I don’t think Coker had even noticed Fay until then. There was an uncertainty about him as he looked down at the frightened girl huddled behind Rachel, and I saw him take in the dressings on her thin arms.
But he still wasn’t ready to back down. He confronted Jamie again.
‘Stacey wouldn’t make it up for no reason. I know you’ve done something to her, you little bastard!’
That earned a bitter laugh. ‘Oh yeah, because she’s such a—’
‘Jamie!’ Trask stared at his son, then turned back to Coker. ‘You’ve had your say. Now get out or I’m calling the police.’
Coker had been looking cornered; now the anger was back. He levelled a thick finger at Jamie.
‘Go near my daughter again and I’ll kill you.’
He pushed past me and thumped down the stairs. A moment later the front door banged. For a few seconds no one moved or spoke, then Trask turned to his son.
‘What did you do?’
‘I didn’t do anything! You know what she’s like!’
‘Yes, I do, and I’m asking what you did to make her tell her father something like that. What did you say to her?’
‘Nothing, I just …’ He seemed to slump. ‘I called her a fat sow and told her to fuck off and die, all right? She wouldn’t leave me alone! I mean, why can’t she just take a hint and—’
‘In my study.’
‘Dad, I swear—’
‘Now.’
Jamie’s shoulders slumped as he followed his father downstairs. As he passed the table he slapped down the knife he’d been holding.
It clattered on the wood, spinning in a slow circle to a stop.
Rachel walked me back to my car. This time she didn’t even attempt to persuade me to stay. We pretended not to hear the raised voices coming from Trask’s study as she packed up some food to take with me. Watching her spoon casserole into a dish, I felt sorry for her, forced by circumstances and conscience into staying with a family whose only connection to her was through a shared tragedy. I wondered if she’d have stayed as long if she’d had a better relationship with her sister, or whether guilt over their final row had kept her here.
The night had turned cold, the air damp and smelling of marsh. ‘How’s the nose?’ she asked as we walked along the footpath through the trees.
I touched it experimentally. It was still sore from where Coker had caught it, but wasn’t bleeding. ‘I’ll live.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ Her smile faded. ‘Not exactly a relaxing dinner, was it?’
‘It was different.’
She gave a tired laugh. ‘We seem to keep dragging you into our problems, don’t we? You remember I said that Jamie and Stacey had a history? Well, it was a bit more complicated than that.’
I’d already guessed that much. ‘Did she get pregnant?’
Rachel nodded. ‘It was before I came here. Jamie had broken up with her, which was bad enough for Coker. Then Stacey announced she was pregnant and claimed it was Jamie’s. It could have been but … she’s a bit older than him so let’s say he wasn’t the only candidate. Anyway, Coker went ballistic and blamed everything on Jamie. There was an almighty row, and knowing Emma I can’t imagine she would have been a calming influence. In the end Stacey had an abortion, but it left a lot of bad feeling. As you may have noticed.’
‘What do you think she’ll do now?’
‘Hopefully let it drop. I’m just glad you saw her, because if it just had been her word against Jamie’s …’ Rachel let that hang, then gave a weary shrug. ‘Anyway, it’s not all her fault. Jamie shouldn’t have said what he did. “Sow” was one of Emma’s pet insults, so no prizes for guessing where he got that from. God, what an evening.’
‘I’m sorry if bringing the wine made things awkward,’ I said.
‘You mean because of Andrew?’ She shrugged. ‘It isn’t normally an issue. Like I said before, he’s not an alcoholic or anything. He just started drinking more after Emma disappeared, and stopped when he realized things were getting a bit out of hand.’
‘Like going to confront Leo Villiers, you mean?’
‘That didn’t help, no. And you saw how it can get between him and Jamie. They’re very alike so they tend to rub anyway. It’s worse if Andrew’s been drinking’
We’d emerged from the copse and now stopped by my car. Rachel looked back at the house, a dark rectangle with yellow windows visible through the shadowy trees.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
‘Me?’ She shrugged. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
She didn’t sound it. A tension had been building up in me, and I spoke without thinking. ‘Look, if you’re not doing anything tomorrow night, how about going out for dinner? Or a drink, or something?’
She looked taken aback, and I felt my stomach lurch. Where did that come from? Less than an hour ago I’d been regretting accepting Trask’s invitation: now here I was asking Rachel out. If I could have snatched the words back I would.
Then she smiled. ‘I’d like that. But there aren’t exactly many places to go around here.’
‘It’s OK. It was a bad idea anyway.’
‘No, I’d love to. It just means driving for miles.’ She hesitated. ‘If you like, I could cook something at the boathouse?’
‘Uh … Yes, if you’re sure …’
‘Great. How about seven?’
I said seven was fine.
Driving back to the boathouse, I swung between euphoria and apprehension. I told myself not to read anything into it, that Rachel was probably glad of the chance to get away from Creek House for an evening. Still, I knew I was potentially complicating things, involving myself even deeper in the Trask family’s problems.
It didn’t matter. Regardless of the circumstances, I couldn’t remember feeling like this in …
Well. A long time.
I’d only been in one serious relationship since Kara had died. I’d been a GP at the time, and it hadn’t survived the transition from my working with the living to the dead. But it meant I’d long ago resolved any guilt over becoming involved with someone else. I was glad for that much, at least, though it didn’t make me feel any less nervous. I smiled ruefully as I caught myself. It was only dinner, after all. Don’t get carried away.
Back at the boathouse I turned on the heater to counter the night’s chill and took the still-warm casserole over to the table. With the soft whirr of the blown air as a background, I turned on my laptop and ate as I opened the files Lundy had emailed earlier. As well as the post-mortem report on the remains from the barbed wire, the DI had also sent a photograph of the custom-made shotgun that had disappeared along with Leo Villiers. I didn’t like guns and had never been a fan of shooting as a sport, but even I had to admit that it was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. The Mowbry was double-barrelled, with an over-and-under configuration rather than side-by-side. The stock was a burnished mahogany, while the barrels themselves were a smoky blue-black that seemed to glow. Most distinctive of all were the silver side plates, intricately whorled and engraved with the letters LV.
Leo Villiers.
I wondered if the man lying in the mortuary had appreciated the aesthetics of the weapon that killed him.
Lundy had attached a short note with the image: FYI – barrel 32 inches. Frears says too long for estuary body to reverse and reach trigger. Assuming the shot had come from Leo Villiers’ missing Mowbry, as seemed likely, that ruled out any lingering question of suicide. Not that there had been any serious doubt once we knew the body wasn’t his.
I went to the file containing the post-mortem report. It wasn’t ideal reading material to accompany food, but my work had long since cured me of being squeamish. Even so, for once I found it hard to concentrate. My mind kept drifting to Rachel, until the words on the glowing screen finally snared my attention. I lowered the fork, a piece of chicken still speared on it, as what I was reading began to sink in. The broken arm and leg I’d noticed when the body was on the barbed wire weren’t th
e only damage it had sustained. There were more injuries. A lot more, I realized, reaching for a pen and paper. I’d noticed that the head seemed to hang unusually loose, even for the length of time the remains had been submerged. With its thick layers of muscles and tendons, it’s usually the last extremity to fall away. Now I saw that two of the vertebrae in the neck were broken, with what was obviously extreme force. And the right tibia and fibula weren’t only snapped mid-shin, they’d been fractured at the knee as well. That same leg also had a dislocated hip, the ball-like head of the femur wrenched completely from its socket.
I tapped my pen against my chin. It was possible the multiple trauma could have been caused by the drifting body being struck by a boat, which might also explain the propeller-like wounds to the face. But it would have to have been a very forceful impact. Probably more than one, I thought, considering the extent of the injuries.
Then I saw something that really made me sit up.
I re-read it, then opened the file containing the mortuary X-rays. The extent of the sharp trauma injuries to the facial bones were evident even from the ghostly 2D images. The boat propeller – if that’s what it was – had inflicted massive damage, making any potential reconstruction a complicated task.
But that wasn’t what interested me. The world shrank around me, ceasing to exist outside the glow of my laptop screen as I enlarged the X-ray of the cranium. I zoomed in on one particular area of damage, chafing at the restricted views the flat X-rays provided. Then, like a pattern emerging from a puzzle, I saw it.
‘And how did you get there?’ I murmured, the half-eaten casserole forgotten as I stared at the screen.
I was too wired to relax after that. My mind was still buzzing when I went to bed, thoughts of Rachel flitting around with ideas about the case. For the first time I felt as though a chink of light was beginning to break through, that things were falling into place for my own life as well as the investigation. I should have known better.
Stacey Coker never came home that evening.
20
AS LUNDY RELATED it later, Coker had gone back home to confront his daughter after storming out of Creek House. His wife had divorced him years before, so now he and Stacey lived alone in a bungalow not far from the marine salvage yard. When he found his daughter wasn’t there, he’d tried calling her without success. Then, opening a pack of beer, he sat fuming while he waited for her to come home.
Except Stacey never arrived.
To begin with Coker wasn’t worried. Even when phone calls to her friends failed to locate her, he was angry rather than concerned. It wouldn’t be the first time his daughter had persuaded friends to lie for her. Only later, as their repeated denials began to ring true, did he start to realize this was different. Even so, convinced his daughter was simply putting off facing him, it wasn’t until the early hours of the morning that he went out looking for her.
After banging on the doors of the friends most likely to be harbouring her, Coker remembered I’d seen Stacey driving past the boathouse. There were two ways back to Cruckhaven from there. One was what passed for the main road, which Coker had taken himself earlier. Not having seen any sign of his daughter then, he now took the other route. This cut further into the Backwaters, less accessible but better for anyone who didn’t want to risk their distinctive car being seen. About a mile before he reached the boathouse, Coker’s headlights picked out a gap in the hawthorn hedgerow by the roadside. Even then he almost drove past, but some instinct made him pull over. Leaving his engine running so his headlights shone on the gap, he got out and found fresh breaks in the branches. The creek beyond was full and dark, but he made out a paler shape sticking from the black water.
It was the rear bumper and one back wheel of a car.
By the time the police arrived the tide was ebbing, and enough of the car was visible to see that it was small and white, with a red racing stripe. Tyre marks showed where it had left the road on the bend, before tipping over as it went down the shallow bank. It had come to rest upside down in the creek, on its roof but canted at an angle. The driver’s door was open, but – as Coker had already established after plunging into the water himself – there was no sign of its occupant. Only a handbag remained inside the car, containing Stacey Coker’s purse and driving licence.
‘It looks like she took the bend too fast, lost control and then rolled it down the bank,’ Lundy told me.
It was the following afternoon and we were in the hospital cafeteria, at an isolated table set away from any other diners. Not that there were many: it was after the lunchtime rush and half the tables were empty. Lundy had dropped into the mortuary unannounced to tell me what had happened. He’d seemed ill at ease as he’d stood by the examination table, rattling the loose coins in his pocket as I’d cut away the decomposed soft tissue from the second body and begun to cut through the connective tendons and cartilage of the major joints. It was unusual for a police officer to be bothered about such things, and he’d showed no such qualms when either of the bodies were being recovered. But he’d seemed relieved when I suggested we take a break for lunch, so we’d headed for the cafeteria.
‘The seat belt was unfastened, so it’s possible she managed to undo it and crawl out,’ he went on, emptying a second sachet of sugar into his polystyrene cup of tea. ‘Or she didn’t bother fastening it and got thrown through the door as the car flipped. Either way, we’ve got to assume she got carried out by the tide or we’d have found her by now.’
I was still trying to absorb this new tragedy. I’d taken the more direct route to the mortuary that morning, and so missed the cordoned-off area of the Backwaters where Stacey Coker’s car had been found. So I’d been unaware of what had happened until Lundy arrived, wanting to hear my version of events the previous evening. Coker had told the police about his daughter speeding past the boathouse, which made me the last person to have seen her before the accident. And, quite possibly, the last to see her alive.
‘How fast was she going?’ Lundy asked.
I remembered the tug of air as the car flashed past, almost clipping me. ‘She was gone in a second, so it’s hard to say. But fast.’
Lundy nodded, morosely. He looked tired, his eyes more pouched than normal and an unhealthy colour to his face. But then he’d had a late night. ‘Figures. She’s a bit hot-headed by all accounts, and she’d just had a row with Jamie Trask. She’s already got points on her licence for speeding.’
‘So what’s happening now?’
He stirred his tea with a plastic spoon. ‘We’ve got the helicopter and marine unit out, and foot patrols searching where we can in the Backwaters. But you’ve seen yourself what it’s like in there. The tide was already going out by the time her dad found her car, so she could have wound up anywhere. Best chance is if the tide took her as far as the estuary, because then sooner or later she’ll wash up on the Barrows.’
He was talking about a body, not an injured survivor. ‘You don’t think there’s a chance she could still be alive?’
‘There’s always a chance.’
His tone made it clear how unlikely he thought that was. Even if Stacey had managed to crawl from the car rather than being thrown out, she’d have still had to fight against the tidal current in the cold water. I’d felt how strong its pull was when my car stalled on the causeway. That had only been knee deep, and I hadn’t been involved in a crash. Stunned and possibly injured, weighted down by waterlogged clothes and probably disorientated in the darkness, it wouldn’t have been easy for her to reach the bank.
The fact that we were having this conversation suggested she hadn’t.
‘How’s Coker taking it?’ I asked.
Lundy turned down his mouth, moustache bristling as he took a sip of tea. ‘As you’d expect. If he’s any sense, Jamie Trask should steer well clear of him.’
I hadn’t thought about that, but Lundy was right. Jamie hadn’t been directly responsible for the accident, but I didn’t think Coker would see it th
at way.
We fell silent in the echoing clatter of the cafeteria. I dutifully chewed my way through a limp cheese sandwich while Lundy tore the cellophane wrapper from a pre-packaged slice of fruitcake. He’d already eaten lunch but had decided he had room for a piece of cake. To keep me company, he’d said, smiling sheepishly.
‘Funny places, these,’ he said out of the blue, looking around the half-empty room. ‘Hospital cafés, I mean. Always the same, wherever you go. Everything seems normal, but nothing is, if you get my drift.’
I hadn’t really thought about it before, but then I’d once worked and trained in a hospital. That gave you a different perspective. ‘People have to eat.’
‘I suppose.’ He’d finished the cake, and now absently began snapping off pieces of polystyrene from the rim of his cup. ‘I’m here again myself tomorrow. The hospital, not this place.’
I looked across at him, wondering if this explained his odd mood. ‘Is everything OK?’
The DI looked embarrassed, as though he regretted saying as much as he had. ‘Oh, it’s just routine stuff. Endoscopy. They think I might have an ulcer. Lot about nothing, but you know what doctors are like.’
‘Pesky bunch, aren’t we?’
I’d noticed Lundy taking antacids but put it down to indigestion. He gave me a smile, acknowledging that he’d forgotten I’d been a GP myself.
‘How are you getting on with the body from the creek?’ he asked, moving off the topic. ‘Did you manage to look at the post-mortem report?’
‘I did, yes.’ The news about Stacey Coker had dominated our conversation until now, so I hadn’t had a chance to broach anything else. ‘There are a lot more broken bones than I’d expect.’
‘Couldn’t they be from being hit by a boat?’
‘They could, but it would have to have been travelling fast or be pretty big to do that much damage. Hard to see that happening in the Backwaters.’
‘We don’t know where the body came from. It could have been carried in from the estuary, or even further out.’