A Line to Kill

A railway line – used only for tourist rides in the summer – ran along the edge of Mannez Quarry, about twenty minutes’ walk from The Lookout. The line split into three and continued down to a large shed which housed the diesel engine and carriages that made the journey to Braye Road Station, twice a week on Saturdays (I had seen flyers advertising the trip back at the hotel). My first thought, as Hawthorne and I drew up, was that despite the blue water and an abundance of bright yellow gorse sprouting all around, it was a remarkably desolate, even a grim place. Perhaps it was The Odeon, the naval tower built by the Nazis, that inspired my sense of unease. It stood high above, as sinister a building as I had ever encountered, with its three dark slits dissecting the grey concrete. From the day of its construction it had been a witness to murder and barbarity. It was somehow fitting that this should have continued into the twenty-first century.

Underneath it, there was a cave, presumably man-made and used to transport food supplies or munitions. It would be easy to miss. There was no sign, no indication that it existed apart from a flattening of the grass towards the entrance. I had been unfair to the sniffer dogs. Apparently, one of them had barked to be let free and had then run inside.

Torode had rung us with the news and he was waiting for us when we arrived. ‘In there!’ He looked tired and ill. He didn’t say anything else.

We made our way towards it, passing the rusting skeleton of an old carriage that had been abandoned in the long grass. Old, abandoned machinery can have a certain beauty, but this was different. Maybe it was just the mood I was in, but somehow the broken, twisted metal unnerved me: a ghost train in every sense of those words. I was filled with dread as we reached the mouth of the cave and went in, leaving the light behind.

The roof was high enough for us not to have to bend down. The ground near the entrance was covered with rubbish: old tyres, crates, coils of wire. From there, the cave continued a surprising distance into the cliff and we would have needed torches, except that the police had already rigged up a looping series of electric bulbs, dangling from the walls.

Helen le Mesurier was about halfway to the end. Just as we reached her, there was the flash of a camera and I saw her as if in a photograph, an image frozen in the brilliant light.

She had been struck several times with a rock. It was lying on the ground next to her, smeared with blood. I remembered the woman I had met at the party with her strawberry blonde hair, her designer dress, her diamond necklace. Again, I thought of her sitting in her bedroom, the white teddy bear with the sachet of dried lavender. This brutalised and casually discarded body was not her. The injuries to her head and to her face were vicious. She was almost unrecognisable. But it was more than that. She had been bored, sullen, sexy, distraught, angry, obstinate. Whoever had killed her had taken all that away and there was nothing left behind.

Three police officers were moving around her. One of them was the photographer. The other two were scouring the floor and the walls, examining everything minutely. We hung back, unable and perhaps unwilling to get too close. The air in the cave was cool and clammy. It was a horrible place to die.

‘Did she meet her killer here?’ I asked. My voice didn’t sound like my own, underground, with the rock and the soil pressing down.

‘I don’t think so,’ Hawthorne replied. ‘Whoever texted her asked her to come to them.’

‘Then why did she come in here?’

‘She could have been attacked outside and then carried in.’ Hawthorne examined the ground. ‘Doesn’t look like she was dragged.’

‘If she’d told you what she’d seen out of her window on the night of the party, she might have saved her own life.’

Hawthorne nodded. ‘Maybe.’

We made our way back into the daylight, squeezing past the stretcher-bearers who had arrived to take the body away. I had never been more glad to feel the sun on my skin.

‘She was on her way to a meeting,’ I said. ‘So whoever it was must live quite close.’ I looked around me. ‘The lighthouse?’

The lighthouse stood some distance away, a clean, modern-looking building painted black and white. I had already seen it twice: once from the airplane as we approached the island and again, briefly, when I had cycled round the island.

‘Not the lighthouse,’ Hawthorne said. ‘But over there …’

I followed his eye to a small farmhouse standing on its own in the middle of a field. At the same time, Torode came over and joined us.

‘Is that inhabited?’ Hawthorne asked him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s occupied. And guess who by.’

‘I never guess,’ Hawthorne said, gloomily.

‘It’s a friend of yours. Derek Abbott. That’s where he lives. Maybe it’s time the two of you had a chat.’

17 Where the Light Doesn’t Shine