‘Did you see anyone in it?’
‘I saw someone run down to the boat – goodness knows where they’d been hiding, because you’ve seen the landscape here. Flat as a pancake. But I can’t be sure I saw anyone get out of the boat – the moon disappeared behind clouds again, and I couldn’t see anything else. I got a bit nosy, and it wasn’t too cold back then, so I nipped out the front door to see if I could spot anyone else.’
‘That could’ve been incredibly dangerous, Mr Webster,’ said Kay.
He gave her a rueful smile. ‘I only thought about that afterwards,’ he said. ‘I was too interested in what was happening. Anyway, I was too late to see whatever it is that was going on, because by the time I got to the gate I could hear the engine revving as the boat left the beach.’
‘Why didn’t you report it at the time?’
He shrugged. ‘I have, in the past, but nothing ever happens. I gave up. You’re the first ones to have taken me seriously.’
‘Could you see anyone on the beach after the boat left?’
Webster shook his head. ‘The place was deserted.’
‘What about the next day? Was there anything lying around – any items that looked out of place?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s like they were never there.’
Chapter Forty-Three
After thanking Adrian Webster for his time and reluctantly leaving the warmth of his house, Kay followed Carys through the gate and out onto the coast road, then glanced over her shoulder as they began to walk away.
The net curtain at the living room window twitched, a silhouette moving beyond her line of sight before disappearing.
She pursed her lips.
‘What’re you thinking, Sarge?’
Kay gritted her teeth as a bitter wind caught her hair and assaulted her face and ears before she tugged up her jacket collar and burrowed her chin into the thick material. ‘Well, we’ll obviously have to see if the incident he mentioned ties in with anyone else’s statement, but we’ll run it past Sharp at the briefing later on. I can’t believe he didn’t report it at the time, though.’
‘Well, like he said – he and other locals have reported it before, but it keeps happening.’ Carys sighed. ‘I don’t envy Colin Fox and his lot. It must be so frustrating for them.’
‘Yeah, I suppose. Do me a favour when we get back to the station, though. Go through HOLMES2 and find out if he really did report anything prior to this, or whether he’s wasting our time.’
‘Think your celebrity status went to his head?’
Kay narrowed her eyes as dimples appeared in Carys’s cheeks.
‘Very funny.’
Kay lifted her gaze to the road beyond, now a rough track that had narrowed to a single car width. Squinting against the wind, she spotted Barnes and Piper leaving a property at the far end.
Beyond them, in the distance, an imposing brick monolith rose from the flat landscape; a Victorian water tower that had been battered by the elements over the centuries and now stood sentient over the small hamlet that surrounded it.
Barnes lifted his hand before both men turned and disappeared from sight.
Kay ran her tongue over her lips, the tang of salt reminding her of childhood holidays on the Devon coastline. She glanced to her left as they made their way towards the next house, a scrubby patch of grass dividing the coast road and the beach beyond.
Somehow, the Kentish coastline had always seemed more desolate to her; alien. The flat marshes to the east of the county had never endeared themselves to her when she’d ventured there on walks with Adam when she’d first arrived in the area. Instead, the landscape set her nerves on edge as she’d peered through mist at abandoned fishing boats, whilst the southern fringes of the county left her with a feeling of melancholy every time she visited, even in the summer.
She blinked to clear the thought as the boundary to the next cottage began, and noticed that unlike the previous property they’d visited, the garden to the rear connected with the beach beyond.
The front of the house was framed with a low wall matching the style of that bordering the rest of the street, with a white iron gate leading to a front door.
She sniffed, the strong aroma of a cigarette wafting on the breeze as Carys rang the bell.
No sound came from inside the house, and Carys knocked twice before dropping her hand and turning to Kay.
‘What do you think, Sarge?’
‘Round the back.’
She led the way along the worn gravel path past the front window of the house and around the side of the building, her eyes taking in the ivy that clung to the walls and up alongside a single window near the pitched roof.
As she reached the back of the house, the wind whipped up a dust devil, blowing sand into her eyes.
‘Shit,’ she muttered, lowering her head and blinking to clear the grit.
‘You okay?’
‘Yes.’
She reached into her bag and tugged a paper handkerchief from a packet before blowing her nose and blinking once more.
Carys shielded her eyes with her hand and then pointed at a wooden hulled boat that hugged the tufts of grass poking through the sand. ‘Over there.’
They moved closer, and Kay noticed a puff of smoke appear towards the bow before a head popped up above the level of the hull at the sound of their footsteps.
A man in his late sixties with a woollen beanie hat pulled low over
