‘Is Michala back from Copenhagen?’ Lizzie asked.
‘She will be. Mid-afternoon. You’re in luck. She likes you. Otherwise I’d never be here.’
‘She’s your secretary?’
‘My buddy. And my colleague. In our neck of the woods the buzzword is collaboration. If you’re lucky you get to build a critical mass. That makes life easier, believe you me.’
‘Safety in numbers?’
‘Hell, no. Excitement in numbers. Momentum in numbers. Safety’s for the birds. No one got anywhere by thinking safety.’
‘And Alois Bentner? He’s part of this thing? This critical mass?’
‘Alois? Who said anything about Alois?’ She was slumped on the sofa now, a mountain of a woman, but her eyes were ablaze. Lizzie seemed to have touched a nerve.
‘I got the name from Michala.’ It was an easy lie. ‘She said you two were close. She told me you were next door neighbours.’
‘Were?’
‘I understand he’s gone missing.’
‘Sure. And on his own terms. Like always.’
‘Some people think he’s dead.’
‘Dead? Alois? Not true.’
‘You know that?’
‘Of course I know that.’
‘How?’
She wouldn’t answer. Instead she asked Lizzie whether she was familiar with her work.
Lizzie nodded. A couple of hours on the Internet over the weekend had taken her deep into this woman’s academic career.
‘Native Indian Rituals on the Pacific Coast,’ she said. ‘And your book was shortlisted for the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award.’
‘That’s right. Proudest day of my life. I never made it to the prize itself but I was in the best of company. Get that far and important doors start to open.’ She brushed crumbs from the shelf of her bosom. ‘You get to read the book at all?’
‘It’s on order. Amazon.’
‘Good girl. Bring it along and I’ll sign it for you.’
‘Along where?’
‘My place. Lympstone.’ For the first time she smiled. The smile transformed her face. She looked suddenly feminine, a far less aggressive woman struggling to get out.
Lizzie asked for an address. Now wasn’t the moment to admit that she knew it already.
Caton plunged a fat hand into her bag. She sorted through a clutch of cards, then handed one over.
‘I thought Michala would have made contact,’ she said. ‘The invitation’s for 7.30. Bring a bottle. Just the three of us. Stay over if you want. I’m cooking.’ She reached for the last of the biscuits. ‘Salmon OK with you?’
Houghton convened a meet in her office. Nandy had arrived from Barnstaple. To his immense satisfaction, his team had just drawn a cough from the two Romanians. They’d encountered the elderly couple while pulling early spuds in the field behind their bungalow. They’d clocked the new Volvo and the paid gardener and concluded there was money to be made. They’d broken in at night, hauled the couple from their beds and demanded everything they had. The old boy’s big mistake was keeping his money in the bank. When he told them he couldn’t remember his PIN number, they battered him to death. His wife was killed for watching.
‘Lovely.’
Houghton’s sarcasm was wasted on Nandy. He beamed at Suttle, at Golding.
‘Full confession.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Forty-seven hours from start to finish. Textbook. A classic.’
The contrast with Buzzard was all too obvious. Nandy wanted to know the latest.
Houghton summarised what few leads they had. The SOC team had finished with the property in Exmouth. They’d also boshed Tania’s car, just in case. Both scenes had yielded nothing except ample evidence of two lives in chaos. Russell, she said, was about to embark on another eight-week posting to the Gulf. How he managed to pull contracts like these was beyond her.
‘Look on the bright side, boss.’ This from Golding. ‘He probably frightens the pirates to death.’
‘So where’s Mr Bentner?’ Nandy wasn’t amused.
Houghton said she hadn’t a clue. Short of turning the country upside down and giving it a good shake, she’d run out of options. Media interest in the story was fast disappearing, and Bentner’s details had been distributed nationwide to no obvious effect. Her working assumption was that he’d either reappear at a time of his own choosing or make a silly mistake. The latter was a tempting proposition, but the longer this thing went on the unlikelier it seemed. This guy was a pro. He knew how to hide. He was world class at going to ground.
‘He kipped on the cliff top with a bunch of drunks,’ Nandy pointed out. ‘How world class was that?’
‘With respect, sir, that tells us a great deal.’ This from Suttle.
‘You still think he’s innocent?’
‘I still think he didn’t know she was dead. Not on the Saturday night. Not when he was in Exmouth. You’re right. That would have been an insane thing to do.’
‘So maybe that’s it. Maybe you’ve nailed it.’
‘He’s insane?’
‘Yeah. Or dead. That’s another option. The guy phones the woman from the Met Office. He heads on west. He has to dump his car. He’s run out of options and he knows it. Even buying booze is off limits. Food. The lot. He’s depressed because he’s a drunk. He’s out of his tree because the world is disappearing up its own arse. Plus he’s just killed the one human being who seems to matter to him and cut the baby’s head off. Cornwall’s full of mineshafts. You can’t move for them. He’d know that. He’d take his pick. Shut your eyes. Step into the darkness. Gravity does the rest. Easy.’ He looked round, hands outstretched. ‘Am I wrong?’
It was Houghton who broke the silence. She sounded weary.
‘So what do you suggest, sir? We search every mineshaft west of the Tamar? Or we wait for something to happen? Or we call it a day?’
‘For the time being we wait,’ he said. ‘I was going to reassign the officers I nicked for the Barnstaple job, but if there’s nothing to action I can use them elsewhere. It’s Monday. We’ll give it until the end of the week. We need leads. Are you really telling me there’s nothing?’
Suttle raised a hand. He told Nandy about Gemma Caton.
‘This is the next-door neighbour, sir.’
‘I understood she was in London.’
‘That’s right. She’s alibied herself. But we still need to check it out.’
He explained about her friend with the flat in Streatham Hill. He’d put in two more calls today but still no response.
‘Has the flat been checked?’
‘A Met guy went round at the weekend.’
‘And?’
‘No answer. He checked with a neighbour, and the woman turns out to be Danish. He thought she might have gone to Copenhagen for a bit.’
‘Handy.’
‘Exactly.’
Houghton had had enough. She had files to go through from her last job and a meeting with one of the ACCs about the state of her overtime budget. After that she was thinking about a canter across Dartmoor followed by a couple of hours in a spa hotel.
Her gaze went from face to face.
‘That’s a joke, guys, in case anyone’s wondering.’
Twenty-Seven
MONDAY, 16 JUNE 2014, 18.57
Lizzie went to the convenience store in Lympstone for her bottle of wine. Dallying between a Chilean Merlot and a decent bottle of white, she remembered that salmon was on the menu and settled for the Chablis. Still too early to knock on Gemma Caton’s door, she wandered through the village until she found a bench that overlooked the water.
At half-tide the exposed mud that fringed the tiny bay was gleaming as the sun sank towards the low swell of the hills beyond the water. The flags in Gemma Caton’s back garden had disappeared, but dinghies from the sailing club were queuing on the slip, readying for launch, and an orange safety tender was already busying around offshore. Junior night, she thought, watching a couple of kids pushing the first of
the dinghies into the water. One of the girls sank calf-deep in mud, and the laughter of her mates carried in the wind. How come a village this tight, this intimate, had managed to breed an act of such savagery? And how come dozens of detectives still had no clue where to look for the culprit?
She sat back, the sun full on her face. It was still warm, and she thought about treating herself to a glass of wine from the nearby pub before knocking on Gemma Caton’s door but decided against it. The next few hours, she told herself, might put her ahead of Jimmy’s precious investigation. Already, to her surprise, she seemed to have established that Buzzard’s prime suspect was alive and well. That much had been implicit in Caton’s silence about his whereabouts. She knew, Lizzie thought, and more important still, she seemed happy to have Lizzie – a total stranger – share that knowledge. Whether Lizzie believed this woman was another matter, but she sensed that there might be a great deal more to come, precious leads she could use to her own advantage when it came to her next encounter with her estranged husband.
She thought of him now, tussling with this latest development in his love life. She hadn’t a moment’s doubt that she could bed him again. What she’d become over the last year or so excited him. She’d seen it in his eyes, in the urgency of his love-making. He wanted to get to know her all over again. He wanted to check her out, to convince himself that she – that they – were for real. And afterwards? Once he’d found some kind of answer to his questions? What then? She didn’t know, and for once she didn’t care. Success, she realised, had brought not just money and profile but a sense of independence she could practically taste. She belonged to no one, and that realisation was the biggest turn-on of all.
It was Michala who opened the door of Caton’s house. She leaned forward and kissed Lizzie on the lips before leading her inside. The house was bigger than it looked from the street. Lizzie could see Caton bent over the stove in the galley kitchen, mopping her face with a tea towel. She was wearing an apron over a pair of baggy jeans, and when she turned towards the open door Lizzie saw the figure of a leaping fish thrusting upwards over her huge chest. A salmon? Lizzie had no idea.
‘Welcome.’ Caton was chewing gum. ‘Fix the lady a drink.’
The smells were delicious. Fennel. Mint. Rosemary. Michala took Lizzie through to the living room. French doors at the far end were open, and beyond the scruffiness of the garden Lizzie could see the kids in their dinghies out on the water. They were racing now, jockeying for space as they rounded a buoy, and Lizzie watched as one teetered on the edge of a capsize.
‘You want wine? A beer? Something else?’ It was Michala.
Lizzie settled for a glass of wine. The room – bare boards, antique furniture – might have belonged in an art gallery. There were artefacts everywhere – spears, a shield, a crude-looking net and a hand-carved face in a wood that might have been mahogany. The walls of the room had been painted a soft sea-green, and there wasn’t a space that wasn’t occupied by photographs. These were old prints, many of them sepia, and Lizzie moved from image to image.
This must be Gemma’s book come to life, she told herself: carefully posed snapshots of Indian life out on the Pacific coast. In one photo two naked children were struggling with a dead-looking fish. In another a family group was standing in front of a huge drying rack. The rack was the size of a house, the timber framework hung with the splayed carcasses of yet more fish. There must have been hundreds of them.
‘You like the pictures?’ Michala was back with the wine.
‘Very much.’ Lizzie’s eye had gone to a third shot, high up on the wall. A biggish group of Indians, all men, was gathered round a circular booth made of wooden poles. A couple of the men were carrying what looked like spears, and there were more of these weapons inside the booth.
‘You know about this stuff?’ Lizzie hadn’t heard Caton coming in from the kitchen. For a big woman she moved with surprising lightness. She stood beside Michala, wiping her hands on the apron.
‘Tell me.’ Lizzie turned back to the picture.
‘Those poles must be taken from the highest mountain. And you know why? Because otherwise the salmon will see them. Something else too. Every year you have to use new poles. Else the old salmon will tell the young salmon about them.’
‘This is way back?’
‘Nineteenth century. These are Californian Indians from the Karuk tribe. See here?’ Her finger stabbed at another picture lower down, three children struggling to carry a huge fish up the beach. ‘This is the first salmon of the run. The elders say prayers before the flesh is cut. That way the tribe honours the fish. And afterwards? You know what happens afterwards? You protect the bones. You make sure they never touch the ground. And then they go back to the river or maybe the sea. That way you keep the spirits sweet. And – hey – the bones come back next year inside a new fish.’
Lizzie nodded, returning to the booth that held the spears. ‘You’re telling me these fish are sacred?’
‘Always. You’re looking at the gods of the river. They have souls. They alone decide whether to return or not. You’re looking at a big slug of marine protein, sure, but you’re also looking at the power of life and death. If the salmon don’t show, then the tribe starves. Honour the fish. Propitiate the spirits. Otherwise, no kidding, you die.’
‘And is this why you’ve chosen to live here? Beside a river?’
‘Sure. But you know the irony?’
‘Tell me.’
‘I can’t swim. Not that it matters. The river’s in here.’ One hand half-covered an enormous breast. ‘That’s the way the Indians figured it too. Live life right, and you are the river. That’s where it starts and that’s where it all ends.’
Lizzie nodded. It seemed a simple proposition. One thing though.
‘There are salmon out there?’ She nodded towards the window. ‘In the river?’
Caton’s smile split her face. She was looking at Michala.
‘Great question,’ she said. ‘I guess we ought to eat.’
Michala laid the table beneath the wall of photos. Lizzie fetched more wine from the fridge in the kitchen. When the food was ready, Caton beckoned Michala out of the room. They returned with a big wooden platter. Steam curled from the fish on top. The salmon, resting on a bed of samphire, was huge. Caton laid the dish in the middle of the table then, with a glance at the view beyond the French doors, aligned it carefully towards the river before gesturing Lizzie to her feet.
‘Face the water,’ she whispered.
‘Why?’
‘Just do it.’
‘For the spirits?’
‘Sure. And for each other. Gimme your hand.’
She stood in the middle, flanked by Lizzie and Michala. To Lizzie the palm of Caton’s hand felt warm and fleshy.
‘You close your eyes, right?’
Lizzie nodded, cheated, peeped through the tiny crack between her eyelids. Caton was intoning something in a language Lizzie didn’t understand. It sounded like a prayer, the same phrase repeated and repeated. She was swaying now, her body rocking back and forth, her hand urging Lizzie to do the same. Then, without warning, it was over.
‘The spirits have spoken.’ She nodded at the table. ‘Sit.’
Lizzie did as she was told. Caton was still on her feet, bent over the fish, cutting a thin line down the backbone, parting the pinkness of the flesh. Another glimpse of a delicacy, a deftness, Lizzie hadn’t expected.
‘Plate?’
Lizzie got the first slice of the fish. Michala helped her to potatoes, French beans, and a crisp green salad. In a restaurant, thought Lizzie, this meal would have been a credit to any chef. Gemma Caton certainly knew how to cook.
‘You know the thing about the salmon?’ Caton had at last sat down. ‘It’s energy incarnate. We eat the salmon and the energy passes to us. It’s like a spirit. It’s immortal. It goes on and on, different shapes, different forms.’
‘That’s what these people thought?’ Lizzie gestured a
t the photos on the wall.
‘Sure. And it’s what we happen to think too.’
‘We?’
‘Me. And Michala here.’
‘And Alois?’
‘Sure, Alois is a believer. The Indians had it right. They knew the salmon. They respected the salmon. They worshipped the salmon. It gave them everything they needed. Fresh food in the summer. Cured food the rest of the year. Clothing from the skins. Look at the kids up there. Skinny, sure. But never undernourished.’
Lizzie was beginning to wonder what any of this had to do with global warming. She put the question to Michala, who glanced first at Caton before answering. She needs permission to speak, thought Lizzie. This woman dominates everything.
‘The salmon made the coastal Indians their own people,’ she said. ‘Like Gemma says, they didn’t need anyone else. As long as the salmon returned, they had no need to trade or look elsewhere for a living. That’s why it was so important that the salmon always came back.’
‘But aren’t they programmed that way? Isn’t it a genetic thing?’
‘That’s what we think.’ Caton this time. ‘And I guess that’s where the trouble starts. Science has its blessings, but the truth is we’ve lost touch with everything that matters.’
‘We’re still talking salmon?’
‘Sure we are. It’s a respect thing. It’s knowing your place in the world. We think the world revolves around us. Which is one of the reasons we’re about to destroy it.’
Caton nodded up at the photos again. The hearts of the first salmon were kept and cherished by the tribe, she said. And if a spear fisherman killed two salmon with a single thrust he was forbidden to celebrate in case the salmon already hanging on the drying racks climbed down and returned to the sea.
‘Respect,’ she said. ‘It’s about respect. In the developed world we’ve lost that. And once it’s gone, all that’s left is what we take from nature. Take, take, take. The spirits have a loaded gun to our heads. And you know what? We’re so dumb we can’t even feel it. In fact we don’t even know it’s there. I guess that’s the sadness. Disaster stares us in the face and we’re looking the other way.’
The Order of Things Page 19
