3

Tuesday, 13 November, the morning after he’d met the Babingtons Brock received an email from the assistant commissioner thanking him very nicely for reassuring them. Then on Thursday morning, just as he was thinking about a coffee break, Matt Stone brought him the news that Nadya Babington had been found dead.

Stone seemed lost for words, but this was Fraud after all, not Homicide, where death was an everyday occurrence, and Brock had to prompt him to get the story. Earlier that morning a birdwatcher in the Kentish marshlands on the southern side of the Thames Estuary had come across an abandoned vehicle on a dirt track beside a large pond. Then he’d noticed what looked like some clothing in the water and called the police. A woman’s body had been recovered from the pond, her driving licence identifying her as Nadya Babington, and a police computer check had found her recent contact with the Met.

‘I’d better get down there,’ Brock said.

‘I’m not sure you should, Brock,’ Stone said. ‘We might be better staying out of it.’

‘Nonsense.’ Brock was pulling on his coat. ‘Who’s handling it?’

He got the details, made a call to the Kent police and ran down to his car, where he checked his satnav. He was to meet a Detective Sergeant Will Holt outside the church of St Mary Hoo on the Hoo Peninsula. A largely blank area on the map, the long bulge of land east of Gravesend lay between the estuaries of the Thames and Medway rivers. He wondered how it was he’d never heard of the Hoo Peninsula, apparently so close to London and yet so empty. And he wondered what on earth had taken Nadya Babington there.

He drove south across the Thames and then turned eastwards onto the A2 through Kent. Past Gravesend he left the highway and headed north-east into the flat country of the Hoo Peninsula. The roads became narrower, the settlements more scattered and the fields broader beneath a brooding dark November sky. Eventually he caught sight of a police 4x4 standing at the roadside in front of a rugged old stone church. He got out and introduced himself.

‘Best travel with us, sir,’ Sergeant Holt said. ‘It gets a bit boggy.’

They left the metalled road and bounced and splashed along an increasingly uneven and muddy track. On either side the hedgerows and cultivated fields fell away, replaced by bottle-green marshland with meandering waterways and black pools. He knew that on the far side of the Thames lay the London Gateway container port, but over here the marshes felt utterly remote from civilisation.

Finally, they rounded a bend and came to a broad gravel area that marked the end of the track. Here was an ambulance, another police vehicle and a truck, on the back of which was secured a dark green Range Rover streaked with mud.

The sergeant led Brock to the ambulance, where a white body bag lay on a stretcher. The ambulance officer unzipped it and Brock confirmed that it was Nadya Babington. His heart was struck by that lovely pale face, framed by wet black hair. She had the preoccupied look of the dead, as if dealing with some new and unimaginable reality. Her face was free of make-up, and she was wearing jeans and a quilted jacket.

‘There are no signs of violence or of anyone else being involved,’ the sergeant said. ‘Looks like she just came to the end of the path, switched off the engine, left the keys in the ignition, then walked into the pond and drowned herself. We’ll take her back to Gravesend for the post-mortem.’

They walked over to the black pool which lay beyond the gravel, and Brock stared at the grass and mud at its edge chewed up by the footprints of the rescuers.

‘So there’s no indication of another vehicle having been here?’ Brock asked.

‘No.’

‘Any idea of timing?’

‘The doctor reckons eighteen to twenty-four hours, so sometime during daylight yesterday. The birdwatcher reported it at two minutes past nine this morning.’

Brock stared at the marks on the ground for a while, thinking about the timing. The threatening email had been dated Monday morning and gave Nadya forty-eight hours to pay, which would correspond with the estimated time of her death yesterday, Wednesday morning. He said, ‘Okay, where’s the birdwatcher?’

‘Over there.’

The sergeant led him to the other police car and opened the rear door. An elderly bearded man wearing an anorak and rubber boots got out and shook hands with Brock. A pair of binoculars and a camera hung around his neck.

‘What were you doing out here?’ Brock asked.

‘There’s a pair of peregrine falcons I’ve been studying.’

He handed Brock a notebook in which he’d been recording his daily observations. The previous day, while Brock had been laboriously working through a pile of tedious old case files, this man had been out here alone in the fresh autumn air gazing at wigeons and redshanks and little ringed plovers. Brock envied him.

‘Haven’t seen them today yet. Not likely to with all this activity. But when we’re done I’ll go back to the nest site and see if I can catch them there.’

Brock looked around at the treeless landscape. ‘Where the hell do they nest?’

‘In the church tower.’

‘At St Mary Hoo?’

‘No, no. St Chad-on-the-Marsh. Over there. You can just see the top of the tower.’

Brock looked where he was pointing and managed to make out a dark bump on the horizon.

‘That’s the nearest building?’

‘Yes. There’s a couple of farms over there as well.’

‘Have you ever seen the Range Rover around here before?’

‘I’ve never seen any car around here before, but I’ve only been in these parts for a couple of weeks—since I got news of the falcons.’

‘Okay, thanks.’

Brock turned to the sergeant and they walked over to Nadya’s car. ‘What did you find inside?’ he asked.

‘A handbag, a box of tissues. Only manuals in the glove box. The car’s just six months old. Nothing in the back.’

‘No computer? Laptop?’

‘No, nor a phone, either in the car or on her person. I wondered about that. Could be at the bottom of the pond, I suppose. I’ll see if we can get a fix on it.’

‘Map?’

‘No, but she had the GPS, of course.’

‘I’d like a report on the GPS. I’m interested in the places she’s been to since she had the car, especially around here. Can you do that for me?’

‘Right.’ He regarded Brock for a moment, then his eyes lit up and he said, ‘Brock. Sorry, sir, I should have recognised the name. Homicide, right? I’ve heard about some of your murder investigations. Is that what we’re looking at here? A possible homicide?’

‘I’m on secondment to Fraud at the moment,’ Brock said airily, as if this was just a temporary aberration, ‘and we’ve been advising Mrs Babington. She may have been the victim of a financial scam. So if anything odd turns up, let me know directly, will you?’ He gave the sergeant his card.

‘I’ll make sure forensics do a thorough job on the car and I’ll send you a copy of the pathologist’s report as soon as we get it. I’ll let you know what he says about time and cause of death as soon as I hear.’

‘That would be appreciated. Many thanks. Has anybody contacted her husband? I think he may be overseas.’

‘Yes. When he didn’t answer his home phone we contacted his office, and they told us he’s in New York. I spoke to him there at ten-thirty this morning.’

Brock took a picture of Nadya’s driving licence photograph and walked around the gravel area while the truck and ambulance drove away, and then was taken back to his car at St Mary Hoo. He got in and sat there for a while looking around at the bleak landscape. ‘Why here?’ he said to himself. ‘Why the hell did you come here, Nadya?’ He felt unsettled, reluctant to return to the city, and instead set the GPS to St Chad, Hoo Peninsula and drove off across the marshes.

Though he was forced to go slowly on the narrow winding lane, it wasn’t long before he made out the dark stump of St Chad’s tower against the lowering sky. The church was a squat structure of rubble stone, surrounded by a churchyard of tilted gravestones. The bleak landscape and graveyard reminded him of a novel. What was it? Then he remembered—in Great Expectations the boy Pip was grabbed in just such an isolated Kentish graveyard by Abel Magwitch, a convict who had escaped from one of the prison hulks moored nearby in the Thames Estuary. This was Dickens country after all; he’d lived in Rochester, not far away.

As Brock walked around the church he saw scaffolding against the far side, and two figures crouching on a platform at the top. He called hello and one of them, dressed entirely in black, straightened and waved. He turned and said a few words to the other man, who was wearing a hard hat and day-glo builder’s jacket, then began to slowly descend the ladder. He was elderly with ruddy pink cheeks and a halo of white hair, and as they met on the gravel path Brock saw that he was wearing a vicar’s white dog collar.

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ Brock said.

‘Not at all, not at all. Time for a tea break; I’m getting stiff. Come and join me.’

As the vicar led the way towards the door of the church, Brock said, ‘You should be careful on that scaffolding, you know.’

The vicar chuckled and said, ‘Yes, yes, I know, old men on ladders, a fatal combination. But the work is almost finished now, and I have faith that the good Lord will let me see it completed.’

Inside the church door was a small vestibule, rather dark, beneath the tower, and beyond it an arched entrance into the barn-like nave.

‘Oh.’ Brock stepped into the body of the church and looked around at the great oak beams spanning the roof, the rough stone walls, as bare and primitive inside as they were out, with no decoration except for a simple full-sized wooden cross mounted on the far wall above a plain stone altar.

The vicar smiled. ‘You’re impressed?’

‘I am. I’ve never seen anything like it. Very … archaic. How old is it? Norman?’

‘No, no, much older. Saxon, four hundred years before the Normans arrived. It’s one of the oldest churches in England—possibly the very oldest. Like its namesake on the other side of the estuary, it was founded by Chad and his brother Cedd, the evangelist monks from Northumbria who came south to convert the East Saxons. Alas, even such a simple building as this requires constant upkeep. When I came here it had fallen into a ruinous state.’

‘I suppose the Church is keen to help you maintain such an important relic.’

‘Ha! The Church has forgotten we exist! They have so many other old parish churches to attend to. We fend pretty much for ourselves.’

They returned to the vestibule and went into a room to one side, the vestry, where the vicar bent to fiddle with a kettle and a small gas camping stove, muttering about making tea to warm them up.

Brock looked around at the bookshelves laden with worn copies of religious texts, an image of Christ on the wall like a Russian icon, and an ancient manual typewriter on the desk.

The vicar got the stove going at last and offered his hand. ‘Alwyn Bramley-Scott.’

Brock introduced himself and the vicar frowned. ‘A police officer? And what brings you here, sir?’

‘Earlier today the body of a woman was found in one of the ponds out there in the marshes.’

‘Oh no, how very sad. Have you been able to identify her?’

‘Her name is Nadya Babington.’ He saw the vicar’s startled expression. ‘You know her?’ Brock took out his phone and showed him her picture.

The vicar blinked at it and nodded. ‘Yes, yes indeed. Oh, this is dreadful.’

‘How do you know her?’

For a moment the man seemed unable to answer; then, ‘Nadya is … was … a very good friend to this church.’

His face had turned pale and Brock, afraid that he might pass out, told him to sit down and poured him a glass of water from a jug on the desk. The vicar sipped, then murmured, ‘Oh, poor Callum.’

‘Who’s Callum, Vicar?’

‘Callum McAdam—the young man who … Ah!’

Brock turned to see the builder, a wiry man of about thirty, standing in the doorway. He frowned at the vicar. ‘You all right, Alwyn?’ A broad Scottish accent.

‘Callum, my dear boy, the most dreadful news. Dreadful! This is a police officer …’

Brock showed his ID and said, ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that we’ve found the body of a woman, Nadya Babington, drowned in a pool near here.’

Again the same reaction, as if an invisible hand had slapped the colour from the man’s face. He whispered, ‘Nadya?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘An accident?’

‘It seems more likely that she took her own life.’

The young man stared at Brock in disbelief, then he seemed to crumple. Covering his face with his hands, he cried, ‘No … No!’

The vicar got unsteadily to his feet and reached out to take the man’s arm, but Callum turned abruptly and stumbled away. Bramley-Scott stared after him, shaking his head. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ To Brock he said, ‘He’s best left to himself for now. I’ll talk to him later.’ He sighed. ‘Please, sit down.’

They sat and the vicar reached into a drawer in his desk and produced two small glasses and a bottle of sherry. ‘Will you keep me company, Chief Inspector?’

Brock nodded and the vicar filled the glasses. He took a sip from his own and stared up at the ceiling. ‘A sad business. And her husband … a London lawyer, I believe?’

‘Yes. How did she find this place?’

‘Because of Callum, who lives close by, at the Smithy.

They’ve known each other for a number of years. He was at art school with her son Miki, you see, and she had been an art student once too, in Russia, and she told me that mixing with the art students was a relief from the London social scene of her husband’s friends. Then, when Callum moved out here, they both became involved in our campaign to save and restore St Chad’s. Nadya was a frequent visitor. Perhaps, in retrospect, too frequent …’ He sighed.

‘You mean they were lovers?’

The vicar winced. ‘One assumes so, yes.’

‘Did she ever bring her husband out here?’

‘Oh no, I don’t think so. Not to my knowledge.’

‘And do you have any idea why she might have wanted to end her life now?’

The vicar hesitated, gazing at the amber fluid in his glass. ‘I have been aware of a certain tension in their relationship recently, but I don’t know what it was about. You really would have to ask Callum.’

‘I’ll do that.’ Brock thanked the vicar and gave him his card.

He saw no sign of Callum outside the church and got back into his car and drove further down the lane until he came to farm buildings—a large shed and an old barn with a sign, The Smithy—but all seemed deserted. There were no lights on and, when he went to the door, no one responded to his knock.

Brock drove back through the dark empty spaces of the Hoo until he came to the flowing river of traffic on the A2 and turned towards the city. As he drove, he reflected that Nadya’s affair seemed to explain well enough her reaction to the scam email she’d received, with its key sentence: I am shocked to discover what you have been up to, and I am sure all your family and friends will be too. No wonder she didn’t want Charlie Wardle to check her computer. He wondered if her son Miki knew of her affair with his friend and, if so, did she suspect that he had been in touch with his father in Russia, who had then devised that email?

When he got back to his office, Matt Stone looked up from the report he was reading. ‘Oh, you’re back. What’s the story?’

Brock gave him a quick briefing, but decided not to mention Nadya’s affair with Callum McAdam.

Stone nodded gloomily. ‘Well, it’s out of our hands. The husband is on his way back from New York. He’s sent a blistering message to the AC. We’re in deep shit apparently. Off the case. No further contact. Disciplinary review.’

‘You’ve got details of his flight?’

Stone consulted a note. ‘BA one-seven-eight to Heathrow. Gets in later tonight.’

‘Right.’ Brock went to his desk and opened the file on insurance fraud that he was supposed to be studying, but his mind soon returned to Nadya Babington and the look of fear on her face when he’d met her. He checked when BA178 was due in.

That evening, Brock said goodnight to Stone, who was still working on his computer, and made his way down to his car in the basement. Instead of driving south across the river to home, however, he headed west towards Heathrow and at 10.15 pm was standing waiting in the arrivals hall at Terminal 3 when Julian Babington came through the gate pulling a bright red suitcase, a satchel slung over one shoulder. He looked exhausted and gazed around as if expecting to be met. Brock hurried forward. Babington glanced at him but didn’t seem to recognise him, and his attention flicked away.

‘Mr Babington—David Brock.’

Then it clicked and Babington frowned. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘I’ll give you a lift.’

‘I’m being picked up.’ He brushed past Brock and marched on through the exit doors, looking left and right. It was cold, the rain streaming down, headlights shimmering on the wet tarmac, people everywhere struggling with luggage. Babington stopped and pulled out his phone. Behind him, Brock heard his words above the hubbub of voices and slamming of car doors.

‘Miki? Where are you? … I’m at Heathrow, for God’s sake! … No, no. You said … Oh never mind, I’ll get a cab.’ He rang off, stuffing the phone back into his pocket angrily.

‘My ride’s right here,’ Brock said, pointing to the car with the police emergency sign on the dash. ‘There are things we should discuss.’

Babington turned on him, furious. ‘Your incompetence caused this tragedy. I’ll make my own way, thank you.’

‘I’m very sorry for what’s happened, Mr Babington, but I’m not responsible for your wife’s death. Without access to her computer, there was nothing we could have done. But I’d like to help you now.’

Babington glared at him for a moment, then his anger seemed to leak away. ‘Oh … very well.’

Brock opened the car door for him and carried his suitcase to the boot.

As he eased out into the heavy stream of traffic moving slowly towards the exits, Babington said, ‘Where is she now?’

‘Gravesend.’

‘Dear God,’ Babington whispered. ‘What kind of sick joke is that? I’d like to see her.’

‘You look all in. Why not leave it till tomorrow?’

Babington didn’t reply, and they came to a junction. Brock pointed at the sign. ‘Left for Gravesend, right for Central London. What do you say?’

‘Don’t I have to identify her?’

‘I did that. She looks very peaceful. She’ll be there for you in the morning.’

Babington sighed. ‘Yes, all right. I’ll be in a better frame of mind tomorrow. Right now I’m just trying to take it in. They told me … They said she just walked into a lake. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just like that? Walked into a lake and out of my life, out of her life? How did she get out there?’

‘In your Range Rover.’

‘Did she … did she leave a note?’

‘Not at the scene, no, nothing.’

‘Has anyone been to the house?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘Miki—her son—may have gone there. I phoned and told him the news from New York. He was supposed to pick me up.’

‘He’d be very upset.’

Babington didn’t reply at first, staring out through the rain-streaked window. ‘They were close. So … what can you tell me?’

Brock described his visit to the Hoo Peninsula and discussions with the Kent police, without mentioning St Chad’s and the possibility of an affair. ‘When were you last in touch with her?’

‘I had to catch a six am flight to New York on Tuesday, so I didn’t disturb her when I left. Then I was in meetings all day, but I tried to phone her at about five in the afternoon, New York time. That would have been ten in the evening in London. I couldn’t get through so I sent her a text.’

‘So the last time you actually saw or spoke to her was when?’

‘Monday night, bedtime, about ten-thirty. We have separate rooms. When … when do you think she did it?’

‘We think yesterday morning.’

Babington groaned. ‘So if I hadn’t left I might have been able to prevent this happening.’

The journey into London was relatively quick, Babington silent as he digested what Brock had told him. The rain had eased to a light drizzle by the time they reached Montagu Square and Brock drove slowly along the east side, looking for a space. As they came to Babington’s house the front door opened and a man stepped out, carrying a suitcase.

‘Stop!’ Babington cried, and Brock pulled to a halt. Babington got out of the car and Brock followed.

‘Miki?’

The man on the front steps hesitated. ‘Julian … hi.’

‘That’s Nadya’s suitcase,’ Babington said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Oh, just, um … picking up a few things—souvenirs, you know.’ Miki swayed unsteadily.

‘Souvenirs?’ Babington looked at his stepson as if he were mad. Brock thought it more likely he was high.

‘Yeah. Stuff of mine. How are you doing, Julian? Isn’t it awful? I mean, Jesus …’

‘Yes, it is. Dreadful. Come inside and we’ll talk.’

‘Not now, mate.’ Miki waved, the rain glistening on his hair, black as his mother’s. ‘Gotta go.’

He blundered past Babington and got into a parked car. Brock saw the face of a young man at the wheel.

‘Wait,’ Babington cried, but the car pulled out and swept away. While he stood, exasperated, looking after it, Brock found a parking space further along the street and returned with Babington’s suitcase.

Babington stared at his front door. ‘I don’t want to go in there; I’m scared of what I’ll find.’

Brock followed him up the front steps. Babington fumbled his key in the door, switched on the hall light and tapped a keypad. ‘At least he remembered to reset the alarm,’ he muttered. The house was silent, the central heating warm. He began to go from room to room. After a while he called to Brock from the back of the house. Brock found him in a room lined with shelves on which were arranged books, magazines and box files. Two tall windows looked out to a darkened garden.

‘This is her office,’ Babington said. ‘She was a freelance interior designer. That’s her work table. Her laptop’s gone, see?’

The table was neat and orderly, everything in its place—filing trays, pens, a stapler, a magnifying glass. There were a mouse and a power cable trailing across the surface, but no computer.

‘Could she have taken it in the car?’

‘No,’ Brock said, ‘it wasn’t in the car.’ Unless, he thought, she carried it with her into the pond.

They moved back out to the hall and Julian went upstairs to continue his search. Brock waited in the hallway, wondering what Miki had taken from the house in such a hurry; his mother’s computer?

Babington appeared at the head of the stairs. ‘No note or computer, but her phone’s here. She must have forgotten to take it with her.’ He stood there looking lost, then took out his phone and made a call. ‘Miki,’ he said, ‘did you see a note? … In the house—a note, a letter from your mother … What about her computer, have you got it? … Your mother’s laptop … You’re quite sure?’

Brock heard a squawk of protest from the phone, and Julian rang off, shaking his head. He looked at Brock. ‘I’d offer you a drink, but I’m bushed.’

‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning and take you to Gravesend,’ Brock offered, but Julian said, ‘No, I’d rather do it alone. Will you text me the details of where to go?’

‘Of course. I’ll phone the Gravesend station first thing in the morning and make sure they’re ready for you.’

‘Thanks. I’m sorry I reacted badly at Heathrow.’

Brock looked at the man, sagging with weariness, and felt sorry for him, thinking of the unwelcome discoveries he might be about to make of his life with Nadya.

‘Only natural,’ he said. ‘Try to get some rest.’