Thirteen
FRIDAY, 22 APRIL 2011
The search for Pendrick’s body resumed at first light. By now there was no chance he was still alive. Exhaustion and hypothermia would have killed him long before the police chopper appeared once again over the boiling sea.
Suttle went to work as usual. The downstairs office, briefly busy after Constantine rose from the dead, was empty. A house fire in Seaton had taken the lives of two kids and their mother was gravely ill in a burns unit in Salisbury. Growing suspicions about the role of her estranged partner had triggered an MCIT investigation. Nandy, as ever, was blitzing the job, but Houghton had tactfully let Suttle sleep in.
‘Appreciate it, boss, but there’s no need. The last thing I want is time on my hands.’
Lizzie spent the day in Exmouth. She was in regular contact with Molly Doyle, who had the ear of the Coastguard, but by midday the search for Pendrick’s body was called off.
Shortly afterwards, she took a call from a voice she didn’t recognise. D/C Andy Maffett wanted to interview her with regard to a Mr Tom Pendrick. She parked Grace with Tessa and walked to Exmouth police station. With Andy Maffett was another detective called Rosie Tremayne. Offered the services of the duty solicitor, Lizzie chose to say no.
The interview, conducted under caution, lasted longer than she’d anticipated. Lizzie kept the details of her brief relationship with Pendrick to a minimum, only too aware of the detectives’ curiosity. Yes, she’d got quite close to the missing rower. Yes, he’d been more than helpful in all kinds of ways. And yes, he’d finally trusted her with the story of what had really happened to Jake Kinsey. Had she been surprised by his confession? Of course she had. Had she had grounds to suspect anything of the sort earlier? Absolutely not. Had she been shielding him in any way? No.
The interview over, Andy Maffett had fashioned her account into a formal statement which she’d signed. Warned that she might be recalled for a second interview, she had no choice but to say yes. Murder wasn’t something anyone would take lightly. Of course she’d assist in any way she could.
Shaken, she’d returned to Tessa’s house. The last thing she wanted was conversation and in her heart she wanted to hide away with Grace in the silence of Pendrick’s flat but the premises had been sealed off by the police pending a thorough search. For a while she’d thought about contacting her husband but in the end she knew she wasn’t up to hearing his voice. The last few nightmare days seemed to have grown darker still. At the police station she’d sensed that the two detectives wanted a lot more. Chantry Cottage, and now Tom Pendrick, had taken her to a very bad place indeed.
Her mobile rang at just gone seven. Gill Reynolds.
‘How’s life in the country?’
‘Crap.’
Lizzie briefly explained about Pendrick. The man had wanted out. He’d taken a boat and gone to sea. By now, she said, he was probably dead.
‘Christ. So how does that make you feel?’
‘Terrible.’
She described the night that Jimmy had returned to find Pendrick at her kitchen table. Since then, she said, they’d barely exchanged a word.
‘Bloody hell. So what happens next?’
‘I wish I knew.’
‘You have to do something, Lou. You have to have a sort-out.’
‘I know.’
‘Then do it. Just do it.’
‘I can’t. I don’t know how to.’
‘That’s pathetic. I’m not hearing this. Of course you can. You’ve shafted that man, Lou. You’ve crapped all over him. You’ve got a child too. Think of Grace. Pull your bloody finger out, kiddo, and do something.’
‘Yeah? Like what?’
The question disappeared into silence because Gill was too busy to talk any longer. In truth there was something Lizzie had done, but since making the call last night she’d heard nothing. It was a long shot, she knew, but just now she couldn’t think of anything better.
He phoned around eleven when she was about to join Grace in Tessa’s spare bed. There was comfort in hearing the voice she knew so well. He wanted directions to the cottage. He’d meet her there next day. She told him how to find Colaton Raleigh. She had to spell the name.
‘What time?’ she said.
‘Midday.’
‘That’s great. I’m having to rely on buses at the moment.’
‘To do what?’
‘To get out to the cottage. It’s the back of beyond.’
‘You’re not even living there?’
‘No.’
‘Fuck. So where’s Jimmy?’
She looked at the phone, realising that she didn’t know.
‘Don’t ask,’ she said.
The following day was Saturday. It was raining when Suttle awoke. One look at the chaos of the kitchen convinced him he needed to get out. He toasted the last of the bread, piled the dishes in the sink, fed the cat and headed out into the rain. With no particular destination in mind, he pointed the Impreza west. After Exeter he took the A30 up to Okehampton. The word Bude on a signpost seemed to hold some promise but half an hour or so later he changed his mind. By the time he found Trezillion, the rain had stopped.
He parked behind the dunes and set out on foot. The wind was rising and the tide was in, pushing at the line of seaweed and assorted debris at the top of the beach. He skirted the dunes and found a path that led up onto a headland. From here, sitting among the rocks, he could look down on the nearly perfect crescent that was Trezillion. Any decent detective, he told himself, had to be able to get into other people’s heads, other people’s hearts. That was an early lesson he’d learned from Paul Winter. You have to become these guys, he’d always said. You have to see the world through their eyes. Only then can you be sure how to make life tough for them.
So what was Pendrick’s story? And how come this place had meant so much to him? The answer seemed all too obvious. Anyone growing up here would have fallen in love with the place. That might explain the start of his quarrel with Kinsey. It might also account for bringing Lizzie out here. Pendrick had wanted to share an important bit of himself, just the way Suttle had once taken Lizzie back to the New Forest village where he’d spent his childhood years. That’s what you did when you met someone you fell for. It was a kind of homing instinct, impossible to resist, and it meant that you’d stumbled over someone who really mattered.
He shook his head, not wanting to take the thought any further. Pendrick had brought Lizzie here because she’d suddenly become part of his life. More importantly, she’d gone along with him, conspired with him, borrowed the key and let herself into this secret place of his. He wasn’t at all sure that he bought Thursday’s story about Pendrick sculling off into oblivion, but in truth he didn’t much care whether the man was alive or dead. Either way, it was too late. From where he was sitting, among a scatter of spring flowers in the spongy wetness of the turf, the damage had been done.
He got to his feet and headed away from Trezillion, following the cliff path. The next town of any size was Newquay. Maybe he could get a bus back from there to pick up the Impreza. Maybe he’d even be up for the return walk. But after half an hour he’d had enough. Trekking on for mile after mile seemed purposeless. He’d lost some inner sense of direction. He felt like a piece of debris, useless, inert, adrift in deep space. Increasingly depressed, he turned back towards the cove, his head bent against the first flurries of the returning rain.
For maybe a mile the cliff path zigzagged upwards. Then came a fork beneath an outcrop of black granite. A path less trodden led to the very edge of the cliff. The cove lay off to his right, the whiteness of the beach fringed by the sand dunes. That’s where my wife wanted to make love to Pendrick, he told himself. That’s where my marriage came to an end. The wind was gusting now, blasts of cold air off the ocean, and he felt the salty prick of moisture in his eyes. He took a step forward, then another, peering over the edge of the cliff. The sea boiled on the rocks below, surging back and forth. Easy, he told himself. A second or two of gathering terror and then nothing but darkness. For a moment he was perfectly still, telling himself that it would be for the best, that it would offer the kindest way out, but then he shook his head, thinking of Kinsey, of Pendrick, of Lizzie, of Grace, glad of the hot jolts of anger that flooded through him, an anger he could almost taste. He turned and headed inland, away from the cove and the roar of the incoming surf.