Beyond the Blood Streams

by Ben Oakley

  “How long have the roadworks been there?” I kept my voice down so others close by couldn't hear.

  “Okay,” she said hesitantly, “dunno, bout two weeks?”

  “Anything out the ordinary?”

  She frowned a little and I watched as her eyes moved all over the place, accessing every part of her brain and memory.

  “Like what exactly?” she said.

  “Just seems strange that's all. I used to work in construction,” I lied, “and it's not like any roadworks I've ever seen.”

  “There's been some rumours from locals but just rumours?”

  I had her hooked already, she was willing to give.

  “Oh really, like what? Not that Blood Streams thing is it?”

  Suddenly her face dropped in recognition of the name. I had seen the look before, when someone was given information they knew a little too much about.

  I continued, “what is it?”

  “There was a girl working here until last month when she just didn't turn up one day. Her name was Ana Fernandez, a Brazilian girl. They reckon they found her body in the Blood Streams.”

  “For real?”

  “Hundred percent.”

  “What happened?”

  “Depends who you ask, police don't really help do they? Some say she killed herself but she didn't seem the type.”

  “You think this roadworks has something to do with it?”

  “Look, I'm sorry, management can be a pain in the backside if we talk too long to customers.”

  “I get it. But just two more little questions?” I pleaded.

  She looked back at the counter but the rest of the staff were too busy to notice her brief absence at that moment. She nodded at me hastily as if to say; hurry up.

  “What do you think is going on over there?” I asked.

  “I reckon it's some kind of cover-up but other people I know reckon it's all legit. You don't work in construction do you? Are you a detective?”

  “Not that kind of detective. Do you believe this thing about the Blood Streams?”

  “People are a bit scared. Not tourists, they wouldn't know any different but the locals, yeah the story of the Blood Streams has people worried. But my Nana always said; don't try to explain something until you're sure it happened first.”

  “You're Nana was a clever lady.”

  “Enjoy your coffee,” she said, before getting back to work.

  I could see people who looked like construction workers mingling around the canal towpath and they seemed to be working on something. Maybe I was reading too much into it.

  Out the corner of my eye, I noticed someone walking towards me. I took a deep breath and looked in the person's direction. I breathed out, more relaxed. It was a gypsy rose seller. Her hair was covered in colourful beads and her dress was a quilted masterpiece of colour and design.

  “Three pounds for a rose my dear?” she said. “For your wife?”

  “What makes you think I'm married?”

  “A lovely man like you, you must be waiting for someone?”

  “I've been waiting all my life but I've never found her.”

  She ignored me, “two pounds for a single rose to express your love?”

  I ignored her in return, they tended to go away quick enough if you said nothing. I took a sip of my coffee and heard her sigh as she walked off down the steps, along the pavement and towards Camden High Street.

  As I watched her walk away, I noticed someone familiar leave the main construction tent on the road. The person was wearing a hi-vis and was walking confidently away from the scene, scratching her head with worry, tensing her eye muscles.

  There was no disputing who it was.

  Detective Megan Paine had just exited the roadworks tent.

  Fourteen

  I left some coins on the table for Daisy the waitress, then I skipped along the walkway to the top of the road. Paine had just walked past as I got onto the High Street. She was two metres ahead of me.

  I followed her for a few seconds then realised there was no point in hanging around. Just as she passed a t-shirt shop with outside railings, I called out to her.

  “Devil's in the details, detective.”

  She stopped and turned to face me, a slight look of embarrassment came over her.

  “Harrison Lake. Should you be outside?”

  “I'm within my restrictions. I saw you at the bridge.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Are you a construction worker now?”

  She glanced at a few of the faces nearby and took a step closer to me, “what are you doing here?” she said.

  “What you should be doing.”

  “Excuse me? What should I be doing? Don't overstep your mark.”

  I sighed, “that's not roadworks is it? If it's to do with the Blood Streams then I need to know. You aren't helping me and I sure as hell need to help myself before all this goes sideways.”

  She rubbed her head again and looked as though she had a headache. “Harrison, go home. I'll be in touch.”

  She turned to walk away but I grabbed her shoulder, “what the hell are you hiding?”

  She turned to face me and slapped my hand away from her shoulder. Some passers-by noticed and kept their glares on us for too long of a moment. We had also caught the attention of some of the stall holders and shop workers nearby.

  “Dammit,” she said, “get in here!”

  She grabbed my arm and forcefully led me to a small alleyway between two of the smaller shops. It was only a metre wide and the moment we entered it, the noise and bustle of the High Street became whispers. She let me go and raised her head to the heavens to stretch out her neck.

  “Are you alright?” I asked.

  “I have an eternal headache.”

  She leaned against the brick wall and I did the same on the opposite side but a couple of metres along from her. I could smell urine stains and the stench of a violent night before. The alley carried on for another twenty or so metres before reaching a small opening with residential doors and then a brick wall at the far end. And I bet the apartment prices here were still in the half-a-million range.

  “I was never gonna sit on my laurels, you know that,” I said. “I'm an investigator, this is what I do.”

  “You're not an authority.”

  “That I'm not but this is my story. I am allowed to investigate and report. If you wanna keep me out of the loop then so be it. I just expected more from you. I'd never put you with the Two Bergs but it looks like I might have to.”

  “What do you think you know?” she said, testing my knowledge.

  “I know you didn't just walk out of a construction site.”

  She cursed to herself and paced back to the entrance of the alley. I looked beyond her to the bustle of the High Street, as if she was looking out on her domain.

  She turned around, shaking her head. “You know, my superior warned me of you. He said you'd be on the warpath, involving yourself in our investigation where you were not wanted.”

  “You think I'm just gonna sit by and do nothing?”

  “Superintendent Salt also said you were the best person to be able to solve your own investigation. But he didn't fully trust you and it was down to me to decide.”

  I frowned at her, “decide what?”

  “Whether to bring you on board and have you assist me.”

  I huffed, “and that's a legal process is it?”

  “You lost your Private Investigator License ten years ago, I know, I read up on you.”

  “And I've been doing just fine without it ever since. Did they tell you what for?”

  “Something about a container.”

  I mocked her, “something!” I chuckled, “that something, that container had evidence in it relating to a missing seven-year-old girl. I broke the rules by breaking into it and doing my job to track her down. I got to her in the final hour before she was about to be shipped off to god knows where. I saved her but I broke the rules
to get to her and for that I was punished. If you lot had done your job properly and listened to me then we would have caught the guy who did it as well. But we didn't and that's on your head.”

  She shook her head and that all-knowing smile came back to her face. She leaned one hand against the wall.

  “Our styles are different,” she said, “our areas of expertise are different, there's nothing similar between you and me in terms of investigatory methods. Yeah, I've read some of your stuff and I agree with you on the Two Bergs but you live in a different world, Harrison.” She motioned with her hands, “this coalition between us wouldn't work, it's not compatible enough.”

  I looked at the ground, noticing the stains and the efforts of the small weeds attempting to break through to a short-lived existence. I looked back at her.

  “Stansey King was put in my cellar for a reason and now I'm trapped within a small geographical circle within London. I'm gonna be investigating this until its conclusion so we're either gonna help each other or I'm just gonna keep getting in your way.”

  She was nodding at me, “Salt also said you were a persistent bastard,” she smiled.

  I shrugged, “the Superintendent's called me a bastard already. I must be doing something right.” I smiled gently, “I can help you.”

  “Okay, okay,” she smiled and I saw her deep in thought, nodding to herself. “What do you think is going on here?”

  “You've pulled 102 bodies from the canal and connected waterways in the past few years and 27 remain unsolved, mostly in the past year. Giving a bit of leeway for errors, I'd put that at just less than twenty victims of an unnamed serial killer. The roadworks site is a cover-up for a more recently discovered body as you don't want to alarm the locals or give rise to media attention.

  “One of the victims identity was stolen and she was found in my basement, making me one of the biggest parts of the jigsaw and it's bugging you more than you let on. You also think the Blood Streams Killer is real and you wanna be the one who catches him, to further your career and get your name in the spotlight. Am I close?”

  “Meh, maybe not about the spotlight thing, I prefer to remain behind the scenes, it's where the meat is.” She put her hands on her hips, “okay Harrison, you're in until you're not.”

  “Doesn't even make sense but I'll take it.”

  “You're partially right. This is an investigation regarding the possibility of a serial killer operating on and around the Regents Canal. We'd rather not go public as we just don't know what we're dealing with. And it's not twenty, it's seventeen confirmed victims who have all been killed in a similar fashion.”

  “So it is a serial killer?”

  “We have to assume it is but there's something about the whole thing that doesn't add up.”

  My attention was peaked, “you have more than one body don't you?” It occurred to me that such a fantastical cover-up with the roadworks would only have been necessary to hide something bigger than one murder.

  “There were two bodies and one more has just been discovered on the water's edge. That's three bodies that have passed through down there. Come with me.”

  She walked to the edge of the alley but turned back slowly to shake her head at me and bite her thumbnail.

  “What's bugging you?” I said.

  “You're not gonna like this.”

  Fifteen

  The roadwork facade extended to two sections. The large tent on top of the road bridge was the biggest part of the cover-up. The official line was that they were carrying out repairs on one side of the bridge. The works underneath the bridge looked connected to the ones on top. It was there on the underside of the bridge where the real work was taking place.

  Paine led me through a small section of the world food market to the stairwell that dropped to the canal below. In place of a police officer at the bottom of the steps, they had a large red and white barrier and a Kestrel security guard. To make it look like the works were dangerous and no one was allowed in there. Paine motioned to the guard to let them through and picked up a hi-vis for me to wear.

  I've gotta admit, they didn't really suit me but I guess they weren't meant to be fashionable garments. I followed Paine along the canal to the underside of the bridge as she spoke.

  “This section of Camden isn't the busiest in London but the tightness of the markets and the pavements mean it always looks packed, shoulder to shoulder kind of stuff. The Canal and River Trust are working with us. They've officially announced that due to repair works on this bridge the canal is temporarily out of service. You can use it either side of this but no one's getting a clean run at the moment.”

  The canals were busy at the quietest of times so I knew it was having a big effect on the industry of the waterways. There were other routes through London but this was a very popular one.

  As we approached the works, I stopped and looked in the other direction from the site. The canal snaked off in the distance and gave way to a view of buildings overlooking the canal. Beyond that was Regent's Park and then London Zoo.

  I saw The Outhouse not too far away, on the opposite side of the canal. If Daisy the waitress saw me here now, her conspiracy theories would explode. Luckily, she was nowhere to be seen but there were people looking across at me. People-watching I guessed.

  Paine broke my attention, “Harrison?”

  I followed her into the large tent on the walkway. I tried to figure out how the covering had extended onto the canal but as soon as I walked through the canvas, it all made sense.

  They had removed the metal railings to make it easier for them. On the opposite side they had positioned scaffolding. A floor unit made of planks of wood were resting between the walkway side and the scaffold. And it was bigger than I expected. Smaller tents were positioned on the floor and were clearly covering something untoward. The canal was generally only a metre deep so it wouldn't have been too difficult to construct.

  Some of the officers disguised as construction workers acknowledged me, others didn't. I'm sure they didn't really know anything about me by that point which was probably a good thing.

  “This morning's body makes seventeen, along with the other two that came here.” Paine said.

  “All in the past three days?”

  “The first one was two weeks ago. When we realised a number of clues and DNA evidence was to be found here, we went for the roadworks idea. The first body is already buried. The second came out of a sewer system five days ago, two-hundred metres to the East, that one's currently in the coroner's office. The third was discovered early this morning near The Broad Walk, by the water's edge.”

  “Near London Zoo?”

  “Yes, not too far from the Waterbus stop.”

  “So you covertly brought the last two bodies here because this was already set up as an investigation scene?”

  “We didn't want to arouse too much suspicion in creating further distractions. We've had teams scour the last two body sites for clues and there's very little if anything at all. It's the water, it hides more evidence than it gives out.”

  I couldn't help but feel she was hiding something else from me but I wasn't going to push too much straight away. The smell under the bridge was dank and rotten, like they'd discovered a rats nest somewhere near by. The sound of the real world above was a stark parallel to the one beneath the bridge.

  “Have you followed the canal looking for oddities?” I asked.

  “Oddities?” she frowned.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “The Regent's Canal, which this is a part of, runs from the Limehouse Basin near the Thames to the Grand Union Canal. It's 8.6 miles long and most of it is not covered by CCTV.”

  “I thought the whole of London was?”

  “This isn't the ring of steel, we're in a more wild territory here. There are over 200,000 people living on or near the canal system and that's not including the smaller connecting waterways and sewer lines. This is one of the most difficult cases that's eve
r come my way.”

  I didn't doubt it at all but there must have been sections of the canal that were well covered by CCTV, or at least privately owned security systems that could be utilised.

  Paine suddenly touched my arm, “I'm sorry but I need to show you something.”

  As much as I appreciated her gentleness, her swift change of direction to being apologetic had me worried. What could possibly have been worse than finding a naked girl in my cellar? She nodded towards the small tent on the far side.

  As soon as I stepped onto the wooden floor, it swayed ever so gently. I wasn't one for getting seasick but enough of that kind of motion would have me reaching for the sick bag. They bounced ever so slightly with each step.

  Paine peered behind the tent entrance and saw no one was in there. She waved her hand to me and I bounced over.

  She said, “we moved the recent body to the coroner's office. It was found partially clothed and still had identification on it. I've had a photo sent through to me from the coroner's office.

  She pulled back the opening and we both stepped in. She lifted a bag with a couple of debit cards inside and showed me. I looked closer.

  No, it couldn't be.

  Then she showed me a photo on her phone and my heart virtually dropped from my chest. The shock held me captive. In the photo, the head of the victim was turned away from me but the dreadlocks covering the face were unmistakable.

  The name on both debit cards confirmed it.

  It was Jess Ashby.

  Sixteen

  I couldn't see her face in the photo but it was her. Similar build and long white dreadlocks matted and wrapped around her head as if it had been deliberate. My dear Jess was dead, I couldn't look anymore. Paine dropped the opening behind me as I stepped away from the tent.

  There was a rising vomit coming from within but I held it back. I'd seen worse but never expected it to be someone who I actually cared for. Someone who had put me back on the right track.

  “I'm sorry,” Paine said, “I know you had a connection with her.”

  I huffed, “you have no idea.”