Their Lost Daughters (DI Jackman & DS Evans #2)(15)

‘Dreary place,’ muttered Marie.

‘That it is.’ Jackman moved forward. ‘This spot has never been popular. The stretch of marsh between the car park and the beach has a reputation for being dangerous at high tide, which generally puts off all but the brave or the foolhardy.’

‘So how on earth did Shauna finish up here?’ asked Marie, gazing around at the deserted landscape.

‘Most likely driven here by someone who knew just how deserted it is.’ Jackman pointed towards the dunes. ‘There are a few dwellings over that way, and another scattering further along the coast, but apart from those, it’s just dune, marsh and sea.’

They trudged across the sand-flats, between dense clumps of sea buckthorn and areas of reeds fringing shallow pools. Then Marie stopped. She knew that old Jack Archer had been right. This was the place where Shauna Kelly went into the water.

Jackman was still walking slightly ahead of her, unaware that she had stopped in her tracks. ‘Now we’re here, I remember coming here with my parents when I was a little boy. Although it was very different back then. They say this coastline reinvents itself every year. Sand blows in from the offshore sandbanks and forms dunes. The whole place has changed beyond belief.’ He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘It looks so wild now, but I seem to recall it was quite pretty back then.’ He stopped and looked around. ‘Marie?’

Marie stood staring out across the grey waters of the Wash, then squatted down on her haunches and gently ran her fingers through the damp sand. ‘She was here. I know it.’

Jackman shivered and looked around him. ‘You’re probably right. It is the perfect spot to bring a body, or to kill someone.’

‘Let’s go up the edge of the dunes, towards that rundown beach hut, and see if there are any houses that have a good view of this strip of beach.’

They perched side by side on a tiny stretch of crumbly stone wall, and looked across the desolate sands.

‘Uniform have been out here and they had nothing to report. The few people that they did get to speak to didn’t see or hear a thing.’ Jackman kicked at a small pile of pebbles, sending them scattering across the path.

‘When we’ve sorted this thing out at Harlan Marsh, I’d like to come back and talk to them myself,’ said Marie.

‘Me too. We’ll pick a different time of day and see if we can catch some more residents.’ He stood up. ‘But right now, I’m afraid we have an appointment to keep.’

Marie pulled a face and sighed loudly. ‘Okay. Let’s get it over with, shall we?’

*

‘The chief’s in a meeting, DI Jackman. He’ll see you when he’s through.’ The Harlan Marsh desk officer looked more bored than apologetic. ‘He’s told one of our men to bring you up to speed and he’s allocated you an office to use.’

Jackman frowned. ‘Such a wonderful welcome. And please don’t get carried away with the accommodation, Constable. We aren’t moving in — or I sincerely hope we aren’t.’ He glanced at Marie. Her face was a mixture of emotions. He wasn’t sure why, but she looked like she wanted to escape.

‘I’ll take you to your office, sir, and then I’ll tell Pritchard you are here.’

The office, if you could call it that, was a small, obviously hastily cleared out cupboard of a room. Not that it worried Jackman, he had no intentions of staying.

‘No place like home,’ muttered Marie, peering out of the small, grimy window. ‘How lovely — a room with a view.’

‘We have two chairs, a desk, a phone and a computer terminal, what more do you want?’ Jackman looked over her shoulder at the crumbling red brick wall of a derelict warehouse on the opposite side of an alley. They were stuck at the back of an old Victorian heap of a building. Their own nick was beginning to look more like the Ritz with every passing second.

‘What do you know about Harlan Marsh?’ Marie asked.

‘It’s a miserable little town, but it covers a huge area. I worked here for a few weeks not long after I moved up to CID, and it was the most unfriendly nick I’ve ever been in.’

‘So when they call this division the plug-hole of the marsh, they mean it.’

‘That’s the polite version. Still, if all I’ve heard about Chief Superintendent Cade is correct, maybe they deserve him.’

Marie’s face creased into a mask of contempt, and she spat out vehemently, ‘No one deserves Cade. That bastard’s a really nasty piece of work.’

‘I’m not sure that you should be speaking about a senior officer like that, Marie.’

Jackman tried to get over the shock of hearing his sergeant blast off in that way. ‘Although, off the record, I have to agree. Most likely his officers are only such miserable sods because they have to work under him. At least we can go home when we’ve sorted this. They are stuck with him.’ He glanced across at her and said, ‘I didn’t know that you’d had dealings with Cade before?’

Marie pulled a face. ‘It was a while ago.’

Jackman raised his eyebrows. If that was the case, it must have been pretty serious to still bother her so deeply. ‘What happened?’

It was like drawing teeth. Marie sighed. ‘When Cade was a DI, he shafted a colleague of mine. Blighted her career and she never managed to make the grade after it. So, as you can imagine, I have no love for him.’