by Damien Boyd
‘Not past Caen Hill, that’s for sure.’
‘What’s at Caen Hill?’
‘Locks. Twenty-nine of them in two miles on the way up to Devizes. They’ll take him most of the day, if he’s on his own.’
‘That’s east. Would he have gone west instead?’
‘Nah. The canal ends at Keynsham and beyond Hanham Lock it’s the River Avon. Tidal, that is. East takes you to the Thames at Reading and you can go pretty much anywhere in the country from there.’
Dixon looked at Jane and smiled. ‘You got any large scale maps in that shop of yours, Jim?’ he asked.
‘Fancy taking Monty for a walk?’
‘Eh?’
‘I’ll drop you at bridge one-four-two on the A361 and you walk along the canal looking for him,’ said Dixon. ‘Then I’ll pick you up at bridge one-four-eight. That’s the A365.’ Dixon had the map spread out across the steering wheel and dashboard of his Land Rover.
‘How far is it?’ asked Jane.
‘A couple of miles.’
‘What do I do if I see him?’
‘Act like a dog walker, find a bench, sit down and ring me. Then pretend to be walking back the way you came and keep an eye on him. If you can get a look in the boat then so much the better.’
‘And what if he’s not there?’
‘We try lower down. And if he’s not there either then we try the other side of Caen Hill.’
Jane sighed. ‘Why me?’
‘You’ll look less suspicious than me.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
Dixon folded the map, leaving it open at Caen Hill, and slid it down the side of the passenger seat. ‘Ready?’
‘Just go.’
‘You got poo bags?’
‘You think of everything, don’t you?’
He screeched to a halt across the entrance to the footpath. ‘The towpath’s just there.’
Jane jumped out of the Land Rover and waited for Monty to hop over on to the passenger seat. Then she clipped on his lead and was gone, slamming the door behind them.
A boat was in the lock under the road bridge, the sound of a diesel engine echoing under the arch, so Jane walked up and looked down into the chamber.
Green with a red roof. And pointing the wrong way too.
Then she walked back along the towpath to the top of the hill.
‘Bloody hell,’ she muttered.
The flight of locks shelved away beneath her in a series of steps, each marked out by the huge black painted beams and a white painted footbridge. Several boats were in the top locks in the flight, all pointing down the hill, though, and Steiner would be coming up. If he’d got this far.
She tried counting the locks, but soon lost the thread. Then she tried imagining the horse, pulling a boat laden with coal up this lot. Poor sod.
‘Right then, you. Let’s make like dog walkers,’ she muttered, Monty sniffing along the undergrowth on the end of his long lead.
Sixteen locks, one after the other; she counted them on her way down the hill. And three boats near the bottom, all going up. People milling about, windlasses in hand, the cranking of the paddles making a loud metallic clack that even Monty had got used to by the time they reached the bottom.
Plenty of other dog walkers too, enjoying the spectacle. Dixon had been right: she didn’t look out of place.
Jane looked back up the flight and tried to imagine the derelict locks on the Somersetshire Coal Canal in the same state. Maybe restoring them wouldn’t be such a bad thing?
A hundred yards or so separated the bottom of the flight and the next lock going down the hill. She spotted figures standing either side of the top gate, windlasses in hand. That couldn’t be Steiner, unless he had help. Either that or two boats were going through the lock at the same time. The locks were wide enough to take two side by side.
The water had brought the boats almost level with the top of the lock chamber and the men on the other side of the gates were leaning against them, trying to push them open. Both were hire boats, green with a red roof.
Jane walked on.
The locks were evenly spaced out now, perhaps a hundred yards between each, and all of them empty. She walked up on to a footbridge and looked along the canal. Nothing.
Then she checked her phone.
Bollocks.
No signal either.
The towpath crossed the canal at the next lock, bridge one-four-six, according to the sign. Not far to go now until Dixon picked them up at one-four-eight.
She stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked down at a boat in the lock below, deep in the bottom, the chamber only just beginning to fill, the now familiar clack of the paddles being ratcheted open and the water swirling.
Jane glanced at the man cranking the windlass. A red baseball cap. Odd that there was no hair sticking out at the sides.
Solar panels, a bike chained to the top rail. And a skylight. Jane froze.
A girl lying curled up on a bench seat, her knees tucked under the dining table; she was just visible in the gloom, the curtains on both sides of the cabin drawn.
Jane looked up and watched the man tiptoeing across the top of the lock gates to the other side. Then he attached the windlass to the paddle and began cranking it.
She walked on, breathing hard now. Fifty yards to a bend in the canal. She looked back. No one coming, so she checked her phone again.
Still no fucking signal.
Then she began to run.
Dixon parked on the grass verge with his hazard lights flashing and walked back to the bridge. He sighed. Dense undergrowth on a bend in the canal obscured his view, so he dropped down on to the towpath and walked around the corner, keeping pace with a narrowboat that had emerged from under the bridge. Black with a purple trim, and no bike on the roof.
Several canal boats were moored on the nearside, some of the boaters enjoying the Sunday morning sunshine with breakfast on deck. Dogs running around loose too.
And Jane sprinting towards him, with Monty running off the lead alongside her.
Dixon checked his phone. No signal.
That explains that.
She stopped in front of him, breathing hard, her hands on her knees, so Dixon took the lead hanging around her neck and clipped it on to Monty’s collar.
‘Well?’
‘The fucker went right underneath me at Lower Foxhangers. Just around the bend back there.’ More gasping for breath. ‘There’s a bridge over the lock. One-four-six.’
‘Did you see her?’
‘She was lying on the bench seat behind the dining table. The curtains are closed but I could see her through the skylight. Asleep, I think.’
‘Drugged, probably. And you’re sure it’s her?’
‘I was looking straight at her. And him.’ Jane straightened up, sweat dripping off the end of her nose. ‘And it’s the right boat.’
‘I got a signal up on the bridge,’ said Dixon, checking his phone again.
‘What’re you going to do?’
‘Call for backup.’ He grimaced. ‘I’m not taking any chances with Roger’s granddaughter.’
Jane nodded. ‘We’re in Wiltshire here, don’t forget.’
‘I’ll ring Potter and she can sort it out.’
Once sitting in the passenger seat of the Land Rover, Jane leaned back and closed her eyes, so Dixon reached behind her into the passenger footwell and picked up a bottle of water.
‘Here,’ he said, handing it to Jane. ‘Just make sure you leave him some.’
‘Is it Monty’s?’ she asked, frowning at the bottle.
Dixon shrugged his shoulders. ‘He won’t mind, seeing as it’s you.’ Then he unfolded the map across the steering wheel and dialled Potter’s number.
‘This had better be good.’
‘We’ve found her,’ said Dixon.
‘Oh, thank fuck for that.’ The sound of Potter clicking her fingers at someone in the background. ‘Where are you?’
‘Caen Hill Locks, just west of Devizes on the Kennet and Avon Canal. She’s on a narrowboat with Steiner heading east between bridges one-four-six and one-four-five at a place called Lower Foxhangers.’
‘How the hell did you find her?’
‘Can we worry about that later?’
‘Yes, of course. What d’you need?’
‘We can’t let him get up into the main flight of locks, and we’ve got about an hour until he reaches the pound in between lock twenty-eight and the bottom lock of the main flight. That’ll be just east of bridge one-four-four.’
‘Hang on a minute – Devizes is bloody Wiltshire, isn’t it?’
‘It is.’
Potter sighed. ‘All right, leave it to me.’
‘I want to take him in the bottom lock. Going up the hill it’ll be empty when he goes in and the water will be at its shallowest. Plus we can close the gate behind him and we’ll have him surrounded.’
‘Armed Response?’
‘Yes. I want dogs too and we’ll need to seal off the A361 and the B3101.’
‘I’ll ring my opposite number at Wiltshire and call you back.’
‘Tell them no bloody sirens.’
‘Will do.’
Dixon rang off.
‘What happens now?’ asked Jane.
‘I’m gonna drive round and park at bridge one-four-four. You get to go for a walk.’
‘Another one?’
‘Get ahead of him and keep him in sight. Dawdle a bit if you have to; watch boats in the locks, that sort of thing. When he’s in lock twenty-seven, come and find me. All right?’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Dixon looked down into the empty lock chamber beneath him, the water perhaps ten feet below, the huge gates to his right closed and holding back the canal above. The sound of running water masked the pounding of his heart, a trickle leaking around the sides of the gates and from a tiny gap in the middle where the two met, the pressure of the water above not quite sealing them shut.
The lower gates were open, turned back into recesses in the stone walls, weeds clinging on in the sludge that had collected on the beams between the panels.
He looked down at a set of metal rungs set into the stone walls. A ladder of sorts with a handrail at the top – just like at a swimming pool, only painted white. One on each side of the lock. Dixon grimaced. He hoped it would all be over before he needed to climb down.
The walls flared at the entrance to the lock, the curved red brick bearing the scars of the boats needing help to get lined up, lichen growing where water was seeping through from above and more weeds sprouting in the cracks.
The dark green water in the pound below the lock reflected the trees on the far side and the few clouds in the sky, the only ripples on the surface coming from tiny fish rising in the sun.
The grass around the lock made a stark contrast with the old Somersetshire Coal Canal: carefully mown – manicured even – rather than strimmed; the wooden footbridge and gate arms freshly painted too.
Away to his right, the next lock up the hill and the ones above were empty, the lock keepers holding back the boats coming down the hill. They were blocking the towpath too, dog walkers diverted across the footbridge over lock forty and into the woods.
Giant black beams with white painted handles on the end marked each set of gates on the sixteen locks in the flight stretching away up the hill, thirty-two pairs in all, looking like giant oars sticking out of the side of a Viking longship. Or giant piano keys maybe. Dixon frowned. Perhaps not.
Below him the towpath was blocked at bridge one-four-five, now well behind Steiner, with dog walkers and other pedestrians being intercepted and sent back to Foxhangers. No traffic on the now closed B3101, blocked at its junction with the A361; might be a bit of a giveaway, Dixon thought, but then it was a Sunday and they’d just have to take that chance.
He looked back across the lower pound to lock twenty-eight. No sign of Jane or Steiner. Yet.
Two narrowboats moored on the nearside in between the locks had been checked, and the anglers who had been fishing in the pound when he arrived told to clear off. The campsite on the far side of the pound had been evacuated too. Otherwise, it looked like a perfectly normal Sunday morning at Caen Hill.
But it wasn’t.
Dixon felt his hands shaking and thrust them into his trouser pockets. Then he perched on the edge of the gate arm and tried to look casual.
Was Steiner armed? Jane hadn’t seen a gun but that didn’t mean . . .
He took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks. They’d find out soon enough.
He looked across at the dense undergrowth on the other side of the lock and the four Armed Response officers kneeling in the stinging nettles. Four more were lying in the bushes behind him below the towpath. The dog handler was in there too. And the duty inspector from Devizes. All well hidden.
No helicopter was a bit of a shame, and not even on standby. Grounded for maintenance, apparently. Still, they shouldn’t need it.
That’s Monty!
Movement under the bridge, in the shadows. Then Jane appeared, running behind him, glancing over her shoulder.
‘He’s in the pound just below the lock,’ she said, when she reached Dixon.
‘Both still on board?’
Jane nodded.
‘I’m parked in the farm on the other side,’ he said, handing Jane his car keys. ‘Over the footbridge and follow the path. There’s a gate. You can’t miss it. There should be some water left too.’
‘Good. I’m parched.’
‘Not for you, for Monty.’ Dixon rolled his eyes. ‘I got this for you,’ he said, handing her a can of Diet Coke from his coat pocket. ‘And tell the lads in the bushes on the other side that Steiner’s on his way.’
‘All right.’
‘Then you’d better keep out of sight. He’ll expect to see you with a dog.’
Jane sighed and trudged across the footbridge.
The metal clanking of the windlass alerted Dixon to Steiner’s arrival in lock twenty-eight, his boat in the bottom of the chamber. A red baseball cap leaning over the paddle capstan cranking the handle; he could see that from over a hundred yards away.
Dixon wondered where Poland was now. Catcott, probably, staring into the bottom of an empty coffee mug, or a whisky glass.
It’ll soon be over now, old son.
The roof of the canal boat began to appear over the top of the gate, a bicycle lying on its side, solar panels too. Blue with a red roof. Dixon couldn’t see the name on the side but it must be Anytimenow.
This is it.
Then the metallic clang of the rear doors being opened on another boat. Nearer.
What the fuck?
The hatch cover slid back and a figure stepped out on to the rear deck of the first canal boat moored in the pound. Seconds later the front doors opened and a woman stepped out on to the front deck and began untying the rope.
Dixon stepped back and spoke in a furious whisper over his shoulder.
‘I thought you lot cleared those boats?’
‘We did,’ came the reply from the bushes. ‘They must’ve been asleep or deaf. Nobody answered when I knocked.’
Dixon gritted his teeth.
For fuck’s sake.
Engine on now, the boat crept away from its mooring, heading towards the lock directly below Dixon, the woman sauntering along the towpath, windlass in hand, ready to operate the paddles.
He stepped forward, holding his warrant card to his chest, with his back to Steiner, who was now at the tiller of Anytimenow as it emerged from lock twenty-eight. ‘Give me the windlass, keep walking and don’t look back.’
‘What?’
‘This is a police operation,’ said Dixon, his eyes wide. ‘Now keep walking as if everything’s perfectly normal.’
‘How far?’
‘Someone will intercept you. Now go.’
The woman handed Dixon the windlass and walked on up the towpath, t
he temptation to look back too strong, obviously.
The rumble of a diesel engine echoed from the bottom of the chamber below him and he looked down to see the narrowboat edging into the lock, an elderly man holding the tiller and looking all around the top, trying to find his wife, presumably.
Dixon ran across the footbridge, climbed down the metal rungs set into the lock wall and jumped across on to the roof of the boat, which was lying at an angle across the lock. Then he stepped over the solar panels and skylight before dropping down on to the rear deck.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m a police officer,’ replied Dixon, his warrant card in the palm of his hand. ‘Get down in the cabin and lie on the floor.’
‘But—’
‘Now, Sir.’
‘Where’s my wife?’
‘She’s safe.’
Dixon took hold of the tiller and turned to watch Steiner’s approach on Anytimenow, the boat lining up to come into the lock alongside him.
A stab vest might have been a good idea. Dixon sighed.
Too bloody late now.
Then Anytimenow stopped in the middle of the pound between the two locks, drifting sideways on the breeze.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jane knelt down behind the stinging nettles and looked along the top of the lock.
‘Where’s Inspector Dixon?’
‘He went down the ladder,’ replied the Armed Response officer kneeling in the nettles in front of her. ‘Another boat pulled in.’
‘He’s on another boat? Where the hell did that come from?’
‘Just over there.’
Jane frowned. She watched through a gap in the undergrowth as Steiner edged his boat towards the lock, lining it up with the entrance and the space next to Dixon. ‘And what’s he looking at?’ she whispered.
‘He won’t hear you. He’s standing on top of a diesel engine, don’t forget.’
‘He’s seen something over there,’ said another, pointing to the bushes on the far side of the towpath.
Jane looked across, just in time to see a uniformed officer duck down. The drone of the diesel engine slowed, the wake at the back of Anytimenow all but disappearing, leaving it drifting sideways on what little breeze there was.