Prologue
Daffodils freeze and shrubs cry. The temperature is unholy, it crucifies all with nails of ice. And there will be a further killing tonight, human not plant.
The good folk of Stormhaven do their best in bitter circumstances. They were bitter before but more bitter now by far, walking hatted, gloved, scarved and hunched. How they long for spring! They long for spring like the watchman longs for morning. They long for the brief hope it brings; for the light, colour and warmth, as if life will now be better; as if from here on, their lives will be fine. But when were their lives last fine?
‘I’m ready for spring’, they say in a supermarket queue made pale and gaunt by sharp winds and disappointing families, who made such a mess of Christmas. ‘Why can’t they all just get on? Is it really too much to ask?’
Stormhaven is a littoral town – which, as the clever girl in the tourist office explains, means existing, or taking place on the shoreline, at the edge of things. And the residents are right on the edge tonight. They are ready for spring a hundred times over, ready for change; but neither appear, hope murdered in cold blood – cut to shreds, frozen out, small buds stabbed in infancy, the massacre of the innocents. They call it The Beast from the East and sea gulls shiver, rooks cower, flower beds harden and beneath a clear cold sky, ice glistens on the rail tracks to Newhaven. We’ll not trust any timetable; no one will escape the town tonight by train.
And the boy – no, he’s a young man, finding his way, earning a little, some money in his pocket at last! But he’s aware of the sudden cold and it’s hurting, like being attacked with knives, like being slashed and cut. Why does he have no coat? Is this a dream? Have they forgotten the coat?
Memories arise. He had been in a car, it’s coming to him now, returning slowly. A misty mind is clearing, shocked by the wind which drills through his ears – he had been in a car, he could feel the road beneath him, the bumps and the holes, lying there on the seat; he’d been lying not sitting. Why had he been lying and not sitting? But now he’s outside in hell’s freezer and he doesn’t know where, and he doesn’t know how, because he’d been at the funeral, carrying the coffin – he remembers carrying the coffin, steady steps to honour the dead. Yet now, he himself is carried – heaved, lifted and carried, the warmth of another body, he feels the warmth and he can hear the sea and he wants to move but cannot move, this could be a dream and he’s laid down – no, dropped down – aagghhh! – pain all over, this must be a dream but he can’t open his eyes, his eyes are closed and the stone is ice and he wants to wake up. The ice hurts, quite terribly; his leg is tied, someone’s tying his leg and the water’s cold, the freezing spray, he will wake up and his mother will psychoanalysise everything, like she does; he won’t mention the dream, it’s too wet.
And he’s lying on stone, though it feels like ice and he can hear the sea and he’s hurting again, and he wants to wake up, the cold splitting his joints, the water smashing his face, salt in his throat, gusts of frozen air, ice-spray needling his eyes and he wants to wake up. How he longs to wake up.
He longs for that more than anything.
PART ONE
1
The Crypt Gallery have mended their boiler, which is a huge relief to all.
It had been touch-and-go for a while: always there in the trustees’ ‘matters arising’ – but a decision never quite made as they, like every committee since the beginning of time, weighed cost against life, life against cost. Though in the end, and it was a surprise, they opted for life; Maureen, the chair, is particularly surprised.
‘I do believe we can afford it,’ she says, though she doesn’t believe it at all and is still in shock at the decision. Her jaw is locked in fury and dismay. ‘So it’s agreed! We’ll pay to have the boiler mended and let the minutes record my full support for this decision.’ How does she force these words from her mouth? She’ll never know; it is a super-human effort. She protects the Crypt’s bank balance with the diligence of the Swiss Guard: no one shall pass. There is no ‘legitimate expense’ for the Crypt – all expense is illegitimate, a bastard’s claim. She ran school finances for thirty years, knows all about a ‘tight ship’ and the sad and wretched end for spendthrifts.
But recent events at the Crypt could no longer be ignored; and those gathered round the fold-away tables tonight know this.
‘The recent case of hypothermia?’ This was how the revolution had started.
‘Hypothermia?’
‘During the “African Safari” lecture.’
‘Oh that. Well, what about it?’ says Maureen. She has more pressing issues to discuss.
‘Is it perhaps problematic for us?’
‘It happens,’ says Maureen wearily, running her hands through her short grey hair. ‘Or “Shit happens,” the technical phrase, I believe.’ She looks around the table; but the revolt is not quashed; they need more. ‘Look, we all know it’s dangerous to get out of bed in the morning. People are knocked down by cars, they’re hit by trees, they fall off bikes…’
‘…and suffer hypothermia at the Crypt.’ A trustee checks this is also considered part of the accidental universe.
‘I’m just saying these things happen.’ And then more quietly, ‘They happen.’ Maureen is at her wit’s end; the last Swiss Guard left standing.
‘I agree it’s a dangerous world, Maureen; I think we all do.’ There are nods around the table: it’s a dangerous world, the revolutionaries do agree. Shit does happen. ‘I suppose we just want to avoid hypothermia, if we can.’
‘If we can, certainly.’
‘And maybe mending the boiler…’ adds another, almost whimsically.
And the whimsy does it. Maureen finally backs down, she falls on her sword, the revolutionaries have the day. Leadership is following opinion whilst appearing to shape it; and there’s no question, the incident had been awkward, the whole hypothermia thing. The Facebook comments weren’t favourable, re-naming the Crypt as ‘The Fridge – The Stormhaven branch of Iceland’. But the woman shouldn’t have come that night, she obviously wasn’t well. What was she even doing out? Yet somehow – and this really gets on Maureen’s nerves – somehow, she manages to blame the Crypt for the cold, with her hysterical health and safety claims!
The other trustees lack backbone, however; she knows this – two of them are writers. And so the bank account was savaged, (Maureen’s view), the boiler mended, warmth restored – and all guests at this evening’s historical lecture sit cosy as toast in the ancient arms of the Crypt’s vaulted Undercroft; while up at the front, Melvyn Strutt, the eminent historian, does his best with the topic: ‘The single witness – should they ever be trusted?’
*
Chief Inspector Wonder knows a car crash when he sees one; and he has seen a few in East Sussex.
Sometimes investigations go wrong. They start off on the wrong foot and never recover, hobbling towards ridicule and disaster. Egos intrude, small empires appear, personal fiefdoms form, lines of inquiry become totems, ‘us’ and ‘them’ in charge, information unshared and a fight against crime becomes a fight between colleagues, with truth and the Chief Inspector as casualties. Particularly the Chief Inspector – he has to sort it all out and it’s a bloody nuisance and the last thing he needs.
And Shoreham had been a car crash, with debris still being cleared from the metaphorical road. It even had Wonder looking up the collective noun for egos. There isn’t one, more’s the shame; though of the suggestions available, he liked ‘A scrotum of egos’ the best.
DI Shah had made mistakes, there was no question of that. But sitting here now, taking the big view, he doesn’t much like Sitwell’s performance either. His recent arrival from Kent had been in the cause of ‘new policing’, whatever that is. He came with a big reputation for ‘Face-off Management’. ‘Geoffrey Sitwell’s your man,’ said one head- hunter. ‘He’s cleaned that place out, top to bottom.’ And now he is their man, six months into the job at Lewes; but a man with a weasel heart, that’s Wonder’s take, who seems to like nothing better than to undermine; to kick ladders from beneath his colleagues’ feet, imagining that he rises as they fall. And perhaps it had worked for him in Kent, where the sense of bereavement at his departure was minimal. As one delighted emailer said, ‘Thank God we’ve got rid of that shit-shower! Cock-a-hoop here! Best thing that’s happened to Kent since Dickens.
He’s all yours, Wonder!’
He needed to speak with Shah; and he needed to watch Sitwell.
*
‘“Testis unus, testis nullus!”’ declared Melvyn Strutt at the start of his talk. ‘But do you agree, my friends? Well, do you?’
No one in the Crypt knows if they agree, because he isn’t speaking in English, and you need to speak English in Stormhaven. (The town welcomes visitors from abroad, no racism here; but they will need to speak the language. The French ransacked the town in the 14th century and some still remember.) There are also some male giggles at the question because it sounds a bit rude, the testis bit, which is perhaps Melvyn’s intention. He likes the ‘controversial’ epithet he has acquired; it has some swagger about it, the scent of fearlessness, and when you are small and bald, you need whatever scent you can get.
But Melvyn Strutt, a lecturer at Brighton University, mostly wants applause as he addresses the Stormhaven Historical Society. Round, shiny and bow-tied, he is a man in search of praise, the warming sun of affirmation – though he should be warned, and it’s not clear he has been, these things will be hard-won here. The residents do not wish applause to go to anyone’s head; so it is usually witheld on health grounds.
And only slowly, as the talk proceeds, and his arm pits moisten, does Strutt become aware of the strangely-shaped man in the second row, lurking in the shadows. He is a man in a habit, some religious throw-back, quaint in his way. Are there really monks in the 21st century? Ye Gods! So he might need to tone down some of the adult humour tonight. Though really, and a different thought now kicks in – what the hell? What the actual hell? This is the 21st century, for God’s sake! It can’t all be fish on Fridays and Gregorian chant.
Though the monk in the second row sees right through him, this is Melvyn’s uncomfortable sense; as if his performance, like wet cloth, is suddenly see-through and exposed in some manner, all artifice removed. And were we to know these things, it’s true: the monk does see through him, as he sees through everyone and out the other side. He sees people like we see a filleted rat in the science lab, spread bleak, boneless and bare – though he’d later suggest that on this particular evening, beyond insecurity and pretension, there was not a great deal to view.
The monk, in his sixties, is called Peter and the sixties are the happiest age, according to a survey he read. (Headline: ‘When I’m 64 – I’ll be happy at last!’) But really, what is age? Whatever one’s decade, for those who look hard enough, there are ever fresh ways to be unhappy; always good reasons to be cheerless. Like the punishing cold, for instance. His hands still hurt from the freezing walk along the sea front; though he’s hardly new to inhospitable climes.
The monk in Strutt’s eye line – a former abbot, if anyone asks – is a recent arrival on these shores, dumped here by odd circumstance, after twenty-five years in Middle-Egypt. So he is familiar with the clear-skied freeze of the desert night, when heat escapes the dry air with indecent haste, like a school emptying at the end of a day. It can neither be held nor trapped and 40 degrees of sweltering sun is quickly dissolved to minus 4. It’s not the antarctic; but it’s certainly coat weather for any night vigil in the chapel or starlit trek in the sands.
But what he is not familiar with, or happy about, is this unrelenting drift, this utter endlessness. The desert cold had an end; a proper start and finish. It arrived and then left; it knew its place. Dawn arrived like matron in the Sahara, with a brisk dismissal of the chill. In the desert, the sun rose heavy and hot, pushing the cold aside like a weedy trespasser. But it forgets to do so here on the south coast of England, where the freeze has no end – and the same might be said of the talk, indeed some would say so later; though Melvyn Strutt is doing his best, and John, the organiser, sits happy with his booking.
‘I think we can expect him to “Strutt his stuff”!’ he’d said a few weeks ago in the society’s mail out, which now has twenty-three names on the list – no, twenty-four including his own. ‘His subject will be witnesses in court – “Why the single witness is no witness.” Controversial, eh?! He’ll make special reference to a remarkable court case in the 1800’s. It should be great, fellow Historicos! So I hope you can all make it to the Crypt, where I am told they are mending their boiler at last! And it’s also really great that he wanted to join us. Maybe the Stormhaven Historical Society is building a reputation for itself!’
Or maybe John is deluded, think some, and Melvyn Strutt would be among them, for – whisper it quietly – he did not want to come at all. The Crypt is his last resort, not his first.
His reply had been positive. ‘I’d be absolutely delighted to come and speak to the Stormhaven Historical Society, John. Sounds like you’re doing a great work there.’
But he’s not absolutely delighted; and the scant audience before him is no great work. The Crypt is not where he wants to be – though maybe better than the bathroom mirror. In front of the mirror, he can gaze on himself in full oratorical flight, delight in his mimed performance, a latter-day Cicero; but there’s no applause from the glass, no appreciative murmurs, which is a downside, and a significant one; for applause is surely the purpose of life?
Without it we wither and die; or Melvyn does anyway.
So here he is at the bottom of Church Street, trying out his talk in the Undercroft at the Crypt – not the real thing, of course, but a dress rehearsal for more prestigous venues, with more seats and deeper pockets. There has been some interest from hotels in Brighton, which is absolutely where he needs to be – Brighton or Lewes. They are going to get back to him, including The Grand, which is obviously the pick of the crop. And the Hydro in Eastbourne had been in contact today, an email enquiry, which could be interesting. Such a nice young girl at the bar there – be calm, Melvyn, be calm! And a free dessert from the restaurant afterwards; they usually did that, fresh profiteroles from the freezer.
But nothing’s free here, apart from weak coffee and biscuits; and that’s Stormhaven for you in a nutshell. Of course, the cruise ship gig is the Holy Grail for the ‘history whores’, as he was once described – the 11.00am lecture slot in the Caribbean, with an ocean between him and his family. The feelers are out for that; Melvyn’s learning to network. But imagine it! Well, he hardly dares. Appreciation in the Caribbean! Attention in the South Pacific! The perfect circle! And why not dream, everyone has to dream; though nightmares are more common – and there’ll be one at Splash Point tonight, a nightmare in the icy spray; some way from applause.
