Swimming with the Dead

by Peter Guttridge

  ‘Drugs?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘None in the system. No indication of recent use of any.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Two causes.’

  ‘Two? Is that possible?’

  ‘It is when I’m not yet sure which takes priority or if they were equally contributory.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Bled out from multiple stab wounds, front and back.’

  ‘Frenzied?’

  ‘I think not. But not precise. Only one vital organ was pierced – the liver – and that was probably by chance. No anatomical knowledge was shown by the pattern of the stab wounds.’

  ‘And no indication that Gulliver attempted to defend himself?’

  ‘None. Which is odd.’

  ‘What do you deduce from that?’

  ‘My dear young woman, no pathologist has deduced anything since the heady days of Sir Bernard Spilsbury.’

  Gilchrist, phone still to her ear, walked to the window and looked down on the busy seafront. She noticed a stocky, paunchy man wearing a trilby with two feathers sticking out of the headband, his grey hair flowing halfway down his back. He was arguing with two women, jabbing his finger at each in turn.

  One was a sharp-featured girl with long black hair, tattoos all down her left arm and wrapped around her left calf. The other was a short woman, whose hair came down to her bum. It was meant to look wonderful but because her legs were short it made her look a bit like a Hobbit.

  ‘Who’s Sir Bernard Whatsit?’ Gilchrist said absently down the phone, growing angry at the way the man was haranguing the women. She turned her head and gestured to Heap to come over to her.

  ‘The most celebrated pathologist of his or any other day,’ Bilson said. ‘He did the autopsy on the Brighton Trunk Murder victim, among many other autopsies. Unfortunately, someone likened him to Sherlock Holmes and he rather enjoyed the comparison so consistently went far beyond his remit to conjecture causation and train of events. In actuality, he was more Dr Watson in that most of his speculations were dangerously erroneous. I think at least two men were wrongly executed because of him. His knighthood, you see, unduly impressed juries.’

  ‘OK,’ Gilchrist said, now with Heap beside her. She pointed down at the group and Heap nodded. He retreated to his desk and she heard him murmuring into his phone.

  Bilson cleared his throat. ‘So, my dear Sarah. I give you the bricks, you get the mortar and construct the building.’

  Gilchrist grimaced down the phone line. ‘How very B&Q of you. OK, oh, wise one, do you have any thoughts you could share? Can you tell from the angle of the incisions whether he was standing or lying down?’

  ‘You have been watching too many television crime shows, Sarah. I would wish to tell you his assailant’s height, weight and the size of his feet but alas I cannot – though I hope I’ll know soon.’

  ‘You’re making further tests?’

  ‘No. You are going to catch the person and tell me.’

  ‘Ha ha. Any thoughts about the gender of the assailant?’

  ‘I could give you some Golden Age guff about poison and knives being women’s weapons but these days knives are definitely for boys and grown-up men.’

  A policewoman Gilchrist didn’t recognize was striding across the road towards the hectoring man and his women.

  ‘Golden Age?’ Gilchrist said. The policewoman reached the trio. Gilchrist turned away from the window. If only all policing could be so immediate. Heap raised a quizzical eyebrow. Gilchrist nodded.

  ‘My dear Sarah, do you mean you’re not a reader of crime fiction?’ Bilson said.

  ‘Wouldn’t that be a little like coals to Newcastle?’

  ‘I’ve never really understood that phrase – I think I went to the wrong school. But you’re missing a treat with the Golden Age crime writers from the 1920s and 1930s. After a long day examining dismembered bodies, coming home to read a country house mystery where someone’s cocktail has been poisoned and they are lying dead in their dinner jacket or, depending on the time of day, plus fours, is a wonderful way to wind down.’

  ‘You’re talking about yourself.’

  ‘I don’t wear plus fours.’

  ‘The reader, I mean.’

  ‘I’m presenting myself as a model for you, yes.’

  Gilchrist saw Heap leave the room. ‘Thank you, Frank,’ she said gently.

  ‘Don’t you want to know the other possible cause of death?’

  ‘It would be remiss of me not to ask. Not to mention rude.’

  ‘Right on both counts. OK, are you ready?’

  ‘My breath is bated.’

  ‘He drowned.’

  When Heap returned he joined Gilchrist at the window. The arguing trio were long gone but Gilchrist was looking beyond the promenade at the grey waves rolling in.

  ‘Drowned and stabbed to death, according to Bilson,’ she said without looking at Heap.

  ‘I think the word overkill was invented specifically for this occasion,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘When I dared to query it with Bilson he got sniffy and said: “He had water in his lungs: he drowned.”’

  ‘But Gulliver wasn’t noticeably wet,’ Heap said.

  ‘I don’t think he was wet at all. When I asked Bilson to explain that he repeated his B&Q line about him providing the bricks so we can construct the building.’

  ‘They don’t sell bricks in B&Q.’

  Gilchrist gave Heap a look. He coughed and reddened.

  ‘So Gulliver was perhaps rendered unconscious by submerging at least his head in water then he was stabbed to death,’ he said.

  ‘That was my thinking, Bellamy. That would explain why he didn’t defend himself when attacked with the knife. But drowned until unconscious rather than dead would also explain why the blood flowed from his wounds for so long.’

  ‘So he’d come round to find himself bleeding to death.’

  ‘If he did come round. Perhaps he just went from one state to the next as he bled out.’ Gilchrist gave an involuntary shudder as she said it.

  ‘I think perhaps the way we found him hugging himself suggests he may have come round but he was too weak to do anything but somehow try to hold his life in.’

  ‘Good point, detective sergeant. But if we accept your premise then he was drowned elsewhere and moved there. It was fresh water, incidentally, so we can discount the sea. What do SOCO have to say about that?’

  ‘No sign of a struggle in the house. No immediate sign of blood anywhere. Plenty of blood at the actual scene so he definitely died there.’

  ‘Could he have been drowned in the lido?’

  ‘Saltwater in the lido I believe, ma’am, from the sea then purified.’

  Gilchrist frowned. ‘They use seawater in the lido?’

  ‘Regular practice in seaside lidos, ma’am.’

  ‘But why would people pay to swim in seawater in a lido when a few yards away they could swim for free in the same water in the actual sea?’

  ‘I think you’ve spotted the crack in the business model, ma’am. The reason lidos in coastal resorts only had a limited shelf life in the thirties. The SS Brighton – where the big cinema is now situated on the seafront? – Only lasted a year before it was turned into an ice rink.’

  ‘OK, is there any fresh water in any pool in the lido?’

  ‘I believe not, ma’am.’

  She frowned again. ‘Any thoughts?’

  ‘Waterboarding, ma’am.’

  ‘You think the CIA is involved.’

  ‘They have never been the only ones to use the method. You’ll recall from the Cambodian antiquities case that Pol Pot used it in the seventies.’

  ‘I was being flippant, Bellamy, which was totally inappropriate. Sorry. That still requires a bath or something, doesn’t it?’

  ‘A wet towel over the mouth and nose does the trick, ma’am. With perhaps another dry towel acting as a bib to prevent water going anywhere else.’

  ‘Jesus.�
�

  They both looked out of the window.

  ‘You know that petition Mrs Medavoy mentioned?’ Heap said.

  ‘The three thousand?’

  ‘It’s a bit dodgy.’

  ‘Fake names?’

  ‘Obviously I haven’t gone through them all but some households seem rather overcrowded.’

  ‘Wouldn’t the fraud turn up by checking the electoral register?’

  ‘Not until it was too late, ma’am. You get the headline and by the time the truth behind it is revealed it’s too late.’

  ‘You say that but wouldn’t the subsequent bad publicity be a problem for the campaign?’

  ‘By then it would be too late because decisions would have been made that the council couldn’t go back on.’

  ‘Fake news,’ Gilchrist murmured.

  She looked out of the window again. She must have been staring out longer than she realized because Heap said: ‘You OK, ma’am?’

  Gilchrist turned and smiled down at Heap. Sometimes she felt like she towered over him. The Little and Large tag was heard less around the station these days but it was still heard.

  ‘Hunky dory. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Was there something else in your conversation with Mr Bilson to make you … thoughtful?’

  ‘I didn’t realize how lonely he is until today. He’s so well hidden under his flirtatiousness and over-the-top bonhomie.’

  ‘We live in a lonely world, ma’am.’

  Gilchrist narrowed her eyes. ‘The Philosopher Policeman,’ she said, more dismissively than she intended.

  Heap flushed, as always. ‘Just my view ma’am.’

  Gilchrist regretted her sharpness. She just wasn’t used to thinking – and certainly not speaking – in those terms.

  ‘Sorry, Bellamy. I’m a bit off-kilter today.’ She glanced back out of the window. ‘Bilson said he was going to spend the rest of his birthday scuttling in a silent sea or something. Is that a quote, Big Brain?’

  ‘T.S. Eliot I believe, ma’am, especially if ragged claws were involved in his remarks.’

  ‘I believe they were,’ Gilchrist said, smiling again.

  ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It’s a poem about loneliness – a man who measures out his life in coffee spoons.’

  ‘Don’t ever change, Bellamy.’

  ‘Noted, ma’am,’ he said, nodding gravely. Then he said: ‘Are you lonely, ma’am?’

  She jerked her head back. ‘I’m not sure my apology entitles you to ask such a personal question, Detective Sergeant.’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ Heap said but held her look.

  She raised her eyes. ‘I’m alone but not lonely. OK?’

  ‘Most people rush into often inappropriate relationships because they don’t like the thought of being alone.’

  Gilchrist thought he was either alluding to last night’s one-night stand or her recent inappropriate affair with a man who turned out to be a villain. She bridled again.

  ‘You’re right. It was rather foolish of me to sleep with a man who turned out to be the crook we were chasing.’

  She recognized that falling hook, line and sinker for that creep some months ago had been a major lapse in her judgement. The embarrassment when it came out was bad enough but it had somehow triggered her recent flurry of one-night stands in ways she was dimly aware of but didn’t want to analyse too closely.

  Heap flushed again. ‘I was speaking generally, ma’am.’ He looked out of the window. ‘Or maybe about me.’

  ‘You think your relationship with Kate is inappropriate?’

  ‘Before her, I meant.’

  ‘How is Kate? Has she heard much lately from her shitty father, William Simpson, corruption personified?’

  Before Heap could answer, Gilchrist’s landline rang.

  ‘To be continued,’ she said to Heap. ‘Or not.’

  She picked up the phone. It was a woman’s voice.

  ‘Tracey here, Detective Inspector Gilchrist. The Chief Constable would like a word. She wonders if you could come straight away. Please bring Detective Sergeant Heap.’

  ‘Sarah, come in,’ Chief Constable Karen Hewitt said. She nodded at Heap. ‘Bellamy.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ Gilchrist and Heap both murmured.

  Hewitt went round her desk and sat down. She was spruced up in a smart turquoise suit today. Actually, more trussed than spruced, Gilchrist thought, wondering how Hewitt could feel comfortable in it. Maybe she didn’t like to be comfortable.

  ‘I hear you’ve snagged a murder,’ Hewitt said.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘I want to be sure that it doesn’t interfere with your important work on teen offenders and the other inter-agency work you’re doing.’

  ‘Well, actually, ma’am, the teen offender work is drawing to a close,’ Gilchrist said. ‘We know who the ringleaders are.’

  Hewitt nodded. ‘Very well, but the initiative must continue.’ She clasped her hands in front of her on the desk. ‘The murdered man—’

  ‘Roland Gulliver, ma’am,’ Heap said.

  ‘Could it be a hate crime?’

  ‘Gay-bashing, you mean?’ Gilchrist said. ‘Too early to say. We’re following several lines of enquiry, including his link to the Save the Lido campaign.’

  Hewitt scowled as best she could within the limits of her Botox injections. ‘The leader of the council was banging on about that the other day at lunch. What an embarrassment it’s been to them. You think it’s somehow linked?’

  Gilchrist glanced at Heap. ‘Bellamy might have more insight than I do about that.’

  Heap looked puzzled but then twigged. ‘The petition they got together looks fraudulent. Perhaps Gulliver was implicated in that in some way?’

  ‘Would that be enough to get him murdered?’ Hewitt said.

  ‘It’s a potential line of enquiry, ma’am,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Will you need to talk to Alice Sutherland?’ Hewitt said.

  ‘Probably,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Tread carefully – she has links with the town.’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘She was involved with a consortium that lobbied very hard to get a development at the West Pier not dissimilar to the one she proposed for Salthaven. They were somewhat miffed when the West Pier Trust favoured the i360.’

  ‘I didn’t realize there were competing projects,’ Gilchrist said, aware that she was woefully ignorant of vast swathes of things that went on in her own town.

  ‘Sarah,’ Hewitt said, sounding exasperated, ‘that sand on the beach is not for sticking your head in, you know.’

  ‘It’s shingle, ma’am. I’m sorry but the West Pier doesn’t really interest me. I’ll be glad when it finally falls into the sea.’

  ‘Which it almost has. And there are some who share your sentiments. Even so don’t say that too loudly around this town or you might end up murdered by the zealots’ wing of the Regency Society.’

  ‘I thought they were all zealots,’ Gilchrist murmured.

  ‘Zealots on the side of right, for a change,’ Hewitt said. ‘On the whole.’ She sat back – stiffly because of her tight jacket. ‘Anyway, i360. Terrible name but there it is and very popular it is. But what Sutherland’s consortium was hoping to do was build a new pier, as happened in Hastings, using Lottery funding.’

  ‘I see,’ Gilchrist said, bored.

  ‘But it just didn’t seem economically viable.’

  ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘Clearing away the wreckage would have cost a fortune.’

  Hewitt must have seen Gilchrist’s eyes glazing over because she leaned forward with difficulty and said, exasperation in her voice: ‘What it boils down to is this: handle Alice Sutherland with kid gloves.’

  THREE

  The sun was up behind a skyscraper on Park Lane, and Hyde Park was already busy with early morning joggers, riders and squads of people in shorts and T-shirts doing regimented squats and running on the spot. There were about thirty swimm
ers already in the water at the lido on the Serpentine, the large lake in the centre of the park. Over half were in wet suits: there was a big triathlon event at the weekend and competitors were having their final swim.

  Police Commissioner Bob Watts slipped on the slimy gangway down into the water so was in before he had time to worry about how cold it was. He lay on his back for a moment then rolled over. Putting his face in the water was hardest. He wished he had a bathing cap like everybody else. And ear plugs. As he swam a fast crawl to get his circulation moving, his forehead started to ache with the cold.

  Years earlier, in his army days, he’d done a good deal of cold-water swimming as part of a survival skills course. He used to know the ratio of body temperature to water temperature to energy loss. It was usual to advise people who were in the water because their boat had sunk not to swim but to conserve energy and therefore body heat by staying put until someone came to get them.

  But here at the Serpentine Swimming Club most of the swimmers seemed to embrace the cold. Christmas day here was like the first day of the January sales, with a throng of swimmers eager to get in, though Watts didn’t think the freezing water was much of a bargain.

  Many of the people here were cross-Channel swimmers. In cross-Channel swimming and its pre-Channel qualifiers, the hardcore world in whose shallows Watts had been paddling for a few weeks, only ordinary swimming costumes, a single rubber bathing cap and ear plugs could be worn.

  Watts had been intrigued to read that in the early days of all-male open water swimming the swimmers had preferred to go totally naked to ensure no artificial aids were being used.

  Captain Webb, the first man to swim the Channel without the help of any aids, had worn his famous striped woollen swimming costume but he had presumably been thoroughly searched first.

  It had been Jimmy Tingley’s suggestion that Watts should take up what was known as wild-water swimming with an eye to doing the Channel. Watts, heading for his mid-forties, was fit enough but, naturally, slowing as he got older.

  ‘Stamina counts for more than speed on a cross-Channel swim,’ Tingley had said over a beer in a new bar in an old building at one side of the tracks in Brighton railway station. Watts had just come in from London; Tingley, his old companion-in-arms, had come in from Worthing, for reasons unspecified. Watts had long known it was best with Tingley, living in his ex-SAS shadow world, that things remain ‘unspecified’.