4. The Boy On The Beach
The body lay across a long line of glistening green seaweed, snarls of blue fishing net, bleached driftwood spears and scuffed plastic bottles, like an unexpected punctuation mark.
A young man dressed all in black, tracksuit pants and jacket zipped up to his chin, shimmering with briny water.
The salt was already starting to crystallize in whitish bands across his chest, thighs and calves, almost as if he'd been whipped by the sea.
Twin cockle shells protruded where his eyes should be, glinting in the grayish light, his head craned back as if to watch Sally's approach.
Her heart kicked in her chest. Mutilated. Sightless. The podcast had actually said it well. Windows to the soul.
"This is the strand line?"
Mayhew inclined her head. "You've listened to the podcast, then."
"Just the first episode. Was it wrong about the body placement, here in front of Reactor A?"
Mayhew's lip curled. "Wrong about almost everything except that. All those people cared about was ripping open old wounds to watch them bleed."
Sally considered that. "Old wounds for you, DCI?"
"That's none of your business, Officer Rogers," Mayhew said coolly. Covering for something, Sally figured, though now didn't seem the time to pry.
"I'll want access to all the old case files."
"You'll have it."
"And the team who investigated. Are any of them still around?"
Mayhew twitched. "Some are, yes. The DI on the case, he lives in the area."
Sally searched her memory of the podcast. "Mercer, right? I'll want to talk to him."
"Not an easy man to contact. He lives on a houseboat on the River Rother."
"So call him."
"He hasn't got a phone, Rogers. I'll put out some feelers. But he'll probably come in anyway, after he hears about this." She gestured to the body.
Sally looked back. It all came back to the body. Some mother's son. Always so limp, so sad, so staged.
"Thank you." She cleared her throat. "Cause and time of death?"
"Without our CSM, nothing. No ID either."
"Witnesses?"
"Just the citizen who found the body." She nodded toward the older woman talking to one of the officers. She wore long green waders, and a plastic bag hung from one weathered hand. "Name's Nancy Cagen, 76. Beachcomber. Called it in at 6:02."
"And the station CCTV?"
"I've got requests out. The reactor manager, Dr. Rupert Palmer, is on his way from Tonbridge. Should be here in an hour and we'll get access, though I don't expect much."
Sally looked up. "Why not?"
"We've been down here before, chasing small boats crossing the Channel."
"Illegal immigration," Sally said. "Right. It's been in the news."
"In the news but not new. We've been dealing with it for years, requisitioning CCTV up and down the coast. And this place?" Her gaze darkened. "They're not helpful."
"How so?"
"Lots of security layers, too much paperwork, so anything we get from the cameras comes too slow."
"Hopefully they'll expedite for us." Sally looked back at the scaffold. "What about interviewing the construction workers? They could all be witnesses."
"We're gathering their details."
Sally frowned. "It's shift change, DCI. I saw them coming out as I arrived. We need to question them immediately."
Mayhew's frown came back. "We're not in London, now, Rogers.
This is Kent: coastal, remote, sparsely populated.
There are no local police in Dungeness or Lydd.
My station, Rye, is 30 minutes away, but we run a skeleton crew.
" She pointed north. "We have some loan officers en route from Dover now; we'll interview the construction workers when they get in. "
"So right now, we're on our own."
"I wouldn't say that, Officer Rogers. You're here now."
Sally ignored that and turned back to the body.
The young man was Caucasian. Athletic build, maybe 20 years old. His face was placid and pale, his lips barely purpled, his cheeks not bloated. His short dark hair lay in a ruler-straight parting, as if combed into place by the sea.
That detail struck her. As if someone had cared for and comforted him until the last, in spite of the raw cockle shells emerging where his eyes should be.
Bloodless. Pale.
Her stomach knotted and something shifted.
Not a thought exactly. More like a current running through her.
She was suddenly aware of the cold coming off him, reaching up toward her.
She pictured the dark of the early hours, this same unforgiving expanse but bleaker and lonelier.
The reactor looming so close but so far, the icy tide washing his prone body.
She pictured him conscious, or close to it. The crunch of the shingle beneath him. The face of his killer above, the hands coming closer, bringing the first shell down to press into his open, staring eye…
"Officer Rogers," DCI Mayhew said sharply, dragging Sally back to the gulls and the wind. "Are you all right?"
Sally shook herself. "I'm fine." She dropped to one knee and leaned close to the victim's ruined face, pushing through the revulsion to see the details.
The cockle shells were an off-white bone color, finely ridged with rust-red patterning. Perfectly symmetrical, neatly slotted. The work seemed expert, but something interrupted the ridging on the left shell. Not a chip. Not a mark from the sea.
She leaned closer still.
A number?
Four of them. They were tiny, etched into the fluted ridges near the shell's lip. Deliberate as a watchmaker's engraving, so small she'd need a loupe to be certain, but clearly numbers.
"8107," she read out.
"What?" Mayhew asked.
"Here." Sally pointed. "Carved onto the shells. Whoever did this was precise. Had to have been before the death, maybe hours of work to get it this neat."
Mayhew pressed in close, peering at the shells. A long moment passed, then she cursed and looked up at the photographer.
"There's four numbers cut into the ridges on both shells. Same position, same size. We missed them. Get pictures in situ, as much detail as you can."
She stood. Sally stood as well, her thighs burning, as the photographer took their place and began taking pictures, the digital shutter clicking.
"8107," Sally repeated. "Does that mean anything to you?"
"Let's get it through forensics first," Mayhew said frostily. "Confirm that's what it says."
Sally let that go. She'd relay it to expert profilers within the NCA herself. For now, she continued with her visual inspection. There were no other apparent injuries: no blood staining on his clothing, no tears or cuts.
"No signs of restraint," she said. "No defensive wounds either. I'm thinking chemical incapacitation."
"We'll run toxicity screens as standard," Mayhew snipped back. "Is that all?"
Sally let the wind fill the gap between them, easing the heat in Mayhew's voice as she looked across the great gray expanse. She couldn't imagine a lonelier place to die.
"Someone carried the victim here, DCI," she said, pointing.
"Either by boat or by land. We need to shut this stretch of beach down, a mile at least, and run fingertip searches for the killer's trail.
We need a full witness trawl, too, along with collecting any other CCTV nearby; camera doorbells, dash cams, whatever we can get.
" She thought a moment. "Are there residences? "
Mayhew took a shuddery breath. "A handful. To the north."
"And to the west?"
"Nothing for miles. A single road dead-ending here or there at the beach. There's nothing to see."
"Then I'll take the north route now. I'd recommend a two-man team to the west." Sally glanced back at the tape line. "My partner should be here soon, and he'll help. But you need to bring in more bodies, DCI. We're way under capacity for what this requires."
Mayhew stared at her a moment, jaw working under the skin, then nodded and started issuing orders down her radio.
Sally headed toward the witness.
The older woman, Nancy Cagen, watched her come.
She was small and wind-scoured, her face heavily lined but lustrous still, wiry curls of gray hair escaping a knitted hat.
Her jacket was red and green, layered under a scarf that had been washed so many times its pattern was barely a ghost. The plastic bag in her hand was from a supermarket, sagging with something heavy.
"Officer Sally Rogers, NCA," Sally said, offering her hand. "I understand you found the body?"
Cagen shook her hand. Her palm was rough as old rope, her grip firm. "Nancy Cagen, my love." Her voice was deeper than Sally expected, her accent broad. "I was out combing the beach, and there he was."
Sally looked at the bag. "Anything good this morning?"
Cagen paused a moment, then raised the bag slightly. "A whole lot of winkles, an old boot, some nice hagstones. You know, stones with holes in them, carved by fairies?" A pause. "And him."
Sally softened her tone. "Can you talk me through it, please?"
"Of course. Whenever the Lady allows, I walk the slack tide." Cagen pointed out to sea, far out, where the water was a smear against the flat gray sky. "Down there, right at the very edge where the sea can't go any further before it starts coming back in."
Sally considered. It was a long stretch of sloping shingle from the body to the sea. "It's a strange landscape."
"It's a cuspate foreland, my love. A great shifting sieve on the Channel, straining everything that comes through. England's only desert, they used to call it."
Sally absorbed that. Desert. Cuspate foreland. She'd have to look it up. "And you walk here regularly?"
"Oh aye, I'm out here couple times a day, combing the Gray Lady's trail."
"The Gray Lady?"
"Just my name for her. The Channel. Like an old-style Goddess. Fickle. Furious. Beautiful, too."
Sally weighed that. "I'd have thought the strand line was where the debris turns up. Right here."
Cagen cackled; a startling sound on that beach.
"Who wants debris when you can have treasure?
Slack tide keeps the best secrets, lovey.
Crystals, sometimes, after you crack 'em.
Fossils buried in rock for millions of years.
Real gems." She shrugged. "You have to break them open to know.
Nothing shows you what it is from the outside. "
Sally filed that away and let a silent moment pass. "Do you have any idea who might have done this, Nancy?"
"Now?" Her eyes narrowed. "No clue. But 30 year back, when the other lad turned up, I had plenty. Said them all to the police back then, again and again, and they just weren't bothered."
Sally leaned in. "Who wasn't bothered? And what did you tell them?"
"Only the obvious, love. Everyone knew who killed that lad, though no one wanted to say it then or now. I'm not afraid though, and I'll tell you–"
"Thank you, Nancy," DCI Mayhew interrupted firmly, arriving at Sally's shoulder. "Someone will drive you home. Get warm."
The moment closed like a shell.
"DCI, I think we should–"
"It's all in the reports, isn't it, Nancy?" Mayhew snapped. "All your theories that went nowhere. Unless you have something new to add?"
Cagen shrugged, a weary form of defeat. "Right you are, our Glory." She hefted her carrier bag and gave Sally a look that was almost apologetic. "Good luck with all this, lovey. Come find me on the beach and we'll talk again."
Sally watched her go, then turned to Mayhew. "She was about to tell me who committed the original murder."
Mayhew waved a hand. "She's told that story countless times, to anyone who will ask. Some local gangster, and it went nowhere, again and again."
"Who?"
"I can't remember. Check the records. For now, Rogers, she's 76 and she's been standing in a gale since 6 o'clock this morning. She's better off back home."
Sally remained calm, looking into Mayhew's eyes. "It feels like you're trying to block my investigation, DCI."
Mayhew snorted. "Your investigation? You're here as a courtesy, Rogers, operating with my permission. And with your history, I'm not surprised you're dredging for monsters already. I need you to rein that in."
Sally frowned. History? Thanks to the paparazzi rag The Gaze splashing it across their front pages during Dark Peak, everyone knew how she'd survived a catastrophic Louisiana shooting where 18 of her sorority sisters had perished.
They'd called her the 'Bulletproof Belle'.
"You want to talk about my past, DCI?" she asked softly. "At least I'm not hiding it. Can you say the same?"
Mayhew stared back, eyes alight. Gulls screamed above them. The wind cut through Sally's jacket.
"Watch it, Rogers," she said at last.
"Call me if there's anything," Sally fired back, then turned into the blasting wind and stalked north up the beach.