Primal Cut (26 page)

‘The plot register gives the names of the caravan owners,’ said Melvin Stour, ‘Site Director’, according to his badge.

‘How far do the lists go back?’ Underwood asked. ‘I’m looking for a plot that was purchased before 1960.’

‘That makes it easier.’ Stour opened the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet. ‘We’ve got over a thousand static homes on this site. We’re one of the bigger facilities. But there’s only a few that have been here that long. My Dad bought the place back in 1959 but he kept all the existing documents. Many of our plots stay with the same family for years.’

‘I’m looking for a plot bought in the name of Shildon or Garrod,’ Underwood explained.

‘We don’t normally get any excitement out of season. In the summer there’s the girls to look at. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen. Shocking.’ Stour placed two files on the desk in front of Underwood. ‘Here you go. These are the pre-1960 lists.’

Underwood began to scan the pages of plot numbers and purchasers. It took him about three minutes to realise that there was neither a Shildon nor a Garrod listed. Disappointment welled inside him.

‘Do you have any records from before 1940?’ Underwood asked.

‘No. Sorry mate. We’ve got no records before then.’

Underwood rubbed his eyes in exhaustion. It had been a long day scraping around at the bottom of the geographical barrel. ‘Can I see the current register then?’ he asked, ‘this year’s list of residents?’

Stour returned obligingly to his filing cabinet. Underwood checked his mobile phone for messages:

‘No Network Coverage’ stared back at him.

For the thousandth time that day, he cursed the desolate Essex coast.

Alison Dexter had returned to her office. She wanted to tear out the tight ball of frustration in her stomach. They had missed Garrod leaving Sandway’s by a couple of hours. She wondered if her own leaden-footed approach to the case since the murder of Kelsi Hensy made her culpable. It was true that they had made relatively little progress apart from the identification of Garrod at the abattoir. Now he had gone. They were always a step behind. She needed to get ahead.

She returned to the Jack Whiteside case file. Something about it had been troubling her: the kind of unease that floats inexplicably but persistently at the back of your mind. She flicked back through the
pages that she had read earlier that day:

The body of the victim was discovered on 6
^th
February 2000, in shallow water at Bramble Creek, Bull’s Ooze, Essex. The remains were found by Mr Cyril Delvis (local resident – details appended) while walking his dog in the area.

She turned to the back of the file, found Cyril Delvis’s contact information and called his home number.

‘Hello?’ said a male voice softened by age.

‘Mr Delvis?’

‘Speaking.’

‘My name is Alison Dexter. I work for Cambridgeshire Police.’

‘Oh! Hello! What’s happened?’

‘Nothing. Don’t worry. I am investigating the death of a Mr Jack Whiteside. I understand that it was you that found the body back in February 2000.’

‘Yes. You had me worried there for a moment!’ Delvis chuckled down the phone. ‘What would you like to know?’

‘Was there anything unusual about the body? Anything missing? Any items in the water or on the beach nearby? Anything that you didn’t mention to the police at the time?’

‘Nothing I’m afraid,’ Delvis replied. ‘I was walking out by Bull’s Ooze with my dog. I was on
the footpath. Well, Reggie – that’s my dog – he stopped to do his business and I had a moment to look at the water. That’s when I saw it.’

‘Mr Whiteside?’

‘Yeah. He was floating face down in the water. I never did see his face. I double-timed it over to the Great Oakley sewage works and got a foreman there to phone the old Bill.’

Dexter absorbed this information. It seemed innocuous enough. There was clearly no point in…

‘Where did you say?’ she snapped suddenly.

‘It was on Bull’s Ooze, near the Great Oakley sewage works.’

‘Yes.’ Dexter tried to organise her thoughts. ‘Thank you.’

She slammed her phone down and fumbled amongst the paper on her desk for the ‘Primal Cut’ case file that she had meticulously crafted seven years previously. On page ten she found what she was looking for:

‘Cornelius Garrod. Born Leyton, London 11
^th
February 1919… Arrested drunk 4
^th
August 1960, Great Oakley.’

Dexter immediately reached for her mobile and called Underwood’s number. Her former boss’s assumptions had not been as shaky as she had believed.

‘The number you have called is unavailable. Please try later,’ said the computerised voice of the telephone company.

‘Fuck!’

Dexter retrieved her East Essex Road Atlas from her drawer and thumbed through to the page on Great Oakley. She saw two villages: Little Oakley and Great Oakley connected by the Harwich Road. To the right she saw Bramble Island and next to it Bull’s Ooze and the sewage works. She could even see the footpath where Delvis had been walking his dog. Further along, pressed up against the coast at Dugmore Creek, about half a mile from the sewage works, she saw the small caravan symbol that denoted a campsite.

She tried unsuccessfully to contact John Underwood again. Then she called Essex police headquarters at Colchester.

Underwood now had the 2001–2002 register of caravan owners on his lap. Stour was babbling happily.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘when all those little slags come up during the season, they don’t hang about here. Oh no. They want the action, don’t they? The bright lights. Party time. Clacton and Harwich – that’s where they want to go. Come crashing back in here at four in the morning. Banging my door
down because they’ve lost their keys.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Underwood asked distractedly.

‘Gospel.’ Stour was warming to his theme. ‘And the men they bring back with them! Squaddies, pikeys, spades you name it. It’s a disgrace. I’d love to sling them all out but I’ve got to make a profit somehow.’

Underwood had given up. There was no ‘Shildon’ or ‘Garrod’ listed; not even a ‘Norlington’. He flipped back to page one of the file. He was about to hand it back to Stour when something caught his eye: the first name on the list in fact.

‘What do you know about this Mr Bartholomew?’ he asked Stour, pointing at the file.

‘Don’t see him much. Older chap. Big fella.’

Underwood pulled the photofit of Garrod from his back pocket and unfolded it.

‘Is that him?’ he asked quietly.

Stour looked hard at the image. ‘Not sure. My bloke is much heavier than this.’

‘Is he around now?’ Underwood asked.

‘No. I haven’t seen him for weeks. Months maybe.’

Underwood was beginning to feel a surge of adrenalin. ‘Did I hear you say something just now about keeping spare keys?’

Alison Dexter exchanged a series of calls with the duty officer at Colchester CID. The result of this exchange was that one CID officer and two squad cars were despatched from Colchester to the campsite north-east of Great Oakley. Colchester despatch estimated that the journey would take approximately twenty-five minutes.

Again, she failed to get through to Underwood’s mobile.

Oblivious to all this, Underwood was at that moment picking his way through the dark spaces between caravans on The Regency site. The only thing that overrode his nervousness was the appalling stench in the air.

‘What is that fucking smell?’ he muttered to himself as the aroma of distant shit arrested him again.

He eventually found Plot Eleven: the static caravan belonging to Mr Bartholomew. Immediately, Underwood began to sense success. The caravan was of an old-fashioned and basic construction. It might once have been silver but Underwood’s torch beam now only revealed flaking grey metal. The curtains were drawn and the door padlocked. He knocked firmly. There was no reply.

Underwood fumbled for the spare key that Stour had given him a minute or two previously. His
hands were freezing cold. He looked around: the caravan was only a few hundred yards from the dark expanse of water that reached from Great Oakley round to Harwich then out into the North Sea. Underwood could see the lights of a container ship crawling into Harwich. The padlock clicked. Underwood removed it and pulled the door open. Edgy now, he shone his torch inside.

Nothing obviously horrific snarled back at him. The inside was basically furnished. The torchlight picked out a small stove and a black and white television. There were some clothes on the bed next to a book called
A History of the British Empire
. Underwood opened it at a bookmarked page. It concerned the story of HMS
Boyd
and the unfortunate fate of its crew who drowned in honey pits then were eaten by cannibals.

Underwood placed the book back on the bed and decided to search the vehicle properly. He pulled open the drawers of the mini-kitchen. There were some ancient knives and forks, some plates and a truly dismal collection of crockery. In the cupboard under the plastic sink, Underwood found a more impressive collection of saucepans and skillets. On the nearby work surface, Underwood found a small but very sharp cheese knife. Carefully, he picked it up and dropped it into a small plastic evidence bag. If he could find no other concrete evidence that the
caravan was indeed Garrod’s, he would send the knife to be fingerprinted by Marty Farrell at New Bolden.

He moved into the living space, inspecting the clothes on the bed. They certainly belonged to a large man but the pockets were all empty. Underwood sat on the bed, uncertain how to proceed. His foot bumped a bedside cupboard. He knelt on the floor of the caravan and shone his torch into the small cupboard space. There were some old newspapers stuffed in there, mostly London editions, an old black and white photo of something that Underwood couldn’t quite make out and what looked like a jar of jam. There were breadcrumbs on the carpet next to the bed. Whoever Mr Bartholomew was, he clearly liked to eat sandwiches in bed.

He stood and carried the photo and the jam jar to the kitchen work surface. On closer inspection the photograph appeared to be of some kind of mangled body. It was old though: its image was barely visible. On the back, someone had written ‘1945’. Underwood then unscrewed the glass jar and discovered that it wasn’t jam at all: it was honey. Moreover, there were three other empty honey jars on the work surface. Garrod clearly had a sweet tooth.

The thought rushed up at him. Underwood suddenly imagined Alison Dexter spread out naked on a bed in front of him. He imagined honey
dripping slowly onto her stomach. He imagined licking the glaze from her flesh.

How would he want to eat her?

Underwood remembered the crew of the
Boyd
.

He would want her to be sweet.

He placed the photo into an evidence bag and pocketed it. Immediate contact with Dexter was essential. The caravan would need to be properly searched by a forensic team. Or even observed in case anyone returned to it. Either way, he had to move quickly. He climbed down from the caravan and padlocked the door behind him, the cold metal clinging momentarily to his skin. Satisfied that the door was secured, Underwood turned.

Bartholomew Garrod stood directly in front of him.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asked.

Underwood’s mind raced. He was backed against the caravan. Garrod was too close, barring his way.

‘I’m John from the Regency office,’ he spluttered, trying not to let his rising terror betray him. ‘We got a call. The door of your caravan was open. We were worried someone had broken in.’

Garrod stared quietly. This man was afraid. ‘You’re lying,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

‘Nothing,’ Underwood replied. ‘Why don’t we go back up to the site office and I’ll give you a claim form and a new padlock.’

Garrod had fought too many bare knuckles not to understand the nature of fear. He was debating what to do when Underwood’s mobile phone rang. For a second, Underwood thought his heart had stopped.

‘Aren’t you going to answer it then?’ Garrod asked advancing on Underwood.

‘It’s probably the wife checking up on me,’ Underwood said.

‘Answer it,’ Garrod instructed. ‘Now.’

Underwood could smell Garrod’s breath now. The man was huge. He knew he would have no chance if Garrod went for him. He pulled his mobile from his pocket and answered.

‘Hello.’

‘John, it’s Alison. Where are you?’

‘I’m at the campsite, sweetheart,’ Underwood replied with mock levity, his eyes never leaving Garrod’s. ‘We got a call about a possible break in.’

There was a silence as Dexter absorbed the significance of Underwood’s unusual tone.

‘Are you at Great Oakley?’ she asked.

‘That’s right,’ Underwood responded, ‘with a customer.’

Garrod’s right hand slammed into Underwood’s solar plexus, throwing him gasping for air against the side of the caravan. He snatched the mobile from Underwood’s hand and read the caller
identification on the LCD display: ‘Dexter’. He lifted the phone to his ear.

‘Hello dearie,’ he said, ‘it’s your old friend.’

Dexter’s blood chilled at Garrod’s voice.

‘I’ll be seeing you soon.’

Garrod dropped the phone to the floor and smashed a giant fist into Underwood’s face breaking his nose and spraying blood against the tin wall of the caravan. Underwood’s head cracked against the stone footing of the caravan as he fell unconscious to the ground.

Garrod felt for a pulse or signs of life but found none. He sensed that he had little time. He would bag up the body and sink it into the creek as he had done with the body of Jack Whiteside three years earlier. However, first he wanted to retrieve his pans and other personal items from the caravan.

Alison Dexter sat stunned in the silence of her office. She knew that John Underwood had to be dead.

Henry Braun returned to Gorton Row from Tesco with all the provisions that he required for Wednesday’s festivities. He had bought a bottle of champagne in anticipation of success, a six-pack of
Special Brew to build an atmosphere and a Polaroid camera to record the details of Alison Dexter’s debasement for his brother and for posterity. He could hardly wait. In the cigarette-smoke haze of Nick’s living room, Janice Braun stared at a documentary about properties in Spain. Henry resisted the urge to fuck her again. He would keep the infection to himself until Wednesday when it would surge out of him like poisoned blood.