A Dark and Twisted Tide

by Sharon Bolton

  38

  Dana

  THE GARDEN WAS at its best on summer evenings, after the heat of the day had woken the scents of the flowers. Being in the garden at the end of the day had become something of a habit for Dana. Even after the worst of days, she found it soothing. There was an exception to every rule, she supposed.

  ‘Bloody Lacey Flint.’ She ran a hand over her eyes.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ replied David Cook. ‘None of the men can concentrate when she’s in the room. She has daft pillocks like Finn Turner jumping into the Thames just to impress her and now she’s got a bee in her bonnet about more bodies. And that’s before we get on to her little habit of taking morning dips in the ruddy river.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to know about that.’ Dana couldn’t help a smile.

  ‘We all bloody know about it.’ Cook seemed incapable of keeping his voice down. ‘Guys on early patrol have their ruddy binoculars permanently focused on the entrance to Deptford Creek. Christ, does she have any idea what people catch in that water?’

  ‘Have another beer, Dave.’

  Cook reached out and helped himself from Dana’s cool box. The sky was finally starting to deepen in colour.

  ‘So, if I followed you correctly,’ said Dana, when Cook had opened and poured his beer, ‘Lacey and the Scooby Gang found two more unidentified women who’ve been pulled out of the river in the past twelve months. Definitely young?’

  ‘Neither over thirty, according to the post-mortems.’

  ‘Both Caucasian, had little soft tissue, suggesting they’d been in the river for some months, but relatively intact skeletons, which would normally suggest they hadn’t,’ continued Dana.

  ‘What we would expect to see in a corpse that had been trapped somewhere.’

  ‘Or weighted down,’ suggested Dana. Cook inclined his head.

  ‘Both in a similar part of the river to the one Lacey found?’

  Cook drank deeply. ‘Limehouse and South Dock Marina. The Scoobies found two others, apparently, but they ruled them out because they were up west. Most significantly, the one at South Dock had very long dark hair and a piece of white fabric wrapped around one ankle.’

  ‘How soon can we see this piece of fabric?’

  Cook had a narrow briefcase with him. He pulled out a small, square plastic bag and put it on the table.

  ‘Looks very similar to me.’ Dana picked up the bag and held it up to the fading light.

  ‘I signed it out earlier,’ said Cook. ‘We haven’t taken it out of the bag yet. It will need to go back to the lab for testing, but it does look exactly like the sheets and wrappings we found on the one last Thursday. There’s even a bit of hand stitching.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Dana.

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ agreed Cook, before ducking sharply. ‘Friggin’ hell! What was that?’

  Dana smiled. ‘A bat. They nest in the trees just over the way. I quite like them.’

  Cook was looking around in alarm. Several small, dark shapes had appeared, flitting around the trees and rooftops. ‘Each to their own. But it leaves us with a bit of a dilemma.’

  ‘There’s no dilemma, Dave. We have to search.’

  Cook sighed and dug into his bag again. He brought out his laptop and logged on. After a few seconds of delay, he pulled up a map showing a section of the Thames.

  ‘Speaking purely hypothetically, if we start at Limehouse and finish just beyond Deptford Creek, we’re talking five miles of river, Dana. Not far off a quarter of a mile wide at that point.’

  ‘You’re just being grumpy because I’m going to blow your underwater search budget out of the water. Pun not intended.’

  Cook got up and walked a few paces into Dana’s garden. ‘These tiles must take some upkeep to keep the moss off.’ He looked down at the smooth and shiny pale-grey stones that covered the patio and the steps down into the lower part of the garden.

  ‘There’s a chemical for everything these days,’ said Dana.

  ‘Lucky you don’t have kids,’ he said. ‘They’d break their necks clambering over those concrete boxes.’

  He was coming back. ‘I can’t justify anything until we have the results back on the fabric comparison. If there’s no match, that’s probably the end of the matter.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  He sat back down beside her. ‘And Lacey thinks there’s a connection to our illegal-immigrant problem,’ he said after a second.

  ‘So I understand. Is it possible?’

  ‘Everything’s possible. Whether it makes sense is another matter.’

  ‘Bringing illegal immigrants up the Thames doesn’t make sense,’ said Dana. ‘Unless they’re heading for somewhere very close to the river. In which case, dumping the bodies when they’re done with them would be relatively easy.’

  ‘Aye, but what are they doing with them? I know the sex trade is the most likely, but if that’s the case, these girls have a value. They’re not going to have been dumped after a few months’ work.’

  ‘Maybe they died on the job,’ said Dana, thinking back to her conversation with Lacey. ‘Some men have very odd tastes. From what I understand.’

  ‘Proving anything is going to be bloody impossible,’ said Cook. ‘You’d better start hoping this search never gets approved and, if it is, that we don’t find anything. Because if we do, it will be Homicide’s budget that gets blown out of the water. Pun very much intended.’

  FRIDAY, 4 APRIL

  (eleven weeks earlier)

  39

  Anya

  SHE’S MADE A terrible mistake. This isn’t a way out. This is the river, vast as an ocean and black as impending death. Water explodes in her face, mountain high, surging with uncontainable power. Everything has turned to water. Anya feels it hit her like a speeding car, throwing her into the wall behind. She cannot see the sky, the lights, her own hand. The storm has come from nowhere.

  The whole world is sinking. Blows come from all sides. Her eyes burning, she sees nothing but a swirling mass of black, grey, brown.

  The wall at her back stretches up for ever, water pouring down it. Anya rubs her eyes, looks up, left, right, searching for a ladder, for a break in the endless, deadly-smooth surface.

  Movement. Clutching at the weed-slick wall, Anya turns. The boat appears, flying up into the air like a spark in an ice-cold fire. A hand stretches out. Desperate, she grabs it.

  And now the water has swallowed her whole. This is how it feels to drown, this ferocious tugging at your hair, this tearing of your limbs. She clings to the side of the boat.

  The engine can barely be heard against the sound of the waves crashing all around her and yet Anya has a sense that it is trying. That the boat and its driver are trying to save her.

  She was wrong to be afraid. Stupid to leap from the boat, to try to find her own way out of the endless dark tunnel. That has always been her trouble – her inability to choose a course of action and stick to it. The boat slips once more into the partial shelter of the tunnel and Anya feels as though she might be able to breathe again soon. The water still dances like a dervish all around them but at least in here it’s contained. They hit one wall, then the other, surge up towards the roof, but then they move on and the sounds of the storm grow fainter. Anya starts to wonder if maybe she isn’t about to die after all.

  The driver reaches out, pats her head. Anya thinks she is about to be pulled aboard, but instead a rope fastens tight around her neck and the boat picks up speed.

  ‘You were right to be afraid,’ says the driver.

  TUESDAY, 24 JUNE

  40

  Dana

  ‘MIKE, WHAT A surprise.’

  ‘Really?’ Kaytes paused on the threshold of Dana’s office. ‘I thought they’d phoned up from the front desk.’

  ‘Indeed they did.’ Dana rose to her feet, wondering if politeness was wasted on this man. ‘But the surprise has stayed with me for the full four minutes it took you to get here in person. Come in.�
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  Kaytes stepped through the doorway. ‘I brought lunch.’ He was holding up a bag from one of the big sandwich chains. ‘Roast vegetables and cream cheese. For me too. Just in case you’re one of those vegetarians who can’t be in the same room as meat.’

  ‘That was very sweet of you. Please sit down.’

  Kaytes collapsed into Dana’s chair as though he’d walked up several floors instead of one, and tipped the contents of the bag on to her desk. ‘Mind if I tuck in? Badminton match last night. Always eat like a horse the next day and I’ve got to cut open a suicidal dental hygienist at two o’clock.’ He pulled the wrapper off one of the sandwiches. He’d brought orange juice too, and crisps.

  ‘So did you just fancy some company?’ said Dana.

  Kaytes had a corner of his sandwich in his mouth. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. I got the toxicology report.’ His face screwed up into an expression of extreme distaste.

  ‘Something wrong?’ enquired Dana.

  Kaytes appeared to be chewing painfully. ‘Bit slimy.’ He blinked his eyes rapidly before taking another bite, a smaller one this time, as he dug one hand into his briefcase and pulled out a thin plastic folder.

  ‘The fact that you’re here in person,’ said Dana, ‘suggests there might be something out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Blood and sand, what is in my mouth?’ Kaytes swallowed hard and then pulled a long piece of maroon vegetable matter from the remainder of his sandwich. He held it up to the light.

  ‘That would be aubergine,’ said Dana. ‘Eggplant if you’re American.’

  ‘Looks like something I might find in my sluice.’ Kaytes leaned over the desk and dropped the rest of the sandwich in Dana’s bin. ‘Thank God for crisps.’

  ‘Toxicology?’ prompted Dana, once Kaytes had opened the packet and emptied half of it.

  ‘Yep, I’ll leave it with you, obviously, but it was a bit odd. Not something I’ve come across before, to be honest.’

  She leaned back in her chair. ‘All ears.’

  Kaytes opened the file and studied the first page for a few seconds. ‘Well, as you know, we didn’t have a lot to work with, owing to the advanced state of decomposition. The internal organs had gone, meaning we were relying on muscle and connecting tissue, which simply isn’t as reliable.’

  Dana waited.

  ‘Well, first of all it was interesting because of what wasn’t there,’ Kaytes went on. ‘Of course, they looked for traces of alcohol, and the usual range of commonly available drugs, such as amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines.’

  Dana nodded. Kaytes was reeling off the list of substances a toxicology investigation typically tested for. The laboratory would have tried to find traces of cannabis and cocaine, of the opiate drugs, typically morphine and heroin, and the chemically produced ones such as Ecstasy. It would also have looked for paracetamol and organic solvents. ‘Find anything?’ she asked.

  ‘Not a sausage.’ Kaytes was sprinkling crisp crumbs all over the report. ‘That’s not to say we can rule them out categorically, but if she’d been a drug addict or died of alcohol poisoning, I’d be surprised if nothing had been absorbed into her tissue.’

  ‘So now we get to the interesting bit?’

  Kaytes turned the page. ‘We do indeed. Because one of the girls – Max, I think – had the bright idea of sending off a hair sample. You remember she still had some attached hair, very long and black?’

  ‘I do remember the conversation about hair,’ said Dana. ‘Perhaps your yanking a handful from my head gave Max the idea.’

  ‘Very possibly. In many ways, hair is ideal for toxicology testing. The day may come when it takes over from blood, urine and soft-tissue testing completely.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Substances disappear from urine quite quickly, from blood after days or weeks, but hair offers a much more permanent record. Every centimetre provides, very roughly, a record of the previous thirty days. And it doesn’t deteriorate. So when you consider that our subject’s hair was nearly two feet long, that’s a long period of history we’ve got.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘First up, it seemed to confirm everything the tissue analysis had told us. No evidence of substance abuse. The woman was actually pretty healthy. But one bright spark at the lab had a good idea. She’d been reading about the case and had been struck by the notion that it could be an honour killing. She started thinking outside the box about what could lead to a so-called honour killing – typically, it’s sexual misbehaviour on the part of the woman. So she did a few more tests, off her own bat, and found this.’

  Kaytes turned the page round to face Dana.

  ‘Human chorionic gonadotropin,’ read Dana. ‘Now why does that ring a bell?

  Kaytes gave her an odd, searching look. ‘In laymen’s terms, it’s the hormone produced by the fertilized egg in the uterus. The over-the-counter pregnancy kits are designed to detect the presence of hCG in the urine.’

  ‘She was pregnant?’

  ‘Not necessarily, and without the key internal organs there’s no way to know for sure. hCG can also indicate the presence of some cancerous tumours. But in a woman of that age, pregnancy seems most likely.’

  41

  Lacey

  LACEY TAPPED LIGHTLY on the door of the incident room at Lewisham and slipped inside. ‘It’s a lead,’ Tulloch was saying. The large room was largely empty, everyone out enjoying the sunshine. Just Sergeant Anderson, Pete Stenning, Tom Barrett and Gayle Mizon were gathered around Tulloch, who looked up and smiled.

  ‘Good afternoon, Lacey, thanks for popping in. OK, as I was saying, if our victim was registered with a GP, there will be some record of her pregnancy. We can contact surgeries, ask them about immigrant women who visited in the past eighteen months and who have since vanished.’

  Lacey pulled a chair from behind a desk as Tulloch looked at the faces around her. ‘Yes, I know, a long shot,’ she admitted. ‘But we haven’t got much else.’

  ‘Could have been a pregnancy out of wedlock,’ said Mizon. ‘That wouldn’t go down well in some cultures. Or the result of an adulterous liaison. Big drama. Family disgrace. Death before dishonour.’

  Tulloch was on her feet now. ‘Seems a bit extreme, but I’m not sure we can rule anything out. Gayle, can you find out how many surgeries we’d be talking about in London? Maybe talk to one or two, see what sort of reaction you get. I’d like to get going with it today, if we can.’

  She looked across at Stenning. ‘How are we doing with tracing Nadia Safi?’

  ‘Her photograph’s been sent round every station in the Met. We’ve got her up on all the People Wanted websites. We know she hasn’t left the country officially. No record of her at immigration.’

  Anderson gave Lacey a wink. ‘What about these two extra bodies Lacey and the Marine Unit have found for us?’

  Lacey sat up a little straighter. This was why she’d been asked to come along. They’d found something. She’d been right.

  ‘Mike Kaytes had a look through the post-mortem reports earlier this afternoon,’ Tulloch told them. ‘Mainly to see if they could be immigrants, and to see if he could spot any similarities with the woman Lacey found last Thursday.’ She paused.

  ‘Don’t keep us in suspense,’ said Anderson.

  Tulloch seemed to give herself a little shake. ‘Sorry, I find myself needing to take a moment after dealing with him these days. Anyway, it seems Limehouse lady isn’t connected. She was blonde, had some pretty expensive dental work and, the clincher for Dr Kaytes, breast implants, one of which was still attached to the body. And frankly, if I could wipe from my memory his comments on that one, I would, believe me.’ She stopped again, and this time looked directly at Lacey.

  ‘The other one, though, found at South Dock Marina, is a different matter. Certain similarities between that corpse and the one retrieved last Thursday lead Kaytes to believe the earlier body is also an immigrant.’

  She glanced down at his notes. ‘Minim
al dental work, well-developed bones in the arms and, of course, the long black hair. He’s sent off a hair sample to see if it shows the same trace chemicals as in Lacey’s friend, but it’ll be a while before we hear. In the meantime, though, it seems a good idea to keep an open mind.’

  ‘Any news on the linen?’ asked Mizon.

  ‘Yes, thanks for reminding me. We’ve had the report back on the fragment found on the body at South Dock Marina, the one we think could be connected. Not entirely conclusive, unfortunately. It’s linen, of the same style and weave to the shroud covering Lacey’s corpse, but not the same batch.’

  ‘So where does that lead us?’ asked Anderson.

  Tulloch found a chair and sat down heavily. ‘We’re going to search the Thames.’

  42

  Pari

  PARI WASN’T GETTING any better. Soon, they kept telling her, soon. These are very powerful drugs we’re giving you, they’re bound to make you feel a bit worse before you get better, but they are working. Soon you’ll be fit as a fiddle.

  Pari wasn’t sure what a fiddle was, or why she should want to be like one. She just wanted to feel well and strong again. But it wasn’t just headaches any more. Her stomach had started to hurt badly, there were pains in her back and parts of her body had swollen. And she was getting a feeling, more and more often, that the blood in her veins was hotter, moving around faster than it was supposed to. It was even harder to deal with than the headaches and the cramps, this sense that blood was never where it was supposed to be: sometimes up in her head, making it pound with heat and noise; sometimes pooling in her ankles, swelling them to the width of young trees.

  ‘Pari, thank God you’re not as puny as you look,’ her mother used to say. ‘Does nothing wear you out?’

  Pari was no longer sure whether she’d give anything to see her mother’s face again, or whether she’d die of sadness were her mother to see her this ill.