by David Hodges
David hodges
ROBERT HALE
Contents
Author’s Note
Before the Fact
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
After the Fact
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although the action in this novel is set in the Avon and Somerset police area, the story itself and all the characters in it are entirely fictitious. Similarly, at the time of writing, there is no police station in Highbridge – this has been drawn entirely from the author’s imagination to ensure no connection is made between any existing police station or personnel in the force and the content of this novel. Furthermore, some poetic licence has been used in relation to the local police hierarchy and structure, and some of the specific procedures followed by Avon and Somerset police in order to meet the requirements of the plot. Nevertheless, the policing background depicted in the novel is broadly in accord with the national picture and these little departures from fact will, hopefully, not spoil the reading enjoyment of serving or retired police officers for whom I have the utmost respect.
I would particularly like to stress that, although the nightmare flooding scenario, which forms the background to my novel, did take place on the Somerset Levels in the winter of 2014 – with tragic devastating consequences for this beautiful part of the world and so many of its inhabitants – the hilltop village of Lowmoor, as depicted in the story, is purely fictitious.
I would like to add my sincere admiration for the people of the Somerset Levels, whose courage and vibrant community spirit during the long months that their homes and businesses were overwhelmed by the waters is a lesson to us all.
David Hodges
BEFORE THE FACT
February 2014
Rain. Cold, heavy, unstoppable and virtually continuous for the past six weeks. Some weather experts cited climate change; others said it was just a cyclical process that occurred naturally, while many of the locals were convinced it was due to poor maintenance of the river system. All seemed agreed, though, that the series of powerful storms that had ripped through the south and south-west of England – piling momentous waves over the sea walls and flooding vast tracts of the countryside – were the worst for 250 years.
The patchwork of fields making up the bulk of the wild Somerset Levels were beyond saturation point; they bled into overfull rhynes that in turn were trying to discharge their loads into rivers already bursting their banks. Inland lakes formed which were only separated in places by fast disappearing hedgerows and grass strips. Combined with high spring tides and whipped up by seventy to eighty mph winds, the swollen waters developed a terrifying ferocity all of their own, engulfing roads and flooding low-level farms and other properties with impunity.
On the higher ground, the elfin lights of the small village of Lowmoor flickered in the deluge as sheets of water cascaded from the rooftop gutters of the cottages, creeping up the slope towards the local inn and, just beyond it, the ancient Norman church that, despite the rain, found itself bathed in the eerie white light of a smoky moon. Marooned by the still rising waters and now accessible only by boat or helicopter, it seemed to the hundred or so inhabitants as if they had been returned to the Dark Ages, virtually abandoned by the rest of mankind, like the poor wretches of a leper colony or a community struck down by bubonic plague.
The girl in the green anorak was scared – very scared – and it had nothing to do with the weather. She had missed the late afternoon boat service that had been set up by volunteers to enable villagers to get to shops, schools and work places and she had stupidly not thought to arrange for the local man whom she had persuaded to ferry her to the isolated village in the first place to return for her. Now she was stranded until the regular morning boat arrived at around ten – and, with telephone lines to the village down and her mobile phone dropped somewhere when she had fled, she had no means of contacting anyone. Standing at the end of the street, staring at the water lapping her booted feet, she shivered as the wind moaned over the flooded Levels. It plucked at her clothes and drove the rain into her face inside the anorak’s hood with painful force; the water bouncing off the bare skin of her thigh where she had cut herself on some barbed wire on a wall she had had to climb over. Only the cold had reduced the pain, but she could still feel the wound throbbing and she knew the bleeding hadn’t stopped. What a mess!
She had contemplated trying to wade through the water, between the twin lines of hedgerows that marked what had once been the main road in and out of the village – such was her desperation – but common sense had prevailed. She had been told earlier that the water was at least four feet deep and she could see in the way it swirled and twisted in the moonlight that it held a deadly strength which would sweep her away before she had gone even a few feet. Furthermore, the hedgerows bordering the edges of the road disappeared in places along its length, which meant that it was virtually impossible at times, even in broad daylight, to see where the road ended and the fields began, let alone trying to do so on a rainy night.
She knew they would be out looking for her by now and turned to stare back up the street through the sheets of water being jettisoned from the gutters of the cottages, but she saw no one. They would be expecting her to hide somewhere in the house or its grounds and would be checking all the usual places, but when they came up with nothing, they would start thinking about the village outside and then it would only be a matter of time before they found her – even in this weather.
She had to find a secure hiding place – somewhere they would never think of looking, but where? She was effectively on an ‘island’, a few acres consisting of a dozen cottages, a church, a pub, a small shop and a farm. There were some fields, of course, and a copse, but she didn’t fancy spending the night out in the open. The farm had a couple of barns but that was the first place they would look and, as the farmer had already given up and left after moving his herd out, who would be there to stop them? As for the pub, in the absence of evening customers, that had now closed and was battened down against the wind, so she would get no help there. Then she thought of the church, the ancient rambling building with its bell tower, crypt and sacristy. That might be a possibility, but she would have to hurry; her pursuers were probably already out in the rain looking for her even as she thought about it.
Swinging round, she pulled her hood tighter about her face with one hand and ducked her head against the rain as the wind slammed into her from behind like a giant’s massive fist.
The gate into the churchyard was wide open, blown back by the force of the wind, with the bottom corner jammed into the sodden grass. The gravestones stood out in the moonlight, crooked broken teeth grinning obscenely as she ran along the gravel path to the porch, praying that the double doors would prove to be unlocked.
There was a latch on the right-hand door and it cracked like a pistol shot, raising hollow echoes in the vaulted interior. The door itself opened quietly enough when she pushed it open, however, and she peered into a heavy gloom only partially relieved by the moonlight streaming through the big rose window above the altar.
The place appeared deserted, but she stiffened involuntarily as the building trembled slightly under a sudden gust of the powerful buffeting wind. Pulling a small torch from her pocket, she swi
tched it on to probe the shadows where the moonlight failed to reach and made a slow hesitant approach along the nave towards the chancel, her footsteps ringing on the stone-slabbed floor. At first she saw only lines of pews and the stone busts of medieval figures peering at her from high in the vaulted roof but then, entering the chancel, which was separated from the main body of the church by a carved wooden screen, her gaze fell on a low-level door set deep in the stone wall to one side. The crypt? It had to be and it was as good a place to hide as any. Turning sharply to head through the choir stalls towards it, she bent down and twisted the ancient iron ring that served as a handle, praying that the door would prove to be unlocked.
And she was in luck. There was a loud ‘crack’ and it swung inwards on creaking hinges, releasing a blast of cold stale air. The beam of her torch revealed a narrow stone staircase dropping away before her and she breathed a sigh of relief – somewhere to hide. But that relief soon turned out to be premature. Following the stone steps down into the darkness, she caught the gleam of water as she rounded a curve in the wall, just feet from the bottom, and moments later the steps came to an abrupt halt.
Moonlight probed the subterranean vault through small, square iron gratings set in the floor of the church above and she didn’t need a torch to tell her that the crypt was flooded, maybe to a depth of several feet. The central stone pillars marched away in the light like ghostly white sentinels and the lids of the stone sarcophagi were only just visible above the gently eddying water which continued to seep through holes and cracks in the foundations from the waterlogged earth.
Muttering an oath, she turned quickly and headed back up the steps, her mind in overdrive. There was no time to look for another hiding place outside the church. She had to find somewhere else within the building and quickly. Even now one of them could be walking through the gate and up the path. The west tower. That was her only real alternative. She could hide in the bell chamber, concealed behind one of those massive bells, but first she had to see if the door to the tower was unlocked, like the crypt.
As it turned out, however, she never got the chance to find out. The grating sound of the crypt door being pulled open was followed by heavy footsteps on the steps above her and, even as she froze where she stood, extinguishing her torch, another more powerful torch probed the darkness around the curve of the wall that temporarily shielded the new arrival from view. She was trapped.
CHAPTER 1
Detective Inspector Ted Roscoe was a committed cynic. The job and a failed marriage had done that to him. Twenty-eight years at the sharp end of police work, dealing with murderers, drug addicts, armed robbers and paedophiles – including ten years of marriage to a wife who had humiliated him by leaving him for another woman – had not blessed the balding ex-Royal Marine with a sunny trusting disposition or a favourable impression of his fellow man – or woman for that matter. The scowl that was etched into his slab-like features when he stomped into the CID office in Avon and Somerset’s Highbridge police station was certainly not indicative of someone with a sunny outlook either and Detective Sergeant Kate Lewis looked up from the file on her desk with a wary frown as the office door gave way under the force of his heavy muscular frame.
‘Guv,’ she acknowledged, smoothing her shoulder-length auburn hair back from her pretty freckled face and climbing to her feet. ‘Coffee?’
‘Where is everybody?’ he demanded, noting, as his dark boot-button eyes swept round the room, that she was the only one there. ‘On bloody strike?’
She sighed and swung away from her computer screen to face him. ‘Both Jamie Foster and Fred Alloway are out dealing with the theft of diesel from a couple of farms on the Levels, Guv,’ she said. ‘Seems we have some nasty arseholes taking advantage of the flooding to carry out raids on abandoned properties.’
He grunted. ‘What about your other half?’ he sniped. ‘At home, with his pinny on, doing the washing up, is he?’
There was a flash of irritation in her blue eyes as she crossed to the coffee machine in the corner. She was well used to her boss’s caustic, intimidating manner and his frequent derogatory comments about her husband but they still got to her. ‘Hayden is actually dealing with a misper inquiry,’ she said tightly. ‘Has been since he came on this morning.’
He grunted, raising an eyebrow. ‘So, what does he want – a bloody medal?’ he growled, then added almost as an afterthought, ‘What misper?’
Kate poured him a mug of black coffee and turned to hand it to him before returning to her desk and settling herself on one corner with her ankles crossed. ‘Woman journalist – Ellie Landy – missing from her digs in Highbridge. According to her landlady, who reported her missing, she left the place three days ago to go off somewhere and never came back.’
Roscoe slipped a wad of chewing gum in his mouth and began chewing furiously as he digested the information. ‘Journalist? How old?’
‘Twenty-one, I believe.’
‘Twenty-one?’ he echoed and, to Kate’s incredulity, managed to take a gulp of his coffee without swallowing the gum. ‘Not a juvenile then, so why are we wasting time on her? She’s probably over the side with some local hunk.’
‘For three days?’
He shrugged. ‘It happens.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe she decided on an extra-long lie-in.’
Kate gave him an old-fashioned look, wincing as he blew a large bubble with his gum, then sucked it back in, leaving a grey trace attached to the underside of his Stalin-like moustache.
‘We still have to make inquiries,’ she went on. ‘She could have fallen foul of the flooding and drowned. Some places are under six to eight feet of water.’
He snorted. ‘Yeah, and she could have just done a bunk to avoid paying the bill – or even been abducted by the bloody tooth fairy!’ He waved an arm dismissively as he turned towards his office at the end of the room. ‘Get the control room to call up that “missing link” of yours and tell him not to make a meal of it – I’ve got his soddin’ annual appraisal to do yet.’
Kate made a sour grimace, straightening and reaching back across her desk for the phone. But she never got to ring the control room; they rang her even as her hand closed on the receiver.
The conversation with the operator was short – and anything but sweet – and Kate’s freckled face was grim as she set the phone down and crossed the room to Roscoe’s office.
He looked up quickly when she entered after a peremptory knock and his eyes narrowed as he read the expression on her face.
‘Problem?’ he snapped.
She nodded. ‘Sus death on the Levels.’
‘Sus?’
‘Woman found wedged amongst some driftwood in the River Parrett.’
‘And?’ he queried, sensing that there was more.
‘ID card on the corpse suggests she’s a journalist named Ellie Landy.’
‘Shit!’ he breathed.
Kate treated him to a tight ironic smile. ‘No sign of the tooth fairy, though, Guv,’ she added with just a hint of malice. ‘Perhaps she’s the one having a lie-in.’
Hayden Lewis looked hot and flustered when he stumbled into the small pumping station, which clung to a spit of land just above the flooded landscape, and it was evident that he had raced to the scene as soon as he’d been told about the dead woman. His green Parka was undone to reveal a badly creased pink shirt that hadn’t been tucked into his trousers properly and the rain had plastered his mop of untidy fair hair to his head like a miniature wet haystack. For ever seen as a look-alike of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, on this occasion he looked more like a refugee from the twilight world of the meths drinker and Kate closed her eyes briefly in resignation as he stood there gaping inanely at the corpse of the young woman in the green anorak stretched out on the floor on a tarpaulin the other side of a line of blue and white police tape.
Kate took a deep breath. ‘Ellie Landy by the look of it,’ she said tightly before he asked the inevitable question. ‘Uniform found her press
ID card in a coat pocket with her wallet.’
Hayden nodded, but avoided meeting her gaze. ‘Darned shame,’ he mumbled.
Roscoe studied him narrowly and slipped a wad of chewing gum into his mouth. ‘Oh it’s that all right,’ he growled. ‘So, what do we know about her?’
Hayden looked puzzled. ‘Know?’
‘Well, you were following up the misper inquiry, weren’t you?’
Hayden abruptly cottoned on and nodded again. ‘Oh that, yes. Not much joy at present, sir.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s likely she was down here reporting on the flooding.’
‘What a surprise, Sherlock. Like half the bloody media, I would think. What paper was she with?’
‘Not sure yet.’
Roscoe studied at him, chewing slowly. ‘Don’t know much, do you?’
‘Working on it, sir.’
Roscoe’s gaze lingered for a few seconds. ‘Then you’d better work a bloody sight harder, Lewis, hadn’t you?’ he snapped.
‘I think she was with some London news agency, sir,’ the uniformed sergeant standing just behind Roscoe cut in. ‘There were half a dozen business cards in the wallet in her anorak, but I didn’t make a note of the name. The wallet’s in my car, if you want me to check?’
The DI dismissed the offer with a wave of his hand but half-turned towards him. ‘Anything else?’
The skipper shook his head and Roscoe frowned. ‘Mobile? Notebook? Anything like that?’
‘Not that we could find, sir, though we didn’t conduct a thorough search – thought it best to wait until the pathologist had taken a look at her first – but maybe she wasn’t working at the time.’
‘Maybe,’ Kate cut in, ‘but I can’t see a journalist going anywhere without a mobile, even if she left her notebook at home.’
‘Perhaps she was using the mobile when she fell in the river?’ the sergeant suggested.
Roscoe emitted a non-committal grunt, then turned back to the corpse as the portly man in the protective overalls straightened up from his crouched position beside it, panting heavily.