Death Ship

by Jim Kelly

  Despite an all-points alert, there was no trace of Hartog at ports or airports: according to online Stena Line records, he had an open return ticket on the Harwich ferry to the Hook of Holland. Dutch police reported that his flat in Harlingen was deserted. Hartog’s life, superficially reconstructed, appeared bleak, except for a lifelong passion for swimming. He’d won a silver medal for the hundred metres backstroke at the Dutch national championships when he was nineteen, and was an instructor at a swimming club in his home town. A season ticket holder at Anderlecht, he also coached an under-eights junior football side.

  Shaw had the case file open at a page containing a translation of a letter from Hartog’s doctor to the Dutch police in response to inquiries about his patient’s health. Had his mental state been fragile in the period leading up to his disappearance? The answer was unequivocal: his mental health was stevig – ‘robust’.

  Suicide seemed unlikely. An accident while diving was the obvious, lethal scenario. But where was the body? This question seemed to bother nobody except Shaw.

  The Wash consisted – at low tide – of nearly 150 square miles of maze-like sand banks and tidal creeks; high tide transformed it into a treacherously shallow sea, bounded on three sides, but wide open to the north wind. Within this vast space a man’s body was a micron. Shaw’s superiors at St James’ had resigned themselves to the idea that Hartog’s body lay out in this liquid wilderness, lost for ever.

  Shaw’s perspective was very different. For five years he had been a volunteer on the lifeboat at Old Hunstanton, more recently the pilot of its small inshore hovercraft, which was designed to thread those self-same maze-like channels and sandy cuts. His relationship with the Wash was more intimate than most. History showed that this eerie lagoon always gave up its dead. Of the eighteen deaths recorded since 1950 on the coasts of the great inlet, only one body had not been washed up within forty-eight hours, and that had been found at Brancaster, just round Holme Point on the open north coast, on the third day.

  In the days after Hartog’s disappearance Shaw had piloted the hovercraft over the sands and mudflats in search of the Dutchman or his kit. The sluices and drains feeding the coastal marshes had all been checked. The beaches had been walked. There was no sign of the missing body. To Peter Shaw, this meant one of two things: either Hartog was alive or someone had weighted down his dead body.

  Lifting the telescope now to his good eye, he scanned the sea.

  Footsteps on sand are silent, so he didn’t hear Lena approaching and he jumped when she touched his foot, reaching through the opening between two slats of the ladder.

  Walking slowly – Lena never rushed – she rounded the lifeguard’s high chair to face her husband. She had a sinuous, cat-like step, Jamaican black skin, and a face made up of a collection of curves, which Shaw always felt reminded him of an African tribal mask, with its wide cheekbones and arched eyebrows.

  She was smiling, but a tear escaped from her left eye. ‘It’s Mum,’ she said. ‘She’s gone at last.’

  Lena had been brought up in Brixton, with younger siblings, while an estranged stepfather lived in north London. Her own father had died young, shortly after her own birth. Her mother, Muriel, still only in her mid-fifties, had been suffering from kidney failure for three years, living in a care home in Tooting.

  ‘She won’t see it now,’ added Lena, turning on her heel to encompass the beach. They’d planned to drive her up to see Surf!, although her mother seemed increasingly fearful of the world outside Lily House. Lena had showed her pictures, of the café and the shop, and the wide beach, hemmed in by the dunes, and her mother had seemed genuinely captivated. She’d asked for one of the images – of Fran and Lena standing in the shallows as the sun went down – to be framed and set beside her bed. Despite her relative youth, she had treated her illness as terminal from the moment of its diagnosis. This sense of inevitability had infused the entire family, and her death had been anticipated as a release from pain.

  For the last two months she had suffered from severe vascular dementia, brought on by a series of strokes, and failed to recognize Lena on her final visit, but for a lucid final few seconds as her daughter stood at the open door.

  Lena sat on the ladder, two steps below Shaw. ‘They called me because I’m the oldest, so I’ll have to tell the others. I’ll do it now. They’ll be angry – with the doctors, the nurses, me. They’re always angry. I wonder sometimes – when I hear them speaking to each other in whispers – why the anger seems to be reserved for me. I’ve always felt like an outsider.’

  The rest of the Braithwaite family was dysfunctional, harbouring a familial sense of injustice that had entirely bypassed Lena. Shaw had met the brother and sister at a family christening. They seemed to resent Lena’s path in life: the law degree, a high-profile job with the Campaign for Racial Equality, and finally her marriage to a detective, working out of New Scotland Yard.

  ‘Jessie will want the flat. I don’t have the energy to fight her over it. Marcus wants a cremation at Streatham, and the ashes scattered locally, so he can visit. But I’ve told him, she hated the idea that she’d be ashes on the wind. I just hope she left a will. I told her enough times that if she didn’t get it down in black and white, Marcus would do what he wanted, for himself.’

  What, at that moment, prompted both of them to turn south, towards the distant pleasure beach?

  Shaw recalled later that his left eardrum creaked, signalling a sudden change in air pressure. Was there a flash of fire? The sound – a dull, buffeting thud – reached them a second later, shaking the lifeguard’s high chair. Lena recalled the bottles behind the bar in Surf! tinkling softly.

  A plume of water rose up a mile distant, sand at its heart, as if the guts of the earth had been ripped out.

  Shaw, already running, heard a ripple of screams, and then – the worst moment of all – a shocked stillness, which seemed to encompass the sea itself, so that even the waves were silent.

  FOUR

  Shaw was thirty yards along the beach before he stopped, checked his mobile, and, finding no signal, called back to Lena to use the landline to ring emergency services and DS Valentine. ‘Tell George there’s been an explosion,’ he shouted. ‘Could be anything. You stay put. I’ll see him by the old pier.’

  About to turn away, he had one last question. ‘Fran?’ he asked, both palms open and held out to the side.

  Their daughter was on a day trip with a friend’s family to Norwich, but somehow he needed to hear an external confirmation that she was safe.

  ‘I’ll double-check,’ called Lena. ‘She’ll be miles away.’

  ‘Tell her to stay put until we call again.’

  It was enough, so he ran. Running was Peter Shaw’s obsession, punctuating every day of his life with two sub-five-minute miles. To the lifeboat house at Old Hunstanton, and the parking space for his Porsche, he averaged 4.32 seconds. That was the workwards leg, while homewards he averaged 4.28 to the first step of the Surf! verandah. Today, he knew he’d broken his best time as he passed the lifeboat house and began the climb up the coastal path that skirted the edge of the cliffs.

  Ahead, the cloud of sand launched skywards by the blast was still drifting in the air, the particles fine enough to produce an interior rainbow. By the stone ruins of St Edmund’s chapel Shaw stopped, doubled over, then checked again for a mobile signal. A single bar came and went like a heartbeat, but there was a 3D digital signal from the aerial on the old lighthouse, so he picked up BBC Radio Norfolk. Securing an earphone, he ran on, past the old radar station, towards the outskirts of the resort.

  The pips on the radio announced four o’clock, the news leading with an item about holiday traffic chaos on the Norfolk Broads. The afternoon programme of music and chat was interrupted thirty seconds later, just as Shaw reached the distinctive pyramid-roofed clifftop café above the town.

  The BBC had a radio reporter at Hunstanton compiling a feature on the pier construction project. ‘We have rep
orts of an incident at Hunstanton. We can go live to our business correspondent, Rupert Bloom.’ They cut to the scene by mobile.

  ‘Everyone’s running,’ said Bloom, without preamble, as if in mid-sentence, struggling to make himself heard against the white noise of scattered voices and a persistent backing track of what sounded like car alarms. Shaw was unsure if he was hearing the soundtrack on the radio or via his free ear.

  ‘Just running,’ said Bloom, as if this fragment made sense in itself. ‘There was a bang and the sand went up, and seawater too, and it’s still coming down, like rain. A lot of people have got their hands to their ears. The sound really hurt. It still hurts. I can’t see any blood.’

  Shaw heard the reporter’s laboured breathing and a young child crying.

  ‘Everyone’s trying to get off the beach. I’m at the edge of the esplanade now and I can see, looking back, a … a shell hole. It’s the only way I can describe it. About – what? – thirty feet long, but narrow at the centre, and then splaying out. There’s a lot of smoke maybe, or sand – I can’t tell. Everyone’s running and they’ve left loads on the beach – pushchairs, and tents, and picnics, and towels. I can’t see any casualties, but it’s chaos, so I don’t know; I can’t confirm that. There’s a lot of glass too, so people are carrying children without shoes. I’m going to try to talk to someone …’

  Shaw stopped, now looking down on the beach below, which was indeed scattered with abandoned belongings, a set of cricket stumps standing in the middle of an acre of empty sand as the tide swept the outfield. Ahead, on the low clifftop by the old pier head, a crowd stood crammed into the triangular green at the centre of which stood the town’s war memorial.

  The reporter’s incoming feed was distorted as if they were listening to his mobile from a handbag or pocket. Shaw readjusted his earphone to try to improve the signal.

  The broadcast cleared, the sound suddenly sharp and immediate. ‘Yes. Sorry. It’s the BBC. Did you see what happened? An explosion?’

  ‘Yes. My God. Oh my God.’ A woman’s voice, stressed, but already laced with a sense of relief. She must have turned away to a child because the next thing she said was distorted. ‘Yes. It’s all right. Hold your brother’s hand.’

  ‘Where were you?’ said Bloom, trying to regain his witness’s attention.

  ‘Just close. Some kids had dug a hole and everyone crowded round to see the sea come in and fill it up. Then everybody ran. Then there was this thud, and the sun just blacked out, like a shadow was thrown up, and it went completely quiet. And dark, like the sun was behind the clouds. And then people just tried to get off the sand. Like, it’s not panic, is it? But I’m scared and everyone’s upset. You can see that. It’s such a shock. And my ears hurt …’

  ‘Were the kids OK? Did you see anyone with injuries?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Well, I can’t say. I feel so sorry for the parents …’

  A piercing police warning alarm made the radio broadcast screech with feedback. Shaw stopped at the top of one of the zigzag metal staircases that led down to the beach, his good eye scanning the debris and detritus, locking on to anything red: a discarded swimsuit, a ball. He phoned the control room at St James’ but found the switchboard jammed. The nerves in his legs kept sparking, as if they wanted him to run, but he made himself compose a text to Valentine: Where you? Bomb blast at beach. Services alerted. Heading for crater. Get bomb disposal. No copters on beach till all-clear. Alert IPCO.

  IPCO was the coordinating unit for terrorist information for the provincial police forces. Shaw didn’t believe this was such an attack, but after a year of atrocities across Europe they needed to make sure the Home Office was alerted.

  A police squad car swung off the coast road and parked by the cliff edge, disgorging two uniformed constables, one with a radio mike already to his lips. The crowds, jammed along the esplanade, pressed up to the iron railings.

  Shaw ran to the squad car and showed his warrant card. ‘What do we know?’

  One of the constables was short, with steel-rimmed glasses, and said his name was Harrison. ‘St John’s Ambulance were here. Control room says they’ve got five casualties on their way to Lynn. Condition unknown.’

  ‘Loud hailer?’ asked Shaw, noting a fire engine, lights flashing, forcing its way between two lines of stationary traffic on the street leading to the green.

  Harrison went to the boot and retrieved a hailer, and a warning beacon and a drum of scene-of-crime tape.

  Before he shut the boot, Shaw had another thought. ‘Evidence bags?’

  Harrison held up two bundles of sealable plastic bags, with red zips.

  ‘Right … We don’t have much time,’ said Shaw, forcing his voice to stay flat, matter-of-fact. ‘High tide’s pretty close, so we have a brief window to collect any surviving evidence. Our first priority is the safety of the public. For now you two are what passes for authority. You need to impose it. Harrison, take the hailer down on to the beach. Ping it to get through the crowd. Don’t run. Tell the crowds the emergency services are on the way and that anyone with injuries should make themselves known. In the meantime, everyone – everyone – needs to move away from the railings, and, when the paths are clear, make their way up to the green, or back to their cars. The beach is closed for the day. Got it?’

  Harrison nodded.

  ‘Don’t say the word “bomb”. Don’t say there might be others. Try to sound like an airline pilot. Got it?’

  Harrison nodded again.

  ‘Right. Lead the way. You come with me,’ added Shaw to the other officer. ‘Name?’

  ‘Wright.’

  Using the hailer, they parted the crowd and made for a set of stone steps which cut down through the esplanade to the sands, at the foot of which a pushchair on its side had disgorged a child’s toys and a bag of soiled nappies. Towels and a line of wetsuits hung drying on a breakwater.

  Shaw surveyed the beach, alert to any movement that might indicate an injured victim. The problem was the wooden breakwaters, which effectively hid the view north and south. Were there casualties out of sight? An unnatural silence still shrouded the coast, and Shaw noted that the Ferris wheel at the fun park a half mile south was stationary. Out to sea, a blue warning light flashed silently on the construction rig, while the crane stood frozen in the sky, the great arm poised at forty-five degrees, dangling a steel girder over the water.

  The crater caused by the blast was awash.

  Harrison began to broadcast to the crowd behind them, his voice – Shaw noted – even and calm. The fire engine had reached the esplanade, and with it an ambulance.

  Shaw and Wright headed for the crater. It did not form a neat Western Front shell hole, but rather a sinuous bow-tie-shaped trench, the blast point at the knot, indicating how the force had been directed north-west and south-east, leaving two rims of the original children’s pit partly intact. The pit was half full of seawater.

  As they approached, Shaw turned to Wright. ‘You got kids?’

  Wright nodded. ‘Two. Boy and a girl. They’re—’

  ‘This might not be pretty,’ said Shaw, cutting him off, making eye contact. Wright was six foot two, about level with Shaw, and although he appeared calm, his eyes seemed to skitter over the scene, unable to rest. ‘There were children playing near the hole. Maybe in the hole. We need to check the sand. Sift through all this stuff. You understand that? The tide’s nearly full but it might fill the rest of the hole. You need to be ready. We need to collect evidence. If you find anything, shout. Got it?’

  Wright nodded, distracted by stuffing his pockets with the evidence bags.

  Shaw used his iPhone to take pictures of the shell hole. ‘Look out for anything suspicious,’ he called. ‘Fragments, metal shards, a priority. Human remains – you shout, I’ll come and help.’

  Wright turned, nodded, his face as pale as candle wax.

  Blood was red for a good reason. Shaw, like all human beings, was hardwired to see it, to r
eact, his nervous system poised to flood with adrenaline. His good eye scanned the sand around the crater. Shreds of plastic were dotted within the blast zone – a few red, but mostly yellow and blue.

  Spotting flesh, or bone, on the pale yellow sands would be less straightforward. Shaw realized that his good eye, under stress, was blurring at the tail and hypersensitive at the focal point. What had he expected? A scene from the Somme – shattered bodies slumped in the hole? Now that they were at the edge, they could see that some of the sand on the sides of the pit was black, discoloured by the blast.

  Shaw jogged quickly along the waterline, surveying the area, his mind actively shielding his consciousness from hellish images of torn bodies. His pulse rate had hit a thudding, steady high, but as each minute passed, he began to sense that they just might have been lucky, unless the blast had vaporized the victims in the force of the explosion – terrorist bomb victims often went to the grave in empty coffins. Or had they been buried perhaps, in the falling veil of damp sand? Were the dead beneath his feet?

  Picking a spot, Shaw knelt and swept the surface layer of sand aside. The tide surged and salt water sizzled around his knees and boots. The next wave was much stronger, sweeping clean over the shell hole, so that he had to retreat. With the water came the spume, like old candy floss, carrying ice-cream wrappers and an empty beer can, and something else, asymmetrical, weighty.

  Shaw’s still hyperactive eye fashioned it into the shape of a head, and his heart stopped a beat, then two. Straps and a zip redefined the object: a rucksack perhaps. At the next wave it came within reach, so he plucked it out of the water and saw that it was a diver’s net bag, decorated with two sewn-in Dutch flags.

  FIVE

  Shaw set up a missing-person checkpoint on the green by directing four West Norfolk squad cars to park in a square. Inside, anyone lost could wait to be found. A female constable from the town’s police station arrived with a clipboard and took names. Within ten minutes a huddle of eight lost children had been reunited with tearful parents. A seventy-two-year-old pensioner was claimed by his grandson, and a thirty-two-year-old female patient from the psychiatric ward at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Lynn was reunited with her nurse, and six other patients, on a day out to the resort.