Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(79)

He saw the causeway looming up ahead, and checked the time on his dashboard.

Eight forty-five.

The causeway was due to close in ten minutes, and he could see the ripple of the tide as it rose inexorably higher, creeping across the causeway inch by inch, until it would be completely immersed. Ryan knew he had to cross now, or miss his chance.

Accelerating through the shallow puddles that were starting to form, Ryan focused on the road ahead, which was becoming less distinct as the water rose up around it. Presently, he came to the middle of the causeway, where the road widened so it could be used as a passing place, or a place for people to park at low tide to get out and take pictures, dip their toes in the sand, or walk across the ‘Pilgrim’s Way’. To his surprise, he spotted the outline of a parked car in one of the passing places, which would be submerged in another ten minutes, if he was any judge.

Though he was eager to find his wife, and conscious of not being late, Ryan’s sense of decency won out, as it always did, and he slowed his car to peer inside the windows of the other vehicle and check whether there had been a breakdown or somebody in need of help.

But all the windows were empty, and there was nobody inside the car.

Thinking of how angry the coastguard would be, when they had to fish the vehicle from the water the next day, Ryan continued across the causeway, where Chatterley awaited him.

*

Anna thought she heard the rumble of a car’s engine somewhere nearby, but it was hard to be sure above the crashing of the waves outside, and the whistle of the wind. She kicked out at the wall of the boot, in case anybody could hear her, and screamed Ryan’s name over and over again.

When the car continued on, and a few minutes later she felt the first ice-cold trickle of water seep through the sides of the boot, Anna knew real fear. The kind that stops your heart, and loosens your bowels; the kind that came from knowing this was the end of the line.

She fought wildly to be free of the ties at her wrists and ankles, but they were too tight.

Water began to pour in, no longer a trickle but a continuous flow, and she was paralysed for a moment, unable to think, unable to move in the terrifying blackness.

Until the back of her fingers brushed against something rubbery.

Spare tyre.

Anna tried to feel for the air cap, but her fingers were numb with cold, making her movements slow and clumsy.

As the water reached her waist, Anna tipped her head high to gasp at the remaining water, whilst working her fingers against the air cap on the spare tyre, twisting and twisting for what seemed an eternity, until it came loose in her hands and she felt a stream of bubbles against her palm.

She took one last gulp of air and dived beneath the freezing water, feeling her way to the air cap so she could clasp her mouth around it and release small sucks of air. She tried to hold her breath for thirty seconds at a time, using the side of her face as a plug until she needed to take another breath.

She knew, eventually, that the air in the tyre would run out.

Ryan, she silently screamed. I’m here. Please find me.

*

Chatterley was indeed a man of his word, and Ryan found him waiting at the designated rendezvous point, on the beach at the head of the causeway on the island side.

He looked almost exactly as Ryan might have pictured him; a man in his late forties, of medium height and build, with a balding head and clean-shaven face. He could blend into a crowd, and had ‘one of those faces’, so it was easy to see how Chatterley could have impersonated the late Father Jacob with a few well-chosen accessories, such as the beard and habit, because they were of a type.

It was difficult for Ryan to keep the disgust from showing clearly on his face, when he thought of all this man had done.

“Where are the remains?” Chatterley demanded. “Where are they?”

Ryan indicated a large, brown leather holdall sitting at his feet. “Where’s Anna?”

He couldn’t see the man’s vehicle, nor any sign of his wife, and Ryan felt panic begin to rise.

Chatterley held up a set of car keys, and jiggled them.

“In the boot of the car,” he said, with a flash of his teeth.

“Which car?” Ryan asked, and then a dreadful, dawning realisation hit him like a sucker punch to the gut.

He spun around, eyes searching for the shadow of the car he thought had been abandoned, but it was too dark to see it from where they stood.

“Give me the keys!”

“Ah-ah! The bones, first,” Chatterley said, curling his fists around the keys he still held in his hand.

Something in Ryan’s face must have frightened him, because he took an involuntary step backwards.

Ryan lifted the bag and flung it forward, where it landed with a heavy clatter at the other man’s feet.

“Here,” he said. “Now the keys. Give them to me!”

“These?” Chatterley said, jingling them again, giggling like a schoolboy now he had what he wanted. “Go and get ’em.”

To Ryan’s horror, he flung the keys high in the air, in a wide arc over the sand dunes on either side of the road where they stood. The keys seemed to remain suspended for a fraction of a second before falling again, towards the water and oblivion.

Ryan shouted something—he didn’t know what—and made a dive for the keys. The tide was still rising—up to his knees already—and he scrambled about for precious moments trying to feel where they had landed.