Walking into the Ocean (41 page)

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full. . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . the cliffs of England stand

. . . . out in the tranquil bay.

. . . . the night air

. . . . the long line of spray

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . pebbles . . . fling

. . . . up the high strand

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The eternal note of sadness

All of the next stanza was missing, except for the final phrase.

. . . . the distant northern sea

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . the breath

Of the night wind. . . .

And we are here as on a darkling plain.

Peter had hoped that Father Salvez had left behind a message for him, but this wasn't the sign he craved. Salvez had simply been playing a word game with himself; it wasn't a puzzle meant for any other reader. He had copied it for solace, or for amusement. He had chopped down Arnold's poem to the physical details, which happened to match the topography just beyond these Abbey walls. He had borrowed them in order to affirm his reality, his presence here on this hilltop during his final stay. No doubt the fragments of the poem had comforted him. His only concession to mortality was the partial line, “the eternal note of sadness.”

Yet the truncated poem was written in a fine hand, not unlike an illuminated manuscript, by a practised amateur calligrapher, presumably Salvez himself. It was a beautiful thing in itself. Peter pulled the tiny square of parchment from the side of the monitor and held it in the glow of the screen. He read the words in yellow-orange,
ars bene moriendi
, and turned it over. On the back, in the same lettering, he found:
Th a-K
.

The typeface. The font. He had seen them before. It was a sign-painter's font. The letters carried modest serifs, with a distinct clerical tone but with a commercial impact too. The font was not derived from the elaborate alphabet of an illuminated manuscript. The colour cinched the debate: the draughtsman of the pious homilies on display in the case at St. Elegias was the craftsman of
ars bene moriendi
. The parchment had been a token from the painter. Salvez had practised his own journeyman calligraphy on “Dover Beach,” but this gem was the work of a professional.

He scanned the short bookshelf for Salvez's copy of
Imitation of Christ
. He thought that he had the English translation clear but he paged through the chapters until he found the precise reference. Thomas à Kempis had been full of catchy sayings, including “Man proposes, God disposes.”
Ars bene moriendi
translated effectively as “the art of dying well.” No, Peter concluded, Father Salvez would have spun it another way, as an exhortation to himself: “You must die a good death.”

In his last days, the old priest had resolved to find that good death.

Father Salvez had persuaded Father Clarke to place the verse from Luke in the casement for his parishioners, and all the town, to see. He had played on Clarke's sympathy for a dying man, making a final nuisance of himself. And perhaps it was for André Lasker to see, if he decided to attend the funeral.

And so Clarke had cut it back. The reference to man's “escape” from fate had been omitted. Salvez had loved games, even when they were shaped by apprehension of his imminent death. Salvez knew what the Knights understood. They too had deleted any reference to “escape” —
“fugere”
— on the final gravestone. The Knights of St. John were convinced that their leader, if he lived a good life and made a good death, would leapfrog the Reaper and land in heaven to stand before the judgment of the Son of man.

Salvez had sent Peter a message, and a puzzle to ponder.
Who was worthy of escape?
He was asking Peter to decide the right answer.

As he rested in the basement gloom, he half dozed and recalled snippets of his dream. Father Salvez was the black figure, flying out over the desert-sea. Had Peter been able to count the blank-faced sheep, he bet the number would have been thirty-three. Thirty-three buttons on the cassock.

He took the sheet with “Dover Beach” on it, bent it in half and slid the parchment between the folds. A small fossil sat on the shelf, a pyritized ammonite that the priest must have collected down at the shore. He picked up the three items and put them in an envelope from the drawer. Last, he picked up the red rosary and slipped it into his pocket.

Hamm checked his pistol and inserted it, safety on, in the door slot beside the driver's seat of the Vauxhall. The man on the phone had been clear about the murderer, and Ron was grateful for clarity. Oh, the caller had sworn him to tight secrecy, and he wasn't a chap whom Ron would normally be inclined to trust, with his glib manner, but everything he said made sense. It was about goddam time someone nailed it down.

The caller confirmed what Symington had guessed at, that Albrecht Zoren had been pivotal to Lasker's escape plans, helping to conceal cash and complete the paperwork for the off-ledger export scam. It was Hamm's own deduction that Zoren had eliminated Sally the bookkeeper to prevent her from pointing the way to the gaps in the accounts.

Ron had been less certain about nailing Zoren as the Rover. The caller had been persuasive, pointing to what Ron already knew, that the mechanic had two previous charges for assault, though no convictions; he had to admire the caller's research skills. With access to an unlimited supply of cars, Zoren could move fluidly across the road network on the cliffs.

But perhaps it was the pure momentum that got to Hamm. He had known for a week or more that he was close to the Rover. The attacks on Garvena and Van Loss, as Peter had emphasized, were mistakes that demonstrated a breakdown of discipline. But Ron had been influenced most by the sight of Brenda Van Loss, pale and bruised and luckily rescued no more than a couple of hours away from death by freezing. There was an extra callousness in that one.

Ron tried to be honest with himself about the rendezvous. He wasn't out for glory, but he wanted his measure of vengeance. Momentum again — and it had been launched with the Symington confrontation. He had not intended to strike him, but the teacher's arrogance had been too much. At first he denied his guilt, then threw lines from Shakespeare in Ron's face. He tried to push all the responsibility onto Zoren.

Ron approached the side streets and stopped out of sight of Lasker's Garage. He contemplated the scene ahead. It was possible that he wanted to prove his professionalism to Cammon and Maris, he thought, but really it was the momentum. If he could stop the Rover now, he would forget the torn bodies of Molly and Anna.

And the caller had been persuasive.

He had visited the garage once before, when he first interviewed Zoren, and recalled the messy work bays, which extended on to several back rooms. The caller had advised that Zoren slept on a cot in one of these rooms, but had no idea which one. Ron crept to the front entrance, which was recessed from the road, and stopped to listen. No lights were on inside. He needed to be inside before he announced himself, and so he tried the doorknob to the front office. To his surprise, the door swung open and a faint glow from the street established that the room was empty. He entered with his pistol in his right hand, a small torch in his left. He noted the gouge in the reception desk but moved on to the opening that led into the work area. Within, he remarked on the open bonnet of a sedan by a work pit; the garage wasn't all that busy, he observed, and the whole place gave off a spooky, semi-abandoned feel.

“Mr. Zoren? This is Detective Hamm, Whittlesun Police.”

He waited in shadow for a full minute. The noise came from the entry behind him, unexpected. The man walked into the beam of Ron's torch and smiled. He was utterly self-possessed. Ron's first one-off reaction was that the man could have been wearing one of the disguises F.R. Symington had conjured up for André, with makeup and hair gel.

“Thank you for coming, Detective. Have you found Zoren?”

“Not yet. Do you have reason to think he's here?”

“I think so, but I'm glad to have the police find out. Have you checked the back rooms?”

“Stay here. I'll do it.”

Weapon drawn, Ron edged past the cars in the work bays and around the open pits. The room was a dangerous obstacle course. It became necessary to turn on the switch by the doorway leading off the large space into the back, and as the neon tubes flickered on, at once he felt overexposed. It seemed safer to move into the next small room.

A cot had been set up in the corner, but Albrecht Zoren was not on it. He had propped himself against the opposite wall and now lay slumped to one side. Death had arrived at least twenty-four hours ago, for the body had stiffened and the sallow skin on the man's face had begun to tighten as the features moved towards full rictus. Ron knelt beside the dead man and immediately discerned the effects of a cocaine overdose. Not only was there white powder on his nostrils and chin, but he had wrapped himself in a panel of canvas for warmth. Cocaine reactions often included the shakes. As Ron examined Zoren, the furnace beneath the garage fired up and hot air began to blow out of the vent right next to the body.

The man, composed and smiling, was waiting in the big room for Ron Hamm to return.

“Zoren is dead,” Ron announced.

The man held back until Ron Hamm was parallel to the work pit and then reached out and cut the detective across the jugular. Coincidentally, the tool that Albrecht Zoren had threatened Peter with lay on the floor between them; but the Rover had brought his own familiar, sharp knife. He stepped back to avoid the spray.

As Ronald Hamm toppled to his right into the pit, he heard his mobile chiming its familiar ring.

It was a sign of Peter's fatigue that he was dozing off in the stiff-backed chair, deep in the blue aura of the computer, when Willet began pounding on the door. He was floating in a reverie, making his detective's lists. Whom did he trust? Well, that answer was constant: he trusted Gwen. She had identified the Electric Man, and he believed in her.

Peter recalled his list of women. He supposed that the one who still niggled at him was Wendie. She was strong, though not in the way that Gwen was self-assured. It bothered him that she seemed more interested in the Lasker case than the Rover, when surely the biggest, showiest news story was the serial predator. He wondered if she had an undisclosed connection to Lasker. Then again, apropos of the Rover, Wendie had been the one to twig to Kidd's Reach.

Still groggy when the second rap came, Peter imagined the gong being rung at the opening of a J. Arthur Rank film, the reverberations sweeping through the crypt from no single direction. He forgot his half-dream as he revived.

He met the constable at the landing; the door had opened about six inches. The man wore his motorcycle goggles and ancient leathers, and still resembled a flying ace.

“Thank you, Mr. Willet. How did you know to find me here?”

“I received two calls, one from Mr. Hamm and a second from Mr. Verden, to the same effect. Stand back for a moment, if you will.” Peter retreated as Willet kicked the door wide.

“Just a minute, Constable.” Peter trotted down to the room and shut down the computer. He tested the light switch at the top of the steps and it worked fine now; evidently, the lights closed down when the door was closed.

They made their way back along the nave and out around the Abbey to the set of steps. Willet's motorbike was parked below, with an extra helmet on the seat. Peter held back in order to take a couple of deep breaths.

“What did Hamm say?” Peter asked.

“He was a bit coy, I must say. Said he's made a breakthrough. He'd report back later about it. I had started my late shift when he called.”

Willet ferried him back to the car park by bike, after which they formulated their plan. Willet would lead the way to Lasker's Garage. He would likely get there faster than Peter in the Land Rover, but he was to park a street or two away and wait for him. Peter had recorded Hamm's number from the young detective's incoming call. He now dialled it as he drove down the hill. This time he connected to his voicemail service and left a message: “Ron, stay away from Zoren. It's a trap.”

In the Land Rover, he careered down the hill, with the
SUV
fishtailing on the muddy verge. He was seeing the power of a coastal storm for the first time. Until now, he had only the tourist's experience of bad weather, encountering the dull fixity of grey mists and drizzle, but now the sleet, fog and cold had rolled in together. Even at this speed, he began to lose Willet's tail lamp in the distance. He turned the wipers to high, and wondered if it might rain forever.

He was safe as long as he followed the only passable road to the town limits; from there he would know the way to Lasker's. He felt, rather than saw, the cloudbank overhead. The storm was moving in from the sea like an invader; it would hover over the land until it completed its assault, leaving wind damage and flooded cellars. Between curtains of rain he glimpsed farmhouse lights. A van with a decal of a satellite dish logo on the side huddled near a farm entrance; the power feed to the area had held so far, but, Peter thought, television service must have become problematic for the entire heights.

He reached Lasker's much faster than he expected. He desperately hoped that he was in time. Willet had pulled his machine into a lay-by on the cobbled street that led to the garage; he had removed his helmet. Peter pulled in behind. He dug in the boot for his Smith & Wesson, which was fully loaded, and ignored the sleet that was angling into his face from up the road. They padded side by side to the lot, where only three cars occupied the apron out front. The pull-down garage door next to the parking area was shut and padlocked. They had a clear view of the entire exterior, but that didn't count for much when any entry to the interior would require blunt force, with the accompanying racket.

Ron Hamm had blundered into the ultimate misinterpretation of the evidence. For a fortnight — had it been longer? — Peter had struggled to keep Lasker separate from the Task Force, if only for day-to-day efficiency, and to avoid crossing wires with the searchers along the Whittlesun Heights and with the Task Force analysts back in Devon. Peter, during the time he was assigned to the Lasker case, had served as a token member of the group. Hamm never had that luxury: he was formally appointed to both and had taken on substantial, perhaps clashing, duties. He was ripe for seduction. Ron Hamm had decided that Albrecht Zoren was the Rover, and he had been persuaded of this by the Rover himself. The convergence could be fatal.

Hamm was new to the world of pathology. It had been a mistake for Peter to conceal Anna's suicide from him. Ron couldn't be blamed for concluding that Zoren had contributed somehow to her humiliation. While at the Regional Morgue that day, he examined Molly Jonas as well, her bloated, white body showing every bruise and desecration of her innocence. But Peter also suspected that Brenda Van Loss was important too. Ron had been early on the scene. He had described the tableau to Peter on the phone, noting the near-freezing conditions that night. The Rover had beaten Brenda about the face, in contrast to Daniella, and left angry abrasions on her arms and forehead. The resemblance to Anna was compelling. Later, the Rover had reinforced the link to Zoren. After all, Hamm had reasoned, Lasker himself had left England before the attacks on Daniella and Brenda. So Zoren was the Rover.

All it had taken to get Ron to Lasker's Garage was a call from the Rover himself.

Followed doggedly by Willet, Peter approached the office, to find the door locked and the shade pulled all the way down. Taking off his coat, he wrapped it around his fist and punched in the window. No sound came from the office, or from the depths of the work bay area beyond. Reaching around the frame, Peter released the doorknob. Followed by the constable, he paused in the office to check the shelves on which Sally had ranged the binders of company invoices. The books were in their places; the intruder hadn't been interested. Peter had a sense that the business had slowed considerably, and the condition of the work bays confirmed the fact. Only two sedans, neither less than a decade old, were waiting for attention, and the open bonnet of one indicated that only desultory repairs were being done.

He needed to move swiftly, but with a high degree of caution. The interior of the garage afforded many hiding places; chasing down a suspect would entail dodging every kind of obstacle, and there were multiple egress points allowing a fugitive to get away. Basic police training for entering a building was the same everywhere. Willet drew his service pistol and fell into rhythm behind Peter as they shifted strategic positions from the doorway to the first parked vehicle, and then to the second. Peter made sure not to block the Constable's line of fire, since the reaction of the first man would likely be to drop-and-shoot while the back-up would shoot to kill. Peter reasoned that an ambusher would place himself at the back of the work zone, although Peter had never been this far into the facility. Also, there was bound to be another door through which he could flee.

But there was silence. It was the kind of silence that rings hollow and seems to expand, that birds feel before the advent of a storm; the sensation that someone has left a room a minute earlier.

The two policemen moved efficiently to the rear exit of the garage and around the full interior perimeter, checking off each place of concealment. Willet finally lowered his weapon and looked towards Peter. He understood when the constable took out his mobile phone and punched in numbers. Peter wheeled a hundred and eighty degrees as a ring tone sounded behind and
below
. The two men followed the sound to the rim of the rectangular hole in the garage floor, and gazed into the oily pit. Ron Hamm lay on his back, his left arm contorted under his body.

Peter scrambled down the short ladder into the pit, unmindful of the grease. Hamm had struggled; his coat was thoroughly soaked with oil and grime. Peter found no pulse and tried
CPR
, to no avail. On closer examination, he understood that Hamm had been unconscious, probably mortally injured, before he fell; the slash across his throat wouldn't have been instantly fatal, but was enough to throw him off balance and make him give up resistance as he turned to his gushing wound. Arterial blood had flooded over the man's shirt, down to the beltline, and sprayed ahead as he fell, coating the side of the work pit. He had bounced and twisted on the slippery cement, rotating onto his back, where he bled out entirely.

Willet dialled 999 and requested both ambulance and police. The responding dispatcher, a woman, was initially confused, but he patiently led her through the basic information she needed to do her job. He explained that a local police officer had been killed, that he too was a Whittlesun officer and was wearing black pants and a leather jacket, and the arriving officers should refrain from shooting him. He gave the address of Lasker's Garage and stated that the door to the small shack, set back from the street, was unlocked.

“We're in one of the work pits with the body of the victim. Once you send Ambulance Services, please call Inspector Maris at Whittlesun Police
HQ
, top priority.”

“Are you sure the officer is dead?” she said, her voice now as cold as his. There was a special code for Officer Down.

“Definitely.
CPR
has been applied.”

“Is anyone there with you?”

“I am with another policeman.”

“Whittlesun Force?”

Willet rolled his eyes in exasperation. “No, New Scotland Yard.”

“Do you know the identity of the deceased person?”

“Yes. He was a good policeman.”

The ambulance arrived in seven minutes flat. Police vehicles began to pour in two minutes later, and Willet met them at the door to the office. The paramedics and police investigators trailed into the work bays and relieved Peter, who was down in the bloody pit cradling Hamm in his arms. His arms cramping, woozy from the damp and the blood smell in the hole, Peter was grateful to climb up top. He followed the instructions of the first detective to arrive, a tall man in his fifties named Perlmutter, and waited outside on the asphalt apron in front of the office shack. Witnesses, even if both were police officers, were to be separated, and Peter respected the rule. He was alone for a moment as the pedestrian traffic spun around him. He knew that Maris would be only seconds behind. Peter's mobile battery was almost exhausted but he tried, with success, to get a clear line to Tommy Verden at home in London. He provided a brief status report on Hamm's killing and asked Tommy to rendezvous at the Sunset Arms as soon as he could drive down to the coast. Peter went over next steps, the agenda for the night, and instructed him to prepare for an intensive search along the cliffs, and to bring along a fresh coat and gloves for Peter himself.

“It's a bastard of a storm moving in, Tommy,” he said.

“And weapons?”

Peter answered with only one word, but Verden understood. “Kershaw,” he said, invoking the bloody shootout with the sixth man Peter had killed.

Peter ended the call just as Maris, bundled in a trenchcoat and leather gloves, was disgorged from a panda car. He asserted immediate ownership of the scene. He came right up to Peter, who was leaning against the door jamb, trying to avoid the broken glass on one side of the doorway while dodging the medical and police personnel trundling in and out.

“Cammon,” he said, “how did my man die?”

Peter was in for a long night, and he didn't have the time. He had never expected that he could “start from the beginning.” Resignedly, he decided to respond in a direct and literal manner to all of Maris's questions. Maybe he could get out of here in two hours or so. The tough part would be keeping his own evasions straight.

“Do you have anyone to take notes?” Peter said, not unkindly. He was signalling that he wouldn't try to upstage or finesse Maris in any way. He knew perfectly well that Maris was on the firing line when it came to explaining this cock-up to the press. He had been the one to suspend Ron for — what would Stan Bracher call it? — straying off the reservation.

“Start with the basics, Cammon. Full statement at the station.”

A young female constable stepped forward. She sensed the need to get Peter's statement, and his professional characterization of events, down on paper quickly the first time. “I can do it, Inspector.”

For all Maris's chronic annoyance, the loss of young Ronald Hamm had affected him, and he tempered his reaction to the woman officer. “All right. Constable, you sit at the desk in there. Chief Inspector, over here.”

They moved inside. The officer, Maris, Perlmutter and Cammon. Peter made it clear that he would stand. It was an awkward venue in which to take a formal statement. The chatter of a dozen men and women intruded from the garage, while rotating cherry lights flashed across the sightlines of the four in the office. Perlmutter realized the problem. “I'm not needed for this at the moment. Let me finish up with our man.” He left for the crime scene inside.

“Cammon, do you know who did this?” Maris said.

“I think so.”

“Well, then, who?”

Peter paused and gathered his thoughts. He took a recharging breath, which Maris interpreted as the prelude to more dissembling. “Can we take it back an hour or two?” Peter said.

“Cammon, if you know the killer, you must agree that time's of the essence. The garage has been closed for two days. The interim manager is a strange fellow named Albrecht Zoren. Willet confirms that Detective Hamm interviewed him early in the course of the Lasker investigation. Was that before or after the incident with Symington?”