After a few seconds, Hamm stretched out his arms from his sides, and turned in place. He raised his face to the heavens, like a Druid, or a Native shaman completing a sacred ceremony. He lowered his arms and resumed his solitary vigil.
Peter handed the binoculars to Gwen, who watched for several minutes. “He’s not moving.”
“Can we catch up to him?”
“It’s at least a half mile. The fastest way is the road over there, then find a path to the rocks.”
“Where do you think he parked his car?” He remembered the Vauxhall; there were many places the clunker could never reach.
“Possibly the Abbey. But that’s six miles or so beyond where he’s standing now. Besides, we don’t have a car ourselves . . . Wait, he’s moving. Look.”
He realigned the binoculars and found Hamm again, but he was edging up the shoreline, out of sight. The grey mist would soon roll in and gobble him up. In an instant he was gone.
“Damn! What’s going on here?”
“We could phone him,” Gwen said.
“Your mother has my cell.”
They trudged back along the farm road to the Ransell cottage, light rain in large drops spattering the dust around them. Peter filled Gwen in on Hamm’s confrontation with F.R. Symington and its genesis in the young man’s reaction to the corpse of Anna Lasker.
“So is he hunting for Lasker?” she said.
“Perhaps, but I wonder. There’s no reason he couldn’t be looking for the Rover as well.” He was saying that Ron Hamm had freaked out.
“Except that the Rover has never operated this close,” she said.
What he really feared was the possibility that Ron Hamm was looking for both of them. He had grown to like the young man. He wanted Gwen to say something. She hadn’t referred to the Rover as the Electric Man yet during this visit, and he would have welcomed her saying it now. They were almost at the cottage. Peter said, “Gwen, do you know who the Rover is?”
“No,” Gwen said, “but it’s possible my mother knows.”
Mrs. Ransell was asleep in the bedroom when they entered. Peter’s mobile phone sat on the counter beside the Koskenkorva bottle. The fire had subsided to glowing coals. There were a dozen things to be done urgently, yet the spectre of Ron Hamm had undone Peter, and all he could think of was to reach out to the young detective. The number, as he expected, was not being answered, and so he called Constable Willet.
“Surprised to hear from you, Chief Inspector.” He had reached Willet at the Whittlesun station. The reception was clear, although Peter’s battery was down to a half.
“Why is that, Constable?”
“I dunno, sir. Maybe because you’ve been considered out of the loop on the Lasker thing of late. Not me saying, you understand, sir.”
Not you, but Maris. Willet’s tone, however, was friendly enough, indicating that he was making an effort to stand apart from the friction between Maris and the Yard. But Peter resolved not to tell the Constable of his presence in Whittlesun.
“Can you bring me up to date?”
“The Lasker home has been released to her family. A bunch of uncles and cousins, I can’t tell them apart. As you well know, sir, the house needs a replastering, and more. I’ve been fielding complaints about that. And there are superstitions among the Romanians.”
“Is there any thought of declaring André Lasker dead?” He knew there wasn’t, but he wanted to move the conversation along without offending Willet.
“Dead? No, and there won’t be until we find him, in one condition or another. You think he’s back in England, sir?”
“Yes. We’re optimistic about tracking him down with the passport angle. What do you think, Mr. Willet?” He felt some relief in talking to the constable. He had had enough of the Ransells’ strangeness for one night.
“I’d have to agree, from what I’m told, which is little enough.”
“And what does Detective Hamm think?”
Willet paused; he clearly understood where Peter was heading with this. “That was clever police work, his figuring to look at complaints of stolen passports.”
“Have you talked to him today?”
“Not today. Not for five days.”
“What’s his status?”
“They’re calling it administrative suspension. Pending an investigation of Symington’s complaint, that is.”
“What happened?”
Willet cleared his throat. “Kind of lost control with Symington. Told me he had delayed viewing the corpse for a long time, but it was his duty as the main investigator on the case. It affected him.”
“I want to put this carefully, Mr. Willet,” Peter said, “but has he been just as obsessed with the Rover?”
There was a longer pause this time. “Mr. Cammon, I have a theory. It may sound a little grand . . .”
“I want to hear it, Constable.”
“Well, Mr. Hamm changed when you and he found the girl’s body that time. Maybe it was coming that close to his own death. But I think it was finding the girl. He’s been off the beam since.”
In Peter’s recollection, Hamm hadn’t seen the bleached and scarred body of Molly Jonas rise, naked, from the sea; he had been unconscious at the time. He was sure now that Hamm had asked to see her at the morgue, probably just after viewing Anna’s remains.
“Mr. Cammon,” Willet continued, “you know what my father said to me? He said, our true natures will always come out. Don’t tell Ron I said this, but the most important thing in his view of himself is to be considered a professional, a copper’s cop. He’s always worried he isn’t tough enough for the job.”
“He’s a good man. A compassionate man.”
“Yes, sir, and this true nature may be what’s tripping him up. Hopefully just temporary.”
“I’d like to talk to him.”
“I’m not authorized to release his new mobile number to you, Chief Inspector. He’s not using his police number any longer.” There was no point in challenging Willet’s interpretation of the rules. There were ways around the problem.
“I understand. Can you reach him and ask him to call me?”
“Yes,” Willet said, knowing there was more to come.
“I have another favour to ask. Do you think Hamm has disappeared?”
“Disappeared? How?”
“Gone off the rails. Done something, or gone somewhere, that puts him at risk.”
“I hope not, Inspector.”
“Could you do me a last favour? Look at his work station? Just the loose stuff on his desk. See if he’s jotted down any appointments, anything like that. Or any piece of paper with a question mark on it.”
“Anything unusual.”
“Exactly. And call me tonight on this line. Tonight for sure, you understand?”
“Sure. Inspector?”
“Yes, Constable?”
“Mr. Hamm does have twin girls.”
As Peter hung up, Gwen emerged from her mother’s room and shook her head. Mrs. Ransell was down for the count. She crossed to the kitchen and brought him some tea. He sipped it appreciatively; she had guessed, somehow, that he took milk, sugar. He caught her glancing at his arm; blood had seeped through his bandage.
“You could rest the night here, Peter,” she said.
He had already decided not to stay. He carried painkillers but, with or without the pills, he feared that he might dream again. He wasn’t a child; awakening in a strange house from a nightmare wouldn’t panic him. But he might have a portentous dream, a premonitory hallucination, and, at least for the next twenty-four hours, he needed to come back to his policeman’s plodding ways. Gwen would know right away if he dreamed. She would want to interpret his dreams and, while that was one of the key reasons he had come to see her in the first place, a mortal consulted Guinevere in moderation. He also had calls to make, to Joan, Sarah, Bartleben, and, most important, a call-back from Willet. His first dilemma was getting back to town. Tommy would come but it would take two ho
urs, and that was an unreasonable imposition, even for his willing partner. It was entirely black outside now, the wind howling around the cottage. No taxi would hazard the trip on back roads. The Ransells were safe here. A room at the Sunset Arms would his best choice, he reasoned.
He promised Gwen that he would return tomorrow, and he meant it. The answers were here, he felt. But he had to try to find Hamm, to see what hell-bent course he was launched on. Also, he had to fit in a visit to the Abbey.
He didn’t expect Sam to be at the garage in Whittlesun at this hour, but there was a slim possibility that he was closing up or that Mayta was working late on the books. There might be an “in emergencies” number on his machine, although Peter could only guess at Sam’s definition of an emergency. Long ago, Peter’s mother had described his favourite aunt as “excitable and unflappable at the same time.” That was Sam.
As it turned out, Sam was there, but Mayta answered the phone. To “Sam’s Auto,” Peter offered a tentative “Hello?” He did not identify himself.
“Inspector! How are you? How is that arm? Every time we hear from you, you’ve done damage to yourself. Is it a curse we’ve put on you?”
Peter had to laugh, a release of a long day’s tension. “What do you know about my wounds, Mayta?”
“I hear a drug dealer shot you.”
“That’s truly amazing, Mayta. That information wasn’t in the press.”
“Skype. Friends in Malta, everywhere. And you’re one of our favourite hits on the Net.”
“I know it’s late to be calling . . .”
“I’ll put Sam on. He’s in love with you. I’m pretty hot towards you myself.”
“Mayta, what are you talking about?”
But she had gone, and Sam took the receiver. “Peter, how’s your arm? Do you need a car?”
“Fine, Sam, and yes. Mayta is amazing.”
“True. She has many Skype friends, chat groups. They gossip about me a lot. And try inputting Scotland Yard shootout. Mayta should be a police detective.”
“Your whole family should be in the business,” Peter said.
Sam’s tone shifted. “Give me your SatNav coordinates. I’ll pick you up.”
“It’s a long way.”
“It’s okay.”
“I actually don’t know them,” Peter confessed.
Gwen wrested the mobile from Peter and introduced herself. She smiled as she listened, nodded often, and said: “Yes . . . Right . . . Okay.” A Gwen–Sam conversation had to be bizarre, Peter thought. She giggled. She held the mobile so that she could read the screen, pressed a series of buttons and recited the longitude and latitude coordinates for the cottage.
Peter took the phone back from her. “Sam?”
“He’s already left,” Mayta said. “What are you doing putting beautiful girls in range of my Sam, Peter?”
They walked out to the road using Gwen’s pencil torch. The winds had fallen off, leaving the whiff of summer’s end, as if winter were holding off for a more propitious time. Peter was glad that Mrs. Ransell remained asleep, even if she knew the Rover’s identity. Of course, it was Gwen who surmised that her mother knew; Ellen Ransell had made no such claims.
“It’s not safe for you out here,” he said, worried for her.
“As safe as it ever was,” she said, in an even voice.
She shone the light at the path, leaving their faces in darkness. His mind was occupied by images from his dream, especially the black figure and the Day-Glo orange of the landscape. But it was the Rover who, however illogical Peter’s thought patterns, sprang to his lips. “He’ll never stop.”
“The Rover? No, he will never stop. But Peter, don’t worry. He’s close.”
He took that to mean she encouraged him. She had used similar words before. It was this message that he misinterpreted, and only later did he understand that Gwen never spoke with the intent of flattery or discouragement. She spoke objectively: he was close. But as a veteran policeman he knew he couldn’t wait for the Rover or André Lasker to come to him. He had to take charge.
Sam’s headlamps joggled through the swales and turns on the tiny road leading to where they stood. He parked the vehicle, an old but rugged Land Rover, catching Gwen fully in the lights.
CHAPTER 32
The one who rejected the label of the Rover watched Peter and Guinevere Ransell from a secure distance. He was sure of himself, his safety guaranteed by the simple fact that he had no intention of attacking them. He could have shot them through the eyes from there. No, no attacks tonight. He was still learning the ins and outs of this new domain, much farther to the east than he had ever ventured. Better to wait.
There’s an interesting point, he reflected, as he monitored the pair waiting in the pinprick glow two hundred yards off. Why not execute the men too, do them in pairs? Pairs of lovers. It made sense. His pursuers were pairing up, more and more. Abbott and Costello, Sonny and Cher. The pocket-sized detective and the exquisite girl. There was that navy man, now with some girl in hiking clothes; they put ashore from time to time, to no purpose that he could tell, and walked the sand. And the paired-up coppers fumbling all over the cliffs. No, he wouldn’t kill by twosomes, though he loved new numbers. He had integrity in his methods. Besides, he wanted to meet their expectations, for now.
He wandered to changes that disturbed him more, though he was prepared to meet them head-on. The girls were no longer so innocent. There had seemed to be an endless supply at one time. The police had distorted the landscape. Where once the plump teenagers had to sneak away to meet a fellow, now they were not allowed out alone. There were a lot of horny boys getting a lot less thanks to that Task Force.
But he wanted the police to explore the cliffs in false hope. He appreciated the earnestness of these young constables. They craved experience, not a picnic, and that was admirable. If they told themselves they were only larking about, then that was no good, no good at all. A message to the young constables and to the remaining girls and their escorts: this is a killing zone, ladies and gentlemen, not a playground.
He made a mental list of his pursuers. This was fun to do, and kept the knife-edge honed. It struck him that so many of the bobbies, especially the newest ones, wandered in shells, in their carapaced uniforms. There were coppers in blue, in trenchcoats and in slickers. They reminded him of little figures in a Fisher-Price set. Then there was the young detective wrapped in his layer of fat, and the old woman moving in her cloud of booze. He himself had his rain gear, which was a very good disguise. Let them send twinned coppers out to stand on the edge and look out to sea like stunned bullocks or dull sheep. He was more protected every day. He was the Electric Man.
And this line of thought brought him, as many times before, to decisions about what to do next. He was always the one who changed without them seeing that he had changed. Fighting the previous war. He was the plastic trickster. They saw him and didn’t fear him, for he was looking inland from the sea. All islands live in apprehension of the flood, yet tell themselves that the water circling them is a moat. He played the defender in order to remain the invader. You can live with anything on an island after a while: erosion, flood, corrosive wind or someone calling your young women to be taken away out to sea.
He watched the Land Rover arrive and take away the detective. It was time to get back to what he had become.
Back to the salt air’s electric cackle.
Back to the Druid shores.
I am concealed because I have melted with the rocks. Just as they have grown to pinnacles of silt through layers of time, shaped by geological pressure, I have added levels to my tower. And here’s the thing they don’t get, yet.
I don’t plan to finish the tower.
Peter was amused to see Sam, when he got out of the SUV, go over to Gwen, bow and kiss her hand. It did seem appropriate, her standing there wrapped in her cloak like a Greek statue. He had only ever seen her interact with her mother, and briefly with Hamm, but now she smiled wit
h matching grace.
“Thank you, Sam,” she said.
“You are welcome, Miss.”
But there was little need for more chatter, and Sam and Peter got into the car. Peter rolled down the window. “Go back in now. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Yes, you should,” she answered.
“Stay safe.”
She may have nodded, he wasn’t sure. She faded back into the dark.
At the wheel Sam was all aggression, forcing the beat-up Land Rover back up the double track and disregarding the eroded shoulders.
“Thank you, Sam,” Peter said.
“No, no, it is for me to thank you.”
“Okay, what the devil is going on? Mayta was coy as anything on the phone.”
“My nephew is very, very excited, and he demands to thank you himself if you have the time in Whittlesun this visit. Even next week.”
“What exactly did I do?”
“You told the Scotland Yard bosses to show him around. He was up to London yesterday.”
“I told my senior, Mr. Bartleben, that Martin had been very helpful and maybe he’d like a tour of our Criminal Information System in London.”
“No, it was a man, Blaikie, showed him around the Statistics Section and the computers, Martin told us. Two hours! He has never been happier.”
In fact, Peter had made a call to Bartleben, who delegated the job to Keiran Blaikie, an old Yard man, an amiable mentor and right for this task, with a modern sensibility for number crunching and applied stats.
“You know what else?” Sam continued. “You know what else, Peter?”
“Frankly, I don’t,” Peter said.
“He got a big tour of the Regional Lab out on the edge of town.” Blaikie had gone all out.
“Did London arrange that visit, do you know?”
“I assume so,” Sam said. “A Mr. Bracher?”
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