Swimming with the Dead

by Peter Guttridge

  ‘That’s thoughtful,’ Stanhope said reluctantly.

  ‘We wanted to ask you about something that happened six years ago. In Crete.’

  ‘I wondered when you’d get to that,’ Stanhope said, putting the coffee down on the table.

  ‘Well, you could have helped us get to it earlier,’ Gilchrist said mildly.

  ‘I see crime stuff on the telly. The police work in mysterious ways.’

  ‘What do you remember about the trip?’

  ‘How long have you got?’

  ‘Did you see any acts of violence?’

  ‘Of course. There were a couple of people wound way too tight.’

  ‘A couple of people? David Blue and …?’

  ‘Harry somebody.’

  ‘We don’t know about any Harry,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘He didn’t last long. Had some kind of breakdown. He was creepy. Always trying to grope you. He was a watcher. You’d suddenly see him peering in through your bedroom window.’

  ‘Harry who?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Was he a friend of Derek Neill?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘What about the death of Lesley White?’ Heap said.

  ‘She drowned.’

  ‘Surely not quite that,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Stanhope said.

  ‘Wasn’t she stung horribly by jellyfish? She died before you could reach help?’ Heap said.

  ‘I thought you were talking about Lesley White.’

  ‘We are,’ Gilchrist said, hoping if she took a sip of coffee Stanhope would follow suit and get her brain in gear.

  ‘The one with the headstone up in Woodvale?’ Stanhope continued.

  ‘Yes,’ Gilchrist said warily.

  ‘She drowned,’ Stanhope said. ‘Body never recovered as far as I’m aware.’

  ‘I think you might be mistaken, Ms Stanhope,’ Heap said.

  ‘Well, there are no certainties, it’s true,’ Stanhope said, finally taking a sip of her coffee. ‘As I now know only too well. Everything is fluid, even gender. But I’ve always assumed that grave was either empty or maybe had Genevra Flynn in it.’

  Derek Neill had mentioned a Genevra.

  ‘Who is Genevra Flynn?’ Gilchrist said, feeling a kind of free-falling sensation.

  ‘She’s the one who brought Harry along. She was on the rebound from her husband, Tim. He abandoned her. But he had always treated her like shit and really took away her confidence.’

  ‘You were friends?’

  ‘Acquaintances. Tim Flynn taught at Sussex – something obscure – and she worked in admin there.’

  ‘Had you met Harry before?’

  ‘Never. I knew she’d been with him a few months but our paths hadn’t crossed. She was still in a bad way though.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Heap said.

  ‘Well, she was pretty much the trip’s bike for a couple of days.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Anyone could ride her,’ Stanhope said, her mouth turning down. ‘And most of the men did.’

  ‘Is that why Harry got angry?’ Heap said.

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ Stanhope said.

  ‘Why would she be in Lesley White’s coffin?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Because she was the one stung to death by jellyfish.’

  NINETEEN

  When they had continued to question Stanhope it had transpired she had not seen Lesley White’s body when Derek Neill and Rasa Lewis rushed off to hospital with it. Nor had she witnessed Genevra Flynn drowning – or seen any evidence of it.

  ‘So how can you be so sure?’ Gilchrist had said.

  Stanhope looked puzzled.

  ‘I-I don’t know. With all that has happened my mind is very muddy.’ She looked at the ceiling. ‘I think Harry told me.’

  ‘Harry told you?’ Gilchrist said. ‘When?’

  ‘At the time. I think.’

  ‘We’re going to need more detail than that, Ms Stanhope,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘I’ve a vague memory of bumping into Harry on the quayside in Hania. I’d gone there for a night because it was all getting too much for me at the swimming retreat. I asked him where Genevra was and he said she’d been stung to death by jellyfish.’

  ‘When was this?’ Gilchrist said.

  Stanhope waved her hands.

  ‘Then,’ she said vaguely.

  ‘When exactly then?’

  ‘I think it was the day after the death.’ She flung her hands up. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be precise. Everything was such a muddle then and is even more of a muddle now.’

  With that the pair left Tamsin Stanhope and, on Gilchrist’s instructions, Heap parked on the promenade near the West Pier. Gilchrist looked out at the wildly churning sea. The wind buffeted the car.

  ‘I just needed a moment to discuss this with you, Bellamy. Our investigation seems to be careering out of control.’

  ‘Not out of control, ma’am, but we are getting a lot of new information in all at once. A very good idea to pause a moment and see where we are.’

  ‘What do you think about Stanhope saying Lesley White drowned and that it was this Genevra who was stung to death?’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t match anything David Blue said. And she couldn’t offer any kind of chapter or verse.’

  ‘I think this Harry has become a person of great interest, ma’am,’ Heap said, as rain began to pelt the windscreen.

  ‘And I think we need to speak to Derek Neill again,’ Gilchrist said, tapping his number into her mobile.

  The rain began to fall more heavily, rattling on the roof of the car, sluicing down the windscreen.

  ‘Who is Genevra Flynn, Mr Neill?’ Gilchrist almost shouted down the phone. ‘And Harry?’

  ‘Flynn – yes, that was the last name of the Genevra I told you about. Harry must have been her boyfriend. I think he was a kind of rebound for her from a marriage gone wrong. They were a couple who were just with us briefly.’

  ‘Just briefly because Genevra Flynn got stung to death by jellyfish?’

  ‘What? No! That was Lesley.’

  ‘We’ve been told Lesley drowned and her body was never recovered. That Genevra Flynn was the woman stung by jellyfish.’

  ‘Told by whom?’

  Gilchrist wondered whether to say. She didn’t need to.

  ‘Wait, let me guess. Tammy Stanhope, right? Jesus, that woman.’

  ‘She seemed very certain.’

  ‘Tammy only does certainties. Things are either black or white. She doesn’t do grey.’

  ‘So are you saying she’s mistaken or that there are shades of grey here?’

  ‘I’m saying her brain is one big shade of grey, though she’s too far gone to realize it.’

  ‘She seemed to be pretty lucid when we spoke to her,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Except for any detail to support her mad suppositions, I’ll bet.’

  Gilchrist didn’t respond. Then: ‘Why were Genevra and Harry only there a couple of days?’ she said.

  ‘Harry had a kind of meltdown and they both left.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Pretty much. Middle of the night stuff. They didn’t pay for their room.’

  ‘When was this in the itinerary of the stay?’

  ‘The night of the day Lesley was injured.’

  ‘Why is Tamsin Stanhope convinced that Lesley drowned and Genevra was stung to death?’

  ‘She’s confused. She was high most of the time she was there. She wasn’t even with us when Lesley was stung. She’d gone somewhere for a couple of days because it was all a bit much for her – I think it was the drugs that were really too much for her. She went to Hania, I think.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw Genevra?’

  ‘How can I be expected to remember that now? Give me a minute.’ Gilchrist watched the rain thumping on the promenade, sluicing onto the road. ‘Not on the day of Lesley’s
death, I’m pretty sure of that,’ Neill said. ‘It was pretty full on. That’s when Genevra and Harry slipped away.’

  ‘Ms Stanhope said most of the men slept with Genevra.’

  ‘Ha! What do you call that thing? Projection? Tamsin was fucking anything that moved. She was pretty hot in those days, in every sense.’

  ‘You had personal experience of that?’

  ‘I’ve already told you I did. And she got jealous when she heard I’d fucked Genevra. Thinking about it, that may have been why she went away for a bit.’

  ‘I thought you were married to Christine and had a thing about Rasa?’

  ‘So? We’re just talking about sex here. No biggie, right, DI Gilchrist?’

  Gilchrist felt herself flushing.

  ‘And Roland Gulliver knew what Tammy was up to?’

  ‘I don’t know if he knew but I know he wouldn’t have cared. He had a crush on Christine’s gay friend and I think he was having a thing with one of the Greek guys at the taverna. You know what the ancient Greek attitude to homosexuality was? If you’re the one doing it, it’s manly; if you’re on the receiving end, you’re a poof. I’m guessing Roland was the poof in that relationship.’

  ‘And Harry?’

  ‘OK, so you know what? I took Genevra into the shared bathroom for a bit of privacy – it was one of the few places in the taverna with a lock on it. I threw a towel on the bathroom floor to protect her arse but it was rubbed raw anyway by the time we’d finished.’

  ‘This is too much information, Mr Neill,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Not like a police officer to say that, DI Gilchrist. But what I’m saying has a point. What I didn’t know was that Harry, who was in their room right next door to the bathroom, could hear noises and voices, quiet as we tried to be and whispering as we were, coming through the wall while Genevra and me were at it.

  ‘Except, it turned out, he didn’t know they were coming from next door, he thought he was hearing voices or hallucinating voices coming out of the walls below his aural threshold and it drove him nuts, which he was worried he was anyway and this just seemed to confirm it. And it did tip him over the edge.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘We sedated him with Tamsin’s sleeping pills and locked him in one of the rooms. We didn’t know what else to do.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then he and Genevra did that moonlight flit. End of story.’

  ‘Did you keep in touch?’

  ‘Not likely.’

  ‘Never heard from either of them again?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘So why does Ms Stanhope think Genevra was the one stung to death by jellyfish?’

  ‘Search me. But she’s one hundred per cent mistaken, I can assure you.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you can remember the last name of this Harry?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘As we’ve been talking it has come to me. Mogford. I’m pretty sure he was called Harry Mogford.’

  Heap phoned Sylvia Wade to ask about the cars at the gym.

  ‘Has a Harry Mogford come up in the cross-check, DC Wade?’

  After a moment she said: ‘He has. Is he of significance, sir? Do you want his licence photo?’

  ‘Send it through. Where’s he living?’

  ‘Well, his licence is registered to an address in London but that might not be up to date.’

  ‘Let’s start with that. Contact the Home Office to see if she came back into this country. And somebody needs to check with the Greek embassy whether they keep immigration records of people coming in and out of that country. We know Genevra Flynn arrived in Crete. I hope for her sake that she also left.’

  TWENTY

  Harry Mogford sat in the Bull in Ditchling, contemplating the log fire and what he might do next. A famous actress was sitting with her back to the room on the other side of the fireplace. He’d heard she lived nearby. She was flanked by a couple of young men who giggled a lot. She glanced over to Mogford from time to time.

  Maybe his next project would be to make her his lover. Actresses, he knew from previous conquests, were pretty flaky. That vulnerable mix of ego and lack of self-esteem. He knew how to manipulate that.

  He’d always known how to manipulate. Except for that time in Crete, six years ago, when he’d totally lost it. Cocaine just didn’t suit him, as he’d discovered too late.

  The details either side of his breakdown on the island of Crete were crystal clear. When that bitch had been stung by jellyfish and everyone had rushed her off to get help, he had a detailed memory of leaving the bay in a borrowed boat with Genevra.

  He had a detailed memory of where he landed alone in Hania. He’d intended to stay there a few days – he’d heard it was really nice. But then he’d bumped into that hot Tammy bitch he’d been sneaking looks at – great tits – on the quayside. He’d given her some jive about where Genevra was – he couldn’t even remember what he’d said – but then thought he’d better get out of Crete.

  But he’d never forgotten that bunch of creeps. He blamed them all for what had happened to Genevra. His involvement was merely incidental. She’d jumped out of the frigging boat when he was just trying to have a discussion with her. She was high but, even so, what was that about? He hadn’t put his hands on her, not really, even though she was driving him mad and he was so pissed off with her that she’d been sleeping with most, if not all, of the men.

  He was a patient man. These last six years he’d been making a good living in America. Real estate. Can’t go wrong with that. But he had this axiom. Never forget; never forgive.

  He sipped his beer. The movie star was getting up to leave. She cast one last glance his way. He grinned and she turned away. She was a shapely woman in her forties, very sexy. He watched her exit the pub and inhaled the sweet, smoky smell of whatever wood had just been put on the fire. Apple, perhaps. He went out to the car park. He would drive into Brighton over the Ditchling Beacon. It was time to finish the job.

  ‘I’ve found Harry Mogford, ma’am,’ Sylvia Wade said to Gilchrist. ‘He doesn’t still live at the address on his driving licence but we’ve traced him to an address in Brighton just off the Ditchling Road.’

  ‘Send someone to invite him in for questioning.’

  When a couple of constables delivered him, they reported to Gilchrist that Mogford hadn’t seemed unduly surprised and had come willingly to the station. He had strong arms and a paunch and fitted the description, such as it was, that Bilson had given of the man in the sauna with Roland Gulliver.

  In the interview room Mogford seemed very confident. He pointed at Barnaby.

  ‘Don’t let anyone give you any shit about being short,’ he said to him. ‘It was the tall men who died first in prisoner-of-war camps. You know why? The guards were usually shorter than them and liked humiliating them – they treated them worse. Plus they had less fat on them so they starved quicker.’ He shrugged. ‘Mind you, not that you’ve got much spare flesh on you.’ He pointed at Gilchrist. ‘Not like you darling. Mind, I’d still give you one, hefty as you are.’

  ‘We want to ask you about Genevra Flynn,’ Heap said. Gilchrist looked across at Heap. Interesting angle to go in on. Of course, she should have asked the first question but she understood why Heap had leapt in, bless him. She sucked in her stomach.

  ‘Who?’ Mogford said.

  ‘Your girlfriend who drowned in Crete on the swimming holiday you were on several years ago. You left abruptly.’

  Mogford scratched his head. He’d definitely been working on his biceps. ‘Is this a request from the Greek police? Because otherwise I can’t quite see what jurisdiction you’re in or why you have a right to ask such a question.’

  ‘Do you know a Genevra Flynn?’ Heap persisted.

  ‘I’d have to give you the same reply,’ Mogford said. He looked at Gilchrist.

  ‘What about Christine Bromley?’ Heap said.

  ‘I think I might have given her one but that period of my life
is a bit hazy.’

  ‘Roland Gulliver?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘A bloke? I know I live in Brighton but I definitely wouldn’t have given him one. I don’t mind the odd bit of anal but it’s definitely with the opposite sex.’

  ‘We’re talking about their deaths,’ Gilchrist said. ‘And those of Philip Coates and Rasa Lewis.’

  ‘These are all linked?’ Mogford said. ‘Somebody has been a busy bee, haven’t they?’

  ‘We have evidence you have had encounters with each of these people recently.’

  ‘Encounters of the Third Kind?’ Mogford asked.

  Gilchrist didn’t immediately get the reference but Heap clearly did.

  ‘Those encounters were benign as I recall, Mr Mogford. These are more murderous.’

  ‘I’m a businessman, not a murderer.’

  ‘What kind of business are you in, Mr Mogford?’

  ‘Refurbishment.’

  ‘Swimming pools and such?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘More the “and such”,’ he said. ‘I relocated down here originally to get involved with redeveloping the West Pier. That didn’t work out when the council went for the i360 but I thought I would stay.’

  ‘Were you part of a conglomerate?’ Heap said.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t going to do it all on my bloody ownsome, was I?’

  ‘With William Simpson?’ Heap said equably.

  ‘Among others,’ Mogford said.

  ‘Have you known William Simpson long?’

  ‘A little while,’ Mogford said, wary for the first time.

  ‘Derek Neill?’ Heap said.

  ‘I think I went on one of his beach holidays once. One out of your jurisdiction.’

  ‘You seem enormously concerned about jurisdictions,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘I used to be a copyright lawyer in America. Jurisdiction is everything in that business.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Entrepreneur.’

  ‘Were you surprised to see Roland Gulliver in the sauna at the Sussex Health Club?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Who says I did?’

  ‘An unimpeachable witness,’ she said, adding the lie, ‘backed up by CCTV images.’