The Killing Season (6 page)

‘Yes, dear.’ I summoned up a smile from somewhere. That beach on Barbados was looking far more attractive by the minute.

‘And what if it rains?’ She continued.

‘Umbrellas?

Kate didn’t even bother to respond. ‘And your best man . . . have you picked someone yet?’

‘I thought Sally Cartwright.’

‘Think again. Much as I love that detective constable I want a traditional wedding and not some other woman standing beside you at the altar making bookends of us both.’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘And if you call me “dear” one more time I am going to pick up my reflex hammer and brain you with it.’

AN HOUR LATER
and I was sitting back in the caravan, nursing a bruised stomach and a bottle of Fullers Honeydew beer, watching a stable girl walk across the yard to the farmhouse.

Jodhpurs, riding boots, a green waterproof jacket, long blonde hair tied back in a shaggy ponytail. Time was, I would have invited her into the caravan to join me for a drink. I wasn’t even considering it now. Well, not seriously. But a man’s eye is drawn to the female figure as a moth is drawn to a flame, as some poet might have remarked once. I took another sip of my beer and smiled inwardly. I may still shoot the occasional glance but I had no desire to act. I wasn’t lying when I said I loved Kate. Everything had changed with her.

Like I said, I used to hate the taste of real ale. Maybe they served it differently down south but since moving to the North Norfolk Coast I had acquired a taste for it. Maybe my metabolism was changing. Probably some science in it – I would ask Kate but she’d only make me laugh and I was forbidden to do that. Maybe it was just because most people round here drank it, including a many the women. When in Rome drink like a Roman. Kate thought it was part of a psychological shift, a metaphorical putting-down of roots. I reminded her that she had qualifications in medicine and forensics, not in psychology or psychiatry, and she had simply smiled at me in a way she had that made me feel too good about her to be irritated. Who knows, maybe she was right. In the cold winter nights at the farthest outpost of civilisation, with nothing between me and the North Pole except thousands of miles of hostile sea, there was something comforting about sitting in front of a real fire in an old pub, listening to the wind howl and drinking something that had its roots in the first intoxicating beverages made by man.

I looked out of the other window, the one at the far end of the caravan, at a herringbone sky flecked with veins of crimson as the weak sun dipped towards the horizon. Halloween would soon be upon us and then Bonfire Night and looking at that sky I felt the power of forces that shaped the personality of this landscape and its people. A pagan power rooted in flame and ceremony, dating from long, long before the birth of Christ. I took another pull on my Honeydew ale and shook my head, smiling wryly. Saints alive, sure I’d be drinking mead next. I put the bottle down as the door opened and a woman walked in without waiting for an invitation.

She was in her late thirties, maybe mid-forties. I may be a detective, but what with Botox and fillers and who knows what monkey-gland elixirs nowadays I sure as hell wouldn’t like to stake my life on making a completely accurate guess at a woman’s age. Bad manners, too. She had brunette hair, cut short in a Louise Brooks-style bob, and wore a dark charcoal dress suit whose hem came just above her shapely knees. She had great pins. Like I said before, moth to flame and all that, but in my defence I
am
a detective – I am paid to notice these things. She was a good-looking woman and knew it. She wasn’t shy about make-up but it was subtly applied, although her lipstick was a cherry red that accentuated the blueness of her eyes, eyes that were looking at me with a degree of confidence that signalled she was used to getting her own way. I could see a lot of men would be happy to do her bidding. She was a snap-her-fingers-and-see-them-run kind of woman. She exuded sex, confidence, authority. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

Maybe this time she would say ‘I’ve come to see you, Mister Delaney, because I think some men have been following me.’ In a husky whisper just like Marilyn Monroe’s in some 1950s film noir whose title I forget.

‘What the fuck are you playing at, Delaney?’ she said instead, exploding my flights of fancy.

‘Afternoon, Susan,’ I replied giving her the benefit of the full wattage of my smile. ‘How’s your day going?’ The full wattage had no effect on her. Her eyes remained as hard as the bark on a frozen tree.

‘That’s Superintendent Dean to you. And my day was going fine until a certain pain in the arse of an Irishman got in the woodpile.’

‘Something amiss?’ I asked innocently.

‘I just had a man in my police station accusing one of my officers of endangering his life and assaulting his mentally challenged colleague.’

I shrugged. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘That’s a bloody good question, Delaney!’

She didn’t pronounce my name with any particular relish.

‘I am certain that if one of your men acted in a forceful way,’ I said, ‘he was perfectly justified. I know you run a very tidy ship up here, Susan. A very tidy ship.’

‘Don’t get funny, Delaney. Your brogue and your supposed Irish diddly bloody charm might have had the ladies in Paddington Green dropping their knickers, but you fuck around with me and I will come down on you like a ton of proverbial bricks. A veritable shitstorm!’

‘Do you kiss your mother with those lips?’ I asked, pretending to be shocked at her language. ‘And you’re mixing your metaphors there.’

‘Shut it, Delaney. And tell me what the hell you were doing assaulting a couple of law-abiding members of my community? And don’t try bullshitting me. Bill Collier gave me a perfectly good description of you. What makes you think you can get away with flashing a warrant card and pretending to be on the force?’

‘Technically, Susan, I
am
still on the force.’

‘Not my bloody force you’re not! And you’re on sabbatical, last I heard. From the Met. You want to take up policing again, rather than poncing about interfering with matters that don’t concern you, why don’t you sod off back to the big city and do it there?’

‘I only went to have a quiet chat with the man. It was his colleague who started it.’

‘Who started it! What are you? Twelve years old, for God’s sake?’

‘They defrauded an old lady out of a lot of money. They are not law-abiding citizens, they are a pair of shifty, sleazy, cowboy conmen.’

‘Then that is a civil matter. It is
not
a police matter and certainly not one where you can go round flashing a warrant card pretending to be part of my team.’

‘I never said I was part of your team.’

‘You implied it and that is as good in my eyes. Do it again I will have you in the nick so fast your head will spin. I don’t care if you’re a Met officer taking a gap year or not. This is my patch. Trust me,’ she said, with a cold smile. ‘Don’t be looking for any preferential treatment from me.’

I flashed her a smile of my own. ‘You come all the way out here in person to tell me this, superintendent?’

‘Don’t flatter yourself. I have a meeting scheduled with the vicar up the road on parish-council business. Just consider yourself told.’

She turned on her high heels and opened the door.

‘Yes, ma’am!’ I said with military crispness.

She turned back to glare at me but settled for slamming the door behind her as a parting comment.

I picked up my bottle of beer and finished what was left. ‘Still got it, Cowboy,’ I said to myself. ‘Still got it.’

I looked around the trailer and then at the telephone on the desk. I thought about recording a new message saying, ‘This is Jack Delaney. At the tone leave your name and message. I’ll get back to you.’

Instead, I looked at my watch, then out at the sky that was dark now. I placed my empty beer bottle into the waste-paper basket by my desk as a crack of lightning rang out like a rifle shot. A few seconds later and an angry rumble of thunder swept in from the coast, and a few seconds after that the heavens opened up and the rain hammering on the metal roof of the caravan became almost deafening once again. I shrugged into my overcoat, pulled on a baseball cap and braved the weather. I had to be brave, after all – it was in my job description.

NIGHT-TIME IN THE
city.

Warm hazy air. Smells of petrol and industrial output mingling with the aromatic smoke of barbecues wafting from back gardens here and there. Yellow light pooling on the ground from sulphurous street lamps. Neon signs flashing. The distant wail of a police siren and an ambulance siren in cacophonous disharmony. Cars flashing past in both directions. Another city that rarely sleeps. Cigarette smoke drifting out of the open car window. Minutes later I pulled the car hard left and parked. Switching off the engine but keeping the radio on.

I stood for a while, my eyes half-closed. The Cowboy Junkies were playing ‘Blue Moon’ now. Soulful. The hot night like a moist, warm blanket. Airless. I could feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead.

I holstered the petrol-pump nozzle back in its cradle and turned round to see Eddie Bonner standing there. He had a smart suit on, his shirt was buttoned up and neatly ironed, and he was wearing a silk tie in dark colours. But he looked haunted. His troubled brown eyes flicked nervously as he watched me, then they steadied with purpose. A cold purpose, as if he had come to a decision. He held a shotgun in his right hand. He lifted it up and held the barrel with his left hand as he pointed it at me. I felt the beads of sweat trickle down from my forehead onto the bridge of my nose and into my eyes. I blinked to keep the moisture away.

I held a hand up in a placating gesture. But the younger man shook his head, almost apologetically.

‘Whatever it is, Eddie, we can work it out.’

‘It’s too late for that, Jack. Far too late.’

‘It’s never too late.’

‘We’re all born with a use-by date, sir. It’s part of the deal.’

‘You don’t have to call me “sir”. We’re friends, aren’t we, Eddie?’

‘We were never friends. But I guess you never did understand that, did you? You being the hotshot detective and all, I would have thought you would have worked that out long ago. Maybe your gut instincts aren’t all they are cracked up to be.’

‘And maybe they are. You don’t want this, Eddie. I can see it in your eyes.’

‘Like I say, Jack, it’s too late. Far too late for any of us.’

I held my hand forward again. ‘I don’t understand this.’

‘It’s all about checks and balances. You crossed a line, Cowboy. You messed up big time and somebody has to pay. You think running away from London changes any of that? At the end of the day someone has to pay. Someone always does.’

‘I did what I had to do.’

Bonner raised the shotgun and levelled it at my stomach. ‘You better say your goodbyes.’

Before I could reply he had pulled the trigger. The blast was like a burning iron fist in my gut. I cried out in pain, spun round and dropped to my knees. The shot had passed straight through me. My wife, with an extremely swollen pregnant belly, was standing holding her hands to her shattered stomach. Blood was running through her fingers in rivulets. She had taken the full force of both barrels. She too fell to her knees and smiled sadly at me. Her eyes were peaceful and she seemed to be in no pain, but large tears welled after a second.

‘It’s all right, Jack,’ she said. ‘Take care of Siobhan for me.’ And then her eyes closed and the alarm rang out, blanking out the sounds of my screams. So that all I could hear was the roar of blood in my ears and the knelling of bells.

I started awake, my eyes wet with tears.

My hand fumbled in the dark for the mobile phone on the cabinet beside the bed. Kate switched on her bedside lamp as I picked up the phone and then dropped it again. My hands were shaking so much.

‘What is it, Jack?’ she asked.

‘I’ll be OK. Let me get this.’ I pushed the button on the phone. ‘Delaney. This had better be good!’ I said.

‘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.’