by Jean Chapman
‘You’re sure it was all ready cash?’ Cannon asked.
‘Oh I’m quite sure, I saw it. I’d heard of folks buying for cash and bringing it in carrier-bags but never thought I’d see it! The men and the boats had gone but I was up on a crane in the yard and could see over the frosted glass at the bottom of the office window. There were three bags on Mr Slingsby’s desk, and he sat counting notes out of one and putting them into piles.’
‘And these boats were taken away on the river by the new owners?’ Cannon asked.
‘Yes, Callum told me about the men.’ It was Hoskins who replied. ‘Tell us again what they were like.’
‘There were two ordinary-looking guys, well, everyday sort of villains, shaven heads, but the one with the money, certainly the boss, he was a big man,’ Callum said, pursing his lips and shaking his head. ‘Shoulders on him like a prize-fighter. Can’t imagine anyone tackling him.’
He went on to tell them that the names of the boats sold were Merrybell, Bluebell and Jollybell, all bought from the same small hire company some time ago. The little one, he said, ‘was called something Boy, ought to have been Rotten Boy.’
When the amiable young man had departed back to the boatyard, Hoskins added two vital bits of information. ‘Callum said he overheard one of the men mention the Stump, Boston Stump, and his description of that man …’
‘At a guess, Sean Jakes,’ Cannon said. Why would Sean Jakes come back for yet another cruiser, a two-berth and one that was barely water-worthy?
Chapter 15
‘Jones has made an arrest,’ Austin told Cannon as they once more went up to the lounge – this time leaving Liz in charge of the bar. ‘His DNA is on record linking him to at least one gang killing.’
Cannon held up a gin bottle from the sideboard, but Austin shook his head regretfully.
‘Wouldn’t mind some of your great coffee.’
‘The tray’s here, ready.’ He went to a corner table and switched on a kettle.
Jacket abandoned once more, Austin pulled his shirt sleeves away from his armpits. ‘Whatever the time of day or night when I finally get home, I shall be glad to get in the shower and have a large g and t.’
Cannon smiled, knowing Austin’s fastidious habits and his love of his end-of-day drink in a fine crystal tumbler.
‘So, Jones?’ he questioned.
‘His reputation is riding high,’ Austin said. ‘He picked this man up after a chase on the motorway.’
‘This man is one of your London lot?’
Austin shook his head. ‘No, bit of a maverick, but we believe he worked for old Jakes at one time.’
‘Expendable,’ Cannon suggested.
Austin regarded him solemnly. ‘You think the Jakeses have made a sacrificial lamb of him?’
‘Yes,’ he said without hesitation. ‘It keeps Jones in a good light and firmly in place so he can make sure the police and the Jakeses never clash. In return, Jones has already received a lady partner, a small mansion and has a promise of a share in the ultimate loot when they run – and I think Jones intends to go with them.’
‘He’s adamant that the Jakeses will be heading south any hour, that there’ll be a confrontation with the London gang, so he’s advising the detailing of all our men on the exits from the motorways.’
‘Meanwhile the Jakeses depart by water,’ Cannon said, and told Austin all he and Hoskins had learned at the boatyard that afternoon.
Austin listened intently, his eyes on Cannon’s face all the time. ‘We have to keep Jones in ignorance of all this, but …’ Austin paused, then made his decision, ‘I need to …’ Once more he broke off, then asked, ‘What do you think of Betterson?’
‘Regional Detective Inspector Betterson? Sound,’ Cannon said.
‘Do you know where he lives?’
‘I do, as it happens. Liz and I catered for his silver wedding party here,’ he answered and went to the desk for his address book of customers.
‘I know Jones is still involved with this arrest,’ Austin said, rising and putting his jacket back on. There are times when phone calls are not the thing. Face to face is the best policy. I shall go to Betterson’s home now and hope he is there.’
Cannon nodded. What Austin needed was a group, a network of astute senior officers to manage what could become messy in all senses of the word. ‘Meanwhile there’s Maddern and …’ The kettle clicked off; both men ignored it.
‘I’ll keep you informed,’ Austin said, adding, ‘resources are stretched and going to be more so, but I can honestly say we’ve every man we’ve got on the lookout for any sign, clue, the slightest thing.’
When he had gone, Cannon found Liz moderately busy in the bar, but she nodded him towards the kitchen. ‘Hoskins, he’s obviously got something he needs to tell you in private.’
‘Listen,’ Hoskins said without preamble, ‘one of my mates has seen that rotten old tub Callum was telling us about – Sailor Boy it’s called – heading out toward Boston. I asked him about the other three, but he’s confident they haven’t gone that way.’
‘Boston, but isn’t Boston …’
‘The wrong way if you’re thinking of cruising anywhere on inland waters,’ Hoskins confirmed.
But the right way, he thought, if one wanted to take attention from the real centre of action. Hadn’t Thompson’s body been taken to the coast? Now an old boat ‘hardly water-worthy’ was being taken that way. Why? What was its cargo? ‘So the Jakes buy a second-rate boat and take it …’ Cannon began.
‘Up waterways that go nowhere,’ Hoskins finished the sentence.
‘Except out to sea,’ Cannon added, and remembered Austin saying that they had a three-hostage situation and resources were stretched.
‘This old boy,’ Hoskins said, ‘has a boat I know he’d lend us, good outboard engine and a spotlight.’
Cannon raised his eyebrows; activities that needed a fast boat and a bright light usually meant some kind of illegal activities, poaching, probably, if he was a friend of Hoskins. ‘So, could we borrow this boat now, tonight?’ he asked.
‘Can I leave …’ he opened the door to the back porch and Jones’s greyhound rose from a blanket and came to stand meekly by Hoskins’ side. Cannon saw it had water and a saucer of broken rich tea biscuits – Liz had seen it was comfortable.
‘Well, I don’t think there’s any chance of Jones turning up here tonight.’
As the greyhound was resettled in the porch, Cannon’s mobile rang. To his surprise it was Austin again. ‘A local motor patrol has reported three cruisers travelling late on the waterways going towards Lincoln. The boats answered the descriptions you gave, but all had their names painted out – and I’ve seen Betterson.’
‘Lincoln,’ Cannon repeated, then told Austin that someone has seen the small, older boat bought by the same man, going the opposite way.
‘Noted,’ Austin said, ‘I’ll get someone on to that as soon as I can.’
The quick update left Cannon with no doubt in his mind what he must do. Three good cabin cruisers going inland, he could guess what they were destined to carry: gold was heavy and water was the perfect way to transport it, particularly if you think all your enemies are watching the motorways. The possible cargo of the old tub being taken the other way, without its name painted out, was of far more concern to him. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
He made a quick assessment of the number of customers in his bar. Liz would manage and Alamat was in attendance. ‘Just taking Hoskins to see a man about another boat,’ he told Liz. ‘Leaving his bike and the dog here.’
He saw her mouth open, though whether in surprise or protest he was not sure, then she pursed her lips in wry acceptance, shook her head a fraction before nodding.
‘But our lives are never dull, love, are they?’ he said.
‘Don’t push your luck, John Cannon, and don’t be long,’ she told him.
Hoskins directed and they covered the few miles to the edges of Boston in good time.
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‘Turn here,’ Cannon was ordered as they came to the edge of marsh and meadowland. ‘It’s the first cottage on the right. I’ll go in on my own.’
Even ex-cops not welcome, he thought, as he watched an outside light come on and Hoskins disappear around the back of the cottage. He knew Hoskins would not waste time and had sensed that he too had the same fear – that the old boat was a perfect way of neatly disposing of unwanted hostages. They both knew old Jakes would have little time or mercy for either his eldest son’s widow or his grandson since their escape from Snyder Crescent – and Maddern? The local bobby must have been a thorn in the family’s side ever since Danny innocently revealed that the sergeant had called him ‘Jakes’ – and it seemed the family were again taking pains to leave evidence well away from their real centre of activity.
He was relieved to see Hoskins reappear but instead of coming back to the jeep he raised an arm and waved a bunch of keys. Cannon was out of the jeep and behind him as he led the way through the back garden and a wicket-gate and along a path to a small boathouse. He opened the door with a key from the bunch and flicked a light switch. Cannon saw a smart little boat with a sleek outboard motor fitted to the stern and a spotlight in the bow, moored alongside a tidy landing-stage.
Hoskins wasted no time in going to the end of the wooden staging and pulling a rope which hung from the rafters – double wooden doors opened like theatre curtains out onto the river. The light from the boat house streaked out across the immediate waters, and where the light reached the far bank the long grasses showed green in the dark sepia, peaty-smelling gloom.
Hoskins got into the boat and switched on the spotlight, angling it low to the water, then moved back to the outboard motor. ‘Can you put the …’ he indicated the bulb above their heads, ‘out, and untie her?’
Cannon obliged.
‘You take the spotlight and I’ll steer,’ Hoskins said as he pushed the boat clear of the staging before dropping the outboard motor into its working position. Once clear he had the motor started and turned down to no more than a purr in seconds. Cannon recognized a well-practised skill when he encountered it.
If he had thought the sound of the engine might intrude on the late February evening, he was wrong. Instead, the noise seemed subdued, dissipated by the surrounding expanse of fenland, and the earthy smell of that was in turn blown away by a wind from the east, bringing ozone from the omnipresent sea. To Cannon, it seemed a sharp reminder to man to know his place. Generations back, the Dutch had brought their expertise to help wrest this land from the sea, but it would need vigilance to make it a permanent arrangement. He turned to look at Hoskins, a man born of this land, and inadvertently raised the spotlight a little.
‘Keep that well down when we get to the town,’ Hoskins ordered. ‘It’s about ten miles, mid-tide and rising.’
‘We should keep a look out all the time but as they took Thompson all the way to the coast, I doubt they’ll abandon anything or anybody this side of the town,’ Cannon said, adding, ‘if you watch the right-hand bank I’ll concentrate on the left, a pale coloured boat should show up well in the darkness.’
‘There are plenty of reed-beds they could run her into,’ Hoskins said grimly.
They came to the town, to the old wharf area. There were apartments, a museum and the looming presence of St Botolph’s. This parish church, with its huge tower, had been the tallest structure in the world in the nineteenth century. Known as Boston Stump and topped by a lantern-like structure, it had acted as a religious and secular lighthouse ever since it was erected in the fifteenth century.
Beyond the town the river was visibly widening with the rising tide. Hoskins cut the speed of the engine.
‘Perhaps we should scan one bank then come back along the other,’ Cannon suggested.
‘Take us a while,’ Hoskins said, ‘but guess it’ll be the only way as we get nearer the sea.’
‘We might of course encounter the boat coming back,’ Cannon said.
‘You mean having dumped …’
‘Yes,’ Cannon said grimly, then asked, ‘how far could they go, ditch the boat and then be able to walk back to where they had left a vehicle?’
‘There’s a place with a notice-board about the Pilgrim Fathers that’s coming up,’ Hoskins said. He slowed to a mere walking pace and continued. ‘Beyond that there’s thickets of bushes and reeds. The path is less easy, so before that would be a good place for someone who had to walk back.’
The notice-board came into view and as they laboured by, something pale, something with a smooth line in the tangle of natural disorderly growth caught their attention. Hoskins stopped the engine in the same moment as Cannon swung the light back in that direction.
‘I’ll have to come round,’ Hoskins said, revving the engine to begin the difficult task of turning the boat against the incoming press of water. He tried to judge how far to go before beginning his circle to come back anywhere near the streak of pale, smooth wood – which could be just a post or a piece of random driftwood. Cannon tried to keep the light turned to their target as the boat was swept much too fast by the current and they came in a dozen or so metres away, but close enough for them both to see it was certainly more than a piece of driftwood.
‘I think it’s a boat,’ Cannon said.
‘I’ll have to go well past it and come round again,’ Hoskins said.
He doggedly repeated the manoeuvre and came in short, but this time Cannon was able to read the name across the flat stern of the little cruiser. ‘Sailor Boy,’ he cried, ‘and she’s sinking bow first,’ he added, and remembered how old man Jakes had chained Carol Smithson to her bed.
Slowly, Hoskins edged the boat closer, until they were more or less alongside. ‘Her bow’s stuck on the mud, the tide’ll swamp her,’ he shouted above the waters now rushing and swirling around the bigger obstruction the two boats had formed. ‘There’s not much time …’
‘Stay alongside if you can, I’ll jump….’ Cannon said, then as a sudden extra surge of water took their boat into the other he did so without much preparation or caution, landing with an ankle- and knee-jerking bang in the tiny well of the cruiser.
With no spotlight focused on the steeply angled cruiser, it was a matter of feeling and trying to keep his feet. He found and clung to the steering wheel on the port side, and having pushed with his free hand at the cabin doors with no result, he clung to the wheel with both hands and kicked them in. He anticipated the usual steps down, three, then a small galley and beyond that a two-berth cabin.
‘Anyone there?’ he called, though he hardly expected an answer – for there had been no sound, no one shouting for assistance – but then his heart jumped with sudden hope as from deeper in the downward sloping darkness there was a thump, as if someone had managed to move a foot or hand to bang on the woodwork to answer his question.
He felt his way along the galley work-surfaces and beyond found the raised wooden side of the bunk on his right. He ran his hand along and then in across the narrow bed – started as he encountered a bare foot, a woman’s, a foot that reacted to his touch.
‘Carol!’ he exclaimed instinctively and found her ankles bound with ropes this time. Anger sped his hands to try to release her, but he found more rope was stretched across her body, laced, maliciously and meticulously, it seemed, in and out of the decorative woodwork both sides of the bunk. Then he had to grab for the side again as the boat lurched downward and he slid with it to the far end of the sleeping compartment. The water was over his shoe-tops and there was a new sound, water coming over the lip of some obstruction and falling down to a new level.
He threw out a hand to the other side of the cabin and as he did so the boat moved again, the noise of the falling water increased and he was up to his thighs. On the opposite bunk he felt the broad shoulders of young Danny – but here there was no reaction to his touch – and with this latest downward plunge of the boat the boy and his mother were both in danger of drowning.
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Hoskins!’ he yelled. ‘Your knife, quick, ropes! Heads under water.’
He tried to find some way of raising Carol’s face above the water level, but there was no chance. The boat lurched again as Hoskins came aboard. Cannon caught and steadied him in the steeply sloping cabin, guided his hand to the ropes and held him firm. The old man was breathing heavily but he handled his knife with precision and in seconds he was through the ropes. Cannon heaved the women’s head above the water level, ripping the tape from her mouth.
‘Danny,’ she gasped, ‘Danny …’
The extra weight and movement was badly affecting the boat. It settled lower and Hoskins slipped. Cannon grabbed his arm and took the knife from his hand as he tried to recover his feet. ‘Hold on to Carol,’ he ordered. ‘Keep her head above water while I get the boy.’
Danny was trussed up in the same way and the water was up to Cannon’s elbows as he cut through the ropes restraining the boy’s head and shoulders. He thanked God Hoskins’s knife was sharp as a razor. Once through, he heaved the boy’s head out of the water, got his shoulder behind the boy’s body and ripped the tape from his mouth.
At first there was nothing, Cannon bent his body further over and the boy belched water, sucked air, choked. ‘Hold on to my arm while I …’ and he cut the rope binding the wrists, then began frantically pulling the rope from the woodwork, like a giant, manic, unlacing exercise, then he cut the rope from the feet. ‘Hold on, Danny, while we free your mother.’
The boy was in a poor way – barely conscious as he retched and choked – and the boat began to sink in earnest, sliding down at an acute angle, the gurgling, bubbling noises of the water getting louder, more sinister.
‘The tide’s swamping ’er, she’ll go down quick,’ Hoskins shouted.
Cannon began to push Danny up towards the galley, but the boy suddenly resisted as his mother called his name. ‘Mam?’ he questioned, then seemed to realize what was happening. ‘No,’ he protested, ‘Mam first.’