by Jo Bannister
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ spluttered Donovan, his teeth chattering with cold and exhaustion, ‘but I need your help.’
With the gate finally behind them, the men on the quads didn’t see Donovan dive from the bank and swim to the little blue narrowboat or drag himself on board, or the boat move over to the near bank so that a small figure in a bright red coat could spring sure-footedly into the well. But it was a reasonable assumption that that or something very like it had happened. ‘God damn it!’
‘Don’t panic,’ warned Jim Vickery. ‘We don’t know who that is. They may not be able to help them; they may not be willing to.’
‘How well do you have to know somebody to let them use your phone? And he is a police officer.’
‘We know that, but they don’t and he can’t prove it. The doctor has his wallet. As for the phone, those things are about as reliable as your missus’s drop scones. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. This isn’t over yet. Damn it, lads, we’ve nothing to lose!’
‘I wish the doc was here,’ whined Alan Hunsecker. ‘He’d know what to do.’
‘I know what to do,’ growled Vickery. ‘Come on – back to Cowslip Bend. We’ll stop them there.’
Tyros on the Castlemere Ring always planned to picnic at Cowslip Bend. It sounded so charming, they imagined a watermeadow decked with wild flowers, the air full of the hum of bees and the occasional whistle and plop of a kingfisher.
Invariably they were disappointed and mostly they kept motoring. Cowslip Bend wasn’t a good place to stop. It was a tight turn complicated by dense willow scrub on both banks, and it was named not for the meadow flower but for an ammunition barge which failed to make the turn back in the 1880s and blew up. Some of the debris landed in East Beckham a mile away.
Even without a hold full of nitroglycerine it was necessary to slow down to manoeuvre a narrowboat round Cowslip Bend. Even little Periwinkle would have to inch her way round, and as she did it her prow and stern would come within a few feet of the bank.
Even on straight stretches narrowboats travel at only walking speed. The quads had no difficulty in reaching Cowslip Bend first.
‘Leave the talking to me,’ said Jim Vickery. ‘We don’t know what he’s told them. He may not have told them anything; or they may not have believed him. We may be able to get them on our side.’
‘I wish the doc was here,’ whined Hunsecker.
Sylvia was at the tiller. The elder at nineteen, the boat’s safety had been entrusted to her, and even without being quite sure where she was she could tell that the dark bend coming up was going to be tricky. She throttled the engine back to a notch above idle, and as the way came off the snub-nosed little vessel she steered towards the outside of the bend. When she was almost on the bank she put the tiller full over so that the bows swung across the turn. It was not an easy manoeuvre, particularly the first time of trying, but she judged both speed and angle accurately and Periwinkle made the awkward turn as if under the guidance of an expert.
It was not a misjudgement that made her brush against the willows on the northern bank, it was appropriate use of the space available. But it was what, cloaked by the canal-side vegetation, the men were waiting for. Hunsecker stepped calmly aboard at the bows, Vickery – tipping an imaginary cap to the astonished girls – at the stern. Within seconds they’d thrown the mooring warps to those waiting on the bank.
Vickery reached down and stopped Periwinkle’s engine. ‘Don’t be alarmed, girls,’ he said in his most unthreatening voice. ‘There’s been some trouble but it’s nothing to do with you. We’re looking for a man with a child. A tall man, dark; a little girl wearing a red coat. He’s abducted her. They were on the towpath five minutes since. Did you stop for them?’
Sylvia’s jaw dropped and she turned horrified eyes on her sister. ‘I said there was something strange about him! He abducted the little girl? My God!’
‘You saw them then?’
‘More than that. He was on board – he asked for help. He wanted us to hide them. He wouldn’t explain why, or what from, just kept muttering about the police. I didn’t trust him an inch.’
‘You were dead right,’ said Vickery with feeling. ‘Tell me – have you got a phone on board.’
Stella shook her head. ‘We brought one, but somebody’ – she looked daggers at Sylvia – ‘didn’t check the battery. It’s dead.’
Vickery tried to hide his satisfaction. ‘So where are they now? Below?’
‘You think I let someone like that on my uncle’s boat?’ Sylvia raised a blonde eyebrow. ‘I sent him packing. Last seen heading up the bank that way.’ Her arm indicated the direction of Sinkhole.
They were two slender teenage girls. Donovan had been sick but he was still a six-foot police officer. ‘How?’
‘I asked him to leave, politely.’ Sylvia gave a sly grin. ‘Then I turned the fire extinguisher on him.’
If it was true it was probably all to the good. At least they wouldn’t have to drag Donovan kicking and screaming off the boat and then decide what to do about the witnesses. On the other hand, it sounded a mite convenient. Vickery let his gaze fall. There were dribbles of foam on the deck. Maybe it was true.
He cleared his throat. ‘Listen, girls, it’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just that a kid’s safety is at stake, and ruthless people can make other people lie for them. Can I look round the boat?’
Stella was standing in the companionway, elbows resting on the roof. She made no immediate effort to move. ‘Who are you people – where are you from?’
Vickery had thought this out. ‘We’re from Castlemere. The kid’s my niece, my sister’s girl. The man’s her father. He’s trying to take her to Ireland.’
‘He did have an Irish accent,’ nodded Sylvia.
‘Right now it’s a family matter,’ said Vickery. ‘We get her back and we don’t need to involve the police. Which I’d rather not do, because they’ll want to know why my sister left the kid alone in the house. She could end up in care.’
‘I wish we could help,’ said Sylvia. ‘But honestly, the best thing you can do is go back the way you came. You’re bound to catch them, it’s miles to the next village.’
‘I know,’ nodded Vickery. ‘That’s what we’ll do. But – I’m sorry but you understand, I have to do this – I want to search the boat first. I won’t disturb anything and it won’t take five minutes. But I can’t risk him sneaking past us.’
For a moment nobody moved. The girls traded a glance; Stella shrugged. ‘You’re in charge.’
‘All right,’ decided Sylvia. ‘God knows I don’t want to be the reason a woman loses her child. Go ahead. Just be careful you don’t do any damage.’
‘I won’t.’
Stella swung aside and Vickery vanished below. Hunsecker went with him; the other two remained on deck.
No two narrowboats are exactly alike. Within the basic shell a wide variety of layouts is possible, and great ingenuity goes into fitting the maximum facilities into the limited space. Particularly on smaller boats storage is the biggest problem, so cupboards and cubbyholes are built into every available niche. Even the spaces under the floorboards are used, accessed by hatches and ideal for keeping beer cold.
So a cursory search of the boat – a saloon, a sleeping cabin, the heads, the shower compartment and a hanging locker – was completed within thirty seconds. But a proper search took longer. Every door, however small, had to be opened and a torch flashed inside to be sure no one was hiding behind it. Every hatch had to be lifted, and this meant moving the furniture and even the carpets; then someone had to lie full length on the floor and stick his head inside. If he got lucky, that person could expect a fist to come rocketing out of the darkness, so the job was undertaken with more care than speed.
Then there was the chain locker under the forepeak. The last time Jim Vickery was on a boat like this the chain locker contained a spitting, snarling whirlwind of a dog. Again, he lifted the hatch cautious
ly and lowered his head inside an inch at a time.
But there was no one else on board. After seven minutes Vickery was sure enough to make his apologies to the girls and take his leave.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘the damage to your bilge-pump – that wasn’t me. I found it like that.’
Stella looked at him interestedly. ‘What’s a bilge-pump?’
Vickery hadn’t really time to explain. ‘It’s what stops you sinking. But it needs a hose between the pump and the outlet. Could cost a few quid; could save you thousands.’
‘You’d think Uncle George’d know about things like that,’ said Sylvia severely. ‘Thank you. I’ll make sure he gets one.’
‘Get the fire extinguisher filled up again too. There’s nothing worse than a fire on a boat.’
‘Yes; thanks,’ said Sylvia.
‘Good luck,’ called Stella after the departing backs.
But the search party never picked up the trail again. They found the quad, shoved out of sight into some willow-scrub. A little way down the bank they found where Donovan had boarded Periwinkle, breaking the sedges and leaving a mud-slide to the water’s edge as he did. They could not find where he came out of the water again.
‘Maybe he swam over to the far bank,’ said Hunsecker. ‘If he did we’ve lost him.’
‘And leave the child? I don’t think so.’ The scorn in Vickery’s voice was mostly to hide the worry. ‘For one thing, we’d have found her by now.’
‘Could she have swum over too?’
The water was cold and dark, the banks steep. Thirty feet doesn’t sound far to swim, but every year people drown in canals. ‘Maybe they didn’t make it. Maybe they’ve solved the problem for us.’
‘Jim. Come down here.’
It was invisible from the top of the bank. But Hunsecker had climbed carefully to the water’s edge, and from there he had a view along the reeds. Something was caught among them. Something red.
‘It’s her,’ whispered Vickery. ‘That coat she was wearing: you could see it a mile away.’
‘What do we do?’
Jim Vickery thought. If both the fugitives had drowned they were safe. If Elphie had drowned and Donovan had made the far bank, they had as long as it would take him to find a phone to dispose of the body. Maybe East Beckham could stare down the police as long as the child could not be cited as evidence. Dr Chapel would know what to do. There seemed no point in hunting further: either the policeman was safe or he was dead. Right now it was more important to use what might be the limited time left to help themselves.
‘Give me your hand,’ said Vickery, stepping down the bank. ‘I can almost reach …’
The sodden bank gave way under him, and he found himself floundering in four feet of water. It was too late to care. He kept hold of Hunsecker’s hand and waded, chest-deep, along the reed line until he could reach with his other hand for the floating hem of the red duffle coat. With a kind of reverence he pulled it towards him.
‘Ah …’
There was no resistance. Not even Elphie could lie that lightly in the water. The coat was empty.
9
At seven thirty they were watching themselves on the television in Shapiro’s office. Superintendent Giles had made a statement after the shooting at Dunstan House. Neither Liz nor Shapiro had added anything to it, but both had been filmed outside the hospital. Liz thought she was putting on weight. Shapiro thought he looked as if he’d wandered off from a day-care facility.
‘We’ve had a busy week,’ he said defensively.
She cast him a wan smile. ‘We’ll have another. There’ll be a lot of questions to answer. A man ended up dead: somehow we have to justify that.’
He watched her with concern. ‘Is that giving you a problem?’
Liz looked pensive for a moment before responding with a gesture that was half a shrug, half a shake of her head. ‘I don’t think I had any choice. Whether Internal Investigations will see it that way is another matter.’
‘Why wouldn’t they? There’ll be a fatal shooting inquiry but I can’t see why it wouldn’t support your actions. The man who died had been terrorizing this town for a week. He’d burned Sheila Crosbie and stabbed Mitchell Tyler and was trying to infect a children’s home with typhoid. No one’s going to think you should have given it a bit more thought first. The people of this town will feel you did them a great favour.’
‘That’ll be a comfort when I’m looking for a job as a nightclub bouncer!’
Shapiro was dismissive. ‘Don’t worry about your career. It won’t damage you to have it on record that, when the alternative was watching other people get hurt, you took a difficult decision and did what was necessary.’
‘Assuming the record agrees it was necessary.’ She sighed. ‘It seemed so at the time. Now – I don’t know. Maybe there was something else I could have done. Maybe I should have shot to wound. Maybe I could have talked him down.’
‘You tried. It didn’t work. A man like that, it was never going to work.’
‘Maybe someone else could have made it work. You could.’
He shook his head, more annoyed than flattered. ‘Liz, I’m not SuperCop! I do the best I can, but I can’t work miracles and I couldn’t have turned Martin Wingrave into a reasonable man. He was a psychopath. It doesn’t matter what you or I think, he didn’t believe he could be stopped. There was only the one way.’
‘Tyler thought he could take him. Maybe if I’d helped … ’
‘Tyler only tried to take him because you’d got his gun! And he got three inches of wood chisel in his chest. If you hadn’t shot when you did Wingrave would have killed him. Then he’d have gone on to infect twenty-two children and eight members of staff with dangerous diseases. You did the right thing, Liz.’
‘Then why doesn’t it feel like that?’
‘Because good and decent people hate the idea of damaging other people, even those who’re neither good nor decent. What you’re feeling now, it’s about you not Wingrave. It doesn’t hurt because there was a spark of human decency left in him that was worth saving. It hurts because of who and what you are. Let’s be honest here: Martin Wingrave is no loss. I’m only sorry you were the one who had to do sit.’
‘It was your idea,’ she reminded him, troubled enough to be unkind.
‘I know. On paper that was a good decision too. Here’ — he tapped his chest – ‘it feels like a mistake. Next time this comes up, be damned to how it looks!’
Liz sighed and shook her head. ‘No, that matters too. And if you weren’t sitting here commiserating with me you’d be doing it with Jim Stark, and quite possibly he’d have a tougher time ahead.
‘If I wasn’t prepared to shoot people I shouldn’t have done the firearms course. I knew what it meant. I accepted that, just sometimes, shooting someone is the right and necessary thing to do. I still do. It’s just – you can’t help wondering. Logically, killing Martin Wingrave was both vital and urgent. So why don’t I feel – vindicated? Why does it feel so bad, so wrong?’
‘You have to wonder,’ said Shapiro sombrely. ‘To be unsure. It’s a necessary safeguard. You couldn’t give a gun to someone who was comfortable about using it.’
They sat in silence, lacking the energy to go home.
The phone rang. Shapiro picked it up. He listened without speaking for a minute, then he held it out. ‘Sorry, Liz,’ he said with an odd ring in his voice, ‘it seems today hasn’t finished throwing surprises at us yet.’
She took it, scowling. She really didn’t need anything more to deal with. ‘Yes?’
Shapiro watched, feeling the tiredness roll back, feeling a little warmth creep back into his heart, watching astonishment and then delight burst across her face like a sunrise. For a minute her lips moved, sketching questions and essaying responses, and no words came. Finally the pressure built up enough to burst the dam, and all the emotions whirling through her – shock, regret, relief, anger, incredulity, amazement, suspicion and impati
ence – erupted in one great geyser of a cry that filled the upper storey like a cheer and made the people downstairs look up in alarm.
‘DONOVAN!!???’
Just about then Dr Chapel was sitting on Sarah Turner’s sofa, holding a bag of frozen peas to his head and listening to Jim Vickery recount the events of the last hour. He did it in great detail, concluding with what he’d found floating in the reeds and what he hoped it meant. Chapel listened patiently because it was too late to do anything else.
‘So we came back here,’ finished Vickery. ‘We couldn’t see any bodies but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there somewhere. What do you think? – maybe we should make a proper search of the bank at first light?’
‘I think,’ said Dr Chapel carefully, ‘the police will be here in about half an hour. I think, if you want to kiss your children goodbye, now would be a good time.’
Vickery stared at him, appalled. ‘You mean it? You think he got away?’
‘I think he got away,’ nodded Chapel.
‘But – how? He couldn’t have swum the canal, not with the child in tow.’
‘He didn’t have to. They were on the boat.’
The foreman shook his head firmly. ‘I’m sorry, Doc, but you weren’t there. We searched that boat from stern to stern. No way could we have missed them.’
Chapel was still nodding – carefully because his head hurt. ‘You checked everywhere?’
‘I told you. The cabins, the lockers, the cupboards – even under the goddamned floorboards. They weren’t there.’
‘You looked underneath?’
Vickery stared at him as if only now beginning to doubt his sanity. ‘Underneath what?’
Chapel sighed. ‘Underneath the boat. Jim, what do you suppose happened to the hose from the bilge-pump?’
They were at the Posset Inn. It was the first place Periwinkle arrived that Donovan could count on getting help. He no longer expected to find his boat there, or his dog. But he found people he knew would protect him and Elphie if the East Beckham militia made a last desperate sortie this far, and he finally found a working phone.