Chapter 5 – Finding Mabel [Easterwich]

Vane let the silence settle after his last sentence. He did not blink. He did not fidget. He simply watched her over the rim of his teacup.

“You won’t reach the village gates,” he said quietly, “unless you are under our protection.”

Joyce did not look away.

“I’ve managed thirty years without it.”

“Thirty years of pickpockets and public order. This is not that.”

He reached into the leather case at his side and withdrew a slim buff folder. It was unmarked.

“There is a car outside,” he said. “It can take you to Easterwich this afternoon.”

Joyce’s jaw tightened slightly.

“You’re moving quickly for a cup of tea.”

“We do not have the luxury of time.”

She folded her hands on the table.

“And what exactly do you imagine I’ll do when I get there? Tend roses?”

“The town requires a police sergeant,” Vane replied evenly. “Sergeant Thomas Spragg is retiring. His father held the post before the war.”

A flicker crossed her eyes. History. Continuity.

“You’ve done your homework,” she said.

“We always do.”

He turned a page in the folder.

“No husband. No children. Parents killed in the Blitz, 1940. You have no dependent ties in London.”

The words were delivered clinically. No sympathy. No cruelty. Just fact.

Joyce felt it land, but she did not give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

“Careful,” she said. “You’re starting to sound like a man who’s already decided for me.”

Vane inclined his head slightly.

“By tomorrow morning, Sergeant Joyce Turner of the Metropolitan Police will have taken early retirement on medical grounds. Poor health. Exhaustion. Stress. It is entirely believable.”

“And if I decline your kind offer?”

“The disciplinary process resumes. Official Secrets Act. Pension forfeiture. Public inquiry.”

He paused.

“And once foreign services realise you accessed material they have been trying to breach for twenty years, your risk profile increases considerably.”

“You’re telling me the Americans and the Russians will start queuing outside my flat?”

“I’m telling you that you have activated something people have killed for.”

Joyce looked past him, through the lace curtain, to the narrow Chelsea street. A milk float trundled by. A woman with a pram. Ordinary life.

London had changed. The station was concrete and audit trails. The old nick was gone. Her husband was gone. The streets she had known were tower blocks now.

“You’d wipe me clean,” she said.

“Not wipe,” Vane corrected softly. “Relocate.”

“And I exist nowhere?”

“You exist where you are needed.”

“And my belongings?”

“Transferred. Quietly. Accommodation provided. Income guaranteed for life. You retain rank. Authority. Purpose.”

Purpose.

That word lingered.

Joyce sat very still.

“Easterwich,” she said. “A village no one can find. Guarding secrets no one can name.”

“Yes.”

“And you expect me to believe this is protection.”

“It is,” Vane replied. “Protection for you. And protection from you.”

That earned him the first true reaction. Her eyes sharpened.

“Explain.”

“You have the map case. It responded to you. That was not chance. Easterwich does not need another bureaucrat. It needs a sergeant who understands discrepancies. Who does not frighten easily.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

He closed the folder.

“You have already stepped beyond your old life, Joyce. The question is whether you step forward deliberately, or are pushed.”

She let out a slow breath.

For the first time in years, London felt distant. Not hostile. Not cruel. Just no longer hers.

“What happens if I say yes?”

“The car takes you to the village. You are briefed properly. You assume the post within the week.”

“And if I say no?”

“You will not be safe.”

The tea had gone cold.

Joyce stood.

“I don’t like being cornered.”

“No one does.”

She picked up her handbag.

“Show me the car.”

Vane rose, smooth and unhurried.

Outside, the street looked exactly as it had ten minutes before.

But Joyce knew, with the clarity of a seasoned copper, that her old life had just closed its file.

The journey was marked by silence.

Vane sat beside her, composed, almost unnaturally still. Joyce kept her gaze on the passing road. Outwardly calm. Inside, something tectonic was shifting. She had agreed to step into the car. That did not mean she was steady.

The motorways were new, wide, and indifferent. Concrete ribbons slicing through what had once been neighbourhoods. The driver kept the speed high. They passed marked police cars more than once. None reacted.

Joyce noticed.

They’ve been told, she thought. Or told not to see.

The city thinned. Towers gave way to hedgerows. The road narrowed. It was mid-spring and Britain was erupting into green. Blossom clung to the trees. Fields rolled outward in patient folds. Somewhere along the way, the tightness in her chest eased, though she would not admit it.

Then the land opened.

The English Channel lay ahead, steel-blue beneath a pale sky. And there, settled into the downs as though it had grown from the chalk itself, was Easterwich.

The turning came quickly.

A barrier blocked the road. A sentry box stood beside it. MOD signs warned in firm black lettering that the area was restricted.

The car slowed. An armed sailor stepped forward and motioned for the window to be lowered. The driver complied and produced his warrant card.

The sailor examined it, then straightened and saluted. The barrier lifted.

Joyce watched it rise.

There it is, she thought. The line.

“An armed sailor?” she asked.

“You are now under the protection of Naval Intelligence,” Vane replied evenly. “I am Commander Vane of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. Not a thug from Special Branch. Your Superintendent needed to be kept out of the loop, for his protection.”

“He is a dear friend,” Joyce said quietly. “Thank you.”

As they passed through, Vane’s posture shifted. Not relaxed, exactly. But something in him eased, as though he too had crossed into safer waters.

“We’ve had your house prepared,” he continued. “Stocked with food and coal. Gas and electric connected. Enough furniture until your belongings arrive tomorrow.”

“How are they getting my belongings in—”

She stopped herself.

He allowed the corner of his mouth to lift.

“Your landlord supplied a key. We had… leverage.”

She let out a short laugh.

“That explains my cheap rent. You’re not the first to produce that card.”

“Mrs Turner,” he said mildly, “are you implying dishonesty in public office?”

“According to you, I no longer exist,” she replied. “Who’s the bent copper now?”

“I see this will be a productive relationship,” he said. “Mabel was right about you.”

Joyce turned.

“Mabel?”

“Lady Mabel Hazelgrove. She oversees operations here. You will take tea with her tomorrow.”

“She sounds formidable.”

“The daughter of local greengrocers,” Vane said. “Married into the Hazelgrove family. Grounded. Practical. You will get along.”

“And you, Commander? Where do you fit?”

“I am your liaison officer. In simpler terms, your handler. You are now in the employ of Naval Intelligence. If you encounter difficulty, I am your first point of contact.”

“And you exist?”

“In the regular Navy, yes. In this capacity, no.”

He looked out toward the clustered rooftops ahead.

“Easterwich is my vessel. I keep her steady.”

Joyce followed his gaze.

London felt very far away.

“I see,” she said.

But what she meant was: There is no going back.

As the road curved toward Easterwich, Vane reached into his case and withdrew a blank sheet of paper. The same sheet that had set everything in motion.

“Mabel asked that you receive this,” he said, handing it to her.

Joyce unfolded it. In the pale light spilling through the window, the paper seemed to glisten. Then new words rose in perfect copperplate.

We are so pleased to see your return.
All will be revealed tomorrow.
My kindest regards
Mabel

“Return,” she said aloud.

She had never been to Easterwich.

Vane turned his gaze to the passing landscape. A faint, almost private smile touched his mouth. The downs rolled toward the sea, patient and unchanged.

* * *

The car slowed as it entered the town, and Joyce felt the first tremor of recognition before she could name it. The rooftops rising beyond the hedgerows unsettled her, not because they were strange, but because they were not. The angle of a chimney stack, the curve of a lane, the pale chalk dusting a low wall, each detail stirred something that had visited her in sleep more times than she cared to admit.

She had seen this place before.

Not in waking life.

In dreams.

They passed into the square and the sensation deepened. The familiarity pressed against her with such force that she felt momentarily unsteady, as though memory and present reality were attempting to occupy the same space. She gripped the edge of the seat.

Vane, without comment, reached into his pocket and produced a small barley sugar sweet.

“Take it,” he said quietly.

She glanced at him, startled less by the gesture than by the timing of it. He had expected this. She unwrapped the sweet and placed it on her tongue. The slow, steady sweetness grounded her, something ordinary and known in the midst of what felt anything but.

The dizziness eased, though the underlying recognition remained.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Barley sugar,” he replied. “An old remedy. It steadies the mind when memory presses too hard.”

She did not question how he had phrased that.

As the sweetness dissolved, she became aware of something else.

The streets were empty.

Not abandoned, not neglected, but curiously still.

“Where is everyone?”

“At work,” Vane answered. “Or resting. Our duties are not always visible, and they are rarely light.”

They turned into a narrower street, and her breath caught in her throat.

She knew this road.

Not vaguely. Not imaginatively.

Knew it.

She had walked it in her dreams, again and again. The way the pavement dipped near the third house. The crack in the brickwork near the corner. The blue door halfway down, paint slightly weathered at the edges.

The car stopped before it.

For a long moment she could not move. It stood exactly as it had in sleep, neither larger nor smaller than she had imagined. The sight of it stirred something so deep that it felt less like emotion and more like recognition at a cellular level.

Vane stepped out first and opened her door.

“Home,” he said, without flourish.

The word did not jar her.

It settled.

She stepped onto the pavement. The air carried salt and chalk. Without conscious thought, she crossed to the flower pot beside the door and bent down.

Her hand moved with the confidence of habit.

When her fingers found the key beneath the pot, she did not start. She only stared at it, turning it slowly in her hand.

“How did I know?” she asked, more to herself than to him.

Vane regarded her steadily.

“Why would you not?”

He did not say more.

He did not need to.