The Restless Dead

32

The marine unit had to wait until the next low tide before they went out to the sea fort. Clarke hadn’t wanted me to go along. Her initial scepticism had faded as I’d made my case, but her reluctance had been harder to break down.

‘You need to get some rest. You’re no use to anyone half asleep, and you’ve been up all night,’ she argued.

So had she, but I knew better than to mention that. So I countered that I felt fine, that I could snatch a couple of hours’ sleep while we waited for the tide. She knew as well as I did that, if we found what I was expecting, they’d need a forensic anthropologist. And even if they could find someone at such short notice, a newcomer wouldn’t know the case half as well as I did.

Finally, Clarke agreed. After we’d finalized arrangements, I set my alarm and then collapsed on to the bed for two whole hours. I woke feeling grainy and far from rested, but a hot shower and breakfast helped. By the time I caught the train back to police headquarters for Clarke’s briefing I felt almost human again.

But going back out to the sea fort was more unsettling than I’d thought. The marine unit launch slogged through the post-storm waves, forced to anchor a little way off from the mooring platform. The police tape tied around the ladder and upper gantry made a low thrumming in the wind as we were ferried across by dinghy. I looked up at the rusted tower high above me, but my business wasn’t up there today.

It was lower down.

The sandbank around the tower was still underwater when we arrived, but by the time the forensic teams and equipment had been disembarked, a smooth brown curve had broken through the surface. It quickly grew, and as the CSIs stepped out on to the soft sand the first of the small crabs appeared.

I should have pieced it together sooner, although when I’d watched the tiny creatures the day before I’d still been in shock from Lundy’s shooting. But the information had still registered in my subconscious, gradually working its way out like a splinter until it could be plucked free. Crabs were scavengers. They fed on dead flesh, even when it was badly decomposed. And for so many of them to have colonized the sandbank meant there must be a plentiful food source buried inside it.

Like a body.

‘Are you sure about this, Hunter?’

Frears stood next to me on the platform, watching the pale crabs scuttle away from the CSIs’ spades as their refuge was destroyed.

‘Sure enough,’ I told him.

Ordinarily I might have had some anxiety that I was wrong, that I’d brought all these people out here on a fool’s errand. Instead I felt a quiet certainty. The crabs had been a catalyst, bringing together all the separate pieces that were already there. You’re half right, Porter had mocked when I’d asked if he’d hidden Emma Derby’s body in the Backwaters after dropping her from the tower. I hadn’t known then what he meant, but when he’d gone out to the sea fort to confront the blackmailers it had been in Leo Villiers’ boat. I’d seen it at Willets Point, a small dinghy moored to the wooden dock at the rear of the house.

Too small to carry Porter and two bodies.

He wouldn’t have realized his mistake until after he’d let them fall onto the mooring platform, sixty feet below. Once he’d done that he was committed. It wouldn’t have been practical to carry their dead weight back up a near-vertical ladder, so when he found there wasn’t room in the boat for both, his options had been limited. If he let the tide carry one of his victims away, he knew they’d eventually be washed ashore and discovered. But the low tide would have revealed another alternative.

He could bury one of the bodies in the sandbank.

Porter would have chosen Emma Derby for practical reasons. He would have been exposed out in the open under the fort, in a hurry to get away, and she was the smallest. She wouldn’t need as big a grave. I doubt he’d have had a shovel with him, but the wet sand would have been soft enough to dig with an oar blade. He wouldn’t have had to go down very far. Only deep enough for the tide not to uncover what was buried there.

Seawater seeped into the hole as the CSIs scraped the sand from what was left of Emma Derby. The crabs had been busy during the months she’d lain under the sea fort’s tower. Most of the exposed skin and soft tissue had been picked away, leaving behind bones and cartilage crusted with dirty-white adipocere. The sand-caked hair had sloughed off but it was still long and dark, plastered about the empty eye sockets and bones of the face. Although there was no resemblance to the beautiful and confident woman whose photograph I’d seen in the boathouse, I wasn’t in any doubt.

We’d found Rachel’s sister.

I didn’t attend the post-mortem. That had been one of Clarke’s conditions of my being present at the recovery: I could observe and advise on handling the delicate remains but that was all. Although I was loath to admit as much, it was probably for the best. I’d been getting by on reserves and adrenalin, and by then both had run out.

And so, for the second time that day, I’d returned to London. I slept for six hours, then got up and showered before throwing together a late supper from what I had left in my fridge. I’d tried calling Rachel, and felt a coward’s relief when it went straight to voicemail. The news about her sister needed to come from the police rather than me, and I didn’t want to speak to her before she — and Trask — had been told. I was wondering if I should try her again when my landline rang.

It was Clarke, calling to let me know the results of the post-mortem.

‘No fingerprints, obviously, so we’re cross-checking with dental records and DNA,’ she said. I was still getting over my surprise that the DCI had bothered to phone: I hadn’t been expecting her to. ‘But the clothes and jewellery match Emma Derby’s. After what happened with Leo Villiers I’m wary of jumping to conclusions, but this time I think we’re safe to assume it’s her.’

‘How did she die?’ I asked, massaging my back. My muscles had seized up from the punishment they’d had in the flooded boathouse.

‘Frears thinks she was strangled. Her hyoid bone was broken, and so was her neck, although that could have happened in the fall. She’d suffered the same sort of multiple fractures as Mark Chapel, so Porter obviously dropped them both from the tower.’

The probable cause of death came as no shock. Porter had strangled Stacey Coker as well, another unexpected witness he’d wanted to silence. But I felt no satisfaction at hearing it confirmed.

‘We found Leo Villiers’ dinghy in the estuary,’ Clarke continued. ‘Probably washed there by the flood, but it looks like that’s what Porter took out to the sea fort. There are fresh tyre marks on Villiers’ lawn that match the Daimler’s, so he must have gone back to Willets Point for the car afterwards and then left in a hurry.’

She didn’t have to say why, or explain the bitterness in her tone. ‘Was the other shotgun in the boat?’

‘No, but we found gunpowder residue on the outboard motor. We think it came off his gloves, which again makes me think he got rid of the gun overboard on his way back. And there were traces of blood as well.’

‘Chapel’s?’

As soon as I said it I knew it couldn’t be. Seven months’ exposure to rain and saltwater would have rendered anything belonging to him virtually unidentifiable.

‘Not Chapel’s, no. But we can assume Porter cleaned the boat after he’d taken the body to the Backwaters anyway. The blood we found was recent, and there were two different types. One was the same as Porter’s, so it probably came from his face after he caught a ricochet from the steel door. The other was off his shoe.’ There was a fractional hesitation. ‘It matches Bob Lundy’s.’

We were both silent. Clarke cleared her throat.

‘We’ve notified Emma Derby’s family. Hard news coming on top of everything else, but hopefully they’ll get some closure now. Oh, and one other thing,’ she continued briskly. ‘You were sent an email by accident. I’d be grateful if you’d delete it.’

It seemed an uncharacteristic mistake for Clarke to have made, but after the last twenty-four hours she was entitled to a small slip-up. ‘OK,’ I said, rubbing my eyes. I wouldn’t have given it any more thought, but she hadn’t finished.

‘I imagine it was probably somebody who didn’t get any sleep last night,’ she went on, and now her tone of voice had subtly changed. ‘I don’t expect it’ll be of any interest to you, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention it to anyone.’

Now curiosity was beginning to kick in. ‘No, of course.’

‘So we’re clear, then.’

‘I’ll make sure it’s deleted,’ I said carefully.

‘Thank you, Dr Hunter.’

She hung up. What the hell was that? Puzzled, I went to my computer. The email was waiting in my inbox, sent only a few minutes before. There was no subject or message, only an attachment. I hesitated, then opened it.

The attachment was a copy of a witness statement. When I saw whose it was my tiredness was suddenly forgotten.

Leaning forward, I began to read about the events of twenty-five years ago.

The summer when Leo Villiers turned nine was marked by a rare heatwave. August temperatures climbed to Mediterranean levels, prompting drought warnings and water shortages. The days were hot and still, the nights humid and close.

But Leo didn’t mind. He enjoyed the sun, and at the family’s summer home on Willets Point there was a sea breeze to take the edge off the baking heat. And away from the boarding school, with its teachers’ censorious gaze and the other boys’ pack-like mentality, he felt able to relax. When he was alone he could be himself.

It was when he was with other people that he felt different.

At Willets Point Leo was usually left to his own devices. Except for Sunday lunch and his parents’ occasional shooting party where he was expected to put in a showing, his mother and father let their son amuse himself. That was fine by Leo. He was used to being on his own, and found it easier than having to face his parents. Especially after what had happened at Easter.

Even though he’d known he shouldn’t, one afternoon Leo had sneaked into his parents’ bedroom to try on his mother’s clothes. The confusion and unhappiness he’d come to accept as normal seemed to fall away as he looked in the mirror and saw himself transformed. For all that the clothes were too big, the person staring back at him seemed a truer reflection of who he was. It was the everyday Leo that was a sham.

He’d only meant to spend a few minutes in there, but he’d lost track of time and been caught. Again. He’d never seen his father so angry. It had been terrifying, even more so than his usual cold disdain. Leo had turned to his mother, hoping she’d intervene, but she’d turned her face away.

The memory still made him ashamed and miserable. He’d hoped things would get better once they came to the house on Willets Point, but they hadn’t. To make things worse, his father’s usual driver had had to go into hospital and a replacement had been hired for the summer. A younger man, with smirking eyes and a pockmarked face. His name was Porter.

Leo didn’t like him. Porter had been a soldier and had driven in the army, and on days when Leo’s father didn’t need the car, he’d been instructed to look after his son. So instead of being able to come and go as he pleased, Leo found himself accompanied everywhere. There were drives to the beach, walks along the sea wall and into the Backwaters. Porter never played or talked with his young charge, but would smoke silently, clearly bored and resenting his babysitting duties. It seemed as though the entire summer was going to be ruined.

Then, one day when they arrived at the beach by the sea wall, a young woman was waiting. Porter smilingly told Leo to come back in an hour, and Leo was happy to oblige. From then on, that became the norm. The beach became their usual destination, and each time Porter would meet someone there. Sometimes it was the same young woman, sometimes another. The thought of telling his father never crossed Leo’s mind. The arrangement suited him as well. He was left alone, free to wander where he liked.

That was how he met Rowan.

She appeared while he was sitting by himself on the sand dunes one afternoon, a plain girl with freckles and straw-blond hair. Leo hadn’t had much contact with girls, but he found Rowan much better company than the boys at boarding school. She lived in the Backwaters, and said her mum worked in a shop in Cruckhaven while her father stayed at home most of the time. He wrote books on nature for schools, and in the past used to take his daughter out with him into the saltmarshes during the holidays.

But that didn’t happen so much any more, she told Leo, not since her dad became ill. She didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he would shut himself away in his study for days. Even when he came out he hardly ever spoke, and Rowan’s mum had told her he needed to be left alone. So now she was left to entertain herself as she liked.

And, for an hour each day, so was Leo.

From then on the two of them met every afternoon. They didn’t always stay on the dunes. They would walk in the hot sun, often all the way into the Backwaters, which Rowan loved. She was familiar with every ditch and channel, knew which parts were safe even at high tide and which parts to avoid. They would talk, each of them telling the other things they’d never spoken of to anyone else. Rowan told him how she heard her mum crying and sometimes shouting at her dad, who was becoming ever more distant. In turn, Leo told her how he hated boarding school and the boys who went there. He even admitted he was frightened of his father.

One afternoon, he told her about dressing in his mother’s clothes.

His face burned after he’d said it, but Rowan didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong. She told him she did the same herself, and Leo felt a wave of unaccustomed happiness. For the first time in his young life he’d found someone he could talk to freely. Share his secret with.

Later, he couldn’t remember who came up with the idea, only how excited they both were about it. Plans were breathlessly made for the following afternoon, and then it was time to go. As he hurried away, Leo was so distracted he didn’t see Porter until he spoke.

The driver was standing between two dunes, a streamer of blue smoke curling from his cigarette. Leo quickly looked back to see the small figure of Rowan disappearing down the beach. Watching her go, Porter smirked and wagged a finger at Leo. What would your father say, he asked?

Leo’s heart was pounding. His first thought was that Porter had heard what he and Rowan had been planning. But the driver had been too far away, and once Leo realized that a new emotion took over. He found himself hating that smirking face, almost shaking at the thought of his cherished new friendship threatened by his father’s employee. He’d say he doesn’t pay you to smoke or meet girls, Leo said.

Porter’s pockmarked cheeks had darkened, but it wasn’t mentioned again.

The following afternoon, as they set off in the car, Leo waited until the house was out of sight and then asked to be let out. Porter was reluctant, but Leo had learned that secrets worked both ways. And when he revealed he’d seen the driver taking boxes away from the summerhouse in the grounds, Porter pulled over. He wasn’t smiling any more, and swore under his breath when Leo got out and said he could go.

But he still did as he was told.

In the quiet as the car engine died away, Leo hurried to the summerhouse. Hidden behind a thicket of trees and bushes, the small, single-storey structure was built from overlapping planks nailed to a rough timber frame. It was meant to resemble a Swiss chalet, and years ago it had been used for entertaining. But that was before Leo was born: now, weathered and warped, it was only used for storage.

A door stood in the middle of a small covered porch, on either side of which were cobwebbed windows. Leo looked around to make sure no one was watching. He’d sneaked in here many times before, but he had to be careful.

His parents would be furious if they found out.

He felt in the window box, where dead and desiccated weeds clung to the dust-like earth. The key was still there, so Leo fitted it into the lock and opened the door. It squealed on dry hinges as he pushed it open. The chalet was hot and airless. A dry, scratchy smell of sun-baked pine tickled his nose as he stepped inside. It was full of cardboard boxes and wooden packing cases. There were old suitcases and trunks as well, though not so many since Porter had taken some of them away. Leo had watched from the trees, unseen, while the driver had let himself in, emerging a few minutes later with the first of several boxes and small pieces of old furniture. He’d loaded them into the car boot before driving off, but even though Leo didn’t think his father knew, it never occurred to him to say anything.

He only cared that one particular suitcase hadn’t been touched.

When Rowan arrived she looked uncertain at finding herself in this new place, so close to the grand house. But Leo felt full of confidence. The anticipation he’d felt all day infected them both as they began exploring the suitcase’s contents. Leo thought the clothes might have belonged to his mother, but it must have been a long time ago. The short dresses and skirts were brightly coloured and much too small for her now.

Neither he nor Rowan minded the smell of mothballs as they began trying on the clothes. Costume jewellery and shoes first, strapped sandals with platform heels and gaudy necklaces. Then blouses and skirts. Small as the clothes were, they were still too big but that hardly mattered. Inside the chalet, with sunlight streaming through the old muslin curtains, it felt like they were in another, private world. Leo felt dizzy with a sense of homecoming, a feeling he would try, and fail, to recapture with alcohol when he was older. He had on a bright-blue dress, Rowan a matching orange top and skirt, giggling as she slid bangles over his hand. One of them was tortoiseshell, almost luminous as the sun shone through it, and afterwards Leo would remember the bone-like rattle they made as they slid down his wrist.

He still had his arm raised when the door was torn open. He saw Rowan’s face change as she looked behind him, and then he was wrenched around. He found himself staring into a face so contorted at first he didn’t recognize his father. Leo’s head snapped back and forward as he was shaken, then a blow to his cheek knocked him to the floor. Stunned, he saw a flash of orange as Rowan ran for the door, only to fall as his father reflexively lashed out. Leo was yanked up and shaken again, so hard he couldn’t see. His father was shouting at him, but he couldn’t tell what. And then, quite distinctly, he heard another voice say, ‘Oh, fuck!’

The next thing he knew, Porter was pulling his father away, pushing in between them. Leo fell back into the boxes, hearing only disconnected sounds. Then he was being half-carried, half-dragged towards the door. Rowan was on the floor, unmoving in her too-big orange clothes. She was very still. He couldn’t see her face, but there was a large, dark mark on the corner of a wooden packing crate next to where she lay. It looked sticky and wet.

That was his last sight of her. The door closed, hiding her from view, and after that things became muddled. Leo could remember being put into the car, and someone — either Porter or his father, he wasn’t sure — dragged off the dress and roughly bundled him into his own clothes. Sometime later he heard his mother’s voice, asking how he’d managed to have such a silly accident. And then he was in cool sheets, drifting away in a darkened room.

Next morning, without explanation, Leo was driven back to the Villiers’ main house. He slept for most of the journey, waking every now and then to see the back of Porter’s sunburned neck in front of him. Years later he would suspect he’d had a concussion, but at the time he welcomed the numb, fogged state that stopped him from thinking clearly. At one point he roused himself enough to ask about Rowan.

She went home, Porter answered without turning round.

No one ever mentioned the incident again. Leo’s recollection of it soon faded and became dreamlike, until he could barely remember the young girl he’d made friends with that summer. If he did happen to think about her, or that afternoon in the chalet, it brought such a stifling sense of panic that it was easier not to think about it at all.

Eventually, he convinced himself it never happened.

It was years before he set foot in Willets Point again. By then his mother had died, and Porter had somehow become his father’s permanent driver. Leo himself had already embarked on the path of unhappiness and rebellion that would characterize his adult life. When he was expelled from the military academy, instead of returning home for the inevitable scene with his father, he followed an impulse he didn’t fully understand and hitchhiked to the house where he used to spend his summers.

It was like being back in a barely remembered dream. The house had been shuttered for years. The chalet had gone, mysteriously burnt down years before. There was nothing to say it had ever been there, and a large magnolia tree had been planted on the spot where it once stood. Rain had dashed the petals from the candle-like buds, and the grass around the tree was dappled with their dirty-white splashes. The sight was obscurely disturbing. It stirred a vague memory, like an old photograph glimpsed on the bottom of a murky lake.

But it wasn’t until years later, when another half-understood impulse led him to set up home in his one-time sanctuary, that he came to hear how a young local girl had left her parents’ house in the Backwaters one hot summer afternoon and never been seen again.

I read through Leo Villiers’ statement twice. Then, as Clarke had requested, I deleted both email and attachment. Turning off my computer, I kneaded the bridge of my nose. All along, I’d assumed the series of tragedies in the Backwaters were recent ones. But the events that had brought me out here had been merely the latest shoots of a crime whose roots stretched back more than two decades.

I felt bone tired and sickened. Porter had seen his employer kill a young girl, and treated her death as an opportunity. Small wonder he’d been taken on permanently after that. He and Sir Stephen were bound together by what they’d done, and while Porter might not have regarded himself as a blackmailer, his silence wouldn’t have come without a reward. Perhaps that was why he’d reacted to Emma Derby and Mark Chapel as he had. They were interlopers, trespassing on what he’d have regarded as his personal territory, and he’d responded accordingly. I wasn’t going to let some chancers muscle in, he’d said at the boathouse. Not after all I’ve done for the Villiers.

And what exactly had he done, I wondered? Did his involvement only extend to keeping quiet, or had he proved his value in a more practical way? Porter’s duties certainly went beyond driving. Sir Stephen had him clean the house on Willets Point to remove any incriminating evidence, and then deliver a sports bag full of money to the blackmailers. What other favours had there been? Rowan Holloway had never been found, but I couldn’t imagine the grey-suited businessman would have dirtied his own hands disposing of her body. Not when there was someone else who’d do it for him.

I got up from my desk to make myself another coffee. Even though Leo Villiers — it was still hard to think of the person at the centre of this as Lena Merchant — wasn’t the killer we’d all believed, he didn’t emerge from this blameless. He might have been a child when his father killed Rowan Holloway, but he’d elected to remain silent as an adult. In his statement he admitted letting Edgar live rent free and sending him monthly food parcels in an attempt to appease his conscience. In doing so, he not only condemned the father of his childhood friend to a solitary existence, but set the stage for the final act of the tragedy.

He’d made Porter deliver the supplies.

If his intention was to punish the driver by reminding him of his part in the crime, it failed. All it did was gift him with another opportunity, in the form of a secluded house and an uncomplaining tenant. And when it appeared that Leo Villiers had committed suicide, Porter stopped bothering with the food parcels anyway. He’d been prepared to help cover up the killing of Edgar’s young daughter. I couldn’t see him losing any sleep over letting her father starve.

Now Porter himself was dead, along with five other people. And the only person who’d emerged unscathed was the man who had started it all.

Sir Stephen Villiers.

I sat down with my coffee, then got up and added a splash of whisky to it. There was precious little chance that Rowan Holloway’s killer would face charges for what he’d done. Although I didn’t doubt what I’d read — it fitted too well with what we already knew — an unsubstantiated childhood memory would never be enough to warrant prosecution. Especially not one that had supposedly been suppressed for years, and that by his own admission Leo had chosen to conceal until now.

The unpalatable truth was that, with neither evidence nor a body, there was little the police could do. They had ample cause now to conduct yet another, more exhaustive search at Willets Point, and it had crossed my mind that the magnolia tree planted on the site of the old chalet might have more than soil concealed under its roots. But Sir Stephen wouldn’t have wanted such tangible evidence of what he’d done to remain on his property, not since there was a much better alternative nearby.

Perhaps Mark Chapel’s body wasn’t the first Porter had hidden in the Backwaters.

The maze of waterways would no doubt be searched again as well, but the chances of finding Rowan Holloway were remote. After all these years, there would be little of the young girl left to find. Just lonely bones sunk into the mud.

Yet the police couldn’t ignore the allegations, not when they’d come from Sir Stephen’s own son. I would have liked to ask Clarke what was going on, but I knew the DCI wouldn’t appreciate that, and doubted she’d tell me anyway. She’d stuck her neck out enough as it was.

So there was nothing I could do but wait, and hope something happened. Days passed without any mention of Sir Stephen Villiers so much as being questioned, let alone arrested. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d been ruthless enough in protecting the family name when it was his son who’d been a suspect. Now it was his own reputation, not to mention liberty, at stake, he’d be exerting all his power and influence. It was galling to think he could emerge unscathed even after this, yet as the furore over the killings in the Backwaters started to die down, I began to think that Rowan Holloway’s killer was going to go unpunished.

I wasn’t the only one.

When Leo Villiers posted his story on social media, not even Sir Stephen’s legal team could suppress the storm that followed. The heir of a wealthy and powerful man hadn’t only come back from the dead, but done so as a woman. As if that weren’t enough, now he was accusing his father of killing a young girl over two decades before.

The revelations caused outrage. An old school photograph of a smiling Rowan Holloway, blond and engagingly gap-toothed, was shown everywhere as the story of her disappearance was revisited. Predictably, Sir Stephen hid behind his lawyers, who deflected questions with assertions of innocence or bland ‘no comment’s. The businessman himself said nothing, but news footage of him hurrying into his car — a dark-grey rather than black Daimler now — told its own story. His face looked drawn, even more colourless than before, the bones of his skull picked out by the flash of cameras. Before I turned off the TV in disgust I had the unprofessional, and unsympathetic, thought that he looked like a dead man in waiting.

It turned out to be prophetic. When news broke that Sir Stephen was critically ill after a massive stroke, his lawyer issued a statement blaming the stress caused by all the media attention. It could well have been true. There’s nothing unusual about being able to commit a crime. What sets some people apart is their ability to live with it. Sir Stephen had lived with his for twenty-five years, untouched and apparently unmoved.

What he couldn’t live with was other people knowing about it.

His former son gave no interviews, either before or after his father died two days later. Disliking the air of voyeurism that now surrounded the case, I tried to avoid the gossip and speculation that rushed to fill the vacuum. But it was impossible to ignore altogether. One particular video clip was shown again and again. It was outside the glass doors of a building I recognized as the police headquarters I’d been to myself. There was movement inside, then the doors opened and someone emerged.

Leo Villiers had been a good-looking man, and Lena Merchant was a striking woman. She was elegant and smartly dressed, with well-cut, medium-length dark hair. I’d never met Villiers, and it was strange now to see this person I’d heard and read so much about. She was immediately engulfed by microphones and cameras, and I expected her to hurry away from the attention. Instead, she calmly walked through the jostling scrum, head held high as she ignored the questions fired at her. There was no shame, no embarrassment. Not any more.

Just a dignified silence as she walked away from her old life and into a new one.