Mark Pearson - The Killing Season

‘It’s not good I’m afraid, Jack.’

‘Henry?’ I rubbed a hand over my eyes, trying to clear my head.

‘Sorry to wake you up so early and please apologise to your lovely wife for me. Had no choice, I am afraid. It’s an all-hands-to-the-pump kind of situation.’

Henry Hill was the secretary of Sheringham Golf club and had employed me on retainer as a security consultant for them.

I looked at the clock. It was ten to six. ‘That’s okay, Henry. What’s up? A break-in?’ I said, looking down at my left hand. It had stopped shaking, and I wiped my sweat-beaded forehead with it.

‘Part of the cliff has collapsed in the night. It was a very heavy storm.’

‘Yeah, I know. Whereabouts?’

‘A considerable landslide on the walkway bordering the sixth fairway. Well, I say “fairway”. Technically, considering it is a par three, it doesn’t have a fairway-’

‘That’s OK, Henry, I know where you mean,’ I said, cutting him off before he started quoting the rules and regulations from the Royal and Ancient handbook. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Get out here. Like I said, we need all hands on deck. We have to seal off the area. The public footpath went down with the cliff, so we can’t have people walking on the golf course and taking a tumble eighty feet or more down to the beach.’

‘Not a good idea, no. I’ll be there as soon as possible.’ I clicked the phone off and turned to Kate.

‘Sorry about that.’

She put her hand on my forehead. ‘What’s up, Jack? You’re all clammy and you were making noises in your sleep.’

‘I’m OK.’

‘Was it the dream again?’

‘Worse this time. Bonner was there with a double-barrelled shotgun and he blasted both barrels into her stomach. And she was swollen, Kate. Past-full-term swollen.’

She held my hand sympathetically.

I swallowed. ‘A few days’ time and it will be the anniversary of the due date we were given for the birth.’

Kate pulled me into a hug and I let her. Burying my face in her soft dark curls. Taking comfort from smelling her hair, feeling her hot breath, the warmth of her body. Her vitality.

‘Maybe that’s why it’s on your mind just lately.’

‘I guess so.’

‘It will get better. The dreams will go.’

‘I know,’ I said, not entirely believing it to be true and feeling guilty that I should wish away memories of my dead wife, however grotesque and warped they were in the dream.

‘What’s the crisis at the golf club?’

‘Some of the cliff by the sixth hole has collapsed. Taking the public walkway with it.’

‘Anybody hurt?’

‘No. Don’t think so. The coastguard just alerted us. They had a call come in from someone out walking his dog. An ex-copper, apparently. He always goes out early before the golfers get there and order him off their private land. Not that there would be anyone playing today.’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘Luckily for our dog-walker the storm had cleared the clouds for a while and the moon was out, otherwise he might not have seen the danger.’

‘It’s about time the government did something about it, Jack. People are losing their homes, entire villages have gone, and they still let it happen.’

‘Might as well wish for the moon to be blue, with cows jumping over it, as expect that lot to do anything unless they’ve got a vested interest. I’ll try and be back for breakfast.’

‘Sure,’ Kate said and kissed me again. I could see little worry creases in the corners of her eyes as she nibbled a thumbnail distractedly, watching me as I got out of bed and dressed in a rush.

It was still dark.

Seven o’clock and there was just the merest hint of light breaking among the dark clouds to the east.

I had a watch cap on, my thermal T, a shirt and my black leather jacket. Like a divvy I had left my overcoat at home and it was cold out there on the cliff’s edge. I flapped my arms around myself to warm up a little. It didn’t seem to do much good. I still hesitated, however, as Henry Hill held out a large silver hip flask to me. But not for long. I opened it and took a nip. It was sweet.

‘Cherry brandy?’ I asked, surprised.

Henry Hill smiled. He was a man of medium height, with sandy hair and a neat moustache. A stickler for details, procedures and protocol. Which was fitting as Sheringham Golf Club was an old-fashioned club. Been going since Victoria was alive. I had a sneaking suspicion that they would have had a men-only bar if they could have got away with it.

A large number of people had gathered on the clifftops, all wearing hi-vis vests over overcoats and warm clothing. There was a kind of Blitz spirit in the air, the community coming together to deal with a local disaster if not exactly a tragedy. The thunderstorm that had raged in the night had passed but, like I said, it was still cold enough to freeze the legendary tits off a witch in a brass brassiere, as my da always used to say. Not in my ma’s hearing he didn’t say it, mind. He wasn’t that brave.

Sheringham Golf Club is a weird beast. Some claim it is a links course, and links are traditionally where the strips of land lie before you reach the beach and the shoreline proper. Which was true here, but the parts of the course closest to the beach here are on the clifftops beside it. This means it’s an elevated course, eighty feet above sea level in places. So some would claim it is not a true links course. Personally I don’t know enough about the game to be able to tell, and favour your man’s opinion that ‘a game of golf is a good walk spoiled’. You can certainly see the sea to some extent from all but one of the holes on a good day. On the north side of the course there are the cliff edges, where we were gathered, and the course itself is sandwiched between them and the tracks of the Poppy Line steam railway which runs from the old Sheringham station through to the equally old stations of Weybourne and Holt. A big tourist attraction in the season, and the views and the sight of the old steam engines pulling old carriages make a fine sight when the sun is out.

Standing out of season by the tee on the sixth hole, however, with the North Sea thundering below and the winds biting like evil and ancient Scandinavian spirits, it wasn’t quite so awfully jolly. Henry offered me another nip of the cherry brandy, which I did not decline. He gestured over as a man was allowed through the human cordon, ducking under the POLICE — DO NOT CROSS tape which been set up around a large area of the sixth hole and the fifth green. The flapping tape didn’t look too effective to me as a measure for crowd control. Luckily there weren’t any crowds and neither were they expected. The holidaymakers were away and the locals had seen enough coastal erosion and cliff slide in the past to stop them venturing out in this kind of foul weather.

‘Martin Lewis,’ said Henry Hill as he indicated the man who was walking towards us. ‘Geological boffin reporting to the North Norfolk Council.’

He looked as much like a scientist as I looked like a cup cake. He was about five foot four high and just about the same wide. In his mid to late thirties, at a guess. He might have had the long hair of the mad professor, I’d give him that, but his was dyed black and shaved at the temples. He was wearing a long leather coat and Celtic tattoos were quite visible on both wrists. A Geogoth, perhaps. I couldn’t see him listening to Mahler. Motorhead, maybe. But then, I have been wrong about people in the past.

‘Hello, Henry,’ he said as he strolled up, smiling broadly and displaying a very well maintained and very white set of teeth. ‘Been landscaping your course, I hear.’