‘Word’s come in there’s a stranger in town, snooping around, asking questions…’
‘I’d hardly call it snooping,’ Finch retorted.
Dryden raised his palm, indicating that Finch should keep his mouth shut.
‘Others’ll be the judge of that.’
Finch kept his counsel.
‘Word’s also come in that Sidney Pickersgill is deceased. You hear that, Nathan?’
‘Sid’s dead? Dear Lord,’ Cole faked.
‘That’s right… murdered!’
‘Murdered?’
Finch wasn’t quite sure where Cole was going with the charade.
‘Shot dead,’ explained Dryden. ‘And this ’un…’
He pointed at Finch.
‘…has been accused of it.’
‘Now hang on a minute,’ protested Finch. ‘There was no such charge. I was questioned and released. And I was the one he was supposed to have burgled.’
‘Burgled?’ tutted a copper. ‘Sid Pickersgill?’
A constable came up and thrust his hand into Finch’s inside jacket pocket. He tugged out his wallet and threw it to the superintendent, who caught it and flipped it open, pulling out his medical card in the process.
‘That right?’ growled Cole.
Said Dryden to Finch: ‘Why don’t you tell him…’
He read the card, then nodded to his men that Finch’s identity was confirmed. He spat the words out.
‘…Dr Ingo Finch… Or is that another of your aliases…? Yes, that’s right, we stopped off at your lodgings along the way.’
Finch turned to Cole.
‘What he says… It’s horseshit.’
He was caught unawares by Dryden’s hard, open-palmed slap across his left cheek.
Stunned, he felt his heart pound, his ear ring. Beyond the stinging pain, he felt the adrenalin pump, the cold sweat begin to trickle down his temples.
‘How dare you!’
Cole, meanwhile, continued to play his part a little too convincingly.
‘That why you out here… harassin’ me… harassin’ my Mavis?’ Cole snarled, with full theatrical gusto.
He lunged at Finch. Two policemen jumped in to restrain him. The third copper, the one who’d removed Finch’s wallet, moved behind Finch and… Click!
…snapped on a pair of handcuffs. He patted Finch down and pulled out his whisky flask. He handed it to Dryden, who opened it and took a sniff.
‘Well… we also got a telephone call this morning…’ he declared – smug, satisfied.
He threw the hip flask to Cole, who caught it.
He turned to Finch.
‘…Seems our friends in Hertfordshire haven’t quite finished with you, Finch… And I tell you what, boy, neither have we.’
Chapter Twenty
Finch was bundled into the back of the Ford and squeezed between two policemen, his rucksack abandoned. With his hands cuffed behind his back he had to be helped up onto the running board. Constricted in his movement, the rough handling nearly forced a shoulder out of joint and he winced at the pain. But he knew better than to protest.
Superintendent Dryden was a man who clearly liked the sound of his own voice… a classic authority bully. He relished his ongoing criticism of the copper behind the wheel, who seemed a perfectly competent driver to Finch, but who had, within a few hundred yards, lost so much confidence he began to make unforced errors – crunching gears, over-revving the engine.
Beyond the pain and humiliation of the slap, Finch was fuming – firstly because of the sense of injustice at being arrested again for the same alleged crime (although he had still yet to be formally charged with anything) and with the sinister hint of some small-town retribution thrown into the bargain.
Secondly, there was Nathan Cole. To hell with playing it cool.
Granted, Finch hadn’t admitted to Cole that he himself had been momentarily accused of Pickersgill’s murder – just that he had been taken into the police station for some questioning, which was pretty much the truth. But the man had plain sold him out. He had trusted him, for God’s sake. And now Cole knew far too much.
‘Over here,’ barked the superintendent.
In the distance, the white sails of a windmill gently turned on a solid flint tower. Before the path straightened out onto the last leg ahead to the shore road, the driver pulled the Ford off to the left, down a slope. Without his hands to brace him, Finch lurched forward and banged his forehead on the metal back of the seat in front, right on its top edge, where it met the leather. It was a bad knock and he could feel the sting of an open wound on his hairline. The blood began to trickle. It ran down and collected in his eye socket, forcing him to blink it out of the way.
No one helped him. The three policemen seemed locked in some silent lawman’s equivalent of the Endthorpe fishermen’s omertà – as if some unpleasant task lay ahead.
Unlike the main path, up on the bank, this track was at sea level, directly on the flood plain. The grass and the last remnants of token field division soon gave way to salt marsh, the car splashing through the puddles across the winding course, the wheels slithering around. A pair of binoculars swung back and forth on a seat hook – just as Cole had predicted.
‘Stop,’ growled Dryden.
The driver hit the brakes and the car skidded. The path was not navigable much beyond this point. There was no one around.
The two policemen in the rear dragged Finch out and down from the vehicle.
Dryden clicked his fingers.
‘My waders.’
One of the policemen pulled down the flap of the car’s boot. He came over with a pair of long green rubber fishing boots. Dryden twisted sideways on his seat, untied his leather brogues and handed them to one of his men. Fastidiously, he tucked his trouser legs into his socks, then wrestled the thigh-high boots over them. He jumped down with a satisfied squelch.
‘You can turn the car around there,’ said Dryden to the driver.
There was a patch of compacted shingle to the side. The copper behind the wheel manoeuvred the vehicle.
‘Okay, this way.’
Then he led them, stamping across the mud.
They were well away from the village, not a house visible, not a soul in sight. A lone heron stood on one leg, conserving its body heat. Beyond, some black and white oystercatchers dipped their bright red bills in the silt. The temperature had dropped again. With the wind chill it felt bitterly cold.
Finch was giddy, his head in splitting spasms of pain from the bash in the car. He could see the drops of blood on his shirt front. His shoulder hurt still and, right on cue, his good old knee decided to join the party. No matter how he tried, his walk was an unsteady, shivering, shamble. His state of distress elicited no sympathy from the two policemen. One of them, a man with the demeanour of a bulldog chewing a wasp, gave him an unhelpful shove every few paces.
Around them, Finch saw that the mudflats were criss-crossed with creeks and tidal flows. The tide had turned from low water and was now ebbing back in. There were some large concrete blocks ahead, remnants of an ambitious but long-abandoned sea defence.
Said Dryden: ‘Right, that’ll do. Bring him over here.’
Finch was led up and manhandled against one of the blocks. It was a cube-like structure, each side about six feet square, its surfaces a composite of concrete and shingle. It had tilted forward in the mud, the upper side facing out to sea, sloping at a forty-five degree angle, the underside covered with seaweed and barnacles. On each corner of the block’s surface was a corroded metal ring.
Finch was pushed hard against the seaward face. He yelped at the discomfort and whacked his head again. He was half lying down, given its slope. One of the policemen flipped him round and undid the cuff on Finch’s left wrist. He handed the keys to Dryden who slipped them into his breast pocket.
‘Constable…’ he instructed.
On Dryden’s nod, one of the coppers yanked up Finch’s right arm. Finch struggled, b
ut with two policemen holding him down he was no match. Dryden re-cuffed him to the uppermost rusty red ring on the block.
‘What the hell… You have no right to do this!’ Finch yelped.
‘You can go now,’ said Dryden to his men.
‘Right you are, sir,’ said the one with the bulldog face and they stamped back over to the car which the driver had turned. They got in and it drove off, gently splashing through the puddles again and straining its way up the slope. Soon you could hear it no more.
‘Well, well, well, Dr Finch… Captain Finch,’ said Dryden coldly, sarcastic.
‘What?!’
‘Poking around, sticking your nose where it’s not wanted.’
Despite his anger, Finch tried to employ reason.
‘Look… I don’t know what the hell you think you’re playing at… or what you heard… I have been completely exonerated from any suggestion of foul play with regard to Pickersgill. I have a lawyer… It is all on record…’
‘Shut your mouth, Finch!’ he snapped. ‘Truth is I don’t rightly care who did in old Sid Pickersgill. Can’t blame you if you did. Things were going nicely round here till he started yowin’. Three good men died because of him whining his mouth off. If he’d have just kept quiet – Bertie Brandon, the others, they’d still be alive.’
‘What the hell are you on about?’
He ignored him.
‘And you, Finch… Dr Finch… Captain Finch…’
In one deft, swift move, defying anticipation, clearly practised in a hundred interrogations, Dryden spun and punched him hard in the stomach. Unable to double over, Finch coughed and choked and jerked his knees upwards, yanking his handcuffed wrist hard against the metal ring. He grabbed on with his left hand to lessen the strain on the right, though it left his midriff vulnerable.
‘Oh yeah, I’ve been reading up about you,’ Dryden went on. ‘You come up here with your smart mouth, thinking we’re all a bunch of dim-witted yokels, asking questions. But I tell you something…’ He spat the word out… ‘Doctor… I’ve got friends. Friends in high places. To hell with “classified”.’
Knowing Finch’s physical predicament, he deliberately took his time. He wound his arm back at his own leisure and…
BAM!
…casually punched Finch again. This time he caught him hard in the solar plexus, sending his diaphragm into spasm. Finch strained hard, trying to raise his knees for protection while gulping, groaning in vain for air, making a guttural, animal noise.
‘That one was for my boy.’
Finch voice came weak, confused.
‘Your… your boy?’
‘That’s right. My boy. My only boy… South Africa. Lost him… Spion Kop.’
Finch mouthed an ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t need your pity.’
Dryden looked wistful for a moment, incongruously emotional.
‘We left some fine men down there, dying in that murderous stink hole at the bottom of the world. Brave men doing their duty for queen and country, king and country. And then there’s the likes of you, running around, thinking they know better, trying to discredit our own intelligence services, pissing all over our armed forces, our lads. Oh yeah, your file’s quite a read, Dr Finch.’
‘That’s not true! I’ve never done one thing in my life to compromise national security. Quite the opposite.’
‘I’d have more respect for you if you’d suited up with a bandolier and a slouch hat. At least the Boers fought with honour… And now you’re at it again!’
Finch coughed… and then the coughing, the spluttering wouldn’t stop. He had trouble breathing, trouble getting the words out.
‘I don’t know what you’ve read, what you’ve heard,’ he wheezed, ‘but that’s not even one half of the story. Anything I’ve been involved in… been rumoured to have been involved in… was to secure the defence of the realm. I’m a loyal servant of king and country… as much as the next man.’
‘Oh yeah?… And so that’s how you show it, is it?… Pitching up here to defend a miserable turncoat? Sidney Pickersgill was a snivelling little weasel. He’s likely ruined everything for us… and a good few ex-servicemen among them. Unless…’
The fist came hard, blind-siding him again. It caught Finch on the left side of the jaw. The knuckles glanced off expertly. The pain shot up the side of his face and down the nerves in his neck. His ear rang again.
‘…Unless we shut you up.’
Finch spat and coughed, retching on his words, protesting.
‘I don’t what the hell you’re talking about… I’m a physician… Pickersgill was ill, a man in a mental state… by the terms of the Hippocratic oath, I was obliged…’
A long viscous drool of blood trailed from a fat split upper lip.
‘…And then he was killed…’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t hear you,’ Dryden mocked.
‘…murdered,’ he spluttered. ‘He’d asked me for help. I owed it to him to come here to try and find out what happened. No one else seems to be lifting a finger.’
Dryden laughed to himself. It was derisive.
‘You think I care, Finch? The government “cared” so much about the death of my boy, the death of all our boys, it went and sold out the peace in South Africa to the very enemy it had been fighting, gave the Boers… the Afrikaners a seat at the top table. A cosy little “Union”, the foe now running the show. Was all a waste of time. Those boys… my boy… died in vain.’
He waved his hand, shaking out the impact of the last punch. He rubbed his knuckles.
‘Only thing that bothers me is this… What do you know about Ursa?’
‘Ursa… I… I…?’
The fist came again. Harder. Finch felt a molar loosen. And he’d bitten a chunk off the side of his tongue. He spat out clotted dribbles of blood and saliva. He tried to raise his head but his neck had been jarred. The peripheral vision in his left eye was now just a blur.
‘Ursa,’ yelled Dryden. ‘What do you know about Ursa?!’
He struck him again, this time with his left, connecting with the right side of the bridge of his nose. A searing jolt shot up into Finch’s brain. His eyes watered instantly.
‘Nothing…’
Finch’s voice was pained and weak now.
‘…I… know… noth— nothing.’
Dryden turned.
‘See that out there…?’
He waved his arm.
‘…the North Sea…’
Finch had slumped, his whole body weight now dangling on the right wrist chained on high.
‘…It’s where us folk up here make a living. Where my father made a living. Where people round here have made a living for centuries. The cold North Sea’s claimed the lives of many a good man… bad ones too.’
Finch looked to his right. The water in the creek had eddies forming in it. Whirlpools were swirling in the fast, incoming current.
‘Please…’ winced Finch, his mind flitting in and out of consciousness.
Dryden turned back again.
‘In order to contain this situation… like I said, I need you, Dr Finch, to tell me everything you know… everything you know about Ursa…’
Finch blinked up through the blood still clogging in his eyes. His mouth and gums were so swollen, he could barely form the words.
He thought of Maude; he thought of Jilkes and his picture-perfect family. He thought of his mother, father, his sister. He thought of the little girl Emily in South Africa. She would be what now, twelve? He thought of her panicked mute mother, of the brave African man who had helped them. He thought of his old friend Hawley Jenkins. He thought of Inspector Brookman, of Ans Du Plessis. He thought of George Robey. He thought of the big green illuminated Perrier sign at Piccadilly Circus. He thought of chicken chow mein. He thought of Mrs P-A. He thought of a stuffed curlew in a glass case… But mostly he thought of Annie.
The man was shaking him.
‘Finch. Goddammit…!’
Finch blinked up into the dispassionate grey eyes. He could feel cold water around his ankles.
‘Don’t you black out on me, you shit!’
‘I know… I know nothing.’
The fist connected again.
* * *
When Finch came to, he was pained, dazed. How long had it been? It took him a moment to orientate himself. Now his legs were cold, numb. The water was way over his knees.
‘Freeland…’ he whispered.
He looked to his right again. The creek was no longer there. It had been completely submerged.
‘What? Speak up, man.’
Dryden sloshed over in his waders, grabbed Finch’s hair and yanked his head back. The pain in his neck was a searing fire. He didn’t know how much more he could take.
‘Freeland… I heard something… about Freeland,’ he offered.
Dryden let his head drop.
‘Not good enough, I’m afraid.’
He smacked his hands together and looked out to sea as casually as a beach fisherman who’d cast a good line.
‘See how far the tide is out, Dr Finch? It’s deceptive… Over flat ground like this, out here, now it’s turned, it comes in fast.’
Finch tried to focus. He could see white breakers. The salt marsh beyond was now a sheet of water.
He willed his mind to be sharp – to appreciate the gravity of the situation. It was true, he knew. Yesterday’s high water had come around four o’clock. It was about one o’clock now but they were a good half a mile out from the old original shoreline…
‘Don’t suppose I have to instruct you on the intimacies of drowning, being a medical man and all. Water goes into the lungs, choking, spluttering… that we all know. But it’s the blind panic that gets you, the foreknowledge… that as the water level rises you’re forced to raise your head as high as you can to try and outpace it.’
‘Please, you must understand—’
‘Funny thing, breathing. Do it from the second we’re out of the womb. Instinctive. Twenty-three thousand breaths a day. Eight and a half million a year. Never even give it a thought. But we’re a frail species. We can survive three days without water, three weeks without food. But air…? Just three minutes and your number’s up… That burning in your chest as you gulp for oxygen… for dear life itself… Only there isn’t any.’
The Cold North Sea Page 16