Water's Edge

Chapter XXXV

...but

Gordon spotted me before I spotted him. Again. Maybe I was going soft on him.

"You've been getting hate mail!" He sounded almost happy about this, and he handed me a couple of scraps of paper, "They addressed it to the B&B so I opened them. No room number." Sure. Why not. "I am sorry." He finally said.

I looked at the scraps of paper. Runner Go Home. That kind of thing. I wouldn't be surprised if these came from the police and the environmentalists alike; stranger comes out of town and finds the bodies almost immediately. Everyone had a reason – past & present – to hate me. I tossed them in a bin.

"Thanks." I said, heading for my door.

"Why do they do it?" He asked, again that strange excitement, almost sincere.

I paused. I turned to face him, "I used to be a copper. A good copper. And now I'm not."

"A good copper?"

That nearly made me smile, "No, I'll always be that. I aim for the good more than the copper though now."

"Sounds admirable."

"You think?"

"It's something..." Gordon conceded, "I'll let you get on." He began to trudge back to his office—

Once in my corner of the world I checked the address again, copied from whatever mush they had found in Andrew Bergs pocket.

I tried ringing The Spectator but they never helped detectives – police, private, or otherwise – so I expected nothing. I think they had my number on automatic forwarding, because I hit the everlasting switch board quicker than the last time I've had to deal with them.

Edith was still flinging the remains of my account her way. I stared at the figure. It wasn't the full amount and the case had been solved, by Elle Thompson. It would be easy to think she just didn't deem me worth the rest of the value, but was it that she, too, did not think we had solved the case? Was she leaving me a taste as inspiration? I sent a message to her, a bit frank. I had one more lead I wanted to test the waters for, over what had happened to Hector. She rang me.

"I must be swift, Mr. Fields."

"What is it?"

"Am I to believe we are in agreement?"

I laid back on the bed and undid my top button, "Over what?"

"Must I say it out loud. Can you not do the heavy lifting, Mr. Fields?"

I took a moment, to let her linger, "That we both think it isn't the environmentalists. And that Hector perhaps is not wrapped up in the same criminal activities as those who also drowned?"

A sharp intake of breath. I had reminded her of the method of death. I apologised with a silence, "I think..." She could not find the words, "I trust the Chief Constable explicitly, more so than I trust you." ...but? "But," There is it, "Even if this Wren girl is the reason for making the estuary unsafe, culpable only in a lack of responsibility..." I sat up, the piece of paper with the address unfolding itself on the dresser, "I think there is something else that perhaps you could look into whilst Elle ties up the other loose ends."

She then went into a spiel about thanking me for my service, shaking back into her role of MPs wife—we discussed particulars and that, in week or so's time, the money would dry. I had a deadline, with some of the original meaning of the word.

When I hung up I checked the stain on the ceiling. The rabbit shape had vanished as it had blossomed wetly. I would have to tell Gordon.

I woke up a few hours later from a nap I hadn't even noticed I had fallen into. I felt out of practice, out of touch. Without all the usual tools and departments at my disposal, I felt like a Victorian Alienist with tinctures and glass rods rather than SOCCO & incident reports. I was a man out of time. But what time?

It would be a four-hour drive to London so I'd have to set off now if I wanted to make the most of the time Edith Wharton had given me. How kind of her. To pay me in the hopes I would fail.