The Unquiet Dead

by Gay Longworth

  ‘Gee, Heaven must be really empty.’

  ‘Oh, there are many more. Some simply haven’t been commemorated as they should have been. Even an unborn life is a little soul. Others are guilty. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” – it is as important to forgive as to be forgiven. An entity often remains due to an inability to do either. We get them there in the end.’

  ‘All this is very interesting,’ said Jessie, trying not to be drawn in, ‘but it doesn’t tell me what you were doing in Marshall Street.’

  ‘I know most of the infested places in this city. As a Christian Sensitive and an expert in deliverance, it’s my job to know. So, when news of the girl’s disappearance hit the headlines, naturally I thought I could help.’

  ‘The same girl you couldn’t remember or recognise a few moments ago.’

  ‘Yes, sorry about that.’ He smiled, picked up a plate from the tea tray. ‘Ginger nut?’

  ‘Marshall Street,’ Jessie prompted.

  ‘Oh, yes. So I went down there.’

  ‘To the baths?’

  ‘Yes. Strangely enough it had been in my dreams lately. I awoke with terrible feelings of regret.’

  ‘What do you have to regret, Father?’

  ‘These weren’t my feelings, though I suppose one is always wondering if one could not have lived a better life.’

  ‘You’re telling me that you saw Marshall Street Baths on the news and went down there because you’d been dreaming about it?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Wrong. You were there before Anna Maria disappeared. You were there before the story even broke – we have you on CCTV. You appear to be following her through the crowd.’

  ‘I wasn’t following anyone. But you’re right about being there before the news story. It is an amazing thing, though I shouldn’t be amazed any more. I was in town attending a two-day seminar at St Martin-in-the-Fields. I took a stroll through Carnaby Street on the first afternoon and returned there when I saw the news piece the following day. Obviously, I knew where it was. Luckily, the door had been left open for me, so I went in and found you. Why attend a seminar on those days, of all days, at that place, you may well ask. But ours is not to reason why, now, is it? Would you believe how many spiritualists found themselves in New York on September 11th. Some spent days channelling confused spirits to the other side, but I am afraid even so many got left behind and much more work needs to be done there if the pall is ever to be lifted.’

  Jessie stood up.

  ‘I’m not sure the detective is really taking this in,’ said Sister Beatrice softly.

  ‘I’m not taken in, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Boss …’

  ‘What! People died. You should not mock it!’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to speak to Mary?’

  ‘Mary the medium?’

  The nun nodded. ‘My sister.’

  ‘Another nun?’

  ‘No. My twin.’ Sister Beatrice laughed. ‘It’s a good joke though, isn’t it? My sister the sister!’ She laughed again. ‘Yes, very good joke.’ She looked up at Jessie, suddenly serious. ‘She may convince you where we cannot. She has worked with the police before, though they don’t like to admit it.’

  ‘I don’t need to talk to your sister. That can wait until I return with a warrant to search these premises.’

  ‘What on earth for?’ asked the woman, startled.

  ‘For Anna Maria Klein,’ said Jessie.

  ‘This hasn’t got anything to do with Anna Maria Klein. This is about the man in the baths,’ said Father Forrester calmly.

  ‘What man?’

  ‘The man whose body you found.’

  Jessie felt suddenly queasy. No one knew they’d pulled a man out of the baths. DCI Moore had made sure of that.

  ‘I thought we were talking about Anna Maria Klein.’

  ‘No. You were,’ said Father Forrester.

  ‘No. You were.’

  ‘Listen to yourself, Detective.’

  Played for a fool, one thing; patronised, another. ‘Burrows, we’re out of here.’

  ‘But, ma’am, you should hear –’

  ‘Now.’ Jessie signalled to the door and Burrows reluctantly left. She turned back to the vicar and the nun. ‘You may find my behaviour shocking. I do not apologise, I have been in this business too long and seen too much to take anything at face value. I have arrested child protection officers for molesting children. I can arrest a priest for any number of broken commandments –’

  The vicar looked right through her. ‘I understand your pain. Loss is a great challenge to one’s belief.’

  Tears unexpectedly pricked her eyelids. ‘I don’t know where you’re getting this information from, but I will find out.’

  Burrows was waiting for her in the dark corridor. They left the rectory in silence, but as soon as they were outside, he turned to her.

  ‘You shouldn’t dismiss what they were saying so quickly. I’ve heard of mediums helping investigations.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Jessie.

  ‘That is an interesting argument – well constructed. Just the sort of thing I’d expect from your fellow DI.’

  ‘What is it? You want me to go along with all that mumbo-jumbo crap?’

  ‘That mumbo-jumbo crap happens to be what I believe in.’

  ‘Jesus, Burrows, you telling me you’re a Christian?’

  ‘Why do you have to say it like that, like it’s some kind of disease?’

  Jessie stopped walking. Her sergeant looked at her, she could see in his eyes how serious he was.

  ‘You’d bend over backwards if I wore a turban and a dagger hanging from my neck. You wouldn’t bat an eyelid if I left work early every Friday for Shiva, but Christian – oooh, scary Jesus creepers and jamborees. I believe in God. There, I said it.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody patronising.’

  ‘Burrows, don’t swear at me.’

  ‘Then don’t disrespect me,’ he replied firmly. ‘I’ve never disrespected you.’ It was true, even during her previous murder inquiry, when all about her were rejoicing in her demise, Burrows had stood up for her, redirected her and advised her. But she wasn’t really angry with him.

  ‘I don’t believe in Heaven,’ said Jessie.

  ‘That is your prerogative.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ said Jessie, walking towards the car.

  ‘Luck has nothing to do with it, ma’am. Belief in the scriptures requires a leap of faith. That’s what people like you can’t get your head around. Throw all the science and reasoning you like at me, a leap of faith cannot be challenged.’

  ‘I’m not challenging you, Burrows.’

  ‘Yes you are.’

  Jessie put her hand out to open the car door and saw that it was shaking again. For a moment she stared back down the cobbled road to where it bent out of sight. Burrows got in behind the wheel and started the engine.

  ‘Just because you can’t see her, it doesn’t mean she’s not there.’

  ‘What?’ said Jessie.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Burrows.

  Jessie looked back to the rectory. Father Forrester was standing in the door frame watching her, smiling.

  Jessie climbed into the car. ‘Take me to the library,’ she said.

  ‘What about getting a warrant to search for Anna Maria Klein?’

  ‘I’m not going to give them the satisfaction. These people are just touting for business. When he turned up at the baths he said he was there to help Anna. When she wasn’t there, it suddenly became old money and a dead guy. He probably overheard my conversation with Don the caretaker. Either way, it’s bollocks. I bet they’re nothing to do with the Church. Loads of people live in old rectories – they were sold off to pay for all those child-abuse cases.’

  ‘If dismissing them makes it easier for you, go ahead.’

&n
bsp; Jessie couldn’t cope with any more religious debate. She simply ignored him. ‘Anna Maria is where I thought she was.’

  ‘And where is that if it isn’t under the rectory floorboards?’

  ‘Holed up in a hotel, watching her own little drama unfold on the TV.’

  ‘In which case she could be anywhere.’

  ‘Not in those heels.’ Jessie looked at the rectory in her wing mirror. They drove along in silence for a while. Jessie wanted to apologise. She never wanted to make Burrows feel the way Mark Ward made her feel. Belittled. Not taken seriously.

  ‘Talk about goose chases! I’m sorry, Burrows; you were right, as usual. I should leave well alone. And I’m sorry if I seemed disrespectful. I admire you enormously, I hope you know that.’

  He looked at her briefly. ‘Admire,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ reiterated Jessie. ‘And need.’

  Burrows cleared his throat. ‘So what do you want me to do now?’

  Jessie thought for a moment. ‘What I asked you to do in the first place. Get the CCTV from the car parks, ask at the café –’

  ‘You said –’ Jessie shot him a look. He closed his mouth, indicated right and drove away from the cul-de-sac. Jessie turned on the radio and let music fill the gulf between them. By the time they were halfway down the high street, Jessie laughed.

  ‘You’ve got to admit it, that was a bit like falling into a David Lynch film. Please – a midget medium and her twin sister the nun.’

  Burrows didn’t say anything, but she saw the right side of his mouth quiver before he turned away to look out for oncoming traffic. She hoped she’d witnessed the beginning of a smile.

  7

  Niaz stood up from his position at the microfiche as soon as he saw Jessie enter the library research room. When she got closer, he offered her his seat.

  ‘You sit,’ said Jessie. ‘Any luck?’

  ‘Well, I decided to search through the local paper first. Any incident relating to Marshall Street Baths would automatically be covered by the local press, but not necessarily by the national papers. Unless it turns out to be a big story. You said in your message that the pathologist had estimated approximately fifteen years had passed since the man was killed. To be safe I began searching from 1980, in keeping with the dead man’s clothes. So far Marshall Street Baths has appeared twenty-one times in a single year, predominantly for fundraising events. Marathon swims for a children’s trust, celebrity races, and of course local school competition days. The safety record seems to be exemplary. I think I may be here all night.’ He pointed to a pile of photocopied articles. Jessie picked up the top one; a group of disabled swimmers and volunteer helpers smiled back at her.

  ‘We are looking for a drowning on February 23rd, year unknown – but start with 1987.’

  ‘You think the date is significant?’

  ‘His watch stopped on February 23rd because it wasn’t waterproof. Ergo, we know the date he drowned.’

  ‘The same date he was discovered. Isn’t that strange?’

  ‘Compared to the lottery, odds of 1 in 365 sound pretty good.’

  ‘But, ma’am, it wouldn’t have made the news if the body was hidden.’

  Listen to yourself. ‘Just check the date, Niaz. Was there a drowning or not?’

  ‘I beg your patience while I change the sheet.’ He fiddled with the machine for a while, flicking through local history in the blink of an eye. ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, try 1988 …’

  Jessie waited.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go to 1989.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was the headline. The main event.

  ‘Can we get a hard copy?’

  ‘Better than that, we can get the original. I’ll take the reference number to the desk, it won’t take long.’

  Jessie took Niaz’s place at the machine and while waiting began to read:

  LIFEGUARD LETS LOCAL BOY DROWN

  Tragedy struck Marshall Street Baths last Tuesday, February 23rd. Schoolboy Jonny Romano drowned in the pool after suffering a seizure halfway through completion of a length. It is not clear why the lifeguard on duty, Michael Firth, failed to respond to the sixteen-year-old’s cry for help. The staff of St Barnaby’s Secondary School have claimed that the boy had been particularly boisterous during that afternoon’s lesson and perhaps the lifeguard was under the illusion that Jonny was simply messing around with his friends. It wasn’t until his body slipped under the surface and went still that anyone realised the situation was serious. Finally the lifeguard dived in to rescue Jonny and brought him to the side of the pool where mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was performed.

  Sadly, the boy never regained consciousness. Despite prolonged efforts to revive him, he was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. A full inquiry is expected to take place into his death. Meanwhile, Marshall Street Baths has been closed and the lifeguard has been taken in for questioning. At present no charges have been made, though there were angry scenes outside the police station as parents of the drowned boy’s friends gathered outside. ‘It could have been my boy,’ said one mother. ‘This was no accident. We want answers.’ The school released the following statement:

  ‘Everyone is devastated by Jonny’s death. He was a talented and bright student who had no history of seizures or fits of any description.’

  The results of the postmortem will be released later today. Meanwhile a vigil outside the baths continues.

  Niaz arrived holding the original newspaper and a photocopy of the article.

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘The article, but I don’t think it is anything to do with your man in the morgue.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure, Niaz. Look at the headline the following week, after the PM –’

  Niaz leant over her shoulder. ‘Lifeguard exonerated – drugs blamed.’

  ‘A routine autopsy revealed the lad was on speed at the time. That means this boy’s death wasn’t an accident. It was manslaughter. Or murder, depending on whose angle you’re looking at it from. If this boy drowned because of the drugs he was taking, I want to know who sold him the drugs. There will be a police file. Find it. Our man in the morgue may not have died on that day, but the date meant something to someone.’

  ‘You think he might have supplied the boy?’

  Jessie thought about the dead man’s teeth and stomach contents. His ‘trendy’ second-hand clothes, his slicked-back hair, the cash in his wallet, the lack of identification.

  ‘Either he didn’t want to be ID’d or someone else didn’t want him being ID’d. He wasn’t an upstanding member of the community and he had no reason to be in a public swimming pool.’ Then she thought of the scratches. Scratches made by a furious woman – a bereaved mother, perhaps. Then drowned by a grief-stricken father. After he was dead, perhaps they panicked. Killing a person was not an easy thing to do. Desperate, they might have tried to empty his lungs, pounding on his chest to force out the water and force in the air. But it failed, just as it had in their son’s case. The bruised man died. Mistake or not, it was still murder.

  ‘Boss,’ said Niaz, ‘look at this –’ The following week’s paper featured a police sketch artist’s impression of a man’s face. ‘They were looking for a man seen frequently on the premises and known to some of the children as Ian.’

  ‘Ian.’ Jessie peered at the rudimentary drawing. ‘He looks like those men in “wanted” posters in cartoons.’

  ‘Look at the hair.’

  The artist had used a soft lead pencil to indicate thick black hair. It appeared to be slicked back. ‘Every fashion-conscious man with enough hair on his head would have been wearing his hair like that. Look at the picture of Jonny Romano, it’s almost identical. A hairstyle doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘But this man went missing,’ said Niaz.

  ‘Let’s pull up the broadsheets and see if they’ve got a clearer image of him.’

  ‘We can do better than that,’ said Niaz. ‘The librarian will show us the orig
inals. I took the liberty of asking her to locate them for me.’ Jessie followed her constable along the polished floorboards of the research room. ‘She didn’t seem to think the request was excessive. Look, there she is.’

  A slim Asian girl was spreading papers across a vast table. On each pile was a plain piece of A4 with the name of the paper written neatly in black ink: The Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, London Evening Standard. She looked up and smiled shyly as Niaz approached. Jessie was about to nudge Niaz knowingly, but seeing the strict way in which he held himself, she thought better of it. Niaz was not really the teasing type. Jessie noticed how his large hand tapped the side of his leg. The unflappable PC Ahmet was nervous.

  ‘I have used the post-it notes to indicate where the story appears,’ said the young woman.

  Jessie put out her hand and introduced herself.

  ‘Asma,’ said the girl quietly. She returned to the piles of paper. ‘It was a big story at the time. Many of the papers were calling for the lifeguard’s head until news of the drugs broke. Then they changed tack and the Daily Telegraph offered a reward for any information relating to the missing man.’

  ‘The man in the picture?’

  ‘Yes. According to these articles his name was Ian Doyle. He lived in a squat, but by the time police raided the address all evidence of the mysterious man had been subsumed by the vagrant population. The turnover of squatters was high. No one knew, or no one admitted they knew the man in question. He had no job, no paper record, no National Insurance, nothing. It was as if he didn’t exist.’

  Which meant he probably didn’t, thought Jessie. Not as Ian Doyle anyway. There were several reasons a man would change his name. None of them good. ‘You’ve done all this very quickly,’ she said, impressed.

  Asma looked worried for a moment.