3

I had walked for nearly an hour past the green, after I had left the pub, down to the darkened boatyard with the stilted walkways over the river mud, then out on the raised path towards the marsh.

I was at the place where the tidal river merged with the inland water mass and the slow-swaying reedbeds. It had been one of Zoë’s favourite spots. The silence was broken only when I disturbed a swan that clattered, screaming away.

“Evening, John.”

I spun, coiled, tense.  I gazed at the shadow.

“Only me – seen a ghost?  Sorry that was a tactless thing to say.  Didn’t mean to startle you.  It’s Jason.”

“That’s okay.”

“Just taking the dog out.  I hear Loraine has lumbered you with the leaflets for the Wildlife Field Day.  It’s very good of you.  I was doing the group’s accounts this evening – your donation of two hundred and fifty pounds was really generous, thanks.  Prefer to say it myself than just send a little letter.”

“Don’t think about it,” I said.  I had donated my fee from the Tador Zhivkov case.  It just didn’t seem right to profit from such a sad scenario.  Not good business sense I know, but I felt better for doing it.

“It’s worth saying.  It was a good day when you and Zoë came here -,” he stopped suddenly.  “Sorry, I do tend to cackle on a bit don’t I?  Get a bit carried away.”

“It’s fine, really.” I lied.

“Well, we’ve had our little piddle, time to be getting back, and sorry I startled you and sorry I mentioned – Oh did Loraine tell you about the field day, for the Wildlife, in May?  And the RSPB lecture coming up?  Hope you can come to both.  We are doing the marsh harriers on the Headland for the field day – got permission from the Bio-Preparations, no less.  Any time now the birds are back from Africa.  It is an incredible migration – fierce little brutes, killers but beautiful with it.  Better be getting back.  Goodnight, John.”

The footsteps shuffled away into the night.  Jason seemed to love the dog as much as he loved Loraine.  I walked on and took the path beside the course of the old river, now silted and narrow, and across the north edge of the marsh.  I climbed; slipping and sliding over the huge barrier of stones the sea had thrown up and went down on to the beach.  My feet gouged in the sand, wet from the receding tide.  From between the fast cloud that carried the last of the slashing rain moonlight pierced the darkness around me.  The only sound was the hissing of the sea on the shingle.  I scanned for a ship’s lights, but there was nothing. 

I walked in the darkness, grinding my feet into the fine pebbles and the emptied shells.  I turned my back to the sea.   The great black hole that was the Oxmarket marshland surrounded the clustered lights of the small coastal town.  I moved on retracing my steps, and came back into the outskirts of the town.  Brisk footsteps were hurrying towards me; a bouncing torchbeam lit the pavement, then soared and found my face.

“Hello, John, it’s Cecil.  Choir practice drifted on, that’s why I’m late out, and – same as you, I suppose – I felt like a prisoner in Cove Cottage what with mother being ill and that dreadful rain earlier today.  Had to get out, get a bit of air before I get mother settled.”

“Evening, Reverend Harkett.”  I said.

“Please, John, not the formality, not among friends – even those, forgive me, whom I do not see on Sundays.

“God and I have a bit of a falling out lately.”  I said sharply.

“I understand,” he held up his hands in mock surrender.   “Not to worry – it’s what people do that matters, not where they’re seen to be.  If all my worshippers were as involved in the welfare of the parish as you are, then I’d be a happier man.”

“Thank you Reverend,” I said sincerely, “but I really must be getting home.  It’s late.  I’ve got an early start in the morning.”  I hadn’t but he didn’t need to know that.

“Yes, of course,” he nodded smiling.  “Oh, before I forget, I’ve got you down for the churchyard grass-cutting, this summer, on my rota.”

“No problem,” I said.

“Well bed beckons.  ‘Night, John.”

“Goodnight.”

I walked across the wet grass and back on to the pavement, deliberating over my conversation with Reverend Harkett when I stared up at the windows where my offices were.

I knew I had turned the lights out of the office when I had finished work earlier, but now the lights were on.  Someone was in my office.

*

I began to edge my way up the stairs, slowing my approach as I came to the final flight that led to my office.  I tried to creep as quietly as possible but the old stairs creaked and protested with every step.  Slowly, I creaked my way to the top.

Through the frosted glass of my front door I could see figures moving, hear low voices.  Taking a deep breath, I kicked open the door.

One of the occupants I knew personally.  Detective Inspector Paul Silver.  A big, burly, red-faced and with the jowls of a bulldog and one of the few people in the world I could call a friend.  Beside him, was the head of Bio-Preparations, Kimberley Ashlyn Gere. An elegant brunette, in a dark blue jacket and skirt and high heeled shoes.  Exalted company indeed, but it spelt only one word, trouble.

I swung the door shut with my heel and asked, “How did you get in here?”   

Paul smiled.  “Oh, I’ve managed to pick up a few tricks from some of the people that I’ve put away over the years.  I don’t believe that you’ve met Miss Gere.”

I shook the woman’s gloved hand.  “No, but I’ve seen her name and photograph in the papers, many times.”

“Please to meet you, Mr Handful.”  She had a deep slow slightly-foreign accented voice.  She was probably thirty-five but at a distance could have passed for ten years younger.  She had beautiful large, clear hazel eyes, and she wore hardly any make up.  The cosmetics counter of any large department store would not make much of a profit out of this lady.  She exuded a sweet and opulent smell of perfume.  “DI Silver has told me a great deal about you.”

I looked at my friend and joked, “Oh, dear.”

“It was all good, I can assure you.”  This time the smile was not so strained and I detected a mischievous glint in her eyes.

I crossed to my desk and gestured them to both sit down in the chairs opposite.

“How can I help you?”  I said, sitting down once they were both comfortable.

DI Paul Silver sat forward.  “Someone broke into the Bio-Preparations complex on the Headland less than three hours ago.”  

The Bio-Preparations complex was locally known as Cobra Mist, a legacy from the cold war era when it was an over-the-horizon backscatter radar system that monitored aircraft and rocket flights far behind the Iron Curtain. It was closed for a while because of interference from a Russian trawler sprouting strange aerials that was constantly spotted just outside the twelve-mile limit.  After years of neglect, the pharmaceutical giant Bio-Preparations bought the site and the rest as they say is history.  A vast grey building dominates a ten-mile long spit of shingle hugged tight to the coast between Oxmarket and the north of Felixstowe.  It is visible from the main quay in Oxmarket and the locals call the spit the island, probably because access is only available by ferry.  There is a military landing craft to take vehicles across for those working at the complex.  Foot passengers travel by launch.

“How can I help?”  I asked, slightly puzzled.

Paul looked embarrassed and allowed Miss Gere to speak.  “Bio-Preparations do not want any publicity.  The last thing we want is the local press crawling over the place.  We want somebody who will be swift and discreet.”

“Who else knows about the break-in?”

“Sergeant Higgins and WPC Melanie Softly,” Paul said.

I nodded.  They were two people I would definitely trust. I then turned my attention back to the beautiful Miss Gere and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“My security people and a few other trusted members of staff,” she replied firmly on cue.

“Let’s keep it that way,” I told them.

“Money will be no object,” Miss Gere insisted.

“Tell me what happened?”

*

Close up, Cobra Mist is an architectural monstrosity, a guaranteed blot on any landscape.  Grim, grey and gaunt, we approached it from the only access road on the spit. This dissected a dun brown expanse of shingle, its immense flat carpet broken here and there by the humped shapes of derelict MOD buildings slowly crumbling under the eternal scratching of wind and weather.

Travelling nearly five miles from the military landing craft’s jetty, DI Silver stopped his car just short of the lowered boom and wound down the window as the armed-guard approached.  He had a machine pistol slung over his shoulder and he wasn’t pointing it at the ground either.

Then he caught sight of Miss Gere, lowered his gun and gave a signal to a man we could not see.  The boom rose, the car moved on, halted before heavy steel crash-gates.  We left the car, passed through a steel side door and made our way into a one-storey block marked ‘RECEPTION’

“Where would you like to start?”  Miss Gere asked me.

“I would like to go and look at the cut in the fence where you think the intruder got in,” I said.  “Then I’d like to talk to the security guard who was on duty in that area.”

Five minutes later DI Silver and I were alone at the break in the fence, which was illuminated by strong searchlights.  Miss Gere had withdrawn out of earshot.

The barbed wire on the outer fence was strung between curving reinforced concrete posts.  There were about thirty strands on the fence, with roughly six inches between each pair.  The fourth and fifth strands from the bottom had been cut then rejoined with heavy grey twine tied round the barbs nearest the cuts.  It had taken a pretty sharp pair of eyes to discover the break.

The rain had saturated the ground and there was a mixture of human and dog footprints scattered everywhere.  I would never be able to tell within a million years which footprints belonged to the person who had cut the wire.   

“Sawn or cut?” Paul asked me.

“Cut,” I replied.  “By a left-handed man or a right-handed man who wanted to confuse us.  So a man who’s either left-handed or clever or both.”

Paul looked at me totally perplexed and we turned to see that a dark stocky security guard in his middle twenties had joined Miss Gere.  He was fighting to restrain a wolf-like animal that lunged out madly at anyone who came to get near him.  He was muzzled but even that didn’t make me feel too confident.

“What’s your name, son?” Paul asked.

“Sanders, sir.”

“Where were you around about nine o’clock last night, Sanders?” I asked.

“Patrolling the perimeter fence with Rocky, sir.”

“Rocky?”     

“My dog?”

“Does he always act like this?”  I demanded.

“Not usually, sir.” Sanders was puzzled.  “In fact, never.  Usually perfectly behaved until l let him off the leash – then he’ll go for the nearest person no matter who he is.  But he even had a go at me when Miss Gere asked me meet you two gentlemen down here, sir – half-hearted, like, but nasty.”

It didn’t take long to discover the source of Rocky’s irritation.  Rocky was suffering from what must have been a very sever headache indeed.  The skin on the forehead, just about eye-level, had a swollen pulpy feeling to it and it took all of us all our time to hold him down when I touched  this area with the tips of my forefingers.  We turned him over, and I parted the thick fur on the throat till I found what I was looking for – two triangular jagged tears, deep and very unpleasant looking, about three inches apart.

“Did you leave Rocky on his own at any time, Sanders?”  I asked.

“No, sir.”

“You’re lying,” I insisted.

“I’m not lying.”  His face was suddenly ugly.  “And you can’t talk to me like that, sir.  Who are you anyway?”

I took a step forward and got as close to the security guard as I could without risking my life with the dog.  “I’m your worst nightmare if I find out your lying.  So tell me the truth now, and I’ll make sure you won’t lose your job.”

He was scowling, sullen.  “I was having a smoke and a coffee with Joanne from reception.”  He turned to Miss Gere.  “You know how much I fancy her, Miss.  I’ve done it before, left Rocky to patrol this area on his own. He’s a killer; I’d thought it would be okay.”

“Well, it wasn’t,” I said wearily.  “You’d better give Rocky, a couple of days off and some disinfectant for those gashes.  You can take him away.”

Miss Gere came over to us.  “What’s happened here?”

“The intruder padded his forearm, sticks it between a couple of strands of barbed wire and Rocky grabs it.  He wouldn’t bark, I suspect these dogs are trained never to bark.  As soon as he grabs he’s pulled through and down onto the barbed wire and can’t pull himself free unless he tears his throat out.  And then someone clouts him at his leisure with something very hard.  Simple old-fashioned, direct and very effective.  Whoever the character we’re after, he’s no fool.”

“He’s smarter than that dog, anyway,” Paul conceded heavily.

*

When we went back to the reception hall, one of Miss Gere assistant’s was waiting for us with a list of what was missing.  Well it wasn’t actually a list it was just one item. Five hundred tablets of a totally new drug with an unpronounceable name.

“Is that all?” I said.

“It’s enough,” Miss Gere said angrily.  “This drug is the latest development in the fight against bowel cancer!” 

I turned my attention back to the assistant.  Her nametag said Mrs Deeves.  Shy and unadorned, she struck me as a loyal and hard worker, private and uncomplicated.  She must have been a beauty in her youth, but lack of sleep and a poor diet had spun the clock forward.

A few times I had seen her walk through Oxmarket, normally on her way to church – she was Reverend Harkett’s sister – in clothes that might have been bought twenty years ago.  It made her about as sexy as my old auntie, but she went about her business with a quiet acceptance.

“Take me to where the drug was stolen from, could you, please?”

“Certainly,” Mrs Deeves said politely.  “That’ll be Number one lab.”

We all filed through a door behind the reception desk and turned down a long corridor to our left.  Number one lab was right at the far end of the corridor, at least two hundred metres away, but that was the way we had to go:  there was only one entrance to the entire block.  Security was all.  On the way we had to pass through half a dozen doors, some opened automatically, others by handles fifteen inches long.  Elbow handles.  Considering the nature of the research that some of the Cobra Mist scientists were working on at any one time, it was a good idea to have both hands free all the time.

We came to number one lab and DI Silver used his authority by asking that only he and I should look round.  The two women reluctantly agreed.

Number one lab was a huge windowless room.  All the spaces and three room length benches were taken up by literally hundreds of cages of all types – some of a sealed-glass construction with their own private air-conditioning and filtration units, but most of the standard open mesh type.  Hundreds of pairs of eyes, mostly small, red and beady, turned to stare at us as we entered.  There must have been between fifteen hundred and two thousand animals in that room altogether – mostly mice, ninety per cent of them mice, I should have guessed, but also about a hundred rabbits and the same of guinea pigs.  From what I could see they all seemed in good health.

“Bloody hell,” Paul exclaimed, “no wonder this place has problems with animal rights campaigners.  They would sell their souls to get in here.  This would be their waking nightmare.”

“I don’t blame them,” I shrugged, resignedly.  “I reckon the amount of animals that die in here is frightening.  All for the sake of science.”

“Anyway,” Paul said coldly, “we’re all entitled to our opinions.”  He smiled without humour.  “What do you think? Inside job?”

“Of course,” I said almost indifferently.  “What I need to know is how and why.”

“Any ideas?”

“A few,” I tapped the side of my head, mimicking the actor who played Hercule Poirot on the television. 

“Are you going to enlighten me then?”  Paul demanded.

“Not yet.”