Strange Tide

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘There’s no indication that he and Dalladay—’ began Land.

  ‘Don’t worry, I did some further checking and got Dan here to take a cell sample. We’re awaiting results on that.’ He unfolded a flyer for Pastor Michaels, and another for the sacred Thames course. ‘Thornberry’s real name is Ali Bensaud. He has no criminal record but he did accidentally sign his real name once, and that’s all it took to track his ID. On the surface of it he has only the most tangential of connections to any of the victims, which I presume is why you didn’t interview him.’

  ‘He hasn’t really been on our radar,’ said Longbright.

  ‘Why not?’ Bryant demanded. ‘He’s hungry, ambitious. According to you, his persona is largely based on his sexual charisma. That means women must at some level think he’s available. Isn’t that why movie stars keep their partners invisible? A pregnant girl could ruin him. It shows he’s fallible.’

  ‘But the company’s his. He’s got more to lose than anyone.’

  ‘The earliest phone and tax tabs I found for Bensaud start when he began appearing as an evangelist. You can see his career path quite clearly. A showman, a charlatan, and now an unqualified therapist with vulnerable women attending his classes. I want a warrant to take his Life Options clinic apart. And I want to know more about Marion North. John hadn’t seen her for years so why would she suddenly call out of the blue?’

  ‘You don’t know it wasn’t the other way around,’ Land said. ‘John might have made one of those – what do they call them? Bounty calls.’

  ‘My partner is a gentleman, not a serial Lothario,’ said Bryant. ‘Why didn’t you pull a transcript of the call?’

  ‘Look here,’ said Land. ‘She was an astrologer, wasn’t she? Why didn’t she know what was going to happen?’

  Bryant threw him a look of exasperation. ‘She wasn’t a fortune teller, you echinoderm. There are dozens of New Age therapies, some fallacious, others based on irrefutable medical research. Life Options was newly minted out of a bankrupt business by people with no previous expertise in the field, and employed snake-oil sellers like Marion North.’ He slapped the board. ‘At the centre of it all, hiding in plain sight, is Ali Bensaud. Clever and highly motivated. I want him broken open. And find someone who saw my partner with North. They were standing on an exposed section of the Thames Embankment, for heaven’s sake! Somebody out there noticed them. I’ve drawn up task lists for all of you.’ He fixed each member of the team with a gimlet eye. ‘If we can’t close this case in the next forty-eight hours I’ll shut the unit down myself.’

  ‘What’s an echinoderm?’ whispered Dan.

  ‘A species that includes the sea cucumber,’ said Colin. ‘When it gets frightened it expels its innards out of its anus.’

  ‘I think I preferred him when he was talking rubbish,’ Dan replied.

  37

  AFLOAT & ON BOARD

  Colin and Meera found him first.

  The retired lighterman lived on a barge called the Penny Black, its deck covered in spider plants and oil drums filled with grasses and shrubs. It was moored near the landscaped riverside park known as Bernie Spain Gardens, beside the Oxo Tower. Sammy Maisner had inherited the vessel from his father and had a long lease on the mooring rights, but was now under pressure to move because the developers behind the South Bank’s latest rash of luxury hutches wanted their residents to have unimpaired views.

  ‘Those bankers in Notting Hill are starting to move out,’ said Colin as he and Meera approached. ‘They say the area’s become really boring since all the bankers moved in. No sense of irony.’ He waved his hand at the barge in front of them. ‘Next they’ll get this bloke out and start moaning about the lack of atmosphere on the river.’

  ‘You’ve been spending too much time with Mr Bryant,’ said Meera. ‘Look at it, Colin, it’s a floating rubbish dump.’

  ‘Are you coming aboard or are you just going to stand there slagging me off?’ Maisner called out. He looked to be in his early seventies, but the outdoor life had kept him fit and fresh. His sailor’s cap didn’t look very official; more like the sort of hat worn by someone in charge of a funfair boating pond, but he sported the requisite white beard and a navy blue cable-knit sweater. Colin pushed Meera in front, on to the gangplank.

  ‘People don’t realize how clearly you can hear everything on water. It can look a bit of a mess, but then there’s this.’ Ahead of them, sitting low on the deck and shielded by the greenery, was a glasshouse filled with herbs and flowers of every hue. ‘I sell them to the restaurants,’ Maisner explained. ‘I grow everything from scratch and water it from the river. Nothing is wasted. And I hear everything. So what is it you want?’

  Meera realized now why no one had interviewed the old bargee. Although the Penny Black had an uninterrupted view of Victoria Embankment and Temple Gardens diagonally opposite it couldn’t be clearly seen from the far side.

  ‘Before you ask,’ he said, patting the side of the barge, ‘it’s called the Penny Black because when my old man was declared bankrupt he sold the stamp albums he’d kept as a child, and the one rare stamp he owned financed the boat. Why don’t you come below deck and I’ll make some tea?’

  Meera couldn’t be bothered with social niceties and ran through times and dates. ‘We need to know if you saw or heard anything unusual.’

  Maisner’s amiability faded. ‘You’re talking about the couple on the bank. I heard them fighting, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘If you knew, why didn’t you report it?’

  ‘The river’s a noisy place to live,’ said Maisner. ‘Police launches, party boats, tourists and restaurants; you hear every clank of a knife and fork from up here. It’s when the hen parties kick off that I really think about upping anchor. Then the sun comes out and everything’s all right again.’ He scratched at his beard. ‘They won’t get me out.’

  ‘The couple who were fighting,’ Colin prompted.

  ‘You only hear people on the opposite embankment when the wind’s in the right direction. I reckon the wind changed just then.’ Maisner pointed to the far shore. ‘I’d seen them a minute or two earlier, a man and a woman, middle-aged maybe, I don’t know. My eyesight’s not what it was. Then I went below deck. My window was open. I heard her shout then suddenly stop, like her vocal cords had been cut. You hear a lot of drunken yelling but it doesn’t normally sound so desperate, it’s more your co-ordinated mooing-into-the-sky sort of thing. That’s why I came back up and looked over again. It looked like she was trying to get away from him. I’d had a couple of whiskies, you know, so I can’t really be sure. I glanced back over again and she was gone, and he was standing at the balustrade leaning out, looking down into the water. It was a very high tide, well over seven metres. For a second I thought—’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘That she’d gone in. But he kept looking for a minute then walked away, sort of relaxed, strolling like, not a care in the world, so I figured she must have got in a taxi and left him behind.’

  ‘Can you fix a time on it?’

  ‘It had to be closer to midnight than eleven. The Oxo Tower restaurant looked like it was shutting. Most of the tourists had gone off to catch their trains.’

  ‘Did you see which direction this man went?’

  ‘Towards Blackfriars, I think. It’s a long bare stretch – there’s nothing much along there but the station.’

  ‘If he left by public transport that means he used the District and Circle on the tube, or Thameslink to St Pancras and Bedford or down to Gatwick and Brighton,’ said Colin. It was the worst possible outcome; between them the lines ran in every direction. ‘You didn’t get a good enough look at him to be able to say what he was wearing? What colour his hair was?’

  ‘Maybe he had a brown or grey coat?’ Maisner thought for a minute. ‘Wait, though, there was something, only—’ He looked around at the flowers, crimsons, yellows and purples. ‘Red. The first time I saw them he was wearing a red sca
rf. But when I looked back it was on her.’

  Meera shot Colin a knowing look. The scarf had just become a noose around John May’s neck.

  ‘I should have called out maybe, just to make sure there was no funny business going on.’ The old man looked tenderly at a trough of alpine daisies, his fingertips brushing their leaves. ‘I used to live in a council flat in Wapping. You never saw anyone from one week to the next. I could have died in there and nobody would have noticed. Here, everybody on the embankment says hello. When they finally manage to kick me out, it’ll be the end of me.’

  Prowling past the windows in his Shad Thames flat, lost in thought, John May jumped when the phone rang. Nobody ever rang his landline.

  MAY: Raymond, are you sure you’ve got this right? Arthur’s recovering? How is that possible?

  LAND: How do I know? Nothing that happens around here makes any sense to me. He says he poisoned himself and now he’s washed it out, but he may still see things that aren’t there. You’ll probably have better luck getting sense out of him.

  MAY: Why do you know before me?

  LAND: I wasn’t expecting him to just turn up, was I? And I couldn’t say anything until I was sure he was OK. I didn’t want that old cow Biddle reporting me. Your partner has been having some kind of illegal chemical treatment. He’s already back at the unit.

  MAY: Won’t he need permission to return?

  LAND: Yes, from his superior officer, which as far as I’m concerned is me.

  MAY: My God. Raymond, you’ve finally done something good.

  LAND: Er, thank you.

  MAY: So what happens now?

  LAND: We’re all working to get you off the hook.

  MAY: Has Giles had the DNA report back from North’s body?

  LAND: I was getting to that. She’s covered in your cells. The good news is that they’re all on the surface of her coat and the exposed parts of her skin. There don’t seem to be any on her neck or the palms of her hands. She would have raised her hands to stop you. Giles says that’s suggestive, but not enough by itself.

  MAY: What about my clothes? Any transference?

  LAND: No, but they’ll argue that you knew how to clean them.

  MAY: What, I cleaned them but left my scarf around her neck? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?

  LAND: It’s no dafter than you not remembering to take the scarf back from her. Bryant originally thought the women all committed suicide, although he’s changed his mind about that now. He’s zeroing in on a suspect but it seems a bit left-field if you ask me. If this Ali bloke’s that smart he’ll have got rid of any evidence long ago.

  MAY: Can’t you get me back into the unit?

  LAND: Not a chance while I’ve got the old bag under my feet. You stay there until you’re cleared or committed. But at least we can be in contact again. I’ll try and ditch Ballbreaker Biddle. (Raymond had not noticed that Barbara Biddle was in his office doorway listening in.)

  MAY: I have to go. Someone’s at the door.

  Arthur Bryant stood there in his bookie’s suit, a dry-cleaning ticket stapled to his lapel, a bag of wintergreen cough drops in his left hand, a metal catapult sticking out of his pocket, egg down his waistcoat and pipe ash in his turn-ups. He pulled off his hat, raising his tonsure of fine white hair. ‘Good morning,’ he said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  May was speechless.

  ‘You might at least invite me in,’ said Bryant, ‘I’m spitting feathers. My word, it’s poshed up a bit since I was last down this street. It’s all very well if you want hand-crafted macaroons and an armchair made from reclaimed railway sleepers but not much cop if you’re after a mug of builder’s. Don’t worry if you haven’t got biscuits, I brought my own.’ He removed a packet of Jammie Dodgers from his top pocket and tried to bite them open. ‘Go mad, take two. And put the kettle on, we’ve got work to do.’

  When May returned from the kitchen with mugs of tea strong enough to strip the enamel from their teeth, he found Bryant standing on his balcony with the steel catapult pulled far back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he cried, trying not to spill the tea.

  ‘I got some pebbles off the foreshore,’ Bryant said, in that way he had of providing an explanation without answering the question. There was a twang of elastic and a bang as the stone hit metal somewhere below. He reloaded, closed one eye, stuck out the tip of his tongue and tried again. This time there was a shattering of glass and some shouting. May pulled him off the balcony.

  ‘I think that settles one argument,’ Bryant said, pocketing the catapult. ‘You can’t span the Thames with a stone.’

  ‘Why would you want to?’

  ‘To leave a contusion on the back of someone’s head. Curtis and North both had them as well, all on the backs of their bodies. I had this idea that someone might have fired something from the other side of the river. It’s much narrower than it used to be. You know Rudyard Kipling’s “The River’s Tale”, which is narrated by the Thames itself?’ He cleared his throat.

  ‘And life was gay and the world was new,

  And I was a mile across at Kew!

  But the Roman came with a heavy hand,

  And bridged and roaded and ruled the land,

  And the Romans left and the Danes blew in –

  And that’s where your history-books begin!’

  ‘Good for Kipling,’ said May without enthusiasm. ‘So you think she was murdered after all?’

  ‘I’d come up with another theory: managed suicides. A charismatic, persuasive man convinces vulnerable females that they’d be better off leaving this world. Dalladay is told she can have a fresh start. Curtis is talked into stopping her meds. North – well, I have to say she seems stronger than the other two but perhaps she also had some weakness that could be exploited. People choose to end their lives for reasons other than money. Out of love, for example. Ali Bensaud teaches them—’

  ‘This is the guy who runs the health courses?’

  ‘Yes, yes, do keep up – he teaches them about the sacred river and its power to heal their souls. He plays to their fears and doubts about themselves. We need to get to him before we go anywhere else. I wanted us to tackle it together, but I’ll have to go it alone. You see, there’s something I know that you don’t.’

  ‘You’d better tell me, Arthur.’

  ‘I’ll tell you everything after I’ve interviewed him.’ Bryant glanced at his stopped watch. ‘He’s still down at the centre, and there’s no time like the present. Can I borrow your car?’

  ‘No, you certainly can’t,’ said May. ‘The last time I lent it to you I found the glove box full of maggots.’

  ‘Ah yes, the lid came off my Brachyceran Diptera. Fear not, I can get the tube.’

  ‘The unit got into a terrible state without you,’ said May as his partner set about taking his leave. ‘Do you really think you’re cured?’

  Bryant tucked his biscuits into his coat. ‘My head is clear. My brain is sharp. My Tibetan skull is at the bottom of the Thames. I feel like a man at his physical peak so long as I don’t look in a mirror.’

  May was trying to catch up. ‘Your skull – I’m sorry?’

  ‘Don’t be, I’ll fill you in later. I say, you didn’t strangle her, did you?’

  ‘I can’t believe you’d ask that. No, of course I bloody didn’t.’ May looked horrified. ‘This interview. I hope you’re going to play it by the book, use some restraint and subtlety.’

  ‘Certainly not. I’m going to make a total fool of myself. It’s the best way to get information.’ Bryant thumped his hat, attempting to give it some shape. ‘Right, stay where you are, I’m heading out into dark waters.’

  38

  Q & A

  The centre was already facing the loss of its clients as the taint of unsolved crime lapped at its doors. Now Bryant was prepared to stir things up further, especially when the receptionist explained that Mr Thornberry was taking an induction class and wouldn’t be
able to see him. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Bryant, flashing his PCU card, ‘I’ll sit in on his talk. I have a lot of questions for him. I’m sure you won’t mind.’

  The receptionist did mind, very much. The man standing there emptying out his pockets in the search for a notebook reminded her of an over-loved Victorian teddy bear. The ladies on the Life Options client list ran book clubs and charities and lunched in garden nurseries along the Thames Valley. The presence of this benign shambles reeking of peppermints and rolling tobacco would surely add to their growing suspicions. ‘Perhaps he could see you at—’ she said before looking up from her screen and finding nobody there.

  Bryant found a space at the back of the induction room, sat down, blew his nose loudly and opened a box of Liquorice Allsorts. The woman next to him moved her chair away an inch.

  Ali Bensaud bounced into the room and began his welcoming address. He perfectly matched the description Janice had provided, moving back and forth before the women with a loping grace that reminded Bryant of a benign leopard. His accent had now been refined in a language school and defied accurate location. Until 1940 most English families had only travelled a short distance, so their intonation could be pinpointed to within a few streets. Bryant knew that dialects broke down into nine broad types, with Received Pronunciation representing the language’s gold standard. Non-native English speakers tended to carry over the phonemic inventory of their mother tongue. North African Arabic, he decided. I’ll have to tread carefully. If he wriggles off the hook I’ll never get him back.

  It was clear that Ali had constructed his persona with precision and would be wary of traps. He stopped before each of his new clients, first reserved, then light-hearted, then earnest. At the end of the induction the good ladies of the lower Thames Valley dutifully filed out to sign up for classes, and the detective rose to meet his key suspect.

  ‘A few minutes of your time, if I may?’ Bryant wiped his hand on his coat and held it out.

  ‘We can go in here.’ Bensaud shook his hand and led the way to Cassie North’s office. ‘My partner is busy dealing with problems arising from the death of her mother, as I’m sure you can appreciate.’ He had an easy, affable charm and held the eye with authority.