At Risk

10

Dersthorpe Strand was a melancholy place at the best of times, and in December, it seemed to Diane Munday, it was the end of the world. Despite the goose-down skiing jacket, she shivered as she descended from the Cherokee four-wheel drive.

Diane did not live in Dersthorpe. A handsome woman in her early fifties with expensively streaked blonde hair and a Barbados tan, she lived with her husband Ralph in a Georgian manor house on the edge of Marsh Creake, three and a half miles to the east. There was a good golf links outside Marsh Creake, and a little sailing club and the Trafalgar. Carry on along the coast and you got to Brancaster and the yacht club proper, and three miles beyond that was Burnham Market, which in terms of desirability was pretty much Chelsea-on-Sea, with house prices to match.

There was evidence of none of these benefits in Dersthorpe. Dersthorpe had a Country and Western theme pub (the Lazy “W”), a coach park, a Londis mini-mart, and a wind-scoured council estate. In summer, an unlicenced burger van took up seasonal residence on the sea front.

Beyond Dersthorpe, vanishing westwards towards the Wash, was the desolate strip of coastline known to locals as the Strand. A mile or so along its length stood five 1950s-built bungalows. At some point in their recent history, presumably in an attempt to resist nature’s relentless monotone, these had been painted in jaunty pinks and yellows and tangerines. The salt air, however, had long since leached the colour and curled the paint flakes from the weatherboards, returning them to faded homogeneity. None of them had a TV aerial or a telephone connection.

Diane Munday had bought the Strand bungalows a year earlier as an investment. She hadn’t liked them-in truth, they gave her the creeps-but an examination of the previous owner’s returns had convinced her that they would give a handsome cash profit in return for a minimum of expenditure and effort. The bungalows usually stood empty during the late autumn and winter, but even then the occasional birdwatcher or writer showed up. A surprising number of people, strange though it seemed to Diane, craved the near nothingness that the Strand offered. The unceasing slap of tide on shingle, the wind in the salt marshes, the empty junction of sea and sky-these seemed to be more than enough.

Hopefully they would satisfy the young woman now standing with her back to the westernmost of the bungalows. A postgraduate student apparently, completing a thesis. Dressed in a parka, jeans and walking boots, and holding the Tourist Board directory in which Diane advertised, she was staring expectantly towards the horizon as the wind blew her hair about her face and the sea dragged at the grey and white shingle in front of her.

Like the French Lieutenant’s Woman, thought Diane, who had long harboured a tendresse for the actor Jeremy Irons, but younger, and not as pretty. How old was she? Twenty-two or three, perhaps? And could probably get herself looking quite presentable if she could be bothered to make the effort. The hair needed work-that dull walnut-brown bob was screaming for the attentions of a decent colourist-but the basic structure was there. Not that you could tell girls of that age anything; Diane had tried with Miranda and had her head bitten off for her pains.

“It’s such a lovely spot, isn’t it?” she said, assuming a proprietorial smile. “So peaceful.”

The woman frowned absently. “How much for the week, including deposit?”

Diane hiked the price as high as she dared. The woman didn’t look particularly wealthy-the parka, the mud-streaked Astra-but nor did she look as if she could be bothered to continue her search. Parental money, almost certainly.

“Can I pay cash?”

“Certainly you can,” said Diane, and smiled. “That’s settled then. I’m Diane Munday, as you know, and you’re…”

“Lucy. Lucy Wharmby.”

They shook hands, and Diane noticed that the other woman’s grip was surprisingly hard. With the deal concluded, she drove off eastwards, towards Marsh Creake.

The woman who called herself Lucy Wharmby watched thoughtfully after her. When the Cherokee had finally disappeared into Dersthorpe, she took a pair of lightweight Nikon binoculars from beneath her coat and checked the coast road. On a clear day, she calculated, an approaching vehicle would be visible almost a mile away to east or west.

Opening the passenger door of the Astra, she reached for her holdall and rucksack and carried them through the front door of the bungalow into the white-emulsioned front room. On the table in front of the seaward window she placed her velcro-sealing wallet, her binoculars, her quartz diver’s watch, a Pfleuger clasp knife, a small NATO survival compass, and her Nokia mobile phone. She switched on the Nokia, which she had recharged in her room in the Travel Lodge on the A11 the night before. It was almost 15:00 hours GMT. Seating herself cross-legged on a low divan against the wall, half closing her eyes against the thin light, she began the steady process of voiding her mind of all that was irrelevant to her task.