Читать книгу: «The Boat House»

Tuesday 26th February 2002. 4.05 p.m.

The call came late afternoon on her day off, just as the twins were finishing their milk and marmite on toast. She left them with her mother, visiting for the week, and moved into the hall.

‘It’s tonight’s match, see,’ the voice on the end of the line said. ‘Argyle and Exeter. All available uniforms are at Home Park or mopping up the trouble makers in the centre of town. Down to you I’m afraid. You and a lad from D Section.’

D Section she thought, so it must be somewhere on the water. The officer gave her the details. Yes, she said, she’d be there. Twenty minutes. Half an hour max. She hung up and stared at her reflection in the mirror. The woman who stared back was mid to late twenties, red hair, bright eyes full of excitement, casual clothes. Time was if she’d received a call to go into work she’d have had to get changed. Put on a uniform. Not anymore. Not as of five days ago.

Detective Constable Charlotte Savage.

As a rank it was technically no better than that of PC, still …

Becoming a detective was something she’d dreamed of since joining the force. After three years on the beat she’d taken maternity leave and on her return she’d made her mind up. She’d studied, passed the exams and now, as of Monday, she was a detective on the Major Crimes team.

She blinked and pulled herself together. No time to be smug. Back in the living room she checked her mum was OK to look after the girls for a couple of hours and then grabbed her waterproof and left the house.

*

Twenty minutes later she was clumping along a pontoon down at Mountbatten, waterproof zipped up against a steady rain. At the end a large RIB pushed itself gently into the pontoon. Constable Nigel Frey sat at the rear of the boat, the wheel hard over, the motor idling.

‘Hurry up, Charlotte,’ Frey said, passing her a life jacket as she stepped into the RIB. ‘The tide will turn soon and we’ll not have long there. Plus I don’t want to be navigating back in the dark.’

‘Keep your knickers on, Nigel,’ Savage said, smiling. She’d been on the beat with Frey as a young probationer and they’d teased each other mercilessly. She accepted the life jacket and put it on. ‘I can always walk back.’

‘I doubt it. The place is only accessible by boat.’

Savage sat down as Frey moved the boat away from the pontoon. He turned and then headed out into the Sound. A light wind had fluffed up little wavelets, but was doing little to disperse a low mist that hung over the bay.

‘Fifteen minutes I reckon,’ Frey said as he pushed the throttle forward. The RIB rose up onto the plane and began to bounce over the waves. ‘We’ll take the inside route past the Mewstone and then wend our way up the estuary to Cofflete Creek.’

‘And it’s a body, you say?’

‘Yes. Usually a couple of uniforms would go over the fields to check, but—’

‘The match, I know.’

‘Cheer up. This is what it’s all about, isn’t it?’

Savage glanced back as a splash of water came over the bow. The spray caught Frey in the face and he grinned.

Within a few minutes they were at the entrance to the narrow inlet that led to the twin villages of Newton Ferrers and Noss Mayo. Come summer, the place would be packed with visiting yachts, but at the moment many of the moorings were empty. A little way beyond the entrance the estuary divided, the right arm heading between the two villages – one on each bank – while the left arm plunged into a thickly wooded valley, the trees running all the way down to the creekside, where mud and rock lay exposed by the now falling tide. Frey turned the boat left and navigated up through a double row of moorings, the boats straining on their chains as the water ebbed.

‘We’ll not have long there,’ Frey said. ‘Not if we don’t want to be stranded.’

Beyond the moorings a small tributary ran away from the main estuary and Frey turned the boat left up it. Now the little creek wound into the hillside, trees clinging to the steep landscape. They’d passed a house at the entrance to the creek, but now there were no signs of civilisation at all. Frey appeared to read her mind because he nodded at the banks closing in on both sides.

‘1971. Somewhere on the Mekong River Delta. Yes?’

‘Might as well be. You sure we can get there by boat?’

Frey cocked his head and looked at Savage and then swung the RIB to starboard to avoid a clump of flotsam. ‘Be tight, but we’ll get there.’

They followed the creek as its course curled left and then right, more mud exposed as they approached the higher reaches. At one point Savage spotted a trio of little egrets fishing in the shallows. The white birds pecked intermittently at the water where shoals of fry darted back and forth. A little farther on a curlew trilled out an alarm call as it flew low over the water and disappeared into the mist.

The creek narrowed and Frey now had to navigate the RIB along a channel that cut deeply through the mud. Trees loomed high to either side, cutting off the view and hemming them in. The gathering gloom and the mist added to the sense of confinement. It was almost as if they were forging through a narrow gorge. If Savage had heard the sound of approaching rapids she wouldn’t have been surprised. Then she did hear something like water falling and as they rounded another corner she saw a small stream flowing over a weir and into the estuary.

‘There.’ Frey pointed to one side of the weir. ‘Home sweet home.’

Savage turned her head to where an old boathouse stood on the shore. Stone walls climbed down the rocky bank to meet the water and a channel led up to ramshackle wooden doors, their bottom edges suspended in mid air now the tide was falling away. Ivy crawled over one side of the structure, running up past a window and onto the slate roof. At one end of the roof a brick chimney poked up from the stone construction. Smoke curled from the pot and drifted in amongst the trees and the thickening drizzle.

‘Bloody hell,’ Savage said. ‘Somebody lives here?’

‘I thought you knew? A Mr Whiddon found the body. He reported it.’

‘By phone?’ Savage stared at the surroundings. There were no telephone cables leading to the property and she doubted there’d be any mobile coverage.

‘No. He rowed down to Newton Ferrers and told the Harbour Master. He called us.’

‘This place isn’t fit for human habitation.’ Savage turned to Frey. ‘There can’t be more than one room in there.’

‘No, there isn’t. Still, Whiddon’s lived here for as long as anyone can remember. Rumour has it he moved here after his wife ran off and left him. He was heartbroken apparently. Craved the isolation. The property is owned by the local estate, but there’s not much point in kicking him out. Nobody will buy the place. There’s no access apart from a couple of hours either side of high water and you’d never get planning permission to extend it.’

‘Right. And this Mr Whiddon, has he been in trouble with us before?’

‘No, not as far as I know. He’s odd, but then that goes with the territory, doesn’t it? Living on your own up a deserted creek. I grew up round here, sailed on the estuary with my friends, went for picnics up the higher reaches. “Look out for Whiddy Whiddon the Weirdo,” my dad used to joke. “He’ll ram your boat and take you home and cook you up in his big iron pot.” But that’s all it ever was, a joke.’

‘No truth at all? Even today, with all we know about historical abuse?’

‘The man’s a loner,’ Frey said, his tone harsh, censorious. ‘But I never saw anything to make me think there was more to it than that.’

‘So this body …?’

‘Don’t know much more than you, Charlotte. I suspect it’s something brought in on the tide. Now, check the depth at the bow would you?’ Frey turned the RIB and began to nose in up towards the boathouse to where a stone quay jutted out from the structure. ‘Don’t want to risk getting stuck on a rock.’