Death Ship

by Jim Kelly

  Shaw’s mobile rang, and he brought up a text from St James’ control room: Family of five at QE2. No threat to life. They dug hole. No other casualties reported. HH

  HH was Sergeant Harry Hunter, a copper who’d been a byword for streetwise policing when Shaw’s father was a DCI, which helped to explain the precision of his message. There might be other, unknown, casualties, but it looked increasingly likely that the explosion had claimed no lives. It left two questions unanswered: What kind of bomb had it been, and were there any others?

  Shaw called the crews of the four squad cars together for a one-minute briefing, establishing that the priority was to keep the crowds off the beach until the sands could be surveyed by the army. One of the squad cars was nominated as a control centre, the doors thrown open, a flashing light set on the roof. What they needed was manpower, and the control room at St James’ was directed to pull in all off-duty uniformed officers and get them to the resort as quickly as possible. An on-duty DS from CID was given the job of organizing food, admin back-up, and transport. Road traffic was warned to brace itself for an exodus from Hunstanton, with holidaymakers heading for other beaches, or just taking the direct route home. Conversely, there were already reports of cars crammed with sightseers heading towards the danger zone.

  Shaw dismissed the team, setting five o’clock for a regroup, and turned away to see Valentine’s Mazda mount the curb and trundle down the grassy slope. The car, with a 1980s registration plate, was Bakelite brown and dinted in the bonnet. Even though he knew his DS had given up smoking, Shaw could never quite dislodge the image of the Mazda as a four-wheeled ashtray.

  Hauling himself out of the driver’s seat, Valentine pressed a hand to the small of his back. Then they stood, polar opposites, almost toe to toe: Valentine defined by the suit that seemed to hang off his bones; Shaw, four-square, in shorts and T-shirt, hair spiky and straw-blond.

  ‘Welcome to the frontline,’ said Shaw, looking out to sea, his face broad and open, with high cheekbones, as if an outrider of the Mongol hordes had fetched up on the north Norfolk coast.

  ‘Injured? Dead?’ asked Valentine, licking his lower lip, as if trying to recollect the tang of nicotine.

  ‘Not so far. It’s looking good. But no doubt it was a bomb – well, an explosion. Kids were digging a hole.’

  ‘Wartime. Got to be,’ said Valentine.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Shaw, nodding. ‘Question is: one of ours, or one of theirs? And if it’s ours, is that British or US? Americans didn’t pack up until the early sixties. Up to then this place was pretty much a military town. When they did go, they were in a hurry, so who knows what got left behind.’

  Shaw had grown up in the seaside resort. His childhood had been full of stories about the war, and the fifties, when one in six residents had been American – mostly air force personnel at the nearby base at Sculthorpe. Infamously, the town had provided services of all kinds, including a string of brothels, set up in the resort’s fading hotels, an attraction that had won Hunstanton unwanted publicity in the racier newspapers.

  ‘So who do we need to give the all-clear?’ asked Valentine.

  ‘Bomb disposal, I guess. They’re on their way.’

  A uniformed PC arrived with a tray of a dozen Costa coffees.

  ‘For the sake of argument,’ said Shaw, ‘if it’s not a UXB, what are our options, George?’

  ‘Our anti-pier campaigners have decided to crank up the odds?’ Valentine, with obvious distaste, examined the white froth on the top of his coffee, dappled with chocolate. ‘What have we had? Graffiti, road blocks, vandalism, arson … Maybe someone’s prepared to push things a bit further?’

  Shaw looked doubtful. ‘I can’t see it. It’s early days, and an open mind is a wonderful thing, but really? A bunch of Barbour-wearing environmentalists plant a bomb on a holiday beach? They kill some three-year-old and that’s the end of their campaign. I know they’ve got fanatics on board, fellow travellers, but a bomb?’

  ‘The arson attack out on the rig wasn’t exactly a nursery crime.’

  ‘But it was amateur. Trademark eco-extremists. Half-cocked. It isn’t that easy to make a bomb, George. And why target the beach?’

  ‘It’s where the power cables run out to the rig,’ said Valentine.

  Shaw turned back to survey the scene. Valentine’s bluff, old-fashioned copper routine hid a first-class grip on his manor. Occasionally, Shaw had to remind himself that while he’d been at school, DI George Valentine had once been the bright young thing in CID. ‘OK. I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yeah. They dug a trench six weeks ago, then filled it in. Perhaps this was half-cocked too.’

  Shaw played with that idea but then caught a movement in the back of the Mazda. Squatting down, he saw an elderly woman in the back seat, looking straight back at him with a profoundly disorientated sadness, like a lost child.

  ‘She’s why I’m late,’ said Valentine. From the front seat the DS produced an evidence bag containing the carton of wrapped toffees he’d found in her shopping bag on wheels. Another bag held three wrapped sweets, plus an unwrapped toffee.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ said Shaw.

  ‘Nope. Same queue, same bus. She’d given out four, one opened.’

  Shaw took another look, trying to recall the details of his artistic reconstruction of their suspect. ‘Doesn’t look that much like her, does it? Or maybe she does. What does she say?’

  ‘No idea what’s going on. Didn’t notice the posters. She gabbled a bit; now she’s shut up. Insists she’s not herself – her words. Hip replacement op, apparently, and she reckons the painkillers make her dizzy.’ He unzipped the evidence bag and held the carton of sweets up for Shaw to sniff. ‘Thing is, I reckon you can smell it.’

  ‘Almonds,’ said Shaw.

  ‘Yup. I’ve checked. There’s one – an almond cluster. But it’s the only smell. What about the orange swirl or the rum truffle. You can’t even smell the chocolate. Just almond.’

  Shaw was close enough to pat Valentine on the back, but he resisted the urge; George Valentine had backed a hunch and followed through. There was a good chance he’d struck lucky. He didn’t need, or crave, Shaw’s validation. And he had a rare smile on his lips. ‘What did she say before she stopped gabbling?’

  ‘Name’s Keeble – Esther. Aged seventy-two. Lives with her husband in one of the old prefabs down on the South Beach. They don’t have a TV – the Keebles – never listen to the radio, and she doesn’t get the local paper, so, like I said, she says she’s no idea we were looking for someone giving out sweets in a bus queue.’ Valentine bent stiffly to look at his suspect. ‘I’d say she was in shock.’ Straightening up, he took a few paces down the slope. ‘But there’s something else going on, behind here …’ He pointed at his eyes, left then right. ‘It’s not fear. It’s not disappointment. It’s like she’s working something out, Peter. Calculating.’

  ‘I know the Keebles,’ said Shaw. ‘Know of them. Husband’s George Keeble. They ran the newsagents down Empire Way for years. Maybe that’s why they avoid the papers now. George was a volunteer in the lifeboat – in the fifties, sixties. He used to turn up for open days, fundraisers. Good bloke. Dad used to say he was salt of the earth.’

  ‘I’ll run her back to St James’, get her a duty solicitor,’ said Valentine. ‘And I’ll have the doc give the once-over. Don’t want her keeling over on us.’

  ‘Right,’ said Shaw, opening up the boot of one of the squad cars and retrieving a large evidence bag, inside of which was the diver’s bag he’d picked out of the sea, emblazoned with Dutch flags. He gave it to Valentine, wanting him to make the link.

  ‘Hartog? Where?’

  ‘On the surf line twenty minutes after the explosion.’

  ‘So what are we saying – that it’s linked to the explosion, or it’s a coincidence?’

  Shaw was unhappy with that most illogical of explanations: coincidence. ‘More to the point, why does the kit turn up, but not his
body?’

  SIX

  The shadow of the dogfish, shark-like, skimmed over the ribbed sea sand, heading shorewards, called from its feeding grounds in the deep sea trench by the single shock wave of the exploding bomb. The fish’s slate-grey back, pitted with scars, twisted with the torque required to power the tail fin, driving it forward on a three-dimensional path it had swum all its life, out of the cold water of the channel, into the warm shallows. Sunlight, filtering down in shimmering columns, created micro-currents, which gently churned the grains of quartz and chalk, sandstone and shell on the ocean floor, creating a thin underwater sea mist, through which the fish sliced a path.

  In the deep channel along which the ships plied, the dogfish could slide untroubled within the sandy walls of the canyon, while above it the iron propellers churned towards the Bentinck and the Alexandra, the Boal and the Fisher Fleet. But here, in the waters above the sand bar, it was troubled by the white scratches of skidoos, hauling water skiers, or a paraglider, cutting silently across the surface above, or the paddling feet of swimmers in pursuit of drifting inflatables, blown west and out to sea. But there was enough water, even here, to muffle the shock waves these intruders left above.

  It slid past a bony fish, past a smack of jellyfish, hanging like a chandelier, and a suspended wreath of sea wrack, until its target came within sight, the shape within the sand even clearer this spring, after the winter storms had stripped away the sandy blanket that had lain over it like a shroud.

  The prow, forced up by the sinking of the engines, stood proud still, clogged with clam shells and weed, so that it looked like a lone rock, encrusted. The deck, steel-plated, pitted with sea snails and limpets, lay twisted, its graceful oval lines skewed, running to the stern, just visible now, revealed to the light by the winter currents.

  That first night, the dogfish had circled the boat as it sank, hurtling in slow motion to the seabed, the water above white with the storm. Seething, the power of the waves had been felt below, creating a maelstrom of silt, through which the falling hull was no more than a shadow passing, crumpling on impact without a sound. The lights had flickered within, circular beams striking out from the portholes, the bridge bright with polished metal, until a small explosion shook it like a cough, deep in the bowels of the superstructure, and darkness had fallen.

  Despite the collision with the seabed, the rivets had held, preserving the outline of the hull, the hold, the deckhouse, and the forward winch. All that first winter the wreck lay unvisited, until the dogfish returned, nosing its way along the bulwark rail towards the hatches of the hold, sensing perhaps what lay within. Plankton, crabs, and small fishes had already inveigled their way into the dark space through air vents and the narrow slits between the buckled plates.

  But the dogfish had to wait. The dogfish was patient. It had a memory of sorts, so that it had returned along the path over the years, nosing at the shattered portholes, the twisted plates, but always denied.

  Until today. The shock wave had sprung the rivets and a plate had fallen from the starboard hull. The dogfish hung, motionless in the lazy current, analyzing the chemical messages hidden in the brine. A lobster hauled itself out through the gap. Finally, the dogfish slipped within. Once, there would have been sweet meat, but no more. Only this: the shadowy hold and an audience of skulls.

  SEVEN

  ‘Miracle Escape!’ is an overused newspaper cliché, and as a result the media struggled, in the hours after the explosion and after the truth was known, to make their readers appreciate the startling fact that no one had been seriously injured in the explosion on the beach. Witnesses interviewed on the radio and TV suggested that it had been the in-rushing tide that had saved so many lives, driving the crowd back from the lip of the hole, so that when the blast came it had driven upwards through the sea itself.

  The major incident paramedic team, assembled at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, braced for casualties and severe trauma wounds, was astounded when the rear doors of the ambulance opened outside A&E, to find the Ross children in a communal hug with their parents. Only Eric had been injured, pulling on his father’s hand and turning back towards the pit at the vital moment, suffering second-degree burns to his left leg below the knee, and severe abrasions to his left shoulder, where he’d been thrown against a cooler box and a child’s pushchair. Marc complained of a ‘flutter’ in his left ear, but this disappeared within an hour of his arrival at the hospital.

  An army bomb disposal unit, scrambled from Sheringham, was on site within three hours, and a spokesman informed BBC Look East that it was not uncommon for survivors of bomb explosions to be very close to the point of impact, due to the fact that the force of the blast tended to be concentrated within narrow angles of dispersal – leaving odd pockets, or ‘lacunae’ – very close to the epicentre of the explosion itself. The spokesman, Captain H. Wharram, was less helpful when asked to identify the bomb itself. Further east on the Norfolk coast, UXBs were common, left over from military training during the Second World War. Although Hunstanton’s beach had been fortified against possible invasion in 1940, there was no record of the live firing of ammunition or enemy air raids.

  The question for DI Shaw, and one reiterated by the chief constable in a series of persistent text messages, was whether there might be other devices in the area that could represent a threat to public safety. Should the beach remain cordoned off from the public? It was late summer, the weather was hot, local businesses were making financial hay. The town council wanted the beach reopened without delay, although they were, of course, unwilling to take responsibility for such a decision themselves.

  The army set up floodlights at dusk and used a pump to drain the shell hole as the sea retreated. Two bomb disposal experts, working in wet suits, retrieved several plate-like sections of molten sand, cooled by the seawater, which had been created in the fierce heat that for a nano-second had been generated at the base of the pit.

  The receding tide also allowed a thorough search of the western extension of the bow-tie trench, and the recovery of one other shard of metallic material, to add to the three collected by Shaw and PC Wright in the last few minutes before high tide. An ordnance expert from Catterick had been ordered south to assist the inquiry. The West Norfolk’s own diving unit was being assembled and would survey the seabed off the shoreline for further bomb fragments at first light.

  By the time Shaw reached his office at St James’ in Lynn, it was after nine, a glorious late-summer sky turning from blue to star-studded black. He told Valentine to assemble the squad ‘off-site’ – CID code for meeting at the Red House, a pub just inside the London Gate, lost in the narrow terraced streets of the old town.

  It had been Shaw’s father, DCI Jack Shaw, who had chosen the Red House as CID’s official ‘other office’ back in the 1980s, in cahoots with his then DI, George Valentine. Once a bustling backstreet boozer, it was now largely dependent on trade from St James’ to keep it solvent. Local slums had been cleared, the Red House’s customers shipped out to the new estates. It was so out of the way, and so rarely used by anyone but CID and a handful of regulars, that the landlord had put a visitor’s book on the bar. An ex-boxer from the East End known universally as Jez, he was happy to give CID a room at the back, and – on request – exclusive access to a back yard, which had seen intermittent attempts at gentrification.

  Tonight, Shaw noted some palms in pots, a string of fairy lights, and a chalk ‘specials’ board which bore two words: Food off. Shaw rubbed it clean and used a stick of white chalk from the dartboard to write 1939–1945?

  ‘Let’s get this straight right now. At the moment we have no evidence whatsoever that this was a Second World War unexploded bomb, but common sense tells us it almost certainly is – and we’re having the beach checked tomorrow by the army to see if there are others.’ Shaw surveyed the team. ‘Common sense almost always points the way ahead. But we mustn’t be blind to other options. There’s a good chance, for exampl
e, that while it might have been made for the war, it was actually left behind when the Yanks pulled out in the early sixties. They had to pack up their gear all along the coast: ammunitions, stores, barbed wire, anti-tank devices, the lot. Who knows what got buried. Don’t get me wrong – the Americans didn’t think they were leaving live shells. But bomb disposal says even if they were made safe at the time, corrosion could make them unstable now, and we know from witnesses that these kids were pelting whatever they’d uncovered with pebbles – and a half brick …

  ‘The Ark will have results tomorrow. With luck, we’ll know what we’re dealing with by first thing. I’ll see the Ross family at the hospital and try to get some idea what this device looked like. We need the beach to stay off-limits to the public until the all-clear – half a mile in either direction.

  ‘Uniformed branch are there now. And … sorry about this, but the CC wants us to man a call line, twenty-four/seven, in case members of the public have information. Switchboard will vet the calls, but we need someone tonight for the first shift …’

  The yard’s floodlight came on, casting them all into deep relief. Moths began to make the shadows dance. Two or three hands were raised.

  ‘Great. So: that’s theory number one: wartime bomb,’ said Shaw. ‘Either dropped between 1939 and 1945, or left behind by the Americans up to 1963. Theory number two. Anti-pier activists.’

  A groan greeted the suggestion. A chaotic conversation broke out while drinks were brought out from the bar. The Stop the Pier campaign – and its various ‘paramilitary’ wings – had soaked up valuable police time for more than two years. Sympathy for the protestors – an uneasy alliance of green activists and local shopkeepers and business interests – had been stretched to breaking point as the campaign had escalated, from non-violent protest to criminal vandalism and finally arson.