There was quite a lot she remembered, if she put her mind to it. She stopped the car for a moment and wound down the window. She breathed in the night air and closed her eyes for a moment.
Get a hold on yourself, she thought. So what if there are things you’d rather not have done? Sometimes you just have to do what’s necessary. It’s almost over, anyway. Everything can go back to normal soon. Or as normal as possible, anyway.
She carried on towards the top of the cliff and parked as close to the edge as she dared. She got out of the van. The wind was now howling over the cliff top. She shivered. She could hear the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks below. She was in luck — the tide was in. If she acted quickly enough, the tide would carry Stanley’s body parts far out to sea, never to be seen again. She opened up the van and looked around. Nothing and no one to be seen.
She emptied Stanley’s legs onto on the grass with a dull thump and rolled them over the edge. She heard a splash as they hit the water. She sent the refuse sack after them and watched as it floated up in the wind and disappeared from view. The body was harder, because she had tied the tape on the sack too tightly. She could not risk throwing the body over inside the sack — it might float. She needed to get it out. With a desperate wrench, she managed to tear the tape and Stanley’s body tumbled out. Alice closed her eyes and pushed it over the edge to be reunited with its legs. She almost screamed when the now empty refuse sack was picked up by the wind and carried out to sea.
As she drove back to Polgarrow, Alice’s heartbeat slowly returned to normal. It was all over. Everything was going to be all right. She could go home and forget about Stanley forever. It would not be too difficult — after all, in the forty years they had been married, they had only really spent a few good years together. Alice was looking forward to a huge glass of port and a good night’s sleep. Everything would be different in the morning. And if she did remember the other things too — well, she could deal with those in due course.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Harriet Taylor woke up from a dream that she instantly forgot. She had a throbbing headache. Her stomach started to contract and she shot up, threw the duvet to the floor and made it to the bathroom just in time. She vomited into the sink.
She retched until she was certain there was nothing left in her stomach. She rinsed her mouth, splashed some cold water on her face and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She was shocked at what she saw. Her face was pale and her green eyes were bloodshot.
Harriet went downstairs and looked at the kettle. She was not sure if her stomach could even handle a cup of peppermint tea, but she decided to risk it and turned the kettle on. She spotted the empty wine bottle on the kitchen table and got flashbacks of the previous night. A whole bottle of white wine and two sleeping pills had ensured a good night’s sleep but the consequences were evident in the bathroom sink.
“Never again,” she said.
She felt terrible. Her headache was getting worse and her stomach was making strange gurgling noises. She sipped her tea and it calmed her stomach a little. What made me drink a bottle of wine after all this time? “Never again,” she repeated, gulping two painkillers with more tea.
She opened the back door and a cool breeze wafted in. She took a big gulp of air. The painkillers were starting to work and the peppermint tea had settled her stomach a bit. She scowled at the empty bottle of wine and threw it in the recycling. The wine had stood untouched in the fridge for months.
What made me open it last night?
Then she remembered. Yesterday would have been Danny’s birthday. Charming, two-timing Danny Taylor would have been thirty years old. Taylor had thought a lot about how life would have been if Danny hadn’t been killed in the accident. She wondered how much longer he would have taken her for a fool.
The truth was that the wine hadn’t been to drown her sorrows. It had been to celebrate the fact that he had died and spared her further humiliation. Danny’s death that night had hit her hard at the time, but, in fact, losing him had given her some semblance of a life again. She forced down the rest of the tea and went upstairs for a shower. A cold one, as cold as she could tolerate.
*
A few miles away, Alice Green woke with a smile on her face. She wasn’t sure why. Was it the result of a dream? She couldn’t remember. All she knew was that it was all over. Stanley was gone for good and she would never have to worry about him again. As she walked through to the kitchen in her nightdress, she noticed that the smile would not shift. It felt like a mask glued to her face.
“Cup of tea?” The jackdaw cawed as Alice turned on the kettle. “Cup of tea?”
“Clever boy.” Alice opened a fresh tin of dog food and emptied some of it into the tray at the bottom of the cage. “It’s a beautiful day, my boy. The bees are going to be in their element today.”
She opened the window as the kettle boiled. The scent of the hollyhocks drifted into the kitchen. She looked outside and her smile disappeared abruptly. There was a gaping trench under the hollyhock bushes and a huge pile of soil on the grass next to them. In her haste to get rid of the body, Alice had forgotten to fill in the hole. She ran outside still in her nightdress and grabbed the shovel still lying on the grass.
“Oh dear.” Eddie Sedgwick’s head appeared above the hedge that divided the two gardens. “Looks like you had a visit from a badger last night. A big one, by the look of things. I wonder what it was looking for.”
Alice had to think quickly. “Probably scouting for somewhere to spend the winter,” she said.
“Do you need some help? I’m pretty handy with a spade, even though I do say so myself.”
“No thanks, Eddie.” Alice began shovelling the loose earth into the hole. “It shouldn’t take long.”
“Lovely day for it, anyway,” Eddie said and went back inside.
Just bugger off, you nosy bastard, Alice thought, but she managed to bite her tongue.
Twenty minutes later, she was finished. She trampled on the last of the soil and stood back to admire her work. It was as if nothing had ever happened. Some soil was still scattered on the grass, but a good downpour would clear that up. Alice went back inside for a well-earned cup of tea.
“Stanley Green,” she raised the teacup in the air, “good riddance.”
She was free of him now. He would no longer haunt her. She wondered where he’d ended up.
Miles out to sea, never to be seen again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Harriet Taylor was about to leave for work when someone knocked at her front door. She opened it and saw DI Jack Killian standing in the doorway, wearing a very grave expression.
“Sir?” Taylor asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m glad I caught you,” Killian said. “Are you all right? You don’t look too well.”
“I’m fine,” she lied. “Did forensics find something?”
“I’m afraid this is about something else entirely. The Milly Lancaster investigation is going to have to be put on hold.”
“Sounds serious.”
“Let’s get going, then.”
“Where are we going?”
“Down to the harbour. And I sincerely hope you’re not the squeamish type.”
*
As they drove towards the harbour entrance, Killian told Taylor how someone had rung the station in the early hours of that morning.
“A fishing boat dragged something up in its net,” he said, “and when the net was emptied on the deck, the skipper almost fainted. It was a human body.”
Taylor flinched. “Milly Lancaster?”
“It’s the body of a man. And when I say body, I mean it literally. The legs are missing.”
The nausea from earlier that morning hit Taylor’s stomach again.
“He’s been cut in half,” Killian continued. “The skipper of the boat thinks it may have been a shark attack.”
“A shark?” It sounded unbelievable.
“We do get shark atta
cks round here every so often.”
“What kind of a shark can bite a man in half?”
“Not many. And you hardly ever get that type in these waters.”
Killian stopped the car by the harbour breakwater. The sheltered marina was abuzz with people. Gulls swarmed overhead. Every now and then, one swooped down to retrieve something from the water.
“It’s worse than I expected,” said Killian. “I thought it might be busy at this time of year, but a shark attack around here is going to cause panic.”
“What do we do?”
“Damage control, for what it’s worth. We’re probably already too late. Word travels quickly in this place.”
He headed towards the wharf where the fishing boats were usually tied up. It was obvious which one had pulled the body up in its nets. A crowd of people had gathered on the wharf next to a blue-and-white boat with the name ‘Serenity’ on the side. Two policemen in uniform were trying to keep the hoard away from it. They seemed to be fighting a losing battle. As they got closer, Taylor saw it was the PCs Eric and Thomas White.
“Morning,” Killian said to Eric. “Where’s the body?”
“Still on the boat, sir. The skipper had the good sense to cover it with a tarpaulin. There’s an ambulance on its way now.”
“Good.”
“Where’s the captain of the boat?” Taylor asked.
“Inside the wheelhouse. He’s in a bit of a state,” Eric said.
“Get these rubberneckers out of here.” Killian pointed to the people gawping at the boat. “I want this whole wharf cleared by the time the ambulance gets here.”
Eric and Thomas set about dispersing the crowds and Killian stepped aboard the boat. The way he skipped from the wharf onto the deck made Taylor think it wasn’t the first time he’d done it. “Come on,” he called.
She leaned over and grabbed the safety rail so tightly that her knuckles turned white, before she managed to scramble on board. Serenity was an old-fashioned trawler with a centre cabin. The tarpaulin she’d heard about lay on the deck at the stern and the boat’s skipper was sipping coffee in the wheelhouse. The stench of rotten fish and diesel didn’t help Taylor’s delicate stomach.
The captain looked more like a schoolteacher than a sailor. He was slim with thinning hair and rimless spectacles. Only the badly-fitting oilskins identified him as a fisherman.
“You must be the police,” he said. “I’m Gary. Gary Dean. This is my boat.”
“Mr Dean, I’m DI Killian and this is DC Taylor. We need to ask you a few questions.”
“Of course.” Dean put his coffee cup down on the steering console. His hands were shaking badly.
“I covered the body up,” he said. “I couldn’t bear to look at it.”
“It’s all right, Mr Dean,” Taylor told him. “There’s an ambulance on the way to take it away.”
“Have you seen it? Don’t look at it. I can’t get it out of my head. I don’t think I’ll ever get it out of my head.” He looked terrified and sick at the same time.
“What time did you discover it?” Killian came straight to the point.
“It was around six this morning.”
“Where was this?”
“About ten nautical miles out, pretty much as the crow flies, from the harbour.”
“What were you doing out so early?” Taylor said.
Dean looked at her as though she had asked him why his eyes were blue. “I cast off around midnight. At this time of year the best fishing is before dawn.”
“What do you fish for? I thought trawling was illegal.” She’d read an article about the issue in the local paper, and was rather proud that she knew the correct terminology.
“It is. The size of the nets is regulated. I don’t really trawl. Not in the traditional or commercial sense. I just catch enough to sell at the markets. I supply some of the restaurants in town too.”
“So you found the body around six,” Killian said, “then what?”
“Then what?” Dean giggled nervously. “I screamed, that’s what. I screamed my bloody head off. I almost threw the body back where it came from.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Then I turned the boat round and came back here as fast as the engine would let me. I got back at around seven and phoned you lot.”
“How long have you been fishing these waters?” Taylor asked.
“Over twenty years. I used to fish with my dad and now he’s gone, the boat’s mine. I’m thinking of selling her after this.”
“Twenty years.” Taylor was genuinely interested. “How many sharks have you seen in that time?”
“Quite a few. They get caught up in the nets sometimes. But they’re just small ones. Two or three feet.”
“Nothing bigger than that?”
“You don’t see the bigger sharks. They certainly see you though.”
“So you haven’t seen any sharks that could do that to a man?” She pointed to the tarpaulin on the deck.
“Bloody hell, no. You’ve seen the film Jaws, haven’t you? That’s the only shark I can think of that could do this.”
“Are you ready?” Killian asked Taylor. He nodded to the tarpaulin.
“If it’s all right with you,” said Dean, “I’d rather not go with you. I’ll stay up here.”
“Of course,” Killian nodded again and stepped down to the deck. The tarpaulin lay next to a crate full of fish. Most of them were dead but a few were flipping around in a desperate attempt to cling to life. “Here goes.” He took hold of the tarpaulin.
Taylor wasn’t sure how she was going to react. She had seen dead bodies before, but they’d still had their legs attached. Please don’t faint in front of the DI, she told herself.
In fact, the body did not even look like a body. It was more like a checked shirt with a blue head and two blue hands. Taylor stared at the face. It was slightly bloated and one of the eyes was missing. Thin grey hair sprouted in patches from the dead man’s head.
“My God.” Killian turned away.
Taylor just stared. The hands were shrivelled. One of the fingers was missing. The lips and eyelids were a lighter shade of blue than the rest of the face. She took in everything, starting from the top of the head and continuing to where the shirt ended and the legs ought to have been.
“Seen enough?” Killian looked as though he was going to be sick.
“Yes.” Taylor replaced the tarpaulin. “Enough to know this wasn’t a shark attack.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Taylor watched as two paramedics put the body in a bag, hauled it onto the wharf and placed it on a stretcher. She followed them to the ambulance parked at the end of the pier. Jack Killian walked after her. He looked queasy.
“Jack,” the older of the paramedics said, “do you want us to check you over? You don’t look too great, my friend.”
“I’m fine,” Killian said gruffly. “What now?”
The paramedic looked at the body bag on the stretcher and then back at Killian.
“We’re good, Jack,” he smiled, “but we’re not that good. I don’t think this one’s going to make it.”
Taylor started to laugh, slightly hysterically. Killian cast her a stern glance and she tried to stifle it.
“Where are you taking him?” he asked.
“Back to the mortuary.”
“Here or Plymouth?”
“We’ll keep him in town. I’m sure you’re curious as to what happened to old Arthur here.”
“Arthur?” Taylor broke in. “Do you know who it is?”
“It’s his sick attempt at humour,” Killian told her. “Meet Carl Morton. Veteran paramedic and terrible stand-up comedian.”
“Let’s go,” Morton said to his colleague. They wheeled the stretcher into the ambulance, jumped in behind it and closed the doors. It drove off at a leisurely pace.
“Quite a character, that one,” Taylor said.
“Carl? An acquired taste, I can tell you that.”
<
br /> “Why did he call the body Arthur?”
“You’ll figure it out. What did you mean back there when you said this wasn’t a shark attack?”
“I’ve watched the odd documentary on sharks. Did you know that they don’t actually like the taste of humans? They usually bite and let go. Unfortunately, that’s sometimes enough to kill you.”
“I’m ignoring your liking for nature documentaries. I suppose it’s better than those awful so-called police dramas. Go on.”
“One bite from a shark would have ripped that body to pieces. They’ve got serrated teeth — each tooth has rows of much smaller teeth. But the shirt on that body was hardly torn. It can’t have been a shark, even a massive Jaws-style one.”
“Interesting. We’ll see what the path guys have to say.”
“And how did he get in the water in the first place?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he went for a midnight dip?”
“In a checked shirt? No, I don’t buy it. Something else happened to him.”
Killian sighed. “Be that as it may, for the time being we keep to the story of a shark attack.”
“Damage control?”
“Precisely. Better to let the public believe a shark did it than have them coming up with all kinds of wonderful theories.”
On the way back to Killian’s car, Taylor’s vision went black for a few seconds and she had to steady herself on the railing of the jetty.
“Are you all right?” Killian asked. Taylor could see his lips move but the words seemed to come out in slow motion.
“Taylor?” Killian looked very concerned now.
Taylor felt extremely cold. Her legs were numb. She sat down on the concrete of the wharf and leaned against the railing. She tried to concentrate on one of the boats in the harbour, a large pleasure craft with ‘Kittiwake’ on the hull and a family of gulls sitting on the bow. She took a few deep breaths and the feeling slowly started to come back to her legs.
THE BEEKEEPER a gripping crime mystery with a dark twist Page 7
