The Restless Dead

24

It had stopped raining when I pulled up outside Creek House. The light had almost gone from a gunmetal sky, and the gale of the previous night had died to a fretful breeze that set the marsh grass whispering like static. Although it wasn’t yet high tide, the creek in front of the house looked ready to overflow, the seabirds on its choppy surface paddling furiously against the tidal drag. There was a restless quality to the landscape, a sense of pensiveness.

Or perhaps it was just me.

Rachel hadn’t wanted to say much more on the phone, leaving me no wiser as to what she might have found. My imagination had rushed to fill the void on the drive over, competing with a guilty conscience because I was flouting Lundy’s warning. In the end, it came down to a simple choice. Which was I going to put first, my continued role in the investigation, or Rachel’s plea for help?

So here I was.

As I walked through the dripping branches of the silver birches, I told myself that technically I wasn’t doing anything wrong. The body from the barbed wire still hadn’t been identified, and Mark Chapel could still be alive and well somewhere. Until it was proved otherwise, Trask wasn’t actually a suspect.

But the rationalization rang hollow, adding to the sense of nagging disquiet that had formed after what Lundy had said about Rachel.

I went up the steps and knocked on the front door. I could hear music playing inside, and then Jamie opened it. He regarded me dully, then dropped his gaze.

‘Dad’s not here. He’s with a client.’

His eyes looked reddened. With everything that had happened, I’d not really thought how Stacey Coker’s death would have affected him.

‘That’s OK, I came to see Rachel,’ I said, relieved that Trask was out.

Wordlessly, Jamie stood back to let me into the hallway. The music was coming from one of the ground-floor bedrooms: some sort of girl band by the sound of it. Jamie shut the front door and turned towards the room where the music was playing.

‘Fay, turn it down!’ When there was no response he went over and banged on the door. ‘Are you deaf? I said turn it down!’

There was an indignant but inaudible reply from inside, then the volume was lowered.

‘Yeah, you too,’ Jamie said to the closed door, then turned to me. ‘Rachel’s upstairs. Go on up.’

‘Thanks.’ I hesitated. ‘I’m sorry about Stacey.’

He looked startled, then almost resentful. Giving a grudging nod, he began to turn away and then stopped. ‘What’s going to happen to Edgar?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Will he go to prison?’

I hesitated, but honesty was better than evasion. ‘I doubt it. He’ll probably be sent to a psychiatric hospital.’

That was true regardless of whether he was guilty or not. It would be a long time before he saw the Backwaters again, whatever happened.

Jamie’s hands were clenched into knots. He struggled for a moment, looking on the verge of tears.

‘Did he… was she, you know…’

I started to say that I couldn’t tell him anything; that I wasn’t even part of that investigation. But I’d already crossed more lines than I cared to think about.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said quietly.

His next words seemed to spill out.

‘It’s my fault. Everything, it’s all my fault.’

‘You can’t blame yourself,’ I said, knowing that was easier to say than do. No matter what anyone told him now, his abiding memory of Stacey would be watching her drive off after they’d argued.

‘No? How do you know?’ He dashed a hand across his eyes. ‘Fuck! I just wish I could go back…’

There was nothing I could say to that, and empty platitudes wouldn’t help. I watched Jamie go into his room, and then went upstairs to find Rachel.

I paused at the top. The open-plan kitchen and living area was empty. The huge floor-to-ceiling window cast a dark reflection, but the only person in it was me.

‘Rachel?’

‘Over here.’

Her voice came from behind the freestanding bookshelves at the far end of the large room. Behind them, partitioned off from the rest of the living area, was a small work studio. Rachel was sitting at a glass-topped desk, studying a laptop. The glow from its screen reflected back warmly from the huge window it shared with the dining and living area. Her smile seemed hesitant as I went over.

‘I didn’t hear you arrive,’ she said.

‘Jamie let me in.’

A shadow crossed her face. ‘He’s taking what happened to Stacey hard.’

‘What about you?’

‘Oh, I’m all right. You know.’ She gave a small shrug. She was wearing faded jeans and a baggy cable knit sweater with the sleeves rolled. The black hair was pulled back from her face with an Alice band. She looked natural and unselfconscious, and I felt a dull ache under my breastbone. ‘It still hasn’t sunk in, to be honest. Going to Edgar’s house and… and everything, it all seems a bit unreal. I still can’t believe he’d do something like that.’

He didn’t. But I couldn’t tell her that. ‘I called you earlier,’ I said.

‘I know, I was going to phone back before, but…’ She trailed off. ‘Look, can I get you something to drink? I just made coffee, but there’s beer or wine?’

‘Just coffee, thanks.’

Her unease added to my own. I followed her into the kitchen, standing silently while she poured steaming black coffee into a mug from a cafetière. ‘Milk, no sugar, right?’

‘That’s right.’

She added milk and handed me the mug. I sipped the hot liquid, my curiosity growing as she crossed to the top of the stairs and looked down. Music still played from the lower floor, but no one was in sight. Satisfied, she led me back behind the bookshelves. They made an effective partition, hiding us from anyone coming up the stairs, but with enough gaps between the rows of architectural text books and journals for us to see anyone who came up.

‘Grab a chair,’ Rachel said, sitting down at the desk. I pulled over a lacquered wood dining chair. ‘Sorry for all the mystery, but I wanted to talk to you in private. I’d have come to the boathouse, but Andrew’s visiting a client in Exeter. And after what’s happened I didn’t think it was fair to leave Jamie to babysit Fay.’

‘OK,’ I said, waiting.

She took a deep breath, her eyes going to the open laptop. From where I sat I could only glimpse its screen. The blue glow gave the enclosed space the private, meditative feel of a library.

‘I told the police about the motorbike photograph,’ she said. ‘You know, that it might belong to Emma’s ex, and that it was taken around here.’

I said nothing, but my guilt went up a notch.

‘They’re looking into it, but I got to wondering if Emma had any other photos of Mark kicking around. Ones she hadn’t framed. You remember I told you we’d had our computers stolen in the burglary? Most of Emma’s pictures were stored on them, and we can’t access any cloud back-ups because Andrew doesn’t have her password. But she had a few boxes of hard-copy prints, so this morning I started going through them. I found these.’

She slid a plain cardboard folder across the desk. I opened it and took out the thin sheaf of glossy photographs. The top one was of a tall man in tight black jeans and T-shirt. He was in his mid-thirties, good-looking and well built, with tousled brown hair and a heavy stubble. There was a cockiness about him even in the photograph, and more than a hint of narcissism in the not-so-casual pose, arms folded to accentuate his biceps as he grinned at the camera.

‘That’s Mark Chapel,’ Rachel said. ‘It’s an old photo but she obviously hung on to it.’

I would have known who it was. Although it was hard to gauge from a photograph, he looked tall, probably a couple of inches over six feet. But it was the stubbled chin that clinched it for me. Mark Chapel had a strong, heavily pronounced jawline, slightly flared at the angle of the base and with a deep, photogenic dimple in its centre.

I’d seen one just like it earlier, on the mandible belonging to the body pulled from the creek.

I went to the next photograph. At first I thought it was a smaller version of the motorbike print from the boathouse. It showed the same gleaming machine standing on the sand dune, the same criss-crossing of contrails in the deep sky. Then I looked closer and realized it wasn’t quite the same: the vapour trails were more diffuse than I remembered, and the angle of the shot was subtly different.

I leafed through the next few photographs. Each of them was a slight variant of the same shot.

‘Emma used to call them her outtakes,’ Rachel said. ‘That’s why she preferred digital to film. She could shoot as many as she liked, and then print the ones that came out best. If you look at the last two you can see the sea forts much more clearly.’

She was right: in the final two bike photographs the three surviving towers of the sea fort were plainly visible in the background, rising from the waves like a scene from War of the Worlds.

‘And you’re sure it’s the fort here?’

‘I’m certain. Here, take a look.’

She spun the laptop round so I could see. On the screen was a website about the Maunsell sea forts. It showed a photograph of the same arrangement of three towers I remembered from going out to the Barrows with Lundy, but in much better detail. The fort was a remarkable structure. Each of its derelict towers was an angular, box-like structure supported on four spindly legs that sloped inwards like a pyramid. Only one of them was still intact, the other two having partially collapsed over the years. A caption under the image read, Remaining towers of the Maunsell army fort off the mouth of the Saltmere estuary.

‘It’s the same fort you can see behind the motorbike,’ Rachel said. ‘And I found this as well.’

She shuffled through the photographs from the folder and selected one.

‘See? You can make out the bike’s number plate on this. I thought the police could use it to confirm if it’s Mark’s. Even if he doesn’t know anything the police will probably want to talk to him.’

I was sure they would, if his remains hadn’t been found decomposing on the barbed wire. But Rachel didn’t know anything about that. As far as she was concerned, the body from the creek bore no connection to her missing sister, and Mark Chapel was still alive.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.

‘No, I was… just thinking that Lundy will want to see these.’

Not looking at her, I put the motorbike prints to one side and turned to the remaining photographs. There were around a dozen, all of them taken out at sea and looking back towards the shore at a large Victorian house surrounded on three sides by trees. The viewpoint threw me for a moment, but then I recognized the distinctive bay windows of Leo Villiers’ estuary home. The photographs varied from long shots of the entire house to zoomed-in close-ups. Some of these showed the terrace, but most were of individual windows through which the rooms could be seen.

Rachel was leaning against my arm to see the photographs as well. ‘Do you recognize it? It’s Leo Villiers’ house.’

She looked at me expectantly. Making an effort to concentrate, I leafed through the photographs again. There were no people in any of the shots, and they had the rushed look of snaps rather than the poster-art feel of Emma Trask’s other photographs.

‘Sorry, I don’t get it. Am I missing something?’

‘Doesn’t anything strike you as odd about them?’

I went through the photographs once more, seeing no more than last time. They just looked like reference shots, probably from when Emma Derby had been hired to redecorate Villiers’ house.

‘No, should it?’

Rachel looked disappointed. ‘Where do you think they were taken from?’

I looked again. The photographs were all looking back towards shore, obviously taken from out at sea. ‘From a boat, I expect.’

‘That’s what I thought at first. But look at the angle. It’s too high up.’ Rachel sounded excited. ‘You couldn’t get that sort of vantage point from a boat. And the sea around the estuary mouth is too clogged up with sandbanks for anything bigger to get close enough to take these.’

She was right. I thought back to when I’d been to the house when the dog’s grave had been found, trying to visualize the view out to sea. It didn’t take long.

‘You think she took them from the sea fort?’ I said.

‘She must have. There’s nothing else out there but water.’

Rachel’s face was flushed. She looked pleased with herself. I turned back to the laptop, looking at the photograph on the fort website. Even the sole tower that hadn’t collapsed looked in poor condition, a rusted hulk stained with salt marks.

‘They look derelict. Aren’t they sealed up?’ I asked, doubtfully.

‘I’ve no idea,’ Rachel said. ‘They’re supposed to be, but I’ve never been out there. I don’t think anyone has, not since it was a pirate radio station back in the sixties.’

‘So why would Emma have gone out to an old fort?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe she went with Mark Chapel. He was in the music business, he’d have loved that whole pirate radio thing. The point is she obviously did go. You’ve seen the photographs: where else could they be taken from?’

I couldn’t fault her logic, I just couldn’t see that it mattered. ‘OK, so she took photographs of Leo Villiers’ house from one of the towers. What does that prove?’

Rachel shook her head, forehead creased in frustration. ‘Maybe nothing, but ever since I found these photos I can’t stop thinking about it. Emma was always impulsive, and taking herself and her camera off somewhere like that without telling anyone would be just like her. What if she had an accident, or managed to get inside and then got locked in? I know it sounds stupid, but the police never found any trace of her. What if this is why?’

It didn’t sound stupid, but Rachel didn’t have the whole picture. As far as she was concerned, Leo Villiers’ body had been found in the estuary. She didn’t know he’d apparently faked his own death, and might even have murdered Stacey Coker. Or that it looked as though her sister’s ex-boyfriend Mark Chapel was also dead, his face ground off and his body dumped in the creek less than a mile from this house.

So much for assuring Lundy there wouldn’t be a conflict of interest.

I looked up, and felt a shock when I saw a face staring back at me through the window. It was my own, I realized a second later, my reflection caught alongside Rachel’s in the blackened glass.

‘Have you mentioned any of this to anyone else?’ I asked.

‘Not yet. Andrew’s been out all day, and there’s no point worrying him if it turns out to be nothing. I almost phoned Bob Lundy, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t grasping at straws. Do you think I am?’

No, I didn’t. I didn’t know how a derelict sea fort figured in any of this, but it was another potential lead. And I hated that Rachel had taken me into her confidence when I couldn’t be as honest with her.

‘I think you should tell Lundy,’ I said.

‘You think he’ll take it seriously?’ she asked doubtfully, picking up the photographs again.

‘I think he needs to know.’

I looked down at the photographs without seeing them. The pressure that had been building up in me ever since the conversation with Lundy made it hard to think about anything else.

Rachel was watching me. ‘What is it? Is something wrong?’

Just ask her. ‘When your sister went missing… You told me you were over here. In the UK.’

She looked puzzled. ‘That’s right, for a friend’s wedding. It was in Poole.’

‘Lundy seemed to think you were still in Australia.’

I watched her expression change, puzzlement deepening to something else as a flush rose up her neck. ‘Well, I wasn’t. I went through all this with the police at the time.’

‘OK.’ It was hard to meet her stare now. ‘I just wondered why he didn’t know.’

‘Maybe because it wasn’t him I told, it was some PC. I don’t expect Lundy can remember every little detail. Or maybe he didn’t think it was important. I mean, he’s only a DI, what does he know?’

I should never have said anything, I realized, not without thinking it through. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘If you like I can dig out hotel receipts. Would you like to check my plane ticket as well?’ She didn’t give me a chance to answer. ‘Jesus Christ, are you serious? You think I did something to Emma? Or Leo Villiers? Or both of them, perhaps!’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Then why did you ask?’

Her face had darkened. She seemed close to tears, but more from anger than anything else. I shrugged helplessly. ‘Because…’ Because I had to. Because I’ve been fooled before. ‘It was a mistake.’

‘A mistake?’

There was a sound from the stairs. Jamie had come up, probably drawn by the noise. He gave me a flat look before speaking to Rachel.

‘Everything OK?’

‘Everything’s fine.’

He gave me another look before turning and going back downstairs. My face was burning as I rose to my feet. ‘I’d better go.’

‘Yes, I think you had.’

Neither of us spoke as we went downstairs. The flush had subsided to twin patches of colour in her cheeks as Rachel opened the front door. I hesitated.

‘I’m going back to London tomorrow.’

‘Oh.’ There was a flicker of something, then her face closed down. ‘Andrew’ll sort out the bill for the boathouse. You can post the key through the letterbox when you’ve locked up.’

Feeling shell-shocked, I stepped out into the damp night air. Anything I said right then would only make things worse, but I hated to leave like this. The wind was still fitful, carrying the threat of more rain and a saline tang from the sea as I turned to her.

‘Bye,’ Rachel said.

The door shut with finality.

I kept replaying what had just happened as I trudged back through the copse, as though that would somehow change the outcome. Idiot, idiot, idiot. Christ, what had I been thinking, blurting it out like that? Well, at least Lundy didn’t need to worry about a conflict of interest any more. I doubted Rachel would even want to speak to me again.

Lost in my thoughts, I almost walked into the man coming the other way through the trees. Trask stopped on the path, seeming as surprised to see me as I was him. He had a battered leather satchel slung over a shoulder and a tubular drawing holder tucked under his arm. The external light from the house made his face look more deeply etched than ever.

‘Here again?’ he said, sounding guarded.

‘I came to see Rachel.’

‘Ah.’ He eased the satchel strap on his shoulder. ‘Awful about Stacey Coker. Absolutely awful. I’d never have believed Edgar Holloway was capable of something like that. How’s her father?’

‘I haven’t seen him.’ I didn’t want to be brusque but the less I said to anyone now the better. ‘I just called round to say goodbye. I’m leaving tomorrow.’

Trask’s look became suddenly keen. ‘Finished already?’

‘I need to get back to London,’ I said noncommittally. ‘Anyway, thanks again for the tow. And for letting me use the boathouse. I still need to settle my bill.’

Trask irritably waved the offer away. ‘Christ, don’t worry about that. Not after what you did for Fay.’

‘Really, I—’

‘I insist. Are you likely to be back this way again?’

I thought about how things had been left with Rachel. ‘I doubt it.’

‘Well…’ There wasn’t much else to say. He gave a brisk nod. ‘Safe travels.’

We shook hands awkwardly, then Trask carried on through the trees to the house. I went back to my car. Some people, like Lundy, you meet and feel you’ve known all your life. Others you brush by without either making or leaving an impression.

But I was too busy worrying over my row with Rachel to dwell on Trask. I tried to tell myself that it was for the best. She’d been through a lot, and these past few days had been so emotionally charged that my own judgement was probably skewed. It wasn’t as though anything had actually happened between us anyway. We hardly even knew each other.

Telling myself that made no difference. I might not trust what I felt for her, but whatever it was, it was strong enough to make me miserable as I drove away.

Brooding about that, I didn’t notice the glow at first. A turn of the road brought it into view, an unsteady light in the darkness off to one side. It wasn’t far away, and even with my sketchy knowledge of the Backwaters I could tell it was the rough location of Edgar’s house. The police must still be searching the place, I thought.

This wasn’t the pure white of floodlights, though. It was a sickly yellow light that flickered against the black skyline. I glanced at it again, feeling a growing unease. The police wouldn’t leave a crime scene untended. Not until it had been fully searched, and I couldn’t see how they could have explored those thickets of undergrowth in the gardens already. And then the glow suddenly leapt higher, and any doubt as to what it was vanished.

Something was on fire.

I wasn’t sure I could find my way to Edgar’s house in the dark. Rachel had driven us there the night before, and I’d been too preoccupied with the disturbed man in the back seat to pay attention to where we were going. But there weren’t many roads to take, and the blaze was an effective beacon anyway. The flames were clearly visible against the night sky, lighting up nearby trees with erratic shadows. Then I turned on to the bumpy dirt track leading to Edgar’s and the fire lay dead ahead.

The house was engulfed. Sparks spewed up from it, and plumes of dirty smoke rose into the night sky. One of the nearby trees had caught fire as well, and the crackle of flames spreading through its branches sounded like snapping bone. A length of police crime scene tape, still secured at one end, flapped madly in the updraught. A police caravan was parked at the end of the track, and just behind it was a pick-up truck. In the feverish light from the fire I could make out the words Coker’s Marine and Auto on its side.

Beyond that, silhouetted against the flames, were struggling figures.

The heat beat against me as I jumped out of the car and ran towards them. I squeezed past the truck, able to make out the bulky figure of Coker wrestling with a police offer. It was a female PC, struggling to hold the thrashing salvage yard owner in an arm lock. A male officer was on his hands and knees nearby, hat lying on the floor as he shook his head groggily. As I ran up Coker threw off the policewoman, his face shiny from snot and tears in the firelight. As he raised an arm to hit her I grabbed hold of him.

‘OK, enough!’

He wrenched free and swung a fist at my head. He was off balance but it still caught me a glancing blow on the cheekbone. I clutched at his arm, trying to pull him away from the policewoman, and something barged into me from behind.

I landed in the dirt, convinced Coker had hit me again, but it was the male PC. He drove his shoulder into Coker’s middle, wrapping his arms around him in a rugby tackle. By now the woman had recovered. As Coker clubbed at her partner she caught hold of an arm again, twisting it behind him.

‘Fucking get off!’ he roared as the two of them wrestled him to the ground. He landed with a heavy thump, but still struggled. I clambered to my feet but before I could go to help the female officer shot me a warning look.

‘Stay where you are!’ she yelled, struggling for something at her belt. She gave Coker’s arm another wrench as the policeman wrapped his arms around the flailing legs. ‘Stay down! Lie still or I’ll spray you!’

Coker swore and fought them, almost kicking free. Grim-faced, the woman sprayed a short burst from a gas cylinder into his face. There was an agonized bellow and the big man thrashed around even more.

And then, abruptly, all the fight went out of him. He sagged back, putting up no more resistance as the two officers dragged his arms behind his back and handcuffed him. He was keening now, and with a shock I realized he was crying.

‘He killed her. He killed my Stacey!’

The broad shoulders were shaking with the force of his sobs. The police officers stepped away, panting. Off to one side I noticed a large plastic petrol container, lying on its side with its lid trailing in the mud.

‘You OK, Trevor?’ the woman asked her partner.

‘Yeah. Caught me a good one, though.’

He looked barely out of his teens. I could see now they were police community support officers, not PCs. All the way out here, with the house already searched, it must have seemed there wasn’t much risk of anyone trying to disturb it.

The firelight gleamed on the blood covering the young PCSO’s lower face. I took a tissue from my pocket and held it out to him.

‘It’s OK, it’s clean,’ I said. It earned a suspicious glare.

‘Who are you?’

They visibly relaxed as I explained. By the time I’d finished Coker’s sobs had subsided but he was still crying. He seemed spent, barely aware of us any more.

‘Poor bastard,’ the male PCSO said, when I told them about his daughter.

‘Yeah, poor him,’ the woman said, massaging her shoulder as she gave the prone man an unfriendly look.

A loud rushing noise made all three of us jump round as the roof of Edgar’s house collapsed. Gouts of flame shot into the air, streaming sparks as a blast of hot air swept over us. I hoped all the animals had been taken away before Coker set the blaze.

‘Shit,’ the policewoman said. ‘They’re going to have a fit.’

While she went back to the caravan to call in, I walked back down the track to my car. I’d left the lights on and the door open when I’d jumped out. As I passed Coker’s pick-up truck I glanced in the back. In the light from the flames I could see a small portable generator surrounded by coils of greasy rope and lengths of chain. Various power tools were half covered by an oily tarpaulin.

One of them was a heavy-duty angle grinder.