Strange Tide

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I had a cousin in the force,’ said the swarthier and more luxuriously moustachioed of the Daves. ‘He got banged up on a charge of receiving stolen goods. He explained how he couldn’t have done it ’cause he was in Eyebeefa at the time, but they still prosecuted him.’

  ‘Miscarriage of justice, innit,’ said his mate.

  ‘Miscarriage, exactly. It would have been all right but he got done for armed robbery in Eyebeefa and tried to say he was in London, which didn’t really work out.’

  ‘Couldn’t they have just checked his passport?’ said the other Dave.

  ‘Yeah, there’s that as well.’

  ‘Get on with your work before I electrocute you,’ said Land, standing by the wall switch. He turned to Longbright. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In the interview room,’ said Janice. ‘I can’t do this. You’ll have to do it.’

  ‘Let me go,’ said Fraternity. ‘I can be just a messenger. It’ll be easier.’

  Land wavered. ‘I should be there.’

  ‘Sod it,’ said Janice, ‘we’ll all go.’

  So they trooped up to the new temporary interview room, which was still being used as a cupboard for stationery supplies and cleaning equipment, and then crowded at the door while Raymond Land went in.

  ‘Hello, John,’ said Land, clambering over a mop and bucket. There was no room for a desk and only two orange bendy chairs, so he and May had to sit with their knees touching. ‘I’m really sorry about this.’

  ‘You’re only doing your job,’ said May. ‘It’s weird, though. I’ve never been arrested before. You do realize it’s a mistake.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Land agreed, ‘but I have to suspend you pending a full investigation. I can’t change the rules.’

  May looked up at the dim bare bulb hanging down from the ceiling. ‘This isn’t going to work as an interview room, even temporarily.’

  ‘I know, but we can’t move downstairs until we’ve figured out what to do with that sarcophagus-thing in the basement.’ Land felt he should obey the formalities. He glanced down nervously at his notes. ‘How much did the Met boys tell you?’

  ‘Just the bare bones,’ said May, filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. ‘That a woman’s body has been found and that I’m officially a suspect.’

  ‘Let me see if I can shed a little light on this.’ Land squinted at the page. ‘I can’t see my own handwriting.’

  ‘Her name is North,’ Longbright said, sticking her head around the narrow doorway.

  ‘That’s right, Cassandra North,’ said Land. ‘Her body was discovered a little after eleven p.m.—’

  ‘No, not Cassandra – Marion North,’ said Longbright. ‘She’s Cassandra North’s mother.’

  ‘Er, that’s right,’ said Land, tipping his single page beneath the bare bulb. ‘She was in the river. A couple of kids had taken a dinghy out because of the high tide and found her floating near the stairs at Tower Beach a little after one a.m.’

  ‘Marion North,’ May repeated, stunned. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘The kids were out by themselves on the river,’ said Longbright. ‘They got a bollocking from their parents, but finding a dead body will probably give them credibility at school. North’s been taken to St Pancras. Giles is already on it. First indications are that she was strangled and dumped a short while before the kids arrived, just before midnight.’

  ‘That’s just a few minutes after I saw her,’ said May, his heart sinking. ‘My God.’

  ‘You mean – you did actually meet up with her?’

  ‘She needed to see me.’

  ‘Do you want to start at the beginning?’ Land untangled himself from the chair. ‘Can we go to my office? The smell of disinfectant is doing my head in.’

  May followed the others in a daze. The thought immediately entered his head that he was somehow responsible. What could have happened?

  They reconvened in Land’s room and now everyone attended, with the result that the two Daves had to man the phones again.

  ‘I first met her seven or eight years ago,’ May began. ‘Maggie Armitage introduced us. Her husband had walked out on her and she was very bitter about it. She seemed smart and had a good head for business. I went out with her a couple of times.’

  ‘I don’t remember you saying anything,’ said Longbright. ‘Do you remember the exact date?’

  ‘No, but I can probably work it out. I don’t think I mentioned it to anyone at the time.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I suppose I knew it wasn’t going to work out between us. We were completely incompatible. She loved parties and hung out with a bunch of social climbers. I didn’t like her friends and she couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone what I did for a living, so I stopped calling. She was pretty upset. I hadn’t really noticed that she was keener than me. I felt bad about it but we weren’t suited for each other, and I didn’t want it to get serious.’

  ‘So how did you get in touch again?’ asked Longbright.

  ‘After Arthur visited Angela Curtis’s daughter yesterday, Marion contacted me through Twitter. She remembered I was at the unit, and said she needed to talk to me about something.’

  ‘Wait, back up – Angela Curtis, who’s she?’ As usual, Land had been kept in the dark about Bryant’s side trips.

  ‘She drowned herself in the Thames,’ May explained. ‘Arthur came across a report of her death in his Dead Diary. He’s started keeping track of anything that happens around the river and discovered she’d been enrolled in Life Options courses that Lynsey Dalladay had been attending. Curtis’s daughter knows Marion North because she runs courses at the centre.’

  ‘Hang on, you mean this daughter phoned your – friend – and told her she’d been visited by Bryant?’

  ‘Yes. Marion North said she’d also had a visit, and called me.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We were all working late here last night. Marion said she was going to be in the West End later so I agreed to meet her when I finished. I went home to change first.’

  ‘Why did you need to change?’

  May gave his boss an old-fashioned look.

  ‘Please tell me you weren’t thinking about sex at a time like this?’

  ‘No, Raymond, I had been to see Giles earlier in the day, I smelled of his damned chemicals and wanted to change my shirt, OK?’

  ‘What did she tell you on the phone?’ Land asked.

  ‘She said she was worried about her daughter Cassie. She needed my advice, but given that we were suddenly getting close to her on a professional basis she wanted to keep our meeting confidential. She was always very concerned about appearances.’

  ‘What on earth did you think you were doing, talking to someone involved in an investigation, even tangentially?’ asked Land.

  ‘I felt I owed it to her,’ said May sheepishly.

  ‘Had you ever met her daughter?’

  ‘No, at the time I met Marion the girl was mostly living with her father.’

  ‘So you met up with her – what time was this?’

  ‘We said eleven p.m., but she was a bit late. She’d been to a networking supper and it overran. She was at the Holborn Dining Room so I suggested meeting down by Temple Gardens, near the tube station, because we wouldn’t be seen there. Only I forgot that Temple is almost impossible to reach from Holborn tube, so she had to get a cab.’

  ‘She turned up, and then what happened?’

  ‘She told me her daughter was in trouble, that she could go to jail. She wanted my advice.’

  ‘Did she say what kind of trouble?’ Longbright asked.

  ‘She was worried that Cassie might somehow be implicated in the investigation.’

  ‘Why would she think that?’

  ‘Cassie was friends with Lynsey Dalladay. Marion felt it was only a matter of time before we – that is, Arthur and I – came knocking on her door. She wanted to know what she could do about it.’

  ‘You must have known at t
hat point that you weren’t in any position to give her advice,’ said Land.

  ‘What did you say to her?’ Longbright asked.

  ‘I said she had to be completely honest with us. I offered to go down to the institute and talk to her daughter privately.’

  Land shook his head. ‘Against any kind of ethical logic. Great.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about ethics,’ said May. ‘You just had Janice breaking into Cassie North’s office without a warrant.’

  Land was indignant. ‘That’s different. It’s the sort of thing your partner does all the time and I never hear you complaining.’

  May sat back and folded his arms. ‘OK, I met up with someone I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Just after you met with Marion North she was strangled and thrown in the river near the spot where you met her. Her body was on the shore where we found Dalladay.’

  ‘How do you know she was strangled at the same spot?’

  ‘The taxi driver remembers that North hailed him in Holborn and asked him to take her to the Victoria Embankment, but he couldn’t turn around and had to leave her on the other side of the road. He thought it was a funny place to drop someone, but she said she was meeting a friend. That would be you.’

  ‘So how did she end up so far downstream?’ May asked.

  ‘Bryant’s been measuring the tidal speeds to see how long it takes bodies and their various separated parts to get from one reach of the river to the next, except we won’t let him out to do any practical experiments.’

  ‘She could have walked further along after meeting me.’

  ‘It’s a long walk. It would have taken her a while.’

  ‘And she was on Tower Beach?’

  Land checked his notes. ‘Yup, and no footprints around the body, just like Dalladay. Not chained up this time, but she had exactly the same kind of contusion, although it was further down in her right shoulder, and a lot deeper. So tell me, what did you do after seeing her?’

  ‘I left her there on the embankment, waiting for a taxi,’ said May. ‘The street was deserted. Anyone could have come along.’

  ‘It wasn’t very chivalrous of you,’ said Land. ‘I thought you always escorted ladies home.’

  ‘Not this one, trust me, you wouldn’t,’ said May. ‘She’s very independent. I mean, was – she was always in control.’

  ‘Well, she lost control of the situation last night,’ said Land. ‘She was strangled with your red scarf.’

  The revelation brought May up short. ‘How could you possibly know that?’

  ‘Because Bryant gave it to you for your birthday,’ the unit chief explained. ‘He had his landlady sew your name on it.’

  32

  IN & OUT

  Longbright followed the devastated May back to his office and sat on the corner of his desk. ‘How did she end up wearing it, John?’ she asked. ‘Surely you must remember.’

  May tried to recall the details of the meeting. ‘She was cold. I put it around her neck.’

  ‘And you didn’t take it back when you left her?’

  ‘I probably meant to and forgot.’ He ran his fingers through his silver mane, exasperated. ‘I can’t believe she’s gone. It must have been my fault in some way. What the hell am I going to do? They’re going to find my DNA all over her.’

  ‘You mean you touched her.’

  May looked guilty. ‘I kissed her.’

  ‘Oh John, you didn’t.’

  ‘Yes, but you know, like an old friends’ kiss, except it was a hug and a kiss. She always had this aura of toughness and independence, but I could tell she was unhappy.’

  ‘So you hugged her long enough to transfer God-knows-what from your hands and jacket.’

  May looked like a smacked dog. ‘It never occurred to me, obviously. I suppose when they put that together with the scarf it’ll be impossible to disprove.’

  ‘Except that anyone who knows you wouldn’t believe it for a second.’

  ‘What about a jury, Janice? How are they going to know me?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous – you have no motive.’

  ‘Of course I don’t.’ He dropped down into his chair. ‘What a bloody nightmare. What was I thinking?’

  ‘You weren’t to know. The Met lads won’t believe—’

  ‘The Met lads? They’re not our friends, Janice. This will play out very conveniently for them. Obviously they know it wasn’t me, but how perfect that I get caught interfering with the legal process! There’ll be an internal inquiry, and you know as well as I do that we wouldn’t even pass a health-and-safety inspection, let alone a full investigation. It’ll mean the end of the unit.’

  ‘Then we have to find a way of clearing your name before it goes any further.’ Longbright knew she sounded unconvincing.

  ‘How? You heard Land. I’m out. If Darren Link discovers I’m still here after today he’ll turn us over to the IPCC and shut the place down himself. I can’t be party to anything concerning the case. With Arthur’s mind gone AWOL and me under suspicion, you’re on your own.’

  ‘Then we need a plan,’ said Longbright. ‘Who else knows you went out with her? What about her daughter?’

  ‘I don’t suppose so. You’ll have to talk to her and see what she knows. All I can say is that the whole thing was a massive error of judgement on my part.’

  ‘Why didn’t you take the scarf back?’

  May shrugged. ‘She was cold, and when I kissed her I just slipped it around her neck. I was being a gentleman.’

  ‘Maybe you left it with her because you wanted an excuse to see her again.’

  ‘What, and then she strangled herself with it?’ May looked aghast. ‘Am I that bad at reading people?’

  ‘No,’ said Longbright carefully, ‘but sometimes you don’t think about the position you put other people in.’

  May felt betrayed. He had always enjoyed the unswerving support of his staff, but for the first time he saw doubt in Longbright’s eyes. ‘Didn’t Arthur say that Lynsey Dalladay killed herself?’ he asked. ‘It certainly didn’t look like suicide. What if Marion managed something similar and made it look like murder when it wasn’t? She knew they were about to come under scrutiny in the course of the investigation. If she had a link with Dalladay, maybe she took the same way out.’

  Janice had always felt closer to John than anyone, and hated seeing him like this. She relied on him to be the centre of any storm, the voice of calm reason. Now he was shaken up and unfocused. ‘Think about it, John; wouldn’t you have sensed something when you saw her? Wouldn’t she have given some indication of what she was about to do?’

  ‘I can’t see anything clearly,’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘I don’t know where this guy Gilyov fits in with North and Dalladay. They inhabit different worlds. They have no connection.’

  ‘Then we need to find one,’ said Longbright, catching his panicked gaze and trying to hold it. ‘I’ve always been here for the pair of you, you know that, but we can’t solve this with you both out of action. We’ll clear your name somehow, but you have to help us find a way forward.’

  ‘Then you’ve got to get Arthur back,’ said May. ‘I don’t know how. You have to give the case over to him.’

  Darren Link walked into Raymond Land’s office as if he owned it. He had no sense of containment. He was a man-spreader; his arms fell wide, his chest swelled, he blundered and sprawled in a proprietorial manner designed to invade and threaten and cause offence. He liked to remind people of where they ranked in his estimation. The split shards of his damaged eye seemed to fix upon things of which he disapproved, as if he could destroy them just by staring hard.

  Right now he was not at all happy to be in Land’s office, with its racing car paperweights and photo frames without pictures in them. He regarded Land as an underling and an idiot.

  ‘How the hell did this happen?’ he demanded. ‘One of your own men? What was he thinking, arranging to meet this woman? Why didn’t you stop him?’


  ‘I didn’t know he knew her,’ said Land helplessly. ‘They met years ago, then didn’t see each other again from that time to this.’

  ‘Did he stay in touch with her or did she just suddenly call him up out of the blue?’

  Land sighed, knowing that it would all have to come out. ‘She’d been interviewed in connection with the Dalladay case. That’s why she called John.’

  ‘And he had a secret meeting with her.’ Link thumped his brisket-fists on Land’s desk. ‘Do you realize how that looks?’

  ‘He agreed to see her purely as an old friend, to offer her some advice.’ Land cleared his throat nervously, hoping that it would prove to be the case.

  ‘Why did she end up with an item of his clothing? Did she take it from him on purpose?’

  ‘They met in the open air, the night was cold, he put it on her and doesn’t remember taking it back,’ said Land, realizing how lame the story sounded. ‘He’s not guilty, obviously.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Link with slow menace. ‘Your unit has a long, embarrassing history of getting too close to its suspects.’

  Land knew that Bryant had always encouraged this culture, blurring the lines between officers and the accused, dragging in outlawed academics and fringe practitioners to offer advice and sometimes becoming directly involved.

  Link thought for a moment. ‘You say Marion North made the jump to calling May because she was interviewed. Who interviewed her?’

  ‘Mr Bryant,’ Land admitted, heavy-hearted.

  ‘That’s not possible, though, is it,’ said Link with heavy irony, ‘because Bryant was suspended from operations after his doctor’s report. Unless you let him continue working on the case.’

  ‘I didn’t, no,’ said Land. ‘He was confined to his office, then sent home on leave. I can’t control what he chooses to do when he’s not here.’

  Link released a bull-snort of frustration. He had the tenacity of an Exocet when the occasion arose but his attitude was mitigated by a sense of fair play. ‘Let’s try and be clear about this. North died just after your top man met her in the vicinity. It’s circumstantial; let’s not worry about that. But he’ll have left behind a murder victim smothered in his DNA, and that’s the real problem. Has Kershaw seen the body yet?’