Authors: Dan Latus
T
he phone rang soon after I got back in the house. It was Bill Peart.
‘You’re lucky,’ I told him. ‘I’ve just got in. Did you try my mobile?’
‘It costs money to ring mobiles.’
‘There is that,’ I said, raising my eyebrows. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’ve been thinking about the bodies at Port Holland.’
Day and night, it seemed. Not too surprising, really. He would feel he had responsibility for them.
‘And?’
‘Well….’ He was struggling. ‘Can you think of any reason for them being naked?’
‘A couple, actually,’ I said with a smile.
He made a disgusted noise and said, ‘Seriously.’
‘Yes, even seriously.’
‘Go on.’
‘It reduces the possibility of identification even further.’
‘Yeah. Got that. Anything else?’
I’d been thinking of this during my long walk along the cliffs. Now I wondered if Bill had got to the same place as me.
‘It would be easier to get victims to take their own clothes off than to do it for them when they’re dead.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ he said with a big sigh. After a moment’s silence he added, ‘You know what this means for the girl that came to your house, don’t you?’
‘Yes. She was meant to be a victim, as well.’
‘Exactly. So she was involved.’
What he didn’t say, but I knew as well as he did, was that she was lucky she’d got away – and how had she managed that?
‘I wonder what happened to her?’ Bill said reflectively.
‘That’s been tormenting me, as well,’ I told him before I hung up.
I was hungry by then, but I couldn’t lay my hands on anything I wanted. I was too distracted. What the hell did Bill think – I was his private, unpaid consultant?
The situation was getting to me. It was all right for him but I had a living to make, and I was struggling. I was neglecting simple things, and forgetting others. Imagining things, as well. No defrosted bread again! And where the hell was the packet of sausages I bought yesterday? I couldn’t find my favourite coffee mug either. Shit!
At least I had plenty of wine and beer. There was nutrition in that, wasn’t there, I thought wearily, as I settled in a chair with a bottle of Caledonian 80 and an opener.
Enough, anyway. Enough nutrition to last me until I got into Middlesbrough tomorrow. That was when I was due to visit Jac Picknett and check out her gallery before I advised her on security arrangements. Getting back to my day job. And doing some shopping while I was at it.
I yawned as I chomped my way through a bag of crisps, not having found anything else that took my fancy and was as easy to prepare. It had been a long day, and an unsatisfactory one. Nothing resolved. But at least Jimmy was on the mend. We were getting back to normal. I should concentrate on a positive like that, and put aside the stuff I couldn’t do anything about.
Then the phone rang again. I picked it up.
‘Doy? Frank Doy?’
‘Yes?’
‘How did you like your house when we were finished with it?’
That was followed by a mad laugh. Before I could reply, the voice said, ‘Keep out of things that are nothing to do with you. Next time you won’t have a house to go back to – or a neighbour either.’
‘Fuck you!’
That was the best I could manage. The phone went dead. I scowled at it. Nice!
Perversely, though, on reflection I was almost pleased. It meant they were still around, and it meant that for some reason I worried them. They were going to be a hell of a lot more worried when I caught up with them.
I got up and did the rounds, checking doors and windows, before I went to bed. Second nature. Old habits. The small window in the kitchen was not properly shut. A slim wedge of cardboard that I must have jammed in to stop it rattling was the reason. I left it. If the wind got up again I would regret taking it out.
That was it. Everything was back to normal. More or less. Well, that was one way of looking at it.
E
specially after that phone call, I couldn’t get the blue car out of my mind. I had seen such a car entering the grounds of the art centre, but was it the one with the missing mudflap?
There was only one place to start looking, if I was going to find out. So the next morning I set off for Meridion House soon after breakfast. First, I had to scrape ice off the windscreen. The weather had changed. It was a lot colder now but the wind had died down, the rain and sleet had stopped and it was a pleasantly bright day.
The entrance to the Meridion House estate was very grand. You drove between two huge sandstone pillars and beneath a wrought-iron arch that spanned them. Then you followed a drive that wound its way through a patch of stunted and distorted Scots pine that must have been planted when the house was built. No doubt the original idea was to have elegant mature trees lining the drive, but it hadn’t worked out. The wind off the North Sea had seen to that.
It was a short drive. Just a couple of hundred yards. When I rounded the final bend I came to a little hut and a barrier that would go up and down when the man in the hut at the
side of the road pressed a button. I was surprised. You couldn’t see any of this from the road. Now I was alerted, I glanced to either side and saw a two-foot high fence of heavy-duty timber piling that would stop anything but a main battle tank. I guessed it ran all the way around the house and its immediate environs. I was impressed. Nobody was going to force their way in here.
I stopped and wound my window down. The gatekeeper came out to see me.
‘Good morning!’ I said brightly.
‘Good morning, sir. Do you have business here?’
‘I do, yes. Frank Doy. I live at Risky Point.’
He gave me a cool, alert look. ‘I don’t believe you’ve been here before?’
‘No, that’s right. I haven’t.’
‘Are we expecting you, Mr Doy?’
‘No. I don’t have an appointment.’
‘Then I can’t admit you. Sorry.’
‘You can’t admit me?’ I frowned at him. ‘This is an art centre, isn’t it?’
‘It is. But it’s not open to the public.’
‘A private art centre? I see. Who’s the owner?’
‘I’m not at liberty to say.’
‘Do you have any information about the place, and what it has to offer?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
This was becoming bizarre. What kind of art centre was it? OK. One last try.
‘Perhaps you can tell me how I can find information – and how to get an appointment?’
‘If you phone this number,’ he said, pulling a business card from his pocket, ‘I’m sure someone will be able to help you.’
‘There’s no one here at the moment who could help me?’
‘I’m afraid not, no.’
I smiled sceptically and shook my head. Then I began a three-point turn, while he stood and watched. Once again, I thought, impressive security.
Back on the main road, I stopped in an unofficial lay-by from where I could watch the entrance to Meridion House. I switched off the engine and prepared to wait.
I was surprised and a little confused by my reception. It didn’t seem right. I’d never heard of a
secret
art centre!
I studied the business card the gatekeeper had given me: ‘Meridion House Art Centre’. There was a phone number and small print said they provided training for young artists. So, an art college? A private one? Very private, it seemed.
The card told me nothing else. The minimal information provided was, perhaps, intended simply to stop people wondering what Meridion House was. Again, I thought, quite clever. If there had been no information at all, public curiosity might have been unbounded.
I wondered if young artists needed quite so much security and privacy, but I didn’t get very far with that one. Perhaps the youngsters were all from countries where people like themselves lived in golden palaces behind high walls that kept out the great unwashed. That would fit in with Jimmy Mack’s oblique reference to foreigners.
I shrugged, and waited.
I waited the best part of an hour. Nobody came in or out in
that time, and it was cold. I was cold. Running the engine for a few minutes every once in a while didn’t do much to warm me up. I gave it up as a bad job and quit.
While I was in the vicinity, I drove into Port Holland, parked and set off to look around once more. The village itself wasn’t much. Just a few terraced streets of modest cottages built originally for the workers and their families. The fine boat tied up at the jetty was the star. And pretty incongruous it looked. As I studied it, a couple of men came from below deck and began sweeping and polishing.
On such a cold, sunny morning the North Sea actually looked blue, and dangerously inviting. I made my way down the rough path to the beach, and thought once more what a mess it all was. It was a working beach, not one for holiday-makers. Broken concrete. Piles of washed-up kelp. Patches of sand and shingle. Swathes of big boulders. A few cobles, the property of men who still fished. A dozen or more fishermen’s huts, most improvised from spare parts and rubbish, and collectively looking as unsightly as any scrapyard.
I couldn’t help wondering if a man with a boat as big and fine as the one at the jetty couldn’t have found a more decorous environment. It was handy for his house, I supposed, but still…. Millionaires, or billionaires, often had both yachts and houses in beautiful places, not junkyards. What was wrong with Palma or Montenegro? Either would be perfect for a private art centre, as well as for a boat like this one. Perhaps the man just liked ugly.
Still, the huts caught your eye. They were interesting. I wandered between them. Some had windows and some had
mere openings, but in both cases wooden shutters, proof against the weather, prevented anyone looking inside. Not that I needed to look inside. I knew some were storage sheds for nets and lobster pots, and for spare parts and tools for the tractors and boat engines. Others could be stayed in overnight, or for a day or two. Some of the latter would be well equipped, while others would just be empty spaces and bare floors. Fishermen were like everyone else. Not all of them would want a home from home.
A little way above the beach was the blocked-up entrance to the tunnel that was the reason for the jetty in the first place. It was built for the shipment of iron ore brought from a nineteenth-century mine some four miles inland.
There were other tunnels in the cliffs along this coast, some to facilitate the extraction of ironstone and others from the days when alum shale was mined. For over two hundred years the production of alum for textiles had been a major industry in Cleveland, and the spoil heaps you could still see in a number of places were their legacy.
As my eyes ranged along the cliff face, they picked out another tunnel entrance, one I hadn’t noticed or known about before. This one seemed to be in use, judging by the well-kept, heavy-duty steel door that covered it.
I spoke about it to a man who was walking his dog along the beach.
‘Yes, it’s an old tunnel,’ he agreed, ‘but I couldn’t tell you what it was for. We never knew it was there till this lot uncovered it, and claimed it. Bloody Russians!’ He nodded at the boat alongside the jetty.
‘Is that what they are? Russians?’
‘The bloke that owns the boat,
Meridion
, is. He bought Meridion House, as well. God knows what he wants with it. It’s a mouldy old dump.’
‘What do they use the tunnel for?’
‘It’s just a storage shed, apparently. They keep spare gear for the boat there. So they say, anyway. I haven’t seen inside, myself.’
‘Does the tunnel go anywhere?’
‘It must have done at one time. That’s quality stonework around the entrance. It won’t go anywhere now, though. Either it’ll have been filled in or, more likely, it will have collapsed.’
I nodded and let him go on his way. He was probably right – about everything. On the other hand, he might not be. If he’d told me the tunnel led to Meridion House I wouldn’t have been astonished.
I wondered if Bill Peart knew about all this. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to think coming into possession of an old tunnel leading down to a jetty could be useful to all sorts of people. It could even explain why someone with an oligarch’s boat and an art centre had bought into a dump like this.
I turned to watch some new activity on the jetty. Newcomers were loading heavy items onto the boat. The rear end had opened up like a car ferry, and they were rolling their stuff inside on trolleys. Very simple and easy. I wondered what the cargo was, but from a distance the wooden crates gave nothing away.
I glanced at my watch and realized time was running out on me. I had less than an hour to get to Middlesbrough for my appointment with Jac Picknett. I’d better get back to the house first.
Bill Peart was still on my mind. As I was debating whether to phone him before I set off, the man himself arrived.
‘If you want coffee,’ I told him, ‘we’ll have to be quick. I’m on my way out.’
‘Suits me,’ he said stiffly. ‘I’m a busy man.’
I switched the kettle on, reached for the mugs and said over my shoulder, ‘Have you heard of a place called Meridion House?’
He shook his head.
‘A mile or so outside Port Holland? That’s where I’ve been this morning.’
He looked up, a calculating look in his eye. ‘Why is that, I wonder?’
I ignored his sad attempt at clever humour.
‘It’s a strange place, and a bit of a mystery. Supposed to be an art centre. Owned by some Russian. At least, I was told that’s what he is. He’s the guy with the big boat in Port Holland, as well.’
‘The
Meridion
?’
I nodded.
‘Another one with more money than sense. He should have bought a football club, like the rest of them.’
‘You’ve been talking to Jimmy Mack,’ I said with a grin. ‘I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Bill, but there’s a lot of old tunnels along this coast. They date back to the days of mining.’
‘That right?’
‘I’ve been having a look around the beach at Port Holland.
There’s a couple there – one I knew about. It connected to the Old Park ironstone mine. It’s blocked off now, of course.
‘But I saw one today I wasn’t aware of. It’s in use, as well. The guy that owns the big boat has had it uncovered, and he uses it as a sort of boat shed. So I’m told. Might be worth looking into?’
‘Why ever would I want to do that?’
‘Big house, tunnels, a Russian with a big boat? It’s not hard to imagine all sorts of reasons.’
Bill chuckled. ‘You want me to see what I can find out?’
‘It might be an idea. It’s an unusual situation.’
‘Aye, well.’ He yawned and stretched. ‘Let’s solve these murders first.’
I made no further comment. Let him work it out for himself.
Bill finished his coffee quickly and got up to leave. ‘Nothing more from your side?’ he asked.
‘Nothing.’
Just Meridion House. I’d already mentioned that. It might be something, or it might be nothing, but my mind was easier knowing that Bill had it on his to-do list. It would be less difficult for him to look into than it would be for me. Besides, I couldn’t do everything. It was time he did some digging himself.