Western Approaches (Jimmy Suttle) Read online

  None of it had happened. Jimmy’s dad fell off his moped and ended up in hospital the day contracts were exchanged. Jimmy himself had made a start on a couple of the jobs, but the pace of life on Major Crimes was unforgiving, and by the time Lizzie had sold their little terraced house it was nearly November. Stepping into Chantry Cottage, she recognised the smell and the damp only too well, realising why Jimmy had been so keen to keep her away. His apology had taken the form of a huge bunch of lilies, beautifully wrapped, which he’d propped up in the cracked sink in the kitchen. It was a sweet gesture, and she’d done her best to smile, but she’d hated lilies ever since.

  Now, with Grace still in her arms, her mobile began to ring. She went back into the living room and deposited Grace in her playpen before stepping outside to take the call. Mobile reception in the valley was patchy at best. Another nightmare.

  ‘Lou? It’s me. How are you?’

  Lizzie closed her eyes, glad – at least – that the rain had finally stopped. The only person who called her Lou was Gill Reynolds. The last thing she needed just now was an hour on the phone with an ex-newsroom colleague eager to tell her what she was missing.

  ‘I’m fine. Busy. You know . . .’ Lizzie tailed off. As ever, Gill had no interest in listening.

  ‘Great news, Lou. The buggers have given me a couple of days off. You remember that promise I made to pop down?’

  Lizzie tried to fend her off, tried somehow to wedge herself into the conversation, tried to explain that this wasn’t the best time to make a flying visit, but in her heart she knew it was hopeless. Gill would be down on Tuesday, around teatime. Directions weren’t a problem because she’d just blagged a new TomTom off the paper. They had loads to catch up on and room in her bag for something nice to kick the evening off. Stolly or something else? Lizzie’s call.

  Lizzie opted for Stolly. Under the circumstances, she thought, vodka and oblivion might be an attractive option. Gill was still giggling at a joke she’d just made about some guy she was shagging when she rang off.

  Lizzie watched the rain returning down the valley. Over the winter life seemed to have physically penned her into this godforsaken place. She’d become someone else. She knew she had. Through the open door she could hear Grace beginning to wail. For a moment she didn’t move. A fine drizzle had curtained the view. She lifted her face to the greyness of the sky and closed her eyes again, knowing she should have thought harder about trusting her husband’s judgement. Underfoot, she could feel the paving stones shifting with her weight. That was another thing he’d never done. The bloody patio.

  Jimmy Suttle found Nandy and Houghton in the apartment that served as the Regatta Court sales office. Houghton stood by the window, staring out, her phone pressed to her ear. Nandy occupied a seat at the desk, eyeballing an attractive middle-aged woman who evidently looked after the development. Her name was Ellie. She’d just put a call through to a local firm she used for work around the apartment block. They’d have someone down in ten.

  Nandy glanced up, seeing Suttle at the door. He did the introductions.

  ‘Ellie’s whistled up a locksmith,’ he said. ‘We’re talking number 37. Fifth floor. You OK with a flash intel search? Mark needs to meet this locksmith guy before he sorts the door for us.’

  Suttle nodded. As ever, Nandy was moving at the speed of light. Thirty years in the Major Crimes game had taught him the investigative importance of the first twenty-four hours of any enquiry. Pile all your pieces on the board, give the shaker a good rattle and pray for a double six.

  ‘So what have we got, sir?’ Suttle asked. ‘What do we know about this guy?’

  Nandy threw the question to Ellie. Suttle sensed she was enjoying the attention.

  ‘You mean Jake Kinsey?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s been with us . . .’ she frowned ‘. . . a couple of years now? Nice enough man. Lived alone. Kept himself to himself.’

  ‘What did he do for a living?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure. I think he may have been an engineer at some point. He was never one for conversation but we once had a fascinating little chat about alternative energy sources. Some of the residents were wanting to install solar panels and he told me why they’d never work on our kind of scale. Then we got on to wind turbines. He knew a lot about them too.’

  Nandy glanced at his watch. He was sharp as a tack but famously impatient.

  ‘Is there anything special about number 37?’ Suttle again.

  ‘Yes. It’s the biggest apartment in the block. It’s huge. I like to think of it as the jewel in our little crown.’

  ‘How much?’ Nandy this time.

  ‘Space?’

  ‘Money. How much did he pay for it?’

  Ellie paused. The bluntness of the question seemed to trouble her. She looked briefly at Suttle, one eyebrow raised, then returned to Nandy.

  ‘One point four five million.’ She smiled. ‘As I recall.’

  ‘A rich man, then?’

  ‘Not hard up, obviously.’

  ‘You checked him out at the time? When you agreed terms?’

  ‘Of course we did. Not personally. But yes.’

  ‘Did he raise a mortgage? Some kind of loan?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Can you check? I’d be grateful.’

  Ellie nodded and reached for a pad to scribble herself a note. Nandy had got to his feet and was feeling for his watch again. A lean man in his early fifties, he wore the same grey suit regardless of the season and in situations like these reminded Suttle of Samuel Beckett. Recently Lizzie had taken to reading Krapp’s Last Tape in bed, and Suttle had clocked the author photo on the back. Nandy had the same hollowed-out face, the same shock of iron-grey hair, the same unforgiving eyes. This was a guy who brought an unyielding sense of mission to every enquiry, every exchange. Suttle rather liked him. There was madness in those eyes. Stuff had to happen quick-time and Nandy was there to make sure it bloody well did.

  Houghton was off the phone. Nandy wanted to know whether she’d secured a slot for the post-mortem.

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘Half nine.’

  ‘Best they can do?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pathetic.’

  ‘I agree.’

  Nandy headed for the door. He was off up to the local nick to commandeer a couple of offices where his team could camp out. The enquiry already had a name: Operation Constantine.

  Houghton and Suttle paused a moment, then followed him out of the door. Nandy was halfway across the car park, heading for his Volvo. Houghton and Suttle exchanged glances. Houghton was a big woman with rimless glasses and a blaze of frizzy silver-blonde hair. She had huge hands, a live-in partner called Jules and spent a great deal of her spare time riding horses on the eastern edges of Dartmoor.

  ‘I’ll field the locksmith and liaise with Mark,’ she said. ‘I’ll bell you when we’re ready for the flash intel.’

  ‘And me?’

  ‘Talk to Ellie.’ She nodded back towards the office. ‘She likes you.’

  Suttle did her bidding. He’d worked for D/I Carole Houghton for more than six months now and had developed a healthy respect. The steadiness of her gaze told you a great deal. This was someone you’d be foolish to underestimate.

  Ellie offered him coffee. The kitchenette was next door. It wouldn’t take a second.

  Suttle shook his head. He wanted to know more about Jake Kinsey. And about what he might have been up to last night.

  ‘That’s easy.’ Ellie was smiling. ‘He was in the pub.’

  ‘Which pub?’

  ‘The Beach. It’s just across the way.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because we were there too. My partner and I.’

  Kinsey, it turned out, had been in the middle of some kind of celebration. Saturday night the pub had been packed. Kinsey had turned up around eight with a smallish bunch of guys in tow. Ellie hadn’t recognised any of t
hem but there had to be some kind of tie-up with the local rowing club because they were all in badged training gear, and Kinsey had made a big play of the silver cup he was carrying. Ellie was vague on the details but thought they must have been taking part in some competition or other and had won.

  ‘He bought champagne over the bar,’ she said, ‘and that doesn’t happen often in the Beach.’

  Kinsey and his mates had stayed for maybe an hour. They’d all had a fair bit to drink.

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘They left. Like you do.’

  ‘Where did they go? Do you know?’

  ‘Not really, but my guess would be home, Kinsey’s place. There was talk of phoning for a takeaway. I suppose Kinsey lived the closest so that’s where they went.’ She looked at the phone. ‘There’s a Mr Smart who lives in one of the flats below. Nothing gets past him. Do you want me to give him a ring?’

  Suttle shook his head, making a note of the name. Organising the house-to-house calls would fall to D/I Houghton. He’d pass the intel on.

  ‘This rowing of Kinsey’s. How does that work?’

  ‘You get in a boat. It has oars.’ Ellie was flirting now. Suttle knew it. He was thinking of the badge on Kinsey’s singlet, the crossed blades.

  ‘Yeah . . . sure . . . so is there a club?’

  ‘Of course there’s a club. I just told you. ERC. Exmouth Rowing Club. Pride of the town. There’s someone else you ought to talk to. She’s the club secretary. Her name’s Doyle, Molly Doyle.’

  ‘You’ve got a number?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Look on the website.’ The smile again. ‘Nice woman. Fun. Everyone calls her the Viking.’

  Houghton kept her laptop in the back of her estate car. Still waiting for the locksmith, Suttle borrowed the keys, woke the dog up and made himself comfortable in the front passenger seat. It was raining again, harder than ever, and the CSI had draped Kinsey’s body with a square of blue plastic sheeting before taking cover in the Scenes of Crime van.

  Suttle fired up the laptop and googled ‘Exmouth Rowing Club’. The website was impressive. The home page had an eye-catching banner featuring a crew of young rowers powering a boat towards some imagined line. This giant collective effort made for a great picture. Their mouths open, their backs straight, their faces contorted, these kids were exploring the thin red line between pain and glory, and Suttle lingered on the image for a moment, wondering how an experience like that might have triggered the celebration in the pub.

  From the front of Houghton’s car, he had line of sight to the scene of crime across the entry to the dock. The warmth of his body had misted the windows but he wiped a clear panel with his fingertip, gazing across at the hummock of blue sheeting, trying to imagine the sequence of events that had linked several bottles of champagne to this inglorious death four or five hours later. Was the guy a depressive? Had he got so pissed he’d done something stupid and gravity-defying and just toppled off his own balcony? Or was the story more complex than that?

  A keystroke took Suttle onto the contacts page. Molly Doyle’s number was listed under ‘Club Secretary’. He made a note and was fumbling for his mobile when Houghton appeared beside the passenger door.

  Suttle wound down the window. The locksmith had arrived.

  It was still barely nine o’clock by the time Lizzie got Grace washed and changed. Despite the weather, she knew she had to get out of the house. Jimmy had taken the car so the only option was yet another walk.

  She watched Grace tottering towards her, then scooped her up, hugged her tight and strapped her into the buggy. During nearly two years of motherhood Lizzie had often wondered about this new role of hers, but there were moments when they seemed bonded, and this was one of them. She wouldn’t wish a rural winter on anyone, least of all her own daughter, but apart from the odd tantrum and a recent talent for ignoring the word no, Grace seemed to have weathered the discomforts. Lizzie put this down to her husband’s evenness of temper. She’d never met anyone so tolerant, so easy-going, and it had always been a surprise – back in Pompey – to talk to his mates in the Job and learn how relentless and proactive he could be. So why hadn’t some of this can-do spirit spilled into their own little lives? How come she still had to wrestle the back door open because the wood had swollen with the incessant rain?

  She pushed the buggy along the lane, keeping to the right, splashing through the puddles in her wellington boots. One of the early lessons she’d learned about the countryside was how difficult it was to find anywhere decent to walk. From a car, or an armchair in front of yet another episode of Countryfile, it was all too easy to imagine a world of endless outings, mother and child spoiled to death by this magnificent landscape: crossing fields, pausing beside rivers or streams, watching the first of the spring lambs, glorying in the freedom and the fresh air.

  The reality, alas, was very different. Everywhere you looked turned out to be someone else’s property. Everything was badged: PRIVATE, NO ENTRY, BEWARE OF THE DOG, TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. And if you finally managed to make it through the long straggle of village and down to the river, chances were that the footpath was ankle-deep in mud from the last downpour.

  The rain came often, blowing in from the west on the big Atlantic depressions. Early on, before Christmas even, Lizzie had learned to read the sky, recognising the telltale wisps of cloud that promised the arrival of yet another frontal system as the light died, and it wasn’t long before her battle with the weather became intensely personal. She hated the wet. She loathed having to dry everything in front of a one-bar electric fire. She spent hours every day trying to hoover mud from that horrible carpet in the sitting room. And night after night she lay awake, trying to distinguish between a multitude of drips. Water came in through the roof, spreading patches of damp across every ceiling in the house, and leaked from a crack in the back boiler behind the fireplace.

  Worst of all was the dribbling tap in the kitchen. Jimmy, as ever, had been oblivious to her pleas to do something about it, and after months of listening to the slow drumbeat of water in the stainless-steel sink she’d caught the mobile library, found a book on DIY and tried to change the washer herself. She’d attacked the thing with an adjustable spanner she’d managed to borrow from the man who ran the village store but had given up in tears when water threatened to fountain everywhere. That evening Jimmy had found her tight-lipped, curled up in bed, Grace asleep beside her. He’d fetched ibuprofen from the bathroom cabinet, filled a hot water bottle, suggested a slug or two of Scotch, convinced she must be heading for a cold, but only later – once he’d reappeared with a plate of pasta – did she tell him the truth. I’m going mad, she said. This place is driving me fucking insane.

  In more positive moods, increasingly rare, she’d tell herself that this husband of hers was doing his best. There was no money for a plumber, or a roofer, or a crew of fitters to turn up with a vanload of double glazing. There was also, it seemed, precious little time for Jimmy to have a go himself, or organise his dad to make good on the promised help that had never happened. And so, instead, they’d retreated to separate corners of their new lives, increasingly withdrawn, pretending that everything was OK, or nearly OK, or OK enough for the spring to finally arrive and take them somewhere sunnier. But even by mid-April that hadn’t happened. On the contrary, the weather seemed fouler than ever, taunting her optimism, snuffing out the last flickers of hope that kept her going. No wonder they call frontal systems depressions, she thought. Even Krapp’s Last Tape beat life in Chantry Cottage.

  She trudged on, wondering whether to put a call in to Jimmy, asking about the wreckage of his day off, about how he was getting on, reaching out for a little company, a little comfort, but then she paused in the road, fumbling for a Kleenex to blow Grace’s nose, knowing there was no point. For reasons she didn’t begin to understand, she’d ended up in a prison cell of her own making. And whatever happened next, she knew with growing certainty, was absolutely down to he
r.

  The locksmith turned out to have a duplicate set of keys for Kinsey’s apartment. He pushed the door open and then stepped back. Mark was wearing a one-piece Scenes of Crime suit. The locksmith and Suttle had left their shoes at the foot of the stairs. Later, the CSI would do the full forensic number on the landing and the flat itself. If Nandy wanted the lift boshed too, no problem. But for now it was down to Suttle to do a quick trawl through the apartment, scouting for obvious indications – bloodstains, signs of some kind of struggle – that would turn an unexplained death into a likely murder.

  Suttle stepped into the apartment, astonished and slightly awed by its sheer size. He’d no idea how much living space a million and a half quid could buy, but nothing had prepared him for this. The hall alone seemed to stretch for ever, and at the far end lay a huge living area. Lounge? Playground? Romper room? Viewing platform? The biggest kitchen-diner in the world? Suttle looked around. The flat occupied the entire width of the building. Everywhere else in the block, according to Ellie, this space would have accommodated two apartments, but Kinsey’s money had bought him a view like none other. Glass-walled on three sides, even in shit weather like this the flat’s trophy room offered a panoramic view on the very edge of the estuary.

  Suttle walked to the nearest of the huge windows. It was half tide, and the water was sluicing out through the harbour narrows. Beyond the narrows lay a long curl of sand fringed with grass. To the right, trawlers and yachts tugged at their moorings, and through the curtains of rain, on the other side of the river, Suttle could just make out the grey swell of the Haldon Hills, shrouded in mist. To the left lay the long curve of Exmouth seafront, the beach already exposed by the falling tide, while the whaleback of an offshore sandbank had appeared, a long ochre smudge in the murk.