Western Approaches (Jimmy Suttle) (32 page)

‘I don’t know. Because you won’t tell me. And even if you told me, even if we had a conversation, I’m not sure I’d believe you.’

‘You wouldn’t?’

‘No. Not now. Not here. Not the way we are.’

‘Great. Then that’s it, yeah?’

‘That’s what?’

‘Everything. You. Me. Grace. This khazi of a house you hate so much. Let’s just bin it, shall we? The lot.’

‘Call it a day?’

‘Sure. If that’s what you want.’

She stared at him for a long moment. She was shaking inside. She’d never imagined a scene like this. Never.

‘I’m sorry.’ She reached for the car keys. ‘I’ll go.’

She drove fast, keeping to the country lanes, swamped by her anger, fighting to concentrate on the next bend and the bend after that. Among the trees on top of the common, she nearly killed a fox. She had time to register the piercing redness of its eyes in the darkness as it turned to face her headlights. Instinctively, she stamped on the brakes and swung the wheel to the right, heading for woodland at the side of the road. The car shuddered and began to slide sideways. Finally it stopped. Lizzie closed her eyes. She was shaking again. Then she opened the door and threw up.

Exmouth was fifteen minutes away. She knew that Pendrick lived in a web of streets near the river and the station. She drove up and down, looking for his van, trying to fix his front door in her mind. There’d been some kind of card in the window of the flat downstairs. A tatty knocker and peeling paint on the door itself.

Finally, she found it. She parked across the road and switched the engine off. The light was on in the upstairs flat and the curtains were pulled back. She stared up at it for a long moment, trying to steady her pulse, trying to regain control of herself. She’d never snapped like that in her entire life, and the knowledge of where it might lead alarmed her deeply. She’d never been frightened of making decisions. On the contrary, especially at work, she’d won a reputation for being on top and ballsy in the trickiest situations.

This, though, was different. She’d pushed married life to the very edge of the cliff and she wasn’t at all sure what she wanted to happen next. She needed to talk this thing through. She needed a listening ear, someone who’d understand, someone who wouldn’t take advantage. Pendrick, she knew, would give her that kind of space, that kind of attention. If necessary, she could stay over. Whether she slept in his bed or not didn’t matter. She wanted to be close to somebody. She wanted to be touched, to be held, to be told she wasn’t some ditzy slapper cheating on her husband. Chantry Cottage had never been a great idea. She wanted out.

She rinsed her mouth with water from the bottle Jimmy kept in the glovebox. Then, reaching for the door handle, she paused. There was movement in the upstairs window. Someone was standing there, staring down at the street, a black silhouette against the light inside. It was a woman. She turned her head and must have said something because she was joined by another figure, bigger, broader. It was Pendrick. For a moment or two he and the woman were both immobile, watching her, then Pendrick reached out for the curtains and the tableau was gone.

Lizzie stared up at the window, trying to make sense of this image. Then her gaze lowered to Pendrick’s van at the kerbside. Parked in front, neatly wedged into a tiny space, was a small black sports car.

Suttle was asleep when Lizzie slipped into bed beside him. She touched his face, told him she loved him, told him she was sorry, promised it would never happen again. Suttle stirred, grunted something she didn’t catch, then rolled over. When dawn broke, hours later, she was still lying there, staring up at the damp patches on the ceiling, the tears cold on her cheeks.

Eight

SUNDAY, 17 APRIL 2011

It was Suttle’s idea to drive the whole family to Exmouth for the Kinsey tribute. Lizzie, exhausted, was tempted to phone Tessa and cancel, but Suttle insisted she see the thing through. The way he read it, they were offering her a leading role in this morning’s ceremony. If the rowing was doing her good, if she enjoyed it, the last thing she should do was let them down.

Lizzie knew she had no choice but to agree. Last night, to her immense relief, appeared to be history. Suttle was cheerful, positive and starving hungry. Making bonfires, he told her, was hard-core exercise. He made porridge for them all and patiently monitored Grace’s attempts to spoon-feed herself in her high chair.

They were on the road by half nine. Suttle dropped Lizzie on the seafront, a discreet distance from the club compound, and drove on towards Exmouth Quays. The porridge hadn’t quite filled the hole. He and the
Constantine
team had used the Docks Café earlier in the week and now he decided to share an egg and bacon butty with his infant daughter.

The café was packed. With Grace in his arms he was about to step back into the street when he caught a wave from a table in the corner. It was Carole Houghton. She was with her partner, a tall handsome woman called Jules. He went over, did the introductions. Grace gave them both a precautionary look and then nestled on her father’s lap as he took the spare seat.

Houghton insisted on buying their egg and bacon butty. Suttle had mentioned the Kinsey tribute on Friday and she had thought it only proper to make an appearance. A full week had gone by since the investigation kicked off and, in the absence of a result, this was the least she could do on behalf of what remained of the
Constantine
squad.

‘Does Grace like brown sauce?’ Houghton was already on her feet, en route to the counter.

‘Loves it.’

Suttle turned to her companion. Jules, he knew, was a lawyer, and he’d always suspected that Houghton shared one or two details of the more interesting jobs with her. He was right.

‘Carole tells me you’re the last man standing.’

‘On
Constantine
?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s true. Short straw, me.’

‘Coroner’s file?’

‘You’ve got it.’

‘And it stops there?’ She smiled. ‘I think not.’

Houghton was still at the counter. Suttle was looking at Jules. He wanted to know more.

‘Carole really rates you,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you but it’s true. She thinks you’re shrewd. And more to the point she thinks you’re honest.’

‘That’s nice to hear. What does honest mean?’

‘It means you’re hard on yourself. It means you don’t take short cuts. And I guess that means life isn’t always easy.’

‘Too right.’ Suttle was thinking of last night. ‘What else did she say?’

‘She said that this investigation of yours, whatever it’s called, is still in the balance. That you shouldn’t give up.’

Suttle blinked. Houghton, he knew, was a class operator. Was this why she’d volunteered to fetch the butty? So her partner could deliver a discreet message? He voiced the thought as Houghton returned.

‘Of course.’ Jules was clearing a space on the table. ‘You read her well, young man.’

Lizzie met Tash Donovan at the club compound. Tessa did the introductions and said that Tash would be rowing in the number two seat ahead of Lizzie in bow. The rest of the crew, including Tash’s partner Milo, were already on the beach helping to rig the boats. God speed, Tessa said, and when it comes to the row-past be sure to give it some welly.

Lizzie and Tash crossed the seafront road and headed down the slipway towards the beach. The tide was falling fast, flooding out of the estuary, and a ledge of high cloud had thinned the sunshine.

Lizzie wanted to know how long Tash had been rowing. She loved the colour of her hair.

‘Couple of years. I’m first reserve with this lot.’ She nodded at the nearest quad. ‘Four of them are bloody good. Kinsey was deadweight.’

‘That’s what everyone says.’

‘It’s true. The poor lamb had his strengths but rowing wasn’t one of them.’

They joined the rest of the crew at the water’s edge. Tash did the introductions. Lizzie recognised Milo from the Thursday session. This was the guy with the camera, she thought. Andy Poole offered her a crushing handshake and a wide grin. Lenahan, the cox, asked whether she was cool with rowing bow.

‘I need to be out of the way,’ Lizzie said. ‘Bow sounds fine to me.’

‘A little bird told me that you and racing starts are strangers.’

‘Your little bird’s right.’

‘We can fix that. Leave it to me. No problem.’

He was as good as his word. He supervised the launch, and the quad nosed out into the current. There was still plenty of water over the offshore sandbank and they crabbed away from the beach towards the nose of a distant promontory.

Lenahan was calling the stroke rate, warming the crew up, and Lizzie could feel the power in the boat. Despite her exhaustion, she realised she was beginning to enjoy this. Then came a small dot powering out of the harbour. The dot grew rapidly bigger and Lenahan gave the speeding safety boat a wave as it circled the quad. There were two men aboard. The portly guy at the wheel Lizzie had never seen before. The other one was all too familiar. Pendrick.

Suttle and Grace found a space near the edge of the dock for the tribute ceremony. Houghton had taken Jules for a stroll round Regatta House. Under the circumstances, she thought her partner deserved a proper look at the crime scene. They’d rejoin Suttle later.

The last of the sunshine had gone by now and it was appreciably colder. Suttle bent to the buggy, tucking Grace in. Earlier he’d watched Lizzie’s boat out in the far distance, stopping and starting, time after time. Now the other quads from the club were pulling hard against the tide, forming a protective square around a couple of smaller skiffs, slowly closing on the dancing water off the dock. All the rowers were wearing club colours, red and white, and as the boats approached, each crew in perfect time, a murmur of approval went through the watching spectators.

By now a decent crowd had gathered and a second TV crew had joined the BBC South West team who had earlier been prowling around Regatta Court. Suttle had watched the reporter on the phone before doing his piece to camera. He’d stationed himself on the stretch of promenade immediately below Kinsey’s apartment, trying to flatten his thinning hair in the rising wind. Suttle was too far away to catch what he was saying, but the cameraman’s dramatic tilt upwards towards Kinsey’s balcony was all too eloquent.
The dead man fell from here, and still nobody knows why
.

‘Mummy!’

Grace had seen her first. She was waving her little arms in excitement. Suttle turned to find himself looking at the Kinsey boat as it passed through the rest of the fleet on its way upriver. Lizzie was at the front and Suttle felt a jolt of admiration at the way she seemed to have mastered the business. He supposed that rowing was difficult. Lizzie had told him so. And yet there she was, perfectly in tune with this strange music, her blades dipping in and out with the rest of the crew, her back straight as she pulled on the oars, her body moving sweetly forward to take the next stroke.

‘Which one?’

‘At the front there. The small one.’

Houghton had appeared behind them. She pointed Lizzie out to Jules, who stepped forward and cupped her hands.

‘Go Lizzie!’

Someone else in the crowd took up the chant. Then another. Then a third. Even Grace was having a squeal. Lizzie had caught the chant. Suttle saw the tiny nod of her head, an acknowledgement. Suttle cupped his own hands.

‘Go! Go Lizzie! GO!’ he roared.

She recognised his voice. A grin this time, spreading and spreading. Suttle turned to Houghton.

‘She’s not bad, eh? For a probationer?’

Lenahan had elected to make the turn about 500 metres upstream from the dock. His cue to start would be an orange distress maroon fired from the quad dropping the wreath. Molly Doyle had cleared this through the Coastguard at Brixham late last night and they’d assured her they’d resist the temptation to launch the lifeboat or a chopper.

‘Red, please.’

Lenahan had got to the turn point. The crew hauled on their right-hand blades, pivoting the quad around a buoy.

‘Next stroke, easy up.’

The crew stopped rowing. Lizzie could feel the tide beneath her, lifting the hull and carrying it downstream. Lenahan was waiting for the maroon.

‘Come on,’ he muttered. ‘Jesus, what’s the matter with those eejits?’

Lizzie wanted to glance over her shoulder and watch the maroon go off, but she knew she’d get bollocked. Eyes in the boat. Always eyes in the boat.

‘Whole crew come forward to row.’ Lenahan had his gaze locked on the dock.

The whole crew came forward, blades in the water, ready for the racing start. The first time she’d tried it, half an hour ago, Lizzie had nearly totalled Tash’s oars. Her second attempt had been better and after that she’d started to get the feel of what was required. She was still playing catch-up, though, and just hoped that no one watching had binos.

‘Ready to row?’ Lizzie caught the muffled bang of the maroon. ‘ROW!’