Death on the Coast

by Bernie Steadman

  Dan stood and placed his empty glass on the coffee table. ‘You ready?’

  Claire shared a look with his mother and sister that cut him deeply, gathered her coat and followed him to the door. ‘I’ll leave my car on your drive, if that’s okay?’ she said. ‘I’ll come for it tomorrow morning. Bye, then.’

  There was silence in the car for the first few minutes as Dan negotiated the traffic and got on the Pinhoe road. He let it lie. He was evaluating exactly where it left him and Claire if she wanted to side with his family against him. Of course, Claire didn’t know the background, hadn’t been there. It was hard for her to see Alison for what she was. He risked a glance in her direction and found her staring at him.

  ‘Your mother cooked specially for you tonight. She spent three hours at your flat cleaning up the mess, replacing the rug out of her own money, making you a lovely meal because she knows how upset you are, and you repay her by storming out? How old are you?’ She turned to stare out of the window at houses closed up for the long winter evening ahead.

  Dan drove in silence, trying to fight back the urge to shout at her, to make her understand. ‘I know what you’re saying. I feel bad for my mum. I wouldn’t hurt her for anything. But you’ve got to understand, Claire …’

  ‘No, Dan, you have to understand. No one can hope to come up to your standards in your family, can they? Why? Because they can’t bear to cut their daughter off completely, even though you’ve written her off as a waste of space. I get it, I know what’s happened in the past, I just don’t like it. I don’t want to be a part of a family that is fractured like this, it’s too painful.’ She scrubbed at her eyes.

  Dan parked outside the Indian restaurant, the dim interior light of the car catching the tears that were forming in the corners of Claire’s eyes. ‘Love, I really don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, taking her hand in his, ‘it’s just the way she makes me feel.’

  ‘I’m not saying you’re doing it on purpose,’ she said. ‘It’s that you’re so bloody ramrod straight about everything that you can’t move on. She isn’t making you feel anything, you’re doing that to yourself.’ She blew her nose on a tissue dragged from her pocket. ‘Look, can you give Alison a bit more time to make her mistakes and find her feet? At least she’s clean, and she has got a chance to make it with us helping her. Don’t expect so much at first. Not everyone is as brilliant as you.’

  Dan winced. She was right. Not about the brilliance; he knew she was being sarcastic. He’d made enough mistakes in his time. Was he being totally unreasonable about Alison? Yes, course he was. Was it related to his childhood? Yes. Could he move on? No, not at the moment. But he could make things a bit better for Claire and his mum, couldn’t he? ‘I’ll try. I’ll support you in this mad idea to get Alison working for your friend. It may work. I actually want her to stay clean. But don’t ask me to forget all the crap from the past twenty years, because I can’t, and don’t ask me to let her back in the flat, because I can’t do that, either.’

  She took hold of his face and pulled it round to look into his eyes. ‘Okay, that will do for now. Thank you. Shall I ring your mum and see if there’s any of that lamb left?’

  44

  Dan was amazed at how well he had slept, considering all the stuff that was crashing round his head as soon as he woke up. He stepped under the shower and scrubbed at his hair, glad that he had gone back home and made it all right with his parents. He didn’t want to risk losing Claire over his sister. He was just going to have to learn how to detach himself from her while she was in his life. The thought that she and Neil might end up together, permanently, didn’t bear thinking about though. Who could he whinge to if they became a pair?

  His phone buzzed in the bedroom and it wasn’t even 7am yet. Claire was downstairs making him breakfast again, even though it was Saturday and she must be knackered. It occurred to him that she might be worried about him. She could tell that he was approaching crunch point in the inquiry, even though he’d told her very little. It was what broke police marriages apart: the inevitable distancing that came when a case got critical, the closeness between the team that left out spouses. They had to leave family out of the loop for their own safety, and because it was the rules. And, as she’d pointed out, he liked to stick by the rules, didn’t he? He dried himself off and got dressed into warm, casual clothes, ready for a day on stake out.

  * * *

  The briefing was, for a change, brief. His and Lake’s teams knew what they had to do. Bill Larcombe had dispatched PC Lynch to stay with Sandra Eastwood. The team tracking Allport were in place and had radio contact set up.

  Foster’s suggestion of using the drone team had been a good one. They set up their monitoring equipment in the MI room and did a sweep of the Topsham beach area at 9am. The plan was to act like it was a new toy, and take it to different parts of the coast to play with it. That way they could get a thorough view of any suspicious activity. Dan was impressed. True, their range was limited to a few kilometres at the moment, but he reckoned the force would rely on them more and more as they improved. Those little machines would save so much leg work in the future. And, of course, help to reduce his staffing levels even more.

  Dan sent the team off to work and briefed DCS Oliver over the phone. Later, he and Duncan Lake would take a walk and check out the area for themselves. He did trust his officers to have done it properly, it was just a matter of seeing it in the flesh and getting a feel for the place. For the next couple of hours, however, Dan needed to go over the plan and look for any weaknesses.

  * * *

  Brendan Moore sat at the wheel of the small white van he had stolen late on Friday night. He’d taken it from a garage in Exwick, and was hoping it had been put away for the whole weekend. The side of the van said: Hopson and Son, Painters and Decorators.

  He then found a barber’s shop in Exeter, and got the guy to shave off his wild beard and crop his hair close to his head. Under a baseball cap, and wearing white coveralls, Brendan thought he looked sufficiently different to confuse any cop looking for him.

  He’d parked the van behind the garages of the flats on the Strand, to allow him to watch the girlfriend’s flat from one window, and the sun twinkling off the water from the other. Beside him, Tana kept an eye on the passing walkers and traffic, checking for anyone who looked like police. She resembled a boy, with her hair bundled up in a cap and her slim frame buried under the coveralls, he thought. Brendan drank from a takeaway coffee and finished the last of his sandwich.

  Tana rang Kegan to check on the fire-building status at the site. It was all going ahead as planned. Brendan listened in and was relieved. It had been a good idea to change the plan. This fire was so important to him, and he didn’t want police interfering. He thought about his long-dead wife and his two beautiful boys, and felt his anger like a stone where his heart once was. Anger had been a hard, tight fist in his chest for such a long time, he thought he would miss it when it went. It would be a wonderful thing to finally send the whole of that damned undercover cell to hell. He was already prepared to join them there. And the English police, well, they weren’t going to ruin it for him now, that was for sure.

  An hour passed, then another. He checked his watch, it was almost 1pm. Two women carrying gym bags strolled down the road, towards the car park, chatting away. ‘You say she comes back from the gym around now, darlin’? Is that her? With the other woman, in the gym kit?’ He watched them walk straight past the front of the van, immersed in conversation.

  ‘It is, granddaddy,’ Tana murmured, ‘but I have no idea who the other woman is.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, let’s pay Sandra a call.’ Moore got out of the van and stretched his legs. He expected the next bit to go smoothly. The Topsham estuary was blue and calm. It was a lovely place, indeed, he thought as he checked on the gun in its holster.

  * * *

  Dan paused at the entrance to Sandra Eastman’s block of flats. He and Lake had scoped out the beach area, w
hich was still viable as a site for the fire, but for every passing hour the fire wasn’t built, he got more worried that they’d made an error. Where were they setting the fire? Why hadn’t they started it yet?

  He checked his plan again. Lake knew where to position his team. They were ready to respond quickly. The car park at the flats was overlooked, a point that worried Lake, but Dan still preferred it as the best place to bring down the gang. There were street lights and fences, which meant it would be harder to slip away than if they were on the dark beach.

  Dan thought back to the fire his sister had started all those years ago. The fear was still in him, a strong fear of fire of any sort, and he was desperate to bring this whole thing to a close before they got anywhere near one. Even in training, going into the smoke-filled room had terrified him. He admitted to himself, standing on a beautiful November afternoon, face up to the sun, that his anger with Alison was all to do with the fire she had started in her bedroom when he was a child. She’d burnt not just her own stuff, but all his toys, all his special things. Nothing had been saved. The fact that she had done the same thing in his flat, his private sanctuary, was more than he could cope with, even though it had been a tiny thing, really.

  He zipped up his jacket against a cool wind coming off the water. A break from it all was what he needed. Getting away for Christmas with Claire, that would be good. They could afford two weeks somewhere warm, surely? Of course, everyone had already booked their time off over the holidays, but, no point in being a DCI if you couldn’t manipulate a bit of holiday time for yourself, was there?

  Feeling cheered he made his way up to Sandra Eastman’s flat. It was after 2.30pm, as arranged. Time to brief the lady without terrifying her.

  There was no answer when he buzzed the intercom. Odd. His heart did a funny little skip. No, please no. He buzzed all the other flats on Sandra Eastman’s floor, and finally got hold of her next-door neighbour who let him into the corridor and up the stairs. He banged hard on Sandra’s door then checked the lock. There was no sign of forced entry, the door was firmly locked, and there was no noise coming from inside.

  ‘She always goes to the gym on a Friday morning,’ said the neighbour, a purple-rinsed elderly woman. ‘Then we play whist, if she’s not doing anything else. Has something happened?’

  ‘Did she come home this afternoon?’

  ‘Oh, I think she did. But possibly I didn’t hear her. My hearing’s not good these days. She had a friend with her this morning, a nice girl. They went out together to the gym. They could be having lunch, couldn’t they?’

  ‘No, I don’t think they could. Do you have a key to Sandra’s flat, by any chance?’ he asked.

  The old lady was flustered. ‘I really don’t think I should be talking to you. Who are you again?’

  As calmly as he could, Dan showed her his warrant card, and waited while she studied it over her glasses.

  ‘I really need to check that she’s not ill,’ he said. ‘You can come in with me if you like.’

  Slowly, she checked through her keyring and fitted the key to the lock.

  As soon as the door was open, Dan almost shoved the woman back into her own flat. ‘Thanks very much,’ he said, ‘I’ll deal with this. Just go inside and lock your door, you’ll be perfectly safe.’

  The body lying on the floor of the lounge was PC Janice Lynch, red hair haloed in a pool of dark blood. Dan sank to his knees, put his ear close to her mouth and listened; she was barely breathing. It looked like she had been hit on the back of her head. He called for an ambulance, but didn’t dare move her. Scanning the impeccably tidy flat, he saw two gym bags and a bottle of water flung into a corner. There was no sign of damage, and there was no Sandra Eastman. They’d taken her already. He was too late. Keeping one hand on Lynch’s arm, he radioed Lake to come back to the apartment.

  Stuck there on his own, and able to think, his horror grew. Panic-stricken, he rang the barracks to speak to Allport. The colonel wasn’t on site. His secretary said he had left an hour ago to start his weekend early. No, that wasn’t normal; no, she had no idea where he was going. Dan asked to speak to the armed officer who should have been accompanying Allport. He came straight to the phone. He’d been told to grab some lunch while the colonel went to the gym. The colonel’s car was still in its parking space; he’d had no idea that Allport had left.

  ‘Shit.’ Dan looked down at the blank face of Janice Lynch, and saw his whole plan disintegrate before him.

  45

  Back at the station, Dan called in as many of the team as he could. He also called in DCS Oliver; she needed to know what was going on, much as he dreaded telling her. All of it, all that careful planning, gone to hell.

  It was uncharacteristically quiet as the team gathered, bringing their drinks and notebooks. They stared up at him, perched on his usual corner of the table, and waited for him to salvage the disaster. He always found it hard to look at Lizzie’s huge, dark brown eyes when it was bad like this. They showed total faith in him and he didn’t know how to live up to her expectations this time.

  ‘Sam, can you run a check on Allport and Eastman’s mobile phones, please? We may be able to trace them.’ He didn’t hold out much hope, but there was no point in beating himself up even more.

  ‘So, they’ve taken Sandra, and it looks like Allport has sneaked out of the barracks. Presumably they are using her as bait to get to him. The guard on duty confirmed that Allport left, in jogging gear, by the rear gate onto the estuary path and headed back east, towards Exmouth town. He could be anywhere by now. Caught a train, a bus, who knows?’ He shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t be too hard on him, they could have done anything to Sandra to make him give himself up. I just wish people would leave it to the professionals. Why didn’t he tell us?’

  ‘With all due respect, sir,’ said Lizzie, ‘Colonel Allport is a professional, has been for his whole life. Maybe he’s not as undefended as we think.’

  Dan shook his head as if to clear it. ‘You’re right, I’m not thinking straight. Allport was a soldier, then he trained marines. He’s fit, and undercover combat trained. We need to bear that in mind when we catch up with them. Try not to mow him down in the rush. You never know, he could have them all trussed up and ready for nick by the time we get there.’ He felt better when that raised a titter.

  ‘We know that the murder has to take place soon, because the gang are aware that we are onto them. For them, the sooner the better. Adam, what did your drone team tell you?’

  ‘Nothing at all on the beach around Topsham, sir. No sign of wood, or of fire building.’ He hesitated. ‘I think we’re looking in the wrong place, sir. Sorry.’

  ‘No need to be sorry – I think you’re right. I think the gang changed their plans as soon as they knew we were onto them, and decided to go early, even though that would put them in more danger.’

  ‘Not if they disguised themselves properly,’ said Bill Larcombe. ‘The front desk took a call from a resident at the Topsham flats to say there was a white van, belonging to a Hopson and Son, that had been sitting in the same place for three hours. She was concerned that they weren’t doing any work. Appeared to be an older man and a young boy in the van.’

  Dan smacked his head with the heel of his hand. ‘They were already in place while we were sorting ourselves out, weren’t they? They’d checked out her address, and just went in and took her, while I was pratting about having a walk and looking in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bloody hell’s teeth.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said Larcombe, ‘the woman said there was an old man and a young man in the van. What if the “young man” was Tana, and Kegan went off to set up the bonfire this afternoon? They could be burning Allport now, for all we know. We should be out there, boss.’

  Dan shouted the noise level back down. ‘I know it feels like we’re wasting time, but we need to have a plan. We can’t go running about the seaside like headless chickens.’ They subsided, the atmosphere worsening.

/>   Sally interrupted the negative mutterings. ‘How’s PC Lynch doing, sir?’

  ‘She has severe concussion and a possible bleed on the brain.’

  Sally looked down at her notebook. ‘She’s a mum of three.’

  ‘I know. I know that, Sal.’ He didn’t know what else to say. ‘Look, I seriously underestimated this gang. If we’d had armed response with Sandra, as well as with Allport, we may have held on to her. But we didn’t. Fat lot of good that would have done us with the colonel, anyway. Allport just took off when he wanted to and made amateurs of us.’

  ‘I can’t believe he did that, boss,’ burst in Foster. ‘I mean, we could have worked with him to capture them.’

  ‘I know, that was the plan. And now we don’t have a clue where they are.’

  DCS Oliver allowed the silence to hang for a short while. ‘When you get a setback like this, DCI Hellier, the best thing you can do is go back to the beginning. Where have they already set fires? Exmouth and Dawlish. Where else could they set fires? I don’t know, say Budleigh, Sidmouth, Seaton? Or round the other way, towards Teignmouth? So, Team Two, if you were the perpetrators, and you wanted to kill someone in a fire today, where would you do it?’

  ‘Ma’am,’ said Foster, ‘I could get the drone team to survey the different beaches for us …’

  Dan waved his hand to stop his junior officer mid-sentence, an idea forming as he spoke. ‘Good thinking, Adam, but it would be too slow.’ He turned to his boss. ‘Ma’am, we need the helicopter. It could do a sweep of all the local beaches, high up enough not to be spotted, and give us a heads-up on any likely sites. Can we do it?’

  She pursed her lips. ‘How far over the budget are we? Sod it, I’ll call them up. Let’s do it before it gets too dark for them to go out.’ She took herself off to a corner of the room and got out her phone.