by Mark Roberts
The temperature in the room remained constant but she felt herself flush as she reached for a newspaper article with the headline:
HEROISM OF LIVERPUDLIAN TEENAGER
THREE LIVERPOOL SAILORS DEAD IN SHIPPING ACCIDENT
She put her hand over the three small black and white photographs at the centre of the article and, sitting back on the sofa, read the article to herself.
Disaster struck when three merchant seamen from the SS Memphis Star drowned in the English Channel just off the coast of Cornwall in the early hours of Sunday, 17 December. It is reported that an undetected hole in the vessel’s hold was torn wide open as the ship battled against a gale.
Initial reports from investigators at the scene indicate that the ship’s life-saving equipment was inadequate for the needs of the crew in the event of a disaster.
Clay closed her eyes and the details of the story, which had haunted her in her formative years, came sharply to life.
Captain Albert Murray, 51, fell into the water when the life raft he was in was tossed up on a huge wave. James Peace, 19, a naval rating, jumped into the water to save him. The 19-year-old swam towards Murray and away from the life raft. The teenager screamed for Captain Murray to swim towards him. Peace reached the captain in spite of colossal waves.
In her head, the scene turned from a reported memory into a series of moving pictures formed from dozens of eye-witness accounts that she had personally listened to as a young teenager attending the inquest.
The black icy-cold waters rose up like giants as the tiny ship was sucked under by the waves. The life raft was tossed about like a dying animal in the jaws of a predator. Rain lashed down from the cast-iron sky as the wind howled, whipping the sea up into a maelstrom.
The men still on board the life raft screamed for the boy to swim back to the fragile safety of the raft but instead he battled away against the waves towards the drowning man. Their fingertips connected as the boy managed to grip Murray’s wrist, to turn the middle-aged man around and cup a hand under his chin. Murray suffered a massive cardiac arrest and, as he sank, Jimmy was dragged under with him. The boy’s head emerged briefly but then was drawn under again by the impossible power of the sea.
Within minutes of the boy’s disappearance, the storm died down. In the days that followed, the search mission recovered the corpses of Murray and another seaman called Peter Lamb, but the boy’s body was lost forever.
Water. She imagined Jimmy Peace’s spirit as he tried to save others and how his strength must have deserted him as the waves grew taller and the sea sucked him under. She pictured his arm reaching out from the water for something, anything to cling on to, but finding only the cruel wind.
Clay opened her eyes, the centre of her head throbbing.
She looked at the back of her hand, covering the photographs of the three dead sailors and, for a fleeting moment, saw her hand as it had looked when she was eight years old, a resident of St Michael’s Care Home for Children, the hand Jimmy had held so many times.
She lifted her hand from the newspaper article and looked at the first photograph of the three. Murray in his officer’s cap with a pipe in his mouth. She looked at the next picture. Peter Lamb, the ship’s cook.
Then her eyes turned to the third picture and she felt as if her heart was about to explode. Her pulse quickened and the heat inside her became intense, colouring her face and throat.
It was a small grainy snapshot taken from his Merchant Navy passbook of the teenager who had been lost to the sea.
James Peace, the surrogate big brother she had briefly known, but who was now gone forever. She remembered the sunny day when he’d called to her as she watched from the window of Mrs Tripp’s office, and the way he’d looked back at her through the window of the police car as they took him away for saving her on that hot day in autumn, 1986.
The picture in the paper was undeniably him but, to her complete frustration, the grainy quality of the passbook photo did nothing to help her remember what his younger face was like.
Clay remembered another name from the past. Maggie Anderson, the kindest worker in the children’s home and the most consistent, who’d been there when Eve arrived as a six-year-old and still there when she left, aged eighteen, to move into the University of Liverpool’s student residence, Carnatic Hall.
She closed the scrapbook and, as she placed it back in the memory box, saw the edge of her cream and red birth certificate.
It was the only time I was alone in Mrs Tripp’s office, thought Clay.
She heard the hydraulics of a bus on Aigburth Road and, at the other end of Mersey Road, heard a siren from a ship heading across the River Mersey towards Garston Docks.
The day we went to Botanic Gardens. The day I took my birth certificate from my file. The day Christopher Hawkins was taken to hospital and never came back to St Michael’s. The day Jimmy Peace was taken away by the police. The day I saw Jimmy for the very last time.
There was no point in looking at her birth certificate. She knew every word by heart and the disappointment she always felt never diminished when she saw the neat handwriting on it: Mother, unknown. Father, unknown.
Black waves crashed inside her head and, in that darkness, she saw Jimmy Peace sinking beneath the surface, gone forever.
Clay opened the Facebook app on her iPhone and typed Maggie Anderson, Liverpool. Within a moment, three names and profile pictures appeared.
An elderly blonde with a pit bull terrier.
Definitely not you, Maggie, thought Clay. You were allergic to dogs.
A teenage girl with braces.
Clay looked at the time on her iPhone and headed for the front door. She slipped her coat on and looked at the third Maggie Anderson.
‘Hello, Maggie!’ she said. She opened Maggie’s Facebook page and sent a friend request. ‘You were so kind to me when I was a kid.’
38
8.00 am
In the viewing room on the ground floor of Trinity Road police station, Sergeant Carol White folded her hands in front of her closed laptop and laid her head down. She closed her eyes and the little boy’s vacant face floated across the darkness of her mind’s eye.
She lifted her head when she heard knocking on the door and asked, ‘Who is it?’
‘Alice.’
Both her and her colleague Alice’s laptops were turned off.
‘Come in, Alice.’
As Alice Banks came in and closed the door, Carol looked at the notice on the door for the thousandth time.
ALWAYS ENSURE THAT YOUR LAPTOP IS TURNED OFF AND THAT YOU ARE LOGGED OUT WHEN YOU ARE NOT USING IT.
IF YOU ARE THE LAST PERSON TO LEAVE THE ROOM ALWAYS ENSURE THAT THE DOOR IS LOCKED.
ALWAYS ASK FOR THE NAME OF ANYONE KNOCKING ON THE DOOR. ONLY ALLOW AUTHORISED, NAMED OFFICERS TO ENTER THE ROOM.
‘You don’t look well,’ said Alice, sitting next to Carol at the table they had shared for months. She turned on her laptop.
‘Do you mind not logging into anything for a minute?’ said Carol, hearing pain in her own voice.
On the table between them Carol’s iPhone sounded an incoming text and she snatched it up as she saw the number on display.
‘You’re tired but you’re quick. What’s up, hun?’ Alice commented.
‘I made an idiot of myself in front of Bill Hendricks. And no I didn’t make a pass at the man of your dreams.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it. So, do you want to talk about it?’
‘No. Yes. I told him how all the porn was getting me down. I cried. I threw up. I told him about Kevin walking out. I made a right mare of myself.’
‘Bill won’t be fazed by that. He’s our station’s Sigmund Freud. Loads of people talk their problems through with him. He’s the most discreet man on the planet.’
‘If he comes here, I’m going out. I feel so stupid.’
Carol turned her laptop on and then walked to the kettle in the corner of the room, opening and reading her text.
> ‘Anything interesting?’ asked Alice, not looking up from the screen.
‘It’s from Eve Clay. There’s a rat in the house.’
‘Sorry?’
‘There’ll be an email in your inbox with the same message. Someone is dishing out contact details about local paedophiles on the sex offenders’ register and on the NPC. It could be anyone, basically. Report any suspicious behaviour. Coffee?’
‘Yes please.’ Alice sighed. ‘Here we go again. David Wilson, you little bastard.’
Carol said something, softly.
‘Louder, Carol!’
‘I said, I’m glad we’re nearly done.’
‘Yeah, but when we finish looking at Wilson’s shit, we’ll have Jamieson’s to wade through.’ Alice plugged her earphones in. Elbow on desk, chin in left hand, she watched the screen with a completely blank expression. ‘I swear to God,’ she said, ‘we don’t get paid nearly enough.’ She glanced at Carol, who was texting as the kettle came to the boil.
‘I’m texting Kevin. He’d better take Damien for a couple of days.’ When the kettle snapped off, Carol gasped, shocked by a small, sudden noise.
‘Jesus tonight!’
‘That’s a good idea,’ said Alice. ‘You look like you could sleep for a year.’
39
8.30 am
Outside her home on Mersey Road, Clay sat at the wheel of her car and psyched herself out of home mode and back into professional. But the trick she had trained herself to do quickly and efficiently proved difficult now.
She somersaulted from the grainy newspaper picture of the teenage Jimmy Peace and landed in Mrs Tripp’s office and the last image she had had of him in the back window of the police car, his face lacking detail but his mouth moving.
Clay called Cole’s landline. ‘Barney, do me a favour when you get the chance. I’d like you to look on the NPC and see what you can come up with on a James Peace. Date of birth, the fifth of December 1970.’
‘Is he a suspect?’
‘No, he was a childhood friend of mine. If you can dig up any information about him I’d be grateful. He died in a shipping accident, aged nineteen.’
‘You sound a bit down.’
In her mind, she saw the still waters of the English Channel under a leaden sky where gulls wheeled and screamed and frogmen from the Devon & Cornwall Police gathered on a stony beach.
‘Are you OK, Eve?’
‘I’d be grateful if you could keep this request between the two of us.’
‘My lips are sealed.’
Clay closed her eyes and she tried hard but just couldn’t recall Jimmy’s face on that day. She picked another day. Jimmy holding both her hands and swinging her round quickly in the garden at St Michael’s. She looked at his face but it was a dizzying blur.
Can I remember all the nice things you did for me, Jimmy? she asked herself. Every day, something. Hundreds of acts of kindness, and one huge protection. But can I recall your face, what you were like to look at as a boy? No.
Clay was hauled from the depths of the past by a gentle tapping on the passenger window. She saw the orange uniform of her regular postman and he opened the passenger door.
‘Hello, Dave.’
‘Hello, stranger.’ He handed her a postcard.
‘Thank you.’
She looked at a picture of a seagull sitting on a white, wooden fence against an impossibly blue sea. In the top left hand corner, in white writing: ‘GREETINGS FROM KINSALE’.
‘Anything interesting?’
She turned the postcard over to see the writing and said, ‘Yes. Very interesting.’
The postman closed the passenger door and carried on up her next-door neighbour’s path.
She looked at the elegant cursive writing that she’d most recently seen on the skin on Steven and Frances Jamieson’s shoulders. Dear Eve, I am Vindici. Come and find me and all this will stop. Or shall I find you first?
Clay took a picture of the front and back of the postcard and typed a text to Barney Cole.
Pls circulate these pictures to the entire team. The postcard from Vindici arrived at my house just now. If it is from Justin Truman, he is in or has recently been in County Cork. Pls contact Garda in Kinsale and Cork and copy them in on this information.
She attached the images and sent it to Cole and, pulling away and picking up speed, a chain of thought materialised in her head: links between earth and water. Mexico... the Atlantic Ocean... Eire... the Irish Sea... England... Liverpool...
40
8.38 am
In a quest for insights into Vindici, Detective Sergeant Karl Stone scrolled on his laptop to the end of the fortieth newspaper article he’d come across on the internet. He looked at his spiral-bound pad and ticked off the date and headline of the article: 13/08/2009 – VINDICI PLEADS NOT GUILTY TO MURDERING HUMAN BEINGS.
Beneath the headline, he summarised the key point of the article: Justin Truman/Vindici reduces packed public gallery to fits of laughter on plea/Judge threatens him with contempt of court.
As Stone took a deep breath and prepared to look at the next article, he became aware that the usually calm Barney Cole was growing agitated at his nearby desk. He paused and took in the scene.
Cole sat, landline receiver wedged between his ear and shoulder, fingers dancing over the keyboard of his laptop. Next to him, his IT civilian assistant, Poppy Waters, was on her mobile and scrolling frantically on her laptop.
The shared printer on Stone’s desk clicked into life.
Stone saw Hendricks walking towards him.
‘What’s happening, Karl?’ he asked
‘I’m not sure.’
The printer sucked a sheet of paper from the tray into the body of the machine.
Cole stood up, placed the receiver down and gave Stone and Hendricks a double thumbs-up. He pointed at the printer as a single sheet of paper shot out and floated face down on to the floor at Stone’s feet.
Stone picked the paper up, turned it over and read out loud what Cole had sent to the printer. ‘Mrs Annabelle Burns, 222 Springwood Avenue, Liverpool L19 6LY. Who’s she?’
‘We’ve had a shitload of help from the very nice French people at the Réseaux IP Européens Network,’ said Cole, advancing. ‘They’ve given us a latitude 53.364478 and longitude -2.885075 and a postcode L19 6LY for one of the Liverpool Vindici sites. It seems Mrs Burns is running a Vindici fan site just off Mather Avenue within spitting distance of the Jamiesons’ house.’
‘Thank you, Françoise!’ said Poppy Waters. She hung up, looking as though she was about to explode with happiness.
‘They’re going to help us with locating the other site,’ said Cole to Hendricks and Stone.
Stone called Clay on speed dial and when she connected, he said, ‘We’ve got great news, Eve. Where are you?’
‘Aigburth Road. What’s happening?’
‘We’ve got a location for one of the Liverpool Vindici sites. You need to go straight over to 222 Springwood Avenue.’
Stone heard the squeal of tyres against tarmac and the sudden acceleration of Clay’s car as it rose way above the speed limit.
‘Let me guess, Karl. It’s a woman. Springwood Avenue a stone’s throw away from being next-door neighbours with the Jamiesons.’
‘Correct. Who do you want with you and how much back-up?’
41
8.50 am
Parked outside Steven and Frances Jamieson’s home at 699 Mather Avenue, Detective Sergeant Gina Riley and Detective Constable Bob Rimmer watched as a dozen uniformed constables knocked on doors at the Garston exit at Woolton Road. Each one returned periodically with the same repetitive and frustrating message.
No one had seen or heard a thing.
As a glum and cold-looking WPC delivered the latest piece of non-news, Riley said, ‘Keep trying, constable. You’re doing a good job. Here.’ Riley handed her a piece of paper with a list of door numbers. ‘Try these on the other side of the road.’
At
the wheel of her car, Riley looked at Rimmer staring into space and saw a man profoundly disinterested in the task at hand.
‘Bob?’ He turned to her voice. ‘Want to slip home for a couple of hours? I’ll call you if I need you.’
‘Are you kidding, Gina? My mother-in-law’s moved in to take care of Valerie. The kids are all booked in to half-term holiday club and, chances are, Valerie’ll be asleep or strung out on medication. So, thanks, but no thanks.’
Riley looked in the rear-view mirror and saw a young constable walking at speed but also directly into a strong wind that pushed him back and made him hold on to his cap.
‘Eleven and a half months ago, the doctors gave her twelve months.’
‘Don’t you just want to sit with her, Bob? Be at her side?’
‘Watch the cancer in her spine and lungs wipe her out, moment by moment?’ He shook his head and Riley observed a once large and gregarious man who was all cried out, silent and thin now, as they slogged to find a killer while most of the world wished failure on them.
The constable tapped on the passenger window; Rimmer opened the door but stared straight ahead.
‘Yes, constable?’ asked Riley.
‘Five doors down from the scene, 689 Mather Avenue. I tried them earlier but they were out. I saw them coming back just now. They’ve got a CCTV camera at the front of the house.’
Riley shuddered in the mean wind as she got out of the car, looked down the avenue and saw a woman standing at a gate.
‘Come on, Bob.’ Slowly, Rimmer got out of the car. ‘Lead on, constable.’
They trudged over the grass verge on to the pavement with the wind at their backs.
‘Things will get worse, Bob. But then they will get better. This won’t last forever.’
‘I feel like an alien inside my own skin,’ said Rimmer. ‘I didn’t think it was humanly possible to feel so sad and carry on living.’
For once, Riley was lost for words.
‘I’m sorry, Gina. I shouldn’t be laying this on you. I’ve already said far too much.’
Riley placed a hand on Rimmer’s shoulder.
