4

It was quite late when DI Paul Silver dropped me off at my flat.  An old Victorian house that had been converted into flats and I had the one on the top floor.  I stood at the communal door and waved him off and instead of going upstairs to the warming comforts that awaited me – I had left the central heating on – I  walked up to the churchyard.

Zoë’s grave was conveniently near a bench close to a hedge.  Therefore, I sat there and chatted with her about things and went over the break-in at the Bio-Preparations Cobra Mist complex with her.  Obviously, I knew that I was talking to myself, but there was something comforting about this weekly ritual that helped me cope with the grief.  I knew that Zoë would not want me to be sad, all the time, but I couldn’t help it.  I just dealt with it better some days than others.  That is just how I am. 

I spent some time reflecting on some of Zoë’s little foibles – how she could have watched the TV series Pride and Prejudice over and over again on DVD and how she always had to wear something mauve and how she loved to learn ballroom dancing before eventually getting up from the bench, groaning slightly as my limbs were stiff from the cold breeze.  I walked over to her gravestone, feeling the wet grass percolating beneath my feet and I traced the etched letters on the cold stone with my fingertip.  I could barely make the writing out in the dark, but I obviously knew them off by heart.  Zoë Handful - A loving wife and friend - We will always have New York.  A closing phrase that only we would understand.    

Somewhere nearby an owl hooted and the sound of the sea was faint in the background.  There was a hint of mist in the air, swirling across the silhouettes of the gravestones and the stark brittle trees.

From there I passed through the lichgate, pausing to read the Parish Church notice board and took the narrow path that went down towards the rectory, which was known as Cove Cottage.  The sound of the sea was louder as I approached as there was indeed a cove behind the house.

I walked stealthily past the postcard Elizabethan cottage; half- timbered with a black thatched roof hanging over the small upstairs window where the Reverend’s mother was bed-bound. A quick look through the lit window and I knew I had nothing to fear from that quarter.  Reverend Harkett was pouring a sherry for himself and Mrs Deeves, his sister, and they were talking animatedly, the way people do when the strain is off.

The garage was locked by a heavy padlock but the master locksmith who had been responsible for a tiny part of the training of myself and a score of others in the now distant past would have laughed at it.  I didn’t laugh at it, I was no master locksmith, but even so I had it open in less than two minutes.

Everybody knew that Reverend Harkett’s sole means of transportation round Oxmarket was a motorcycle.  It was in excellent condition and obviously his pride and joy.  There was nothing incriminating in the garage and after a fairly thorough search I left and locked it, slightly disappointed.

Another quick check on the sitting room showed the two of them sitting round the fire, still drinking and talking.  I made my way to the tool-shed behind the garage.  Another padlock.  From where I was I was now completely hidden from the house so I took a chance of having a good long look at the padlock.  Then I picked it and went inside.

The shed was no bigger than seven by five and it took me no longer than ten seconds to find what I was after.  There had been no attempt to conceal anything.  Using a couple of plastic carrier bags, which were hanging from a large hook, I removed the items, sealed them in the bags, locked the door behind me and rejoined the path that weaved its way down to the cove. 

I reached the beach, where the foreshore was narrow and the slope of it was paved.  Visibility was poor and the only way to locate where I was going was to actually walk into a few of the small boats that lay on the paved slope.  The path curved round and finished against a shoulder of rock, and in this rock gaped the mouth of a cave with another beach just about visible at the other end.  I went over to it and entered and found exactly what I was looking for.  A rubber dinghy stored against the wall of the cave, hidden from view.

I dragged the dinghy out through the other end of the cave and down to the beach.  It took me longer than I expected, but trying to haul a rubber dinghy over slippery seaweed-covered rocks, some as much as six feet in diameter, to the sea twenty interminable metres away is, even in broad daylight, a bone-breaking job: in pitch darkness it’s almost as good a way as any for a potential suicide to finish off the job with efficiency and dispatch.  Several bone-jarring bruises later I managed to get the dinghy out to sea and started rowing towards the Headland and the Cobra Mist complex.  

My attempt to imitate the way the intruder had gained access to the complex, proved one thing.  Whoever had done this had arms that were rather better used to rowing than mine.  It took me an hour and a half and they were aching interminably by the time I had tied the boat to a small wooden jetty which was protected from the craggy shore.  I spent a few moments getting my breath back and massaging some feeling back into my arms, before setting off across the beach.

My feet crunched on the smoothed stones of red agate, opaque quartz and pink granite and on the pebbles of cysterine, slate and Torridonian rock, and on the broken scallop, whelk and mussel shells.

The tall red-and-white striped finger of the unmanned Headland lighthouse was my only guide, its beam slicing through the shadows of the night like a blade of fire.  Flint pebbles crunched crisply under my feet as I walked seaward under a gathering of gulls, which seemed highly indignant at being disturbed at such an ungodly hour. 

It was beside the lighthouse that I found the reason for their indignation.  Rough circles of scraped-together grass and seaweed, each holding one or two oval eggs blotched with scribbles of tarry black for camouflage.  “Go-go-go!” screamed the gulls, flapping overhead as they urged me on my way.

I bent forward into the wind and pushed on across the shingle beach to the perimeter fence.   The space between the complex and the boundary fence, five hundred metres at the nearest approach, was completely open, completely clear.  No trees, no bushes, just tiny sea campion and other plants such as the rare sea pea and horned poppy have made their home on this fragile landscape.  Hardly big enough to hide behind and nothing higher grew in the bleak desolation of the grounds of the Cobra Mist complex.

I found where the fence had been cut.  As it was still theoretically a crime scene it had only temporarily been repaired and I could just about make out crime-scene tape flapping in the sea breeze.  I gingerly stepped through the break in the boundary fence to try and get my bearings.  The darkness was so absolute it was virtually impossible.

I had seen enough and was just starting to step back through to the other side, when there came the stealthy rush of padded feet and something heavy crashed into my back and shoulder and then, before I’d time to start reacting, something else closed over my upper left arm, just above the elbow, with all the power and brutal savagery of a sprung bear-trap.  The immediate pain was agonizing.

My arm felt as if it was going to be crushed in half.  I swung round in a vicious half-circle hooking with all the strength of my right arm and all I did was make a hole in the night.  I almost dislocated my right shoulder but I had more to think about than that as I lurched sideways again, fighting for my balance.  Fighting for my balance and fighting for my life because what had hold of me, was a dog about the size and power of a wolf.

I tried to tear him off with my right hand but all it did was to sink those huge teeth still deeper into my arm.  I tried crashing my right fist repeatedly against that powerful body but he was so far to my left and back that I could barely reach him.  I tried kicking, but I couldn’t get at him, I couldn’t shake him off, there was no solid object I could crush him against and I knew that  if I tried falling on top of him he’d loosen his grip and have me by the throat before I knew it.

He must have weighed between eighty and nine pounds. If you had fangs like steel hooks embedded in your arm and a weight of ninety pounds suspended from them, only one thing can happen – the skin and flesh start to tear, and I haven’t any different skin or flesh from anyone else.  I could feel myself getting weak, I could feel waves of pain and nausea washing over me when, in a moment of clarity, I heard a voice shouting.

“Rollo!”

The bear-trap grip on my arm loosened in a fraction of a second and the dog obediently retreated to his handler.

A torchlight was probing the night like a pointing finger and without hesitating I stepped back through the break in the perimeter fence and staggered back, with voices calling after me, as fast as I could to the small wooden jetty where I had cached the dinghy.

Removing my damaged coat jumper and shirt was no pleasure at all, the arm was already stiffening up, but I managed it and washed my arm thoroughly in the ice-cold sea.  I wished it had been fresh water and not salt but beggars cannot be choosers, so I bandaged my arm with the torn sleeve of my shirt before looking back across the Headland.

 All hereabouts was bleakly evocative, a silent anthem to wars cold and hot and to the gentle, inexorable power of nature patiently reducing these monuments to harmless dust.  I climbed in, unshipped the two stubby oars and paddled off to the southwest and the mainland.  I rowed and rowed and rowed, but not for what seemed longer than a month, arriving back in Oxmarket at ten to five in the morning.

*

After I had returned the dinghy to its rightful place I decided that instead of sneaking back past Cove Cottage, I would follow the coastal path, which wound to the left of the church.  This took me right past the deserted caravan site, the closed-up beach huts, and the boat-maker’s yard, which was now full of boats pulled up for the winter.

I passed some of the original houses of Oxmarket, a motley line of dwellings just across the road from the boathouse and –yards and mooring jetties.  They were old enough to date from a time when people evidently didn’t see much point in a sea view as against the disadvantages of an icy sea wind and the occasional floods. The cottages that lined the Oxmarket marshes were odd, ill-sorted and squeezed in at strange angles as if each had fitted into a space slightly too small for it.

Following the narrow curvature of the path, I felt like I was teetering on the edge of the world.  The wintry early morning light slanted on to the flat, colourless landscape; the wind moaned, the sea birds shrieked and there was a melancholy boom of a foghorn far out at sea.  I shivered inwardly, my mind full of plots and sub-plots, piecing together the puzzle of how, who, what, when and why.  My arm ached interminably.  Helping to keep my focus.

After a while, I turned left following the signs of the public footpath.  This section was a lame excuse for a path, my jeans swiftly darkening with damp from the long grass.  Partially hidden by trees that acted as a windbreak was some farmland and further in the distance, small lights signified Heather Hill Farm, where the conclusion to my previous case had taken me. Relatives of the Painswick’s were keeping the place ticking over while Hilly and George awaited trial.

To my right, empty stretches of marshland where the sea eventually came into view, rose up like a wall of darkness under the dark sky.  The moon cast a wavering path over its waters. About fifty metres away was a broad wooden jetty, illuminated by spasmodically positioned dim streetlights.  Beyond the jetty was a collection of houseboats that had certainly seen better days.  Some were small, with square cabins and round wheels at the back and some were very large.  The majority were obviously no longer lived in, tipped from their moorings towards the green-grey mud.  A few were lit.  Diehards who loved the solitude, no matter what the weather.

They were originally lived in by artists and sixties’ hippies, I remember the landlord of the Waggoner’s Rest, telling me one night during a lock-in.   “There are photographs of them when they were new in the library by the bookshop,” Robert Trefoil had slurred, enjoying drinking away the profits, a little bit too much.  “They had dogs chained to their sides, flowers in pots, chairs and tables, even ironic garden gnomes. They’re all made of iron and wood, painted in primary colours, and had gangplanks leading from the jetty. Old Jamie Parsons, the librarian, told me that they even used to have their own post-box.  He also told me that on one of the barges, the couple had made pots to sell in the café; another made nut roasts, bean salads and carrot cake.”

“They’ve still got some people living there,” I had commented.

“Retired people or young couples who can’t afford a house,” Robert went on, “but no where near the amount of people who use to live in them.”

I had now rejoined the lane that eventually became the main street of Oxmarket.  The river beside the lane rushed by, journeying in the opposite direction, towards the sea, its flow swifter than my pace; white spume washing against the leafy banks and breaking over embedded boulders; debris of leaves, small branches and stones were carried in the flux and water spray cast a thin mist over the river’s bubbling rough surface.  Trees that edged the lane and the opposite riverbank glistened like silvery raindrops.

I passed where Zoë’s brother had his vehicle body shop repair business.  It was all boarded up now; he had left Oxmarket after his involvement in the Zhivkov case.  His embarrassment was massive; his feeling of acrimony towards me could not be measured.

I removed my mobile from my pocket, checked that I had a signal and dialled a number.

“Hello?”  A sleepy voice answered.

“We need to talk,” I said.

There was a pause. DI Silver was obviously checking his watch.  “Do you know what time it is?” 

“Of course, I do,” I said, dismissively.  “I know who done it but I am not sure how it was done.  I want you to meet me.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

I told him.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Positive.”

I could almost hear him thinking this over.  DI Paul Silver is a realist and knows how the truth can be manipulated, ameliorated and negotiated away at every stage of an investigation and trial.  That’s the reality of modern policing.  Overworked, underpaid and unappreciated, investigators are forced to cut corners and paint over their mistakes.  Usually, with a little luck, the facts fall into place and right person goes down.  And even if the system fails, police detectives can normally sleep peacefully at night because the defendant was probably guilty of something equally terrible.  Truly innocent people rarely go to jail.  That’s the theory.  It’s normally the practice.  Then a case like this one comes along where the waters are a little bit murkier.    

“I’ll get dressed and I’ll meet you there,” he said eventually, with a hint of resignation.  “Give me ten minutes,” and then the line went dead. 

*

“I’m not going into any damned hospital and that’s final,” I said irritably.  With a couple of ham sandwiches and half a tumbler of whisky inside me I was feeling much more my old miserable self again.  “Sorry, Doctor Madsen, but there it is.”

“I’m sorry too.”  Doctor Madsen was bending over me in the only police cell in the Oxmarket police station. He was Zoë’s replacement and he was a neat, methodical and precise man with a neat, methodical and precise voice.  “I can’t make you go, more’s the pity.”  He turned to DI Paul Silver who was standing in the doorway.  “Try and talk some sense into your friend Detective Inspector.”

Doctor Madsen picked up his tool-bag and took off.  Once he was out of sight I stood up and started to pull on a clean shirt, which Paul had picked up from my flat.  It hurt, but not as much as I expected it would.

“What were you thinking of, John?”

“Proving a point,” I said sourly.  “There is no way that whoever stole that drug came through the perimeter fence.”

“That’s worth getting yourself half mauled to death is it?”

“It is, if I prevent someone from doing something that they will regret for the rest of their lives!”

“You’re mad,” Paul smiled.  “Zoë always said that some things in life are a complete and utter waste of time and making you see sense was one of them.”

“She knew me better than anyone,” I agreed.

“So now you have seen that becoming all clever and lone-wolfish isn’t all that clever, would you like to share with me your findings?”

“Yes,” I nodded, smiling generously at my good friend.  “On the way.”            

*

“What can I help you gentlemen with?”  Reverend Harkett said cheerfully, as he led us into the old fashioned sitting room with heavy Edwardian furniture, velvet drapes from ceiling to floor and a few smouldering embers of the fire I had seen burning earlier in the huge open fireplace.  “What is so important at this unearthly time in the morning?”  His smile died away as he saw our faces.  “Was there – is there something wrong?”

“I’m afraid there is,” I said sadly, without expanding on it

“Is your sister about, Reverend Harkett?”  Paul asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

“Yes, she’s upstairs attending to mother.”

“Would you ask her to join us, please,” I said softly.  “We would like to speak to both of you.”

He duly obliged and within a few minutes Mrs Deeves, who was wearing a none too flattering ankle length dressing gown with matching bed socks, joined us.  She sat on the settee next to her brother. 

“When I bumped into you earlier this evening,” I began, “you told me that you had been attending choir practice.”

“That’s right.”

“Choir practice is on a Thursday,” I said.  “I was up at the church earlier this evening; I saw it on the notice board.  7.30 pm every Thursday. It states it quite clearly.”  They both sat there quite still, saying nothing, so I continued.  “On the back seat of Detective Inspector Silver’s car is a carrier bag containing a hammer and a pair of insulated pliers.  They both look clean, but I bet on closer inspection the hammer would reveal a couple of grey hairs belonging to a canine pal of mine called Rocky, who was so grievously clouted last night.  The pliers have been perfectly cleaned but I’m sure once Suffolk Constabulary’s finest forensic boys got their hands on it, they would find some scratches on it and quickly make the comparison with the broken ends of the barbed wire fence at the Cobra Mist complex.” 

“I’m afraid we’re not very good at this sort of thing,” he looked at me.  “I know this is the end of the road for us but we were only thinking about mother.  The drugs she has been prescribed are no longer working. It’s inoperable, her bowel cancer, you see.  We had to do something.  Mary told me about the new drug they were developing over there, so we hatched a plan to get some.”

“So how did you really get them out of the complex?”  I asked.  “The cutting of the fence, the bashing over the head of the dog, was all a little bit elaborate and there is no way you could have defied those dogs they have patrolling about the place, believe you me I know, I’ve tried.”

“I underestimate you, John?”  Reverend Harkett said ruefully.

“Thank you.”  I heard Mrs Deeves clear her throat and looked across casually.  Her steepled fingers were resting lightly on her lap.  I asked, “Now, how did you do it?”

“It was easy,” she shrugged.  “They’re so obsessed with industrial espionage that they don’t notice what’s going on right under their noses.  The staff pinch things all the time, over there.  Only little bits and pieces, but it does go on. I was so scared of being caught but I was able to take out enough tablets in my handbag without ever once being searched.  I only took enough to make her last few months comfortable.  We know there is no cure.”

“It was my idea to make it look like a break-in,” Reverend Harkett interrupted.  “Mary told me that the end of the month stock check was fast approaching and they would notice the tablets missing.”

It was at this point an old woman in a thick cotton nightdress appeared at the door.  It was obviously there mother, but she was much older than I had expected her to be.  A closer inspection showed that she wasn’t really that old, she just looked old.  Her hair was white, her eyes had that curious gaze you sometimes see on old people who are coming to the end of their road, and hands that leant on the door supporting her frail frame were thin and wrinkled and criss-crossed with blue veins.  Not an old woman: a sick woman, a very sick woman, prematurely aged.

“You never told me we had guests?”  Mrs Harkett had that assured direct no-nonsense voice that would have gone well with a Victorian drawing room and a houseful of servants.  She peered at me.  “Especially someone so handsome.  My eyes aren’t what they used to be, I’m afraid – but I know a handsome man when I see one.”  She gave me welcoming smile that rather complemented her thin, rather aristocratic features.

“Mother, please!”  Mrs Deeves was up and guiding her mother back out of the sitting room and up the stairs.  “I’ll be up to see you in a minute.”

When she was safely out of earshot Reverend Harkett:  “Sorry about mother.  She does tend – “

“I think she’s a wonderful woman.  No need to apologise.”  His face lightened a little at that.  “Now, Detective Inspector Silver and I have come up with a solution to this problem which will hopefully please everyone.  I think I will let the Detective Inspector explain when your sister returns.  Now, what about a nice cup of tea?”

*