Swimming with the Dead

by Peter Guttridge

  ‘Nothing yet. The final call he received was from April Medavoy, the Chair of the Save the Lido committee.’

  ‘Time for another chat with her,’ Gilchrist said. Her phone rang. Bilson.

  ‘Mr Bilson, a keenly awaited pleasure.’

  ‘Sarah, I know you don’t mean that in the way I might hope from the fact we’re back to formality.’

  ‘Christian names are only for birthdays and special occasions, Frank. Have you found our killer?’

  He chuckled. ‘I rather thought that was your job.’

  ‘The widow, Tamsin Stanhope, in the library with a wet towel? Shaw in the cemetery with a stiletto?’

  ‘Mr Shaw is into cross-dressing?’

  ‘I don’t know about his private habits, but I meant the stiletto knife not the heel.’

  ‘It will cost your department an arm and a leg for us turning round Mr Shaw’s DNA test so quickly. Tamsin Stanhope’s won’t cost much less.’

  ‘But worth it, I hope.’

  ‘If you mean by that you can exclude two people from your enquiries, then yes.’

  ‘Neither of them had any DNA traces either at Gulliver’s house or on his person? Not even Shaw?’

  ‘Not even Shaw.’

  ‘Isn’t that odd, given they were so close?’

  ‘Odd but not unknown. It depends when they last saw each other.’

  She hung up the landline as her mobile started vibrating on her desk. She glanced at her watch. Noon.

  ‘Bellamy. How’s Kate doing?’

  ‘Still out there. Two hours to go.’

  ‘What about Bob?’

  ‘The same.’

  Heap seemed subdued.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Philip Coates is dead. Drowned in Lake Coniston last weekend.’

  ‘And you’ve only just found this out?’

  ‘I put tracking him down to one side because I didn’t think it a priority.’

  ‘And what do you think now?’

  ‘I think I made a massive mistake that someone else may have paid for.’

  ‘What do you mean by that last bit?’

  ‘Somebody here is missing feared drowned.’

  ‘Jesus, Bellamy. What is going on?’

  ‘I heard a couple of people talking. It’s a woman. She didn’t turn up for her next feed.’

  ‘But wouldn’t someone else see if she was in difficulty?’

  ‘Everybody is pretty much focused on their own thing. And people doing crawl don’t see anything anyway.’

  ‘How do they know she’s not still out there?’

  ‘The bathing cap. Hers is pretty distinctive apparently. No one can spot it.’

  ‘Shouldn’t they be stopping the race?’

  ‘I think it’s a “show must go on” scenario. Especially as there would be a lot of unhappy swimmers who haven’t yet reached their target if they stopped it now.’

  ‘Do we know who the swimmer is?’

  ‘Someone called Christine Bromley.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ Gilchrist murmured. ‘And you think it’s suspicious, of course.’

  ‘At the moment I’m finding everything suspicious. I’ve just met a man who fits the description of the man Darrel Jones saw with Gulliver in Woodvale Cemetery.’

  ‘I thought we’d agreed there are hundreds who fit that description in Brighton.’

  ‘Yes, but this one is as involved in the swimming world as Gulliver was. Name of Derek Neill, one of the organizers of this swim and Coniston.’

  ‘Do you want to have a word with him?’

  ‘Now is probably not a good time but once we know more about Christine Bromley.’

  ‘I’m on my way down,’ Gilchrist said.

  NINE

  When Gilchrist arrived, Bellamy Heap was standing on the pavement outside the Palace Pier with Kate and Bob Watts, both swaddled in big, hooded gowns.

  ‘Did you do it?’ she asked, addressing them both.

  Kate’s teeth were chattering.

  ‘We did.’

  ‘Has the woman turned up?’

  Watts shook his head. ‘Unfortunate coincidence for Dolphin Smile,’ he said.

  ‘Is it a health-and-safety thing?’ Gilchrist said. ‘Is Dolphin Smile being reckless?’

  ‘Not at all. These swimmers all know what they’re doing and are given advice. In Coniston the water wasn’t cold. Here it was about sixteen centigrade.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound very warm,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘In the sea the range in the summer is between fifteen and nineteen centigrade,’ Watts said. ‘Sixteen centigrade is cold but not dangerous – below ten is dangerous. Very cold water can trigger a heart attack or hypothermia. If you suffer from either in other circumstances you have a good chance of surviving. In water, you’re probably going to drown.’

  ‘I’m not really up on hypothermia,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Heat transfer is always one way – from the hotter to the cooler thing. And heat loss from a human body occurs quickest when the body is totally wet. So swimming in cold water is the quickest way to lose body heat.’

  ‘But some of these Channel swimmers take hours and hours to cross – how do they do it without freezing to death or drowning?’

  Watts nodded. ‘It’s tricky. If you speed up to keep warm you might lose more body heat from increased air and water movement over your body and just from your increased respiration rate.’ He gestured to Kate, whose teeth were still chattering. ‘Shivering generates heat but you can’t do much else while you have the shakes.’

  ‘It’s all about metabolism,’ Kate said, her voice wavering with her shivering.

  ‘Yes,’ Watts agreed. ‘Hypothermia varies from person to person, depending on metabolism. It can set in quickly – within two or three minutes of stopping swimming. It can start when you’re swimming but you don’t realize, except for the fact it takes a lot out of you to swim just a few yards. And then swimming even that distance becomes impossible. If hypothermia set in with this woman and she started to drown she wouldn’t even be able to raise her arms to wave for help.’

  Gilchrist shook her head. ‘Fingers crossed she’s OK. Bob, Bellamy mentioned you know Derek Neill, the man behind all this. We’re going to need to talk to him if you can point us in the right direction.’

  ‘Sure, though he’s hard to miss. Big, muscled hipster type. What is the name of the woman who is missing, by the way?’

  ‘Christine Bromley,’ Heap said.

  ‘The Christine Bromley?’ Watts said.

  Gilchrist looked at Heap, who shook his head but reached in his bag for his iPad.

  ‘She runs Bromleys, a Hove-based family company with fingers in many pies,’ Watts said. ‘Transport – not quite as big as Eddie Stobart but getting there. Aggregate – shipping out of Shoreham. And engineering construction – they tendered for the redevelopment of the Brighton Centre and the West Pier.’

  ‘Big then.’

  ‘Big enough,’ Heap said, reading from his iPad. ‘Two thousand workforce.’

  Gilchrist nodded. ‘Yes, yes. She’s been in the papers recently, hasn’t she, but I can’t remember why.’

  ‘She wants to turn the family business into a workers’ cooperative,’ Watts said.

  ‘Right,’ Gilchrist said slowly. ‘And the brother doesn’t agree?’

  Heap was scrolling.

  ‘She intends to give up around £60 million worth of shares,’ he said. ‘And she’s asking her brother and her mother to do the same. They’re on record as resisting the idea. Delaying tactics and all that in the hope she’d come to her senses and it would all go away.’

  They all exchanged glances. Gilchrist voiced what all were thinking.

  ‘And now she’s probably dead.’

  Gilchrist and Heap decided against talking to Neill just then about Roland Gulliver or Philip Coates. The other emergency services had arrived and divers were in the water searching for Christine Bromley’s body. They
left them to it and walked over to a bar on the promenade where Watts and Kate Simpson were going to join them once they’d changed.

  ‘Here we are.’ Bellamy scan-read the page he’d brought up about the Bromley family business. ‘Two brothers. Bernard from a first marriage and James from the second marriage that also produced Christine.’

  ‘And the mother?’

  ‘I don’t think she’s on the board but she was still being asked to tip over millions of pounds.’

  ‘Could Christine insist?’

  Heap shrugged. ‘She was deputy chairman, anointed by her father to succeed him after his death.’

  Gilchrist took a sip of her wine. ‘Why would someone want to give away £60 million? It makes no sense.’

  Heap shrugged again. ‘I don’t have that information yet. But I hope I won’t need it. At the moment, Ms Bromley is merely missing presumed drowned.’

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Let’s get back to this potential link between Roland Gulliver and this Derek Neill. Can we get a photograph of Neill and have uniform show it to the delightful Darrel?’ She gestured at Heap’s iPad. ‘What can you find out about Neill?’

  Heap fidgeted with his iPad.

  ‘Local boy. Former footballer, former music promoter all along south coast. Set up Dolphin Smile with his business partner, Rasa Lewis, six years ago. Swimming holidays around the world. Tried it out first in Crete with friends and family. That’s from the Dolphin Smile website. Nothing on Google; no Wikipedia entry.’

  Heap focused on his iPad for a couple of moments.

  ‘Hang on, there’s a photo gallery on the website. No sign of Roland Gulliver in it though.’

  ‘What about Philip Coates? Bob said Neill and he were friends. And is there a link between Neill and Ms Sutherland?’

  ‘At the moment we only have one definite murder,’ Heap said. ‘Coates and – probably – Bromley have simply drowned.’

  ‘Or not so simply.’

  Watts and Kate, both looking newly showered and towelled, faces pink and hair wet, came into the bar. As they sat down, Gilchrist pushed her phone across to Kate.

  ‘Kate, I’m going to do something dodgy here, just on the off-chance.’

  ‘Off-chance of what?’ Kate said, looking wary.

  ‘The off-chance that you recognize these teenagers I’m about to show you.’

  Kate looked, scrolling the pictures along. She nodded. ‘All four. That ferret-faced little sod is the one who had his hand up my skirt.’

  Gilchrist nodded at Heap. ‘Darrel Jones again.’

  ‘He’s Darrel Jones?’ Kate said. ‘I spoke to him on the phone once. And his whiny mum.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Watts said. ‘Hand up your skirt, Kate?’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Kate said, glancing at Heap and flushing. ‘I only mentioned it in passing to Sarah a few days ago.’

  ‘What kind of nothing,’ Heap and Watts said together, concern in their voices.

  ‘I got attacked by some kids.’ She flushed some more. ‘They just groped me – I think so they could rob me, like that thing in Cologne that New Year?’

  ‘How did you get out of it?’ Watts said.

  ‘They ran off. Two men intervened.’

  ‘When was this?’ Heap said quietly.

  ‘A few days ago.’

  ‘These men?’

  ‘A big hipster and a nondescript guy.’ She stopped.

  Heap handed her his iPad. ‘Recognize him?’

  ‘People like that all look alike – you know that,’ Kate said. She peered most closely. ‘But, yes, unusually, he was very tanned.’ She looked again. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Derek Neill.’

  ‘The guy who runs Dolphin Smile? I’ve never actually met him.’

  Heap reached over and shifted the screen. ‘Was this the other man in the cemetery?’

  ‘Yes, yes – I think so. Who is he?’

  Heap showed the screen to Gilchrist.

  ‘Roland Gulliver,’ she said.

  When Bellamy Heap and Kate Simpson had gone off together, Watts moved around the table to sit beside Sarah Gilchrist. After their florid affair several years ago, he felt they had moved from awkwardness to a kind of relaxed familiarity, based on affection. But what did he know?

  Not a lot, he decided, when she seemed to jerk away from him. OK. He recognized he had the sensitivity of a tadpole so, maybe, she had a wholly different view, disguised by her need to make their professional relationship work.

  He gave them both more than enough space on the seat.

  ‘How are things?’ he said.

  At least she looked at him. ‘You know what the job is like,’ she said.

  ‘Actually, I don’t,’ he said. ‘I never did it properly.’

  ‘I mean from people telling you. Me telling you.’

  ‘This case?’

  She looked at him and put her glass down a little too hard.

  ‘There is no “this case”. There are a lot of them. But no, not the work. I’ve just got myself into an odd place emotionally.’

  He nodded slowly, wondering what she meant but not knowing how to ask. He wasn’t good at the sharing lark and when he tried he thought he came across as some sociopath mimicking human emotions. Even so, he said: ‘Want to talk about it?’

  Gilchrist looked surprised then smiled at him, fondly, he thought.

  ‘That’s kind of you, Bob; but I don’t think so. What about you? How are things going?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, feeling awkward.

  She nodded. ‘Good. Good.’

  Watts searched for something to share. ‘Kate is my niece,’ he blurted out, then almost immediately regretted it.

  Gilchrist frowned but didn’t say anything for a moment.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she eventually said slowly.

  ‘No, really. My dad and her grandmother …’

  ‘I thought you were talking figuratively. You mean William Simpson is your half-brother? Wow.’

  ‘Wow, indeed.’

  ‘He’s been in business with Alice Sutherland, the woman who was trying to develop Salthaven Lido.’

  ‘On that project?’

  ‘No, a West Pier one that lost out to the i360.’

  ‘I thought Simpson was off saving the world for genocidal dictators.’

  ‘I guess that leaves him with spare time on his hands,’ Gilchrist said, taking a sip of her drink. ‘Kate hasn’t mentioned your relationship.’

  ‘Kate doesn’t know. I decided not to tell her.’

  Gilchrist looked surprised and started to speak but her phone rang.

  ‘DI Gilchrist,’ she said in a business-like tone. She listened for a moment. ‘OK, thanks.’ She turned to Watts. ‘They’ve found Christine Bromley. Bilson will do the post-mortem.’

  ‘After the Coniston death I had a slightly odd conversation with Neill. I think he thought his friend’s death was suspicious. He said that strange things had been happening lately. When I asked him he backed off.’

  Gilchrist cupped her chin.

  ‘Really? Perhaps I do need to talk to him now.’

  Watts started to get up. ‘I need to go anyway.’

  Gilchrist stood. Watts moved to embrace her but her phone rang again. She glanced down at it.

  ‘Bellamy,’ she said, picking it up.

  Watts gave her a little wave and stepped away.

  ‘Cheerio, then.’

  Gilchrist went back to the station to find Heap and Sylvia Wade deep in conversation. ‘Constable Wade here has been to see April Medavoy again since she discovered Gulliver’s last call was from her. She’s found something interesting.’

  ‘It wasn’t the phone call itself,’ Sylvia said. ‘She said that was just about some paper Gulliver was writing for the committee.’

  ‘You believed her?’

  ‘I pressed her and didn’t have any reason to believe she was lying.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I think when she
phoned him he was having that glass of wine with somebody. She said she heard him excuse himself to somebody and then she sensed he went into another room to take her call. Even so, he sounded cautious and distracted. Her words.’

  ‘So we know what time he was in his house,’ Gilchrist said. ‘That’s good for the timeline. Did she have any clue about who he was with? Did she assume it was Provocateur?’

  Wade smiled at the use of the nickname they’d given to Francis Shaw because of his pretentious website.

  ‘She didn’t mention him at all. But she wondered if it might be this man Derek Neill, from Dolphin Smile.’

  Gilchrist and Heap exchanged glances.

  ‘Now why would she think that?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Apparently he and Gulliver were old friends and had been seeing a lot of each other lately. And Roland had mentioned trying to get sponsorship of some sort out of him for Save Salthaven Lido.’

  ‘Did she say what kind of old friends?’

  Wade shook her head.

  Gilchrist looked across at the Gulliver murder investigation timeline on the whiteboard on the wall.

  ‘Mr Neill is suddenly proving to be a man of considerable interest. Bellamy, find out where he is and let’s go to see him.’

  Bob Watts was standing on his balcony looking at the choppy waters of Brighton bay. His six-hour swim had been hard work but not as difficult as he had feared. Now he was surprised to see Derek Neill walk across from the seafront promenade and disappear from sight beneath his building. Was he coming to see him?

  When the doorbell didn’t ring he leaned out from his balcony but couldn’t see Neill on the street. However, he could see Sarah Gilchrist and Bellamy Heap walking in his direction.

  He wasn’t expecting them but he went over to his entry phone and on the video monitor saw them climbing the front steps to his building. He pressed his buzzer, and said: ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. Come up.’

  Gilchrist and Heap looked bemused then into the camera at the entrance.

  ‘We’re not here to see you, Bob,’ Gilchrist said. ‘We’re here for a neighbour of yours. Derek Neill.’

  Watts frowned. ‘I had no idea he lived here. I’ve just seen him crossing the road.’