St Benet's

by David Blake

  Seeing a familiar figure stretched out over the starboard side bench, one hand draped over the side of the boat, the other resting on the rounded metal tiller, a smile played over his lips.

  ‘Morning,’ he called out, as he stepped aboard. ‘Or should I say, good afternoon.’

  The young woman lifted the rim of the floppy wide-brimmed hat which had covered the whole of her pretty face, and without moving her head, squinted over at him.

  ‘It’s not even half past nine!’ she moaned, as if lodging an official complaint.

  Checking his watch, Tanner said, ‘Actually, it’s just gone.’

  She dropped the brim of the hat back over her face. ‘I suppose that’s what you call afternoon in London, is it?’

  ‘Well, people do have to get up very early down there.’

  ‘Is that so they don’t miss out on all the worms?’

  ‘Something like that. Anyway, I’ve got the papers, and some milk.’

  ‘How about the paracetamol?’

  ‘Oops! I knew there was something I’d forgotten.’

  ‘Please tell me you’re joking!’

  He pulled out a small blue box from the front pocket of his jeans and gave it a shake.

  ‘Now that was funny,’ she said. ‘You really should write that one down.’

  ‘What do you want first, the drugs or the coffee?’

  ‘Which would you recommend?’

  ‘Well, one will take about ten minutes to make, whilst the other will only need a glass of water.’

  ‘Drugs, please!’

  ‘Right you are, miss, but if you want either, you’re going to have to move. The cups are under the bench, along with the kettle.’

  ‘Move, as in get up?’

  ‘Unless you’ve mastered the art of levitation.’

  ‘Hold on. I’m a bit out of practice, but let me have a go.’

  There followed a full ten seconds of silence.

  ‘Anything?’ she asked.

  ‘You mean, did your body lift magically up in the air, allowing me to retrieve a glass, two mugs and a kettle from under the bench seat?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I’m afraid not, no.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Are you going to move, or am I going to have to hire a fork lift truck?’

  ‘Are you saying I’m fat?’

  ‘If I said yes, would you get up and punch me in the face?’

  ‘Definitely!’

  ‘OK, yes, you’re fat!’

  ‘Right, that does it.’

  After making a feeble effort to sit up straight, she gave up, raised her arms helplessly in the air and said, ‘Give us a hand, will you?’

  Dumping the newspaper, milk and paracetamol on the small fold-up table positioned in the middle of the cockpit, he took hold of her hands to heave her into a sitting position.

  Straightening her hat, she looked him in the eyes to say, ‘Oh, hello, stranger! My name’s Jennifer Evans. Didn’t we have sex last night?’

  ‘If you mean, did you pass out on top of me whilst endeavouring to take off your coat, then yes, I believe we did.’

  ‘Was it as good for you as it was for me?’

  ‘Unforgettable,’ he assured her, before knitting his eyebrows together in apparent confusion to ask, ‘Sorry, but - who are you again?’

  Jenny sent him an unamused scowl, earning a grin in return.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘are you going to get up, or am I going to have to arrest you for loitering with intent?’

  ‘With intent to do what?’

  ‘With intent to stop me from putting the kettle on.’

  Letting out a disgruntled moan, she raised herself onto her feet and removed her hat. As she squinted around the cockpit, she said, ‘Tell you what, if you can find my sunglasses, I’ll make the coffee.’

  ‘Deal,’ and he turned to look down into the yacht’s minuscule cabin, which was a mess of bedsheets, clothes, books, and magazines.

  ‘Any idea where they are?’ he asked, thinking that he should have offered to make the coffee instead.

  ‘If I knew that, I’d have found them myself,’ she pointed out, lifting the lid of the bench seat on which she’d so recently been sprawled.

  Ducking his head, Tanner stepped into the cabin to begin tidying up, hoping that doing so would uncover the missing sunglasses belonging to the woman he'd only recently thought of as being his girlfriend.

  Two cups of individually filtered premium grade coffee later, while Jenny studied the Sunday Times’ Fashion & Beauty section as if she was about to be tested on it, Tanner sat up and began folding up the rest. Despite the many hundreds of column inches featuring the very latest in news, gossip and editorial comment, he’d hardly been able to find anything to engage his interest.

  Glancing over to watch a hired motor boat burble past, Tanner asked, ‘What do you fancy doing today?’

  ‘Not sure,’ she said, still absorbed in the article she was reading.

  ‘Shall we take Seascape out for a spin?’

  Turning to stare at him over the top of her sunglasses, she asked, ‘Seriously?’

  ‘I thought we could, yes.’

  ‘Despite the fact that we spent over twelve hours yesterday attempting to take part in the Three Rivers Race, before giving up due to the lack of wind, having to be towed back here, getting shamefully drunk and collapsing into bed?’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ he said. ‘But apart from that, why not?’

  Jenny pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose to stare up at the small blue and red flag positioned at the top of the mast.

  It was lifeless and limp.

  With some effort, she turned to study the tops of the nearest trees.

  ‘Well, there’s no wind for a start,’ she eventually said.

  Following her gaze, he said in nature’s defence, ‘There’s some.’

  ‘A breath, maybe, but I doubt there’s even as much as there was yesterday. How about we take that 1980s TV mini-series car of yours out for a drive instead? There are loads of nice pubs around here we’ve yet to go to, assuming it can make it to one of them without breaking down first, of course.’

  ‘You know, at some stage you’d better start making a few more complimentary remarks about my car, else one day you might find that it’s reversed over you when you weren’t looking.’

  ‘Are you saying it can go into reverse now?’

  He narrowed his eyes at her, leaping to the defence of his beloved 1985 Jaguar XJS. ‘The gearbox was fixed last week, as you well know.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right. Sorry, I forgot.’

  ‘They cleaned it, as well.’

  ‘Really! What colour is it now?’

  Ignoring the question, Tanner said, ‘We can always take your car, if you prefer?’

  ‘Oh, no. If we take mine, we know we’re going to end up at the place we set out for. With yours, we never know which garage we’ll end up in.’

  Tanner smiled with wry amusement. His rather individual choice of vehicle provided Jenny with a seeming endless amount of comic material. However, deep down, over the two months they’d been together, he knew she’d grown to like it. He reached that conclusion because, when he’d offered to sell it and buy something more German instead, she’d refused to allow him. It hadn’t stopped the jokes, of course, but at least he knew then that that was all they were.

  ‘Assuming we get back before dark, maybe we could go for a walk afterwards?’ Jenny suggested. ‘I’ve still not taken you to the wildlife reserve.’

  ‘How far is that?’

  Pointing over towards the front of the boat, she said, ‘It’s about ten minutes that way, and we won’t even have to risk driving.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  ON THEIR RETURN from a pleasantly uneventful drive through the Norfolk countryside, culminating in a pub lunch, Jenny led the way over to the Norfolk Broads Wildlife Centre.

  Following a path through a bank of magnolia coloured reeds, t
hey arrived at a modest building, one with wooden planked sides and a steep thatched roof, all of which jutted out into Ranworth Broad to provide unspoilt panoramic views over the water and the marshland beyond.

  There they spent an enjoyable hour, taking it in turns to watch some of the many insects and birds through a freely available telescope. Although they saw kingfishers, dragonflies, a reed warbler and even a marsh harrier, the bird Jenny had been most hoping to catch a glimpse of, the elusive bittern, was nowhere to be seen. Despite having grown up in the area, she’d never been lucky enough to catch sight of one. As the Centre’s conservationist explained, in recent years they’d simply become so rare that only the booming call of the male could be heard, and even that was unusual.

  By the time they got back to the boat it was only half-past three. With time to kill, and with even less wind than there had been in the morning, Jenny suggested that they drive over to St. Andrew’s church in Horning, which she felt was worth a visit. On the way, their thoughts turned to the week ahead, leading naturally to the subject of their new boss, Detective Chief Inspector James Forrester. He’d been brought in to replace DCI Barrington, who’d been encouraged into early retirement after a less than stellar performance in a previous case, one which cost the life of three civilians and a senior officer, and had left Jenny seriously wounded.

  ‘What do you make of him?’ asked Jenny, sat in the passenger seat next to Tanner.

  ‘It’s too early to tell. He’s more hands-on than Barrington was, I know that much.’

  ‘Is that good or bad?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Thankfully, we’ve been pretty quiet since the death of Burgess, and in my experience, you only see someone’s true colours when they’re under pressure.’

  Enjoying the view of the lush green landscape which seemed to slip effortlessly past, Jenny said, ‘You know, I still think they were too hard on Barrington. I mean, what happened to Burgess was hardly his fault.’

  ‘Maybe not directly, but I think that had he been more decisive, less concerned about politics and more focused on what needed to be done, then there’s a possibility it could have been averted. I never told you, but I did sneak a peek at the disciplinary report’s findings, which I agreed with. Burgess didn’t have enough experience to lead the investigation. I’m not saying I’d have done any better, but you don’t give someone free rein on a high-profile murder case without them having had at least some prior experience.’

  They rounded a bend in the narrow tree-lined road, after which Jenny directed him to turn left into an empty gravelled car park.

  Leaving the Jag, as Jenny led the way towards the church spire they could see poking up beyond a clump of trees, she said, ‘I still think you should have applied for the DCI job.’

  ‘Er, no thanks!’

  ‘Why not? You’ve got the experience. And if it wasn’t for you, we’d still have a deranged serial killer roaming the Broads.’

  ‘Yes, but if you remember, I nearly managed to get you killed in the process.’

  ‘I’ve told you before, John. That wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘But it was. I should never have allowed you to go inside that mill. Neither one of us should have, not without back-up.’

  ‘I seem to remember that we didn’t have much choice.’

  ‘Our actions didn’t save Burgess though, did they? And you don’t seem to understand just how close we came to losing you as well.’

  As they took in the view of the many crooked gravestones over to their left, Jenny lifted her hand to her neck to feel the thin three-inch scar which she did her best to keep hidden under the folds of a silk scarf, and which was likely to serve as a permanent testament to the many dangers of the job.

  ‘Anyway, I’m happy enough being a DI,’ he said. ‘I prefer to be out and about than stuck behind a desk having to deal with station politics.’

  Pulling the scarf back into place, Jenny wound her arm around his, saying, ‘But you wouldn’t have to be behind a desk all the time. Forrester isn’t.’

  ‘No, well, as I said, he’s more hands-on than most DCIs I’ve known. But the responsibility remains, and we’ve both seen what can happen when you screw it up.’

  There was no denying it, and for a moment neither spoke.

  Keen to change the subject, Tanner eventually asked, ‘So anyway, are you still intending to sit your Sergeant’s exam in October?’

  The horrific events that had occurred less than two months before had done little to deter her interest in pursuing a career in the Force.

  ‘That’s the plan,’ she replied. She then slid him a sideways look to add, ‘You don’t sound exactly enthralled by the idea.’

  ‘Only because I don’t like the idea of you being in harm’s way.’

  ‘We’ve discussed this before.’

  ‘I know, but it doesn’t change how I feel. With what happened… I just worry, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, don’t! For all we know, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.’

  ‘What, in the middle of the Norfolk Broads? I think you’d have more chance of being hit by a falling satellite.’

  ‘We do have buses, you know. And they’re not bright red like the ones down in London, which does make them harder to spot.’

  Bringing Tanner to a halt at the edge of the graveyard, about fifty feet away from the church itself, she looked up at the imposing square block tower, rising into the sky before them. ‘So, what do you think?’

  ‘Impressive. Can we go inside?’

  ‘I’m sure we could, but I can’t say I’m too keen.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re the Anti-Christ, and you’d burst into flames if you did?’ questioned Tanner. ‘I’ve certainly not seen 666 tattooed anywhere on your body.’

  ‘You haven’t looked hard enough.’

  ‘You’d better remind me to have a closer look tonight,’ remarked Tanner, sending her over his own version of a mischievous smile.

  She glanced over at him to say, ‘Don’t let me forget,’ before returning her attention to the historic building ahead. As her dark brown eyebrows drew closer together, she continued by saying, ‘This used to be my church.’ Noticing the confused look on Tanner’s face, she added, ‘I was brought up a Catholic. I was even baptised here. This used to be where I’d come every Sunday, with my parents, and I went to the Catholic girls’ school, just down the road.’

  ‘But…I thought you were brought up in Horning?’

  ‘This is Horning’s parish church. The village grew up away from it, probably due to the attraction of the river.’

  ‘I see.’ He had no idea that Jenny was a Catholic, and with a little caution, asked, ‘Do you still go to church?’

  ‘The last time was for midnight mass on Christmas Eve over ten years ago, and I seem to remember being half-drunk at the time. That’s why I’m not too keen to go in.’

  ‘Why’s that? Did you throw up on the priest’s shoes?’

  ‘Not that I can remember.’

  ‘So…why not?’

  ‘It’s a guilt thing, I suppose. And I don’t particularly wish to find myself face-to-face with my old priest and have him ask me where I’ve been all his life.’

  ‘Do you think the same one would still be there?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, but they do have a tendency to live longer than most.’

  After dutifully appreciating the church’s 15th Century architecture, Tanner eventually said, ‘If we can’t go inside, can we at least walk around?’

  ‘That’s not a problem. After all, I did want you to see it, but if we meet a clean-shaven white-haired old man wearing a cassock and a dog collar, then I’m off!’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Monday, 17th June

  A LUMINOUS LAYER of pre-dawn mist hung over the Broads like a widow’s veil. The only sign that the sun was about to rise was the merest hint of blue edging the horizon to the east. The sky above remained as black as pitch.

  Stanley Garbett would not normally be up a
nd about this early. He certainly wouldn’t have been when he was still working. It was over five years since he’d retired, and at seventy-one, he was finding it increasingly difficult to remain lounging in bed for hours on end, as he used to do when he was younger. His bladder now had him up before four o’clock every morning, and once awake, it was almost impossible for him to get back to sleep. He would lie there staring at the ceiling, becoming increasingly worried about the smallest of things, such as whether he’d turned the gas fire off before going to bed, or if he’d remembered to lock the back door. The longer he remained, the darker his imagination would become. For example, if he had forgotten to turn the fire off, was the living room now ablaze with him trapped upstairs, and no way to escape? Or if he had neglected to lock the back door, was there someone in the kitchen at that very moment, knife in hand, preparing to climb the stairs and stab him to death?

  Foolish nonsense, of course, but six months ago he’d woken to discover that he had forgotten to turn the gas fire off; and there had been several occasions when he’d left the back door unlocked, giving anyone the opportunity to wander in.

  He blamed his memory for all of this. He’d never admit to it, at least not to anyone else, but it was nowhere near as good as it used to be. Before his wife died it had always been as bright as a button; he’d rarely forget anything. But within just a few months of her passing, he’d noticed it had begun to grow dull. Two years on, and he was lucky if he could remember what he’d had for dinner the day before.

  Watching a program on TV about how to keep his brain active had given him the idea of taking up a new hobby. According to the programme, you didn’t just have to exercise the body; you had to do something similar with the mind, and apparently one of the most effective ways of doing so was to learn something new.

  Fishing was the obvious choice, given his location. He’d lived in and around the Broads all his life, and had certainly seen enough people huddled along the many river banks, hiding amongst the reeds, waiting, watching, or more probably sleeping. He’d often thought about it, but never so much that he’d acted upon it. Before he retired, he hadn’t the time, and afterwards, frankly, he couldn’t be bothered. But if doing so would help him to keep his mind sharp, then he was willing to give it a go.