Walking into the Ocean (38 page)

“The body was never found, was it? That's probably why you dreamed it. Another case not closed. And, I might add, another example where Death still haunts us.”

“Australian sheep?” he said.

“No. Cheviot sheep. Harold Holt disappeared on a beach. What was it called?”

Now he remembered. “Cheviot Beach.”

He sat there in astonishment. Even if she had searched the Internet, how had she thought to seek out the death notice of Harold Holt, an almost forgotten Australian prime minister?

Gwen was tracking his thoughts. “Peter, the Great Dream Master, whether his name is Freud or Jung, loves puns. So, chervil becomes cheviot. Lasker turns Willemse to Willemsea.”

“I'm almost afraid to ask, but what about the black figure in my dream?”

“Was he good or evil, benign or hostile?”

“I assumed he was evil, maybe an avenging angel. I thought he was the Rover, and then he might be André Lasker, your Cloaked Man.”

Gwen took her place again on the chesterfield. “He's neither Lasker nor the Rover. He is obviously Father Salvez. Maybe the Annunciation image meant that he was ‘announcing' something to you. He was all in black, like Salvez. His face too?”

“It was black where the face should be. Because he was dead?”

“I'm not so sure. In dream symbology, the white face is the Mother, but a blacked-out face isn't necessarily the Father. It can be Death, but I'm not so sure. My mother's better at this. Black is the void. A human figure all in black is inviting you to fill in the void.”

“Please don't tell me that Salvez was summoning me to find my faith, find my way back to the Church?”

She laughed. “No, this was the dream of a Scotland Yard detective. Probably secular, then. At least your dream is some kind of progress.”

She leapt up from the cushions. “Time to go, if we're going at all. The light fades early these days.”

Peter went to the entrance to the cottage and unpacked his hiking boots. While he was putting them on, Gwen went to her bedroom and retrieved a pair of bright purple Nike trainers. He stared at her outfit.

“What?” she said. “You need to dress for the cliffs. These shoes are perfect. You think we're attending the Celtic Fair?”

Her dream interpretation was still buzzing around his mind. He felt as if he had just left a fortune teller's tent. “Where are we going?”

“Three caves I want you to see. Conceivably, a person could hide out in them for a long time. Bring your gloves if you have any. It'll get cold.”

“Why these three?”

“Don't fairy tales have three of everything? Three hibernating bears, for example.”

“Three witches?”

“No, that's Shakespeare. We're leaving him at home today, along with all those sheep. Banquo's ghost won't help us this time.”

They were outside on the stoop of the cottage, just about to close the door, when Peter's mobile rang. They moved back inside while he answered it.

It was Joan; the reception was good. “Peter, are you there?”

He hadn't expected a call from his wife and was thrown off balance. Mrs. Ransell, her hair a Gordian knot and her face ruddy from sleep, burst out of the bedroom. Even though it was impossible, Peter understood from her look that she had known right off that Joan was on the line. They had met only once, at the funeral, although he had no idea what they had discussed. The old woman came close and made to grab the cell.

“Just a minute, Joan.” He fiddled with the buttons on the side of the device. “Hello? Hello?” He was satisfied that he had succeeded in putting the call on speaker. The three of them, Gwen and Peter baking in their heavy clothes, huddled around the mobile to listen to Joan, her voice tinny coming out of the miniscule speaker.

“Yes, what's wrong?” he said.

“Two things. Well, nothing's wrong at all. But Stan Bracher has been trying to call you.”

“Well, I'm here.”

“He's nearer you than me. I don't know why he can't get through. He's on the south coast.”

“What's he doing here?”

“He wouldn't say. He was very coy. But there's something else. The church.”

Peter had encountered so many churches over the last two weeks that he wasn't sure which one she meant. As usual, she read his thinking process.

“The church today, Peter. Did you notice that big, enclosed display case at the end of the front path?”

“The one with the Bible passage in it?” He was thoroughly confused. He caught Ellen Ransell nodding, as though she understood where Joan was going with this.
What did these women talk about?

“Did you read it?”

“I don't remember it.”

“It was from Luke 21. It said: ‘That ye may be accounted worthy to stand before the Son of man.' Underneath was printed
Luke 21:36
.”

“It was a different quotation when I was there before. Something about kings.”

“Not now. I think it was put there recently, maybe especially for Father Salvez's funeral. You know how a picture in a sealed glass case can wrinkle after a while if it isn't framed properly? Well, this sign was fresh, no water spots.”

“What bothers you about the Bible verse?”

“When I read it — I was talking to Mrs. Ransell at the end of the path . . . ”

He interrupted. “She's right here.”

“Hello, Ellen . . . Well, something stuck in my head, but I didn't figure it out until a moment ago. When we were touring the cathedral in Malta, I read out to you the inscription on the Grand Master's tomb. It said,
‘In mortis starabo ante Filium hominis.
In death I will stand before the Son of man.' How can an obscure biblical reference on a knight's grave suddenly show up at a Catholic church in Whittlesun, Dorset?”

Peter certainly didn't have the answer, but after his dream interpretation session with Gwen, it wasn't a day to reject coincidences out of hand. “That is weird.” He didn't know what to say; he was anxious to get out to the cliffs. Mrs. Ransell tried again to grab the phone. “Joan, Ellen wants to talk to you.”

The old lady roughly took the device. She addressed her words to Joan, although the others could hear.

“Joan, the Bible is best read in Greek, whether or not Matthew, Mark or St. Paul originally composed it in Greek. It's what scholars use when they study the meanings of the fine text. There might be Hebrew and Aramaic scholars who disagree.”

Joan's voice sounded metallic out of the speaker. “But the reference in the display case was in English, not Greek or Latin.”

Mrs. Ransell was not to be rushed. “Greek is the preferred language because it is precise. For example, if you want to be sure whether two people in the Bible are ‘cousins' or ‘brothers,' or ‘uncles' rather than ‘stepfathers,' the Greek is your best source. But Latin is next-best, and that's what your Maltese knights were familiar with.”

“Are you suggesting that I read the passage in Greek?”

Mrs. Ransell heaved a frustrated sigh, though more with Peter than with Joan. “No. I am suggesting that you compare, read the quotations carefully. Pay attention to the similarities but also to the differences. It may in fact be a mere coincidence.”

Mrs. Ransell was drunk, and Peter saw no point in her lecture. He remained confused, and he also sensed Joan's distress. If Mrs. Ransell was delivering a clue, Peter couldn't find the trail. It was time to get back to business, and that meant embarking on their search of the cliffs.

“Peter,” Gwen said, “didn't Father Salvez like word games?”

“Yes. But why the same quote?”

“First of all, it isn't exactly the same — that's what Mum is saying — and it isn't much of a coincidence to find that two religious men, even centuries apart, would anticipate their pending encounter with Jesus, the Son of man. To really know, it would help to verify if Salvez was behind the homily at the church.”

Peter understood that Joan felt isolated as they bickered in the cottage so far away. But the distance gave her perspective on the discussion, and perhaps that was why she identified the next logical question. “You may be right, Gwen. Peter, did you tell Father Salvez about our visit to the Cathedral in Valletta?”

“No. I never talked to him at all after Malta.”

“Well,” Joan said, “if it turns out that the Latin on the Grand Master's tomb matches the Latin Bible verse from Luke, what does that tell us?”

It told them, Peter knew, that, coincidence or not, John Salvez was trying to send him a message.

“Oh, you two!” Mrs. Ransell shouted. “Let me talk to Joan. Go do your walkabout. Come back later, by sunset, Gwen.” She kept the mobile and bustled into the bedroom, slamming the thick oak door behind her.

They had been walking on a shallow downward angle for ten minutes, and Peter was already lost. Guinevere was relentless, steadily leading him towards the setting sun along sharp defiles in the grass-crowned dunes behind her cottage. Over that time, he couldn't make out the sea at all, and she kept them below the horizon, in black shadows, as they moved west. She finally stopped; there was nowhere to go but up.

She turned to him. “Shelter your eyes when we come over the knoll. We'll come out facing west and the sun will be directly at us.”

The vertical path was deceptive, becoming rough limestone as it climbed. The depression they had been following was merely a silt fosse for soil swept by the wind from the top plates of stone. Gwen reached back to help him over the lip of rock. He gained the upper rock plate, stood up and arched his back, and looked out to the east. The vista along the Channel recalled the wake of the Great Armada, fleeing out to the open sea. Looking westward, he made out the shape of Whittlesun and its harbour, and even with the face-on sunset, he thought he glimpsed Whittlesun Abbey. He looked at Gwen and she nodded.

They alternately descended and remounted the heights as they progressed to the first cave, although Peter thought at times that they were no longer moving west by the compass. She moved with full confidence, and he had no choice but to trail behind. She never hesitated when the path diverged. Whenever they succeeded in reaching an open perspective on the Channel, his sightline was inevitably blocked by the salients of rock. She kept them away from the edge; he well knew the risk of suddenly falling into one of the hollowed-out bays along this erratic shore.

Finally, after they had been walking for several minutes on a relatively flat plateau with a clear view of the water, she halted on a massive stone and called out against the crosswind.

“The cave is thirty feet below. First, I'll take us up there” — she pointed to a rock mound ahead — “so that you can orient to the shoreline, get some idea of distance from the town. It'll be stormy.”

They found handholds along the sides of a defile ahead, and in two minutes they emerged on the pinnacle. He poked his head over the fissured rim, found the wind tolerable and hoisted himself onto the topmost rocks. Talking was impossible; they used hand signals and gestures to communicate. The relatively straight line of the shore to the west surprised him, as if erosion had been largely resisted in that sector. Gwen pointed to his pocket and he took out his military binoculars. He followed her pointing finger to several spots along the shore, in both directions. She wanted him to identify promising indentations that might have provided hiding spaces for Lasker.

They descended and began working their way towards the rim of the cliff. They had to crab-walk and crawl against the rising wind off the Channel. The final goat track down to the cave inscribed another narrow maze, but Gwen moved with assurance. She paused twice to check for signs that someone else might have visited recently. They came out onto a sloping hill that ended in the sea some two hundred yards away. Their position gave them an open view of the coast below. From there, with Gwen's guidance, he spied two dark indentations in the rock face opposite.

“Caves,” she said. “We can get to them in twenty minutes.”

The trek took thirty minutes. The path narrowed to a mere trace at times; Gwen knelt down and fingered the gravel, like an Apache tracker. Gorse and sedge grew in clumps and encroached on the track, threatening to obliterate it. Where it widened, she pointed to plants that had taken hold in the rich silt. “Buckthorn, whortleberry, horsetail.”

The first cave was disappointing. Sea winds had etched out a dry grotto in the cliff wall fifty yards above the Channel. Peter nervously held back from the rim of the cave. The hollow extended into darkness and the beam from Peter's torch disappeared into the gloom. It was a good enough hiding place but no one had been here. Not even crisps wrappers or condoms, he noted.

The sky over the Channel had now ashened with the nascent storm and the fading of daylight, lending some urgency to their return to the cottage. After only one discovery, the heart had gone out of their plan. There were too many possibilities, and they had failed to narrow down the search criteria. He had been naive, he saw. Even if André Lasker had holed up in one of the caves the night of his escape, he might not use the same refuge now. He could be anywhere, including a location much farther west, on the other side of Whittlesun.

The claustrophobic effects of the labyrinth of paths wore on them. “Let's go to higher ground,” he pleaded. “I'm disoriented.”

As they climbed to a safer level, and inland a few hundred yards, Peter found a perch on a boulder that gave them a silhouetted angle on the row of cliffs in the distance. He paused for a last look at the grey clouds, with the dun water below. He began to see the meaning of his dream, or at least the part with the flying black figure. (To be fair, Gwen had never presumed to explain all of the dream.) A sea bird — Peter identified it as a skua — migrating along the Channel shortcut swooped past them, fighting a contrary wind as it struggled for a purchase in the rocks. The black figure was Salvez, but
why
had he flown into the dream? She was right, that most of the dream was about André, fed by the urgency in Peter's subconscious to track him down, but there was something else. The figure was equal parts priest, angel and hovering bird. It floated above the scene for a good reason: there was something it had wanted to point out to Peter.

They stood on a broad, lonely plateau strewn with boulders. Even with the wind howling and battering the zone around them, Gwen noticed the change in him. “What is it?”

“The black angel. It's a premonition.”

And then they were no longer alone.

Gwen knew the route back to the cottage and they were soon in sight of the farm roads that demarcated the fields from the cliffs. Their return would be faster once they reached a country lane. Behind them, the weather closed in. Peter turned to catch a last look at the sunset and thought he saw something sticking up above the horizontal plane. Gwen threw him a questioning look. He took the compact binoculars from his pocket, and aimed them towards the sea, adjusting the focus as he scanned the horizon. The dark figure jiggled into view and he steadied the binoculars with both hands. The figure stood sideways, but was gazing out to the Channel. Peter recalled the iconic scene in
Wings of Desire
where the angel stood poised on a rooftop overlooking the city. The man turned, full on. It was Ron Hamm. The face remained in half shadow, but Peter was sure.

After a few seconds, Hamm stretched out his arms from his sides, and turned in place. He raised his face to the heavens, like a Druid, or a Native shaman completing a sacred ceremony. He lowered his arms and resumed his solitary vigil.

Peter handed the binoculars to Gwen, who watched for several minutes. “He's not moving.”

“Can we catch up to him?”

“It's at least a half mile. The fastest way is the road over there, then find a path to the rocks.”

“Where do you think he parked his car?” He remembered the Vauxhall; there were many places the clunker could never reach.

“Possibly the Abbey. But that's six miles or so beyond where he's standing now. Besides, we don't have a car ourselves . . . Wait, he's moving. Look.”

He realigned the binoculars and found Hamm again, but he was edging up the shoreline, out of sight. The grey mist would soon roll in and gobble him up. In an instant he was gone.

“Damn! What's going on here?”

“We could phone him,” Gwen said.

“Your mother has my cell.”

They trudged back along the farm road to the Ransell cottage, light rain in large drops spattering the dust around them. Peter filled Gwen in on Hamm's confrontation with F.R. Symington and its genesis in the young man's reaction to the corpse of Anna Lasker.

“So is he hunting for Lasker?” she said.

“Perhaps, but I wonder. There's no reason he couldn't be looking for the Rover as well.” He was saying that Ron Hamm had freaked out.

“Except that the Rover has never operated this close,” she said.

What he really feared was the possibility that Ron Hamm was looking for both of them. He had grown to like the young man. He wanted Gwen to say something. She hadn't referred to the Rover as the Electric Man yet during this visit, and he would have welcomed her saying it now. They were almost at the cottage. Peter said, “Gwen, do you know who the Rover is?”

“No,” Gwen said, “but it's possible my mother knows.”

Mrs. Ransell was asleep in the bedroom when they entered. Peter's mobile phone sat on the counter beside the Koskenkorva bottle. The fire had subsided to glowing coals. There were a dozen things to be done urgently, yet the spectre of Ron Hamm had undone Peter, and all he could think of was to reach out to the young detective. The number, as he expected, was not being answered, and so he called Constable Willet.

“Surprised to hear from you, Chief Inspector.” He had reached Willet at the Whittlesun station. The reception was clear, although Peter's battery was down to a half.

“Why is that, Constable?”

“I dunno, sir. Maybe because you've been considered out of the loop on the Lasker thing of late. Not me saying, you understand, sir.”

Not you, but Maris. Willet's tone, however, was friendly enough, indicating that he was making an effort to stand apart from the friction between Maris and the Yard. But Peter resolved not to tell the Constable of his presence in Whittlesun.

“Can you bring me up to date?”

“The Lasker home has been released to her family. A bunch of uncles and cousins, I can't tell them apart. As you well know, sir, the house needs a replastering, and more. I've been fielding complaints about that. And there are superstitions among the Romanians.”

“Is there any thought of declaring André Lasker dead?” He knew there wasn't, but he wanted to move the conversation along without offending Willet.

“Dead? No, and there won't be until we find him, in one condition or another. You think he's back in England, sir?”

“Yes. We're optimistic about tracking him down with the passport angle. What do you think, Mr. Willet?” He felt some relief in talking to the constable. He had had enough of the Ransells' strangeness for one night.

“I'd have to agree, from what I'm told, which is little enough.”

“And what does Detective Hamm think?”

Willet paused; he clearly understood where Peter was heading with this. “That was clever police work, his figuring to look at complaints of stolen passports.”

“Have you talked to him today?”

“Not today. Not for five days.”

“What's his status?”

“They're calling it administrative suspension. Pending an investigation of Symington's complaint, that is.”

“What happened?”

Willet cleared his throat. “Kind of lost control with Symington. Told me he had delayed viewing the corpse for a long time, but it was his duty as the main investigator on the case. It affected him.”

“I want to put this carefully, Mr. Willet,” Peter said, “but has he been just as obsessed with the Rover?”

There was a longer pause this time. “Mr. Cammon, I have a theory. It may sound a little grand . . .”

“I want to hear it, Constable.”

“Well, Mr. Hamm changed when you and he found the girl's body that time. Maybe it was coming that close to his own death. But I think it was finding the girl. He's been off the beam since.”

In Peter's recollection, Hamm hadn't seen the bleached and scarred body of Molly Jonas rise, naked, from the sea; he had been unconscious at the time. He was sure now that Hamm had asked to see her at the morgue, probably just after viewing Anna's remains.

“Mr. Cammon,” Willet continued, “you know what my father said to me? He said, our true natures will always come out. Don't tell Ron I said this, but the most important thing in his view of himself is to be considered a professional, a copper's cop. He's always worried he isn't tough enough for the job.”

“He's a good man. A compassionate man.”

“Yes, sir, and this true nature may be what's tripping him up. Hopefully just temporary.”

“I'd like to talk to him.”

“I'm not authorized to release his new mobile number to you, Chief Inspector. He's not using his police number any longer.” There was no point in challenging Willet's interpretation of the rules. There were ways around the problem.

“I understand. Can you reach him and ask him to call me?”

“Yes,” Willet said, knowing there was more to come.

“I have another favour to ask. Do you think Hamm has disappeared?”

“Disappeared? How?”

“Gone off the rails. Done something, or gone somewhere, that puts him at risk.”

“I hope not, Inspector.”

“Could you do me a last favour? Look at his work station? Just the loose stuff on his desk. See if he's jotted down any appointments, anything like that. Or any piece of paper with a question mark on it.”

“Anything unusual.”

“Exactly. And call me tonight on this line. Tonight for sure, you understand?”

“Sure. Inspector?”

“Yes, Constable?”

“Mr. Hamm does have twin girls.”

As Peter hung up, Gwen emerged from her mother's room and shook her head. Mrs. Ransell was down for the count. She crossed to the kitchen and brought him some tea. He sipped it appreciatively; she had guessed, somehow, that he took milk, sugar. He caught her glancing at his arm; blood had seeped through his bandage.

“You could rest the night here, Peter,” she said.

He had already decided not to stay. He carried painkillers but, with or without the pills, he feared that he might dream again. He wasn't a child; awakening in a strange house from a nightmare wouldn't panic him. But he might have a portentous dream, a premonitory hallucination, and, at least for the next twenty-four hours, he needed to come back to his policeman's plodding ways. Gwen would know right away if he dreamed. She would want to interpret his dreams and, while that was one of the key reasons he had come to see her in the first place, a mortal consulted Guinevere in moderation. He also had calls to make, to Joan, Sarah, Bartleben, and, most important, a call-back from Willet. His first dilemma was getting back to town. Tommy would come but it would take two hours, and that was an unreasonable imposition, even for his willing partner. It was entirely black outside now, the wind howling around the cottage. No taxi would hazard the trip on back roads. The Ransells were safe here. A room at the Sunset Arms would his best choice, he reasoned.