Walking into the Ocean (14 page)

They proceeded in silence for a few miles. Peter undid his collar button and massaged his stiff neck.

“You getting enough help down here?” Tommy said.

“There's one good detective on the Whittlesun force I've been cultivating. Reasonable type but I don't want to get him in a vise between me and the good Inspector. I have to be careful.” Peter reflected that he hadn't seen Hamm for two days. He would remedy his neglect when he returned to Whittlesun. When the time came, Peter would need his special talents, and his friendship.

“I can come down if you need backup,” Tommy said. Peter was well aware of Tommy's plodding way of saying things twice. In this instance, the second mention meant that Tommy wouldn't mind at all getting out of London for something more lively than chauffeuring, and whatever else Bartleben had him doing.

“Thank you. I'll likely take you up on that. I don't know, Tommy, there's something off-kilter here.”

“Run me the scenarios.”

Peter leaned back in the seat. “André had been planning his disappearance for a long time. He wasn't going to tell her he was leaving.”

“They seldom do.”

“She found out about it, or maybe he told her that night. They argued. She started smashing things but nothing she said stopped him. He stormed out. One way or another, he left.”

“By the way,” Tommy interjected, “do you think she attacked him, left any scars?”

“No. There were no epithelials under her fingernails, none of his blood in the house. But then she looked out the window and saw that he hadn't taken the family car. She would have noticed that he didn't leave with a suitcase, or anything at all. Maybe then she understood that he had this schemed out for a long time. She grasped that if he didn't need to pack a bag, every other part of his escape must have been in place. She rampaged through the house, cut herself in the lavatory and smeared menstrual blood on the walls.”

“So the husband didn't smash her head into the medicine cabinet?”

“It's hard to know in what order it happened but I'd say it was part of her frenzy once he left. If we find him, it will be my first question.”

“And she took the car and went looking for him, right?”

“Right. Except that she didn't know which way he'd gone. He was on foot, so how far could he have gotten? She guessed wrong. In fact he'd begun walking, maybe running, down to the lower strand while she struggled uphill to the Upper Cliffs. She parked the car in the tourist pad, got out and scanned the horizon for signs of him. I tried to duplicate her line of sight. There was no way she could have seen her husband below.”

“Did Mrs. Lasker even have a driver's licence?”

Peter thought back to his discussion with Father Vogans. “No, she didn't. But I still think she drove up there.”

Peter tried to imagine Anna getting out of the automobile, walking to the edge and peering into the obsidian night. Did she see a light offshore, the vessel waiting to pick up her husband?

“Did she fall or did she jump?” Verden singsonged.

“One thing's clear. Why would she drive to the cliffs instead of the shore? Because she feared that André was about to commit suicide. She still loved him.” Peter thought for a minute. “She jumped.”

They batted about the idea for the rest of the journey. Only a few miles from the cottage turning, Peter said, “I expect to call you in a couple of days to take me back.”

“I understand,” Tommy said.

“It's nice to be home,” Peter said. “Michael and Sarah are up. Can you join us for dinner?”

“Thanks very much, Peter, but I have to see my sister and her three children, with the seven grandchildren. Command performance for me, you might say.”

“And you are the presiding uncle?”

“More the presiding horsey. Did you ever get demands to play horsey from your two? It's exhausting being a horse.” Tommy turned into the cottage lane.

Peter laughed, the mention of children calling up a picture of his home, just ahead.

Tommy drove all the way up the lane to the front of the house. Sarah and Michael had already arrived and they came out on the porch with Joan as the car pulled in. Peter shook hands with Michael, who took the Gladstone bag and placed it on the porch. Sarah embraced her dad but made a bigger fuss over Tommy, who had known her since infancy. He was like an uncle, or even more — a protector of the entire Cammon clan. He easily lifted Peter's slim daughter off her feet. She pecked him on both cheeks and implored him to stay for dinner. Verden begged off for the reason he had given Peter and, with a kiss for Joan and a cheery wave to the others, drove away.

Peter sized up his two children. Michael was older than Sarah by seven years, and had a much quieter nature. It wasn't so much reticence, Peter thought, but a confidence in how he lived his life; he always made firm decisions and never felt the need to justify or explain himself. In a group, people would turn to him, and they listened to him when he finally entered the conversation. This was helpful in the parole trade, as Michael called it. Acquaintances remarked that Michael had followed his father into a criminal justice career, but that wasn't it at all. Michael had found his calling early. A summer job with the county probation department had set him on a career path quite different in focus from his dad's. He had once told his mother that his experience that summer had opened his eyes to society. Where others saw human failure, he saw the possibility of redemption. It was the people part of the job that attracted him, and as soon as he finished his degree in criminology he joined the Parole Office in Leeds. Four years later he had gone back for his master's, and now he was moving steadily up the ranks in the regional operation. As a parole officer, Michael saw more people in a day than Peter saw during an average investigation. Peter felt a mutual respect with his son, although, like every parent, he wondered which parts of his son's character came from him, and which from Joan.

Sarah was a different matter. She grew up feisty, independent by nature and constantly moving. Marine biology was a perfect fit. She travelled to every shore and cove around the Isles, from the Orkneys to Guernsey. She was on call at the Ocean Institute in Oxford and was always being summoned to the far corners of Britain. Peter had no idea how her career would unfurl, but Sarah, at the age of twenty-nine, seemed happy.

Peter took his suitcase up to the bedroom while Michael hauled the boxes of papers to the shed. Peter was glad to be home. He tossed his laundry in the wicker hamper in the hall. Normally upon returning from the road he would change into old clothes and go for a walk in the garden or up the lane. Joan called this one of his tools of decompression and, in truth, after a short walk he was usually able to banish thoughts of the job.

Since both his children were present, a rare occurrence these days, he decided to skip the walk and changed into flannel trousers and one of his best shirts, a Christmas gift from Sarah. He sat on the edge of the bed and gathered his thoughts. Investigations proceeded at their own pace, and he sensed that this one had a long way to go. The clash, though violent, could be regarded as nothing more than a domestic dispute taken to extremes by both the husband and the wife; his cruel plot to abandon his marriage was matched by her self-destruction, and the tragedy had closed in on itself. He had no doubt that he would be back in Whittlesun within the week.

He thought of Gwen Ransell. He had to see her again. To this point, the Lasker case was a criminological puzzle, but she had implied that it was something more, that real evil was involved. He was willing to discount her spectral visions, but he needed to know what she meant. The image of Gwen made him think of Sarah. They had a strained relationship sometimes, and he was unsure of the cause. He had trouble sustaining a conversation with his daughter. But both his children were downstairs now and he had no complaints about life, and so he determined to avoid any kind of friction that night.

He needn't have worried, for Sarah and Michael were giddy from the start.

And it was Michael who delivered the inadvertent clue about the Lasker case that helped Peter sleep.

He came down to the dining room to find the wine already poured and his family waiting for him to propose the toast. Memories of Whittlesun faded away as he raised his glass. The sun was setting beyond the linden tree at the far end of their property, past the tangled hedgerow, and orange light flooded the room.

Peter was about to improvise his toast when Joan interrupted.

“There he is!”

They turned and followed Joan's pointing finger. The last pheasant, his bottle-green head iridescent in the declining sun, had reappeared in a space in the tall grass. He looked around and then froze, as if on alert.

“
Phasianus colchicus
,” Sarah said.

They watched for a full minute. Joan slowly waved her hand.

“Mum,” Michael chided, “you realize that you just waved at a bird?”

“Why not, you insensitive nit,” Sarah retorted. “I wave at birds all the time.”

“You do? Does that work well?”

“I worry about him,” Joan said. “He's the last of the group.”

Michael and Sarah engaged in raillery that sometimes struck their parents as too aggressive. Perhaps it was the seven-year age difference, which made them almost of separate generations. Michael's devotion to Sarah was unquestioned, since he had been her defender throughout childhood, but part of her emergence on her own was a need to assert her views by correcting him. He didn't mind, but sometimes he went too far with his banter. Peter could see that he was about to toss a cutting comment at Sarah. But both men understood that the moment had shifted to Joan, who was looking wistfully out to where the pheasant had been sighted.

Sarah added, just a little pedantically, “The ring-necked pheasant is the official bird of the American State of South Dakota.”

Michael had a dozen quips ready for this non sequitur, but it was Peter who surprised everyone, including himself, by blurting out, “Damn, he's a long way from home!”

Sarah collapsed in helpless laughter. Her recovery wasn't aided by her blowing wine out her nose, nor by her brother's admonishing: “Please. A daughter should not make fun of her mother's pet bird.”

The tone was set for the dinner itself. Through the sibling teasing, Joan and Peter were updated on the lives of their children. It turned out that Sarah was on the verge of a promotion that would send her on a major project to wetland areas around Britain. Her success was paralleled by Michael's elevation to a project of his own called “unit management,” which targeted high-risk offenders coming out of top-security prisons. He had pioneered the strategy and it was already showing promise in Leeds.

Joan had set out the fine silver for dinner along with her best linen tablecloth. Sunday fare, which now encompassed most occasions when all four of them gathered at the cottage, never varied: roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, cauliflower with white sauce, trifle for dessert. Peter wielded the carving set that he had inherited from Joan's father. He finished his artistry with the roast while the family watched, and then rested the iron blade of the knife and the pronged carving fork on two tiny silver peacocks that were one of the favourite heirlooms passed on to him by his mother.

Joan, in his absence that week, had bought the wines. Peter, still standing after carving the meat, made sure that everyone's glass was full, or in the case of voracious Michael, always half full, and raised his glass.

“I never did get to propose that toast before being interrupted by wildfowl.”

“Just a second, Dad,” Michael said.

“Will I ever get to make this toast?”

“Yes,” Michael said, “at the wedding in April.”

Sarah was around the table and kissing Michael before the veteran chief inspector of Scotland Yard absorbed the message. Michael had been seeing the same girl for four years, although Joan and Peter weren't sure whether they were living together. Her name was Maddy and she coordinated women's shelter services in Leeds.

“It's a shame that Maddy couldn't make it tonight,” Joan said, after the whooping died down.

“Yes, she had to work,” Michael said. He pulled his mobile phone from below the linen tablecloth, having just speed-dialled a number. “But she's waiting to take your call, Madam!”

They each had a turn congratulating Maddy over the line, even if technically you weren't supposed to congratulate the bride-to-be. Peter opened champagne and the meal got seriously cold. No one minded.

After the call and the good wishes, Joan stated: “You know, the garden can get quite cold in April.”

This struck everyone as hilarious and led to more pheasant jokes. The conversation turned to reminiscences of Michael and Sarah's childhoods. She had grown up here, but Michael remembered the move from London. He reminded his father of the times they had taken Sunday strolls so that Peter could show off the old Headquarters edifice on the Embankment. Thinking that such memories might make Peter, whose semi-retirement seemed problematic to Michael, long for the days at the old Headquarters, he changed the subject, instead toasting Sarah's meteoric career as a marine biologist.

“To my sister, love and success.” They were all getting tipsy now.

Sarah swirled the last ounce of claret in her glass. She looked at Peter. “Do you know the exact moment I decided to become a zoologist?” She gave him a shy smile; she'd never told this story before, at least not to him.

“No,” he said. “Tell us.”

“One day you were taking me through the garden, pointing things out, and we saw a snail. There were dragonflies and robins and creepy-crawlies all about, but it was the snail you pointed to. You picked him up and said, ‘Do you know why the snail is the cleverest animal? Because he carries his house on his back.' From then on, I was hooked.”

Peter and Joan smiled with pride. Michael Cammon, who respected his sister's profession but had gone into a much darker occupation, one in which he dealt with drug addicts and career criminals, raised his glass yet again. He had drunk too much but his words were gently delivered. “Speaking professionally, I would say that the monkey is the cleverest animal, for he gets others to carry him on their backs.”

It was then that Peter understood that he had to adopt a new angle on the guilt of André Lasker.

After dinner, Peter strolled out to the back of the garden. It was an uncommonly warm evening. He lifted the lid of the old air raid shelter and descended the chiselled stone steps to the small room. A previous owner had built the subterranean chamber during the Blitz, but if buzz bombs had in fact ever rained down on the cottage, Peter was unaware of it; he had never found any shells or unexploded detonators in the garden. The shelter was useful as a root cellar because it was the driest place on their property.

He stored his gun in the bottom of the heavy steel cabinet that stood in the corner against the three-foot-thick cement walls and beside a crate of turnips. A simple wood chair and a square table completed the spartan décor of the bunker. Before they renovated the shed, he had taken guilty pleasure in coming down here once in a while to review his old files. Now he took out the Smith & Wesson pistol from the lower drawer and hefted it in his hand. There were newer guns, and newer models of the S & W, but this one fit his hand and he was comfortable using it.

None of the six men Peter had shot in the line of duty had gone quietly. He killed three men in a single bank robbery in Durham over a period of a mere three hours, and employed two different weapons to do it. The fourth dead man was a Moroccan immigrant, a self-styled jihadist, back before the term was in wide use; he had pinned his plan for an Underground apocalypse to the wall of his flat in Brixton and failed to get the thumb tacks out before Peter, checking door-to-door for witnesses to a completely unrelated assault, had walked in, but then decided to shoot it out with Scotland Yard. His pursuit of martyrdom ended in a minor key, with a whimper in a puddle of blood. The saddest was the fifth, a domestic dispute that never should have happened; a heart-rent husband, a dead wife and suicide-by-cop. It entailed a decision (on Peter's part) and a termination so quick that for a week Peter wasn't certain it had happened.

But the five deaths at his hands during the early days had an impact that could be considered politically incorrect: each death made him a better policeman. He had learned something about professionalism from each incident.

The bank heist saga was pervaded with the death wish of armed thieves on a high, and no one at the time took much pride in the outcome, in spite of the boost it gave to Peter's career. He had ever after been amazed by how it went down.

All inspectors are required to undergo firearms training. That particular week, Peter had been allowed, at his own request, to join an advanced course up in Durham, having taken to long-range rifle shooting in his basic training session. He had a talent for it, the trainers all agreed, and he won a certificate of “Marksman” to put on his wall. He remained at the first-plus-one level of accredited firearms officer, however, since full accreditation required even more training, as well as defensive driving courses and psychological testing. But, for winning Top of the Class, Peter was invited by the chief constable of Durham, who provided occasional teachers to the rifle program, to lunch at Headquarters; from time to time, the chief constable succeeded in hiring away Yard up-and-comers to his regional force. The lunch never happened. The bank robbery in downtown Durham turned deadly from the start, with a security guard killed in the first five minutes and the getaway vehicle surrounded and seized by police officers in the following minutes. Every county in England possessed a flying squad, and the chief constable called out his in full force. He also understood how to organize a perimeter, and he had one in place in record time; he also had the siege weapons to enforce it. What he didn't have at that moment was trained snipers on duty, and that was where fate entered the equation. It seemed both routine and exciting to Peter at the time — and that accounted for his willing enlistment — but the chief, who carried inspector rank, immediately assigned him to what turned out to be the pivotal observation point. The bank formed one wing of a retail shopping complex and while Durham sharpshooters manned the front entrance, Peter was positioned across a pedestrian mall from a secondary exit of the bank. This turned out to be the door through which the first hostage-taker emerged.