* * *
At that same exact moment, in Croydon crematorium, a private funeral service was taking place. The celebrant, an experienced sixty-seven-year-old called Michael Noonan, looked out at the almost empty benches of those who had gathered to witness the life of a man christened Graeme Garrison. Noonan always tried to speak to the friends and relatives before a funeral service. Often it was impossible because of the numbers. But in this case the task had been simple, because they were so few. In the front row, the redoubtable grandmother, Betty, was there with a couple of elderly neighbours from her care home. And there were also two elegant and well turned out women, Angie and Sophie, who were sitting at the opposite ends of the rear bench. Each had described themselves as Graeme’s partner.
Noonan knew exactly who it was who would be cremated. He had done his homework, and knew the press had wanted to attend. There had also been many email enquiries by members of the public, and plenty of trolling. The most surprising was an official letter from HMP Bronzefield, requesting a CD copy of the service to be supplied. The crematorium had the facilities for live streaming for those relatives who were unable to attend a ceremony, and they could keep copies. But he had never before heard of a prisoner being able to request one. If the prison authorities were prepared to allow it he could see no reason to refuse. The grandmother had requested no hymns nor prayers, no eulogy nor description of the life of this mysterious man. That left him with most of the allotted forty-five minutes of the service to fill. He decided that he would have time for most of Fauré’s Requiem and a full committal. In the middle, however, he had to say something. He was saved by a letter, received the day before, which just had a few lines.
My love,
I don’t have a name for you now that I’m sure about, but I do have many wonderful memories. I knew you just a few months, and despite all your faults and many deceits your touch upon me will be indelible.
Ellen xx
Afterword
I have taken some liberties with the geography of Surrey for the purposes of the plot. There are no sizeable railway embankments near Pirbright, and the villages of Shildon and Westmeare are fictitious. Lacey Dutton, a village which first appeared in The Body on the Shore, reappears here in its full and charming glory. If it existed I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to afford a house there. The new development of Shepherd’s Rest near Woking is also fictitious, though obviously similar to many that actually exist.
I would like to thank Home Office forensic pathologist Dr Stuart Hamilton for carefully checking my forensic and post-mortem scenes, and retired Detective Inspector Kim Booth for his insight and knowledge. I was also helped by Simon Thomas, crew manager at Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue, on the river rescue scenes. Thanks also to Mark Buckle, to the media relations team at British Transport Police, Duncan Claber at South Western Railway, and Kiat Huang for his knowledge of mobile phones. Any mistakes remaining are my own.
Michael Bhaskar and the Canelo team as always were enthusiastic backers of the book. Miranda Ward did an excellent editing job. Tim Cary, Cheryl Cullingford and Sara Wescott, my readers’ circle, made invaluable suggestions. Above all is my wife and first reader, Louise, to whom this book is dedicated.
About the Author
Nick Louth is a bestselling thriller writer and an award-winning financial journalist. A 1979 graduate of the London School of Economics, he went on to become a Reuters foreign correspondent in 1987. He was for many years a Financial Times columnist, and a regular contributor to Investors Chronicle, Money Observer and MSN Money. It was an experience at a medical conference in Amsterdam in 1992, while working for Reuters, that gave him the inspiration for Bite, which in 2014 went on to become a UK number one ebook bestseller. The Body Under the Bridge is his fifth book in the DCI Gillard crime series, and his ninth thriller overall. Nick Louth is married and lives in Lincolnshire.
www.nicklouth.com
DCI Craig Gillard Crime Thrillers
The Body in the Marsh
The Body on the Shore
The Body in the Mist
The Body in the Snow
The Body Under the Bridge
Find out more
Thrillers by Nick Louth
Bite
Heartbreaker
Mirror Mirror
Trapped
The Body on the Island
Don’t miss Nick Louth’s next thriller, coming in October 2020.
Tuesday, 14 May 2019
The prisoner being transported in the back of the Serco van was having a laugh and joke with two fresh-faced young prison officers sitting with him. He was being escorted from HMP Wakefield, category A prison, to HMP Spring Hill, an open prison in Buckinghamshire to complete the last few weeks of his six-year sentence. They talked about last night’s Manchester United game, the sending-off, and the high tackle that caused it. The two officers, Andy and Steve, new recruits to the outsourcing firm, were relaxed. It was the last trip of their working day and this little guy wasn’t going to be any trouble. Neil Wright, 63, had been put away for the manslaughter of his wife. According to him, she banged her head on the stone floor during an argument in which she threatened him with a knife. The paperwork confirmed he was now considered a low-risk offender unlikely to reoffend. The two officers, one of whom was handcuffed to the felon, were quite understanding of Wright’s explanation and regret for what he’d done. Steve, the older of the two officers, was divorced, and his own relationship had verged on violence during its breakdown. Andy, just twenty-two, with a soft innocent face and a snub nose, was a big Crewe Alexander fan, and lived just around the corner from the ground. The prisoner, having spotted Andy’s lanyard, memorised his surname.
As the van arrived at the gatehouse of the new jail, the driver passed across a clipboard holding a stack of documents, including the prison escort record and its matching risk assessment document, all neatly filled out. After being checked through by the gate officer, the barrier was lifted and the vehicle entered the courtyard. Other more detailed documents had been emailed to the prison governor ahead of the arrival. Everything appeared to be as it should be. Bureaucracy doing its job.
Every word of it was a lie.
The man they were unwittingly escorting was in fact a notorious child murderer and paedophile, who had at the Old Bailey in 1986 been given an indeterminate sentence for the killing of at least nine boys between the ages of ten and seventeen over a period of thirty years. The judge had described him as ‘Perhaps the most wicked, bestial and coldhearted killer ever brought before me.’ The decades in various segregation wings across the British penal system had gradually changed his appearance. The grinning, muscular, tousle-haired goblin of twenty-nine, a staple of the 1980s tabloid press, had gradually transmuted. He had aged badly, and was wiry, with only a few tufts of snowy hair and a grizzled beard. Only the dark watchful eyes, now behind red framed spectacles, were the same.
His real name was Neville Rollason. The fake identity was neat and flawless, utterly professional. It was not the result of some cunning piece of sleight of hand by the prisoner himself or any of his associates. It was far too comprehensive for that. It was in fact created by a senior officer in Special Branch, under instruction from the Home Office.
The general public would be staggered to learn that their government is from time to time complicit in such falsification of the legal records which are the framework of society. The reasons for doing so would not impress them either. But the public rarely finds out. Because the government goes to great lengths to keep the entire process secret.
Only one thing on the false documentation was correct, to conform with statute. The release date of 2 July 2019 when this criminal, known in his heyday as The Bogeyman, would be released back onto Britain’s streets. He’d had more than thirty years away from his passion, and was anxious to get started again. He’d already started compiling a mental list, at the top of which was the name Andy Jenkins of Crewe. But that was for pleasure. There was mor
e serious stuff to be planned. Like revenge against the detective who had put him away.
1.56 a.m. Friday, 21 June 2019
Michael Jakes liked to cycle to the river during the summer nights, but the summer solstice was always special. There were a lot of thoughts that he needed to get straight, and somehow he couldn’t make sense of them in the daytime. But in the coolness after midnight, with the shade of the trees above him, he’d pedal miles along the southern bank near Walton-on-Thames until he got to Hurst Meadows Park. There he would listen to the sounds of the waters, the ripples and the rills, the raucous noise of the ducks and geese foraging on the grass. There were narrowboats moored here too, and sometimes cars. From them came the sound of laughter or music, muted lights, and often nearby the silhouettes of lovers, drawn to the water.
The splash came from behind him. A big ‘thwock’ like someone diving in. He cycled on for half a minute, before stopping and turning. There were no lights except his own head torch. He made his way back towards the noise. There was no other sound, except a distant car. He dismounted, and walked up to the edge of the water. There were still ripples, echoes of the disturbance, along the edge of the water bouncing off the hull of a narrowboat. He could see the dark cut-out of a male figure, a long ponytail like frayed rope, standing in the stern of the boat, staring out into the water. He was talking to somebody else close at hand. ‘I can’t see anyone,’ the man said, then turned at Michael’s approach, hand lifted to shield himself from the head torch beam. ‘Was that you?’ the man asked. ‘Did you chuck something in?’
‘No. Not me. I just heard the noise. Maybe it was someone from the car. Going for a swim.’ He pointed back along the tow path where a few minutes earlier he had passed a BMW, its stereo pounding out.
‘I think we heard that,’ the man said. ‘They come down Sadler’s Ride, don’t always bother with the car park.’ A woman emerged from the cabin, and stared out at him.
Michael drew away from the man, not wishing to be properly seen. He had learned not to approach others at night. People sometimes thought him strange, especially when they saw his eyes. And his dark unruly hair and beard, often still spattered with plaster. People had bad ideas about him. Until they saw his work. The smooth, perfect finish, not the merest ripple, product of a steady swing of the forearm. Michael could make a ceiling flatter than the Thames, a straight horizon in any dimension. Wet, it was the colour of mocha, a day later it was the hue of his own skin. An unconscious skill, honed over years. People had bad ideas about him. But then he had bad ideas about people.
Bad ideas. Someone jumping in the water. And then not swimming a stroke. Not calling for help. Just ripples, disturbing the surface. Finally smoothed over by the flow of the Thames. Leaving one world and entering another. As the great man said: There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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Copyright © Nick Louth, 2020
The moral right of Nick Louth to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788636988
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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