The Order of Things

by Graham Hurley

  Downstairs in the kitchen Lizzie studied the photo she’d taken in Michala’s bedroom last night. All she knew for sure was that the woman in the wetsuit must have played a part in Michala’s life. Maybe they had been lovers. Maybe this hunky kitesurfer was yet another courtier in Gemma Caton’s waterside ménage, a splash of rich colour after the pale delights of her Danish waif. Either way, Lizzie had to find out more. She recognised Exmouth beach from her days in the rowing club. The moment the wind blew, the place was thick with kitesurfers. She’d go down there later, make an enquiry or two, see if the face on her mobile drew a nod of recognition.

  In the meantime she needed to know a lot more about Gemma Caton. She fetched her laptop from the living room and settled down again at the kitchen table. A couple of keystrokes took her to Amazon. She typed ‘Native Indian Rituals on the Pacific Coast’ into the search box. The book was only available from a single supplier in Seattle, and even express international delivery would take three days. She frowned, moving the cursor across the screen. By then, she thought, I may have found the mystery kitesurfer. The cursor settled on Buy.

  Done.

  Jimmy Suttle drove Alois Bentner to Heavitree police station. To Suttle’s surprise, the pavement outside the nick was swarming with media, TV crews as well as photographers. Bentner was a big man, sturdy, with a tumble of greying curls that lapped the collar of his shirt. He wore glasses and a full beard. According to the PC at the hotel, he’d already admitted to sleeping rough, but eight days of life in the wild appeared to have done him no harm at all. On the contrary, for an alleged recluse he appeared to be getting a kick out of all the attention. As he pushed through the scrum of bodies, a shout came from a reporter at the back.

  ‘Did you kill her, Mr Bentner?’

  The bluntness of the question stopped him in his tracks. He turned towards the reporter and looked him in the eye. He was taking his time. From where Suttle was standing, he seemed to appreciate that his answer would be all over the rolling news channels within minutes.

  ‘There are life and death issues here we ought to be discussing,’ he growled. ‘Whether I killed my partner isn’t one of them.’

  The crowd parted. Suttle shepherded Bentner through the doors of the police station, and led him through to the Custody Suite. This time, arrested on suspicion of murder, he had nothing to say.

  Lizzie was in Exmouth by mid-morning. To her relief a brisk wind had brought half a dozen kitesurfers to the crescent of beach that fronted the dunes towards Orcombe Point. Four of them were already on the water, criss-crossing the offshore chop, using the bigger waves to launch themselves into spectacular jumps. One of them soared higher, buoyed aloft by the huge sail. Lizzie caught his wild yelp, pure exaltation, then watched as he got the landing wrong and ended in a tangle of arms and legs. That’s me, Lizzie thought, if I’m not careful.

  The first guy she approached had already been out on the water. Carefully folding his sail, he spared the time to look at Lizzie’s mobile. Then came a shake of the head and the news that he was new to the area. He’d heard about the beach from mates, checked out the forecast and driven down from Bristol that very morning. He was due back at work in the early afternoon. When Lizzie asked what he did for a living he pulled a face.

  ‘I’m a copper,’ he said. ‘For my sins.’

  The other surfer on the beach was a woman. This time it was more promising. She lived locally and thought she recognised the face in the photo from a while back but couldn’t be sure. Best to ask at the kite shop, she said, nodding back towards the marina.

  The shop was empty when Lizzie arrived. She looked around then spotted the bell on the counter. A couple of rings brought a youth clattering down the stairs. With his shorts and his tan he might have stepped off the beach.

  Lizzie introduced herself. She said she was a freelance journalist working on a story about Exmouth. She wanted to put a name to a photo she’d acquired. She showed him her mobile.

  ‘That’s Kelly,’ he said at once.

  Lizzie heard the door to the street open behind her. She turned to find herself looking at a woman in her forties. She had a sheepdog on a lead. She called the boy Marcus. There was a delivery expected. Had it arrived?

  Lizzie looked from one face to the other. There was a definite likeness: the same blue eyes, the same blond curls, the same hint of determination in the strength of the jawline.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ The woman was staring at the photo.

  ‘A friend gave it to me.’

  ‘Like who?’

  Lizzie didn’t answer. Instead she asked about Kelly. Was she still kitesurfing? Did she live locally? If so, where might Lizzie find her?

  ‘Find her?’ The woman sounded incredulous. ‘You’re telling me you don’t know what happened?’

  A five-minute drive took Lizzie to an area of grassland overlooking the estuary. The water was protected here, and there were more kitesurfers, less accomplished, trying to master their rigs. Lizzie sat behind the wheel of her Audi, wondering whether Michala too had fallen in love with the sport. Was this how she’d come to meet Kelly? And find a space for her on her bedside table?

  Lizzie’s iPad was in her bag. She fired it up and tapped in a Google enquiry: ‘Kelly kitesurf Exmouth’. Within seconds she found herself looking at a list of entries. One of them took her to the Exmouth Journal, the town’s local paper. The article was headed WINDSURFER TRAGEDY AT SEA. Accompanying it was the face on her mobile, another grin for the camera but this time no kiss.

  Quickly Lizzie scanned the text. Kelly Willmott, thirty-one, had been posted missing after failing to turn up for a drink with a friend. The friend, unnamed, knew she’d been planning to windsurf earlier. She’d waited and waited, made a few check calls and then dialled 999. A joint police and coastguard search had located Kelly’s car on Exmouth seafront. Her rig and wetsuit were missing. A helicopter was scrambled and joined the local lifeboat for a search but neither found any trace of Kelly. Three days later, in a separate story, a trawler picked up a kitesurf sail identified as Kelly’s. The date on the story was 21 December last year. Kelly’s body, it appeared, was never found.

  Never found? Lizzie looked up for a moment, wishing she knew somebody who could put all this information in context, somebody who understood about wind direction and tidal flows, someone – in short – who could give her some idea how to navigate the no man’s land between a simple accident and something more sinister. Jimmy, she knew, would be useless. He’d never expressed the least interest in anything to do with watersports.

  Briefly she toyed with trying to contact some of the people she’d rowed with. A handful had become mates at the time, but her memories of that period of her life were ugly, all the more so because they led to a man called Tom Pendrick. He too had disappeared at sea, only to reappear on her mobile phone months later, texting from a beach in Thailand. Jimmy, she knew, still blamed him for the collapse of their marriage, and God knows he might be right. No way did she want to revisit any of that.

  Which left Michala. She’d obviously known Kelly Willmott. And just now, if Lizzie was to find out the truth about Alois Bentner, that relationship might offer crucial evidence. Last night Gemma Caton had seriously frightened her. That she’d played some role in Bentner’s disappearance, maybe even Harriet Reilly’s death, seemed more and more likely. Michala might therefore turn out to be the key to this puzzle. And given the choice between talking to the Buzzard squad or to her guest from last night, Lizzie suspected she’d choose the latter.

  Michala’s number was still on Lizzie’s directory. She answered on the third ring.

  ‘It’s me, Lizzie Hodson. I think we ought to meet.’

  The first interview session with Alois Bentner began after lunch. He’d conferred with his solicitor, who’d brought sandwiches from the nearby Waitrose, washed down with coffee from the machine in the corridor. Bentner’s solicitor was a partner in an Exeter practice Suttle knew well, a waspish thirty
-something single mother with a reputation for plain speaking. Suttle asked Golding to handle disclosure, something of a formality because Buzzard had so little in the way of hard evidence. When he returned, minutes later, Golding was looking glum.

  ‘She’s saying this is a waste of time, skip. Hers and ours.’

  ‘And Bentner?’

  ‘I showed him the scene photos. He refused to look at the shots of the victim. He’s not a happy man.’

  Golding was right. The formalities over, Suttle opened the interview by asking Bentner to describe the exact nature of his relationship with Harriet Reilly.

  ‘We were together,’ he said. ‘You’d know that. You’ll have checked. Her place sometimes. Other times mine.’

  ‘You saw a lot of each other?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You described her as your partner outside.’

  ‘That’s right. She was.’

  ‘Close, then.’

  ‘Of course. In every sense.’

  He confirmed they went away together whenever the opportunity arose. Brazil. The States. Europe. The odd expedition up to Scotland.

  ‘Why there? Why Scotland?’

  ‘Because it’s one of the few wild places left. That’s where you go when you want to turn your back on all this shit.’ He gestured up at the window, at the incessant roar of traffic grinding up the hill from the city centre.

  ‘As a matter of interest, who tipped the media off?’ This from Golding.

  ‘I did. Last night. From the hotel. It’s easy. It’s like everything else these days. You phone a number. You give them a name. You tell them you’re giving yourself up next morning, and if there’s money in it they’ll all appear. Everything’s for sale. Including me. And you know what? It’s because I’m the bad guy. You’ve done a great job already. That passport photo you used? Doctor Death? A hundred years ago that would have had me hanging from a lamp post. Life’s all assumptions, because people love the easy life. Except one morning we’re all going to wake up dead.’

  Suttle assumed the latter comment was an invitation to discuss global warming. He ignored it.

  ‘You think we’ve been prejudicial?’

  ‘I think you’ve made your minds up.’

  ‘Just as well you’re here then.’

  ‘Sure. Why else would I have come?’

  Touché. Suttle was beginning to warm to this man. Nothing in his manner betrayed a scintilla of anxiety or self-doubt. He didn’t really need the services of his solicitor. He was here to correct a misconception or two. In the first place about Harriet Reilly. And afterwards, if there was the time and the opportunity, about one or two other issues.

  Suttle wanted to stick with Reilly.

  ‘She was pregnant,’ he pointed out.

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Would you like to tell us more?’

  For the first time he glanced at his solicitor, but when she shook her head he chose to ignore her.

  ‘Harriet wanted a child. I said yes.’

  ‘It was that way round?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it wasn’t her child, was it?’

  ‘No. She couldn’t have children of her own.’

  ‘Because she wouldn’t try?’ Suttle remembered Tony Velder on the phone from Australia.

  ‘Because she had a problem conceiving. Trying was never an issue. Not for either of us.’

  ‘She liked sex?’

  ‘She loved sex. It came late to her. Maybe I was able to help in that respect.’

  Suttle nodded and made a note. He wanted to know more about the pregnancy.

  ‘Where did the egg come from?’

  ‘From my first wife. She had cancer. We had the eggs harvested and frozen when we knew she wouldn’t make it. And thank God we did.’

  Suttle checked the date. March 1999. Bentner nodded in agreement. They were in Boulder, Colorado. A fine place to end your days.

  ‘She died soon afterwards?’

  ‘Yes.’ Bentner’s face was a mask. ‘A difficult time for both of us.’

  ‘Her especially.’

  ‘Of course. And me too. Commitment’s tough. You have to mean it. Commit, and you lose a little piece of yourself. Commit to someone who dies and you lose everything. It’s hard to imagine something like that until it happens to you …’ He nodded, fell silent, sat back, gazed at his hands.

  ‘And it’s now happened twice? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Twice in a lifetime. After that you’re nothing. It’s all meaningless. I used to think we were just animals. How wrong can a man be?’

  Suttle was watching him carefully, trying to decide whether there was any element of performance in his account, but the closer he looked, the more genuine Bentner appeared to be. He missed both women, and their absence first bewildered then diminished him. For a man so short of social graces he had the rare knack of being able to voice his grief.

  ‘We understand your partner Harriet miscarried a couple of times?’

  ‘She did. This was our last shot.’

  ‘You must have been delighted.’

  ‘We were. We had plans for afterwards.’

  ‘Afterwards?’

  ‘After the baby arrived. There’s an island in the Outer Hebrides. North Uist. Just over a thousand people. Perfect if you happened to be us.’

  ‘You’d found somewhere?’

  ‘A little croft. No one for miles.’

  ‘You can prove this?’

  ‘Prove that we’d had enough?’ For the first time Bentner laughed. ‘Prove that we wanted out? Clean air? Our own company? Somewhere for the baby to become a real child?’

  ‘We need details, Mr Bentner. Evidence that you were serious.’

  Bentner nodded. Said it would be a pleasure. He borrowed a sheet of paper from his solicitor and wrote a line or two before he passed it across to Suttle.

  ‘Dearcadh is the croft we were bidding on. MacDonald and Co. is the estate agent handling the sale. If you want more I’ll have to have my phone back.’

  Bentner’s phone had been seized by the Custody Sergeant. Golding went to the Custody Suite to get it back. When he returned, Bentner scrolled through a collection of photos. Seconds later Suttle found himself looking at a sturdy stone-built cottage with a rusting tin roof and two milk churns by the front door.

  ‘This is where you’ve been hiding out?’ Suttle had spotted the date on the image: 13/6/2014.

  ‘Of course. I’m surprised you never turned up.’

  ‘Our mistake, Mr Bentner. Shit happens.’

  ‘You’re forgiven, my friend. A man can disappear in a landscape like that. The nearest human being? Two miles away. And he’s normally too drunk to remember anything.’

  Suttle wondered whether this was true. More likely Bentner already had friends up there, locals who’d be attracted by this bearded creature, half scientist, half prophet, who so wanted to turn his back on the madness of the world. A man like this, he thought, would seal lips island-wide.

  ‘We need to talk about the weekend before last,’ he said.

  ‘Down here, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bentner nodded. In essence, he said, it was simple. From time to time he felt the need to get away. Harriet understood this. It was one of the reasons they worked so well as a couple. She was a bit of a solitary herself. And after an especially brutal month at the centre he was ready for a change of scene, something very different.

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I drove down to Exmouth on the Saturday afternoon. There’s a guy I know down there, fascinating man, a rough sleeper.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Geordie John.’ He paused. ‘You know him?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’s a great guy, ex-army, a good man, educated, right attitude. We’ve always talked. He’s one of the few human beings I can relate to.’

  ‘A drinker?’

  ‘
Of course. It goes with the territory. But this guy is wise. Wise in ways most of the world never understands. He had money once, gave it all away. He even had a house and a mortgage. Living rough is a conscious choice. He thinks the world is teetering on the edge and he wants to be there when we all fall off. Good man.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘He lives out on the cliffs. I spent the night there.’

  Suttle nodded. Glanced at Golding. Made another note.

  ‘We believe you took a call that evening,’ he said. ‘At 23.47 to be precise.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Who was it from?’

  ‘Harriet.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She asked me how things were going. I told her they were going fine.’

  ‘How did she sound?’

  ‘Fine. Normal.’

  ‘The call lasted less than a minute. Was that usual for the pair of you?’

  ‘Yes. She said she was very tired. I told her to go to bed.’

  ‘Told?’

  ‘Suggested.’

  ‘What about the next day? Did you phone her? Check she was OK?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I might have woken her up. In any case I’d be seeing her later. There’d be no point.’

  ‘You had a tent?’

  ‘I always have a tent. Back of the car.’

  ‘And next morning?’

  ‘I stayed there. Lovely weather. I walked along the beach to the end and then went on to Budleigh. Bought some supplies for Geordie John.’

  ‘Food?’

  ‘Drink. Dropped them off on the way back.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I went home.’