Swimming with the Dead

by Peter Guttridge

  ‘Yes, detective sergeant?’

  ‘Can you confirm that you informed her of a possible murder and not of a poisoning?’

  ‘Absolutely certain.’

  ‘I assumed so but which leads to the obvious question about how she knew the bottle was involved,’ Heap said.

  ‘I know,’ Wade said. ‘I thought I would be stepping beyond my remit – and possibly into a procedural quagmire – if I pursued that.’

  ‘Wise of you, Sylvia,’ Gilchrist said. ‘And well done.’

  Gilchrist tapped her teeth with her pen. ‘Did Ms Rule have anything else useful to say?’

  ‘Not a thing, aside from accusing Christine’s brother of committing the murder.’

  ‘Did she specify which one?’

  ‘She was a bit vague on that one.’

  Heap scratched his cheek. ‘Supposing this death has nothing to do with Christine Bromley’s family. Actually, supposing this death has nothing to do with Christine Bromley. What if she was randomly killed? What if, for kicks or some other sick notion, someone tampered with the first feed bottle they came across?’

  Gilchrist shook her head so hard it hurt.

  ‘No, no, no. Trust you to make it complicated, Bellamy. I like the idea of it being linked to the family. That’s proper. We can do proper police work based on that assumption. Someone killing randomly – that’s messy. It doesn’t have proper edges. I don’t like that at all.’

  ‘Ma’am.’

  She sighed. ‘Bilson mentioned in passing she might have been given somebody else’s feed. Somebody else altogether might have been the target.’

  Heap nodded slowly. ‘Sylvia, how are we getting along with the timeline for all of the swimmers and their supports?’

  ‘Slowly.’

  ‘We’d better start doing the background checks now on all of them rather than just the ones we thought might be of interest later.’

  ‘Ma’am.’

  Gilchrist turned to Heap. ‘Any thoughts about where you and I go now?’

  ‘Back to Janet Rule?’

  ‘Is Janet Rule Brighton based, Sylvia?’

  ‘A flat on the marina, ma’am.’

  ‘OK, but let’s start with the young brother James Bromley.’

  ‘I’ve already confirmed he’s in the office in Shoreham, ma’am. I’ll let them know we’re heading that way.’

  ‘Great – then when we go to interview Janet Rule we can go to the pictures afterwards, Bellamy. There’s that new Meryl Streep film on.’ Gilchrist saw Heap’s expression. ‘That was a joke, Bellamy.’

  ‘I’ve already seen it, ma’am. With Kate.’

  ‘Well, touché, detective sergeant. Touché.’

  ELEVEN

  The Bromleys HQ was just a little beyond the Ropetackle Arts Centre along the coast road to Worthing. James Bromley’s office was on the second floor with a magnificent view of the sea through a ceiling-to-floor window taking up a whole wall. However, he sat behind his desk with his back to the view.

  He had a lean and hungry look. The phrase popped into Gilchrist’s head and she was pleased with herself that she even knew its source. She had learned something at school.

  He was tall and broad-shouldered in a too-tight suit with the currently fashionable too-short jacket. His shoes were long and pointed. His cheekbones were almost sculpted, with hollows below them. He had an intense stare and a five o’clock shadow. He was striking, looking both incredibly ugly and incredibly handsome at the same time. Gilchrist found him utterly disconcerting.

  Condolences given and received, they sat in low chairs in front of his desk.

  ‘I’d find it hard to turn my back on that view,’ Gilchrist said cheerily.

  Bromley gave the smallest of smiles. ‘I’ve learned to turn my back on many things.’

  ‘I’m sorry to ask you invasive questions at such a time, but we need to progress this investigation as quickly as possible,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Sure, but I don’t have any proof it was Janet. I wasn’t there.’

  ‘You’re accusing Janet Rule of killing your sister?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘She was feeding her, wasn’t she? That’s what killed her, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Such information has not been released. Do you mind telling me what makes you think so?’

  Bromley snorted. ‘Janet phoned me and accused me of the crime. Told me I’d poisoned my sister’s feed. How did she know how my sister had died, do you think?’

  ‘Ms Rule said they were about to be married,’ Heap said.

  Bromley snorted again. ‘She would say that. First I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Were you close to your sister?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘On the whole.’

  ‘On the whole, sir?’ Heap said.

  ‘My sister was incredibly competitive. I’m somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. That could cause friction. This swimming …’

  ‘What about it?’ Gilchrist said when Bromley’s voice trailed away.

  He looked out of the window. ‘I run ultramarathons. That’s what I do, all over the world.’

  Gilchrist tilted her head. ‘Ultramarathons?’

  ‘Very long marathons,’ Heap murmured.

  ‘There’s nothing more exhilarating,’ Bromley said. ‘My sister couldn’t compete with that. So she decided to swim the Channel instead.’ He shook his head. ‘Take advantage of all that weight she’d put on after the attack.’

  Gilchrist and Heap looked at each other.

  ‘You’re going to have to unpack that, sir,’ Heap said.

  ‘The weight or the attack?’

  ‘Let’s focus on the attack,’ Gilchrist said.

  Bromley sat forward and clasped his hands on the table. His knuckles were blunt and a little battered, his fingers scabbed and scarred. He caught Gilchrist’s look.

  ‘I do free climbing too. Ramming your hands into crevices to bear your weight isn’t the best form of manicure.’ He cleared his throat but it sounded theatrical, not real. ‘My sister was raped about a year ago. You people never found who did it. Ever since she’s suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Which is why she was eating like a pig and acting mad as a bag of snakes.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ Gilchrist said, looking levelly at Bromley.

  ‘Oh indeed,’ he said, offering the palms of his hands. ‘Don’t get me wrong – it’s a terrible thing to happen to anyone and you feel it even more when it’s your sister. But it made her ungovernable.’ He looked from one to the other. He had the most intense stare. ‘You know about the recent nonsense?’

  ‘The workers’ cooperative?’ Heap said.

  Bromley nodded.

  ‘I mean, the idea was barking. “Hey, James, hey, Bernard, hey, Mum, care to hand over £60 million each to the people who work for us?”’

  ‘What was her reasoning?’ Heap said.

  Bromley flashed him an intense look.

  ‘There was no reasoning,’ he snorted. ‘That was the point. Janet Rule is full of this left-wing crap and they’d gone off to Argentina and checked out some large cattle cooperative there that’s a big success. Christine said it was a great model. And I’m sure it was. But why she has to use it for our family business I didn’t quite get.’

  He leaned back.

  ‘“Let’s each give all our shares to the staff – it’s only fair.” Well, excuse my language, but fuck fair. My father worked damned hard to build up this business and I’ll be damned if we’re going to hand it over to others without a fight.’

  He caught Gilchrist’s look.

  ‘I’m fully aware that gives me a motive to kill my sister but she was, when all is said and done, my sister and that’s not what relatives do.’

  Gilchrist tried not to raise an eyebrow. In her experience, that’s exactly what many relatives did. ‘But you were angry with her.’

  ‘Actually, no.’ He saw Gilchrist’s look. ‘Seriously. I was exaggerating for the sake of effect just now. Nobody was upset. All discussio
n was reasoned and calm from our side. My brother, mother and I had no animosity towards my sister.’

  Gilchrist raised an eyebrow. ‘I wish I took whatever your family takes to remain calm.’

  Bromley clasped his big, knobbly hands again. ‘We all recognized that she was ill. As I said, ever since the incident Christine had been suffering with PTSD. One consequence, I understand, is that to keep the demons at bay some people work non-stop. Christine was working sixteen-hour days, seven days a week. She burned out. Soon after our father died she had a total collapse.’

  ‘When was that?’ Heap said. ‘The death of your father, I mean, sir.’

  ‘About a year ago.’

  Bromley had an odd expression on his face.

  ‘He was a good age. Eighty-seven. He’d lived a good life.’

  ‘Even so,’ Heap said.

  ‘You and your father were close?’ Gilchrist said.

  Bromley wrinkled his nose in an oddly childlike way.

  ‘Close enough to know that he never, ever discussed our family business becoming a mutual in his entire life,’ he said. ‘Nor that the family should give up ownership.’

  ‘Might he have said it privately to Christine?’ Heap said.

  ‘Christine never claimed that,’ Bromley said.

  ‘Were they close?’

  Again that odd expression on Bromley’s face.

  ‘Oh, yes. He adored her: his only daughter, you know. He’d sometimes talk about the business with her when she was still in the sixth form at school.’

  ‘And with you?’ Gilchrist said.

  He smiled and shook his head.

  ‘Though in fairness I wasn’t interested. Football mad – and Nintendo, of course.’ He looked down. ‘Anyway, when she was at secondary school she’d work for the business during the school holidays.’

  ‘You did the same?’ Heap said.

  Bromley laughed. He had small pointed teeth, curved inward like a rodent.

  ‘I rather liked having holidays: you know, hanging out with my mates, trying not to get into too much trouble.’ He looked from one to the other of them. ‘I’m sure you would have been the same.’

  ‘No argument there,’ Gilchrist said. ‘So she was driven long before the sexual assault.’

  ‘I suppose she was always driven, yes. Anyway, the minute she left university my father made her deputy chairman. It was always understood that she’d succeed him.’

  ‘Was she the eldest?’

  ‘Actually, no. We’re the second family. My brother, Bernard, from my father’s first marriage, is ten years older.’

  ‘There was no discussion about Bernard taking over the family business?’ Heap said.

  ‘Not in my hearing,’ Bromley said.

  ‘What did Bernard think about that?’ Gilchrist said.

  Bromley showed his teeth again. ‘You’d have to ask him, Detective Inspector.’

  Heap had been scratching his ruddy cheek for a minute or so, each time leaving a white line that would quickly suffuse with blood. ‘Do you or your company have any dealings with Alice Sutherland and her Scarborough-based company?’ he said now.

  ‘I’ve heard of her, of course, but that kind of thing would be above my pay grade.’ He waved at his large office. ‘This is a kind of grace and favour thing. My father and my sister never really trusted me with any kind of real responsibility. Not that I wouldn’t be able to handle it – I’m an MBA – but that they wouldn’t want me to.’

  ‘Does the same go for Bernard?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Does the name Philip Coates mean anything?’

  Bromley shook his head.

  ‘Roland Gulliver?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Bromley was starting to look impatient. ‘These names are sounding kind of random.’

  ‘They’re not,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Where were you on the morning of the Brighton event?’

  ‘Running on the Downs with three buddies. Just a quickie between Lewes and Wollstenbury Hill. Then we had lunch in the Jack and Jill. Lots of witnesses there.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw your brother?’ Heap said.

  ‘Bernard? Couple of weeks ago. We’re not close.’

  ‘When did you last see your sister?’

  ‘Oh, in work the other day. Probably Friday.’

  ‘Before we go, would you just clarify what the situation was about the cooperative? With you and your brother opposing, presumably it couldn’t go ahead.’

  Bromley’s eyes glinted as he steepled his hands.

  ‘There are five people on the board, excluding Christine. Three were opposed, two in favour.’

  ‘So including her vote in favour it was a deadlock?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘She had two votes,’ Bromley said. ‘Which would be decisive.’

  ‘But she did find other people to favour the scheme,’ Heap said. ‘Who were those two?’

  Bromley grimaced. ‘Our finance director and the other union representative.’

  ‘The other union representative?’ Heap said.

  Bromley looked at him oddly. ‘In addition to Christine.’

  He saw Gilchrist’s frown. ‘Didn’t you know? Christine was both chairman and union delegate. That’s why she got two votes. Her two votes would have carried the scheme.’

  ‘How can the chairman of the company also be its union representative?’ Gilchrist said as they walked back to the car.

  Heap shook his head. ‘Nothing should surprise us with this company, ma’am. But it does seem like a conflict of interest.’

  ‘What did you make of him, Bellamy?’

  ‘Disconcertingly frank.’

  ‘Disconcerting, certainly,’ Gilchrist murmured. ‘Let’s do the mother next, then Bernard, the older brother.’

  Heap took a call from Sylvia Wade when they got in the car. ‘Janet Rule is home and happy to see us, ma’am.’

  ‘OK, let’s fit her in now.’

  Rule had a small flat overlooking one of the inner lagoons at the Marina. She was waiting at the lift doors when they opened on her floor.

  ‘Ms Rule, we’re sorry for your loss,’ Gilchrist said. ‘I’m DI Gilchrist and this is DS Heap.’ Heap nodded. ‘We just need to go over a few things.’

  ‘So you can blame it on the queer?’ Rule said as she led them down the corridor to her flat.

  ‘We adhere, quite rightly, to a strict code of LGBTQ+ conduct in this force,’ Gilchrist said, feeling prim as she said it. ‘This isn’t about the bottle of feed. It’s about your relationship with Ms Bromley.’

  Rule shut the door behind them as they entered the flat. She was about the same height as Heap, chunky, with spiky hair to go with her spiky manner. She had a tough look about her. She looked at Heap.

  ‘Is he always red-faced or is it because he’s never met a dyke before?’

  Both Gilchrist and Heap ignored the remark, though Heap might have blushed a little more.

  ‘If I may say, Ms Rule,’ Gilchrist said, ‘your hostile attitude is a little surprising since I would have thought we all want the same end – to apprehend the person who murdered Ms Bromley.’

  ‘Actually, I’d rather have her back, but I know that isn’t going to happen.’

  ‘How long had you known Ms Bromley?’ Heap said.

  ‘Is my answer going to help you apprehend the killer?’

  ‘Please, Ms Rule. We know you’re upset …’

  Janet Rule started to cry and Gilchrist saw beneath the bluster. Heap conjured up a neatly folded wodge of tissues and passed them to her.

  ‘They’ll disintegrate if you blow too hard and that could be messy for all of us,’ he said.

  Rule looked at him in surprise and snorted a laugh into a tissue. She wiped her nose and gave a couple of tiny blows, her eyes fixed on him.

  ‘We can’t be having that, can we?’ she said, her voice gentler.

  ‘Preferably not,’ Heap said.

  ‘Eighteen months, almost to the day,’ Rule said. ‘It was lov
e at first sight. We moved in together and I proposed and we were going to be married.’

  ‘We’ve heard reports that she was a bit all over the place, suffering from post-traumatic stress because of the attack on her. How did you find her?’

  Janet Rule blew her nose again.

  ‘Calm, actually. Calm and calming. Full of energy, full of ideas.’

  ‘Like turning the family business into a workers’ cooperative.’

  ‘That was just one of them. She wanted to go into politics. She was passionately against fracking, passionately for gender and LGBTQ+ rights.’ Rule gave a rueful smile. ‘She was passionate about life.’

  ‘Did she say how her family responded to her co-op proposals?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’ Rule rolled her thick shoulders. ‘When we got together she said the one area she wanted to keep private was the family business. It wasn’t something she wanted to talk about. Not to exclude me, she said, but because it would get in the way. I didn’t really understand but I went along with it. I assume you’ve talked to the family?’

  ‘We are about to.’

  ‘Bernard?’

  ‘In due course.’

  ‘I heard them having a blazing row a couple of weeks ago. It left Christine pretty shaken but she wouldn’t talk about it afterwards.’

  ‘You didn’t hear what the row was actually about?’ Heap said.

  Rule shook her head. ‘I saw him on the morning of the swim.’

  ‘Bernard Bromley?’

  Rule nodded.

  ‘You’ve met him then,’ Heap said. ‘Many times?’

  ‘Just the once. Christine took me to her mother’s birthday drinks thing at the family home in East Preston.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘The family didn’t take to me.’

  ‘They were rude?’

  ‘No, no – far too polite for that. James was charm personified. Bernard can’t do charm though – his mother’s genes, I suppose. He spent the entire couple of hours staring at me. Actually, I saw his stepmother discreetly chide him for it – she had noticed too, so I wasn’t imagining it. Let’s just say I’m not what they’re used to.’

  ‘You saw Bernard on the Palace Pier?’

  Rule shook her head.