by Oliver Tidy
The skies had darkened dramatically in the last hour, a sure sign Romney Marsh was in for a good April drenching.
Her presence and her strength of purpose were a welcome distraction from my energy-sapping feelings of dreadfulness.
As we hurried down the stairs, I said, ‘How come it was missed when you searched the place?’
‘We only searched in and around the mouth of the thing. We made a mistake. If you hadn’t had an aerial view it might never have been found and recognised for what it might be. You are quite sure about it being your uncle’s?’
‘Sure enough to call you. Forensic examination will determine what you need to know on that score, won’t it?’
She obviously considered that rhetorical. We exited on to the gravel. Fat spots of rain were starting to pockmark the sun-bleached grey concrete fence panels. It was going to tip it down.
There was a strand of barbed wire strung about six inches above the top panel. I hurried back into the shop as quickly as my damaged body would let me and returned with a stepladder and a throw from one of the sofas. I put the ladder against the wall, threw the throw over the top of the wire and then stepped down to let Jo go over.
I offered her my hand to steady her as she went over the top and she took it. It was cool and the skin was soft. She had a firm grip and it was everything to do with teetering six feet above the ground on an inch-wide slab of concrete.
She straddled the wire as the rain turned to something more insistent.
‘How am I supposed to get down the other side?’
‘Jump. Or I’ll go over first, if you like?’
She made a face, braced herself and dropped. I waited for her to call out the result of a duff landing. But she didn’t.
‘Pass over the stepladder.’
I did. She put it against the side of the container, climbed up and swore.
‘I need an evidence bag. In my car. Try the boot first.’
She threw her keys to me and I got one and brought it back.
The rain had made up its mind to lash it down. It came down straight, thick, hard and cold. My T-shirt was soon plastered to my skin.
I watched her climb up on top of the metal box and retrieve the slipper, wrapping it carefully in the little plastic bag. She reversed her journey and was soon straddling the barbed wire again to come back but with no ladder my side she was forced to contemplate the drop again. We looked at each other for a moment. I thought about offering to try to catch her. She waved me aside and dropped into the gravel, which was deeper there where the car traffic had pushed it to bank up. I was suitably impressed. I reached under the wire, over the fence and pulled the stepladder back over, freed the throw. Job done.
The rain was like a sustained and concentrated volley of stair rods and we hurried back inside.
We stood dripping and soaked to the skin in the little airlock space. She was checking in the bag and I was looking at her. Her hair was plastered to her scalp, her eye make-up had run and her open neck white shirt beneath her suit jacket was stuck to her skin, giving me a clear impression of what she had on underneath.
I looked up to find her staring at me in a do-you-want-a-photo way. I smiled a little pathetically. A little guiltily.
‘You want a towel?’
She said she did.
We went upstairs. I flicked the kettle on as we walked into the kitchen.
‘Look, do you want to borrow a dry shirt?’
‘Got a hairdryer?’
‘There’s one in my aunt’s room. You know where that is, don’t you?’
She disappeared like she did. I heard her go upstairs. She wasn’t backwards in coming forwards. I supposed that being a police detective did that to you if you weren’t already like it.
I pulled on a clean T-shirt from the pile of laundry. I made a couple of coffees and waited for her. I heard the hairdryer going on full blast for a good couple of minutes, giving me time to reflect on where my imagination and logic had taken me earlier.
The idea that my poor aged uncle – a decent harmless old man, terrified for himself and what had happened to his wife – could have been fighting for his life and someone’s attention in that rusting metal coffin for days while I came and went only a loud voice away was an idea I found to be the most appalling of anything I had ever been forced to contemplate. That included losing a four-month-old foetus. It was the stuff of nightmares.
Jo eventually came back downstairs and into the kitchen. Her hair was less wet and tidier and so was her shirt. She’d wiped off the mascara, leaving her eyes looking smaller and more tired. She thanked me and accepted the coffee I indicated I’d made for her. She had taken Exhibit A with her and I was glad of it. Now she set it on the table in its plastic covering.
I took a deep breath and shared my hellish thoughts with her. When I’d finished it didn’t feel like a problem halved. She had adopted a severe stony expression. She didn’t say anything, so I did.
‘Who would do that to a defenceless old man?’
‘We have a good idea of who, or one of them at any rate. So think about why? Why would someone go to those lengths?’
‘Because of the importance of what they were trying to conceal? What could be that important?’ I answered myself. ‘To normal-thinking people, nothing. Nothing could be important enough to torture and then murder someone like my uncle. Believe me, he was a gentle, kind man.’
‘I believe you. I also have to deal with elements of our society for whom life means nothing, distress and torture and violence are tools of their trade. Not everyone has the moral compass of “normal” people. Turn the telly on any night of the week and see what people are doing to each other all over the world if you doubt me.’
‘What’s your point?’ I said, thinking there must be one.
‘My point is that for the criminal underbelly of society this kind of thing wouldn’t be such a big deal if it was a measure they deemed necessary to preserve their position or business.’
‘But my uncle and aunt wouldn’t have been a threat to the business or position of anyone like that.’
‘Maybe they were and they just didn’t know it. Or not until it was too late, anyway.’
***
32
Jo didn’t hang around. She had a lot on, she said. She took the slipper and left with assurances she’d be in touch as soon as forensics had looked at it and were able to confirm whether it had belonged to my uncle or not. I imagined Cinderella retold by Tarantino.
I needed to keep busy. I needed to distract myself from a scenario that was threatening to drive me to drink at best, insane at worst. I did the only thing I could think of and went down into the shop.
I stared at the books and the boxes and started to wonder at the pointlessness of my uncle’s life’s work. Decades of collecting and caring, knowledge, skills and understanding snuffed out in an act of sociopathic thuggery.
I checked my email for some procrastination. It was possible there would be something in my Inbox I could drag out some time on, highjack my thoughts with. There was an understanding message from my now ex-employer and nothing from my wife, understanding or otherwise. A couple of other messages from contacts, which I ignored.
I clicked on Internet Explorer. I wanted to find the phone number of the plumber who rented space in Flashman’s yard. I had a couple of things to ask her and as she’d been prepared to speak to me before I saw no reason why she wouldn’t again.
I was intending to type in something like plumbers on Romney Marsh. I couldn’t remember her name from the sign-writing on her van, but thought that if I saw it a memory might be jogged. I only got as far as typing ‘plu’ in the browser search box.
Like most search engines the one I was using displayed suggestions related to what was being typed – a sort of predictive text – based on what might have been previously accessed from that particular terminal. Typing in plu gave a suggestion – PLUTO. If I’d typed quicker or been looking at the keys instead of
the screen it wouldn’t have been displayed or I probably would have missed it. PLUTO. Someone had already used the computer to search for this. I became aware of an increase in my pulse rate. PLUTO. Just like the entry in my relatives’ desk diary upstairs. I’d wanted distraction and I’d got it in spades. I hit enter.
I was confronted with the usual page of web links. A quick scan let me know that any one I chose would be concerned with one of three subject matters: Pluto the planet; Pluto the cartoon dog or the PLUTO initiative of allied forces in the Second World War. The first was in outer space. The second was in Disneyland. The third was at Dungeness – less than ten miles away.
There was a second clue in case I wasn’t smart enough to pick option three based on the geography – the text of the web link was a different colour from all the others on the page, indicating it had been viewed before.
I thought about calling Jo but didn’t. I needed to see what it was all about in my own time. As I moved the cursor over the point of connection I realised my palm was moist. I clicked the link and got a history lesson and what my amateur sleuth’s nose recognised as a high old stench of a lead.
PLUTO – pipeline under the ocean. A wartime codename. I read the comprehensive, detailed text. I studied the maps and images. As a concept it struck me as one of those hare-brained Heath Robinson affairs that only those with a frail grasp of reality and the rudimentary understanding of the logistics involved in such a proposal could conceive. But, with as much secrecy as possible, it had been approved and commissioned by the War Office and it had become a wartime success story. It was virtually on my doorstep and I had no idea.
When the allies were coming around to the idea of the D-Day landings it was recognised that a reliable supply of fuel for the various military transports and machinery that pitched up on the beaches of Northern France would be essential to the chances of success. Sending a succession of tankers across the English Channel laden with fuel would have made nice easy targets for the Luftwaffe and the U-boats while simultaneously putting the Allies’ supply lines firmly at the mercy of the capricious Channel weather. Such a system certainly couldn’t have been relied upon as a supply of an essential element of the invasion of occupied France.
Some bright spark came up with the idea of laying fuel supply pipes across the seabed of the English Channel and simply pumping the fuel over. The simplicity of the notion struck me immediately. This was closely pursued by the incredible logistical aspect. At its narrowest point the English Channel is over twenty miles across. Twenty miles of pipe and all that implied. In the twenty-first century it wouldn’t have been such a big deal, I supposed. In the war-torn Europe of the 1940s, with no precedent for such a thing, it struck me as madness, something to be laughed off.
They’d done it though. By the end of the war, between the Isle of Wight and Cherbourg, the Combined Operations Experimental Establishment (COXE), that rich well of alternative positive creative types who apparently didn’t have the word can’t in their lexicon, had laid four pipelines totalling over two hundred and eighty miles in length. Between Dungeness and Ambleteuse, near Boulogne, an unbelievable seventeen pipelines measuring over five hundred miles in total length had been laid in a swept seabed channel two miles wide. Truly staggering.
But what did it have to do with anything now? Pipelines under the English Channel. I read on. There were two types of line laid. Both had an internal diameter of approximately three inches. Both contained materials – lead and other metals – deemed valuable enough to have been salvaged in the years following the official end of hostilities.
I learned that at Dungeness beachside bungalows had been built and used as pumping stations. They had housed big Mather and Platt pumps and the necessary plumbing and paraphernalia and teams to keep it all operational. Miles of pipes had been submerged in the shingle of the barren landscape of the Dungeness peninsula to supply these pumping stations from storage tanks and distribution networks remotely positioned and camouflaged further inland. With a growing sense of awe and respect I came to understand something of how vital this operation had been to the invasion effort.
But again, I came back to the same question: what did it have to do with the here and now? PLUTO had been written in my relatives’ diary and it had been accessed on their computer. It must have some relevance and possibly a connection to their fates. There was nothing else to consider.
As I sat there mulling this over and improving my knowledge of local history there was a determined thumping on the back door. I minimised the computer page, picked up the cricket bat and went to investigate.
***
33
Flashman senior stood on the gravel a punch away looking filled to bursting with something explosive and unstable. I had the bat out of sight down by my side. I flexed my grip on the handle. I wasn’t going to take any more beatings without a fight. And I didn’t intend to fight fair. That never got me anywhere. There were no niceties to dispense with.
‘The police have been to see me,’ he said.
‘And?’
I couldn’t tell whether he wanted to fight or talk. Rip my head off and shit down my neck or cry on my shoulder and pour his heart out. He had the hide of a rhinoceros, the bearing of a silverback and the growl of a bear with a thorn in his paw. He didn’t strike me as the sensitive type.
‘We need to talk.’
‘What about?’
‘My son.’
Given the circumstances, they were as powerful a combination of two simple one-syllable words as I’d ever heard. I opened the door to admit him. If I hadn’t he might have decided to come through it closed.
‘Go through to the shop.’ I stood the bat against the wall behind the door so he wouldn’t see it. No point giving him ideas.
We arranged ourselves on the furniture. He filled the two-seater Chesterfield and I perched towards the front of a matching wing-back feeling small and vulnerable opposite him. He showed little interest in his surroundings. Maybe he wasn’t much of a reader. Or maybe he just had more pressing issues on his mind.
‘The police arrested you yesterday.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Yes. They did.’ I didn’t ask him how he knew.
‘Why?’
I saw nothing to be gained in being less than straight with him. He wanted answers to a tragic loss. So did I. As both recently bereaved we had something in common. He might be able to provide some answers for me, even if he didn’t know it. Alienating him would have been counter-productive and potentially dangerous.
‘The man in charge is incompetent. He made a mistake.’
‘About what?’ He wanted to hear me say it.
‘About a lot of things. But yesterday he made the mistake of thinking I had a hand in your son’s death.’
His sun-darkened lenses had cleared to give me a good view of his magnified eyes. His intense stare beneath his deep, slanted primate’s brow disconcerted me when I tried to match it.
‘Did you?’
I was glad I didn’t have to lie. ‘No. Nothing. Quite the opposite in fact.’
He didn’t like that. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Who spoke to you?’
‘Sprake.’
‘How much did he tell you?’
‘Very little. He just brought bad news and dropped your name.’
I made a note to self to thank Sprake for that next time I saw him. I took a deep breath. ‘I might have a lot more. If you want to hear it and you don’t know already know, it’s not going to make you any happier.’
‘I couldn’t be less happy.’
I thought maybe he could, but I didn’t say so.
‘The night before last I was kidnapped with violence. Knocked unconscious, bound, gagged and dumped in an agricultural building in the middle of nowhere – Appledore to be precise. I understand it’s a barn you own. Your son was involved. He was into something that involved at least two other men and late night activity in your yard that could have been regular. When t
hey understood I had been watching them they waited for me, took me and left me for dead.’
His face was an impassive mask constructed of something harder than stone.
‘On top of that I now have reason to believe that your son and his friends were involved in the deaths of my uncle and aunt.’
Something happened to that mask then. It slipped. Only a fraction before he caught it and tried to fix it back. But it was skewed. It didn’t hold the determination and malice that it had just done. There was something else there now. It could have been sadness. It could have been regret. It could have been despair. It could have been all three and more.
‘What reason?’ His voice betrayed what I suspected. He was battling an internal wretchedness and grief. And he feared he knew. It threatened to spill out of him and embarrass us both. And I sincerely hoped it wouldn’t.
‘Did you know about any of it?’
He shook his head and swallowed hard and full. ‘Would you have a glass of water?’
I indicated an unopened plastic bottle of still mineral water on the table between us.
‘Help yourself. I haven’t touched it.’
He twisted off the lid and drank deeply. I felt I could press him.
‘What do you know of your son’s night-time activity and his friends?’
He seemed to relax a small amount, like a lumberjack’s unclenched buttock and about as pretty. Something went out of him. He was a rough diamond who’d lost his sparkle. A tomcat waking up to the reality of his neutering. A man who’d lost his only son.
‘I can talk to you without it getting back to the law?’
I indicated he could.
‘I knew very little about my son’s life any more. The truth is he had become a disappointment for me. We ruined him, of course. Spoilt him rotten. He was an only child and we could afford it. When he came back from university he was a changed man. He was supposed to follow me in the business, that was the deal, but he’d lost interest. He had grander ideas, schemes, and he didn’t want to get his hands dirty on building sites. All that was beneath him.’