The Body on the Island

by Nick Louth

  The rhino followed as van Steenis led the way to the open-air enclosure. Directed by van Steenis, the two policemen moved along a sloping walkway that climbed out of the stables and circled high above the edge of Dennis’s compound. Van Steenis continued to chat to the animal as if he was a domestic pet while he chewed through a bed of hay on which the food supplement had been emptied.

  ‘Isn’t he dangerous?’ Cottesloe called across.

  ‘No. Dennis is as gentle as a pussycat. White rhinos like him are much more placid than the smaller black rhino species, except when calves are about. Besides, he knows me and his other keepers by our scent.’

  ‘You know that dead body,’ Wickens muttered to Cottesloe. ‘Wasn’t it wrapped in wire?’

  ‘That’s what I heard. But I haven’t seen it.’

  ‘See over there?’ He pointed to a hefty roll of wire mesh fencing stuffed down behind metal railings at the far end of the rhino’s compound. ‘What if the bloke had been caught in that, and the rhino leaned against him?’

  Cottesloe turned to him, a sceptical smile on his broad face. ‘You fancy yourself as a detective, don’t you?’

  Wickens shrugged. ‘There’s a lot of ways of being squashed in a zoo, that’s all.’

  ‘Sure, but mostly accidental. If that happened I can’t see they would just dump the victim in the Thames.’

  They left the walkway as van Steenis made his way back into the stable block. He led them out towards the herpetology building. They passed a rough concrete pool, wired off from the track.

  ‘I’m going to build a roof on this in the next couple of years, so we can make a tropical crocodile pond.’

  ‘Where do you get the crocs from?’ Wickens asked.

  ‘We got some young Nile crocodiles rescued from a French zoo that went into bankruptcy. They need special certificates to be moved, but it was a lot easier within the EU because there is common certification. They are microchipped, like dogs, believe it or not. When they’ve grown a bit I shall put them in here.’

  ‘It’ll be carnage,’ Wickens said, with boyish enthusiasm.

  ‘No. It’s much easier to have a gang of Nile crocs than salties, because the Nile boys have a clear pecking order and don’t fight among themselves. That really helps at feeding time.’ He stared over the railing reflectively. ‘Boy, I learned my lesson with Australian saltwater crocs. I had two females, Betty and Nora, but Nora bullied the other, bit her tail, and then chewed off a foreleg. Eventually she killed her. Nora now has to have an enclosure on her own, over the back.’ He gestured with his arm. ‘She is nearly ten feet long now, must weigh half a ton, and I wouldn’t trust her an inch.’

  He then led them on foot into the herpetology building. ‘Only the gharial will be inside this building, with the monitor lizards and snakes. I suppose I shall put the scorpions and tropical spiders in here too because they like the warmth.’

  ‘Are you going to open it to the public?’ Cottesloe asked.

  Van Steenis blew a long sigh. ‘Well, maybe one day if the sheikh can be persuaded. We’ve already got planning permission for a bigger visitor centre, but it might lapse. You see, many of the buildings here would not pass the zoo licence requirements. I’ll have to rebuild them first, and then there is all the woodland we would have to lose for the car park, which would break my heart. Finally, there’s the great undisciplined British public, tapping on the glass, disturbing the animals, chucking litter and bottles into the enclosures, all that stuff. I don’t know, the sheikh quite likes it as it is, and I’m sympathetic to that view.’

  Cottesloe checked his watch and told van Steenis that they should be going.

  ‘If I’ve answered all your questions, I’ve got one of my own.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Cottesloe said.

  ‘Perhaps it’s not quite on the point, but I have to say I am outraged to hear that the police are going to release from prison one of the worst murderers in British history—’

  ‘Ah, it’s not the police who were releasing him,’ Wickens said. ‘In fact if it was down to me—’

  ‘Not only that, but if the newspapers are cricked, public money will be spent giving this man a new identity. So he will be invisible in our community, ready to strike again.’

  ‘Your concern, sir, is noted,’ Cottesloe said, getting into dealing-with-the-concerned-public mode. ‘The Parole Board in its wisdom makes its decisions only when an offender is considered to be safe to release.’

  ‘May I remind you that the Bogeyman used to torture his victims, most of whom were adolescent boys,’ van Steenis continued.

  ‘Yeah, he’s evil personified,’ Wickens said, eyeing his colleague. ‘He should have been kept inside for life.’

  Van Steenis shook his head. ‘No, PC Wickens, not so. He should not have been kept inside. He should have been hanged. It isn’t fashionable to say so, but execution has much to recommend it these days. Miscarriages of justice are much less likely because of the power of DNA evidence, which neutralises the one powerful argument against the gallows. It would save the great British public a lot of money too.’

  ‘You’ve got a good point there,’ Wickens conceded. ‘You really have.’

  ‘I looked it up. It costs £26,133 per annum to keep a prisoner. Times thirty years and that’s over three-quarters of a million pounds. Multiply by the number of murders each year, say 700, and that’s half a billion—’

  ‘Well, thank you for the tour.’ Cottesloe stood up to bring the discussion to a close. He thanked van Steenis for his views, which he promised he would pass on to his superiors.

  ‘It’s a hot topic, Andy, death penalty. Always has been,’ Cottesloe said to his colleague as they got back into the patrol car.

  ‘Not surprising. It’s a bloody outrage. Bastard gets out a week on Tuesday.’

  ‘Well, relax, he’s old now. Pretty harmless too, I expect. A bit like Dennis.’

  Wickens snorted his disagreement.

  Chapter Seven

  Sunday 9 a.m.

  Sunbury-on-Thames was a typical piece of London suburbia. Not wealthy, not poverty-stricken, not in any way distinctive. Gary Tilling’s home in Linden Avenue was a scruffy 1930s former council house, which had been gradually extended over the years. What had been the front garden was now tarmacked up to the enlarged porch with its flat roof and leadlight effect UPVC windows. As PC Andrew Wickens parked his patrol car outside, he checked for the car whose number had shown up on the ANPR. Yes, there it was, parked in the street outside. A ten-year-old Volkswagen Golf, black, short of two hubcaps and a section of rear trim.

  Wickens rang the doorbell and waited. The chime was one of those electronic tunes that seem to go on and on. He could see through the glass the approach of a sizeable figure. The door opened to reveal a paunchy man of perhaps thirty, six-one, in a black T-shirt and stained baggy joggers. He had straggly dark hair around a balding pate, and a slice of toast jammed halfway into his mouth.

  ‘Gary Tilling?’ Wickens asked.

  The man nodded and mumbled something through his toast. What’s it about? Wickens guessed.

  ‘May I come in for a minute?’

  The man nodded and gestured for Wickens to enter. They both stood in the hallway. The TV was on in the background, some kind of soap opera, enveloped in the aroma of toast.

  ‘You may have heard about the appeal for information. Over the body discovered in the River Thames.’

  ‘Yeah, I think I heard something about it.’ He had a loud voice, but didn’t make eye contact.

  ‘According to our records, your car was on Hampton Court Road late on Thursday night.’

  Tilling didn’t say anything, but the tip of his tongue moved out slightly and along the edge of his lip, as if searching for the last fragments of jam from his toast.

  ‘Is that correct?’ Wickens pressed.

  Tilling nodded. ‘Is that from a number plate camera?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Reluctantly Tilling beckoned him
through. A glance at the place showed why he was so reticent. The carpet was grubby and threadbare, mended in places with gaffer tape and littered with crumbs, dust and hair. The place smelled of body odour; sour and enduring. It felt like the windows hadn’t been opened in years. Dust lay thickly around the edge of the room, with just a well-trodden footpath past a builder’s jack right in the middle, bracing a metal joist against a cracked ceiling. Wickens took in a leather-effect three-piece suite, extensively repaired with tape, behind which stood a bald car tyre and some tools, balanced on a badly scratched and oil-stained sideboard. The only well-cared-for object was the wall-sized flat screen TV, on which Emmerdale was showing. Wickens was finding the noise of the TV distracting, and said so. Tilling picked up the remote and muted it.

  ‘Take a seat. Want a coffee?’ His voice was deep and rough.

  Dragging his eyes away from the domestic drama portrayed in larger than actual size, Wickens looked again at the grubby and sagging sofa, and eyed the unspeakably filthy kitchen off to the right. ‘No, I’m fine thanks. This won’t take long. So may I ask what you were doing by the river at that time of night?’

  Tilling scratched his head, sending a shower of dandruff onto the well-dusted shoulders of his T-shirt. ‘I was hoping to spot an otter.’

  ‘Are there otters in the Thames?’

  Tilling nodded. ‘One or two. I’ve got pictures,’ he said proudly.

  There was a voice from upstairs. Wickens didn’t catch what was asked, but Tilling clearly did. ‘It’s the police, Mum. About some dead body in the river.’

  Straining for the reply, Wickens heard a little better. I told you to call them.

  ‘But why? I didn’t see anything,’ he called back up. ‘I didn’t see anything,’ he repeated to Wickens.

  ‘You mean otters or people?’ Wickens asked.

  ‘There were people. Too many for otters to show themselves.’

  ‘Can I get some details down about timings?’ Wickens asked.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘What time you arrived at the riverbank, and what time you left.’

  Tilling scratched his head again. ‘Won’t it be on the cameras you recorded my number plate on?’

  Wickens sighed and looked at his notebook. This was like pulling teeth. ‘Yes, sir, but I’m anxious to get your own estimation.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Tilling said. ‘It was after midnight. I got to the bridge, and it was noisy. Rap music or something like that, coming from a car parked in the middle of the bridge to Tagg’s Island. I waited on the north bank, unpacked my kit and waited for them to go. I couldn’t decide whether to drive around to Hurst Meadows park on the southern bank. The park is bigger, so it’s easier to get away from people, but the parking would be shut there, and it’s further to lug the kit.’

  ‘What time did you leave the north bank?’

  ‘I gave up before two a.m.,’ he said. ‘They showed no signs of leaving.’ Wickens looked at his notes. The western camera had recorded the Golf passing eastbound at 00:47 a.m. and returning westbound at 2:07 a.m.

  ‘Can you describe the vehicle that was on the bridge?’

  ‘It was a white BMW.’

  ‘Did you see the occupants?’

  ‘There seemed to be several, because of the conversation. There were two black guys stood looking over the water, but they were also talking to somebody inside the car.’

  Wickens felt he was really getting somewhere now. ‘Can I ask why you didn’t call us with this information? It could be quite important.’

  ‘It was just some people on the bridge,’ Tilling said, looking at his hands. ‘I should have listened to Mum. She said to ring in.’

  Wickens could see that Tilling’s departure time didn’t quite tally with the camera record. There would be nearly ten minutes unaccounted for after Tilling said he’d left. Yet it would only take a minute to drive that distance from the Tagg’s Island bridge to the western camera. He decided that it was probably nothing. The white BMW was a more interesting prospect.

  ‘Do you want to see the otters?’ Tilling said.

  ‘Why not,’ Wickens replied. At least it might explain Tilling’s motive for being there.

  Tilling led him to the sun lounge at the back of the house. ‘This is my office,’ he said unnecessarily. The room was packed, but markedly less neglected than the rest of the house. Computers, laptops, screens, modems, keyboards on and under tables, resting in heaps on chairs and boxes. The whole floor was criss-crossed with networks of cables, over which plywood duckboards had been laid. The electrical sockets were crowded with plug adapters. The whole place had fire hazard written all over it. Tilling picked up a large camera with a telephoto lens attached and, after fiddling with the screen at the back, showed it to Wickens. A five-second video clearly showed an otter sitting on a riverside log. It preened itself, before staring in the direction of the lens and then sliding sinuously into the water.

  ‘You took that?’ Wickens asked.

  Tilling nodded. ‘Last year, in the winter. You have to be very patient. They’ve got very keen senses.’

  ‘What do you wear for these otter trips?’

  ‘Camouflage jacket and trousers and a woolly hat.’

  ‘In the summer?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t get hot. I have a small tent that I use as a hide. Do you want to see pictures of egrets?’

  ‘No, thanks. Did you see anyone else?’

  He thought hard. ‘There was a man on a bike. He had a head-torch, which annoyed me because it might have disturbed the otters. But he rode onto the island and I didn’t see him again before I left.’ Tilling started playing with the camera. ‘I’ve got some water voles if you want?’

  Wickens, trying to avoid being drawn into Tilling’s hobby, asked to use the toilet. He was directed upstairs, first on the left. He negotiated more threadbare and grubby carpet, and squeezed past an old stairlift, clearly not in use going by the fractured seat. A smell, worse than stale, assailed his nostrils. On the landing he noticed a tea trolley on which several dirty plates were stacked. Wickens stepped back from the stench, and banged into the trolley, setting off metallic clinks. He opened the bathroom, took one look and thought better of it. Turning to come downstairs, he ran into Tilling, who was coming up the stairs.

  ‘You didn’t wake Mum up, did you?’

  ‘Wasn’t she awake already?’

  ‘She has sleep apnoea, among other things. She’s not well. She’s been bedridden for years, and now she’s got problems with her spine. It’s gradually crumbling, and she’s in pain.’

  Tilling escorted Wickens back to the front door. The PC escaped gladly to his car, breathing in some fresh air. It was only when he was safely inside and had already started the engine that he looked up at the gable. That would be the room Tilling’s mother was in. The curtain was drawn but between it and the glass, moisture could be seen running down the inside. Poor Mrs Tilling, being looked after by a man like Gary. Not the most natural carer.

  Unless you were an otter, perhaps.

  * * *

  After the policeman had gone, she called loudly again from upstairs. He never had any trouble hearing her.

  ‘Did you discover why they came here?’

  ‘I think he was interested in otters. But not egrets.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Gary.’

  ‘It was the car registration. Got caught on a camera.’

  ‘You’ve got to be careful,’ she said.

  ‘Yes Mum.’

  ‘You’re a good boy, Gary. You’re a great comfort. And there aren’t many of them left for me in this world.’

  ‘No Mum.’

  ‘Can you fetch me some of the new painkillers? It’s bad again.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  * * *

  Kletz was strumming his Alvarez classical acoustic gently, sitting on the deck of his houseboat. It was nearly midnight and the river was quiet, just the lapping of the water, the quacking of foragin
g ducks and the distant hum of traffic on the Hampton Court Road. Juliette had already gone to bed, and he was thinking of doing so himself.

  A light on the bridge drew his attention. A head-torch, casting its searchlight erratically over the river, towards him and then back, then down to the water. Kletz muttered to himself about LED lights, far too powerful and dazzling, even at a hundred yards. When his eyes had readjusted he again saw some activity, the light being partially masked by the railings.

  Then there was a splash.

  Not as loud or as big as the one he had heard two nights before, but enough to stop him playing. The head-torch was now pointing down into the water, the guy leaning over. He realised who it was. That peculiar cyclist again. His suspicions were confirmed by the speed of the man’s departure, and the whirling reflectors on the bike wheels.

  He wondered whether to call the police. It was the kind of thing they might like to know, but then judging by previous experiences they would spend half their time sniffing round his own home looking for drugs and leering at Juliette.

  No, he’d give it a miss.

  Still, he was curious as to what had been tossed into the water.

  Chapter Eight

  Monday 9 a.m.

  Anton St Jeanne was annoyed but not surprised to be pulled over by uniformed police as he was driving across Kingston Bridge. Being a youngish black guy in a new white 7-series BMW, he was never surprised. He had lost count of the number of times he had been stopped over the years. But today he was in a hurry, already running late for a meeting with a supplier at his restaurant J’adore Ça. Anton knew from long experience that arguing just slowed the process down, so he swallowed his irritation and co-operated when they asked him what his number plate was and demanded he produce ownership documents. Again, from long experience, he had the papers to hand. Only when the young female officer had finished establishing his credentials as a legitimate car owner did she ask him what she really wanted to know.