The Lyme Regis Murder: A Dorset Crime Novella by Rachel McLean, book 9.5 in the Dorset Crime series - Chapter 1

Jim Wollason shivered as he climbed out of his van, parked next to the lifeguard building at the entrance to Lyme Regis’s famous Cobb. It was six am, only days until Christmas, and it was bloody freezing.

Pulling the van’s back door open, he grabbed his coat; the warm one his daughter had given him last Christmas. He’d had the same old waterproof for years and had protested when she told him it wasn’t enough, but he was damn glad of this one.

He zipped the coat up and made his way onto the Cobb. As he passed the door to the lifeguard station, it opened.

“Alright, Jim.” It was Eddie, the station manager.

“Morning, Eddie. How’s business?”

Eddie wrinkled his nose. “Quiet, so far. I don’t like the look of that storm brewing out to sea, though.”

“Brewing?” Surely the storm was already here.

Eddie chuckled. “This isn’t a storm, mate. This is the kind of weather where I can make myself a cuppa safe in the knowledge I’ll get to finish it. You wait.”

Jim shrugged. “OK. Let us know if it’s too dangerous to operate the machinery, yeah?”

“You’ll know that on your own.”

Jim gave Eddie a nod and headed along the Cobb, taking the lower route. Only tourists and idiots – often the same thing – took the top route, especially in winter. The stones up there slanted precariously to one side and were often slippery. Perfect conditions for falling off, and half of what kept Eddie and his lads busy.

Jim’s supervisor, Geeta, was already there, crouched by the equipment, switching on the lights that made it possible for them to work this early. He knew some of the locals didn’t appreciate bright lighting along the Cobb, but he also knew those same locals grumbled if they carried on working past mid-afternoon. So they started early, when the place was quiet. They were dredging the harbour, levelling its base so that the currents would behave more predictably once the spring tides came.

It was boring work, but it was paying for the holiday he had planned to Majorca with Brenda in May. He’d perused the brochure for the hundredth time before coming out; it was what kept him going on cold, dark mornings like this.

“Right,” said Geeta. “We’re moving to the area immediately by the harbour wall today. Hopefully the shelter means we won’t have to knock off at lunchtime.”

He grunted and climbed inside the cab of his machine. Legs protruded from each side, and it stood a little way back from the edge. Both he and Geeta knew how dangerous these things could be, and he was pleased to see she’d done all the safety checks before he’d arrived.

She was alright, Geeta. Didn’t throw her weight around, like some supervisors he’d had. He’d been wary of working for a woman on a site like this, and a… well, an outsider, too. But she was better than most of the blokes he’d worked with.

He ran through the safety checklist, casting his eyes over buttons and lights, before cranking the machine’s arm over the water. This was the risky bit; he’d known guys who hadn’t set up properly, or who’d sited their gear on a slope, and ended up in the water. It was why he wasn’t required to wear a seatbelt. If this thing toppled, he needed to be able to get out, and fast.

Slowly, glad to see that Geeta was watching from a safe distance, he let the arm swing out over the harbour. The tide was going out and the water level receding. That would make things easier for them. Dredging at high tide was a mucky business.

The digger hit the silt at the bottom of the harbour and began to move, picking up muck and debris as it went. His job was to shift it, pull it up, and dump it into the vast skip situated on the harbour wall.

He pulled at the lever and the machine’s arm came up, dripping, seaweed hanging from it as always.

“Stop!”

He stopped the arm’s movement, gently; he wasn’t about to panic. He was wearing a hard hat and woolly beanie beneath, and Geeta’s voice was muffled, but the urgency in it was unmistakable.

He waited. He knew better than to shift his weight or make the rig move any more than it needed to.

“What’s up?”

She rounded the front of the machine so he could see her. “You’ve pulled something up.”

He resisted a laugh. “Of course I’ve bloody pulled something up. That’s my job.”

She shook her head. Her face was pale. “Not silt, Jim. Something else.”

He frowned. What the hell? “What?”

She pulled off her hard hat and scratched her head. She looked past him, towards the arm of the dredger. “I’m not… look.” She frowned. “Bring it over onto the harbour wall. Drop it onto the ground.”

“Not in the skip?”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be… I’m not sure…” She put her hard hat back on, her movements jerky. “Just put it on the ground, yeah? Then secure the rig and get down. I need a second pair of eyes on this.”

He shrugged and did as he was told. Geeta was being weird, but he trusted her. He secured the machine and climbed down from it.

She was standing next to the pile of debris he’d brought up.

“I was right,” she said, pointing.

He followed her fingertip. “No.”

“Yes,” she said.

He took a step forward. Sticking out from the pile of silt and seaweed was something that looked very much like a leg.

“Shit,” he said. “Has anyone gone off here recently?” He looked back towards the coast guard. “Is he… she… could they be alive?”

Geeta shook her head. “I saw more of it when you were bringing it in, Jim.” She swallowed. Her face had gone a weird colour, and he knew it wasn’t just because of the artificial lighting.

She looked at him.

“You’ve just pulled up a dead body, mate.”