Bad Sons (Booker & Cash Book 1) (9 page)

I took off my trainers and socks. They might not have been expensive but they were the only ones I had. I put out my hand for the torch. Detective Cash hesitated. She looked like she was having second thoughts about involving me.

‘What?’

‘That could be evidence and you’re involved in our investigation. Whether you or I think you should be is not my decision.’

‘So?’

‘So, if I let you go in there, I’m taking a risk that you could contaminate it.’

‘You’ve got two choices then: you can find me something to pick it up with so I don’t have to touch it or you can get in there yourself. I suppose it ultimately depends on how involved you personally think I am in my relatives’ disappearances.’

She sighed a little dramatically. ‘I don’t think you are involved. All right? But I’m not the one making the decisions. And if it got back to him that I’d allowed you within a hundred yards of something that could be evidence in the case, let alone asked you to retrieve it, I’d be in big trouble.’

‘I won’t tell if you won’t.’

She looked at me with a hard intensity for a long moment and I waited. If she was going to bottle it I was going in there anyway and sod the consequences. If there was something in there that could be relevant to my aunt’s death I wasn’t going to risk losing it to the next tide and the sea.

Maybe she saw something of this in my face. She looked around like she was expecting Sprake to spring out from his hiding place. ‘Wait there. I’ve got some evidence bags in the car. Let me get you one of those and you bloody well make sure you don’t let anything of you come into contact with whatever it is.’ I smiled at her and she gave me a very grim look back. ‘I’m serious. If anything of you turns up on that we’re both finished.’

I got the message and sat on the edge of the outfall wall to wait for her. My legs were stiffening up and the sweat on my T-shirt was sticking cold against my skin.

She hurried back over the lip of the sea wall as if she was afraid of what I might have been tempted to do in her absence.

She handed me the evidence bag and a final reminder. ‘Please be careful not to touch it. It’s probably nothing, but it could be something.’

I took the torch, the bag and her warning and dropped down into the water. It was bitterly cold. My body’s reaction was to suck in air. I was hit by the putrid smell of what existed down there, trapped in the confinement, heavier than air, a combination of the brackish water and the years of Nature’s deposits left to cling to and build up on the exposed surfaces: crustaceans and slimy green plant life. I shone the torch ahead of me into the greyness. I had about twenty feet of channel and murk to navigate. The last bit of it would be under the sea wall and in almost total darkness. This was not something I would have done for fun. Confined dark spaces, even those not prone to flooding, have never appealed to me as places for recreation. Just the idea of pot-holing made my mouth dry.

I lumbered forward in the water that ran around my shins. My feet and lower legs were already numb. I was treading gingerly. With nothing on my feet, I didn’t want to step on broken glass, discarded fish hooks, rusting metal, dead animal carcasses and other things I tried to stop myself dwelling on. As I progressed I was aware of the crackling of the thousands of barnacles that clung to every available surface as they shrank to close at my approach – an alien in their environment, a possible threat.

Either the torch had an electrical fault or the batteries were on the way out. The beam became weaker and more watery by the second. I was three-quarters of the way there when it died and then, after a swift bang from me, resumed its pathetic efforts.

Cash called down to me. ‘Well?’

I shouted back at her to hang on. To my own ears my voice betrayed my unease at the situation and apprehension at what I might find.

The torch died again and I stopped. There was only the thinnest of grey light filtering through the slits in the woodwork several feet above me. It wasn’t pitch darkness but it wasn’t far off it. I hit the torch with the heel of my hand. Nothing. The cold of the water, my sweat-drenched clothes and my phobia had chilled me to the marrow.

‘Mr Booker?’

‘Your bloody torch has packed up.’ I sounded cross.

‘Come out then. Don’t fumble about in the dark.’ She sounded cross.

And then in a dreadful moment of panic that dropped my core temperature another few degrees and redirected all my remaining energy to my flight mode preparations, I heard a noise and I realised I was not alone down there.

Ahead of me in the blackness something animal and substantial was approaching. It splashed quickly through the shallow water towards me. Its laboured distressed breathing rose above the gentle gurgling of the water.

I hit the torch again hard enough to make me wince. The bulb flickered and gained in intensity. I aimed the fragile beam ahead of me, expecting to be attacked by some beast that lived down there – a freak product of radioactive waste from the adjacent atomic power station interfering with Nature.

With the light the sound of movement ceased abruptly. And it left me wondering whether it had been a figment of my imagination conjured up by my claustrophobia. Five feet in front of me, the torchlight came to rest on a splash of red. I had myself and my fears back under control.

I just wanted to get it and get out of there. In two big strides I was at the grille. I stuffed the torch under my armpit and using the plastic bag like a glove, and as carefully as if it were the last wounded young of an endangered species, I eased the object away from where it had caught in the rusting ironwork. I rolled the plastic tightly over it and released the breath I’d been holding. The torch flickered again, reminding me to hurry.

Beyond the grille the surface of the water was disturbed once more. Closer. Louder. It moved quickly. It charged at the grille and, as I instinctively brought my arms up to protect myself, captured briefly in the feeble beam of artificial light I saw the mad staring evil eye of something possessed bearing down on me. I heard myself shout. I turned and fell, clasping the torch in one hand and the evidence bag in the other. The embrace of freezing water sucked the air out of my lungs as I went under.

Operating on the instinct born of blind panic, I scrambled along on all fours, got some air back into my lungs and – choking on the dirty, salty water – stumbled towards the murky mouth of the outfall, expecting to have my back raked by unchecked talons at every stride.

Cash was looking down at me as I emerged running, her face a taught mask of concern. She’d probably been worrying how she was going to explain my accident in the tunnel to Sprake.

‘What happened? Are you hurt? Why were you shouting?’

I looked behind me. Nothing. I scrambled soaked, dripping and shivering up on to the beach. I could see in her face that I had frightened her.

I searched for the words to explain what I’d seen down there; what had tried to get at me. But I was spared that humiliation as the unmistakeable bleating of a trapped frightened adult sheep echoed down the channel.

‘I slipped and fell. That’s all.’ I even managed to sound sheepish. I handed her back her torch. Water was still trickling out of it. It was unlikely to work again.

She held it at arm’s length, regarding it for a sad moment, like it meant something to her, had a value beyond money.

‘Did you get it?’

I held up the bag.

‘She took it from me.’

‘You didn’t touch it?’

I shook my head. ‘Absolutely positive.’

She seemed to relax. She held the bag up to study its contents.

‘It’s a woman’s slipper,’ I told her. ‘And I’ll swear in court it was my aunt’s.’

***

13

Detective Cash didn’t strain herself trying to talk me into accepting her offer of a lift, even though she’d be passing my door, even though I was a strong candidate for a dose of double pneumonia. I was a mile from home dressed in shorts and T-shirt. I was shivering with the cold, the early evening had rolled a chill in off the sea and my clothes were plastered to my skin with the dirty water from my fall. But I would have made a mess in her police car. It might have been a mess she would have to explain. She knew it and so did I. So she offered once generously and I declined graciously. We’d gone all polite again after our episode of frayed nerves.

My leg muscles had tightened like over-tuned nylon guitar strings. In my ‘condition’ I didn’t think it wise to risk running back. So I walked. I walked fast.

*

I got some strange looks as I stood shivering and waiting for the evening traffic to allow me to slip across the high street. By then I was past caring.

I stayed under the steaming shower until the hot water tank was empty. It just about worked for my shell, but I needed something more direct to thaw my insides.

I dressed and poured two fingers of the whisky. It didn’t leave much for emergencies. I drank one finger quickly and waited while it filtered through my system like searing lava crawling down the side of a volcano. I took the glass with me into the front room and stretched out on the sofa.

My phone rang. It was Detective Cash. She told me I must have made it home. I admired her detective work. She might have been smiling. She said she just wanted to check I hadn’t been stampeded and mauled to death by a flock of vampire sheep. I let her know how funny I found that. She said she’d spoken to Sprake about the find. I asked how he reacted. She said he hadn’t indicated it meant a lot to him. I told her what I thought of him for that. She might have smiled again. I asked her if she’d rung the RSPCA for the sheep that had got itself lost and stuck in the big drain. She said she had. She said she’d be in touch. I told her I could hardly wait and hung up.

I lay around for a while. I dozed for a bit. Since I returned home I couldn’t seem to be able to lie anywhere without succumbing to sleep.

I got up and thought about the pub for dinner again but I couldn’t be bothered. It was a lazy thought. I had bought food and it was just going to go to waste.

So I cooked myself some pasta, opened a bottle of wine and got slowly drunk trying, not for the first or last time, to fathom the whys and wherefores involved in my relatives’ disappearances without an ounce of satisfaction.

I got myself to a real bed that night. The wine, the food, the exercise and the excitement had exhausted me and I slept soundly until I was woken by noises coming from the builder’s yard in the small hours of the next day.

My room was at the back of the building. I always sleep with the window open, no matter what the season. When I woke it was still very dark out. I didn’t know then what had disturbed me.

I got up to pee. No point trying to get back to sleep without one and nearly a litre of cheap red wine having worked its way through my system. I didn’t put a light on. I knew my way around well enough in the dark and it would have just hurt my eyes.

As I came back into my bedroom, I heard low voices murmuring in the quiet night outside.

My room is on the top floor but it is an odd acoustic phenomenon that because of the enclosed nature of the area at the back of the building sound reverberates about it and carries with a startling clarity, even up to my level. Because of the suppression of the voices, I couldn’t make out exactly what was being said, only that – unless there was someone out there with a multiple-personality disorder and a gift for impersonation – there was more than one person.

I checked my watch. It was three o’clock. The time and the location made me instantly suspicious and wary of the motives of whoever was down there. It was also now Saturday. Not too many small parochial builders start work so early at the weekend, if at all.

I twitched the curtains. It was a clear night. A bright half moon was doing a fair job of dimly illuminating the area. As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I made out at least two men engaged in lifting something that took both of them out of the old ship’s container directly beyond the dividing boundary fence. Either one of them was a midget or the other was huge. They heaved it into the back of a waiting truck and the bigger one closed the container door with a shriek of dry metal fittings that could have passed as the call of an adult fox. He fixed a lock and then got in the van. It started and they drove out of my line of sight, presumably through the gates.

On an impulse, I hurried through to the front bedroom opposite my room. There would be a good chance that with the lights in the high street I would get a better look at the vehicle if not the occupants. I wasn’t entirely sure why I was doing this but I had cause to feel that something was not quite right about them.

They pulled out of the yard into the otherwise empty main road and turned right, away from me. As they drove across the white-painted raised disc in the middle of the junction that is the mini-roundabout the van was illuminated by the orange light of the sodium lamps around it. I could see it was a white unmarked Transit van. I tried to get some of the registration but managed only the first three digits before it had accelerated away in the direction of St Mary’s Bay and out of view.

I went back to bed wondering whether I was being a bit foolish and just seeing too much into things that went bump in the night. I might also have still been a little drunk.

***

14

Another morning, another headache. Another prospective day of limbo regarding the details of my relatives’ disappearances. The view stretched out ahead of me with all the clarity of a shimmering strip of tarmac on a blazing summer’s day.

The find of the previous afternoon had given me some small sense of perverse satisfaction concerning the theory I’d put forward to the police. As I lay in bed looking for the inspiration to get up and do something, I wondered how Sprake would really be feeling about the discovery.

Of course, I couldn’t prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the slipper had been one of my aunts and I was equally dubious regarding whether any trace of her would have survived the water immersion to tell tales. I knew it was hers. I recognised it. But without its matching twin turning up here I suspected strongly it wouldn’t turn out to be evidence of the police kind.

When I’d exhausted my wretched thoughts of my relatives’ last hours – I was under no illusions that my uncle was still alive – I thought about Istanbul. I thought about my wife. I thought about work. I thought about where I was geographically and personally. I thought about the book order I’d come back to help fulfil and what to do about that.

Eventually, my depressing reflections crowded in on me like a resolute cell of unhappy protesters at a rally: aggressive, determined and vying for attention. I got up and padded off to the shower.

After some coffee and toast I went down to the shop and the computer. My wife hadn’t replied to my email. I’d kept her waiting so she’d be showing me some karma. That was her way. The circumstances of my delay in contacting her wouldn’t matter at all in her largely egocentric outlook. No problem. I was sure I’d find the inner strength to deal with her iceberg of a shoulder.

I found the contact details for the buyer of my uncle’s stock and spent a good half an hour composing, editing and rewriting an email to him in an attempt to explain what had happened.

Then I had an idea. I went to my social networking site and loaded the images I had on file in the albums I’d created.

When I had last been back in Dymchurch I’d taken some photos and uploaded them. Some of the pictures had been taken in the flat above me. I wondered if any of them would have an image of my aunt wearing her red and black tartan slippers with the red trim of fluff. One did. She was sitting with my uncle on the sofa. Her legs were crossed in front of her. It was a good shot of the slippers but it brought me no pleasure, just a crushing painful sense of loss. She was smiling at the camera. They both were. They had wine glasses in their raised hands. It had been a late birthday celebration for my uncle. They looked happy and still in love. Now they were dead.

I looked at the time. I wasted a little more of it getting another coffee to make it more respectable and then I phoned Detective Cash.

It was Saturday morning. She probably didn’t work weekends. She was probably lying around in bed with company. She probably wouldn’t be pleased, but I didn’t care. We had something to discuss about my dead relatives. I prepared myself for some irritable comment. She answered on the third ring. I could tell from the background noise she was outside.

‘Good morning, Detective. Sorry to bother you on a Saturday.’

‘Hello, Mr Booker. No problem. What can I do for you?’

She sounded tired. She sounded unhappy. She didn’t sound outraged for the disturbance. I wanted to ask her if she was working but that was none of my business. I realised in that moment that I would have liked to sit down and enjoy a coffee with her somewhere neutral. Just a quiet drink and a chat about anything but the reason we had come to know each other. There was something about the female detective that intrigued me on a personal level.

‘I wondered if you’d be interested in a photograph of my aunt wearing slippers that match the one we discovered yesterday? I found one.’

‘Sure,’ she said, although she didn’t sound too enthusiastic.

‘Right, well you’ll have to ask me if I’ve got one won’t you because I don’t know that you recovered a slipper from the outfall yesterday, do I?’

‘Mr Booker. I’m afraid I might have some more bad news for you. A body has been washed up at Littlestone. The deceased gentleman fits the description you provided of your uncle. I’m sorry.’

***

15

Cash offered to collect me, give me a ride to make the official identification. I said if she’d give me a time and place I’d drive myself. She told me the police would prefer it if I identified the body sooner rather than later. That suited me. I didn’t see anything to be gained by delaying the inevitable.

I’d known he was dead – he had to have been. There was no other explanation for his disappearance that stood up under scrutiny by someone who knew them. But it didn’t lessen the impact of the blow. Now it was real. The rich and good life of my last surviving family member had ended – prematurely, abruptly and in suspicious circumstances.

As I sat at my uncle’s desk waiting for the shock of the news to release me from its crippling embrace I made a decision. I would not be going back to Istanbul and my life there. Leaving aside the estate I was about to inherit, I had to unravel the secrets surrounding the deaths of the two people who been the closest family I had ever known. And then I had to do something about it.

*

I followed Cash’s instructions and within the hour was walking towards where she was waiting for me outside the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford. This is where the pathology lab that served Romney Marsh and the surrounding area was situated. The coroner would demand an autopsy in the circumstances. So would I. I wanted to know how my uncle had died.

I felt her critical gaze on me as I approached her. Her brow was creased. She looked tired and drawn and I wondered what time she’d been hauled out of bed on this bright spring Saturday morning to look at dead bodies washed in on the tide.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Angry. Do you know how he died?’

‘It looks like he drowned but we’ll have to wait for the official verdict. I’ll remind you that until you’ve identified him we don’t know who he is for sure.’

I gave her a look that I expected to convey what I thought of the shadow of doubt.

I followed her inside, through the disinfected, uncluttered and brightly lit corridors. We passed bewildered relatives, harassed staff and shuffling patients. Down a level we came to pathology. They were expecting us.

There were several steel tables evenly spaced along one wall. Only one of them had a corpse on it. A white shroud covered it completely. I could smell butchery and disinfectant and death. I didn’t like being there and it had little to do with the body under the sheet.

They waited for me to move towards the table and then a young man in white overalls pulled back the first fold of the covering.

My uncle seemed to be resting peacefully – sleeping, perhaps. His mouth had always had a tendency to set in a contented half-smile when it wasn’t working at something and so it was now.