Walking into the Ocean (37 page)

“You're most welcome to visit,” she said, piercing the fog that had enveloped him. His arm was aching again; it had become a cue to his mood, paining him whenever he was anxious. Mrs. Ransell was looking at him; evidently her invitation did not extend to Joan. Above the spire of the church, the sky darkened and the predicted winds, the vanguard of new ocean storms, moved in.

Each claimed to have a gun. Neither did. But one possessed a Highlander skinning knife, slotted down his sock, out of view. The other carried a right-angled chunk of iron in his pocket. It was crude, but he told himself that it suited his spontaneous style of attack and defence; he had picked it up on a farmer's lane.

The Rover and his Assistant. The New Order. The New Model Army. The New Broom, now getting a bit old. The New Best Friend. He did that, the Rover, spun phrases until he found the one that worked. Name something and you begin to control it. He enumerated the options in his head. The Dynamic Duo. Burke and Hare. Green Hornet and Kato. He couldn't find the fit. He, the List Man. Oh well, lists were made to be broken.

But the Cloaked Man knew something that the Rover did not think he knew. Lasker had figured out the Rover's non-pattern. Oh, he had struggled with the “Six-K” thing;
TV
-20 had made a big announcement of its “Six-K” calculation, even labelled the pervert the “Six-K Killer,” but it hadn't stuck; it was still the “Rover.” But the Cloaked Man had sorted it through and more or less ignored Six-K, and moved to the next square on the Parcheesi board. Except that in the absence of a pattern, that meant the Rover might kill just about anywhere. But then, he thought, Six-K was a ruse and a diversion and that fact might hold the clue to his next set of moves.

Lasker shivered in the October air. Why had the Rover come this way — towards Whittlesun — and not, say, farther towards Land's End? His prey, evidently, lived everywhere, in abundance. So why this direction, not that one? Two possibilities came to mind. First of all, opportunism was only so much fun. Stalking was a better kick, the Cloaked Man deduced. And now it was pretty evident that the serial killer was stalking
him
. Otherwise, he probably would have switched to the other direction, but somehow the Rover had discovered
him
. Lord knows, he had made his presence obvious. If the Cloaked Man kept up with the news, likely the pervert did too.

Or, second, the Rover had a
specific
woman in mind this time.

Anna's death had been a reprimand. She had confronted his desertion in the — what? —
slyest
way. She knew that her death would draw him back. He had no religious faith, but he understood the need for penance perfectly well. She had won, with her sense of duty, her family, even her religion.

The Cloaked Man and the Rover sat in mutual silence — that is to say, it was a tactic for both of them. Each thought he could outwait the other. The Rover wanted something, to seduce the scruffy fellow, and he was content to wait. He had already said his piece the first time, and the offer was on the table — the tablet — the funeral bier — the sacrificial altar. For his part, Lasker used the waiting to figure out the rest of it, what he was already envisioning as the endgame. Let the killer believe they were striking an unholy alliance. He must know that it was going to be very short-term. Winter was coming. If the Rover's pattern was a non-pattern, then it could all end abruptly. The worst thing for André was for the Rover to walk away. Mutual seduction, that was the ticket. He only had to get close enough one time. He would kill the Rover, do justice to Anna. Of course, meanwhile he might have to offer up something to bring the pervert on side.

The mission to the Ransell cottage got off to an awkward start. After the funeral, the three old friends drove to the Sunset Arms. Tommy had exhausted his supply of Salvez anecdotes at the podium — there seemed to be nothing left to say — and Peter's rendezvous with Guinevere Ransell overshadowed their lunch. He had described Gwen to Joan only in vague terms, but she had picked up on his captivation with her; she saw his neediness when her name came up.

They talked over the logistics of Peter getting across the fields to the Ransells'. It was Joan who solved the dilemma. Tommy would drop Peter off and return for Joan, and then convey her home. She, meanwhile, would take “a very long tour of downtown Whittlesun.” Peter agreed to call both of them later, when he knew where he would be spending the night. So it was agreed. Peter paid the bill in the restaurant and kissed Joan goodbye. He wondered idly if her rambles would take her past the Lasker house.

Tommy and Peter got lost on the back trails to the cliffs and had to ask directions of a grizzled crofter at the roadside. Peter was tempted to ask him if he had glimpsed anyone who might be the Rover, but he refrained. They arrived by late afternoon; the light had already turned sallow and wintry, and the wind off the Channel was building. Peter had changed at the hotel and now carried his heavy boots in a beat-up rucksack. Tommy let him off at the end of the rutted track. To test telephone reception, they separated to about a hundred yards and Peter called Tommy's mobile number. After some initial static, the connection became better than either expected. Peter waved and walked over the final hillock towards the front door of the cottage.

There was no delay when he knocked; Ellen Ransell was expecting him and she opened the door wide. He placed his bag just inside the entrance. In his polished black brogues and his dark turtleneck and canvas pants, he was a mysterious visitor from an Edward Gorey tale. A fire crackled away steadily, and he smelled sandalwood. Mrs. Ransell was very drunk.

Guinevere glided out of her bedroom. She wore her usual layers, and her hair hung in gorgeous disarray. She was barefoot. Peter interpreted her manner as welcoming, but then, she had that way about her anyway, an ability to put others at ease. She gave her mother a warm glance, yet as she made eye contact with Peter, she at once promised full engagement with him. Thus it was with a seductress, he thought.

“Are you well?” he said.

“Very well.”

“Your mother told you I'd be coming by?”

“Yes. But no. I'd been expecting you anyway.”

Before now
, was the implication. Peter was starting to worry that he had left it too long. She moved to the chesterfield and took up the same spot as before, at the end of the cushions. She did this quickly, and Peter read the movement as mildly confrontational. Perhaps he was overreacting. Mrs. Ransell had busied herself in the kitchen, and Peter couldn't tell if she was monitoring their conversation, but he sensed hostility from her, too.

Before Peter could speak, Gwen said, “You've been getting close.” It was a factual statement. Her verb tense confused him a little.

“How close?”

Evidently the question bothered her. She let a minute pass. As he had been doing since entering the cottage, he looked for a path to connect to her, but he respected the lull and kept quiet.

“I'd make a terrible police officer,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I don't have the police officer's all-consuming desire for endings.”

“You mean, putting closure to a police investigation? I'm hopeful we'll find André Lasker soon.”

“Actually,” Gwen said, “I was talking about the one they call the Rover.”

Peter sighed, and said only, “It's easy to confuse the two.”

“I'm not confused. I see no reason we can't talk about both, and keep them straight. Take the Rover, for example. Are you close to finding him? Do you know who he is,
what
he is?”

She was in a philosophical mood. He was not. Peter felt something he had never anticipated: exasperation.
Is she playing games?

She continued. “You don't know where he was born, where he was christened, what colours he liked, his favourite shows on the telly, and so on.”

“I wish I did know. We'd have our killer.”

“Then what would you do with him? I know, you'd put him in prison for life. Or in an asylum.”

“That would certainly be closure.”

“Not for him.”

“My role, without being callous, would be over.”

“But then you would never know what he really thought about evil. You've stopped him from killing again, but does it bother you that he squats in a cell and continues to ponder his crimes, that he makes no distinction in his mind between past and future deaths? What does he really think about the girls out there that he hasn't killed?”

“Jesus Christ, Inspector!” Peter turned to meet the dark red face of Mrs. Ransell. She stood six feet away in an unsteady crouch, a tumbler of vodka in her hand. She raged forward; he smelled her fumes. “You can't see him clearly now? Listen to the girl. We both know your next seven questions, Inspector, but you can't understand the answers. Your next question, am I right, is whether Gwen has been out there on the cliffs? We are both out there on the cliffs. You're not close, no matter what she says.” She waved her free arm in disappointment, returned to the kitchen counter for her Koskenkorva bottle, and clumped into her bedroom.

Gwen remained calm and let another full minute go by. In that short time, something changed in Peter. He had been beguiled by Gwen, but he was also a policeman, a professional. He needed her special insight, but not at any cost. He decided that there would have to be limits on how much of the investigation — the two investigations — he would disclose.

“Should you comfort her?” Peter said.

She looked at him. “Peter, what do you think is going on out there?”

He didn't have an answer, but her mother's outburst and all the talk about closure made it obvious that Mrs. Ransell and Gwen had been talking as one: both knew all the possible endings. Out there.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but have you been along the cliffs much?”

“I live here, Peter. Sure. Do you believe in the Six-K theory?”

“No. I don't trust the theory,” he answered, understanding that she was changing the subject in order to control the conversation.

“By my calculation,” Gwen said, “another six kilometres beyond the last attack wouldn't place him very close to here. On the other hand, there's the husband. Maybe he's . . . closer.”

Peter tried to lighten the mood. “I'm sorry. It seems every time we discuss one case, we end up talking about the other one.”

She frowned. “But isn't that true generally, when you talk to other policemen? I'd think it would be irresistible.”

And just like that, Peter broke through one of his longstanding quandaries. She was right; there was no need to compartmentalize his thinking about the Lasker and Rover dossiers. André might be close, or he could be in Barcelona or Manchester. The Rover could be six kilometres closer or somewhere far to the west. He could keep them straight.

As usual, Gwen was ahead of him, making a different point. “Okay, Peter, let's start with Anna and André Lasker. Do you want to fill me in?”

He hesitated and finally said, “We have to be clear about this. Much of what I'm telling you is internal police information. I may call a halt at some point.”

She nodded, apparently not at all concerned. His consultation at the feet of the oracle had become a negotiation, and give-and-take would be the rule.

He recounted his trip to Malta to arrest André Lasker, the shooting in Marsalforn and the death of Kamatta. He left out the bloodiest parts. He laid out for her the details of the auto export scam and the factory operation that spewed out false passports. He summed up the itineraries the husband could have essayed to get back into England and, warming to his own saga, he offered his views on why Lasker would return to England.

She asked him to list every known alias Lasker had adopted or might have obtained from Kamatta's stash in the flat with the yellow door, and Peter enumerated them from memory. He also recited the names used on the Malta import manifests. Impressed, she nodded and sank back into the cushions to consider the list. For his part, having summarized just about everything, he thought the overall case file of the Lasker investigation amounted to a feeble showing.

Eventually, she looked up at him. “One detail, then. Our Mr. Lasker's a bit of a joker. He's been toying with the police. He used the name Willemsea on one of the documents?”

“Or Kamatta did.”

“No, I think it was the husband. Herman Willemse swam the English Channel in 1959. He was the first Dutchman to accomplish it. Convert the last syllable to ‘sea' and you have Mr. Lasker's idea of a bon mot.”

“How the devil did you know that?” he said.

“I live here,” she said, for the second time. “What is it that bothers you most about André Lasker, Peter?”

He paused to regroup. “I'm afraid that, out of guilt for his wife's killing herself, he'll commit suicide too. Then I'll never understand why he concocted his elaborate scheme. What drives a man to that, to leave his wedding ring exactly in the centre of his clothes and walk into the ocean?”

“I don't know,” Gwen said, “but it illustrates the point, doesn't it? Death isn't always closure. Death can stay around to haunt the living.”

They sat in the quiet. Finally, he looked at her and said, “What about a
dream
of Death?”

“Ah! So, that's it. What have you been holding back?” She smiled for the first time. It seemed that she could read his every thought.

“Because the dream is probably about the Rover, not Lasker,” he said. It sounded pitiful even as he spoke. He was willing to tell her the entire dream but he secretly hoped that it would turn out like his session with the police psychiatrist years ago, who had dismissed the worrisome elements of his nightmares and told him to go back to work.

He narrated his dream to her, and managed to recall most of it. He tried to convey the vividness of the desert, which he speculated was the Sahara. He described the flying black figure and the flock of sheep, and emphasized the underlying anxiety through it all. He elaborated on his hobby of tracking down scenes of Mary's Annunciation and how that motif was reflected in his dream. Finally, he repeated the chant at the end of the nightmare: “Chervil!”

Gwen smiled at this ludicrous word. Peter had asked Joan about it, for he knew that it was some form of bush, and she had told him that it was a harmless, scrubby plant like parsley, and could be found everywhere; it was one of the herbs used in French cookery. Peter waited. He expected Gwen to highlight the religious icons that were threaded through his dream story, but she leaned forward and gently touched the back of his hand.

“Peter, the dream isn't about the Rover, it mostly concerns the other one. Lasker. The Cloaked Man.”

“Why do you call him the Cloaked Man?”

“Because he wears a cloak. It doesn't matter, Peter.” She didn't want to be confronted on this point.

He moved on. “Are you sure? The dream, I mean.”

“My mother's better than I am at this, but let's try. Tell me about the sheep. Close your eyes and picture them . . . What colour were their faces?”

With his eyes shut, he conjured up the scenes that built to the stampede of the flock of sheep. “They started out as clouds, puffy like sheep's wool. They were grey on top. Then they turned over and showed white on their bellies. At some point they transmogrified into sheep.”

“Their faces?”

He opened his eyes. “They were white.”

“The chanting of the word ‘Chervil.' Who said it?”

“No one. It just came out of . . . the environment. I heard a voice repeat it five or six times.”

“Well,” Gwen said, and got up from the chesterfield. She began to pace around the Persian rug in her bare feet. “It's obvious.”

“Don't toy with me.”

She laughed, and faced him. “Chervil is a plant, a bit of a weed, not so good in salads. It has medicinal properties, but that doesn't concern us here. You can find it everywhere. Chervil is just your mind's trick for homing in on the cliffs. It represents the cliffs, if you want. You probably saw lots of it. Maybe it represents a wasteland, depending how you feel about the cliffs these days.”

“I was in a desert,” Peter said.

“Yes, that. The desert is in Australia. It's not the Sahara.”

“How do you know that?”

“One point of clarification. Did the chant stop, then start again, later in the dream?”

He ran the dream plot in his mind. “Yes, I think so.”

“And was the word the same, ‘Chervil'? Could it have been ‘Cheviot'?”

“I don't remember.”

“Because the sheep you describe are Cheviot sheep. They have distinctive white faces.”

“Found in the north of England mostly,” Peter added. “Where's the connection to Lasker in the
north
?”

“Oh, there are at least three farms around here that raise them. The word could also reference Chesil Beach, which is just up the road, well within the Jurassic Coast.”

“That's it, then. Chervil-Chesil-Cheviot. All in the neighbourhood.”

“No.”

“Well, why not?” Peter said.

“I don't think so. The connection is in Australia,” she said. “Do you remember Harold Holt?”

Of course he did. “Australian prime minister who drowned in the sea. It was an accident. He went swimming in a riptide. There were conspiracy theories at the time. One had it that secret agents had picked him up offshore in a submarine. But no doubt that it was an accidental drowning.”