29. Fifth Continent
On the winding road back to Lydd, Sally thought about Roarke Rook and his brothers. Out on the marsh somewhere, tucked into some channel or ruin or hidden mooring, laughing while the police chased card records and port sightings.
Home field advantage.
The old fire station looked different without the emergency vehicles and press presence outside. Smaller. More honest. The red bay doors were shut and a handwritten sign had been taped to the glass.
CLOSED DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES
Sally parked and they got out. Liam peered through the glass. "Unforeseen circumstances is doing a lot of work there."
There was nobody inside. The displays remained where they'd been dragged aside, while a profusion of mugs, teas and instant coffee tubs rested on the central trestle table.
"The girls will be in Dover now," Liam said. "Immigration Removal Centre. Basically a prison, but they've got no sentence. No idea how long they have to stay."
Sally tried to peer deeper in. She recognized a large red hand pump, the display of old helmets. Then a figure appeared at the back, carrying a mop bucket.
Sally rapped on the glass.
The figure twitched, turned, and stared at them.
He was elderly but upright, perhaps late 70s, with a narrow face, white hair and a brown cardigan buttoned over a shirt and tie. Even from outside, he looked offended.
Sally held up her badge to the glass. "We need to talk. Open up, please."
The man set the bucket down with visible reluctance and came to the door. He opened it only as far as the chain allowed.
"We're closed, Officers," he said, his accent very posh indeed.
"Officer Rogers and O'Connell," Sally said. "We're not here about yesterday."
"We're still closed."
"We actually need help with local history."
Now the man's eyes showed some kind of curiosity. "What kind of local history?"
"Owlers," Liam said. "Old smuggling routes through the marsh."
The man paused. Then he closed the door, scraped the chain free and opened it properly.
"As part of an active investigation? You'd better come in."
They stepped inside.
The museum smelled strongly of bleach now, laid over the familiar old fire-station smell of wood, dust and cold stone.
Several of yesterday's folding tables had been stacked against one wall.
A few foil blanket fragments still glittered in the corner near the skirting board.
Someone had forgotten a bottle of water beneath the wartime display.
The old man saw Sally notice and stiffened.
"Terrible business yesterday," he said. "You gave us 20 minutes' warning, then filled the place with police, doctors and poor young souls. We do what we can, of course, but it's not what the building is for."
"Seems it's been through several uses," Sally said. "Everything changes."
"Well, now it's for remembering things properly." He said it with some force. "Which may be increasingly unfashionable, but I believe is essential."
"We agree completely," Liam said. "And your name is?"
"Edwin Pike. Volunteer trustee. Retired headmaster. Amateur historian, though not amateur in standards."
Sally liked him immediately, despite herself. "You have a display on the Owlers?"
"I have three," he said sternly. "The trustees allow me one and a half, while the rest remain in storage." He picked up a ring of keys from the gift shop desk. "This way."
He led them past the old hand pump, past the helmets and black-and-white photographs of fire crews, into a side room where the ceiling dipped and the lighting was poor. Here the displays changed from fire service history to marsh life. Fishing nets. Model boats. Photographs of flooded fields.
At the far end stood a display case labelled SMUGGLERS, OWLERS AND THE SCARECROW LEGEND.
Inside were clay pipes, replica pistols, a dark lantern, an ancient map of Romney Marsh, yellowed and annotated, with waterways marked in blue and old churches dotted across it.
There were also a slew of battered, yellowing paperbacks showing a dramatic figure wearing a scarecrow mask, riding a horse.
All authored by Russell Thorndike. A mannequin in a black cloak and tricorn hat stood beside the display, one arm raised melodramatically, his face covered by a rough burlap sack mask.
THE FEARSOME DR. SYN, read a colorful sign.
"Dr. Syn," Sally muttered, thinking back. "I've heard that name."
"He's a scarecrow?" Liam asked.
"He only dressed as a scarecrow, young man. In Thorndike's books, he is the Robin Hood of Romney Marsh, a nightmarish specter for those who tread down the common man." Pike finished with a dramatic flourish.
Liam turned. "This is a history museum though, right?"
Pike sniffed. "Of course! The Owlers were very real.
Dr. Syn himself may not be, but he epitomizes the period dramatically, and tourists require theatre.
Any true student of history requires footnotes, which you will find here in abundance.
" He pointed at a small plaque beside the figure. "We compromise as much as necessary."
Sally stepped closer to the map. "Where would they hide?"
Pike frowned. "Excuse me?"
"Owlers. Smugglers. Men moving goods or people inland from the coast without being seen."
Pike's expression changed, tingeing with caution. "Ah. Is this about the murder?"
"We don't know yet. It may be about the men connected to it."
"The Rooks," Pike said.
"You know them?"
"This is Dungeness. Everyone knows of the Rooks. Most have the good sense not to know them personally, though I schooled all of the boys myself."
Sally took that on board. "You taught them all?"
"I did, for my crimes. Just missed teaching their father, too, though I always heard he was a tearaway, never in attendance." He sighed. "Those were different times, of course."
Sally looked at Liam. He nodded appreciatively.
"So you're ideally placed," she went on. "Did they care about this stuff? Dr Syn, Owlers, smuggler routes?"
Pike's mouth tightened, and a moment passed as he summoned old memories.
"Roarke Rook was the leader. Always chasing anything that gave him a leg up on the other boys.
Dr Syn, the Scarecrow, Owlers, Romney Marsh ghosts?
He loved to dress up in the costume of all that history, using it to scare the rest. He never had the discipline to dig deeper, though. "
"So where would they go?" Liam asked. "If they wanted to mimic the Owlers and hide out in the marsh?"
Pike looked at the old map for a long moment. "This map does show genuine Owler routes," he murmured. "But it is heavily outdated. They used to call it the fifth continent, it was such an alien place."
"The fifth continent?" Sally asked.
"Yes. Back in the early 19th century, only four continents were known well. It's an Ingoldsby line; the world divided into Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Romney Marsh. It's hard to picture it now, of course. Few truly wild patches remain. But back then?"
"It was a swamp?"
"Worse than a swamp," Pike said primly. "More like a killing ground.
This entire region was, and remains, below sea level, so the marshes ran deep and unpredictably.
Tidal influxes could drown a traveling party within minutes.
There was the ague, too, a pestilence that inflicted any sufferer with feverish deliriums, left to wander the marsh alone. "
"Basically malaria," Liam said.
Pike's eyes narrowed slightly. "Indeed. A British variant carried by mosquitos, which were rife.
There were quick bogs. Wolves. Shifting crossing points manned by ferrymen who'd as soon kill and rob you as fulfill their duty.
Add to that the mists, the clouds, the impossibility of meaningful navigation?
" His eyes took on a faraway look. "It was truly a land apart.
A place for monsters, myths and madmen."
Sally felt Pike's strong baritone bearing her like a ferryman toward this murky, shifting past.
"It only looks as it now does thanks to generations of human manipulation, beginning with mass drainage in the medieval era, followed by a great leap forward in the early 1800s."
"The Royal Military Canal," Liam chirped in brightly.
"Correct," Pike said, clearly pleased with his new student.
"Five house points to you, Officer O'Connell.
The RMC fully tamed this land, stitching it back into the greater mass of Britain.
" His gaze returned to the map. "But to your question.
Where would the Rooks go?" His eyes roved the display.
"I would assume they'd hide in one of the wilder patches.
Not the obvious farm tracks. They'd need somewhere wet enough to discourage pursuit, dry enough to sit out the hunt, but connected to a sewer wide enough to traverse in a shallow boat. "
"Sewer?" Liam asked.
"Not what you're thinking," Pike said. "Out here it just means drainage canal. They crisscross the old marsh everywhere."
"Are there old Owler hideouts, still?"
Pike waved his hand. "Most of those are nonsense. Invented by pubs, resorts and men with books to sell."
"But some aren't?"
"No." He touched the glass over the map.
"Some aren't." His finger moved across the marsh, tracing channels Sally could barely distinguish.
"There were always landing places in the marsh.
Channels where flat-bottomed barges could ply a path between ruined churches and old sheepfolds.
" He shook himself and looked back at them.
"Most are gone now, as the marsh shifted. Many are on private land."
"Where?"
Pike went around the display and unlocked a narrow cabinet. From inside, he took an Ordnance Survey map and unfolded it across a nearby display table. It showed a modern take on the marsh, already marked with pencil circles and handwritten notes.
"This is not for general use," he said.
"Understood."
"It is my personal copy, marked with old crossing points and supposed Owler storage sites. Half are speculative. Some are dangerous. One or two are private enough that the owners would shoot you before asking questions."
Sally leaned over the map.
Pike tapped one pencil circle near a tangle of channels and marsh symbols.
"If Roarke Rook were pretending to be an Owler, he'd like this one.
Old sheep shelter near Giggers' Green Road.
No legal access. The ridge should be dry if the water isn't high.
Invisible from the main track. Local boys used to dare each other to sleep in the old shepherds' cote.
Rook boys among them, if memory serves."
Sally felt the search spotlight narrowing.
He tapped another spot. "Waterways around the St. Thomas Beckett church.
The church itself draws a few tourists, but the land around it is vast, boggy and inhospitable.
Just along here," he traced a thin blue line, "near Puddledock sewer, there's a ruined hay croft.
No sightlines. Could be a good place to hole up, especially if the landowners are paid off. "
Pike pointed to several more locations, each in a wilder portion of the marsh. The Black Gutter. Daleacres. The Listening Ears near Greatstone.
Sally took photographs of each and jotted down notes.
"Could you guide us to these?"
Pike laughed once. "Absolutely not. I have two artificial hips and a healthy fear of drowning in a drainage ditch. Besides, my knowledge is academic, limited to what used to be." He folded up the map. "You need someone who knows the marsh as it is now."
"And do you know someone like that?"
Pike hesitated. Sally waited. He looked toward the closed museum door, as if the Rooks might be listening from the high street.
"There is a man," he said eventually. "Not a friend to the Rooks, but not exactly respectable, either. He knows the marsh better than anyone alive."
"Name?"
"Arthur Bledd."
Liam wrote it down. "Address?"
"He's got a converted steel Dutch barge for a houseboat.
That thing's shallow-draughted and ugly as mud, built for the marsh and short coastal hops.
He berths mostly on the River Rother, just south of Appledore.
He's an eel man, self-declared naturalist, and a royal pain in every committee he has ever attended. "
Sally narrowed her eyes. "But he knows the land?"
"He knows everything above and below the surface.
If the Rooks are in the marsh, he may already know where they are, and if he doesn't, he can find them.
Finds Roman coins, musket balls, drowned farm tools, wreckage from aircraft, even bones.
He used to give talks here until he accused the chairwoman of falsifying a Saxon buckle. "
Liam snorted. "Had she?"
"Probably. But I must warn you, he's a mercurial character. Not an advocate of the 'world of men', as he calls it."
"Just as well I'm a woman," Sally said drily. "Will he help us?"
"If he's sober and interested. I think he may."
"So how do we make him interested?"
Pike gave her a thin smile. "You could tell him Edwin Pike still wants compensation for the damage to the Mesolithic display cabinet. That'll get you in the door."
"Damage?"
"He brought in a live eel during a school visit."
Sally stared at him. Pike's expression did not change.
"The eel was not exactly the problem," he said. "The children were. There was a minor stampede and the display cabinet was shattered. Bledd has not yet made full restitution for this. Nor has he apologized."
Sally smiled. "We'll go see him."
Pike wrote his phone number and a location on the back of a museum leaflet. "His boat's called the 'Thomas Ingoldsby'. You can't miss it; looks like a floating junkyard."
"Ingoldsby?" Liam asked.
"The author of a 19th century book of local legends. Now, Bledd has no phone, but don't hesitate to call me." Pike tapped the paper. "And be careful. Bearding a Rook in his den could be lethal. The Owlers were hard, merciless men, and the Rooks are no less so."
Sally took the leaflet. "We won't. Thank you, Mr. Pike."
They headed out. The sky had reverted to gray, threatening more rain. Sally looked toward the country beyond the town, where the marsh began its long, flat reach inland.
Maybe their way in.