Gone in the Night

by Mary-Jane Riley

  A man in fisherman’s oilskins and a wide-brimmed hat dripping water was smiling at her. He motioned for her to put the window down.

  ‘Alex Devlin, isn’t it? What are you doing in this neck of the woods?’

  All at once she recognized the charming smile. ‘Mr Rider—’

  ‘Jamie, please.’

  ‘Jamie, I—’ What was she doing? She thought frantically. ‘When I was walking home the other night I dropped my scarf. I was hoping to find it. It’s got sentimental value, you see. I got it when I went to Venice. Have you been to Venice?’ For God’s sake stop babbling.

  ‘I have as a matter of fact. Beautiful. One of my favourite places. Can I help at all?’

  ‘Help?’

  ‘I’ve got the four-by-four here, I could pull you out.’

  She felt a twinge of annoyance. What was it to be? Stay here in the car along with her pride, or accept the humiliation of being pulled out of the mud?

  ‘It could happen to anyone. Being stuck in the mud, I mean. And it is a particularly nasty day.’

  Suddenly her irritation drained away. There was no point in looking a gift horse in the mouth. Or the offer of help from a man with a four-wheel drive.

  Five minutes later and Alex was back on the road, Jamie Rider’s face at her window once more. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You must let me buy you a drink sometime.’

  He cocked his head to one side. ‘How about you come up to the farm for one? Let me show you around?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Please?’

  She could have sworn his eyes twinkled. Or maybe it was just the rain.

  What was the harm? It could be an interesting way to find out more about the Rider family.

  She smiled. ‘I’d like that. Thank you.’

  ‘See you tomorrow for a quiet family supper,’ he said. ‘I’ll send a car.’

  ‘That won’t be—’

  ‘Until tomorrow.’

  A car? What was the reason behind that? To show off or to show who was in control? Or perhaps he was planning to get her as pissed as a rat and have his wicked way with her? On the other hand, maybe he was simply being nice. Time would tell.

  As she drove away, she glanced in her rear-view mirror to see him standing in the middle of the lane watching her as she went.

  She also noticed two thick streaks of mud on either side of her face.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DAY TWO: LATE AFTERNOON

  Left or straight on? Did it matter? Where was he trying to go? And why hadn’t he found a bloody map in that farmhouse place, then he might have some idea of where he was.

  Rick had pushed his way through hedges and across ditches to find the road again in an attempt to give himself some sense of direction. Where was his physical strength? His mental strength? Had that place (whatever that place was) sapped it all from him? He was better than this, he knew he was.

  He sheltered behind a tree and pressed another three paracetamol out of the blister pack. His headache was still raging. He wasn’t sure if it was the rain making the air around him misty or whether his eyes and brain were playing tricks on him.

  He was trying to keep off the roads, but the mud from the fields had made each footstep heavier than the one before. He had slipped into deep puddles, and the jeans he was wearing were sodden and heavy. The waterproof jacket was soaked through, no protection from the rain that fell and fell and fell some more. He had eaten most of the chocolate bars, had torn off hunks of bread and dipped them in the honey, savouring the sweetness, and he had drunk two bottles of water. His body had been craving nourishment. He must have been deprived of it for some time. Weeks? Days?

  Left or straight on?

  He heard the sound of an engine. Not a tractor, more like a car. Or a van. Most likely just a car. Someone out for a drive, going to work, visiting a friend. Anything. Nothing to be worried about. Too much of a coincidence if it was them. Nevertheless, he flattened himself against the tree, hoping now the mist was real and wasn’t just in his imagination.

  Lights came into view. A white van, travelling pretty slowly. He pressed himself even more against the tree, wishing he could disappear inside it. He’d seen that white van before, he was sure of it.

  He risked a glance.

  Two men in the front. Faces turned. Looking. Dog in the back, head through the gap in the seats, panting, drooling. Could he really see that or was it his fevered imagination? Dear God.

  It was them, he was sure. He recognized the bull neck and bright red jacket of one. He always wore that too-tight bright red jacket. Rain or shine. Every time he took Rick to work in the lab.

  The lab. Where had that thought come from?

  On the island.

  What was it for? Suddenly his hands began to sting. The burns on his hands. Something in the lab. What, though?

  And not just a lab, but there were also booths with beds and comfy seats in one of the sheds. That shed had been warm. He had seen them. He had talked to—

  There had been women there. Women wearing perfume. How had he got there? He remembered being in the car park behind the solicitor’s and two men coming to talk to him, offering him a job. Next he knew, he was in the back of a van that smelled of fish. Fish and the sea. And something else. Misery.

  Then there was that niggle of memory, a niggle that said his arrival on the island was something planned. But he’d had to leave before he wanted to. He shook his head. It would come back. It had to.

  The van slowed down. The men inside were probably debating whether to go left or straight on.

  They stopped the vehicle and got out. He wondered whether to stay behind the tree or make a run for it. But he was not at his best, he knew that. He was weak from wounds and lack of decent food. Those bloody muesli bars gave him no sustenance at all. But the two goons were fat and overfed. Pumped themselves full of steroids and thought they were fit. He balanced on the balls of his feet and took a deep breath.

  Then he heard the sound of a zip being pulled down, and the splash of urine as it hit the ground near his tree. Once more he kept still. Told himself not to move a muscle, not to breathe. To wait.

  The sound of the zip being done up.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ shouted the other one from the side of the van. ‘We’ve gotta keep looking.’

  ‘All right, all right. I needed that piss. Stuck in that van all day with you.’

  ‘Fuck off, Gary and come back here.’

  ‘What about food? We’ve eaten all those doughnuts.’ Gary began walking back to the van, his tread heavy. ‘I’m bloody starving.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll find a KFC somewhere.’ Laughter.

  ‘Yeah, right. More like some poncey vegan place with people in flat sandals.’

  ‘Who stink.’

  ‘Worse than our lot.’

  ‘Anyway, we’ve got to find Rick before anyone else does. You know the harm he could do, and we’ll be toast if that happens.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  The door slammed, the engine revved, the vehicle moved away down the road.

  Rick let out his breath in one long sigh and sank down on his haunches. He held his throbbing head in his hands. That had been a lucky escape. He’d almost given himself away.

  But what harm could he do?

  It was what he had seen on the island. To do with the women – and more. He pounded his forehead with his fist. he needed to remember more.

  Until he did, he had to keep walking.

  The road down which the white van had gone was wider, better kept, more used. The one to the left narrowed, tufts of grass grew down the middle at intervals. Less traffic. Straight on probably led to a town, to safety, to people. Left went nowhere. Maybe to the sea. To the wild. To where he couldn’t hide. There was a sign, covered in dirt. By-way to Gisford, it said. He knew that place.

  The white van went straight on.

  He turned left. Towards Gisford.

  CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

  DAY THREE: EARLY MORNING

  The early morning wind blew off the North Sea and knifed straight through Sam Slater’s overcoat. The sea spray combined with the driving rain to lash his face and the faces of police officers and specialist crime scene investigators. He knew his skin would be sore by the time he reached the inside warmth of a police station. Sand stuck to his shoes and the waves crashed like angry fists onto the shore as he made his way across the beach to talk to the investigating officer.

  ‘What have you got?’ he asked, rubbing his hands together to try and coax some feeling back into them.

  ‘Sam. Turning up like a bad penny. Unidentified male. About all we know for certain at the moment.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Face has been picked clean by gulls and fish. Been in the water some time, the pathologist reckons. And the smell from the corpse suggests a few weeks of decomposition. The sea has done a lot of damage, as have rocks. Might not even have come from around here. I mean, we have had bodies washed up on the beaches here that have started in the Netherlands. Not natural for a body to float, of course. We’re made up of sixty per cent water, did you know that?’

  Slater shook his head.

  ‘He’ll only have floated for as long as there was air in those lungs, then he would’ve dropped like a stone. Or a dead body.’

  There had been too many of these, Slater knew that. It was the third body that had been washed up on a Suffolk beach in the last three months. One had been minus its limbs and head, never to be identified. He knew his colleagues in Norfolk and Essex had been puzzled by the sudden increase in bodies landing on their beaches. Could any of them see a pattern? Surely not. It was all coincidence. Most of them were seen as people who wanted to kill themselves. A couple were so badly decomposed the Home Office pathologist couldn’t say whether it was suicide, accident or murder. Given the state of the country and politics and all that, Slater thought there were plenty of reasons for topping yourself. People thought wading into the sea to die was an easy option. But it took an iron will and a real desire for death to keep wading.

  For how much longer would they put these down to suicides?

  ‘So,’ said the officer, ‘we’ll be doing the usual round of appeals for information, maybe even a facial reconstruction. There’ll be a post-mortem, of course, but unless that throws up anything suspicious, we won’t have much to go on. Sometimes we never identify them.’

  Slater almost felt sorry for him.

  ‘Any missing person investigation that he could be linked to?’

  The officer looked out over the grey sea. ‘Not that I know of.’ Then he turned to Slater, as if something had just occurred to him. ‘What brought you down here anyway, Sam?’

  Slater shrugged. ‘I heard it on the radio. There’ve been too many suicides recently. I’m leading a task force about it all. Anyway, I’ll leave you to it.’

  The officer nodded. ‘Of course. I’d heard about that nugget of bureaucracy. They must have thought you didn’t have enough to do, you know. Too much free time.’ He laughed.

  Slater laughed. ‘As if,’ he said, and walked back up the beach, carefully placing one foot in front of the other.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  DAY THREE: MORNING

  The wind had howled around the apartment block all night. Alex had woken up several times to hear the thump thump of boats’ fenders against the harbour wall. She’d also heard the waves crash onto the walkway between the apartments and the harbour and guessed the nearby railway line would be flooded.

  She squinted at her clock. Time for another five minutes of shut-eye.

  Her phone played David Bowie’s ‘Starman’.

  Gus.

  She sat up, stifling a yawn. ‘Hi darling, how are you. I’m looking forward to seeing you next week.’

  ‘That’s just it, Mum.’ Her son sounded awkward. ‘I’m afraid I can’t make it.’

  Disappointment filled her. She had been so looking forward to seeing him and catching up with whatever was going on in his life. It felt a very long time since she had been able to talk to him without Martha there. Much as she liked his girlfriend, Alex wanted time with Gus, the two of them. Though perhaps it was unfair of her to expect this. He and Martha had been together for some time now. Her mother’s job was done and she didn’t half feel useless sometimes. Perhaps another reason why she wanted to get her teeth into something substantial and make a difference to someone, somewhere.

  ‘That’s a shame, Gus.’ She tried to smile, thankful it wasn’t FaceTime.

  ‘Martha wants me to go to this gig with her.’

  Alex wanted to ask if there wasn’t someone else she could go with, but bit her tongue.

  ‘I can’t say no, Mum. Even though I don’t like the band.’

  Yes, you can, she said to him, silently. You can say you haven’t seen your mum in ages and you promised her a visit and— She took a deep breath, pushing the thought that maybe Martha was a selfish cow right away from her head.

  ‘No, that’s fine, Gus. You can come another time soon, perhaps?’

  ‘Of course I will. Really soon. I’ll ring you and arrange a date.’ He sounded relieved. ‘And thanks, Mum?’

  ‘What for?’ She kept her voice light and bright.

  ‘Understanding.’

  ‘That’s what mums are for.’

  After saying their goodbyes, Alex was in no mood to sleep, besides, she had a phone call of her own to make.

  Pulling an old jumper over her PJs, Alex went to her desk. There, nestling in a piece of kitchen towel, were the pieces of broken glass she had picked up on the road where the accident with the Land Rover had happened. She had no idea whether they were from the indicator or headlight, or even the windscreen, but she wanted to show them to Sam so he could check it out, though when she’d tried to call him last night she had frustratingly only got his answerphone.

  This time he answered.

  ‘Sam, it’s Alex. I’ve got something that might be interesting.’

  ‘Right.’ His voice was careful.

  ‘Yesterday, when you came with me to find the Land Rover—’

  ‘And we didn’t find anything.’

  ‘I think I have.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘After you left, I dug around some more—’

  An impatient sigh. ‘Alex. You should let it go.’

  ‘Maybe I will, but first listen, please. I found some pieces of glass that I think could have come from the Land Rover.’

  ‘And?’ Now there was only weariness in his voice.

  Alex ploughed on. ‘And if I give it to you, could you have it tested or something?’

  There was another sigh, then silence for a moment. ‘Forensics would have to look at it.’

  ‘That would be great.’

  ‘But you know very well what budgets are like. As I said to you before, we are being squeezed until more than our pips squeak—’

  ‘I know all that, Sam. But this could be important.’

  ‘Even if we find that it is glass from the Land Rover, how does that help you?’

  ‘It means I’m not going mad. It means you might actually take me seriously, believe that I saw Rick Winterton at the accident.’

  ‘I do believe you saw him.’

  ‘No you don’t. If you did you’d be wondering why the Land Rover had disappeared. And you’d be helping me look for him.’

  ‘Look. Next time you’re in Norwich drop it in at Bethel Street. I’ll pick it up from there. Okay?’

  ‘Couldn’t I bring it to you today—’

  ‘No. I’m busy,’ he cut in. ‘I won’t be around until tomorrow at the earliest.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Sorry, Alex. I don’t mean to be abrupt, but I’ve got a lot on at the moment.’

  ‘Right.’ Though yesterday, thought Alex, he had time to come and see what she was doing.

  ‘It could be glass from anything, you do know that?’ Sam went on. ‘A Coke bottle,
a different car accident, anything.’

  ‘I know. Which is why I’m asking you if you’ll get it tested. Please. But I do have a feeling about this, I really do.’

  ‘Alex?’

  ‘Yes?’

  There was a pause. ‘If something had happened to me, I’d want you on my case.’ He cut the call.

  After a shower and a hasty breakfast of yoghurt and honey, Alex locked the door of her apartment and ran down the stairs to the main door. The rain was coming down in buckets again. Damn, she was going to get really wet if she had to leave her car too far away from Able and Paul. After she had told Kate Able the whole story about Rick’s disappearance the solicitor had been very accommodating on the phone, agreeing to let her take a look at the CCTV.

  ‘Miserable, isn’t it, dear?’

  She turned to find a man in a wheelchair sorting through the free sheets that were left strewn on the ledge by the post boxes.

  ‘I’m looking for something to read.’ He sighed. ‘I get so bored with re-runs of Star Trek and Friends.’

  ‘Mr Watson, isn’t it?’

  ‘John, yes.’ He gave a laugh. ‘And this is Stumpy.’ He pointed to his stump. ‘Not very original, but, hey-ho. We cripples have got to get our amusement from somewhere.’

  Alex bit her lip, trying not to laugh at John’s political incorrectness. She knew from one of her other neighbours that his leg had been amputated a couple of months before. It couldn’t be much fun having to cope on your own with one leg and sitting in a wheelchair. ‘Look, if I can help at all—’

  ‘Thank you, my dear. Be careful what you say because I am well known for taking advantage of anyone who wants to come to my aid in any way. And do forgive my sartorial mistake of sandal and sock but it’s the only thing that keeps me steady at the moment.’

  Alex looked down at his feet and rather liked the bright pink sock with large blue hearts on his single leg. ‘I wouldn’t dream of saying anything about your attire.’

  John laughed. ‘Must go now. I’ve got to go and fit Leggy on and have a bit of a walkabout.’

  ‘Leggy?’