But I didn’t have to. ‘So is that what last night was about?’ she said, banging aside the items inside a small locker in the stern of the boat. ‘You were checking up on me as well as Andrew?’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Really? Because that’s how it feels.’
‘Look, I didn’t know for sure about Mark Chapel until I saw the photograph. And I couldn’t have told you anyway.’
‘Seems like there’s quite a few things you can’t tell me.’
‘That’s right, I can’t,’ I shot back, my own temper fraying. ‘What would you have done if I had? Tell Trask your sister was seeing her old boyfriend again as well as Leo Villiers?’
That made her pause. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘But I don’t think for a minute Andrew’s done anything wrong.’
I didn’t point out that’s what everyone says. No one wants to believe someone close to them could be a murderer. I’d made that mistake myself in the past.
The jetty bounced as Lundy came back along it. The DI looked vaguely troubled.
‘Everything OK?’ I asked.
‘Can’t get hold of anyone. I’ve left a message, though, so they know where I am if they need to get hold of me. Assuming they can reach me out there,’ he added sourly.
Lundy waited for Rachel to respond, but she seemed chastened now. He cast a worried eye on the boat as she pulled another life-jacket from the locker.
‘You sure this thing’s big enough to take out of the estuary?’
Rachel put the lifejacket behind her and closed the locker. ‘It’ll be fine. I’ve taken it out in a lot worse weather than this.’
Lundy scratched his neck doubtfully. ‘Well, if you’re still set on it, we need a few ground rules. If the weather turns nasty, or if it looks too rough once we’re out in the estuary, we turn back. Same when we get out to the fort. If there’s anything I don’t like the look of, we’re turning the boat straight round. I’m sticking my neck out over this as it is, so I don’t want any arguments. That clear?’
Rachel nodded meekly. Lundy sniffed, obviously expecting more resistance.
‘Right, then. Just so we know.’
I steadied the boat for him as he clambered awkwardly on board. The two of us sat on the bench seat in the middle while Rachel sat in the stern next to the tiller. Lundy wrestled his way into the lifejacket she gave him, struggling to make the straps meet across his barrel chest before abandoning the attempt.
‘Don’t suppose you’ve anything any bigger?’
‘Sorry, they’re all one size apart from Fay’s.’
He regarded the lifejacket draped on either side of his stomach and shook his head. ‘I must be mad.’
But once we were under way it didn’t seem to worry him. As the small boat picked up speed, he sat with his face turned to the wind, showing every sign of enjoying himself despite the circumstances. I saw him pop a couple of antacid tablets in his mouth, and remembered what he’d said about the hospital calling him. It occurred to me that could be the reason he’d not put up more of a fight when Rachel insisted on doing this. He was bound to be worried about what the hospital wanted: perhaps the trip to the fort was a welcome distraction.
Rachel sat at the tiller, dark hair streaming back in the wind. She wore the red waterproof jacket I’d first seen her in under her own lifejacket, and seemed more relaxed herself as she guided the boat between the banks of the creek. Seeing me looking, she gave a smile. But it was an uncertain one, and I wondered if she was having second thoughts. The stiff wind turned the water’s surface fretful and dull. There was no rain as yet, but the sky was a leaden grey, with a darker band on the horizon.
‘You said the forecast was bad?’ I asked Lundy over the drone of the engine.
He nodded. ‘Supposed to be getting a bit feisty later on. It’s a spring tide tonight as well, so that should be fun. We’ll need to be back well before then.’
After a few minutes the creek merged into the estuary. Out here it was more exposed, and the chop gave way to marching waves. The boat juddered with rhythmic thuds as they smacked against the prow. Each impact flicked beads of cold spray against us, leaving a taste of salt on my lips.
The sea fort’s towers lay dead ahead, but the visibility beyond the estuary mouth wasn’t good enough to see them clearly. A slight haze, more like smog than a sea mist, obscured the tall structures, reducing them to vague skeletal shapes in the distance.
The boat slowed, its engine noise dropping as we entered the Barrows. All around us low, smooth humps rose from the waves. Rachel manoeuvred through them, scrutinizing the water for disturbed or smoother patches that might indicate a sandbank hidden below the surface. Once we were through the bottleneck she gunned the engine again, and we had to brace ourselves as the boat pitched against the bigger swells. As we approached the mouth of the estuary, Leo Villiers’ house came into view off to one side. It stood on the wooded promontory, the curved glass of its bay windows reflecting black as they faced out to the open sea.
Then we were past, and heading out of the estuary. Up ahead, the old army fort’s remaining towers rose from the waves. They looked even stranger seen from this close, alien and forbidding relics that had lived past their time. The towers were set a short distance apart, each consisting of a square, two-storey metal box supported on four inward-sloping legs. Flimsy-looking gantries and catwalks sprouted from their sides, now warped and rusted.
The nearest tower looked the most intact. Rachel headed for it, but Lundy leaned towards her.
‘Go by the others first,’ he told her, raising his voice to be heard. ‘Let’s rule them out before we take a look at this.’
Rachel obliged, looping the boat around the outside of the towers. But it was already clear that if her sister had taken the photographs of Villiers’ house from the fort, she hadn’t done it from either of the two towers that stood further out to sea. The first was little more than an empty shell. Fire had blackened the metal walls of the platform, though judging by the ochre coating of rust it wasn’t recent. The roof was gone, and so was the external framework of walkways and ladders I’d seen on the website photographs. The structure had been completely hollowed out, and as though to emphasize the point a seagull flew up through a gaping hole in the platform’s base, flitted past glassless windows, and emerged above the roofless structure a moment later.
The second tower had fared even worse. The upper structure was completely gone, leaving the four spindly legs to rise from the sea like the corners of an incomplete pyramid. Lundy took off his glasses and wiped the salt spray from the lenses.
‘OK, let’s take a look at the other.’
Rachel took the boat in towards the last tower. Even out here the sea was silted up and shallow. I could see the paleness of seabed where a sandbank had formed around the third tower, even breaking the surface in places. Swells smacked against the structure’s legs, creating a criss-crossing chop that buffeted us as we approached. The sound of them became more resonant as Rachel brought us in underneath.
Up close the tower was bigger than I’d expected. The legs were tubular and made from reinforced concrete, now badly spalled and draped with seaweed below the waterline. It swirled from them like green hair, and every now and then there was an echoing boom as a larger wave crashed into the hollow tubes.
I looked up as we passed beneath the shadowy underside of the tower, sixty feet above my head. The girders that formed its base were badly rusted, stained white with bird droppings that added an ammoniac sharpness to the smell of seaweed. Rachel bumped the boat alongside a mooring platform set between the fort’s splayed legs and quickly tied a line around a mooring post. As the swells jostled the boat, she went to get hold of the rusty ladder that extended down into the water.
‘I’ll go first,’ Lundy told her. ‘If anybody’s going to get dumped in the sea, it’s better off being me.’
Timing the swells, the DI hauled himself up the ladder and onto the steel platf
orm. Brushing the rust off his hands, he stamped on the platform, making the whole thing clang and quiver.
‘Seems solid enough. All right, up we come.’
Rachel went next, clambering easily up the rungs. I followed slightly less elegantly, but managed not to fall in. The ladder was blistered with corrosion, and the platform itself was little better. But Lundy was right: there seemed no imminent danger of its collapsing.
Following Rachel and Lundy’s example, I took off my lifejacket and looked around. Another ladder, this one newer-looking, ran up to a small gantry suspended above us. From there, a flight of metal steps led to a heavy-looking door into the fort itself. There was no other way in that I could see.
‘Look,’ Rachel said, pointing back towards the coastline.
Across the open sea, Leo Villiers’ empty house stood facing us on its rocky promontory.
Rachel took a pair of compact binoculars from a jacket pocket, and studied the house through them before handing them to Lundy. ‘It’s the same view as the photographs.’
‘Came prepared, did we?’ he commented as he raised the binoculars. ‘Not quite the same view. It’s too low down.’
‘So she must have taken them from inside. Let’s go and look,’ Rachel said, her impatience returning.
Lundy considered the ladder rising to the underside of the tower. ‘This shouldn’t be here. I’m not happy about …’ he said, and then broke off as his phone rang.
The musical trill sounded out of place, but at least it meant we were close enough to the shore for mobile coverage. That settled the question of Emma Derby’s not being able to call for help if she’d had an accident. Lundy fished in his pocket for his phone as it continued to ring.
‘I need to take this,’ he said, checking the display.
He moved to the other side of the platform to answer. Rachel watched him go, then turned back to the ladder and began to climb.
‘Rachel …’ I said, exasperated.
‘There’s no point standing around.’
She was already halfway up to the small gantry. I looked across at Lundy, expecting him to remonstrate. But the DI didn’t seem to have noticed. He’d turned away from us, and stood with his head cocked, listening to whatever was being said on the other end of the phone.
Great. With a sigh, I began to climb as well. This ladder was an extendable one, made from lightweight aluminium rather than rusted steel. Lundy had said the original access ladders had been removed years ago, presumably to keep people out of the towers.
Someone hadn’t let that stop them.
I wondered who.
I pulled myself through an opening on to the gantry. It was smaller than the platform below and caked with white droppings. The wind was stronger up here, cold and biting. Clambering to my feet, I saw that Rachel had already gone up the metal steps to the tower door. She tugged on the handle.
‘It’s padlocked.’
On one level I was relieved. Finding Stacey Coker’s body was still fresh in my mind, and if the tower held any surprises it was better for the police to find them rather than Rachel.
But after coming all this way I knew I’d be disappointed if we had to turn back now. Rachel gave the door a frustrated thump. ‘Do you think there’s another way in?’
‘I doubt it.’ The fort had been built for coastal defence: it was supposed to be hard to get into.
‘Have we got anything to smash the padlock?’ she asked as I went up the steps.
I could imagine what Lundy would say to that. ‘No, and I don’t think that’s going to break in a hurry anyway.’
Both the padlock and the hasp it was fitted to were new, made from heavy-duty stainless steel. They looked as though they’d resist anything short of a sledgehammer.
Rachel rattled it in frustration. ‘This is ridiculous! How did Emma get inside if it was locked?’
I didn’t know, but I was beginning to feel uneasy. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
I turned away, but Rachel stayed where she was. Crouching by the door, she reached in her pocket and pulled out her sister’s heavy bunch of keys. She went through them, then selected one and tried it in the padlock.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Trying Emma’s spare keys. I’ve no idea what some of them are for, and she must have got inside somehow.’
‘We should get back to Lundy,’ I said impatiently, as she tried another.
‘Just a couple more.’
‘You’re wasting your—’
There was a snick as the lock came open. Rachel grinned down at me.
‘Ta-da.’
I felt the hairs prickle on the back of my neck. It was one thing if her sister had made a single trip to the fort to take photographs. But if Emma Derby had padlocked the tower – and presumably was responsible for the replacement ladder as well – that suggested she’d been out here more than once. No one would go to all that trouble over an abandoned sea fort without good reason.
Not unless there was something inside they didn’t want anyone to find.
Rachel was already taking the padlock from the hasp. Before I could say anything a piercing whistle came from below. Going to the edge of the gantry, I looked down and saw Lundy, craning his neck with two fingers poised in his mouth. He took them out when he saw me.
‘We need to go,’ he called.
‘There’s something here you should see,’ I shouted back. There was a groan of dry hinges behind me. Glancing round, I saw Rachel struggling to swing open the heavy door.
Lundy’s voice echoed up to me again. ‘It’ll have to wait. Something’s come up. I need to get back.’
Whatever it was, it must be serious. The DI looked shocked, I realized, looking down at where he stood on the lower platform. No, not shocked. Stunned.
‘OK,’ I called, and turned back to Rachel. ‘Come on, we’d better—’
The doorway was empty.
Shit. I ran up the steps. The heavy steel door stood open, revealing a dark corridor with flaking metal walls. It disappeared into shadow, but there was no sign of Rachel.
‘What’s going on?’ Lundy’s voice sounded annoyed as it bounced off the metal roof.
I turned my head to shout. ‘Rachel’s gone inside.’
The DI’s muttered ‘Jesus wept’ carried up to me, then I heard his footsteps ringing on the ladder. I stepped through the doorway, unable to see far in the dark interior.
‘Rachel?’ I yelled. ‘Rachel, we need to go!’
There was a muffled response from somewhere deep inside the tower, but it was too distorted to make out. I swore, torn between going after her and waiting for Lundy. But from the laboured pace of his footsteps on the ladder, it would take the DI longer than us to reach the top. Swearing, I went further inside.
It was cold in the tower. The air was clammy, with a peppery smell of mould and rust. Once in the corridor I found it wasn’t as dark as it seemed from outside. Dirty light fell through small, rectangular windows, the glass brown with filth. Bright squares of daylight spilled through broken panes, revealing an antiquated generator standing like a sentinel at the foot of a flight of steps. More rooms were visible beyond it, but they were only hinted at in the gloom. Every surface was crusted with muck and salt, while corrosion lent a ruddy tint to the flaking metal walls and floor. It was like a sepia photograph brought to life.
Fragments of rust and old paint crunched underfoot as I went past the generator to the stairs.
‘Rachel?’
‘Up here.’
Her voice echoed down the steps from the floor above. I started to go up, but a clattering from outside announced that Lundy had reached the gantry. A moment later the DI appeared in the open doorway, red-faced and out of breath.
‘Where the hell is she?’
‘The next floor. The door was padlocked but her sister had a key.’
‘Bloody hell!’ He shook his head, his breathing laboured. ‘We’ve had this all wrong. All of it.’
‘What d
o you mean?’ I asked, but he waved it away.
‘Later. Let’s go and find her.’
I paused to jam the heavy steel door back against the wall, testing it to make sure it wasn’t going to swing shut, and then hurried after him. Our footsteps rang on the metal steps as we climbed to the next level. At the top was another corridor, branching off to one side as well as straight ahead. Open doors gave glimpses of ruin. The rooms had been stripped except for empty metal shelves, upended bedsteads and broken chairs. A faded pin-up of a smiling young woman in a swimming costume was still fixed to one wall, winking at the camera. Looking up I saw the steps continued to the roof, but the door leading out to it was closed.
‘Rachel? Where are you?’
‘In here.’ Her voice came from a room at the far end of the corridor, where a steel door stood ajar. ‘You need to see this.’
Lundy’s usually placid expression had been replaced by a tight-lipped anger as he marched in front of me down the corridor.
Whatever he’d been told over the phone, it had seriously rattled him.
‘That was bloody stupid!’ he declared, pushing open the door and going in. ‘I told you not to …’
He stopped.
After the dark squalor of the rest of the tower, the room was a surprise. Daylight flooded through its windows, and apart from empty metal brackets still fixed to the floor there was nothing left of its military origins. A glass booth had been built against one wall, where a peeling poster advertised a long-forgotten concert by The Kinks. Inside the booth two antiquated turntables sat on a desk, along with an empty microphone stand.
I’d known the fort had been a pirate radio station during the 1960s, but someone had been using it much more recently than that. The room had been decked out like a studio flat. The cold metal floor had been covered by a Turkish rug, and a folding table and chairs stood in front of a portable gas heater. There was a stainless-steel camping stove as well, while an improvised futon had been made by laying an inflatable double mattress on wooden pallets. There were other domestic touches: battery-powered lanterns had been covered with colourful pieces of cloth, and dog-eared paperbacks and empty wine bottles stood on a bookshelf made from house bricks and planks of wood. Fixed above the bed, a computer-printed sign in crimson text declared, If you’re not living your life, you’re already dead.
The Restless Dead Page 32