The Killing Season (15 page)

‘I certainly don’t think it’s going to rain.’

‘I am not here to talk about the weather, young man.’

Harry Coker sighed inwardly once more. The woman was not much more than a decade older than him but talked to him as if he was a truculent fourth-former or whatever they were called nowadays in the high schools.

‘How may we be of assistance?’

‘The Reverend Holdsworth is missing.’

‘What do you mean, “missing”?’

‘What do you think I mean?’ she replied angrily. ‘There is not much confusion about the word, is there? He is not at his church, nor at his house, and his bed has not been slept in. He is missing and I want to know what you are going to do about it.’

The sergeant bit back a remark that he was going to make about the reverend’s sleeping arrangements being nothing to do with him. ‘He was out with a group of friends at a stag party last night,’ he said instead.

The woman’s lips curled a little. She was the priest’s cook and house manager at the rectory but, as in all other areas, she liked to think that her duties lay beyond those that were merely stated on her contract of employment.

‘Do you mean to imply that the vicar, a man of God . . . that Reverend Holdsworth would have become embroiled in some kind of activity that . . . that . . .’ The woman seemed unable even to contemplate the very thought of whatever it was that the sergeant might be implying.

The sergeant held his hands up in a soothing manner. ‘Not at all, Miss Skipton. Just that the group of friends might have retired to one of their houses. Maybe the groom’s. Maybe they made a bit of a night of it and he crashed over.’

‘Crashed over!’

‘Stayed over.’

The sergeant had grown up in Sheringham. They had gone to different schools but he knew Nigel Holdsworth well. And he knew his friends. He might have a dog collar round his neck but Harry knew he was just following in the family tradition and was far from what you might call a saintly man. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if they had all ended up in a nightclub in Norwich, or hired escorts to visit a hotel and send Len Wright off to wedded bliss in fine carnal style.

He said none of this to Emily Skipton, however. When it came to her blessed Reverend Holdsworth she was the three wise monkeys all rolled into one.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ she asked again, picking up her brolly.

The sergeant eyed the instrument suspiciously but somehow managed to summon up a reassuring smile that also indicated how seriously he was taking the matter. ‘I shall make enquiries immediately, madam,’ he said. ‘Round up some troops if necessary. Rest assured that if the Reverend Holdsworth has come to any harm we will find him.’

‘Young men do foolish things on stag nights, silly pranks. Maybe he is tied to a lamp-post somewhere.’

‘He’s not the groom.’

‘What?’

‘Well, it’s the groom they usually tie to lamp-posts or suchlike.’

‘When alcohol and young men get together, sergeant, there is always a danger of foolhardiness and I should expect you to realise that better than most.’

Emily Skipton turned and walked out, a galleon in full sail. The sergeant wondered whether she had been referring to him personally in her remark about alcohol and foolishness or had simply meant that he as a policeman had witnessed the behaviour concerned. He didn’t consider it for longer than it took for the door to close, however. He had an appointment with a hot bacon roll or two that he didn’t intend to miss. He waited for a minute or so then headed for the door himself.

The Reverend Holdsworth would turn up shortly, he had no doubt, with lipstick on his dog collar and a smile on his public-school-educated, smug and shiny face.

I WAS JUST
loading the last of my office paraphernalia into the boot of my much maligned Saab when the sound of sirens approached once more.

Technically it was just one siren and one police car. The siren mercifully stopped as the car pulled alongside my own. Sergeant Harry Coker got out on the passenger side and a tall young uniform with ears like jug handles got out on the driver’s side.

‘Sorry about the twos, Jack,’ said the sergeant. ‘Young Gary here wanted to have a play with them.’

The young uniform, somewhere in his twenties, smiled. He had large teeth that, unlike the rest of him, weren’t entirely uniform.

‘Got to give the locals something to gossip about, haven’t you?’ he said.

‘What can I help you with?’

‘The super wants you cuffed and brought down to the nick,’ said Harry Coker, shrugging apologetically.

‘Again?’

‘Seems that way.’

‘Do you reckon she’s got the hots for me?’ I asked the constable who surprised me by blushing a little.

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ he said.

‘I think Gary here has got the hots himself for the boss, Jack,’ said Coker. ‘Woman in power, wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘Rubbish!’ said Gary, blushing even more and laughing far from convincingly.

‘So what have I done now?’ I asked. ‘Speeding, parking on a kerb, walking up the street in the wrong direction?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘That guy Len Wright. I guess he’s laid a complaint against me?’ I asked. In truth I had been half-expecting it. I was surprised that he hadn’t come after me with his fists later that night. He seemed the type.

‘No, Jack. The Reverend Holdsworth has gone missing.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘And so has Len Wright, the bridegroom.’

‘And . . .?’

‘And it has become known to Superintendent Susan Dean that you were involved in a fracas last night.’

‘A fracas?’

‘Her vocabulary. She also knows that Len Wright threatened to see you some other time and sort you out.’

‘And so she assumes what?’

‘She thinks they might have ended up meeting you again and found that they were boxing below their weight as it were.’

‘I left you and went home, put the kids to bed and stayed up for a couple of hours reading before going to bed.’

‘Kate with you?’

‘Kate was with the hen party. The lucky lady who is getting to marry Len Wright works as a nurse at their practice.’

‘I know. Poor cow. Anyway, the super wants you in, official statement and all that. I am sure that Holdsworth and Wright will turn up soon enough. They’re probably down the clap clinic, getting a shot.’

I held up my hands. ‘OK, I’ll come quietly,’ I said.

‘Sod that for a game of coconuts,’ said Sergeant Coker. ‘Bring your car. I hear you’re moving your office into town anyway.’

It seemed that only the big secrets stayed hidden around here.

I WAS HEADING
up to the roundabout at the bottom of Holway Road, following the police car ahead, when my mobile phone trilled.

‘Jack Delaney,’ I said answering it and steering with one hand.

‘You do know it’s an offence to drive and speak on a mobile phone, Jack?’

‘Is it going to be added to the charge sheet, then, sergeant?’

‘Slight detour. Follow us down to the beach.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘I guess we’ll see.’

I followed the police car as it swung down Beeston Road, then Beach Road, which led down to the sea. We turned slowly onto the promenade and made our way at a very sedate pace. We parked up behind another couple of police cars and walked down to the beach. The tide was coming in as the sergeant led me up to the site where the dead man’s body had been found.

‘What we got?’ Sergeant Coker asked a man in a hard hat, behind whom was some earth-moving equipment and some other men in hard hats and hi-vis vests. After the forensic team had finished, these guys had been called in to clear the fallen cliff from the beach.

‘Hi, Harry. What we got is something we didn’t expect.’

He gestured us all forward. ‘See here?’ he asked, pointing to the remains of some chalk blocks at the base of the cliff.

‘Yeah – we got a cliff, and we got what’s left of the stuff that fell down that you haven’t cleared yet.’

I walked up to the jumble of chalk blocks and ran my hand along an edge.

‘These have been tool-cut.’

‘Who’s your buddy?’ the man asked Harry Coker.

‘Jack Delaney, meet Simon Brown,’ he replied.

I held my hand out and shook his.

‘You have a sharp eye, my friend.’

Coker laughed. ‘Don’t you know who this is? This is DI Jack Delaney. Poster boy for the Metropolitan police and darling of the press. Nothing gets past him.’

‘What’s a hotshot like you doing in these parts, then?’ asked Simon Brown.

‘I’m on a gap year.’

‘He’s taking a sabbatical.’

‘And you’re helping out while you’re up here?’

The sergeant grunted. ‘Technically, I am supposed to be taking him in for questioning, so in that sense you could say he is helping us with our enquiries, yes.’

The guy handed me a torch. ‘Get down and have a squint through that gap,’ he said, pointing to a space between a few of the blocks of chalk. I bent down and shone the torch as Harry Coker leaned down beside me.

‘It’s a cave,’ Harry said.

‘Certainly looks like it.’

‘Your mystery man wasn’t buried at the top of the cliff, he was buried under it. And then he was blocked in.’

‘Yo, sergeant!’ a voice called from along the beach near the promenade. ‘You better get over here.’

Coker, myself and the young police constable walked back along the beach. The man hailing us was someone I recognised from The Lobster. A member of the lifeboat crew and a local electrician. His name was Ian Hart but everyone called him Spike, because of his spiky hair that hair-care products seemed unable to control. A tall man in his late forties with a broad Glaswegian accent.

‘You’d better get here, Harry,’ Spike called again.

The sergeant picked up on the urgency in the man’s voice and we quickened our pace.

‘He’s at the slipway, bottom of Beach Road.’

‘Who is?’

‘Not sure.’

A few minutes later and our cars had headed back down the promenade towards Beach Road again.

A fishing boat was pulled up on the beach. The net beside it on the slipway was empty of fish but had something else in it.

A human body.

We walked over and looked down.

‘We saw it on the water,’ explained one of the fishermen. ‘Thought it might be a seal or dolphin at first, then we realised.’

He opened up the net and the naked corpse flopped on its side. Male, in his thirties, with skin the colour of eight-week-old milk. The smell was not too fresh either.

It was the Reverend Nigel Holdsworth. Late, I guess, of this parish, as they say.

‘You better get out of here, Jack,’ said Harry Coker.

I nodded. ‘I’ll go up to the station and give them my statement.’

‘Might want to call your wife on the way.’

‘Super Susan’s not going to hold me.’

‘I wouldn’t put it past her. But no. I meant we might need Kate down here.’

‘I think this guy’s beyond the benefit of medical attention, Frank.’

‘Still, nice to get a jump. Cause of death. Norwich are going to be on this like white on rice.’

I nodded. ‘I’ll make a move.’

‘Jack,’ he said as I went over to my car which was parked now on Beach Road.

‘Yes?’ I looked back at him questioningly.

‘You ain’t brought a lot of luck to our town, have you?’

KATE AND I
were sitting in The Ship at Weybourne.

It was another decent bar, one that hadn’t been totally made over into a pub-themed restaurant. They did food but had a separate restaurant for the gastropods – as I like to call them – and a proper bar separately. I was having a club sandwich. It was good. Kate was tucking into a BLT, and none too daintily. One of the things I liked about her was that she looked like a model, sounded like the well-educated doctor that she was, and ate like a hungry field worker. A woman of appetite. My kind of woman. My woman, in fact . . . and that put a smile on my miserable Irish face pretty much every waking day.

She put her sandwich down and took a sip of diet Coke. ‘So they’re not going to charge you?’

‘No,’ I said after swallowing the last mouthful of my sandwich. ‘Although I get the impression that nothing would make Susan Dean happier. Short of a multiple orgasm and even then it’s a toss-up.’

Kate frowned. ‘I’m not sure I am happy with your choice of phrasing, Jack.’

‘You’re a doctor, Kate. You should know about these things.’

‘I meant the fact that you choose to associate the woman with a sexually based comparison. To say such a thing indicates it is possible, and maybe probable, that you have had such images in your mind.’

‘Then put such thoughts from your own mind, cherry pie. Jack Delaney is a one-woman man. He has seen the light, oh Lord. And the light is shining from your big brown eyes.’

‘Did you just call me “cherry pie”?’

‘I certainly did. My one and only cherry pie.’

‘Well, that’s OK, then.’

‘She can’t charge me with assault. Enough witnesses were there to prove that I was acting in self-defence.’

‘And were you?’

‘No. But that’s not the point.’

‘And now the Reverend Holdsworth is dead and the best man is still missing.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s why I called you.’

‘Go on?’

‘I need some advice.’

‘Advice of what nature?’

‘Supposing a girl was about to be married.’

‘A girl like you?’

‘Well, not like me, exactly. Let us say a more adventurous sort of girl.’

‘Adventurous in an outgoing kind of way?’

‘Maybe just in the going sense.’

‘As in a goer?’

‘You are more down with the vernacular of the street, darling. But yes. Promiscuous, shall we say, or sexually experimental.’

‘This girl was going to be married soon?’

‘Yes.’

‘And she works with you?

‘You are quite the detective.’

‘I just follow the clues like a bloodhound. And when I have eliminated the impossible then what remains, however improbable, leads me to conclude that a nurse in your employ has been getting up to the naughties.’