Strange Tide (48 page)

‘Could somebody please tell me what is going on?' Land demanded.

‘It's simple,
mon petit beauf
,' said Bryant, munching. ‘The banker met Lynsey Dalladay at the Cossack Club and paid her one point eight million euros through a private Swiss account for services supposedly rendered, which she used to buy real estate for Ali Bensaud's wellbeing centre.'

‘What did he get out of it?'

‘He was shifting dodgy money into UK property and did a runner when he got wind that we were on to him, but I think there's more to it than that. While he was out on bail, it looks like he attempted to murder two of our staff when they turned up at his place of work.'

Land gave a low whistle. ‘Dalladay must have been something special to get paid that much.'

‘Draycott couldn't have gone there with the specific intention of killing our staff,' said Bryant, ignoring Land's lascivious thoughts about what a high-priced call girl might get up to. ‘He'd just been released from police custody. What was he doing in the boatyard?'

‘He was repainting one of the vessels,' said Longbright.

‘Ah yes – that makes sense,' said Bryant.

Land looked first at his detective sergeant, then at his most senior detective. ‘That
makes sense
? Is there something you know that I don't?'

‘You mean apart from everything?' Bryant thought for a moment. ‘I know that John had nothing to do with the death of Marion North. And I think I know how to bring this chain of tragedies to an end.'

By the time the fire control officers stationed at Deptford had managed to douse the Athena boatyard, there wasn't much left of the shed or its contents. May arrived just as the engines were packing up. As he slipped under the plastic ties of the cordon, Senior Fire Officer Blaize Carter came out of the security guard's hut carrying boxes and bin bags. She looked even more athletic and magnificent than he'd remembered her, despite her hi-vis yellow jacket and the baseball cap that hid her kinked auburn hair.

‘What are you doing here?' asked May. ‘This isn't your manor.'

‘Nice to see you too, John,' said Carter. ‘You didn't just come down to see me, did you?'

‘As a matter of fact, I did.'

‘Your Mr Bryant is giving me the run-around.' She indicated one of the bin bags. ‘Boat registration records. He wants these so you might as well take them to him.'

‘How does he know what he needs without coming here? It's like he's watching us all from somewhere above, moving pieces around.'

‘You're asking
me
how he operates? What do you think happened?'

May accepted the bag from her. ‘Looks like we interrupted an arson attack.'

She nodded back at the smoking shed. ‘It wasn't very well planned. Draycott left a nice clear trail of petrol drips all the way from the garage to a stack of combustibles he'd piled up just inside the doors. And if he was looking to burn the contents of that bag he hadn't done his homework. They were stored in the security office safe.'

‘Where is he now?'

‘The EMT took him to the Docklands Medical Centre suffering from a nice bit of police brutality. Well done, your team. You'll have to wait until his sedation wears off.'

‘So you had the combination for the safe in there?' asked May.

‘Not exactly.' Carter pointed back to one of her fellow officers, who was dragging the largest sledgehammer he had ever seen. ‘Wanton destruction of private property. It's why I joined up.' She headed past him and shoved the rest of the boxes and bags into the fire tender's secure area. ‘I hear your partner made some kind of miraculous recovery.'

‘Yes, he'd been accidentally poisoning himself.'

‘You lot don't do anything by halves, do you?'

May squinted at her through the pattering rain. ‘We have a reputation to live down to.'

‘If he's better I guess you won't need to look after him so much any more.' She stuck the tip of her tongue between her teeth, teasing him.

‘It doesn't look that way, no,' he said. And then: ‘So, what I said before . . .'

‘. . . about always having to put your work first, you mean?'

‘Yes, that part. I may have been mistaken. I've been thinking.'

She stood up and studied him. ‘Oh? And what did you decide?' She was waiting for him to say it. He tried to think of an intelligent answer, but the words dried in his mouth.

‘Well? Cat got your tongue? I guess finding yourself on a murder charge makes you stop and think. You have a lot to learn.'

‘Then teach me,' he said. ‘What time do your men disappear?'

‘When my shift ends. We can go to that disgusting Italian restaurant in King's Cross.' Every police officer and firefighter in the area knew La Veneziana. It had a resident crooner called Gary Garibaldi who smoked while he sang and fiddled with his flies whenever the waitresses passed by. Bryant had once found a dog-end in his
calzone
.

‘Why would you want to go there?' he asked.

She shrugged as she turned to leave. ‘It was where you turned me down, Mr May. I'm going to make you eat your words.' She climbed up into the fire tender.

What a woman
, he thought, watching her go. Then:
What have I done?

As he walked back to his BMW he saw someone leaning on the bonnet, hidden beneath an enormous black umbrella. It tilted back, cascading water, to reveal a familiar wrinkled face.

Arthur Bryant gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘Did you learn nothing from your incriminating embrace with Marion North?' he asked. ‘Do the fairer sex blind you so much that all common sense simply flies out of the window?'

‘Everybody has a weak spot,' said May, his cheeks colouring. ‘I suppose women are mine.'

‘I hate to interrupt your amorous dalliances with anything as sordid as work, but I thought I'd better come here in person. I need those registration documents. There's still one key factor missing. I'll tell you about it if you like.' He raised a finger and pointed at May. ‘We
are
a team, after all.'

‘What can I do?' asked May. ‘I'm not even supposed to be outside my apartment.' He handed over the black plastic bin bag and unlocked the car. ‘I guess you're in charge now. Find what you're looking for while I drive.'

Bryant slid on to the back seat and tore open the plastic bag, rapidly sifting through the files. ‘I made a fundamental mistake,' he explained. ‘I assumed the killer was intelligent. I should have realized earlier what was going on.' He checked the immobile hands of his watch. ‘We need to get going. There's a life in danger. We still have time to save him.'

‘Who?' asked May.

‘Why, Freddie Cooper, obviously.'

‘Sometimes I wish I could see the world through your eyes.'

‘You wouldn't want to with my vision, trust me. There's no answer from Cooper's mobile or his house phone.'

May put his key in the ignition. ‘Where do you want me to go?'

‘I think he's going to be drowned, so you'd better head for the river.'

‘Would you like me to aim for any particular section?' May asked. ‘As you keep reminding me, it
is
a couple of hundred miles long.'

‘Just put your foot down,' said Bryant. ‘I'll figure something out on the way.'

Raymond Land looked at the stack of coffee cups on his desk and realized he'd drunk enough caffeine to power him up the side of Snowdon. There was no answer from John May's apartment and obviously Bryant wasn't picking up. He was sure that they had illegally joined forces once more and were out there putting the entire unit at risk. Even if they managed to close the case, John would at the very least be in violation of his house arrest.

To make matters worse, Barbara Biddle knocked and entered without waiting for a response. ‘I don't know where to begin,' she said, pulling off her Alice band and shaking her head at the pages in her fist. ‘Everything is wrong here, every single thing, from evidence contamination and witness-statement policies down to health-and-safety infringements. Each of these points, taken individually, would be enough to close you down for the next thousand years. How am I supposed to identify a problem when the entire operating procedure of the unit is contradictory and downright dangerous? Every aspect of the unit's working structure is anomalous.'

Raymond thought hard but couldn't remember what ‘anomalous' meant. He suspected it wasn't something good.

Barbara threw the paperwork down in disgust. ‘So now I have a problem. In my job it's helpful to uncover one or two specific causes for concern and recommend a way of removing them. So what am I to do when none of it works? I can't simply recommend shutting the entire unit down. That's not within my power, and besides, the PCU still seems to have a few key political allies. But I have to do my job. You see my dilemma?'

‘No. Yes. Yes,' said Land nervously. He felt as if his shirt collar was strangling him.

‘If you hadn't allowed your detectives to run roughshod over you creating their own climate of chaos, things wouldn't be as they are now. I've identified the source of the problem. It's you.'

Land swallowed. This was the worst of all possible outcomes. If Biddle blamed the unit's catastrophic procedural misdemeanours on him, he would be booted out without a pay-off, and if he simply agreed to fall on his sword he would still get nothing. Dreams of a retirement bungalow on the Isle of Wight suddenly evaporated.

‘I feel for you, I really do,' Biddle continued, softening a little. ‘I don't want to be seen as a walking hatchet, chopping away at the roots of venerable institutions. I'm human, I have feelings. There's more to me than this uniform.'

Land tried for the image and failed. The thought of there being a woman behind all that make-up had honestly not occurred to him.

Barbara set her pages down on his desk and took a step closer. ‘I'm prepared to make allowances. I know you've been under a lot of pressure, what with the divorce. I don't listen to gossip but it's been hard to ignore what the others have been saying.'

What
have
they been saying?
Land wondered.

‘You can imagine how much harder it is for me. I know what they say about me behind my back. “She's a cold bitch.” “She enjoys destroying people's lives.” “She should never have been acquitted.” We're supposed to remain impartial but it's impossible not to form opinions. And right now, you could do with an ally.'

‘What do I have to do?' Land all but squeaked.

‘You'll have to think of something,' said Barbara, flicking the end of his tie. ‘Let me know what you come up with.'

‘They're heading for the Thames,' said Dan, tracking Bryant's second GPS. ‘Why are they going it alone?'

‘Mr Bryant's protecting us,' said Colin. ‘If he's wrong, he'll take the blame.'

‘Then we have to back him up,' said Dan, ‘particularly after the way everyone has treated him lately. We should have had more faith in him. Go and get the others.'

Colin collected the rest of the team with the exception of Raymond Land, who he felt would be neither use nor ornament. Leaving instructions with the two Daves to keep an eye on the phones (something they had come to enjoy doing), they took off in pursuit.

‘The Thames was considered a place beyond laws, a free zone of water gypsies and smuggling bargemen,' said Bryant as his partner drove. ‘Water moves constantly, so it's a symbol of liberty.'

‘As usual I'm missing your point,' said May, attempting to squeeze between buses.

‘The point is that we checked the riverbanks and foreshores, the barges and moorings, before thinking of the river itself, and then we went for the few small craft that passed on the Thames that Sunday night,' said Bryant, ‘but we didn't go to the most obvious place where a criminal might be hiding, and you know why? Because they use boats which are so ubiquitous that we never even notice them.'

‘What are you talking about?' asked May. ‘We thought of everything.'

‘No we didn't. The Marine Policing Unit is based out of a station on Wapping High Street and has twenty-two vessels at its disposal at any time of the day or night, plus they can call on the services of the RNLI. The building is close to the first murder site, but set back from the shoreline. They're the only small craft allowed to move near areas of sensitivity after dark.'

‘I could see their launches moored at one of the reaches near Dalladay's body,' said May, ‘but the MPU can't be implicated in this. They've a reputation for being incorruptible.'

‘Who says they were in on it? Who else has access to the boats?'

‘Oh – got it.'

‘Precisely. The engineers and mechanics. MPU Wapping doesn't have them on staff because they use registered shift-workers.'