The Silent Pool (30 page)

It was rubbish, of course, the boat was just like any other and could sink but in one respect his father had been right: the river brought good things but it demanded a price.

‘Do you want coke in this one, darling, you have had a lot already?’ shouted Elena from the kitchen.

Her accent bore only the slightest trace of Romanian and past experience had taught him that if he ever mentioned that she would get upset and not speak for hours.

The Mayor knew what people would think if they ever found out about Elena. That she was twenty years younger than him and was only attracted to the power, money and status of being the Mayor's mistress.

The truth was somewhat different. Elena Karpinski was a lecturer in Islamic Art at the John Moores University and they had been introduced at a fundraiser for Third World debt relief. This had been six months ago, before the bailout by Bovind, and Elena had smiled when introduced and asked him whether, in fact, shouldn't he be out in China or somewhere seeking donations to save Liverpool from its mountain of debt.

The attraction between them had been palpable, it made him feel young again, and an affair had quickly started. It had become the best thing in the Mayor's life, a refuge from his wife, his children, and most of all, the city with its constant demands and crises.

Her apartment, her bedroom, was his sanctuary. He cast his eye around the room. The mirrored surfaces of her bedroom furniture reflected his haggard looking frame back at him. He looked older than his forty-nine years, a lot older. The city had aged him he decided.

There was a new item on Elena's dressing table, a large porcelain figurine of a black cat, usually exactly the type of thing that Elena hated. The Mayor felt a sting of jealousy and for a moment he felt like a teenager again.

Elena appeared holding his drink. She was dressed only in her bra and kickers, her lean figure exaggerated by her lithe, almost feline movements. The Mayor felt his stomach churn with a familiar longing.

He couldn't help himself. ‘The cat, on the dressing table, it's new?’

Elena looked puzzled and then smiled at him. She picked the figurine up with her free hand.

‘This, this was a present from one of my adoring students, are you jealous?’

The Mayor snorted.

‘I think you are jealous, it's so cute!’

She carefully placed the figurine back in its original position. The Mayor wasn't happy. He considered whether he could get away with accidentally damaging it on his way out, too late now probably, he had drawn her attention to it.

Elena handed him his drink and then moved closer, rubbing her body against his.

‘I will have to see what I can do about making you feel secure, my darling.’

The Mayor closed his eyes and one by one all his thoughts disappeared.

CHAPTER 37

Rachel cursed as once again Erasmus’ phone went straight to voicemail.

Typical. She had been left to do the legwork while Erasmus and that weird friend of his, Pete, went to meet Bovind. It seemed to Rachel that even in unconventional partnerships traditional gender roles had a nasty habit of asserting themselves. She had witnessed the same in the newsroom. While HR, the subs, hell, everybody paid lip service to equality as soon as the tea needed making guess who got asked?

Despite that she couldn't help feeling rather pleased with herself.

Inspiration had hit as she listened to her friend Leanne tell her about the injustice she had just witnessed on a TV talent show. Apparently, it was the very worst thing Leanne had ever seen and she was busy telling Rachel all about it at the same time as she posted her thoughts online.

Rachel had been caught in a conflicting mixture of emotions: gratitude to Leanne, an old school friend for putting her up at such short notice and disbelief that this seemingly vacuous woman obsessed by talent shows had been her best friend at school. What had happened to her to make her become so boring?

As she had had this thought and immediately been gripped by guilt and in an attempt at penance had asked Leanne exactly what she was doing online.

Leanne had been tweeting her comments on the talent show. To Rachel's surprise Leanne was followed by over 500 people, all of whom were apparently interested in Leanne's musings on light entertainment.

‘And look at this!’ said Leanne. ‘I've got a worldwide following.’ She had clicked a link to Google Earth and now there was a spinning globe with blue tags indicating the location of each of her followers.

‘Let's check out Brad, he's cute!’ She clicked on Brad's tag and the screen flipped and showed a bird's-eye view of Brad's suburb in Sacramento. Leanne zoomed in, streets and then houses becoming more defined until the view was right outside Brad's front door.

‘Wicked, huh?’ said Leanne.

‘That is pretty amazing. Listen I've got to do some work for tomorrow,’ said Rachel who could barely contain her excitement as inspiration hit.

‘Yeah sure. By the way Graham rang. Asked when are you coming home?’

But Rachel was already halfway up the stairs excitedly lost in her thoughts.

Rachel fired up her laptop and then lay on the bed. She had the PDF of Tomas’ file that she had obtained from the
Echo
’s crime correspondent who was frankly a dirty old lech prepared to do anything for a pretty young girl who smiled at him. She checked it again. The official version stated that Tomas had been working on the
Everlong
with the boys and then had disappeared into the woods at approximately 2 p.m.

Father Michael's witness statement stated that they had looked for Tomas until 3 a.m. before calling it a night and then resuming at 9 a.m.

A call to the police wasn't made until 5 p.m. the next day. A search was carried out for twenty-four hours but in the absence of any evidence of foul play and given Tomas’ recent history of petty crime and truancy the police had eventually listed it as a Missing Persons case until Frank Burns had unexpectedly confessed to the crime a year later.

Burns had told the police that he had been driving through the woods when Tomas had tried to hitch a ride. He had obliged but then pretended his van had a puncture and asked for Tomas’ help in fixing it, pleading a bad back prevented him from removing the tyre. Tomas had obliged and while kneeling down to inspect the tyre Burns had knocked him unconscious with a tyre iron. He had bound him, tortured him for hours before removing his eyes and then killing him. Burns had disposed of the body in the Irish Sea and it had never been found. With the prevailing currents at that time the theory was that the body would have floated into the shipping lanes and was likely torn apart by the propeller of one of the large container ships that ploughed the route between Liverpool and the States.

But the fact remained that Stephen knew something. He had called Kirk Bovind ‘evil’, and now he had disappeared, and the boys pictured with the
Everlong
were being murdered.

Rachel scrolled to Stephen's witness statement. It was very brief. They had brought the boat to Formby beach for its launch after they had renovated it. Father Michael had borrowed a 4X4 from a member of his congregation and they brought the boat from St Mary's to the beach.

Rachel called up Google Earth on her laptop. She typed in ‘Formby Beach’. Rachel could see clearly two beach tracks that led from the main highway to the beach snaking through the dunes. Assuming they that had come from the city in the south that meant they would have taken the first beach track.

She found the first lane, zoomed in and started to scroll slowly along the beach track. The track ended where it met the beach. On the day this picture was taken, some twelve months previously, the Google cameras had captured a number of vehicles on the beach. The beach was wide and long and the sand firm and vehicles reaching the beach didn't just stop there they drove for miles north and south, tracks spinning off in both directions on the image. She focused in on the lane. It was tarmac and led to a picnic area.

Rachel checked Father Michael's statement again. He described the
Everlong
as laying in a drained saltwater pool. The pool flooded once a month when there was a spring tide. The idea was that they would float the Everlong in the pool when it flooded and then take the boat out to sea. That never happened.

He had told the police that some vandals had started a fire later the same night that destroyed the boat. That didn't sit right with Rachel. She zoomed out, getting a bird's-eye view of the stretch of beach.

There was nothing that looked like a saltwater pool in the image she was looking at. She dragged the image south. After a mile she saw it. A clearing tucked away between two large sand dunes, dark and marked with a lighter ring. She left clicked the mouse and slowly zoomed in. In the long sea grass she could make out parallel lines running towards the pool. It was an overgrown path.

She focused on the pool moving in slowly. She zoomed in closer, nothing. She zoomed out, the details disappeared. She swore aloud, she had been so sure that she was right. Reaching for the file again she knocked her empty coffee cup off her desk. She bent down to pick it up and as she came back up she looked at the screen. And then there it was, visible only from an angle.

There in the middle of the clearing, slightly darker grass outlined the unmistakable dark outline of a boat was the
Everlong
.

The doorbell rang.

From downstairs Rachel heard Leanne get off the sofa and answer the door.

There was some mumbling.

‘Rachel, it's Graham! Can you come down, please!’

Rachel saved the Google Earth image and then quickly sent a copy containing all the Geodata to Erasmus’ phone. She slammed her laptop shut and ran downstairs to be confronted by a tearful Graham holding a bouquet of forecourt flowers.

CHAPTER 38

Hours, and many drinks later, Erasmus and Pete stood outside the pub. Pete lit a roll up and suggested they walk.

Erasmus followed Pete but stayed half a step back. Pete, as he knew he would, led Erasmus towards the Grapes. They turned off the main road and were soon walking along the dark alleyways that twisted and turned, labyrinthine through this part of the city.

Pete was chuckling to himself and he turned to face Erasmus. ‘Do you think that I should get some cosmetic surgery like your friend Bovind? I could do with a nip and a tuck.’

Pete stopped laughing when he saw Erasmus’ face.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Who did you tell about my time in Afghanistan?’

Pete stopped laughing. ‘I don't know what you are on about. You're drunk. Come on, let's go.’

Pete turned to leave but Erasmus stepped forward and grabbed hold of his arm. Pete looked at Erasmus’ head, grinned and then looked at Erasmus. The grin disappeared when he saw the look on Erasmus’ face.

‘You better remove your hand or we have a problem!’

Erasmus left his hand where it was and instead increased the pressure of his hold.

‘You are the only person I ever told about what happened but someone else knows. They left a pig's head in my apartment. Either you have been speaking out of turn or you did it. How much did they pay you?’

Pete smashed Erasmus’ hand to one side with his arm and stepped backwards. Both of them tensed, ready to fight.

‘You are losing the plot! A five-year-old with a PC could access your Army records!’

‘My Army records don't record the incident. I didn't tell the Army, I only told you and my doctor and yet Bovind knows. Did you set the fire?’

Pete shook his head and a look of sadness replaced the anger. ‘You are getting paranoid. I'm going and you can forget about any more help, from now on you are on your own!’

Pete turned and walked away.

Erasmus watched him go and was filled with a sense of loss and despair. Could it be the case that someone could access his medical files? Maybe the psychiatrist he had seen after his discharge had talked? Wasn't it more likely that Pete had just let his secret slip in the drunken manner that Erasmus had told Pete?

‘Fuck it!’ He smashed his fist into a corrugated iron hoarding that covered a doorway to an abandoned terraced house. When he pulled his fist back the skin was hanging from his knuckles.

Erasmus decided to walk back to his apartment as it could help to clear his head. He began to walk and soon he felt warm wrapped in his coat and with the booze flowing through his veins. It was pretty much downhill all the way to the waterfront.

He made his way down Hardman Street, dodging inebriated students weaving from side to side, and then crossed the road to avoid the queue outside the Magnet nightclub that blocked the pavement.

It was a busy night, post-pub and pre-nightclub traffic creating a boozy, druggy jollity. Yet he decided to get off the busy street and take a shortcut through the back alleys of the Georgian terraces that ran like dark capillaries off the main street.

One of these alleys was slightly wider than the rest and it ran past another of Pete's favourite pubs, the Pilgrim, a dark subterranean place reached by descending iron stairs. It was closed now and there were only one or two people ahead of Erasmus at the far end of the alley where it joined onto Upper Parliament Street, which ran down to the docks and Atlantic Way.

Erasmus liked walking this way at night because at the end of the alley was the looming silhouette of the gothic Anglican cathedral lit like some majestic, brooding beast carved from sandstone. The sight of it never failed to rouse a feeling of awe in Erasmus and he was so busy looking at the cathedral that he bumped into a man who was standing by a parked van trying to light a cigarette.

He apologised to the man whose face was hidden by a dark hooded jacket before stepping to one side to let him pass.

The man didn't move, his lighter sent sparks flying as he flicked it back and forth.

Erasmus diagnosed the problem straightaway. ‘You're out of gas,’ he said to the stranger.

The man dropped the lighter on the floor. Strangely, he didn't bend down to pick it up. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ said the man. His voice was deep and mellifluous.