Dead in the Water

by Matthew Costello

  ***

  Sarah met the farmer at the wall.

  His name was Dick Tyler, and he was well past the age when you’d think he might have sold up and thought about retiring.

  His craggy face reflected hard years working the land, the wrinkles more like deep furrows.

  And now, his eyes – so deeply set in the face, watching Sarah – were narrow.

  He was not happy.

  Sarah walked from her Rav-4 to where the man stood. And she could see the damaged wall.

  Someone had put a lot of effort into pushing the great chunks of stone off the top, then upsetting more stones below, all the way down to the base, until now there was a full opening in the wall.

  “Mr. Tyler, thanks for meeting with me.”

  He nodded.

  Man of few words.

  “You see what they did? The bastids.”

  And as Sarah looked left, then right, she could see this wall meandering along the perimeter of Tyler’s land. But now, with this gash-like opening, and the odd-shaped stones that had once locked together perfectly, all scattered like rubble.

  “This wall must be hundreds of years old,” she said. “Why would anyone do something like this?”

  “Too right! Centuries it’s been standing! Older than many of the houses around here.”

  He shook his head, looking at the wall.

  “Going to cost me a bloody fortune to get it fixed. Not cheap, dry-stone walling, you know.”

  Another head shake. Then again: “Bastids…”

  “And do you know who did it?”

  He looked up. And took a step towards Sarah.

  “Know who did it? You bet I do. Those kids, tramping across my land, making so much noise in the middle of the night.”

  Sarah looked up to see the gentle rolling hill that led from the road and this wall. At its top, a stand of trees.

  “They came down this way, I heard them, making so much noise, crazy laughing. And they did this!”

  “And you didn’t call the police?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Public footpath, that’s the bloody problem! People have a right to traipse all over your land. Isn’t that what the ‘law’ says? God…”

  He bent down and picked up a piece of mossy limestone. “Come walking over my land, and wreck this.”

  Sarah could see that the piece of stone the man held had been broken in two. Rebuilding was not going to be an easy task. Though this being the Cotswolds, there were people who specialised in just that.

  She looked up to the hill again.

  “You said they came from up there?”

  Tyler barely looked to where Sarah pointed.

  “Right. Whole bunch of them – like a bloody circus. Heard them from my farmhouse, dead asleep. That’s how much noise they were making!”

  Sarah kept looking at the hill.

  “And past those trees there… I mean, where were they coming from? What’s there?”

  Tyler turned to look at Sarah, then at the hill.

  “The old quarry. Just past the hill. God knows what they were doin’ there.”

  The quarry.

  And Sarah thought as well: What indeed had they been doing there?

  She turned to Tyler. “I’d like to take a look. If you don’t mind.”

  Tyler shook his head as if he didn’t have any faith in the usefulness of that. But then he nodded.

  “Sure. Go on. After all, it’s a public footpath, isn’t it?”

  Not a fan of that system, Sarah could tell.

  And she smiled.

  “Thanks.”

  And she used the breech in the centuries-old stone wall, and started up the gentle slope of the hill, not only wondering what she might find when she reached the top, but also remembering when she herself had been there.

  So very long ago…

  24. A Surprising Discovery

  The GPS app in Jack’s phone was having trouble finding the road that led to Josh’s cottage.

  More than once, he hit a pocket with no service.

  And then another time, he was given vague instructions about a left turn to come that simply led him back to the main road.

  So – he decided to go old-school; he pulled the Sprite off the road and dug out the road atlas from its tiny trunk.

  It took him a while to found his current location, then more hunting until he saw a thin, curvy line that was the road that supposedly ran by Josh’s cottage.

  Not really so far out of Cherringham – but definitely out of the way…

  He took a few moments to review and hopefully remember the twists and turns to come, and then – muting the nice, polite lady who had been giving him sporadic directions – he got back into his car, and started driving slowly, map beside him, in case he should get lost again.

  ***

  Then – with no signage to speak of – he came to a pitted driveway leading off what had to be the narrowest English road Jack had ever tackled, complete with thick hedges on either side that seemed ready to enclose the road completely.

  He started up the driveway.

  Such a bumpy way to what he hoped would be a cottage.

  But the Sprite was quickly overmatched by the conditions.

  And not more than a few yards up – guessing that his car would now be safely hidden in the narrow opening made in the line of hedges – Jack stopped.

  No case was worth damaging the sports car’s undercarriage.

  And then he got out and started up on foot.

  As he walked, he thought: Quite the spot Josh lived in.

  The silence here – almost contemplative.

  Then, he reached the end of what passed for a driveway… and saw the cottage. Tiny, an almost fairy-tale cottage, like a miniature. Sweet.

  And Jack thought… I could live here myself.

  Swapping a Range Rover for the Sprite, to be sure.

  He walked to the front door.

  Unlike the rocky, rutted driveway, Jack saw a gravel path here, perfectly maintained. And then, looking to the left, a garden. Small, but filled with different vegetables. Lettuce, strawberries, a few herbs, and a gangly tomato plant with fruit just starting to turn from green to orange.

  Such a disconnect.

  If Josh had a drug problem, this neat, organised garden made no sense.

  And, once again, Jack came back to the idea that Josh didn’t take that LSD on his own.

  More and more, that seemed to make sense.

  And back to the white front door of the small cottage, catching the sunlight.

  Would there be answers inside?

  He slipped on his gloves, dug out his lock-pick set, bent down, and examined the lock.

  ***

  Sarah stood a few feet back from the edge and looked down through ragged bushes into the limestone quarry below.

  Not much more than a hundred feet deep and a couple of hundred feet wide, she knew this old place hadn’t been worked for over a century.

  Once upon a time, she thought, the stone that made up Dick Tyler’s dry-stone walls had probably been dug here.

  And probably the stone for most of the older houses in Cherringham.

  But though the quarry had never been active in her lifetime, it did have memories…

  Back in the late 80s when she was still in school, she and her gang used to come up here on hot summer evenings and hang out.

  She thought back to all those years ago – before London, before kids – such an innocent time.

  The rest of the country was deep in the middle of what they called “the second summer of love” – dance music, acid house, free parties.

  But the real thing hadn’t quite made it to Cherringham. So Sarah and her mates had to make do with their own rural version…

  Cheap cider, a massive ghetto blaster, big rugs – and lots of chocolate. Beth, Sammi (she remembered the girls – but who were the boys back in those days? She’d forgotten!), lying on the rugs looking up at the sky.
>
  Lots of snogging, gossip, teenage dramas – and so many laughs.

  God it was tame though! she thought, smiling at the memory.

  I must dig out the photos, show them to the girls…

  Maybe not Chloe and Daniel though. They’d be way too embarrassed.

  She found a path through bushes that looked like it led to the bottom of the quarry.

  And as she wound her way down towards the quarry, the place got warmer – and quieter.

  She paused, taking in the scent of the gorse, watching butterflies flitting around the wild flowers that dotted the grass.

  Above, she heard the shrill mew of a buzzard. She looked up. There they were, two of them, circling high against the blue sky.

  Then she heard the noise of a car, down in the quarry – its engine gunning as it dealt with the rough ground.

  Getting closer.

  She edged through the bushes, keeping low.

  She’d dropped to within twenty or thirty feet of the floor of the quarry, and now, through the scrub, she saw flat, dry, rutted mud and old piles of discarded stone blocks.

  And there… just fifty yards away, a small white van coming at speed into the quarry, clouds of dirt spilling from its back wheels.

  Sarah sank to her knees, concealed by the undergrowth, and watched.

  The van pulled up on the far side of the quarry by a pile of giant sandstone rocks, and the driver turned off the engine.

  The place was silent again.

  Sarah watched as the clouds of dust blew away.

  Then the driver’s door opened and a man in a T-shirt and jeans got out, walked round the far side of the van and opened the back doors wide.

  Sarah leaned forward trying to see who the guy was, but the angle was just wrong.

  She watched him disappear around the back of the rocks.

  Damn, she thought. Can’t see…

  She turned and looked along the rim of the quarry edge. It curved round to a point where – maybe – she just might be able to see behind those rocks.

  She backed up into the undergrowth and, still crouching low, moved farther round the side of the quarry until she reached a good vantage point.

  Carefully edged forward through a gorse bush…

  Yes.

  From here she could see the van head on – and the sandstone boulders – no more than twenty yards away.

  The guy was bent over a pile of black rubbish bags. She watched as he grabbed a couple in each hand, then stood up and turned, ready to carry them over to the van.

  Now Sarah could see his face.

  A face she recognised straight away.

  The young guy from the burger van.

  Ted.

  She watched as he made the trip three times, until all the bags were stowed in the back of the van.

  While he did, Sarah took out her phone and took pictures of the van – and especially the number plate.

  Then, she watched as he shut the double doors, climbed in, started the engine and drove off fast in another cloud of dirt.

  When he was out of sight, Sarah stood up and walked down into the quarry.

  The mud was marked with hundreds of footprints and wheel marks.

  And scattered behind the rocks and in corners, she saw bits of rubbish, discarded bottles, cans that hadn’t been picked up yet.

  Pretty obvious that this was the site of the rave the previous night.

  Had Ted and Rikky been selling food down here?

  Or maybe they were involved in more than just the food. If they were clearing the place up, maybe they were planning to use it again someday.

  Sarah put her phone back in her jeans pocket and started to climb back up to the top of the quarry, feeling – at last – that they were getting somewhere.

  ***

  Click.

  Jack felt, more than heard, the tumblers fall and he gently turned his pick in the lock until the catch moved.

  He pushed on the door and it opened.

  With a quick glance behind him to double check he wasn’t being watched, he pushed the door a little more – but it jammed.

  Still, there was just enough room for him to slip inside – then he shut the door behind him.

  Darkness. The place smelt empty, unused. At his feet, he saw a pile of letters and magazines.

  He picked them up and went through them carefully. Bills mostly. Nothing handwritten, nothing out of the ordinary.

  He picked out what looked like bank statements and slipped them in his pocket to examine later.

  Useful to know the state of Josh Owen’s finances.

  He laid the other letters back down on the floor and scattered them again.

  Then he walked through the house.

  The place was tiny – but even so, thought Jack, it must have cost a fortune to rent. On a teacher’s salary too…

  Was that suspicious? The statements might help answer that.

  But the two bedrooms were simply furnished – just one small wardrobe of clothes as far as Jack could see. And no sign of regular visitors: in the bathroom, a solitary toothbrush in a jar.

  As Jack moved from room to room he got the feeling that Josh Owen wasn’t someone who splurged on luxuries – or tech.

  Just a docking station for his mobile phone, with mid-range speakers in the little sitting room, and a small TV.

  Josh was clearly a man who lived within his means and believed in leaving a small footprint on the world.

  The house was simply furnished, almost Spartan. Yep, that was the vibe.

  Lots of bare wood, indigenous furnishings and paintings – evidence of Third World travel – books on alternative energy, horticulture.

  Everything tidy, in order, lined up neatly on shelves.

  No sign of smoking, not much booze apart from a few bottles of real ale on a shelf.

  A big cork-board on the kitchen wall with photos of happy, grinning pals – holidays, snowboard trips, sailing, diving.

  All activities that you might expect from a popular, gregarious young guy.

  From the kitchen window, Jack could see the garden: a tidy lawn – though in the week or so since Josh had died the grass had grown tall.

  Jack pulled up a chair at the small kitchen table. He sat and breathed-in the place.

  Josh was no dealer. Not even a user – surely.

  So that story of the Oxford club? Well either Tim Wilkins was just mistaken or Josh had simply been showing off in front of the girls.

  And who hasn’t done that? thought Jack with a smile.

  No, this guy was innocent.

  Then Jack noticed some marks on the floorboards in the corner of the kitchen, next to an old pine cupboard.

  He got up from the table, walked over, and crouched down. From the scratch marks on the wooden floorboards he guessed that the cupboard had recently been dragged to one side.

  And where it used to stand was a narrow dusty strip that – unlike the rest of the kitchen – hadn’t been recently swept.

  He dragged the cupboard back to its original position… to reveal a couple of floorboards that were shorter than the others in the kitchen.

  No more than a foot long – just fillers for the corner of the room.

  He saw from the scratched, bare wood, and loose nail, that one of them had been lifted recently – and not securely hammered back.

  He took out his clasp knife, slid the blade under the nail and lifted.

  The board came up easily.

  And there, in the space beneath, he saw a big plastic bag. The kind of thing you’d wrap your sandwiches in for a picnic.

  But when Jack lifted the bag from its hiding place, he could see it hadn’t been used for a picnic. Inside the bag were pills of all shapes and sizes.

  Hundreds and hundreds of pills, in more plastic bags.

  Well, waddya know… he thought.

  Jack stood up and put the bag on the table.

  Then he opened the kitchen drawers and searched until he found an old shoppin
g bag.

  He put the drugs into the shopping bag, went to the front door, opened it – checked again that nobody was watching – and slipped outside.

  Then he gently shut the door behind him and left.

  25. Making Connections

  Jack parked in the village square next to all the tourist coaches, picked up the plastic shopping bag from the passenger seat and crossed the High Street towards Huffington’s.

  He opened the door and looked around: the place was already buzzing, tables full of tourists and locals, waitresses in their old-fashioned outfits scurrying around with pots of tea and trays of sandwiches and cakes.

  Through the crowd, he saw Sarah in the far corner, gave her a little wave, then threaded his way through the tables to join her.

  He could see she was engrossed in her notebook, so he sat opposite her without speaking, put the shopping bag by his feet and waited patiently for her to finish.

  “Told you. Place is busy – so I took the liberty – ordered for you,” she said, finally looking up and putting down her pen. “Welsh rarebit – that okay?”

  “Sure. That’s the funny cheese thing on toast huh?”

  “I thought you said you liked it?”

  “I like everything here,” said Jack. Then: “We in a rush?”

  “Actually, Jack – we’re on a roll, I think,” she said with a grin. She took out her phone, flicked through some screens and handed it to him.

  “Take a look.”

  He peered at the photo on the screen.

  “A truck. On a beach.”

  “It’s a lead, Watson. A piece of fine detective work from yours truly.”

  “Go on…”

  “This morning I went over to see that farmer – you know the one having trouble with kids? His farm backs on to the old limestone quarry – so I checked it out. And guess what?”

  “You have my attention, detective…”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s being used as one of the sites for these raves. That van – the one in the photo – turned up. Guy got out, started clearing away rubbish – like it was his job. See the plate? Oh and the guy – the driver – well, take a look at the close-up here.”

  Jack held out the phone so she could flick to the next picture…