The Man by the Sea (The Slim Hardy Mystery Series Book 1)

by Jack Benton

  ‘Good call.’

  Slim stood up. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  They shook hands then went their separate ways.

  Slim was buzzing both inside and out. He had his tasks to do, but all he could think about was getting back to Emma’s and secreting the time to chart his way through Ted’s ornate, tightly written script. He had read only a few pages the night before, most of which had been stream-of-conscious meanderings rather than hard facts, but it was already clear that Ted was unsure whether he found himself interacting with a real person or a ghost, or something in between.

  49

  IT BECAME the focus of my existence. Hiding my reasons from Emma, I took every opportunity to return to Carnwell and search for you. I know that early on, she suspected nothing, but as time went on, I believe her suspicions were aroused. What could I tell her? That I had found you after all these years?

  The truth was, I didn’t find you. As business and a variety of obscure reasons brought me home, I had just that solitary meeting upon which to rest all of my hopes. I searched, of course I did, but it was eight long years before I caught another glimpse of the apparition you had become.

  Of course, by then you had become a figment of local folklore, and perhaps I was partly responsible for an image of a woman born of the sea to assume your name. Men with loose tongues in late-night bars will pass information better than newspapers will. Yet, that I was not alone in seeing this apparition gave me hope that—some part of you, at least—still existed.

  I dreamed of a true reuniting, of the chance to make amends, and perhaps to forge a life with you that was never mine to have. I dreamed, Joanna. I’m sorry, but I dreamed.

  And then I heard about the dead girl, and the world I was beginning to understand flipped on its head.

  50

  THE ELECTRICITY HAD BEEN REPAIRED, and a lucky break with the credit card company had given Slim enough to pay for it. A cheap VHS recorder he had bought in a charity shop stood on a stack of water-damaged cookbooks Slim had never used, making a worrying clicking sound as it played a grainy video of the street outside Emma Douglas’s house.

  Slim, pressing a whisky glass against his eyes to hold them open, did as Arthur had suggested, fast-forwarding through the quiet hours when not even a car passing was visible on the triangle of street caught in the view-finder from a neighbour’s security camera five doors down from Ted’s house, waiting for people, then pausing, rewinding, reviewing, moving on.

  The way to overcome the boredom was to segment it, Arthur had told him. One thing at a time. Focus on the people, eliminate them, then deal with the vehicles.

  Military sentry duty had taught him the need for patience, but late at night, already drunk, eyes sore from trying to focus on bad quality images, it wasn’t easy.

  He checked the timer on the video, found it to be a good hour after the fire in the Douglases’ car, then withdrew it and tossed it onto a pile of discarded tapes. Or was that the maybes pile? Slim rubbed his eyes, struggling to remember.

  The nearest tape to hand was from the security camera of a hairdresser three doors down from his flat, the only one on his street.

  With a sigh, Slim slid it into the machine. According to Arthur, the camera had been vandalised on the same night of the fire at Slim’s flat. The view finder showed a section of pavement with the high street behind. A tree to the left cast a shadow left by a streetlight just behind it.

  Every few seconds, the camera shook lightly. Slim looked for passing cars causing the lens to shake, then a flurry of movement obscuring the view told him everything he needed to know.

  A bird was nesting on top of the camera.

  Slim, an early hangover starting to grow as the view continued to shake at regular intervals, squinted as the minutes ticked past. There seemed little point continuing to watch; besides the occasional car, there was little of interest. The few people who had walked past had all gone in the opposite direction.

  He was about to switch off and turn in for the night when a figure stepped into view.

  Thick braids of black hair pushed out at a hood that covered the face beneath, deepening the shadow already left by the tree.

  Joanna Bramwell.

  Terror broke through Slim’s stupor, and he reached for the remote to switch off his television. At the last moment he stopped, transfixed as Joanna lifted a hand that began to wave like a pendulum from side to side.

  ‘You’re mocking me, damn you,’ Slim muttered.

  As her waving continued, Slim, his courage slowly eking back, leaning forward, wishing he could see beneath that black hood.

  He was just inches from the screen when Joanna Bramwell jerked forward, and the screen went black.

  A scream died in Slim’s throat. As the view turn to static, he reached for his bottle.

  51

  DROWNED.

  I told myself it was impossible you were involved, and even when the inquest concluded, there was not enough evidence to suggest otherwise.

  Becca Lees was nine and by all accounts couldn’t even swim. Did you see her? Did you see anything?

  I know that what I did tied you to Cramer Cove in a way it’s hard to understand, but I remember you, Joanna. I remember your smile. You would never have hurt anyone. You had the sweetest soul. Perhaps my mistake changed you, or perhaps I’ve been mistaken.

  All I saw was an apparition, after all.

  52

  ‘SHE KNEW,’ Slim said. ‘She knew someone would see her.’

  Arthur leaned over the laptop and replayed the converted video clip for what felt to Slim like the hundredth time.

  ‘It won’t change,’ Slim said. ‘She knew where to stand to ensure her face would be hidden.’

  ‘We’ve got a good lock on her clothes, at least,’ Arthur said. ‘I’ll distribute updated descriptions to my officers. The net’s closing, Slim. We’ll have her within days, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘No, you won’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look at her. She’s avoided every other camera except the only one where we couldn’t get a clear look at her. And there she taunts us.’

  ‘She was knocking off the bird’s nest. She must have something against them.’

  ‘No. That’s just a cover. We’re being duped. Joanna Bramwell is cold and calculating, and she’s one step ahead of us. She knows we’re trailing her, but she’s playing us for fools.’

  ‘I’ll double the officers on the streets.’

  ‘It won’t make a difference. We have to get ahead of her.’

  ‘Ted?’

  ‘I think if she planned to kill him, he would already be dead.’

  Arthur rubbed his eyes. ‘We’re hunting someone who’s likely brain-damaged, prone to violence, and prefers solitude. How can she hide out in plain sight? Look at her. She’s a walking caricature.’

  Arthur made to turn the laptop around, but Slim put up a hand. ‘I’ve seen enough,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get ahead of her.’

  ‘I’m out of ideas.’

  Slim sighed. ‘Me too.’

  53

  IT WAS A STUPID IDEA, but Slim couldn’t resist. Carnwell Royal Infirmary was an unassuming series of three-storey buildings set in a half-hearted attempt at landscape gardens at the top of Carnwell’s only real hill. The view from the bus stop was one of a quiet, grey town laid out in a rough semi-circle around the curve of a sandy bay. Small fishing boats lay on the sand, while larger commercial vessels clustered around a dredged harbour at the end of a breakwater. North and south the land rose, northward beginning an undulation that would flatten out again at Morecombe Bay, south on the march to Wales, passing the rugged cliffs of Cramer Cove.

  It was pretty, lacking the dramatics of Scotland or Cornwall, but a pleasant place to live, one that didn’t deserve to be haunted by a wraith from the sea who ought to be dead.

  Slim signed in as a friend of Ted’s, but was required to show ID for police chec
ks, meaning that by tomorrow Arthur would know what he had done. If he were honest with himself, he had expected to be turned away, but with an orderly muttering about how few visitors Ted had received, Slim allowed himself to be led down a clinical if weathered corridor into the hospital’s heart.

  A man with the hard eyes of a plain-clothes police officer was strolling up and down the second floor corridor where the orderly indicated Ted’s room. On a chair outside, a copy of the Daily Telegraph lay open on the racing news. Slim waited while the orderly hurried off to confer with the police officer, who nodded, then waved a nonchalant hand toward Ted’s door as though he considered this whole exercise a waste of police money and time.

  The orderly reiterated what Slim had already figured out, then held the door for Slim to slip inside.

  Ted Douglas lay on the room’s only bed, turned to face the window with its view inland toward the Pennines, as though the rugged hills rising in the distance might encourage him to awaken. His eyes were closed, and pipes snaked out of his mouth and nose, linking him to a machine that hummed alongside. His breathing was shallow, long drawn-out breaths, his chest rising and falling in a hypnotic rhythm.

  Slim pulled a plastic chair away from the wall and sat down. The room was depressingly empty, Ted’s only companion a pile of generic thrillers with library stickers on their spines. Otherwise, the room lacked even a token vase of flowers.

  ‘Well, Ted, we meet at last,’ Slim said, feeling both strange to speak aloud, and that it was the only appropriate way to treat a man whom he knew well, even though Ted knew nothing about him. ‘I have to say, I actually feel like we’re friends of a sort. We have a connection, that’s for sure. Joanna Bramwell is screwing me almost as badly as she screwed you. Did she sit in this very same chair? Or did she just stand?’

  Yet, even as the questions left his lips, Slim felt a sense of the absurd, like a crowd of clowns hiding behind a curtain, covering their mouths as they laughed at him.

  As though he were being duped.

  A creeping sense of unease overcame him, and he turned to glance back at the door.

  Closed, no one peering through the little window, no one hiding in a dark corner, crouching in a gap between the machines, a bleached-white smile just too wide to be sane—

  Slim stood up sharply, and paced around the bed. He pulled the hip flask from his pocket and took a long swallow, scowling when it ran empty.

  ‘I know you loved her,’ he said, feeling a need to fill the uneasy quiet. ‘You wanted to be with her but you were a goddamn stargazer, weren’t you? All you had to do was tell her to her face. And if she laughed at you … you wouldn’t be the first.’

  He spun on his heels, eyes scanning every corner of the room, searching for what it was that had shredded his nerves.

  ‘People have died, Ted. People have died because of that crazy bitch. They’ve died because you couldn’t let her live her life. Why did you do it, Ted? Goddamn it, tell me.’

  He was on his knees, unsure how he had got there, his hands on the edge of the bed, staring at Ted’s grey face, the closed eyes, the tubes protruding from Ted’s mouth, and he was back there again, smoke rising from the sand, staring at a pair of boots.

  ‘Sir? Are you all right, sir?’

  Slim looked up. The policeman stood over him, one hand on his shoulder, firm enough to suggest comfort could turn to restraint if Slim became difficult.

  ‘What?’ Slim pushed himself up. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just … seeing him like this … it’s not easy.’

  ‘Visiting time is over, I’m afraid. You can come back again tomorrow.’ The policeman gave an apologetic nod in Ted’s direction. ‘I’m afraid there’s not likely to be much change in his condition.’

  ‘Stop saying that.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  Slim turned on the policeman, who took a step back. Slim had never felt imposing, but his frame still held some of the years of military training, enough, at least, to unnerve this small town policeman.

  ‘Stop saying you’re afraid. You’re not. You don’t know what afraid means. Do you know how it really feels to not sleep at night? To be too afraid to close your eyes?’

  ‘Sir … I think you need to leave.’

  ‘I’m going, I’m going.’ Slim backed away toward the door. He took one last look around, and finally understood the feeling that had come over him.

  He wasn’t looking for something that was out of place.

  He was looking for something that should have been, but was not.

  54

  ‘WHERE ARE YOU, JOANNA?’

  Slim threw the empty hip flask at the wall of a local bank. It clattered away with a rattle and came to rest in a gutter. Slim swung a kick at it as he passed, but he missed and almost overbalanced. Scowling, he moved on up the high street.

  Word must have got out fast, because there were three missed calls on his phone from Arthur, but the police chief had been unable to leave a message because Slim’s memory was full. He didn’t need to hear the police chief’s words, because he knew them already.

  Failed. Failed. Failed.

  Joanna Bramwell was a ghost after all, unable to be constrained by cuffs or chains, her cage the fragility of Slim’s eroding confidence. He was out of his depth, floundering in rips more powerful than those of Cramer Cove, and would soon be dragged under.

  He forgot time as he wandered the streets, angry and hateful, wishing Emma Douglas had called someone else and left him alone.

  Boots in the sand.

  An underwater cave.

  A face peering up at a video screen, unheard, unseen laughter mocking him like the chattering of carrion crows.

  The taxi ride was a blur, the road where the taxi’s meter reached the limit of his money dark and unforgiving. The walk down to the beach a stumbling affair of knocked ankles and scuffed shoes.

  Waves battered the shore, the remnants of an Irish Sea storm. Slim walked to the waterline, stopping only when the remnants of far-off breakers sloshed over his shoes.

  He stared out into the night, the only light coming from occasional glimpses of the moon through cloud. Rain beat down, slashing at his face like the ocean’s claws, and he felt his knees land in waterlogged sand.

  He didn’t know if he was crying. The only boots in the sand were his, the rest of his body gone far away.

  ‘Are you there?’ he called into the night. ‘Ted couldn’t banish you, could he? No matter how hard he tried. Answer me, Joanna.’

  Weariness was like God sticking two fingers under his ribs. Slim closed his eyes and slumped forward onto the sand.

  55

  I TRIED TO FORGET YOU. Believe me, I tried. Every time I drove south, back to my job and my home and my wife, I tried to put you to the back of my mind.

  I throw myself into my work, filling my head with numbers to drown out the words that haunt every waking hour. Yet, something always comes up—a work trip, a sick friend, a family affair—that brings me back. I cannot escape you. You and I are attached by a string, Joanna, one that cannot be severed.

  Yours is a name spoken in dark corners, behind closed doors. Three people dead, and no one will face the truth. It destroys me to think you might be involved, or, God forbid, responsible. I will come back for good one day, I promise, and I will put an end to this. You have my word. If it’s you that needs to be freed, I will free you. And if it’s the rest of Carnwell, then by heaven, I’ll free them, too.

  56

  THERE COULD BE no better time for such exhilaration than when death felt so welcome. Slim’s forehead contained a marching band as he climbed to the edge of the cliff and lowered himself toward the first jutting ladder. Heart thundering, he felt with his feet, finding purchase. With no other choice, he lifted his feet again, then pushed his body into a slide. At the moment he began to accelerate, he felt metal against his forearm and clutched desperately at a rung of the ladder gummed up with scree and patches of grass. Below his flailing feet, waves crashed an
d spray burst up over an outcrop of rocks that waited to slay him should he fall. He gave the nightmarish drop one glance then decided it was best not to look again.

  The climb down was far harder than the climb up had been. He had to negotiate treacherous gaps and ledges between the ropes and chains by going feet first. When he reached the borehole—itself deep enough to be fatal if he fell—it felt like a saviour.

  He was bleeding from a dozen cuts by the time his descent was over. The light from the morning sun cast the insides of the cave in a spectral glow, and Slim, exhausted, sat down hard on shingle untouched by water for countless years.

  ‘It’s been a long road, Joanna,’ he said. ‘I’m tired now. No more boots in the sand. Is that okay by you? I’m done with all that. Done and dusted.’

  The cave gave no answer. Slim sat still for a while, then stood and went over to the ramshackle bookcase.

  The copy of Romeo and Juliet lay where he had left it. He took it back to the shaft of light and withdrew the makeshift bookmark.

  A tear ran down the side of his face as he looked at the faded line of actors with Ted and Joanna in the centre. Then, he turned the paper over and read the list of names.

  ‘I wouldn’t make much of a detective, would I?’ he muttered, giving a little laugh. ‘I don’t think I’ll be taking that job, after all.’

  He carefully folded up the sheet of paper and replaced it into the book.

  ‘Now, where are you? You’ve been here all along, haven’t you?’

  He went back to the bookcase and pulled it away from the cave wall. Ancient wood creaked as it began to break up, salty air having first made it brittle and then fragile. At first, the dark space behind kept its secrets, but as Slim’s eyes began to adjust, there appeared the shape of a woman lying on her side, knees pulled up, one hand resting beneath her face, the other lying across her chest.