Authors: Mark Pearson

The Killing Season (26 page)

It was technically spring but someone had forgotten to tell the weather gods. There was a thick hoar frost on the ground and tiny frozen particles in the air.

I was dressed in a traditional suit but I had refused to wear grey. I wanted to wear green as part of my cultural heritage but the proposal was met with as hostile a reaction as Hitler’s invasion of Poland had been in 1939. We had struck a balance and we had opted for black. 1930s style to match Kate’s wedding dress.

The landlord of The Lobster smiled genially at me as I came in and sat at my usual corner stool.

He put a large glass of whiskey in front of me. ‘I’ve not been idle,’ he said. ‘The function room’s all ready. Bunting, buffet – and chilled Bolly good to go.’

‘Cheers,’ I said, raising the glass.

‘Get it down you,’ he said. ‘Last drink for the condemned man. On the house!’

I took a small sip. ‘Get me a pint to go with it, would you?’ I asked. The days when I could knock back multiple half-tumblers of whiskey were a long way behind me. And I had a wedding to go to, after all.

The door opened and she walked in. Killer legs, a cream-coloured skirt and matching jacket. Bright red lipstick, hair that was straight off the cover of
Vogue
magazine. High-heeled, cream-coloured shoes. Eyes that a man could probably dive into.

‘Hello, Susan,’ I said.

‘That’s “superintendent” to you, Delaney,’ she said as she sat elegantly on the stool next to mine. But she said it with a smile this time.

‘Champagne, landlord,’ she said.

‘We’ve got some cava somewhere,’ he said apologetically.

‘Get a bottle of Bollinger from the reception room,’ I said.

‘Excellent.’ He beamed once more and hurried away.

Susan Dean was certainly looking better than the last time I had seen her. Severe head trauma had put her into a coma. Or to put it more prosaically, Solly had hit her savagely on the back of her head with something very hard. He had thought he had killed her and very nearly did. Kate had arrived on the Bump a little while after me. It’s hard to run fast uphill wearing wellingtons, after all. She had detected a faint pulse. An air ambulance was called in and Susan was flown to the A&E at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. Her skull hadn’t been fractured. Luckily she had come out of the coma and was as good as new. Apart from the nights when she woke up screaming, that was. Screaming at the memory of what had happened, and the imagining of what would have happened had I not pulled her out of the bonfire.

Strangely enough, my own recurring nightmare had not returned since the incident. Perhaps not so strangely, Superintendent Susan Dean’s attitude toward me had brightened enormously.

She had finished her first glass of champagne and was sipping on a second when she fixed me with a look. I could see that she had been flirting around the issue of something or other, getting ready to articulate it. Something was on her mind and she was about to let me know what it was.

‘I want to offer you a job, Jack,’ she said.

I looked at her, a little surprised. ‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘A consultant on some case? Has something happened that I don’t know about?’

The body of the missing dentist had never been recovered although Solly Green’s body had washed up on the shore a few days after his death. Spat back by the vengeful god who found the man too unpalatable even for him.

‘A proper job.’

‘Go on?’

‘Your little holiday is coming to an end soon.’

I knew that right enough. I had had Diane Campbell on the phone plaguing me practically every day asking for my decision. And in truth I didn’t know what that decision was going to be. Recent events had given me a taste – more a hunger, really – for proper police work again, but I knew how much it meant to Kate and Siobhan to stay up here. Kate’s cousin’s prospective buyer had fallen through and Kate was pushing me to make a decision.

‘I know you are thinking of going back to London,’ Susan Dean continued. ‘But I want you to stay here. The murders here shook up more than our little town, Jack. Norwich and Yarmouth have been in consultation with us and the county, and we agree that we need some form of CID presence locally.’

‘I see.’

‘Local knowledge. You can’t import that. You know that.’

‘I’m not a local.’

‘Yes, you are. Especially now. You’ll never be a Shannock, Jack. But a large percentage of the people here aren’t either. The town is growing. The tourist season is lasting longer and longer. We have the Viking festival, the Crab and Lobster Festivals, the Forties Weekend, the Raft Race, the Christmas events, the Carnival, other things planned. More and more people are coming into the town and we as a police force have to acknowledge that and address it.’

‘So where do I come in?’

‘Like I say, regional funding has authorised the establishment of a CID unit here. A small unit – nothing like the size of White City or Paddington Green, obviously. But a unit here so that if there is a major incident we don’t have to draft in teams from Wymondham ten miles south of Norwich or from Great Yarmouth! We will already have eyes and ears on the ground here. Trained ears. Experienced eyes. But not private.’

‘Makes sense.’

‘And I want you to head up the unit, Jack. You can select your own team. Be part of the whole process from the ground up. What do you say?’

What could I say?

So I said it best, as the song suggests, for the moment at least, by saying nothing at all.

I WAS STANDING
at the front pew on the right-hand side of the aisle of All Saints Church in Beeston Regis.

I flicked away the small flecks of snow that had settled on my shoulder as I had made my way from my car to the church. The car was a Volvo, almost new, traded in for my old Saab, and had been driven by my best man.

Sergeant Harry Coker was standing beside me, looking uncomfortable in a suit that matched my own. I had considered asking my cousin to be best man but had decided against it. We had opted for a small ceremony and so no members of either Kate’s or my family were there. The church was filled with people, though. Most of them friends of Kate, who had taken to small-town and village life like a mallard making a nest.

I looked behind me. Susan Dean was sitting in one pew, smiling at me but giving me the look. She wanted an answer. Sitting next to her was Diane Chambers with her partner, a PC who worked in the records office at White City, and Sally Cartwright, my old DC. Holding baby Jade and looking as youthful and fresh-faced and innocent as ever. I hoped she would always be that way but I knew how much the city of London and our job took its toll. You had to grow a hard carapace and sooner rather than later.

Amy Leigh was in the pew behind me. She gave me a thumbs-up and winked. Then the music started.

Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.

Kate had chosen it, of course. Along with the flowers, the hymns, the wedding-breakfast menu. She had asked for my input. Demanded it. But when push came to shove she was far too much of a control freak to allow me to make any decisions that she hadn’t already suggested.

I didn’t mind. Seeing her happy, seeing that happiness reflected in my daughter Siobhan’s eyes and in the happy smiles of our baby brought a warmth to my body that no drug could replicate.

I looked back and smiled as she came in. She was wearing a pearly gold art-deco dress. Her long curly hair framed her radiant face with a floral headband. She looked like she had stepped out of a 1930s film. Olivia de Havilland in
The Adventures of Robin Hood
, only brunette.

She walked slowly up the aisle. Behind her Siobhan in matching bridesmaid dress walked, carrying a wedding posy. Laura Gomez was Kate’s other bridesmaid, dressed completely in black – but she had dyed her hair pure white for the occasion. Hugh, Kate’s partner at the surgery, was standing in as father of the bride to give her away.

She came up and stood beside me and I couldn’t stop smiling. Her beauty took my breath away.

The vicar coughed politely and finally I turned towards him.

‘We are gathered today with family and friends to witness the exchange of the marriage vows between Kate Walker and John Delaney.’

I hardly took in what he was saying, watching his lips moving but hardly hearing a word. But when Kate took my hand and said ‘I do,’ I understood everything.

I was home.

Acknowledgements

Thanks firstly to my lovely editor on this book, Selina Walker, who, over a very pleasant lunch, suggested we winkle Jack Delaney, as it were, out of his comfort zone in crime-riddled London and transplant him to the wild and rugged coast of North Norfolk; and making it such a very satisfying and enjoyable journey too. Thanks also to Beth Kruszynskyj (pronounced Kruszynskyj) for meeting him at the train station and making sure he was settled in, and, as ever, of course a big thanks to all the team at Arrow/Random House!

Also, as ever, a very big thanks to Robert Caskie and team PFD. To my long-suffering partner and her mother, who – in the absence of an almond croissant – provides a very acceptable Eccles cake or two. To Irish John for his comprehensive research and knowledge of the local hostelries.

And a very big thank you to the town and community of Sheringham. Very much ‘Little Britain’ with a big heart!

A crime book needs a villain or two but the bad guys in this one are entirely fictional. As mentioned in the book the stretch of coast here is truly the least defendable area of the entire coastline of the British Isles but – even in the darkest hours of the Second World War – not only the famous, and vital, Y stations but the men and women of the region stood shoulder to shoulder against the very real threat coming across the narrow stretch of the North Sea from mainland Europe.

Thousands of people, nowadays, invade Sheringham throughout the year – on high days and holidays on the various festivals and in the ‘Season’ to enjoy this magnificent part of the country. But it is a most welcome and friendly invasion. No small wonder then, that even when the town is quiet during the dark days of winter Jack Delaney can sit in front of a roaring fire in his local inn, enjoy the banter of the regulars, and feel, as so many do, at home!

Mark Pearson

March 2014

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Epub ISBN: 9781448134946

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Arrow Books 2014

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Mark Pearson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between these fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

Arrow

Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

London SW1V 2SA

www.randomhouse.co.uk