The Man by the Sea (The Slim Hardy Mystery Series Book 1)

by Jack Benton

  ‘I see,’ Slim said.

  ‘When he found out, he hit the roof. He’s never forgiven me. He doesn’t care that we needed the money to cover the debt he made. He just goes on about me wanting him dead.’

  ‘I think that’s a little over the top.’

  ‘Is it? He’s angry because he knows I have a separate policy of my own. It matures in five years, but if I die, it pays out big.’

  ‘I see,’ Slim said again.

  ‘Do you? Do you really? Because you know what it means, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He talks up my dislike for him, but it’s rubbish. This, though, is something. It means Ted has a genuine reason to want me dead.’

  27

  SLIM LEFT Emma with her paranoia under the pretence that he had errands to run, but really he needed somewhere to get drunk, and in his own way try to make sense of everything. He felt up to his neck in a barrel of confusion, and no matter how strong the urge to walk away, he knew there was no escape.

  Allocating the day as a day off, he got roaring drunk, ignored all calls, and stumbled homeward sometime after dark, waking up in a park in the grey light of pre-dawn, his keys caught in the frayed fabric of his pocket’s inner lining, and a vague memory of being unable to get into his flat.

  He went up, cleaned and showered, changed his clothes, then swallowed enough ibuprofen to take the edge off his thumping headache.

  For the first few hours of the day, he went through the box of Ted’s old papers, looking for something that might back up the information Emma had freely given him, but found nothing useful at all. Suspicious, he checked the dates on as many items as were dated and found nothing later than 1992.

  Had Emma responded to his lie with one of hers? If they were playing a game, he wondered who was playing the cat and who the mouse.

  Just before lunch, he headed up to Cramer Cove to wait for Ted. He parked up the road out of sight where he usually parked, afraid of spooking Ted. Then he went to wait for Ted in the trees just inside the broken gate leading onto the beach.

  It was approaching three when he decided Ted wasn’t coming. Emma had mentioned a hire car Ted was using for work, but for whatever reason, Ted had decided that this Friday would be the first he missed since Slim had begun his weekly vigil.

  Slim called Arthur and asked if there were any updates on the photographs, but Arthur hadn’t heard back from his contact. Instead, Slim got to thinking about how he had seen the figure up on the cliff, and it had just vanished into the air.

  Ghosts vanished, it was true, but ghosts didn’t get caught on camera, and people didn’t just disappear. They went somewhere.

  Always.

  He headed up the cliff path, keeping an eye out for anyone following him, but he felt alone on the windswept headland, with the sun beaming overhead chasing away any shadows. He reached the stile into the field where he had seen the figure, then climbed over and followed the footpath, sticking close to the line of the hedge.

  It appeared an impenetrable tangle, at its heart an old stone wall that had partially collapsed over the years beneath an accumulation of soil and plant matter. At times, farmers had added sections of fence or barbed wire to keep animals in, the rusting remnants of which were now buried beneath a thicket of gorse, brambles, and couch grass.

  Somewhere in the distance, a siren was wailing as Slim knelt down by a section of hedgerow, looking for the signs of animal trails: fox burrows, badger sets, anything that provided a way through the thicket. Beyond was a section of cliff not accessible by any way other than getting over the hedge, a section also impossible to reach from the beach, even by clambering out over the rocks at low tide. Slim had seen it on maps, but perhaps this section of rugged coastline could offer him answers.

  Working from the stile down, Slim got on his hands and knees and peered under the hedge, trusting his military instincts to know what he was searching for. He remembered lying in the dusty, scorched dirt of Iraq’s eastern provinces, fingers searching for hidden entrances and trapdoors, feeling for strange edges where they should be curved, the give of wood where there should only be rock. There was always that feeling of reluctance, of hoping you found nothing, that you returned from the mission with nothing of interest to report, because, when you found something, the problems really began.

  A thin trail led into a patch of dead brambles. Maybe the roots had been eaten through. Slim lay on his front and reached in, feeling around for how far the trail went inside. His fingers had just closed over something cold and hard when his mobile rang.

  He sat up, pulled it from his pocket, and answered.

  ‘Where are you?’ Arthur Davis said.

  ‘On the cliffs.’

  ‘Get here, now. Ted Douglas has had a serious car accident. He’s on his was to hospital as we speak.’

  28

  TED HAD CRASHED on his way to Cramer Cove, failing to make a sharp turn at the bottom of a hill and slamming straight into a tree that had both crushed the front of his car and trapped him inside. A police cutting crew had removed him, and an ambulance taken him away.

  Three police cars, a tow-truck and a handful of gapers remained on the scene when Slim arrived. He saw Arthur taking measurements around the back of Ted’s crumpled car, but ticker tape kept everyone unofficial a few metres back from the crash scene. Slim waited with other onlookers while the police carried out their investigation.

  The road descended a steep hill with a tight, near-ninety-degree turn at the bottom. Tire tread marks on the road showed where Ted had started to make the turn, then tried to correct himself, and hammered into the trunk of the gnarled old tree, around which the hedge had grown like a protective barrier.

  The police had drawn chalk lines around everything, marking a couple of spots with reflective triangles as though they could make sense of Ted’s decision with mathematics.

  With little to see, the crowd slowly dispersed. Slim, feeling a little conspicuous as the last remaining onlooker, retreated down the road a little way, in the direction Ted would have gone had he made the turn. The horizon between Cramer Cove’s cliffs was a blue V rising above a green and brown line of trees, hedgerows, and fields, with the road winding down the centre of the valley on one side, then snaking up the side of the valley on the other, disappearing over the top of the rise.

  Something crunched underfoot.

  A handful of bits of shell lay in a neat pile beneath his shoe. Had it been cockleshells like the poem he might have smiled, but it was simply a few limpets and periwinkles, with a tiny, shining conch in the middle.

  He looked back up the road. Ted’s car could have started around the bend, viewed this very spot, then swerved back away, hitting the tree.

  Arthur was standing beside a police car, shaking his phone, then angrily waving it in the air to look for a signal. Slim waved him over. Arthur said something to a colleague, then wandered across to where Slim waited.

  ‘What happened?’ Slim asked.

  Arthur shrugged, shaking his head. ‘We won’t know until Ted wakes up. If he wakes up.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘I was in the first car on the scene. He was in a bad way. Unconscious. A lot of blood. I’d guess he lost control as he made the turn. Perhaps he was going too fast.’

  ‘Looks like he tried to turn out of it.’

  ‘I guess we’ll have to wait for the full report.’

  A couple of other officers were throwing looks in their direction.

  ‘A problem talking to me? I can make myself scarce.’

  ‘I said you lived nearby. Might have seen or heard something. I can’t stay long. We’ll talk later.’

  ‘Can you go back into the files for the three dead girls?’

  Arthur frowned. ‘I think so. Why?’

  ‘I’d like to read the complete description of each body.’

  ‘I told you the cause of death.’

  ‘Not that. The circumstances in which they were found, position
of the body, objects found nearby. You have photographs?’

  ‘Some, yes.’

  ‘If you can get copies, I’d appreciate it.’

  ‘It sounds important.’

  Slim shrugged. ‘It could be. I don’t know yet. In your opinion as Police Chief, what do you think happened?’

  Arthur sighed. ‘With a road like this you’re always playing the averages, especially if you’re used to big, looping A-roads or all the lights in the city. Ted got a bit cocky, took the downhill straight a bit fast, botched his brake and turn. Not the first I’ve seen.’

  ‘And you really think that?’

  ‘I told you, as Police Chief. I’ll wait for the report.’

  29

  EMMA WAS HEARTBROKEN, but not heartbroken enough not to show up at Slim’s flat with a bottle of wine. She cried before and after sex, while during, her face held a look of concentration that suggested she was going through the motions but little else.

  ‘Someone tampered with his hire car,’ she said. ‘Maybe they cut the brake wires, I don’t know, but they made him crash.’

  Slim didn’t point out that car brakes weren’t like bicycle brakes, but the assurance in Emma’s expression meant he could rule her out.

  ‘It’s quite hard to tamper with a car to that degree,’ Slim said. ‘It takes a lot of expertise.’

  ‘Do you think there was someone else in the car?’

  ‘Not unless they escaped unscathed,’ Slim said. ‘The police report will be able to tell us.’

  ‘What about Ted? Will he be okay? I mean, we had our differences, but I don’t want to see him—’ She burst into tears. Slim consoled her for a couple of minutes, then called a taxi to take her to the hospital.

  Just before she left, Slim asked her to wait a moment while he went into another room. He returned with a battered teddy bear which he held out with a sheepish grin.

  ‘Can you give him this?’ he asked, his cheeks reddening from apparent embarrassment after he had given them a sharp pinch on his way back.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s my lucky charm. I spent a little time in a military hospital after getting hit by shrapnel. A local kid gave it to me.’ He smiled and patted it on the head. ‘We’ve been a long way together, haven’t we, mate?’

  Emma smiled. ‘That’s sweet. I’ll make sure he gets it.’

  She slipped the bear into her bag. Slim didn’t remember where it had come from—some phone company’s free gift or whatever—but it headed off to the hospital with Emma, and the little recording chip he had pushed into the hollow space behind its plastic eye went along with it.

  Alone again, but half drunk, Slim called Arthur. ‘Make sure Ted’s under guard,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Let’s just say I’m cautious. Also, see if you can keep a record of anyone who comes to see him. His wife, obviously, but also any friends, neighbours, work colleagues.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It would be good to know what kind of affection Ted Douglas commands.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And do you remember what you told me the other day? About Joanna Bramwell?’

  A pause. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think it’s time we found out once and for all if Joanna Bramwell is truly dead.’

  30

  ARTHUR PICKED Slim up at 11 p.m. from outside the closed corner shop at the end of Slim’s street. No longer in his police uniform, Arthur was dressed all in brown and driving an old blue Ford Escort. After stopping at a petrol station for takeaway coffee—‘To steady the nerves,’ Arthur said, his hand trembling as much as Slim’s often did as he took the coffee and flashed Slim a smile—Arthur drove them across town and parked down a leafy farm lane just outside the town limits, then they walked the last mile to the graveyard along a public footpath leading through fields. Arthur refused the use of any light during the awkward, stumbling journey, stating that it wouldn’t do for the chief of police to be caught opening graves, so they moved much slower than they might have done, tripping on roots and ploughing through thickets of brambles until they were both thoroughly miserable.

  When they had reached the graveyard, tucked away behind a church built low into a valley and overrun with grass, Arthur led them to a plot near the back and a granite headstone that had begun to list. In the torchlight Arthur now allowed, Slim read: Joanna Bramwell, 1960-1984, taken too soon, forever beloved.

  Then, from a deceptively small pack, Arthur withdrew a set of metal poles, which he began screwing together.

  ‘No shovels?’

  Arthur shook his head. ‘We can avoid that mess, I think.’ He held up the instrument. ‘This is what people in these parts used to use to drill for water. A smaller version, obviously.’

  The object was a long, thin drill. The hollow shaft was an inch wide, each section two feet long. They could be screwed into each other, while on the top side of each was a fitting for a cross-piece handle three feet wide. It allowed for both Slim and Arthur to work at once, pulling one side each, then passing the handles over. A specialist screw-drill head fitted onto the end.

  Arthur chose a place at one end of the plot, drove the drill’s metal tip into the turf, and looked up at Slim.

  ‘Let’s see if we can find oil,’ he said.

  Half an hour in, Slim wondered whether using shovels might not be less strenuous. His shoulders and back felt torn open, and it seemed as though they had only gone down a couple of feet. But as the drill handle got close to the ground, and Arthur removed the handle to add another two-foot length, he realised they were now four lengths in. Six feet. Wasn’t that the standard depth for a coffin?

  A few minutes later, Arthur paused. ‘Did you feel that? That momentary give?’

  Slim felt only muscle ache, but Arthur was convinced they had reached the decomposed remains of a coffin.

  ‘Now we come to the tricky part,’ he said. ‘We have to get the shaft out without collapsing the hole we just made.’

  Inch by inch, they wound the drill back out again, removing each section of shaft as it came. When the drill head appeared, Arthur replaced it with a new flat-headed piece. It was hollow-ended, but by the light of their torch, Arthur explained how inverted hooks could be used to spear something and hold it like a fish on a line.

  Again, far slower than Slim’s shoulders appreciated, they lowered the now-blunt-ended drill back into the hole. A couple of times, they met resistance, and Arthur grimaced, explaining his fear that the shaft had collapsed and they would have to start over; then they pushed through, and the drill continued down. At last they reached the depth they had previously reached.

  Arthur called for a halt and looked up at Slim. ‘Now we need one solid push,’ he said. ‘I hope you’re feeling okay. If this comes up with nothing, we’re starting again.’

  Slim forced a smile. ‘Let’s get this done and get home.’

  ‘Three, two, one—’

  They leaned on the shaft handle with all their strength. It plunged another hand span before hitting resistance.

  ‘Right, let’s pull her up,’ Arthur said.

  They withdrew the shaft from the ground. Arthur unscrewed the end and laid out a piece of cloth. Then, turning the length of shaft upside-down, he inserted a metal rod into it and pushed out the contents caught inside.

  In the torch’s light it looked like just a few lumps of soil to Slim, but Arthur laughed.

  ‘Got her,’ he said. ‘First time. See that?’ He poked a lump of material that unfolded into a rough diamond shape. ‘That’s cloth. Which means this’—he pointed to another lump beneath—‘must be tissue. And this little piece here that looks like gravel, that’s a section of bone. I’ll get this sent away, and we’ll have an answer in a couple of days.’

  Slim nodded, feeling a sense of elation nearly swallowed up by his disgust at what they had done. Together they tidied up, and then ruffled up the grass where their feet had been to make it harder to tell anyone had ever been here.


  As they walked back to the car with their treasure wrapped in a plastic bag, Slim should have felt excited. Instead, even though the night wasn’t that cold, he found himself shivering.

  31

  AFTER GETTING up late the next morning, Slim drove to the hardware store on the outskirts of town and picked up some better recording equipment so he could leave the microphone feed to Ted’s hospital room running while he went out. To his surprise, his credit card wasn’t yet maxed, but he hurried back to his car anyway, before the store clerks realised their error and called him back.

  With Ted still in intensive care, and, according to Arthur, unable to receive any unsupervised visitors, there was no hurry to set it up, so he took the box of Ted’s papers down to a local cafe, where he tried to sort through them while resisting the urge to relocate to the pub across the street and get drunk.

  As he delved deeper, he kept coming across the same things: innocuous notes written on veterinary surgery notepaper and receipts for shipments of medicine he guessed were for animals, dull bank statements, and simple, handwritten photocopies for local Shakespeare productions.

  But on one, he found a phone number.

  The production’s date was March 1st, 1982, at a local theatre the internet told him had burned down in late 1985. That a thirty-five-year-old phone number would still work was too unlikely to be true, but an online database gave him a historical address.

  When he knocked on the door, he didn’t expect to find the same occupant who had lent their contact phone number to a local Shakespearean society, but the house’s middle-aged owners had kept in occasional contact with a lady called June Taylor, a retired English teacher now living in a care community complex not far outside Carnwell.