Black Ice (48 page)

Billy Fraser parked his battered old Escort van beneath one of the railway arches to the south of Tooley Street and took his bag out of the back. He slung it over his shoulder and made his way across the busy street to the network of cobbled alleyways running through the old wharves and warehouses of St Saviour's Dock.

He kept close to the dripping walls, his head down, his sharp features obscured by the soiled tweed cap he habitually wore.

Anyone observing him might imagine he was a fisherman perhaps, with his rod bag slung over his shoulder. In his worn green oilskins he certainly looked the part.

But Billy Fraser wasn't a fisherman … he'd never cast a rod in his life. He was actually a mudlarker, one of the many dozens of Londoners who scoured the low-tide mudbanks of the Thames in the search for old coins, discarded trinkets or anything else which could be sold.

Most were part-timers—weekend treasure hunters dreaming of the big haul. Billy treated them with contempt. Not many of them lasted more than a few weeks, digging up a few hundred bottletops was enough to see them off. But Billy was different—one of the diehards, out there at every low tide almost every day.

In the bag was the tool of his trade: a state-of-the-art metal detector powerful enough to pinpoint a button-sized sliver of Roman silver—a denarius perhaps—even if it was two feet under the mud.

He'd had his successes, had Billy, all of them in the East End. In his early days he'd occasionally tried the western reaches of the river—Hammersmith, Putney and beyond—but the regulars up there hadn't looked kindly on an interloper from Bermondsey, and in the end he'd stuck to the pitches from Tower Bridge to Greenwich.

It was dirty work; Thames mud stinks of rotting fish in the summer and in winter it freezes your feet to blocks of ice. There were hazards—the rusting needle of a drug addict's syringe had once slid easily into the sole of Billy's rubber boot, missing his flesh by a whisker. There were knives hidden in the glutinous slime, sharp fragments of broken glass waiting to slice into an unwary hand.

The worst thing was the bargekeepers' dogs; bull mastiffs and sometimes Rottweilers roamed around the exposed shorelines every time their floating homes were grounded. Billy had lost track of the number of times he'd had to fend off dog attacks, beating back flashing teeth with the blunt end of his metal detector.

The river could turn on you too. Billy had friends who had been so engrossed in digging up a find that they'd neglected to watch the incoming tide. The Thames moves fast, its churning, silt-laden waters coursing faster than a man can run. Leave it a few minutes too long and you could find yourself cut off by a fast-rising channel, unable to reach the steps or ladder which lead to the safety of the embankment. Billy had had a few close shaves himself.

Mudlarking was not a pastime for the faint of heart, but, as Billy had found to his gain, there were compensations for the many thousands of hours spent in fruitless toil.

The Tudor sword was a good one. 1978, that find had been, Billy's first ‘big one', as he called it. Four hundred and eighteen pounds from a military museum in Lambeth. Not bad.

Roman coins? By the bucketful. Billy sometimes wondered if all the Romans did all day was stand on the banks of the Thames throwing their denarii in for luck. He must have made a good two or three thousand out of them in his time.

Then there were the oddities. A cash box containing a loaded revolver, the keys to a Bentley, a silver picture frame holding a photograph of a young girl, an artificial arm, sucked down into the mud.

Oh, the river had secrets all right; that was part of the charm. Billy really didn't know what curiosities it was going to throw up from one day to the next.

That was what had kept him mudlarking for more than twenty-five years.

Today his plan was to sweep the muddy banks at the river end of St Saviour's Wharf. The slime was a good foot deep there, but he had his thigh-high waders on, and the pickings could be rich. Only the most dedicated mudlarkers chose these more difficult spots, and for that reason Billy was sure there would be something waiting for him.

The day was overcast, dull and cold. Billy checked his watch: six fifteen a.m. He clambered as quietly as he could down an access ladder on the side of the dock, his sharp eyes glancing to and fro for any early risers who might be watching him. It wasn't exactly illegal to roam on these mudflats, but it wasn't exactly legal either. The river police routinely turfed mudlarkers off the flats, and he'd been arrested once or twice.

He picked his way past a few lumbering steel barges, their hulls streaked with rust. There was a dredger tilted on its side, the muffled sound of an angry dog barking from within.

He was just thinking about switching his metal detector on when he saw it, the shape lying amongst a few rusting pieces of debris by some rotten old pilings.

At first he thought it was a dead seal; he knew they sometimes swam into the river by mistake, only to die from starvation and the effects of the toxic soup which surrounded them.

Billy looked around him once more, craning his neck to see if anyone was watching him from the top of the barges. But there was no one. The dog had stopped barking; the only sound now was the throaty chug-chug of a tug in the middle of the river.

As he got closer to the shape, he realised with a sudden shock that it was a human body. Billy knew mudlarkers who had found corpses before, but this was the first time such a thing had happened to him.

The smell was strong, the rich odour of decomposition mixing with the silty aroma of the flats. It was a man, middle-aged or perhaps older, bearded. The upper torso was half naked where the victim's shirt had ridden up, exposing a back which was strong and broad. One foot was bare; the other wore a dark blue sock. His trousers were black, the belt still in place.

Billy's first thought was of foul play; perhaps this was a victim of some gangland vendetta? He wedged his boot beneath the corpse's chin and rolled the head sideways, half expecting to see a bullet hole through the forehead, or a severed windpipe. But the face was intact, with no sign of trauma. A suicide, Billy decided, or a drunk who had had one too many and decided to try and swim the river in the dead of night to impress his friends.

Billy knew what to do. He bent down and slipped a hand into one of the trouser pockets, grunting with a tut of disappointment when he found it empty. He rolled the body slightly to one side to search the other pocket. Again nothing. Billy cursed his luck. The least he could have expected was a slender leather wallet, a few notes, soggy but retrievable, inside.

A sudden movement caught his eye: a City worker pedalling his mountain bike along the embankment above him. Billy kept still, and the cyclist passed on, not noticing him where he crouched among the wooden piles.

Time to go. The last thing Billy wanted now was the river police dragging him in for a statement. He'd move on to another pitch; perhaps Tobacco Wharf would be a good choice.

Then he noticed the hand, the way it was clenched so tightly. That was odd; it looked like there might be something inside. Whistling lightly beneath his breath, Billy tried to prise open the corpse's fingers, grunting with frustration as he found them locked into a fist by rigor mortis.

On an impulse he switched his metal detector on, sweeping it over the hand in a quick pass.

The bleep was unmistakable; there
was
something metal inside that hand. Billy bent once more, his fingers sliding under the clenched fingers of the drowned man, prising harder and harder until they finally gave with a brittle cracking sound.

The glint of gold. Billy's heart skipped a few beats, then he took the medal into his hands, feeling by the weight that this was the real thing. He wiped the cloying mud from the surface, squinting to read the inscription etched elegantly into the precious metal:

THE POLAR MEDAL.

PRESENTED TO JULIAN FITZGERALD

BY HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II.

Billy felt the weight once more, trying to estimate its value. It had to be a good few ounces, even on the quiet it would be worth a pretty penny.

He wouldn't waste any time. The gold markets of Hatton Garden were only a fifteen-minute walk across Tower Bridge. Billy knew plenty of jewellers there who would buy with no questions asked. He'd take some breakfast in a transport café he knew just off Chancery Lane and wait for them to open at nine.

The gold would be melted down within minutes, and Billy would be a few hundred pounds richer.

He pocketed the medal and moved away quickly, his boots making small sucking noises as he lifted them from the mud. At the ladder he looked back one more time at the body, lying so pathetically amid the styrofoam burger cartons and other waste.

The tide was already lapping at the man's heels. Billy knew that sometimes bodies were swept right out into the North Sea and never seen again.

He climbed out onto the embankment where the early commuters were now beginning to emerge. He slipped off his waders and placed them with the metal detector in his bag. Soon he was just another anonymous figure amid the bustling crowds crossing Tower Bridge.

A good morning's work, Billy reckoned; one of the more interesting he could recall.

As for the drowned man, well, Billy had already forgotten the name.

Also by Matt Dickinson

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Outstanding reviews for Matt Dickinson's

BLACK ICE

“A really taut thriller full of suspense and genuinely exciting.”

—
Publishing News
(U.K.)

“A ripping good adventure yarn with a thoroughly admirable heroine, a suitably black-hearted villain, and such vivid descriptions of the sheer agony and awfulness of Antarctica that you'll be reaching for the central heating switch as you read.”

—
Irish Independent

“Matt Dickinson writes a taut thriller set in the icy wastes in such a way that you have to keep reading. Reaching the end will leave you impatient for his next book.”

—
Yorkshire Gazette & Herald
(U.K.)

“Exciting and fascinating reading.”

—
Daily Mail
(U.K.)

 

The critics also love Matt Dickinson's
THE OTHER SIDE OF EVEREST

“Dickinson has an eye for meaningful detail and storytelling talent—a rollicking, insightful, and harrowing ride.”

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The New York Times Review of Books

“Gripping—the action more than lives up to its promise. Dickinson takes the reader through the steps of his climb with humor, wisdom, and a minimum of bravado—a thought-provoking exploration of nature and man's will to master it.”

—
Los Angeles Daily News

“Dickinson brings the fresh perspective and wide eyes of the novice to mountaineering's most enduring saga—the result is an absorbing narrative that vividly portrays, step by agonizing step, his slow climb to the summit.”

—
Mercator's World

“Although Dickinson's work follows in the tracks of Jon Krakauer's
Into Thin Air
and Anatoli Boukreev's
The Climb
, it is anything but a ‘me too' book about climbing Mt. Everest during the spring of 1996… Dickinson has his own story to tell, and he tells it very well … [His] descriptions of climbing are careful and informative, taking nothing for granted. His forceful narrative makes a worthy addition to the growing Everest library.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Dickinson's book reads like a thriller, pacy and exciting, giving a good flavor of the sublime misery of climbing at extreme altitude. It is a real page-turner … fresh and vivid.”

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The Guardian
(U.K.)

“Gripping.”

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The Sunday Times
(London)

“[His] excitement at being there is infectious.”

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The Times Literary Supplement

“This is a gripping account of filming—and surviving—in the death zone.”

—
The Mail on Sunday
(London)

First published in Great Britain by Hutchinson an imprint of the Random House Group Limited

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

BLACK ICE

Copyright © 2002 by Matt Dickinson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003052602

ISBN: 0-312-98932-6

EAN: 9780312-98932-3

St. Martin's Press hardcover edition / December 2003

St. Martin's Paperbacks edition / October 2006

St. Martin's Paperbacks are published by St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

eISBN 9781466862760

First eBook edition: December 2013