Mark Pearson - The Killing Season

‘Still alive?’

‘I wouldn’t think so. I need to know what happened to them.’

I had stayed with Helen Middleton for a further hour or so.

I didn’t learn much more but I think she was grateful to have someone to talk to. Someone who was trying to find justice for her much-loved brother, a brother whom she had missed for seventy-three years.

I was heading east again, keeping my eye on the curving, twisting road. My phone trilled and I pushed the button on the hands-free set.

‘Speak to me.’

‘Well, chief, I have some information. Henry Wilson was killed in 1942 in an air raid, leaving no relations. Tony Carter lived till retirement age and fathered a son, who in turn fathered a son called Robert Carter who has a dental practice in Sheringham.’

So much for my theory about the other members of the crew going missing around the same time as David Webb.

‘Give me the dentist’s address.’

‘Sir, yes sir!’

Laura did as she was told, finally. I wasn’t quite sure how she had got on my payroll, so to speak. Mind you, Amy Leigh had had pretty much the same experience. Collusion, to my mind. Amy, Kate, Laura, Siobhan — all colluding to keep us in Sheringham. Thank God for Superintendent Susan Dean, I thought. At least that was one woman who would be glad to see my sorry Irish arse kicked back down to London. She would also, no doubt, be glad to do the booting herself.

William

The man smiled as he looked at the headstone. He put out a strong finger and traced the words, running its tip into the grooves. It was a fine headstone in the graveyard of an old Catholic church in East Beckham, a small village just outside Sheringham.

There were floral decorations at the corners of the stone and a verse from the Bible, an inscription in a flowing italic hand beneath the name of the dear departed.

He smiled again as he read the inscription.

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

EPHESIANS 6:4

And then he smiled once more, picked up the old and rusted sixteen-pound sledgehammer that he had brought with him for the purpose, and smashed the headstone into small pieces.

‘Rest in peace, Tony Carter,’ he grunted under his breath. Then he shouldered the sledgehammer and walked away.

I turned along Addlestone Road, a tree-lined residential street.

Robert Carter’s dental practice was at the far end on the right. A finely built Edwardian detached house that had been converted into the surgery. There were five partners in the practice as far as I could tell from the nameplates set into the brick wall by the reception door. Robert Carter’s was at the top of the list but I could see that that was probably on the basis of alphabetical order.

There were two women sitting behind the long counter in the reception room as I entered. One of them was in her fifties and was tapping, in a businesslike manner, on a keyboard, scowling at the monitor and paying me no attention at all. The other, a younger, happier-looking woman in her thirties held a finger up to me as she finished her call.

‘Can I help you?’ she said after hanging up.

I showed her my warrant card. ‘I’d like to speak to Robert Carter, please.’

‘Oh my God. Is it to do with the murders?’

That got the elder woman’s attention. Her fingers ceased their tip-tapping and she turned round to look at me, suddenly full of curiosity.

‘It’s just a routine matter,’ I replied. ‘Is he available now or is he with a patient?’

‘He’s gone out,’ replied the older woman.

I looked at my watch. ‘When will he back?’

‘He didn’t say.’ The younger woman answered for her. ‘He took a call about half an hour ago and flew out in a bit of a rush. He said to rearrange his appointments for the day.’

‘Where was he going?’

‘Didn’t say.’

‘Who was the call from?’

‘A priest. Can’t remember his name.’

I wrote my name on a piece of paper, along with my mobile-phone number, and put it on the counter.

‘Can you get him to call me when he comes back?’

I was opening the door when the younger woman called out. ‘Father somebody he was.’

A Catholic priest called Father somebody. Fancy that! I smiled in thanks and went out the door.

I spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of a few outstanding issues.

I’d had a quick meeting with Brian Stenson, the owner of the caravan park. The petty vandalism seemed to have stopped, no incidents for well over a week. Maybe the fact that I, and now Laura Gomez, whom Stenson had met, had been looking into it had scared off whoever it was. Either way the owner seemed happy enough, and I was happy enough to sign off on it too. Then I went back to the office. Checked my mobile for messages, as I had gone out of signal range for a while. But there had been no calls. I called Robert Carter’s surgery again but he hadn’t returned from his trip out. I asked for his mobile number but it cut into his message service when I dialled it, so I did as requested at the tone and left a message, asking him to call me and giving my own mobile number. I tried to sort out some paperwork, but I was distracted so I soon gave up and headed to The Lobster. It was dark now and the wind was whipping off the North Sea hard enough for me to zip my jacket up to my neck.

The makeshift CID incident room in the double-storey function room of the pub was abuzz with activity as I entered. Lots of people talking on phones, lots of people typing on laptops. I had a word with a female police constable on DI Walsh’s team but they were no further forward than they had been the last time I had checked in with them.

I tracked Harry Coker down having a bacon sandwich and a half of lager in the lounge bar. The landlord had closed that bar off to the general public and more particularly to the press who had descended on the town like a plague of biblical insects.

‘Making any progress?’ I asked as I slid onto the bar stool next to him.

‘I am with this sandwich,’ he said as he finished it with a large bite and chewed thoughtfully. ‘But that’s about all.’

I gestured to the barman and ordered the same for myself and another half for the sergeant.

‘I tracked down the people manning the lifeboat the night David Webb was murdered — tracked ’em down on paper, obviously,’ I told Coker.

‘What were your thoughts?’

I shrugged. ‘Loose threads. Pull at enough of them and sometimes the mystery unravels.’

‘Is that what they teach you at Hendon?’

‘It sure as shit wasn’t needlework classes, Harry. I can tell you that.’

‘So did you learn anything?’

‘Well, either David Webb was lost at sea and the man in our cave was just wearing his watch. Or. .’

‘The men who said he was lost at sea were lying?’

‘Exactly.’

‘So what has that got to do with the murders here this week?’

‘I don’t know. But they happened after David Webb turned up after all these years very much not lost at sea. I went over to speak to the grandson of one of the men in the boat. The only surviving relative: Robert Carter. He’s a dentist here.’

‘Yeah, I know. He’s on the lifeboat crew too.’

‘He was out. I’ve left a message. Long shot, but I don’t know. Maybe his grandfather told him something. Or his father.’

‘What?’

‘I have no idea. But that’s what we do, isn’t it? Ask questions because we don’t know what the answers are. Get enough answers and sometimes things start to make a bit more sense.’