Dead Weight

by Frank Smith

  The bodies had been laid out on plastic sheets on the narrow footpath and a makeshift screen set up around them. But when Dr Reginald Starkie arrived, there was little he could do beyond taking temperatures and directing the photographer to take pictures of the injuries before ordering the bodies to be covered and carried up to the road.

  ‘Are you quite sure that no one else is trapped down there?’ Paget asked one of the divers. ‘The report we had from the man who claims he was nearly killed last night said that one of the cars was full of screaming teenagers, so I’d like you to go as far as the next bend in the river, just to be sure.’ If there had been others in the car, and they had been swept beyond the bend, they could be anywhere downstream, so there was nothing to be gained by extending the search until they knew more.

  The divers slid into the water, and Paget made his way along the bank to take a look at the old boathouse that was once the home of the Broadminster Rowing Club. The clubhouse itself was tucked into a fold in the hill, with a canopied extension, supported by pilings, jutting some twenty to thirty feet into the river. It was a sad-looking building: the paint on the warped wooden siding was peeling, the glass in some of the windows was gone, and some of the pilings needed replacing. The tunnel-like canopy over the water was made of heavy canvas; once taut and tight-laced, it was now ragged and sagging between rusting metal ribs.

  He was about to turn back when he noticed a man sitting quietly on a large slab of rock, smoking a pipe. A folded fishing rod and basket lay in the grass beside him. Paget recognized the man as the fisherman who had reported the car in the river.

  ‘Mr Hughes,’ Paget said. ‘I thought you’d gone home. I must thank you for bringing this to our attention.’

  ‘Can’t fish, so I thought I’d just sit here and watch for a while,’ the man said. ‘Haven’t seen this much activity along here in many a year. Old hat to you, no doubt, but all new to me.’

  ‘Do you fish here regularly?’ Paget asked.

  ‘Used to come the odd Sunday when I was working,’ Hughes told him, ‘but now that I’m retired I try to get down here two or three times a week. Gets me out for a walk and a bit of fresh air.’ A sly smile touched his lips. ‘And I can smoke my pipe.’

  ‘I thought the boathouse was no longer in use,’ said Paget, ‘but I see two skiffs moored to the pilings down there, and they don’t look very old.’

  ‘The rowing club moved out a couple of years ago,’ Hughes said. ‘The place was falling apart, and the road was in need of repair. They couldn’t afford to fix everything up, so they packed up and left. But there are still a few who moor their boats here from time to time because it’s free.’

  Paget’s mobile phone rang. ‘PC Thomas, sir, up here on the road,’ a voice said when he answered. Paget looked up and saw a man in uniform give a brief wave. ‘It’s about the crane, sir,’ Thomas continued. ‘It’s here, as you can see, but there’s a problem. I’ll hand you over to the operator and he can explain it better than I can. His name is Carter. Here he is now.’

  Paget could see a man wearing a hardhat take the phone from the constable and put it to his ear. ‘What’s the problem, Mr Carter?’ Paget asked.

  ‘The problem is the distance between where I’m standing and the river,’ said Carter. He looked like a big man, but he had a thin, asthmatic voice. ‘Even with the extension, the boom of my crane won’t reach far enough out to lift the car straight up in a sling, and there’s not enough room down where you are to get equipment in, so we’ll have to do it in two goes, if that’s all right with you, sir?’

  ‘When you say “two goes”, will you explain that to me, Mr Carter?’

  ‘Right. What I mean is, if the divers can attach the cable well enough to take the weight of the car, I can winch it on to the bank and drag it partway up the hill to that bit of a flat spot over to your right. That will bring it within reach, so, when you’ve done whatever you have to do, we can get a sling under it and I can lift it straight up and on to the trailer.’

  Paget could see the problem, and Carter was right: there was no other practical way to lift the car out of the river. ‘Very well, then,’ he said, ‘we’ll do it your way, Mr Carter. However, the divers still have some preliminary work to do before we stir up the mud by moving the car, so I’ll have to ask you to be patient. Shouldn’t be too long.’

  ‘It’s all the same to me, sir,’ the man said. ‘We bill by the hour, so take as long as you like.’

  Paget heard a shout as he pocketed the phone. One of the divers was making his way to shore. He pulled himself out and gestured for Paget to join him.

  ‘We’ve found another body,’ the man said as Paget approached. ‘It’s only a few yards away from the car, but we almost missed it because it was half buried in the mud. But this one comes gift-wrapped, and it’s held down by a couple of what looks like ten-kilo barbell plates; one’s wired to the neck, the other to the feet.’

  ‘Could the body have been thrown from the car?’

  ‘It’s … possible,’ the diver said doubtfully. ‘As I said, it’s half buried in the mud, so it looks to me as if it’s been there for some time. But, if it was slung from the car, what with the weights and all, I suppose it could have buried itself. But whichever it is,’ he continued, ‘we could do a lot of damage to the body if we try to bring it up with the weights attached, so I’d like to cut them off and bring them and the body up separately. We can do that without unwrapping the wire; there must be at least ten feet of it around the neck and legs.’

  ‘In that case, go ahead and do it that way,’ said Paget, ‘but I want the body and the weights kept below the surface of the water until they can be brought on to the bank under cover of the screens. There are too many people up there on the road with mobile phones and cameras, and I’d like to keep this one from public view until we’ve had a chance to see what we’ve got. And bring up anything else you find that looks as if it might be relevant.’

  Paget took out his phone and called Tregalles. What had begun as an almost routine investigation into the cause of a tragic accident had changed with the discovery of the additional body. ‘We have the accident on one hand,’ he told Tregalles, ‘and a suspicious death on the other, and I don’t know whether they’re linked or not. An autopsy could settle it, but that will take time, so I’m going to assume, for the moment at least, that the body could have been thrown out of the boot of the car. Anyway, that will be for you to follow up, so you’d better bring Forsythe with you.’

  The body was wrapped in layers of black plastic. Industrial-strength bin liners, it was determined later, held together with what must have been at least one full roll of duct tape, and possibly more. It was bound so tightly that Paget wondered if any water had managed to get in at all. But that was for Starkie to find out, and the doctor was not in the best of humours when he was called back to the scene. In fact, when Paget described the body, Starkie flatly refused to come down the hill to examine it. ‘There is no way I’m going to take that plastic off down there,’ he told Paget, ‘but tell the divers I need to know the temperature of the water where it was found. And tell them to handle the body very carefully.’

  Easier said than done. The narrow hillside road was too rough for the small wheels of an ambulance trolley, so, like the others, anonymous in a body bag, the plastic-wrapped body was carried up on a stretcher by four sturdy constables.

  ‘Let’s hope that’s the last of them,’ Starkie muttered as the body was being loaded into the van. ‘There’s not much doubt about the way the rest of them died, but the coroner will probably want autopsies done on all three, so you may have to wait a bit for this one. In any case, I won’t be able to do a PM until Monday at the earliest, because we’re closed until then for the quarterly inspection and decontamination.’

  ‘You have a problem?’ asked Paget.

  ‘The place is old and hard to keep as clean as it should be,’ Starkie told him. ‘You’ve seen it. They keep saying they’re going to
build a new facility, but it never happens, so I have the place scrubbed from top to bottom every three months.’

  Paget remained on site only long enough to brief Tregalles and Forsythe when they arrived, and to watch as the car was pulled ashore. The divers had tied the boot and the rest of the doors shut so they wouldn’t be torn off or damaged further when the car was dragged on to the bank. ‘Everything was open when the divers first found it,’ Paget explained, ‘so it’s possible that the body was thrown from the boot when the car went in. The divers think not, but it’s something to keep in mind.’

  Paget turned to leave, then paused. ‘I’m going to the hospital to see how the young chap is doing – the one who was thrown clear and spent the night up there.’ He pointed to a marker halfway up the hillside. ‘I’ll have a word with him if he’s in a fit state, and find out what happened.’

  Tregalles and Molly exchanged glances as Paget moved away. ‘Looks like he’s back in the saddle again,’ Molly observed drily. ‘I wonder what happened to spending more time in the office.’ She saw the flush of disappointment on Tregalles’s face, and wished she’d bitten her tongue. She had assumed that Paget was handing the investigation over to Tregalles. Clearly, Tregalles had thought the same, but, whether Paget realized it or not, he’d assumed command, and it didn’t look as if he intended to give it up. Was it force of habit, Molly wondered, or was there some other reason? She could almost see the same thoughts going through Tregalles’s mind, and she wished there were something she could say. But that might make it even worse, so she decided to say nothing.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Fortunately, it wasn’t very cold last night,’ the doctor said, ‘so Mr Kendrick is warming up quite nicely. We’re keeping an eye on him, of course, because he did suffer a mild concussion, but it would seem that his fall was cushioned by bushes; he has cuts and scratches all over his body, but nothing too serious. And being either drunk or stoned – I don’t know which, because I haven’t seen the blood tests yet – probably helped. It would keep him relaxed when he tumbled out of the car. Barring the unforeseen, he’ll be as right as rain in a couple of days: bruised and sore, but no broken bones.’

  ‘You say his name is Kendrick? There was no identification on him when he was found.’

  ‘A and E recognized him,’ the doctor said. ‘His name is Walter Kendrick; he lives by his wits on the streets, and he’s been in several times with food poisoning. He’s one of these people who will eat anything that appears to be remotely edible, and I suspect his main source of food comes from bin diving, and that, together with drugs and alcohol, when he can afford them, can be a very unhealthy combination. I’d be surprised if he hasn’t been in your care at one time or another.’

  ‘Is he conscious?’ asked Paget. ‘The sooner I can speak to him, the better, because he is the only one who can tell me exactly what happened when that car went over the edge and into the river. The boy isn’t in any trouble as far as we’re concerned, so there will be no pressure on him. I just want to know what happened.’

  ‘In that case, I can’t see any harm in it,’ the doctor said. ‘His injuries aren’t serious, but he is under light sedation until we’re satisfied that there are no after-effects from the concussion, so he might be a bit groggy. But you’re welcome to try as long as you don’t press him too hard. I’ll have a nurse accompany you, and it will be up to her to decide if you are putting too much pressure on the boy.’

  Kendrick was dozing, twitching restlessly. There was almost no colour in his face and he was painfully thin. It had taken only one phone call to the office while Paget was making his way upstairs to learn that boy had been living on the streets since he was fourteen. Walter Kendrick, he was told, had gone to bed as usual one night, but when he got up the following morning, his parents had disappeared, taking all their worldly goods with them, together with as much of the landlord’s small furniture as they could pack into their battered van. The boy had been taken into care, but he didn’t like that, so he had ended up on the streets, where he joined a group of tearaways led by Gerry Slater.

  Now, seated beside Kendrick’s bed, Paget coaxed the boy awake. ‘I won’t keep you long,’ he promised when he’d introduced himself and had the boy’s attention, ‘so if you can just tell me what happened when the car you were in went off the road, I’ll let you go back to sleep.’

  ‘Gerry was driving,’ Kendrick said quickly. He might not be fully awake, but his brain was alert enough to tell him to push whatever blame there might be on to someone else. ‘I just went along for the ride. He swerved to avoid a head-on, and the next thing I knew the car was doing somersaults. My door came off – just disappeared – and I was flying …’ His eyes slipped out of focus. ‘Flying,’ he repeated lazily. ‘Never felt like that before. It was cool, man.’

  ‘And you landed in the bushes,’ Paget said.

  ‘Suppose so.’ A pale hand came out from under the covers to touch his face, and his voice took on a stronger tone. ‘How does it look?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I mean, what’s it going to look like? Will there be marks?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Paget told him. ‘Your nose is swollen, but it will go down, and the scratches will heal. You were very lucky.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Kendrick closed his eyes. ‘They told me the car went in the river, and they’re all dead. They really dead, or were they just shittin’ me?’

  ‘You are the only survivor, I’m afraid,’ Paget told him. ‘But tell me, how many were there in the car when it went off the road?’

  ‘Gerry and Debbie and Barbie Doll.’ Kendrick screwed up his face to peer intently at Paget. ‘You sure they’re gone?’ he asked. ‘I mean, we were just having fun. Gerry was driving. Geez! That car went up the hill like a rocket. Flattened me back in my seat like I couldn’t breathe. Debbie was hammering her fist on the dash and yelling for Gerry to go faster, and Barbie Doll was screaming her head off. Then this car comes outa nowhere. Gerry swerved—’

  ‘Are you quite sure that there was no one else in the car?’ Paget cut in.

  The boy shook his head and winced. ‘No, that was it, man. Piggy wanted to come, but Gerry wouldn’t let him.’ Kendrick’s face clouded. ‘He shoulda let him come, because it was him who found the car back of Parkside Place and brought it round. Wide open, he said it was, just asking to be taken.’ Kendrick snickered. ‘Said he’d come to give Gerry a ride in his new car, but Gerry tossed him out and we all piled in.’ Kendrick frowned, and his watery blue eyes drifted away from Paget’s face. ‘But then Piggy’d be dead as well if Gerry had let him come, wouldn’t he?’ he said sadly.

  ‘Piggy?’ Paget said. ‘Does he have another name?’

  ‘Ummm.’ The boy was beginning to drift. Paget reached out and shook his shoulder gently. ‘Don’t do that, man,’ Kendrick chided sleepily. ‘That hurts.’

  ‘I need a name,’ said Paget. ‘What is Piggy’s real name?’

  ‘Sammy, Sammy Pollock.’

  ‘Where did he get the car? Come on, Walter, stay with me for a couple of minutes, and then I’ll let you go back to sleep. Where can I find Sammy Pollock?’

  Kendrick tried to focus his eyes on Paget, but they wouldn’t stay open. ‘Joyride,’ he muttered sleepily, and giggled.

  ‘Joyride?’ Paget echoed sharply. ‘Please, Walter, just answer the question. Where can I find him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Pollock. Sammy Pollock.’

  ‘Dunno. We left him. Gerry shouldn’t’ve done tha …’

  There were other questions Paget wanted to ask, but Walter was fast asleep, and he had enough to be going on with. Time enough for a formal statement from the boy when he was fully recovered. But first things first: he needed to talk to Sammy Pollock.

  Arriving back in Charter Lane, Paget was about to enter the building when the custody officer, Sergeant Sam Broughton, came down the steps. ‘Finished for the day,’ he announced with some satisfaction when they met at the bottom. ‘I’ll be glad to get home
and put my feet up.’

  ‘Bad day, Sam?’ Paget asked.

  ‘It’s the knees,’ Broughton said, glancing up at the sky. ‘Weather’s going to change and the buggers are letting me know it.’ Sam had arthritis in both knees, and there were days when he found it almost too much to stand up.

  Paget was about to continue on his way, but the name “Sam” triggered an association with the name Walter Kendrick had given him. ‘What do you know about a kid by the name of Sammy Pollock?’ he asked the sergeant.

  ‘Piggy Pollock?’ Broughton sighed and shook his head. ‘Oh, yes, we’ve had him in a few times. What’s he done now? Something to do with cars—’ He stopped, eyes narrowing. ‘Oh, don’t tell me he was in the car that went into the river?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t one of them,’ said Paget, ‘but I’m told by the boy who was thrown out of the car, Walter Kendrick, that it was Pollock who stole the car in the first place. It was a boy by the name of Gerry Slater who was driving when it went into the river.’

  ‘I heard,’ Broughton said heavily. ‘We’ve had Slater and Kendrick in a few times as well. So, what do you want to know about Piggy?’

  ‘First of all, why is he called Piggy?’

  ‘It’s his nose. It’s sort of turned-up and flattened out a bit. It’s really not that bad, but somebody started calling him Piggy and it stuck. He’s not a bad kid if we could just find a way to stop him nicking cars. Drives his mother crazy. She tries, but nothing seems to work.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Fifteen, maybe sixteen by now.’

  ‘Where would I find him?’

  ‘His mum lives over the other side of the river in the Flats, but Piggy’s never there. You’ll probably find him down the bottom end of Bridge Street in the arcade. He’s crazy about video games. You could try Zapp or Joyride, which is where Slater and Kendrick usually hang out. Sammy’s always trying to get in with some of the older crowd down there by giving them stuff he nicks from cars, but they just use him to run errands and things like that.’