CHAPTER TWO

 

Kate was up to her neck in reports when Jon got back from seeing Jack Archer. ‘Waste of time?’ she queried, noting his unusually serious expression.

‘No, far from it. He’s a great old guy. Really helpful.’ Jon placed two beakers of coffee on her desk, then reached back and pushed her office door closed.

‘So why the mardy face?’

‘Oh nothing, ma’am. It’s just the thought of that young kid dying like that.’

Kate closed the file that she was working on and pointed to a chair. ‘Sit.’ She reached across and helped herself to one of the coffees and a handful of sugar sachets. As she tore open the tiny packets and shook them into her drink, she looked at him thoughtfully. Jon was not classically good-looking. He was too pale to be hunky, and his ancestry was clearly something of a mixture. Although he was as English as a Skegness chip shop, there was definitely a hint of something Oriental, or maybe Slav, about his features. And whatever it was, it was something that was very attractive. Even his dress sense was unorthodox. Black or grey jackets or sweatshirts over white T-shirts which, when added to his rough-cut, raven black, hair, gave him an edgy Matrix kind of look.

‘Why has this one hit you so hard, my friend? You’ve seen your fair share of death before.’

Jon shifted uncomfortably. ‘Oh, it’s silly really, but it’s the anniversary of my sister’s death, and I had my dad on the phone earlier. My mother always has problems around this time of year.’

Kate’s eyes widened. ‘I never knew that you had a sister.’

‘Isabel. She was adopted before I was born. Usual story, no babies for years, they adopt and hey-presto, a natural child comes along.’

‘How did she die? If you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Teenage suicide. She was sixteen.’

Kate gasped. ‘Jon! I’m so sorry. You never said.’

‘Not the kind of cheery little thing you throw into a conversation, I guess. And there were circumstances around her death that…’ Jon shrugged. ‘I don’t talk about her often. Anyway, my dad likes to take mother out to lunch on the anniversary, and he asked if they could call in for few minutes on the way to the restaurant.’

‘Why not go with them? I’ll cover for you.’

‘No, ma’am. I’d rather not.’ He inhaled. ‘And I really think I should bring you up to speed on my meeting with Jack Archer.’

Kate watched as he opened out a dog-eared map of the coastline. It was clear he felt he’d said enough, and she decided to respect that wish.

‘The upshot of it is; Jack thinks that the girl went into the water around this area here.’ He stamped his finger firmly on the map. ‘Allenby Creek. The tides, the currents and the recent light winds all make this the most likely spot, unless she fell from a boat. And we have to hope that isn’t the case.’

‘Allenby Creek? That’s a remote spot, isn’t it?’

Jon stared at the map. ‘It’s on the borders of our patch and Harlan Marsh. And yes, that area is all farmland and wild salt-marsh.’

‘Come to think of it, I remember it from when I was a kid. There used to be one accessible beach there. It was close to the old Seal Sanctuary at Hurn Point.’

‘Mm..,’ Jon’s slender finger moved slowly along the coast. ‘…I see where you mean. Shall I ask uniform to go check it out for us?’

‘We should go ourselves.’ Kate gnawed on her bottom lip. ‘But no, you’re right. You need to be around here at lunchtime, and I need to get these reports on the Jamie Durham murder up to the super, so we’d be wasting valuable time.’ She lifted her desk phone. ‘I’ll see if the Duty Sergeant could get a crew over there to take a look around, maybe ask some questions of the locals.’

After a few words, Kate replaced the phone in its cradle and sat back in her chair. ‘Right, that’s sorted. Now, while I get these out of the way..,’ she indicated to the small mountain of paper work cluttering up her desk, ‘…maybe you’d chase up Rosie and Scott.  See how they are doing tracing Shauna Kelly’s last known movements?’

‘I’m on it.’ Jon stood up, and then paused. ‘I suppose you haven’t had any more information in about Jamie Durham’s missing murder weapon, have you, ma’am?’

‘Believe me, if I had, you’d be the first to know.’ Kate’s face drew up into an angry mask. The murder of the young local lad by a drug-addict had got to all of them. It should have been so simple, but everything had gone against them as they tried to prove the drug addict’s guilt. ‘Every man jack in this station knows exactly who butchered that poor lad, but if we don’t find that damned knife soon, I can see that bastard Cullen Payne walking free, can’t you?’

‘Sadly I can.’ Jon growled. ‘Now that would be a travesty if ever there was one.’

‘Agreed,’ murmured Kate and she watched Jon intently as he closed the door.

He had had a look on his face that she’d seen before. It wasn’t bitterness, but it was something like that; a kind of internal rage against the injustice of a bad man literally getting away with murder. It was hard to analyse, but it worried her. It worried her a lot.

 

At twelve thirty precisely, Jon took the call to say that his parents were in reception. As he raced down the stairs he thought about his lovely mother, and what she had suffered with Isabel. She may not have been a natural daughter, but his parents had given her everything conceivable for a privileged start in life. She had a beautiful home in their country house in Frampton; private schooling; everything imaginable. And she killed herself. Since then, his mother’s whole life had changed. Everything ordered and to schedule. It had to run like clockwork. Nothing unexpected, nothing messy, and no surprises. Her brain, he suspected, had become as finely tuned as the exquisitely hand-crafted Italian cello that she taught so masterfully, and he was certain that it was not a heart that beat inside her anymore, but a metronome.

Unlike his father. Lawrence Summerhill was a senior lecturer in Earth Sciences, and he was inclined to measure his version of time in light years rather than GMT. But no matter how differently they had coped with their grief, they still stood together.

As he approached the foyer, Jon saw them waiting for him, and he felt a rush of something he could only think was love.

They had not yet noticed him, and the first thing that struck him about them, was that their body language exuded sadness into the air around them.

‘Hey, Mum, Dad.’ Jon drew his mother to him in a bear hug and breathed in the familiar fragrance of Lanvin Rumeur. Although she hugged him back, he felt a slight tremor in her grip. ‘My boss is in a meeting, so she said to use her office.’ He led them towards the lift. ‘It’s a tad more comfortable than an interview room.’

‘You’re busy, son. We won’t stay long, we just wanted to mark the day.’ His father smiled at him sadly. He may be at the tail end of sixty, but he still had a full head of iron-grey hair and a ram-rod straight back, even if his clothes did look two decades out of time.

Jon glanced quickly across at his beautiful mother. The usual placid smile was in place, but her grief showed through. It always did. When Izzie died, something of his mother died too.

In the privacy of the small office, they talked for a while. Not about Isobel. Just small talk. Then his father said that they would be going to the crematorium to take some flowers, then on to lunch at his mother’s favourite riverside inn. ‘Come for dinner next weekend, son. We should catch up.’

‘I’d love to, Dad.’ Jon knew it would not happen, and so did his father, but they said it anyway.

And then they were standing up and telling him not to work too hard, to eat properly, and to take care, to take great care.

 

From the end of the corridor, Kate watched Jon usher his parents into the lift. It was clear now where Jon got his looks from. She knew his mother was a classical musician, but Kate had never seen her before. Sophia Summerhill, who obviously would never see fifty again, was strikingly attractive. Shiny dark hair, hair that had never been in within ten metres of a bottle of Clairol, was swept up into a loose chignon, and her face, although almost devoid of make-up, had a natural beauty about it that is reserved for those of mixed race origin.

Kate smiled as she made her way back past the CID room. Jon was certainly his mother’s son. Then the smile faded. Even at a distance she had noticed that an almost visible aura of melancholy surrounded them. Jon had said something about the circumstances of his sister’s death? Was that what it was? Maybe she would ask, but not today.

As she pushed her door open she heard her name called out.

‘This has just arrived, ma’am. It’s marked urgent.’ The civilian handed her a brown envelope and turned back down the corridor. Kate went inside, closed the door, then flopped into her chair, placed the manila envelope on the desk in front of her and stared at it. Her name was scrawled across the front in Tommy Thorne’s strange slanted handwriting.  An awful lot rested on what this brief report would tell her. Not least, the fact that she may have to break it to one of her own staff that her daughter was dead.

And from the moment she had seen the girl on the beach, Kate had had a nagging gut feeling about their little mermaid. She hadn’t fallen, and she hadn’t jumped.

She frowned and tore open the envelope.

The dental records confirmed the identity of the drowned girl as that of Shauna Kelly.