Swimming with the Dead

by Peter Guttridge

  Tingley doing what he did best: tracking a man down. With the help of a few contacts it didn’t take him long. Bernard Bromley’s timeline was laid out before him. Ticket to Thailand booked the day he flew but it was a regular trip for him anyway. Made three trips a year for the past three years. Always stayed on the same island, in the same hotel. Not apparently a paedophile with either girls or boys but enjoyed his grown-up adventures, both paid for and consensual. Except this year. This year he had scarcely left his room on the beach.

  Perhaps that was because it looked from the CCTV footage that he left England a little bruised and battered around the face.

  Tingley booked a ferry for later that day. He packed his snorkelling gear. The waters off the island were renowned for their reefs and exotic marine creatures. All work and no play and all that.

  Sylvia Wade was just putting her phone down when Gilchrist and Heap came into the office. She stood, as she always did when addressing Gilchrist.

  ‘Ma’am, the desk sergeant just phoned through. A drink driver was asking for you. Said you knew her.’ Gilchrist frowned. ‘She doesn’t want to spend a night in the cells and hopes you’ll let her go home. Says you’ll vouch that she’s been under a lot of pressure.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  Wade looked down at her pad.

  ‘An April Medavoy.’

  ‘Mrs Medavoy,’ Gilchrist murmured.

  Heap shrugged: ‘It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch.’

  ‘That’s what I keep telling people about you,’ Gilchrist said. ‘But Kate clearly took no notice.’

  Gilchrist dialled down to the desk and put her phone on speaker.

  ‘She’s being quite cantankerous, ma’am,’ the desk sergeant said. ‘Won’t let us swab her and is insistent she be allowed to take a taxi home.’

  ‘How pissed is she?’

  ‘Three times over the limit.’

  ‘Perfect time to interview her again,’ Heap said. Gilchrist gave him a look. ‘Only joking, ma’am. I know we absolutely can’t.’

  ‘A friend of hers just got murdered,’ Gilchrist said on the phone. ‘How did we get her?’

  ‘Driving erratically on King’s Road.’

  The road along the seafront.

  ‘Has she said anything about why she’s drunk. Has she just come from somewhere?’

  ‘A friend’s house.’

  ‘You’ve already booked her, of course.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘OK, tell her that if she cooperates with you she can go home in a taxi, if that’s OK with you. But first she has to tell us who the friend is – and she must have the swab. Explain that she has been arrested and everyone who has been arrested must be swabbed. Sorry, I realize I’m telling my granny how to suck eggs – it’s been a long day.’

  ‘I’ve never really fancied sucking eggs. Will do, ma’am. Leave it with me. Sorry you’ve been bothered.’

  Gilchrist turned to Heap. ‘I think the dodgy petition is a side-story, don’t you, Bellamy?’

  ‘I do. Especially as our techies have got the goods on Sting Ray so we can focus on him.’

  ‘Is it James Bromley?’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be neat? Alas, no. A new name for us. Raymond – see what he did there? – Newell. Currently, according to his Wi-Fi connection, sitting in the café of the new art-house cinema in Lewes.’

  ‘Isn’t that naughty, us knowing that.’

  ‘It’s out there, ma’am, for anyone to pick up.’

  ‘Lewes has a cinema now?’

  ‘Very nice. The Depot. Down near the station. I’ll get the locals to pick him up.’

  ‘Do we have a picture of him?’

  ‘Should have soon.’

  ‘Then let’s get back to Lewes.’

  At Lewes nick, after the usual official pleasantries about cooperation, Gilchrist and Heap were shown into a brightly lit, glossily painted interview room while Newell was sent for. Gilchrist was hoping for a tanned, paunchy guy with strong arms in his late forties. What she got was a tall, stringy man with not an ounce of fat on him, in well-worn trainers, singlet and shorts. He had a scrubby beard. His face was deeply lined. He looked agonized.

  ‘Thank you for coming in, Mr Newell.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware I had a choice.’

  ‘What have you been doing today?’

  ‘I spent two and a half hours cleaning a house at the top end of town. I don’t have a car so I rode my bike to get there.’

  ‘Healthy.

  ‘I prefer riding my bike, frankly.’

  ‘You cleaned a whole house?’

  ‘Just the kitchen. I was only there two and a half hours.’

  Gilchrist tried not to look at Heap. ‘Two and a half hours on a kitchen. How much did you get for that?’

  ‘They gave me £50 but I gave them £20 back.’

  ‘You hadn’t done a good job?’

  ‘I did an exemplary job. But I’m not sure they appreciated it so I was unable to take the full amount.’

  ‘Tell us about your running regime.’

  ‘Pre-accident?’

  ‘Unless you’ve been running with two broken feet.’

  ‘I used to run for results or to show off or to attract attention. But now I’m running for myself. To examine myself. To embrace the solitude.’

  ‘How was that going before your accident? Was the accident when you were going to, or heading from, the wood by the way?’

  Newell looked at her intently. ‘On the way there. It’s a Buddhist thing. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. It’s lifelong. I want it to be a moving meditation, meditating on me and on humanity, on the questions we all must face in the West. Maybe I’ll get a few answers, or at least a better understanding of the questions.’

  ‘So how far do you run?’

  ‘I was averaging thirty-six miles a week but I was aiming for hundred miles a week running, one hundred fifty cycling. I was sixty lbs overweight.’

  Gilchrist looked at the skinny man in front of him.

  ‘But you got rid of that.’

  ‘Thirty of it.’

  Gilchrist nodded slowly.

  ‘Why run so much?’

  ‘Only way to get strong, mentally and physically.’

  He really had intense eyes. In fact, everything about him was intense.

  ‘What kind of thing are you looking for in Buddhism?’ Heap said.

  ‘Look, when I first visited Brighton some years ago I spent six hours alone on the beach, counting the waves, allowing them to exist, listening to what they had to say.’

  ‘Allowing them to exist?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Did they have much to say?’ Heap said.

  Newell scowled. ‘We have become a mindless lot, consumed by numbers and accomplishments. Wouldn’t it be more telling to say that you had tea with your daughter and that later she told you she loved you? You don’t even realize how sweet a kiss can be, or a stroke of the neck, or sweeping up the street just so things can look nice. You could do better.’

  Gilchrist ignored his peroration. (She’d decided she liked that word.)

  ‘Do you have a thing about cleaning? Kitchens in particular?’

  ‘There’s something Zen about all labour,’ he said.

  ‘Tell us about your daughter,’ Heap said.

  ‘My daughter?’

  ‘You said you had tea with your daughter and she told you she loved you.’

  ‘I wasn’t referring to me. I was just saying wouldn’t that be something?’

  ‘There are always choices in life,’ Heap said, ‘but you made a good one by coming here and telling us about your meds.’

  ‘My meds?’ Newell said, looking off-balance.

  ‘When did you stop taking them?’

  ‘My meds?’

  ‘The lithium you take for your paranoid schizophrenia.’

  ‘I don’t have paranoid schizophrenia.’

  ‘Sorry – I’m using an old-fashioned term. I mean for your bipola
r disorder.’

  ‘I’m not bipolar. Who says I’m bipolar?’

  Heap picked up a sheet of paper. ‘According to Brighton hospital you’ve been admitted twice in the past three years for psychotic episodes. The police have been called to restrain you four times over the same period.’

  ‘I’ve got anger issues, I don’t mind admitting that,’ Newell said, chewing on the edge of his moustache. ‘Paranoid schizophrenia is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition. But it’s not in the fifth edition. It was dropped. You know why? Because nobody can figure out what it is. The American Psychological Association eliminated subtypes because they had limited diagnostic ability, low reliability and poor validity.’

  ‘You know a lot about it for someone who only has anger issues,’ Heap said. ‘We’ve seen your medical reports from the hospital. You have serious paranoid thoughts.’

  ‘Is that why I’m here? My thoughts? You’re the thought police?’

  ‘We’re here to ask you about the deaths of three people.’

  ‘Three among so many.’

  ‘What do you mean – there are more?’

  ‘I mean that as we’ve been speaking who knows how many thousands of people have died. And you’re concerned with three. You can’t see the wood for the trees.’

  ‘We see the wood is made of individual trees,’ Heap said. ‘And we value each and every one of those trees and how each grows in its own unfettered way. Whereas, if I understand you right, you like order in a wood – not a tree out of place and certainly none that have fallen down. In fact, in your life too – those streets you want to clean, those kitchens you want to make spotless.’

  ‘I knew somebody once who couldn’t make a meal until he’d cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom,’ Gilchrist said. ‘He invited me round for a romantic dinner but it wasn’t romantic at all since by the time he’d finished the kitchen stank of bleach, it was nearly midnight and it was time for me to go home.’

  ‘Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal,’ Newell said.

  ‘I’ll need to ponder that,’ Gilchrist said. ‘When did you first meet Rasa Lewis?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The woman you were taunting about her Jersey swim.’

  ‘I’ve never met her.’

  ‘This man?’ Heap said showing him a photograph of Roland Gulliver.

  ‘Don’t know him.’

  Photos of Christine Bromley and Philip Coates drew the same response.

  ‘Who are these people? What do they have in common? Why am I supposed to know them?’

  ‘Well, you know Rasa Lewis and Philip Coates virtually because you made threats to them in online fora,’ Heap said.

  ‘Forums to you,’ Gilchrist said, doubting that this man was up on Latin declensions.

  ‘I don’t notice the names of people attacking me on those things. And that other stuff you were saying about me tidying woods and shit. Where’d you get that from?’

  ‘Your own words,’ Heap said. ‘On one of your blogs.’

  Newell gave her his intense stare again.

  ‘Is there something you want to accuse me of?’ Newell said.

  ‘We’re building up to it,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Now we have the right to hold you for forty-eight hours without charge and we intend to exercise that right while we’re checking the things you’re about to tell us. That would be your whereabouts on certain dates and other boring but essential meat-and-potatoes stuff. But the sooner you furnish us with those details the sooner you can be out of here. If the facts check out, that is. If they don’t, well then it will get interesting for you.’

  The next morning Watts was in the Serpentine before the changing rooms had even opened. By the time he had done an hour, the changing room was crowded. Margaret Lively was there, already in her costume and swim hat.

  ‘How’s the algae?’ she said.

  ‘Flourishing,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Busy.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Working with a friend of yours, actually. He said to say hi.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘William Simpson.’

  ‘Really.’

  She smiled and leaned in. ‘I can’t tell from your tone what that “really” means. Listen, I have an invite to a book launch at Foyles early this evening. It’s a book about wild-water swimming. If you’re still up town would you like to come? Maybe supper afterwards?’

  ‘I’d like that,’ Watts said.

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘All of it.’

  ‘Let’s meet in Polpo at Cambridge Circus at six and go on from there,’ Margaret said, leaning further in to kiss him on the cheek. ‘I’d better go now and brave the briny deep.’

  Watts watched her go, her athletic body looking pretty sensational in her swimming costume. A beautiful young woman but he was thinking how cynical he was to agree to a date mostly to find out more about her connection to his erstwhile friend and more recent enemy, William Simpson.

  Gilchrist was woken from a heavy sleep by her phone ringing. Nothing new there. She was groggy. She and Heap had questioned Newell until after midnight.

  It was Lewes nick.

  ‘Hello, Gilchrist here.’

  ‘Sorry to disturb you so early, Detective Inspector.’

  Gilchrist focused on her bedside clock. Eight a.m. Not so early.

  ‘Has something happened to Newell?’ she said, her voice a little croaky.

  ‘Newell? Oh – no, no. But I believe a Ms Rasa Lewis – different spelling to the town – is a person of interest to your investigation.’

  Gilchrist was sitting up now.

  ‘She has been found dead in suspicious circumstances, ma’am. DI Mountain is in charge of the investigation and wonders if you would like to attend the scene of the crime.’

  ‘I certainly would, with my colleague DS Bellamy Heap accompanying me. Where is the scene of the crime?’

  ‘Her home address at—’

  ‘We have it. We were with her last night.’

  ‘Indeed, ma’am. Then DI Mountain will be particularly pleased to see you.’

  Tingley took a water taxi to Bernard Bromley’s hotel. Reception was by the jetty.

  ‘You’re here for Mr Bromley?’ the tiny woman at reception said. Tingley slipped a wad of money across the desk and she fluttered it instantly out of sight. ‘Fourth Cabin along the beach. Jacaranda. He has not been seen yet today.’

  Tingley hoisted his bag over his shoulder and stepped down onto the sand. He walked along the waterline, the warm water lapping his bare feet. The sea was flat, shimmering, opalescent. He saw the sign for Jacaranda hanging from the branch of that very tree outside the beach hut. He walked up to the entrance.

  ‘Hello,’ he called through the door. ‘Mr Bromley. Bernard Bromley. Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I’m here to get a witness statement from you.’

  No response. He tapped on the wood.

  ‘Mr Bromley?’ Nothing. ‘Mr Bromley, I’m coming in.’

  He turned the crude handle. He expected the door to be locked but it started to open. He put his face to the crack. ‘Mr Bromley? Then he smelled it. That unmistakeable iron tang of spilled blood. He pushed the door wide and stood in the doorway, his eyes adjusting to the gloom within. Silhouetted like that he was an easy target for anyone in the room with evil intent but he rather thought evil intent had been and gone.

  For there was Bernard Bromley, flat on his back on the bed, gouts of blood down his chin and the front of his shirt, with any chance of a witness statement as dead as the air around his lifeless body.

  DI Mountain was a short, peevish-looking woman who was professionally friendly but clearly didn’t much like Gilchrist towering over her, in any sense.

  ‘I hear you were at this house last night,’ she said, addressing Heap, who was more her size. ‘That might be a first: the police contaminate a crime scene before a crime has even be
en committed.’

  Gilchrist acknowledged the comment with a smile.

  ‘How did she die?’ she said.

  ‘Brutally.’

  ‘Do you know when yet?’ Heap said.

  ‘Before midnight. What time did you leave?’

  Gilchrist looked at Heap.

  ‘At 10.58,’ Heap said.

  ‘So the killer might have been watching and waiting for you to go.’

  ‘Bloody cheek,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Method of death?’

  ‘Beaten to death with some heavy implement laid across the side of her head. Then this weird, presumably post-mortem, thing. Her mouth has been stuffed with Jelly Babies. There were a load more scattered over the floor. Don’t know what that’s about.’

  ‘She’s a distance swimmer,’ Heap said. ‘Jelly Babies are a treat in the water because they taste nice, they’re easy to swallow so they don’t slow you down and they give you a sugar rush of energy.’

  Mountain looked at Gilchrist. ‘He’s handy to have around. I’ve heard about you two – Little and Large.’ She reached out a placatory hand before Gilchrist could respond. ‘You should try being my height with a name like Mountain.’ She gestured to the police and SOCO around them. ‘They think I don’t hear they call me Ain’t No.’ Gilchrist frowned. ‘As in “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”?’

  ‘“Ain’t no valley low enough,”’ Gilchrist murmured. Maybe this woman wasn’t so peevish after all.

  ‘So Ms Lewis figured in your current investigation as a witness.’

  ‘And now she’s part of it. Have you contacted any friends or family yet?’

  ‘We can’t find her phone to get contacts,’ Mountain said. ‘You got any?’

  ‘Derek Neill. They are business partners and more. He’s slap in the middle of our investigation too.’

  ‘Do you want to …?’

  ‘No, no. You need to talk to him about this. Bellamy here can fill you in on what we’ve got then we can liaise afterwards.’

  ‘You’re off?’ Mountain said.

  ‘Don’t think I can give you added value here until we know a bit more.’ She turned to Heap. ‘Brief DI Mountain, please, Bellamy. I’m going to see how DC Wade is getting on with Ray Newell’s various alibis.’

  SIXTEEN

  Jimmy Tingley called Bob Watts while Watts was splashing out on breakfast in Balthazar, the pretend turn-of-the-century French brasserie out of New York, which had opened in Covent Garden a few years earlier.