by Joy Ellis
Marie narrowed her eyes. ‘As you said, let’s just get it over with, shall we?’
Jackman put the car into gear and said nothing further.
* * *
Not far away from Asher Leyton’s fancy abode, someone else was equally as troubled.
Her small home was far from elegant, but it was clean and tidy and usually it felt warm and safe to Jasmine. But not today.
Jasmine lay on the sofa, her duvet drawn tightly around her thin body. She was alone at last, although it had taken some time to convince her mother that she should go to work. Jasmine’s mother, who worried about absolutely everything, had finally accepted her excuse that it was just a really bad time of the month. After making Jasmine a warm drink and a hot water bottle, she had hurried off to her job as a bookkeeper at the food factory.
Jasmine stared at the blank television screen and tried to decide what she should do. She wasn’t ill, there was nothing wrong with her at all. She just couldn’t face school and more to the point, she couldn’t face her best friend, Chloe.
Her thoughts kept going back to the party. Jasmine gave a little snort of disgust. It had been like no party she’d ever been to. She shivered and pulled the duvet higher up under her chin. The place had been horrible. It had been dark and dirty, it stank of sweat and booze, and the worst thing of all was the fact that Chloe seemed to be having the time of her life.
A tear slipped slowly from Jasmine’s eye. How could she? They had been friends since they were in nappies, and now, well . . . She grimaced. A picture flashed up in front of her. Chloe dancing with a boy she didn’t even know. Chloe lifting up her skinny T-shirt top and thrusting her naked breast towards the gyrating boy’s open mouth.
Jasmine felt as sick now as she had then. She sipped the drink that her mother had made her and tried to forget all the other things she had seen.
Worse things, far worse.
She placed the mug back on the table and nibbled anxiously on her bottom lip.
She should tell her father, she knew she should. But how could she? He’d kill her if he thought she’d been to such a dreadful place.
More tears began to fall. It should be easy. She wasn’t a bad girl, she should simply do what she knew to be right. And she might well have done, if it hadn’t been for the man with the horrible eyes. He had known immediately that they had gate-crashed. And then he had taken her to one side, and coldly and calmly told her what he would do if she ever breathed a word about the parties.
Jasmine knew he wasn’t joking. She shivered again. That should have been okay, considering that she never wanted to go back as long as she lived, but he hadn’t threatened her, had he? The terrible things he had said he would do . . . were to Chloe.
Jasmine began to sob. Because Chloe wanted to go back. The man had put her number on his special list, and stupid, stupid Chloe could hardly wait for the text telling her where the next party would be.
CHAPTER SIX
‘You know, I’ve been around these parts for decades now, but I’ve probably only ever been out to Harlan Marsh once or twice,’ said Marie, gazing out of the window across the great expanses of flat, cabbage-covered fields.
‘It’s not the sort of place you go, is it?’
The bleak never-ending farmland stretched on until it met the river, then the marsh and then the sea. There was no town at the end of the road. No pretty village awaited them with quaint antique shops and cosy tearooms. And on a day like this, as the drizzling rain draped its chilly fingers around them, it was just mud all the way to the Wash.
Marie smiled to herself, because it wasn’t always like this. It was in many ways a magical landscape, ancient and wild, alternating through the changing seasons between strange and inhospitable, and achingly beautiful. Marie loved the great wide ribbons of waterways, straight and shining as quicksilver, home to swans, kingfishers and water voles. And the panoramic light shows at sunrise or sunset would melt the coldest heart.
Marie remembered walking the field pads, as the locals called footpaths, with her father’s spaniel racing ahead of her. The dog would run into the “litter” fields and bark as skylarks rose up ahead of him. Even as she sat in the car, Marie could still smell the meadow plants, the ragged robin, meadowsweet and clover, all cut as a hay crop for the animals. At times like this she missed her dad. Her parents had split up when she was very young, but she had benefited from having two loving homes, one here with her dad, and one in the Welsh mountains with her mum. Her parents had been wonderful, doing all they could to keep their daughter happy and well-balanced. The fact was, her parents had loved each other deeply — they just couldn’t live together. Their decision to part had worked well. They remained lifelong friends, until her dad died of a heart attack some fifteen years ago.
‘Fancy a detour?’ Jackman slowed down as they approached a crossroads. He stared at the signpost, then pulled over. ‘We are about five minutes away from the spot where your Mr Archer thinks that Shauna went into the water. If we go later we’ll lose the light.’
Marie nodded and her pleasant thoughts about her father evaporated. ‘Sure. Since I’m so looking forward to seeing Cade again, any diversion is a good one as far as I’m concerned.’
Jackman turned into the side road and they drove on.
‘Over there.’ Marie indicated a faded sign, half obscured by straggly bushes. ‘I think that’s a sign for Hurn Point, Allenby Creek, and the seal sanctuary.’
Jackman eased the car around a sharp bend. In front of them they saw an apology for a car park. Ahead were the sea-bank, the marshes, and a decrepit wooden hut with a weather-beaten painting of a seal on the wall.
They got out of the car into a damp miasma of salty drizzle.
‘Lovely,’ murmured Marie, turning up her jacket collar against the wind. ‘Just lovely.’
Avoiding puddles of sandy mud, they walked to the old hut.
The first thing they saw was a warning sign for an MOD bombing range. The RAF still used great stretches of the Wash for target practice and Jackman and Marie both understood the red flag warning system. Below that was a dog-eared notice informing them that there was no longer any access to the seal sanctuary and that the public should take the coast road to the “new” visitors’ centre.
‘Dreary place,’ muttered Marie.
‘That it is.’ Jackman moved forward. ‘This spot has never been popular. The stretch of marsh between the car park and the beach has a reputation for being dangerous at high tide, which generally puts off all but the brave or the foolhardy.’
‘So how on earth did Shauna finish up here?’ asked Marie, gazing around at the deserted landscape.
‘Most likely driven here by someone who knew just how deserted it is.’ Jackman pointed towards the dunes. ‘There are a few dwellings over that way, and another scattering further along the coast, but apart from those, it’s just dune, marsh and sea.’
They trudged across the sand-flats, between dense clumps of sea buckthorn and areas of reeds fringing shallow pools. Then Marie stopped. She knew that old Jack Archer had been right. This was the place where Shauna Kelly went into the water.
Jackman was still walking slightly ahead of her, unaware that she had stopped in her tracks. ‘Now we’re here, I remember coming here with my parents when I was a little boy. Although it was very different back then. They say this coastline reinvents itself every year. Sand blows in from the offshore sandbanks and forms dunes. The whole place has changed beyond belief.’ He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘It looks so wild now, but I seem to recall it was quite pretty back then.’ He stopped and looked around. ‘Marie?’
Marie stood staring out across the grey waters of the Wash, then squatted down on her haunches and gently ran her fingers through the damp sand. ‘She was here. I know it.’
Jackman shivered and looked around him. ‘You’re probably right. It is the perfect spot to bring a body, or to kill someone.’
‘Let’s go up the edge of t
he dunes, towards that rundown beach hut, and see if there are any houses that have a good view of this strip of beach.’
They perched side by side on a tiny stretch of crumbly stone wall, and looked across the desolate sands.
‘Uniform have been out here and they had nothing to report. The few people that they did get to speak to didn’t see or hear a thing.’ Jackman kicked at a small pile of pebbles, sending them scattering across the path.
‘When we’ve sorted this thing out at Harlan Marsh, I’d like to come back and talk to them myself,’ said Marie.
‘Me too. We’ll pick a different time of day and see if we can catch some more residents.’ He stood up. ‘But right now, I’m afraid we have an appointment to keep.’
Marie pulled a face and sighed loudly. ‘Okay. Let’s get it over with, shall we?’
* * *
‘The chief’s in a meeting, DI Jackman. He’ll see you when he’s through.’ The Harlan Marsh desk officer looked more bored than apologetic. ‘He’s told one of our men to bring you up to speed and he’s allocated you an office to use.’
Jackman frowned. ‘Such a wonderful welcome. And please don’t get carried away with the accommodation, Constable. We aren’t moving in — or I sincerely hope we aren’t.’ He glanced at Marie. Her face was a mixture of emotions. He wasn’t sure why, but she looked like she wanted to escape.
‘I’ll take you to your office, sir, and then I’ll tell Pritchard you are here.’
The office, if you could call it that, was a small, obviously hastily cleared out cupboard of a room. Not that it worried Jackman, he had no intentions of staying.
‘No place like home,’ muttered Marie, peering out of the small, grimy window. ‘How lovely — a room with a view.’
‘We have two chairs, a desk, a phone and a computer terminal, what more do you want?’ Jackman looked over her shoulder at the crumbling red brick wall of a derelict warehouse on the opposite side of an alley. They were stuck at the back of an old Victorian heap of a building. Their own nick was beginning to look more like the Ritz with every passing second.
‘What do you know about Harlan Marsh?’ Marie asked.
‘It’s a miserable little town, but it covers a huge area. I worked here for a few weeks not long after I moved up to CID, and it was the most unfriendly nick I’ve ever been in.’
‘So when they call this division the plug-hole of the marsh, they mean it.’
‘That’s the polite version. Still, if all I’ve heard about Chief Superintendent Cade is correct, maybe they deserve him.’
Marie’s face creased into a mask of contempt, and she spat out vehemently, ‘No one deserves Cade. That bastard’s a really nasty piece of work.’
‘I’m not sure that you should be speaking about a senior officer like that, Marie.’
Jackman tried to get over the shock of hearing his sergeant blast off in that way. ‘Although, off the record, I have to agree. Most likely his officers are only such miserable sods because they have to work under him. At least we can go home when we’ve sorted this. They are stuck with him.’ He glanced across at her and said, ‘I didn’t know that you’d had dealings with Cade before?’
Marie pulled a face. ‘It was a while ago.’
Jackman raised his eyebrows. If that was the case, it must have been pretty serious to still bother her so deeply. ‘What happened?’
It was like drawing teeth. Marie sighed. ‘When Cade was a DI, he shafted a colleague of mine. Blighted her career and she never managed to make the grade after it. So, as you can imagine, I have no love for him.’
Jackman had never heard her badmouth another officer before. The aggression in her voice was about as normal for Marie as a fish climbing a tree. In his book this meant some sort of emotional involvement. ‘So were you close? You and this colleague?’
At first he thought Marie wasn’t going to answer, then she said quietly, ‘She was my first crewmate, a great girl and so full of potential, until she turned down that slimeball’s advances.’ She shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t happen now. Cade wouldn’t have dared, for fear of a sexual harassment charge, but back then a young policewoman didn’t stand a chance against a senior officer like him.’
Jackman desperately wanted to delve deeper, but decided that now was not the time. He nodded and took it no further. Not that he’d leave it alone for too long. Marie had obviously never forgotten her old crewmate, and the anger she had felt had never dissipated. There was a story there that he was very interested to know — when the time was right.
A knock at the door dispelled his thoughts.
‘I’m your liaison officer, sir, PC Gary Pritchard. And I’m very pleased to meet you.’ An older man entered the tiny room and held out his hand.
As they shook hands, Jackman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Have we met before, Constable?’
‘I was seconded to your area to help out on the Red House Farm murder, sir. I’m surprised you remember me.’
‘I do. I always remember good coppers, and you were polite, helpful and remarkably efficient, considering that you were working way out of your comfort zone and for a different division.’
Jackman saw that Pritchard was blushing.
‘Glad to have been a help, sir,’ he murmured to his boots. ‘That was a nasty case, that one. All those deaths under one roof.’
‘Still, we eventually caught the intruder who killed them. Thank God.’ Jackman frowned. ‘That was the second of three terrible investigations in this area.’
‘Yes, sir. Years before, Harlan Marsh had the Mulberry shootings, when Simeon Mulberry shot his wife and then himself, right in front of his children. Then you had the massacre of the farm workers at Red House Farm, and then there was that tragedy at Dovegate Lane.’ He shook his head. ‘What a world we live in.’
‘Well, let’s hope this case is a simple one. Come on in, PC Pritchard, although I can hardly say make yourself at home.’
The constable looked apologetic. ‘Not exactly roomy, is it? This old place is pretty well ready for the wrecker’s ball. They keep promising new premises, but then they say the budget won’t stretch that far.’ He bit his lip and growled. ‘Even so, this is taking the proverbial. Shall I try to organise something a bit better?’
‘No, we’ll cope. Hopefully this is just a flying visit. Go find another chair, if you can fit it in, and fill us in.’
Gary Pritchard left, returning shortly dragging a chair, and in his other hand balancing a tray holding three polystyrene cups of coffee, a heap of sugar packets and some creamers. ‘I hope you both drink coffee. If you don’t you are unlucky, the tea here tastes like something left behind after the tide’s gone out.’
Jackman smiled. ‘Coffee’s great, thank you. So, Constable, why are we here?’
‘Well, actually it’s your own fault.’ Gary gave a cheeky grin. ‘Chief Superintendent Cade read the county stats regarding your recent arrest rate. When a Masonic friend of his hit a problem, he promised him he’d get the best team in the area onto it. And here you are!’
‘Oh, great! And are you really rushed off your feet with a serious investigation?’ asked Jackman.
‘We are up to our necks, sir, but then we don’t have the staff that your division has. And what seems serious to us out here in the sticks is probably not as bad as the things you deal with.’
‘Okay, you’d better give us the background.’
Gary sat down, stirred his coffee and frowned. ‘The girl, Toni Clarkson, is sixteen and a right little tearaway. It seems that her father, Neil Clarkson and his wife Ellen, have spoilt her to the point of ruining a kid who’s bright, if somewhat unruly.’
‘Has she run away before?’ asked Marie.
‘This is the fourth or fifth time. That is why there is no missing persons alert, even though she’s vulnerable because of her age. We could go public, but Daddy is shit-scared that we’ll find her crashed out, drunk as a skunk, in some squat and make him look a total fool.’
Jackman�
�s forehead had become a mass of creases. ‘So good old Chief Cade, his chum in high places, has roped us in to sort it out for him?’
‘As quickly and as quietly as possible, sir.’
‘Well, we’ll see about that, Constable,’ snapped Jackman. ‘I’m not renowned for my diplomatic fairy feet. We’ll do what needs doing, and in whatever manner I see fit.’
Gary nodded and gave a satisfied smile. ‘Oh, good.’
‘Nice to know we already have an ally in the camp. So what happened this time, Constable?’ asked Marie, taking out her notebook.
‘Yesterday Toni had a row with her mother over something quite trivial, but it escalated into a huge dust-up. Dad stuck his oar in and grounded her. Toni, as you’d expect, didn’t take it well, and when night fell she bunked off out of the bedroom window.’
‘Where do they live?’ Jackman asked.
‘Cameron Court, the only posh address in the whole town. They have a ground floor apartment. It’s a gated community, and has around a dozen townhouses as well as the main Court itself. That’s three storeys of executive flats. Cost a mint.’
‘Has she been seen since?’
‘She and two mates were caught on CCTV sitting on the steps of the war memorial. They were drinking from a bottle concealed in a bag. The time was logged at 10.27 p.m.’
‘And after that?’ Marie was scribbling rapidly.
‘Nothing. We recognised the other two girls and had a quiet word with them. They said she got stroppy when they refused to gatecrash the local nightclub with her. After a row she called her friends a pair of losers and said she was going “Somewhere where she would be welcome and there was plenty of booze.” That’s the last time she was seen.’
‘And did they know where she meant?’
Gary shook his head. ‘They had no idea at all. Then we were pulled off, for fear of attracting too much attention. At that point it was assumed that Dad still believed she was just sulking and hanging out at some friend’s place.’