by Kate Simants
‘DVLA have a 1989 soft top Golf Cabriolet registered to him,’ she told him, pointing it out lower on the page. ‘I’m going to run a search on that in a sec. He’d been for a few after-work drinks but no particular mates – sounds pretty shy – and he hadn’t been in the job that long.’ She lifted her hands, dropped them, underwhelmed. ‘Not much to go on though. He’d signed up for a few socials with a local photography group. I’ve emailed the guy who organized it to see if he made any friends there.’
As Mae read, the picture emerged of a quiet, unremarkable man. He’d moved from Glasgow to Edinburgh a couple of years before, then down to London only a few months ago. From what Kit had managed to trawl in a couple of hours, they were looking at an average twenty-something bloke, without a particularly vibrant social life, with good, normal, healthy pursuits. Vintage cameras. The gym. Batshit crazy girlfriends.
In the pause, Kit moved her feet a bit before telling the floor, ‘So I found that book online, A Splintered Soul. That chapter on Ellie.’
Mae looked up from the documents. ‘OK. And?’
She gave him a look. ‘You could have told me, you know.’
‘Told you what?’
‘Her phobia. Why you wanted me to change into plain clothes.’
‘OK. Well,’ he said, holding his hands up, ‘not everyone’s as well-versed in mental health as you are.’ Back in 2006, if he’d suggested DS Heath wear plain clothes because a uniform was a known trigger for a vulnerable witness, he’d never have heard the end of it.
But Kit was still looking distracted. ‘Maddening though, isn’t it? I mean, I know it’s none of my business what happened when she was little but, even in the book, there’s no mention of the trauma.’
‘Trauma?’
‘Yeah. The cause of the disorder she’s got.’
‘I think he just couldn’t work it out?’
She shrugged, but the nonchalance was forced, hiding something. ‘Just – frustrating. I mean, this is an extreme thing, DID. It gets diagnosed like, practically never, and when it does … well, they say the mind can do literally anything, but there’s going to be a bloody good reason for it to do that.’
Mae squinted. ‘You really have got that degree, haven’t you?’
But she waved it away. ‘What I’m saying is, the trauma you’d have to experience for something that extreme to happen would have to be chronic, for one thing, and fuck-off massive, for another. But he never even offers a guess. Do we even know if she knew her father, for example?’
‘Christine had been single for a long time. That’s all I know.’
‘See, that’s waaaay suspicious, isn’t it? Surely there has to be some context about her dad? Early years with him, or something. And I get that Cox had to anonymize it,’ she said, holding up her hand to pre-empt the next thing that Mae was going to say, ‘but it just seems like a massive missing piece. I mean, there’s the mention of these scars of hers but it says that was because of an accident, right? I mean, I’m no expert but I don’t think a one-off accident is going to be enough to cause something as serious as a dissociative disorder.’
Mae had noticed it too, way back when. The other cases in the book were fleshed out, the abuse or trauma that triggered the disorder in the first place forming part of the story. As per the title, they were stories of successful treatment. The book had been funded by a charity, so the message was fairly consistent: funding + excellent care = positive outcomes. The exception was the part dealing with Ellie, which was just a snapshot of the middle of her story, the few months she’d spent under Cox’s care. There was no background, and no happy ending.
‘Guess maybe he wanted to talk about the treatment part of it? To be honest it wasn’t exactly the focus of our investigation.’
Kit seemed to take offence for half a second before delivering a hearty smack on the arm. ‘I’m just interested.’ Then, ‘Maybe I should ask him.’
‘I’m going to assume you’re joking,’ he said, before remembering something. ‘You’d be wasting your time anyway.’
‘Because?’
‘It was something Lucy Arden told us – Jodie’s mum,’ he explained. ‘Apparently Jodie had asked him for copies of his research, a few weeks before she disappeared. He had transcripts done from the audio recordings of Ellie’s sessions, all her medical notes, loads of data, but he lost it.’
Eyebrows up, incredulous. ‘Lost it? How did he manage that?’
‘Apparently. He was still using floppies. Useless things. Lost your data all the time.’
Kit retracted her chin. ‘What the hell is a floppy?’
Mae rolled his eyes in reply. Kids. He turned back to his screen.
Kit was staring ahead now, through him.
‘What?’ Mae asked.
She shook herself and looked at him. ‘Just doesn’t … I don’t know.’ She mimed cogs with her fingers, not quite meshing. ‘Doesn’t fit. He spends all that time with her, recording her, everything, then the whole lot disappears? It’s fishy.’
‘Be that as it may. It’s her own business, not our remit.’
Kit dropped her hands, reddening very slightly.
‘I know. I’m just interested.’ She cleared her throat. ‘You going to get that?’ she asked him, raising a finger towards the desk phone.
Mae laughed and shook his head, then took the call he could see was from the switchboard.
‘DS Mae, Mr Jupp on the line. Says he’s returning your call about visiting a boatyard.’
15.
Mae
Jupp’s boatyard was only a couple of miles away, so Mae borrowed one of the force pushbikes. It was late afternoon, the light was sparse through a heavy ceiling of cloud. Spotting the marina entrance, he swung a leg over the crossbar and sailed it standing on one pedal, then hopped down and secured it in a single practised movement against a lamppost.
Mae had discovered the wharf earlier that summer, when he’d talked Bear into a walk along the towpath. He’d pointed out where he’d dealt with a burglary at one of the warehouses that backed straight onto the river, and he’d seen the boats on the towpath that extended from the yard. That was back when it had been warm enough for the residents to still be sitting out on their decks as the sun went down, drinking and barbequing. Different story now, at the arse-end of November. He smelled the smoke of the little log burners they used, the diesel emissions. There was the rumble of generators, punctuated by the honking of a pair of Canada geese. Scraps of laughter from outside a nearby pub lifted and cracked in the air.
He took the steps built into the sloping wall down to where a shabby prefab cube of an office sat precariously levelled on bricks. He knocked and went in. Cheap, functional furniture was laden with papers, notes scribbled on envelopes, and a jumble of polystyrene cups. Behind the desk, a fat guy in a shirt made for a thinner one.
Mae put out a hand. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Mae. We spoke on the phone.’
‘Jupp,’ the man said. He was puffy and goutish, the kind of clean-shaver who should have considered a beard. Waving a hand vaguely behind him, he said, ‘My yard.’ Strong Bristol accent. He didn’t get up, and only shook the hand reluctantly when it became clear Mae wasn’t going to put it away unshaken.
Jupp listened while Mae gave him the basics, then rummaged in a drawer and brought out a key. ‘Take you down to his boat, shall I?’
Standing, Jupp was short enough for Mae to see the shiny top of his head, lit up with the reflection of the flickering single-bar strip light. Then again, everyone was short, to Mae.
Outside, a half-hearted drizzle had started to fall, blown across them by a brisk wind. A tang of lager and used nappies was emanating from three overfilled wheelie bins. They stopped at a gate where Jupp paused to key in the code, angling his thickly padded shoulders to block Mae’s view of the keypad. Mae saw it anyway: 2580, all four numbers in a vertical line down the middle. Nice one, Mae thought: unbreakable. The gate buzzed and clunked open.
They went
down the sloping pontoon towards the water, Jupp confirming on the way that he hadn’t seen Matt since the morning of the day before.
‘Said he was going to go down to the pump-out.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Mile or so.’ Jupp indicated with his arm: downriver, east.
‘Did you see him go?’
Jupp shrugged. ‘Nope. But he came back, didn’t he? Must have come back last night on the big tide. Boat was in place when I did my patrol.’
‘But you haven’t seen him today?’
‘It’s not a prison.’ Jupp eyed Mae with obvious dislike as they approached the bottom of the slope. ‘They come and go as they please. Lot of us boaters just want leaving alone, tell the truth, not so keen on people coming round, poking their noses—’
‘Left or right?’ Mae asked with a smile, aware that life was short and he wasn’t getting any younger.
Jupp sniffed and turned, leading Mae left along the metal gridding.
‘How does it work then, mooring here?’ Mae asked. ‘Your tenants pay in advance?’
‘Invoice them on the twentieth, payment due first of the month. Month’s notice either way.’
The first of the month was coming up in a few days. ‘People rent these boats then, or own them?’
‘Bit of both. Matt rents his off my brother.’
Mae followed Jupp along a floating pontoon stretching maybe thirty, forty metres along the river. The walkway dipped and bounced as they moved along it, their footsteps causing the sections to clank together.
‘Watch your step, boy,’ Jupp said, glancing at Mae. ‘Dangerous if you’re used to nice safe driveways.’
‘Don’t worry about me. Spent my childhood fishing.’
Jupp frowned. ‘Din’t know your lot fished.’
‘Police?’
‘Chinese.’
Mae blinked. ‘Korean.’
He shrugged. ‘Same difference. Thought it was snooker. Gambling.’
‘OK, yeah. We’re all ninjas, too.’
Jupp frowned, but Mae raised a hand to dismiss it. Just could not be arsed.
The pontoon bouncing under their feet, they passed an assortment of boats. Traditional narrowboats; flimsy-looking fibreglass cruisers; wide, curvy-bottomed things with wheelhouses and Dutch-sounding names painted along their bows. Twe Gebroders, Derkje, Ziet Op U Zelve.
‘Mr Corsham been here long? Regular with the rent? Any problems?’
‘Moved down from Scotland somewhere a few months ago. Pays on time.’
‘No wild parties, anything out of the usual?’
Jupp cast a look over his shoulder. ‘People call us gypsies, you get that? Pikies, river scum.’
Mae waited, unsure where this was going.
‘We get it in the neck, is what I’m saying. Brick brigade making their judgements. So we stick together, yeah? You’re not going to get us dishing dirt on each other.’
‘I’m not after dirt. I’m checking on his safety.’
‘Yeah, well.’ Jupp stopped, flipping through a bunch of small keys. ‘This one.’
Matthew Corsham’s boat was a red and green narrowboat, last on the stretch, past a mains hook-up board. Reasonable nick from the outside. Through a window in the front end – the fore? – the place looked tidy, nothing immediately suggesting forced entry. Moving along he tried the next window when the boat suddenly listed, the water slapping underneath the pontoon. Jupp had grabbed the thin handrail running along the edge of the roof and was hauling himself up, keys in hand. But after an extended fumble with a circular padlock, he grunted and gave up, huffing and stepping down clumsily from the gunwales.
‘Changed the bloody locks. Supposed to supply the management with a working key at all times.’ So much for the Anarchists’ Manifesto of three minutes previously. ‘You can have a look through the windows, but I’m not breaking the door without my brother’s say-so.’
Jupp turned to head back the way they’d come.
‘Do you have CCTV here?’ Mae called after him.
‘No. And I’ve got jobs to do.’ He paused to light a cigarette, then stumped off back towards his office.
Mae stepped up onto the deck. The smooth metal was slippery under his feet as he braced to shove back the hatch. It wouldn’t give, so he ducked down to the level of the two tiny doors that came up no higher than his thighs. Cupping his hands between his forehead and the glass, he peered inside.
Bear would have given her thumbs to live in there. Not that there was enough money in the world to pay him to endure what looked like several inches of negative headroom, but the attraction of the cosy, simple lifestyle in evidence there wasn’t hard to imagine. Shallow shelves tucked under the windows held books and a few video games, secured against the inevitable rocking with taut lengths of curtain wire. A crocheted blanket was stretched neatly over the back of a sofa, and the few feet of wall space between the single-glazed windows were covered in mismatched picture frames holding photographs.
He was about to leave when something caught his eye. A single sheet of paper on the table opposite the wood burner and a pen next to it. Mae went along to the window next to the table, to get a better look. Carefully bending into a crouch on the narrow ledge beneath the glass, he wiped the rain from his eyes and squinted in.
It was a list. Toothpaste, toothbrush, razor. Blue holdall, phone, charger, wallet, tickets. Camera, film, batteries. All the items on it crossed off.
He read to the end. Footsteps approached, and he waved Jupp away with his free hand as he brought himself up to standing. ‘All right, I’m coming.’
But when he turned, Mae saw that Jupp was long gone. The person who had passed him, who was now on the back deck and unlocking the door with her keys, was Ellie Power.
16.
Ellie
The dirty remains of the afternoon sun quivered in the puddles at my feet as I approached the marina. The office was closed up, but as I headed down to towards the boats I saw Mr Jupp. He threw his cigarette on the ground like a dart when he saw me, and came lumbering up the gangway.
‘We’ve got the bloody police down here, looking for Matthew,’ he said, passing me. ‘You’ve got keys, you bloody let him in.’
Shit. Fear swelled in my chest, inflating in seconds. But I made myself go down before I could change my mind. Before I’d had a chance to think through what I was and wasn’t going to tell him, there was Ben Mae, hanging off the side of Matt’s boat.
‘All right, I’m coming,’ he said, waving me away without looking up.
I cleared my throat, and he turned.
‘Ellie.’
‘DC Mae.’
He smiled. ‘Been a while. It’s DS now. I’m the lead on Missing Persons, so that’s why I’m …’ he trailed off, gesturing at the boat, the yard. Me.
‘Congratulations,’ I said.
We stood there for a moment, before I remembered what I was doing. I climbed up, got both locks open and swung the tiny doors open and slid back the hatch.
‘Coming in?’ I asked him.
‘Are you inviting me?’
‘That’s vampires, isn’t it?’
He laughed and gestured at the door. ‘After you, then.’
The familiar smell rose up around me as I went down, a woody warmness with the slight tinge of damp. I half-expected him to be there but the boat was empty. I stepped down into the cabin. Mae started to follow me in, but paused on the steps. He gestured at the four coat hooks next to the door.
‘Should these have anything hanging on them?’
‘It depends.’ I frowned, thinking of the last time I’d been there, when I’d hardly had room to hang my own raincoat. Matt loved being on foot, but winter was forging on and he was skinny. Usually, those pegs were draped with his layers.
I went in and sank into the built-in sofa. It was as if the place had been exorcized. So cold in there. The few square feet of hearth under the wood-burning stove had been swept after its last use, and the shallow pil
e of the fabric of the upholstery was sticking up unevenly, recently vacuumed. Usually the windows wept condensation, but now they were dry. Which only added up if there had been no breath to wet them. I unzipped my rain-soaked top and hung it above the stove. Mae came in and abruptly slammed his head on the ceiling.
‘F … lipping hell,’ he said, rubbing his scalp where he’d hit it. I almost wanted to laugh: Matt had a permanent bruise on his hairline at the front where he continually banged his head coming in. Unscrewing his eyes Mae said, ‘This is not sensible for a man of his height.’
I fiddled with the keys, rolling the cork float-ball keyring around in my palm. Mae nodded at them.
‘Mr Jupp couldn’t get his to work. Reckons the locks had been changed.’
I nodded. ‘First time I’ve used these ones. The old locks had just got rusty.’ Matt had said he’d been meaning to change them for ages, and had given me the set of keys as an afterthought, less than a week ago. He’d rolled down the window of his car and called me back after we’d already said goodbye outside the flat. Keep them to yourself, he’d said. You never know who might want to break in and swipe my dirty underpants.
‘You know why? Security worries?’
I gave it half a moment’s thought, and shook my head. ‘Not that I know of. No. He would have said.’
‘Sure? His colleague said the hospital had been expecting his laptop back, so—’
‘He’s lost it.’
‘OK,’ he said, his notebook out now and pen poised. ‘Details?’
‘I don’t know any more than that. He asked me to check around the flat.’
‘But you didn’t find it?’
‘No,’ I said, irritable. But now I thought about it, Matt hadn’t found it and I hadn’t asked. Guilt pecked at me as I ran that phone call back: he’d sounded really worried, but I hadn’t offered to help. ‘Does it matter?’
Mae made a search me face. ‘It wasn’t … stolen, or anything? You’re sure?’
‘Look, I really don’t—’ I started, then I broke off. Processed what he was saying. ‘Why did the hospital want it back?’