Strange Tide

by Christopher Fowler

  Colin searched the seesawing craft, checking the painted sterns as they twisted and turned. The low smoke from the fair’s braziers drifted above the heads of the crowd and was beaten down on to the shoreline, where the tar torches pierced the gloom with lambent shards. A stage erected at the end of the street bled electronic feedback, compounding the cacophony and sending echoes from the buildings across the river.

  Even Fraternity wasn’t sure how he managed to spot the rowing boat. Around six metres long, it was drifting away from the shore ahead of the other parade vessels. A lone oarsman stood poling his way from the rocky beach. He was the only one ignoring the chaos surrounding him, so intent was he on escaping the interlocking boats.

  Fraternity and Colin were still a long way from the staircase to the shoreline. The crowd was a living creature, unyielding, enclosing, impossible to penetrate. Only someone as small and tough as Meera had any hope of getting through. They caught her eye and signalled to her.

  She dropped low and shoved forward, causing revellers to yell and fall back as she hammered her way through. Emerging between the legs of a surprised brewer selling hot porter in commemorative tankards, she caused him to slop the boiling ale on his customers. The ensuing argument caused others to fall back, allowing her to reach the break in the balustrade that led to the beach staircase.

  Popping up again, she surveyed the scene on the floodlit water before running for the steps. The boats along the shoreline were all attempting to set off, but were so densely packed that many could not get clear. Following Fraternity’s mimed directions, she jumped on board the first vessel, hopping from one deck to the next, using them as stepping stones. At the outer reach of the last launch she threw herself forward as the rowing boat passed, and landed hard on its deck.

  As the pilot raised his oar, Colin cried out a warning. Pushing forward, he tried to reach the shoreline but a group of incensed Indian lads shoved him back into place. He and the others could only watch, helpless, as the figure on the boat swung the oar at Meera, sending her over the side.

  47

  SINK & SWIM

  As Meera surfaced she fought to stay clear of the dancing prows and stabbing oars that surrounded her. May spotted one of the supervising MPU cruisers and prayed it would find the spot where she thrashed the bitter water. As its spotlight picked her out and Meera was pulled aboard, May tapped his phasing headset. ‘Fraternity, can you follow her path over the boats? Don’t let Colin try.’

  ‘Getting hard to hear you, John,’ Fraternity shouted back. ‘Not enough bandwidth.’

  May waved his arms, pointing frantically to the route. Fraternity finally nodded back and set off.

  ‘Here, give these a go,’ said Bryant, handing his partner a pair of pocket binoculars. ‘They’re no use with my eyes even in the night-vision mode.’ May was not in the least surprised that his partner should be carrying such an item. Bryant had been known to produce everything from a soldering iron to a portable easel from his inside pocket. He scanned the scene and quickly located the longboat with the Medusa logo.

  There was someone lying in the bows, but the figure was stiff and silvered, like the effigy of a venerated elder being committed to the depths on a funeral barge. Crimson smoke drifted across its prow as it inched forward towards clear water.

  ‘I can see Cooper,’ said Fraternity into his crackling throat-mic. ‘He’s either unconscious or dead.’

  Freddie Cooper was cocooned in duct-tape, his ankles and wrists bound together, a strip sealing his mouth. Standing astride him was Ali Bensaud. Gone was the look of benign gentility; in its place was a fixed mask of anger.

  May refocused the binoculars. Fraternity was bouncing across the decks of the locked-together vessels. A moment later he had landed on the rowing boat, almost capsizing it.

  Bensaud regained his balance and raised his oar again, swinging it hard, but he only caught the young officer’s shoulder. The others were too far off to help. The MPU cruiser was forcing its way towards them, but its path was blocked by a rat-king of oars and tangled pennants. In the chaos of the mass launching most of the craft had become hopelessly interlocked. On the shore, the Mayor was having an argument with a group of Russian sponsors he was seeking to impress.

  When May was next able to focus he saw that Bensaud had turned away and was picking something up from the deck: a long-barrelled shotgun.

  Fraternity’s rubber-soled boots found purchase on the wet boards. Bensaud swung the rifle, took aim at Cooper and fired both barrels. The noise was lost amid the cacophony of drums and firecrackers.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Bryant. ‘I wish I was taller.’ The drifting crimson smoke obscured his view. When it cleared, he saw that the rowing boat on which Fraternity had landed was sinking bow-first.

  May trained the binoculars on the vessel. Bensaud had fired through the boards beside Cooper’s head. He smashed at the planks with the barrel as an arcing spout of muddy water sprayed into the boat and tipped it sharply. Within moments Cooper was submerged. Bensaud leaped away across the boats, into the firework smoke.

  Fraternity hauled himself forward but the craft was rising to a steep angle. The bales and coils of rope around Cooper were sliding over him, trapping him.

  Fraternity climbed down and pulled at the body, raising his head and tearing at the silver tape across Cooper’s mouth. The boat lurched deeper, throwing him off balance and dropping Cooper below the waterline once more.

  Fraternity grabbed at his arms, trying to free him, but water flooded in as the boat sank. He was forced to head over the side and into the river.

  May tried to see what was going on but the boat had now vanished between the other craft that had crowded around it. Fraternity appeared thrashing and spluttering near the spot where the boat had submerged, and dived again. When he surfaced, he was hauling Cooper beside him. Several of the costumed watermen who had gathered from the maze of marine craft reached down and dragged them out of the icy tide. They returned to the shoreline bearing the officer between them, and in a second cortège, Cooper’s bound body.

  Of Ali Bensaud there was no sign. There were only silhouettes of mariners and revellers moving through a haze of green and scarlet smoke, like ghosts of the river risen from the depths to wage war with those upon the land.

  48

  GUILT & INNOCENCE

  The gathering at the PCU was unusually sombre. The team had decamped there after the disastrous turn of events at the river pageant. Raymond Land was the only member of staff whose clothes were not steaming and sodden. Fraternity had his arm in a sling. Meera’s shoulder was taped up.

  ‘I don’t know where to begin,’ said Land, pacing past them. ‘Do you want the bad news or the really bad news? Because of your incompetence we’ve a murderer on the loose planning God-knows-what. By now he’ll no doubt have changed his name and appearance again, so we may never find him. He got into the country; I dare say it’ll be just as easy for him to get out. Meanwhile, your latest little escapade has left a banker in St Thomas’ having his jaw wired up, and Mr May here is being charged with the murder of Marion North.’

  ‘You didn’t do much to stop it happening,’ said Meera angrily.

  ‘That’s enough out of you, missy,’ snapped Land. ‘I’ve had nothing but disrespect and insubordination from you from the start.’

  ‘Don’t pick on her,’ warned Colin.

  ‘Yeah, leave her alone,’ said Fraternity.

  ‘Oh, am I being addressed by the pair who’ve single-handedly put police brutality back on the agenda? The suspect you duffed up has launched a lawsuit against us. Luckily, by the time it goes through the unit will have ceased to exist. We’ll be closed for business.’

  ‘Again?’ groaned May. ‘This is getting to be a habit.’

  ‘That’s it, treat it like a joke.’ Land was now nodding like a dashboard mascot. ‘Well, this time there’s no eleventh-hour rescue. The entire investigation was a monumental cock-up from beginning to end. W
hen textbooks come to be written about the policing failures in Britain you’ll have your own section.’

  ‘Is this going to affect our pensions?’ asked Dan Banbury, his hand half-raised.

  ‘Bensaud can’t get far,’ said May. ‘He needs to contact Cassandra North because he’ll require money to get out of the country, and he won’t be able to use his credit cards. She controls the finances. She’ll have to get him cash from their company account. When he contacts her we’ll find him.’

  ‘Have you spoken to her?’ Land asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Janice replied. ‘She’s ready to do whatever we say. Her first priority is to save her business.’

  ‘I would have thought her first priority would be finding her mother’s killer, then hiring a lawyer,’ said Giles Kershaw, ‘before her clients all start suing her for feeding them quack potions and giving them life-threatening advice. Stupidity was never an impediment to a lawsuit. Do you know how much the pseudo-medical industry brings in?’

  ‘No, and I don’t care about a bunch of gullible—’ Land looked around. ‘Where’s the hell’s Bryant?’

  May had assumed one of the others had brought him back. ‘Wasn’t he with you?’ he asked.

  Bryant stood before the bringer of life and death.

  Beyond the lock gates on the Isle of Dogs the river was high and wide. At this point he was almost entirely surrounded by chill waters. You could feel it on the skin, taste it in the air. Here the breaches in the river’s sea defences had once formed an inland lake known as ‘the Poplar Gut’, London’s own alimentary canal.

  He stared past the rotting green stanchions, down into the puddled mud studded with polished stones, pieces of pottery, car tyres and shredded knots of blue nylon cord, and a distant memory surfaced.

  He was seven years old, waiting for the bridges to close so that he could visit his father’s family on the Isle. ‘It’s like Venice,’ his father had said admiringly, with what was probably the least appropriate simile ever chosen for the Isle of Dogs. There was no purpose in searching for London’s past now, so completely had it been erased. But the old man remembered.

  ‘Mr Bryant?’ A young Malaysian boy appeared carrying something the size and shape of a painting wrapped in plastic. ‘You’re waiting for this?’

  ‘Thank you, yes,’ Bryant replied. ‘I thought it was quicker to come and collect it. Just stick it down there.’

  ‘It’s really heavy. Have you got a way of—’

  ‘Thank you, I’ve a taxi booked to take me to St Thomas’ Hospital. You can get along.’

  The young man carefully stood the board against a wall and took his leave. The final piece of evidence, thought Bryant. Even if Bensaud makes it out of the country, his dream is over now.

  ‘We should call it a night,’ said Raymond Land, irritably checking his watch. ‘The only lead left is testimony from Cooper and he’s still having his stomach pumped. There’s nothing to be gained by staying here. Go home, the lot of you.’

  ‘You’re kidding. It’s so windy out there that the rain’s going sideways,’ said Meera. ‘Let’s at least wait until it eases off a bit.’

  ‘You’re not dossing down here, young lady. This is a police unit, not Airbnb. Not that any of you actually solve crimes here any more, it seems. Maybe after we’ve been closed down we could go into the hospitality industry, turn the place into a community centre or an artisanal coffee shop, start serving cappuccinos in the evidence room.’

  ‘Not every case ends the way you’d like it to,’ said May. ‘You should know that by now, Raymond. None of the Met’s specialist units would have got any further. We know who to look for. Bensaud will have to surface eventually.’

  ‘What about Lynsey Dalladay?’ asked Longbright. ‘We didn’t manage to do very much for her, did we?’

  ‘What did you expect, vengeance?’ asked May.

  ‘We don’t even know what really happened,’ said Banbury, who hated loose ends.

  ‘It’s fairly easy to work out a sequence of events,’ May replied.

  ‘Well, could someone else do it?’ asked Land. ‘After all, you are actually under house arrest and suspended from duty pending a murder charge. Or does nobody think that matters?’ An accusatory silence ensued. ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Land waved him on.

  ‘Bensaud got her pregnant,’ May continued, ‘and when she told him she wanted to keep the baby he figured she was going to destroy his career. He killed Marion North because she discovered the truth and threatened to tell Freddie Cooper. The two women were going to destroy everything he’d tried to achieve. He was ambitious and when it all went wrong he was forced to clean up. The engineer and his mate had nothing to do with the case.’

  ‘That’s not exactly true,’ said a familiar voice from the door. ‘I’ve just had an interesting little chat with poor old Freddie Cooper. He’s a bit woozy, but sitting up and taking notice.’

  ‘We were told no one could see him,’ said Longbright.

  ‘Oh, I just slipped in when the nurse left her desk. Can someone give me a hand in with this?’ Arthur Bryant unstrangled himself and threw his scarf on to a vacant chair while Bimsley obligingly dragged in the bubble-wrapped object. ‘Open it up, would you, Colin?’

  Bimsley knelt and tore the plastic away to reveal a ragged piece of black painted wood. Along the top, picked out in gold lettering, was a single word: ‘Medusa’.

  Bryant rooted about in the vast repository of his overcoat and produced a Swiss army knife. Bending down, he began scraping away at the paintwork. Everyone peered forward to watch him. If ever an example of the PCU’s peculiar behaviour was needed, it would have been this sight: a roomful of officers silently watching a strange old man scratching away at a piece of wood. Even Land decided to keep his mouth shut.

  ‘Bill Crooms was involved. He had a nice little business going.’ Bryant flicked shreds of paint from his knife. ‘He was running off fake engine parts on 3D printers and selling them to interested buyers with forged IPR from China.’

  ‘IPR?’ asked Land.

  ‘Intellectual property rights mean you can trace anything back to the original manufacturer,’ Bryant explained, hunched over and concentrating on his task. ‘Unless it comes from China, Russia or, oddly enough, California, where things get murkier. In avionics all components require registered provenance, and although the legislation covers all types of marine equipment it doesn’t always work out that way because there are plenty of people who are prepared to turn a blind eye in favour of profit. It was Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa that finally confirmed my suspicions.’

  He stretched and waved the penknife about, loosely outlining the painting, then returned to scratch at the paintwork. ‘I had so many elements in my head but my poor befuddled brain couldn’t fit them all together. The unmarked beach. The blurred tattoo. The magic act. The chairs stacked in the nightclub. The neck-chain with the puzzle link. The cauterized stump. The health centre. And at the heart of the case, joining everything together, the river. I wanted a unifying theory but I simply couldn’t make sense of it. I felt the way poor old Raymond here must feel all the time.’

  Land thought of taking exception but decided against it as no one was watching him.

  ‘Then there was Ali Bensaud, so handsome and clever, so ruthlessly ambitious. Seducing credulous women and dumping them. And as proof of his guilt, there was this.’

  Bryant set down his penknife for a moment and pulled out a tattered photograph, which May passed around. It showed Bensaud dressed as a magician, with the silver chain around his neck. The crescent moon glistened at his clavicle. It was, without doubt, the same chain that had attached Dalladay’s wrist to the rock in the Thames.

  ‘Finally, physical evidence,’ Bryant said. ‘But it felt wrong. What really confused me was the Thames, meandering, switching back and forth, deceiving. That’s the odd thing; in most other major cities built around rivers, the waterway acts as a plumb line that provides you with compass poin
ts. But the Thames doesn’t do that. Quite the reverse; it deliberately obscures your point of view, because whenever you stand on the north bank you assume you must be facing south, but you’re not. The river follows the contours of a jigsaw piece, and it led me away from the truth.’

  ‘Which is what?’ asked Land impatiently.

  Bryant gave a shrug. ‘That despite how it looks, Ali Bensaud is not the killer,’ he said.

  49

  INNOCENCE & GUILT

  Fraternity was incredulous. ‘But Meera and I both saw him sink the boat and try to drown Freddie Cooper.’

  ‘Yes, I know, and that’s exactly what he did. But something still felt wrong. Ali Bensaud is a sharp-witted man. I thought if he planned a murder he’d be too smart to leave evidence – so why would he use his own neck-chain to tie Lynsey Dalladay to the rock?’

  ‘You tried to convince us she committed suicide,’ said May.

  ‘True. I thought that Bensaud possessed the perfect murder weapon: his charismatic powers of persuasion. But my theory had to be wrong, because as you pointed out, John, he had no allegiance to the Thames and its meanings. He was simply out to make money. Why would he come up with such a strange idea? Bensaud has assimilated our culture, but the concept of the sacred river eludes most Londoners, let alone those learning English as a second language.’

  ‘My thought exactly,’ said May.

  ‘There were other things that bothered me, like the amounts of cash that were suddenly passing through Dalladay’s account which couldn’t possibly have been made from immoral earnings. It was an easy matter to implicate Bensaud, but there was no single hypothesis that would make logical sense of his actions. Persuade Dalladay to kill herself just because she was pregnant? No matter how confused she was, would she really be that weak? And she was known at the centre; being implicated in any sort of crime was the very worst thing that could happen to him.’ Bryant turned to address the others. ‘I started thinking of Bensaud as something even he didn’t foresee: the victim, not the perpetrator. And that meant looking at everything differently. At the heart of this wasn’t revenge at all, but a love story. That was when I came to the realization that we were looking for a killer who wasn’t smart, just opportunistic. I knew we needed to know more about Bensaud’s past. How had he arrived here?’