Hell's Mouth

by BATEMAN, A P

  Hell’s Mouth

  By

  A P Bateman

  Text © Anthony Paul Bateman

  2017

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, printing or otherwise, without written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction and any character resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Some locations may have been changed, others are fictitious.

  Author contact: authorapbateman@gmail.com

  Facebook: @authorapbateman

  Website: apbateman.com

  Also by A P Bateman

  The Alex King Series

  The Contract Man

  Lies and Retribution

  Shadows of Good Friday

  The Rob Stone Series

  The Ares Virus

  The Town

  The Island

  For the used and abused, the pawns in those wicked games of the few, who affect the lives of so many. Those whose lives have no value to the people who need them, to the people who would take them. We will win, they have already lost.

  For the other three in “The Four Family”

  Thank you…

  1

  Tell me when you see it...

  Those had been his final words. Not deathbed style. Nothing as dramatic or theatrical as that. But he had been adamant. He had told him half a story and given him the means and time and opportunity to discover the other half. It had been typical of Anderson. He had not wanted the man’s opinion jaded in any way. Simply outlined what he had seen; but the truth, the ultimate end to the tale, was for him to discover.

  Ross O’Bryan put down the telephone. He would know who his new boss would be soon enough. He felt numb at the news, but death was an old and constant companion. He had spent enough time with it, knew the processes of grief only too well. In his darkest hours, he did not fear death, nor shied from its path. Outside forces had contributed, but ultimately death was a face he no longer feared to stare into. Occasionally he goaded it, stared coldly and dared it to make its move. It had made for a flat-line in both career and love. He was unbreakable. He was uncontrollable. Untameable. And that meant that with the replacement of his long-time boss, he would most likely be unemployable. He was a crisis man. The man you wanted on board when the toughest choices had to be made, when it counted. But crisis men were like tethered animals. They only truly lived when they were free.

  Fifty-nine days…

  The longest period since the clock turned back and the marker read zero. His heart fluttered and his stomach tensed. He could feel a sudden rush in his chest cavity as the blood surged quicker through his veins. He started to ball his fists as he walked out of Anderson’s study and into the lounge. Anderson had kept a crystal decanter of brandy in the study and the temptation was behind him now. He had looked at the decanter, its amber contents glistening in the late afternoon sun which had shone brightly through the windows. The close proximity of the water had seemed to intensify the light, given it an added quality of brightness he seldom saw, or perhaps noticed in London.

  The entire south wall of the lounge had been replaced by glass doors and the view spoke for itself. The creek was almost at high-tide and the water was the deepest blue, pooling to black in the shadows of the trees on the other side. It was late summer, the final weeks where the next front of cold weather spelled the end of the season and the beginning of autumn.

  The body of water this far up the creek wasn’t popular with paddle boarders or kayakers. It was shallow and held on to the flat bed of mud and grass for all but three-quarter tide. Lower down the creek at Point Geddon, less than a mile distant, there would be hordes of children, clad in brightly coloured wetsuits, jumping off the jetty and into the deep water. There would be kayaks and other craft paddling through the moorings as the last weeks of ideal boating conditions were exploited, and sailors started preparing their boats for hauling out of the water for the long winter months.

  Across the water lay an old wooden jetty. It was all but hidden from view by a large fallen tree which must have become snagged, or sucked into the mud, because it hadn’t moved for the entire week. Each time the tide partially submerged it, but still it did not move. The absence of leaves would indicate that it had not fallen this summer. It looked to have been there for years. Perhaps it had taken root in the mud. O’Bryan did not know about such things, lacked the care to Google it, but he reasoned that it was not in the way of the tiny jetty, nor the rest of the river, so its presence was of no consequence.

  O’Bryan stepped into the open doorway and leaned on the warm glass. Birds skimmed the surface of the water, and some kind of large black and white bird was ducking down repeatedly and reappearing twenty or thirty-feet further down the creek each time. It seemed to be following a line. O’Bryan figured there was food there. Perhaps shrimp. But what did he know? He couldn’t have said whether it was a cormorant or a duck.

  He stepped out and felt the sun on his face. It was hovering between late afternoon and early evening. Another hour until dusk. The sun was warm and the water looked inviting enough to swim in. He put the thought out of his mind. A bad experience, a trauma he supposed, had left him with little desire to swim. It was too soon. The close proximity of the creek had left him feeling anxious, but he reasoned he had control over it. He just had to stay on dry land. He had been a champion swimmer a lifetime ago, and a water polo player at university. The sport had shaped him, broadened his shoulders, trimmed his waist and left him with an athletic build, even when he no longer trained. It saddened him that another part of his life was over and he was left with nothing but regret and distant memories. He seemed to be following a pattern throughout life. Or maybe it was just the way it went when you got older, crossed into the uncertainty of middle-age.

  The warmth of the sun did nothing to lift his spirits. The call had been swift, but mainly because he was at a loss what to say. What did you say to a woman whose husband has just died? O’Bryan counted Anderson as one of his closest friends, even if he had been his boss since he arrived in the department. He hadn’t known the man had been suffering with cancer; wouldn’t even have guessed. But that was what the man had been like. Anderson wouldn’t want pity or sorrow or awkward silences in a conversation. It struck O’Bryan that the man’s wife hadn’t known either, although it didn’t surprise him of the man. He was tough and would want to be remembered that way. He hadn’t even looked sick, but there were a few tell-tale signs upon reflection. Weight loss, colour, absence. But all handled like typical Anderson. Diet. Need a bloody holiday. Busy on an investigation, hush-hush stuff. He wondered whether Anderson had helped himself along, found a way out before the suffering reduced him as a man. He would have known a few methods that would not have been obvious. Or maybe he had got his wife to help him, and she was a little off during the conversation because of fear or guilt or regret. He made a note to put his oar in if he heard anything on the grapevine, anything to give her an easier ride. If he had a job to go back to.

  O’Bryan needed a beer. A cold glass in the setting sun, a toast to his departed friend, his mentor and his boss. Just one bottle. Frosted, quenching, but wholly unforgiving. There were some bottles of something German in the back of the fridge. He could imagine the sound of the bottle top spinning off and hitting the marble counter, hear the fizz of the beer as it frothed, see the tiny bubbles pop and burst in the air above the rim.

  He could taste it...

  Before he knew it, he was running. He kicked the wooden gate open, his pace barely slowing as he joined the well-trodden path along the bank of the creek. He hadn’t run for more than two-
months. Not since before his accident. Or incident. Incident would best describe it. He shook his head, clearing the memory. Focus. Focus on the pace, his breath, his stride. Think about anything else but the bottle, anything else but the empty bottle that invariably always led to another.

  Fifty-nine days...

  O’Bryan knew the problem. He had been inactive for too long. He needed a crutch. Something to take a hold of him, his mind and body. His soul. Anderson had seen that. He had known what a task it would be for him to take a full two-months away from his desk, his patch. He had given him the chance of a break, but one with purpose. One he was most suited to. But what? O’Bryan cursed the man for being so cryptic. There had been the newspaper clippings from the national press and a good deal of reports from the Westbriton when the nationals moved swiftly onto the next story. And there had been the copies of the reports he had pulled. Anderson had clout, that much was obvious. He had increased O’Bryan’s leave and postponed his psychoanalyst programmes after the initial inquiry. He knew O’Bryan needed something practical to concentrate on, and no amount of therapy was going to change what had happened. He also knew that O’Bryan hid a condition that would have cost him his job. Analysts had a habit and ability to unearth more than was good for their patient.

  Anderson had been the one person O’Bryan could count on, and now the man was dead. And with it, O’Bryan’s hopes of continuing with the investigation. Without Anderson, it was as good as dead in the water.

  Dead in the water…

  O’Bryan stopped running and stared at the water. The tide was moving rapidly, like a walking escalator at an airport. There was a piece of driftwood coming in with it and it gave a sense of perspective of how fast the tide was moving. He knew it went out faster. Or he might have made that up. Either way, it seemed obvious to him that the pull would be stronger than the push. Especially in calm conditions with no storm surge.

  He watched a medium-sized fishing boat coming in. It was powered by an in-built diesel engine that sounded as if it had seen better days, around fifty-years ago, and housed a substantial cabin on the foredeck. O’Bryan could see two men at the helm. One rolled a cigarette and the other raised his finger, covered his left nostril and shot-gunned his nose, a spray of snot hitting the water. They glanced at him, but O’Bryan looked away, and from the corner of his eye, they both looked uninterested as they piloted the boat around an exposed mud bank and onwards up the creek. The rear section of the deck was stacked with two types of lobster or crab pots. Rounded ones that looked as if they were made from wicker and larger square metal cages. Huge coils of rope seemed to pack them in. There were plastic crates staked alongside.

  Anderson had been quite specific. Tonight was the second time and date in the letter. O’Bryan had missed the first time, last week. He had met up with a woman that he had initially met on his first night in the local pub. He felt bad missing the time and date, but Anderson could be a dick sometimes. He had felt obliged to come down to Cornwall, as though it were an order rather than a suggestion, although he had been quite entitled to his time off from work, in light of what had happened. This had been Anderson’s family home, or at least one of them. His commander had referred to it as the Hemingway House, because of its likeness to the writer Ernest Hemingway’s house in Key West, Florida. Strangely, it did not look out of place, predominately because of the types of house which had sprung up over the past decade or so. This was an affluent area, one of second homes and holiday lets, and the plots were being bought up and old houses knocked down in favour of newly built chrome, glass and expensively weathered oak constructions. Hemingway House was modern, but chic. It added a touch of class to the area, where only money remained. Money and class were not inextricably linked.

  The date had gone well. They had picked up where they had left off, but without the cluster of regulars heckling them at The Smuggler’s Rest. They had met for cocktails in Truro and gone on to eat at a favourable Italian chain restaurant. O’Bryan had stuck rigidly to the crutch of his car. If he was driving, it was socially unacceptable to drink, especially within their age group. Besides, a taxi back to Point Geddon and Barlooe Creek beyond was a ludicrous proposition to most. The myriad of roads, the hills and narrow turnings to get out to the creek. Situated past Mylor, a taxi would cost almost as much as the meal itself. In his mind, at least. With that, the cocktails had been ‘mocktails’ and a simple lime and soda went well with the meal instead of chilled Italian beer. There may be a talk about his drinking later, but this wasn’t first date conversation. The gap in both age and dynamic had taken a downwards turn when Sarah had suggested a club. O’Bryan was nudging forty and it showed in his panic at the prospect of dancing in a loud and crowded club with a thirty-year-old who would pass for early twenties. The sincerity and confidence of the idea was put into context, when they arrived and discovered the club had been closed down for a considerable length of time. Sarah looked like she felt a little foolish, and O’Bryan could tell, along with snippets of conversation throughout the night, that she did not get out as much as she liked to pretend. He doubted she got out at all. And that meant there had to be a reason. Something she had not disclosed, something she had purposely avoided.

  It was the detective in him. The role never left him. Not even when it had cost him his wife and child. But that hadn’t been the only reason.

  Fifty-nine days…

  He glanced at his watch. The sun was below the furthest-most headland towards Restronguet. The timing would be right. He turned and ran back to the house. There was the occasional dog walker, who said, “Good evening…” or nodded a greeting. He could not get used to it. People actually spoke to strangers down here. In London they’d call the police, because you would clearly have escaped from some sort of institution if you behaved in such a way.

  The boat’s rough-sounding engine belied its speed and O’Bryan had to run a good pace to catch up with it as he rounded the point and drew close to Barlooe Creek. The Hemingway House looked as splendid as ever, but the light was low here and he knew that there may not be enough light to watch what happened next.

  Breathless and tentative, he ran through the doors and into the lounge. Anderson had appreciated ornithology and kept a pair of Zeiss binoculars on the bookshelf next to the glass doors. O’Bryan picked them up. They were a good magnification and a series of symbols on the side of the frame indicated they were suitable for low light conditions, as well as their degree of magnification and width of angle. There were no lights on in the house and he stood a few feet back to remain invisible. He raised the glasses and watched the boat. It skirted the fallen tree, throttled backwards, and suddenly O’Bryan could see how significant the tree was. It all but hid the boat from view. There were enough branches to disrupt the silhouette of the vessel, combined with the trees on the shoreline and the ambiance of dusk, the boat had disappeared. O’Bryan knew this was what Anderson had meant for him to see. The time, the date, the location. But why? Why would a commander in Special Branch have an interest in this? These men could be fishing, or poaching from the nearby estate. There were deer all over that headland. O’Bryan had heard gunshots the night before. But this was the country, not London and nobody seemed to bat an eyelid. He had mentioned it at The Smuggler’s Rest, and one of the men at the bar had offered him some rabbits the next time he went out.

  The men on the boat could be bringing in cigarettes and alcohol to escape duty. A questionable activity, and one that no police officer would ignore, but merely a tip off to the local constabulary would be action enough. Why had Anderson seen fit to offer his house to a recuperating officer? What wasn’t O’Bryan seeing? He kept his eyes on the area where the boat had moored. He could no longer see the tree, and only guessed at where the boat was, but he could see a figure on the jetty. One of the men for sure. Then, two more figures. No, three. Varying sizes, perhaps indicating either different sexes or ages. O’Bryan closed his eyes for a moment. There were the reports, the newspaper a
rticles. He opened his eyes and pressed them closer to the binoculars in vain. He strained his eyes, moved the focus. He took them away and checked the magnification. There was a dial. He was on seven and it went to ten. Perfect. There was a switch on the top of the frame simply marked ‘on’ and ‘off’. It had to be better if you turned it on. He raised them and looked again. For a fleeting moment he saw a figure looking back at him, a set of binoculars raised. The light in the room illuminated him, cast his silhouette in the open doorway. He visibly jumped.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Sarah asked. She walked in, carrying two brown paper bags and an aroma of Chinese food wafting in with her.

  “Switch off the light!” he yelled. She looked at him incredulously. She was not accustomed to being shouted at. Either that, or she had been once and had now drawn a line in the sand. He suspected the latter. “The light, the bloody light!” he yelled again. He turned back as she tutted loudly and switched it off. He raised the binoculars. The man on the distant jetty had gone. O’Bryan felt the tiny hairs rise on the nape of his neck. He had a sinking feeling that he had witnessed something that someone would go to great lengths to make sure he hadn’t.

  2

  Seven weeks earlier

  London

  DI Ross O’Bryan studied the photo in his lap. He checked the man walking towards him, there was no beard, and his hair was cropped short instead of his usual long, greasy strands, bordering on dreadlocks. The man was thinner too. Drawn in, gaunt. Was it him? He’d been this close before. Sat opposite him for three days of questioning. Sat across the courtroom from him for two-months during the trial. He’d been forced to watch the man walk away then. But not now. Not today. With just ten paces between them, he folded the photograph so that only the eyes remained. He focused for a moment, then stared directly into the man’s face. Two seconds, and he was gone. Past the car and walking away with his back to the wing mirror. It was all he needed. Those eyes were the same. Like the eyes of a shark. Dark and lifeless.