‘Is he from up north?’
‘Who, Pete Wendle? Oh yes, you’re right, he might be…’
I abandoned her to go in search of Freddy. Why hadn’t I thought to interrogate Freddy further about this mysterious Tsar? Why had my mind immediately jumped to Nick and feared the worst? Was it some sort of subconscious revenge for the way he had assumed the worst of me? I didn’t know what to do first: run back down to the shore to apologise to Nick, or find Freddy and demand some answers.
My so-called intuition had let me down before. I couldn’t risk making another mistake. There was no sign of Freddy in the marquee, although I found Jack anxiously checking his watch.
‘Have you seen Nev?’ he asked. ‘I want him to wheel me down to the front, so I can get a good view of the action on the water later. I don’t suppose you could have a quick look for him for me, could you, Becca dear?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I promised.
It was no great surprise Nev had gone missing. Whatever action was due to take place this evening, I was pretty sure he was going to be in the thick of it.
I wandered into the house, passing Aunt Phoebe pacing in the hallway as Ivy gurgled in her pram.
‘Nobody else seems that bothered, but surely she should be put down now?’ Phoebe remarked. ‘It must be past her bedtime.’
I was glad she had added the second half of the sentence. ‘Freddy will do that for you, when I find him,’ I promised.
‘Oh, Freddy’s gone out somewhere,’ Phoebe said. ‘Took off about half an hour or so ago.’
‘What? Did he say where he was going?’
‘He was here one minute then he took a call on his phone and went flying off on that scooter thing of his. I don’t know why your mother lets him have it. You’d have thought after what happened to your father—’
‘Oh Phoebe, do you never give up?’ It was all getting too much. ‘Why don’t you just put Ivy into her cot? She won’t bite. I need to go and find Freddy.’
‘Really, Rebecca.’ Phoebe looked affronted. ‘Whatever has got into you?’
I’d only had two drinks; champagne came in very small glasses. I didn’t have time to argue. I was already racing out of the door to the stable block. In the flat upstairs, I hastily exchanged my heels for the ballet pumps I had on standby, and then took the steps two at a time to the garage. Freddy’s phone went straight to voicemail.
‘Fred, if you are there, please pick up. It’s urgent. Please call me.’
I could only think of one reason why Freddy would head off at the drop of a hat. Kimmi van der Plaast. My stupid, stupid brother. Didn’t he realise that now he had Ivy, he only had room for one girl in his life?
Freddy couldn’t afford to get mixed up in any of van der Plaast’s illegal activities, not tonight. Whatever happened later, he mustn’t get caught. I headed straight through the village to the van der Plaast mansion. The gates were firmly shut and, although it was impossible to see the house from the road, every combination of buttons I pressed on the keypad failed to gain a response.
I returned to my car, slammed it into reverse, put my foot on the accelerator, and headed with a growing sense of dread to the marina.
Chapter Thirty-Five
My throat was dry, my heart was racing. There was a police roadblock at the top of the lane that led down to the Hard. I wound down my window.
‘Sorry, miss, we can’t let you through.’
‘But I need to get to the marina.’
‘The marina is closed. I suggest you head on home.’
I shoved the car into reverse. It was some consolation to know that if I couldn’t get through, Freddy couldn’t get through. On the other hand, it definitely indicated the police were expecting something to happen tonight. How could I have been so stupid as to doubt Nick? Back in the village, I took the rutted track that led to Chapman’s Wharf. If I couldn’t get to the marina one way, I would try another.
I parked my car outside Aidan’s workshop. It was all very quiet, and very dark. There was no sign of life on The Solstice, but then I already knew Nick was prepared for a night of nocturnal activities.
I used my phone to light my way along the gravel path. Up ahead, the rusty bulk of the Regatta Queen partially blocked my view. I could hear voices on the water. I recognised Pete’s bellow. He was issuing instructions from one of the pontoons. The sea scouts had formed an unruly circle, struggling to keep their torches alight as sails flapped in the gentle breeze. Pete wasn’t happy.
‘Get a bloody move on,’ he shouted. ‘George, you lead. This is shambolic. I thought I’d trained you better than this.’
I definitely caught traces of a northern accent – Liverpool perhaps, as opposed to Manchester, but it was there and it was enough. The marina itself looked deserted, but if Pete was The Tsar then Nick and his men would be hiding out here somewhere. Perhaps they were already dealing with van der Plaast and Neville at another point along the river? Meanwhile, Pete was just twenty, thirty metres away, balancing precariously on the edge of a mooring, and he’d been swigging champagne all afternoon.
It would only take one push. I thanked Charlene the beautician for putting the idea into my head. Pete was smug and bumptious and, Tsar or not, he was the man who had sold my mother this stupid idea of having a sailing flotilla, regardless of his motive. That was all the excuse I needed.
Pete looked puzzled as I approached. ‘Becca, what are you doing here? The lads are just about to set off now. I’ve just phoned Natalie and told her to let everyone know…’
I gave him a shove, he opened his mouth to say something, I shoved again, he wobbled, ‘what the hell…’ and then toppled straight into the water.
‘Man overboard!’ one of the sea scouts cried, unable to contain his glee. The others joined in with various cat-calls. ‘Mr Wendle’s in the water.’ ‘Somebody save him!’ ‘No, leave the old sod to drown…’
Pete splashed and spluttered, reaching out fruitlessly as his sea-scouts sailed away from him as instructed, forming a perfectly co-ordinated straight line. Gerald Kimble, aroused by the commotion, appeared on his deck.
‘What’s going on?’ he called. ‘Is someone in the water?’
‘Don’t help him, Gerry,’ I yelled, running towards the Regatta Queen. Pete swam frantically towards the old frigate. ‘That man is a dangerous criminal and the police will be here any minute now to arrest him.’
Just as I reached the start of Gerry’s pontoon, I was grabbed from behind. I struggled, dug my elbows into the chest of my attacker, and kicked his shins.
‘Becs, it’s only me,’ Freddy hissed, spinning me round. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Looking for you,’ I hissed back. ‘Where’s Kimmi? Have you seen Max?’
He shook his head. ‘Kimmi wanted me to launch the Aqua Riva and meet Max down at the estuary. But I couldn’t get to the mooring. The woods around the creek and lane are heaving with police.’
‘Have you taken the Aqua Riva before?’ I demanded.
‘We might have taken it for a spin or two.’
It was probably the least of my worries. ‘Where is Kimmi now?’ I demanded.
‘I don’t know. She ran off. She must be trying to get to the estuary on foot. Why the hell did you push Pete Wendle into water?’
‘Because he’s the Tsar, isn’t he?’
Freddy shook his head, ‘No, he’s the harbourmaster.’
‘What?’ Before I could even begin to contemplate the implications of being wrong again, a shower of golden stars lit up the sky in an ear-splitting explosion. The fireworks had started early at Rivermede.
Another second explosion closely followed, throwing a burst of colourful confetti into the night air. As the sky illuminated, I saw the canoe swiftly and stealthily following in the wake of the line of little boats, and all hell broke loose on the marina.
Bodies appeared from everywhere, from within the dry stacks, from behind the boatsheds.
We both realised at
the same time what was happening.
‘Jesus, run!’ Freddy shouted. ‘He said this might happen. We’ve got to head for Chapman’s Wharf. We can hide out on The Solstice. He said to go there if anything went wrong.’
‘Who said? Who told you that?’ I gasped, already knowing the answer but not wanting to face the horrible truth. At least he had offered Freddy an escape route. He wasn’t all bad. A crook with a heart. My heart, shattering into zillions of tiny shards all over again.
I stumbled over the uneven stones, losing my footing in the ruts of the track. A screeching flare zoomed into the sky. Within an instant, searchlights appeared on the river, their beams picking out the line of the dinghies, picking out Pete thrashing in the water. And then as they swung in the opposite direction, they picked out a figure, the familiar bulk of Max van der Plaast, lurching towards us along the shore, followed by a chasing pack.
Freddy pushed me off the path and into the squelchy mud of the reed bed with an urgent, ‘Hide.’
There was nowhere to hide. It was impossible to run through a reed bed, and The Solstice was still a couple of hundred of metres away. I squelched through no more than ten, fifteen metres, before my progress was halted by the thickening mud. I looked over my shoulder to see Max van der Plaast grabbing Freddy by the tails of his morning suit.
‘Nice outfit, boy,’ he grunted, ‘but it’s about to get ruined.’
Max had a gun, and he pointed it at Freddy’s head.
This wasn’t happening. This was a dream, a nightmare, one of those awful realistic nightmares where you feel genuine fear and can’t run because your legs are made of lead, or trapped in mud, as mine were. I couldn’t make a sound, I daren’t move. I was frozen with fear in a slowly sinking hiding place, watching a scene from the worst kind of TV show being played out in front of me, all to the accompaniment of a pyrotechnic multi-coloured light show, willing myself to wake up safe in my bed in the stable block, or even better back in Battersea. The Kerridge nightmare over.
The chasing pack had stopped twenty metres of so away from where Max stood with Freddy. I crouched low, clasping hold of handfuls of the reeds to haul myself free.
‘I want a boat,’ van der Plaast shouted. He was out of breath, panting hard. Another ear-splitting shower of fireworks lit up the sky, making a spectacular mockery of his threat so that he had to start all over again. ‘I want a boat. You get me a boat and I let the boy go.’
‘There’s nowhere to go,’ one of the pack retaliated. ‘We’ve got the estuary covered and upstream is surrounded. There’s no escape, van der Plaast. We’ve already got your haul. You are completely cornered. Give yourself up and we can talk.’
Van der Plaast laughed. ‘You want this boy’s blood on your hands?’
A figure stepped forward. He was dressed differently to the other officers in their black uniforms. A figure in a bomber jacket with a baseball cap on his head. ‘Give yourself up, Max. Let the boy go.’
Van der Plaast’s grip on Freddy tightened. ‘You. I should have guessed. Maybe I’ll save my bullets for a traitor, not a stupid boy.’
There was a rustling further along the track, accompanied by a sob. ‘Papa, please.’ Kimmi scrambled up onto the path. She must have been hiding out somewhere in the reeds like me. ‘Papa, please let Freddy go.’
Van der Plaast said something in Dutch to his daughter. The tearful girl shook her head and made to move towards him, but one of the police officers lunged for her. Van der Plaast twisted Freddy to his knees, and then Nick darted forward. I covered my face with my hands, squeezed my eyes tight shut, and then heard the shots.
For a split second, everything went quiet and then Kimmi screamed. I heard a scuffle, scrunches on the gravel, grunts, shouts, and thuds. I opened my eyes. Two men were down and surrounded on the shore by half a dozen officers. Kimmi was being restrained, while Freddy remained on the path, curled in the foetal position, hands over his head, dazed but safe.
I clambered out of my hiding place, sacrificing my ballet pumps to the mud.
‘Freddy!’ I cried.
‘Oh Becs,’ he stuttered, tears streaming down his cheeks as he unfurled himself. ‘I thought I was a gonner.’
‘I thought you were, too,’ I wailed with relief, clinging to him.
The shoreline was in chaos. There were paramedics, officers in riot gear everywhere. Kimmi continued to cry, breaking her sobs every now and then to swear in Dutch.
My eyes searched the throng for Nick. It took seconds to register that he was the second man down.
‘I have to go and see Nick,’ I gasped to Freddy.
‘Who?’
‘The police officer in the baseball cap. The guy who saved you. Was he your Tsar?’
The guy who had been playing a double bluff, undercover, risking his life to fight crime. My hero. Every single emotion escalated into one. Love, compassion, grief, gratitude, relief. Nick had saved Freddy’s life.
Freddy nodded. ‘You’re saying he’s police?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, Freddy. It’s Nick, my Nick.’
‘Your Nick?’ Freddy looked even more dazed and confused than ever.
The jagged pebbles stabbed my bare feet as I approached the huddle on the strip of shingle. A paramedic was already administering a drip. An ambulance crew was rushing towards us along the gravel track.
I could see and smell blood.
‘Take all civilians out of the way,’ a gruff voice commanded from the huddle.
‘I need to know if he’s going to be okay?’ I cried, as an officer reached out to restrain me.
‘Is that you, Rebecca?’
‘Yes, it’s me, Nick. It’s me.’ The huddle momentarily gave way to allow me to crouch down beside him. I could see he was in agony; his face was deathly white. Blood was pouring from a wound in his leg, his bad leg, the leg that already bore the scars of his ski-ing accident.
‘Get the bloody stretcher here quick,’ the paramedic yelled.
‘I’m sorry about your dress,’ Nick rasped, ‘you looked so lovely earlier on…’
‘It’s only a dress,’ I replied, tears rolling down my cheek. ‘I can always have another one.’
‘A white one next time, eh?’ he croaked, and then one of Nick’s fellow officers hauled me out of the away.
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘Stop screaming, Becs,’ Freddy said, holding me close. ‘You can’t do anything, you have to let them go.’
Was I the one who was howling, making that awful animal noise? I thought it was Kimmi having hysterics, but Kimmi was quiet now, already being led to a waiting police car.
A physical pain tore through my entire body. The sense of helplessness was crushing. There was absolutely nothing I could do. Please, please, please let Nick be okay.
The ambulance sped away from the quayside, sirens blaring, lights flashing.
‘What hospital will they take him to?’ I screeched to the nearest officer. ‘You have to tell me.’
But he didn’t. He didn’t have to tell me anything. ‘It’s classified information,’ he replied. ‘You two need to come with us. We’ll need statements.’
‘I just want to go home,’ Freddy said, his teeth chattering. He was still in shock. We were both in shock.
We were given blankets and then bundled into a car. At Portdeane police station, I confessed I knew Nick from long ago, hoping for some sort of sympathetic ear, but the interviewing officers remained tight-lipped. They wanted facts, not romantic speculation. The operation to apprehend Max van der Plaast was part of a much bigger, international enterprise. Nick was just one of many officers involved, and Freddy and I, we were mere minions, bystanders who had unwittingly got in the way. I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid as to doubt Nick. He had warned me right from the start that Rivermede wasn’t safe. As the evening wore on, it dawned on me we were all very lucky to have escaped relatively unscathed.
While I waited for Freddy to finish being questioned, I saw a bedraggled, wet Pete Wen
dle staggering into the police station supported by two officers. He swore at me through the glass partition. He’s going to file charges, I thought, here goes. I am going to be charged with attempted murder, but there was no re-call to an interview room. Presumably the police had more pressing matters.
At three o’clock in the morning, Freddy emerged, and we were told we could go. We caught a taxi back to Rivermede. News of the arrests on the marina had filtered through to the newlyweds, and Pearl was waiting for us in the drawing room, beside herself with worry, all thoughts of a wedding night in the luxurious surroundings of a nearby country house hotel abandoned.
‘Oh my goodness, what has happened to you two?’ she cried. She was wrapped in her old familiar padded dressing gown, although her face was still fully-made up. ‘Freddy, look at the state of your suit, and Rebecca, where are your shoes?’
She swamped us with affection, hugs, tears, offers of tea, coffee, brandy. But for once Heather was not on hand, and I ended up making my own cup of tea while Pearl sat at the kitchen table, her arms draped around Freddy, running her fingers through his hair and repeating a relieved, ‘my dear, dear, boy,’ over and over again.
Freddy wanted to see Ivy.
‘But she’s asleep,’ Phoebe protested when she was awoken from her bed in the night-duty room.
‘I don’t care,’ Freddy said, grabbing his daughter from her cot and clutching her to his chest. ‘I just want to hold her.’
I knew the feeling. I was too tired to explain everything to Pearl, too exhausted to face further questioning. The stable block flat had never seemed so welcoming, and yet so surreal. I slipped off my ruined bridesmaid dress, left it on the floor, and fell into bed.
The police arrived at Rivermede at first light with search warrants. They didn’t disturb me in the flat, and I sensed little would be gained from rushing to enquire for news of Nick. Instead, I watched from the window as JJ was led away and bundled into a car. Later, when the coast seemed clear, I ventured over to the house.
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