Scream: A DCI Mark Lapslie Investigation

by Nigel McCrery

  He paused again, and smiled beneath his huge moustache. ‘And today we’ll be learning about cognitive behavioural therapy.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Steve Stottart murmured to Lapslie. ‘We’re going to have a buzz!’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  On her way back from lunch with Jane Catherall to set up her incident room in Canvey Island, Emma Bradbury took the opportunity to drive around the various streets, roads and avenues of the area, familiarising herself with the locality. After all, she might be there a while, depending on how the investigation went.

  If she was being honest with herself – which frankly didn’t happen very often – then Emma was nervous. She’d never really handled a big murder investigation before. Stabbings outside nightclubs, yes; bottles suddenly smashed over the heads of wives or girlfriends in the kitchen after a domestic row, yes; but premeditated and sadistic murder – not with her in charge. She’d worked on that scale of investigation before, of course, but playing second fiddle to a more senior officer. In the past year or so that officer had been Mark Lapslie, and she’d learned a lot from him about how to project authority without making it look like you were doing so. Now she had to put those lessons into practice.

  Canvey Island, she thought as she drove around, was one of those places that you had to be deliberately going to in order to find it – you couldn’t just drive through on your way somewhere else – and for that reason Emma had managed to inadvertently avoid it for her entire time in Essex. She realised, as she cruised around, that she had actually missed something rather special. It was charming, in its own 1950s way. Isolated, but thriving and full of energy. Something about it reminded her of the early Carry On films, although she couldn’t quite place what it was.

  Part of her brain was flagging street names as she drove – a habit she’d got into years ago, before satnavs, so that she always knew roughly where she was if she had to check a street map. After five or six strange names her conscious mind picked up on the anomaly, and she found herself reviewing the names without quite knowing why. Paahl Road, Waarem Road, Vaagen Road, Delfzul Road … she decided that there must have been some kind of Dutch influence in Canvey Island, years ago. Passing Cornelius Vermuyden School a few minutes later she was pretty much convinced about it.

  She passed a church as she was driving: a squat, white tower with an oddly styled roof, set behind a black ranch-style fence. The church was attached to what looked like a hall and a house – perhaps the vicarage – both of them white-plastered as if they had all come as part of a job lot. The tower had a massive cross set into it, large enough to crucify a giant. Emma’s hand crept up to cross herself, shoulder to shoulder and forehead to chest and she had to repress a twist of guilt within her heart.

  The board outside the church named it as ‘Our Lady of Canvey and the English Martyrs’. There had to be a story behind that, she thought, and made a note to look into it. Who could possibly have been martyred at Canvey Island, and for what?

  A little further on, she passed a pub with the appealing name of the Lobster Smack. It was freshly painted a gleaming white, but beneath the paint it looked old, as if it dated back hundreds of years. It sat in the shadow of one of the concrete sea walls that appeared to line the island, protecting it against high tidal floods. A row of wooden cottages sat beside it, looking equally venerable. She wondered briefly if the pub had rooms. This case might require her to stay around for a while, and it wasn’t as if she’d passed a Travelodge or a Premier Inn while she was driving.

  She kept going alongside the sea wall for a while, then got bored and turned around, taking a different route back and passing a surprisingly modernistic building looking out onto the Thames Estuary that appeared to have been designed to mimic the bridge of some ocean-going liner, with a curved central portion and wings to either side. In contrast to the Lobster Smack, which looked Victorian, this place was built in a style reminiscent of the 1930s. Again, it was a stark white against the leaden sky. White seemed to be a favoured colour around Canvey Island. Perhaps all the other colours kept getting used up by the time the deliveries got this far. Signs attached to the central drum-shaped portion identified it as a restaurant and bistro, and Emma made a note to check it out. Chances were, this close to the Thames fishing grounds, she might be able to get a decent seafood linguine. Well, seafood at least. Linguine, like coloured paint, might not have got this far.

  Finally, she found Canvey Island Police Station. It was a two-storey red-brick building – thankfully, not whitewashed – although it did have white-framed windows. Two police cars and what looked like several cars belonging to the staff were parked outside the front. Security appeared to Emma Bradbury to be non-existent. She was used to sealed-off parking areas around the back of the nick, accessible only with a security code or a swipe card. This was almost civilised.

  She parked up and looked around. Gulls wheeled overhead, crying out like abandoned babies, their eyes scanning for rubbish bins and discarded chip packets. She could swear that their eyes tracked the back of her neck as she walked towards the front door of the police station.

  ‘DS Bradbury to see Sergeant Murrell,’ she said, flashing her warrant card. The youth on the front desk – Police Community Support Officer, rather than a ‘real’ police constable – visibly gulped, tried not to look at her chest and said, ‘Certainly, ma’am. Would you like to come inside?’ He buzzed her in through the door – the only sign of security that she’d noticed so far – and led her down a short corridor to a small office.

  Sergeant Murrell was scanning what looked, upside down, like staff reports. He turned the top one over and stood up as she entered.

  ‘DS Bradbury. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.’

  ‘Please, call me Emma,’ she said. ‘I’ve got the preliminary results of the autopsy. We’ve confirmed that it’s a murder, so I need to set up an incident room and get going on the investigation. How many staff can you spare?’

  ‘And I’m Keith. I’ve got five full-time PCs and nine PCSOs,’ he replied, ‘and although they’re not exactly overworked, they’re not sitting around with their thumbs up their arses either. We don’t get a lot of murders here, but there’s a fair amount of antisocial behaviour and domestics. Something about being at the far edge of the country brings out an almost Scandinavian moroseness in people, I find. I can probably spring a PC and two PCSOs for a while – anything else would compromise the visible patrolling that we like to do here.’

  She debated briefly whether to push for another PC, but she didn’t want to alienate Murrell – not just yet, anyway. She nodded. ‘That’ll be fine for now. Where can I set up an incident room?’

  ‘We’ve got a crew room, where the team can grab a cup of tea and read the paper during their breaks. If necessary, we can turn it into an incident room.’

  ‘Again, it’ll have to do. Apologise to your team for me for taking their crew room away.’

  ‘Don’t worry – there’s a café across the road.’ He paused. ‘Talking of which, can I get you a coffee?’

  ‘Please. Black, no sugar.’

  ‘Chris,’ he said, turning to the PCSO in the doorway who had been trying to steal glances down her T-shirt; ‘A Whoopie Goldberg for the DS, please. And a Julie Andrews for me.’ He gestured to a seat in front of his desk. ‘Take the weight off your feet. Is there anything I can tell you before we start setting your incident room up?’

  ‘I’m a bit unsighted on the area,’ Emma said, sitting down. ‘Can you tell me something about Canvey Island?’

  He shrugged. ‘What’s to say? It’s a reclaimed island in the Thames Estuary, separated from the rest of Essex by a network of creeks. At various times in the past it’s been known as Counus Island and Convennon Island. It lies about three metres below sea level, on average, which probably makes it the closest thing that England has to Holland. That means it’s prone to flooding on occasion. Last time that happened was 1953, before I was born. Fifty-eight people died then, and it�
��s still a scar on the local psyche. That flooding led to the building of fifteen miles of concrete sea wall around the edge of the island, which provides a level of protection against all but the worst tides.’

  He paused, brow furrowed. ‘What else? Originally the place was a source of salt for the Roman invaders, although they switched to Maldon, further up the coast, where the salt is purer. It was then turned over to sheep farming for a long time. More recently the petrochemical industry built a large oil refinery down in the Hole Haven area, and the island was the site of the first delivery in the world of liquefied natural gas by container ship, which makes us feel like we’ve contributed something to history. Of course, the whole thing is disused and partially dismantled now, and it’s a nature reserve.’

  ‘What’s the population?’

  ‘Nearly 38,000 people, 30,000 of whom moved in since the Second World War. For a while it was one of the fastest-growing seaside areas in the UK, although it’s stabilised somewhat now.’

  ‘What about you – are you local, or were you posted here? You said “we’ve contributed something to history” just now.’

  ‘Well spotted. I’m a local, born and bred,’ he said. ‘My family go back to the eighteen hundreds. Best way to be taken seriously around here is to have a name that’s familiar from the tombstones in the cemetery.’

  ‘How nice.’ She paused, remembering. ‘I saw a building on the way here – looked like it was a restaurant of some kind. What’s that all about?’

  ‘You mean the Labworth Café?’

  ‘Is that what it is?’

  He nodded. ‘Designed by some famous engineer – I can’t remember his name. It’s the most notable landmark we have.’

  ‘Why “Labworth”? Was that the guy who designed it?’

  ‘No, apparently there used to be a Labworth farm there, before the café was built. I remember my nan, God rest her soul, telling me that the name came from two Old English words: lobb, meaning spider, and werda, meaning a low-lying marsh. Easy – ask me another.’

  Emma grinned. ‘Where’s the best place to get a seafood linguine around here?’

  ‘Chelmsford.’

  She laughed, unforced. ‘Yeah, I was afraid of that. Oh – something else I meant to ask about that I saw when I was driving around. There’s a church called “Our Lady of Canvey and the English Martyrs”. What’s that all about then?’

  ‘Ah, now my nan used to wax lyrical about that as well. Back when she was a girl, there were a fair few Roman Catholics on the island, but no Roman Catholic church. This was before the bridges were built, so if they wanted to go to Mass they had to walk to the ferry and take a trip over to the mainland – or if the tide was out, walk across the stones in the creeks – and then take a train from Benfleet to the nearest town with a church, then do the whole thing in reverse to come back. Apparently, permission was given for Mass to be said in a local house belonging to a Mr Levi—’

  ‘Doesn’t sound particularly RC.’

  ‘No, he was Jewish, but his wife was RC. He converted after a while. They built a shed in the back garden for Mass, and then later, just before the Second World War, a church was built. It was named “Our Lady of Canvey” after a navigation beacon erected at Deadman’s Point around the turn of the century.’

  ‘I assumed it was a reference to the Virgin Mary. A kind of wish-fulfilment that she had some special interest in Canvey Island.’

  ‘No, it was this beacon. Apparently it looked like a woman, with a ball for a head, her hands on her hips and wearing a triangular skirt. The beacon’s gone now, sadly, but the church remains.’

  ‘And the English Martyrs?’

  ‘You’ve got me there. I think that was some kind of sop to the bishop. They’d snuck this local joke past him, naming the church after a shipping beacon, so they threw in the English martyrs to compensate.’

  ‘Clever.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, standing up, ‘enough of the history and geography lesson. Let’s go and get that incident room set up.’

  The room was large, whitewashed and lined with pinboards which were covered with posters highlighting Essex Constabulary’s position on sexism and racism in the workplace (they were against it, Emma was pleased to see) and with fliers advertising meetings of the Police Federation. A couple of trestle tables were scattered around, with plastic chairs pulled up to them. Another table, set against one wall, formed the base for a filter coffee machine which, judging by the nose-wrinkling smell, had been continuously keeping its coffee warm for several weeks. Two constables and a Community Support Officer were sitting together and talking. They looked up when Keith Murrell and Emma Bradbury entered. Murrell caught their eye, and they quickly drained the dregs of their coffees and left.

  ‘Will this suffice?’ he asked. Emma looked around. She’d seen worse. ‘It’ll do nicely,’ she said diplomatically. ‘The pinboards will come in useful. What are the chances of getting some whiteboards, a couple of computers and a couple of local maps?’

  He pursed his lips. ‘The maps we can get straight away from stores. The whiteboards I could order for you, but you’d have to wait a couple of weeks until they arrived. Or I could send a PC across to the mainland with a handful of cash and get him not to come back until he’s found a Staples, or something similar. The computers could be a problem. Any chance you could get some spares from a bigger police station – Braintree or Chelmsford or even Southend-on-Sea? If they’ve got the PCs then I can get a police van sent across to collect them.’

  ‘I’ll make some calls,’ Emma said. ‘Oh, phone lines. We’ll need to get some phone lines in here.’

  He grimaced. ‘I’ll have to talk to Christine on the switchboard. She can tell me how to go about doing that.’

  ‘Appreciated.’

  He glanced around the room. ‘Give it a day or so and you won’t recognise this place. You’ll have your own little kingdom.’

  ‘Just what every girl wants,’ Emma replied drily, ‘after a My Little Pony and a fairy dressing-up costume – the chance to be a princess.’

  Murrell smiled. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, indicating the anti-sexism poster on the wall, ‘you won’t have to fight for respect here. The men will be bowled over by your brusque charm and the women will envy your stylish plainclothes shoes.’

  He left her there to think about how she was going to arrange her incident room. Ten minutes later, her phone rang. She expected it to be Mark Lapslie, but it wasn’t his number flashing up on her screen. It wasn’t Dom McGinley either.

  ‘Emma Bradbury,’ she said.

  ‘DS Bradbury. This is Jane Catherall.’

  ‘Doctor Catherall. What can I do for you?’

  Typically, the pathologist didn’t answer the question directly. ‘Where are you? I remember you said you were heading over to Canvey Island when you left the restaurant.’

  ‘I’m there now, setting up my incident room.’

  ‘Your incident room. How very possessive.’

  ‘Don’t you start. What’s up?’

  Emma heard what sounded like a snort from the other end of the line, as if Doctor Catherall was exasperated at the lack of witty banter. Too bad. ‘I’ve got the preliminary results back on the dead girl.’

  Emma’s interest was suddenly piqued. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Well, firstly the sexual assault kit was negative. She had not been raped, and if there was any sexual activity then it was some days ago.’

  ‘Okay. That rules out one motive, I guess. Anything else?’

  ‘Indeed. You may remember that we took samples from beneath the girl’s fingernails. There was something there: a powdery, white substance which we sent off for analysis. The results are now in.’

  ‘Cocaine?’ Emma asked, feeling a sudden rush of excitement. A drug connection might lead to a whole set of new leads and a whole load of arrests.

  ‘No, sodium chloride.’

  And her interest subsided again. ‘Salt. Just salt.’

 
‘Don’t be so dismissive of salt, my dear. This is not your common or garden table salt. There are no anti-caking agents, such as sodium silicoaluminate or magnesium carbonate, and no iodising additives such as potassium iodide, sodium iodide or sodium iodate. There are, however, significant mineral additions: sulphate ions, magnesium, calcium, potassium, bromine and minute traces of boron and strontium.’

  ‘Contaminants?’

  ‘More like something naturally occurring as part of the chemical formulation. I think you will find it is sea salt: salt that has been created by the natural evaporation of sea water in large, flat pans.’

  ‘Sea salt.’ She remembered something that Sergeant Murrell had said earlier, and her excitement quickened. ‘They used to make salt on Canvey Island. They made it for the Romans. Apparently.’

  ‘This isn’t from Canvey Island,’ the voice on the other end of the phone said.

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Gas chromatography. There is a distinct difference between the chemical composition of sea salts from different coastal regions, even if they are only a few tens of miles apart. Tidal patterns create unique chemical signatures.’

  ‘So where is this salt from?’

  ‘Maldon, if the particular percentages of the various ions are to be believed.’

  ‘Anything else on the samples?’

  Jane hesitated for a moment. ‘Let me see if I can get this confounded computer thing to cooperate.’

  There was silence for a moment, then the sound of keys being hesitantly tapped. Silence again.

  ‘Actually, I do have an email from the chemical analysis laboratory. It came in a few minutes ago, shortly after the one about the salt sample. Yes, they have apparently also analysed the blood and the various organs I sent them, which is quite unusual considering the timescales to which they usually work. Perhaps they are underemployed at the moment. Perhaps the rate of serious crime in Essex has gone through an unusual statistical blip. No matter.’