BLIND SPOT - AND TWO OTHERS

BLIND SPOT PART 2

5

  Close up, Cobra Mist is an architectural monstrosity, a guaranteed blot on any landscape. Grim, grey, and gaunt, we approached it from the only access on the spit. This dissected a dun brown expanse of shingle, its immense flat carpet broken here and there by the humped shapes of derelict MOD buildings slowly crumbling under the eternal scratching of wind and weather.

  We travelled nearly five miles from the military landing craft’s jetty. DI Silver stopped his car just short at the lowered boom and wound down the window as the armed-guard approached. He had a machine pistol slung over his shoulder and he wasn’t pointing it at the ground either.

  He checked the Detective Inspector’s ID and gave a signal to a man we could not see. The boom rose and the car moved on before halting in front of a set of heavy steel crash-gates. We left the car, passed through a steel side door, and made our way into a one-storey block marked ‘RECEPTION.’

  Waiting for us was my fiancé, Kimberley Ashlyn Gere. She was wearing a dark blue jacket, skirt, and high-heeled shoes. She was a natural brunette and the silken hair rested easily on her shoulders. We kept it all official by shaking hands but with me, she had a hint of sadness at the death of her colleague in her eyes and her hand remained in mine that little longer.

  “Would you like to follow me?” She said, and we all filed through a door behind the reception desk and turned down a long corridor to our left. Human Resources was right at the far end of the corridor, at least two hundred metres away, but that was the way we had to go, there was only one entrance to the entire block. On the way we had to pass through half a dozen doors, some opened automatically, others by handles fifteen inches long. Elbow handles. Considering the nature of the research that some of the Cobra Mist scientists were working on at any one time, it was a good idea to have both hands free all the time.

  The room that housed the HR department was a contradiction to the rest of the complex. It was awash with light and years after the case was closed I would still remember my first sight of the head of HR, Jodi West. She was wearing a dark blue and black skater dress and her beauty was more than simple perfection of face and form; it had the remote perfection of a distant star. It struck the heart, and she came towards us, her exquisite lips parted in a smile.

  “I was telling DI Silver and Mr Handful,” Kimberley said during the introduction. “That I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Miss West felt obliged to argue as we all sat down opposite her desk. “It is a personnel minefield sometimes having to deal with all the staff that work here.”

  “How many is it again?” I asked, directing my question towards Kimberley, but it was Miss West that answered.

  “Over one hundred people.” She kept twitching in her seat, as though stillness was a crime.

  “Do you know them all personally?” DI Silver pressed.

  “Of course not,” she admitted smiling, “but I make a point to know all their names and their birthdays. Bio-Preparations pride themselves in their staff engagement programme.”

  “What can you tell me about Simon Nunn?” I asked.

  Jodi West looked at Kimberley for reassurance who nodded her encouragement.

  “Well.” She clapped her hands together, straightened her back, gave a little wriggle, and took a deep breath. “He was a bit of a loner. Kept himself to himself. Never had a day off.”

  “Next of kin?”

  “Both parent’s dead, I’m afraid.” She replied.

  DI Silver took out a pad and started writing down some notes.

  “Was he gay?”

  Jodi took another deep breath. “Just because he lived on his own, doesn’t mean that he was gay, Mr Handful.”

  “Of course not,” I offered with a smile.

  “In fact, Simon Nunn was a very charming man.” I tried to catch DI Silver’s eye, but he wouldn’t let me. “It’s a terrible business, surely it’s not true that the police suspect foul play?”

  “We’re just making a few inquiries at this stage,” DI Silver reassured her.

  “I just can’t believe anyone would wish to harm him,” Jodi continued, “He was the kindest soul alive.”

  “What was your relationship with him?” I pressed, noticing DI Silver sneaking a glance at me.

  “We dated a few times,” she admitted. “But nothing came of it. We remained friends.”

  “When was the last time you saw him on a social basis?” I persisted.

  “I actually saw him on the night before he died,” Jodi said honestly, her voice quite untainted by the slightly salacious excitement that usually accompanied that sort of remark.

  “Where was this?”

  “At the cottage. I don’t remember the exact time. I had borrowed The Killings at Badger’s Drift by Caroline Graham off him.”

  “And that couldn’t have waited until the next day at work?” DI Silver asked, glancing discreetly at me.

  “No,” she said. “I had a glass of red wine and left after about an hour.”

  “And that was the last time you saw him?”

  Jodi West nodded.

  I leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Was it unrequited love on anyone’s part?”

  She gave a little wriggle of her shoulders, which I interpreted as a shrug. “What are you implying?”

  “Nothing.” I said, throwing an exasperated look towards DI Silver.

  “Is there any reason Mr Nunn would have committed suicide, Miss West?” The Detective Inspector asked quietly.

  “Not because of me,” she stressed. “We went out for a meal and went to the theatre in Bury St Edmunds once. That was it. End of story.”

  “Is there anyone who can confirm your movements, Miss West?”

  “I didn’t realize that I needed to obtain myself an alibi.” She replied staring angrily at the Detective Inspector.

  “It’s all right, Jodi,” Kimberley reassured. “They have to ask these things.”

  But she remained unmollified and continued to glare at the two of us as we continued our questioning. I thought this made her look more beautiful than ever.

  “Did his glaucoma affect his work?” I asked.

  “Not really,” she answered.

  “What do you mean? Not really?”

  “We made allowances,” she replied. “As I said earlier, Bio-Preparations prides itself in colleague engagement and the welfare of its staff.”

  “I’m certain that goes without saying, Miss West.”

  She stood up to indicate our time was up.

  “Now, if you don’t mind,” she said, “I am extremely busy.”

  I looked at Kimberley for guidance and I could tell by the look in her eyes that the meeting was over.

6

  DI Silver and I parted on the quay. After collecting my car, I drove south through the gloom of gathering storm clouds, wind and rain sweeping in from the North Sea. The wipers on my car could barely handle the rain that blew across the windscreen obscuring the road ahead. Sheep huddled in silent groups at the roadside, picking desultorily at the thin patches of grass that somehow survived among the rocks on this coastal route.

  And then, suddenly, a line of golden light somehow far below dimpled the underside of the purple-black clouds that surrounded them. A tattered demarcation between one weather front and another. The grim gathering of cloud fell away as the road descended south to the tiny clutch of cottages huddled around the Oxmarket Marshes.

  Simon Nunn’s cottage was one in a line of three that sat on the edge. One was occupied by the warden of the bird sanctuary that occupied the Headland, and the other by weekenders who came down in the summer. The access road was frequently flooded in spring and autumn and often impassable by midwinter.

  The Scene of Crime unit weren’t exactly thrilled by my unannounced arrival. Prints of my shoes were taken, for purposes of elimination, along with hair samples.

  “Go easy,” I warned. “I can’t afford to be generous.”

  The SOCO apologized. “Got to get the root, Mr Handful. Otherwise, we can’t get the DNA.” On the fifth try with tweezers, he was successful. One of his colleagues had almost finished videoing the interior. Another was still taking photographs and yet another was in conversation with WPC Melanie Softly about how much clothing they should remove to the lab.

  “Just the most recent,” she told him.

  “Polo shirts seems to have a company logo on it,” the SOCO commented.

  “Bio-Preparations?” I asked with a smile.

  “Yes.”

  “That makes your job easier,” I said.

  The SOCO stiffened his shoulders. “My job is collection. The rest is down to the Suffolk Constabulary and you.”

  “Thanks,” I exclaimed. I didn’t know him, but I knew the type: late forties, half a lifetime’s experience.

  “My pleasure,” the SOCO countered, starting to turn away to continue with his work.

  “May I have a look round?” I pressed.

  “Keep to the outside of the cottage,” he told me firmly, before adding: “And no traces, please.”

  I made my way round the cottage to one of the windows of the sitting room and looked in. Sanded wooden floor, comfortable faded sofa, large flat-screen TV, books, covering every available subject. Cookery books, books on Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, books on Golf but also murder mysteries, travel guides and wine making. Simon Nunn was nothing if not eclectic in his tastes.

  I shifted round to the next window which looked in on the kitchen. It barely had room for a fridge and a cooker and there was a thriller, The Accident Man by Tom Cain, open on the table situated by the window. Beyond the rear garden with its windblown grass and broken blue fence there was nothingness. Just miles and miles of marshland, spotted with stunted gorse bushes and criss-crossed with small, treacherous streams.

  I had walked around this area many times before with Kimberley and her Cocker Spaniel, Charlie and sometimes, at this time of year, we had seen great flocks of wild geese wheeling across the sky, their feathers turning pink in the rays of the rising sun. But today, on this grey afternoon, there was not a living creature as far as the eye could see. Everything was pale and washed out, grey-green merging to grey white as the marsh met the sky. Far off was the coastal path and then the sea, a line of darker grey, seagulls riding in on the waves. It was utterly desolate, and I had absolutely no idea why anyone would want to live here let alone someone with impaired vision.

  I went around the outside of the cottage looking in all on the ground-floor windows. As far as I could see, nothing seemed improper, except, of course, everything in this cottage would now be improper and different. The discovery of the owner’s body on the beach earlier that morning would see to that.

  I stopped by WPC Softly standing guard at the front door and thanked her for her help and drove off back over the cattle grid and renegotiated the twisting road back towards Oxmarket, watching clouds like brushstrokes leaving darker streaks against the palest of grey skies.

  I took a left on the road that ran down to the old Oxmarket harbour, where a steep concrete slipway below the winch house led to a tiny quay.

  I pulled onto the side of the road, as the flat-bottomed ferry emerged distantly out of the horizon, gliding across the mirrored surface of the harbour.

7

  The warning sirens, silenced the thud, thud of the engines as the disembarkation ramp began lowering onto the concrete. A handful of foot passengers emerged from its belly and among them was Kimberley Ashlyn Gere.

  She flung herself into my arms and when I suggested that we walked along the beach, she smiled at me, a smile touched with sadness, her eyes brimming with tears.

  I sensed that she felt the need to be in the open, to be walking along the wide expanse of beach, under the low grey sky. The air was filled with the whispering sound of the sea. It sighed, as if relieved by the removal of its obligation to maintain its angry demeanour. The beach stretched ahead for miles, glittering with secret inlets, the occasional piece of driftwood black against the horizon. It looked vast and completely featureless, and we walked close enough to feel each other’s warmth, leaving tracks in virgin sand.

  Last night’s wind had blown the sand into odd shapes and ridges. Nearer the sea it was flatter, striped with empty oyster shells and dead crabs. Little streams ran across the sand to join the sea and occasionally, there were larger expanses of water, reflecting the grey of the sky.

  We were almost at the end of the beach by now, and I put my hand lightly on her shoulder to turn her back the way we had come. Already the sea was washing up over our footprints, erasing any history of our ever having passed this way. I left my arm around her shoulder and felt her lean in to me as I steered her a little further up the beach, away from the water.

  We walked in silence for almost half of its length until we stopped, as if by some mutual unspoken consent and I turned her towards me and I put a finger under her chin. At first, she wouldn’t meet my eye.

  “Shall we talk?” I asked gently.

  She slumped down into the sand, sitting cross-legged, her face falling forward into open hands. At first, I thought she was crying again, but when she took her face out of her hands it was dry. Shock had blunted all other emotions. I sat down beside her. She gazed out over the transient benevolence of the sea and said, “It’s strange. Simon used to use the coastal path every morning.” She shook her head as if trying to shake a recollection back into her conscience. “I never thought about if before, but it must have been quite a task, walking near the cliffs when you’re visually impaired.” She turned to look at me, eyes wide with disillusion. “He never used a stick or a dog to guide him.” I put an arm around her, and she rested her head on my shoulder.

  We sat like that for a long time, listening to the slow, steady pulse of the ocean, until I could feel her trembling with the cold. But she made no attempt to move. “I only spoke to him last night. He was telling me how much he was looking forward to his holiday.”

  “Where was he going?”

  “On a walking holiday in Austria with a local coach company.” She turned to look at me, her eyes clouded and said, “I didn’t once stop to think how difficult that would have been for him and how he would never let his disability stop him from living life.”

  “The coastal path is very treacherous,” I said, reaching out a hand to brush stray hairs from her eyes. “He took a huge risk every day he took his morning constitutional.”

  “He was so clever how he overcame that,” she looked at me with pain etched in every line of her face. “He used the sound of a buoy to gauge his distance from the edge.” She closed her eyes, trying to recall exactly. Then opened them wide at the sound of a bell ringing distantly. “What time is it?”

  I didn’t answer but there must have been light in my eyes because Kimberley frowned, canting her head, staring at me. “What is it?”

  I stood up and offered Kimberley my hand. She pulled herself up to stand beside me. “I think I need to go to church.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m following the ABC of investigation,” I told her.

  “Which is?”

  “Assume nothing. Believe no one. Check everything.”

8

  The road wound down the hill through a strung-out collection of disparate dwellings that made up the outskirts of Oxmarket. Whitewashed houses with irregular fence posts and narrow gardens ran down the slope towards the cliffs where some were cultivated to raise basic crops, grains, and root vegetables. The discarded technology of distant decades, rusted tractors, and broken harvesters littered overgrown plots, the rotting symbols of a once hoped-for prosperity.

  Beyond the curve of the hill, I could see the dark roof of the Oxmarket Church dominating both the skyline and the people over whose lives its shadow fell. In the garden of the rectory someone had hung out washing, where white sheets flapped furiously in the wind like demented semaphore flags urging praise and fear of God in equal measures.

  We turned off the road and up the narrow asphalt track and over the cattle grid to the sprawling car park in front of the church. It was a bleak, uncompromising building. No carved stonework or religious friezes, no stained-glass windows, only a bell in the bell tower. This was God without distraction. A God who regarded entertainment as sin, art as religious effigy. There was no organ or piano inside, only the plaintive chanting of the faithful and the ringing of the bell rang round its rafters on the Sabbath.

  We heard hammering as soon as we entered the vestibule, but it wasn’t until we walked into the church itself that we found its source. Reverend Cecil Harkett was at the top of the ladder up on the balcony, perched precariously among the rafters, nailing replacement planking along the east elevation of the roof. He wore blue workman’s overalls. His hair was greyer and thinning more rapidly since I had last seen him. He was so concentrated on the job in hand that he didn’t notice us standing among the pews watching him from below.

  There was a pause in the hammering as Reverend Harkett searched for more nails. “It seems you spend more time working as an odd-job man in this church than you do preaching the word of God,” I called up to him.

  Reverend Harkett was so startled that he almost fell off his ladder and had to steady himself with a hand on the nearest rafter. He looked down, but it was a moment before recognition came. “God’s work takes many forms, Mr Handful,” he said when he finally recognized me.

  “I’ve heard it said that God makes work for idle hands, Reverend Harkett. Perhaps he blew that hole in your roof to keep you out of mischief.”

  Reverend Harkett couldn’t resist a smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite as cynical as you, Mr Handful.”

  “Thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  Reverend Harkett gazed down on us with clear appraisal in his eyes. “I assume that the fact you’re accompanied by your lovely fiancée, this is a personal visit and not a professional one.”

  “It’s a bit of both, I suppose.”

  Reverend Harkett frowned but didn’t ask. He hung his hammer from a loop on his belt and started carefully to come down the ladder. By the time he had descended into the church I noticed that he was a little breathless when he shook our outstretched hands. “What can I do for you?”

  “Is there something wrong with your church bell?” I could see the surprise in his face. Whatever he might have been expecting it wasn’t that.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Your church bell is as accurate as Greenwich Mean Time,” I told him. “Until recently.”

  Reverend Harkett looked at me for several long seconds. “I know.”

  “What?”

  “I know,” he repeated. “It’s not working.”

  “But we’ve heard it ring,” Kimberley interjected.

  “Let me show you,” and he headed off up the aisle to the far end of the church and opened the door into the vestry. We followed him and watched as he unlocked and opened a drawer in the desk there. He took out a folded piece of paper and waved it at me. “The repair bill for the bell.”

  I took it from him, looked at the estimate and quickly realized that a great deal of fundraising would be needed to meet the cost of the repair bill.

  Reverend Harkett’s eyes creased in bewilderment. “What’s this about, Mr Handful?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s about nothing, Reverend. A silly idea. Forget I ever asked.”

  Reverend Harkett slipped the estimate back into the drawer and locked it. He turned to face me again. “Would you like to come to the rectory and have a cup of tea?”

  “Mary would love to see you both.”

  I severely doubted that, but we agreed and followed the Reverend to Cove Cottage to find his widowed sister in her untidy kitchen chopping up fish. Berlioz, their cat, sat on top of the fridge watching the knife rise and fall, his punch-ball face suffused with satisfaction.

  “He won’t eat tins,” Mary Deeves said, reasonably enough. Then, “I understand Simon Nunn has died.”

  I could not conceal a look of surprise. I had been brought up in North London and never really understood how efficient a small coastal Suffolk town’s grapevine worked and was impressed at the speed with which this item of news had been disseminated.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “That’s awful,” she turned pale, resting her knife on the board. “He was a nice lad.”

  I had forgotten she had recently retired from Cobra Mist and I had forced her retirement when I had found her guilty of stealing a revolutionary new cancer drug. She had misguidedly taken the drug to give to her terminally ill mother. It had been a fool’s errand. Her mother had died, and she had lost her job. What made matters worse was that Kimberley had been her boss. Berlioz made a protesting murmur, and she started chopping again.

  “I offered Mr Handful and Miss Gere a cup of tea, Mary.”

  She banged the plate down on the floor and opened a carton of cream. She poured some into a stone dish and set that down as well. “This cat’s arteries must be well and truly furred up by now. Fur inside and out. Ha!” She gave Berlioz an affectionate nudge with her boot. “But he does love it so.”

  “Did you hear what I said, Mary?”

  “Of course, I did, Cecil.” She said stitching the biggest false smile on her face that I ever saw. “Take our guests into the sitting room, while I make the tea.”

  A grandfather clock ticked cumbrously in the corner. There was a small inglenook fireplace and beams decorated with brasses, a chintz-covered three-piece suite, a Queen Anne table and two diamond-paned cabinets full of plates and figurines. One wall was solidly packed with books.

  The interior of the rectory was so precisely what the exterior led one to expect: that I had stepped on to a perfect period stage set. Surely, any minute now a maid would enter, pick up the heavy black telephone and say, “I’m afraid the Reverend and his sister are not at home.”

  “Please take a seat.” The Reverend told us. “I won’t be a moment.”

  As soon as he was out of the room, I got up very slowly and walked over to the cabinets to take a closer look. Some plates were exceptionally beautiful, gleaming with the touch of gold.

  “This is awkward,” Kimberley commented.

  “Mmm,” I said. Between the cabinets a little piecrust table held the telephone and a stack of books. The Complete Gardener, the Art of Crafts and That Damned United. Open on top of the pile next to a pair of reading glasses was a limited-edition copy of Pride and Prejudice.

  “Here we are?” Mary Deeves came into the room wheeling an overwrought trolley carrying four china cups, a large matching tea pot a sugar bowl and spoon and a plate overloaded with tiny sandwiches (in the shapes of playing card symbols) and rich creamy cakes. She filled two plates and handed them over to us.

  The Reverend poured the tea and popped a silver spoon on the saucer and handed it, with the cup, to Kimberley. He repeated the process and handed the next cup to his sister and then the third cup to me. I took it and leaned back into the sofa.

  The Reverend dealt with an anchovy club, a salmon-spread spade, a potted-meat diamond, and a marmite heart on to a plate and adding a meringue erupting with cream sauntered over to Kimberley. He put everything on an occasional table, brought over the tea then swayed back to his sister. They beamed at each other before eventually sitting in the two vacant armchairs.

  “I suppose I’ll be required to carry out the funeral soon?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. There will be an inquest,” I paused, “then a formal identification, that is necessary after a post-mortem and then the coroner will issue a certificate and Simon Nunn can be buried.”

  “Of course,” the Reverend acknowledged, clearing his throat.

  “Have either of you seen Simon Nunn, recently?” I asked.

  “We saw him at least once, maybe twice a week.” The Reverend responded sharply.

  “Where and when was that?”

  “On the coastal path.” He replied.    “We’ve been advised by Doctor Madsen to do at least half an hour of brisk walking every day. Sometimes we go in the morning and sometimes in the evening. Normally, depending on the weather.”

  “We would try and get coastal side of the path to allow him to pass.” Mary interjected.

  “Why was that?”

  “Because of his poor eyesight,” Mary Deeves lifted an eyebrow like a crayoned new moon.

  “Of course.”

  “But he always insisted on keeping on the coastal side,” the Reverend’s voice thickened with chagrin.

  “And why was that do you think?”

  “He didn’t like anyone sympathizing with his plight,” Kimberley said suddenly.

  “Fair enough,” I conceded and then asked. “Did you see him this morning?”

  “No,” the Reverend replied. “It was too foggy this morning. Walking the coastal path would have been too dangerous for us.”

  “I see.”

  Reverend Harkett simpered into his vanilla slice. A fringe of cream graced his upper lip as he asked suddenly, “Have you two set a date yet?”

  Kimberley smiled, uncomfortably. “No, not yet.”

  “Probably next, September,” I interpolated quickly.

Kimberley turned sharply and looked at me but said nothing. I had pleasantly surprised her.