by Ryan Casey
“Are you asking me to climb up here?”
“You’re gonna have to if you wanna see what I found.”
Brian sighed. He put a foot on the bottom of the ladder and started his climb. He wasn’t afraid of heights; he’d just rather stay rooted closer to the ground. There was something unnerving about climbing a ladder on the roof of one of the tallest buildings in Preston.
He got to the top of the ladder and looked down into the open roof of the water tank. The smell was awful now.
“I pulled the lid of the tank aside and boom. There she was.”
It took Brian a few seconds to clock her, but when he did, his stomach turned.
The girl had long blonde hair, but it’d discoloured and gone a shade of brown in patchy places. She was floating face up around a foot below the water surface. Her skin was an awful shade of green. It was scaly, like she’d been in a bath for far too long. She was naked. Her clothes floated around beside her, which was particularly weird.
She was looking up in total horror.
“When we getting this girl out of here?” Brian asked.
“Fire service is on their way to cut her out,” Finch said, gasping between words. “Opening of the tank’s too small to pull her out that way.”
Brian nodded, then made his way back down the tank. It was awful, it was tragic, but Annie was right. It looked like a suicide. “So the girl took her own life, we think?”
Finch looked over at Dan. It was then that Brian saw a look of uncertainty on Dan’s face.
“What?”
Dan scratched the back of his head. “I mean it could be. But there’s some things that don’t add up.”
“Like what?”
Dan lowered his head. For a man supposed to be cooperating, he was acting weird.
“Dan?”
“Well, first there’s how she got onto the top of that tank,” Dan said. “I mean you’ve seen it yourself. You need to get on a ladder to get up there.”
Brian didn’t intervene. He just let Dan continue.
“Then there’s the lid of the tank. I won’t make you try moving it, but fuck, even I struggle, and it’s my job to move ’em. How a girl’s supposed to have pulled the lid back over when she’s in the water, I’ve no idea.”
Brian felt a strange feeling in his gut. The sense that something else had gone on here intensified rapidly.
“Anything else?” Brian asked.
“Tell him,” Finch said. “Or we will.”
Brian narrowed his eyes. “Tell me what?”
Dan looked Brian right in his eyes. “I swear it’s not what it looks like.”
“What isn’t?”
“I mean, it was dark when I got here and I was tired. I mighta been sloppy.”
“Dan, what is it?”
“I’ve got alibis. I’ve got people who knew where I was when this—”
“Dan!”
Dan paused for a moment. He looked at the floor again. Then back up at Brian. “To get to the roof. Those two doors we walked through. They’re security locked by two different six-digit codes. There’s no way in hell this girl got up here without knowing those codes.”
Brian knew where this was going now. “So you’re saying someone who knows the codes took her up here?”
Dan shook his head. He’d gone completely pale. “That ain’t possible, Detective.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I’m the only person who knew the latest codes.”
Six
“There’s no way she got in there on her own.”
“You don’t know that—”
“You heard what Dan said, Annie. You needed two sets of codes to get through those doors. I tried those damned doors myself and there was no getting in there. So there’s no way this girl got in there alone.”
Brian sat in Costa inside the bus station with Annie. It was their lunch break, and they were waiting for news on the body. Apparently, the hotel had drained the tank so the fire services could cut it out. The bulk of the guests had been moved to another hotel across town, which Brian wasn’t comfortable with. If a guest was involved, then he wanted everyone to stay put.
But sure, he’d hardly be keen on staying somewhere he’d been drinking dead body-water for days either.
“What about this Dan fella?” Brian asked.
“What about him?”
“His alibis are tight?”
“As tight as they get. He only just started his shift when he found the body.”
“But there’s no telling where he was in the weeks before, no?”
“Actually, there is,” Annie said. “If this body has been in that tank a while.”
“I saw it. It has been.”
“Well if it has, it has to be longer than three weeks. Dan’s been in the Costa Del Sol with friends for that amount of time.”
Brian shook his head and took a sip of his hot chocolate, which was boiling. It burned the tip of his tongue. “There’s just something not right.”
“There’s plenty not right. But it doesn’t mean the girl was murdered.”
“So how did she get to the roof?”
Annie shrugged. “She found the codes?”
“Dan said he was the only one who knew them.”
“No. He told us he left them in a secret location behind the desk while he was away. But he never told anyone about it ’cause no one ever needed to go up there to check on the water tanks.”
“You seriously believe that?”
“Brian, have you seen that place? It’s an absolute shithole. Has it breached health and safety? I’m not sure they give a damn, to be honest. I’m not even sure most of the guests do either.”
Brian rubbed the side of his head. The noise of the coffee shop was too loud. He was hot around the collar, and the smells of coffee were making him sick. “I just don’t buy this.”
“Brian,” Annie said, puzzlement on her face. “Just… just relax. We’re looking into it. Dan’s not off the hook. Maybe he did slip the code to someone, maybe accidentally, or maybe without even remembering. Who knows? But we’re looking into him anyway. He’s been honest with us. That counts for something, right?”
Brian took a few deep breaths, but they didn’t help. He knew he was probably acting rash. But there was something distinctly off about that body. “Any idea who she is yet?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Annie said. “But we’re doing what we can. Seriously, mate. What’s got into you?”
Brian looked into Annie’s eyes, and a memory flashed in his mind. A memory of finding that body floating at the top of the water, bobbing around on the surface. It reminded him of what he’d done a year ago.
The chief constable, Jerry Matthews.
Throwing him into the docks.
Watching his dead body sink into black oblivion.
“Chances are Dan just made a mistake. The doors weren’t as locked as he thought they were. Or the girl found another way up there.”
“There’s no other way up there. Dan was clear about that.”
Annie sipped back her coffee and shrugged. Outside, the sun beamed against the windows.
“And the tank lid. The whole ladder thing. Does none of that seem off to you?”
“So she climbed her way up the side of the tank and managed to pull the lid in place. Big wow.”
“Dan said it was heavy—”
“Again, it was the middle of the night when Dan found her. He told us himself, he couldn’t even be sure whether the lid was open a little when he found her. He’d probably’ve remembered better if he knew what he was about to find.”
“Seems like he’s hedging his bets.”
“What?”
Brian shook his head. “Nothing.”
Annie leaned across the table and put a hand on Brian’s arm. It made him flinch. “If there’s anything you need to get off your chest, you know where I am, man. You know that, don’t you?”
Brian looked into Annie’s e
yes, and he wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to tell her the whole truth about what he’d done, about how stupid he’d been, and how much danger he’d put his future, and his family’s future, in.
And then Annie’s phone rang and the moment passed.
She raised it to the side of her face. “Yeah. Sure. Right. I’ll… I’ll tell him. Later.”
She cancelled the call.
“You gonna tell me?” Brian asked.
Annie sighed. She picked up her empty coffee cup and climbed from the chair. “They found a provisional driver’s licence beside the body. Our Jane Doe’s a Jane Doe no more. She’s called Elaine Schumer.”
Seven
One of the worst parts of any death investigation, murder or otherwise?
Telling those closest to the dead exactly what’d happened.
A day had passed since the discovery of Elaine Schumer’s body, and the discovery of her identity. Her family had been notified by the family liaison officer. They were mortified, naturally, and claimed that they knew she’d gone but just thought she’d gone on holiday. It was weird, but their story kind of matched up.
What was weirder was that Elaine’s social media had still been updating… and was still updating.
Brian sat in the lounge of Sammi, one of Elaine’s closest friends. Her mum, a friendly but nervy woman called Karen, had let Annie and him in and led them in here. It was warm again outside, but this lounge felt distinctly cold. It was dark inside, the kind of room that seemed like it didn’t get any light at all. Sammi had made Brian a tea, but he hadn’t touched it. He avoided caffeine where he could. Besides, he was a lot less trusting these days. Murdering the chief constable had a funny way of doing that to you.
“Sammi, you say you last saw Elaine two weeks ago,” Annie said. “Can you tell us more about that?”
Sammi was a short girl, but she was well built. Judging from the baggy rugby shirt she was wearing, a St Helens one, she was into her rugby. She had dark hair and even darker eyes. Her face was totally pale. She looked like she’d seen a ghost.
“Sammi?” Annie repeated.
Sammi blinked and turned to Brian. “Sorry. I just… it’s just hard, you know?”
Brian cleared his throat and nodded. He always hated the small talk at the start of any investigation. “Can’t imagine how hard it must be for you. But we really need to know how—”
“She was my best friend. My… my only real friend, really. I’ve never really fit in. I mean I’m in clubs and things but I’ve always been a bit of an outsider. But me and Elaine, we just clicked, right from day one. We grew up together. We went to uni together. Even lived together. And now she’s gone. Now she’s gone.”
Sammi sunk her head into a cushion on her lap and cried.
Annie looked at Brian, a flat, defeated smile across her face.
“Sammi, what you have to say to us could be important. Really important. You say you were at a concert with Elaine on May 24th. Is there anything you can tell us about that night?”
Sammi lifted her head and wiped her eyes. “Oh, I… Well, it was amazing, you know? We were both loving it. Well. I was loving it. Elaine isn’t as big a fan as me. She’s into weirder stuff. She… she was into weirder stuff.”
“Speaking of weird stuff,” Brian said, eager to pin down the whole point of his visit. “Anything weird happen that night?”
“Nothing totally weird. I mean, Elaine left early, but that wasn’t so surprising. She did that a lot.”
“Did she tell you where she was going?”
Sammi shook her head.
“And that’s the last time you heard from her?”
“She put some posts on Facebook and Twitter. I just… I just saw those and assumed she was fine.”
“Sorry Sammi, but that doesn’t add up to me,” Brian said.
“What—what do you mean?”
Brian knew he should hold back a little as this wasn’t technically a murder investigation, but there were so many uncertainties nagging at him. “She’s your best friend. Your only friend, you said. And yet you don’t speak to her for weeks?”
Sammi sighed. She nodded. “I know it looks weird. But Elaine had… she had problems.”
“Problems?”
“Mental health problems.”
Brian frowned at Annie. “That’s the first we heard of—”
“She kept them secret. It was between her and me. Sometimes she’d just rather be alone. And as much as it scared me when she went quiet, she always came back, always. I tried finding her the first few times she went missing, but she’d just end up worse for it. When I gave her some time, she’d… well, she’d come back refreshed. Full of life all over again. So I kinda just left her to it.”
Brian shook his head. “Elaine’s parents? They left her to it, too?”
Sammi covered her face and shook her head. “See that’s the thing.” Her voice cracked.
“What?”
“I told her parents we were on holiday together.”
“You did what?”
“I didn’t know what to do, okay? I tried messaging her. I tried speaking to her. You’ll see it all on her messages if you take a look. I just… I just wanted to give Elaine the time she needed. I did something stupid. I can see that now. I did something really fucking stupid, and I’m sorry.”
Sammi cried some more. Brian was mad at what she’d done, but he could just about see things from her perspective. “You should’ve called us the second she disappeared.”
“I didn’t think I needed to do that.”
“You should’ve—”
“Sammi,” Annie said, interrupting Brian before he could dig himself into any more trouble. “You say Elaine had problems. What kind of problems, exactly?”
Sammi scratched her arms. “I dunno exactly. Bipolar, or something.”
“Elaine was bipolar?”
“I don’t know exactly. I don’t even know if she got properly diagnosed. But she was messed up. She failed her year and it kind of made her… low.”
“How low, Sammi?”
Sammi’s eyes scanned Annie and Brian’s faces then. Brian knew what Annie was doing too. It’d dawned on him.
“Wait,” Sammi said. “You’re not saying she…”
“We’re not saying anything,” Brian said.
“The suspicion is that… Elaine took her own life,” Annie said. Brian felt annoyed at her for divulging that kind of information, especially when it wasn’t confirmed.
“She wouldn’t.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“She—she couldn’t do that to herself. She couldn’t. Could… could she?”
Sammi’s question answered everything Annie needed to hear. The uncertainty said everything. To Brian, that question meant that yes, Elaine could kill herself. Yes, she had problems, so she could’ve ended her own life.
But the key code. The solid lid atop the water tank. Something just wasn’t right.
“That’ll be all for now, Sammi,” Annie said, standing. “Thanks for your time.”
Brian followed Annie out of Sammi’s house when he felt his phone ring.
“Yeah?”
“Word from the hotel,” DS Finch said. “Elaine Schumer checked in two weeks ago and paid the whole sum up front.”
“So she’s got a room at the Baker’s Inn?”
“Not just a room. But something very interesting in it, too. You’re gonna want to take a look at this, McDone.”
Eight
Brian held his breath as he looked inside Elaine’s Schumer’s room at Baker’s Inn.
Inside Room 479 on the top floor, the wallpaper was crinkled. Specks of mould crept up behind the dusty little CRT television, which had an old circular aerial sat on top. The carpet felt hard, like it had been walked on many times. It was overdue a change, and Brian figured it’d been that way for quite some time.
The room was dark. There was a window at the other side of the room, but very little light pee
ked through it. As Brian got closer, he realised it’s because it looked out onto a rectangular court in the middle of the rooms. There was nothing at the bottom of this court, though, just dirt. The windows felt pretty solid, and they’d take some budging.
But there were loads of other windows that Brian could see. Someone had to have seen Elaine Schumer at some stage. Someone had to know what had happened.
He turned around and looked back across the room. “What is it you want me to see, Finch?”
DS Finch stood by the door. He didn’t cut an imposing figure, not even slightly. So when he had something over Brian, he definitely enjoyed using his advance knowledge to his advantage. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“Can we not just fuck around here and actually get on with things?”
Finch raised his hands. “Hey. You’re the detective inspector. You’ll find what you’re looking for, soon enough.”
As much as Brian wanted to collar Finch and remind him exactly what his rank was, he also didn’t want to give Finch the joy of getting one over him. So he took a deep breath of the dusty air and started his search around the room. “Just keep out of my way and keep the fuck quiet.”
“At your service, boss.”
Brian started at the bed. White sheets, completely neat. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s slept in here.”
Finch didn’t respond.
“Did they change the beds after Elaine’s two weeks expired?’
Again, Finch didn’t respond.
“Finch?”
“Thought you said to keep quiet?”
Brian shook his head. “Jesus, Finch. Don’t act like this. Did the hotel change the bed or not, yes or no?”
“Nobody came in this room,” Finch said. “Elaine checked in ten days ago. The two weeks of her stay aren’t up yet.”
Brian nodded. “Ten days ago. May 24th.” That added up with the night of the concert. “The bed’s really neat.”
“Well done, genius.”
“It means she never slept a night here. She checked in, paid for her room… and then she did it.”