The Drowning Ground: A Novel

by James Marrison

  ‘That’s not what the people who saw you up there say.’

  Gardner looked at his hands and shrugged. ‘Well, I can’t help that,’ he said shortly.

  ‘Let’s go back a bit,’ I said. ‘Frank Hurst was up on Meon Hill. He was working there when you decided to go to see him. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes. He was fixing some old fences, by the looks of it. I don’t know farmer stuff. Hardly noticed I was there to begin with. Even though his dog was barking like mad. Stupid sod.’ Gardner laughed.

  ‘So his dog was already tied up when you arrived? Tied to a tree.’

  ‘Cujo you mean? Yeah, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered.’

  ‘And you went over there to speak to him because you were angry with him. But you didn’t know about the tapes. You didn’t know that he was having you followed.’

  Gardner’s shoulders hunched. He looked at me balefully.

  ‘You must have found out somehow, though,’ I said. ‘Somehow you found out that he was having you looked into. That’s why you went to confront him when you heard he was up on his field.’

  ‘I got a phone call,’ Gardner said quietly. ‘A few months ago he called me straight out of the blue. Just as I got home from work. I didn’t even know who it was to begin with. All I heard was this breathing and then this scary, creepy old man’s voice on the other end. That and his bloody dog barking in the background. He started telling me that I’d better watch my step. I honestly didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.’

  ‘But he accused you of something. Must have come as quite a shock, considering you’d been so careful.’

  Gardner swallowed and his voice rose. As he had done back at the station, he made a good attempt at seeming indignant. He was rather skilled at it. ‘Well, none of it was true,’ he said. ‘I’m not like that. Like I said, it’s just a lot of talk, and I was innocent the last time. And I told him so and all. Told him to mind his own fucking business. Nothing happened out there.’

  ‘But he phoned you. That’s what you’re saying? Frank Hurst phoned you one night at home and he gave you a warning. He told you to stay away.’

  Gardner opened his mouth as if to protest some more, but, when he could see I was grinning at him, he shut it again with a loud, wet slap. He pushed his head against the soft corded fabric of the sofa. ‘He told me to … he told me to stay away…’ Gardner’s voice trailed off. His eyes became woeful. He didn’t seem able to say it.

  ‘He told you to stay away from kids,’ I said bluntly. ‘He told you to stop hanging about schoolyards.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gardner said and sighed. ‘I asked him where he’d heard it. He wouldn’t say. Jesus, the guy was really … the guy was really crazy.’ Gardner laughed a little desperately. With an abrupt movement he shifted forward and then stood up.

  ‘I don’t even know how he got my number.’ He fell silent and smoothed back his hair. A tuft of it sprang back up almost immediately.

  ‘So what happened?’ I said.

  ‘I got fed up with it.’

  ‘He phoned you more than once?’

  ‘Yeah. Told me his name and said if he ever heard … if he heard I was doing anything like that with kids, he’d come looking for me. He threatened me. Said he’d break my neck. Or worse. Well, no one can talk to me like that. I did some asking around and found out where he lived, and I went round his house to tell him to leave off.’ Gardner’s voice had become hoarse all of a sudden.

  ‘But you couldn’t get anywhere near him.’

  ‘No. Bloody dog comes tearing round the front as soon as I get outside the car. Got all these bars and all. Like Fort Knox it was.’

  ‘So you could never have it out with him,’ I said, almost sympathetically. ‘Not in person. Until that day you heard he was up in his field.’

  Gardner looked down at his knees. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  ‘And you were doing a job nearby, I suppose.’

  ‘Over in Bampton. The owner told me. She said she’d just seen Hurst. She couldn’t believe how’ – Gardner’s voice became high and upper-class – ‘how that awful man dared to show his face. Not after what he’d done to his poor wife. She got in a big huff about it. Daft cow.’

  ‘And so off you went?’

  Gardner nodded. ‘Said I had run out of paint and I went on over there.’

  ‘In your van?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you had it out with him?’

  ‘No, I told you. I just wanted to tell him to mind his own business. He just stood there and took it. Didn’t seem to care one way or the other. Didn’t even seem to be listening. He just stood there staring at me and then he went back to work. Like talking to a fucking zombie, it was, and so I walked back down the hill and went straight back to work. I was gone less than half an hour.’

  ‘I suppose you can prove that?’

  ‘Just ask her. She’ll tell you. One of them posh new cottages in Bampton, like I said.’ Gardner grinned a little, getting back his confidence again.

  ‘But who’s to say you didn’t go back there,’ I said. ‘When Hurst was leaving the field and there was no one else about.’

  The grin vanished.

  ‘Where did you go after the job?’ I said.

  ‘Home. I went home.’

  ‘You didn’t go out? See anyone?’

  ‘No. I was knackered.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Had a few beers. Watched the telly.’

  ‘Talk to anyone?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Might have. But only on the phone.’

  ‘And there’s no one who can back that up?’

  ‘No,’ Gardner said miserably. ‘There isn’t.’

  ‘And the first time you ever spoke to Hurst was when he phoned you out of the blue.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gardner said.

  ‘And so how did he know who you were? Why you? Didn’t you wonder about that?’

  ‘My name was all over the papers, if you remember. One of your lot must have leaked my name when those two girls went missing. Those journalists made my life hell for a while. People still give me dirty looks about it. Hurst must have just found out where I lived and got my number. Had nothing better to do.’

  ‘And you’ve been here all night?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gardner said.

  ‘All right,’ I said. I took out the key from my pocket and chucked it on the table. Then I crossed the living room, relieved to be heading outside and into the fresh air.

  ‘So that’s it? You believe me, then?’ Gardner shouted after me. ‘You believe me about Hurst?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and turned around. ‘I do.’

  ‘And the tape? The tape Hurst had of me.’

  ‘Oh, that. I suppose I’ll be handing over the tapes first thing tomorrow to my superintendent,’ I said breezily. ‘She often takes a dim view of things like that. So I imagine there’ll be a full-scale investigation.’

  I watched and waited. Suddenly there was a look in the corner of Gardner’s eye. He licked his bottom lip. Then he bounded across the room.

  ‘You fucking foreign bastard!’ Gardner shouted. ‘You think you can come in here, into my own home and…’ And then he did exactly what I had hoped he would do all along. He threw an awkward and unpractised cross, which missed me by a mile. I punched low and hard at the base of Gardner’s gut, driving the fist in hard.

  Spittle flew out of Gardner’s mouth. He slumped to the floor. He pawed at his stomach, looking wildly around in panic as he tried to catch his breath. I looked at him in a detached kind of way, wondering if he were going to be sick. Then, almost gently, I picked him up, led him to the sofa and sat him down. I sat next to him. I took the key from the table and put it firmly in the palm of his hand and closed his fingers around it. Then I let myself out the front door.

  30

  Graves watched the lights of the ambulance fade. Nancy’s body had been taken away, and there was nothing else he could do here. The crime-scene manager ha
d placed a number of evidence markers in the sludge where her body had lain, and the whole area by the garages was cordoned off with yellow police tape. They had not been able to find the murder weapon. Graves turned away from the sharp glare of the arc lights and let the forensic team take their pictures and get on with it.

  He walked along the side street towards town. He glimpsed the backs of ill-kept gardens. There was a shopping trolley lying on its side and an old car seat with a few ripped black bins surrounding it. In a few minutes he had left the alley behind. The shops had closed hours ago, and the lights were more diffuse, making the core of the town leaner somehow. But there were a lot of pubs and restaurants still open on the main street, and the town was busy with Christmas drinkers huddled together, walking in the cold.

  Graves knitted his hands behind his head as he walked. He’d have to get a lift back to the station, as Downes had taken the car. It didn’t matter. The last hours since they had found Nancy had passed in a blur. When he had returned from his search of the train station, Downes was already on the phone to Collinson. Then things had really started to move. Graves nodded his head in approval as he walked, still impressed by the speed of the operation.

  Collinson had talked first to the assistant chief constable of Gloucestershire and then the divisional commander, whose area of responsibility encompassed both Cheltenham and Tewkesbury. This message had been instantly relayed to all officers currently in the area, while a further handful of officers, who could be spared, had been dispatched immediately to the alley to cordon off the crime scene. Nearly all the police officers now on duty in the town were canvassing the pubs, cafés and restaurants using the concise description of Nancy that Downes had provided for them. But so far none of it had done any good. No one in the café near the clock remembered seeing her. So Nancy must have met up with the man somewhere else, but where was anyone’s guess; neither Nancy nor anyone else had been seen entering or leaving the alley.

  At the other side of the street, near an electronics shop, Graves saw two police officers making their way along. A man and a woman around the same age. They moved lithely through the small crowds on either side of the high street. The male officer disappeared inside a pub and reappeared a few moments later, while his partner continued to search outside, looking round an empty side street. Another policeman was cutting through a small group of people farther up the street.

  Graves wandered towards the male and female officers, who waited for him when they saw him approach. ‘Nothing, sir,’ the female officer said. ‘I’m afraid no one seems to have seen her.’

  Graves knew deep down it was hopeless. Her killer had disappeared into the shifting crowds hours ago.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Keep trying and let me know the moment you hear something. All right?’

  They nodded and went straight back to work. He needed to think, so he walked on, leaving the shopping centre behind and heading up the slope towards the Georgian houses at the top of the rise. It was much quieter up here. Soon the pubs and restaurants would close, the town would be completely deserted, and they would have to call it quits. He moved quickly past the grey walls of a bank. He peered through the windows of an Italian restaurant and then went in. But some constables had already paid them a visit and none of the staff had seen Nancy.

  For a moment, he stood on the steps of the restaurant, thinking. It was impossible to know if the man she had been meeting had gone down that darkened alley with her, or if he had been waiting for her amongst those old garages all along. He might also have followed her. Graves put his hands in his pockets. Since he’d arrived he’d seen the results of three murders up close: Hurst; the girl under his house; and now Nancy. And he’d been here less than a week.

  He tried to unravel the events of the last few days and to make some sense of them, but it all seemed to merge. Hurst’s lying dead on the hill. His house standing cold and dark on the other side. The fire leaping into the dark. The girl wrapped in the dirty folds of the groundsheet. The broken lines of her body exposed to the merciless onslaught of the fire. And now this.

  Shotgun’s face, when he had seen Nancy lying on the ground, had been difficult to read. Almost expressionless. But his eyes had glimmered. Anger, perhaps, darkening his face like a cloud. Or horror. His own face, Graves was sure, had betrayed his shock. He pushed the image away and turned back towards the centre of town, determined to make as early a start as possible the next day. Somebody must have seen something. He rang Downes on his mobile, but there was no reply.

  31

  As promised, early the next morning, I took the tapes and the files into the station and handed them over to Collinson. I marked Gardner’s tape with a felt-tip pen and made sure it was on the top of the pile. Graves came with me.

  I didn’t begin with Nancy. Instead, I began with Gardner, and after I finished talking there was a long silence. Collinson moved forward in her chair and leant across her desk.

  ‘But if it’s not…’ She stopped and let the sentence hang in the air. She nodded to herself several times.

  ‘But who the hell is it?’ Graves said suddenly, and then looked taken aback by his outburst. ‘If it’s not Elise Pennington down there and it’s not Gail Foster,’ he said more quietly, ‘whose body have we got in the morgue?’

  Graves hunched in his chair and blinked. He looked worried. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to start searching, sir? Some of the other men and I,’ he said, motioning outside the glass walls of the office, ‘we can make a start on it right now and try to get some kind of match. Female. A hitchhiker or a runaway maybe. Someone who never came back. I…’

  ‘Thank you, Graves,’ I interrupted politely, ‘but it’s not going to be necessary.’

  ‘But why, sir? How do you know that there aren’t more down there? We haven’t finished searching yet. And how can you be sure that one of the girls isn’t down there just because of the rucksack? The DNA will tell us that once Brewin’s done the comparison anyway.’

  I didn’t reply immediately. On the other side of the wall one of the officers tried to throw a paper ball into the bin and missed. There was a dry sarcastic round of applause.

  ‘When Hurst found out that Gardner was hanging around that school, he warned him off,’ I said finally. ‘He told him, and in no uncertain terms, that he’d go round there and break his neck if he ever found out that Gardner was up to his old tricks. Hurst was getting on a bit, but he was perfectly capable of doing something like that if he felt like it. I thought that it was because of a link between the two. That Hurst was afraid they’d all be exposed. It made sense, considering he’s got a dead body under his house. But, according to Gardner, the first time he came into contact with Hurst was when Hurst called him completely out of the blue and told him he’d better watch his step.’

  ‘You believe him?’ Collinson said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Actually, I do. Gardner hadn’t even known he was being followed. But Hurst warned him. He phoned him up and told him to stay away from little kids or else. And to Gardner, Hurst was a total stranger. Which of course changes everything.’

  I looked at Collinson and then at Graves. ‘It means that Hurst wasn’t acting to protect his own interests. He was genuinely concerned about the well-being of those children. He wanted to protect them.’

  ‘But,’ Graves almost cried out, unable to contain himself, ‘that doesn’t make any sense at all. I’m sorry, but why would he care about a bunch of kids? The man was a bloody paedophile. He’s got a dead schoolgirl buried under his house, for God’s sake.’

  ‘There was never any schoolgirl,’ I said. ‘I was wrong.’

  ‘What?’

  I glanced across at Graves. Graves looked shocked and indignant, as if I had just pulled a trick on him to make him look stupid. Graves looked at Collinson, embarrassed at his outburst.

  ‘The private detective whom Hurst had hired was given instructions,’ I said. ‘Hurst didn’t just want these men monitored. He wa
s after something more specific than that. He wanted to know if there were any places where they kept going back to. Out-of-the-way spots. Spots out in the country or isolated buildings, that kind of thing. He called it a “secret place”, a place that only these men knew about. Bray told me that he thought it all sounded a bit silly. Childish even. But Hurst was very serious about it.’

  ‘So what was he looking for?’ Collinson said.

  ‘A burial ground,’ I said. ‘He was looking for a place where Elise and Gail may have been buried, or where they might have been taken and then disposed of.

  ‘If one of these men kept returning to a specific place, it’s possible that’s where they had taken the girls after they’d been abducted. But it wasn’t those two girls Hurst was really concerned about. What he really wanted to know was what had happened to his daughter. Rebecca.’

  ‘But he knew perfectly well what happened to her. She left home,’ Graves said.

  ‘But why hasn’t she come forward?’ I said. ‘It’s been on the news and in all the papers. She must know by now. So where is she? None of the villagers seem to have seen her, have they?’

  ‘No,’ Graves said. ‘Well, no one ever mentioned seeing her again. And anyway that doesn’t necessarily mean she hasn’t been back. She could have been back loads of times and just gone to the house and not bothered with the village.’

  ‘No, she didn’t come back,’ I said. ‘Bray would have told me if she’d come back. Because that’s what Hurst hired him for in the first place. He hired him to find his daughter. But what do we really know about her?’

  I waited. Neither answered, but I had a feeling Collinson had a pretty good idea. So I said, ‘All we really know is that Hurst came back one day and she was gone. Bags packed. Her room empty. She went…’ I paused, trying to remember the unusual expression Bray had used, ‘she went walkabout. That’s what the villagers are saying. One summer she just took off with all her things, and she never came back.’