by Jim Kelly
At thirty knots they threaded their way out into the Wash, the sandbars to port and starboard glistening silver, the water black. The waxing moon seemed to track them like a spotlight. Hadden had an Admiralty chart out to plot their journey: Bull Dog Channel out into Roaring Middle, passing close enough to the lightship to hear the water slapping her sides. Then past Hunstanton, the pierhead lit, the town dotted with amber street lights. Shaw used the binoculars to find the spotlight in front of the Old Beach Café as they slipped past.
Holme lay in darkness, as did Thornham, both villages lost beyond the marshes and sea walls which protected them from the North Sea. The entrance to Overy Creek, notoriously difficult to locate at night, was somewhere in the subtle folds of the coastal sandhills. Shaw had the buoyage and lightships by heart, but it was still tricky spotting the channel. He caught a glimpse ahead of white water where waves were breaking on the submerged sandbar below Gun Hill – but before they could swing in through the gap they headed directly for the beach below Scolt Head. On a rising tide there was no danger, so they nudged forward until the bottom grated on the sand. Hadden jumped first, splashing into a foot of seawater, and Shaw followed. The crew dropped a sheet anchor and began to break out sandwiches and coffee.
Shaw felt the chill in the water through the thermal boots. The moon was to their backs, but the way ahead seemed to be lit by the fluorescence in the falling waves. Out at sea a light flickered and Shaw wondered if it had been distant lightning beyond the horizon, illuminating a skein of cloud. Emerging from the water they stood on the beach of shattered shells. Someone on the boat tuned into a radio transmission and they heard a burst of static, then silence but for the sea and wind.
At the high-water mark Shaw took stock of his precise position. The night before he’d swum to Scolt Head Island and traced the waterline on the landward side, until he found the footprints, and then climbed over the line of high dunes which formed the island’s spine, descending – he now realized – to this precise spot.
He saw the stones in a rough heap to one side, the place where they had previously stood marked by a circular patch of blackened sand.
Hadden stood over the spot. ‘So you reckoned, what? A fire?’
‘Yes. Unlikely to be the killer. Or the victim. Maybe a night fisherman, walking out at low tide weighed down with food and fuel, then back after high tide on the morning of the seventeenth? They might have seen something. It’s a loose end.’
Hadden shook his head. ‘Stones first. As you know, this is a sandy shore. No rock until you get to Hunstanton and the cliffs, and they’re sandstone and chalk. These are flints and granites – all geologically different, by the way. A collection, almost. Why drag them all the way here? You don’t need them for a fire unless it’s really windy. And why do you need to mark the spot?’
‘So the stones explain the deeper footprints?’
Hadden didn’t answer directly. ‘Now let’s look at the fire.’ He slipped both shoes off and his socks, and stood in the black circle.
‘Nope. Shame – it’s gone now, but when we came out the morning after you found them you could still feel the heat in the sand, let alone the stones. Cold now – just. But it’s not a fire. It’s much more interesting than that.’
Down on his knees Hadden dug away until he’d revealed what looked like a strange rock, the colour of deep-fried battered calamari; browned, almost cellular, as if it might once have been alive.
Shaw knelt beside the black circle. ‘What the hell is that?’
Hadden beamed, clearly enjoying himself, teasing Shaw’s curiosity. ‘Well, you’re not going to believe this. So let’s take it in stages, shall we? What was the defining characteristic of the weather on the day we found the victim on Mitchell’s Bank – and indeed on the two days prior to that?’
‘Electrical storms.’
‘Right. Lightning. In fact, for nearly forty-eight hours the storm was largely immobile, which meant that when lightning struck the thunder came with it – a simultaneous phenomenon.’
‘A thunderbolt.’
‘Bull’s eye.’ He slapped his hand on the black sand. ‘This is the top of a thunderbolt.’
‘No, it’s not. Thunderbolts are made of sound waves and electric particles discharging, going to earth. You can’t stand on one, any more than you can stand on a sunbeam.’
‘The difference between a thunderbolt and a sunbeam is the voltage,’ said Hadden. ‘A single lightning bolt can reach thirty-five thousand degrees Fahrenheit – that’s six times the surface heat of the sun. When it strikes a mineral like sand it melts it, forming a solid new rock. We get this.’
He patted the rock in the sand. ‘If we dug this out we’d find a long stone finger branching down into the sand, formed in the few seconds of intense heat when the lightning bolt struck. It’s rare, but not unheard of. The gem museum at Cromer’s got some. Geologists call it fulgurite. A decent one, which would pretty much look like Zeus’ thunderbolt – would fetch you a thousand pounds on eBay. More if you contacted museums or collectors.’
‘And it’s still in there?’
‘Yup. Know what I think? I think someone saw the bolt strike from the mainland and came out to find it, bringing the stones to mark the spot so that they could come back and dig it up.
‘They haven’t come back, and that’s suspicious. Although I guess you don’t have to be a killer to know it isn’t a great time to be wandering around Overy Creek, given the police presence. Perhaps they just don’t want to admit they were out here the night our man died on Mitchell’s Bank.’
‘So when I found the stones the heat was from the lightning strike?’
‘Yes – not a fire. Well, not a man-made one. You said the stones were warm. So I think the marker was built the night before we found the body – the night the victim died.’
Hadden led the way up through the sand dunes and marram grass to the ridge.
Down below they saw the beach facing inland, across the channel, to Burnham Marsh. To the east lay the flashing black and white buoy, marking the spot where the victim’s body had been found on the now submerged Mitchell’s Bank. On the beach below they could see a series of cones in the moonlight, running into the water.
‘That’s the path of the footprints you found that night. Whoever came ashore – if they were wading – came off Mitchell’s Bank. I think they came here, found the strike point for the lightning, built the cairn and then set off back. If the timing’s right they could have seen him – dead or alive.’
Shaw turned back to look north into the sea and the night.
‘Forensics? Anything?’
‘Nothing – sorry.’
Hadden zipped up his dayglo jacket. ‘So, are you up for it?’
‘Up for what?’
‘I’ve brought spades and four men willing to help. Let’s dig up the thunderbolt.’
TWENTY
The D’Astis’ house in Burnham Market overlooked the green, with its picturesque parish pump, cherry trees and Georgian lamp posts splashing golden light on the grass: a bucolic scene undermined only by the BMWs, sports cars and 4×4s parked bumper-to-bumper by visitors using the restaurants and pubs. At this time of night the windows of the Burnham Arms flickered with candlelight. From the open doors of the Beachcomber came the thin whine of a jazz clarinet – suitably discreet but unmistakably live.
Lucilla and Cornelia shared a room on the third floor. Its single sash window looked out over the rooftops and on fine clear days gave them a view of the hills. At home in London, in the townhouse on Cheyne Walk, they had separate bedrooms on different floors. Given the two girls would almost certainly go to different schools – Lucilla was frighteningly bright, whereas Cornelia was happy and easily distracted – the decision had been taken to let them share on holiday, at least. Leo had been brought up separately from his three brothers and they were all strangers now, united only by a series of trust funds.
He could hear the girls now, over his head, th
rough the rafters and beams, and above the crackling of the fire. Embracing the heat of the coals and glowing logs, he sat forward, hands out, palms down. His body was still icy cold. The doctors had said initially that this was due to shock after the family’s traumatic rescue from Mitchell’s Bank. It wasn’t that his skin was chilly at all – in fact, he was sweating slightly in his baggy jumper – it was that something lay inside him, like a rough boulder of ice and grit. Still haunted by what might have happened on Mitchell’s Bank, he had begun to develop a mild aversion to closing his eyes, afraid of what he might imagine. One scene kept recurring: he stood outside himself, watching as he lifted a tarpaulin to identify the three children, who had been laid on the grass bank by the harbour office at Burnham Overy Staithe, their heads in a line, so that the length of their bodies was cruelly unequal, Cornelia’s feet hardly reaching Paulo’s waist.
Juliet, Leo’s wife, had driven up to the hospital and stayed a night. She’d brought half the shop with her and the house was heavy with the scent of roses; they didn’t really have the vases, and had to use glass pint pots and a bucket in the kitchen. She’d gone back to oversee a wedding contract but she’d promised to return for the weekend, and then they’d all relax, she said, as if it was exclusively a communal activity, which would have to be postponed in the interim. She’d been solicitous, in a slightly patronizing way, which implied that his guilt – what there was of it – was in equal measure with that of the children. They’d all been silly, they’d succumbed to an adventure, but it had all ended well. Leo had gone along with this depiction of events in order to protect the children. But one day he’d tell her how close they’d all come to death on Mitchell’s Bank.
The scent of the flowers in the house was strangely anonymous. It made the old building smell like all their homes: Chelsea, Lucca, even the flat in Paris. Leo was struck by this unsettling irony, that they had all these houses but that they were all the same on the inside. The view out of the window might change but the brushed chrome coffee maker was identical, the artwork, the vases, the drapes, the bed linen. What was the point, thought Leo, of travelling at all? Especially after dark. The windows were blind eyes then: it didn’t matter what was outside. Staring into the flames of the fire he could see himself moving through the world without ever quite touching the sides, failing repeatedly to make contact with any spiritual sense of place.
Which made what had happened on Mitchell’s Bank oddly precious: the landscape (combined with the seascape), the place, had conspired to nearly rob them of their lives; but at least Leo would remember where it all happened. The intensity of those few minutes would be with him for the rest of his life. An idea formed now, as he looked into the flames, and as soon as he recognized its shape, he knew that the moment might change the rest of his life. Why didn’t he move here, to north Norfolk, with the children, for good? They could visit the other homes but this would be home. The family business would be fine without him. One of his brothers, more diligent and talented than Leo, worked at the head office in Milan and would eventually take over from his father. Instead, Leo could invest in a local business here in Norfolk. An organic farm, perhaps, or a boutique hotel. He could do the financing, business planning, take a back seat. Could he get Juliet to agree? She liked the drive and could stay at the London flat in the week. She’d miss the kids, but she’d love the independence. They’d make a real home for her to come home too. He didn’t want to be footloose any more.
This vision of a new life was intoxicating. It was also therapeutic. Leo saw now that what had happened on Mitchell’s Bank could be a turning point, a new beginning, a chance to move on and change the shape of the world in which he lived. There was a small Catholic chapel in the village – St Henry’s – and he promised himself he’d light a candle the next time he passed, to mark the decision.
He smiled in the firelight.
Only one duty remained before he could put his feet up with a glass of wine. The strange detective with the one-dimensional face and the inappropriate name – Valentine – had asked him a favour. A profoundly unromantic-looking man, reeking of nicotine, with a mildly arthritic stance, he seemed, Leo had sensed, not to care much for the children, being one of those adults you couldn’t imagine on their knees with a set of Lego or a Christmas board game. Aloof, perhaps; or just afraid of entering a child’s world. When he’d got Leo’s statement down (and what a tedious task that was – couldn’t they just take notes and then send you the statement to check?) he’d surprised him with a final request.
‘We’ve not bothered the children, sir. They’re still upset and you’ll want to take them home. But later, when they’re not so shaken, perhaps you could ask them to think back. You went out to Mitchell’s Bank yesterday as well, you say? So that’s two days – consecutively. The victim on Mitchell’s Bank died the day before you found him, probably after dark. Perhaps they noticed something – or someone – out on the marshes that first day, or over at Burnham Marsh? They live in their own world, kids. But they see stuff we miss. Anything that glitters. They’re like magpies.’
Leo thought he would get it over with tonight while the children were still excited by their rescue, still proud of the shared experience. He closed his book, The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, the classic spy story set among the sandbanks of the Frisian Islands. Childers had written the book in his London flat on Cheyne Walk, thirty yards north of Leo’s own front door. Childers had been a foreigner in his own country too, just like Leo. Once the children were asleep he’d finish the tale. But for now it was bedtime, and all its routines.
In the D’Asti family – at least the D’Asti family in its north Norfolk incarnation – this demanded a certain degree of pantomime. His wife had bought an old paraffin lamp at a local ‘antique’ shop in the village. Leo lit it and climbed the stairs as he did each night, remembering to switch off all the lights in the stairwell which reached up through the heart of the house. The stairs creaked theatrically. When he got to the girls’ room on the third floor he knocked three times. After a short, hysterical bout of giggles he saw the bedside lights go out under the door. This was the signal for him to enter, setting the lantern down on a chest of drawers.
He sat between the beds on the floor and held both their hands.
Telling them what the strange detective had asked him, he said they should both close their eyes tight and tell him three things they could recall about the last two times they’d walked out to Mitchell’s Bank. Had they seen anything? A lonely bird watcher, perhaps? A boatman rowing in the marshes?
So that they had time to think, he volunteered to go first. ‘I remember a green buoy which was on the sand – that was there both times. And the wreck of a ship which pokes up near the bird hide – Paulo spotted that. And a seal. With whiskers. In the water near Burnham Overy Staithe. That was the second day – before …’ He left it at that, because they’d know what the seal came before.
Cornelia, three-and-a-half, remembered losing her shoe in the mud and having to squeeze her foot back in the black gunge, a kite flying over Gun Hill but they couldn’t see the person on the other end of the string, and a dead seagull. Leo recalled the kite now – how clever of her to keep the image. That had been on the day they’d found the victim. So he’d tell Valentine – but he might not be interested. Lucilla, eight, recalled the kite too – it had been in the shape of a black hawk. She’d seen waves of geese in a double-V, and she’d seen the moon, rising over the village. On the first day it had appeared behind the ruined church tower, but on the second it was already sailing high, clear of the pine trees.
Leo said goodnight, thinking what observant girls they were.
Paulo’s room was in the roof, up a short switchback wooden stair. The bed lay in a space created by a dormer window with glass on three sides. In winter it was bitterly cold but the boy loved it because he was able to watch the stars with the duvet pulled up to his chin. The children played a game in which they had to choose betwee
n their different homes – which had the best fire, which had the best food, which had the best view. Paulo always said that this was his best bed, which upset Leo, because he always thought the boy was unnaturally silent in this house, even subdued.
He told his son what he’d told the boy’s sisters. Paulo’s eyes widened in the moonlight coming in through the window. A serious child, he considered his options. Then his hand appeared from under the duvet to count off his three observations.
‘One: a blue fishing boat passed us coming in both times. It was one of those with the funny stand-up cabin for the helmsman. I couldn’t see the name but it said LN two-two-three on the side. That means its home harbour is King’s Lynn. I looked that up.
‘Two: I saw a dead seal on the far sands. I looked at him with my telescope.’
‘And three?’ asked Leo, quickly, tucking him in.
‘The boat I said I’d like for Christmas.’
Leo remembered too. That had been on the day before. ‘The wooden one, coming in from the sea?’ he asked. It had been beautiful, even Leo had to admit that. Clinker-built, graceful, with brass portholes.
‘It didn’t have a number like the fishing boat.’
‘Oh well, I’ll tell the policeman anyway,’ said Leo, standing.
‘But it had a name,’ said Paulo. ‘I used my telescope. It was called the Limpet.’
TWENTY-ONE
Darkness. The mobile buzzing on the bedside table. Shaw’s heartbeat already running at seventy – up from its resting rate of fifty-eight. Not the lifeboat; because he had a pager for the RNLI, and he’d set it to chime, and he’d hadn’t heard the maroon go off from the coastguard hut on the cliffs. Lena stretched and lay still, a black arm across the white pillow, a single exhaled breath indicating she was only just awake, poised to slip back into sleep. She’d always needed her sleep and deeply resented late-night calls. A month earlier Shaw had been struggling with a case involving street attacks on working girls which had led to a spate of late-night text messages. Lena’s patience had finally snapped and she’d made up a bed in the café. She’d only just returned, signalling a truce at least.
