Deep Waters

by Patricia Hall

  ‘Aspirins?’ Barnard asked.

  ‘Aspirins are fine,’ the doctor said. Barnard picked up his coat and hat and made his way unsteadily to the door. In the corridor outside he was stopped by DC Peter Stansfield, who looked slightly embarrassed by Barnard’s unusually dishevelled state – shirt crumpled, tie askew and coat pulled on over the rest with the collar tucked inside at the neck. Flash Harry knew he was not looking flash this morning.

  ‘You OK, Sarge?’ he asked. ‘The guv’nor told me to try to catch you with a message before you went off sick.’

  ‘Right …’ Barnard said cautiously.

  ‘He said to tell you that Southend took a statement off Miss O’Donnell and let her go yesterday evening. They haven’t seen her since. He’s asked them to keep an eye out for her. Is that OK?’

  Barnard groaned.

  ‘I very much doubt it,’ he said. ‘Thanks, anyway.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Harry,’ Stansfield said and turned on his heel leaving Barnard in near despair, his head banging and his stomach churning. How, he wondered wearily, had he allowed himself to get into this state over Kate? But he knew the answer.

  After taking a cab home, Barnard stripped off and had a shower before brewing coffee with his usual care. Having swallowed two cups and three aspirins, he slumped in his revolving chair wondering wearily where to start looking for Kate. As the drugs kicked in and the headache receded, he felt his brain move slowly back into gear and his memory of last night’s events improving. He got up and looked at the coffee table, which was standing unusually askew. On one corner he could discern a trace of dried blood and a few dark hairs – his own, he assumed – and beneath the table a small brownish stain. He smiled slightly. He was used to looking at forensic traces, but generally not his own. When he looked back to the previous night’s events, he realized that Ray had probably not hit him hard enough to knock him out. It was the table that had done the damage, a thought which he found oddly comforting.

  He sat down again and tried to work out what Ray had told him before his explosion of temper. He had, he realized, talked of going abroad but needing to see someone before he went. And one word became insistent. Gyppos. Ray had talked about gyppos. And so, he recalled with greater clarity, had Ray’s mother the last time he spoke to her. Ray’s ex-wife, Loretta, was a gyppo, she had said. And his ex-wife had been looking for him at the club, and probably at the gym as well. And she had a sister called Delia at the farm on Foulness who had been married for years to Sam Dexter, the Southend post office robber just out of jail. If Robertson was going to see Delia, Barnard concluded, there had to be a much closer relationship between him and the Southend criminal fraternity than anyone had ever suspected. And he began to wonder how completely he had been conned by Ray and for how long. He pulled his car keys out of his pocket and dangled them over a third cup of coffee. Kate had last been seen in Southend, and Ray Robertson he was certain had been on his way there last night. Concussion or no concussion, he needed to get there fast.

  Later Barnard could remember very little about his drive to Southend except the mist rolling in from the estuary and that his safe arrival outside the nick had been achieved more by luck than judgement. He walked into the police station and, waving his warrant card, pushed past everyone waiting to speak to the desk sergeant.

  ‘Is DCI Baker in?’ he asked. The sergeant looked as though he was about to protest but took a second look at Barnard’s expression and changed his mind.

  ‘First floor, beyond the CID office, if it’s urgent.’

  ‘It’s urgent,’ Barnard snapped. He followed the desk sergeant’s directions to Baker’s office, knocked cursorily on the door and went in. Baker was at his desk, head down over a pile of paperwork. His face reddened when he recognized Barnard and took in his dishevelled state and the bandage across his head.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘I thought I told you to stay well out of my way.’

  ‘My girlfriend is missing and I reckon you or someone in this nick must have been the last person to see her,’ Barnard said, knowing that his voice was slurred. ‘Sir,’ he added as an afterthought.

  Baker looked for a moment as if he were about to explode, but thought better of it as Barnard swayed and sat down abruptly and uninvited.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I got hit on the head last night.’

  ‘Your guv’nor told me,’ Baker conceded. ‘And the rest. And I told him that Miss O’Donnell left here safe and well last night after giving us a statement.’

  ‘In time to catch the last train?’

  ‘How should I know? I’m not her bloody nanny. Didn’t she phone you?’ Baker asked.

  ‘I wasn’t in a fit state to answer the phone,’ Barnard said. ‘I was out cold.’ The two men stared at each other, Baker in exasperation and Barnard in increasing fear.

  ‘Did she tell you in her statement what she’d been doing yesterday? Who she talked to?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘She’d been poking her nose in again,’ Baker said. ‘She’d been in touch with Connie Flanagan again and with Delia Dexter, Sam Dexter’s ex, who was a Flanagan before she married. And she claimed that Delia had driven off with Connie and her son, though she didn’t know where they were going. I told her she was a bloody pain in the neck and should go home.’

  ‘Well, she never made it,’ Barnard said, close to despair. Baker looked at him for a long moment then sighed.

  ‘Mrs Dexter might have gone to the farm on Foulness Island,’ he conceded. ‘Maybe your Miss O’Donnell followed them there.’

  ‘How would she do that?’ Barnard asked. ‘It’s miles away.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Baker said. ‘It’s not as if I don’t want to track Connie Flanagan down myself. She’s still on bail. I’ll get one of my DCs to make some inquiries. The military keep a check on who goes in and out. We’ll ask them if there’s been any movement overnight. In fact, I might ask them to send one of their sentries down to take a look at the farm. It would be quicker than driving to Foulness from here in this fog.’

  Barnard swallowed hard.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Can I get some coffee in your canteen?’

  In the end, though, the police had to drive through the fog to Lane End Farm. A military police officer had come back to Baker quite quickly to report that the farmhouse was empty but the doors had been left unlocked and there was blood spattered around the living room and shotgun pellets embedded in two of the walls. A car with a flat battery had been abandoned outside, and nowhere was there any sign of life.

  Baker had put Harry Barnard in the back seat of his car for the painfully slow journey through the fog. They stopped at the checkpoint to confirm who had come and gone through it the previous day. The log confirmed that the abandoned car had gone through, with two women in the front. Later, a man and woman had gone in and come out again after about an hour. There had been nothing suspicious about the coming and going – in fact the sentry had recognized Delia Dexter as a regular who lived on the island, although he had never seen the other driver before. The only other visitor was a solitary driver who, in spite of the deteriorating visibility as the mist began to roll in from the river, claimed to be heading to the pub in the village. There was no record of his having gone back, but that might have been just because of the weather.

  Barnard absorbed this information and found little comfort in it. It appeared that Delia Dexter had not taken Kate to the farm, and he had no idea whether the other cars had any connection with Delia or not. Baker’s enquiries, he became convinced, could have little to do with Kate’s disappearance and as he gazed out of the car window at the mist swirling across the bleak fields and ranges he wondered if time had already run out.

  When the car finally pulled up at Lane End Farm, Barnard insisted on getting out and following Baker into the building after his driver, DS Reg Hamilton, a tall taciturn man with the shoulders of a prizefighter and an expression to match. Outside the te
mperature felt Arctic and it was just as bitterly cold inside the farmhouse, the fog that seeped in through the open door forming a haze around the underpowered lights. And it smelt like a butcher’s shop. After a quick look at two distinct areas of clotted blood on the floor and walls inside the house, Barnard quickly stepped into the fresh air again as nausea threatened to overcome him.

  He knew that Delia Dexter had a shotgun – after all, he and Kate had been threatened with it. But he had never imagined she could use it on a human being, even less on two. More likely, he thought, she had been one of the victims and Connie Flanagan the other. His mind flinched at the possibility that one of those pools of blood might be all that was left of Kate.

  Taking gulps of cold air, he went back inside. Wandering around the blood-stained room, he idly pushed open the door into an adjoining space where the curtains were still closed. He pulled them back, which only marginally improved the illumination, but found nothing of interest until he moved back towards the door and felt something crunch beneath his feet. He bent down to see what he had stepped on and drew a sharp breath as he picked up a gold chain with a pendant with a single stone at the centre. The setting was crushed, the gold chain snapped and grimy. He gripped the necklace tight and swayed slightly, before staggering back into the farmhouse kitchen only to find it deserted.

  Out of the window he could see DCI Baker bustling out of the house and making his way back to the car. He rested against the door jamb for a moment before stepping outside and then, as his sick headache almost overcame him, had to lean against the outer stone wall. He lit a cigarette with shaking hands and took several drags before he was able to summon the strength to follow the DCI across the yard.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ Baker said irritably. ‘As I see it, we’ve two possibilities. We need to trace the man and woman who came over the bridge by car and left again after about an hour, and the man who claimed to be going to the pub and appears not to have gone back through the checkpoint at all. We can easily check that out. I’ve put someone back at the nick on to that. The other possibility is to assume that someone came in by one of the illicit routes over the sands and went back the same way. You’re not supposed to go near the sands without the military’s permission, but they won’t be firing today in this fog.’

  ‘You reckon they could take bodies with them?’ Barnard asked incredulously.

  ‘There’s one sure way to get rid of bodies not far from here,’ Baker said bluntly. ‘And that’s on the sands.’

  ‘Jesus wept!’ Barnard said, shivering violently. He held his hand out to Baker.

  ‘I found this,’ he said, handing him the crumpled necklace. ‘It’s Kate O’Donnell’s. She must have been here.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Baker snapped.

  ‘Because I gave it to her for her birthday. She’s been here, and either she dropped it deliberately so we would know or someone wrenched it off her neck.’

  The thought that if the second of these possibilities was true then one of the clotted puddles of blood on the farmhouse floor was hers hit him like a punch in the stomach. He turned away and walked back across the yard hardly able to breathe. As he stood by the door waiting for his heart to stop thumping against his ribs, the fog lifted slightly revealing a second farm gate opposite the one they had come in by. Looking harder, he could see ruts leading to the gate that were obviously fresh, as there was no sign of their having been disturbed since they were made.

  ‘Guv!’ he shouted across the yard. ‘Do we know where this track goes? There are fresh tyre marks here.’

  The Essex officers hurried over.

  ‘It goes down to the river,’ DS Hamilton said. ‘I think it leads to the track across the sands. To the Broomway. But I don’t see how anyone could have gone that way in the dark and fog. It’s difficult enough in daylight, and you need to know the tides.’

  ‘Can we have a look, guv?’ Barnard asked and hoped his voice did not sound too desperate. Baker looked at him and nodded.

  ‘Maybe we’d better,’ he said.

  They drove in silence across foggy tracts of flat sodden land. The track occasionally seemed to almost disappear, only to appear again through a muddy landscape of pools and waterlogged grass. Eventually Sergeant Hamilton pulled up at a point where even in the poor visibility it was clear that the narrow road headed down a slope and into the estuary.

  ‘There’s the car,’ Baker said. Ahead of them the roof of a car could be seen just visible above the waterline. ‘If they thought it would sink, they misjudged it in the fog. Reg, get on to the army again and see if they can help pull it out.’

  ‘You think whoever pushed it in will have gone across the sands?’ Barnard asked.

  ‘There’s no other reason to drive down here, is there?’ Baker said. ‘We know no one’s gone out over the bridges.’

  They got out of the car and walked along the start of the muddy Broomway until they were only feet from the submerged vehicle. ‘It could be an accident, I suppose. A misjudgement in the fog, and all the occupants were trapped inside.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Barnard said quietly as he stared at the ground. ‘There are footprints on the track here. As well whoever was inside, there were people outside the car too.’

  ‘Another murder then?’ Baker asked himself as much as the two sergeants. ‘Or disposal of the bodies? Either way, we’ve got an evil bastard here. Have you made contact with the army?’ His sergeant nodded.

  ‘They’ll bring a winch,’ Hamilton said.

  ‘Right, you stay here and wait for the troops,’ Baker said. ‘I’ll take Sergeant Barnard back to civilization and see if we can arrange to cut them off before they get away.’

  ‘Where will they come ashore?’ Barnard asked as the DCI accelerated down the muddy track back to the village, swinging wildly in his hurry.

  ‘Wakering Steps,’ Baker said. ‘There are various places where you can get back to the shore, but if you want to avoid the checkpoint you have to go beyond the bridges. Unless they set off in the dark, I doubt they’ll have got that far by now in this fog. They’d have to wait for something approaching daylight and probably for the tide. Anything else would be suicide. The only thing in their favour is that no one will be firing today, but the place is littered with unexploded ordnance. It’s not a place you go for a Sunday stroll.’

  Barnard lit another cigarette and drew deeply. If I was a religious man, he thought, I would say a prayer. Failing that, he cursed steadily as Baker flung the car through Delia Dexter’s farmyard gate, past her own car with the dead battery, and then down the track through the village and along the military road back to civilization. He put his hand in his coat pocket where he had put Kate’s pendant and clutched it so tightly that the sharp edges cut into his palm. But he hardly noticed. He knew with no doubt at all that if she was dead he might as well be dead himself.

  TWENTY

  For the fifth or sixth time Kate slipped on the mud and clutched Delia Dexter’s shoulder to keep herself upright. She was bitterly cold and she was terrified as Dowd, who was walking last in their column of three, prodded her in the back with his shotgun, making her wonder how long he would have the patience to continue at her slow pace. The fog was still thick and Delia, who reckoned she knew the way across the Broomway even in this weather, occasionally moved so far ahead she could barely see her. But with her bruised and cut legs, from which Delia’s makeshift bandages had long since disappeared into the mud, she struggled to keep up. Her feet and legs stung and jabbed intolerably. And after more than an hour of struggling through the sticky black dirt she did not think she could go on much longer, though Dowd continued to poke her in the ribs with his gun to hurry her up.

  Delia had driven the three of them to the sands at Asplins Head, where the Broomway came back to dry land. Dowd had sat in the back with the shotgun close to Kate’s neck. Nobody spoke, but there was a sense of menace coming from the big muscular man behind them and Kate guessed that he had fou
nd no difficulty in heaving the two bodies into the boot, which he had left ajar. She wondered if her fate was to be heaved into the car with them when they reached their destination. Delia followed a slow and erratic course through a landscape where none of them could see further than a couple of feet ahead, but she never hesitated. It was obviously a route she knew well. She finally stopped where the track began to drop through a gap in some sort of dimly visible embankment following the coast on either side. As she followed Dowd’s order to get out of the car, she guessed that there was nothing but the sands stretching out to sea for miles. The silence was almost unbroken, with not even the cry of a gull to be heard.

  Dowd stood for a moment looking around and in particular at Kate.

  ‘Can you really not get a vehicle across?’ he asked Delia.

  ‘No chance,’ she said. ‘A few fools have tried, but the track won’t take the weight. The cars have got bogged down and the drivers have had to be rescued – or sometimes not. We’re not even supposed to use it without permission from the army, but that’s not going to matter in this.’ She glanced around at the enveloping fog and shrugged.

  ‘Right, the car goes in,’ Dowd said. ‘You can help me push, and if you don’t behave you’ll go in with it. We need to get down the slope on to the soggy stuff. I’m guessing that once we’ve got it into the mud it’ll sink under it’s own weight.’ And the weight of two bodies – or maybe three – Kate thought. Delia maintained a brooding silence.

  Reluctantly the two women did as Dowd instructed and put their weight behind the two front doors, while Dowd pushed strongly from behind. Eventually the car gained some momentum and toppled from the causeway into the mud, where it immediately began to founder, sending only an occasional murky bubble up to the surface.

  Kate was aware of Delia gazing at Jasper Dowd. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she said at length. ‘If I go, she goes too. She might be useful in the end, anyway.’