In the Blood (50 page)

As she arrived beside him, the SOCO supervisor pulled the hood back off her tidy red-brown hair and lifted the bags up for Bastion to see.
 
“Here you go, Chief,” she said.
 
“All done.”

Bastion wheeled around in the shingle and smiled.
 
“Thank you -”
 
He paused.
 
She was familiar, but he couldn’t place her.

“Gillian McDowd, sir.”

“Yes, of course.
 
McDowd.”
 
Bastion flashed her another smile, more out of embarrassment than sincerity.
 
He turned his attention to the bags McDowd was holding.
 
The outline of a sheath knife flashed a violent image of Peter Schofield through his mind.

“It was velcro’d into his jeans pocket,” McDowd said.

Bastion’s fringe twitched.
 
“Concealed, yet convenient,” he said.
 
He led McDowd back into the floodlit arena, towards the stone wall at the top of the beach where a folding table waited.
 

“I’m sure you’ve been thorough?” Bastion said as they crunched their way towards the table.

McDowd’s smile looked forced.
 
She spread the bags across the table and produced a fresh pair of latex gloves.
 
“Better put these on if you insist on touching anything before the lab’s done with them.”

Bastion snapped the gloves on without taking his eyes off the contents: the knife, a few fat roll ups, three mobile phones, a silver crucifix and an old leather-bound notebook.
 
He removed one of the phones and switched it on, navigated to the ‘last call’ list and redialled the number Simon Phillips had called that morning at an indicated ten minutes past ten.
 
The call went straight to Jefferson Tayte’s voice mail.

Bastion cleared the call, thinking it would have been the last call Simon Phillips made to Tayte before he’d tried to blow him up.
 
He switched the phone off and slipped it back into the protective bag.
 
Then he moved on to the next phone and repeated.
 
The last call from this phone was later, obviously not to Tayte since Tayte’s phone was out of action by then.
 
The displayed time read, ‘13:39’.
 
Bastion re-dialled the number, another cellphone.
 
This time the call rang and after several seconds it was answered.

“Richard Fairborne,” the voice announced.

Bastion was speechless.
 
His head buzzed with the implications.
 
He had not expected this.
 
Thanks to Tayte, he already knew Sir Richard Fairborne had motive enough to want Simon Phillips dead.
 
Now it transpired that Phillips and Sir Richard Fairborne had spoken together that very afternoon.

Bastion could still hear Sir Richard’s voice in the earpiece.
 
“Hello...
 
Who is this?”
 
Bastion ended the call.
 
“I wonder if he’s got an alibi,” he said.
 
Then to McDowd he added, “I’m bringing someone in for questioning.
 
I need as much of this processed tonight as possible.”
 
He reached for his radio, about to make a call that would end the celebrations at Rosemullion Hall.
 
“If we can place Sir Richard Fairborne at the scene, maybe we can keep him in on suspicion.”
 
He scoffed.
 
“Might even get a charge out, the way things are stacking up.”

Floating adrift in the swell at Nare Cove, by the light of the dive lamp DS Hayne had thrown him when they parted company, Jefferson Tayte was on his knees, bent over the back end of the police inflatable he’d semi-appropriated from the Aquastar.
 
He was staring in disbelief at a prop blade that looked like it would never turn again.

The timing sucked.

He reached a hand out to the prop and tugged hopelessly at the thick orange fishing line that had snagged it.
 
He wished he had a knife.
 
He looked back towards Porthkerris Point for the Aquastar’s search light, but there was nothing.
 
The sea and sky merged as one dark eternity.
 
The coastline too was barely discernible in the void, and Jefferson Tayte was stuck somewhere in between.
 
He figured Hayne must have gone further south, beyond the headland.
 
He silently wished him better luck.

Some good I’ve been...

Tayte eyed the back-up oars clipped to the inner walls of the inflatable.
 
Maybe he could row along the coastline - anything would be better then just sitting there.
 
But he realised the oars were useless.
 
Without a spare hand to hold the dive lamp he wouldn’t be able to see a thing.
 
He turned back to the motor and tried to rotate the prop blade by hand to see if there was any play in it, hoping to work it loose enough to be able to turn it over more forcefully with the starter cord.
 
It wouldn’t budge.
 
Without something sharp to cut the tangled line away, Tayte knew he’d be there until the Aquastar came in.

Out of frustration he snatched at several strands of line with both hands and began to vent his anger on them, pulling back and forth with all his weight until the pain across his fingers felt like he was close to losing them.
 
As he let go and went to cool his hands in the salt water he saw a single strand of orange line stretching away.

His first thought was that he might be able to push the loose end back through the tangle and in doing so, gradually unravel it.
 
It would take time, but he saw no obvious alternative.
 
He grabbed at the stray line and pulled it clear of the water, but instead of finding a loose end, the line went taut and twanged out from the sea.
 
It ran all the way to the cliff face.

Tayte knew his luck had just changed.
 
He couldn’t stop smiling as he unclipped an oar and began to row the inflatable awkwardly towards the cliff, following the orange fishing line with the dive lamp between his knees.

Is this what Laity was trying to say?

He recalled Bastion telling him that Laity had said something about mackerel fishing when they picked him up.
 
Maybe this was the line he used.

Closer in, the swell shoved the inflatable around harder than Tayte liked, and more than once he felt the scrape of a rock beneath the inflatable’s soft underbelly.
 
The fishing line led him to a sheer wall of rock that at first he thought was literally the end of the line.
 
Then he saw a towering split in the cliff face that he hadn’t noticed before.
 
He passed uneasily beyond it, through a tight gap that barely accommodated the craft until he vanished from the eyes of the world, hidden now behind a curtain of rock.
 
Around him in that tight space, the sea began to break over every inch of exposed surface it touched.
 
Salt-spray soaked him, and Tayte instinctively knew that this was not a good place to linger.

The fishing line ended abruptly in the middle of a hidden pool where it sank below the water.
 
Tayte could still feel resistance as he tugged it.
 
It was attached to something, but he could no longer see it.
 
He shone the dive lamp down through the water and his eyes followed the line until it dropped too deep to see.
 
He realised then that to follow the line further he’d need the services of a diver with scuba gear.

Or some guts.
 

Tayte already had the dive lamp.
 
His lungs would have to provide the oxygen.
 
He shook his head at the idea, knowing what he had to do, yet barely able to believe he could.
 
It was like someone else was inside his head with him, suddenly calling the shots.
 
Only that other guy was plain crazy.

Tayte was over the side before his sensible self had a chance to argue.
 
He drew a sharp breath against the cold water as it filled his clothes and pricked his skin.
 
He took another, deeper breath, and then followed the dive lamp beneath the surface.

Chapter Sixty-One

B
eneath the sea, without a dive-mask or goggles to put an air space between his eyes and the water, Jefferson Tayte’s vision was blurred.
 
In the halogen light, he could see a white sand bed rising as it came in towards the cliff.
 
He blinked and followed the incline to a dark slit in the rock.
 
The orange fishing line, which seemed to glow now as he shone the dive lamp along its length, vanished again into that narrow space.
 
He felt a twist of nervous excitement as he realised he was looking into a cave and that Amy might be on the other side.
 
The opening looked tight.
 
He bobbed his head up for a last breath of air before going on.
 
Then he sank below again, following the line.

It only took a second for him to realise he wasn’t going to make it through.
 
The gap was closing.
 
His suit began to snag and tear and he wished now that he’d left his jacket on the boat.
 
He reminded himself that he didn’t even know if Amy
was
on the other side.
 
Yet at the same time it occurred to him that someone must have fixed that fishing line in there.
 
So he wriggled and squeezed, forcing himself further in, millimetre by millimetre it seemed, until it was suddenly all or nothing.
 
Then a swell surged in and gave him the push he needed.

As Tayte burst through the gap, he realised the tide must still be coming in.
 
There was still hope.
 
He fell through the water to his hands and knees, still submerged, kicking up sand that clouded his view.
 
He began to float and his feet scrabbled for purchase.
 
When they found it he kicked into the sand and shot clear of the water, gasping for a long starved breath.

It was then that he saw her.
 
“Amy!”

At least, he thought it must be Amy.
 
He didn’t recognise her at first and she gave no response.
 
She looked dead.
 
Her eyes were wide and staring.
 
Her bottom lip and what was visible above the water line of her lower jaw were moving in a perpetual shiver.
 
Her chin was all but submerged and Tayte couldn’t understand why she didn’t get higher.
 
There was still plenty of air space above her and further into the cave it was shallow enough to see breaking water, becoming more pronounced towards the tapering end of the cave where sea foam danced with abandon over the exposed and jagged rocks.

Why doesn’t she move?

Tayte surged towards her, ducking as he went.
 
He almost had to crawl to reach her.
 
“Amy!” he called again.
 
She didn’t seem to notice he was there.
 
From his jacket he pulled out the cellphone Bastion had loaned him.
 
Water dripped from its insides and the screen was tellingly blank.
 
He dropped it, doubting he would have got a signal anyway.
 
Now he was close to Amy, everything about her looked odd.
 
Her body leaned forward, tilting to her left, bringing her head lower in the water than it needed to be.
 
Dangerously low.
 
The water brought a kiss of death to her bottom lip now and it was rising with every surge.

Tayte set the dive lamp down on a nearby rock and took hold of Amy’s shoulders.
 
He tried to sit her up to get her head higher, but he couldn’t move her.
 
Her body felt rigid and so very cold.
 
Then he noticed her left arm reaching out beneath the water.
 
He held his breath and went under with the lamp.
 
She was definitely reaching for something.
 
He went closer until he began to make out her hand, and the Celtic ring she wore caught the light, drawing his eye.
 
As the sand began to clear, his eyes suddenly widened.
 
He wrenched away, coughing and spluttering and almost filling his lungs with water.

Tayte was looking into the empty eye sockets of a human skull, part buried in the sand, showing just enough to return his stare as his eyes fell upon it.
 
Close by was a pile of small bleached bones, one with a gold ring still attached; a ring identical to Amy’s.
 
Her arm reached past them, to the stubby ends of two larger bones protruding from the sand.
 
It looked like she was trying to pull them free and could not let go.
 
Tayte forced her hand away and he saw movement at last as Amy’s fingers autonomously clutched for the bones again, trying to re-establish the connection until, in sudden panic it seemed, she pulled away.