The Body on the Island

by Nick Louth

  Where was the net? And who cut him out?

  Those distinctive injuries put paid to any hope that this case would not require his attention. One, if it was an accident, it was certainly a weird one. Two, most accidents happen to those wearing clothing. Three, no one had so far reported him missing. He decided to try to get some of his paperwork done on some of the other incomplete cases, to prepare for the inevitable call from Chief Constable Alison Rigby telling him to drop everything for the new case. Rigby had come to the job three years ago, bringing a stellar reputation from the National Crime Agency. Part of the new wave of assertive female senior officers, she had an unerring eye for detail, and a keen political antenna that few of the old-school men seemed to have. She demanded utter dedication from her subordinates, but it was nothing she had not done herself. Rigby worked phenomenal hours and would back her officers to the hilt if she was sure they were in the right. If they weren’t, she was terrifying to behold, aided by her six foot one height. Gillard got on well with her, and the respect was mutual, but he wasn’t immune to the frisson of fear felt by all officers in her commanding presence.

  Gillard checked his watch. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock, and there was a lot he could get done by mid-morning, assuming he was left alone to do it. But he had barely opened the first page of the domestic violence case when Rigby rang him from her home number.

  She’d clearly been looking at the same CSI pictures that he had.

  ‘Craig, I know you’ve got a lot of preparation to do for some other cases, but I do want you to take a look at this for me. We’ve been lucky in that Dr Delahaye will be free to begin the post-mortem this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes ma’am.’ His instinct had been right. But at least an early glimpse at the corpse from an expert should quickly answer some of the questions.

  * * *

  Cottesloe and Wickens allowed Elvira Hart a few hours to regain her composure before going to visit, which required negotiating the walkway over the East Molesey weir. Her home turned out to be an emerald green houseboat, adjoining a gaily painted raft crowded with planters of irises and gladioli. A dining table and chairs were set out among the greenery, beneath a parasol. The two constables crossed the gangplank from the shoreline and tapped the brass knocker on a door small enough for a Hans Christian Andersen tale. The woman who answered the door was what Cottesloe would have called a glamorous upper-class granny. Tall and slender, with refined features and clear blue eyes. She had evidently once been very beautiful. Her thick, shoulder-length, silvery hair had been expensively cut. The two officers were shown into a small but exquisitely furnished lounge, in which the morning sun reflected off a range of antique silverware. The two sat side by side on the chintzy settee, sipping proper coffee and eating artisan biscuits, as Ms Hart moved gracefully around them, plumping cushions and brushing imaginary specks from the arms of an antique chair before she sat in it.

  ‘You must have had an awful shock this morning,’ Cottesloe began, biscuit poised in front of his mouth.

  ‘It was horrible, actually. It was only just light, and this bloated, ghastly purple… thing floated up. I have no idea what must’ve happened to the poor chap.’

  ‘Well, we’ll leave that to the pathologist,’ Wickens said. He got out a printed map and asked her to show exactly where she’d found the body. The point she marked was exactly where CSI were now examining the scene.

  ‘Did you see anybody else around?’ Cottesloe said.

  ‘On the island? No.’

  ‘Ms Hart, in your initial call, you said you had just got back from a run,’ Wickens said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Do you normally go out jogging in the small hours?’ Wickens was a keen runner himself, but didn’t like to run at night.

  She smiled. ‘Not normally that late, but it was the solstice and I was too hot to sleep. It was a beautiful night and I felt full of energy.’

  ‘And do you feel safe at that time of night?’ Cottesloe asked.

  She laughed, an infectious tinkle. ‘Well it’s your responsibility to keep me safe isn’t it? No, I’ve never had any problems. I take a small torch with me. I can run quite fast, and have a loud scream, should I need it. There are plenty of houseboats around if I do need help, and a boyfriend lives on the next island.’

  Wickens noted the phrase a boyfriend, leaving room for more. ‘Ms Hart, honestly we wouldn’t advise running in darkness. There have been incidents over the years.’

  She smiled again. ‘Your advice isn’t surprising since you’re a policeman. Every day you are surrounded by evidence of the worst that people can do.’

  ‘Well, you may have just seen it yourself,’ Wickens said.

  ‘Possibly. But the risk is that fear informs a life of constrained choice and curtailed freedom. By contrast I have lived my entire life sustained by a belief in the best that people can do, the best that they can be. I am rarely disappointed.’ She reached for her own coffee, and the long sleeve of her sweatshirt rode up for a couple of seconds before she brushed it down.

  ‘When you were having your run, were you aware of anything unusual? Were there other people around?’ Wickens asked.

  ‘Yes, there were a surprising number of people around in Hurst Meadows park, considering the time. Late-night picnics, carousers, young lovers. It made me think of Sisley’s paintings, you know.’

  ‘The French impressionist?’ Cottesloe asked. ‘I think he’s the best of the bunch.’

  Wickens glanced at his colleague appreciatively. Hidden depths. First obscure songs, now this.

  ‘He was British, actually, though he lived most of his life in France. He lived around here in the 1870s. I’ve got a delightful print of his Molesey weir painting in my bedroom. It’s a gorgeous melange of aquamarine and whites, with a thick impasto sky. Take a look if you like.’

  Cottesloe paused, his eyes unfocused as if considering.

  Wickens jumped in: ‘Anything else unusual you noticed, Ms Hart?’

  ‘Yes, there had been some noise. There was a party on the other island…’

  ‘Tagg’s Island?’ Cottesloe asked.

  ‘Yes. I’d been there earlier myself. It was the usual Kretz solstice bash and carried on a bit after midnight. As I was on my way home I also heard some awful music pounding out of a car on the bridge. That racket must’ve lasted until almost two. That’s really why I decided to go for a run.’

  ‘Did you get a look at the car?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, it was a white BMW with a personalised number plate.’

  ‘Did you write it down?’ Cottesloe said.

  ‘No, but I might recognise it again if you showed me. There were three people there, in the car with the doors open.’

  ‘Can you describe them?’

  ‘The two in the front were black, one was quite a big guy.’

  ‘Did you approach them?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I wasn’t angry or anything, I just thought it a little inconsiderate.’

  Wickens said: ‘How do you get back from a party on Tagg’s Island? There’s no bridge between the islands.’

  She laughed. ‘By boat. I have a little motorboat, although in the past I have swum it. It’s only fifty yards. When there is a drought you can even wade it.’

  The two policemen finished writing down her statement and offered it to her to sign. They were shown out and made their way back over the weir and the rickety metal walkway across the lock gates to the southern bank. Once they were solidly on dry land, Wickens turned to Cottesloe and said: ‘Did you see her arms?’ Seeing his colleague shake his head, he continued: ‘They were criss-crossed by scars, lots and lots of old scars. Self-harm. I think there’s evidence of mental health.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Cottesloe said. ‘Did you see the date of birth on her statement?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Born in 1938. Eighty-one years old. I’d reckoned sixty-five.’

  ‘No way! And she still wanted you in her bedro
om.’ Wickens nudged him in the ribs.

  ‘You, young man, have a one-track mind. She clearly loves living here, and I can see why. It’s beautiful, which is why painters like Sisley were drawn to it.’

  ‘So what about the car that was drawn to it? Making all that racket on the bridge.’

  ‘Probably nothing. If you’re going to dump a body in the water, it sounds stupid to draw attention to yourself.’

  ‘Double bluff,’ Wickens said. ‘That’s just what they want us to think.’

  Cottesloe grinned at his colleague’s easy certainties. ‘Let’s see if any of the other witnesses can fill in the blanks.’

  * * *

  Cottesloe and Wickens finally had something to get their teeth into. Elvira Hart’s report about a party led them back to Tagg’s Island. It was eleven a.m. The Drifter was a large, white two-storey clinker-built houseboat moored on the island, right by the southern edge of the bridge. As the two officers boarded the large exterior deck, they took in the smoked-glass picture window over the water and the roof terrace filled with pot plants and strung with decorative lamps. The door was answered by a slim blue-eyed man in his sixties, face screwed up against the light. ‘Yeah?’ He looked horribly hung-over.

  He had a ponytail of iron-grey hair and was wearing a leather waistcoat over a partially unbuttoned white shirt. Tight black jeans, no shoes and a large mug of black coffee in his hand. Behind him, a thirtyish woman with bed-hair of tabby shades and a resentful expression tightened the belt on her thigh-length white kimono.

  While Cottesloe made the introductions, Wickens’ eye strayed to the woman. She had long tanned legs and shapely feet with red varnished toenails. The rustle of silk as she showed them in enticed him to imagine her naked.

  ‘We’ve come to take a full statement from you both about last night,’ Cottesloe said.

  ‘What about last night?’

  ‘The body that was discovered this morning just downstream.’

  ‘Christ, so that’s what Elvira was on about,’ the man said to the woman, then turned back to the cops. ‘Our neighbour left us a garbled message about it.’ He led the two policemen to a low and expensive-looking black leather sofa, which hissed as they settled in. The man slumped onto a director’s chair with his back to the picture window, a leg folded horizontally across his thigh. The woman arranged herself on another, a tantalising glimpse of thigh again beckoning Wickens’ gaze.

  ‘So let’s take down your full names,’ Cottesloe said.

  ‘I’m Brent Kletz, and this is Juliette.’

  ‘Full names please.’

  ‘Brent Oswald Kletzmann.’

  ‘I’m Juliette Aquaria van Steenis,’ she said, her voice betraying the husky tones of a lifelong smoker.

  Cottesloe looked up quizzically. ‘You mean aquarium as in fish tank?’

  She rolled her eyes, then spelled her name. ‘As in the feminine form of Aquarius, the sign under which I was born.’

  ‘Right, I see,’ Cottesloe said, exchanging a glance with his colleague. After the formalities of name and permanent address were completed, Cottesloe came to the point.

  ‘We understand you had a party yesterday evening.’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’ Kletz said, holding his head with both hands. ‘Did someone complain about the noise?’

  ‘No.’ Cottesloe smiled. ‘What time did it finish?’

  ‘Not late. People drifted away from about one a.m. but the last guest didn’t go until three.’

  ‘Can you account for all your guests?’ Wickens asked.

  ‘Account for them?’ Kletz asked. ‘It’s not a nursery class. Their parents don’t come to collect them.’ He shrugged at Juliette, who was quietly killing herself laughing. ‘Fuck, there might still be a couple hiding under the bed in the spare room,’ he said, playing up to her.

  ‘Have you spoken to any of them this morning?’ Wickens asked. ‘A man is dead. He could have been one of them.’

  Kletz shrugged. ‘Look, we’ve not been up long. I think if it was one of our lot, Elvira would have recognised him and said so in her message.’

  ‘We’ll need the contact details of all your guests,’ Cottesloe said.

  Over the next few minutes, and with the unfamiliar deliberation of a toddler learning to write, Kletz compiled a list. ‘There’s twenty-two names on there,’ he said, passing Cottesloe’s notebook back. The list was barely legible.

  ‘You know, we did hear a splash,’ Juliette said. ‘Like someone jumping in.’

  ‘What time?’ Cottesloe asked.

  The couple looked at each other.

  ‘Half one?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ Kletz said. ‘It was later. Must have been two-ish?’ he asked, turning back to Juliette.

  ‘The cyclist!’ she said, her memory sparked again. ‘You spoke to him.’

  ‘Yeah, I came out to take a look.’ He described walking up to the bridge and encountering a cyclist.

  ‘What did the cyclist look like?’ Cottesloe asked.

  ‘I couldn’t really say. I was being dazzled by his head-torch the whole time, but he was pretty tall and slim, and a bit shaggy.’

  ‘Shaggy?’

  ‘Unkempt hair and probably a beard.’

  ‘And how long after you heard the splash was this encounter?’ Wickens asked.

  ‘A couple of minutes, wasn’t it?’ Kletz said, turning to Juliette for affirmation. She nodded.

  ‘Definitely not before?’ Cottesloe asked.

  ‘No. I only came out onto the deck when I heard the splash, looked around, saw this light, which turned out to be the head-torch, and then called out to the bloke.’

  ‘So what do you think caused the splash?’

  Kletz shrugged. ‘I thought someone had jumped in for a joke, but I changed my mind when I couldn’t hear any further noises. You do get people messing about but there’s usually a bit of shouting and laughing along with the splashes as they chuck each other in. There was none of that.’

  ‘Did you hear anything else?’

  ‘There was some music from a car stereo a bit earlier. We get a bit of that from time to time too.’

  ‘Was that nearby?’ Wickens asked, remembering that Elvira Hart had referred to that.

  ‘The same place on the bridge. It was interfering with our own music, so I just slid the window closed for a while.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Not sure, really. But maybe half an hour before I heard the splash.’

  ‘Did you see anything else suspicious earlier that evening?’

  ‘No.’

  Wickens asked if he could use the toilet. ‘I’ll show you,’ Juliette said. She led the young constable into a large and untidy bedroom, strewn with lingerie. ‘Sorry about the mess,’ she said. Wickens’ gaze was drawn to the woman’s shapely posterior as she padded through the room, but he was professional enough to take in a few observations that were more in the line of duty.

  Back in the lounge Cottesloe said: ‘As you may be aware, there is a public appeal for information over the body. So perhaps you could ask your friends and neighbours if they saw anything, and to ring Crimestoppers. The incident number you should reference is 196.’

  Wickens’ return was Cottesloe’s cue to stand, ready to leave. But the younger officer said: ‘I couldn’t help noticing that you have a cannabis pot plant sitting on the cistern of your toilet.’

  ‘Fuck,’ breathed Juliette, letting her face fall into her hands.

  ‘And there is a strong smell of cannabis in the bedroom.’

  ‘Juliette, I told you to shift it out of there,’ said Kletz, turning to her. ‘They can’t help themselves.’

  She leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s illegal,’ said Wickens, as if the two had never heard the word before. ‘I think we can refrain from ordering a search, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find a few more plants, a good bit of wacky baccy, on your boat.’
<
br />   ‘I thought you wanted our help,’ Juliette said.

  ‘And right now we are giving you ours,’ said Wickens. ‘And here it is: we would be perfectly entitled to issue a penalty notice for disorder on finding even modest amounts of cannabis. It would be a warning, effectively…’

  ‘I know how it works,’ Kletz replied.

  The two officers looked at each other. ‘Do you have previous convictions?’ Wickens asked.

  ‘A few, nothing serious.’

  Juliette laughed. ‘He shared a cell with Hugh Cornwell in 1980.’

  Kletz turned to his partner. ‘Thanks for that.’

  Wickens looked baffled.

  Cottesloe whispered to his colleague: ‘Lead singer of the Stranglers.’ The younger officer didn’t seem much enlightened.

  Kletz turned to the cops and shrugged. ‘It was only three weeks. But Pentonville back then was the worst place in the world.’

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ Wickens said. ‘We’ll take no action so long as you are straight with us, okay? But I strongly suggest that you don’t flaunt any of your unpleasant personal habits if we need to speak to you again.’

  The two officers signalled the end of the interview and were shown to the door. Once they were standing outside on the deck, Wickens said: ‘I saw some signed posters in the bathroom. This bloke used to be a session musician. Played with Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton.’

  ‘He told me he played bass,’ Cottesloe said. ‘Must have seen some parties back then.’

  ‘They might well still be having them,’ Wickens said. ‘Pound to a penny it was snowing cocaine last night.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’ Cottesloe squinted into the sky and wondered whether if he had pursued his own musical studies with a bit more effort when he was at school it could have been him.

  * * *

  Once the cops had gone, Kletz turned to Juliette and said: ‘You’ve got to be more careful. It could bring the roof crashing in.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ she said.