Simon Beckett - The Restless Dead

The nearest tower looked the most intact. Rachel headed for it, but Lundy leaned towards her.

‘Go by the others first,’ he told her, raising his voice to be heard. ‘Let’s rule them out before we take a look at this.’

Rachel obliged, looping the boat around the outside of the towers. But it was already clear that if her sister had taken the photographs of Villiers’ house from the fort, she hadn’t done it from either of the two towers that stood further out to sea. The first was little more than an empty shell. Fire had blackened the metal walls of the platform, though judging by the ochre coating of rust it wasn’t recent. The roof was gone, and so was the external framework of walkways and ladders I’d seen on the website photographs. The structure had been completely hollowed out, and as though to emphasize the point a seagull flew up through a gaping hole in the platform’s base, flitted past glassless windows, and emerged above the roofless structure a moment later.

The second tower had fared even worse. The upper structure was completely gone, leaving the four spindly legs to rise from the sea like the corners of an incomplete pyramid. Lundy took off his glasses and wiped the salt spray from the lenses.

‘OK, let’s take a look at the other.’

Rachel took the boat in towards the last tower. Even out here the sea was silted up and shallow. I could see the paleness of seabed where a sandbank had formed around the third tower, even breaking the surface in places. Swells smacked against the structure’s legs, creating a criss-crossing chop that buffeted us as we approached. The sound of them became more resonant as Rachel brought us in underneath.

Up close the tower was bigger than I’d expected. The legs were tubular and made from reinforced concrete, now badly spalled and draped with seaweed below the waterline. It swirled from them like green hair, and every now and then there was an echoing boom as a larger wave crashed into the hollow tubes.

I looked up as we passed beneath the shadowy underside of the tower, sixty feet above my head. The girders that formed its base were badly rusted, stained white with bird droppings that added an ammoniac sharpness to the smell of seaweed. Rachel bumped the boat alongside a mooring platform set between the fort’s splayed legs and quickly tied a line around a mooring post. As the swells jostled the boat, she went to get hold of the rusty ladder that extended down into the water.

‘I’ll go first,’ Lundy told her. ‘If anybody’s going to get dumped in the sea, it’s better off being me.’

Timing the swells, the DI hauled himself up the ladder and onto the steel platform. Brushing the rust off his hands, he stamped on the platform, making the whole thing clang and quiver.

‘Seems solid enough. All right, up we come.’

Rachel went next, clambering easily up the rungs. I followed slightly less elegantly, but managed not to fall in. The ladder was blistered with corrosion, and the platform itself was little better. But Lundy was right: there seemed no imminent danger of its collapsing.

Following Rachel and Lundy’s example, I took off my lifejacket and looked around. Another ladder, this one newer-looking, ran up to a small gantry suspended above us. From there, a flight of metal steps led to a heavy-looking door into the fort itself. There was no other way in that I could see.

‘Look,’ Rachel said, pointing back towards the coastline.

Across the open sea, Leo Villiers’ empty house stood facing us on its rocky promontory.

Rachel took a pair of compact binoculars from a jacket pocket, and studied the house through them before handing them to Lundy. ‘It’s the same view as the photographs.’

‘Came prepared, did we?’ he commented as he raised the binoculars. ‘Not quite the same view. It’s too low down.’

‘So she must have taken them from inside. Let’s go and look,’ Rachel said, her impatience returning.

Lundy considered the ladder rising to the underside of the tower. ‘This shouldn’t be here. I’m not happy about...’ he said, and then broke off as his phone rang.

The musical trill sounded out of place, but at least it meant we were close enough to the shore for mobile coverage. That settled the question of Emma Derby’s not being able to call for help if she’d had an accident. Lundy fished in his pocket for his phone as it continued to ring.

‘I need to take this,’ he said, checking the display.

He moved to the other side of the platform to answer. Rachel watched him go, then turned back to the ladder and began to climb.

‘Rachel...’ I said, exasperated.

‘There’s no point standing around.’

She was already halfway up to the small gantry. I looked across at Lundy, expecting him to remonstrate. But the DI didn’t seem to have noticed. He’d turned away from us, and stood with his head cocked, listening to whatever was being said on the other end of the phone.

Great . With a sigh, I began to climb as well. This ladder was an extendable one, made from lightweight aluminium rather than rusted steel. Lundy had said the original access ladders had been removed years ago, presumably to keep people out of the towers.

Someone hadn’t let that stop them.

I wondered who.

I pulled myself through an opening on to the gantry. It was smaller than the platform below and caked with white droppings. The wind was stronger up here, cold and biting. Clambering to my feet, I saw that Rachel had already gone up the metal steps to the tower door. She tugged on the handle.

‘It’s padlocked.’

On one level I was relieved. Finding Stacey Coker’s body was still fresh in my mind, and if the tower held any surprises it was better for the police to find them rather than Rachel.

But after coming all this way I knew I’d be disappointed if we had to turn back now. Rachel gave the door a frustrated thump. ‘Do you think there’s another way in?’

‘I doubt it.’ The fort had been built for coastal defence: it was supposed to be hard to get into.

‘Have we got anything to smash the padlock?’ she asked as I went up the steps.

I could imagine what Lundy would say to that. ‘No, and I don’t think that’s going to break in a hurry anyway.’

Both the padlock and the hasp it was fitted to were new, made from heavy-duty stainless steel. They looked as though they’d resist anything short of a sledgehammer.

Rachel rattled it in frustration. ‘This is ridiculous! How did Emma get inside if it was locked?’

I didn’t know, but I was beginning to feel uneasy. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

I turned away, but Rachel stayed where she was. Crouching by the door, she reached in her pocket and pulled out her sister’s heavy bunch of keys. She went through them, then selected one and tried it in the padlock.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Trying Emma’s spare keys. I’ve no idea what some of them are for, and she must have got inside somehow.’

‘We should get back to Lundy,’ I said impatiently, as she tried another.

‘Just a couple more.’

‘You’re wasting your—’

There was a snick as the lock came open. Rachel grinned down at me.

‘Ta-da.’

I felt the hairs prickle on the back of my neck. It was one thing if her sister had made a single trip to the fort to take photographs. But if Emma Derby had padlocked the tower — and presumably was responsible for the replacement ladder as well — that suggested she’d been out here more than once. No one would go to all that trouble over an abandoned sea fort without good reason.

Not unless there was something inside they didn’t want anyone to find.

Rachel was already taking the padlock from the hasp. Before I could say anything a piercing whistle came from below. Going to the edge of the gantry, I looked down and saw Lundy, craning his neck with two fingers poised in his mouth. He took them out when he saw me.