Deep Waters

by Patricia Hall

  ‘I thought your boyfriend said he was a copper,’ Connie said doubtfully. ‘Though that didn’t seem to stop him being pulled over that night we went to Clacton. He won’t go along with us running away from the coppers here, will he?’

  ‘He’s in the Met,’ Kate said. ‘But I won’t take you to his place. I could take you to stay with a friend of mine for a few nights. There’s a spare bed there and I’m sure Luke could sleep on the sofa. Then I’ll talk to my boyfriend and work out the best thing to do. It’s obvious that if someone’s attacked your solicitor they’re looking for you. They’re not likely to find you in Shepherd’s Bush.’

  Connie looked dubious, but in the end she shrugged.

  ‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’ she said. ‘It’s not safe here and the first place they’ll look is my auntie’s in Clacton, and you say Delia’s done a bunk so maybe Foulness isn’t such a good idea.’ She turned to her son. ‘Come on, Luke, we need to get out of Southend.’

  ‘Can I see the Beatles in London?’ Luke asked, his expression still mutinous. Kate laughed.

  ‘You never know, la,’ she said. ‘They might be in America. But I’ll find out for you and you might be lucky. I used to know John Lennon. We went to the same college in Liverpool.’ That, she thought, as Luke gazed at her in something approaching awe, had got through to the boy like nothing else would. It was something to build on. She glanced at her watch. ‘The next train back to Fenchurch Street goes in half an hour, so we’d better get to the station.’ They strolled through the town, but as they approached the station forecourt Kate grabbed Connie’s arm.

  ‘There are two policemen in the booking hall,’ she whispered. ‘I wonder if they are looking for you – or for me, for that matter. DCI Baker was very keen to run me out of town.’ She thought hard. ‘Is there a bus to Benfleet? We could pick up the train there.’

  ‘It stops by the pier,’ Connie said.

  ‘Come on then,’ Kate said. ‘Let’s do it.’ She was beginning to think like a fugitive herself and didn’t like it, and she knew Harry would like it even less. Keeping to the back streets, they made their way back towards the pier and the fairground, where there were bus stops. But as they approached the seafront, Connie paused.

  ‘If you keep an eye on Luke, I could go back to my van and pick up some stuff we might need,’ she said.

  Kate looked dubious.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

  Connie put on a mutinous look.

  ‘There’s no one around now,’ she said. ‘It’ll only take a minute and we can’t go away in just what we’re wearing, can we?’

  Kate looked across the fairground. She could see a few paying customers on the rides and some milling around the ice cream van. There was no activity at all visible amongst the caravans close to the pier.

  ‘We’ll wait here,’ she conceded, putting a hand on Luke’s arm. ‘But be quick. Your uncle must have noticed that Luke’s not there any more.’

  Connie nodded and slipped away, taking cover behind a family with three tall boys in tow before slipping away towards the living quarters. Kate waited for a good five minutes, with Luke becoming increasingly agitated beside her. Just as she spotted Connie making her way towards them lugging a heavy holdall, they were startled by the sound of a convoy of police cars heading in their direction along the seafront. They pulled up, brakes squealing and blue lights flashing, right across the main entrance to the fairground and at least a dozen uniformed officers spilled out and ran down the slope towards the rides and caravans. Close behind them, DCI Jack Baker got out of an unmarked car and stood watching events with his customary scowl.

  ‘Mum!’ Luke shouted and started running through the startled fairgoers towards Connie. Kate had little option but to follow.

  ‘They can’t all be looking for me,’ Connie breathed as the three of them dodged behind the hoopla stall. Luke, Kate noticed, had gone very pale and had his hands clenched tightly in the pockets of his shorts.

  ‘They’ve hardly had time to register that you haven’t turned up for your interview,’ Kate said, hoping to reassure Connie. ‘They must be looking for someone else.’

  ‘Hide, hide!’ Luke said, clearly panicked.

  ‘But where?’ Kate said.

  ‘The ghost train,’ Luke said and, grabbing his mother’s arm, pulled her and her luggage towards the sea wall. The entrance to the ghost train appeared to be firmly closed.

  ‘It’s not running today, there’ll be no one there. This way, this way.’ He led the two women down the side of the attraction to where he pulled apart two sections of thick canvas and slid between them into total darkness. Connie pushed her holdall inside and Kate followed. They were all gasping heavily and the clammy air inside did nothing to make breathing any easier. For a moment they stood still and Kate could hear her own heart beating fast, but they could hear very little of what was going on outside apart from an occasional shout.

  ‘Where are the lights?’ Connie asked her son. She was obviously as unfamiliar with their hiding place as Kate was.

  ‘No lights,’ Luke said. ‘Only when the generator is running.’

  ‘So how do we get out of here without being seen?’ Kate asked. Luke pulled the edges of the canvas apart and peered out.

  ‘Not this way,’ he said as he pulled the fabric together again and plunged them back into darkness. ‘There’s coppers all over the shop.’ Kate felt despair creeping up on her.

  ‘We’re trapped in here,’ she said. But to her surprise Luke grabbed her arm.

  ‘No we’re not,’ he said. ‘Come on, this way, right round the edge of the ride. The rails and funny stuff’s all in the middle. I nearly forgot, there’s a door at the back, one of those emergency door things that you push. Me and my mates were always too scared to touch it, but we should be able to get out there. We’ll come out just by the roller coaster and we can hide there too. Come on, quick.’

  If they needed any more persuasion it came from the direction of the main entrance to the ghost train, where they could here shouts and demands that someone turn the electricity on. The police, it seemed, were going to instigate a search.

  With Luke in the lead, they followed the canvas wall in total darkness for what seemed to Kate’s frantic imagination like miles before they came, as Luke had promised, to the emergency exit at the back of the ride and pushed down on the bar to open it. The mechanism seemed stiff from disuse but eventually the double doors swung open and they found themselves in a narrow passageway where detritus from various rides and stalls had been dumped out of sight.

  ‘We can go up on the roller coaster,’ Luke said. ‘If Fat Fred is taking the money, he’ll let us on and we can go round as often as we like. You can see everything from up there. Me and my mates used to go up there to spy on my mum and dad – and Uncle Jasper.’

  Connie noticed Luke’s hesitation before bringing his uncle into the conversation and looked at him horrified.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ she asked. Luke shrugged and kicked at the tattered bumper of a discarded dodgem car.

  ‘I just liked to see things,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Kate agreed, ‘they’re not likely to look up and see us.’

  The three of them made their way cautiously to the terminus, where the stationary cars were filling up. After a brief negotiation with a heavily built teenager who she assumed was Fat Fred, Luke waved them into one of the rows of three seats and made sure they were secure.

  ‘You don’t throw up, do you?’ he asked Kate uncertainly. It was strange, she thought, how easily the child had taken charge of their escape and how readily his mother accepted his lead. She supposed that boys who’d used the fairground as a playground for years had a knowledge of it that the adults, busy making a living, did not necessarily share.

  ‘I don’t usually,’ she said, remembering her childhood rides at New Brighton and Blackpool, as the cars began moving and flung them up a gradient and then down a s
teep incline. It was true that once you got used to the motion the big dipper offered an unrivalled view of the fairground and what was going on there.

  The police contingent seemed to be heading in the direction of the caravans parked directly underneath the highest point on the roller coaster’s journey. They could hear shouting and the sound of knocking and banging on doors.

  ‘If I’d still been there they’d have found me, anyway,’ Luke said.

  ‘I thought you said Jasper moved you around?’ his mother said.

  ‘He did, but only down there on the fairground,’ Luke said.

  ‘Why did he keep you there?’ Kate asked. ‘What on earth was he doing that for when he knew your mother was going frantic?’ The boy hesitated before replying.

  ‘He thought I knew too much,’ Luke said at last in a small voice.

  ‘And did you?’ Kate demanded. The boy shrugged and glanced at his mother for help, but she seemed frozen by his plea.

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘When I was up here, I saw Uncle Jasper with some men I didn’t know. I just asked him who they were and he said I had to stay with him until he’d finished some business.’

  ‘You really didn’t know the men? Know who they were, I mean?’ Kate persisted. ‘You hadn’t seen them before, with your dad maybe?’

  The boy looked at her and shook his head.

  ‘But I might recognize them again, mightn’t I? That’s what Uncle Jasper was afraid of, I think. He was frightened I might recognize them and tell someone. He just wanted me to keep quiet. He wasn’t going to do anything bad to me.’

  Kate looked at him incredulously. Uncle Jasper might not have meant Luke any harm – but if the men he had seen were Dexter and Barrett, who must have been in jail for most of Luke’s life, there was no doubt they could have harmed him.

  ‘Look,’ Connie said, pointing to where two men could be seen running away from the caravans pursued by several police officers and also by Jasper Dowd, who was shouting and gesticulating furiously.

  ‘That’s Sam Dexter,’ Connie whispered. ‘Delia’s ex. I haven’t seen him for years but I’d know him anywhere.’

  Somehow Connie’s Uncle Jasper managed to dodge through the rides and stalls, taking a shortcut across the dodgem rink and stumbling as he passed the hoopla, spilling a jumble of hoops and cuddly toys across the floor in front of the following police, who also dodged and stumbled in the mayhem and evidently lost sight of their quarry close to the waltzer. It wasn’t entirely clear whether Jasper Dowd was chasing the other two men or running with them, and it looked quite possible that the pursuing police didn’t know either.

  ‘They went inside the ghost train,’ Luke said. ‘They’ll never find them in there in the dark.’ Kate looked at the boy, whose eyes were gleaming with excitement, and wondered whose side he was on.

  ‘Were they the men you saw?’ she asked quietly. Luke glanced at his mother again and then shrugged, his face closed and eyes blank as they watched the pursuing police officers scatter and pause as they lost sight of their quarry.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I don’t know for sure. I don’t know who they are.’

  Kate looked at Connie but guessed this was not the time to pursue the fugitives’ identities or their criminal records, with the boy listening in. She was just pleased that Luke was out of their reach, for the time being at least.

  In the end, they did three circuits on the big dipper before the activity below calmed down and the police began to reassemble by their cars. Kate could see DCI Baker in apocalyptic mode berating his officers, who must have lost their quarry in the further reaches of the fairground, where bemused groups of visitors stood about not knowing what all the fuss was about.

  ‘There’s Uncle Jasper!’ Luke said, pointing to the rear of the ghost train where they had successfully remained out of sight.

  ‘So it is,’ Kate said, recognizing Dowd’s hat from above. She glanced at Connie, who was looking shell-shocked.

  ‘We’ll talk later,’ she said, as some of the police cars pulled away and the remaining handful of officers fanned out among the rides again. ‘As soon as we stop this time, we’ll get off the fairground and I’ll go and see if the bus to Benfleet is due while you two go up on the pier out of sight. We need to be out of here. No one will take any notice of us if it’s Uncle Jasper and the other men they’re looking for. But we need to keep out of their way.’ She gave Connie a ten-bob note.

  ‘Get yourselves an ice cream,’ she said before making her way back to the road and the bus stops, feeling slightly desperate. The whole situation seemed to be spiralling out of control.

  Kate walked slowly past the queues of people waiting for buses but before she reached the right stop she was surprised by a car suddenly pulling up beside her. She instinctively pulled back from the passenger door, but there was no one on her side and when she peered in at the driver she was surprised to see Delia Dexter behind the wheel.

  Delia wound down the window. ‘What on earth are you doing still here?’ she asked. ‘I thought you’d gone back to London.’

  Kate inched closer. ‘It’s a long story,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I thought you were going as far away from here as you could get.’

  ‘I am, but I thought maybe Connie had gone back to the fairground. I couldn’t think of anywhere else she could have gone. My brother wasn’t a very reliable husband as it goes, and she always relied on her Uncle Jasper for help.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think she’ll be doing that any more,’ Kate said. ‘She found Jasper had Luke locked up down there to keep him quiet about something. She doesn’t know whose side Jasper is on any more.’

  ‘That explains why Jasper was so jumpy when I knocked on the door of his caravan a while ago. He had someone in there with him, though he made sure I couldn’t see who it was. He said Connie was with the police, but he never mentioned Luke.’

  ‘Well, Connie isn’t with the police. She’s with me, and so is Luke. We were going to London but the police are watching the railway station. They still want to question her about her husband’s death and now her solicitor has been attacked as well. She needs to get well away until the police sort out what the devil’s going on here. And she wants to get Luke well away from Jasper. She may have always thought he was a cuddly uncle, but not any more.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Delia asked, glancing at the bus queue. ‘You won’t get out of the town on the bus. It’s much too slow. I’ll take you as far as Canvey, if you like. You can pick up the train there.’ Kate hesitated, looking back to where the police car lights were still flashing at the entrance to the fairground.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said doubtfully. ‘Stay here and I’ll ask Connie if she’s happy with that.’

  ‘I am Luke’s auntie,’ Delia said tartly. ‘I don’t want him any more mixed up in this than he is already. His dad is dead, his mother’s a police suspect and his brother and sister are in care, poor kid. The least I can do is get him out of here.’ Kate nodded and glanced at the pier, where she had left Connie and Luke eating ice cream wafers well out of sight.

  ‘I’ll talk to Connie, anyway,’ she said. ‘See what she thinks.’ But it did not take much effort to persuade Connie to accept Delia’s offer of a car ride in the right direction. They made their way back to the road and Kate helped Luke and then Connie through the passenger door into the back seats and prepared to get into the front. But as she pushed the seat back and picked up her bag Delia suddenly reached across and pulled the door shut in her face, then revved the engine and pulled away into the stream of traffic so suddenly that an approaching bus had to slam on its brakes, hooting loudly in protest.

  Kate muttered all the expletives she could think of as she watched the car disappear along the seafront. But anger soon turned to a despair which threatened to overwhelm her. And her heart thudded in panic as she realized that the little drama on the road had been witnessed not only by an entire bus queue but also by two uniformed policemen who were now heading in
her direction at a determined pace.

  ‘What was all that about?’ the leading PC asked, not hiding his suspicion.

  ‘Wasn’t that Connie Flanagan?’ the other said. ‘And the boy? Has she got her son back? We’ve been hunting for him for the best part of a week.’

  ‘It was and it is,’ she said. ‘I think I’d better talk to DCI Baker.’

  ‘I think you better had,’ the older officer said grimly. ‘As it happens he’s still just round the corner on the fairground, so you’d better come along with me. I think you’ve got some explaining to do.’ He took her arm in a vicelike grip and steered her firmly in the direction he wanted her to go.

  Kate glanced at her watch and for the hundredth time tried to make herself comfortable on the bare bunk which was the only place to sit in the police cell where she had been confined on DCI Baker’s orders.

  ‘Take her to the nick and make sure she doesn’t leave,’ he had instructed the uniformed officers who’d escorted her to him at the entrance of the fairground. When they arrived at the police station, the desk sergeant interpreted that as an instruction to lock her up. So far she had been there for more than two hours and no one had so much as looked through the shuttered window in the very solid door. She had almost decided to bang on the door and demand to be taken to the lavatory when the hatch opened with a snap and she heard the welcome sound of keys outside.

  ‘Come on,’ the custody sergeant said. ‘The DCI’s back now and has time to talk to you.’ She followed him upstairs away from the cells and down a corridor with doors to the left and right. Eventually he opened one and pointed her towards one of the four chairs set around a table firmly screwed to the floor. The room was not much more prepossessing than the cell below, with high windows of frosted glass that let in little light and walls and floor which looked filthy and stained, but at least it was a slight improvement on the previous two hours. She took a deep breath in preparation for facing DCI Jack Baker and his apparently permanent rage.