Deep Waters

by Patricia Hall

  The three of them waited for what seemed like hours beside the gradually sinking car. Eventually Delia said it was light enough, in spite of the fog, to make a start across the sands. She had assured them there were markers along the Broomway to guide them. But although the tide had now noticeably begun to ebb away down the track sloping into the estuary, Kate had not seen many of those so far. Meanwhile the surface squelched beneath them and their feet were occasionally sucked into the mud, so that they had to pause to extricate themselves before the three of them could set off in single file again across the black stuff that the tide had left behind. Kate, on the edge of panic, began to wonder whether Delia had decided not to lead them to dry land, as she had promised, but was deliberately taking them out to sea – where they would be unseen from the shore in the swirling fog and would undoubtedly drown as the tide quietly rose and engulfed them. Dowd was deadly dangerous, but Delia too was unpredictable and hardly someone who could be relied on. But with Dowd’s shotgun at her back, Delia Dexter was her only hope. She had to trust her to take them safely across the sands. The alternative was despair. There was no way and no place to run.

  The fog was still thick when DCI Baker and DS Harry Barnard arrived at Wakering Steps, where the Broomway climbed gently up from the sands on to the mainland close to Great Wakering village and the army base at Shoeburyness. When Barnard got out of the car, he realized how busy Baker and Hamilton had been on the phone. They found half a dozen police officers and the same number of soldiers waiting for them where a reasonably firm causeway could be seen heading off into the waterlogged sands before disappearing into the fog. A military police officer with sergeant’s stripes detached himself from the huddle of troops – all carrying regulation rifles, Barnard noticed with surprise – and hurried over to make himself known to the DCI.

  ‘Normally we’d have the red flags flying by now, sir,’ he said curtly. ‘No one should be out there on the ranges today, whatever the visibility. When your officer reported that they’d started from Asplins Head, which is three miles away, we knew it would take them a couple of hours to cross – more, probably, in this fog. If they make it, that is. You couldn’t have conditions more conducive to getting lost out there, I hope you realize that.’ Baker nodded but did not argue, and Barnard groaned. These people knew the area and would not be exaggerating the risks. Out here he was a rank amateur.

  For more than half an hour the welcome party, which would be only too unwelcome to Jasper Dowd if he and his companions made it, peered into the fog but saw nothing.

  ‘Couldn’t you go out to meet them?’ Barnard asked the MP, who glanced at him with contempt.

  ‘From what I’ve been told, your man is armed and not shy of using his shotgun,’ he said. ‘The sands are treacherous. If anyone panics for any reason and leaves the Broomway, we might never see them again in this weather. It’s not just the mud. There’s stray ordnance out there. You need to be able to see where you’re going, and today you can’t.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’ll be high tide again at 13.50. We need them all out of there long before that.’

  Barnard’s shoulders slumped, and he sat down on a concrete barrier sited to prevent vehicles reaching the sands and lit another cigarette. He wondered how his life had imploded so comprehensively and whether there was anything he could have done differently to save Kate from this. Even the police and the army troops seemed to be infected by the same pessimism and gathered in silent huddles, while DCI Baker and the MP sergeant stood with binoculars focused on the spot where the Broomway faded into the deep grey haze but apparently seeing nothing.

  Barnard kept looking at his watch, realizing that the tide would have begun to flow towards the land again. He didn’t think it would surge in – there was no wind although the fog banks appeared to swirl around, but that would make no difference to the incoming water. It would slowly and steadily rise and eventually sweep across the track and continue inexorably, so that anyone out there would drown. He had seen what water could do on Canvey Island all those years ago, and knew there was no way of stopping it. At high tide no doubt boats could get out on to the sands, but that would be too late.

  Another half hour inched by and Barnard smoked his last cigarette. As he ground it out, the whole waiting group was galvanized by the sound of a shot.

  ‘Shotgun,’ the army sergeant said. ‘And not far out either.’ He raised his binoculars again and peered into the gloom. ‘I can see something, but not how many people it is.’ He turned to DCI Baker. ‘If we can all get out of sight, sir, they may just walk out. If we can’t see them, they won’t see us. It’s worth a try.’ The two men waved the whole group back, away from the last few yards of the track behind the sea wall. Baker gripped Barnard’s arm tightly.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid, Sergeant,’ he said. Barnard did not reply but crouched down with the rest, out of sight of the Broomway’s end. In the event it was Jasper Dowd, still holding his shotgun, who emerged from the sands first, boots and trousers caked with thick mud and half-dragging, half-carrying a woman, exhausted and staggering, behind him. He had neither time nor energy to raise his gun before he was surrounded by troops with their rifles at the ready. Barnard realized instantly that Dowd’s companion was not Kate – it was Delia Dexter, and there was no sign of anyone else emerging from the fog. He grabbed Delia’s arm so hard she cried out.

  ‘Where’s Kate?’ he demanded. ‘Has that bastard killed her?’ Delia looked at him with tears in her eyes.

  ‘She couldn’t walk any further,’ she said. ‘He shot at her, but I think she dodged him and disappeared into the fog. I was in front, so I didn’t see it clearly. She’s somewhere out there still.’

  Barnard let go, and before anyone could stop him ran down the slipway and on to the sands. The MP officer gestured to two of his men and they followed more slowly.

  ‘Wait!’ he shouted at Barnard. ‘You don’t know where it’s safe.’ Barnard slowed slightly and allowed the men following him to catch up.

  ‘She must be close to the track,’ he said, his breath catching in his throat.

  ‘Try shouting,’ the MP said. ‘She may hear you before she can see you.’ The four men shouted in unison and then listened, but there was no sound except the slight gurgling of the water as the tide began to move in. They walked cautiously along the track and as they went the fog began imperceptibly to thin, drifting in white clouds above the emerging miles of sodden sands. Barnard swallowed hard.

  ‘I heard something,’ he said. ‘Listen.’ It was the faintest of cries, clearly seeking help. Treading carefully off the Broomway towards the shore, they eventually saw Kate lying in the mud, which had sucked her far enough in for her to be unable to gain enough purchase to stand up again.

  ‘One each side,’ the MP said sharply. ‘Under her arms. She’ll be all right if we’re careful.’ He and Barnard took hold of Kate and gradually eased her out of what had been so close to becoming a greedy sodden grave, then the other two soldiers helped carry her back to the relative safety of the track.

  Barnard doubled over, then took Kate’s limp hand and squeezed it hard.

  ‘Jesus wept!’ he whispered close to Kate’s ear. ‘Don’t do that again, sweetheart. I can’t lose you now.’

  The next morning Harry Barnard sat by Kate’s hospital bed in Southend, where she was recovering from her ordeal on Maplin Sands. Once she had been patched up as an emergency, the doctors had recommended that she stay in overnight for observation and she had thankfully let sleep overwhelm her.

  Barnard had gone home looking shell-shocked. He arrived back bringing clean clothes to replace the outfit, now mud-sodden, she had gone to Southend in the day before. ‘I chucked your other stuff in the bin,’ he said, putting a carrier bag on the bed. ‘We’re ready to go as soon as the doctors are happy with you.’

  His explanatory phone call to DCI Jackson had been met by a chilly acknowledgement. Clearly there would be an unpredictable and possibly terminal reckoning back
at the nick when he finally reported in, with the Yard no doubt still breathing down the DCI’s neck. In the meantime he quietly celebrated the fact that when Kate had woken from what looked like a profound sleep her eyes had met his and she’d summoned a wan smile which he reckoned was much better than no smile at all.

  ‘Are you feeling any better?’ he asked. ‘Really?’

  She nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Where were you?’ she whispered. ‘I couldn’t get hold of you when I needed you, la, and then the whole thing got out of hand.’ She shut her eyes to try to escape the kaleidoscope of appalling images that the long night and early morning had left behind. Worst of all was the constriction in her chest as she remembered how the quicksands had clutched her tight as she slipped into their grasp. ‘I thought I was going to die,’ she said. ‘But if I hadn’t run, he’d have shot me.’

  Barnard took her hand, feeling helpless.

  ‘Did they get Jasper?’ she persisted. ‘He was obviously in on the robberies.’

  ‘Remanded in custody this morning, with a charge sheet as long as your arm. And they’re holding Delia Dexter. Whose side was she on, for God’s sake?’

  ‘She was all right, la,’ Kate insisted. ‘She did her best to help. Is she all right? She tried to help me. I think Dowd would have shot me back on Foulness and dumped me with the others if it hadn’t been for her. He’d nothing much to lose by then, and I knew too much. She convinced him I might be more use as a hostage.’

  ‘I can’t think what they might charge her with. She was obviously acting under duress.’

  ‘But what I don’t understand is what Ray Robertson was doing out there. He kept saying he was going away but then he did that long trip out to the farm. He said he wanted to know if Delia was pretending to be her sister, but why did it matter? It didn’t make sense. He picked me up off the road and then ended up taking Connie and Luke away but refused to take me. Somewhere safe for them, he said.’ Barnard gave her a curious look.

  ‘Do you know where he took them?’ he asked. ‘Or why?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Kate said.

  ‘There was I thinking that it must be Delia who had got hold of the money and had probably spent it, but maybe it wasn’t,’ Barnard said. ‘She didn’t look as if she had two pennies to spare, did she? Maybe Connie and Bert somehow managed to hang on to it through the flood, keeping it safe for the other two in jail. And then when Bert was murdered, Connie decided to hang on to it herself.’

  ‘Connie took a bag with her to Foulness,’ Kate said. ‘I saw her put it into Delia’s car. But I guess Delia would have searched that. She gave it to Ray willingly enough when they left. I saw her. But I think mainly she was just relieved to get out of there. She must have guessed her husband and Barrett would eventually turn up.’

  ‘We didn’t go through the bags Connie carried to Clacton, did we?’ Barnard whispered. ‘But you can bet your life Ray did when he got her there and made himself at home with her Auntie Vi. He wouldn’t miss a trick like that. He can be very persuasive when he tries.’

  ‘I never fathomed why Ray went out to Foulness, anyway,’ Kate said.

  ‘Ray has an unerring instinct for the main chance,’ Barnard said. ‘He must have known for years that the cash from those robberies had never been recovered. Rod Miller could have told him easily enough. And once Dexter and Barrett were on the loose again, it got urgent. With his connections to the Flanagan family from way back, he must have reckoned he stood as good a chance as anybody of getting hold of it.’

  ‘Right,’ Kate said.

  ‘Your friend DCI Baker will want statements from you about what happened, but I’ve told him he’ll have to wait until you’ve recovered. Jackson even allowed me that much when I stupidly knocked myself out.’ He hadn’t told Kate yet about Ray Robertson’s involvement in that episode. He would wait to see what the Yard made of it before giving her something else to worry about.

  ‘Baker won’t like waiting,’ Kate said.

  ‘He turned out OK in the end,’ Barnard said. ‘He got hold of the cavalry when it was needed. Armed to the teeth, too. Dowd took one look at those six rifles and gave up.’

  ‘Baker’s a bully,’ Kate said with a spark of anger. ‘He nearly got me raped.’

  Barnard’s expression hardened.

  ‘We’ll talk to the military police about that,’ he said. ‘Would you recognize the bastard again?’

  ‘You bet,’ Kate said. ‘And his scooter.’

  ‘We’ll pass that bit of information on to Jack Baker before we head home,’ he said. ‘Are you ready to go?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Kate said. ‘Good and ready.’

  ‘Let’s face the music then, shall we?’