Cruel Tide Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Titles by the Same Author

  CRUEL TIDE

  TITLES BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  A Good Liar

  Forgiven

  Fallout

  CRUEL TIDE

  RUTH SUTTON

  First published in United Kingdom

  by Hoad Press in 2015

  2 Lowther Street, Waberthwaite, Millom, Cumbria LA19 5YN

  www.ruthsutton.co.uk [email protected]

  ISBN–13: 978-0-9929314-0-7

  Copyright © Ruth Sutton 2015

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any

  manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the copyright holder,

  except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  The right of Ruth Sutton to be identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Prepared for publication by Aldridge Press

  [email protected]

  Editorial: Charlotte Rolfe

  Design: John Aldridge

  Cover design: Kevin Ancient

  Cover photos: Jeff Dalt iStock; Ron Jeffreys rgbstock (Morecambe Bay)

  Typeset in Bembo 11.5/14.5pt

  Printed and bound in UK by TJ International, Padstow

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This first foray into crime fiction has been greatly assisted by expert support provided by Matthew Hall and William Ryan. Thanks are also due, as ever, to John Aldridge and Charlotte Rolfe of Aldridge Press, and to Kevin Ancient for his creative translation of a vague idea into a striking cover image. Special gratitude goes to Mick Shaw for his unfailing encouragement and practical advice throughout.

  Author’s note

  Some of the locations of this book are real and recognisable, but many place names have been changed. The story and the characters are all entirely fictional, and bear no connection to any events or people, living or dead. In particular, no such institution as Montgomery House ever existed on the north shore of Morecambe Bay, and the culture and procedures of journalism and policing in 1969 were very different than they are today.

  RS, Waberthwaite, October 2015

  CHAPTER 1

  BARROW-IN-FURNESS, OCTOBER, 1969

  Judith Pharaoh pushed open the heavy door of the police station. She pulled strands of wayward hair back into place and tasted brick dust blown from the demolition site across the street. Now that the ironworks had finally closed, Barrow was slowly coming to terms with a different future. It was not a pretty town.

  The overnight incident book was disappointing: another stolen bicycle, another midnight scuffle outside the Hope and Anchor. Nothing meaty to keep her editor at the Furness News happy. ‘Better luck tomorrow maybe,’ said Sergeant Clark. She had already turned to leave when the phone jangled. She watched the sergeant’s face as he listened.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ he told her, putting the black phone back on its cradle. ‘Call from Attercliff. Looks like a body in the mud at the shore. No details, uniform on the scene with a witness. We’ll get someone from plain-clothes down there, probably the new lad with the funny name. Could be your story, Judith, if you can persuade your boss.’

  ‘What’s the new bloke’s funny name, then?’ Judith asked. She knew most of the Barrow police after six months of following them around.

  ‘Detective Constable Tognarelli. Would you credit it? A bloody I-tie – ’is dad was from Glasgow apparently. Lots of them there, all making ice cream.’

  ‘Poor lad, with a name like that,’ said Judith. ‘What do you lot call him?’

  ‘Nelly mostly, or Dago.’

  She winced.

  ‘He plays it by the book, so watch yourself. They’re all pissed off with him already and ’e’s only been ’ere a few weeks. Came from Lancashire when they joined up with us.’

  ‘Sounds like a fascinating day ahead,’ said Judith, ‘and it’s my birthday.’

  ‘Birthday, is it? Many happy returns. Celebrating tonight, are we?’

  She shook her head, and more recalcitrant hair fell out of its restraining elastic band.

  ‘Brings back some not so good memories,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a bugger,’ said Sergeant Clark.

  Judith shrugged. ‘What do they call you, by the way?’ she asked. ‘Everybody has a nickname round here. I know they call me Red. So what’s yours?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ he said.

  She was crossing the street when the birthday memory hit her again. She reached the kerb and leaned on a wall to breathe, slowly, until the wave of humiliation passed. That was ten years ago, she told herself. She had to let it go. She was stronger now, less foolish, more wary, in charge of her own life. No one could ever hurt like that, not again.

  ‘You all right, love?’ someone asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

  ❖ ❖ ❖

  When Judith opened the door of the newsroom at the paper something was going on. Hattie, the secretary, motioned to her to be quiet, pointing towards the closed door of the editor’s office. ‘They’re in there,’ she whispered.

  ‘Who?’ Judith asked.

  Ed Cunningham was leaning on the doorframe of his sub-editor’s cubbyhole, cigarette in hand. ‘George Falcon and his missus,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Shouting,’ said Hattie. ‘Marjorie’s been shouting.’ She giggled into her hand.

  ‘What about?’ asked Judith. Cunningham shrugged. ‘My guess,’ he said, ‘George wants to stay off and the boss said no.’

  ‘But he’s ill,’ said Judith.

  ‘And we’ve got a paper to run,’ said Cunningham.

  The door to the editor’s office opened. Bill Skelly, Furness News’ chief reporter for the past twenty-something years, stood for a moment in the open doorway, his face red, before he stomped across the room, jammed his hat onto his head, and pushed past Judith, followed by George Falcon looking pale and Marjorie close to tears. All three left the newsroom without a word as Judith watched, intrigued.

  She was still wondering what was going on when Alan Thornhill, the paper’s editor, appeared at his office door ‘Ah, Judith,’ he said. ‘Good. Can you come in a moment please?’

  Hattie watched intently as Judith, still wearing her coat, followed him into the office.

  ‘Close the door,’ he said, easing himself into his big chair on the far side of the desk. He sat back, his fingers steepled together in front of his mouth. Judith gazed round the room to avoid looking at him. One wall was hung with dozens of photographs of Thornhill at various functions. She recognised some of the faces that beamed out at her, the mayor, someone from the TV, all looking ple
ased with themselves.

  ‘Bit of a problem,’ Thornhill said, still looking at his hands. ‘George Falcon isn’t well, poor chap. Marjorie insists he can’t come back to work. He’s not willing to resign, and I can’t sack him, not yet, so we’ll have to make a few changes. How long have you been with us now?’

  ‘Six months,’ said Judith. Her heart was beating loudly in her chest. She wanted to sit down.

  ‘Bill says he’s quite pleased, but you just don’t have the experience, do you? We took a chance, taking you on, never employed a young woman as a news reporter before, but now, well, we may have to think again.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Judith, aware of the croak in her voice.

  ‘We need an experienced journalist. Bill can’t do everything.’

  ‘But I am experienced,’ she said. ‘Three years…’

  ‘Not enough,’ he cut her off. ‘George wants to stay on the books for now, and we’re duty bound to that for a while at least, but in a few weeks, well…’ He spread his arms wide. ‘If George stays off sick, we’re a man down. If he goes, well, either way we’ll have to reconsider. Budget, you know. We’re on a knife-edge here, every penny counts. You know how it is.’

  Judith stared at him. ‘That doesn’t make sense –’ she began.

  Thornhill held up his hand. ‘I’m the best judge of that, young lady,’ he said, still not looking at her. ‘I’m being straight with you, but you can’t count on being here past Christmas. You could start looking elsewhere right now, or stick around and convince me that you’re too valuable to lose. That’s your choice. Understood?’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Good. Now is there anything else?’

  She swallowed, making up her mind.

  ‘There is a story I’m working on. It could be big. Just got it from Sergeant Clark. A body, in the bay, buried in the mud.’

  ‘Are you saying you want the story?’

  ‘Who else is there? Bill’s run off his feet as it is. And young Andrew, well.’

  Thornhill looked at her over the top of his glasses. ‘Where is this body?’

  ‘Attercliff. It’s our patch. I’ve got the scooter.’

  He stared out of the window. Gulls shrieked on the neighbouring roofs.

  ‘OK,’ he said finally. ‘My decision, I’ll tell Bill. He won’t like it, and you know what he’s like.’

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Judith.

  ‘He’ll be back. I’ll tell him I’ve given you this story to see what you can do with it. So you report to me on this one, OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Mr Thornhill.’

  ‘Alan,’ he said. ‘We’re all on the same team here, Judith. My job is to get the best possible stories out of you, squeeze them past Führer Cunningham out there and into the paper for people to buy and make us all rich.’ He smiled. ‘OK?’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Thanks. I’ll get on with it, then.’

  ‘Go,’ he said, waving his hand towards the door.

  ‘Well?’ Hattie whispered as Judith reappeared.

  ‘He’s given me a big story.’

  Cunningham’s voice said, ‘And what did you give him, I wonder?’

  Andrew giggled. He was the office trainee and observed the goings-on around him as if he were watching Coronation Street.

  ‘Shut up, Andrew,’ said Judith. She picked up her helmet off the desk where she’d abandoned it and left the room with as much dignity as she could muster. It was only when she got outside that she realised her hands were still clenched tight.

  ❖ ❖ ❖

  The red Vespa scooter parked invitingly round the back of the Furness News office brought a smile to Judith’s face. It was her parents’ Christmas present and felt like belated recognition of her adult independence. For her stepfather, John Pharaoh, Judith’s independence wouldn’t have been a problem. But Judith’s relationship with her mother, Maggie, was more complicated, constantly soured by unrealised expectations. And then there was Vince’s accident, and things had gone from bad to worse: Maggie blamed Judith for not looking after her little brother carefully enough, even though Vince was twelve when he fell off the back garden wall. Buying the scooter, from both of them, was a step back towards trust. It was a new start. And it had transformed Judith’s life. She didn’t have to wait around for buses any more, or feel beholden to people for lifts. When she needed to be somewhere, she could just go.

  The day had brightened into breezy blue and within a few minutes of leaving town she was out at Rampside and the start of the coast road. She purred up and down its quiet slopes and curves, smelling the sea. For the first time in months, she felt she was being given a chance to prove what she could do. Whatever it took, she would do it. She had to. She couldn’t bear the look on her mother’s face if she lost this job. ‘Unsuitable’, Maggie had called it. ‘A waste of a good education.’ Judith remembered the conversation. ‘Plenty of proper steady jobs going at Sellafield. Your father would help, of course. Good clean work, and prospects for a bright young woman like you. Jessie did well there, before she threw it all away.’

  ‘Granny didn’t throw it away,’ Judith had protested. ‘She made a choice.’

  ‘Too many choices, if you ask me,’ Maggie had said, with a twist of her chin that signified the conversation was over.

  Judith wasn’t sure exactly how far down the coast road she was aiming for but any unusual activity at the shore would probably be obvious, and it was. As she approached Attercliff two cars were already parked on the side of the road by an open gate, and fresh muddy tracks pointed the way to the shore where a tractor and an ambulance were standing, and a van that was probably the coastguard.

  She stopped, put her feet down to hold the scooter steady and looked out towards the bay. The morning light was still casting long shadows, and flat acres of sand and mud beyond the shore gleamed like pewter. Only minutes earlier the tide had left the shingle bank, sliding noiselessly back to where a flock of oystercatchers stalked and probed. Every day the shallow waters of Morecambe Bay flooded across a hundred square miles of mud flats and then retreated, flooded again and retreated, faster than a man could run: relentless moon-driven motion that transformed the landscape and the light.

  Judith parked the scooter by the hedge, took off her helmet and raised a hand to her eyes against the glare. Across the road behind an old limestone wall was a stand of oak trees, the last few withered leaves snatched by the breeze. Further east, out of her sight, the bay narrowed towards river estuaries where fresh water clashed with the incoming sea, churning mud into froth. Several miles away on the southern shore of the bay was the grey blur of land, the streets and promenades of Morecambe that blazed with light when the night air was clear.

  Wishing she’d brought some Wellington boots Judith set off gingerly across the field, picking her way round cowpats and the worst of the mud churned up by the passing wheels. A cluster of figures stood on the edge of the sands, holding large boards on end, like ancient soldiers carrying massive shields. Of course, she thought, they need to rest the boards on the quicksand to avoid being sucked down. She imagined the body hidden below the surface, and the final minutes as cloying mud extinguished light and air.

  The back door of the ambulance was open and a man appeared, watching her progress down the field. She knew Doc Hayward from another accident she’d reported, and liked him, a rare exception to her aversion for professional men of a certain age. He raised his hand and as she waved back another figure emerged from behind the ambulance. This was a younger man, who walked briskly towards her looking official but not in uniform; Judith guessed he was the detective constable with the Italian name. He was quite short, wearing a tweed jacket that sat square over his shoulders but was too long at the hips. Cropped hair, a young man trying to look older, thought Judith, as he came closer and she could see his boyish face and the faintest trace of a moustache above his lip.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked, as if he had the right to know.
<
br />   ‘Press,’ she said, holding out her ID card. He looked carefully at the card, took a small notebook and a very small pencil out of his inside pocket and wrote some miniscule notes before looking back at her.

  ‘This is a crime scene,’ he said. His voice had a petulant expression, as if responding to a social gaffe.

  Judith wondered about the unfamiliar tone, a Lancashire accent mixed with something else. ‘What crime?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, it could be a crime scene,’ he said, ‘and you’re in the way. You’re contaminating the area.’

  Judith looked around. ‘Me and a few others, by the look of it. I’ve every right to be here.’

  ‘How did you find out about it?’

  ‘I was at the station when someone phoned it in,’ she said. ‘You’re DC Tognarelli aren’t you?’

  He blushed.

  ‘It’s my job to find things out,’ she said, taking full advantage of his surprise. ‘Sergeant Clark knows what we do,’ she continued. ‘I check the incident book every morning, to see what stories we need to follow up.’

  ‘Isn’t there someone more senior?’ he asked. ‘Shouldn’t you be doing the WI meeting reports or something?’

  Judith restrained an impulse to hit him. ‘I’ve got your name already,’ she said. ‘So watch what you say.’

  ‘That’s all you’re going to get from me,’ he said, turning away. ‘I’ve got a job to do.’

  Prat, she said to herself, and she walked off, towards the ambulance. The rear doors were open.

  ‘Morning, doc,’ she said, looking into the gloom of the interior. ‘How long do you reckon it’ll take them to get it out?’

  ‘Morning, Judith. Come in and have a seat. Won’t take long, now they’ve got the boards down. That’s stuff’s like wet concrete. If you struggle, it drags you down. Lost a dog in the quicksand once. He cried and wriggled until the end, but there was nothing I could do.’ Dr Hayward shook his head, and began to cough, deep and prolonged. He held up his hand, as if to tell Judith that he was all right, but the fit left him breathless. She looked away towards the shore to give the old man time to recover.