Walking Into the Ocean

by David Whellams

  And then he was sure. Anna Lasker had painted those stains. The preliminary report ruled that it was her blood. But André simply couldn’t have “carried” that much of it down the stairs, nor was he so perverse as to kill her and continually dip his hand into her wounds like a pot of ink. Anna, desperately injured, had resolved to desecrate her home, which should have been her refuge but, as she suddenly knew in her panic, was becoming her coffin. She had passed along the hallway, stopping three times to paw her fingers through her own seeping veins.

  Peter returned to the upper bedroom and gathered the file from the bed. He entered the lavatory once again and stared at the carnage. Despite his conclusions about the source of the blood downstairs, the destruction there remained a mystery. There was simply too much blood. The nylons drooped from the shower bar. The house was silent, and he tried but failed to identify any sounds from the street. Before he could decide what to do next, his phone chimed.

  “Inspector! There’s a girl who’s seen the Rover. Can you come with me to interview her?” Ron Hamm said.

  “Have you already talked to her?”

  “Yes. Well, no. I’ve talked to the mother.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She needs to be approached carefully. The girl. I need your . . . experience.”

  The Rover was supposedly none of Peter’s affair, but he couldn’t resist. Why did he always rise to the bait? Would Maris soon be calling Bartleben and calling him a troublemaker? He sighed, but it was his only hesitation. “Pick me up at the Lasker house. I’ll be ready whenever you get here.”

  He immediately understood that Hamm was taken aback by his quick response, and so he put the query the detective had been expecting. “Does Maris know that we’re doing this?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s be careful about mixing the two cases,” Peter said.

  “Inspector?”

  “Yes.”

  “Something was mentioned about Lasker as well.”

  Peter had a few minutes before Hamm was due to pick him up. He was almost sure now that he understood how Anna had haunted her way through the house, certain of the end of her marriage and her life in England. She was with him in the house now, beckoning him to follow. Her ghost gave him permission to take possession of the crime scene; now the house resonated differently. He did a final, lambent tour of the bloodied rooms and corridors to imprint the overall scene on his memory. He made sure that the computer and printer had shut down, and pocketed the yellow sticky notes. Then he waited out front on the stone step. He didn’t care if the residents of the street saw him.

  Ron Hamm drove up no more than five minutes later. The wind along the street had picked up, a hint of coming winter. Peter got into the nondescript Vauxhall and sank into the battered and sprung passenger seat. Hamm was too big for the vehicle and had to hunch over the steering wheel; this pose made him appear even more in a hurry. Peter reached around and dumped his files on the back seat. The sedan lurched ahead and they were off down the cobbled street, headed for the outskirts of Whittlesun.

  “Where are we going?” Peter asked.

  “Still in Dorset but not very far from the Devon line. It’s isolated.”

  “Good thing. In Dorset, I mean. Devon is out of your jurisdiction, I believe.”

  “But not out of yours,” the detective joked.

  “What were you doing over there in the first place?”

  Peter wormed in his seat, trying to get comfortable. Hamm shifted his bulk in sympathy and squared his shoulders. “The Task Force is short of manpower, and so Maris volunteered me and a couple of other lads to help out with contacting people along the county line. Create goodwill and all that. The place we’re going is only four miles inside the border. But hell and gone as far as driving there is concerned.”

  Maris was smart to keep it low-profile. Peter understood that Maris was officially on the Rover Task Force but by no means the co-chair — yet. The legwork had been done so far by Devon officers, and they would resent any duplication of effort. McElroy would be sensitive to levels of public paranoia, and it took little to provoke false sightings and letters to the editor demanding a massive manhunt. Peter thought it significant that Jack hadn’t yet invited the Yard to attach anyone to the Task Force, even as liaison. McElroy intended to keep London separate from local, Devon distinct from Dorset, and — the primary concern for Peter — Lasker divided from the Rover. The only remaining question was why Hamm was risking Maris’s ire by dragging Scotland Yard into both.

  Hamm was talking. “The mother’s name is Ellen Ransell. The daughter is called Guinevere. She’s a drinker — the mother, that is. She rang up the Task Force and spoke to one of the investigating detectives. He judged that she was full of crap. Jack McElroy and his detectives wouldn’t normally have hesitated to cross into Dorset and do the interview themselves but, as Maris put it to me, they think this is a low-grade witness. The mother was born in Finland, in Helsinki, I presume.”

  “You’ve never seen either witness?”

  “No. It’s confused. I talked to the mother. She says the daughter saw something, and mentioned Lasker, but the old woman only wanted to talk about the Rover.”

  The journey took an hour and a half, and Detective Hamm had trouble finding the house amid the twisting trails and rolling hills. Once in a while, Peter caught sight of a jutting cliff several hundred yards off, but then they seemed to be descending much closer to sea level. When Hamm finally parked the Vauxhall, still some distance from the house, Peter was completely disoriented. The countryside was particularly bleak here, with long grass obscuring the pathways and the wind strong enough to knock a hiker over. The sea wasn’t visible from the Ransell property, but he could hear the distant breakers and taste the lingering salt spray. Turning a bend in the path, he caught sight of the ocean some five hundred yards down a steep slope; but then the path took them away from the overlook. The cottage had a thatched roof and was stuck in a cleft between two hills. As a result, it was always in shadow, except when the sun was overhead. At this point in the afternoon, the vale was rapidly losing the light.

  Panting, Ronald Hamm led the way down a fieldstone path to the front door. Befitting a cottage for dwarfs or hobbits, the main door was made of oak and was held by black iron hinges; Peter would have sworn the same craftsman who had replaced the portals he had just seen at St. Walthram’s had made this one too.

  Ellen Ransell answered the door before they could knock. A smell of lime and sour alcohol wafted from her, and from the house itself. She appeared careworn and partly drunk. Her white hair, streaked with sickly yellow, as if stained with nicotine, was uncombed, and the deep lines in her face were vertical and sad, reminding Peter of the eroded fissures in the coastal rocks. On her face, the defensiveness of the recluse fought with the rare stimulus of having visitors who might draw her out of her boredom. She opened the door wide. The hinges creaked crazily, just like in a fairy tale.

  “Welcome, Officers. You can come into the parlour.” The voice was confident, only slightly defensive. She likely wasn’t a witch, Peter mused, but a crystal ball would fit the scene.

  Hamm and Cammon entered and found themselves in the one main room, which served as the kitchen and parlour. The two bedrooms off the back of the cottage had solid oak doors like the one at the entrance; that is, they were outside doors used as inside ones. Both were closed. The ceilings in the main room were low, and Hamm had to tilt his head slightly; after ninety minutes in a similar contorted position in the car, his neck would soon be creaking like the door hinges, Peter thought. The woman held a glass of clear liquid in her left hand; she did not offer them a drink. Peter noted the tall bottle of Koskenkorva vodka on the kitchen counter; the more popular Finnish vodka, he knew, was Finlandia. He didn’t care to estimate her daily intake, before she passed out.

  “I don’t remember your name.”

  “It’s Hamm, and this is Chief Inspector Cammon from Scotland Yard.”

/>   She looked at Peter. “I phoned it in, you see. My daughter saw the Rover. Maybe she did. She has special abilities. Comes from an expensive education combined with good genes. Her father was Finnish, you know. A strong people, they are.”

  Peter understood witnesses like these: lonely, pent-up people who, when finally given an audience, cram so much into one outburst that it’s hard to pare down to the truth.

  “Mrs. Ransell,” Peter began gently. They were still standing near the door. “I imagine that you and your daughter know this region well. It would be valuable to talk to her about what she may have seen out on the heights.”

  He struggled for an opening to mention André Lasker’s name. Mrs. Ransell shrugged, turning the burden towards the detectives, as if Peter, not she, had fixed on the daughter’s roaming habits. “She wanders, you know. Leaves at first light, comes back after sunset. But she always stays safe.” Peter and Hamm exchanged looks; the woman was apprehensive about something. “She knows the terrain, the cliffs, the caves, the dunes. Now this Rover fiend, making it unsafe for every woman in Britain.”

  “Could we have a word with her, Mrs. Ransell?” Peter persisted. The old woman would eventually let them speak with the daughter, Peter understood, but something was bothering her.

  “She’s strong and tough, stronger than me, Inspector, but she’s unwell.” She leaned close and whispered, through rancid breaths. “Astatic seizures.”

  Hamm looked over at Peter.

  “Epilepsy,” Peter said. He turned to Mrs. Ransell. “We’ll be very careful. She can tell us in her own fashion. We won’t take long.” Peter spoke in earnest; the interrogation wouldn’t be a long one. In his experience, there were some witnesses who would simply refuse to open up at the first conversation and had to be seen several times, and coaxed through a succession of short interviews. Unfortunately, this was likely to be one of them.

  “Her name is Guinevere. G-w-e-n-e-v-e-e-r. She has reached the age of twenty-five,” she declared.

  The old lady went to one of the bedrooms and tapped on the oak door. Within half a minute it opened and Miss Ransell came into the main room.

  Peter was standing on the far edge of the room when she entered, but the girl’s aura electrified the entire space. Her radiance stunned Peter and caused Hamm to wilt and step back a pace. Her manner and presence begged comparison with the great icons of beauty and idealized female grace. She was the Gothic paragon wandering the heath, but with a worldly understanding beyond the self-absorbed heroines of the Brontës. She was the Pre-Raphaelite ideal, but without the whiff of consumptive weakness. She had the alabaster head of a Greek maiden, but was a girl for modern times. He could tell all this before she spoke.

  Her long hair was brick red, parted in the middle; it sprayed out in thick waves, naturally kinked and voluptuous. Her skin was flawless and there was a Scandinavian strength to her facial bones. She stood taller than Cammon and held herself like an artist’s model, although there was nothing arch or artificial in her positioning. She smiled, though it was not a particularly welcoming look; it didn’t seem right to offer to shake her hand.

  She positioned herself at the end of the chesterfield, and this movement seemed to signal to the two men that they should sit too. She wore a long, layered dress that almost touched the floor and that now spread out across the cushions. A blue sash, firmly tied around her waist, showed her leanness. The gaping cuffs of her dress and suede vest gave her a renaissance-fair look. She was entirely comfortable in herself. She neither stared nor recoiled from the presence of the two dowdy policemen, who sat down on the two-seater across from her. Their visit could have been the most natural occurrence in the world.

  “Hello. My name is Guinevere, spelt like the Morte d’Arthur, despite what my mother says. Call me Gwen.”

  Hamm croaked out: “I’m Detective Ronald Hamm and this is Chief Inspector Peter Cammon of Scotland Yard.”

  Guinevere suddenly looked concerned, as if something were misplaced in the room. Had she heard a disturbance outside? She gazed into the middle distance, but then turned full-face to Peter.

  “Do you care to speak to me, Inspector?”

  Her eyes were entirely upon him at that moment; Hamm might well have disappeared. Peter felt it urgent to establish a trust between them, and to do that he had to be alone with her. He couldn’t hope to discover her secrets by treating her as just another witness. She would tell him what she knew, but only in her own time, on her own terms. He looked around the cottage. A fire blazed in the stone hearth.

  “Is this your favourite place in the world, Miss Ransell?”

  Her eyes flickered. She gave no response, as if waiting. Old Mrs. Ransell was already fading towards the other bedroom; Peter noticed that she had the vodka bottle in her hand. Even she was intimidated by her daughter’s penumbra. She slipped into the second bedroom and closed the door.

  Guinevere Ransell was keyed into different rhythms of thought and logic than most humans, Peter understood. He rarely encountered this sort of mind, and he cherished it when he did (as long as the conversation didn’t veer into craziness, which he was sure it wouldn’t). People like Guinevere tended to place themselves at a distance, befitting an oracle, and Guinevere did so now, moving to the farthest end of the chesterfield and crouching with her knees to her chin. This was the natural conversational distance for the two of them. He sensed her sizing him up.

  The girl smiled at Peter’s question. She turned to Detective Hamm. “Mr. Hamm, would you leave Mr. Cammon and me for a few minutes. Please?”

  Hamm looked to Cammon for support and found none. He heaved himself up. “Well, maybe I’ll take up smoking again. I’ll be outside.” He buttoned up his coat and prepared to leave. Just then Mrs. Ransell came out of her bedroom and palmed him a pack of Benson & Hedges. She retreated and Hamm went outside.

  Peter waited for the girl to speak. She straightened her legs and paused for another full minute. “Have you always had a moustache?” she said.

  “I grew it when I was thirty.”

  “To make yourself look older?”

  “The phrase I used was ‘more mature.’”

  “You’re older now. Why don’t you shave it off?”

  “Habit. My wife likes it.”

  “She says it makes you look distinguished.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “What’s the worst thing anyone ever said to you about your moustache?”

  “That it made me look like Hitler.”

  “Do you know why I want to talk about this?”

  This was parry and thrust, but of the most benign kind. It was also her way of sliding into the conversation that she wanted to have. Honesty and directness were the only workable responses.

  “You’re interested in the way people present themselves to the world,” he said.

  “Yes. The phrase I would use is: I want you to know that I notice the appearance of things. Do you believe in appearances?”

  “You mean the outward appearance of things?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes. It’s often the way policemen uncover crimes, working from observation.”

  “The way people present themselves to the world is important,” she agreed in a dreamy voice. “They create an impression that is different than the one they intend. Maybe that’s why Dracula couldn’t abide mirrors. Do you know why I gave up my studies?”

  “I didn’t know that you had. At university?”

  “I was reading English literature and psychology. At Leeds.”

  “I majored in English lit too.”

  Peter, not being much of a risk-taker himself, was fascinated by people with a heightened awareness of the decisions in their lives and of the risks that they entailed. Her biggest risk, he imagined, was retreating to the edge of civilization with an alcoholic mother.

  “I took an extra course in Freudian psychology. Freudian symbolism is a crock. If I dream of a ship in full sail, does that represent a fertile woman,
as Freud says it does?”

  “I never studied psychology,” Peter said, “but I confess that after a while literature raised the same issue for me. Literary symbolism seemed too pat; it got in the way of seeing the real world. And there began to be an inverse correlation between my love of romantic literature and my exposure to the foibles of human beings. As a police officer.”

  Suddenly melancholy, she shifted to his end of the chesterfield and placed a comforting hand on his arm. It wasn’t necessary, or even appropriate, but he didn’t mind. He tried to appear relaxed, less the formal interrogator. For a brief moment, the atmosphere in the room was confessional. He was almost desperate to sustain that mood, to persuade her to open up to him.

  “You’re saying that we should get beyond easy symbols?” Peter babbled. He tried to convince himself that he would get back to his interrogation soon.

  She sat back. “Yes. My point is that people are always putting on masks. They take on personae quite consciously. They’re yearning to do it, but if they adopt a mask without controlling it, then they’re in trouble.”

  He might have said the same to Guinevere herself, and she to him, though his would always be the policeman’s mask.

  “Yes. If I decided to put on a deerstalker and sport a meerschaum, that would be a personal crisis,” he said.

  She laughed. A line of perspiration had formed along her brow. It served to turn Peter more serious. He could talk to her all day about everything and nothing, but her circumlocution had to get to the point — her apparent sighting of the Rover — sooner rather than later. And so he said: “I have to ask you about the people you’ve seen along the cliffs. Do they wear masks? Have you seen strange people on the shore?”