Dead in the Water

by Wilfred Jules

  Right behind Ajanta Ben walked into the room with the usual swagger of someone who is perfectly conscious and in control of his own body, the way sport professionals tend to keep themselves. He had also managed to change into one of his signatory black suits. His size made it hard for him to find his clothes in a regular store. Ianthe knew he had his suits and shirts tailor made in Hong Kong. He had visited there on a tour when he was still playing volleyball and had a tailor make him a suit which he had liked so much that every year he had ordered the same suit and matching shirts at ‘Rocky’s Fashion’. Perhaps not quite as stylish as Ajanta’s clothes, but probably more comfy.

  With these two in the room, Ianthe felt seriously underdressed with her faded blue jeans and cheap white blouse. Fortunately, Geoff Simmons, the senior SOCO officer she had invited as well was on Ben’s heels.

  “Right,” she started. “Thanks for being almost on time.” She smiled to herself as she saw them rolling their eyes in unison. “It is now 5:02 PM on Tuesday 14 May and this is our first briefing of Operation Blackbird, which is the name the police computer has randomly assigned this time. This operation is an inquiry into the suspicious death of Mr Bert Devos, a fifty-four-years old Dutch national who has been a long-time resident of Lewes, Sussex, husband of Ms Josephine Devos, nee Josephine Chambers, forty-one years old, equally of Lewes, Sussex, father of two children, who was found killed by person or persons unknown this morning on board of his sailing yacht Polaris in Brighton marina. The post-mortem examination has already revealed that the cause of death is death by impact of a blunt object to the back of the skull, administered probably in the hour between midnight and one in the morning of Tuesday 14 May, meaning last night. Geoff, thanks for joining this meeting. Any additional information that forensics so far has been able to uncover?”

  “Thanks, Ianthe. Yes, quite. So, my SOCO team arrived on site at about 4:30 AM this morning. You may remember it was raining quite heavily last night so it was not easy to get anything meaningful from the topsides of the boat, nor from the pontoons. The gated entrance to the jetty can be opened only with a key fob or you need to ring for assistance, but the bell button nor the gate itself gave us any meaningful prints: it was just too wet for that. However, the inside of the boat was obviously humid but very dry and was able to provide us with a wealth of information.”

  That got everyone sitting up in attention.

  “The problem, however, which is a bit weird, is that there is simply too much information at this point. In a sailing boat like this, which, I understand is relatively recent, you would expect a limited set of prints and fibres from the owner, his family and perhaps a few other people he might have sailed with. And where we did of course find numerous prints that we have been able to identify as Mr Devos’s, there are also a lot of prints from other people none of which we have been able to identify yet.”

  “Please define “a lot”, Geoff,” Ianthe said.

  “Well, we have prints of at least twenty-five to thirty other individuals, perhaps more. We have also found lots of fibres, hairs etc that support that finding, meaning that plenty of people have been on board Polaris since it has been acquired by Mr Devos. These fibres are still in the lab for analysis.”

  “Could it be that Mr Devos offered boat trips to tourists?” Ben offered. “That would explain the presence of that many people on board.”

  “Or perhaps he chartered his boat and let it be used by other people,” Ajanta added.

  “Good thinking,” Ianthe replied. “Can you check with the small ships register if Polaris has been registered for commercial use? And Ben and you can go talk to the Brighton Marina harbour master and the security master in the morning to see if they have insights into what might have happened. Anything else, Geoff?”

  “Yes, actually. You may remember that blood was found on the edge of the chart table, suggesting Mr Devos may have fallen and bumped his head against the chart table, causing his death. Well, forensic investigation ruled that possibility out. The blood on the chart table is pending DNA analysis likely to be Mr Devos’s, but it was put there after his fall. Someone must have dipped a soft cloth or piece of paper in the blood pooled around his head and wiped it on the edge of the chart table, hoping it would be considered an accident. But you can see the wiping pattern easily. There was no way either that Mr Devos could have ended up in the position he was in if he had bumped his head against the chart table. Only a very superficial examination would have come to a different conclusion.”

  “So, our perp tried to be cunning but was not smart enough,” Ianthe remarked.

  “Meaning we are probably looking for someone who does not really have a good understanding of police work or forensics,” Ajanta commented.

  “I would say that is almost certainly correct,” Geoff agreed.

  “No sign of the murder weapon though?” Ben asked.

  “No. There are a lot of tools on board. Several hammers. Winch handles as well. But none of these have been used on Mr Devos. Our murderer was wise enough to dispose of the weapon. Mind you, he might just have dropped it overboard in which case it could still be somewhere in the vicinity of the boat.”

  “Thanks. I will ask the super for permission to have the Fire & Rescue Department divers explore the area around Polaris in that case.” Ianthe added. After the Specialist Search Unit had been sacrificed on the altar of budget cuts in 2015, Sussex Police had set up a cooperation with the Fire & Rescue Department to use its divers when required. “He won’t be too happy about that. The blunt object, I guess most likely some sort of hammer or spanner, could be anywhere in Brighton Marina, which happens to be the biggest one in the UK. When do you think you will have the results from the fibres, Geoff?”

  “We should have at least some partial results tomorrow evening.”

  “All right then. Ajanta, can you also check Mr Devos’s phone records to see if he has been talking to anyone interesting? We will have another briefing at five sharp tomorrow evening then. Anything else?”

  “Yes, guv,” Ben answered. “I helped doing the door-to-door this afternoon as discussed. We knocked on every door of the apartments in Brighton marina, but we did not have any luck. No one seems to have noticed anything out of the ordinary last night, except for a Mrs Thompson,” he consulted his notes, “who saw someone hurry down the main walkway just before midnight. Mrs Thompson lives on the third floor of an apartment building next to the Wetherspoon’s, so that is quite far from the East Jetty. The timing is consistent however with Mrs Devos telling us when her husband went to the marina last night. Mrs Thompson was just going to bed, so she could not tell us anything more. I left my card just in case, of course. The other thing is that I spoke again to Gerry Nichols from Premier Marina Security who you met this morning to ask for the CCTV. Unfortunately, the CCTV cameras on the East Jetty, which are located at the lavatories in the middle of the jetty, were not turned towards Polaris. He had noticed that only when he came on duty and told me he had put it in his report for the security manager. It appears it is not his role to do something about this sort of thing himself but must leave that to the maintenance crew. The weather was ghastly last night, I admit in his defence.”

  “No CCTV of the relevant part of the jetty. That’s convenient for our killer,” Ianthe commented sarcastically. “All right. If there is nothing else, we will convene here tomorrow evening at 5 PM again. Ben, Ajanta, if you can go to Brighton Marina tomorrow morning to talk to the harbour master and the security and berthing master to see if and how well they knew our victim. Get all the CCTV from the past week from the marina as well. I will go to Lewes in the morning to talk to his widow again and I will get the Fire & Rescue Department divers in as well. We probably want to use the press to appeal to the public for anyone who has ever sailed on Polaris to come forward and anyone who was in the vicinity of Brighton marina last night who might have seen something. I will liaise with our press officer Duncan for that. Let’s adjourn here and start again in
the morning.”

  *

  They all packed up and started to leave. Before she went out to her car, Ianthe dropped into the office of the Detective Superintendent again to brief him on what Geoff had told them. She asked and got permission to involve the Fire & Rescue Department but limited to a single day due to budgetary constraints.

  “What about the CCTV, sir?” she asked.

  Pooh bear looked pensively at his monitor as if great words of wisdom were suddenly appearing on that.

  “Let’s ask the Met to run it through their facial recognition software first, Ianthe. There are bound to have been a lot of visitors to Brighton marina over the past five days. Having a constable watch the tapes is just going to be too time and budget consuming. Tell IT to take it up with their Met partners and that I sanction it.”

  “Makes sense,” she replied. “I take it you will want to run the press conference yourself as well, sir?”

  “Indeed. I’ll talk to Duncan about setting one up day after tomorrow sometime in the morning, so that you have time to dig up some more information. When is your next team briefing?”

  “Tomorrow at 5 PM, sir”

  “All right. Do brief me again at 6 PM then like today and make yourself available for the press conference day after tomorrow.”

  “I think I will need an additional DC on the team, sir.”

  “I agree. Why don’t you take DC John Ryan? I think he told me he does a bit of sailing in his spare time. Might prove to be useful in this particular case.”

  “Sure, sir, I’ll give him a call on the way home. By the way, sir, I had a bit of a run-in with DI Gorti earlier, as expected.”

  “Leave him to me, Ianthe. I’ll talk to him. There’s plenty of work to go around for everyone.”

  *

  After her chat with her boss, Ianthe was about to get into her Audi when she received a text message at 6:39 PM. It was from Nathan, reminding her to meet him for a drink at the Gladstone’s, next to the mortuary. She hesitated for a second, but then thought, what the heck, Tony had not let her know he was back yet, so she might just as well stop for a drink and a chat on the way home with a friend.

  On the way to The Gladstone, Ianthe called DC John Ryan on his cell and asked him to meet her at 8:15 AM the following morning at Malling House to go with her first thing to interview Josephine Devos. She had met John a few times and he had struck her as a competent officer. He was however most of the time part of DI Vik Gorti’s team, and she was a little worried about that.

  She also called Laverne Robbins, the liaison officer with the Brighton & Hove Fire and Rescue department. She was quite a character, but Ianthe liked her directness and the team’s particular sense of humour. She relayed to Laverne the sanction to perform an underwater search of Brighton Marina, starting with the berth of Polaris and widening the search primarily around the East Jetty, beyond that if there was time.

  CHAPTER 6

  At 6:43 PM Ianthe parked her car in Gladstone Place just off Lewes Road, across from the Kwik Fit, and hurried to the brightly yellow coloured Gladstone Public House. This was the favourite haunt of the morticians, but due to its vicinity to Brighton Uni, it was almost always busy with students. At this early hour there were not too many of them around, but Ianthe did not spot Nathan immediately. She texted him and he texted right back he was in the beer garden, which was at the back of the pub, outside but weatherproof with heaters. In summer, this would be packed with young folk, but in the middle of May it was quiet, and you did not have to shout to understand each other.

  Ianthe found Nathan with his back against the wall, sipping from a pint of Copperhead.

  “Hello again, beautiful,” he said. “What is your poison tonight?”

  “I’m driving so I’ll just have the one glass of Northern Light if you don’t mind,” she replied. He was the only one who could address her like that, and she would not mind. While he got her drink she settled in, also making sure to be in a position where she could observe the rest of the room, as was her habit. She felt totally uncomfortable if she had to sit with her back to a room or even a door and would manoeuvre shamelessly to get the position she wanted, either in the pub or at the restaurant. Even in meeting rooms. She just did not feel safe otherwise.

  Nathan returned with her beer.

  “Didn’t know you favoured Northern Light?”

  “Well, actually I prefer some special Belgian beers, but there’s almost no pub in the UK that carries them, and definitely not on tap.”

  “That special huh. Any I know?”

  “I doubt that. My all-time favourite is ‘Omer’, but that is a small brand that even in Belgium you would almost only find in the Southwestern part of the country, in a province called West-Flanders actually. That one and ‘Duchesse’, which is another small brand.”

  “I guess that comes with the territory of having lived in Belgium for a rather big part of my younger years. I told you my father used to be a civil servant with the European Commission, right?”

  “Yup. And your mother is even Belgian, isn’t she?”

  “Quite right. I was even born there. We came back when my Belgian grandparents passed away. My parents now live in Winchester.”

  “That isn’t too far away. How are they getting along with Tony now?”

  “They don’t,” she shrugged. “I guess they are doing their best, but their disapproval is kind of obvious. Tony doesn’t want to visit them either. He thinks they are narrow minded.”

  “And how is it going between the two of you?”

  “Am I getting the third degree or something?” she said defensively. “You know, all couples have their good and bad days.”

  “Except with you it seems to be more bad than good days.”

  “Hey, can we talk about something else, please? My private life is private, right?”

  Nathan got the message immediately and did not press on.

  “Sure. Let’s talk about your sergeant. He’s a good-looking chap all right. How come you never brought him to the mortuary before?”

  “You think I want to introduce all my colleagues to you immediately? Mortuaries are not that pleasant to visit.”

  Nathan definitely looked hurt now.

  “Ouch. And there we are putting in our best effort to make the experience a pleasant one! So, does he have someone?”

  Ianthe laughed. “Now I understand why you wanted to get me here for a drink! You want to know if he’s gay!”

  “Guilty, inspector,” Nathan smiled somewhat embarrassed. “Well, is he?”

  “Actually, I don’t have the foggiest, really. I never asked him. I don’t think he’s in a relationship though. Haven’t heard him comment about anyone special really. He is quite well off, that I know. He lives in a semi-detached in Balfour Road, just across from Balfour Primary School. These houses don’t come cheap. Must be his volleyball career. Definitely not his coppers’ pay check. But I don’t know if he lives there alone or not.”

  “Balfour Road huh. That’s quite nice indeed. I didn’t know a volleyball player earned that kind of dosh.”

  “Well, it isn’t like the soccer players I guess, but he did make it to the England team all right. Mind you, had his career cut short due to injury a couple of years back.”

  “And you don’t know if he’s gay or not?”

  “Not a clue. And you know I am not allowed to ask him, so I’m not going to do that.”

  “Hmm. I’m quite sure I saw him at the Revenge though.”

  “Yeah, but it isn’t forbidden to go there if you are straight, is it? He could have been with someone else.”

  “Right. Sure. But that hardly ever happens you know. Straight people tend to feel a bit self-conscious on that scene.”

  “You know what. Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Ianthe asked, which made the chief mortician look definitely mortified.

  “Aw come on. Can’t really do that, can I?”

  “Anyways, I better get home. Not sure when Tony wi
ll be back from his business trip, but he likes me to be there when he gets home.”

  She picked up her small Quechua backpack and turned to go.

  “Oh, I almost forgot. Josephine Devos came to identify her husband I trust? Anything to report there?”

  “Nothing unusual. It’s him all right. She was quite distraught actually. But what do I know, right? Some people are just extremely good actors. She asked about the cause of death, but I was evasive about it.”

  “Right. I’ll see her in the morning again. Thanks for the beer and all that.”

  *

  At 8:04 PM Ianthe’s Audi turned into Belvedere Terrace. There was a burgundy BMW 420 parked in front of number 32 on the ground floor of which she lived. She sighed under her breath. That was Tony’s car. He was home already and would not have enjoyed coming home to an empty house.

  Belvedere Terrace was everything that had gone wrong in urban planning in Brighton and Hove. Originally, these had all been regency or fake regency houses that, with the uptake of the real estate market had been divided into draughty apartments that were sold or let separately. Tony and Ianthe were living on the ground floor in a one-bedroom apartment they were letting for an impossible grand a month, excluding services. Single pane glass, a mouldy bathroom and kitchen, tired carpets gave the place its rather depressive look. Ianthe had wanted to move for a while now a bit further out of town and perhaps closer to Malling House, but Tony wouldn’t budge. His office was next to Brighton railway station and every time she brought up they should move he claimed he enjoyed walking to the office. Even though he took his BMW to drive there every day. He just seemed to like the idea of walking there, without ever having to do that.