Walking into the Ocean (2 page)

Whittlesun claimed two beaches, each providing half a tourist site. The stony one here, murder on a bather's heels, nonetheless offered a calm, wadeable sea. Way off to his left, he knew, beyond an obstructing promontory, lay a narrower beach of sand; however, his package of notes warned that it backed up against crumbling cliffs and ran steeply into choppy, treacherous waters. Anna Lasker had fallen into the tide at this point. He had a clear view of about a half-mile in each direction. To his right, the shore ended at a long, wooden pier; the massif bracketed the left extreme. He could see a ruined church on the clifftop.

If Lasker hadn't been washed out irretrievably, the sea would serve as its own net and cough up the body eventually. With his pointed index finger, Peter drew an arc, a decisive line across the near horizon from land point to point, penning the zone of investigation into an area about a nautical mile wide, from the promontory to the pier. What had happened out beyond this perimeter would likely remain unknown until Lasker crossed back into this zone, one way or another.

How did it feel striding out to the vanishing point, until the salt water closed over your head? Was the urge to swim irresistible? The metaphor became literal: swim or sink. At what point did your decision become unretractable, André?

He had spent enough time here for the moment. He had just wanted to take a look, gain an impression. He creaked to his feet but remained focused on the Channel for an extra minute. What made Peter Cammon a good detective was a kind of free-roaming patience (Bartleben's phrase); he was willing to stare at a scene without knowing what he was looking for, until something lodged in his mind, even if only in his subconscious. Not many detectives were willing to partner with him.

Did you plan your walk into the depths for a day like this one, André? Not likely. Verden was right: you followed a tight schedule shaped by more compelling forces than the weather.

Just one more minute, he decided. The tide was moving in by detectable inches. The wind had come up to create distinct waves. Dickens might have had this place in mind when he described “the waves of an unwholesome sea.” Matthew Arnold had imagined “the grating roar of pebbles” in the tidal flow, although he had been talking about religion, the Sea of Faith retreating.

He shook his head in an effort to reset his thinking. He had once regarded homicide in almost literary terms. Whether or not he was naturally inclined this way from four years at Oxford, he came to understand that most criminal acts were sordid and unimaginative. Violent, driven men followed classic patterns — not to mention that they told themselves cheap stories to justify their deeds — and his task was to follow the storyline back to the standard founderous bog of greed, envy, ambition and the breakdown of self-control. In other words, Peter Cammon was a romantic, always searching out the melodrama. His febrile mind had served him well in the early years. Young Inspector Cammon proved instrumental in solving several revenge crimes back then, including three killings by the Kray organization. The murders, and a bank robbery in Durham, had made his reputation. Rapid promotion had followed.

But it was also his duty, he came to realize after a few years, to try to comprehend the hot anger at the core of most crimes. Some dismissed this darkness as imponderable, but he saw that the attacker's rage and the victim's terror clashed on a tilting plane, where pain and hope rose and fell, and that was where the uniqueness of each case would be found. The anger and the terror had to be engaged before he could parse the criminal act.

André, did you begin that night in hot anger? Did you run from the horror into the shallow waves, fearing to meet the undertow? Did the chill sea then turn passion to panic?

At Peter's retirement reception, Lord Paymer, the current head of New Scotland Yard, had urged Peter, given his decades of exposure to violent offences, to assemble an encyclopaedia of crimes. This had been his unsubtle way of edging Peter towards fully leaving; the chief hated the “half measure” of semi-retirement and the cost of keeping consulting detectives on the rolls. But Peter had little interest in reducing his career experience to a list of pigeon-holed sins, and if he had undertaken such a taxonomy, “walking into the sea” would have been a sub-genre of a sub-class, at best. And from the literary perspective, were there any precedents? Didn't someone in
Far from the Madding Crowd
choose that way out? It seemed a cowardly form of suicide, and if a deception, a contrived one. The catalogue entry would note the conventions in exiting via the ocean (whether intending to stay under or planning one's resurfacing to a new life). Clothes are to be stacked in a squared pile above the high-tide line, so that they will be found. A note is superfluous. Civilization's deserter, overwhelmed by a need to leave his old life behind, walks steadily into the water at a precise right angle to the horizon. It should be a neat, formal departure. Almost a British thing.

André Lasker had followed all these rules, but Peter suspected that he had over-planned his exit. That was why Chief Inspector Peter Cammon gave fifty-fifty odds that Lasker was still alive.

He counted to the seventh wave and turned back to the town.

The sea road climbed by a series of hairpin bends to the centre of Whittlesun, but it was faster to walk straight up the pedestrian steps that crossed the road at a right angle, like the straight lines on an American dollar sign. Rain threatened, but it would hold off for an hour or two, he guessed, although he was having trouble judging this coastal weather. At the top of the stone stairway, he took off his suit jacket and paused to look back at his first vista of the harbour off to the west. There was a boldness, a defiant confidence in the way the town engaged the sea. Whittlesun had been a significant Channel port for four centuries. His briefing stated that the port still offered moorings for fishermen and a marina for boaters, but larger ships no longer used the silted harbour. And if Lasker had jumped a ferry, it wasn't out of Whittlesun; the nearest boat left from up the eastern coast.

The upper road became the high street and led him right into the town. He reached the Delphine without a wrong turn, and found his bag and the Lasker dossier waiting in his room. He hadn't bothered with his laptop, since apparently none of the hotels in Whittlesun offered wi-fi service or any other mode of in-room Internet. He wasn't sure about using the computer facilities at the local station. As he unpacked, he noticed a card on the faux refectory desk that, indeed, offered a connection for a token fee. He thought about asking Tommy Verden to retrieve his computer from the cottage. He hung his spare clothes in the closet.

Leaving his umbrella and hat in the room, he took the lift to the lobby and asked directions to the central police station. It turned out that the main, and only, police offices for Whittlesun were located farther up the hillside, but within walking distance.

Against all logic and topography, the upper reaches of Whittlesun had been laid out on a right-angle grid. Major streets that would have flowed better if contoured around the foothills instead ran straight uphill at steep, stubborn angles. The hotel concierge told him to expect a serious climb no matter which route he took; there used to be a funicular tram running to the cliff plateau but it had “rusted out,” as he put it.

Daubney Lane, the main commercial street in central Whittlesun, was bustling with traffic at this hour, and the town seemed prosperous enough to Peter. There was nothing startling or unfamiliar in the Whittlesun core; the renovators and the modernizers could only do so much with a traditional high street in a moderate-sized English town. If anything, the town was evolving into a tourist village, where quaintness becomes the touchstone and the imposed Dickensian veneer risks parody. Peter supposed that Whittlesun might have revived its maritime tradition, but instead it had opted for standard Victorian street lights and adding an Old English
e
to just about every shoppe name. It takes money to make the old new again, he thought. He sensed the struggle going on in Whittlesun. Workmen toiled on the decaying, oxidized roof of a 17th-century church, replacing green cladding with brown copper; the repairs looked long overdue. Otherwise, there did not appear to be any publicly funded renovation along the main avenues, aside from the street lamps.

The concierge had overstated the steepness of the climb, and Peter had a pleasant hike. He found the station by the sound of police motorcycles entering and leaving the car park. The building, about four streets uphill from the commercial area, had once housed an insurance company or a bank; grandiose pillars framed the main entrance. He guessed that the police had taken it over when they outgrew their old digs. The Whittlesun Force was autonomous, serving all of Dorset but remaining officially under the control of Southwest Regional Police. Bartleben had informed him that there were eighteen constables, five detectives and twenty or more other ranks. “Not so many,” Sir Stephen had opined, “if you have to patrol for a serial killer.”

Peter hadn't called ahead. Inspector Maris had been told by Bartleben to expect Chief Inspector Cammon sometime that morning. Peter counted six motorcycles and four police vehicles with decals on the doors, and two that he knew were unmarked police cars. A seventh bike was leaving by the far exit. Was anybody policing Whittlesun? They all seemed to be here, Peter thought. He entered the reception area at the front, which immediately disillusioned anyone expecting the pillars to have a stylish follow-through. The former grand entrance had been partitioned for security reasons, and now a female officer in a Plexiglas booth confronted each visitor. She was cheerful enough and, through the scratched and smeared plastic panels, sized him up, probably as an elderly victim of a break-in or an auto theft. His identity card did the usual trick; she recoiled in impressed disbelief from his Scotland Yard credentials. She stabbed a button on her phone console, then another for good measure.

“Just a minute, Chief Inspector,” she said through the round grill in the booth.

It took a full five minutes before an officer in shirtsleeves clicked the door lock and came out to greet him. The man was overweight and whey-faced, but he smiled broadly and openly. His whole manner indicated awe at being in the presence of a Yard senior detective.

This couldn't be the heavily burdened Inspector Maris. This rumpled young man was cheerful and welcoming, and lacked the executive gene. Bartleben had warned Peter not to expect enthusiasm. Maris had made it clear that Peter was coming down to help with the work-up on André Lasker; he would not officially supervise the dossier, nor determine the offences to be charged, should Lasker be nabbed.

“Hello!” the young detective said, and offered his hand. “Sorry. Sorry to keep you waiting. Come in. Down from London, then?”

He stood aside and Peter had to squeeze past him around the Plexiglas box and through the doorway. It would have been easier for the officer to go first.

“Peter Cammon.”

“Ronald Hamm. We're just finishing up our staff meeting. I'd invite you in, but we're about done. If you wait out here, I'll be back in a flash.”

Detective Hamm rushed into a room and the door closed behind him. Peter remained standing in the main room. It was open concept: few walls, with cloth-panelled partitions that seemed to him to create the worst of both worlds, eliminating real privacy but preventing spontaneous gatherings. The retention of the heavy interior pillars from the previous business gave the place an odd feel, as if some general and his staff had temporarily taken over the premises of a chateau in wartime. Glass-walled offices had been constructed in the four corners of the big space. Peter suspected that the bureaucratic dictates of police administration had compromised the original design of the refit.

In his short talk with Bartleben, Peter hadn't revealed his first reaction to the assignment, but all detectives from the Yard knew the drill when they descended to the Regions. Local police were always ambivalent, conceding that they needed the help but resisting any implication that they lacked the expertise necessary to crack the case. There was an inherent contradiction in this resentment — don't ask if you don't really want the assistance — but Peter ran into it just about every time. He knew that Stephen would have pledged the fullest cooperation and deference to local powers over the phone, but, in practice, the arm-twisting would all have to be done by the Yard man on the spot. Peter's lone-wolf habits weren't going to help, and Bartleben had known that. For his part, Peter wished that Bartleben would get out in the field more.

He could hear a lecturing voice in the closed room but no clear words. Officers began to come out of the meeting, one at a time, the door flapping, and he caught bits of sentences out of context.

“. . . want those numbers in shape by noon tomorrow.”

A very young man with red hair and the air of a junior staffer or an earnest executive assistant rushed out, and the door swung back again.

“. . . coastal communities where people see things.”

A minute later the meeting broke up. Peter had to step aside to avoid being trampled. Three uniformed officers rushed out together and made for the front door. Other detectives returned to their desks out in the open area and began making phone calls. There was nothing extraordinary about this police activity, but someone had put a fire under them, he noted.

Hamm emerged, his shirt even more dishevelled now.

“Inspector Maris said we should go to his office. Won't be a sec.”

And it wasn't, since Maris, the last one out of the meeting room, was right behind him. The inspector was in his late thirties, and everything about him seemed constricted. His suit lapels were narrower than was the current fashion, and the jacket pinched him at the waist. His hair was gelled and brushed straight back from his temples. His shoes had pointy toes; they needed a polish. Peter judged that he didn't lift weights or otherwise get much exercise. All of this supported a generally harried look.

“Maris. You're Cammon?”

“Yes.”

Without further greeting, Maris led him to one of the glass rooms in the corner. He closed the door and heaved a bundle of notes and files onto his desk. Only then did he glare at Peter. Maris's look was laden with deep irritation.

“Sit down. This is a devil of a business.”

He could have been referring to the series of killings along the coast or to Lasker's slaughter of his wife. Peter assumed the former, although he was unsure. A gratuitous thought occurred to him: were the two investigations destined to overlap?

Maris had trouble sitting still; he twisted in his chair and sighed with impatience even before starting his spiel. Give him time to vent; he was allowed, Peter reasoned. Perhaps it's that the staff meeting didn't go well. The time for asserting the Yard's role would come soon.

Maris rose and smacked the desk. “Have you ever dealt with a mass killer?”

Peter nodded. He decided to demonstrate that he could be collegial. “Peter Sutcliffe.”

But the question had been rhetorical. So was Peter's response, in effect, since he wasn't about to debate the Yorkshire Ripper.

“You know the biggest thing with a serial murderer?” Maris said. “It's that we never seem to catch them early enough. The numbers grow until he makes an obvious mistake.”

Peter nodded again. He had no stake in the killings but he resolved to be both frank and forthcoming. Maybe it would garner cooperation. “I agree. There's an argument that serial killers and rapists are different than other criminals. Maybe, but they're messy, reveal more information to us than most. Yet we often have trouble figuring out what they're telling us.” Why did he feel that he was babbling?

He sized up Maris. Peter tried not to be judgmental but the tension was already in the air. It seemed to Peter that Maris's already sweaty brow and his sawing hand gestures were an overreaction. Maris was probably raised in a south coast county and remained suspicious of outsiders. He was a believer in the humanity of the citizens with whom he grew up; outsiders didn't get that break. The chance that a local was calculatingly killing off young women was an affront to the values that had been poured into his upbringing. Such indignation could distort his perspective on the murders.

There were many ways this conversation could go, Peter felt. His gambit hadn't won any concessions from the inspector, not even eye contact after that first look. He understood that Maris needed to control his small kingdom and not be embarrassed by a parachuted expert out of London. On the other hand, another local caliph might simply have welcomed the help. So be it, Peter decided, but he needed certain protocols in place, if only to speed up the Lasker investigation. The crime scene was already turning stale. He had to make sure Maris understood that the more information and resources he made available at the outset, the less Peter would need to bother him over the next week.

The pleasantries ended. Maris remained in a heightened state, ready for sparring, it seemed.

“Inspector, I don't even begin to understand why Bartleben dispatched you down here. He sent you, what, to fix a problem?”

“No, to help in any way I can.”

“This is purely a manpower challenge. I don't really need a chief inspector. Whatever Lasker's sins may turn out to be, I can handle it. But we have a serial rapist on the loose on the south coast and there's no spare help to do the Lasker interviews. I'm not sure they require a Scotland Yard chief inspector.”

Peter's neutral look masked his annoyance. Bartleben expected him to be diplomatic, and that was his natural policy. He would help out wherever he could. And Maris had given him a prompt: if the Whittlesun force was overwhelmed, Peter would pick up the slack in an unthreatening way. That would be his principal angle on the assignment. But then . . . He disliked dismissive people, like Maris, who gave speeches and then foreclosed discussion. And there was that cheap shot about chief inspectors. What was that, a form of reverse condescension?

He couldn't help himself, and said, “Want my suggestions for dealing with the other forces?”

Peter was aware from Bartleben's information packet that a Task Force had been set up to reassure the public about the killings. J.J. “Jack” McElroy, an old colleague, was leading it, but he worked out of Devon, not Dorset, where Whittlesun was located. As far as Peter knew, none of the victims came from Dorset. Maris was a member because both counties formed part of Southwest Region.

For a second, Maris was confused about whether Peter was referring to Lasker or the other case. He settled on the serial murders. “No.”

“Be proactive.” Peter was leaning forward now. This whole thing was about to go off the rails, and it would be his fault. Maris sat down and tilted back a few inches in his chair. Peter shifted tone, adopting the bureaucratic jargon of modern police management. “Yes,” he said, “I suggest you show the lead on the exchange of information. Perhaps volunteer to chair any subcommittee on evidence sharing. Set up a database, and here's the thing, set it up so that everyone is using the same software with the same protocols for adding information.”