What if...
'Where are you going?'
I ignored her and marched towards Tam's Place. Maybe the police hadn't checked every room. Maybe Tamara was in there. I hadn't gone through all the rooms the other night. They might not have gone into the cellar. There was so much junk down there, why would you?
Just full of boxes, Sarge. I can hardly get my leg over.
Well don't tell your wife that, son. Get back up here, then. We'll tick it off the list.
How it might have gone. While he was sitting down there with a shotgun in one hand and Tamara's mouth under the other. Shh. Quiet as a mouse.
'Paul! Don't. Come with me. I want you to see something. I want you to come with me.'
I ignored her. I got as far as slipping the key into the lock before they came up behind me and told me to get into the car, there was someone who wanted a word. For a moment I considered resisting, but their hands on my arms were big and strong, and I was so weak. I was matchsticks.
Amy came too. We sat in the back of the unmarked squad car and ten minutes later we were sitting in an office in the police station. There was a photograph of a woman on the desk. Smiling. Happy. Miles from here.
DI Keble came in. He was humming a tune, something I recognised from my childhood but couldn't put my finger on. He unburdened his pockets of a wallet, a notebook, a tube of mints, a bunch of keys: put them all in his in-tray.
'I do that,' he said, as if anybody gave a shit, 'because the paper that gets put in there comes out so fast it almost shreds itself in mid-air. I don't like an untidy in-tray. I don't like...' he turned to face us. 'Pen-ding.'
He held up a file. 'This is pen-ding,' he said. 'This is waiting for action.'
'What is it?' I asked.
'This is child deaths. Kieran Love. And the thinnish boy we found in your chi-chi dirty weekender. Harry Parker. Six years old it turns out. He went missing a couple of years ago. I'd like to put this file in the out-tray. I'd like to stamp it with MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. I don't want to have to hand it over to the upper echelons while I stand there, picking trousers out of my arse and saying I'm stuck sir, sorry sir.'
'I want to report a missing person,' I said.
'Right,' he said, sitting down and putting the file, with a wince, back in his in-tray. 'Right you are, sir. I'll get my top men on it. They haven't got anything better to do. Just a couple of unsolved child murders but... fuck 'em, hey? It was probably their fault. Stupid little bastards getting separated from Mum. Not been taught the whole 'stranger danger' thing yet. Maybe a friendly old man with some ice creams in his hand. Want to see some puppies? Want to come and play with my toy trains? And in the car and off we go and hey, look at the bright side of it, you'll never have to worry about going to school and going to work and getting married to some bitch.'
'Her name is Tamara Dziuba,' I said, ignoring him. 'That's D-Z-I...'
He held up his hand and started writing on a notepad. He showed it to me. 'Like that?'
The note read: FUCK YOU.
'Professional,' Amy said.
'And who might you be?'
'I'm helping him.'
Keble stared at us both from under the brim of his hat, his heavy-lidded eyes penduluming between us as if he were watching a lazy tennis match. 'You look as though you both forgot to get out of the car before it fell into the crusher.'
'Are you going to arrest me for something?' I asked him. 'Because if not, I'm leaving. I'm going to talk to some real policemen who have got time for a missing person.'
'Oh, sit down Paul. We've all got time for a missing person. Plenty of time. We'll play anagrams with her name while we wait for her to turn up. I'm more interested in these dead kids. And why you fucked off out of town when I told you to stay put.'
'I was looking for Tamara. That takes precedence, for me at least... Look, I'm as sick as anyone else about Kieran, and this other child - '
'Harry.'
'Harry. Yes, it's awful. But a, it was nothing to do with me - '
'It's what they all say.'
' - And b, there's nothing I can do about it.'
'You could confess.'
'You think I did it, you arrest me.'
We were both getting red in the face. His mask was slipping. I could see how torn up about all of this he was. He was probably coming under a lot of pressure from his bosses to feel a collar. I said: 'If we were at school, this would be called bullying. Just because you have no suspects...'
'Oh, I have at least one suspect.'
'You think I could kill a child? I can barely cut up a roast chicken, Keble. I'm a mess.'
'Yeah, and some quadriplegics play football in the park right after they've picked up their disability benefits.'
'So you can't help me with Tamara?'
He shrugged. 'You can do what everyone else who reports a misper does. Fill a form in. We'll take it from there.'
'And what about this killer. This rapist. Where are you on that?'
'Rapist?'
I found myself wishing I could disappear into the cracks in this cheap plastic seat. Amy was looking at me too. Ruth hadn't reported it. Shit.
'It sounds as if you know all kinds of surprising information, Paul,' he said.
'What else is a killer, if he isn't a rapist?' I said.
'Oh, you have a philosophical angle on all this too? I'm not that busy, I suppose. I could sit here and listen to you for hours.'
'How about my accident?' I asked him. He frowned.
'Your accident?'
I pointed at my face with both index fingers. 'You think I got this looking in the mirror?'
'Beg pardon,' he said, 'but this isn't information exchange day. I dragged you in here for questioning. You tell me what you know.'
I chewed my lip for a while. 'A friend of mine, Ruth Fincher - '
'I know Ruth.'
' - she was raped. She thinks the person who did it is still around. So do I. He could have been responsible for my accident. He could be responsible for Tamara's abduction.'
'Hold on, kidder,' Keble said. 'Rapists, kidnappers... it's a big leap from someone who was merely missing a minute ago.'
'Did you search the B&B?' I asked. 'I mean, really search it?'
'Top to bottom. Why, any nasty little secret passages you not telling us about?'
I sighed, shook my head. 'I just... I suppose it was wishful thinking. I thought he might be there. This rapist. This attacker. He might have kidnapped Tamara and was... I don't know... keeping her there. He might have planted that body to distract me, to keep me off the scent.'
'You're worse than a conspiracy theorist, you are,' he said.
'Maybe I'm just doing your job for you,' I said. 'Maybe I'm making connections that you'll make, eventually. You know, infinite chimps and typewriters, all that.'
He looked as though he might react badly and I thought I'd pushed my luck too far, but then he laughed; short, gruff, a tension releaser.
'I've been through the files,' he said, and he reached for his Pending tray again, pulled out a manila folder without looking at the label on the front. 'There's not much to pass on, I'm afraid. You were the victim of a hit-and-run, yes. All we had was a report of a black Land Rover Defender.' He fingered past a couple of pages. 'No registration number reported. No description that might help us locate it. It was going fast and it was heading south. That's all. And it probably didn't have bull bars. Or you'd be dead, most likely.'
He put the file away. It was very thin. He steepled his fingers. Looked at me from under the brim of his hat. 'Now tell me more about this rapist.'
'I don't know any more. Ruth told me he was passing through. A drifter maybe, looking for work.'
'A hitcher?'
'Maybe. But maybe he stole a car. This car.'
'We've had no reports of a stolen car that matches this description.'
'You might check.'
'It would be in your file,' he said. 'Something to check up on. We're like that, th
e police. We check up, follow leads.'
'So what are you saying? I'm lying? Ruth's lying? She's pregnant by this bastard.' I felt hemmed in, but it was not the usual imprisonment imposed by my too-tight skin, my realigned bones. I needed to be outside. Every second playing bullshit whiff-whaff with this clown was another second in which Tamara might be suffering.
'In my experience, murderers don't become rapists. And if they're rapists first, they're unlikely to move on to murder, but if they do, they're likely to rape first. And Kieran Love was not raped.'
'So you're saying we've got two violent criminals on the loose here?'
'I'd say one. I'd say that Ruth's rapist is long gone. And if she'd thought to report it, he might be behind bars by now.'
'So what now?'
'You go home. And concentrate on getting well.'
'I'm not a suspect?'
'No. You're a pest. But not a suspect. Which is not to say I won't be keeping an eye on you.'
'What about the children?' Amy asked. The question blurted out of her. It was like the stopper being removed from a bottle of shaken soda.
Keble sighed. It was the sound effect equivalent of what now?
'The bones, the skulls that were retrieved from the wrecks. What of them?'
'They're being carbon dated. They're not recent.'
'Doesn't mean there wasn't a crime committed.'
'Well our path man said they were pre-19th century. So whoever did it, well, I'm not going to dig him up and bring him in and ask him if he wants sugar with his tea. Sleeping dogs and all that.'
Amy stood up sharply, her calves barking against the lip of her chair, forcing it back on the cheap lino floor. I wasn't sure if it was the chair leg, or Amy, or indeed Keble, that had squealed. 'Those children were murdered. Their parents did it. Something has to be done or -'
'What? Why?'
'I tell you something has to be done otherwise -'
'Sit down, Amy.'
'Otherwise -'
'Amy...'
'It will happen again. It is happening again.' She was screaming. I stood up and caught her arm. She was so tense I thought a piece of her might break off in my fist. I led her to the door and thankfully she didn't resist. I walked her through the reception and out on to the street. I flagged a taxi and we drove back to Southwick in silence.
Chapter Fourteen
Bryning's Pit
Amy parked her Mini on the gravel in front of a wooden café. Neither of us were hungry. A determined couple in bright red fleeces were eating chips from a polystyrene tray. The wind was such that both of them were keeping the tray pinned to the table with their hands. They ignored a dog sitting on the floor beside them, staring forlornly at their meal. I watched its tail wag. Every time the man, or woman, lifted a chip from the tray, the tail would freeze as if in anticipation of a treat.
'That's a form of cruelty,' I said.
'Maybe they fed it before they came out,' Amy said. 'Maybe it's not even their dog.'
'Still...' I said. 'One chip.'
'How are you feeling?'
I looked at her. She was assessing me, like a doctor searching for signs of disease. I guessed I appeared as shaken by our episode at the police station as she did. 'I'm all right,' I said. 'Keble's just a showman. And a bully. I'm sorry you had to be a part of that. You didn't have be, you know.'
'He needed to be told,' Amy said. Now she turned her attention back to the café. To our left, the gravel had been built up into a kind of wall; perhaps it had been designed like that to protect this makeshift car park from stormy seas. Or maybe the wind had shaped it so. A tide clock indicated the times for high and low tide. There were no other cars here.
'Come on,' she said.
I struggled to get the door open. The wind kept trying to slam it shut again. Maybe it was trying to save me from what we were about to do. I followed her to the shingle and we hobbled over the rise to the spread of the beach. To our left, maybe two or three miles away, I could see the lighthouse in Southwick as it flashed its warnings out to sea. The tide seemed to be dragging the night sky into the village. Darkness was coming on quickly. Amy noticed it too.
'We don't have much time,' she said.
The dunes grew as we trudged south. Couch grass and marram bound them together to a point where the sand was disguised altogether. Rocks reared up ahead, pleated like a grey cloak.
'That where we're going?' I asked.
Amy nodded. Her breath was coming in stiff little stitches now. The terrain was affecting us both. The stones were loosely packed and kept falling away from each footstep. There was no feeling of firmness beneath, as if the shingle were suspended over an eternity of space; the camber of the beach was working against us. By the time we got to the rocks, the sky was a deep blue-green, as if it were trying to take on the colour of the sea. The cave resembled an open wound in this light. A large, dark stain on the sand in front of it could only have been sea water, but it resembled oil, or blood. The place was like an accident site. There ought to be ambulances. Police cordons. Helicopters. I didn't like it at all, and I said so.
'I have to show you,' she said. 'You have to see.'
She'd pulled a large Mag-Lite torch from her coat pocket. She switched it on and focused the beam, trained it on the mouth of the cave. Crabs skittered across the rocks. The gaping cave entrance was untouched by the light. It was absorbing it, sucking it out of existence, bending it like a black hole, unwilling to allow us to see what lay inside.
'They came here in 1772,' Amy said.
'Who did?'
'The parents. And again, a hundred years later. And they were meant to come here in 1972 as well. But something happened. There was no sacrifice that year.'
'Sacrifice?' It was difficult to pay attention to what she was saying and pick a route through the folds of rock at the same time. If I lost my footing here, it might set my recovery back months.
'There's strong death... I don't know what to call them... echoes? Stains? Something, anyway. There's something giving me the mother of all headaches whenever I go near this place. So the other day I went inside.'
The rocks increased in size. I was spending so much time navigating a route around them that I hardly looked up at the great, wet O of the cave entrance. The rock was like old flesh, damp and grey, hanging in wrinkles and creases as if it had melted and then hardened. I felt loath to touch it in case it had the same moist, springy feel of perspiring skin.
'Who was being sacrificed?' I asked, as much to distract myself from that horrible yawning entrance. 'Why?'
'Children, of course,' she said. 'Why do you think there are so few around here?'
'They're all being killed?' I stopped, shocked. I thought of Kieran Love and Harry Parker. How many more? I didn't want to go in there with her. I imagined the bodies of children - bulldozer loads - packed up against the walls, stalagmites rising from their cold, blue skin.
'No,' she said, and she stopped too, to catch her breath. I didn't know what was worse: keeping an eye on the cave myself, or seeing her standing before it, like some crumb that the mouth had temporarily missed. I saw the shadows of sharp rocks beyond the entrance, rows of them, like the inward curving teeth of a shark. 'But if they were here? Who knows? I think the families have left here, and stayed away. This is no place to bring up a child.'
We entered the cave. The temperature plummeted. Amy's torchlight, so bright when shone in the face, was incapable of picking out much detail in here.
'What's this place called?' I asked.
'Bryning's Pit,' she said.
'Sounds charming. There are better words, I'd have thought. Aperture. Opening. Cave, for God's sake. Why can't people just call things what they are?'
'There are worse words,' she said.
'Who's Bryning?'
'No idea,' she said. 'Person who found it? Dug it out? Died here? Some guy. Some girl.'
We concentrated on one foot in front of the other, until our eyes grew accustomed
to the dark, and our feet felt a little more confident. 'How do you know about 1972?' I asked. 'You said they were meant to come here?'
She was staring at the rock, feeling it with her fingers, really digging into its crevices, as if she might find something tucked in there, like the prayers to God posted at the Wailing Wall. She seemed to suddenly remember my question. 'It's like those circles in a tree that's been chopped down. Age rings? I feel the same... space between events. Big shock in 1672. Another hit a hundred years later. Ditto 1872. And then... not a blip. Not here, anyway. Kieran Love? Harry Parker? Yes. Hard impacts to the gut. But... different here. There was desperation behind it. Not the same. There was a calmness too. It was as if...'
She tailed off, and I thought she might have closed down, like a robot whose power cell has drained, or whether her pain had come back, thick and hard, cutting off her train of thought. Her eyes streamed. Could be cold. Could be pain. Could be memories.
'Amy?'
'It was as if these deaths here in the cave...' She took a deep breath. 'It was as if the people - the children - who died... wanted to die.'
We moved deeper into the cave. Whenever I looked back towards the entrance - the exit - I felt a brief pang of panic; the sky seemed to be getting darker out there. I was worried that it might degrade to the point where cave mouth and sky were indistinguishable. If we got lost in here and the tide came crashing in, we were finished. I thought maybe it was some kind of optical illusion. Perhaps a consequence of the eye coming to terms with the gloom inside the cave was that the outside appeared darker than it actually was. I hoped so, anyway, as Amy drew us deeper beneath the Suffolk earth.
She actually said, at that moment, or rather, muttered: 'Suffolk earth. Suffolk hate.' The acoustics were so good that I could hear every scrape of her feet. I thought I could hear her breathing. I thought I could hear the triphammer of her heart. Or it might have been mine. The beam of light picked out insane shapes in the rock. Moments of shocking pareidol that the mind rejected almost as soon as it had assimilated them. Creations made of rock and shadow that ought to have remained in the dark. But it was just rock, after all. I had to keep telling myself that.
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