Erica (The First Carmington Novel)

By Robert William Saul Harvey

Erica is 23 years old and sings in a band which gigs around the hotels of a sea-side resort. She discovers a taste for older men, in their sixties and seventies, who come to the resort on short coach holidays. Everything's fine until someone starts killing the men she meets...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert William Saul Harvey
• Release date: Nov 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310427077

Robert William Saul Harvey

Robert was born in 1949 in the small Scottish hamlet of Douglas West, Douglas in Lanarkshire, but moved to England when his father, a miner, had to move south for a job.Having left school at the age of fifteen, without any qualifications whatsoever, he started work in a small engineering firm. He soon got fed up coming home covered in dirty grease and having a spotty face so, after six months, decided that engineering was not for him. With nothing to lose, he ran away to sea, so to speak. He joined the Merchant Navy and happily spent three and a half years travelling the world and getting paid for it!Meeting his future wife at the age of nineteen convinced Robert to leave the sea and settle down. There were not many jobs around for a nineteen-year-old and he ended up doing bar/cellar work until deciding to get married at the age of twenty. That was when he joined the Royal Air Force, in which he spent nine years as a Clerk Secretarial, attaining the rank of Corporal before leaving in 1979.After applying for various jobs, Robert finally got one with the National Coal Board in a colliery Stores Department. Ok, this would do him for a while, whilst he looked around for something better. Thirty years later, as a Supply and Contracts Manager, he retired from the Coal Industry at the age of fifty-nine and now has an allotment where he plays at growing vegetables (very nice they are too), and spends his spare time dabbling on his laptop; bliss.Now, with seven books on Smashwords, an eighth under construction, and number nine in the pipeline, who knows where it will stop?Second in the series, Beryl's Pup is now also available.

Book preview

Prologue

Eighty-three-year-old Wilhelm (Bill) Hofstadter lazily waved the head of his metal detector from side to side, holding it a mere one inch above the surface of the wet sand as he slowly waddled along the beach in his bare feet. He loosely held a pair of leather sandals in his free hand, letting them swing idly back and forth in time with his steps. The earphones blocked out all other sounds as he listened intently for the telltale ‘whine’ which would let him know there was an object, metallic, buried beneath the surface. It never ceased to amaze him, some of the things the thousands of visitors to this beach each year left behind them; empty tin cans and plastic bottles were the favorite, plus a multitude of plastic cups, wrappers etcetera. People seemed to assume it to be perfectly acceptable for them to bury their rubbish in the sand instead of either taking it home with them, or deposit it in one of the many trash bins along the seafront with little regard that the sea would uncover them as the tides ebbed and flowed twice a day. Out of sight, out of mind, he supposed. He didn’t collect and carry away anything he classed as rubbish, merely made a small heap of it knowing the tractor would be along later to scoop up as much of it as it could manage in the metal net it dragged along behind. He tended to concentrate on the smaller, more valuable items; coins, jewelry, etc.

Bill enjoyed it when the tide was on the ebb, it gave him ample time to wander up and down the beach, as he did most weekends, tide, and weather permitting. He liked the early mornings best, before anyone else was up and about, bar a few eager joggers and dog-walkers. It was peaceful and he could pursue this pleasant and sometimes rewarding pastime without nosy holidaymakers interrupting to ask if he’d found anything important yet, or discourteous yobs messing him around, taking the piss because of his advanced years, German accent, and shuffling gait.

Teenagers were the worst. The spotty-faced young buggers thought they were so flaming clever, teasing him about unexploded bombs, eagerly telling him how they would laugh their socks off if he came across one and it exploded, blasting him into a million insignificant pieces. Wouldn’t it be funny if a flock of seagulls swooped down and gobbled up all little the bits of him lying on the sand, before anyone could come and gather them up?

Not.

Little shits.

Another good reason for coming out so early, the greasy-faced workshy little wankers would still be snoring like troopers, stinking in their dirty pits, and the once-a-year holidaymakers would be slow in rising, taking their time over breakfast, before venturing out to sample the delights of Carmington-on-Sea.

Yes.

Very few people were about at this time of day.

Suited him just fine.

He had the beach all to himself.

Bliss.

As he went about his business, Bill cast a wary glance towards the calm almost mirror-like surface of the North Sea, unusual for the time of year, or any time. He looked for telltale signs the tide might be turning. This would be his cue to pack up and head for higher ground. He needed plenty of warning nowadays because walking on sand, especially dry sand, slowed him down even more than his normally slow pace. Any attempt to hurry would play havoc with his angina and his aging muscles.

Feeling slightly out of breath, Bill paused for a moment. He glanced ahead of him, along the beach. It was empty for as far as his eyes could see, which wasn’t far without his normal glasses. The sunglasses he wore were cheap things he had picked up in one of the beachfront shops because those silly photo-chromatic things he normally wore focused the sun’s rays onto his nose and left him looking like some drunken sop.

He turned his head and looked back.

A long way behind him, he noticed at least three people exercising their dogs, way back along the far end of the promenade where dogs were allowed on the beach. Up ahead, on the promenade, all was quiet. It was still too early for most people. One lone jogger pounded his way toward the pier and an old woman shuffled toward the few dilapidated beach huts around the low headland beyond the pier.

Later, the sea front and beach would teem with holidaymakers and they would crowd the roads with cars, buses, and the obligatory horse-drawn carriages, their drivers vying for business.

The promenade was only about eight feet above the level of the beach, protected by a painted waist-high fence of iron railings which gave access to the beach via steps and ramps at regular intervals.

Bill could barely make out the fuzzy outlines of the few shops lining the opposite side of the promenade. A shop selling newsagent, toys and beach wear, plus a post office, amusement arcade, gifts, etc.

Carmington-on-Sea was no different to hundreds of other small seaside towns, scattered around the British coast, large and small. He had lived here since the war ended and he had been released from the prisoner of war camp where he had spent the final six months of the conflict. His English was now almost perfect, with just a hint of German.

He threw an unconscious sneer towards the unsightly multitude of offshore windmills with their blades lazily turning in the stiff morning breeze. He could never understand why they had to stick those monstrosities where they did. Why could they not have stuck them somewhere out of sight? To his mind, they were such an unnecessary blot on the seascape.

Bill heaved a sigh and wearily returned to the task in hand. His clumsy, arthritic fingers twiddled with one knob on the handle of his detector. He swung the machine in a low arc to his right, pausing for a second when he thought he heard something, but decided he must have been mistaken when nothing other than an almost inaudible hum softly massaged his eardrums.

After a while, he lifted his head and glanced up at the sky.

There was rain in the air.

He could smell.

His bones could feel it.

There were the tops of numerous dark, towering clouds peeking over the horizon, threatening to billow up and block out what little warmth there was from the early morning sun.

‘Ah, well,’ he thought. ‘Time to pack up and go home. Breakfast’s calling.’

It had been a long, fruitless morning with nothing more than a few old tin cans, a bent coat hanger, plus a badly discolored twenty pence piece to show for his labor.

‘Definitely time for breakfast.’

Thoughts of a hot mug of strong builder’s tea and two thick slices of bread, toasted over an open fire, with lashings of butter and jam, made his mouth water. Such simple fare would set him up for the day ahead.

Perfect.

Yum.

He switched off his detector and was about to turn in the promenade’s direction, over one hundred and fifty yards away from where he stood, and slightly uphill, when something caught his eye.

He squinted at the something rolling about at the water’s edge, something dark and chunky with what looked like a mess of seaweed caught on one end.

A log?

Perhaps.

‘Mmmm. Might be something interesting. A nice bit of driftwood, maybe.’

He shucked his metal detector onto his right shoulder.

Could be, John-the-Chip might use this for one of his weird sculptures, he mumbled.

Sensing a reward for finding such a usable chunk of flotsam, or jetsam, or whatever it was called, he puffed his way across the wet stretch of sand towards the log.

He kept a wary eye out for signs the sea might try to take advantage of this situation and turn, forcing him to hurry back to the promenade where he had parked his old dark green Ford Fiesta, in one of the marked disabled bays.

If the wind was right, the sea could rush in faster than Bill could run. More than once, they, the parking spies, had caught him out and given him a ticket for overstaying his allotted time. He would struggle to climb up the beach and reach those steps nearest to him.

The last time such a thing had happened, over a year beforehand, he had dropped his metal detector, and had to wait until the tide went out before he could return to retrieve it. The seawater had damaged the machine beyond repair and he had to dig into his meager savings to buy his current toy. This one had cost him over two hundred pounds. To cover such another occurrence, he made sure he had taken out insurance to cover the cost.

Out of breath again, he stopped about ten feet away from the log. It looked bigger than he thought it was at first. It was obviously much too big and heavy for him to carry.

Bugger.

He would have to tell John-the-Chip its whereabouts and hope he could come out with his old Land Rover and retrieve the thing before the sea dragged it out again.

He peered at the log through narrowed eyes, squinting against the bright morning light, wishing he had brought his prescription glasses with him instead of these crap sunglasses. He raised his left hand, his sandals gently hitting his shoulder as he pushed the sunglasses up onto his forehead. He then swapped the sandals over to his right hand. Now, as he stepped towards it, he was able to get a better look at the damn log and try to figure out some way of stopping it from drifting away when the tide came in.

Only,

He halted, taken aback.

His mouth hung open.

Shock rippled through his body and a handful of creepy-crawlies ran down his spine.

He stared in disbelief.

It was not a log.

Well, bugger me! he muttered, blinking, scratching the tip of his nose with the index finger of his free hand, and made puzzled. What have we here?

What he imagined to be a tangle of seaweed at one end of the log, was, in fact, someone’s hair. The stump of a broken branch, sticking out to one side, was not a branch. It was the broken, ragged stump of some unfortunate person’s missing right leg!

Nope.

This definitely was no log.

This was most definitely the remains of a human body!

Male.

‘A dead male,’ he thought.

Bill shuffled the last few feet, stood over the body, and stared down at it.

God! he whispered.

He had seen dead bodies before. Lots of them. Long ago, on the beaches of Normandy. Many of whom he had helped to put there as a young conscript in Hitler’s army, although he now thoroughly regretted his part in that painful episode.

He knew how dead bodies behaved in rolling waves, albeit slight waves like those now lapping at his feet. How one body would roll this way, another would roll that way, slip sideways, arms floating out to one side, legs, totally out of control, similar to those of a rag doll, and he knew the damage submerged rocks and marine creatures could do to such a body.

From what he could see of it, the dead person’s skin was cold, slimy, and an almost gray-white color, as if the icy water of the North Sea had sucked the normal pink color out of it. Most of the right leg was missing, as was the left hand, and two fingers of the right hand. Two eyeless sockets stared out towards the horizon and thin blue lips quivered slightly, as if the lifeless body were pleading with the sea to return its missing parts, but in fact it was because a small crab was trying to force its way out of the mouth, its two pincers attempting to part the thin lips.

Taken by surprise, Bill staggered backwards for a few of steps and barely swallowed his natural urge to call out. No one would hear him, anyway.

He turned his head and glanced towards the promenade. He needed to report this, quickly, before the tide came in, and dragged the body away.

He quietly told the sea to leave the body where it was for the time being.

Please.

The sea ignored him and sent a heavy wave to roll the body over onto its front.

‘Tch!’

He needed time to alert someone in authority, give them a chance to get a team of experts down here. At his age and in his condition, he would be unable to drag the body up the beach for any significant distance, a few feet at the most, which would not be far enough. The tide would be in soon.

Bill was not in the habit of carrying his cell phone with him whilst he was on the beach for fear of dropping it in the water. He always left it in the glove compartment in his car.

Yeah. He knows, it would do him a fat lot of good there. But it had cost him nigh on a hundred pounds, a lot of money to an old age pensioner.

He had no option but to leave the body where it was, and make his way up to the promenade and thence to the car park, where he had parked his car.

However, there was one thing he could do before he left the scene.

He removed the leather belt from around his trousers, looped it twice around the body’s remaining ankle, and buckled it around the handle of the small spade he carried with him for the purpose of digging up any ‘treasure’ he might come across. He then rammed the spade into the sand, pushing it in as far as he could.

‘That should act as an anchor, with a bit of luck,’ he thought with a satisfied grin.

As quickly as his old body would allow, huffing and puffing from the effort, he shuffled through the loose sand.

By the time he climbed up the steps leading to the promenade, his chest was trying to squeeze both the breath from his lungs, and the blood from his heart. His leaden legs refused to support his body any longer. His knees buckled, and he sank onto the tarmac, only feet from one of the concrete benches spaced at regular intervals alongside the seawall at this end of the promenade. He vaguely hoped he had not damaged his metal detector when he dropped it as he fell.

Are you all right, mate?

He flinched, surprised when the shape of a short-haired terrier of some sort filled his vision, and its wet tongue licked at his face.

He made confused.

‘Eh? Dogs can’t talk,’ he thought.

A comforting arm rested on his shoulders whilst a human hand pushed the dog away from him.

Back, Bruce. Sit! the voice commanded.

The concerned face of an early morning dog walker replaced that of the dog. A man in his thirties, Bill presumed.

Bill fumbled with the button on the breast pocket of his multi-colored check shirt, but could not undo the damn button.

The man made gentle as he pushed Bill’s hand out of the way.

Here; let me, he said.

He quickly undid the button, extracted a small spray can from Bill’s pocket, and handed it to him.

Thank you. Bill murmured, groggily.

He pointed the spray at his open mouth and pushed the top of the cylinder. A slight puff of vapor squirted into his mouth. He licked the wetness around his gums and squirted another spurt under his tongue. Within seconds, the constriction in his chest eased.

He could get his breath now, and his heart beat that bit easier.

Thank you, he repeated.

The dog-walker remained squatting by Bill’s side and waited as he got his breath back. Bill smiled at him and nodded his head.

Thank you.

No problem, old timer. You take it easy. You want me to phone for an ambulance?

The man gave Bill’s shoulders a gentle squeeze.

No, Bill said, shaking his head. No. Police. Must get police.

The man made puzzled.

No, mate. An ambulance is what you need, not the police.

Bill shook his head again and waved a hand over his shoulder.

Police, he croaked. Dead man. On the beach. Call police.

He leaned back, rested his head on the man’s shoulder, and groaned as the tightness in his chest returned…

As usual in such cases, various police and forensic personnel hurriedly swarmed over the beach, inspecting the now floating body, still anchored by the belt and spade Bill had set up earlier and the surrounding area for clues, before the tide came in further, and really messed everything up. As if being submerged in seawater and being tumbled around like a load of rags in a washing machine had not already done enough to mess things up. The area around the body was quickly roped off using police tapes and a few strategically placed metal spikes. The scene quickly attracted a crowd of spectators waving cell phones about, hoping to capture pics or video of the deceased…

This guy’s not been in the water for long, has he?

Detective Chief Inspector Jeremy Brett, so named because his mother had loved to watch the guy in the Sherlock Holmes series on TV, stared down at the body on the stainless steel table.

Decked out in a one-piece green medical gown, matching paper cap, and blue latex gloves, he looked a right Wally.

He wrinkled his nose beneath the green medical face mask. Even the mask couldn’t filter out the distinctive, sickly smell of mortuary aromas, plus the smell of sea-salt, which assaulted his senses every time he entered this place. He’d learned long ago how to control his gag reflex, mainly by breathing through his mouth, and not having anything to eat in the hours preceding a visit, as long as they had given him ample warning of such a visit. This time, he had plenty of time to prepare, and popped three breath mints whilst he waited in his own office for Amy Wellbeloved, Assistant Medical Examiner—yes, she had heard all the jokes—to let him know she was ready.

Whilst Amy took her sweet time in examining the body, Brett noted the many grazes, cuts, and bruises on the remnants of the man’s nose, cheeks, chin, and forehead. Guessed they had been caused when the man’s face had contacted rocks, pebbles, and other items hidden beneath the surface of the sea. He rightly assumed the eyes had been the first things removed by those marine creatures, which had a taste for such tasty items. The guy’s bottom lip, scratched and swollen, and slightly torn on the right-hand edge, revealed many broken teeth. The small crab he had been told about could not be found. The one remaining hand had its remaining three fingers grazed and bruised. The body’s clothes, torn in many places, were now little more than rags. Both Fibula and Tibia of the left leg had been broken, with the broken Fibula protruding from the damaged skin. The sock on that foot was only a rag flapping around the dead man’s ankle, the foot being covered in cuts and grazes with the big toe bent at an unnatural angle, suggesting to Jeremy the sea had broken it and ripped the lower half of the right leg completely off. Jeremy could not identify any teeth marks around its ragged edges to show something, such as a shark, might have had a go at it, so he assumed it must have been the sea which had fancied a bit of a snack.

He guessed the man to be somewhere in his early twenties.

There was something familiar about this guy. It annoyed Jeremy because he could not remember where he had seen him before. At least, the face was vaguely familiar, but he could not be sure because of the extensive bruising and lack of eyes.

He glanced to his left, meeting the steady gaze of Geraldine Westinghouse, Amy’s supervisor and Chief Medical Examiner.

Has he? he repeated.

Geraldine shook her head and made a sad smile, as she replied, Not long. A day, maybe two, at the most, for a guess. We’ll find out more during a full autopsy.

Jeremy nodded, happy with her ‘guess.’ He trusted Geraldine’s judgment. She was almost always right. With twelve years of experience under her belt, she knew most, if not all, of the signs.

Once Geraldine came up with a time-line, they could work out an approximation of where the body had entered the sea. He was sure she would have taken into account the rough seas over the previous two days. Something which could have caused so much damage to the corpse.

Brett narrowed his eyes as he peered down at the body, noting the almost straight blue-black line across the corpse’s throat, more to the right than the left.

‘Mmmm. He didn’t drown, then.’ He pointed to the deceased person’s neck with a gloved finger and announced, Throat’s been cut, by the looks of it.

Geraldine nodded.

Looks like a nice clean cut. Almost from ear to ear. Both carotids, jugular, trachea, etcetera.

She made a cutting motion in front of the throat.

If they attacked him from behind, his attacker would be a right-handed person. From the front, left-handed. See?

Jeremy nodded his understanding as Geraldine added, I’d say whoever did this knew what they were doing.

Jeremy made thoughtful and asked, Anything else I need to know at this point?

Geraldine nodded.

A mischievous smile played at the corners of her lips, and in her eyes, which shone as she lifted the bottom of the white sheet to one side, and said, His crown jewels have been, um, ‘removed’.

Jeremy made a face and turned away. He sucked at his top lip to suppress a shudder…

Chapter 1

‘Ho-hum. Here we go again.’

Erica stifled a yawn, her lips slightly parted, and pretended to look alert. She did not want everyone to know how fed up she was. All she wanted to do was go home and climb into bed. She was tired, her arm and leg muscles ached like hell after she had spent most of the day cleaning up the apartment, now her bone-idle excuse for a boyfriend and his cronies had finished ‘celebrating’ the New Year, albeit at two o’clock in the morning. And she was hungry. She had only eaten a bowl of mushy wheat biscuits and a spread-cheese sandwich all day. She just hoped no one could hear her stomach rumbling.

So,

Yawn.

January the First and here she was, spending yet another mind-numbing weekday evening helping to entertain a roomful of half-dead wrinklies, not one of them under the age of seventy, in her opinion. But then, she did the same thing six evenings per week. The band performed in a different hotel each night, except for the two-month break immediately after New Year. The local hotels closed down for their winter break. Thankfully, this was the last night of the season. There would be no more of these brain-freezing performances for the next eight weeks.

Yippee!

She could wind down and re-charge her batteries in readiness for the start of the new season.

This evening, the band would play its usual Thursday night gig at the small, cozy Bentamore Hotel sitting back from Carmington-on-Sea seafront on South Road.

Tonight, they, she and the other two band members, had to stand at one end of a hotel dining room, on a makeshift stage, a small cleared space on the floor. They would spend three hours spouting out a myriad of stupid songs, mainly from the fifties and sixties, to a hundred pensioners with a mid-show, fifteen-minute break, during which the band would retire to the bar for a well-earned drink.

The band churned out the same sequence of songs, the same old jokes as they had been doing week in, week out throughout the months of March through December. No heavy metal, no house, garage, or any of that modern electronic rubbish. If they tried to play anything post-seventies these decrepit old people would pull disapproving faces and heckle the band.

Nah.

Keep it simple.

Rock-and-roll, Beatles, Stones, Kinks, and Elvis. A bit of Tom Jones and early seventies were also acceptable.

Give them what they want and keep them quiet.

Erica—actual name Eunice, which she hated—took time out to prepare herself. She stood at the back of the small stage, silently appraising the latest batch of boring old farts whilst the other two band members and their so-called roadie, her shitty boyfriend, finished lugging in the rest of the gear they would need.

Erica had settled on her alternative name whilst she had languished in hospital, at the tender age of fifteen, after an attempted gang rape, which had failed when a man walking his dog through the local woods had frightened off her would-be assailants. It had left her with a broken left wrist, multiple bruises, and a mild concussion. The doctor had insisted she stayed in hospital for a few days, under observation, as a precaution.

Because it had bored her stiff lying on top of the bed in a small side ward full of elderly moaning Minnie’s, with nothing but the usual mind-numbing crap on daytime TV, she had tried her hand at the Daily Express crossword. She was not much good at crosswords but had nothing else to occupy her mind. One clue that stuck in her mind had been, ‘Heath Genus.’ She had no idea what a Heath Genus was so, intrigued, she had waited until she could get her hands on the paper the following day and looked at the answers to the crossword.

Hence,

‘Erica’ was born.

‘Phew,’ she huffed silently to herself, ‘Just look at them. Sad old bastards. Nothing any different to the last lot. Or the lot before and the lot before them.’

She made a resigned sigh and slowly shook her head.

‘Not a breath of life in any of them.’

She counted four Zimmer frames and two wheelchairs.

‘By the looks of them, some of these sad old gits will be lucky to make it back home alive.’

As she glanced around the small sea of expressionless faces, she noticed the frowning glare one old woman was throwing her way. She sought to placate the sour-faced crone with a disarming smile. It worked—it usually did, because Erica had a beautifully inviting smile, she learned at an early age how to use to her advantage. The woman’s face broke into a toothless grin. She lifted a glass of what looked like red wine and made a silent toast.

‘Silly old cow,’ Erica nodded and broadened her smile, as if she was agreeing with the woman. ‘I hope it bloody chokes you.’

The sight of a balloon slowly dancing its way across the ceiling, obviously a survivor of the previous night’s celebrations, New Year’s Eve and all that, distracted her. She immediately forgot about the toothless woman and smiled to herself as she visualized this crowd of old coffin-dodgers joining hands in a large circle in the middle of the floor and singing ‘Old Lang Syne’ whilst trying to remain upright.

Erica couldn’t help thinking, ‘Some of these definitely won’t be making it back here next year.’

She glanced to her right as the taller of the two men in the band deposited her equipment on the stage with a noisy thump; something he knew annoyed the shit out of her.

Hey, you big ape, she cried, Take care with that will you?

The ‘big ape’ knew how much the electric guitar had cost her, yet he was always thumping the case down, not to mention the larger box containing her combination amplifier-speaker, which she referred to as her ‘amp.’

Anyone would think it was heavy the way you dropped it, she added.

Okay. So, it was heavy, but Carl was a big, brawny lad of six-four with biceps like ham hocks.

‘He could be more careful, if he wanted to be,’ she fumed to herself and bared her teeth.

Carl ignored the implied threat and flexed his biceps. Puffing his broad chest out, he made an even broader grin, same as he usually did whenever she chastised him, as if he were expecting her to appreciate his physique, and be grateful for