Out of the Night

W
hen they found the first body on the beach near Port Holland I didn’t take much notice. I was busy at the time, tying up some work I’d been doing for a client who wanted to know why stuff kept disappearing from his hi-tech plant near Middlesbrough. It was obviously an inside job and I was on the brink of naming the supervisor with a nice little racket going.

Jimmy Mack said, ‘It had its head cut off.’

I stared at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘That body they found.’ He continued working away at a lobster pot he was mending. ‘So they say, anyway.’

I shook my head. ‘Ship’s propeller, maybe?’

‘Maybe.’

He didn’t add anything, and I had plenty to do. So I left it there.

‘I’ll have to get back, Jimmy. I’m expecting a phone call. See you later.’

He nodded. ‘There’ll likely be more, you know.’

‘More what?’

‘Bodies.’

‘Give over, you daft old bugger!’

I walked away in disgust.

The next morning I heard in the paper shop I visited that another body had been found on the beach at Port Holland. It seemed a curious coincidence, especially when the woman behind the counter shuddered and told the customer in front of me that the head was missing.

The third body was found not long after that. Headless again.

That was when Bill Peart came to see me. It was getting dark at the time. Mid-afternoon, and getting dark. That’s what November days can be like at Risky Point, or anywhere else on the Cleveland coast. It’s a different world compared to May time.

I saw the lights of his car as he picked his way cautiously up the long track that leads from the road to our cottages. Mine was the first one he came to. Fifty yards further on was Jimmy’s.

That’s all there is now at Risky Point. At one time it was a village, an ironstone miners’ village, but there’s not much left now. The relentless sea, and coastal erosion, has taken its toll. The only good thing is that at least the erosion has been gradual. Not like at Kettleness, a bit further south, where years ago the whole village slid into the sea in one go, and most of the population was saved only because there was an alum ship waiting offshore that managed to pick people up.

I knew it was Bill as soon as he opened the car door. I watched him get out, swing the door shut and then stand still for a moment. His weary, worn-out posture was what gave
him away. Even in the gloom there was no mistaking those hunched shoulders, and I could already imagine that care-lined face. Nature and time had taken their toll on him, as they had on the coastal cliffs. I’ve never envied Bill his job, or his life. But he’s a good man. Always was.

‘You look like a man who needs a coffee,’ I said, standing by the open front door.

‘Better make it strong,’ he said with an audible sigh as he came towards me.

He shook himself, as if dripping wet, and came inside. He really was wet, I realized then, although it wasn’t raining.

‘Take your coat off, Bill. Hang it up by the stove. What have you been up to?’

‘Guess.’

‘Headless bodies on the beach anything to do with it?’

He nodded and gave a weary sigh. ‘As if I didn’t have enough to do.’

I let him get settled while I made the coffee. It was a while since I’d last seen him, but we were old friends and sparring partners. From time to time he came over and we did a spot of fishing together. Or we just drank coffee and talked. As a serving cop, a detective inspector, he liked to keep an eye on what I was doing, and sometimes I got stuff from him. Sometimes we helped each other, usually unofficially.

‘Bodies on the beach, eh?’ I said, placing two mugs on the kitchen table and sitting down opposite him. ‘Whoever would have thought it?’

He stared at me suspiciously. ‘Is that you being funny?’

I smiled. ‘Not really. What’s going on?’

‘No idea. It’s not just heads that are missing either.’

‘What else? Hands?’

He nodded.

That said something. Quite a lot, actually. It meant it hadn’t been a ship’s propeller. It was probably somebody who didn’t want the bodies to be identified. Either that or it was an obscure message to others left alive.

With that grim reality hovering unspoken between us, we sat for a while, not talking much. It was warm in the kitchen, with the wood stove going full blast. I let Bill dry out and warm up a bit.

‘Why is it your case, anyway?’ I said eventually.

He looked at me.

‘It’s outside your patch, isn’t it?’

Bill was with Cleveland Police. This was North Yorkshire. Just.

‘How unlucky can one guy get?’ he asked me. ‘You’re right, technically speaking, but …’ He shrugged. ‘It’s only just over the boundary, and the two chiefs did a deal for reasons best known to themselves.’

‘So you’re, like … seconded?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘That really is bad luck,’ I said with a grin.

He didn’t respond. It was probably a sore point with him. Politics! I guessed he’d had the bad luck to be available.

‘I’ve got something in the oven,’ I said. ‘Are you going to stay for supper?’

He looked up with interest. ‘What have you got?’

‘Lamb casserole. With rice, probably.’

He pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully. ‘I could do, I suppose. I’ll just get a bottle of wine out of the car.’

I smiled to myself while I waited for him to come back. The wine meant he’d planned this visit. Probably wanted to pick my brains. Well, good luck to him. He was welcome to anything he could find there. I knew nothing about headless, handless bodies on the Port Holland beach. Nothing to do with me.

That didn’t mean I didn’t want to know what Bill knew, of course.

I
found out that Bill knew very little, seriously little.

‘I haven’t a clue,’ he said when I asked him point-blank what it was all about. ‘I got a call yesterday morning, and came straight down with a team. There wasn’t anything at the scene for forensics and the tide was coming back in. So we did the necessary, recovered the body and then I packed everyone back off where they’d come from.

‘Today I got another call. The same thing. Came back down. Recovered the body, and sent the team away. After that I hung around for a while, trying to get my head round what I’d seen.

‘Then this afternoon it happened again. A dog walker – or his dog – found the third one. I was still in Port Holland. So I whistled my people back and they did the business.’

‘Then you thought you’d come and see what your old mate Frank Doy has to say?’

‘More or less. I was cold, wet, tired and hungry. Risky Point did seem like it might be a good place to come,’ he admitted with a grin.

I thought about what he’d said. We were gently joshing each other but that was to keep things on an acceptable level. We had to be objective. Thinking too sympathetically about mutilated corpses could do your head in.

‘Are there going to be any more?’ I asked him.

‘You tell me.’ He shook his head impatiently. ‘How the hell do I know?’

I felt like setting him on Jimmy Mack for an answer, but I didn’t. Instead, I pulled the casserole dish out of the oven, checked the contents and began to set the table.

‘Smells good,’ Bill said, sniffing eagerly.

‘You’re only saying that because you’ve been on a wet beach in the cold all day. Wait till you taste it.’

He grinned and began to hunt for a corkscrew. ‘Good stuff, this,’ he said, holding up the bottle he’d brought. ‘It’s from the
Sunday Times
Wine Club.’

‘The label should be worth reading, in that case. But what are the contents like?’

‘Australian,’ Bill said with a grin. ‘Fifteen per cent.’

‘Wow!’

‘Exactly,’ Bill said. ‘Get through this, and we might come up with some fresh ideas.’

But we didn’t. Not really. All we came up with was fantasy and speculation. Bill was disappointed, I think, that I had nothing to bring to the table but food.

‘So you’ve heard nothing?’

I shook my head.

‘No theories?’

‘For God’s sake, Bill! I’ve told you. I’ve heard nothing at all. I knew some bodies had been washed up, but that’s all.’

‘Washed up?’ he said quickly. ‘What makes you say that?’

I shrugged helplessly and sighed. ‘They were on the beach. I just assumed … but I don’t know. All right?’

Again, he was disappointed.

‘Sounds like organized crime, though,’ I said, trying hard to give him something useful to think about.

‘Doesn’t it?’

He yawned and stretched, and glanced at his watch.

‘Do you want to stay tonight?’

He shook his head. ‘Got to get back. But thanks for the meal.’

‘Thanks for the booze. It’s good stuff.’

‘Isn’t it? You finish it,’ he added, draining the one glass he’d allowed himself. ‘We’ll do this again when I’ve got the case cracked.’

‘In a couple of days’ time, then?’

He just grinned.

After Bill had gone I cleared up, checked my emails and texts, looked up the weather forecast, and went to bed. I was tired. It had been a busy day, and the end of an investigation that had been going on for a few weeks. I was glad to have finished it and placed the results in the hands of my client. It was up to him what he did with them. I was done.

The wind got up and I could hear the sea crashing against the base of the cliffs, and draining back through the boulders and shingle; the rumbling, hissing, seething sound you get with a high tide. I liked listening to it. I was used to it, and accepted it as part of where I lived, but it was still pretty awesome.

I was asleep a couple of hours, I subsequently worked out. Then I woke up. It was still dark and I was puzzled. Something had woken me but I didn’t know what. I lay still, listening, feeling, waiting. Now I was awake I was on edge.
Old habits. Conditioning. Something had woken me. I needed to know what it was before I moved.

Three or four minutes passed. Then I heard a sound that didn’t belong. Even through the noise made by the wind and the sea I heard several dull thuds from somewhere downstairs, perhaps from outside. Not loud noises, but something different. I got up to investigate.

It was black outside when I looked through the window. I could see nothing. I put a light on and made my way downstairs, wondering if something had come loose in the wind. Downstairs seemed normal. Nothing there. I stood, listening. Then I heard it again. One thud this time, against the front door.

I put more lights on, unlocked the door and started to open it. Immediately, the door slammed heavily against me, forcing me back off-balance. I held on. The door kept on coming, and with it came a shower of icy rain – and a wet, naked body that hit me hard and sent me staggering backwards.

Automatically, I dropped into a crouch, prepared to fight, but the body was an inactive dead weight. So my fists relaxed and I reached out to grab and hold. Then I probably gasped with shock as I realized what I was holding on to: a naked woman who was extremely wet and cold.

‘Help me!’ she whispered. ‘Please help me.’