Bad Sons (Booker & Cash Book 1) (24 page)

The site provided extensive and comprehensive historical, technical and logistical details, as well as everything else one could possibly want to know about this thread of Operation Overlord. The researcher had also gone to the trouble of finding and including a few photographs that captured the period and something of the work involved.

Given the secrecy surrounding the project at the time, I would guess the photographs were not War Office commissioned or sanctioned. They looked amateurish and casually framed, like something one of those involved at the sharp end might have been moved to record for posterity with the box Brownie he got for Christmas. And now they had helpfully resurfaced here.

Naturally, I was most interested in the Dungeness shots. There were four. The first was of a large diameter supply pipe sticking out of a shingle bank, shirtless men in knee-length khaki shorts leaning on shovels and grinning on a splendid summer’s day. I thought of
‘Ice Cold in Alex’
. Dungeness is a kind of desert. The second picture was of a big Mather and Platt pump in situ. The third showed a group of men lined up and smiling outside a building, looking like the cast of
‘It Aint Half Hot Mum’
. The fourth provided a very clear image of three identical seaside bungalows built in the style of the time that had been used to house the operation and pumps. Some clever residential camouflage to confuse the Luftwaffe.

It was a long time, a very long time, since I had last been to Dungeness. I had only a scant recollection of the geography. Thankfully, scant was all that was needed. It wasn’t exactly a diverse landscape. One huge peninsula of shingle. If Dungeness were a dish it would be a bowl of porridge.

The small and unique community that traditionally inhabited this inhospitable backwater was connected to civilisation by a road that ran along the coast getting bleaker and bleaker until it got fed up with the view and elbowed at Dungeness to head for Lydd – the town that time forgot. 

Oddly, to my mind, Dungeness was today renowned and somewhere to be seen – for about thirty minutes until the boredom set in. Long enough to pose for a photograph in front of one of the landmarks that had raised its profile: the charmingly-appointed battleship grey and rather Soviet looking nuclear power station; the lighthouses – the old one and the new one – and the little wooden dwelling that probably wouldn’t have cost as much to build as it cost to hang one of the gates that now sealed the approach road to the nuclear facility but was more famous than anything else out there.

Twenty years ago you couldn’t have given away one of the little wooden shacks that people born and interbred there called home. Then a bloke called Derek Jarman purchased one.

Jarman was fairly well known in the arty-farty world of film. However, it’s probably fair to say he is most notably and generally remembered for dying of AIDs – known at the time as the gay plague – certainly by the indigenous population of Dungeness, at least. It seems equally fair to suggest that none of the locals would have ever been to the kind of cinema that showed his films.

In the autumn of his life, Jarman moved out to, and made his home in, Dungeness – a sure sign that something was eating his brain. He got hold of one of those fisherman’s shacks and transformed it into a different kind of shack – a more upmarket shack. Some new windows, an artistic clash of black and yellow paintwork and some creatively arranged driftwood in the ‘garden’. From a certain distance it resembled a giant bee that’d lost its way to crash land into the shingle and die. It was still a Dungeness shack. You could’ve taken that shack out of Dungeness but you couldn’t have taken Dungeness out of that shack.

People being people, as a result of Jarman’s interest, Dungeness real estate values skyrocketed. Ancient abandoned sheds that looked like prototypes of B&Q’s early flat-pack range and surrounded by twenty square feet of stones hemmed in with old fishermen’s netting started fetching healthy five-figure sums. Before you could say
a fool and his money are soon parted
the headland was teeming with bohemians with more money than sense in search of something that didn’t exist and the ex-locals were laughing all the way to the ex-council estate in Lydd for a foot on the bottom rung of the bricks-and-mortar property ladder. I understand a goodly number didn’t survive their first winter – the bohemians that is, not the displaced Dungenessites. Like escapees from Siberian Gulags, they were never going back alive.

But I had to admit: in small doses I liked it out there. It could be stark, bleak, harsh, tough, samey, depressing, but the juxtaposition of the nuclear power station and the surrounding shanty buildings of the generations of fishermen’s families that it dwarfed lent the landscape a surreal quality.

Owing to the rapid and deep shelving of the shingle under the water the huge sea vessels that had to round the point on their way somewhere exotic would often get close enough to give a landlubber a truer idea of just how enormous they could be. And when a heavy sea mist rolled in to blanket it all you could almost understand why a man with a cinematic eye might have been fooled. Think contemporary interpretation of
The Emperor’s New Clothes
.

For one reason and another, other than the tarting-up of some of the dwellings, Dungeness had remained unchanged for decades. Forgotten structures weren’t so much demolished as disintegrated with time and neglect.

The three bungalows in the photograph looked stout and sturdy fifty years ago. With the British government footing the bill for construction of an important wartime installation, I doubted they’d have been jerry-built. I wondered if they’d still be around today and if they were what sort of secrets they kept.

I could think of three ways to find that out but none as quick as getting in the car and going for a look. Dungeness wasn’t exactly built up. And with fewer roads than main arteries in the average body, if the buildings had survived they shouldn’t be hard to find.

I printed off a copy of the black and white photograph, got a few things together and left.

I was well on my way before I sincerely began to question why I was driving out to the back of beyond. My answer wasn’t hard to admit: distraction, a change of scene, some fresh air and the very slight chance I might learn something about PLUTO.

At New Romney I turned left down what was known locally as The Avenue, although in all my life I’d never seen a sign to that effect. It took me past the secondary school that I, along with all the other dimwits of the Marsh who hadn’t passed the eleven plus exam to get into the local grammar school in Folkestone, ended up having to go to. It was unrecognisable as the institution of learning associated with my youth. The mobile classrooms where I’d failed to grasp anything of the sciences; the converted stable block in which I’d been unable to master either French or German; the sports field where we’d been encouraged to chase a football about like sheep without the first idea of a tactical thought; the playground I’d been bullied in; the canteen I’d got food poisoning from and the shed that my bike had been stolen from were all gone. Halcyon days. Bulldozed and replaced with contemporary architecture, facilities and opportunities that – based on my impression of contemporary youth – were as likely to be wasted today as what had existed before had been on us. Just history repeating itself.

The road abruptly bumped into the coast about a mile down. The unimaginatively named sub-districts  of Littlestone and Greatstone flashed by, thankfully, with little to commend them other than the memory of the pub on the front that used to be a haven for under-age drinkers on a Wednesday night. Many a stomachful of weak lager I’d heaved up over the shingle in the car park carved out of the beach at the rear.

The coast road did little to improve my mood; dull and depressing, lined with dated and mismatched holiday bungalows interspersed with patches of coarse scrub – post-war seaside Britain with contemporary trimmings.

My phone rang. I looked at the display. It was Jo. Because she was police I pulled over to talk to her.

‘You didn’t ring me?’

I was surprised. ‘No, should I have?’

‘You tell me. How are you doing?’

‘Bearing up. Look, while you’re on, can I ask you to find out something for me?’

‘What? Why?’

‘Would you be able to tell me whether Dennis Flashman had evidence of drug use and abuse in his system?’

There was a delay during which I heard noises that led me to believe Jo was making a bit of privacy for herself.

In a quieter but insistent voice, she said, ‘What do you want to know that for? What are you up to?’

‘I’m not up to anything.’

‘Then why are you asking about Flashman? I warned you to leave this to the police. Don’t tell me you’re getting involved, David.’

I was pleased to hear we were back on first name terms. It made lying easier.

‘His father came around to see me.’

‘What for?’

‘Someone told him I’d been arrested for the murder of his son.’

She sighed down the line. I nudged her. ‘He’s OK now. We had a man-to-man. Seems the father had his suspicions of his son’s involvement with drugs.’ This was complete supposition bordering on fabrication on my part. ‘But for his own reasons he never did anything about finding out. When I spoke to the son in his yard the other day he seemed like he was high on something.’

‘Wait a moment.’ I heard paper being shuffled. ‘Yes. Traces of amphetamines. No needle marks. Nothing serious.’

I changed the subject. ‘Have you got confirmation on the slipper, yet?’

‘No. Not yet. Where are you?’

‘Out for a drive.’

‘Where?’

‘Mind your own business.’

‘Charming. How about I return the drink you bought me tonight?’

Another surprise and a pleasant one.

‘I bought you dinner.’

‘I might be able to stretch to a take-away.’

I remembered my appointment with Flashman. ‘I’ll have to check my diary.
’

‘Don’t bother then.’

‘How about eight thirtyish? I can meet you somewhere, if you like?’

‘I’ll come to yours.’

‘Fine. See you later.’

‘Stay out of trouble, please.’ She terminated the call.

I realised I was grinning. And I felt guilty for it. I had no right to be. I started the car and accelerated hard away from the kerb.

***

35

The buildings were not hard to find. I followed the road, Coast Drive, until it bent at something like ninety degrees inland towards Lydd. A sign, knocked flat to lie in the shingle verge, told me I was now on the Dungeness Road.

A quarter of a mile along and off to the right a narrow concrete strip, discoloured with age, led across the shingle in a straight line to three identical detached bungalow-shaped properties. They had hardly changed at all, just more abandoned looking and with some of the ubiquitous graffiti.

They were set back from the road about a hundred yards, surrounded by only shingle and clumps of the hardy sea kale that sprouted randomly and unchecked. There wasn’t another building near them.

A perimeter fence had obviously been deemed unnecessary. A sturdy five bar gate with accompanying chain and padlock across the access road had not. The only way down would be on foot.

There were two signs fixed to the gate. One was large and rectangular, black lettering on a white background. It informed prospective trespassers that access was restricted to Ministry of Defence Personnel. No Admittance Without Permission. The second was newer and colourful: red lettering on a yellow background – Property Acquired for Development.

I could see that all the windows facing the road were sealed with metal sheeting cut to fit into the reveals. The entrances too. I didn’t stop the car. For one thing, the spot was exposed and isolated without another house within four hundred yards of it. For another, there was a white panel van parked to the side of the far building. I was unable to read the number plate.

I drove on along the road in a state of agitation as far as the lakes that formed part of the RSPB reserve about another half a mile on. The road was quiet. I U-turned and drove steadily back past. I didn’t learn anything new.

I found myself back at the joint of the elbow. On the opposite side of the road the well-known pub of the point beckoned. It looked open. I parked up, hidden behind a delivery lorry, and went in.

I ordered a sandwich and a pint and took a table by one of the big picture windows that gave out over the English Channel. The sea was grey, the sky was grey, the shingle looked grey. Either the windows needed cleaning or it was a very grey day.

Only a couple of tables were occupied. I’d brought the average age of the clientele down to about fifty. Maybe it was pensioners’ discount day. Judging by the prevailing silence either the fish and chips were exceptional or the people had run out of things to say to one another.

I didn’t know what I was doing there. I felt like I’d made a mistake. I should have kept driving and called Jo and let her know what I knew.

But I also knew that involving the police would deny me any opportunity for finding my own answers. If Jo investigated and found nothing then, if they were the people I was looking for, they’d be alerted and if they had any sense they’d disappear.