7. Sign Of The Killer
The wind tore at Sally's thin running gear as she cut away from the crime scene, her eyes roving for the faintest hint of a trail in the shingle, while her thoughts circled the body.
She kept walking. Shingle and shells stretched away to the gray line of the sea; millions, maybe billions of shattered fragments.
She looked up 'cuspate foreland' and found her answer; 'a low-lying, ever-shifting triangular-shaped landform of coastal deposits created where opposing longshore currents meet, causing sand and shingle to build outward into the water'.
The word 'ever-shifting' clung to her thoughts.
A graveyard of sea creatures, their shells left behind, in constant grinding motion.
She slowed and scooped up one half of a cockle shell.
It looked much like the shells in the victim's eyes.
Ridged, milky, heart-shaped. She turned it between her fingers as she walked, feeling the rough exterior and the glossy interior, stained a wine-like purple.
She thought about pearls in oysters, an invasive grain of sand layered over years with glistening white matter.
Love and death, she mused. The reactors receded behind her. Her body trembled and her eyes swam from the cutting wind. She needed coffee. She needed breakfast. Ahead rose the spike of a striped black and white lighthouse, the second in only a few hundred yards.
As she approached, she tapped out an email to McMaster.
‘Dungeness looks like the work of a serial, sir. We found a number carved on the shells, 8107. I'm requesting the Fates for a full workup. They should focus on the eyes, the shells, the number.'
The ‘Fates' were the NCA's dedicated team of forensic psychologists, so named after the trio of sister deities from Greek myth who personified destiny and dictated the life of every mortal.
Formally known as the Behavioral Investigative Advice Unit, they were highly adept at straining meaningful criminal profiles from aberrant crime scenes.
She sent the email. The lighthouse drew closer. Below it stood a decrepit structure of clapboard and rusted iron, no larger than half a shipping container. The words ‘Crab Shack' were written in faded yellow across the side.
To the left ran a clutch of three low cottages. On the road before them were several large media vans; press crews unloading tripods and cameras at the reactor's fence. A reporter in a bright pink puffa jacket was already filing a report, her back to the reactors, blonde hair whipping in the gale.
Mayhew's exclusion order wasn't in effect yet.
Sally stopped near the Crab Shack, wondering if anyone would really carry a body this far. With every step further, it seemed less likely. She surveyed the shack, and caught a glimmer of red light. A single CCTV camera hung from the eaves, pointed back across the beach and toward the reactors.
Her pulse ticked up a notch. She closed the distance and hammered on the shack's door, but it rang back hollow. The thin door was locked with a clasp and a heavy-duty padlock.
Sally circled to the side window, but it was so hoared by salt and dust that she couldn't make out anything inside.
She returned to the shack door. The padlock was new but the door looked frail, the hinges weak. It would be the work of seconds to barge it open. Barely any noise. She turned to check the reporters. None were looking this way.
For a moment she thought about it.
The old Sally, who solved problems first and dealt with the fallout later, would break down this door without thinking.
But that Sally had nearly died in a hole in the Yorkshire peat.
Besides, anything she found would be fruit of the poisonous tree.
Useless in court. It could damn the entire investigation from the start.
Better to do this through proper channels.
She turned and started toward the cottages. As she stepped onto the cracked blacktop road, the reporter in the pink jacket noticed her and pointed.
Sally set her gaze on the first cottage. It was a blue-painted box with peeling woodwork, lobster pots stacked against the wall and a garden patch of shingle crowded with dirty gnomes. The wind vane on the roof squealed in the wind.
"Excuse me, officer!" called the reporter from the sidewalk. "What can you tell us about the murder at the reactor?"
Sally knocked on the door. Footsteps thumped near, bolts scraped then the door opened to reveal an elderly man in a frayed woolen sweater. He was thickset, his face heavily lined, with eyes cloudy as frosted glass.
"Yes?" he said slowly.
"My name is Officer Sally Rogers, from the National Crime Agency." Sally raised her badge. "I'd like to ask you some questions about the body found by the reactor, Mr...?"
His gaze moved over her badge, then flicked past her to the reporter. "Body at the reactor?"
"That's right, sir. May I have your name?"
"Dean Whateley. So there's been another."
Sally registered the flat affect of his voice. Not a question. A statement. "There was a death last night, that's all we know so far. Did you see or hear anything unusual?"
Whateley mulled that for a moment, like he was tasting the salt air. "You can't stop it, you know. Tide brings what it wants. Takes what it wants. Always has, always will."
A chill ran through Sally. "About last night, Mr. Whateley."
He gazed out over the beach. "Last night. Engine sounds, around three? Thought it was kids at first. Then the dogs started up. Not long. Went quiet again."
Sally leaned in. "Whose dogs?"
"I don't know. Could've been a dream."
"And the engine, was it a car? A boat?"
Whateley squinted, as though listening for the sound again. "Couldn't say for certain. Not a truck. Smaller than that. Could be a van, or a boat motor, carried strange on the wind." He looked at her. "Sound travels different out here. Comes from one place, means another."
A shiver ran down Sally's back.
"Officer," shouted the reporter from the sidewalk. "Can you confirm that this murder matches the original Cockle-Eye Kill?"
Sally ignored her. "Did you look outside last night, Mr. Whateley? Did you see anything?"
A flicker of unease came into Whateley's milky eyes. "No. I don't look out to sea."
"Officer, can you share the victim's name?" the reporter called.
"One more question," Sally said, pointing. "The Crab Shack over there, do you know who runs it?"
Whateley peered. "Crab shack?"
"There."
He frowned. Sally saw no recognition in his eyes. "I never heard of a Crab Shack."
Sally glanced past him. On the walls of his home, she saw family photographs. Him as a younger man. A wife and two children.
"Thank you for your time, Mr. Whateley."
She turned and walked back down the driveway. The reporter was waiting, one hand extended. "Tania Brown, with the Gaze."
Sally flinched slightly. The Gaze, again. Brown's lipstick was clamshell pink, her cheeks as sharply contoured as topographical lines on a map. She was surely older than she looked, mid-30s at least, but playing the game.
"Talk to press liaison," Sally said.
"Come on," Brown pressed. "Woman to woman, give me something."
"No comment."
The next house over was padlocked on the outside. Maybe a holiday home? She hammered on the door but there was no answer.
"You can't be her," Brown said as Sally passed back by. Her phone was raised and she was looking between it and Sally. "The Yank with the NCA."
Sally kept walking.
"You are, aren't you? You're the Bulletproof Belle!"
Sally felt those words twisting at her insides, but pushed on without comment. The third house sat higher than the others, modern timber with glass balconies turned opaque from salt. Sally pounded the door and a young woman opened it, curls whipping around her face, wearing a revealing pajama top.
"Oh," she said brightly. "Hello?"
Sally began her opening spiel, but the girl's eyes just darted at Tania Brown and her camera. "Are they allowed to, um, film me like this?"
"They are. If you'd prefer, we could go inside."
"No, that's fine." She flashed a smile at the cameras and waved. "Hello, Jakey!"
"Ma'am, your name?"
"Sure. Amelia Brig." She sobered. "Jake's my fiancé. On a trawler out there somewhere." She waved vaguely at the Channel. "You said they found a body?"
"That's correct. Did you hear or see anything unusual last night? Possibly around 3 a.m.?"
Brig's eyes screwed up. "Last night? Not really. Except maybe, yes. I think I heard dogs?"
A switch clicked over in Sally's head. "Did you see them?"
"I didn't look. Like I said, I was sleeping."
"And do you often hear dogs in the middle of the night?"
Brig shifted her weight. "Sometimes. It's funny, I guess. Nobody down here has dogs, though the Seafoam Strangler used to."
"The Seafoam Strangler?"
"Sure, old Whateley." Brig waved at the blue house. "Before he drowned his whole family in the Boils."
Sally blinked. "Mr. Whateley drowned his family?"
"Well, not on purpose, I guess." Brig beamed. "He was cleared. All an accident, right? Out on a rowboat or something. But that was like, decades ago? I wasn't even born." She lowered her voice. "Why, you think he's a suspect?"
Sally ignored that. "What happened?"
Brig waved a hand at the Channel. "I don't know. One of the Strangler's kids went over the side or something, got tangled up in the Boils."
"The Boils?"
Brig sighed. "Sure. Way back when, the reactors used to pipe coolant water out there or something?
Hot water brought fish, which brought fishermen, lobster traps, lots of net and lines.
" She took a breath, like this was boring her.
"So the first kid gets tangled, the other tries to get him out and gets pulled down.
The mom next, and the Strangler goes last. He can't get them out, but he does manage to swim free. "
Sally stared. "So he left them?"
"Oh yeah. Divers went out and found them." She lowered her voice. "All wrapped up around each other, they say, down at the bottom by the outflow pipe. Like they were strangling each other. Probably parboiled, too."
That image sank into Sally.
"They switched off the Boils after that," Brig went on. "Cut off the pipe or something. Whateley became this pariah. People started leaving the bodies of dead gulls at his door. Get rid of him, I guess. I think somebody even poisoned his dogs." She shrugged. "Didn't work."
Sally tried to square all that with the man she'd just met. A pariah. She weighed the vacant gaze, the hollow home, the photographs on the walls; all the cost of a horrific accident he was unable to stop. The tragedy of it seemed unbearable.
Was any of it relevant, though? It could certainly break a person; fill them with rage, make them want to lash out. But she couldn't picture Whateley, clearly half-blind and infirm, dragging a body across the beach. At best, it was something to formally rule out.
She cleared her throat. "Was anyone else at home last night, Miss Brig?"
"Nah, just me." She waved vaguely again at the Channel. "My Dad's out there."
"He's a fisherman too?"
"Sure. Not much to catch now, other than illegals in dinghies." She smiled at her joke. "Sink the lot of them, I say."
Brown shouted another question. Other reporters were gathering now, lending their voices to the hubbub.
"Last question." Sally pointed. "The Crab Shack, do you know who runs it?"
Brig frowned. "That old thing? It's gotta be older than the Strangler. Not been open for years. Nobody runs it, I reckon."
Nobody.
"Thank you for your time," Sally said, then headed back toward the beach. She tried to steer away from Tania Brown, but the reporter kept after her.
"Come on, Sally, help a sister out. You did so well for us last time!"