Western Approaches

One

SUNDAY, 10 APRIL 2011

Nearly a year later, D/S Jimmy Suttle stumbled downstairs, knotting his tie, his mobile wedged against his ear. In theory, this was a precious weekend off. In theory, he should still be in bed.

‘Where did you say?’

‘Exmouth Quays. Sus death. Mr Nandy wants to blitz it. Asap, Jimmy. Do I hear a yes?’

The line went dead, leaving Suttle in the chaos of the tiny kitchen. In these situations, D/I Carole Houghton seldom bothered with anything but the barest of facts. That way she was already on to the next call.

Suttle gazed around. The tap he’d promised to fix this very morning was still dripping onto the pile of unwashed plates. Two empty bottles of cheap red and the remains of yet another Chinese takeaway were stuffed into the lidless waste bin. Even the cat, a tormented stray Lizzie had rescued from down the lane, wasn’t interested in the curls of battered fish in gloopy sauce.

Suttle found it next door in the sitting room, crouched behind the sofa. Here, the carpet stank of animal piss and a fainter smell that signalled a more general neglect. In one of her blacker moods Lizzie had christened the cat Dexter in memory of a nightmare boyfriend at her long-ago Pompey comp. Now, his back to the wall, Dexter would do anything to defend his patch against all-comers. Suttle, wondering why he hadn’t swallowed more ibuprofen last night, knew exactly how he felt.

Upstairs, he could hear Grace talking to the mobile over her cot. This, he knew, was a prelude to the full lung-busting wail with which she greeted every new day. Normally it would be Lizzie who got up and answered the summons, leaving Suttle with a few snatched extra minutes in bed. Last night, switching off the light, he’d promised to sort out his daughter himself, giving Lizzie a lie-in. Now, looking for his leather jacket, he was trying to remember whether the car had enough fuel to get him to Exmouth.

Grace began to howl. Pulling on his jacket, Suttle headed for the door.

Exmouth, an old-fashioned low-rise seaside resort with a reputation for kite surfing, birdwatching and lively Friday nights, lies nine miles south of Exeter. Exmouth Quays is a marina development built around the basin of the old commercial docks, a quieter frieze of expensive waterside homes in various shades of New England pastel. Suttle, who’d been here before, had always regarded it as a film set, not quite real, a showcase destination for people who wanted to make a certain kind of statement about themselves.

He parked the Impreza beside Houghton’s Vauxhall estate. Her dog, a mongrel terrier, lay curled on the back seat. A couple of uniforms had already taped off an area of walkway beneath the biggest of the apartment blocks, a towering confection with a faux clapboard finish and stainless steel trim.

Suttle crossed the bridge that spanned the dock entrance, flashed his ID at the uniforms and ducked under the tape. The apartment block was called Regatta Court. A banner draped across the fourth floor warned that only three apartments remained for sale while an accompanying poster asked WHY LIVE ANYWHERE ELSE? Why indeed, thought Suttle, eyeing the body at the feet of the grey-clad Crime Scene Investigator.

He’d worked with the CSI on a job in Torquay only last month. Difficult guy. Ex-marine. Mad about R amp; B. Lost his left leg after stepping on an IED in Afghan.

‘Houghton about?’

The CSI was making notes on a clipboard. Suttle was trying to remember his name.

‘It’s Mark, if you were wondering.’ The CSI didn’t look up. ‘And she’s talking to Mr Nandy.’

Suttle was still studying the body sprawled among the puddles on the wet paving stones.

‘So what happened?’

‘He has to have fallen.’ The CSI glanced up at last. ‘We’re thinking the top apartment. Big fuck-off place. Number 37.’

‘The guy’s got a name?’

‘Kinsey. According to a neighbour.’

‘Anything else you want to share?’

The CSI gave him a look. Wet weather made his stump ache.

‘Some arsehole’s been spewing round the corner if you want to take a look.’ He nodded at the sea wall at the end of the walkway. ‘Apart from that? No.’

Suttle was circling the body, examining it from every angle. The guy was on the small side. He was wearing a pair of Nike track pants and a red singlet. A crest on the singlet featured a pair of crossed oars. His feet were bare and there was something awkward in the way the body seemed to change angle around the neck. Blood from both ears had pooled on the paving stones and more blood had matted in his thinning hair. Guessing his age wasn’t easy but Suttle thought around forty. His eyes were open, the lightest blue, and the last seconds of his life had left him with an expression of faint surprise.

Suttle knelt to examine the big Rotary on Kinsey’s left wrist. The impact had smashed the face of the watch. Four minutes past three. Suttle’s eyes strayed to the name beneath the crest on the singlet: Jake K.

‘Has Mr Nandy asked for the pathologist?’

‘Here, you mean?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘He thinks there’s no point. And he’s probably right. A fall from that kind of height you’re talking head first. If there’s anything else, it’ll show up at the PM.’

‘You think he jumped?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Suttle nodded. His early years as a uniformed probationer in Pompey had taught him everything he ever wanted to know about the way the weight of the human head can turn a jumper upside down. Twice he’d had to deal with deranged adolescents who’d turned their backs on the world, or on a fucked-up relationship, and stepped off the top level of the city’s Tricorn car park. Fall dynamics was a phrase he’d never grown to like.

He turned to the CSI again.

‘CCTV?’

‘There isn’t any. The nearest cameras are in the town centre. We’re talking nearly a mile away.’

‘None at all?’ Suttle was amazed.

‘Zero. Nada.’

‘Right.’ He nodded. ‘So how’s Mr Nandy?’

‘Manic. Argyle lost again yesterday and he thinks they’re stuffed.’

Suttle turned to go. CID-wide, Det-Supt Malcolm Nandy was recognised as the king of lost causes. Trying to defend his empire against the marauding cost-cutters at force HQ was one of them. Plymouth Argyle was another. His beloved Pilgrims were on the edge of bankruptcy, and among the Major Crime Team Nandy was rumoured to be bunging them the odd fiver, doing his bit to help them stave off oblivion.

Fat chance on both counts, Suttle thought, ducking under the tape again.

Lizzie knelt beside the fireplace in a third attempt to coax a flame from the pile of damp kindling. Grace stood in her playpen by the sofa, shaking the wooden bars in a bid to attract the cat’s attention. Her morning bottle and a modest bowl of porridge had at last put a smile on her tiny face.

‘Daddy?’ she gurgled.

‘He’s at work, my love.’

‘Daddy gone?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

Lizzie abandoned the fire. Even the balls of newsprint beneath the kindling, the leftovers from last week’s local paper, seemed reluctant to light. She pulled one out and flattened it against the cracked slates on the hearth, wondering if she’d missed anything. PENSIONER’S HANDBAG LEFT ON BUS went the headline. Breaking news in Colaton Raleigh, she thought. What the fuck have I done?

She was still taunted by dreams of her last day at work and the get-together in the pub afterwards. Starting her maternity leave in Portsmouth, she’d had every intention of one day resuming her job at the Pompey News. As the favoured feature writer, she’d cornered the market for the plum interviews and the occasional foray into serious investigative journalism, and she’d loved every minute of it. She’d scooped one of the big provincial awards for a feature on racial tensions among the city’s Kosovan community and there’d been a couple of flattering calls from one of the national tabloids, inviting her to send a CV and a representative sample of her recent work. But then came Grace, and nine months later Jimmy had managed to score a promotion of his own. By this time she’d begun to know a different Pompey composed of fat mums at the health centre, ever-partying student drunks down the road and a manic neighbour — heavily tattoed — who claimed to have once met the Pope.

She remembered the morning the letter from Exeter had arrived only too well. That night she and Jimmy had celebrated with champagne and blueberries with lashings of double cream. It had never been part of her career plan to move to Devon, and she’d never realised that her husband had fallen out of love with Portsmouth, but seeing the grin on his face as they emptied the second bottle she realised that she and Grace had no choice. Jimmy had grown up in the country, a straggly little village on the edge of the New Forest, and now he couldn’t wait to introduce her to what he called the sanity of rural life.

Chantry Cottage had been his idea. His new employers — Devon and Cornwall Constabulary — had wanted him to start rather earlier than he’d expected, and he’d headed west without taking the extended leave he’d promised her. The Major Crime Investigation Team he was joining put him through a two-week force induction programme which gave him a little spare time at the end of each working afternoon. Within days, a trawl of the Exeter estate agencies had produced half a dozen potential buys. All of them, in Lizzie’s view, were way too expensive. Property prices in Pompey were beginning to sink and mortgage companies were starting to demand ever bigger deposits country-wide. Jimmy was disappointed — she could hear it in his voice — but a week later she was looking at yet another set of estate agent’s particulars. Chantry Cottage, according to Jimmy, nestled in a fold of the Otter Valley. It had half an acre of garden, mature fruit trees and space for a garage. The estate agent was the first to admit the property needed a little work. Hence the giveaway price of £179,000.

Needed a little work. Lizzie understood language, made a living from it, knew the multitude of blemishes a well turned phrase could hide. Needed a little work?

She lifted Grace from the playpen and wandered through to the kitchen to put the kettle on. She’d first seen the property back in high summer last year. It was a beautiful August day with real heat in the sun, and driving down the Otter Valley from the quaintly named Newton Poppleford even she had to admit that this little corner of England was hard to resist. The way the greenness of the valley cupped the water meadows beside the river. The silhouette of a lone buzzard circling high over a waving field of corn. The lumbering herd of cattle that brought them to a halt a couple of minutes later. Grace had kicked her little feet with excitement. She’d never seen cows before.

The cottage lay about a mile outside the village. According to the estate agent, it had once been a chapel, but on first glance Lizzie thought this highly unlikely. Grey slate roof. Red brick construction. Ugly metal-framed windows. The broken gutters were brimming with moss and there were water stains down the exterior walls. The estate agent’s photo had been taken from the back of the house, the view artfully framed by shrubs and a fruit tree. On this evidence, and her husband’s obvious enthusiasm, Lizzie had been expecting something that would grace a calendar. Instead, she found herself looking at a run-down property that might have belonged on one of the more distressed Pompey estates.

Inside, it got worse. The moment you stepped inside, the sunshine vanished. The place smelled of damp and something slightly acrid that she couldn’t place, and there was a chill thickness to the gloom that made her physically shiver. You went in through the kitchen. The units, obviously home-made, were chocked up on wooden blocks. One door had lost a hinge and a couple of drawers were missing. Ancient loops of electrical wiring hung from the walls and the walls themselves were wet to the touch.

Next door, in the tiny living room, the floorboards moved underfoot beneath the scuzzy carpet. One of the windows didn’t close properly and there were gouge marks in the metal frame where someone had tried to get in. The open fireplace looked promising but on closer examination Lizzie found neat piles of mouse droppings on the cracked stone hearth. When Jimmy — still wrestling with the window — finally managed to get the thing open, the draught down the chimney carried a thin drizzle of oily soot.

Under-impressed, Lizzie had tried to get her thoughts in order, tried to puncture the bubble her husband had made for himself, but he was already leading her through the chaos of the garden towards the tiny stream at the bottom, his daughter in his arms, fantasising about the life that awaited them in this new home of theirs. Walks on the common up the road. A cat or two for company. And evenings around the barbecue he’d install on the refurbed patio, toasting their good fortune in cheap red from the village store.

In the end, that evening, she’d said yes, not really understanding his passion for this horrible house but knowing how much it mattered to him. He’d already negotiated a £15K discount on the asking price, which brought the place within their budget, but the work she insisted had to be done right now would be down to Jimmy. No problem, he said. His dad was handy. He’d get him across from Hampshire the moment they exchanged contracts. Between them, they’d sort the electrics, install a new kitchen, do something about the bathroom, give everything a lick of paint and generally clean the place up. He might even be able to tap his dad up for a loan to cover new windows. By the time Lizzie and Grace were ready to move out of Pompey, the place would be unrecognisable.

None of it had happened. Jimmy’s dad fell off his moped and ended up in hospital the day contracts were exchanged. Jimmy himself had made a start on a couple of the jobs, but the pace of life on Major Crimes was unforgiving, and by the time Lizzie had sold their little terraced house it was nearly November. Stepping into Chantry Cottage, she recognised the smell and the damp only too well, realising why Jimmy had been so keen to keep her away. His apology had taken the form of a huge bunch of lilies, beautifully wrapped, which he’d propped up in the cracked sink in the kitchen. It was a sweet gesture, and she’d done her best to smile, but she’d hated lilies ever since.

Now, with Grace still in her arms, her mobile began to ring. She went back into the living room and deposited Grace in her playpen before stepping outside to take the call. Mobile reception in the valley was patchy at best. Another nightmare.

‘Lou? It’s me. How are you?’

Lizzie closed her eyes, glad — at least — that the rain had finally stopped. The only person who called her Lou was Gill Reynolds. The last thing she needed just now was an hour on the phone with an ex-newsroom colleague eager to tell her what she was missing.

‘I’m fine. Busy. You know. .’ Lizzie tailed off. As ever, Gill had no interest in listening.

‘Great news, Lou. The buggers have given me a couple of days off. You remember that promise I made to pop down?’

Lizzie tried to fend her off, tried somehow to wedge herself into the conversation, tried to explain that this wasn’t the best time to make a flying visit, but in her heart she knew it was hopeless. Gill would be down on Tuesday, around teatime. Directions weren’t a problem because she’d just blagged a new TomTom off the paper. They had loads to catch up on and room in her bag for something nice to kick the evening off. Stolly or something else? Lizzie’s call.

Lizzie opted for Stolly. Under the circumstances, she thought, vodka and oblivion might be an attractive option. Gill was still giggling at a joke she’d just made about some guy she was shagging when she rang off.

Lizzie watched the rain returning down the valley. Over the winter life seemed to have physically penned her into this godforsaken place. She’d become someone else. She knew she had. Through the open door she could hear Grace beginning to wail. For a moment she didn’t move. A fine drizzle had curtained the view. She lifted her face to the greyness of the sky and closed her eyes again, knowing she should have thought harder about trusting her husband’s judgement. Underfoot, she could feel the paving stones shifting with her weight. That was another thing he’d never done. The bloody patio.

Jimmy Suttle found Nandy and Houghton in the apartment that served as the Regatta Court sales office. Houghton stood by the window, staring out, her phone pressed to her ear. Nandy occupied a seat at the desk, eyeballing an attractive middle-aged woman who evidently looked after the development. Her name was Ellie. She’d just put a call through to a local firm she used for work around the apartment block. They’d have someone down in ten.

Nandy glanced up, seeing Suttle at the door. He did the introductions.

‘Ellie’s whistled up a locksmith,’ he said. ‘We’re talking number 37. Fifth floor. You OK with a flash intel search? Mark needs to meet this locksmith guy before he sorts the door for us.’

Suttle nodded. As ever, Nandy was moving at the speed of light. Thirty years in the Major Crimes game had taught him the investigative importance of the first twenty-four hours of any enquiry. Pile all your pieces on the board, give the shaker a good rattle and pray for a double six.

‘So what have we got, sir?’ Suttle asked. ‘What do we know about this guy?’

Nandy threw the question to Ellie. Suttle sensed she was enjoying the attention.

‘You mean Jake Kinsey?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘He’s been with us. .’ she frowned ‘. . a couple of years now? Nice enough man. Lived alone. Kept himself to himself.’

‘What did he do for a living?’

‘I’m not quite sure. I think he may have been an engineer at some point. He was never one for conversation but we once had a fascinating little chat about alternative energy sources. Some of the residents were wanting to install solar panels and he told me why they’d never work on our kind of scale. Then we got on to wind turbines. He knew a lot about them too.’

Nandy glanced at his watch. He was sharp as a tack but famously impatient.

‘Is there anything special about number 37?’ Suttle again.

‘Yes. It’s the biggest apartment in the block. It’s huge. I like to think of it as the jewel in our little crown.’

‘How much?’ Nandy this time.

‘Space?’

‘Money. How much did he pay for it?’

Ellie paused. The bluntness of the question seemed to trouble her. She looked briefly at Suttle, one eyebrow raised, then returned to Nandy.

‘One point four five million.’ She smiled. ‘As I recall.’

‘A rich man, then?’

‘Not hard up, obviously.’

‘You checked him out at the time? When you agreed terms?’

‘Of course we did. Not personally. But yes.’

‘Did he raise a mortgage? Some kind of loan?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Can you check? I’d be grateful.’

Ellie nodded and reached for a pad to scribble herself a note. Nandy had got to his feet and was feeling for his watch again. A lean man in his early fifties, he wore the same grey suit regardless of the season and in situations like these reminded Suttle of Samuel Beckett. Recently Lizzie had taken to reading Krapp’s Last Tape in bed, and Suttle had clocked the author photo on the back. Nandy had the same hollowed-out face, the same shock of iron-grey hair, the same unforgiving eyes. This was a guy who brought an unyielding sense of mission to every enquiry, every exchange. Suttle rather liked him. There was madness in those eyes. Stuff had to happen quick-time and Nandy was there to make sure it bloody well did.

Houghton was off the phone. Nandy wanted to know whether she’d secured a slot for the post-mortem.

‘Tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘Half nine.’

‘Best they can do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Pathetic.’

‘I agree.’

Nandy headed for the door. He was off up to the local nick to commandeer a couple of offices where his team could camp out. The enquiry already had a name: Operation Constantine.

Houghton and Suttle paused a moment, then followed him out of the door. Nandy was halfway across the car park, heading for his Volvo. Houghton and Suttle exchanged glances. Houghton was a big woman with rimless glasses and a blaze of frizzy silver-blonde hair. She had huge hands, a live-in partner called Jules and spent a great deal of her spare time riding horses on the eastern edges of Dartmoor.

‘I’ll field the locksmith and liaise with Mark,’ she said. ‘I’ll bell you when we’re ready for the flash intel.’

‘And me?’

‘Talk to Ellie.’ She nodded back towards the office. ‘She likes you.’

Suttle did her bidding. He’d worked for D/I Carole Houghton for more than six months now and had developed a healthy respect. The steadiness of her gaze told you a great deal. This was someone you’d be foolish to underestimate.

Ellie offered him coffee. The kitchenette was next door. It wouldn’t take a second.

Suttle shook his head. He wanted to know more about Jake Kinsey. And about what he might have been up to last night.

‘That’s easy.’ Ellie was smiling. ‘He was in the pub.’

‘Which pub?’

‘The Beach. It’s just across the way.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because we were there too. My partner and I.’

Kinsey, it turned out, had been in the middle of some kind of celebration. Saturday night the pub had been packed. Kinsey had turned up around eight with a smallish bunch of guys in tow. Ellie hadn’t recognised any of them but there had to be some kind of tie-up with the local rowing club because they were all in badged training gear, and Kinsey had made a big play of the silver cup he was carrying. Ellie was vague on the details but thought they must have been taking part in some competition or other and had won.

‘He bought champagne over the bar,’ she said, ‘and that doesn’t happen often in the Beach.’

Kinsey and his mates had stayed for maybe an hour. They’d all had a fair bit to drink.

‘What happened then?’

‘They left. Like you do.’

‘Where did they go? Do you know?’

‘Not really, but my guess would be home, Kinsey’s place. There was talk of phoning for a takeaway. I suppose Kinsey lived the closest so that’s where they went.’ She looked at the phone. ‘There’s a Mr Smart who lives in one of the flats below. Nothing gets past him. Do you want me to give him a ring?’

Suttle shook his head, making a note of the name. Organising the house-to-house calls would fall to D/I Houghton. He’d pass the intel on.

‘This rowing of Kinsey’s. How does that work?’

‘You get in a boat. It has oars.’ Ellie was flirting now. Suttle knew it. He was thinking of the badge on Kinsey’s singlet, the crossed blades.

‘Yeah. . sure. . so is there a club?’

‘Of course there’s a club. I just told you. ERC. Exmouth Rowing Club. Pride of the town. There’s someone else you ought to talk to. She’s the club secretary. Her name’s Doyle, Molly Doyle.’

‘You’ve got a number?’

‘I’m afraid not. Look on the website.’ The smile again. ‘Nice woman. Fun. Everyone calls her the Viking.’

Houghton kept her laptop in the back of her estate car. Still waiting for the locksmith, Suttle borrowed the keys, woke the dog up and made himself comfortable in the front passenger seat. It was raining again, harder than ever, and the CSI had draped Kinsey’s body with a square of blue plastic sheeting before taking cover in the Scenes of Crime van.

Suttle fired up the laptop and googled ‘Exmouth Rowing Club’. The website was impressive. The home page had an eye-catching banner featuring a crew of young rowers powering a boat towards some imagined line. This giant collective effort made for a great picture. Their mouths open, their backs straight, their faces contorted, these kids were exploring the thin red line between pain and glory, and Suttle lingered on the image for a moment, wondering how an experience like that might have triggered the celebration in the pub.

From the front of Houghton’s car, he had line of sight to the scene of crime across the entry to the dock. The warmth of his body had misted the windows but he wiped a clear panel with his fingertip, gazing across at the hummock of blue sheeting, trying to imagine the sequence of events that had linked several bottles of champagne to this inglorious death four or five hours later. Was the guy a depressive? Had he got so pissed he’d done something stupid and gravity-defying and just toppled off his own balcony? Or was the story more complex than that?

A keystroke took Suttle onto the contacts page. Molly Doyle’s number was listed under ‘Club Secretary’. He made a note and was fumbling for his mobile when Houghton appeared beside the passenger door.

Suttle wound down the window. The locksmith had arrived.

It was still barely nine o’clock by the time Lizzie got Grace washed and changed. Despite the weather, she knew she had to get out of the house. Jimmy had taken the car so the only option was yet another walk.

She watched Grace tottering towards her, then scooped her up, hugged her tight and strapped her into the buggy. During nearly two years of motherhood Lizzie had often wondered about this new role of hers, but there were moments when they seemed bonded, and this was one of them. She wouldn’t wish a rural winter on anyone, least of all her own daughter, but apart from the odd tantrum and a recent talent for ignoring the word no, Grace seemed to have weathered the discomforts. Lizzie put this down to her husband’s evenness of temper. She’d never met anyone so tolerant, so easy-going, and it had always been a surprise — back in Pompey — to talk to his mates in the Job and learn how relentless and proactive he could be. So why hadn’t some of this can-do spirit spilled into their own little lives? How come she still had to wrestle the back door open because the wood had swollen with the incessant rain?

She pushed the buggy along the lane, keeping to the right, splashing through the puddles in her wellington boots. One of the early lessons she’d learned about the countryside was how difficult it was to find anywhere decent to walk. From a car, or an armchair in front of yet another episode of Countryfile, it was all too easy to imagine a world of endless outings, mother and child spoiled to death by this magnificent landscape: crossing fields, pausing beside rivers or streams, watching the first of the spring lambs, glorying in the freedom and the fresh air.

The reality, alas, was very different. Everywhere you looked turned out to be someone else’s property. Everything was badged: PRIVATE, NO ENTRY, BEWARE OF THE DOG, TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. And if you finally managed to make it through the long straggle of village and down to the river, chances were that the footpath was ankle-deep in mud from the last downpour.

The rain came often, blowing in from the west on the big Atlantic depressions. Early on, before Christmas even, Lizzie had learned to read the sky, recognising the telltale wisps of cloud that promised the arrival of yet another frontal system as the light died, and it wasn’t long before her battle with the weather became intensely personal. She hated the wet. She loathed having to dry everything in front of a one-bar electric fire. She spent hours every day trying to hoover mud from that horrible carpet in the sitting room. And night after night she lay awake, trying to distinguish between a multitude of drips. Water came in through the roof, spreading patches of damp across every ceiling in the house, and leaked from a crack in the back boiler behind the fireplace.

Worst of all was the dribbling tap in the kitchen. Jimmy, as ever, had been oblivious to her pleas to do something about it, and after months of listening to the slow drumbeat of water in the stainless-steel sink she’d caught the mobile library, found a book on DIY and tried to change the washer herself. She’d attacked the thing with an adjustable spanner she’d managed to borrow from the man who ran the village store but had given up in tears when water threatened to fountain everywhere. That evening Jimmy had found her tight-lipped, curled up in bed, Grace asleep beside her. He’d fetched ibuprofen from the bathroom cabinet, filled a hot water bottle, suggested a slug or two of Scotch, convinced she must be heading for a cold, but only later — once he’d reappeared with a plate of pasta — did she tell him the truth. I’m going mad, she said. This place is driving me fucking insane.

In more positive moods, increasingly rare, she’d tell herself that this husband of hers was doing his best. There was no money for a plumber, or a roofer, or a crew of fitters to turn up with a vanload of double glazing. There was also, it seemed, precious little time for Jimmy to have a go himself, or organise his dad to make good on the promised help that had never happened. And so, instead, they’d retreated to separate corners of their new lives, increasingly withdrawn, pretending that everything was OK, or nearly OK, or OK enough for the spring to finally arrive and take them somewhere sunnier. But even by mid-April that hadn’t happened. On the contrary, the weather seemed fouler than ever, taunting her optimism, snuffing out the last flickers of hope that kept her going. No wonder they call frontal systems depressions, she thought. Even Krapp’s Last Tape beat life in Chantry Cottage.

She trudged on, wondering whether to put a call in to Jimmy, asking about the wreckage of his day off, about how he was getting on, reaching out for a little company, a little comfort, but then she paused in the road, fumbling for a Kleenex to blow Grace’s nose, knowing there was no point. For reasons she didn’t begin to understand, she’d ended up in a prison cell of her own making. And whatever happened next, she knew with growing certainty, was absolutely down to her.

The locksmith turned out to have a duplicate set of keys for Kinsey’s apartment. He pushed the door open and then stepped back. Mark was wearing a one-piece Scenes of Crime suit. The locksmith and Suttle had left their shoes at the foot of the stairs. Later, the CSI would do the full forensic number on the landing and the flat itself. If Nandy wanted the lift boshed too, no problem. But for now it was down to Suttle to do a quick trawl through the apartment, scouting for obvious indications — bloodstains, signs of some kind of struggle — that would turn an unexplained death into a likely murder.

Suttle stepped into the apartment, astonished and slightly awed by its sheer size. He’d no idea how much living space a million and a half quid could buy, but nothing had prepared him for this. The hall alone seemed to stretch for ever, and at the far end lay a huge living area. Lounge? Playground? Romper room? Viewing platform? The biggest kitchen-diner in the world? Suttle looked around. The flat occupied the entire width of the building. Everywhere else in the block, according to Ellie, this space would have accommodated two apartments, but Kinsey’s money had bought him a view like none other. Glass-walled on three sides, even in shit weather like this the flat’s trophy room offered a panoramic view on the very edge of the estuary.

Suttle walked to the nearest of the huge windows. It was half tide, and the water was sluicing out through the harbour narrows. Beyond the narrows lay a long curl of sand fringed with grass. To the right, trawlers and yachts tugged at their moorings, and through the curtains of rain, on the other side of the river, Suttle could just make out the grey swell of the Haldon Hills, shrouded in mist. To the left lay the long curve of Exmouth seafront, the beach already exposed by the falling tide, while the whaleback of an offshore sandbank had appeared, a long ochre smudge in the murk.

‘Are we doing this or what?’

Mark, the CSI, was Exmouth born and bred. He’d probably lived with this view most of his life but Suttle found it difficult to tear himself away. If I had that kind of money, he thought, I might just live here myself.

The CSI had disappeared again. Suttle could hear him padding around in one of the other rooms. He reappeared a minute or so later, shaking his head.

‘Fuck all. Someone’s had a party but we can’t nick them for that.’

Suttle nodded. The hugeness of the lounge was under-furnished. A shallow crescent of sofa had been placed to suck in the best of the view and there was a free-standing plasma — not large — for after-dark entertainment. To the left, Kinsey had positioned a desk and executive chair beside another of the windows. Within reach of the chair was a big brass telescope on a wooden tripod with a scatter of charts on the floor beneath. One of the charts covered the south Devon coast, and Suttle paused a moment, gazing down at it, wondering precisely where this belonged in the story of Kinsey’s final days. Beside the chart was a set of tide tables for Dartmouth, open at the month of April. Saturday the 9th had been ringed in pencil. High tide at 09.03. Was this where Kinsey had been yesterday? Some kind of race? Might this have accounted for the champagne in the pub?

Suttle looked round. A room this big and this bare could swallow a multitude of sins, but the evidence for a serious post-pub party was remarkably modest. An area at the back of the room housed a kitchen so spotless it might never have left the showroom. Suttle noted a couple more bottles of champagne, both empty. There were six glasses neatly lined up on the work surface beside the double sink, all washed, and a collection of crushed tinnies — mainly Guinness — in the swingbin. The bin also yielded the remains of a sizeable takeaway.

Mark limped across and took a sniff. ‘Chicken jalfrezi.’

Suttle accompanied the CSI to the master bedroom. It was a decent size, nothing huge, with a view of the river beyond the rain-pebbled glass. The en suite bathroom had the usual goodies — recessed lighting, slate-tiled floors, big jacuzzi — but there was nothing to suggest violence.

In the bedroom the CSI had found a silver cup on the floor beneath the window. Suttle stooped to inspect it, remembering the chart beside the telescope. They were celebrating in the pub last night, he told himself. This has to be why.

The CSI was looking at the bed. The duvet had been thrown back, along with the top sheet, and the bed appeared to have been slept in. Given that this was the master bedroom, it was reasonable to suppose that the bed’s occupant had been Kinsey.

So what had got him up and taken him to his death? Suttle returned to the lounge. There were twin balconies on the right and the left of the view, flanking the front of the apartment. Access to both lay through big sliding glass doors. Kinsey’s body had been found by a local walking his dog. It was lying on the harbour side of the apartment block, directly under the left-hand balcony.

The CSI was inspecting the latch on the big sliding door.

‘Here. .’ He beckoned Suttle closer.

The latch was unsecured. Under his gloved hand the door moved sweetly open. Suttle stepped out. The rain was lighter now, no more than a thin drizzle, and he went across to the rail, peering over. The blue shape of Kinsey’s shrouded body lay directly below, and Suttle stared at it for a long moment, trying to imagine how a fall like that could have happened. Kinsey was on the small side. Mounting the rail and throwing yourself off would have required a definite decision, not something that could have happened by accident.

Suttle looked up again, trying to work out whether anyone might have witnessed what had happened. The balcony overlooked the entrance to the dock. According to the CSI, this was where fishing boats and water taxis and the ferry that crossed the river tied up. There was a line of working units on the dockside, rented by fishermen, with a terrace of 1960s-looking flats beyond. To the left, looking out over the basin of the marina, another row of properties had line of sight on Kinsey’s balcony. Suttle made a mental note, fixing the view in his head. He estimated at least thirty front doors. More priority calls for the house-to-house teams.

He took a last look round. Kinsey’s watch had stopped at 03.04. At that time of the morning, of course, it would have been dark. He needed to check the harbourside illumination and whether the throw of light would reach up as far as Apartment 37. He sensed that a lot of these properties would belong to retired couples, wealthy enough to buy a share of a view like this. People that age often had trouble sleeping. Someone might have seen something, a flicker of movement, something unexplained. Worth a try.

He stepped back inside, wiping the rain from his face. They already knew that the front door had been closed on the latch but not bolted inside. Now he wanted to know about the interior lights.

The CSI shook his head. ‘Everything off.’

‘Including the bedroom?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right.’ Suttle nodded. ‘So the guy gets up in the dark, comes through here, opens the exterior sliding door, finds himself on the balcony. Yeah? Is that what the scene tells us?’

‘Spot on.’

‘Then what?’

‘Fuck knows.’

Suttle took a look at the other rooms. There were two other bedrooms, both en suite, and one of them appeared to have been used as an office: desk, filing cabinet, whiteboard on the wall. There was nothing on the whiteboard, and apart from a PC and a phone there was nothing on the desk either. This bareness extended to the rest of the apartment, and as Suttle did another walk-through he got an overwhelming sense of emptiness, of a life somehow on hold. When it came to furnishings and decor, this was a guy who’d stripped his surroundings down to the bare essentials. The stuff was functional, well made, served a purpose, but there were no pictures to brighten the bareness of the walls, no framed faces of friends or family, no hats doffed to any kind of private life. Even the fridge yielded nothing but a one-litre carton of milk, half a pound of butter, a Tesco fillet steak and a stalk or two of broccoli.

Beside Kinsey’s desk, the CSI was checking the answering machine. Suttle threw him a look but he shook his head.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

D/I Carole Houghton drew the Constantine team together at 10.07. Ellie had volunteered her office, plus a supply of coffees, and Houghton sat on the desk, letting her anorak drip onto the carpet.

So far she’d managed to rally eight D/Cs. Nandy was looking for a couple more but they lived out of the area and wouldn’t arrive for at least an hour. In the meantime, she said, D/S Suttle had conducted a flash intel search of the apartment and drawn up a priority list of addresses for house-to-house. The duty Inspector at the local nick was preparing three rooms for Constantine and all of them would be operational by lunchtime. Depending on initial inquiries, the investigation might or might not transfer to the Major Incident Room at Middlemoor. At the moment, she stressed, the jury was out on Kinsey’s death. Nothing in the flat suggested anything but a man who had fallen off his own balcony. If the truth proved otherwise, it was up to Constantine to find out.

There were very few questions. Houghton wanted the D/Cs working in pairs. She divided the house-to-house calls between them and sent the most experienced team to the Beach pub. She wanted a full account of Kinsey’s visit last night, plus names and addresses of fellow drinkers for follow-up.

By the time Ellie returned, the detectives had gone. Houghton eyed the tray of coffees she was carrying and offered her apologies. Ellie put the coffees on her desk.

‘That nice young man I was talking to. .?’

‘He’s gone to meet the club secretary.’

‘Ah. .’ Ellie failed to mask her disappointment. ‘The Viking.’

Molly Doyle opened the door on Suttle’s second knock. She was wearing a scarlet dressing gown, loosely belted at the waist, and her hair was wet from the shower. The blush of colour on her face, plus the muddy Nikes on the square of newsprint inside the porch, suggested recent exercise. He’d phoned ahead but she’d failed to pick up.

‘I’ve been out on the seafront.’ She was still looking at Suttle’s warrant card. ‘My Sunday treat.’

After a moment’s hesitation, she invited him in. It was a neat house, warm colours, comfortable, lived-in. A line of family photos on the mantelpiece suggested a sizeable brood of kids and already, from somewhere upstairs, Suttle could hear a stir of movement.

‘So what’s going on? What’s this all about?’

Suttle explained about Kinsey. The news that he was dead froze the smile on her face. She looked visibly shocked.

‘Dead?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘But how can that happen?’

‘I’ve no idea. That’s what we have to find out.’

Suttle wanted to know about yesterday’s race. Kinsey, it seemed, had won himself a cup.

‘He did. He texted me. The Dart Totnes Head. First proper race of the season. His guys did well. Better than well.’ She frowned, knotting her hands in her lap. ‘Dead?’ She stared at Suttle, wanting him to change the story, to apologise, to explain that it was all some kind of joke.

Suttle pressed for more details. ‘You’ve got names? This crew of his?’

‘Of course. Our events secretary is having a baby. I did the race entry form myself.’

‘You’ve got contact details?’

‘For the crew, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Absolutely. That’s my job.’ She hesitated. ‘You want me to get them?’

Suttle shook his head. He’d collect the names and addresses before he left but right now he was more interested in Kinsey. What kind of man was he?

‘He was. .’ she frowned, unhappy with the past tense ‘. . different.’

‘How?’

‘Hard to say.’ The frown deepened. She seemed affronted as well as upset. Who was this man to barge into her house, into her precious Sunday morning, and throw everything into chaos?

‘The man’s dead, Mrs Doyle. And at this point in time we don’t know why.’

‘Christ, what else are you telling me?’

‘I’m telling you nothing. And that’s because we know nothing. Except that he probably fell from his own balcony in the middle of the night and ended up dead. There has to be a reason for that. Which is why I’m here.’

‘But you’re suggesting. .?’

‘I’m suggesting nothing. You used the word “different” just now. What does that mean?’

‘It means that he wasn’t — you know — one of the usual crowd. We’re a club. Quite a successful club as it happens. How much do you know about rowing?’

‘Nothing,’ Suttle said again. ‘Tell me.’

‘Well. .’ She gathered her dressing gown more tightly around her. ‘It’s a sport, obviously. It’s pretty physical, and it can be pretty challenging too, in our kind of water. People love that. It becomes a bond, a glue if you like. It sticks us together. When you’re out there you have to rely on each other and that can build something pretty special. Not everyone races. A lot of our guys are social rowers. But I guess it boils down to the same thing. The sea’s the sea. You don’t mess with it.’

‘And Kinsey?’

‘He was never a social rower.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Kinsey was a competitor. In everything. Winning mattered.’

‘And that’s unusual?’

‘To his degree, yes. This is me speaking, my opinion, but — hey — you did ask. .’

She offered him a bleak smile. She believed him now. Kinsey was dead and gone. No more cups. No more glory.

Suttle let the silence stretch and stretch. Footsteps hurrying overhead and then the splash of water in a shower.

‘Did you like him?’

‘Like him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because these things can be important. I’m getting a picture here. People like Kinsey can be uncomfortable to have around.’

‘That’s true.’

‘So was he liked? Was he popular?’

She looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head. It had been obvious from the start, she said, that Kinsey was rich. Not just that, but he was arrogant too. Wealth, like winning, mattered.

‘He came to us from nowhere. Just walked into the clubhouse on a Sunday and signed himself up.’

‘Had he rowed before?’

‘Never. He said he’d watched us out of his window when we rowed up the river. That was important.’

‘Seeing you row?’

‘Telling us where he lived. That huge penthouse flat. It wasn’t just pride. It was something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘He needed us to know the kind of guy he was. Rich. Successful. All that nonsense. Ours is a funny little club. We get all sorts. But money never comes into it. In a boat on the sea you are who you are. Kinsey never seemed to quite get that.’

Coaches at the club, she said, had taught Kinsey the basic drills. After a couple of outings, like every other novice, he’d sculled with an experienced crew, one oar in either hand, and hadn’t let himself down.

‘Was he good?’

‘Not really. Some people are naturals. You can see it. Their body posture is right. They pick up the rhythm, the stroke rate, really quickly. They know know how to turn all that energy into real power. It’s a bit like dancing. Either you have it or you don’t.’

‘And Kinsey didn’t?’

‘No. Don’t get me wrong. He was OK, he was competent. But he got into bad habits from the start and never really listened to people who wanted to put him right.’ The smile again, hesitant, almost apologetic. ‘Am I making sense?’

Suttle nodded. He could hear a radio now from upstairs. Heart FM. The last thing he wanted was one or other of the kids to stumble in through the door and bring this interview, this conversation, to an end.

‘Tell me about the racing,’ he said. ‘How many other cups did he win?’

‘None. Yesterday was their first outing. That was why he was so chuffed.’

About a year ago, she said, Kinsey had bought the club a brand new quad.

‘Quad?’

‘Four rowers and a cox. This was a sea boat. They don’t come cheap.’

‘How much?’

‘Eighteen thousand, including the bits and pieces that go with it.’

The extras, she said, included oars, safety equipment plus a couple of trailers for the road and for the beach. The club had never had a windfall like that but Kinsey soured the gift with a major precondition. He and his crew always had first claim on the boat, regardless of who else might be in the queue.

‘And that was unusual?’

‘Absolutely. And it didn’t stop there.’

Kinsey’s crew, she said, was hand-picked. These weren’t a bunch of mates he happened to get on with, like-minded souls with a taste for exercise and a laugh or two, but serious athletes he cherry-picked from the club’s membership.

‘It was like he was playing God. It put a lot of backs up. Here was a guy from nowhere, a virtual stranger, buying himself into the top boat. And no one could lift a finger because he was happy to pay for it.’

One of the crew, she said, wasn’t even a club member. His name was Andy Poole. Kinsey had come across him on some business deal or other. It turned out Andy had been in the Cambridge blue boat two years running and had nearly made the national squad before a move west brought him to Exeter.

‘Don’t get me wrong. Andy’s a nice guy. He’s a bloody good rower too. We’ve been lucky to have him. Even on Kinsey’s terms.’

Kinsey, she said, had enrolled Andy Poole in the club, paid his annual membership and designed a training programme around the guy’s work schedule. The other guys in the crew had undoubtedly learned a huge amount from Andy’s tuition, one reason why the crew had swept to line honours in yesterday’s race, but the whole point was that access to this kind of coaching was strictly limited. Only Kinsey and his crew ever laid eyes on Andy Poole. To the rest of the club, he was Mr Invisible, the big man with the Mercedes who popped down from Exeter to do Kinsey’s bidding. There were even rumours that Kinsey had paid him start money to make sure he turned up for yesterday’s race. Not that Andy Poole was short of a bob or two.

‘And that upset people?’

‘Big time, if you let it get to you.’

‘You’re telling me he had enemies?’

‘I’m telling you he was unpopular. And, to be frank, a bit of a joke.’

‘Because he was so naff?’

‘Because he was so crap in a boat. Some people called him The Passenger.’

‘And he knew that?’

‘I’ve no idea. But even if he did it wouldn’t have made any difference. To be honest, he was the most thick-skinned person I’ve ever met. This is the kind of guy who takes what he wants and turns his back on the rest. He thought money could buy him anything.’ The smile again, even bleaker. ‘And — hey — it’s turned out he was wrong.’

Footsteps clattered down the stairs. The door burst open to reveal a girl in her mid-teens. She was wearing a blue tracksuit and pink runners. Ignoring Suttle, she tapped her watch.

‘Shit, Mum, I’d no idea. I’m supposed to be down there for ten. Tansy’ll go mental.’

‘They won’t be launching today. It’s a south-easterly, 4.3.’

‘I’m talking Ergo, mum. You know what she’s after for the 5K? After a night like last night? Twenty dead. I’m gonna be toast. See you.’

As suddenly as she’d appeared, she’d gone. Suttle heard the front door open and then slam shut again. Ergo? 4.3? Twenty dead? This had to be rowing talk. Had to.

Molly Doyle was on her feet. Like her daughter, she was tall and blonde. Hence, Suttle assumed, her nickname. Under the circumstances, the Viking thought coffee was a good idea. In the meantime, Suttle could help himself to the details on Kinsey’s crew from the files she’d got upstairs.

‘They went back to his place,’ she said. ‘After the pub last night.’

‘All of them?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He texted me an invite. Silly man.’

It had finally stopped raining by the time Lizzie got to the village church. It lay on the road that led down to the river, a sturdy plain-looking structure with a bulky tower that seemed out of proportion with the rest of the building. She opened the gate and pushed the buggy up the path towards the half-open door. Lizzie had never been a practising Christian and had avoided worship for most of her adult life, but this morning, for whatever reason, she felt the need to quieten herself, to find somewhere she might find a bit of privacy and a little peace.

Until she stepped into the gloom of the nave, it didn’t occur to her that the church might be in use. Shit, she reminded herself. Sunday.

Heads turned, all of them old. There weren’t many people, twenty tops. The nearest face looked familiar. She lived down the road, Mrs Peacock. They’d talked a couple of times in the village shop. She’d become the village’s self-appointed chronicler and archivist, contributing badly punctuated articles to the parish magazine on various episodes in Colaton Raleigh’s long history. It was May Peacock who’d confirmed the estate agent’s belief that Chantry Cottage had once been a Nonconformist chapel, and — in the depths of winter — it was Mrs Peacock who’d battled through the snow and posted some additional information through Lizzie’s letter box. There was some kind of tomb, she’d written, at the bottom of the cottage’s garden. It had been constructed hundreds of years ago and was rumoured to contain the bodies of two children.

At the time Lizzie had dismissed the story as a figment of Mrs Peacock’s imagination. This kind of legend was the currency of village life and Mrs P was obviously a big spender. Lately, though, as the damp walls of Chantry Cottage pressed closer and closer, Lizzie had begun to think more about the story. Anything to revive the numbness that used to be my brain, she’d thought. Anything to stop me becoming a complete vegetable.

Now, aware of Lizzie’s hesitation, Mrs Peacock was beckoning her into the church. She had a long, slightly horsey face and wisps of white hair curling from her chin. Come in, she seemed to be saying. We won’t bite.

Lizzie found a perch on the end of an empty pew. Grace, mercifully, seemed to have gone to sleep. At the altar a line of elderly worshippers waited to take communion. They were all women and most of them used walking sticks. Watching them as they shuffled painfully towards the altar rail, Lizzie found herself wondering what had happened to their menfolk. Were their husbands at home, sorting out the midday roast, or had the retirement years in Colaton Raleigh finally throttled the life out of them?

She had no way of knowing, of course, and as Mrs Peacock threw her another smile and struggled to her feet to join the communicants, Lizzie remembered the morning she’d taken up the carpet in the sitting room. Back then, in December, she’d still had the energy and the self-belief to pit herself against the challenges of Jimmy’s little find. Chantry Cottage, she’d told herself, was simply bricks and mortar. She could make a difference; she could roll her sleeves up and have a proper sort-out.

The previous occupant, according to Jimmy, had been a lifelong hippy who’d read a couple of books about some Indian guru and become a yoga teacher. Living on virtually nothing, she’d tried to bypass the electricity meter with the aid of instructions from an anarchist site on the Internet but she’d screwed up badly and nearly burned the place down. This seemed to explain both the lingering sourness Lizzie caught from time to time, plus the sooty patches on the living room ceiling, but the latter, according to Jimmy, had come from the candles the woman had burned every night. This was someone who’d evidently lived by candlelight for most of her life and saw no reason to change. Quaint, he’d said. And very Devon.

It was at this point that Lizzie had decided to turn the year on its head and go for an early spring clean. The following morning, once Jimmy had gone to work, she moved Grace’s playpen into the kitchen, shooed Dexter into the garden, cleared the tiny sitting room of furniture and began to roll up the carpet. For once the sun was shining. She’d strung a rope between two fruit trees and intended to give the carpet the beating of its life. With luck, she’d thought, the rest of the house would listen and take note. Pompey girl on the loose. Mend your ways.

In the event, though, the house — yet again — had won. The carpet had seen better days. Years of abuse had larded it with every conceivable spillage — grease, candle wax, coffee, wine — and when she took her gloves off to get a firmer grip it was sticky to the touch. That was bad enough, but as she began to roll the carpet back, she found herself looking at layer after layer of newsprint. These were papers from the early 60s. Headlines about the death of JFK. Feature articles asking why the Brits had to suffer yet another sterling crisis. She started to go through the papers story by story. This was a treasure trove of living history, she told herself, something to spark conversation when Jimmy came home. But then her interest flagged, and she stopped turning the pages, only too aware that Chantry Cottage had the feeling of a morgue, of time arrested under her very feet, a malevolent force dragging her unaccountably backwards, into a darkness that first alarmed and then depressed her.

That night, with the carpet in all its squalor back down on the sitting room floor, she’d tried to voice a little of this to her husband. She and Grace were still newcomers to the countryside. They’d been living here for barely a month. But already she could feel a sense of near-despair beginning to seep into her life. In some dimly remembered past she’d been the one pitching stories, conducting interviews, writing copy, dreaming up headlines, earning herself the beginnings of a serious reputation. Now, as the days implacably shortened and yet more rain blew in from the west, she felt totally helpless, a creature without either direction or worth.

Jimmy, as ever, had tried to understand. The winter was bound to be tough. They’d both known that. But the seasons would roll round, and spring would come, and then they’d all have a chance to take stock. At work, he said, they still think I’m great. He’d made sure that word of his last job in Portsmouth had reached the ears of his new colleagues, and there were still moments in the MCIT offices when he could feel the warmth of all that reflected glory. He’d been the key to the undercover operation that had potted Pompey’s biggest criminal. If there’d been a medal struck for the death of drug baron Bazza Mackenzie, it would have had Suttle’s name on it.

Lizzie loved her husband in moods like these. He’d always been a blaze of auburn curls in her life. With his freckles and his easy grin, he had an untiring optimism, an almost visible sunniness that was the very bedrock of their relationship. She’d always fancied him, and there were times even now when she still did, but she knew that her depression had begun to affect him as well, yet another reason to hate her new self. Evenings at home were beginning to be difficult. There was too much stuff that was better avoided — the state of the house, Lizzie’s sheer isolation — and once Grace was tucked up, they both settled for silence or the telly rather than risk another row. But deep down, where it had always mattered, she suspected that Jimmy was right. Stuff comes and goes. You have to walk tall on life’s road. But how on earth was she going to get back to the person she’d once been?

Thinking suddenly of Gill Reynolds, she watched the communicants returning to their pews. The last to take her seat was May Peacock. Lizzie gave her a little wave, hearing Grace beginning to stir, knowing that she had to get out of the church before the service came to an end. Her dread of conversation extended to pretty much anyone. She’d lost the knack of talking to people. She was no longer able to get the right words in the right order. Better therefore to keep the world at arm’s length and pray that something, anything, turned up to make things better.

Suttle phoned D/I Houghton from his car. He had names and contact details for Kinsey’s crew and knew that these would be priority interviews for the Constantine squad. When Houghton at last picked up, she told him to come to Exmouth nick for half eleven. Mr Nandy had sorted a couple of offices before departing for another enquiry in Torbay and he wouldn’t return until mid-afternoon. By half eleven, she was expecting feedback from the house-to-house calls. After which she and Suttle could plot a sensible path forward.

Suttle checked his watch. Nearly eleven. Exmouth nick was round the corner, a two-minute drive. With time in hand, he fancied a little detour.

Molly Doyle had given him directions to the seafront compound which served as the base for Exmouth Rowing Club. Suttle found it tucked up a wide alley behind a building that belonged to the RNLI. A wooden fence enclosed a patch of scrubland beneath the looming shadow of a half-completed leisure complex. A raised Portakabin served as a clubhouse and one of the sagging doors was an inch or two open. Suttle picked his way between a litter of abandoned rubber bootees, pausing on the steps to check out the ERC fleet.

In the compound he counted five big sea boats, all of them red and white, readied on launching trolleys beneath the spreading branches of a huge tree. Someone had attached a plastic owl to the roof of the Portakabin. Suttle was looking at the boats again. If the owl was a bid to keep the gulls off, it had failed completely. There was bird shit everywhere.

Suttle pushed at the door of the clubhouse and stepped inside. Neon tubes threw a cold hard light over the sparseness of the interior. Lighter boat shells hung from racks on the walls and a pile of ancient yellow life jackets occupied a corner at the back. There was an overpowering smell of sweat and effort, and among the handful of faces on the rowing machines he recognised the Viking’s daughter. Even now he didn’t know her name but he responded to her nod of recognition, wondering whether news of Kinsey’s death had yet to reach this far.

A coach was squatting beside the nearest rowing machine, monitoring the performance readout on the tiny heads-up screen. The last thing Suttle wanted was a conversation, but the guy got to his feet and asked whether he could help.

Suttle shook his head. It was way too early to extend the investigation this far and in any case the circumstances were all wrong. He needed four walls, a desk, a couple of chairs and a door to ensure a little privacy. Not this place.

‘You’re interested?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘In rowing. Only we do taster sessions for novices. Think of it as three free goes. If you like it, you become a member. If you don’t. .’ He shrugged. ‘No harm done.’

Suttle looked around. It seemed like the place was falling apart: the sagging doors, the piles of abandoned kit, the bird shit. Yet at the same time there was no arguing with the buzz. These kids were really going for it.

‘So anyone can turn up?’

‘No problem.’

‘When?’

‘Sundays are best. As long as the weather’s not too evil, you’ll find us on the beach.’

The coach turned back to the rowing machine and checked the readout again. Suttle couldn’t resist a look: 4,567 metres. In 19.03. The rower, a young lad of maybe seventeen, was cranking up for a final push. Sweat darkened his T-shirt. His face was contorted with effort, and every time he pushed back against the footstretchers the effort squeezed a grunt from his gasping lungs.

Suttle caught his eye. ‘This is good for you?’ he murmured.

The boy had the grace to muster a smile.

‘Fuck off,’ he mouthed back.

Exmouth police station occupied the middle of an otherwise picturesque square on rising ground beyond the main shopping centre. An undistinguished 1960s building, it had a slightly alien presence. An apron of parking contained a handful of cars and the clock on the church opposite had stopped at twenty to four. Suttle, already struck by the slightly retro feel of the seafront, regarded this as somehow symbolic. Exmouth, he thought. The town that time forgot.

Houghton was putting the finishing touches to the smaller of the two offices commandeered for Constantine. Three desks: one for Nandy, one for Houghton, the third for Suttle. A poster featuring a Thai beach occupied one wall. A second poster warned uniformed coppers that FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT.

‘This used to be the sergeants’ locker room,’ Houghton grunted. ‘You should feel at home, Jimmy.’

Suttle tallied the names of Kinsey’s crew he’d picked up from Molly Doyle. Eamonn Lenahan, he said, served as cox. He lived up the river in Lympstone. Andy Poole, who turned out to work for a hedge fund partnership, had a flash apartment in Exeter. Tom Pendrick, who rowed in the seat behind Poole, was listed with an Exmouth address. While a guy called Milo Symons evidently dossed with his girlfriend in a caravan on farmland near Budleigh Salterton. She’d been at the party too. Her name was Natasha Donovan.

Houghton had scribbled down the names. Kinsey’s body, she said, had been removed after the Scenes of Crime photographer had done his work. A Crime Scene Manager had joined the CSI and they’d made a start on boshing Kinsey’s apartment. Documents from the desk that served as his office and from a filing cabinet in one of the spare bedrooms were waiting for Suttle’s attention, and Kinsey’s computer had been bagged for full analysis.

‘The CSI also pinged me this.’ She beckoned Suttle closer. ‘He found it on the man’s Blackberry.’

Suttle read the text on Houghton’s iPhone. It read, ‘V. We stuffed them. The whole lot. Decent time too. The Krug’s on ice. Usual place. J. xx’.

Houghton wanted to know who V might be.

‘The Viking. Her real name’s Doyle. Molly Doyle. She’s the one who gave me the crew names.’

‘“Usual place”?’

‘Yeah. Interesting.’

‘You sound surprised.’

‘I am, boss. The woman’s no fan of Kinsey.’

‘Are we sure?’

‘Of course not.’

‘But?’

Suttle shrugged. He honestly didn’t know. Molly Doyle, in his judgement, had her finger on the pulse of the club and her description of Kinsey had sounded all too plausible.

‘The guy muscled his way in,’ he said. ‘No one liked him. He thought money could buy him anything.’

‘Including her?’

‘I doubt it.’ Suttle made a mental note to check the lead out.

Houghton nodded, then updated Suttle on the house-to-house calls. Gerald Smart, who occupied the apartment below Kinsey, confirmed that his neighbour had entertained guests last night. He’d heard laughter and music and a bit of stamping around but not much else. Getting on for midnight, everything had gone quiet and after that he and his wife had retired to bed.

‘Nothing afterwards?’

‘No.’

‘What about the other properties? Line of sight?’

‘Zilch. The guys aren’t through yet but we seem to be talking a particular demographic. These are retired people. They’re older rather than younger. I get the feeling they party early, get pissed and go to bed.’

‘How many of them knew Kinsey?’

‘Very few. There’s a residents’ association which is pretty active but it seems he could never be arsed. Most of these good folk knew him by name because of the property he’d bought but that’s pretty much as far as it went. You’re going to ask me whether he was popular but I don’t think it’s that simple. When it came to socialising and all that, he just wasn’t interested. Apparently he didn’t even have a Facebook account.’

Suttle nodded. This is exactly what Molly Doyle had told him. This is the kind of guy who takes what he wants and turns his back on the rest.

‘Mr Loner,’ Suttle muttered.

‘Exactly.’

‘What about the pub?’

‘The landlord was pretty helpful. Turned out to be an ex-marine. His line on Kinsey was pretty much everyone else’s. The guy very rarely made an appearance and when he did stuck to fizzy water. Last night seems to have been a one-off. Three bottles of Moët? The landlord couldn’t believe it.’

‘And the crack? The chat? Anything there?’

‘Not so far. The landlord was too busy to listen in but he’s given us the names of some regulars who were in last night in case they picked up a clue or two. I’ve scheduled the follow-ups for this afternoon.’ Her eye strayed to the list she’d made of Kinsey’s crew. ‘These guys need sorting. Where do you want to start?’

Eamonn Lenahan lived in a rented cottage in Lympstone, a waterside village a couple of miles upstream from Exmouth. Suttle’s first call had been Tom Pendrick, but his attempts to raise an answer on the phone or in person had come to nothing. Before leaving Exmouth nick, he’d run all six names — including Kinsey — through the Police National Computer but drawn a blank. No previous convictions. No one ever charged or even arrested. Model citizens, all of them.

Lenahan’s cottage lay in a tiny cobbled street with a glimpse of the river at the far end. Clouds of gulls swooped over the rooftops and Suttle could hear the soft lap of water on the pebbles that fringed the tiny harbour. He knocked again, wondering if Kinsey’s cox was still sleeping off last night’s piss-up, and then stepped back from the door and offered his face to a sudden burst of sunshine. The weather had brightened from the west, and standing in the quiet of this little village, listening to the gulls, Suttle realised that he was beginning to enjoy Constantine.

Most of the jobs that came to Major Crime were, to be frank, tacky. In Portsmouth he’d lost touch of the number of pissed retards who’d ended up battering a friend or a stranger to death. There was no mystery, no challenge, to enquiries like these, and even the drug scene — a dependable source of more interesting work — was riddled with lowlife. Heading west, he’d somehow assumed that he’d be stepping into a different world, classier, more sophisticated, but crime hot spots like Torbay and Plymouth were as squalid and mindlessly violent as anywhere in Pompey. To date, he’d worked on two murders and an alleged stranger rape. In all three cases the real culprit had been cheap vodka and the girl reporting the rape had turned out to have been as pissed as the rest of them. These were lives in free fall, tiny domestic tragedies played out against a landscape of crappy bedsits, cheap drugs and increasingly elaborate benefit scams.

Constantine, on the other hand, already looked a great deal more promising. An alleged millionaire with no apparent reason to end his days plus five partygoing crew mates who may or may not have wished him well. Molly Doyle had painted a picture of each of these people. These very definitely weren’t lowlife. Eamonn Lenahan was a medic. Andy Poole worked in hedge funds. Pendrick was an electrician. These people had jobs, education, prospects. Booze had undoubtedly played a part last night, but it was a relief not to be looking at SOC shots of fat battered women lying dead on yet another stretch of fag-cratered orange nylon-pile carpet.

Suttle was about to knock for the last time when the cottage door opened. A small figure in a pair of black boxers was rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He’d found a pair of pink slippers from somewhere and hadn’t shaved for a while.

‘Mr Lenahan?’

‘The same. Who the fuck are you?’ Irish accent. Inquisitive smile.

Suttle offered his warrant card. He’d appreciate a word or two.

‘No problem, my friend. Always a pleasure.’ He stooped to retrieve a pint of milk and stood aside to let Suttle in. The house smelled of burned toast. Lenahan blamed his fellow tenant.

‘Sweet wee girl. Off out early, she and her lovely friend. How can I help you?’

The sitting room was tiny and dark — a single tatty armchair, a battered sofa and a trestle table in the corner loaded with books and a copy of yesterday’s Guardian.

Suttle took a seat. There was a row of framed photos on the opposite wall, randomly hung. Somewhere hot. A village setting. Some kind of open-air market in the background. A crowd of black faces mugging for the camera, many of them kids.

‘Sudan.’ Lenahan had found a T-shirt from somewhere and a pair of trackie bottoms. ‘Know it at all?’

‘No.’

‘Shame. We all need a bit of Sudan. Keeps you fucking sane.’ He perched on the sofa, his legs tucked beneath him. ‘So what have you got for me?’

Suttle explained about Kinsey. The news that he’d been found dead sparked no reaction whatsoever. Lenahan just looked at him.

‘You’re not surprised?’ Suttle asked.

‘Nothing surprises me.’

‘You’re not. .’ Suttle frowned, hunting for the right phrase ‘. . upset?’

‘Never. You go, you’re gone. That’s pretty fucking final. Dying would have upset yer man, for sure. Kinsey was one for the options, you know what I mean? That’s how he operated. Always. Options. Possibilities. That sweet little opportunity no other fucker ever spotted. Dying’s a terrible option. And you’re talking to an expert.’

Suttle blinked. He’d been right. This definitely wasn’t Torbay. Lenahan hadn’t finished.

‘Under that apartment of his, you say?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So you’re going to want to know about yesterday, about last night. Am I getting warm?’

‘You are.’

‘OK, so here’s the way it was. We need to start with the race. The race is everything. And why’s that? Because the race, my friend, is where it begins and ends.’

Yesterday’s outing, he explained, was a head race, nine and a bit miles down the River Dart from Totnes to Dartmouth, pretty as you like, acre after rolling acre of God’s fucking England. The boats start every thirty seconds and the trick is to knock them off, one by one.

‘Knock them off?’

‘Pass them. That’s the trick, that’s what we’re there for, that’s what Kinsey wants us to do. Fastest boat wins. And if you pass every other bugger, you’re home safe.’

Off the start line, he said, they were towards the back of the fleet. Lenahan is in the cox’s seat face to face with Andy Poole. Andy is stroke. He sets the rate. Lenahan’s known Andy for ever, rowed with him for years on the Thames, won oodles of fucking cups. Between them, they’ll boss the race.

‘So we’re half a mile down the course, a long straight bit before the first bend, and already we’ve reeled in the boat ahead. The guys doing the work have no idea what’s going on because they’re all looking backwards, but I haven’t said a thing so far because it’s good to toss the guys the odd sweetie, and so I’m nudging towards the right bank for the overtake and you know what? It’s Kinsey, the man himself, who’s up there in the bow, he’s the one who susses what’s happening and steals a little glance over his shoulder, just a little look now, one of his trademark looks, and here’s the point, here’s what I’m trying to tell you. As we step on these guys, as Andy pumps up the rate and we go surging past, racing past, I get to see the expression on Kinsey’s face. He’s creamed them, he’s fucking buried them, and the sweetness of that knowledge, that big fucking jolt of adrenalin, puts this nasty little smile on his face. He’s top dog. He’s up there with the angels. The heavenly fucking chorus is giving it full throttle and every last cell in his body tells him he can do this for ever. He doesn’t feel a whisper of knackeredness. That man’s got the world by the throat. All the nausea we’ve gone through in training, all the money he’s spent, all that has paid off, big time, in spades, and all he needs now is more of the same. One bunch of muppets crushed. Eleven to go. And you know what? Yer man’s right to think that. Because that’s called winning.’

Lenahan shifted his weight on the sofa and offered an emphatic nod, driving the point home. There was a moment of silence and Suttle wondered whether to applaud or not. Was Kinsey’s prize cox like this all the time? Or was the performance strictly for Suttle’s benefit? Either way, he needed to find out more.

Lenahan was cranking up again. By the time they got to Dartmouth, he said, Milo and Kinsey had hit the wall and even the last couple of overtakes couldn’t mask their pain. But they still crossed the line in 58 minutes 27 seconds, an easy win, and an hour or so later they’re in the Dartmouth clubhouse on the right side of a couple of pints and they’re scooping up the trophy and milking the applause and feeling thoroughly pleased with themselves when Kinsey starts again.

‘Starts what?’

‘Post-race analysis. That’s his fucking phrase, not mine. My friend, you need to make an effort, you need to imagine it. We’ve won. We’ve done the business. We’re all getting happily bladdered and Kinsey starts banging on about post-race analysis. Where we got things wrong. What we could do better next time. How we need to sharpen up on the catch or the extraction or changes of rate or any fucking thing. Can you believe that? We’ve pissed all over the opposition. We’ve come close to setting some kind of course record. And he’s talking about rate changes? The man’s an eejit. Was an eejit. And that’s being kind.’

Suttle wanted to know what happened later, back in Exmouth.

‘This is last night, right?’

‘Right.’

‘OK. So we tuck the boat away in the club compound and kiss it goodnight and then we go to the pub. This is a proper pub that’s stayed scruffy and real and for once in his life Kinsey uses it the way you should. Maybe Andy’s had a word. Maybe Andy’s told him to lighten up, enjoy himself, tie a couple on. That’s probably the way it was because Andy’s the only one Kinsey ever listens to. The freemasonry of the minted, right? Both these guys have got money, real money, and so Andy deserves a hearing. The rest of us? We’re just bad-arse drinkers, also-rans, trophy fodder for the man’s fucking ego.’

At the pub, he said, they were joined by Milo Symons’ partner.

‘Now this girl is a piece. Her name is Natasha — Tasha if she knows you. She’s late thirties, maybe older, good nick, works out, blonde, describes herself as a resting actress. Way back in the day she probably did it for real on some crap telly series, but we’ve been around her for the best part of a year now and I can’t remember catching a single fucking gig, not one. But fair play to the woman, she’s still got it, she’s still good-looking, and she’s funny and sexy in the way that those two words often go together, you know what I mean? She rows with us sometimes when one of the other guys can’t make it, and while she’ll never win any prizes for technique she makes us laugh. She’s also taken Kinsey’s fancy big time, which is funny in itself because the guy’s a midget and she’s way taller than he is. Not that little me can talk.’

‘So how long were you in the pub?’

‘An hour, tops. Kinsey’s ordered champagne. In the end we do three bottles, no problem, and then Kinsey orders us all back to his apartment round the corner for a nightcap or two, and at that point it’s Tasha’s idea to sort out a curry because that woman eats for England. So she takes orders and gets in her little car and then the rest of us halloo round the corner to Kinsey’s place.’

Suttle tried to imagine this little knot of revellers making its way through the windy darkness. Kinsey, it turns out, has more champagne in his fridge but no Guinness. Pendrick thinks that’s a shame and so Milo gets on the mobile to Tash and tells her to pick up some resupplies.

‘Tash has gone for the takeaway by herself?’

‘Yep. Now I’m with Pendrick on the Guinness. Excellent fucking call. So we’re all lying around Kinsey’s pad, helping him with the Krug, and then Wonder Woman turns up with a whole load of takeaway plus an armful of tinnies. Me and Pendrick split the tinnies between us and we’re drinking toasts to how fucking invincible we are and all the time the temperature’s dropping because the sliding door to one of the balconies is open and then it occurs to us that Kinsey’s out there chucking up over the rail. You can hear the splat-splat on the promenade below. Nice.’

Suttle made a note, remembering the CSI telling him about the puddle of vomit on the other side of the apartment block round the corner from the body. Then he looked up again, asking what had happened to Kinsey. It was Pendrick, it seemed, who’d sorted Kinsey out, taken him to his bedroom and tucked him in. Meantime the rest of the crew were getting stuck into the curry, which turned out to be a big disappointment.

‘Splodge, you know?’ Lenahan pulled a face. ‘No theme. No story. Nothing to remember it by. It’s one of those nights you pick at the best bits but our hearts aren’t really in it. A lounge that big isn’t the cosiest place in the world and the truth is we’ve all had enough. Nine hard miles? Our collective fucking bodyweight in Guinness and champagne? Definitely time for bye byes. So Tash dumps the curry in the waste bin and does the washing-up. She’s got the little sports car for her and Symons but we need a cab so she makes the call. The guy’s there within five minutes. He has to do a bit of a circuit to drop the three of us off. Andy lives in Exeter so he’ll be the last man standing but you know what yer man does? He gets a price from the driver and then takes a whack from each of us before we even get in the bloody car. That’s how you get rich, I guess. That’s the kind of stroke Kinsey would pull.’

Suttle wanted to know more about Kinsey. Was he still in bed at this point? Or had he got up again?

‘Still in bed. Yer man’s spark out. This guy and alcohol are strangers. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him. But that’s not the point. The place has got three en suite bathrooms and we’re still all thinking why hasn’t the eejit used one of those if he wants to be ill, but it’s Pendrick who puts his finger on it. Guy’s a dog, he says. The man has to leave his smell everywhere.’

It was a neat phrase. Suttle scribbled it down. Later Lenahan would have to volunteer a formal statement, but in the meantime — as precious background — this stuff was gold dust.

‘So you left. .’ Suttle suggested.

‘Sure we did.’

‘Time?’

‘Gone midnight. Ask the cabbie.’

‘And you pulled the door shut behind you?’

‘Yeah. We do that grown-up stuff really well.’

‘No one else around? No one you saw? Inside the building? Out by the marina?’

‘Didn’t see a soul.’

‘And no calls when you were up in the apartment?’

‘Nothing. Just us.’

‘But a couple of hours later the guy’s dead.’

‘So it seems.’

‘Don’t you find that odd? Being a doctor?’

The word doctor brought the ghost of a frown to Lenahan’s face.

‘How do you know I’m a doctor?’

‘Molly Doyle told me.’

‘Ah, the Viking.’ The smile was back. ‘And did she tell you what kind of doctor?’

‘She said you worked abroad a lot. Médicins Sans Frontières.’ Suttle nodded at the photos on the wall. ‘I take it she’s right.’

‘She is. Fine woman.’ He studied his hands a moment, then his head came up again. ‘You really want to know about death, my friend? Then let me tell you. It’s getting towards sunset. It’s hotter than you can believe. Even the lizards are getting fucking stressed. But yer family are desperate and so they bring little you into the clinic. They’ve probably walked ten miles to get you to where it matters, and a journey like that hasn’t done you any good at all. So there you are on the knackered old trolley we use as a bed and after your last ten breaths your breathing stops and then you’re gone.’ He nodded, his voice soft, his eyes never leaving Suttle’s face. ‘You’re a couple of years old, maybe younger. Your mother screams and leaves the room. All the relatives outside, dozens of the fuckers, start to wail. Your father squats on the cracked old plastic chair which is the only one we’ve got and puts his face in his hands. A nurse cleans you up, removes the IV, swabs all the fucking blood and mucus away and then drapes something half clean over your face. Then your dad ties your big toes to keep your little legs together and wraps your feet and puts your hands together and binds your thumbs like this.’ He mimed the action, showing Suttle. ‘Then your dad lifts you onto a piece of coloured cloth and wraps you for a final time and takes you away. Me? I’m watching all this. It’s something I’ve got used to. It happens maybe five times a week. It’s like a little piece of theatre. The gennie’s fucked again and the lights are flickering on and off and you stand there in the dark and you listen to make sure they’ve all gone. You have absolutely nothing to say. You padlock the drugs cupboard and then step outside. With luck, you’re alone. You have a cigarette, you look up at the stars, and you wonder if the rest of the guys back in the compound have left any beers in the fridge. But on no account do you allow yourself to think. No way. Never. Why not? Because that’s the truth about death. It’s ugly. It’s unsparing. And it’s fucking everywhere. So from where I sit, Kinsey probably had it easy.’

There was a long silence. Gulls again, more distant this time, and a stir of wind in the street outside. Suttle, for once in his life, was lost for words. He wasn’t sure if any of this stuff served any evidential purpose but it was hard not to be touched.

‘You’re going back? To Sudan?’

‘Sure. And to Uganda and to Somalia and to all the other fucked-over places.’

‘So what does it do to you? Long term?’

‘I dunno. I guess that’s a treat to come.’

‘Are you worried?’

‘Sure.’

‘Do you think it damages you?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Hope so?’

‘Sure. Because it’s real. Because this is what’s waiting for us all, some place down the road.’ He stirred again in the chair, his hand reaching for a packet of Gitanes on the floor. Suttle shook his head at the offered cigarette, watched Lenahan light up and suck the smoke deep into his lungs. ‘Look at it this way,’ he said finally. ‘You go to some fancy dinner party. It happens a lot around here. You’re heading for the cheese course and everyone’s still talking about house prices or private schools or which four-by-four is best for towing jet skis or the horse fucking box, and then comes a bit of a lull, because there’s always a bit of a lull, and you sense it’s your turn. But what the fuck can you offer by way of conversation? Have any of these people got a clue about Sudan? About cholera, malnutrition, pneumonia, kidney infections, measles, meningitis, gunshot wounds, snakebite, sepsis after female fucking circumcision? Has any one of them ever heard an infant’s heart stop? No fucking chance.’

‘So who do you talk to? Who understands?’

‘Is that a serious question?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then it has to be Pendrick. This is a guy who lives in a dark part of the forest. He lives in the shadows. He lives in his head. But he’s good, bloody good, and he’s done a bit too, one way or another. Jesus, has he. .’ He tailed off, took another drag, expelled a thin line of blue smoke up towards the ceiling. ‘If you want the truth, we talk about it a lot. Once you’ve been out there, I tell him, once you’ve seen it, lived it, been part of it, been swamped by it, you’re ruined. There’s a gap between you and the rest of the world. Nothing’s real. And nothing matters. You knock at my door and tell me Kinsey’s dead and you know what? I couldn’t care a fuck.’

‘You think he killed himself?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You think he fell by accident?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What else might have happened then?’

Lenahan’s eyes drifted to the copy of the Guardian, then he was looking at Suttle again. He was smiling.

‘You tell me.’

Suttle was with Houghton by half past twelve. One of the other desks was occupied by a young D/C trying to raise someone in the marina. Suttle pulled a chair towards Houghton. Boiling down Lenahan’s account to the kind of brisk summary the D/I favoured was beyond him so he stuck to the essentials.

‘The guys all left in a taxi around midnight,’ he said. ‘We need to check out the booking and statement the driver, but I’ve talked to the girl Lenahan shares with and she confirms he got back around that time. There’s no way he could have got up and gone out later because the girl’s best mate was kipping on the sofa downstairs and the front door opens straight out into the street.’

‘Not Lenahan, then.’

‘Not if we’re talking murder.’

‘And what’s your view on that?’

‘I haven’t got one. Not yet.’

‘And this guy Lenahan?’

‘He says he’s agnostic.’

‘Meaning?’

‘He thinks the jury’s out. He says Kinsey was too self-interested to end it all, and too sensible to put himself in harm’s way.’

‘Kinsey was pissed,’ Houghton pointed out.

‘Sure. But he’d thrown most of it up. I’m not saying he was sober. Just that he’d probably have stayed in bed.’

Houghton nodded, said nothing. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the adjacent desk. The young D/C’s name was Golding. He’d just spent half an hour in Exeter with Andy Poole.

‘So how was he?’ Suttle adjusted his chair.

‘Same story, Sarge. They won the race. They had a bevvy or two. Kinsey got rat-arsed. The girl sorted a taxi. End of.’

‘But how did he take it?’

‘Take what?’

‘Kinsey dying.’

‘He was gobsmacked. He couldn’t believe it. Neither could his missus.’

‘She’s alibied him?’

‘Yeah. She was still up when he got back, watching some DVD or other. They talked a bit about the race then they went to bed.’

‘She knew Kinsey?’

‘Not especially well but I think they’d all socialised a bit. Poole couldn’t get his head around it. At one point he was wondering whether he ought to have stayed in the apartment last night, kept an eye on the guy, stopped him doing anything silly.’

‘As if.’

‘Exactly. That’s what his missus said. Sanest man I ever met. Direct quote.’

‘Because he was the go-to guy?’

‘Because he was rich. Because he had it all. Because he’d just won his first race. Because he had everything to look forward to.’

‘And Poole?’

‘Agreed. In spades. Apparently he’d helped Kinsey map out a whole load of these regatta things, pretty much every weekend over the whole summer. Money was obviously no problem. They were going everywhere. The big deal was to get into the South Coast Championships. On yesterday’s evidence, Poole thought that might be possible.’

‘Even with The Passenger aboard?’

‘The who?’

Suttle explained about Kinsey’s nickname around the club. The D/C consulted his notes.

‘Yeah. Poole had just found another old mate who’d really strengthen the crew but Kinsey was obviously there for the duration.’

‘So who was going to get dumped?’

The D/C went back to his notes again. ‘A guy called Symons. Apparently he’s really good for a novice, but Poole knows this other bloke will row the arse off him.’ He looked up. ‘Milo Symons? Name ring any bells?’

Lizzie was back at Chantry Cottage in time to give Grace her lunch. The prospect of Gill’s visit had begun to weigh heavily on her and she was wondering whether she might dream up an excuse and put her off. They’d been mates for years, fellow journos on the Pompey News, and they’d ended up forging a friendship that owed more to Gill’s pushiness than anything else. This was a woman who always needed a best friend, a mother confessor, someone she could rely on to share a drink or two and an account of her latest conquest.

Last in a longish line of failed relationships had been with a Major Crimes D/I called Joe Faraday, much respected by Jimmy, who’d brought his life to an end with three packs of painkillers and a bottle of decent red. Gill had regarded Faraday’s suicide as a personal tragedy, hers rather than anyone else’s, although her claim to a special place in her new beau’s life had never stood up to serious scrutiny. Jimmy had discovered that his boss had shagged her just twice before locking his door and taking the phone off the hook.

The real problem, in Lizzie’s view, was simple. Gill Reynolds had never mastered the knack of letting a relationship develop at its own pace. She had a bad habit of crowding her man from the off and never understood why thigh-length boots and a dab or two of Chanel wouldn’t guarantee the love affair of her dreams. In this respect Lizzie suspected that nothing would have changed and wasn’t at all sure whether she could cope with a couple of days of heavy-duty angst. Gill never arrived at any meeting without an agenda. Taking an interest in anyone else’s life was beyond her.

But what could she say? And wasn’t company — of any description — a brighter prospect than yet another wet afternoon banged up in Chantry Cottage?

The endless rain had made the front door stick again. She turned the key and gave it a kick at the bottom before stamping the mud from her wellies and wrestling the buggy indoors. For some reason she’d left her mobile in the kitchen. Half-expecting a text from Jimmy, she took it out onto the back patio and fired it up. She wasn’t wrong about a text, but oddly enough it came from Gill. She’d had to change her plans. Instead of descending on Tuesday she’d arrive tomorrow in time for lunch. ‘Lucky us,’ she’d texted at the end, ‘Can’t wait.’

It was mid-afternoon before Suttle got to Tusker Farm. Constantine had yet to be upgraded to a full HOLMES 2 enquiry and in the absence of a statement reader, Houghton wanted Suttle to sort out the scraps of feedback from the marina, which were beginning to fatten into something more substantial. The house-to-house teams, while failing to unearth the bankable evidence that would turn Constantine into a fully fledged murder enquiry, were reporting widespread resentment of Kinsey and his behaviour.

According to one resident, a mainstay of the Exmouth Quays development, this was a guy who’d never had any time for his neighbours. He openly flouted some of the by-laws by having midsummer barbecues on his balcony and riding his mountain bike around the marina basin. He never turned up at the community fund-raising events — Canapes on the Quay, Carols on the Quay — that had become such a feature of waterside life. He never put his hand in his pocket when appeals were launched for a commemorative bench or a fighting fund to battle a nearby development, and when she’d confronted him, knocking on his door and trying to shame him into writing a cheque, he’d told her to go away and get a life.

None of this, of course, suggested grounds for dumping the guy off his own balcony and leaving his body to cool in the rain, but it confirmed a wider irritation. The landlord of the Beach pub, re-interviewed at his own request after the Sunday lunchtime drinkers had drifted away, confirmed that Kinsey had also upset a fair number of locals in the town, firstly by writing to the local paper and complaining about early-morning noise from fishermen putting to sea from the dock beneath his apartment, and later by mounting a vigorous defence of a bunch of developers planning yet another multi-storey block of flats within shouting distance of the marina. To upset these two very different groups of locals — working trawler men and middle-class worthies — took some talent, and in the view of the landlord Kinsey definitely had some kind of death wish. The interviewing D/C had underlined the phrase, bringing it to the attention of Houghton when he got back to Constantine’s temporary home.

Suttle was thinking about it now, as he bumped the Impreza into the farmyard. Houghton wanted him to develop the intel picture on Kinsey — the kind of guy he’d been, the risks he’d run, the people he’d upset — and barely hours into the enquiry he was already tallying an ever-longer list of potential enemies. Paul Winter, a Pompey D/C who’d taught him everything he needed to know about the darker arts of CID work, had once told him that money, serious money, carried a smell of its own. At the time Suttle hadn’t really understood what Winter had been getting at, but his years on the tastier Major Crime jobs had wised him up. Money puts you in the bubble, he thought. And that’s when you’re truly vulnerable.

The farmer’s wife answered Suttle’s knock. Molly Doyle had been wrong about a caravan. Half a field away, tucked beside the shelter of a hedge, he could see what looked like a mobile home.

Suttle introduced himself. He said he was looking for a Mr Milo Symons. The farmer’s wife was still studying Suttle’s warrant card.

‘In trouble is he?’ She didn’t seem surprised.

‘Not at all.’

Suttle asked whether she’d been at home last night.

‘Of course I was. We both were.’

‘And does Mr Symons come in this way? Through the farmyard?’

‘No. They’ve got a separate entrance up beyond their place. It’s a gate we use to get the tractor into the field.’

‘So would you hear anything when they come and go?’

‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On the wind. And Bess.’

Bess, it turned out, was their sheepdog. Ears like a bat.

‘So last night?’

‘She heard nothing. Nothing that I can remember.’

‘Around midnight? Maybe later?’

‘Nothing. But the wind had died so she probably wouldn’t.’ Suttle brought the conversation to an end. Symons and his fancy woman had evidently been renting the mobile home for a couple of years. So far the farmer’s wife had no complaints. The woman dressed like a tart, but these days that was so common you barely noticed.

Suttle thanked her and set off up the field. The grass was still damp underfoot but the sky was cloudless and there was a definite hint of the coming summer in the golden drifts of buttercups. Several fields away, Suttle could see lambs worrying their mums to death and he found himself thinking of Grace. There were lambs on a hobby farm up the lane from Chantry Cottage. Maybe Lizzie had wheeled their daughter up there for a look. Maybe.

The mobile home was bigger than he’d expected. A line of washing was flapping in the breeze and a sodden cardboard box beside the door was brimming with crushed tinnies. Behind the mobile home, invisible from the farmhouse, Suttle found a white Transit van. The van was pocked with rust around the sills. There was paperwork all over the passenger seat, and half a cup of something that looked like tea was balanced on the dashboard. In the well beneath the glovebox, a litter of empty crisp packets.

Suttle had phoned ahead, making sure Symons was available for interview. He’d wanted to talk to his partner too, but it seemed Tash was elsewhere.

Symons came to the door. He was tall and thin, dark complexion, single ear stud, a mane of jet-black hair tied at the back with a twist of yellow ribbon. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt under an embroidered waistcoat. With the gypsy look went the hands of an artist: long fine-boned fingers, delicate wrists.

‘Come in. Yeah. Good.’ Symons dismissed the proffered warrant card with a wave of his hand. Already, he seemed to be saying, Suttle was some kind of mate.

On the phone Suttle had been vague about the reason for his visit. Now he told Symons about Kinsey.

‘Dead? Shit. How did that happen?’ His amazement seemed genuine.

Suttle said he didn’t know. In the circumstances it was his job to put together Kinsey’s last movements and try and understand what might have led to his death.

‘But the guy was cool with everything. Why. .?’

Suttle was looking around the space that obviously served as a living room. There was a built-in sofa that probably doubled as a spare bed and an Ikea rocking chair that had seen better days. The far end opened into a galley kitchen and Suttle could smell fresh coffee. But what took Suttle’s eye was the PC on the desk in the corner. An image hung on the screen, two bodies on a bed. One of them was Symons. Straddling him was a woman. The long fall of hair down her naked back was a violent shade of mauve.

‘That’s Tash.’ Symons laughed. ‘You want to see the rest?’

Without waiting for an answer he stepped across to the desk. A single keystroke brought the sequence to life. Tash was moving very slowly, barely lifting her arse, her hands cupping her breasts. Symons’ eyes were closed. These people have been at it a while, Suttle thought. Years and years. Perfect control. Lots of practice.

‘Then this.’

Symons bent forward. Tash seemed to be almost immobile, waiting, poised. Then, seconds later, she arched her back and grunted and the shot cut to a stretch of sand, black with birds erupting from their roost. White flashes from a thousand wings filled the screen, a dizzying explosion of movement as the camera held them in frame, slowly panning across the gleaming expanse of the estuary. Suttle was transfixed. He’d seen exactly this landscape only this morning. From Kinsey’s apartment.

‘This is some sort of movie?’

‘Yeah. It’s a rough cut. You want to see more?’

Suttle shook his head. He had business to transact, questions to ask. Luke Golding, the young D/C who’d talked to Andy Poole, thought that Kinsey had backed Symons on some kind of project by bunging him money. Maybe this was it.

‘Tell me about yesterday.’ Suttle took a seat on the sofa. ‘Talk me through it.’

Symons, sprawled in the rocker, described the race. They’d been great. It was his first ever race. 58.27. Total result.

‘And afterwards?’

‘Afterwards was great too.’ He described the pub. Toasting themselves in champagne was definitely a novelty. It was good, he said, to see Kinsey so relaxed. He deserved it. And so did everyone else.

Suttle wanted to know about the impromptu party afterwards. Had Kinsey shown any signs of stress? Had Symons noticed anything that might account for what happened later?

‘The guy threw up. Then he went to bed.’

‘And the rest of you?’

‘We pushed off. Tash organised a cab.’

‘For everyone?’

‘No. She’d driven over. It’s a sports car. It’s only got room for two. The rest of the guys went off in the taxi.’

‘Leaving Kinsey by himself?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what time did you get back here?’

Symons thought about the question.

‘After midnight,’ he said at last. ‘Then we crashed.’

‘Anyone else see you?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘And this morning?’

‘I ran Tash up to Honiton and dropped her at the station. It’s her mum’s birthday. Normally you can get a train to Yeovil but on Sundays there’s a coach service. She was well pissed off.’ He grinned. ‘Back tonight though. I’m driving over to pick her up. You know Yeovil at all? Evil place.’

Suttle shook his head and scribbled himself a couple of notes. There was something slightly childlike about this man. In ways he couldn’t quite define he reminded Suttle slightly of J-J, Joe Faraday’s deaf-mute son. The same hints of vulnerability. The same feeling that bits of the wiring didn’t quite connect.

‘So how did you come across Kinsey?’

‘I didn’t. It was Tash who met him first. Someone told her about the club after she’d seen the boats when she was out jogging and she went down to find out more. Kinsey was on the beach. He was still a bit of a novice himself in those days — he hadn’t bought the new boat — and they sort of shared notes. He bigged himself up from the off, did Kinsey, told Tash all about his penthouse apartment in the marina, how he’d watched the club boats from his window going up the estuary, and how he’d fancied getting involved. They went out together that morning, same boat, half experienced guys, half novices, and it was funny because Tash came back and told me how crap he was, completely out of time, always ahead of the stroke. Stick insect she called him.’

‘You were a rower then?’

‘No. It was Tash who got me into it. That was a bit later. She said it was brilliant and she was right. She’s like that, Tash. She’s the one who sorts me out. Always has done. Ever since the off.’

They’d first met, he said, when he was in his early twenties. All his life he’d lived beside the river up in Topsham, but after leaving school with pretty much nothing to his name he’d bailed out of Devon and signed up for a film course in west London. Too much dope was doing his head in, and after a near-terminal bust-up with his dad he knew he had to get his shit together. The film course included a chance to work with professional actors and one of them had been Tash.

‘We’d spent the afternoon shooting a whole load of stuff in some studios in Hammersmith. Afterwards we went to the pub, a place in Chiswick down by the Thames, and I was telling her about my own river, and what it meant to me, what it’s always meant to me, and how hard that feeling was to express, and she said film, you need to make a film about it, you need to dream up a story, or make something associative, an image-based thing, something that does justice to this feeling of yours. And you know what? That was the most wonderful thing I’d ever heard. It was like a door opening in my head, or maybe somewhere way down in here. .’ He touched his chest, leaning forward in the rocker, trying to draw Suttle into this story of his. ‘Tease it out, she said. Take it in your hands. Nurture it, understand it, shape it, treasure it. Why? Because something’s calling you. Maybe it’s the spirit of the river. Maybe it’s something else. But either way you’re lucky. Because that kind of thing doesn’t happen very often. So be aware. Stay in tune. Listen to the river. And do it.’ His eyes found the PC on the desk. ‘She was right, too. And it’s worked.’

Suttle smiled. He could imagine a conversation like this. It sounded more like therapy than idle pub chat. Symons was a good-looking guy, no question, and Suttle could picture this new woman in his life, probably older, undoubtedly wiser.

‘And this film has a story?’

‘Sure. It’s about the river. Actually it’s more than that. It’s a story about the river and a story about a love affair, about two people who live on the river, who are part of the river, who maybe are the river, its mirror image, its other self, the river made flesh. They live on an old barge. The barge sits on a mooring up off Dawlish Warren. That’s where the tide flows strongest, where the river talks loudest. These two people, the man, the woman, they have no names. They just are. They’re part of the river, part of each other. The word Tash uses is flux.’

‘Flux?’ Suttle was lost.

‘Yeah. Wonderful word. Perfect. Flux.’ Symons grinned. ‘Partly this is about geography. Here, let me show you. This is Tash again. Her idea. Her trope.’

Symons unfolded his long frame from the chair and rummaged around behind the desk. Seconds later Suttle found himself looking at a framed map of the Exe estuary. Symons knelt beside him, visibly excited at this sudden interest in his life.

‘OK, so what I’m wanting is a narrative, a story that does justice to the river, that captures its essence, its soul. The framing device is the affair. But the affair, this relationship, has to be shaped by the river itself. And here’s what Tash came up with.’ One bony finger settled on the river upstream of Exmouth. Then the finger tracked slowly south until it paused at the mouth of the estuary.

‘Look at that. Look at the river just there. What does it remind you of?’

There was a hint of impatience in his voice. This, he seemed to be saying, is obvious. Suttle was trying to make sense of the shape of the river. The way the harbour nosed into the tidal stream. The long curl of a feature on the bank opposite. The narrowness of the gap between them.

Suttle asked about the bank opposite. What was he looking at?

‘It’s called Dawlish Warren. It’s a protected bird site. Magic place.’

Suttle nodded. He was still no closer to an answer.

‘You can’t see it?’ Symons couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice.

‘No.’

‘Truly?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a fanny. A woman’s vagina. That was her insight, Tash’s, a stroke of total brilliance. Just here, where the river gets tight, is where the barge is moored. That’s where the action takes place. Within touching distance of the Warren. Just here. Just across the water where the sweet spot is. And here’s another thing. Touching distance. Tash again. The perfect title. Why? Because we’re talking every kind of distance. Geographical distance. Historical distance. The distance between two people. And the way that passion, or the tide, or the history, can bridge that distance, even abolish it.’

Way back in the eighteenth century, he said, a group of Dutch seamen got themselves shipwrecked on the Warren. There was a big south-easterly blow and their ship ended up on the beach. The locals came over from Exmouth and slaughtered every last man.

‘That’ll be in the movie too. My idea this time, not Tash’s.’

His finger had found the sweet spot again. Suttle was looking hard at the map. This time he got it.

‘That’s Regatta Court. That’s where Kinsey lived.’

‘Exactly. He thought it was really funny. We needed a development budget and Tash thought he might like the idea. He knew nothing about flux but he understood the rest of it.’

‘You’re telling me he gave you money?’

‘Not me. Tash. She did the negotiations, got him sold on the idea. First off he wanted to see the kind of stuff I’d done already. I’ve got some work from way back but Tash said we could go one better and shoot a couple of scenes from the script and show him those.’

Suttle’s eyes had gone back to the PC. He was beginning to understand.

‘So that’s what you did?’

‘Yeah. Kinsey bought us a decent camera and gave Tash a couple of grand to make it happen and we did the rest.’

‘You’re talking about the stuff I just watched?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So who chose the sequences?’

‘Tash did. She chooses everything.’

‘And Kinsey?’

‘He only saw a rough cut. I gave him a DVD and he watched it on his laptop.’

‘And?’

‘He loved it. Totally knocked out.’

‘He told you personally?’

‘Yeah.’

‘When?’

‘Last night, in the pub. He’d told Tash already but last night he made a big thing of it. He said the rest of the budget wouldn’t be a problem. Not after watching what we’d done.’

‘How much are we talking?’

‘Forty-five grand. Quite a lot of that is for the hire of the barge.’

‘Right.’ Suttle nodded. ‘Right.’

There was a long silence. Would someone about to field a cheque for forty-five thousand pounds toss their benefactor into oblivion? Suttle thought not.

‘How well did you know Kinsey?’ he asked. ‘Be honest.’

‘Not well. Not really. If you want the truth I got into his crew because of Tash.’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘Kinsey fancied her. He’d do anything for her. And that turned out to be a bit of a blessing.’

‘For you?’

‘For both of us.’

‘Because of the movie?’

‘Of course. And the rowing too. Yesterday was magic. That guy Andy Poole’s taught me loads.’

‘He thinks you’re good.’

‘Does he?’ The grin was unfeigned. ‘Did he say that?’

‘Yeah. Not to me. Not directly. But yeah. So tell me — what did you make of Kinsey?’

Symons thought about the question. Finally he sat down again, leaning forward, his voice lowered, almost conspiratorial. A kid. Definitely.

‘This is just between us two, right?’ Suttle didn’t answer. Symons went on regardless. ‘I think he was lonely.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I just got the feeling. He didn’t seem to have any friends, any mates. Mates matter.’

‘No girlfriends? No one special?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Was there a wife once?’

‘Dunno. I suppose there may have been.’

‘Right.’ Suttle nodded. ‘So you’re telling me the guy was pretty much alone?’

‘A loner, sure.’

‘And Tash?’

‘Tash?’

Suttle recognised the flicker of alarm in Symons’ eyes.

‘She got close to him?’

‘He fancied her. I told you.’

‘That’s not what I’m asking.’

‘Listen, man. The woman’s my partner. She’s beautiful. Everyone fancies her. So what are you suggesting?’

‘I’m suggesting nothing.’ Suttle had noted the sudden flash of anger. ‘I’m asking you whether she might know more about Kinsey than you do.’

‘And not tell me, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

Symons considered the proposition before rejecting it with a vigorous shake of his head.

‘No way,’ he said. ‘No fucking way.’

Suttle held his gaze. At length he asked how Symons made his living.

‘I do stuff for my dad.’

‘What sort of stuff?’

‘You’ve seen the van out there? I collect and deliver bits and pieces of furniture. He’s got a couple of antique shops. He bids in the auctions and I pick the stuff up.’

‘And that gives you enough to live on?’

‘Yeah.’

Suttle nodded and scribbled himself a note. The earlier warmth had gone out of this conversation. Symons was visibly upset now. Suttle asked him where Tash would be tomorrow morning.

‘Here,’ Symons shrugged, ‘I guess.’

Suttle took her mobile number and then got to his feet.

‘There’s a guy called Pendrick,’ he said. ‘He rows in Kinsey’s crew. You’ll know him.’

‘Of course.’

‘Any idea where he might be?’

‘No.’

‘He didn’t mention anything last night? Plans he might have had for today?’

‘No.’ The smile had returned. ‘But then he wouldn’t.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘The guy’s another loner. Just like Jake.’

Suttle was back at Exmouth police station in time for the first of the Constantine squad meets. Nandy had returned from a busy afternoon in Torbay, and the house-to-house teams filled the rest of the office. As a courtesy, Houghton had also asked the duty uniformed Inspector to attend.

She kicked off with a brisk summary of progress to date. House-to-house teams had knocked on every door in Regatta Court. They’d scored a response from maybe two thirds of the apartments but failed to gather anything of evidential use. Only one resident had laid eyes on Kinsey’s partying crew. She’d seen them streaming out of Regatta House around midnight. Hand on heart she couldn’t be sure but she thought four or five people, one of whom was definitely a woman.

Detectives had also covered every property with line of sight on Kinsey’s balcony. Again, nothing.

‘What’s the lighting like?’ This from Nandy. One of the D/Cs fielded the question.

‘Crap, sir. We’re talking lights at knee level on the walkway by the dock. No way would they reach the fifth floor.’

‘So no witnesses?’ Nandy was looking at Houghton.

‘None, I’m afraid.’

‘And definitely no CCTV?’

‘No.’

Houghton went on to describe the kind of ripples Kinsey had been making. No one seemed to like him. His reputation for arrogance had spread beyond Exmouth Quays. There was even a question mark about the crew he’d put together.

‘Who says?’ Nandy again.

‘Me, sir.’ Suttle told him about Lenahan and Symons. In his view Kinsey had bought their loyalty. These were guys who got on among themselves, and after yesterday’s win they might still carry on rowing with someone else in the bow seat, but neither Lenahan nor Symons seemed over-distressed by Kinsey’s passing.

‘So what are you telling me?’

‘Nothing, sir. Except no one seems surprised that the guy’s dead.’

‘You think someone killed him?’

‘I think he may have had it coming.’

‘And we can prove that?’

‘Of course not. Not yet.’

‘But you think we might?’

‘I think it’s possible, sir, yes.’

Suttle was getting uncomfortable. The last thing he wanted was a public pissing match with Nandy.

Houghton stepped in. The post-mortem, she reminded everyone, was scheduled for tomorrow morning. After that, things might be a great deal clearer. In the meantime, D/S Suttle would be pulling together the background intel.

Suttle nodded, glad of the reprieve. There was a pile of Kinsey’s files on his desk, material seized from the apartment, and he’d be spending most of tomorrow trying to build a picture of the man’s life.

Houghton wanted to know what they’d missed. She was still looking at Suttle.

‘Pendrick,’ he said. ‘We still haven’t nailed the guy.’

Houghton nodded. Detectives had returned to his flat throughout the day but failed to raise him. Messages left on his mobile had gone unanswered. She’d tasked two D/Cs to sit on his address throughout the evening. If necessary, they’d be relieved by another shift at midnight. SOC had already retrieved some shots of last night’s celebration from Kinsey’s camera, and a process of elimination had ID’d Pendrick. If the guy hadn’t turned up by first thing tomorrow morning, she’d be circulating the mugshot and other details force-wide.

Houghton had printed a couple of photos. Suttle, reaching for one of them, found himself looking at a big guy in his mid-thirties. A brutal grade one darkened his shaved skull and there was something about the cast of his face that seemed vaguely familiar. He had a deep scar that tracked diagonally down his right cheek and he was wearing jeans and a blue sweat top that had seen better days. Unlike the rest of the crew, he wasn’t punching the air. On the contrary, he seemed preoccupied, almost detached. A loner, he thought, remembering Symons’ parting shot.

The meeting broke up. Nandy told Suttle to stay put. Already Suttle sensed what was to come. It was this man’s job to match ever-thinning resources against the incessant demands on the Major Crime machine. MCIT inquiries were horribly expensive, as the headbangers at HQ were only too eager to point out. In any enquiry the only currency that mattered was evidence.

‘We’ve got Kinsey’s crew alibied. Am I right?’

‘Yes, sir. With the exception of Pendrick.’

‘And Scenes of Crime have found nothing material in the apartment?’

‘Not so far.’

‘We’ve no witnesses to what happened?’

‘No.’

‘And not much prospect of finding any?’

This was a question Suttle wasn’t prepared to answer. He didn’t go as far back as Nandy, nowhere near, but his years on the Major Crime Team in Pompey had taught him never to discount a surprise. Solid effort, meticulous investigation and a helping of luck could sometimes transform a faltering enquiry and something told him that Constantine was far from over.

Nandy rarely left a suspicion unvoiced.

‘You don’t think this man had an accident, do you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘And you don’t think he topped himself?’

‘I think it’s unlikely.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he doesn’t seem that kind of guy.’

‘Who says?’

‘Pretty much everyone.’

‘I see.’ Nandy nodded and turned away.

There was a long silence. Suttle thought the conversation was over. He asked whether the Det-Supt would be down in Exmouth tomorrow. Nandy ignored the question. He hadn’t finished with Kinsey.

‘You think these people knew him, this man? Really knew him? You think anyone knows anyone? You really think there aren’t parts of us we keep hidden? You? Me? Every other poor sod?’

Suttle blinked. This was suddenly personal. He seemed to have touched a nerve in Nandy, stirred feelings much deeper than irritation at defending his precious budget.

Nandy hadn’t finished. He said he’d lost count of the sus deaths he’d tried to stand up as murder. As a younger copper he’d taken far too much notice of people telling him that so-and-so would have been incapable of suicide. They were probably sincere, they probably meant it at the time, but the truth was that deep down we were all in the dark, all strangers to each other.

‘You don’t believe that?’ There was something almost plaintive in his voice. ‘You don’t think that’s the way we really are?’

Suttle left the nick shortly afterwards. He’d phoned ahead, checking in with Lizzie, but had raised no answer. The road back to Colaton Raleigh took him down into the town centre. On an impulse he headed for the seafront. The rowing club lay at the far end of the long curve of yellow sand. He found a parking space on the promenade and got out.

The days were lengthening now and the sun was still high in the west. The tide had turned a couple of hours ago and water was pouring back into the mouth of the river. After a morning of low cloud and drizzly rain Suttle could scarcely credit the transformation. A sturdy little trawler was wallowing in through the deep-water channel, a cloud of seagulls in pursuit. More gulls wheeled and dived over the distant smudge of Dawlish Warren while a pair of cormorants arrowed seawards, barely feet above the churning tide.

Watching the cormorants, Suttle thought suddenly of Joe Faraday. His ex-boss had been a manic birder. On a number of occasions down by the water in Old Portsmouth he’d abandon a review of this job or that to bring some passing blur to Suttle’s attention. Suttle, who knew absolutely nothing about birds, had always been touched by this passion for the natural order of things. Faraday, to his certain knowledge, had despaired of the chaos that passed for daily life, and from the world of birds he appeared to derive both comfort and solace. Nature, he’d once confided, represented sanity. You could rely on a mother to feed her chicks. You could set your watch by the arrival of birds of passage. Spot a skein of Brent geese lifting off for the long flight north, you knew it had to be April.

Suttle paused on the front, enjoying the sun on his face. Nandy, somewhat to his surprise, seemed to share a little of Faraday’s view of the world. In Faraday’s case, deep pessimism had hardened into despair — and it was that despair, in the end, that had taken him to his death. Nandy, on the evidence of six busy months, appeared to be far more robust, but after their last exchange, just minutes ago, Suttle was beginning to wonder. Was there something that came with higher command, some subtle alteration to your DNA, that took you to a very bad place? Had Nandy been serious about the stranger at the heart of every friend?

In truth, he didn’t know, and just for a moment, standing in this puddle of sunshine, the wind in his hair, he knew he didn’t much care. He liked this new job of his. There wasn’t much of a social life as far as work was concerned because most of the guys lived a fair distance away, scattered across the hugeness of Devon. Some lived up near the north coast, an area they referred to as the Tundra. A commute like that didn’t leave much room for a pint or two after work, and in any case most of his new colleagues had young families to think about, a gravitational tug about which Suttle knew a great deal.

He grinned to himself. Despite the grief he was occasionally getting from Lizzie, he loved going back to Chantry Cottage. He wasn’t the least bit daunted by the ever-lengthening list of jobs he had to sort and rather liked the way they’d managed to turn camping into a way of life. Nocturnal scufflings from the mice, he told himself, brought you closer to nature. That had to be good for Grace, and good for all of them in the end, and if Lizzie occasionally lost her sense of humour then so be it. Faraday, he thought, would have definitely approved.

On the point of returning to the car, his eye was caught by wheel marks tracking down to the water’s edge. Then he spotted a boat trailer, tucked up beyond the tideline. The trailer was tiny, way too small for the big sea boats he’d seen earlier in the club compound, and he peered out at the water, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun, not quite sure what he might find.

For a long moment he could see nothing but the dance of the incoming tide. Then he caught a movement, a black speck, away to the east.

The speck was moving fast, buoyed by the tide. Within seconds he could make out the shape of a single rower. He was big, powerful. He was wearing a red singlet. Each stroke seemed to flow effortlessly into the next one, his long arms reaching forward, his legs driving hard, his hands tucking the oars into his body until the cycle started all over again and he leaned forward over his knees, his hands feeling for the grain of the water, driving the tiny scull closer and closer.

Suttle grinned to himself, suddenly recognising what Lizzie needed in her life, what would chase the demons away, what would put the sunshine back. She should be down here. She should have her three free rows and get stuck in. She’d never been frightened by exercise. Back in Pompey she’d been running two or three times a week. She loved the water too, and they’d often fantasised about getting a little dinghy and sailing across to the Isle of Wight.

Suttle fumbled for his mobile, hoping Lizzie would pick up. Good news was for sharing. The sculler had stopped now and was drifting down with the tide, his body sagging, his head on his chest. Then came Lizzie’s voice on the phone. She sounded exhausted. And there was something else there. Anger.

‘Thank Christ it’s you,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough.’

He found her curled in a ball in the darkness of the living room. He’d never seen her sucking her thumb before. Even Grace, safe in her playpen, was looking anxious.

Suttle squatted beside her. She’d been crying. He knew it. Another first.

‘What’s happened?’

‘I don’t know.’ She clung to him. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘Shit.’ He held her close. ‘Tell me. Just tell me.’

‘There’s nothing to tell. I’m just. . Fuck. .’ Her hand felt blindly for the tissues balled beside her. ‘This is horrible. . I’m sorry. . I’m really sorry.’

‘But what is it? Tell me. What’s happened?’

She began to cry again, gulping for air, real pain, real misery. Suttle tried to get to his feet but she wouldn’t let go. Grace couldn’t take her eyes off her.

At last she released her grip. Her face was shiny with tears.

‘I’m useless,’ she whispered. ‘Totally pathetic. Ignore me. Forget it. I’m sorry to get you back like this.’

‘I was coming home anyway,’ Suttle pointed out.

‘I know but. .’ She sniffed. ‘This is the last bloody thing you need.’

Suttle struggled to his feet and she stared up at him then turned her head away. Grace was agitated now, shaking the wooden bars of her pen in bewilderment. Suttle lifted her up and gave her a cuddle. She struggled in his arms. She wanted to be with her mum.

Lizzie reached out, taking the baby.

‘It’s on the table,’ she said.

Suttle found her mobile. It was still switched on. He read the message.

‘Who’s this from?’

‘Gill.’

‘Gill Reynolds?’

‘Yes.’

‘And she wants to come down?’

‘She is coming down.’

‘You said yes?’

‘I did.’

‘Shit.’

‘Quite.’

Suttle absorbed the news. He’d never had any patience with Reynolds. Once you got past the obvious there was nothing there but self-obsession. As long as she’d just been a mate of Lizzie’s, Suttle had bitten his tongue, but after what happened to Joe Faraday he’d consciously blanked the woman from his life.

‘I’ll cancel her,’ he said. ‘Leave it to me.’

‘I’ve tried.’

‘When?’

‘This afternoon. I gave myself a talking-to. I knew you wouldn’t want her down. It took me for ever to make the call but in the end I did it.’

‘And?’

‘It made no difference. You know what she’s like. She never listens.’ She took a deep breath and held Grace tight. ‘Tomorrow morning. Around twelve.’

‘I’ll phone her again.’

‘It’s pointless. You could go one better though.’

‘How?’

‘By being here.’

Suttle thought about it, tallying the work he had to get through by lunchtime. Day two of Constantine. No chance.

‘I can’t, my love.’

‘You could. If it was that important.’

‘Of course it’s important. You’re important. You’re both important. All this is important. But I can’t just-’ He broke off. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll phone her.’

Lizzie began to protest again, telling him she’d cope somehow, but Suttle wasn’t listening. The weakness of the signal drove him onto the patio. It was a beautiful evening, the sun sinking in the west, the wind beginning to die. They’d discovered a troop of ducklings on the stream at the bottom of the garden only yesterday. Suttle could hear them pestering their mother.

‘Gill?’ Suttle could feel the patio slabs moving under his weight. ‘Is that you?’

‘Of course it is. Jimmy?’ She sounded surprised.

‘Yeah, me. Listen. Something’s come up. Lizzie’s not too good. Some kind of bug. She’d never tell you in a million years but I honestly think-’

Gill broke in. She had a habit of ignoring the end of other peoples’ sentences.

‘She sounded fine this afternoon. It won’t be a problem. You know me. Iron constitution.’

‘It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s Lizzie. She needs-’

‘I know what she needs. I know that girl like a sister. I probably know her better than you do. I expect she needs a bit of TLC. I’m good with that. Just ask her.’

Suttle wasn’t having it. It was flu. Definitely. Lizzie needed peace and quiet. She needed to be left alone. Please, Gill. Just this once.

There was a brief silence on the line. The mother duck had mounted the bank, an unsteady line of fluffy nothings behind her. Under any other circumstances this would have been a precious moment. He’d run for the camera. Grace. Lizzie. The ducklings. One for the family scrapbook. Then Gill was back. There was something new in her voice, a definite edge.

‘I’ll be there for lunch, Jimmy. You won’t regret it.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard what I said. You’ll be around too?’

‘No.’

‘Then I’ll stay for dinner. Don’t worry. No pressure. I’ll sort an Indian or something. Do they have takeaways in the country?’ She laughed, then hung up.

Suttle was still staring at the phone. You won’t regret it?

For a moment he thought about phoning back, upping the ante, going for broke, but then he heard a movement behind him and he turned to find Lizzie standing in the open doorway. She’d heard every word he’d said.

‘See?’ she said.

‘Fucking woman.’ Suttle risked a smile. ‘We’re doomed.’

They didn’t talk until later. Suttle had bathed and changed Grace, leaving Lizzie to do her best with a packet of pasta and what was left in the vegetable basket. After he’d put his daughter down and blown on the mobile over her bed, he drove down to the village store and bought a bottle of Chianti. The wine turned out to be on special so he grabbed another before returning to Chantry Cottage.

Lizzie had made a definite effort with the pasta. She’d even found a candle to soften the overhead light in the gloom of the living room. Suttle uncorked the Chianti and poured two glasses, raising his own in a toast.

‘To us.’

They touched glasses but then Lizzie put hers down.

‘Something wrong?’

She smiled. For some reason she seemed to find the question genuinely funny.

‘You want a list?’ she said.

‘Yeah. Since you ask.’

‘No, you don’t. And I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I’m supposed to be better than this.’

‘You’re lovely. I love you.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, really. I know I’m not, you know. .’

‘Here much?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s not that. It’s this. All of it.’

‘What?’

‘Everything.’ She made a vague, circular motion with her hand. ‘You, me, Grace, this horrible cottage, the country, the rain, the silence — it’s driving me nuts, Jimmy. I just don’t know who I am any more. Have you ever had that feeling? Not knowing what’s happening to you? Not knowing if it’s ever going to stop? I’m out of tune, my love. I’m not me any more. Do you know what I’m talking about? Has something like this ever happened to you?’

Suttle had to shake his head. Life had dealt him a number of evil hands. Twice he’d been hospitalised after making the wrong call in dodgy circumstances, once in the Job and once in his private life. That had hurt, sure, but he’d never suffered anything remotely like this.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m really, really sorry.’

‘Sorry doesn’t cut it. Not any longer. I’ve got to do something, Jimmy. I’ve got to take some decisions.’

‘About?’

‘Us.’

‘Ah.’ Suttle’s head went back. He reached for his glass. For the first time he realised they were facing something really serious. Not once had he ever thought she might leave him.

‘Is it me?’ he said at last. ‘Be honest.’

‘Yes, in a way it is. Because this, all this, is you. You love it. I can see you love it. You love the country, the space, the fresh air. Even the fucking rain seems to turn you on. Me? I loathe it.’

‘Then we’ll move.’

‘Where to?’

‘Somewhere the roof doesn’t leak. Somewhere with windows that fit. Somewhere mouse-proof.’

‘In the country?’

Suttle didn’t answer. Just looked at her. The silence stretched and stretched. She’d said her piece. The situation couldn’t have been clearer.

‘You want to live in a town,’ he said. ‘Or a city.’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Plymouth? Exeter?’

‘I don’t care. Pompey, if I have to.’

‘That sounds like a threat.’

‘You’re right. That’s where I am. Mrs Desperate. Dreaming of Copnor Bridge.’ She smiled and reached for his hand across the table, throwing Suttle into confusion. He was lost now. Was she really packing her bags? Were they really headed for some shitty ground-floor flat in a gutty part of Guz?

He voiced the thought aloud. Cards on the table.

‘Guz?’ she said blankly.

‘Plymouth. It’s what the locals call the place. Tells you everything you need to know.’

‘I see.’ She was toying with her glass. ‘How come the ground-floor flat?’

‘Because it’s all we could afford. I’ve been round this course before. Prices are astronomic down here.’

‘Dearer than Pompey?’

‘Big time.’

She nodded, then took a tiny sip of wine. Maybe she’s not aware of all the implications, thought Suttle. Maybe this isn’t quite as dire as I thought.

Wrong.

‘I talked to Gill for quite a while this afternoon,’ she said softly. ‘We had a proper conversation for once.’

‘And?’

‘She’s just moved into a new flat. Three bedrooms? In Southsea? Can you believe that? It turns out they gave her a rise. She’s mad about the place. It’s even got a bit of garden. She says it’s lovely.’

Suttle’s heart sank. The implications couldn’t be clearer.

‘You’re telling me you’d move in with her?’

‘Either that or my mum’s, yes.’

‘Both of you?’

‘Obviously.’

Suttle stared at her, not quite believing his ears. Lizzie and Grace? Camping out with Gill fucking Reynolds?

‘Cheers,’ he said, reaching for his glass.

Lizzie waited for him to swallow a mouthful or two. Then she leaned forward across the table. She wanted him to be reasonable. She wanted him to understand.

‘Think about it. My job’s still open if I want it. I could go back to work, earn us a bit of money, give us some options.’

‘And Grace?’

‘My mum would look after her.’

‘You’ve asked her?’

‘No. But she would, I know she would.’

‘So how long would this. .’ Suttle shrugged ‘. . go on for?’

‘For as long as it takes. Until we had a decent stash.’

‘That could be years.’

‘Yeah. It could.’

‘Living apart? Me down here? You back in Pompey?’

‘Yeah. Unless you did what I’d do.’

‘Go back to my old job?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I doubt they’d have me.’

‘Of course they’d have you. You’re the guy who put Mackenzie away. Local hero, you.’

‘No.’ Suttle shook his head. ‘Going back never works, never.’

‘How do you know? When you’ve never tried it?’

‘Because I wouldn’t. No way. You go on in life. You look forward.’

‘So what does that make me?’

‘Good question.’

Silence again. Upstairs, Suttle could hear Grace beginning to grumble. If you caught her early enough you could head off the tears and get her back to sleep. He was half out of his chair but Lizzie beat him to it.

‘Leave it to me.’

Suttle listened to her footsteps on the stairs. All the earlier drama seemed to have gone. This was a different Lizzie. She must have been planning something like this for weeks, maybe months. He should have seen it coming. He should have headed it off.

He poured himself another glass of wine. By the time Lizzie was back at the table, his glass was empty again.

‘Well?’ she said.

Suttle began to talk. He told her about Constantine, about the lone dog walker from Exmouth Quays finding Kinsey’s body sprawled on the promenade, about his involvement with the rowing club, and about the investigative pathways Suttle had to start exploring first thing tomorrow. Despite herself, Lizzie found herself engaged. At heart she was still a journalist. Stories like this had always fascinated her.

‘So what do you think?’ she asked.

‘Honestly?’

‘Honestly.’

‘I think somebody killed him. I haven’t a clue who and I might well be wrong, but that’s not the point. Hunch isn’t a word my bosses have much time for. They prefer evidence.’

‘And?’

‘There isn’t any. Not yet.’

Lizzie reached for his hand again. In the early days he’d often let her into the world of the Job, sharing odd titbits from ongoing investigations, and she’d always loved him for it. It was an act of trust. It made her feel special. It made her feel loved. Lately all that had stopped. These days Jimmy very rarely talked about his work. Now this.

‘So how do you — ’ she reached for her glass ‘- progress something like this?’

‘By grafting. By looking. By building the intel picture. By establishing a timeline. By wondering about motive and opportunity. By getting inside this guy’s head.’

‘The killer’s?’

‘Kinsey’s.’

‘And then the killer?’

‘Maybe. .’ he nodded ‘. . if it pans out that way.’

‘But it will, won’t it? You’re good at this. Paul thought you were the best.’

Lizzie was the only person Suttle knew who always called Winter by his Christian name. Winter had a famously soft spot for Lizzie. He’d once told Suttle she was the only journalist in the city with real bollocks. At the time Suttle hadn’t known quite what to make of the comment but in time he recognised it as a shrewd judgement. Winter was right. This lovely wife of his rarely lost her nerve.

Now she wanted to know more about Kinsey. Suttle shook his head. He’d said enough.

‘Then why bring all this up?’

‘Because of the rowing. I’ve spent most of the day talking to people who are crazy about it.’

‘And?’

‘I think you should have a go.’

‘Me?’

‘Yeah. Why not? You need to get out, my love. You need to put this place behind you once in a while. I’m sure running helps but maybe it’s not enough.’

‘Running round here is crap. Grace obviously comes too. I do my best with the buggy but on these roads you take your life in your hands.’

‘Lives. Plural.’

‘Exactly.’

‘OK.’ Suttle nodded. ‘So maybe I’m right. So maybe rowing’s the answer.’

Lizzie wasn’t at all sure. Suttle could see it in her face. She’d started this conversation with her bags practically packed. Now this husband of hers was talking about some rowing club.

‘How would it work?’

Suttle explained about the trial offer, three free rows. Suttle would drive her down to Exmouth next Sunday, and if her maiden voyage worked out OK then she could return for the club sessions on Tuesday and Thursday night.

‘But what about Grace?’

‘I’d look after her.’

‘You’d get back in time?’

‘Of course I would.’

She nodded, doing her best to fight her excitement. She’d always relished a challenge.

‘Does anyone know about this?’

‘About what?’

‘About your missus maybe joining up? Only the way I read it most of your suspects belong to the club.’

Suttle had the grace to laugh. In truth, he hadn’t thought this thing through at all. Not properly.

‘So what would you prefer?’ he said. ‘How would you want to play it?’

‘I’d need to be me,’ she said. ‘Lizzie Borden.’

‘Not some copper’s wife?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Fine.’ He shrugged. ‘In that case you’d drive yourself down on Sunday. Use the TomTom. There’s no drama finding the place.’

‘And you’d really stay behind? With Grace?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do the washing? Sort the cat out? Peel the spuds? Mend the fucking door? Not go mad?’

‘No problem.’

‘And you’re telling me it’s not a hard thing to do? Rowing?’

‘I’m telling you you might like it. I’m telling you you might love it. And I’m telling you it’s the least we can do.’

‘To keep this thing afloat?’

‘Exactly.’

Lizzie pondered the proposition, then emptied her glass and reached for the bottle. Her turn to propose a toast.

‘Here’s to Guz,’ she said.

‘Meaning?’

‘We’ll see.’