by James, Henry
‘We’ve been bait-digging,’ Felix said.
Boyd cringed and added quickly, ‘We stopped at the pub, just to warm up, like, before heading off.’
‘Which one?’
Luckily Boyd remembered passing the pub. ‘The Dog and Pheasant . . . we only had the one.’
‘Sure, sure. Need to warm up on a night like this. Well, go back there and knock up old Bob, and he’ll let you stay the night. Say there’s been an incident and the only way off the island is shut.’
‘Thank you, officer,’ Boyd wound up the window hurriedly. ‘Friendly for a copper? Makes a change. That’s that, then,’ he said to Felix. ‘Well, we can’t hang around here drawing attention to ourselves. There’s nothing for it. To the Dog and Pheasant.’
1.45 a.m., Mersea Road
‘Blimey, it’s a real pea-souper,’ Kenton said above the roar of the engine, flicking the wipers on full. Although visibility was poor, he continued accelerating into the dark as they left behind the residential outskirts of Colchester and the orange glow of the street lamps.
‘A pea-souper is a fog. Or smog, to be more accurate, a smog caused by industrial waste, denoted by its colour. Clever lad like you should know that. This –’ Lowry rummaged in the glove compartment for some mints – they might give you sweet breath but, sadly, they did nothing to keep you awake – ‘this is just a mist. A cold one, I’ll grant you.’
The mist thickened as the road dipped through Donyland Woods.
‘Slow down, for Christ’s sake! You can’t see!’ Lowry cried, agitated. He was a bad passenger. Especially in Kenton’s cramped orange sports car.
‘Quitting smoking making you nervous, guv?’
The Triumph accelerated out of the dip.
‘No, it bloody well isn’t. Just slow down. There’s no hurry.’ It felt surreal, travelling in a convertible in these conditions. He was trying his best not to suggest that Kenton might consider fixing the roof.
Kenton eased off a fraction, ‘Not made any New Year’s resolutions myself.’
‘Wouldn’t bother.’ Lowry was giving up for health reasons, having developed a hacking cough. He didn’t give a fig that it was New Year, although the winter weather made it worse. No, it had been just a night like any other, albeit a busy one.
‘Always room from improvement, guv, quality of life—’
‘Don’t start banging on about quality of life at this time of the morning. Get out of the police force if you want quality of life . . . and don’t call me guv. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not Dixon of Dock Green. Though I’m starting to feel as old as him.’ Lowry looked across at his driver. ‘Actually,’ he continued hesitantly, ‘I have been thinking about trying something new . . .’
‘Yes, giving up the fags.’
‘More than that . . .’
‘Not complaining about my car?’ Kenton prompted, the damp air catching his hair as turned to his passenger.
‘Me not complaining about this heap will improve your quality of life, not mine. No. I’ve decided I need to take up a hobby.’
‘A hobby? What, as in stamp collecting? Making model aeroplanes? That sort of thing?’
Lowry couldn’t make out his colleague’s expression in the dark, though he realized he needn’t fear being ridiculed. Daniel Kenton, for all his joking, was as sound as a pound – if anything, he’d understand.
‘Not quite so sedentary, no, although now I’m getting on a bit, it’s time to pull out of the gaffer’s boxing team. No, something outdoors.’
‘Cycling?’
‘No. Birdwatching.’
‘Ornithology? Crumbs. Sounds a bit . . . well . . .’
‘A bit what?
‘Well . . . Poofy? Was it the wife’s idea, guv?’
‘“Poofy”?’ Lowry said, surprised that someone so educated would use the term. ‘No – I haven’t even told her. It’s just an idea. I caught a programme on the telly and liked the thought of the fresh air, really. No more to it than that – not sure that qualifies me for a change in sexual preference.’
‘Sorry, sir. No offence. I was just wondering what the chief will have to say about it,’ said Kenton. ‘Ditching the boxing is one thing – I mean, you’re getting on and all, but . . .’
‘It’s none of his business.’ A vision of Stephen Sparks, the station’s pugilist chief superintendent, loomed across Lowry’s consciousness.
Kenton knew not to push him further. He was a good lad, Lowry thought, as he watched the tree limbs pass by, stark and white in the lights of the car, occasionally clawing ominously through the fog. Sparks, on the other hand, was not so agreeable. Lowry hadn’t really considered the effect this change in direction might have on the chief; as far as Sparks was concerned, the social side of the force was as crucial as the policing itself, if not more so. And Kenton’s observation was accurate enough: Sparks would more than likely view this harmless, gentle pursuit as on a par with being caught soliciting in public conveniences. But, in truth, he no longer cared; all his life he’d done things for other people. The boxing had started with his father. Even when the old man left them, Lowry had carried on, his need to impress him seamlessly replaced by the fuel of anger. And then the police force – and the shine had gone off that now. When did it happen? If it weren’t for his wife and Matt, he’d have thrown in the job years ago . . .
The Triumph drew to a stop. Kenton killed the engine, and silence descended on them.
‘Though, if it’s fresh air I’m after, there’s bags of it to be had travelling around in this thing with you,’ Lowry said, dispelling thoughts of sports and pastimes as he pulled himself out of the car on to the ice-cold causeway. ‘Watch your step,’ he said to no one in particular, flicking seaweed off his newish shoes. He spun his torch from left to right. On either side of the road there were narrow walkways bordered by two-bar wooden fences that ran the length of causeway. The motorist had hit the body as he came off the island. Lowry shone the torch to the right. Was it conceivable that the body had been brought in by the tide? He stepped up to the fence and looked into the murk of the salt marsh beyond the causeway. He couldn’t see the marshes, but he knew they were there.
‘Could the body have slipped between the gaps of this fence?’ he asked, more of himself than anyone else. He gauged the space between the bars – just short of a foot. Yes, probably.
‘The tide was a high one, guv,’ said a uniformed officer who had suddenly appeared beside Lowry. ‘Fully over the first rail.’
‘Sorry, and you are Constable . . . ?’
‘Jennings, guv, West Mersea.’ That would be why his face was unfamiliar, Lowry thought. He couldn’t keep up with the treadmill of Uniform – they tended not to stick at it so much these days; impatient for promotion. He stepped back from the rail and moved towards the huddle of silhouettes standing underneath an arc lamp in the middle of the road.
The body was male and clothed. It lay sodden and limp on the road. It reminded Lowry of a drunk he’d once found in the pouring rain in the middle of a lane near Tiptree.
‘Do you have a cigarette on you, son, by any chance?’ Lowry asked. The officer shook his head. Lowry shrugged. ‘Where’s the Dodger?’
‘The sergeant clocks off at nine, sir.’ The respect accorded to the station sergeant, a robust sixty-year-old who had manned the Mersea Station for more than thirty years, pleased Lowry. He crouched down and regarded the blanched corpse; his experience hinted it had been in the water for at least twenty-four hours. They needed to get the body to the lab; Lowry gave the signal and stood.
A torch bobbed towards him in the blackness.
‘There’s nothing more we can do tonight.’ Kenton approached, looking ashen under the spotlight. ‘West Mersea police have already scoured the road. No sign of the head.’
‘Sod the head for now.’ Lowry turned round in the darkness. ‘How did this get here?’ he said, tapping the corpse with a now-damp loafer. ‘Did it float in on the tide?’
-
3-
1.50 a.m., Saturday, Colchester Garrison HQ, Flagstaff House, Napier Road
CS Stephen Sparks was cursing inwardly. They should have left the dinner party half an hour ago with the last guests, when Antonia had signalled she was ready, and not have had another brandy, as he’d insisted. Blast! The night had been fun, until now. Brigadier Lane stood in the hallway of his spacious quarters, speaking quietly into the telephone and occasionally shooting a glance in Sparks’s direction.
To a casual observer, the brigadier and Sparks might appear to be friends. Over the years, a genial relationship had developed between the two middle-aged men, fostered by social occasions like this evening’s lengthy dinner party. But the surface bonhomie masked a fierce rivalry. They held similar positions within Britain’s oldest-recorded town – Sparks was chief superintendent and Lane was garrison commander – and, while they didn’t compete in their professional lives, each had a deep-rooted need to outshine the other. It was channelled furiously through sports, particularly boxing. Both men had shared a passion for boxing since boyhood and were keen to instil the love of the sport into their respective commands; so, for the past ten years, local policeman and serviceman had met in the ring to batter the hell out of each other. Competition reached such a pitch that, in the Jubilee Year of 1977, the Colchester Services Cup was born, a prize which now glinted tauntingly from the brigadier’s trophy cabinet.
Sparks eyed the surrendered cup they’d lost the previous year before swigging the last of his brandy and replacing the glass heavily on the table. This telephone call could only be bad news. Sparks knew that Brigadier Lane tempered his deep, booming voice only for matters of a serious or upsetting nature. The policeman’s young fiancée shot him a pleading look: must we stay longer? He ignored her and watched as the brigadier replaced the receiver, his head bowed.
‘That was the hospital,’ Lane announced as he re-entered the room. ‘Young Daley . . .’ He rubbed his impressive beard, reluctant to say more in front of his wife and Antonia. But Sparks could read his expression and acknowledged what must have happened in silence. Shit, he’d never expected the lad to die. He’d only jumped off a wall, for Christ’s sake. He shook his head woefully.
‘The other boy has regained consciousness, according to a Dr Bryant,’ the brigadier continued. ‘We’ll have him transferred to the garrison hospital straight away.’
Abbey Fields, the military hospital. That’s the last thing we need, thought Sparks. Once the army had him, the police would never get access.
‘Really? Surely it’s best not to move him. Why not leave him in the General?’
‘Army takes care of its own, Stephen, you know that.’
Yes, only too well. It was because the soldier had been in a critical state that the civilian police had successfully overruled the military police – Lane’s Red Caps – in the first place. The brigadier’s wife got up off the sofa and moved to comfort her husband. As if he cares, thought Sparks – the embarrassment is all that brute will be worried about. And the fact he’s lost a good bantamweight fighter. Daley had a lethal upper cut.
Sparks rose, along with his fiancée.
‘I’m very sorry, John.’
‘Not your fault,’ the brigadier replied. Though, of course, Lane would hold him responsible for allowing yobs to run riot in the high street on New Year’s Eve. ‘Have you caught the little sods yet?’ he demanded.
‘We’re making inquiries. This, of course, ups the ante . . .’
‘Murder?’ piped up Lane’s wife, wide-eyed.
‘Let’s not be too hasty,’ Sparks urged. ‘There’ll be a full investigation.’
‘Damn right there will,’ Lane put in.
Sparks held out Antonia’s coat for her to put on. Yes, he thought, but don’t you go poking your oar in with the local Gestapo. The last thing he wanted was MPs crawling all over this.
‘Right, we must be off. Thank you for a lovely evening.’ Handshakes and kisses were exchanged. ‘I’ll check in at the station on the way home and call you first thing in morning, John.’
Sparks ushered Antonia to the door, his hand a little too firm in the small of her back. ‘Lovely evening, thank you,’ he repeated forcefully as the bitter night air filled the hall. Lane nodded in silence on the threshold, and his wife smiled wanly, aware that the unwelcome news had ruined a pleasant evening.
*
‘Did you have to practically push me out of the front door?’ Antonia shivered as Sparks fumbled with the cap for the de-icer in the VIP parking bay. ‘What was all that about, anyway? What did she mean, “murder”?’ She wrapped herself tightly in her long fur coat.
‘Typical New Year’s Eve trouble – a ruckus between the locals and a bunch of squaddies,’ explained Sparks.
‘And someone was killed? There’s always fighting in town over Christmas, but good heavens, what’s the place coming to?’ she said, appalled.
Sparks bristled. ‘Yes, but this time a dozen or so yobs chased two lads and cornered them at the castle. They jumped from the north wall, not knowing it was a twenty-foot drop. Both are in hospital, and one just died.’
They sat in the Rover in silence. Sparks turned on the blower to de-mist the windscreen. Antonia brushed her lush blond hair from her face.
‘Do we really have to go to the station tonight?’
Sparks ignored her and picked up the radio handset. ‘Get me Lowry,’ he said.
2.45 a.m., Colchester CID, Queen Street
‘Ah, there you are. Just seen Kenton slope off. Where’ve you been?’ Sparks said loudly. As usual, the chief seemed oblivious to the late hour, marching around bright-eyed and energetic in his attic office, as though it were a fresh spring morning. This ability of his to be wide awake at all times grated on Lowry. ‘The night sergeant has filled me in on the obstruction on the Strood.’
‘Kenton’ll be back out there, on the mud at dawn, don’t worry. And I’ve just been phoning to check on my son. He’s sleeping over at my wife’s parents.’
Sparks reached for a bottle from the small, tatty cabinet. The chief wasn’t interested in Lowry’s domestic arrangements, nor, it seemed, in the body on the Strood.
‘We have a problem,’ Sparks continued. ‘Drink?’
Lowry nodded and took the generous measure of the chief’s favourite malt offered to him. Sparks was in civvies: a neatly tailored suit in Prince of Wales check, a white shirt and a navy tie at half-mast. When out of uniform, the older man, with his cropped hair and bulky frame, didn’t look like a copper, especially in a get-up that wouldn’t look out of place on an East End gangster.
‘Cheers.’ He raised the glass. ‘What’s happened?’
‘The soldier boy who fell off the wall in Castle Park is dead.’
‘Oh.’ Lowry didn’t need an explanation. In this town, a soldier’s death was a cause for concern.
Colchester was one of the country’s largest garrison towns. This had been the case since the Roman invasion in AD 43, and every policeman in Queen Street knew the history, to varying degrees. In military conflicts across the ages – the Civil Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the First and Second World Wars and, most recently, the Falklands – Colchester had played a significant role in housing the country’s soldiery. Many of the men who had taken Port Stanley had been based there and had only recently returned home. But the war had been over for six months and already the civilian population, who had welcomed home the servicemen as heroes, now ignored or even resented them for what they saw as their boozy belligerence. The police were acutely aware that maintaining peaceful relations between squaddies and civilians was a fine balancing act. Any harm caused by one side to the other would set the town on edge.
‘Oh, indeed.’ Sparks put his feet up on the desk. Lowry took in the quality of his superior’s expensive leather soles. ‘So, have we got any of the little fuckers who did it yet?’
‘But he fell.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Sparks raised his eyebrows.
‘I said he, the soldier, fell – or jumped. They both did.’
‘Nick, don’t cock around over the detail. Answer me – have we got them?’
‘Stephen, I know you’re pals with the Beard, but you know it was an accident. The coroner will give death by misadventure . . .’ Lowry paused to check his boss’s face. The nostrils were not flared, so he wasn’t angry – either that or he’d been drinking. ‘Uniform were on the scene in a matter of minutes and said there was no one else in the vicinity.’
Sparks swung his feet off the desk so abruptly it startled Lowry. ‘Stop all this bollocks!’ he barked. ‘Do we have them?’
‘No,’ he answered truthfully.
‘But you know who the likely candidates are, right?’ Sparks pulled out a pack of Embassy Number 1. ‘Here.’ He tossed them over. The cigarettes beckoned to Lowry from the worn oak desk.
‘I’ve given up.’
Sparks nodded as though impressed – although he wouldn’t be – before retrieving the pack and taking a cigarette out with his teeth. ‘You must know who chased after those lads.’
‘How?’
‘Ah, do me a favour – a ruck in the town centre? How fuckin’ hard can that be? You know the locals. Bring ’em in and ask a few questions, and we’ll take it from there, eh?’
Lowry got up to leave.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Home to bed.’
Sparks nodded. ‘After the hospital.’
‘What, now?’
‘The other lad has come to. Lane will be looking to shift the boy to their place at Abbey Fields. You know as well as I do, it’s easier while he’s on our turf. Toddle off to the General.’
-4-
3 a.m., Saturday, Colchester General Hospital
Jacqui Lowry stood in silence as her husband consulted with her lover across the dead soldier’s corpse. She assumed a mask of indifference, fighting back the notion that her sin was somehow exposed for all to see by the stark hospital lighting, like invisible ink under ultraviolet light. As Paul explained to her husband the complications that had caused the soldier to go into cardiac arrest, she tried to ignore the way he pushed his soft, wavy blond hair away from his face. This gesture, which she had adored up to now and found part of his boyish charm, seemed affected in the face of her stoic husband of ten years. And the sculpted beard, which she’d always considered a turn-on, looked vaguely effeminate next to Nick’s now-stubbled jaw. She pinched herself. It was guilt that was making her feel this way.
