Strange Tide (34 page)

At midnight, under a railway arch at Finsbury Park Station, one of the few that had been too angular and ugly to be sold off to developers and stuffed with minuscule luxury apartments, a strange turnip-shaped woman, ragged and filthy, uncoiled herself from an upturned blue Nissan and lowered her boots into a puddle in order to note its increased depth. Delighted by the result she dabbled her feet in the water like a duck, then hammered them up and down, splashing and thrashing with laughter.

‘It's coming, Arthur,' she roared into the rain. ‘I warned you about the powers of death and rebirth before, but you wouldn't listen. Last time it was fire, this time it's water. London is at the mercy of the four elementables. The sea levels are rising. The lions are drowning! The river must give up its dead. You proved yourself once – it won't be so easy to do it again. You should never have married me and got me stagnant with your child. We'll be together again soon, just you wait and see!'

A pair of passing constables stopped to watch her for a minute, rolled their eyes at each other and kept moving.

As Esmeralda the tramp released another peal of shrieks the rain suddenly made itself visible, pounding on the chassis of the wrecked car. The sound of laughter and thunder was lost beneath the rumbling of the passing trains.

The boys hadn't exactly stolen the bright orange dinghy, but nor had they got permission to use it.

Mitesh's brother had left it in his shed when he went off to Afghanistan, and when he came back he had lost his old enthusiasms. Once he would race to the coast to take the dinghy out, but now he stayed indoors playing video games and hardly spoke to anyone, so Mitesh and Bhavin had quietly removed it along with the pump and headed for the Thames without telling their mother. They went to the first set of steps beyond Tower Beach because the water was higher than they'd ever seen it, and they thought it would be easier to get into the river from there.

They hadn't given much thought to getting out again.

Bhavin was twelve. Mitesh was eleven.

Right from the first, Bhavin knew they were in trouble. The current snatched at their oars, the paddles of which were made from thin plastic and bent alarmingly. When they entered the water the tide had been on the turn. Now it started to draw them out. The dinghy had no steering other than its oars, and proved too skittish to control. It now seemed likely that they would be pulled into the main deep-water channel.

‘This was a dumb idea,' Bhavin said. ‘Look at all the rubbish that was floating against the wall – it's getting sucked out.'

Mitesh tried to see what was ahead, but away from the lights of the embankment it was much darker than he'd expected. The water smelled of dead plants and something earthier, like graveyard soil and mould. ‘It stinks down here,' he complained.

‘That's 'cause the other rivers are emptying in – see them pipes along the embankment? Water and dirt, man, 'cause of all the rain. We don't want to get sucked in under one of those.'

‘I wanted to go under Tower Bridge,' said Mitesh. ‘These oars are crap.' They weren't unduly scared because they had no real idea of the danger they were in. The orange dinghy was caught in an eddy and swung around like a fairground car. It lurched so violently that for a moment Bhavin thought they were going to overturn.

‘We can't go to Tower Bridge,' he said. ‘The river widens after that – we'll never get back.' He knew it might already be too late. The ominous tide was now dragging them in that direction, and the great plain of water that lay just ahead was starting to look dark and frightening.

Neither boy was prepared to give in. To do so would be to lose face, so they joked and made light of it while pushing the flimsy oars ever deeper. Bhavin looked past Mitesh's shoulder and grew afraid; something immense and black was coming towards them, and the little dinghy had no lights.

The barge was low in the water and approaching at speed. For a moment it seemed as if it would plough right over them. There was no way out of its path. Then it had slid past and the wash propelled them back towards the shore wall. The stairs were suddenly ahead, partly submerged beneath the dinghy. Bhavin tried to grab at a stone outcrop as they passed, but leaning out brought him down so low that he brushed the icy water. The face that surfaced beneath him was white as china, its eyes staring wide, its black mouth open in a silent scream.

It was not an arrest as such, more of an accompaniment, but it was required by law for any serious crimes suspect. It occurred just after dawn on Thursday morning in the narrow empty street of Shad Thames. The officers were young and from the Met, and were embarrassingly apologetic. After all, the man they had come to collect had far more experience than either of them, but thankfully he had the good grace to allow them to go through the process without interrupting.

Colin Bimsley, who monitored police calls while he was on the running machine at his gym, was the first to pick it up. He was so surprised that in straining to listen he stood still for a moment and shot off the end of the moving belt.

Word spread fast and messages flew back and forth. Some offered help, but there was plenty of
Schadenfreude
mixed in with them. Raymond Land turned up at the PCU without his tie, a sure sign that he had been told the news and had rushed to get there. By the time the rest of the team arrived even the two Daves had somehow discerned what was going on, in the way that electricians, decorators and plumbers always manage to, and were interjecting with helpful ideas as they trailed more cables across the floor.

‘I had a cousin in the force,' said the swarthier and more luxuriously moustachioed of the Daves. ‘He got banged up on a charge of receiving stolen goods. He explained how he couldn't have done it 'cause he was in Eyebeefa at the time, but they still prosecuted him.'

‘Miscarriage of justice, innit,' said his mate.

‘Miscarriage, exactly. It would have been all right but he got done for armed robbery in Eyebeefa and tried to say he was in London, which didn't really work out.'

‘Couldn't they have just checked his passport?' said the other Dave.

‘Yeah, there's that as well.'

‘Get on with your work before I electrocute you,' said Land, standing by the wall switch. He turned to Longbright. ‘Where is he now?'

‘In the interview room,' said Janice. ‘I can't do this. You'll have to do it.'

‘Let me go,' said Fraternity. ‘I can be just a messenger. It'll be easier.'

Land wavered. ‘I should be there.'

‘Sod it,' said Janice, ‘we'll all go.'

So they trooped up to the new temporary interview room, which was still being used as a cupboard for stationery supplies and cleaning equipment, and then crowded at the door while Raymond Land went in.

‘Hello, John,' said Land, clambering over a mop and bucket. There was no room for a desk and only two orange bendy chairs, so he and May had to sit with their knees touching. ‘I'm really sorry about this.'

‘You're only doing your job,' said May. ‘It's weird, though. I've never been arrested before. You do realize it's a mistake.'

‘Yes, of course,' Land agreed, ‘but I have to suspend you pending a full investigation. I can't change the rules.'

May looked up at the dim bare bulb hanging down from the ceiling. ‘This isn't going to work as an interview room, even temporarily.'

‘I know, but we can't move downstairs until we've figured out what to do with that sarcophagus-thing in the basement.' Land felt he should obey the formalities. He glanced down nervously at his notes. ‘How much did the Met boys tell you?'

‘Just the bare bones,' said May, filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. ‘That a woman's body has been found and that I'm officially a suspect.'

‘Let me see if I can shed a little light on this.' Land squinted at the page. ‘I can't see my own handwriting.'

‘Her name is North,' Longbright said, sticking her head around the narrow doorway.

‘That's right, Cassandra North,' said Land. ‘Her body was discovered a little after eleven p.m.—'

‘No, not Cassandra – Marion North,' said Longbright. ‘She's Cassandra North's mother.'

‘Er, that's right,' said Land, tipping his single page beneath the bare bulb. ‘She was in the river. A couple of kids had taken a dinghy out because of the high tide and found her floating near the stairs at Tower Beach a little after one a.m.'

‘Marion North,' May repeated, stunned. ‘It can't be.'

‘The kids were out by themselves on the river,' said Longbright. ‘They got a bollocking from their parents, but finding a dead body will probably give them credibility at school. North's been taken to St Pancras. Giles is already on it. First indications are that she was strangled and dumped a short while before the kids arrived, just before midnight.'

‘That's just a few minutes after I saw her,' said May, his heart sinking. ‘My God.'

‘You mean – you did actually meet up with her?'

‘She needed to see me.'

‘Do you want to start at the beginning?' Land untangled himself from the chair. ‘Can we go to my office? The smell of disinfectant is doing my head in.'

May followed the others in a daze. The thought immediately entered his head that he was somehow responsible. What could have happened?

They reconvened in Land's room and now everyone attended, with the result that the two Daves had to man the phones again.

‘I first met her seven or eight years ago,' May began. ‘Maggie Armitage introduced us. Her husband had walked out on her and she was very bitter about it. She seemed smart and had a good head for business. I went out with her a couple of times.'

‘I don't remember you saying anything,' said Longbright. ‘Do you remember the exact date?'

‘No, but I can probably work it out. I don't think I mentioned it to anyone at the time.'

‘Why not?'

‘I suppose I knew it wasn't going to work out between us. We were completely incompatible. She loved parties and hung out with a bunch of social climbers. I didn't like her friends and she couldn't bring herself to tell anyone what I did for a living, so I stopped calling. She was pretty upset. I hadn't really noticed that she was keener than me. I felt bad about it but we weren't suited for each other, and I didn't want it to get serious.'

‘So how did you get in touch again?' asked Longbright.

‘After Arthur visited Angela Curtis's daughter yesterday, Marion contacted me through Twitter. She remembered I was at the unit, and said she needed to talk to me about something.'

‘Wait, back up – Angela Curtis, who's she?' As usual, Land had been kept in the dark about Bryant's side trips.

‘She drowned herself in the Thames,' May explained. ‘Arthur came across a report of her death in his Dead Diary. He's started keeping track of anything that happens around the river and discovered she'd been enrolled in Life Options courses that Lynsey Dalladay had been attending. Curtis's daughter knows Marion North because she runs courses at the centre.'

‘Hang on, you mean this daughter phoned your – friend – and told her she'd been visited by Bryant?'

‘Yes. Marion North said she'd also had a visit, and called me.'

‘Then what?'

‘We were all working late here last night. Marion said she was going to be in the West End later so I agreed to meet her when I finished. I went home to change first.'

‘Why did you need to change?'

May gave his boss an old-fashioned look.

‘Please tell me you weren't thinking about sex at a time like this?'

‘No, Raymond, I had been to see Giles earlier in the day, I smelled of his damned chemicals and wanted to change my shirt, OK?'

‘What did she tell you on the phone?' Land asked.

‘She said she was worried about her daughter Cassie. She needed my advice, but given that we were suddenly getting close to her on a professional basis she wanted to keep our meeting confidential. She was always very concerned about appearances.'

‘What on earth did you think you were doing, talking to someone involved in an investigation, even tangentially?' asked Land.

‘I felt I owed it to her,' said May sheepishly.

‘Had you ever met her daughter?'

‘No, at the time I met Marion the girl was mostly living with her father.'

‘So you met up with her – what time was this?'

‘We said eleven p.m., but she was a bit late. She'd been to a networking supper and it overran. She was at the Holborn Dining Room so I suggested meeting down by Temple Gardens, near the tube station, because we wouldn't be seen there. Only I forgot that Temple is almost impossible to reach from Holborn tube, so she had to get a cab.'

‘She turned up, and then what happened?'