A Dark and Twisted Tide (6 page)

‘In the Thames?’ asked Anderson.

‘No offence, Sarge, but do I have to dignify that—’

‘Do you have any idea what you can catch in that river?’ asked Tulloch.

‘Yeah, there was that bloke, that comedian, what’s his name? Williams?’ said Stenning. ‘Swam the entire length of the river for charity. Got the raging trots after two days.’

‘I don’t swallow,’ said Lacey, her eyes hardening.

Anderson was leaning back in his chair, a big grin on his face. ‘So are we talking wetsuit, drysuit, or
Baywatch
-style red swimsuit?’

‘Inappropriate sexual banter, Sarge.’ Lacey got up to return the cups to the sink.

‘Lacey, that’s ridiculous,’ said Tulloch. ‘I can’t imagine anything more dangerous or irresponsible. You should know better.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ muttered Lacey, her back still to the others.

‘What did you just call me?’ Tulloch raised her voice.

‘I said yes, Ma’am,’ said Lacey.

‘No you didn’t, you called me Mum.’

‘Sorry, no disrespect intended.’

‘Oh, I’m used to it. But seriously, you swim on your own?’

‘I usually have someone with me, he’s just not very well at the moment.’

‘I’m not surprised. What has he got? Weil’s Disease?’

Lacey turned back to face them. ‘There’s a comedy club up the road from here. I can see if they have any free slots coming up. In the meantime, it made no difference to what happened this morning, but if you tell Mr Cook, I’ll be in serious bother.’

Tulloch was looking troubled. ‘It may not be as easy as that, Lacey. How often do you swim in the river?’

‘Only since I’ve been living on the boat, and when the weather’s warm enough. Only early morning or early evening, when the river traffic is light. And only at high tide. When it’s on its way in or out, the flow is just too strong for it to be safe.’ Lacey looked from one face to the next. ‘So, to anyone who doesn’t know the river, there’s no pattern at all. It would look entirely random.’

‘But to someone who does, it would be pretty predictable.’

Anderson was scratching behind his ear. ‘Hang on, you think someone meant Lacey to find the body?’

Lacey found a chair and sat down on it.

‘Was it tied round that pile or just caught round?’ asked Stenning.

‘The Marine Unit took photographs,’ said Tulloch. ‘I’ve been promised them later today. They should tell us how it was fastened.’

‘They won’t.’ Lacey threw up her hands in a surrender gesture. ‘I had a look. I went under. It wasn’t a bowline or a reef knot. On the other hand, it looked pretty secure. Basically, impossible to say one way or another.’

‘Do you always follow the same route?’ Tulloch asked.

Lacey nodded again. ‘We usually go up almost to Greenland Pier. But we stop a few yards short because it can get quite busy, even very early in the day. So we turn at the lock entrance to South Dock Marina and then head back.’

‘Were you on your way out or coming back when you found the corpse?’

‘Coming back.’ The realization hit Lacey. ‘It wasn’t there on the way out. I’d have seen it. Shit, it was left there for me, wasn’t it?’

Concern washed over Tulloch’s face. ‘Impossible to know. But for the time being, I’d feel a lot happier if you found a local pool for your early-morning constitutional.’

11

Lacey

‘
FIRST TIME IN
a sewer?’ asked Sergeant Wilson, as they approached the tunnel entrance.

‘It’s been a day of new experiences, Sarge,’ Lacey admitted.

As they drew closer, she glanced back at the middle-aged man with faded red hair who was steering the small dinghy. Fred Wilson was a Marine Unit veteran of some twenty years who’d pulled Lacey from the river a little under a year ago – and almost thrown her back, he’d been so furious with her for jumping in in the first place. Lacey always thought of Sergeant Wilson as Uncle Fred, because he was Uncle Fred to the man who’d introduced them. One day, she rather feared, she’d call him Uncle Fred to his face.

At the bow was Constable Finn Turner, mid twenties, six foot five, whose gaunt face and thin body fell just a raised eyebrow short of male-model gorgeousness.

Lacey caught hold of the rope-grip as the dinghy was tossed up by a wave. Being aboard small craft always gave her the feeling of being thrown around in a washing machine. On top of that, she was hot. The drysuits worn by the Marine Unit on wet operations were designed to keep their wearers warm. Out of the water, on hot days, warm became drippingly hot.

‘Not claustrophobic, are you?’ There was sweat beading at
Wilson’s temples and his face was even redder than normal. As a child, he would have been covered in freckles. In his mid fifties those freckles had merged into a tan.

Over Turner’s shoulder, Lacey looked at the gaping hole in the river wall and felt a tickle of anticipation. ‘I guess we’re about to find out,’ she said.

Wilson revved the engine, turned sharply towards the wall, and then Lacey and her two companions entered a long, narrow tunnel that ran under the City of London. The sounds of the Thames on a summer day faded as quickly as the heat and the light. As Wilson cut the engine to an idle, the three officers travelled further into a world few people in London knew existed, even though it was directly below their feet.

A world of strangely distorted sound, of darkness so intense as to be almost tangible, a world in which only your long-dormant sixth sense might tell you that danger was creeping up behind. The world beneath.

To her surprise, Lacey realized that something was gripping her chest, her breathing speeding up. Was this claustrophobia? Or just the hangover of a memory that needed a little longer to fade? Few people knew this twilight-coloured, subterranean London better than she. There had been times when beautifully engineered, brick-lined tunnels with decorative archways had been as familiar to her as streetlights and traffic signs are to most people. And then, not quite a year ago, in a tunnel very like this one, she’d almost lost everything.

She closed her eyes for a second in an attempt to throw off the sudden urge to jump from the dinghy and swim back towards the sunlight. When she opened them again, it was to see that, behind the sergeant’s solid frame, the world they’d left had become a small, hazy circle of light.

Turner turned on a powerful torch at the bow and then, taking that as a signal, all three officers switched on their helmet lights. Being able to see again helped.

At high tide the tunnel they were travelling along would be almost submerged, leaving no room for a boat with three living, breathing occupants. At low water, the river would retreat back
down the beach, leaving just a trickle of water flowing from the outlet. This was the optimum time to come in here.

On either side, low down on the arched walls, ran a narrow ledge that was just wide enough to walk along. Beneath them, the water was black, topped with foam, and it smelled of oil, of abandoned cellars, of the trapped water at the far corners of busy harbours.

‘I’m guessing trailing my hand over the side at this point probably isn’t the best idea,’ said Lacey.

‘The water in here won’t be any worse than the main river,’ the sergeant told her. ‘This is a storm drain, remember? We don’t discharge sewage directly into the Thames.’

‘Unless there’s been heavy rain,’ said Turner, ‘when all bets are off on what comes pouring out of here. You should probably wash your hands before you make the tea.’

‘What are we looking for, exactly?’ Lacey looked up at the perfect arch of the tunnel roof, seeing strange patterns formed by algal growth.

‘Items of a suspicious nature,’ said Wilson. ‘An explosion down here could take out half the financial district.’

‘Not everyone would see that as a bad thing.’

‘Ladder just ahead on the right, Sarge,’ said Turner.

Wilson slowed the boat to a halt. ‘You up for this, Finn, or do you want to send Lacey up?’

‘If she were wearing a skirt I’d be tempted, Sarge.’ Turner stood and reached for a narrow iron ladder that ran up the tunnel wall. ‘As it is, I don’t want to hang around while she gets an attack of the vapours.’

‘You do realize officers have been sacked for less than that?’ said Lacey, as Turner sprang from the boat. About ten feet above water level, the ladder disappeared into a narrow chimney. Soon they could only see the lower part of Turner’s legs.

‘What’s he doing?’ said Lacey.

‘Checking the manhole cover is still in place. Looking for any sign of it having been disturbed recently. Probably pushing it open an inch or so, just to make sure it’s still in working order.’

Lacey suppressed a giggle. ‘So right now, someone above us could be treated to the sight of Finn popping up like a meerkat?’

‘We’ve just got to hope he doesn’t get flattened by a passing car. You heard from our mutual friend lately?’

Lacey felt the familiar stab of excitement. Christ, just the mention of his name. Wilson was talking about Mark Joesbury, his nephew, Dana Tulloch’s best friend, and her – what exactly? She was still trying to figure it out.

‘Not since early April, Sarge. He’s away.’

Wilson gave a quick nod. He knew what ‘away’ meant. ‘Well, when you do hear, his mum wants to know where he put the barbecue tongs last time he was round and his brother needs a word about Lex Luthor.’

It was still something of a novelty, hearing about Joesbury’s family. ‘Lex Luthor?’

Wilson gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Don’t ask me, some daft code they invented when they were kids. Probably something to do with cash, given how rich Lex Luthor supposedly was.’

They heard the loud, dissonant clang of iron falling on to stone and Turner jumped back down. ‘Hasn’t been touched, Sarge,’ he said. ‘Had to give it a bloody good shove.’

‘So,’ said Wilson, as they set off again, ‘what’s the clever money saying about that body of yours?’

‘It’s my body now, is it?’ said Lacey. ‘The ancient maritime law of finders keepers.’

‘Nah, just the pervs at the station who like using the phrase “Lacey’s body”,’ chipped in Turner. ‘You know, “Have you seen Lacey’s body? . . . Lacey’s body’s getting a bit whiffy in this heat.”’

‘Where your reputation with women comes from is beyond me,’ said Lacey. ‘Do you actually have conversations with them?’

‘Never found it necessary.’

‘Are you OK about it, Lacey?’ The sergeant was suddenly serious.

‘I’m fine.’

He looked at her carefully for a moment, then nodded. ‘How likely are we to get an ID?’

‘I wouldn’t put money on it,’ admitted Lacey. ‘CID asked me to run a search of people still officially missing after supposedly going in the river. I found fourteen in the past three years.’

‘Doesn’t mean they’re all dead,’ said Wilson. ‘Some will have climbed out, wet and embarrassed, and hurried off home.’

‘And some will have been swept out to sea, never to be seen again,’ said Turner. ‘How many were young women?’

‘Two,’ said Lacey. ‘But neither fits the bill. One was a twenty-year-old Nigerian who was seen jumping from London Bridge, the other a bleached blonde who was fooling around on one of the embankment walls and went over.’

‘We don’t solve them all, you know,’ said Wilson. ‘I pulled one out myself a couple of years ago. Up Pimlico way. Young woman, almost completely skeletonized. Never did find out who she was or what happened to her.’

‘If you can be bothered, you could check the national Missing Persons List,’ said Turner. ‘Although it’s really a CID job.’

‘Already done it,’ said Lacey. ‘Massive number. But once I’d taken out those who were either too old, too young, the wrong ethnic group or the opposite sex, I was left with a hundred and two.’

‘It won’t take CID long to spot any possibilities.’ Wilson cut the engine again and Turner’s legs disappeared up a second ladder. ‘Then local forces can probably provide DNA samples for matching.’

Turner jumped back down and got into the boat. ‘You’re up for the next one,’ he told Lacey. ‘So, if she’s been reported missing, we’ll know who she was pretty soon?’

‘Dana will have it cracked by the end of the week. Brightest officer the Met’s had in years, that girl.’ Wilson moved them further into the tunnel.

‘Bit of a babe as well,’ said Turner, as they came to the next ladder and he reached out to hold the boat steady. ‘Do you think she just hasn’t met the right man yet?’

Lacey climbed on to the ladder.

‘Fucking Norah!’ Turner practically stuck his fist into his mouth. ‘Watch what you’re standing on!’

‘Sorry, Finn,’ said Lacey. ‘I guess my eyes haven’t quite adjusted yet.’

12

Dana

WHAT ON EARTH
possessed the woman to live here? thought Dana, not for the first time.

The tributaries of the tidal Thames had become urbanized over the last few hundred years, morphing into industrial docks with towering warehouses and commercial wharves. Deptford Creek, the name given to the last half-mile of the River Ravensbourne before it met the Thames at Deptford, flowed through a steel and concrete channel that was up to seven metres deep and in places seventy metres wide. Along its length, dark-brick buildings made the walls even higher. At high tide, it was full of water. Other times, it formed a vast, urban tunnel.

At the lock-up yard that was sometimes referred to, in a rather tongue-in-cheek way, as the Theatre Arm Marina, Dana crossed the concrete and found the ladder that would take her down to the twelve boats that were more or less permanently moored there, forming the biggest of Deptford’s houseboat communities.

A number of the boats’ residents were on deck, making the most of the fresher, cooler evening air. On a large, black-hulled boat in the middle of the rafting sat a young couple, a toddler curled up on the woman’s lap. Toys and baby paraphernalia lay scattered around the deck. People actually raised children here?
You wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off them for a second.

A train went by on the elevated section of the Docklands Light Railway that ran overhead. It was a busy line, and would provide an almost never-ending background of noise.