Strange Tide

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Then share your knowledge with me,’ said Bryant. ‘I need your advice. Maybe I can put it to good use before either of us goes. Is there somewhere we can sit?’

  They found a café across from the entrance to the church, on the other side of the fountains, and settled at a table by the window. Audrey lowered herself with a wince.

  ‘Is there anything you can’t have?’ asked Bryant, ordering.

  ‘At this stage? With my insides? The most I can manage is the odd mouthful of bircher muesli. A weak mint tea will be fine. And some cake. And perhaps a sausage roll.’

  A Polish waiter shot over and took their order with smiling efficiency. While they waited, Bryant did his best to outline the case.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Audrey when he had finished. ‘So you know it’s considered a holy river. Anything with the word “Temple” in it, from locks to tube stations, is a sign that the Knights Templar were there.’

  ‘So I believe.’

  ‘Therefore baptism makes sense, even the baptism of an unborn child. But you say she was chained to a rock, which suggests sacrifice. The Thames is considered the spirit of London, its principal avenue, yet most of us take it entirely for granted. Technically speaking, it was always beyond the jurisdiction of the City.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s not policed in the same way. So few people use it now. And it’s lost its distinctive smell, have you noticed?’ Audrey scratched at her head, then checked her palm as if daring anything else to fall out. ‘The odour was of tar and rope, but mainly from hydrogen sulphide caused by lack of oxygen. In Victorian times there were so many chemical reactions going on in the water that it actually heated up.’

  ‘It’s not the condition of the river I’m interested in but what it stands for,’ Bryant pointed out as the waiter returned with a mound of food. ‘It may help me to understand why this young woman was so brutally killed.’

  ‘A bit of an unorthodox way to investigate a crime, isn’t it? What about witnesses and fingerprints and DNA, things like that?’ The academic crammed a doorstop of sponge-cake into her mouth.

  ‘It’s not how I do things,’ said Bryant simply. ‘We’re assuming she was killed because she was pregnant, but why in such an odd fashion? We also found a man’s severed left hand nearby. Any ideas about that?’

  Audrey sluiced the cake down with tea. ‘This could be hotter. I know there were votive ceremonies connected to the Thames but those took place in Celtic and Roman times.’

  ‘What sort of things were offered up?’

  ‘Mostly small animals, bronze bowls, weapons and helmets, gold coins and figurines with amputated limbs. The waters were meant to transport heathen idols to hell. They were often found around the bridges – after all, there are twenty-four of them, and London Bridge is the oldest. It got so overcrowded with horses and carriages that in 1733 they put up “Keep Left” signs, which is why Britain still drives on the left.’

  ‘Offerings,’ Bryant reminded her. ‘You were saying.’

  ‘Ah yes. In the sixteenth century witches’ bottles were thrown into the tide at Southwark to ward off evil. And of course, there were always severed heads to be found, right through history.’

  ‘I thought they were just placed on tall poles at London Bridge.’

  ‘Oh no. We used to believe that the soul lived in the head, not the heart, so it was a way of sending someone to the underworld. Decapitations occurred around the site of the old Billingsgate fish market, just down from where you say you found the body. We probably get the name of the market from Belinus, one of the great gods of the Thames. And less than twenty years ago around fifty decapitated skulls were found in one of the Thames’s tributaries, the River Lea. The heads on Traitors’ Gate were stuck on pikes thirty at a time.’

  ‘I assume they were put there to scare visitors into behaving themselves.’

  ‘Not just that. The Thames was once considered to be a pathway to heaven. Of course, as it filled with industrial waste it became associated with hell. Corpses always beached at Dead Man’s Stairs in Wapping. And as the Thames comes around the Rotherhithe Peninsula – the wiggly bit – most bodies and parts still get washed up at Limehouse.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘The river has strange turbulence. There are hidden currents, whirlpools and maelstroms that can suck you into the depths in seconds. It was always treacherous to cross. Ferrymen and passengers drowned trying to shoot the rapids beneath London Bridge.’

  ‘Yet we encouraged children to swim from Tower Beach,’ said Bryant, amazed.

  Audrey appeared not to have heard him. She sucked her teeth and stared grimly into her tea as if expecting to find something dead floating in it. ‘That’s part of the London paradox,’ she said. ‘There were always scaffolds set up on the Thames or on its tributaries – at Dagenham and Millwall and Greenwich, the Hanging Ditch at Blackwall and the gallows at the mouth of the Neckinger, which means “Devil’s neck-cloth”, slang for a hangman’s noose.’

  ‘Why build execution docks on the river?’

  ‘There could be a prosaic reason: the height of the gallows above the water. Or it could be something more spiritual, the idea that the water takes the soul out to sea. The Thames has always been used to dispose of bodies. Back when there were houses built out over the water’s edge it was said that certain taverns had trapdoors opening directly into the water. Dismemberment and despatch, all in one. In late Victorian times, body parts washed up at a tremendous rate, arms, legs, torsos and innards.’

  ‘That’s a cheery thought,’ said Bryant, now feeling thoroughly depressed. He looked at the purple Osteospermum standing in its little vase on the table and fancied that the academic could wither it just by reaching out and brushing it with her fingertips.

  ‘Yes, it’s a catalogue of death and disaster,’ Audrey added for good measure.

  ‘I remember the sinking of the Marchioness,’ said Bryant. ‘Nineteen eighty-nine, wasn’t it? Fifty-one drowned.’

  ‘There was a worse case: the Princess Alice pleasure steamer went down at Gallions’ Reach in 1878, drowning some seven hundred souls. But that wasn’t the most awful part of it. An hour before it sank the river’s sewage outfall pipes had opened, pumping millions of gallons of excrement and oil into the Thames. The corpses came out so black and slippery that they couldn’t be cleaned. Some of them exploded. One of the few survivors was Elizabeth Stride. She lost her entire family and turned to prostitution. She became Jack the Ripper’s third victim.’

  ‘Well, thank you for that,’ said Bryant. ‘I’d love to stay and chat longer but I’d end up killing myself.’

  ‘And another thing,’ said Audrey, waving a bony digit at him. ‘The river’s blackness attracted suicides. Its Celtic name was “Tamesas”, meaning “dark water”. The watermen said that women floated face-up, men face-down. Waterloo Bridge was the most famous lovers’ leaping spot. So many people jumped to their deaths that there was a special boat moored by the bridge to recover the bodies. No wonder people came to believe that the river was haunted.’

  An idea began to form in Bryant’s head. ‘Are they supposed to occur at any particular time of the year, these deaths?’

  Audrey chased the last scraps of sausage roll around her plate. ‘There have always been more at this time of the year than any other. It’s hardly surprising. The darkness of winter is associated with depression. There are still as many unexplained deaths on the river as there ever were. People come here from all over the world with high ambitions, and when they fail the Thames calls to them. It’ll be us next. Nattering away like this one minute, then suddenly becoming part of London’s sediment.’

  Bryant’s thoughts were in turmoil. No matter how hard he tried to employ cold logic, the ghosts of the Thames took up the reins of his imagination. ‘I have to go,’ he said, rising. He reknotted his ratty green scarf and pulled his hat down over his eyes. ‘Audrey, I think you’ve certainly cleared up one thing for me.�
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  ‘Really?’ sighed the historian, almost disappointed to have been of use.

  ‘Yes, I’ve realized something – that even though I walk in the Valley of Death, I shall do so armed with a pint of beer, a pork pie and a Batman comic. I can’t help it, Audrey, I’m just a naturally optimistic person. You should try it some time.’

  Bryant released himself back into the vibrancy of the city with relief, for he had come to understand that in the midst of winter there was within him an invincible summer.

  23

  RAIN & SPEED

  It would be wrong to think that the staff of the PCU were merely drifting about like flotsam, lost in a sea of academic misinformation. For the last two days the unit’s three detective constables, Colin Bimsley, Meera Mangeshkar and Fraternity DuCaine, had been conducting witness interviews and logging data searches, recording conversations, filing evidence, cataloguing information and carrying out door-to-doors.

  They did not perform the duties of their pay-rank but often worked at higher levels, having long refused any promotion that would remove them from daily contact with the public. Ground crew got their hands dirty; it meant that when a case began to break, they weren’t stuck upstairs in PowerPoint presentations. While autonomy within the PCU insulated them from Met policies, it didn’t stop them from being placed on bin duty, overnight surveillance or so-called ‘nuisance runs’ if Janice Longbright thought it would benefit an investigation. There were still times when Meera felt like walking out and getting a job in a bakery. Just once, she thought, it would be nice to make something attractive for a living, to bring people pleasure, to go home smelling of strawberries and warm bread, instead of this.

  This being the rotting cabbages at the bottom of a skip beside Lambeth Bridge, where they were bending over in the sifting rain, searching for anything that might give them a lead on the drowned, amputee workman. It was unlikely that they would find anything after so long, but it was worth a try. Fraternity was talking to office workers in the nearby buildings, leaving Meera and Colin to grub about in rubbish and poke through the undergrowth beneath the bridge.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about,’ said Colin. ‘Someone’s chucked away a rabbit. This would make a nice fur collar.’ He was holding up a length of sodden pelt in one gloved hand.

  ‘Can you put that down? You’re actually making me sick.’ Meera was seesawed over the edge of the skip trying to reach its murkiest recesses. ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this again. I thought we were finally getting somewhere.’

  ‘I did too,’ said Colin. ‘When you put your head on my chest the other day and held me for the longest time, and it felt as if—’

  ‘I meant with the case,’ she snapped. ‘A poor little rich girl, hanging out with a few rough geezers in a Dalston dive bar, sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. Then this one pops up. Why are we here? There can’t be any connection.’

  ‘What, you mean beyond his chopped-off hand appearing near her body?’

  ‘Yeah. Bits of people turn up all the time.’

  Colin looked over to the line of police boats moored a few metres offshore, beneath the abutment of the bridge. ‘My granddad worked as a lighterman down at the Pool of London when he was in his early twenties,’ he said. ‘He reckons there were all kinds of weird superstitions about the river. Like, if you pulled a body out of the water and gave it a proper burial, you were cheating the Thames of a soul and creating a ghost.’

  ‘He sounds like a laugh,’ said Meera, levering herself further into the skip to pull aside a disconnected washbasin and a box full of taps.

  ‘So if you think of the Thames as a person,’ Colin persisted, ‘it’s like it deliberately directed its currents to wash this bloke’s hand up right beside the girl’s body, so we’d connect the two events and solve the case. Like it’s helping us. They call them “strange tides”, when things wash up somewhere they’re not supposed to.’

  ‘You don’t half talk some toss sometimes,’ said Meera. ‘I’m stuck.’ She had teetered too far forward and was about to fall into the rubbish.

  Colin knew how she would react if he put his hands around her waist, then thought: Sod it, and grabbed her just as she tipped over.

  For once Meera did not complain. He set her upright and was about to dust her down before he realized that would be a step too far.

  ‘What?’ she said as he stared at her. ‘Have I got something on me?’

  ‘It’s just—’ Colin swallowed. ‘You’re still beautiful, even when you’ve been in the bins.’

  ‘Cheers. I’ll file that under Compliments I Never Want to Hear Again.’

  ‘It’s just that ever since that night—’

  ‘Colin, give it a rest,’ she snapped, then caught herself. ‘I just ended my engagement. Give it – some time.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, fair dos, no worries, understood.’ He looked up into the darkness of the bridge rafters. ‘Dan already searched down below, right? He never misses anything. But he couldn’t have gone up there. He’s too short to reach.’

  Before Meera could stop him, Colin had scrambled up into the corner where the underside of the bridge met the road and was climbing from a drainpipe on to the girders.

  ‘Think you should be doing that with your spatial awareness issues?’ Meera called up.

  Colin flicked on his torch and shone it around the joists, dislodging a number of diseased-looking birds. ‘It stinks of ammonia up here,’ he shouted back. ‘There’s bits of his overalls still stuck to the girders. Hang on.’

  Meera waited while her partner grunted and clattered around, finally swinging back down in a spray of dried seagull waste and cascading filth. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t fall off his perch earlier,’ said Colin.

  ‘You smell of dead people and pigeons,’ Meera replied

  Colin grinned. ‘You smell of cabbages. Now we’re even.’

  Neither of them saw the shape that divorced itself from the shadows until it was too late. Colin was suddenly and resoundingly gonged across the back of the head with a shovel. He fell forward on to the beach.

  Meera ran into the murk beneath the bridge, unsure of what she had just witnessed. As the figure floundered out into the water she ran across the stones after it.

  Colin pulled himself up on to one knee. ‘Meera, don’t!’ he yelled, fumbling for his radio. Fraternity answered his call for assistance.

  Bimsley’s head was used to being hammered at his boxing club, so being hit with the flat of a shovel did little more than make his ears ring. He told Fraternity to get back as quickly as possible, but his call was drowned out by the start of an engine. Colin’s assailant had climbed into one of the police launches moored offshore.

  Fraternity came running down the steps, passed Colin’s pointed arm and charged straight into the water without stopping. He made a grab at the launch but was only able to seize the tarp that partially covered it. There was another launch right behind, and without a second’s hesitation he slit the canopy with the blade of his Swiss army knife and hauled himself into the driver’s seat. A moment later the second engine roared into life. Meera was still wondering how this was possible when he pulled away.

  Colin was up on both feet but wavering. ‘What does it take to bring you down?’ asked Meera, amazed. He was pointing at the launches, trying to speak. She knew what he wanted. ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ she warned. ‘Not until you’ve had that checked out.’

  ‘Where the hell did they get keys?’ Colin asked, staring after the boats.

  ‘I don’t know about the other guy but Fraternity used to be with the Marine Policing Unit,’ Meera replied, looking back at the two launches as they headed out into the middle of the river. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Headache,’ said Colin, falling back on to the beach.

  Fraternity might have known what he was doing, but he had never piloted a launch unsupervised. This was not a state-of-the-art blue and yellow; those had tall cabins a
nd bristled with technology. This was a decommissioned training cruiser, but it still had some kick.

  He brought it up to speed as they passed Victoria Tower Gardens heading towards the Houses of Parliament. A moment later Meera was in his earpiece explaining what had happened.

  ‘He must have experience,’ Fraternity shouted back. ‘He had the ignition key-code, and these things are light – they’re tough to steer against the current. But he doesn’t know the river, he’s going the wrong way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s fighting the tide and heading into a busy area. He’d have been better turning around and making for Putney. There are serious undercurrents around the bridges.’

  Fraternity tried to keep the rain out of his face and an eye on the boat in front. All he could see was the back of a black plastic raincoat with its hood up. The launch was veering away from the Houses of Parliament, which meant that its pilot knew about the anti-terrorist stakes that prevented boats from coming close without permission. Only the tips of their yellow pennants could be seen near the river’s surface, and then only when you were right on top of them.

  The wake of the launch swung underneath his bows, nearly wrenching the wheel from his hands. There were obstacles ahead: Westminster Pier to the left, the London Eye to the right, the Tattershall Castle, a pub-cruiser moored off Victoria Embankment, just a little further on. Rain punched into his eyes, combining with the spray from the wake in front.

  He needed to cut inside and overtake, but the powerful current was dragging at the launch’s steering. The intercom was locked, so he tried the siren to draw any other marine units in the area. There was a staff of nearly eighty working out of Wapping – somebody had to be around.