46. Artisan Eye
"Tell me about Prospect Cottage," Sally said, as the Tesla shot back through Rye.
"It's just up the beach from the reactors," came a voice from the back. Chakrati. "Like the DCI said, it's famous. Shingle garden, driftwood sculptures, painted all black, got a John Donne poem on the side."
Sally turned. "A what?"
"A poem. The whole thing's a national monument to Derek Jarman. Artist, film maker. It was open for tourist visits for a while, but…" Chakrati's tone sharpened. "I'm on the website. They do artist's residencies now. Winter. Summer. Hang on."
Sally brought up the Prospect Cottage website too. The building was framed with wooden lapboards, condensed and boxy, gleaming black like an oyster shell against the low horizon. The poem on the side was barely legible, cursive letters nailed to the wall in tight rows.
"There's someone there right now." Chakrati looked up. "Nia Mensah, she's into found sculpture, driftwood, just like Jarman."
Sally searched Nia Mensah as they shot through Camber and onto the barren coast road. She found her webpage, her social media, and then–
"I've got him! Bledd, in a photo with Mensah. That looks like Prospect Cottage behind them."
"Notify the DCI, Simms," Gemmell said. "Have her redirect the AROs."
Sally rechecked the map. Jarman's Cottage was almost within sight of where she'd door-knocked on the first day. It would have been easy for Bledd to move a body from there to the reactor. Out on his strange boat, in again, but–
She continued out loud. "Bledd's got a junk pile houseboat. With those tanks, the punt and the back platform, how would he ever moor on shingle?"
"Wild landing," came a voice from in back. Simms. "Same way my dad used to take us out fishing. You beach yourself, basically, timed with the tides. Come in when the tide's going out, beach at the tideline, then bugger off to the pub. Come back when the tide's in again and head off."
Sally considered that. A man like Bledd would feel the tides in his bones. Timing his arrival and departure would be nothing to him. In on the slack tide, out when it turned. Long enough to drag a drugged body up, carve the eyes, and return.
A shudder tore through her. Maybe it really was him.
Soon the Tesla was arcing in along the Dungeness coast road.
Ahead of them lay the square black box of Prospect Cottage.
It was small and set back from the beach, but striking with its bright yellow window frames and door.
The Mini stood on the weedy shingle, Mayhew at the door, all four officers holding their batons and cans of PAVA.
The Tesla halted and Sally stepped out, the wind ripping at her clothes.
"Police!" Mayhew shouted, pounding on the door. "Arthur Bledd, open the door!"
No answer. Sally scanned the shingle. The sea was far out, barely visible, but there was something strange amongst the ranks of beached fishing boats.
A larger craft, like a garden shed conjoined with several smaller sheds, easily mistaken for two or three boats strapped together, at a distance and in the night.
"That's Bledd's houseboat," she called over the wind, pointing.
The officers turned. A thought struck Sally and she looked up, searching the gray clouds for the shape of a drone. She saw nothing, heard nothing, but that meant nothing. If it were a thousand feet high, they would never know.
Bledd could be watching them right now.
"We have to go in," she said.
Mayhew pointed. "Chakrati and Simms, take the back. Flaherty, get the ram from my boot."
The officers dispersed. Flaherty came back carrying a bullet-shaped block of metal on swing handles, an 'Enforcer'.
"Do it," Mayhew ordered, and she swung it at the door. A crack rang out and the old timber door caved inward.
Mayhew moved in first, PAVA can raised, followed by Liam, Flaherty, Gemmell, Hawlin then Sally.
The hall was narrow, dim and smelled of bleach and paint.
Sally's eyes moved automatically, to corners, doorways, hiding places behind furniture.
The old cottage seemed to press inward around her, low ceilings and whitewashed walls crowded with art: framed pencil sketches on linen paper; rusted tools welded to gleaming fresh bolt mechanisms; fragments of bone drilled and studded with seagull feathers.
The front room opened on their left. Mayhew and Liam went in fast. Sally saw a cast-iron log burner, a narrow day bed made up with gray blankets, a couch, shelves sagging beneath thick art books, with a desk by the window looking out at the beach.
"Clear!" Mayhew said, shoved past Sally and kept moving.
On the right was the artist's studio, windows filling one wall, light-bathed and stinking of the sea. A large desk dominated the space, covered in driftwood, tangled blue fishing net, buckets of cockles and heaps of sun-dried seaweed; as if the strand line had disgorged its contents here.
It turned Sally's stomach, but she searched the pile still.
Amongst the tidal debris lay many half-built sculptures, shapes that might have been writhing figures, different media blending into each other in otherworldly combinations.
Perhaps half-finished, perhaps complete, perhaps displayed exactly as they were intended.
"Clear," Mayhew called and moved on.
The rear of the cottage was a small kitchen with windows looking out over the northern beach.
A used mug sat by the sink, a plate held the crust of a sandwich.
On the kitchen table lay maps of the marsh and beach, printed satellite images, tide charts, strips of handwritten coordinates, all weighed down with pieces of flint.
The reactors were circled in red. The Listening Ears.
Sally's pulse accelerated.
"Keep moving," Mayhew commanded. "Don't touch anything, leave it all for forensics. Kitchen clear."
A back door led onto a tiny shingle yard, where the unlikely pairing of Chakrati and Simms now stood, her small, him massive.
"Nobody out here, boss," Simms said.
The breath Sally had been holding came out slowly. That left only one place.
"Bledd's boat, DCI."
Mayhew glanced at her, already moving. "On me."
Sally followed back through the clutter of the cottage; reeds drying in bundles, boats in bottles, maps of water channels, a lighthouse beam drawn again and again in black pencil.
It was too much. If there was a clue here, it would be buried deep. She was at the door when PC Hawlin's voice came from the studio.
"Ma'am, I think you'll want to see this."
Sally turned and Mayhew followed.
The wide room seemed smaller with the three of them inside. Hawlin stood beside a second workbench tucked beside the front window. At first Sally saw only more clutter: clay, wire, broken crockery, oyster shells, old metal cogs, glue, paint, bone-colored plaster.
Then the shape resolved.
A small figure stood on the bench, no more than 10 inches high. Human, roughly made, its head tilted back as if looking up at the ceiling. Where its eyes should be, there were tiny white cockle shells.
Nobody moved. The hard wind rattled the window in its yellow frame.
Sally stared at the little figure, and all the cold in the cottage seemed to gather behind her ribs.
The killer had been here. Bledd. Mensah. One of them. Both of them. It didn't matter. The Fates had weighted against a male-female killer pairing, but weighting meant nothing when the evidence stood directly before her, staring back with shell-filled eyes.