The Silent Pool (33 page)

‘Bovind told me that he had a fight with Tomas, something to do with the
Everlong
and that's why he ran away, that's how he ended up in the woods,’ said Erasmus.

‘Bovind lied to you.’

‘How do you know?’ said Erasmus.

‘The church taught me many things but perhaps the one thing that remains most useful is the ability to smell guilt. Stephen was so guilty after Tomas disappeared that I knew something awful must have happened. When Burns confessed to the murder he became worse, as though he blamed himself for Tomas’ death. Something happened out there at that pool. Something evil. I am sure of it.’

Erasmus shook his head. ‘So that's it. You smelt guilt?’

Theo straightened his back in the chair. ‘Not quite. It's amazing though, a person's capacity for denial and rationalisation in the face of time passing and success. The nagging doubt that all was not right with Burns confession receded over the years but it took one phone call to change everything.

‘It was Jenna. Over the years Stephen and I had drifted apart. We lived in the same city but we never spoke and my only contact was occasionally through Jenna. There had been no great falling out, no familial argument but rather an unspoken arrangement that with the absence of any communication there could be no awkwardness, no eyes meeting or silences, and I believe no prospect of the subject of Tomas ever being raised.

‘Then three months ago Jenna called. She was hysterical. Stephen had come home from work that night and everything had seemed fine. She had left him to go out and do some late night shopping and when she returned he was drunk and violent. Stephen was, I mean is, a teetotaller, Erasmus. Yet something caused him to drink a bottle of whisky and go crazy. He had smashed up some furniture and even tried to knock her around. Eventually he collapsed unconscious and then she called me.’

‘Was it the gambling debts, the pressure getting to him?’

Theo looked away. ‘No, the trigger for his falling apart was seeing a piece on the local evening news, a piece about the return to Liverpool of Bovind and his Foundation's proposed huge investment in the city. Stephen screamed at Jenna that the man was a murderer and that so was he. Jenna asked him what he meant but he began crying and just repeating the one phrase over and over.’

‘What was it?’

‘“We killed that boy.”’

‘Tomas,’ said Erasmus.

‘I think that something happened that night. I think that Tomas was killed by one of the boys and for some reason Frank Burns confessed to the murder.’

Erasmus considered this for a moment. ‘And now Stephen is missing and the others, apart from Bovind, you and Father Michael are dead. Guess that narrows down the suspects, Theo.’ He looked straight at Theo who returned his gaze.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I'm going to take a look at the
Everlong
.’

CHAPTER 41

The road to Formby beach ran straight and true from Liverpool. The scenery changed from dockland, to terraced houses and then to grander suburbs before woods began encroaching on the road.

Erasmus drove in silence. He needed time to think. There was something missing from what Theo had told him. Erasmus had once been told by his father, a keen amateur astronomer, that the light from a supernova that exploded 2000 years ago was so bright in the night sky that if we saw in the infrared spectrum we would see it as a disc larger than the moon in the night sky. Erasmus felt like this now, that there was something huge hidden from view but in plain sight. He just needed to look at it from the right angle.

The text that Rachel had sent had given him an exact geo location, which he simply fed into his sat nav. It should take him straight to the remains of the
Everlong
.

This part of Merseyside seemed strange to Erasmus. He had never visited it before and he knew it solely as the place where rich footballers lived and where successful Liverpudlians aspired to make it to. It reminded him of the open spaces of Cape Cod, whispery sea grass and sand dunes and the occasional large house or apartment development.

The wind had picked up another notch and his VW was buffeted as it followed the road to the beach.

Soon, his sat nav was signalling that he should take a left turn, but Erasmus could not see a turning up ahead. His sat nav became more insistent, counting down the metres, so he slowed the car and then brought it to a halt at the very point he was being instructed to, ‘Turn left now’.

There was no turning just a continuation of the barbed wire fence that ran alongside the road marking the line between sand and tarmac. Erasmus got of the car and checked the fence. There, beyond it, he could see an outline in the sand that indicated a road had cut through these dunes once.

A car sped by, the displaced air rocking him back on his heels.

Erasmus checked his watch. It would be dark soon.

He entered the co-ordinates into Google Maps on his phone. The device told him that the
Everlong
should be straight ahead approximately four hundred yards through the sand dunes.

Erasmus held down the barbed wire and climbed over. He headed for the sea.

The first twenty yards were easy going but then the dunes rose quickly in height and his feet sank in the dry sand. The sand was being whipped by the wind and after a few mouthfuls he pulled up his scarf to protect his face.

At the top of the first dune he could see the sea. The tide was coming in – grey with angry white flumes – but it was still a good four or five hundred yards away.

He jogged down the dune and checked his phone. Erasmus’ location was represented by a blue pin with a pulsing blue circle around it. The circle indicated a radius of ten yards. According to his device, the
Everlong
was just behind the next dune. This dune was smaller and Erasmus quickly reached the top.

He looked down.

There was a small, flat area surrounded on all sides by sand dunes. It was protected from the wind and gloomier due to the towering dunes all around it. The colour of the sand seemed darker in the drained pool. In the bowels of the pool Erasmus could see no sign of anything that resembled the wreckage of a boat.

The light was beginning to fade now and the temperature to drop. The wind had the taste of a sharp salty tang. He scrambled down the dune and up the adjacent one. He looked down but could see nothing.

A gust of wind pushed him backwards.

Erasmus decided to turn back. Nothing remained here.

And then there was a break in the clouds above, and for a second the last of the day's sun shone into the clearing, and Erasmus looked again. Was it his imagination or was the grass a darker shade in places when he moved a yard to his right? Could it be that the different shade of grass sketched an outline? In this light the darker sand formed an outline, like a large bloodshot eye.

But it wasn't an eye. It was the burnt outline of a small boat. Erasmus felt his heart rate increase.

He had found the
Everlong
.

The gap in the cloud closed and just as quickly the difference in shades became impossible to judge.

Erasmus ran down into the drained pond and stood in the place which he reckoned was the dead centre of the boat. He checked his phone. The blue pin had turned red. He had reached his final destination.

He walked around the area and kicked at the sand. Sure enough underneath the sand there was charcoal and each kick brought a little bit more of the
Everlong
back to the surface. He started to kick more frantically, his boots easily breaking the burnt wood into pieces that began to fill the clearing.

And then he noticed something shiny and new glittering in the darkness. Erasmus got down on his hands and knees and his fingers gripped the silver chain that he could know see sticking out of the sand. He began to pull at the chain. At first it wouldn't give but then it came loose and he pulled it free.

Erasmus lifted it up.

He gasped as he realised what he had found.

He didn't notice the sand spilling down the side of the dune behind him or the subtle decrease in light as the sun was blocked by the figure behind him until it was too late.

CHAPTER 42

It might have been minutes or days. Erasmus opened his eyes. His vision was blurred, a consequence of the blow to his head, maybe a concussion, he thought. He blinked and shapes in the gloom slowly came into focus.

He was looking up at a white ceiling with a single bulb hanging from it. Erasmus tried to turn his head to see what was in the room and found that he couldn't. It was then that he realised the pain in his head was caused by the tight grip of the straps holding his head down. Erasmus tied to move his arms but they too were tied solidly to the surface on which he lay. The same was true of his legs. Erasmus felt panic building in the pit of his stomach and he knew that if he let it grow and rise then he may start screaming. Focus, he told himself, what can you see?

He rolled his eyes up, down and to the side. Directly opposite his feet he could just make out the top of what looked like a steel door. To his left and right were just plain walls and he couldn't move his head to see what lay behind him. The room must be about 10 feet by 10 feet, he guessed. Just large enough for the bed or whatever he was strapped to, and not much else.

The light bulb was off but there was some dim light coming from somewhere otherwise he would be in darkness. He couldn't see a window. Maybe it was behind him on the wall he couldn't see. It had been going dark when he was attacked. Just how long had he been out?

He listened but the only sound was a low hum of a boiler or some ancient machinery somewhere far off in the bowels of the building.

Erasmus shut his eyes and thought about Abby. He conjured up an image of her when she was six years old. He had been watching her from an upstairs window of the first house that he and Miranda had bought together, a place full of only happy memories. Abby had been sulking. Her friend Tanya had been allowed to wear clip on earrings by her parents and, wanting to fit in, Abby had asked for some. Miranda had said no and in no uncertain terms and this had brought on a crying and stomping tantrum of huge proportions. Erasmus had been working in his study and was looking at the back garden when Abby had stormed across the lawn, tears pouring and then stopped as she saw that some of the washing that Miranda had hung up earlier that day had fallen onto the damp grass. Despite being six, and in the middle of a tantrum, Abby had immediately begun to pick up the items of clothing and Erasmus had watched as the tears dried and her face lit up with the joy of a simple task her mother. Abby had begun to sing. Erasmus hadn't been able to hear because of the window and he didn't want her to know he was watching, but the elation she had brought was the most natural and beautiful thing he had ever seen. Erasmus concentrated on that memory, felt those feelings and the panic began to subside.

For a moment it was though as he was back standing at that window feeling the late afternoon sun on his face and then a door slammed and everything changed.

Erasmus opened his eyes and there was a flash of movement in the peripheral vision on his left hand side and then whoever was there, was standing behind him. Erasmus tried rolling his eyes back as far as they would go and only succeeded in causing a dull pain above his eyeballs.

‘Who are you?’ asked Erasmus.

Erasmus could hear the man's breathing, slow and heavy.

‘A better question for a man in your position would be to ask, what do I want with you? I will ask you some questions and if you give me the wrong answer or if I think you are lying to me then I will kill you. Do you understand?’

Erasmus knew he was in danger. The man was a professional. He had gotten the drop on him and now he was giving no information away. The only reassurance was that he had hid his face from Erasmus, which told him that he may just walk out of here, wherever here was, alive.

‘Yes,’ said Erasmus.

‘Then we will begin.’

Erasmus heard the man moving behind him and what sounded like trolley wheels dragging on the floor.

Erasmus winced as crocodile clips bit into his ear lobes.

‘If you are lying you get a shock. It is very, very simple.’

‘Why me?’

‘Because you are complicit.’

There was movement and then silence apart from the man's heavy breathing.

‘Have you ever killed a man?’

Erasmus needed to test the parameters.

‘No,’ he replied.

The world seemed to stop as the volts hit him, and his body was forced into a violent arch that he thought impossible due to the straps holding him down. Erasmus’ teeth were forced together and the pain felt like his bones were being sandpapered. And then the connection was broken and he sank back to the table with a thud.

‘Do you work for Kirk Bovind?’

Erasmus was sweating heavily and his limbs shaking. He had undergone interrogation resistance training at Sandhurst but nothing had prepared him for the sheer pain of torture like this.

‘Yes,’ he whispered.

There was no shock this time.

‘What kind of work are you doing for him?’

‘Contracts, commercial leases…’

This time he blacked out. He came round, seconds, minutes, later. Erasmus felt a warm sensation at the top of his thighs and back and he realised his bladder must have let go. His limbs felt distant as though separated from his body and the part of him that was still rational, not just a wounded animal, wondered if the nerve damage he had clearly sustained was permanent.

‘You know this is essentially the same system used by a defibrillator. The electrical current in that case jerks the heart back to life. In your case, I fear it may have the opposite effect. I saw it used in the war this way. It will be a painful death for you.’

‘You were in the war? Iraq? Afghanistan? I fought in Afghanistan. Which unit were you in?’ It was a desperate attempt at establishing a rapport, again, straight out of the interrogation manual. It is much harder to kill someone you think is like you.