The Drowners (9 page)

Alison dumped the pile of files on the desk and turned to look at her anxiously. ‘I know it’s a bit of a step down from your old office,’ she said with her habitual lack of tact, ‘but they needed that for the new officer. Have you met him yet?’

Alex shook her head and sidled past her to get to the desk. Dropping gratefully into her chair she sighed heavily. ‘No, not yet. What’s he called again? I know Sue mentioned him but I can’t remember …’ She cast around and spotted her desk lamp in a box shoved under a spare chair.

‘There’s only one plug,’ said Alison, pointing to a single, outdated socket across the room by the door.

‘Great,’ muttered Alex. ‘So what am I supposed to do until I can get some more fitted?’

‘’Um, well we did the best we could,’ said Alison.

Alex felt fresh tears begin to form in her eyes and this time they were nothing to do with the light. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just—.’ She gestured at the cramped space, not much more than a modified cupboard really, and felt just how much she was worth to the service.

‘Don’t be worrying,’ said a familiar voice, and Lauren’s head popped round the corner. ‘I spoke to Bert and he’s going to come down later when he gets in, sort out what you need and where you want stuff. We just rescued it all and set it out so you’d not come back and have nowhere to sit down and get away from all the lads. Speaking of which, they’s arriving so I told ’em to play quiet on the pool table for a bit. Hope that’s all right?’

Despite her headache, despite the angry lump in her throat, Alex felt herself smiling at her indomitable friend. It was a measure of Lauren’s forceful personality that the peace of the day centre was still undisturbed following the arrival of the clients.

‘The new bloke, he was right eager to get in and take over,’ Lauren continued.

‘So what’s he like?’ Alex asked again.

Alison glanced at Lauren and said, ‘Okay I suppose. Bit young, bit callow – typical first year officer I guess.’

Lauren pulled a face and slid around the doorframe, pushing the door shut behind her. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s not like he’s done nothin’ but he makes me a bit uneasy. I’m not sure I want to work for him, even if it is a promotion.’

Alex looked at her, surprised by this bit of news. ‘What? This is new – tell me.’

Lauren opened her mouth, but at that moment there was a muffled crash from the direction of the day centre’s main room, followed by shouts of laughter. Alex was round the desk and had the door open in a second.

‘Later,’ she said to Lauren. ‘I think it’s time I started work.’

She strode down the corridor, flung the main door wide and roared into the sudden silence. ‘Well gentlemen, it seems you have some tidying up to do.’

Alison and Lauren eyed one another warily, before Lauren jerked her head in the direction of the main room. ‘Reckon she’s got it all under control. I’ll be off then,’ and she was gone, leaving Alison to sort the files on the desk in the
buzzing
, flickering neon light.

For the second time in a month PC Dave Brown found himself too close to an autopsy table for comfort. As he entered the cold, white room with its shining metallic surfaces and almost imperceptible smell of blood and ripe meat, the other officers stepped aside and he was once more standing at the front of the group, a few uncomfortable feet away from the victim from the Avalon Marsh.

‘Ah, Constable Brown, good to see you,’ said Dr Higgins, nodding in his direction. Dave Brown managed a slightly
lopsided
smile in reply. ‘I believe we have you to thank for the preservation of the subject,’ continued the pathologist as he wriggled into his surgical gloves and turned towards the table.

Dave cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. ‘Well, no, not really,’ he said. ‘There was a whole team involved and everyone does their bit you know …’ His voice trailed off as Higgins lifted a scalpel from the tray next to his elbow and held it up to the light, squinting at the blade critically.

An attendant stepped forward to draw the sheet down, exposing the grey, bloated body to the harsh light. There was a general intake of breath as the pathologist leaned forward as if to make the first incision. Dave felt his head begin to swim and realized he was holding his breath. Forcing himself to watch as the knife hovered over the waxy flesh, he tried to focus on Higgins’ voice reeling off the known details for the
benefit of the tape recorder that whirred away softly in the corner.

‘Middle aged man, well built, medium height,’ he said. ‘No visible trauma to the front of the body, extensive
discolouration
of soft tissue due to prolonged exposure to water.’ He nodded to the attendants, who lifted the corpse and rolled it over. ‘Ah, now here we have signs of lividity along the back, buttocks and shoulders. Not, you notice, the usual pattern which is …?’ He glanced around the room, one eyebrow raised whilst the police glanced away or shuffled their feet nervously. Dave glanced towards the body and looked up as he felt all eyes in the room on him.

‘’Um, normally in the head and neck,’ he said.

Higgins beamed at him approvingly. ‘Indeed, yes – and this is because …?’

‘Most bodies float head down, on their front,’ Dave finished miserably.

Higgins nodded briskly and signalled to the attendants to turn the body over again.

‘Right. So here we have a drowned man who shows signs of being left on his back for some time after death. And now,’ he put the scalpel back on the tray and leaned over the head, prising the eyelids open, ‘sadly, I think we have lost our other clear indicator. The eyes will dry out if a victim dies on land leaving a distinct horizontal line.’ He twisted the head around, peering at the exposed eyeball. ‘Alas, the evidence is transient and the signs are now inconclusive. So we must probe a little further.’

He lifted the scalpel and began to cut, making a deep incision from one shoulder to the breast bone. Dave tried to breath through his mouth and as little as possible, as the body on the table was systematically filleted, gutted and hollowed out leaving just a shell. By the time it was over, Dave felt as if he could easily swap places with the remains on the table. His head was aching, his vision was blurred and every tiny muscle in his back and around his chest was screaming with pain
from tension. All he wanted was to get out of there with his pride intact, but Dr Higgins had one last test for him.

‘Constable Brown,’ he called, just as Dave reached the safety of the door.

Dave turned back, reluctant but determined, as the
remaining
policemen gathered outside the room and watched him with malicious eyes. Higgins was rinsing his hands and arms off in a sink and smiled pleasantly at him as he towelled off.

‘Could you please take that bag back with you?’

He indicated a brown paper sack on the side, sealed with chain of evidence labels. Dave lifted it and was surprised by how light it was. There was a faint rustling from inside, the only indication it wasn’t empty.

‘I took the liberty of stripping the hands,’ continued the pathologist. ‘The skin was starting to detach so I removed it to preserve the fingerprints and any evidence from under the nails. If you could sign for it on the way out and drop it off at the main lab I’d be most grateful.’

Dave risked a glance at the body, now covered with a stained sheet, and waiting for the porter to wheel it into the freezer. The hands, he recalled, had been encased in paper bags. He walked out of the autopsy room with the evidence bag clutched in his pale fingers and just made it to the Gents before he succumbed to the acid roiling in his stomach.

At the end of her first day in charge of the day centre Alex collapsed, exhausted, into her office chair. The neon light was as brutal as ever and the buzzing sound seemed louder with every passing minute. Bert had arrived earlier, shaken his head and pulled that face workmen seem so fond of, the one that means ‘I can do it but it’s a really difficult, long and expensive job’, when he saw the single socket. She had half decided she would get by, but more than a few minutes under the light made her realize that was not going to work.

There was a tap on the door and Sue stuck her head round. ‘All done?’ she asked.

Alex rubbed her eyes and tried to stretch some of the tension out of her neck. ‘I guess,’ she said.

There was a pause as Sue took in the tiny, cramped space with piles of books on the floor, pictures propped up in one corner and the angry, hissing neon light casting its baleful glare over everything.

‘Don’t think you are,’ said Sue, and she looked back down the corridor, beckoning to someone.

There was a scuffling of feet and suddenly the room was filled with people. Pauline and Lauren were first, then Alison wearing what Alex mentally dubbed her ‘virtuous’ face. Gordon and Eddie brought up the rear. ‘Paul’s sorry he can’t help,’ said Gordon, ‘but he’s out with Ricky, the new bloke, and probably won’t get back before Bert locks up.’

Alex was pushed gently into her chair and wheeled out of the doorway where she gave directions and felt the smile spreading across her face for the first time since her return to work. In half an hour the space was transformed from a muddled cupboard with a desk shoved inside to
something
resembling a comfortable working environment. Bert appeared half way through and sniffed disapprovingly at the sight of a multisocket board running around the edge of the room, but a hard look from Pauline sent him scurrying off to find some off-cuts of carpet to cover the offending cables. As her friends stepped back to admire their handiwork, Alex struggled with a lump in her throat.

‘Maybe them upstairs don’t seem to care,’ whispered Lauren, ‘but that don’t mean you isn’t valued by everyone that really matters.’

‘Right,’ said Eddie, rubbing his hands together, ‘who’s for a drink then?’ Alex was exhausted but she felt she really should accompany her colleagues after their show of solidarity.

She was saved by Pauline, who tapped her sharply on the shoulder and said, ‘I don’t think you should push it on your first day back. We’ll raise a glass to you but you go off home now. Will you be all right until Sue gets back or do you want someone to come with you?’

Alex smiled, trying not to look relieved. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘It’s only five minutes away.’

‘I’ll pick up something for dinner on the way back,’ said Sue, and then glared at the look of alarm flitting over Alex’s face. ‘Like fish and chips! God, one dodgy recipe and the world thinks I’m trying to poison you.’

Alex waited until Sue had flounced out down the corridor before saying to Lauren, ‘Actually poison would be merciful compared to some of the stuff she’s produced these last six weeks.’

Iris found herself making excuses for the delay in arranging a memorial service for her late husband. Not that many people asked her about arrangements, but she was aware of curious glances as she walked through the village of Middlezoy on her way to the post office or to pick up milk from the shop. Her life was so mundane suddenly, a life like every other now her husband was gone. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that his friends, the collection of villains and supporters who had tramped through her house all her adult life, failed to offer their help at her time of loss, but on reflection she was happier without them around. The only one of them worth anything had been Bill, she thought, as she sat before her gas fire one evening. Big Bill Boyd, her husband’s faithful deputy and best friend, who had been murdered last spring out on the Levels. Big Bill, the only man who had treated her with kindness, who showed her respect, who saw her as a person in her own right and not just ‘Derek’s wife’.

‘Enough of this, girl,’ she said sternly. ‘Nothing you can do now – is all over and finished with and you’ve to carry on with how it is, not how you want it to be.’

Above all, she thought, she had to look out for Newt. Her one surviving son would be released from Dartmoor some time in the next year and she was determined he was not following Derek’s path into a life of crime. She’d lost her younger boy, nicknamed Biff, to the ‘family business’, but Newt was another matter. He was smart, a quick, clever young man with charm and a ready smile. Despite his constant truanting whilst at school he had developed a liking for books and had been equally happy tearing across the Levels on a beat-up motorbike or lying on the couch, reading. Newt, she decided, was going to make something of himself but first she had to get him over the loss of his father, get him to move past what had happened the last year and willing to look to the future.

She sighed heavily as she picked up the letter that had arrived in the morning’s post. Clearly labelled from Dartmoor prison, for the whole world to see, it looked as if the envelope had been passed around half the village before it landed on her door mat. She’d read it three times already but unfolded the crisp, white paper, unable to resist reading it again. Slow, harsh anger boiled up inside of her as she scanned the same callous, pompous words.

They hadn’t even got that right, she thought furiously. It’s a memorial service, not a funeral. And it wasn’t as if she expected him to be able to stay. She just wanted him to be there, to lay the memory and image of Derek to rest so he could start to move on. That was not going to happen if he just sat there, brooding about events inside the walls of Dartmoor. There were too many people in Dartmoor who
had known Derek, who might expect Newt to step into his shoes.

She sat for some time, twisting the letter around in her hands before finally, reluctantly, she reached for the telephone.

The Gang of Six were in a fine mood when, a few days before Christmas, they met up to assess their ongoing operations across the region. Phil Watson had laid on a bit of food to go with the drinks and the men sat around the table in the room upstairs, picking at Marie Watson’s famous mincemeat pie and sampling the mulled wine.

‘This is right bloody horrid,’ said Max, screwing up his face as he spat the wine back into his glass.

‘Traditional, that is,’ retorted Walter, pouring himself another glass. ’Tis a festive welcome that, from the landlord, so show some appreciation.’

‘Rather have a decent pint,’ muttered the young man from Bristol. ‘Reckon I’ll go down and get something proper to drink.’

‘You sit down and wait,’ said Tom Monarch sternly. ‘Phil’ll be up shortly. We don’t want no curious eyes peeking at you and wondering what you is doing so far from your patch. Not when things is starting to go our way.’

Max scowled but took his seat again, pushing the offending wine away angrily as he did so. ‘Don’t see the point of meetin’ in a pub if’n can’t even get a drink,’ he muttered, but further complaints were cut short when the door opened and Phil Watson slipped in to the room with a loaded tray.

‘Well now gents,’ he said, ‘I reckon mulled wine is all right and good but maybe you’m wanting a proper drink.’ He set the tray down in the centre of the table and stepped back as Max reached for a pint of bitter, a grunt his only thanks.

‘Mighty thoughtful of you,’ said Tom, followed by murmurs of agreement from around the table. ‘Perhaps if we got all we’s wanting, now we can have a bit of time – private like?’

Phil kept his ‘jovial landlord’ smile on his face until he was outside at the top of the stairs where he stopped and took a
deep breath. He glanced back at the door, firmly closed now, and wished, not for the first time, he had never started all this.

Around the table the group was taking stock of their first few months’ work. Overall, it had been highly successful, despite a few minor organizational hiccups. Cargoes from across the Channel were cut out of the loading process by Geoff’s men and stacked away, out of sight, ready for Jimmy’s special drivers. Once on the road they found their way through the region, watched over by Mark’s men from Cheddar, who used some of the more isolated nooks and crannies around the Gorge to store them, assembling orders ready for moving on to the shops, businesses and less orthodox outlets in Bristol, Somerset and Exeter. At the far end of this operational chain, Max took delivery of goods for the eastern area whilst Walter used his long-established contacts to keep Exeter supplied and happy. In the centre, controlling and overseeing the whole thing, was Tom, who ran the orders through the Levels and surrounding region. It was, without doubt, the most sophisticated operation the south-west had ever seen and the combined profits already exceeded their expectations.

The only problems they had encountered in the past few months were on the Levels themselves. Although large areas were sparsely inhabited, there were relatively few decent roads and even fewer suitable for a lorry. Too great a rise in heavy traffic was likely to draw unwanted attention and there were few ‘safe’ routes into Highpoint itself. Glastonbury, the other focal point for Tom’s trade, was even more of a problem, with all traffic funnelled on to two viable roads, one from the east and Shepton Mallet and the other coming in from the west and Taunton. The west route was the busiest and a few more lorries would probably pass unnoticed despite the recent decline in local commerce, but it was coming in from the wrong direction. Tom had studied the problem with his usual thoroughness and thought he had a solution, but he wanted to sound out the group first.

‘I’m thinking we need a secure store for some of our goods,’ he said. ‘Cargoes come in, and they’s big some of ’em. Now you Max,’ he nodded to the man from Bristol, ‘you got some decent lock-ups, safe places for sorting and organizing. Walter here,’ he indicated the man opposite him, ‘he’s been doing this so long now, got his whole network in place but we’m just setting up out here. Can’t see the Johns boys lettin’ us use none of their places, …’

This brought a round of sniggering from the assembled company.

‘So I’m thinking we should try something different. Police, they’s rolling up the last of Derek Johns’ sorry crew, so we need to keep away from them and their ways.’

There was a general nodding of heads.

‘So I’m thinking of usin’ the Levels to our advantage. Seems more and more is being set aside what with they Greenies up on their hind legs and the old peat workings getting’ closed off.’

‘I heard they was shutting off a whole slice of the Avalon,’ said Jimmy, ‘just on account of some old toad they found.’

‘Was a salamander, I think,’ said Mark, helping himself to another bottle of beer. ‘Right rare, it is. Peat cutting’s finished I reckon, out here anyways. Can’t make a living off the marsh no more without big machines and they’s all being taken down. Will be a wilderness in ten years, mark my words.’

‘All the better for us then,’ said Tom. ‘Out past Shapwick, all the way to Wedmore nearly and inland to Glastonbury is empty land most of it.’

‘’Tis no wonder is empty,’ grumbled Geoff. ‘’Ent no roads, nor no land neither to speak of. Lethal, a lot of it. Salamanders or whatever, they’s welcome to it, I reckon.’

‘So all we need,’ said Tom, ‘is a safe way across. Could hide a year’s cargo out there, tucked away all snug, and no-one ever coming within sight of it.’

The rest of the group looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

‘Yeah, right, like
all we need
,’ said Max, waving his hand dismissively. ‘Suppose you got that all worked out then?’

A slow grin spread across Tom’s face. ‘Well, just so happens I have,’ he said.

Tom was the last to leave that evening and he made a point of looking in to the kitchen and thanking Maria for her hospitality. She responded with distant politeness, a brittle smile on her face, but Tom was not offended by her attitude. He knew how she felt about the arrangement, even
sympathized
with her reluctance, but as long as she kept to the terms he’d agreed with her husband he had no quarrel with either of them. Whistling softly to himself he opened the back door and stepped out into the dark yard behind the pub. The wind was getting up and he pulled his coat collar around his ears against the chill. Softly in the breeze came a line of music, almost familiar, tantalizing in its incompleteness, but before he could identify it, it was gone. He stood for an instant, listening to the wind as it gusted around the cars and rustled the last of the fallen leaves. Just as he was convinced he’d imagined it, the sound came again. Only a couple of bars played on a flute or something similar – and it was gone again. Tom walked across the yard, out of the splashes of light from the windows, and leaned against the wire fence, straining to hear.

‘Hello? Anyone there?’

There was a moment’s silence before a few mocking notes floated past him on the wind. Without thinking, Tom tightened his grip on the fence and felt the rusting barbs cut into his palm.

‘Bloody hell!’ He let go hurriedly, turning back towards the light to examine his hand. The door opened and Maria looked out.

‘Everything all right?’ she asked. ‘Oh, what you done there?’

She wiped her hands on her apron and reached out, lifting his hand to examine the palm in the dim light.

‘You come in now and I’ll dress that for you,’ she said, tugging him towards the pub. ‘Don’t argue – can be right dangerous, them rusty fences. Better check you’s up to date with your tetanus in the morning too,’ she added, as she pulled him into the kitchen and took down the first aid kit from the cupboard.

Tom stood obediently by the sink as she washed and cleaned the wound, only flinching a little as she dabbed it liberally with antiseptic.

‘Keep still now,’ she scolded, taping the gash together with plaster before letting go. ‘So what was you doing then, trying to climb out over our fence?’

She seemed to have forgotten her nervousness around him, Tom thought. Close up she looked tired, tired and worried, but she was still a fine-looking woman. As if she sensed his thoughts, Maria stepped back, dropping her eyes to the floor and wiping her hands on her apron again.

‘Strangest thing,’ Tom said, ignoring her withdrawal. ‘There was – like music outside. Pipes or something, playing in the open – maybe just over the hill. Didn’t see no-one, though. Don’t suppose you ever heard ’un?’

Maria shook her head. ‘No, but then I’m not out much. Got too much to do round here to be swanning around, listening to music. Mind you, a couple of regulars mentioned something like that, last week I think it was. Sort of eerie flute music, no real tune but almost like something …’ Her voice tailed off as Phil’s imposing bulk loomed in the doorway.

‘Now then Tom,’ he said. ‘This ’ent in our agreement.’

His voice was jovial but his stare was hard and the message clear. He was tolerated, but within strict limits and standing in the kitchen with Maria was beyond them.

Tom nodded and turned to go. ‘Well, thank you for this,’ he said, holding up his bandaged hand.

‘You see about that tetanus injection,’ said Maria as he stepped out into the darkness once more. Behind her Phil let out his breath in a long sigh.

‘You be careful now,’ he said gruffly. ‘Don’t want to be getting’ too friendly with the likes of Tom Monarch.’

Marie sniffed in disgust, ‘Well maybe I should’a just left him bellowing out there? Is all we need, Tom Monarch getting lock-jaw off our back fence. What with him and Micky, people’ll start saying we’s cursed or something.’

She swept off into the bar and began clearing the counter with a clanking of glasses and banging of ashtrays whilst Phil stood by the kitchen window, staring out into the darkness and wondering what exactly he’d got them both mixed up in.

Alex was putting the finishing touches to her workshop proposals and trying to prepare herself for a meeting with Garry later in the day when her phone rang.

‘Hello?’ she said absently, her mind still on how to justify her ideas in the light of the new, punitive guidelines that were seeping through the system.

She paused as she tried to identify her caller and then her mouth went dry as she struggled to reconcile her conflicting emotions. Struggling for a professional tone she focussed on the more positive feelings whilst a shiver of dread pushed itself deep into her mind.

‘Mrs Johns – yes, sorry. This is Alex Hastings – Newt’s – I mean William’s probation officer.’

For an instant she wondered if this were true. Did she still have any of her old case-load left? Garry had been
remarkably
unenlightening about the whole subject on her return and she had simply carried on with the files Alison had transferred into her new office, most of which had clients on day centre orders anyway. Newt, she realized, was probably the sole exception.