Time and Tide

by Peter Grainger

  Smith’s pointing finger travelled a couple of miles further west – ‘And the other one is Deepford, which must be where the contours do that funny wiggle inland.’

  Partington said, “Funny wiggle” isn’t a term we often use but apart from that, you’re spot on. When you retire, sergeant, you should look us up. We could find you a shift or two.’

  Terek said, ‘Thank you for your assistance. I assume that if we need anything more formal, something written perhaps, I could approach you in the first instance?’

  ‘In the only instance, I’d say. I’m the senior man here now, by default. We’re all volunteers these days. I don’t think our word carries a lot of official clout, inspector. But if there is anything I can do to help, I will.’

  Terek’s mobile began to sound like a ship’s sonar, and Smith thought, some idiot somewhere must be doing a psychological study of what our choice of alert tones reveals about us; his own was still set on the defaults because he had no idea how to alter them despite Waters’ best efforts. The detective inspector opened his phone and flicked a thumb across the screen.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Reeve has been trying to reach me. Please excuse me while I step outside and return her call. Sergeant, perhaps you could get Mr Partington’s contact details while I do so.’

  When it was just the two of them, the coastguard said, ‘Right, sergeant. Would you like my details?’

  ‘I’m taking a wild guess that they haven’t changed much since the last time. How are you, Malcolm?’

  ‘Good, David. And yourself?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘And that’s the new boss, is it?’

  Smith nodded, one ear still on the one end of the conversation he could hear outside on the steps.

  ‘Not much like the old boss on this occasion. A woman, wasn’t it, the last time we talked about work?’

  ‘Yes, definitely. She’s now his boss. This is his first day, and a body turns up. I don’t know whether that’s a good omen or a portent of doom, to be honest. Time will no doubt let us know.’

  Partington perched himself on the edge of his desk and folded his arms.

  ‘I remember getting new young officers. The novelty wore off after a while. You must have thought about jacking it in. I meant what I said about doing a bit here. You don’t need nautical know-how – an ex-copper would be ideal.’

  Smith’s old friend coincidence, of course, but he fought back the urge to say, well, as it happens, on this very day I handed in my letter of resignation. Jump no guns and count no chickens – life had taught him those lessons often enough. But the idea of it appealed. To come here once or twice a week, to sit in this neat little room with its maps and binoculars, watching the sea come and go. To talk to sailors on the radio and call the Hunston police about illegal barbecues and lost lilos. Maybe even to save a life rather than investigating a death…

  ‘Anyway, we haven’t seen you at the club for a month or two. Have you not been up to the caravan?’

  ‘Hardly. Shirley’s had it booked out every weekend. I think there’s a free week in a fortnight, so I’ll be about then.’

  ‘Look forward to it – I don’t know if there’s anything on. Are you bringing that nice-looking lady again?’

  Out on the steps, Smith heard a couple of ‘Yes, ma’ams’, and thought the conversation was coming to an end.

  ‘Jo? I doubt it.’

  ‘That’s a shame. She seemed…’

  Partington didn’t quite know how to say it, but Smith thought it – yes, she is.

  He said, ‘Oh, we’re still in touch but she’s working away until Christmas.’

  ‘What does she do?’

  ‘Clever things. She’s a lecturer, and a writer.’

  ‘Ah, I see the problem. She’s out of your league, old son. She expects more than a week or two in a caravan.’

  Partington was fishing for answers, of course, probably on behalf of Sally, his wife of many years, but Smith was in a good mood and ready to oblige.

  ‘You couldn’t be more wrong, Malcolm. She loves it up here. She’ll be back in the new year.’

  DI Terek returned, looking brisk and ready to leave – had there been developments? Smith felt a moment of irritation at being out of the loop – the arrival of a new detective inspector had changed the dynamics of the department just as he had anticipated.

  Terek said, ‘Thank you again. We’ll be in touch if we need any further help.’

  Malcolm Partington said, ‘Always happy to oblige. But I have to say that if you need real local expert knowledge, you should be speaking to Sam Cole down at Barnham Staithe. He’s lived and worked on these waters all his life.’

  Terek nodded, turned and walked out of the look-out. Smith said goodbye to the coastguard and followed. There was probably no way he could convince the detective inspector that he had not just been set up, and so he wouldn’t waste time trying, but the silence in the car for the next few minutes was a tense one.

  When they came to the sign for Overy that pointed the way out across the saltmarshes, Terek managed to slow down enough to read it before accelerating away again.

  He said, ‘Why did you make the point about good vehicular access between here and where the body was found?’

  Sometimes one just has to state the obvious, whatever the risks.

  ‘Because I don’t think our man would have been able to walk very far, sir.’

  After a moment’s thought, Terek said, ‘It’s conceivable that he got those injuries after he entered the water.’

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s just about conceivable that he was run over by a trawler.’

  The habits of a lifetime, Smith, are difficult to change.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Detective Inspector Terek? You do surprise me.’

  The three women stood in the outer office of the police mortuary at Kings Lake, and the one who had just spoken, Olive Markham, senior mortuary technician, looked down at the paperwork she had already begun as if there might have been some mistake.

  DCI Reeve said, ‘Why is that, Olive?’

  ‘Well, it isn’t that I know Detective Inspector Terek. Quite the reverse – I have never heard of him. But I have already made a preliminary, very preliminary, you understand, examination of our new guest, and he bears all the hallmarks of a Detective Sergeant Smith discovery.’

  Reeve caught Serena Butler’s eye as she said, ‘It’s funny you should think that. DI Terek has been accompanied by the said sergeant this afternoon.’

  ‘Ah. Well, there we are. That makes more sense.’

  There was a certain gloomy lugubriousness hovering around Olive Markham - she exuded somehow a sad but reassuring sense of peace, as the walls of the old building still exuded the smell of formalin though it had not been used to preserve elements of the dead here for many years.

  Reeve said, ‘May I ask why, Olive? What are the hallmarks of a Smith discovery?’

  ‘To begin with, there is always a…’

  She paused and peered at them over her glasses.

  ‘Would you like to go through and see the subject of our discussion?’

  ‘Like’, thought Alison Reeve, probably isn’t the operative word, but this was why she had brought Serena Butler with her; it might help if the detective constable had at least seen the dead man whole, as a person, before she witnessed him being dissected. If she was going to be ill, better now than in the morning in front of Dr Robinson.

  The technician led them in through the swinging doors. On a mortuary trolley, ready to be pushed into the controlled environment locker for overnight storage, was a body underneath a sheet. There is no mistaking such a thing, no disguising it; the size and shape are instinctively recognised, the feet poking up at one end, the nose at the other.

  Olive Markham had shown many bodies to many people. She took hold of the sheet at the head end and then fixed her gaze on DCI Reeve – she waited until she received the nod. Then she did exactly the same with the young,
female detective constable. There were no obvious signs of apprehension, and the nod came quickly enough.

  ‘So,’ said the chief inspector, ‘what are the hallmarks of a Smith?’

  What an absurd question, when one thought about it, but the person most responsible for this new form of corpse categorisation would, of course, be delighted by it.

  Olive Markham had removed the sheet in its entirety now; she folded it carefully and placed it on a nearby table.

  ‘It’s very simple. There is always an oddity, at least one, with anything he directs to me. I realise that he doesn’t only encounter oddities, naturally. The explanation must be that he sends the simple, boring ones to Kings Lake General or to the mortuary in Norwich.’

  As the now-quite-senior officer present, Reeve felt that she should clarify a point of procedure here.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Smith doesn’t actually decide personally where bodies should go, Olive.’

  ‘No, of course…’ but the technician was, unusually, smiling to herself, and Reeve thought, oh, you’re one of us, you’re one of the people who know him.

  Serena Butler spoke for the first time.

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking, then, what’s the oddity here?’

  ‘Have you had a proper look yet?’

  When she wanted to see you clearly, Olive Markham peered over her spectacles and that’s what she was doing now.

  Serena let her gaze travel down the dead body and then up again. There was something… She could feel it but she could not explain it, and so she frowned and shook her head.

  The technician’s hands were slender and pale, with very long fingers that had no rings. She held one of them out and over the body, a few inches from it, and then moved it down towards the lower end. It hovered above the corpse there as if she was about to perform some act of spiritual healing.

  ‘This man has two broken legs, just here in the mid-section. We will know more when the clothing is removed but look below and you will see that the feet are at quite improbable angles.’

  They looked and it was true – and once seen, it could not be unseen.

  Reeve said, ‘Anything else? I know this is all very preliminary but…’

  ‘There is a severe contusion to the back of the skull. The scalp is torn open and there must have been plenty of bleeding. One cannot see that at all standing here now but if you wish to examine it, we can do so. Rigor has passed.’

  ‘No, that’s fine, Olive. We’ll leave all that for the morning. I just wanted you to meet Serena here, and her to meet you. It avoids shaking hands over a corpse, which is probably unlucky. Are you alright with everything?’

  The question was directed to the detective constable, who seemed to have got over any initial discomfort that she might have felt. In fact, as she answered she was leaning forward a little, examining the dead man’s face.

  ‘Yes, ma’am – I’m good.’

  One of those modern idioms that members of Smith’s team uttered at their peril, but of course he wasn’t here to denounce it. Serena Butler straightened up then and said to Reeve, ‘Can I ask a question about this?’

  ‘Of course.’

  To Olive Markham, then, ‘Do you think that the blow to the head was the cause of death?’

  The senior mortuary technician drew a measured breath before she answered.

  ‘At no time this evening have we been, as some of you like to say, on the record. In other words, my opinions have no weight at all, officially speaking. I am, quite literally, the hired help in these matters.’

  Reeve said, ‘Absolutely, Olive. We’re simply asking out of interest. Nothing will be written down now and you will not be quoted.’

  ‘Very well. The wound on the head certainly did not help matters. It is unusual in that it isn’t a straightforward impact wound – not the consequence of your typical blunt instrument, shall we say. There are elements of dragging in the contusion, of the head being pulled off to one side during the impact, which has torn the scalp. Dr Robinson will no doubt be able to go into much greater detail. And there are, as you can see, minor abrasions to the right side of the face.’

  The detective constable was leaning in a little further and peering again, and Reeve thought, she really does want to get a look at it – I had no idea our Serena was so bloodthirsty.

  Serena Butler said to Olive then, ‘You said the blow didn’t help matters, which suggests that something else might have been the cause of death – that the damage to the skull is a contributory factor.’

  ‘That would be my guess, detective constable. It would also be my guess, though I have to say much less of one, that the ultimate cause of death will be that he drowned.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Olive Markham almost smiled at DCI Reeve as she said, ‘I do not know it – knowledge will only come from the doctor’s examination. Everything that I say to you is a guess but some of my guesses are more – how can I put this? More grounded in experience than others. So, why am I guessing that he drowned?’

  Olive took a step closer to the body and a pencil from the breast pocket of her white lab-coat. She pointed with it, the sharp end now a few inches from the dead, pale skin of the lifeless, expressionless face.

  ‘See here? The skin has a faint greenish tinge? Typically, that develops in a victim of drowning after about forty eight hours. The rate of development can vary depending on whether the body has remained in the water.’

  Serena was staring intently, and moving her head around to get light on the skin from different angles.

  ‘Yes, I can see it. As you say, it’s faint but it’s there. I never knew that…’

  Olive Markham seemed almost pleased by the newcomer’s show of interest in her work. As she replaced the pencil, she said, ‘And there is something else. One might also say that I’ve cheated in making my guess. When we moved the body from the ambulance’s stretcher to the trolley, we could hear the water inside. It squelches. Not a lot of people know that, either. The lungs and stomach will be full of water.’

  Detective Constable Butler said, ‘So when the pathologist opens him up…?’

  ‘It will all run out, yes, and in quite surprising amounts. I will take samples, one for us and one for you. And you will be writing labels and attaching them to the samples. The whole experience is quite hands on, as they say. Not everyone requires a full English breakfast on the day of an autopsy.’

  But DC Butler went on to ask what time they would start and how long would it last and what she should wear. She didn’t seem apprehensive in the slightest, and Reeve thought how useful it would be to have someone else who liked this sort of thing, now that Smith was leaving.

  It was after eight o’clock in the evening when Smith left Kings Lake Central police station. On the way out he had detoured down to the main reception desk, hoping to find Charlie Hills, but instead there had been two young, uniformed women on duty. He didn’t know them and they did not know him – they had simply nodded at each other before he walked out into the warm, September air.

  And it might soon get worse, of course. There was talk of contracting out reception now, making it a civilian role, just as had already been done with a number of administrative tasks, which was fair enough, he supposed, but recently intelligence analysis had been civilianised, if there was such a word. That was a step too far; it was creating a space, a break between the brain and the hands of the body of the police force, in his opinion. Now there were additional meetings taking place at which the civilian analysts explained their conclusions to the officers who might have to act upon them. What had been gained by that? In the past, the detectives had processed the intelligence themselves, they had internalised and owned it; now they received it as attachments to emails which they had to read. How was that progress?

  That and similar questions occupied him on the drive home. Smith understood how his mind worked – it was seeking reasons and reassurances that he had done the right thing at the right time
when he placed the letter on Alison Reeve’s new desk that morning. But he had, surely. It was time. Too much was changing too quickly now, and at the same time he was losing the ability to adapt to change. A natural process, just the way of things, and if one resists it for too long one becomes bitter and then foolish and then a danger to others. He had seen these things happen to older men before him, and he was lucky – he could choose not to have it happen to him. He had done so.

  But some things would not change. Because it was so late, too late to eat a full meal, he made a healthy, wholemeal sandwich of organic ham, local cheese and fresh salad and carried it upstairs to his office. There he took down his present Alwych notebook, realising that this one would see him out, leaving three in their cellophane wrappers and wondering what use he might find for them afterwards.

  He began a new page, as always for a new case, and wrote with a fountain pen filled with his currently favourite ink – Waterman’s Intense Black. And, as always, the heading was prosaic and factual – ‘Barnham Staithe, body of unidentified male’, followed by the date. From the top drawer of the desk, he took the twelve-inch steel ruler that he had owned for at least thirty years and with a pencil he underlined the heading neatly. These, of course, were rituals as well as routines; this way of doing things had brought him success in the past and therefore might do so again. He took time in these preparations, allowing his thoughts to settle into the quiet, methodical, analytical mode which, ironically, brought him peace whilst at the same time beginning the search for answers to the tragic questions posed by others’ misfortunes.

  As his hand began to write, Smith’s mind began its work. Those empty pockets were his first concern. He had known suicides to do that, removing all obvious traces of their own identity as if they were in some way ashamed of what they had decided to do, but this was no suicide – not unless he had jumped off a quay onto a concrete landing stage, broken both legs and then waited for the tide to wash him away. As Smith knew every quay from Kings Lake to Cromer, this could immediately be discounted – there wasn’t a single one of them more than ten feet above the low tide mark. If you were unlucky, you might break an ankle, that was all.