A Dark and Twisted Tide

by Sharon Bolton

  Another instruction was called and the queue moved forward again, deeper into the smell of boiled food, engine oil and industrial-strength disinfectant that was characteristic of every prison Lacey had ever been in.

  Sometimes, it seemed that every step deeper into the high-security facility at Durham seeped a little more of the life force out of those making the journey. Colours faded, voices grew muffled, shoulders slumped. Something in the process of queueing to enter a place that so few would ever choose to visit leached the life out of this crowd of women, children and a few grey, limp men.

  More hands probed her, coldly impersonal, less intrusive than the whiff of humanity around her. Another corridor. Another check of bags and pockets. More forms to sign. Another half-hearted protest over an imagined grievance and they’d reached the visitors’ room. As one, the visitors began moving around with the resignation of those who’d done this many times before.

  Lacey found a table in the centre of the room as the prisoners filed in, each wearing the violet tunic that distinguished them as the crowd that wouldn’t be going home any time soon. They were as dull and drab as their surroundings, more shadowy even than the people who’d come to visit them.

  And then she came. Twelfth in line, yet separate somehow from the others. She walked with her head held high, her shoulders back, either not seeing or pretending not to notice the sideways glances, the lulled conversations, the nods and whispers. She was the celebrity presence, the one they all talked about, the one they felt they knew, the one they wanted to get closer to, if only they dared.

  She was young, in her mid twenties. Her long, toffee-coloured hair was clean, although it needed a good trim. She wasn’t tall, but was so slim and had such great posture that she gave the impression of being so. Her skin was clear and her eyes still bright; the notoriously poor prison diet hadn’t impacted upon either yet. She was vivid and beautiful, infinitely more alive than everyone around her, and in her presence you never for a moment forgot that she was a killer.

  Lacey called her Toc, although it wasn’t even close to being her real name. She came up to Lacey’s table, rested her cheek on either side of Lacey’s for a second, then held her tight for a second longer. ‘Hey, you,’ she said, before stepping back and smiling.

  ‘You need to get off that boat,’ Toc said, some time later. ‘Just for a while. Just till this is sorted out.’

  The visitors’ room was noisy. It always was. There was nothing soft in the fixtures or furnishings to soak up sound, and the endless posting of instructions, of rules and regulations, of notices of rights and responsibilities on the walls around them almost seemed to add to the incessant noise. They both had to lean forward across the table, to speak a little louder than felt comfortable.

  ‘I don’t know for certain that there is a “this” yet,’ Lacey said. ‘And even if there is a “this”, the “this” in question may never be sorted out. I can’t just abandon the first home I’ve ever owned.’

  Toc frowned and blinked. ‘Gimme a minute to process that.’

  ‘We have no proof that the corpse in the river was left specifically for me to find. And no proof that whoever left the bag of crabs on my boat had anything to do with the corpse. The bag was just an old linen napkin. Probably somebody’s idea of a joke; someone who heard about the examination of the body and knew I jumped when the crabs came scuttling out. Coppers have a very sick sense of humour. It’s practically in the job description.’

  ‘And, of course, if you move away from the creek, a certain turquoise-eyed DI won’t know where to find you.’

  No one knew her better than Toc.

  ‘OK, back to crustaceans,’ said Toc. ‘What did the police say? You did call the police?’

  ‘I called Tulloch. It didn’t seem serious enough to call out uniform, but of course she disagreed, so the whole of the marina was like a scene from CSI Miami until daybreak.’

  At the mention of Dana Tulloch, Toc’s eyes had narrowed. Lacey waited a little nervously. Tulloch had been Toc’s arresting officer.

  ‘So what was the conclusion of the Met’s finest?’

  ‘Well, to say she’s not happy is putting it mildly. She actually wanted to take me home with her, and settled for leaving a couple of uniforms in the yard. So I spent what little was left of the night dreading that you-know-who would emerge from his hiding place and get arrested.’

  ‘If he was there in the first place.’

  ‘Who else would leave me the heart?’

  ‘Why would Joesbury leave you a bag of smelly crabs? Or a couple of toy boats? It’s not as though you have a bath to play with them in.’

  Lacey shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘Not the crabs anyway. I had two visitors yesterday. If this keeps up, I’ll be complaining about my hectic social life.’

  Toc gave the polite smile the remark seemed to need. ‘OK,’ she went on, ‘let’s say Lover Boy came round, left his calling card and scarpered, and that crab man, or woman, came later. Crab man is who we should be worrying about. Joesbury wouldn’t hurt you. Crab man is a different kettle of fish entirely.’

  Lacey couldn’t help but smile. ‘I’m loving these mixed seafood metaphors.’

  Toc wasn’t about to be distracted. ‘I’m not sure Joesbury did leave you that second heart. What time does a man on the run have to go beachcombing? If someone else left the bag of crabs, someone else could have left the heart and the boats.’

  Lacey shook her head. ‘Not possible. The heart was a personal thing. Like a secret message.’

  ‘What if someone has been sneaking around your boat, saw the heart that Butch Boy left you in the cabin and thought it would be funny to play with your head a bit? And I’m really not happy about the floating corpse that, in the biggest river in the world, just happened to stray directly into your path.’

  Lacey said nothing.

  ‘And you know what’s worrying me more? Because you didn’t tell the boys in blue about the second heart—’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. But because you didn’t, they won’t take the whole thing as seriously as they should. They’ll go with the coincidence-followed-by-practical-joke theory.’

  She was right. She usually was. Lacey dropped her head into her hands. ‘Why me?’

  ‘It has to be someone you know. Or rather, someone who knows you.’

  Lacey looked back up. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Strangers don’t come into the yard,’ Toc said. ‘From what you’ve told me, those gates are locked half the time. To have seen Joesbury’s artistic creation in sugar, they’d have had to get into the yard without being challenged, cross at least three boats and then peer down through your cabin window. They’d be conspicuous, to say the least.’

  Lacey said nothing. She could tell Toc most things, but . . .

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a window on the other side,’ Lacey admitted. ‘The creek side. The night he stayed, just before he arrived, I thought I heard someone swimming round the boat.’

  Toc gave an incredulous smile. ‘Nobody in their right mind swims in that river.’

  Lacey waited.

  ‘Sorry. Lots of people enjoy a bracing dip in the sparkling waters of the Thames and its South London tributaries. Could have been anyone.’

  ‘It could have been someone in a boat.’

  ‘Still conspicuous,’ said Toc. ‘Unless it’s someone who’s often seen in the water there.’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘I’m getting a bad feeling about this.’

  ‘You and me both.’

  ‘Could there be fingerprints on those bits of glass and shell?’

  Lacey thought about it. ‘Could be.’

  Visiting time was coming to an end. The drinks station had closed. The prison officers were looking at their watches, tapping people on the shoulders.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s just gone,’ said Lacey.

  ‘If I were giving him the benefit of the doubt, I’d
say he decided you’d be better off without him. Associating with a known cop-killer won’t exactly improve your promotion prospects.’

  ‘Visiting you every fortnight has hardly put me on the fast track.’

  ‘Well, that’s your call.’

  Even Lacey knew when she’d gone too far. ‘Sorry. Uncalled for and irrelevant. I’ve no desire to be on the fast track.’

  Toc softened. As people were starting to say goodbye she reached over again. ‘I’m really sorry, Lacey,’ she said. ‘Just when everything was starting to work out.’

  For a second, the noise level fell. And then a toddler ran shrieking across the room. Her mother, in a prison tunic, got up to retrieve her. Lacey felt her nose stinging, her jaw starting to ache. She couldn’t cry. She never cried.

  Toc was watching her intently. ‘People kill for all sorts of reasons, you know.’

  ‘Seldom good ones.’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion.’

  ‘No, it’s really not.’

  Toc’s gentle, hazel-blue eyes could turn cold in an instant. They couldn’t argue. If she lost Toc, she really did have no one.

  While Lacey waited, not sure what to say to make things better, Toc seemed to force herself to relax.

  In the six months since she’d been sentenced, Lacey had been slowly coming to terms with the knowledge that if you cared for someone deeply enough, you could deal with just about anything they’d done. It was possible to love a killer, and in the circumstances, that might prove to be no bad skill.

  SUNDAY, 22 JUNE

  32

  Lacey

  LACEY TOOK A deep breath and told herself to hold it together for just a few more hours, because that was how she was dealing with life right now, in hourly chunks. With gloved hands she emptied the contents of the freezer bag on to the work counter. The day shift was over and Wapping police station had fallen quiet.

  She switched on the desk lamp and picked up a magnifying glass. The pebbles, the shell, even the broken crockery were all hard, non-porous surfaces. Whoever had touched them would have left some prints behind. The experts could find them easily, but this was hardly a job she could send to the fingerprint specialists.

  She picked up each pebble in turn, twisting it under the light. There were several partial prints but nothing that would be definitely identifiable. Nothing on the shells either, or on the broken pieces of glass.

  She was in the basement, a room with no external windows. Lacey changed the light configuration and went back to the worktop.

  There, on a triangular piece of green glass, the ridge pattern of a print was fluorescing in the ultra-violet light. A large print, probably from a man’s hand. Lacey studied it carefully, then flicked the overhead lights back on and referred to the reference book she’d found earlier.

  Patterns in fingerprints were largely referred to as whorls, loops and arches. Arches were ridge-lines that rise in the centre to create a wave-like pattern and were either plain or tented. Only around 5 per cent of all pattern types were believed to be arches. Loops were made up when one or more ridges doubled back on themselves, and were sub-divided depending upon whether the ridges flowed towards the thumb or the little finger. About 60 per cent of human fingerprints were made up of loops. Whorls were circular patterns, either concentric circles like a bull’s eye or continuous like a spiral. Thirty-five per cent of patterns contained some form of whorl.

  The pattern she’d found on the green glass was a plain arch. The ridge lines ran from left to right of the print, rising slightly towards the tip of the finger and then falling again. A very distinctive print.

  Encouraged, Lacey found the second bag she’d brought, the one containing the two toy boats. It was a matter of seconds to find several prints, all compatible with the one on the piece of green glass. Whoever had left the heart had also left the boats.

  Reaching into her bag once more, Lacey took out the turquoise toothbrush that Joesbury had used when he’d stayed over and that he was the only person to have touched. Under the ultra-violet she could see marks along the handle, but nothing measurable. Then, at the head of the brush, just below the bristles, one very clear print that had probably come from his thumb. She directed it towards the light, held up the magnifying glass to be sure, but there was no mistake.

  The print on the brush was completely different. A double loop. Ridges running from the bottom left corner to form a loop that overlapped with one originating in the top right. Whoever had left the heart in the cockpit of her boat, whoever had brought the boats, it hadn’t been Joesbury.

  33

  The Swimmer

  THE SWIMMER ROSE to the surface roughly twenty yards away from Lacey’s boat. The last of the marina’s residents had gone below some time ago. All seemed quiet.

  Slowly. Lacey is wary now, on edge. Her nervousness as plain as daylight when she came back to the boat earlier. She’s holding herself differently, her shoulders high, her weight forward on the balls of her feet, as though ready to run. She’s never still any more, her head turning, her eyes searching for something she wouldn’t necessarily recognize if she saw it, her nerves anticipating fears she can’t even begin to name. Lacey is afraid, and a frightened Lacey is a dangerous one.

  Hearing, seeing nothing, the swimmer moves forward through the still, cold water, into the shadow of the hull, to the stern of the boat. The swim ladder is down, as it always is. The swimmer reaches up, takes hold of the bottom rung and then the next.

  Several of the hatches are open to catch the night breeze. Careful now. A noise below. Lacey awake, after all.

  From the bow cabin comes the sound of a heavy sigh. It escapes into the night, hovers like mist above the boat before drifting away across the creek. The night it leaves behind has chilled. It was the sound of misery.

  The swimmer waits for the weeping that will surely follow such a sigh, but hears nothing other than a creaking of wood, a rustling of cotton sheets.

  When no further sound comes, the swimmer reaches forward and places the small, plastic, blue-hulled toy boat on the flat door of the stern locker.

  A twist, a jump, a gentle splash and the swimmer is gone.

  MONDAY, 23 JUNE

  34

  Lacey

  ‘THERE’S PEOPLE-SMUGGLING AND people-trafficking,’ said the civil servant, a bland-looking man in his early thirties whose name badge read Dale. ‘People use them interchangeably but they mean something quite different, you know that, don’t you?’

  Lacey was at Lunar House on Marsham Street, headquarters of the UK Border Agency, the government body with responsibility for managing immigration into the United Kingdom. That morning, Chief Inspector Cook had announced a desire to be brought up to speed on the whole business of people-smuggling. He wanted as much background as possible before he organized resources. Consequently, Lacey, the newest member of the team and the only one with a background in CID, was off river duty for a couple of days.

  The room she’d been shown into was grey. Grey walls, grey furniture, grey carpet. Even the lukewarm coffee she’d been served was grey.

  ‘I think so,’ she said. ‘People-smuggling is consensual. The people concerned want to access another country without the necessary permissions. The smugglers help them do it, for financial reward.’

  Dale dropped his head and tapped something into the laptop in front of him, as though Lacey had made a point he wanted to remember. His limp, mousey-brown hair was thinning at the crown. He suffered from dandruff and smelled of medicated shampoo.

  ‘People-trafficking, on the other hand, is altogether darker,’ Lacey went on. ‘The people themselves are the commodity. Usually women and children – they’re brought illegally into a country and then sold. People-trafficking is effectively the slave trade.’

  Dale looked up. ‘You’ve not been with the Marine Unit long, have you? I just wonder why Chief Inspector Cook assigned you to this.’

  Lacey took a deep breath. ‘About three months.’
>
  ‘I suppose it could be your background as a detective,’ Dale went on. ‘I’m not sure I’ve met anyone before who’s chosen to go back into uniform. Quite a few who were obliged to, but that’s another matter.’

  The question was left hanging in the air. Which was exactly where it was going to stay. Lacey spotted a splash of coffee on the table and, without thinking, touched it with her index finger and drew a heart.

  ‘So, what’s puzzling us, Dale,’ she pressed on, ‘is why anyone would choose to bring illegal immigrants up the Thames. For one thing, it’s an extremely busy patch of water. The chances of being seen are very high.’

  ‘Yes, you’d think so.’ Dale’s eyes were fixed on the heart she’d drawn.

  ‘Of all the routes illegal immigrants could take into this country, why this one?’

  ‘Well, that’s another misconception,’ he drawled. ‘Most illegal immigrants aren’t smuggled in in the depths of night. They come into the country perfectly legally, with a work or study visa, and quietly stay behind when the permit runs out. That’s the real immigration problem this country faces, trying to find all these people and send them home. Not the odd boatload sneaking up the Thames.’

  Christ, if this bloke were any more laid back, he’d be asleep under the table. ‘I understand that. But in the last year, I’ve personally witnessed two boatloads coming up the Thames. According to records at Wapping and anecdotal evidence, there have been several other sightings. The one I was involved with last October could have ended very badly. The boat the people were travelling in overturned. We had to pull them out of the water.’

  Dale started pressing keys on the laptop again. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said after a moment. ‘First of October, just east of Greenwich, wasn’t it? Now that’s interesting. Three of the occupants weren’t illegal immigrants at all. Only the woman was.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘The three men were all known to the police, all had records,’ said Dale. ‘They were charged, found guilty and sentenced. They’re in Wormwood Scrubs, eligible for parole in a couple of months.’