Death of a Mermaid

by Lesley Thomson

‘What’s that?’

  ‘What?’ Toni was instantly alert. In this tomb they wouldn’t hear the patrol.

  ‘Here.’ Freddy’s voice was muffled in the musty dark.

  Toni found Freddy in one of the gun cells. She was aiming her phone torch at the ground.

  ‘Down there. I saw something.’

  ‘We should go, Freds.’ Toni was getting a nasty feeling. She squatted down and, her own torch held at her shoulder, spotlit a puddle of revolting liquid, which, were the place accessible to the public, she’d assume was piss. Freddy peered down. A cluster of silver glinted in the light.

  ‘It’s Mags’s crucifix,’ Freddy breathed.

  ‘You can’t know that.’ But Toni knew it too.

  ‘It is.’

  Toni shone her torch down.

  ‘The chain could have broken and it got blown in.’ Freddy was unnaturally bright. ‘It needn’t mean… it means nothing.’

  ‘No way was it blown in. The way it’s bundled up like that looks deliberate. It would never have fallen like that.’ With a deft flick, Toni took a photograph with her phone then lifted the crucifix up and held it to her torch. Four letters were engraved in the silver: MPTM.

  Margaret Pauline Theresa McKee.

  Toni lowered the crucifix and chain into an evidence bag. She touched Freddy’s arm.

  ‘I’m calling it in.’

  38

  FREDDY

  Two minutes past midnight. A police helicopter clattered over the cliffs, the searchlight creating shadows, as if the shingle itself was shifting. Miles off shore, the lights of the Rampion Windfarm winked red in the darkness.

  ‘They’ve found a dead body, it’s been in there for years.’

  ‘I heard it was some woman?’

  ‘That teenager who stabbed his mum was a serial killer.’

  The senseless chatter of onlookers. Bad news, true or false, travelled fast. A police constable had sent Freddy behind the cordon, where she was jostled by the gathering crowd, drinkers from the Hope and Facebook followers. Phones like the flames of votive candles, the light making ghouls of them, they texted their friends.

  Mags was none of their business. Yes, she is, they chorused. She is public property. Before Freddy got banished behind the ‘Do Not Cross’ line, she’d heard Toni tell DS Malcolm Lane to organise a six a.m. press conference. Soon Mags would be headlines and trending on Twitter.

  Freddy was sure she and Toni hadn’t searched the battery properly before Toni radioed for help. They had done a cursory check of the gun cells. Freddy crossed herself and prayed that Mags was at Lourdes and unaware of all this fuss in her name.

  ‘Could you come with me, please, madam?’ The PC who’d warned Freddy to keep back or she could contaminate the crime scene was holding up the tape. Numbly, she dipped beneath it. Freddy tripped and stumbled over the beach to officers clustered around an unmarked car.

  ‘Freddy, we’re going to need your ex’s details.’ It was Toni, notebook out, detective’s face on.

  ‘Ex?’ Freddy could only think of Mags.

  ‘Her name is Sarah, wasn’t it, Freds?’ Toni prompted with the ghost of a smile. Freds. Toni was being super kind. Like when Freddy had come to the Kemps’ house after her dad chucked her out.

  ‘Sarah Wood.’ Freddy recited the number and address. ‘Why do you want her? Sarah never met Mags.’ Sarah had been on the beach that night.

  ‘That’s great for now.’ This from DS Lane. Toni was walking off towards the battery.

  ‘Why do you want Sarah?’ Freddy’s voice was feeble; it was whipped away in the wind.

  A murmur had gone up from the crowd. One of the guarding officers was undoing the tape. People retreated to make way for a vehicle. Flashes, the stutter of fake shutters on phones held high. A van stopped five metres from the battery. White suits. Forensics. Freddy gasped, ‘Is it Mags?’

  ‘Sarah was in this vicinity. We have to talk to all potential witnesses. To eliminate her from our enquiries,’ DS Lane said.

  ‘Have you found Mags?’ Freddy persisted.

  ‘Frederica, please would you come with me.’ Lane ignored her. ‘We need to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s routine, Freddy.’ Toni was back.

  Actually, Toni hadn’t said it was routine. Nothing would be routine again.

  Across the lonely stretch of beach came the looming moan of the foghorn. Rolling fog made the air bitterly cold and damp. Freddy could no longer see the ridge of shingle or the sea beyond.

  39

  TONI

  ‘A Sarah Wood is in reception,’ Sheena said. Toni took off her headphones.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Anxious he might be hard on her, Toni had planned to listen in on Malcolm’s interview with Freddy. ‘She’s coming from Liverpool.’

  ‘Lewes.’ Sheena didn’t quite manage to hide her delight at wrong-footing Toni. ‘She’s staying at the Premier Inn. Seems that, contrary to what your friend Frederica told you, Sarah Wood never left Sussex.’

  ‘Show her into room three. Offer water, no tea or coffee. Let her sweat. Then get on with reading those diaries.’ A search of Mags’s flat had thrown up a stack of diaries under her bed. It made Toni queasy for Sheena to read them, but Toni and Malcolm had enough to do.

  Toni had brought in the Homicide Assessment Team. The HAT detectives – from Brighton – had assessed the murder environment and, as Toni knew they would, referred it to the murder squad. Aka Malcolm and Toni. Mags had been missing for a week. Her crucifix, the copy of Julian and the fact that she’d called in sick – although no one had actually spoken to her – told the police that Mags had not gone away of her own accord. They had traced the message that she’d sent Freddy to near the battery. Toni hadn’t told Freddy they were not looking for a missing person. This was a murder investigation. Toni could hardly believe it herself. The chances Mags was alive after a week were bad.

  ‘Sergeant Lane found this. He said you might want it. ’ Sheena handed Toni an evidence bag. Toni looked through the plastic.

  ‘I do. Tell him thanks.’ She was going to enjoy her interview with Sarah Wood.

  ‘And he said he’s organised the press conference for six p.m.’ Sheena would have perceived Worricker granting the SIO role to Malcolm as demotion for Toni. It was not. To avoid compromising the investigation if it got to court and to provide resilience, Toni would deputise for Malcolm. With a budget barely enough to police a duck pond, and as one of the few highly experienced SIOs in the county, Worricker had said that ACC couldn’t afford to take Toni off the case. He’d told Toni she’d have to swallow down her connection to the potential victim and treat it like any other murder. Any other murder. What was that? This was Mal’s first homicide. He’d nearly had a heart attack when she told him he was the lead.

  ‘A reminder.’ Toni told Sheena. ‘No mention of the crucifix – call it jewellery. Or the Julian book – that will sound weird to the average punter. We have to grab the public’s attention and get them on board.’ She sighed inwardly. A single female churchgoing librarian was not sexy. The team would have to push to stoke the media’s interest. Lines like ‘this is the worst case of murder that in twenty years I’ve…’ would not play out. Especially without a body. It wasn’t a mother strangled by her crazed son. Wild West Britain is open for business had been one headline for the Munday case. The team needed all the help they could get.

  Toni gathered up her notebook and Mags’s hastily compiled file. Slim, it included Sarah Wood’s details, scene photos, a picture of the crucifix and a shot of a stain in the last gun cell, which Toni needed with every fibre of her being not to be blood.

  ‘There’s the possibility that Margaret McKee will turn out to be on a pilgrimage. Check out likely sites. Lourdes, Rome, Walsingham.’ Toni mustered up a few places where Catholics trotted off to for devout worship. Mags had been to Lourdes before – would she go back?

  ‘What is this about?’ Sarah Wood demanded when Toni backed open the
door and laid her papers on the table. Toni switched on the recording machines and reeled off the usual stuff. She informed Wood they were being filmed for the sake of both parties.

  ‘Bullshit. It’s to cover your arses,’ snapped the defence lawyer.

  ‘Thank you for coming so promptly, Ms Wood.’ Toni showed a pleasant demeanour while she struggled to put warm, chatty, tempestuous Freddy in a relationship with the ice-queen in Armani. ‘I understand you are in Lewes and not at your home in Liverpool.’ Fingers steepled, Toni rested her elbows on the table. Open, inviting, encouraging. Pointless, a defence lawyer, Wood knew every trick in the book; Toni had to box very clever.

  ‘Yes.’ Wood hesitated long enough for Toni to expect ‘no comment’. ‘Do I need a lawyer?’ Wood’s Liverpool accent had been ironed out by a private education or good effort.

  ‘You are best placed to decide that.’ For the camera, Toni gave the semblance of a smile. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I’m visiting someone. Not that I need to tell you.’

  ‘This is a murder investigation.’ Toni noted that Wood showed no surprise that they presumed Mags was dead. ‘You will be well aware that we need the name and address of this person. Is there a reason why you would withhold the information?’

  ‘Frederica Power is my lover. We live together.’ Wood was daring Toni to blink. But Toni’s quelled intake of breath was because Wood had called Freddy her lover. Freddy had said they’d split up. Why lie?

  ‘Freddy has been here for her mother’s funeral. She’s staying in Newhaven. I don’t know the address. Her family own a fishery; it should be easy enough to find her.’ Wood was playing her. She knew the damn address. Freddy said she’d been there. She was a cool customer. Cool enough to kill?

  ‘What were you doing on the evening of Saturday the eleventh of May?’ Toni’s stomach clenched.

  ‘No idea.’ Sarah cradled an eye-wateringly expensive handbag on her lap.

  ‘You don’t recall what you were doing last Saturday night.’ Toni spoke to the tape as a less than subtle reminder that Wood was on record. ‘A week ago.’

  ‘I forgot the date. I was on my way here. Freddy wanted me with her.’ Wood must be confident Freddy would back her up. Toni had a nasty feeling that Wood might be right. Freddy was loyal. Toni wished she could tell Freddy she must be completely honest. Unlike Mags, who believed she did everything in the face of God, Freddy had saved Toni’s bacon more than once by lying to the nuns.

  ‘Where did you meet Frederica?’ Freddy had said she’d been shocked when Wood turned up at the battery. Sheena would check Freddy’s phone records to confirm. Unless her pillow-talking lawyer got to her, Freddy would be cooperative. Malcolm would get the truth out of Freddy. That was what Toni was afraid of.

  ‘I went to her mother’s house. Before you try to trip me up, I found it on the electoral roll, but I don’t have the address off pat. You’ll find it on my satnav if you get a warrant for my car.’ All in a day’s work for a defence lawyer’s investigator. ‘It will on be my phone, which, sadly, I’ve left in the hotel.’

  ‘You left your phone at the hotel?’ Toni was working up a healthy dislike for Ms Wood.

  ‘Come on, I’m sure you can do better.’ Wood was playing her like a harpsichord. ‘Weren’t you at that ghastly convent with Freddy? Didn’t you girls have to have top-notch brains to get in? Or at least have got God.’ Wood gave a death smile. ‘For the tape, when I got the call from your colleague to come into the station, I rushed out, leaving my phone on the dressing table thingy.’ Toni would bet a month’s salary that Wood had her phone in her lovely handbag. She knew Toni could only search it if she arrested her.

  ‘You are Frederica’s partner, yet you had to look up her mum’s address?’

  ‘Freddy didn’t get on with her family. You must know that bigoted git of a pater chucked her out. Because she was a lesbian.’ That challenge again.

  Lesbian shezbian. Toni wouldn’t be caught out that way.

  ‘You also must know what happened next,’ Wood was goading.

  This time Toni gave the briefest assent. She felt mild annoyance that, while Freddy had told Wood about that time, Toni was bound by a promise she’d made to Freddy not to tell Ricky.

  ‘You met Freddy at her mother’s house?’ This was not what happened, but she hoped to lead Wood down a path.

  ‘Yes.’ Wood was dismissive. ‘I expected Freddy to return to our home with me, but she’s been roped in to care for her mother’s animals. Some holiday scheme for pets. Freddy’s a walkover.’ Not very nice.

  ‘What time did you get there?’ The woman was lying her head off. Toni helped her along.

  ‘About eight?’ Wood rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t count minutes when I’m off the clock.’

  ‘You met Frederica Power at her mother’s house?’ Toni hadn’t yet got background, but knew Wood had kept a bunch of bank robbers out of prison on a technicality. They were never going to be besties.

  ‘Yes, ma-yam.’ Bronx now.

  ‘Strange.’ Toni raised her racket to deliver an ace. ‘Can you explain why we found your railcard on the ground outside the lunette battery?’ She had the satisfaction of seeing Wood quell surprise.

  ‘I must have dropped it.’

  In addition, we have a witness who places you on the beach by the lunette battery in Newhaven at that time. Could you explain this discrepancy?’

  ‘Am I a suspect for something, Sergeant?’ Only a detective could have spotted that Wood was rattled. She looked desperate to snatch the card.

  ‘Detective Inspector. For the tape,’ Toni said. ‘You may be a key witness to a murder. Did you or did you not go to the lunette battery that night?’

  ‘As you’ll know from your witness, I was there briefly. I met Freddy there and I must have lost my card then.’ Wood had regained her poise. ‘We spent the rest of the evening at her mother’s little house.’

  ‘While you were there, did you see anyone at, or around, the lunette battery?’

  Wood faked a yawn and Toni was irritated to catch it. ‘Only Freddy, who, I am guessing, is your witness. If you’ve talked to her, I should have been there.’ Now Wood looked properly cross. ‘I’m her lawyer.’

  ‘Did Frederica tell you why she was at the battery?’ Toni ignored this.

  ‘Why should she?’ Answering a question with a question. Wood was swaying on her tight-rope. It was obvious Freddy had not told her.

  ‘You weren’t inquisitive, or even concerned, to find her on a beach at night alone?’

  ‘Freddy hasn’t been herself since she heard her mother was ill and then died. Bear in mind, Detective Inspector Kemp, this is a woman who was not informed, either by family or supposed friends, that her mother had cancer.’ Snatching an advantage after an unforced error, Wood drilled Toni with a stare. Still feeling shit for not telling Freddy about Reenie, Toni would not be chastised by Sarah Wood.

  ‘Have you heard of a Margaret McKee?’

  ‘I… I may have heard the name. I hear a lot of names in my work.’

  ‘What about Mags?’ Toni cooed.

  ‘I think that was the name of who Freddy was meeting.’ Wood was improvising.

  ‘You and Freddy have discussed Mags?’

  ‘Hardly at all. She wasn’t important. To either of us.’

  ‘But you knew Mags’s full name is Margaret McKee?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘You said Freddy told you that her father threw her out for being gay.’

  ‘Of course. We share everything. I didn’t realise Margaret McKee was that girl.’ Sarah looked askance. ‘The one who dumped her high and dry. She lost her home, her livelihood and now her inheritance.’

  ‘How did you know Frederica would be at the lunette battery?’ Toni resisted tipping the beaker of untouched water over Wood’s head. Keeping her powder dry, she tried for nice cop laced with ill-disguised admiration for Wood’s intuition.

  ‘I looked on my phone.’

&n
bsp; ‘You rang Frederica?’ Despite her grim mood, Toni was close to enjoying herself.

  ‘I used Find my iPhone.’ Wood was discombobulated now.

  ‘Do you mean that you were tracking your partner?’ Toni scribbled Stalker and shifted her notebook to give Wood a chance to show off her upside-down reading.

  ‘Not like that.’ Wood scowled at the page. ‘For safeguarding. She’s my partner.’

  ‘Did Frederica know that you tracked her?’

  ‘Of course.’ Freddy had not known. She’d told Toni that she’d since deregistered her phone so that Sarah Wood couldn’t find her. Had Wood spotted this? Whatever, Freddy had told Sarah their relationship was over, but Woods had ignored her.

  ‘How long were you at the lunette battery before you saw Freddy?’

  ‘Minutes. I didn’t see the McKee woman.’

  Toni shuffled the file. The next bit was theatre; she had no evidence. ‘Ms Woods, in your capacity as a solicitor, you sent letters to Freddy’s brothers purporting to be on her behalf. Please tell me the contents of these letters?’

  ‘I don’t play games, Inspector.’ Sarah kept her gaze on Toni. Buddha calm. ‘Sorry, Detective Inspector.’

  ‘Please answer the question.’ Damn. Toni had dared hope that Wood would collapse under the weight of likely exculpation from the legal profession. Instead, she appeared boosted. Her eyes on the file, she’d have noted Toni didn’t have the letters.

  ‘What has this to do with why I am here?’ Wood was icily benign. ‘Did Mags McKee have something to do with Reenie Power’s will?’

  ‘We’re looking at Mag— Margaret’s disappearance from all angles.’ Toni felt an uprush of emotion. Compartmentalise. ‘As I understand it, Frederica Power knew nothing of the letters and they contravened her actual intentions. Can you confirm that?’

  ‘Detective Inspector Kemp, I don’t see how this tranche of questions has a bearing on the disappearance of Margaret McKee. As you well know, my professional relationship with Frederica Power is bound by client confidentiality. Unless I’m under arrest, I would like to leave.’ Wood gathered up her handbag.