The Deep Secret

by David Robinson

  “Why are we heading south?” he asked. “Why not a straight line across the Bristol Channel?”

  “Cardiff Airport, and Bristol airport, sir,” the pilot replied, lifting his headphones away from his ears. “We have to avoid their approach zone.”

  It sounded reasonable to Croft. “How long?”

  “About ninety minutes, sir. Give or take. We’ll be turning west again pretty soon, to bring us to over North Devon, and then it’s a straight run down to Braunton.”

  Croft tutted. “So much for Shannon and his ‘another hour’.”

  “He was generalising, Felix. Besides, we don’t know that Prather is actually in the area yet, do we?”

  “Last known location Bristol this morning? In another stolen car? He won’t be far off.”

  Ignoring Croft, Millie returned to her reading, but just as quickly looked up again. “Tell you what; this Zepelli was a crap writer, wasn’t he?”

  “You think so?” Croft asked. “I thought his official biography was well-written, but he could have used a ghost writer on it.” He gave a hollow laugh. “He could certainly afford it by then. The handwritten manuscript… well, that was different. He was in prison when he wrote it, and he didn’t live long enough to be free and have a ghost writer attend to it.”

  “Why does he underline certain words?”

  “I noticed it, too. When I first received the manuscript. A mnemonic, I suppose,” Croft said. “I don’t really know, but back then, authors, so I’m led to believe, underlined words which were intended to be italicised in the final version.”

  “You don’t do that?”

  Croft shook his head. “I’ve never handwritten a manuscript. I’ve produce them with a word processor and I italicise words as I’m preparing the script.”

  “Well, if he’s picking out italics with underlines, what’s he going to do with those he’s double underlined?”

  “Italics and bold?” Croft speculated.

  Millie sniffed disdainfully. “Not a good writer anyway. Some of his stuff reads like Dave Thurrock’s reports.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Millie searched back through the sheaves of paper. “Here, look. I noticed it the other day at Oaklands. See where he says, ‘The Deep Secret will live on, granted to the individual who can calm himself and realise the space to work out the puzzle? If he wanted someone to sit in a field and contemplate his knob end, why doesn’t he just say so?”

  “Perhaps he had literary aspirations,” Croft suggested.

  “You mean, he was trying to show how clever he was but actually made a balls of it. He did it again, too, a bit further back.” She checked the sheet and then followed the phrase with her index finger. “‘But there is no space for manoeuvre on the matter’. Most of us say there is no room for manoeuvre. Was he just plain thick, or what?”

  Croft felt the colour drain from his cheeks. It couldn’t be. Could it?

  “You all right, Felix?”

  “Jesus Christ, that’s it.” He snatched the paper from her and stared at the complex puzzle beneath the handwriting.

  AGRV YUK ZBFTW GRPJOLIB

  IFTL HN EIBSENS R TGTNHI

  CEO IGW NAISY LEN NY GNKE

  BRIU NX OMOAO G NEEG NACH

  WL MM LJRP MO ILAQ TIOGNI

  EIAADAN ARN A OSTI ETS NT

  FRVEH USU IU TLHAM NNR IR

  EAM RJATE ELW P TSSA YIKA

  PTNCIN RJ ASL IGT AS MINP

  LWEJ CSE GO RIO APH U NUGS

  SPE AUCA AE ISOBORO IHOT

  RAP ISL DHAO I PPD BRTOHI

  IM LSREESDS UAES N MAICA

  TUL NIEG GHNT RNU AEWITD

  JSYK TOHT R MEMSA OEV WAW

  ITE T NYNTN DSK LBKZN ESE

  DHL QNHU CA OAA ORWH R TSK

  TRO YEEB EN FS IUY UOH RLM

  RDEANN VDUN H BTAD IO IIT

  F CYI DGUE ONLP TORQMISI

  ESF CAE HRSA C MUGNN OA AN

  “How could I have been so blind.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “Spaces,” Croft said. “That’s what Zepelli has been telling us. ‘No space for manoeuvre’; ‘realise the space’. He means take out the spaces.” He held out his hand. “Pass me my netbook, will you?” He leaned forward and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “If I use my computer, will it interfere with your avionics?”

  “Long as the wi-fi’s turned off, sir, it’s no problem.”

  Millie reached down between her feet, picked up his netbook case and handed it to him.

  Unpacking the computer, Croft switched it on and began to tap the keyboard impatiently, willing it to hurry through its starting routine.

  “So what’s it going to tell us, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Croft admitted, “but we may find more regular patterns if we take out the spaces; regular patterns are the key to breaking any code.”

  With the machine working, he accessed his transcription, scrolled to the opening pages and ran quickly through the block of twenty lines, eliminating the spaces, until he was staring at a block of meaningless characters.

  IFTLHNEIBSENSRTGTNHI

  CEOIGWNAISYLENNYGNKE

  BRIUNXOMOAOGNEEGNACH

  WLMMLJRPMOILAQTIOGNI

  EIAADANARNAOSTIETSNT

  FRVEHUSUIUTLHAMNNRIR

  EAMRJATEELWPTSSAYIKA

  PTNCINRJASLIGTASMINP

  LWEJCSEGORIOAPHUNUGS

  SPEAUCAAEISOBOROIHOT

  RAPISLDHAOIPPDBRTOHI

  IMLSREESDSUAESNMAICA

  TULNIEGGHNTRNUAEWITD

  JSYKTOHTRMEMSAOEVWAW

  ITETNYNTNDSKLBKZNESE

  DHLQNHUCAOAAORWHRTSK

  TROYEEBENFSIUYUOHRLM

  RDEANNVDUNHBTADIOIIT

  FCYIDGUEONLPTORQMISI

  ESFCAEHRSACMUGNNOANA

  “It still doesn’t make any sense,” Millie said.

  Croft tutted. “Nor to me. Too cramped. Maybe if I…”

  “Yes?”

  “I was just thinking, when I work on anagrams, I use the cell structure of a spreadsheet.”

  “Not a table?”

  He shook his head. “Tables are awkward to format and for this I need one with twenty cells across and down. A spreadsheet works fine once you reduce the width of the cells. I just wonder if I transfer this to a spreadsheet, would it show us anything?”

  She shrugged. “Worth a try, I suppose.”

  He passed her the original manuscript. “I’ll open up the spreadsheet. Will you read the characters to me?”

  They began a minute later.

  It was a slow process. Millie ran along the lines of text with her finger to ensure she did not miss any, Croft typing in the characters and double checking to ensure he had them right. Minehead had passed beneath them and they were cutting out over the luxurious greens of Exmoor and the North Devon cliffs by the time the job was complete, and Croft studied the result.

  “Still nothing,” he complained. “We’ll have to—”

  Millie cut him off. “I dunno. Does that spell Julius?”

  She pointed to the screen and a diagonal line running up and to the right from the seventh cell upwards. Croft followed the line of the letters.

  “Felix, it’s a word search.”

  “J-U-L-I-U-S-R-E-I-… Julius Reiniger.” He burst out laughing. “All this time and in the end, it was so simple.”

  Millie laughed with him. “Crazy.”

  Croft disagreed. “Genius is often identified by its simplicity, and if this is anything to go by, then Zepelli truly was a genius.” He laughed again. “When we land, we need to get copies of this printed out so we can go through it letter by letter and see how many more words we can get.” He kissed her. “Millie, you’re a genius, too.”

  She kissed him back. “Then you can give me a proper reward later.”

  38

  Why?

  The question rang repeatedly through Billy’s head as he sped along the dual carriageway skirting north of Tiverton.

  Why wer
e Croft and his black girlfriend at Sentinel Street? He could understand the police standing guard outside. He’d expected that. They were there on the off-chance that Gerry headed for home. But why would Croft be there? Had he simply gone there to see if he could learn anything, or did he know?

  Reaching the end of the dual carriageway, he circled the roundabout, and dropped onto the A361, now a single track, heading towards Barnstaple. From here, Helecombe was about forty miles. But he would turn off before reaching Barnstaple and the road was not a good one. It would be packed with holiday traffic, too. He calculated at least another hour before he got there.

  And what would he do when he arrived? He did not have the key and short of breaking in, he could not get into the boat.

  His stomach growled. He needed food, too. Tearing away from Bristol like that, determined to put as much distance between him and the Avon and Somerset Constabulary as he could, he had not stopped.

  Gerry, the careful planner, had not planned for this. He reasoned that the police would be at Sentinel Street and that the present owners of the house – Asians, naturally – might object, but since Gerry planned on going there at night, they would have been easy to deal with. Knowing Gerry, he would probably have fucked the Asian woman before topping her. That Gerry, he’d shag anything.

  Billy grinned at the thought, and accelerated to pass a slow moving lorry.

  But Gerry had not considered the dread boredom of two or three days on the road alone. How could he? He’d anticipated seeing the plan through. It was that ennui which had sent Billy to Sentinel Street twelve hours too early, and now he did not have the key, so Helecombe was out, and it was up to him, Billy, to come up with an alternative, and when it came to planning, he was not in Gerry’s league.

  All his life Gerry had been a thinker, a schemer. Thrown out of Granthaven, when he came to Easton Comprehensive, he was the one who had come up with the idea of drilling through the changing room walls so they could peek at the growing tits and pubes on the girls next door. Others had tried, but only Gerry succeeded by secreting his father’s electric drill in his schoolbag and having Billy keep lookout while he drilled the hole. And he’d brought a readymade plug, made from a bit of old wall tile with a stub of shaped concrete attached to it, so they could hide the hole when they were done. It took the school three months to find it, and only then by accident when one of the cleaners was scrubbing a bit too vigorously.

  Borrowing books from the library on famous murderers, Gerry had been impressed with the work of people like Haigh, Christie, Brady and Hindley, but disparaged them for choosing targets that were too easy, and using methods that were also too easy. He came up with his own plan for the perfect murder, which resulted in the death of the girl under Clevedon pier after she had been twice fucked. And everything went according to Gerry’s plan. Later, as The Handshaker, he terrorised the small town of Scarbeck for two years and he was only caught because he picked on Trish Sinclair. If he had avoided Croft, he would probably be still up there, murdering them for the thrill of it.

  That was Gerry. A one-off when it came to thoughtful planning.

  Billy was nothing near so good, but he was not a total waste when it came to thinking things through, and he knew the dangers of spur-of-the-moment murders. That undercover cop in Marseilles was a case in point. If he’d stopped to think, the guy gave away too much when he was asking Billy for drugs; hassling to learn who was his supplier, agreeing too readily to the price. But Billy didn’t think. Instead he lashed out, flattened his opponent, then slashed his throat, as a result of which he spent the next two decades in a French prison. In one sense, he was lucky. France was the last country in Western Europe to abolish the death penalty in 1981. If Billy had been running drugs and murdered a cop before then, he would surely have faced the guillotine.

  A sign ahead advised him of a diner off to the left. It was risky. He’d been listening to the radio all morning, and images of him, with complete descriptions had been circulated. No doubt they would be all over the TV, too.

  He recalled his days in the dour high rise blocks of Baumettes prison, the Centre Pénitentiaire de Marseille; the overcrowding, lack of proper sanitation, the frequent fights between inmates, and the minimal rations. Upon his release, he had sworn that he would never go cold and hungry again.

  With a smile he recalled the items he had taken from the theatrical supplier in Wolverhampton, transferred from the Nissan when he stole this Vauxhall, and now tucked in the boot along with his weapons. Gerry was the real expert on theatrical makeup, what with his dad having been on stage almost all his life, but Billy was sure he could rig up something.

  He pulled off the road, and followed a narrow track round to the rear of the diner, where a number of cars and lorries were parked. Climbing out, he opened the boot, retrieved his holdall, then got back into the car. Half bowed so that he was hidden from any passersby, he pulled on a dark wig, hooked a beard over his ears. Checking the mirror, it did not look particularly convincing, but the face looking back was not that of Billy Prather.

  ***

  The police Land Rover, emergency lights flickering in the sunny afternoon, sped through Helecombe and down to the quayside, where Constable Ian Kneale jumped out and opened the doors for Croft and Millie.

  He had collected them from Braunton twenty minutes earlier and, following the directive of his Divisional Superintendent at Barnstaple, rushed them through narrow coastal roads, and the busier town streets of Helecombe to get them here, and while he drove, he brought them up to date.

  “Bristol left a message for you, ma’am. Scanners have found a possible burial site in the back yard at Sentinel Street. They’re about to begin digging it up.”

  “Burke’s caravan?” Croft asked.

  “We checked with all the sites locally, sir, and Burke is not registered as an owner with any of them.”

  “Try the name Humphries,” Croft suggested, and for the benefit of both Millie and Kneale, explained, “If Burke senior owned a van, it would be rust by now, as we speculated yesterday. Ten to one Gerry replaced it sometime after his father’s death, and he may just have registered it in his mother’s maiden name.”

  “I’ll get onto ’em the minute we get to Helecombe, sir.”

  “No sign of the latest stolen vehicle, I suppose?” Millie asked as they pulled into the harbour car park.

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but it’s the height of the holiday season. Do you know how many out-of-town Vauxhall Corsas we have on our car parks? Without a registration, we could be checking them from now until Christmas.” Kneale opened the Land Rover door for her. “Harbourmaster will have a printer you can use, sir,” he told Croft, and pointed to a low, redbrick building, with a small, green-painted observation deck above one corner. “And the Quayside Hotel is just along there.” He swung his arm back the way they had come, to a cream and pale green-decorated pub/restaurant. “My guvnor has already booked rooms for you.”

  “Thank you, Constable,” Millie said. “Do me a favour before you get back on your beat. Get onto your boss, ask him to check if anything has come in since we left Scarbeck and, if so, ask him to call me. He should have my contact number.”

  “Wilco, ma’am.”

  While Kneale climbed into his Land Rover and drove off, Croft and Millie entered the harbourmaster’s office. Millie introduced herself and hooked Croft’s netbook to the printer.

  “You ever heard of Gibbet Point?” Croft asked while he waited for the laser printer to produce the copies.

  Pete Orville, the forty-year-old harbourmaster, looking regulation smart in his white shirt and braided epaulettes, shook his head. “Lived round here all my life, sir, and I’ve never heard of such a place.”

  “Sandy beach and tall cliffs,” Millie said.

  The officer gestured through the windows. “That could be anywhere on this coast from Tintagel in the south to Minehead in the east, ma’am.”

  Croft gathered up the half dozen cop
ies of the grid and Millie scribbled down her mobile number.

  She passed it to Orville. “If you think of anything, anything at all, bell me. We’re only across the road. You right, Felix?”

  “Let’s get to it.”

  Croft slotted the copies into his briefcase, threw his overnight bag onto his shoulder, and followed Millie from the harbourmaster’s office and back along the way Constable Kneale had brought them.

  The harbour was situated well away from the town, which could be seen on the lumpy hills half a mile away. A line of white buildings in the distance heralded the standard view of a British seaside town. Along the approach road, known as The Quay, the bars and restaurants enjoyed brisk trade. Holidaymakers crowded the narrow pavements, shuffling in and out of souvenir shops or peering into restaurant windows checking on the menu and prices. Some posed while their partners/friends took photographs, others idled by the waterside, admiring the boats bobbing on the calm waters.

  Croft reminded himself that this was the holiday season, and many of these people were coming to the end of their annual summer vacation. They had not been dragged across the country, nor locked in a nightmare battle with a madman. On Saturday, they would climb into their cars, onto their buses or trains, and journey home, and next week, they would be showing off their holiday snaps to friends and workmates, and reminiscing on the wonderful week they had in Helecombe.

  What would he, Croft, be doing? Or Millie? Or Shannon? Trish, he deliberately reminded himself, would be lowered into a hole in the ground where she would rest for eternity. The thought sent a lance of pain through his heart, but he had become numbed to it. Its sting now produced only the murderous anger which had so consumed him at Sentinel Street.

  The interior of the Quayside could have been any pub in mainland Britain. Horse brasses decked low-slung beams, a cheery (mock) fire burned in a large, rambling fireplace, and only the pictures adorning the walls declared it a seaside hotel. In the country, Croft would have expected rural scenes, in East Anglia he would probably have seen interpretations of the Spitfire or Lancaster flying through wartime skies, but here, it was beach views, cliffs and boats.