‘Are you with them?’ she asked.
‘Who?’
‘The Freeland people?’
Finch tried not to betray any reaction.
‘Freeland? No. Who are Freeland?’
‘I don’t know rightly know, sir. Some marine company, something to do with the fishing, I think. Up from London.’
She informed Finch she had a copper bed warmer if required and asked if he’d like a full cooked breakfast – bacon, sausages, mushrooms, black pudding, fried tomatoes, and how did he like his eggs? She wondered if she might make him a sandwich and a cup of tea if he wanted to avail himself of the lounge and the fireplace for a spot of reading. He said he’d be down shortly and she left him to it.
A short while later, Finch was back in the hallway, fountain pen in hand, poised over the guestbook. With the landlady in the kitchen attending to the assembly of his sandwich, he flipped through it, though there was no entry for any guest beyond early October, as if the page containing anything else since had been removed. Yes, there were the remnants of a tear along the page gutter. There was certainly no clue as to whom the ‘Freeland’ guests might have been.
As close – or as far – as he might be to uncovering what might be going on, Finch felt a very real sense of danger still. He decided to leave a clue, lest anything should happen to him.
The woman emerged, valiantly bearing a tray overladen with a pot of tea and a huge doorstep of bread and cheese.
‘Here you are…’ she said.
She looked over his forearm at his freshly inscribed signature.
‘…Mr Cox.’
Said Finch: ‘Please, call me Leonard.’
Chapter Nineteen
Nathan Cole lived in a remote cottage on Blakeney Point. From the village itself, with its flint cottages lining the slope of the only real road, which led down to the small harbour, Finch began the long walk out on the coastal path. It sat atop one of the dykes that the Dutch engineers had constructed along this stretch of the coast in the seventeenth century, reclaiming miles of farmland from the sea but rendering the original small ports stranded and silted-up miles inland. Turning back to face the old coastline, he felt like he was already way out offshore.
The Point was a hook of land that curled round the salt marshes of the estuary of the narrow River Glaven, which meandered out across the mudflats. The ambient tinkling of the rigging of the sailing craft retreated as he proceeded. On the wind now, in staccato blasts, you could hear the barking of the grey seals – and get a whiff of them, too – from the colony on the far shore. The winter breeding season was upon them.
It was a cold and blustery morning but mercifully dry, the sea air invigorating. Finch found Cole’s cottage easily enough. A good mile away from anything else, it was a remote, rundown shack – a brick foundation that had been embellished and patched with wood – smoke wafting from the rickety chimney, buffeted about by the onshore breeze.
A young woman in a long grey dress and white apron, her hair in a loose bun, was pinning out tattered washing on a line in a nominal garden of coarse grass fringed with yellow gorse and a fence made from driftwood. There was a toddler at her feet waddling around, merrily banging on stones with a stick.
Finch bade good morning, but his voice was lost on the wind. He tried again, louder, and the woman turned round with a start. The presence of a stranger who’d walked all the way out here caused inevitable suspicion. She stopped her pegging, pulled a shawl around her shoulders and picked up the little one – all mischievous grin and ruddy cheeks – who smiled at Finch and offered him his stick.
When Finch asked if he might speak to a Mr Nathan Cole, the woman pointed twenty yards away, seaward. On a shelf of the shingle beach, amid patchy clumps of samphire, was a man hunched over, paintbrush in hand, attending to a ten-foot skiff with a single short mast at its bow.
Finch crunched across the stones.
‘Mr Cole?’
The man looked up from the boat and studied him with inquisitive hazel eyes. He was in his thirties, had tousled dark-brown hair and tanned skin.
‘Who want a-know?’
Finch was beginning to think this was the standard Norfolk greeting. The man set down his brush and stood up. It was only then that Finch saw – he was missing his left arm. It had gone from just below the elbow. His frayed canvas shirtsleeve had been rolled up accordingly.
Cole wiped his right hand on a rag. He was lean and fit-looking, his extant forearm strong and sinewy.
Finch, judiciously, didn’t offer up his name.
‘I’ve come from down near London,’ he said. ‘I’m an associate of Mr Sidney Pickersgill.’
Cole took his time. He chewed the word over. He uttered it with cynicism.
‘Associate?’
‘I mean I had some dealings with him.’
One-handed, while bracing a jar of varnish in his left armpit, he screwed the lid back on.
‘How I know tha’ be true?’
‘I saw him just the other day, Mr Cole. Saturday. He was at my house.’
He set the jar down.
‘Then how come you don’t give me a name…?’ he said. ‘Man with nothin’ a-hide han’t got no business withholdin’ his name. Normal passage o’introduction, ’s the first thing you sayin’.’
He was right, knew Finch.
‘The barmaid at the Coronet said I should speak to you.’
There was a faint flicker of a smile.
‘Ole Betsy?’
‘I’m afraid she withheld her name.’
He muttered something under his breath.
‘She’s a good girl, Betsy, but she gotta be watchin’ harself. Some rum ’uns in there.’
‘Rum ’uns?’
‘Folk none too particular. Sure you meet some already – the big ’un, Fat Pete… Spud, Squinty, Tommy… Shitty Eddie…’
‘Why do they call him Shitty Eddie?’
‘Why you think?’
‘The barmaid… Betsy… She got me out of a spot of bother. You say you know her?’
He held on to the pause again.
‘She’s my sister.’
Finch dug into his pocket. He pulled out the scrap of paper and showed him her handwritten scrawl.
‘Tha’s har,’ he confirmed.
Cole continued to take his time.
‘She vouchin’ for you, suppose you think I owe you a hearin’?’
Finch was in no mood for games.
‘Before we begin anything, Mr Cole. I need to know how well you knew Mr Pickersgill.’
‘Sid? Pretty well. Why?’
Finch chose his words carefully.
‘I’m afraid I have some bad news… Sidney Pickersgill… He’s dead.’
‘Oh.’
Cole turned and gazed out to sea for a moment. Finch left him with his thoughts.
After a minute or two, he proffered his packet of Navy Cut. Cole took one.
‘Thank you.’
Finch got out his lighter and sparked it up for him. Cole gestured for them to sit. The shingle was dry.
‘How?’ he asked. ‘How’d he die?’
‘Shot.’
He exhaled.
‘Jesus… Do anybody else know?’
Finch got out his hip flask. He offered it and Cole took a sip, cigarette gripped between his fingers while he did so. He gave a nod of approval at the Talisker and raised the flask slightly in toast.
‘You’re the first I’ve told up here,’ said Finch. ‘I was assuming word hadn’t reached these parts yet.’
‘Generally the last to know on everythin’,’ he conceded. ‘Someone say th’other day ole Napoleon be done for.’
He gave a sardonic smirk.
‘And when I say “shot”, Mr Cole… Whoever it was that did it tried to frame Pickersgill as a petty crook, a desperate drunk.’
‘Sid don’t drink.’
The Norfolk dialect, Finch realised, had no past tense, everything in the present; at least poor old Pickersg
ill would live on. Awash with glottal stops and yod-drops, the stress on random syllables and the rising inflection at the end of each sentence gave the broad accent a musicality – no burred ‘r’s like the West Country but a big round sound full of sea air and country flurries. His ear was beginning to adjust.
Cole stared out to sea again. He took another swig of the whisky.
‘To Sid Pickersgill…’ he said, wistfully.
Finch nodded.
‘…So, ole boy. Get you in the end, they do…’
Finch let it hang for moment.
‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked.
Cole turned to face Finch.
‘’xactly what it sound like. After the others? Only one way it going to finish up.’
His tone became more conciliatory.
‘Listen, I don’t want no trouble…’
He nodded back to his house.
‘…I’ve a wife, a kid. I tell Sid, I warn him not’a pur-soo things. He dint ought a-done that – come after you, I mean. I told him, boy, just leave ’im be.’
He dragged on the cigarette. Finch extended his hand.
‘You’re right, Mr Cole, I do owe you an introduction. My apologies. My name’s Finch… Dr Ingo Finch.’
Cole parked the cigarette in his mouth and shook. His one hand had the power of two.
‘I know,’ he said.
Cole’s wife appeared. She crunched across the shingle with two enamel mugs of tea.
‘Milk,’ she said to Finch. ‘Takin’ a guess at no sugar.’
‘Thank you, Mavis,’ said Cole.
Finch took both mugs and drilled them an inch into the shingle to secure them.
‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘Much obliged.’
She smiled and returned to the house.
‘Wife keep a pot goin’ near constant,’ Cole added.
Finch took a sip.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘That you knew it was me?’
‘I mean puttin’ two and two t’gether. See you a-comin’ up here. I know Sid set orf a-try find you. He think you can help him… That you’re… you know… connected… That you might have a way a-stop this thing. Fearin’ for his life.’
‘I just don’t get why a fisherman from Norfolk would go to such lengths…’
‘Fisherman…?’
Cole gave a small, incredulous chuckle.
‘…Hold you hard, boy.’
‘What?’
‘Sid wa’nt no fisherman… Sid run a mission boat.’
‘A mission boat?’
Cole explained how the mission boats – small steamers – put out to supply the box fleets sitting out there on the North Sea, stuck out over the Dogger Bank for weeks at a time. While the company cutters took care of the catch and ferried out everyday supplies, shuttling back and forth with food and suchlike, the mission boats supplied spare clothes, reading material, tobacco. Many of them, like Pickersgill’s boat, the Kittiwake, came under the patronage of the Church, run as charitable operations…
Servant of the parish.
…They did most of their work, not with the local crabbers, he said, but with the trawlers out from Hull and Grimsby up beyond the Wash.
‘Crew with him myself awhile,’ he added, ‘but just wa’nt worth it, money-wise.’
Finch recapped how Pickersgill had come to him; about his state of agitation; his presence at the Dogger Bank incident; and how he was on the verge of revealing something he believed to be of great importance. He skipped over reference to any of his own interaction with military intelligence.
‘He said he’d been wounded, shot in the wrist,’ said Finch.
‘Tha’s right. Army medic fix Sid up better’n me.’
He waggled his stump.
‘…Cop me a good ’un at the Zand River… the Transvaal…’
‘You were in South Africa, too?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Sorry.’
‘For this? Don’t be…’
He waggled it again.
‘…I be dead otherwise. That’s the way I look at’t. That’s the way I have t’look at’t.’
‘I mean, just sorry… South Africa, the whole bloody mess.’
‘T’ent your fault, Dr Finch. Despite my arm, I still get orf light. Join up with the Norfolks. By the time they ship me out, Pretoria’s aboot a-fall. Just a few skirmishes. Nothin’ at all… then some ole Boojer, he creep up the railway line, do our blockhouse with some ’splosives. Catch me with a round when we’re all a-scarper. Dum-dum bullet. Smash right through the bone.’
‘Again, I’m sorry. Battlefield surgeons. Trust me. They don’t take such decisions lightly.’
Cole shrugged it off as if it were no big deal.
‘Be havin’ a tough time, Ole Sid…’
He gazed out to sea again, lost for a moment.
‘…Was older’n me, above ten yar n’more. Not an active service type. Enlistin’ like a lot o’locals. Hoped for the Norfolks but, ’cause o’his age, end up in the Military Foot Police…’
He bummed another cigarette.
‘Queer thing, he see a lotta mischief. More than me. After the big show’s over, he’s stuck clearin’ up the stink. The guerrilla war. Women, children, old ’uns. Burn down their farms. Herd ’em into camps…’
His jawline tensed.
‘…I tell you, Dr Finch. What he tell me? If I’d a-know it then…’
‘It was a mess, Mr Cole. A scandal. I saw it myself.’
‘Sid say that plain wrong – him torchin’ farms by his own hand, destroyin’ their livelihood. Folks just like us. Say the military police’s just scapegoats, there t’do the dirty work o’thems higher up…’
Cole’s sadness swelled. He explained how Pickersgill’s wife, Edna, had died while he was in South Africa. Cancer, they thought, but no one knew for sure. It happened quickly. The man had no children. No other family.
‘He always sayin’ that God’s way a-punish him for what he do down there. I mean he always a Christian man, a church-gooer. But his life ever since, this last two yar? That be all aboot atonement. Turned into a devout good-booker…’
He pointed at Finch’s flask.
‘…Never touch another drop.’
Finch swigged.
‘But how… How did he know me?’ asked Finch. ‘Where do I fit in? What made him seek me out?’
‘Because if you’re who you say you are, Dr Ingo Finch… Cap’n Ingo Finch of the Royal Army Medical Corps… as was… then you one o’his victims.’
‘What?’
‘Tha’s right, boy. Tell me a rum ole tale, Sid do – ’boot how they arrest you in Stellenbosch, take you down a-Cape Town and work you o’er all night long… Good ole thumpin’, he reckon.’
Jesus… Pickersgill?
‘He never felt right aboot that either.’
He was one of the little bastards?
Finch felt light-headed. The shock must have been evident to Cole.
‘Y’all-right?’
‘I’m fine, really,’ said Finch.
He sipped the tea this time.
Christ. He’d been trying for so hard and for so long to block it from memory, that black night in Stellenbosch. And now he was in the perverse position of trying to recall it all.
For a moment he was back there, naked, in a darkened, stinking room, curled double against the pain of the beating, the drug they had pumped into him, and the sheer desperation – though he could not single out the individual faces of his tormentors… The captain in charge, yes, but certainly not the underlings.
Nathan Cole was either oblivious to the full extent of what had happened to Finch, or simply didn’t care. Finch hoped it was the former.
‘This stuff in the North Sea,’ Cole went on. ‘Men dyin’ since – Bertie, the others. It’s been hard on us locals.’
‘What stuff in the North Sea?’
‘…But then the money…’ he continued.
‘What money?’
Cole
threw him a look as if to suggest Finch’s mental impairment.
‘From Freeland, o’course. Everyone suddenly very rich and no one complainin’. This kind o’thing never happen a-folk like us…’
‘The North Sea, you say… What happened out there?!’
Their talk was interrupted by the sound of a car – unmistakeable in the silence. The rasp of the engine rose on the breeze. They turned to see a black, open-topped Ford advancing along the coastal path. There were four men inside and the shapes of police helmets.
‘Shit!’ blurted out Cole.
Finch went to duck into the boat.
‘No point in tha’,’ said Cole, almost mockingly. ‘Will have had eyes on us. Binoculars.’
He was probably right.
‘And anyway, we got nothin’ t’hide, right?’
They got to their feet.
‘If you say so.’
‘You’re a man up in the country, ’quirin after ole Sid Pickersgill. All legal.’
‘Right.’
The car came to a halt about fifty yards away. They heard the ratchet of the handbrake. Then four men got out, one in plain clothes and three uniformed policemen. They strode towards them.
‘Don’t worry, I know ’em,’ said Cole. ‘Just play ’ar cool. Follow my lead.’
The plain-clothes man led his men over. He wore a long mackintosh that flapped in the breeze and a wide-brimmed fedora.
‘Fancy ’imself does this boy,’ Cole asided.
He threw Finch a reassuring wink.
As the man crunched across the shingle, the uniformed bobbies trailed in his wake.
‘Morning, Nathan,’ he called out.
‘H’ar y’all right, Chief?’ replied Cole. ‘You care for a cup o’tea?’
The man oozed condescension.
‘Another time, Nathan. Afraid it’s official business.’
‘How can I help you?’
The man turned to Finch.
‘Superintendent Dryden, Norfolk Constabulary,’ he announced.
‘Good morning,’ said Finch.
But the man did not return the pleasantry. There was certainly no handshake. He was in his fifties, had a piercing grey-eyed stare and carried himself with the air of someone who did not beat about the bush.
The Cold North Sea Page 15