dark soon.’ Lowry turned to face him, front tooth missing and unlit cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. ‘Of course, it’s a gamble. Everything is.’
*
Felix watched the men retreat through the hedge. Weird, that – men in suits, in a place like this; not farmers, surely. Policemen, maybe? Nah, he was just being paranoid again. Drug-induced paranoia had already led him to the field. He hadn’t liked the looks he was getting from the landlady in the pub.
He gave an anxious chuckle, which caused a pain in his side. Oooh. He did feel funny. Very funny. He looked towards the bleak horizon, trying to steady himself. A wave of exhaustion began to consume him, taking his legs first, which turned to jelly, and passing straight through to his head. He dropped to the ground and allowed sleep to take him, feeling safe in the knowledge he was in the right place, if not in the right circumstances – but that could wait until he’d had a little rest . . .
-32-
3.50 p.m., Monday, Colchester General Hospital
Jacqui drifted through her shift on autopilot, in an inattentive fashion, which was not her way usually – she was a good nurse, and the one thing she did care about was her patients. She wheeled the washing trolley into the next bay, preoccupied with the events of Saturday night; or, more specifically, her inability to recall them. The report about the two dead men in the paper had shaken her up, but not enough to awaken her memory. Not since her teenage years had she experienced such a complete void. She played back the night’s events as best she could: the drink with the girls at Tramps, the walk up North Hill, being attacked by the drunk soldier who had followed them up to Head Street, Nick intervening, telling her to go home, and her indignantly (and foolishly) deciding to go on, then the trip to Aristos . . . What time had that been? It had still been early, she was pretty sure of that, as it had been practically empty apart from those guys at the bar. She remembered the dance floor, the revolving lights . . . then going to the loo, giggling with that young fella, who promised her a high she’d never experienced before – that glint in his eye, manic, out of control. It should’ve been a warning, but it had only served to entice her; that temptation to escape—
‘. . . Excuse me, nurse. Ow! Not so hard. Oww!’
This. To escape this. Just for a night. Jacqui was suddenly back on the ward with her hands underneath a seventy-five-year-old man, his creased face crumpled further by discomfort.
‘Sorry, Mr Moore, sorry,’ she soothed. ‘Nearly done.’ She turned back to the trolley. One thing she was fairly sure of: she hadn’t slept with anyone. She’d had her knickers on when she got home and they were as pristine as when she’d slipped them on before going out. She sighed, and pushed the trolley out into the aisle. Paul had entered the ward. Though he could at times be annoying, he was safe and reassuring, like the hospital itself, just so long as he didn’t get too serious. She mustered a half-smile and moved to the next bed.
4 p.m. Mersea Police Station, East Road
Kenton could tell that Bradley was unimpressed by being dragged in here on a Bank Holiday; the Mersea sergeant sat, arms folded and devoid of facial expression. He was flanked by two similarly blank PCs. The five of them were crowded into the small back room of East Road station. Lowry finished explaining how things stood and stubbed out the last of Kenton’s Bensons.
Sergeant Bradley grunted. He caught Kenton’s eye, but his look betrayed nothing; it was as if they’d never met, let alone shared a cup of tea at ten thirty that morning, Bradley in his string vest.
‘So, inspector, you’re telling me that you have wilfully allowed a murderer on to Mersea Island, endangering the lives of our women and children?’
Lowry took a deep breath.
‘No, Sergeant Bradley, we –’ he enunciated the pronoun strongly – ‘have done nothing of the sort. We are merely looking for a man to help us with our inquiries. Let me remind you that the murder in question may involve drugs that were smuggled through Mersea, right under your very nose.’
‘I resent that implication,’ Bradley barked. Lowry looked sternly at PC Jennings, who shuffled his feet. ‘In any case, you are still putting the island’s population at risk.’
‘Oh, fuck off, Dodger!’ Lowry was losing patience. He pushed back the cheap plastic chair, which made an unpleasant screech, and flicked his fingers between the slats of the blind. ‘It’s practically dark out there now. It would’ve been pitch black by the time we’d scrambled a helicopter. Look on the bright side – if we catch him here, it makes you look good.’
Dodger Bradley grunted and moved away from the table. Kenton looked at his boss. Lowry was the same as ever: determined. Though at first Kenton had thought his boss’s logic was flawed, he now agreed with him – even if the coastguard could’ve got a helicopter out in fifteen minutes, the visibility would have been to poor. It was practically dark by the time they’d got to Mersea. The fog was not receding at all; if anything, it was pulling afternoon to a quicker close, cloaking the marshes. Kenton toyed with his now-empty cigarette packet; he didn’t quite understand Lowry’s mentality, but thought him instinctively right and was keen to learn.
‘I don’t see how you think he’d get over here, meself. From Fingringhoe? Only way’d be by boat.’
‘He could wade across at low tide?’ Kenton asked, thinking of the other morning, when on the Strood, watching Uniform hunting for evidence along the sea wall.
‘Not a chance; mud’d swallow ’im up at low tide. Only way on is the road at low tide, or a boat at high tide . . .’
‘There you go, then – make sure you cover the Pyefleet Channel.’
‘Okay, what do you need?’ Bradley asked resignedly. ‘We don’t have that many hands. Will you be getting back-up from Sparks?’
‘Nope. All you need to do is alert the coastguard. Anything tries to make off from these waters, we nab it.’
‘All right, then,’ Bradley said, with the air of a man who’d do anything for a quiet life. ‘I’ll talk to the coastguard – we can keep tabs on any vessel moving out until, say, dawn? We have two boats; that should do it. One thing, though.’ A shadow crossed Bradley’s brow.
‘What?’ Lowry asked.
‘That other business.’ Bradley nodded indignantly at Kenton. ‘I thought that was why you were here – because I fired a rocket up Sparks’s arse.’
Lowry laughed coldly. ‘That post office has been done more times than the chief’s taken rectal rockets from County. We’ve no interest in that now – stop getting hung up on it.’ He was aware of Kenton’s offended stare but continued anyway. ‘All we’re trying to do is our job; if you don’t need our help, then fine, we’ll leave it up to you.’
Bradley stroked his unshaven jaw. ‘All right. Jennings,
grab your life jacket.’
-33-
4.20 p.m., Monday, Mersea Road
As the car hurtled back towards Colchester, Lowry wondered if he’d made a mistake. He was thinking about the radar the coastguard had mentioned to him this morning. He loved the idea that they could simply swoop on any vessel coming to and going from the island. But what if their man had other plans? He could slip away along the north shore and quickly reach Brightlingsea or the caravans at Point Clear. They’d never find him there.
Of course, he might not even be the man they were after, but every instinct of Lowry’s told him this was a killer retracing his steps. He imagined him fleeing the scene of the carnage at Greenstead and heading for the place of guaranteed escape – the coast – following the river and so avoiding the main roads. The route would take you south through Rowhedge, and along the woods to Fingringhoe, but from there, where? Bradley was right: it was nowhere near the causeway, and getting across the mudflats on foot and at low tide was perilous at best. So why had he left the Land Rover behind? Again, Lowry returned to the premise that it was all unplanned. Something must have gone very wrong – a deal gone sour, an act of madness, then panic.
‘I didn’t know you lived at Fingringhoe?’ Kenton had interrupted his line of thought.
‘What?’
The car slowed to a melancholy growl as they approached the Abberton junction on Mersea Road.
‘I said, I didn’t know you lived at Fingringhoe. You mentioned it back there. I always thought you were a Greenstead boy.’
Lowry was caught unawares. He seldom talked about his problematic family: it was of little interest to him and he was therefore taken aback when anyone else took an interest.
‘Originally, yes, from the village. My mother moved to Greenstead when I was a teenager.’ When his father did a bunk, he thought.
‘Nice place – picturesque.’
Lowry smiled as the car jolted forward. ‘Picturesque’ was the word his mother had always used to describe the place, though he himself had different memories: of cycling to the Rowhedge docks with his paternal grandfather that last summer he was there, hauling timber until he was fit to drop. The Lowrys had always worked at the docks; Colchester, back then, had been an industrial town, and the family shipping business had flourished – timber, predominantly, coming in, and sand going out. It was decided that Nicholas, when he was thirteen, should get first-hand experience of the business, so he spent his summer holiday unloading timber, a backbreaking yet formative experience. He enjoyed the open air, the camaraderie, the honesty of the work. But that all stopped when his father severed all ties and he ended up on a council estate with his abandoned mother. The experience, while unpleasant, toughened him up enough to survive one of the roughest comprehensive schools in the area, where he’d excelled at sports – boxing, in particular. As the chill wind rushed through his hair and they entered the brick-and-tile outskirts of Colchester, leaving the countryside behind, he realized that his growing passion for birds and nature was an effort to realign himself with some happier, childhood self who had flourished in the open spaces of Fingringhoe.
‘Yes. It was – is – a lovely place, especially in the summer,’ he conceded.
As they the pulled into the station car park, Lowry was in a brighter, warmer world, until the precariously wired police radio sputtered into life to inform them of new evidence discovered at the Greenstead house.
4.30 p.m., Fingringhoe
Felix woke abruptly.
The hard earth he had collapsed on, its ploughed furrows cast in frost, had eventually forced enough discomfort into his shoulder blade to pierce his exhaustion. This first sensation was followed by the sharp pain of biting cold at his extremities: his nose and fingers were numb, but the cold in his feet was the worst; thin socks and cheap trainers gave next to no protection. He propped himself up on his elbows and took a deep breath of cold, black air. It wasn’t quite pitch black, though; the moon was up there somewhere, illuminating the layer of mist that swept across the field. It gave just enough visibility for him to remember where he was. He staggered to his feet. His head felt like lead and the vile taste in his throat made him think he was going to vomit – it was probably only the cold that stopped him. He needed water.
In spite of the aches in his body, his mind felt clearer than it had in days, but now his thoughts were climbing over each other to get his attention. The tide must be up by now. He needed to get to the dinghy before it grew dark; otherwise, he wouldn’t find it. A cry of laughter drew him to the pub behind the hedge. He made his way gingerly towards its glowing orange light, stopping at the phone box on the roadside. He pulled open the door and slumped inside. He should try the numbers before making his getaway. As his numb fingers groped blindly for some coppers, he thought about how bad things might be. For one, he didn’t have the money they were supposed to get for the drop. But had the drop even taken place? He struggled to make sense of what had happened – he remembered the house, arriving with Jason, being late. Getting bored. Taking a dip into the drugs. He found a two-pence piece in his pocket. The drugs. He thought vaguely about where they might be and in the same way wondered what had happened to Jason. He felt a pang of guilt: Jason wouldn’t get far without his wallet. And what was he going to do now? He opened his friend’s still-damp wallet. In it was a slip of paper with two series of numbers written on it. These were important – he’d seen Jason get them out before, when they were stranded in the pub. One was a Colchester number: the house he’d been at.
His finger, swollen from the cold, only just managed to dial. The number rang. He waited. It rang and rang. He hung up.
The other number ran to the paper’s edge, where the damp had made it illegible. But there were plenty of digits all the same, so he picked up the receiver again . . .
. . . and then hung up in despair. He’d never felt so alone. He’d done all he could. He might as well try for home and wait.
5 p.m., Queen Street HQ
Lowry was at the point of calling it a day and was just back at HQ briefly to pick up Saturday night’s arrest reports from the desk sergeant. He needed time to think, and that was best done at home.
A scarf lay in a transparent polythene evidence bag on Lowry’s desk.
It looked familiar. He thought Jacqui had one similar. Similar, or was it the same? He could see the Top Shop label. Hadn’t she been wearing one like it when she went out on Saturday? A chill ran through him. Forensics had found the garment in the tiny front garden at Beaumont Terrace. He touched the edge of the bag. Maybe there would be a scent on it . . .
‘The bullets match.’ Kenton entered the office eating a banana, his complexion still burnished from the cold. They’d been back at Queen Street at least half an hour, but the temperature inside was only marginally higher than outside.
‘Sorry?’ Lowry’s mind was on his wife.
‘The automatic found at Stone’s flat. The bullets match those in the Mersea post-office ceiling.’ Kenton handed the forensics paperwork across the desk. ‘And fingerprints matching those taken from the mug at Stone’s flat were found there, too.’
‘Even better.’
‘Yes, a clean set, but they don’t match those of the man murdered alongside Stone.’
‘That would figure. The other dead man was one of the smugglers, without a doubt.’
He pushed thoughts of Jacqui aside and returned to the theories that had floated through his head while strolling across the beach this morning. Small-time drug-dealers rob a post office to get the cash for a big deal. Two men pulled off that job, and Stone was one of them. The other one’s fingerprints were on a mug found in Stone’s flat, but who was he? So far, there were no more clues. He had spoken briefly to the girls who worked in the hairdresser’s beneath Stone’s flat. They said they’d seen Stone regularly, but had never spoken. He was often on his own but sometimes wi
th company (often male – but they couldn’t say one way or another whether there was anyone else living in the flat).
‘So, some progress to cheer the chief up,’ Kenton suggested. ‘He seemed out of sorts earlier.’
‘Yes, “out of sorts” is a fair assessment. He’s got a lot on his mind, and the one case that was solved – the post-office job – you’ve spilt wide open.’ Lowry paused to swig some coffee. ‘Have we looked for a car?’
‘A car?’
‘Stone was holed up in Artillery Street . . . He’d have to get back there from Mersea . . . Speak to Barnes: Uniform need to check out the area – someone might have seen them pull up. Start with the hair salon underneath his flat.’ Lowry rose. ‘Right, there’s nothing to be done on Greenstead for now, so I’m up top to see Sparks, then off home – but could you have a word with Uniform about prodding a few of Jamie Philpott’s known associates? I find it hard to believe he’s just disappeared.’
As he passed the coat stand, he slipped the bagged scarf discreetly into his coat pocket.
-34-
5.30 p.m., Monday, Queen Street HQ
DC Kenton sat with the phone glued to his ear, waiting for the man on the other end to return. He stared at his reflection in the black rectangle of the window. The day was far from over, and the harder he worked, the less success he seemed to achieve, and hanging on the telephone for a second-hand car dealer wasn’t exactly helping them find Philpott. He doodled pictures of cars on a notepad underneath the name Barnes and sighed: something else he had to do. He considered himself diligent, but the prospect of obeying Lowry and going cap in hand to Uniform for titbits on a lowlife like Philpott filled him with gloom. Despondently, he glanced up at the window again and his heart quickened. In the glass he saw WPC Jane Gabriel coming his way with a colleague from Uniform in tow. The twinge of excitement grew and he absently swapped the telephone receiver to his other hand and patted down his hair.