Western Approaches (Jimmy Suttle) (5 page)

‘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?’