‘He’s out?’ Gilchrist said.
‘No, no – I think he was coming in.’
‘Small world,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Perhaps we can come up once we’re finished with him – assuming nothing arises from our conversation that requires immediate attention.’
‘I’ll get the cocktail shaker out now,’ Watts said.
He walked back over to the balcony, musing on Derek Neill and the enigmatic Rasa. He liked the man and hoped he wasn’t caught up in something illegal.
His phone rang and Margaret Lively’s name came up on the screen. He let it ring. He wasn’t sure what to do about her. Unless he was misreading the signs – and that was a frequent occurrence for him – she was interested in him as a lover. He liked her but she was younger than he felt comfortable with. Had she been Sarah Gilchrist’s age that might be different. Had she, indeed, been Sarah Gilchrist.
He had wondered if they might get together after the dust had settled over his divorce and all the shenanigans around the Milldean Massacre but it hadn’t happened. Maybe the moment had gone. They’d both had other involvements, both seen them go horribly wrong. Now they were good friends, and he was pleased about that, although from time to time tensions arose.
He had enjoyed his meeting with Margaret Lively. She worked for a venture capitalist, which made him uneasy – as criminals went, bankers and venture capitalists were high on his list of unconvicted ones. But she had made the jokes about her job before he could.
She left no message and when he called her straight back it went to voicemail. He left no message either.
TEN
When Gilchrist and Heap entered Derek Neill’s apartment, he was civil and bade them sit. His look intrigued Gilchrist. He was a handsome man, underneath the modish long beard and fastidiously cropped hair. What bits of hair-free face she could see were deeply lined by long exposure to the sun. His tan seemed ingrained in the skin.
He served coffee, then moved over to the window and pulled down thin blinds.
‘Can’t see for buggery in here at this time of day,’ he said. He turned. ‘I assume you’re here about Christine Bromley. Terrible business.’
‘You were seen with Roland Gulliver in Woodvale Cemetery, possibly a couple of times,’ Gilchrist said.
‘Not Christine then,’ he said with a small smile. ‘Roland – yes, that’s quite possible.’
‘Why were you there?’
‘Talking to my friend.’
‘Just talking?’
‘As I remember.’
‘What about the day you interrupted a group of teenagers attacking a young woman,’ Heap said.
‘What about it?’
‘When was that?’
‘I don’t remember. I mean I remember the incident, of course, but I don’t remember which day it was.’
‘Did you or Mr Gulliver recognize any of the youngsters?’
Neill shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t recall Roland saying anything. I certainly didn’t recognize anyone.’
‘You were in the cemetery with him the day before he died though?’
‘We were discussing ways in which Dolphin Smile might get involved in the Save Salthaven Lido campaign.’
‘And what conclusion did you reach?’
‘The discussion was on-going.’
‘Someone has said you were, quote, “kissing and cuddling there”.’
‘What about it?’
‘Were you an item?’
‘No.’
‘Never?’
‘None of your business, but never.’
‘How do you explain the kissing and cuddling?’
‘I don’t. Do I need to?’
Gilchrist sighed. Of course, he didn’t. She loathed asking these sorts of questions.
‘And you didn’t see him the night of his death?’ she said.
‘As I said.’
‘We’re going to need a DNA swab.’
Neill just shrugged, clearly pissed off at the intrusive last questions.
Watts answered the door to Sarah Gilchrist. No Bellamy Heap.
‘Neill gave us a DNA swab so Bellamy has gone to get it analysed ASAP.’
Watts wanted to ask what was going on but knew better than to do so. Gilchrist would tell him if she chose to. She chose to.
‘It’s this murder investigation – Roland Gulliver. We heard they were old friends but Neill says Gulliver got in touch to try to get Dolphin Smile to sponsor or in some way help the Save Salthaven Lido campaign. Says he visited Gulliver at home at some point but he wasn’t the bloke drinking wine with him on the day Gulliver was waterboarded then stabbed to death.’
‘Waterboarded?’
‘I’ve probably said too much – you’re not supposed to know about operational matters, are you?’
‘As police commissioner, no; but as your friend, maybe.’
‘Where are the cocktails then?’ she said, then flushed, perhaps at her forwardness. Watts had always found Gilchrist to be quite shy.
Watts laughed. ‘Will you settle for an Australian sauvignon?’
‘Done. Anyway, I asked Neill if he thought there was anything odd about Christine Bromley’s death – in case he thought it was as dodgy as you say he thought the Coniston death to be – but he didn’t open up.’
‘You didn’t say you’d heard about odd goings-on before Coniston?’
‘Didn’t want to land you in it and let him know you’d told me.’
‘Thank you. Is he a person of interest in the case?’
‘Potentially. We have a sighting of a man fitting his description with Gulliver in the cemetery the other day. And Kate, if you recall, seemed to think they were around together on another occasion.’
‘Did you bring that up, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘He said they were just talking but I have a witness saying something different.’
‘Quarrelling?’
‘“Kissing and cuddling” – quote.’
‘And such a beautiful wife too.’
‘He’s married?’
‘Well, he has a business partner who everyone assumes is also his life partner – is that the right phrase?’
Gilchrist smiled and nodded.
‘Rasa. Ice-queen type, mind. And in any case, who is anyone to judge the complexity of the human heart?’
Gilchrist looked thoughtful.
‘Who indeed,’ she murmured.
When Gilchrist got back to the office Heap was holding her phone away from his ear. He looked relieved when she came in. He mouthed, Mr Bilson – Gilchrist was amused by his formality even here – and passed her phone to her with seeming relief.
‘Sarah, how lovely to hear your voice – not that it wasn’t a delight to converse with young Bellamy. I was explaining to him that it is so nice to have a freshly drowned person to dissect. Floaters, who’ve been in the water for days, are the worst to do an autopsy on. All those gases bloating the body, all those fish nibbling away at the corpse for days on end.’
‘I can imagine, although I’d rather not. Did she drown?’
Bilson ignored the question.
‘Are you any nearer to telling me who killed Roland Gulliver?’ he said. ‘Have you felt someone’s collar – do people still say that?’
‘I don’t know if anyone has ever said that outside of cheap crime fiction. Our investigations are continuing.’
‘You’re so intoxicating when you play it by the book,’ Bilson said.
Gilchrist rolled her eyes. Bilson was pretty certainly breaking a large number of ‘harassment in the workplace’ rules with his continuing badinage but she wasn’t offended and groan-worthy flirtation between equals was hardly the same as what some Hollywood producers got up to.
‘So this poor woman who drowned during the swim,’ she said. ‘Is there anything suspicious about her death?’
‘Why do you think that her death might be suspicious?’
‘Money. Lots of it.’
‘These
damn fools swimming in cold water don’t know what they’re letting themselves in for.’
‘I’m not sure I know.’
‘Hypothermia. The science of it is fascinating.’
‘I’m sure it is to you, Frank. And Bob Watts, as I recall.’
‘I consider myself trumped,’ Bilson said. ‘A word we must use carefully in these mad geopolitical days. But allow me to take a moment to perorate on the wonders of the mammalian body as it accustoms itself to extreme cold.’
‘Perorate?’
‘If you would allow me.’
‘By all means, perorate away in the middle of a murder investigation.’
‘Like other mammals it seems that humans can, with sustained exposure to extreme cold, acclimatize in the way small mammals do, through an increased output of noradrenaline and/or thyroxin and the associated activation of free fatty acids.’
‘Fascinating.’
‘It is, because of a controversial theory that we have both brown and white fat in our bodies. Burning brown fat generates heat thanks to these free fatty acids. And it is this heat production that makes it possible for humans to acclimatize over ten days or so to extreme cold.’
‘Frank …’
‘If the theory is correct, what’s intriguing is the possibility of using winter sport as a pleasant method of treating obesity.’
‘Frank!’
‘Thank you for listening.’ Bilson cleared his throat. ‘This woman did drown but not as a consequence of a heart attack.’
‘You’ve been quick.’
‘And your department will pay the high financial price for that speed.’
‘What then, if not heart attack?’
‘She was poisoned. Kind of.’
‘Come again?’
‘I’ll know more when I get further information about stomach content. Not that there was much stomach content. I think she’d been throwing up.’
Gilchrist looked across the office at Heap, who had just returned. She put her phone on speaker.
‘I’m struggling here, Frank,’ she said. ‘What did you mean, “kind of”?’
‘There were traces of ketamine in her system – horse tranquillizer often used for recreational purposes. Well, she may have taken it herself or she may have taken it unwittingly and, combined with the temperature of the water, it would have made her sluggish and then the hypothermia would have taken over.’
‘Taken it unwittingly?’
‘Most probably in the feed. The feed is like an intravenous injection – it has immediate impact. The swimmer’s body is so pumped it goes straight into the system and goes straight to work. So if you add a poison that is capable of attaching itself to the feed then the body of the swimmer will absorb that without much problem. And it is going to have a massive effect, but not necessarily straight away.’ Bilson paused for a moment. ‘The swimmer might be throwing up anyway, as she was, so if their body reject the poison nobody is going to think twice. But most probably it gets in their system and absorbed before it can be rejected. It’s very interesting science actually …’
Gilchrist inhaled impatiently.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
Gilchrist was still looking at Heap.
‘OK, I get the science but you still haven’t explained the “kind of”?’ she said.
‘Well, the poison wouldn’t directly kill her. As I said it would have disabled her so that she couldn’t help but drown.’
‘So we need to find out who put the poison in the feed.’
Heap drew closer when he heard this, tapping away on his laptop as he did so.
‘Not so much of the “we”,’ Bilson said. ‘I believe feeds are prepared individually. Should be fairly straightforward to find out who prepared her feed.’ He cleared his throat. ‘If, of course, she drank her own feed and not somebody else’s by mistake.’
Gilchrist and Heap exchanged glances.
‘OK, thanks for that last complication, Frank,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Just what we need.’ Heap nodded. ‘Now, would you do me a favour with regard to another drowning?’
She gave him the details of Philip Coates’s death. ‘Contact your equivalent up in the Lakes – not that you could ever have an equivalent, of course.’
Surprisingly, Bilson ignored the compliment. ‘You think they’re related?’
‘It could just be an unlikely coincidence.’
‘Do the two corpses have a connection?’
‘A direct one is unknown as yet but, yes, there is a link.’
‘I was expecting you to have me sitting down looking at CCTV footage from the gym to see if I could recognize the man sitting in the sauna with Roland Gulliver.’
‘Believe me, I had you lined up for that. But unfortunately the gym dumps its CCTV footage every five days so that day is gone.’
‘As so many days are gone. Where are they now, Sarah, those blue remembered hills?’
‘Goodbye, Frank. And thank you.’
‘I might have equivalents but no equals,’ Bilson said as he hung up. Gilchrist smiled and turned to Heap to tell him what Bilson had said prior to the call being on speakerphone.
‘I don’t see how nobody saw anything,’ she said, ‘if she was drowning.’
‘What’s to see?’ Heap said. ‘A couple of hundred people doing front crawl; nobody is going to see anything but their own arms and the scissoring legs of the next person in front. They won’t exactly be following what’s going on unless they bump into it.’
‘What do we know about Christine Bromley’s support team?’
‘I think each swimmer just had one person to feed them. I was Kate’s designated person. Every two hours or so she would pick up a new feed at the Palace Pier from me – I’d throw the bottle into the water attached to a rope so I could haul it out again when she’d drunk it.’
‘Who did Bob Watts?’ Gilchrist said. ‘Just out of interest.’
Heap frowned.
‘I don’t know.’ He tapped on his iPad. ‘There’s no name on the call sheet. Christine Bromley had a woman called Janet Rule.’
‘And what do we know about her?’ Gilchrist said.
‘If I remember the name in the newspaper accurately, she was to be Bromley’s wife.’
Janet Rule lived in Hove. Gilchrist sent Sylvia Wade down to advise her that her fiancée had been murdered, while she called Watts and filled him in.
‘Who gave you your feed, by the way?’ she asked just before she rang off.
‘I tried an experiment as the water wasn’t so cold. I didn’t have a feed.’
‘At all? For six hours? But I thought—’
‘It’s an army thing,’ he said. ‘My training was all extreme stuff.’
‘And how did you feel after six hours.’
‘I felt fine. Now I feel like shit.’
Gilchrist was impatient. She called Heap over to sit with her.
‘So what have we got, Bellamy – aside from more lookalike bearded men than we know what to do with. Why haven’t you grown a beard?’
‘I’m fair-haired, ma’am. The one time I grew a beard, when I was a student, nobody noticed.’
Gilchrist smiled.
‘Roland Gulliver is murdered at night,’ she said. ‘At some point that evening a paunchy man has an altercation on the lido steps with a hipster who probably isn’t Derek Neill over somebody called Lesley.’
‘And Mr Bilson saw Roland Gulliver in conversation with a paunchy man in the sauna.’
‘There’s no security at the lido because Terry Dean has drunk too much. At some other point Gulliver is sharing a bottle of wine with a person unknown when Mrs Medavoy phones. At a further point he’s waterboarded somewhere, stabbed then dumped.’
‘The previous day he’s seen in the cemetery with a hipster who, according to Darrel, isn’t the same one who was having the argument at the lido,’ Heap said. ‘In fact this one he’s kissing and cuddling, according to Darrel. Neill agrees he was with Gulliver but has no comment about t
he kissing and cuddling.’
‘Kate identifies Derek Neill as one of the two men, along with Roland Gulliver, who rescues her from the aforementioned Darrel on an earlier occasion.’
‘So it’s possible, ma’am, that Darrel could be making up the kissing and cuddling to get back at Neill. We need to talk to Darrel again. But why are Gulliver and Neill meeting up a couple of times in the cemetery, which has been known to be a cottaging area from time to time?’
‘Then there is Christine Bromley,’ Gilchrist said. ‘No known connection to Roland Gulliver. Not part of Save Salthaven.’
‘In fact, rather, potentially in business with Alice Sutherland over the West Pier, who in turn is a major part of Save Salthaven – as she’s the big bad wolf the campaigners are trying to save Salthaven from. And her man, Philip Coates, her boots on the ground, is also drowned.’
‘In a swim organized, as is the Brighton one, by Derek Neill.’
‘Who has no known business links to either Bromley, other than through the swim, or Sutherland.’
‘There,’ Gilchrist said, leaning back. ‘Clear as mud now.’
She phoned Sylvia Wade and put it on the speaker so Heap could hear.
‘Ma’am?’ Wade said, her voice a little breathless. ‘Is anything wrong? I’ve just this second finished with Janet Rule.’
‘How was she?’
‘Devastated. She, of course, vehemently denies tampering with Christine’s bottle.’
‘Did she tamper with it not-so-vehemently?’
‘I think she is denying tampering of any sort.’
‘You actually asked her about it?’ Gilchrist said.
‘Not at all. The second I said, “Ms Bromley may have been murdered,” she blurted it out.’
‘Did she lose sight of the bottle? Was it swapped?’
‘Affirmative to the first. She was watching Ms Bromley. Then she had to go to the loo. She wasn’t expecting she’d “need to keep a close eye on a drink bottle”. End quote.’
‘OK but she remains the obvious suspect.’
‘If they were about to be married—’
‘I know what you’re saying, Sylvia – it’s only after marriage that you want to kill your partner.’
Heap butted in. ‘Actually, there is only her word for it they were going to get married. Find out if there’s anyone else to confirm that. And, Constable Wade?’
Swimming with the Dead Page 11