Deep Waters

by Patricia Hall

  She sipped her drink slowly, wondering how long it would take Greenwood to mellow out. He was ordering whisky with such regularity that she suspected he would pass out before he mellowed. But as she sipped her shandy and listened to the two men chatting about their most recent fishing trip, she suddenly realized that Greenwood had fixed her with a bleary-eyed stare and within seconds had clearly recognized her. He got unsteadily to his feet and started towards Kate before evidently having second thoughts as Tom and Ken got to their feet too, obviously planning to intercept his threatening approach. When he realized Kate was not alone he spun round, teetering precipitously close to another table of young men, who shouted abuse in his direction, before he eventually reached the door and disappeared from view.

  ‘You want to ban that old fool,’ one of the lad’s shouted at the barman, who laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘We’d make no profit and then how far would you have to go for a drink? Bloody Benfleet, that’s where,’ he said. Amid the general jeers and laughter, Kate got up and headed to the door herself. Having got this far, she wasn’t going to let Les Greenwood disappear into the mist without making a serious effort to talk to him.

  She had only just moved in time, she realized when she got outside. Greenwood was making erratic but speedy progress down one of the roads leading right from the pub forecourt, but visibility was still poor and she had to hurry to keep him in sight. She had no doubt that he was heading home, but she had no idea how far away that was or whether she would be able to catch him before he disappeared inside and maybe refused to answer his door. She speeded up and at one of the junctions where Canvey’s generally straight roads intersected, she caught up with him and he finally stopped, panting as he leaned for support against a garden wall. He was sweating heavily and, Kate thought, looked seriously unwell.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘How the hell did you find me? I told you and your boyfriend I wanted nothing to do with all that old history. I knew no good would come of it, and who did I see yesterday? Those bastards who went down for the robbery.’

  ‘Dexter and Barrett?’ Kate asked. ‘Here on Canvey?’

  ‘Here on Canvey,’ Greenwood said. ‘I told you Dexter and his wife lived here before the flood for a while, down by where they’re building the new flats. He’d gone to prison before the place was inundated, so he wasn’t here. But his house was wrecked. His wife got out in time, apparently. Dexter was here for a time after the robberies, and the Flanagans too. Mrs Flanagan didn’t want the kids living on the fairground any more. At least that’s what I was told. They’re related, you know, the Dexters and the Flanagans. I don’t know how Bert Flanagan got away with that robbery. He was thick as thieves with Dexter, everyone knew that. Now I hear they’ve found him dead.’

  ‘On the sands, and his son’s still missing,’ Kate said. ‘That’s why I’m here. They’re holding the boy’s mother at the police station, which is ridiculous. There’s no way she could have been involved in her husband’s murder or the disappearance of her son. She was distraught about that.’

  ‘Well, I know nothing about it. But if you’d been a copper as long as I was, you’d know that families lie through their teeth if it suits them. Especially those gypsies from the fairground. They say they’re not gypsies but I can’t tell the bloody difference. And the women are as devious as the men.’

  ‘Connie was looking after two small children and was desperate about the missing boy,’ Kate said obstinately. ‘She’s hardly likely to have gone out on the sands and pushed her husband into the mud. Can you help me find out what’s going on with her at the police station?’

  ‘Not bloody likely,’ Greenwood said. ‘Your boyfriend would stand a better chance of that than I would. But I will say, I reckon if Dexter and Barrett are mooching about Canvey they can only be looking for the proceeds of God knows how many robberies. And if they’re here, I’m not taking any chances. It’s quite likely they remember me and might feel like settling old scores. I interviewed both of them at one time or another, as well as Rod Miller, and we didn’t pull any punches back then.’

  ‘Nor now as far as I can see,’ Kate added, thinking of her interview with DCI Baker.

  ‘I’m off this afternoon for a long holiday, just in case Barrett is still bearing a grudge. He’s a nutter, that one. I told you.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Never you mind,’ Greenwood said. He hauled himself upright and began to follow the road to another gate, which Kate guessed was that of his own house.

  ‘Where did Dexter’s wife end up?’ she asked as he struggled to open the latch.

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ Greenwood growled. ‘I expect she went back to Foulness. That’s where she came from, I think. They bought a farm out there before the robberies. Bloody wilderness that is. The population got completely cut off in the flood. The rescue people thought they’d all drowned.’

  ‘So could Dexter have gone back there himself?’

  ‘I don’t think they’re on speaking terms any more, those two,’ Greenwood said. ‘I heard she divorced him while he was in jail, though she managed to keep the farm apparently. But that might be just another rumour. And it wouldn’t stop him or Barrett beating her to a pulp if they thought she knew where the money was. My guess is that’s why Flanagan’s dead. She’s his sister, after all.’

  Kate suddenly felt very cold and she didn’t think it was simply because the fog had begun to thicken and the warnings had begun to sound again out on the estuary. Greenwood looked at her.

  ‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘And I tell you, girl, you should get back to London and keep right out of this. That’s my advice. Stay well clear.’ He went into the house and slammed the door behind him, and she realized that she would not get anything more out of him.

  She turned and began the long walk back to Benfleet station. The fog was still hanging in swirls above the road and she had to keep an eye out for the few cars that loomed through the murk, most of them without lights in spite of the gloom. Back on the train to Fenchurch Street, feeling deflated at the results of her inquiries, she knew she would have to swallow her pride and talk to Harry Barnard. There was no alternative.

  TWELVE

  Ray Robertson was twitchy. Swathed in a heavy camel coat plus a muffler and with a broad-brimmed fedora pulled down to shield his eyes, he stood close to his Jag on the forecourt of a garage on the A11 heading north out of London. He had made his arrangements very carefully and was furious that his contact was late. He lit another cigarette and pulled the smoke into his lungs gratefully, but he flung it away when he saw the man he had persuaded to drive out here for him pull off the main road in what looked like a clapped out Ford. He wrenched open the driver’s door and almost pulled him on to the tarmac.

  ‘You’re bloody late,’ he said, handing him the keys to the Jag. ‘I hope this old banger moves a bit smarter than looks likely.’

  ‘You can bank on that, guv,’ the driver said. ‘It’s been well fixed.’

  ‘I’ll call you when I want to swap back,’ Robertson said. ‘Probably tonight, possibly tomorrow.’

  ‘Any time, Ray, any time.’

  ‘And for God’s sake get the Jag out of sight as soon as you can. It’s not just the filth who might recognize it, though I don’t think they’ll be looking for me around here.’

  And with that he slid into the Ford’s driving seat, switched on the engine, and revved it for a moment, evidently to his satisfaction, before accelerating on to the main road without a backward glance. He drove north for a short distance before swinging east and then south, cruising just below sixty to avoid attracting unwanted attention, then finally turned east again, with the Thames just in sight, towards Southend-on-Sea. He stopped briefly on the seafront, close to the pier, and parked. After downing a Scotch at one of the cluster of pubs close to the amusement arcades, which were the only places that looked busy, he indulged in fish and chips, which he took back to e
at in the car, stuffing the greasy papers into the footwell on the passenger side with a sigh of satisfaction when he had finished. Then he pulled out into the traffic stream and continued his journey.

  He followed his route more slowly now. He knew the terrain but it was years since he had followed these increasingly narrow roads over increasingly flat country, and as he got closer to his destination he was particularly anxious not to draw any unwanted attention to himself. Beyond the two villages of Wakering, set back from the estuary, the landscape flattened out even more and he could see across the featureless fields towards the equally featureless Thames. There was little or no traffic out here and he had little fear of being seen. Safely over the first of the two bridges that crossed to the island, first over the River Roach, slow-flowing and muddy at low tide, and then the two creeks that helped cut Foulness off from the mainland of Essex. The movable Scherzer bridge, which looked like something out of science fiction, was fortunately in place. He slowed for the military checkpoint where the army controlled access, particularly when artillery firing was taking place, but the sleepy-looking squaddies on duty waved him through although Ray was certain that they would have made a note of his number plate. Good job it was a fiction, he thought. He prided himself on leaving nothing to chance.

  Once safely on Foulness Island proper, he relaxed and headed down the narrow road to Churchend, the only village on the island with its own church, the stubby steeple of St Mary the Virgin serving as a landmark for miles around, as well as a substantial pub – the weather-boarded George & Dragon – and a post office to serve the scattered farming community that shared the desolate space with the military. Beyond that, he would have to be more circumspect as he approached the isolated farm where Delia and Sam Dexter had set up home before Dexter’s incarceration. One fork in the road veered left in the direction of the north coast and the River Crouch, but Robertson kept right on along an increasingly rutted track. After a mile or so, he pulled off the road into a barnyard and eased the car out of sight behind a dilapidated wooden barn, where it would be concealed from any passing traffic. He sat for a moment breathing heavily and surveying the rutted mud that lay between him and the Dexter farm.

  ‘I should have brought my bloody wellies,’ he muttered as he began to plod towards the huddle of house and barns, trying to keep out of the more liquid puddles of mud. ‘My God, I hate the country.’

  There was no sign of life at all around the farm. He could see there was no livestock kept here, only apparently endless ploughed arable fields with few hedges or trees to break the monotony, not even a dog to give useful early warning of a stranger’s approach or a cat to keep down the rats and mice. There were no lights on inside the house that he could detect and the solid wooden front door was closed and, he guessed, locked.

  ‘It’s like the bloody Marie Celeste,’ he muttered and began to wonder if he was not too late and Delia Dexter’s body was lying in a shallow grave somewhere in this endless God-forsaken flat muddy landscape, the latest victim of Bomber Harris’s rage. If it was, he thought, it could lie buried for weeks if not months before anyone even noticed she had gone.

  While he was still considering what to do next after what appeared to be a long wasted journey, he picked up the sound of a car engine on the road he had just travelled down. He thought he had concealed his own car carefully enough, but he himself would be clearly visible once the approaching car came round the last bend and in through the farm gate. With surprising speed for a man of his bulk, he dodged inside one of the empty barns and crouched behind some bales of hay or straw. He heard the approaching car pull up outside, the slam of two doors, and then heavy footfalls as, he guessed, the visitors made their way across the yard to the farmhouse door.

  The hammering on the door did not last long before Robertson heard a scream of frustration and then the start of a second assault, which was clearly being carried out with more than just fists. The sound of wood splintering and a heavy weight falling to the ground told its own story, as the door was demolished. Then a long silence fell. Robertson moved to the barn doors, which he had left slightly ajar, and peered carefully out. There was no sign of the two men who had arrived in the black Rover parked in the yard. Cautiously, keeping the barns and outbuildings between him and the farmhouse, he hurried back to his own car and drove quietly away. If Delia Dexter was in the farmhouse, which he doubted, he did not give much for her chances.

  Kate O’Donnell got back to the flat in Shepherd’s Bush to find it empty and no sign of much in the fridge from which to make a meal. She sighed. She knew it was her own fault, as she had not left Tess any details of where she was going or when she expected to be back. If she was going to move back here permanently, she thought, she would have to get used to flat-sharing on a different basis from the life she had become accustomed to with Barnard. Tess liked order in her life, the result she guessed of a home life in Liverpool even more disorganized than her own. Flinging herself down on her bed to rest, Kate did not find the prospect enticing. In any case, she needed to talk to Harry about her trip to Southend.

  She glanced at her watch. It was six thirty and if Barnard had decided to go to the pub after work for want of anything better to do on a dismal evening without her, he would probably not be home for a while. Unless, she thought with a slight sense of guilt, he decided to make a night of it. She was not so naïve as to imagine he would avoid female company if he was still in Soho, if only to pass the time. Almost reluctantly she dialled his flat and to her relief he answered so quickly that she was certain that he had been waiting for her to call.

  ‘You’re back,’ he said and then hesitated, obviously realizing that the statement was unnecessary.

  ‘Can we meet for a drink?’ Kate asked. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘You’re not coming back here then?’

  Kate took a deep breath before she replied. ‘Not yet,’ she said. There was a long silence at the other end of the line and she could imagine Barnard struggling with the implications. But she couldn’t help him. She had not worked out the implications for herself yet.

  ‘OK,’ Barnard said at last. ‘I’ll pick you up in half an hour and we’ll go to one of the pubs in Notting Hill. That suit you?’ Kate settled for that and hung up.

  An hour later they had found a table in a corner at the Windsor Castle and Barnard had delivered a pint of bitter and a half pint of shandy to the table before sitting down opposite Kate.

  ‘What did I do, honey?’ he asked. ‘What did I do to deserve this?’

  ‘You didn’t do anything but I decided I’d got in too deep, far deeper than I wanted to be,’ she said. ‘Why the hell did I get carted off to Essex like that? Like a criminal? That man DCI Baker thinks he’s God Almighty. Maybe you all do. I think I want a break from playing cops and robbers. That’s not my job.’

  ‘Is that what it is, you and me?’ Barnard asked. ‘Playing cops and robbers?’

  ‘That’s what it feels like sometimes,’ she said.

  ‘The Southend business was your call,’ he said mildly. ‘You persuaded me to go and rescue Connie Flanagan, remember?’

  ‘I did, but we didn’t know then that her husband was dead, did we? Which links it all to those robberies in Southend and quite likely to the murder in Whitechapel and your missing friend Ray Robertson. It’s wheels within wheels, isn’t it, Harry? It’s all escalating and I don’t know what’s going on or who to believe. I’ve had enough. To be honest, I want nothing to do with any of it any more.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. They stared at each other in mutual incomprehension for a moment.

  ‘I think we should have a break,’ Kate said at last. ‘I don’t know where I am any more. I told Ken Fellows I was going up to Liverpool to see my family. Maybe that’s what I should do.’

  ‘You know I’m not officially working on this murder case in Whitechapel,’ Barnard said. ‘I can leave it alone. Maybe we could go away together—’

  ‘You won�
�t leave it alone, though, will you? You don’t want to. You’re too tied up with Ray Robertson. As far as I can see, you always have been. The man’s a crook, a gangster, and maybe a murderer. And yet you still make allowances for him. You feel you owe him something. No wonder your DCI doesn’t trust you.’

  ‘It all goes back a long way,’ Barnard said, looking uncomfortable and lighting a cigarette.

  ‘So it should be over.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Barnard said, though there was not much conviction in his voice. ‘Why did you want to meet up anyway?’ he asked. ‘If you’re not planning to come back?’

  Kate finished her drink.

  ‘I wanted to fill you in on what I did today, so you know where we stand,’ she said. ‘I bumped into Les Greenwood on Canvey Island. He was the one who really spooked me. He’s getting out, he said. He says it’s too dangerous to stay while Dexter and Barrett are tearing around looking for their money. He thinks they may have it in for him as he was one of the officers involved in the investigation into the robberies back before the flood. I asked him if he knew what was going on with Dexter’s wife and he said he didn’t want to know, you were best placed to ask DCI Baker about that. But you can’t do that, can you? It would get straight back to your boss. And I certainly can’t go anywhere near the Southend police again, even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Connie Flanagan has got a lawyer. I managed to speak to her. Connie should be all right with her, I think.’

  ‘You take too much on your shoulders,’ Barnard said.

  ‘That’s what Greenwood told me,’ Kate admitted. ‘I was thinking about what he said while I was on the train coming back to London and I realized that if he was getting out maybe I shouldn’t be going down there asking more questions. I suddenly felt very scared.’

  Barnard drew a sharp breath.

  ‘I think Greenwood’s right,’ he said heavily. ‘Come back to my place for tonight and I’ll put you on a Liverpool train first thing in the morning. Can you phone your family, tell them you’re coming?’