Deep Waters

by Patricia Hall

  ‘She took most of the kids’ stuff with her,’ Dowd said reluctantly. ‘She must have got a taxi, or maybe someone she knew gave her a lift.’

  ‘We’ll check the railway station and the bus station,’ Baker said. ‘Have there been any strangers hanging around here recently?’ Dowd gave that infinitesimal hesitation again.

  ‘There was a young woman talking to Connie last week, said she was doing research or something and wanted to take some pictures of the fairground. Sounded a silly sort of story to me. When Luke went missing, I wondered if she was involved in that.’

  ‘Did she leave a name?’ Baker asked, although he guessed that if she did it might not be genuine. But to his surprise, Dowd nodded.

  ‘She left it with me, as it happens. On a bit of card, but I gave it to Connie. There were phone numbers in London.’ He glanced away, crushing his hat down on his head as if it might help him. ‘I don’t read very well,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Anything else you can remember about this woman?’ Baker insisted.

  ‘She told Connie she’d been to the local rag, looking for something. Maybe they’ll know who she was.’

  ‘Right,’ Baker said. ‘If you hear anything from Connie Flanagan, I want to know about it. Without fail, understand? In the meantime, we’ll step up the search for Luke and see if we can track down this mysterious visitor Connie had before she left. And we’ll try to find out who dumped Luke’s father on Maplin Sands, though there can’t be much evidence out there with the sea washing over the sands twice a day. I just hope to God the boy’s not out there as well.’

  Harry Barnard answered the summons from DCI Jackson with a certain weariness. A conference with his boss every day, he reckoned, was over the top. But as soon as he opened the door to Jackson’s office he realized that this was something new in the scale of things. There were two men in the office – Jackson himself, who was standing by the window, looking out, with his back to the room, and a man Barnard did not recognize wearing the uniform of a commissioner at Scotland Yard sitting comfortably in Jackson’s chair.

  ‘Ah,’ the stranger said, and there were layers of meaning in the tone, by no means any of them encouraging. ‘You’re DS Barnard. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  Jackson turned back into the room.

  ‘This is ACC Cathcart, who initiated the search for Ray Robertson recently, for reasons which we discussed. That search has now become a top priority.’

  ‘Sir,’ Barnard said, his mouth dry.

  ‘I know you have been kept at arms length from the murder case in Whitechapel, for very good reasons,’ Cathcart said, his eyes like flint. ‘But in the light of some information that has just come to hand from Essex, I need some information from you which may be relevant to the inquiry into Rod Miller’s death. Have you been to Essex recently, Sergeant?’ Barnard took a deep breath before concluding that there was no easy way out of this. Kate, he thought, would probably never forgive him.

  ‘A couple of times,’ he said. ‘I went to Canvey Island with my girlfriend on Saturday, to keep her company while she was taking some pictures, and then we had a night out in Southend. Took me back a bit.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Cathcart pressed. Barnard sighed.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I gave my girlfriend a lift out there again the night before last,’ he said. ‘She can’t drive and she wanted to help a friend – well, not a friend exactly, someone she’d met through work in Southend. This woman wanted to get herself and two kids from Southend to Clacton in a hurry. It sounded like an emergency, so I agreed to help.’

  ‘And you got stopped on the A12 for speeding, in your red Capri,’ Cathcart said.

  Barnard nodded. ‘Stupid thing to do,’ he said.

  ‘So where exactly did you drop this woman and her children?’ Cathcart snapped.

  ‘At her aunt’s house,’ Barnard said reluctantly. ‘I don’t know the address exactly but it was close to the pier. She just told me where to turn. We watched her go to the door with the kids and a couple of bags she had with her. When someone let her in, we left.’

  ‘And does she have a name?’

  ‘Connie Flanagan,’ Barnard said. ‘Her boy’s disappeared and she was trying to drop out of sight. She was very scared. The Essex police know all about it.’

  ‘That’s not all the Essex police are concerned about today, Sergeant,’ Cathcart said. ‘There have been some major developments since Mrs Flanagan unexpectedly took herself off with your help. I’m sure they’ll now want to talk to her urgently.’

  ‘So how did your girlfriend come to be in contact with her?’ Jackson broke in, his face flushed and angry.

  ‘She was taking some photographs on Canvey Island and then did some research at the local paper in Southend. It was initially all to do with the 1953 floods. There’s some redevelopment on Canvey that her agency is interested in.’

  ‘Did you go to Essex on any other occasions, Sergeant? With your girlfriend, maybe?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Barnard said. ‘I talked to her about Canvey before she went. I was in the army in ’53 and ended up trying to get people out, then filling sandbags for days afterwards … It’s not a place you volunteer to go back to if you saw it then. I talked to her about the flood, obviously, but she went there and to Southend on her own, apart from those two occasions.’

  ‘The Essex police will want to talk to Miss O’Donnell,’ Cathcart said. ‘We’ll let them make their own arrangements. They don’t like interference from the Yard. You can warn her that there will be questions, probably later today.’

  ‘Have they found Connie’s son?’ Barnard asked, fearing the worst and suddenly feeling very cold.

  ‘Not her son, Sergeant, it’s her husband who has been found dead. So, as you can imagine, they want to talk to his wife urgently.’ Barnard stared at the commissioner, a whole raft of wild possibilities running through his mind.

  ‘And on the other matter, Sergeant?’ Jackson broke in. ‘Have you heard anything more on the whereabouts of Ray Robertson?’

  ‘No, guv,’ Barnard said. ‘I saw his ex-wife again last night. She’s haunting me. But I told her the same as the last time. I’ve no idea where Ray Robertson is. For all I know he could be dead too.’

  Two police officers from Southend arrived at the Ken Fellows Agency at midday. Harry Barnard had already warned Kate that they would be contacting her, but it didn’t make her feel any more comfortable when they arrived. The news that Connie Flanagan’s husband had been pulled out of the marshes dead had shaken her, and the two men did not look enchanted when they realized that the limited space Ken and his photographers worked in would give then no privacy at all.

  ‘The local nick?’ the younger man, the one who had introduced himself as Sergeant Mason, asked. Mason shook his head.

  ‘Don’t think the boss would like that,’ he said. ‘I think, miss, it would be better if you came back to Southend with us. This may take some time.’ Kate shook her head angrily.

  ‘It’s a long way to go, for not very much,’ she said. ‘Can I ring my boyfriend to tell him what’s happening?’

  ‘That would be Sergeant Barnard would it, miss?’ Mason asked. Kate nodded, startled that they already knew so much about her.

  ‘In that case, best to leave him out of it,’ Mason said. ‘We’ll need a statement from him eventually, so we’d rather you talked to us first. We don’t want you comparing notes, do we?’ He gave her a smile which was not really a smile at all. It reminded Kate of an anticipatory shark. ‘Sorry,’ he added, as an apparent afterthought. ‘Do you have a coat?’

  Kate turned towards Ken, who was standing in his office doorway looking bemused, but she could see little encouragement there. Angrily she pulled on her coat, picked up her bag and followed the two policemen down the stairs and out on to the street, where they had parked an unmarked car half on the kerb. Mason held open the back door for her and got in beside her.

  ‘Chin up,’ he said, with an attempt at a smile. ‘It’s n
o worse than going to the dentist.’

  TEN

  Kate O’Donnell sat in an uncomfortably hard chair in a small, slightly smelly interview room with only an opaque window high in the wall opposite her. She had been there, becoming increasingly impatient, for an hour, delivered by a smirking Mason and his taciturn colleague, then apparently ignored. She had nothing to read and had not been offered anything to eat or drink, or even a visit to the lavatory. As the hand on her watch flicked up to the hour she decided that enough was enough, got out of her seat, and opened the door on to an empty corridor. She listened carefully before heading in the direction of faint voices to her left.

  The corridor led her to a door and when she opened it she found herself facing a busy office where plain-clothed officers mostly had their heads down over files or glued to telephone receivers. For a second no one appeared to notice her standing at the open door, but eventually it was DS Mason who realized she was there and who hurried over to her.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he asked, evidently not best pleased to see her. ‘Have you finished with the DCI?’

  ‘I haven’t even started with the DCI!’ she said. ‘I’ve been sitting there like a lemon doing nothing for an hour. I need a drink and a visit to the lavvy, la, before I burst.’ Mason glanced at his watch and winced.

  ‘I’ll show you where to go,’ he said. ‘And see if I can find the guv’nor. He’s a busy man.’

  Kate scowled at him and followed him back down the empty corridor, where he indicated a door.

  ‘Go back to the interview room after, petal,’ he said, looking faintly embarrassed, though not as much as Kate thought he should be. ‘I’ll get you a cuppa.’ He was as good as his word and came back with tea and a packet of biscuits.

  ‘The DCI says he’ll be ten minutes,’ he said, though it was twenty before DCI Jack Baker opened the interview-room door and came in, surrounded by a cloud of cigarette smoke, closely followed by Mason.

  ‘Right, young lady,’ Baker snapped. ‘I want a statement from you about your contacts with Connie Flanagan and an explanation for why you’ve been interfering in police operations in this part of the world. So let’s have it. What were you doing in Southend in the first place?’ Kate placed her empty mug in front of her carefully and met Baker’s belligerent stare full on.

  ‘I was working,’ she said flatly before outlining her assignment on Canvey Island and how she had come to move on to Southend to seek some help from the East Anglia News.

  ‘Right, I’ve had a word with that old fool Frank Garside,’ Baker said. ‘I hope you’re paying him a decent whack for his help. I can’t see how they came to send a dolly bird like you to do a man’s job. Anyway, that’s by the by, your boss’s problem I suppose. How did you meet Mrs Flanagan, then?’

  ‘I’d never been to Southend before,’ Kate said, ignoring Baker’s insults with difficulty. ‘I walked down to the seafront and had a look at the pier. It’s famous, after all, isn’t it? And then I thought it would be interesting to take some pictures of the funfair, but it was mostly closed. But Connie Flanagan was there and we got talking. The next time I came to see Frank Garside, to look at some more pictures, I found her son had disappeared.’

  ‘There was no real panic over that at the time,’ Baker said defensively, not meeting her eyes. ‘His mother thought he’d probably gone off with his father. The parents weren’t on the best of terms, it seems.’

  ‘So Connie said,’ Kate agreed. Baker ran his hand over his bald head, slightly nervously, then lit another cigarette. He had got it wrong about Luke, she thought, and she hoped the boy had not suffered for that misjudgement.

  ‘So tell me how and why you and DS Barnard became the good Samaritans and took Mrs Flanagan all the way to Clacton.’

  ‘She was terrified,’ Kate said flatly. ‘According to her it all went back to some robbery years ago, with the two men just out of prison. Her uncle was supposed to be looking after her and the kids, but she still didn’t feel safe. With her husband and the boy missing and, as far as she could see, the police not taking any interest, she wanted to get out. I’d given her my phone number and she rang me and asked if I could help her get to Clacton. She sounded desperate, so we took her. I can’t drive, so Harry Barnard offered to take us all in his car.’

  ‘Well, she’s back now, silly cow,’ Baker said with no vestige of sympathy. ‘And for all I know, you have significantly slowed down a murder inquiry by interfering. Give DS Mason a full statement of everything that happened after you met Connie Flanagan, including what your boyfriend got up to. I hear he’s not flavour of the month at Scotland Yard. So don’t leave anything out, young lady. I’ll be passing a copy of your statement to the Met in case they want to take any action of their own.’

  ‘What we did wasn’t illegal,’ Kate said fiercely. ‘She was in trouble and had two small children with her. Why couldn’t we help? Nobody knew her husband was dead at that stage. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if she thought he was, and Luke as well. If you’d taken the boy’s disappearance seriously from the start, none of this would have happened.’

  Baker stood up ponderously and for a moment Kate thought he might hit her, but he did no more than thump the table hard, his face the colour of a ripe tomato.

  ‘You and your dodgy boyfriend – and don’t think they haven’t filled me in on him from A to Z – are riding for a fall.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to Connie now?’ Kate persisted, even as DS Mason flinched in his chair.

  ‘At this moment she’s downstairs in a cell getting ready to answer some questions,’ Baker said. ‘And her uncle will be next. They think they’re a law unto themselves, these fairground families. It’s about time they learned they’re not.’ He turned on his heel and slammed the interview-room door behind him.

  ‘And where are the children?’ Kate asked Mason, who looked slightly embarrassed.

  ‘They’re being looked after. For the time being at least, they’re staying with their auntie in Clacton.’

  Mason allowed himself a glimmer of a smile. ‘Where’s that bloody awful accent from? Glasgow, is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Liverpool, la,’ Kate said. ‘Where I come from you don’t mess with anyone who comes from Scotland Road. Or anyone who knows John Lennon, for that matter. Which I do. So now what more can I tell you about a law-abiding drive – well, nearly law-abiding – from Southend to Clacton that you don’t know already? We did someone I’d met down here a favour, that’s all, and I don’t see why I had to be dragged back like a criminal for no reason at all. Do you?’

  Kate took the train back to London and strap-hung on the Northern Line back to Highgate and Barnard’s flat. He was not there and she made herself a cup of tea before coming to a decision she had been mulling over on the rackety train journey back from Southend. Decision reached, she phoned her flatmate in Shepherd’s Bush and spelled out her plans.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Tess Farrell asked. ‘You and Harry have been through a lot together.’

  ‘True,’ Kate said. ‘But being dragged down to Southend and interrogated like that was a step too far. He didn’t even make a phone call to see what was happening to me. He must have known I was there. They wouldn’t have come to London to pick me up without telling the local police, would they? I’ve not heard a word from him.’

  ‘You used to say he couldn’t call you from work,’ Tess said. ‘Talk to him when he gets home.’

  ‘No,’ Kate said firmly. ‘I want to give him a shock. And I want a break from the blasted police and all their works.’ Kate was slightly surprised herself at the depth of her sudden anger. Tess was right, she and Barnard had a history of trouble which in large part stemmed from her own insatiable curiosity about the new world he had introduced her to. But they had always been on the side of the angels and had had backup from his colleagues when it was needed. Yet this time she’d been scooped up by the Essex police with little excuse, bullied and spat out again, with not a gli
mmer of an apology and without so much as a phone call from Harry to reassure her. Enough was enough. He could see what it was like to come home to an empty flat and not know where his lover was.

  ‘I’ll see you in an hour or so,’ she said.

  She went into bedroom, flung most of her clothes into a suitcase, left a brief note on the kitchen table for Barnard and within ten minutes was making her way back down the hill to Archway underground station lugging her heavy suitcase, not quite sure whether she felt relieved or devastated by what she had done. By the time she arrived at the flat she still technically shared with Tess, her friend had cooked a meal and put clean sheets on her bed.

  ‘I assume you’re staying the night,’ she said. ‘Although Harry’s been on the phone already. He’s obviously seen your note and he says he’ll come over later when you’ve calmed down a bit.’

  ‘I’m perfectly calm,’ Kate said, knowing she sounded far from it, and dumped her suitcase on the bed. ‘It’s not about calmness, it’s about how I want to live and this was definitely not the way I wanted to spend the afternoon – being harassed by policemen, essentially because we did a woman a favour. I think I’ve had enough of cops for a bit.’

  ‘Even Harry?’ Tess asked as she presented Kate with sausage and mash. ‘Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Even Harry,’ Kate said. But when push came to shove and Barnard was sitting in his car outside the flat hooting his horn, Kate pushed the curtains back and stared intently into the ill-lit street outside unsure what to do. He flashed his lights and then got out of the car and stood on the pavement with his arms wide looking up at her. Kate shrugged helplessly and went downstairs to meet him. Even in the poor light, she could see that for the first time since she had met him he looked crumpled and defeated.

  ‘What did I do, honey?’ he asked. ‘I knew nothing about what had happened until the DCI told me just before I was leaving. I didn’t know what had happened and I didn’t know where you were. Then Southend said you’d gone back to London and wouldn’t tell me any more. I’m so sorry, Kate. They’re all bastards.’ Kate could feel the tears running down her cheeks, although she did not seem to be in control of them or anything else.