Revenge of the Tide (5 page)

B
y the time it was daylight, the shock started to kick in. Josie, who had been a paramedic in a former life, sat with me in the saloon of the
Souvenir
and was keeping a close eye on me.

The police were on my boat.

Malcolm had called them. He and Josie had been the first ones to get to me, although not long after that the whole marina was awake and milling around in various states of undress, waiting for the police to arrive. They all took turns to look down the side of the boat with the torch, at the body. Eventually Malcolm had shouted at everyone to go to one place and wait for the police – they were contaminating the scene – and most of them went back to their boats.

One police car had arrived, and two patrol officers. We’d met them in the car park of the marina. The automatic lights still didn’t appear to be working, so it was dark and by that time I was shaking, shaking from head to foot. One of them asked me questions about what I’d seen and heard while the other one went to look.

I hadn’t cried. Instead I’d found myself making a sound that started out like a wail of panic, something I couldn’t control, a noise from somewhere inside which came from fear and horror at finding her like that; finding Caddy of all people, my beautiful Caddy. The noise went on and on, rising and fading again as I ran out of breath, while Josie held me against her bosom and shushed me and rocked me, and I held on to her.

When I’d calmed down again, they made me go with Sally and Josie to the
Souvenir
. More police cars came, and a motor boat came up the river with other police on it. They put some kind of net over the end of my boat and tied the other side of it to the pontoon, presumably so the body didn’t float off on the outgoing tide, although it didn’t seem to want to go anywhere. Now it was daylight, low tide, and I was sitting in the saloon with two blankets around me, one around my shoulders and the other across my knees, but even so I was shaking. I couldn’t stop thinking about how filthy my trainers were, and whether anyone would notice if I took them off.

People kept asking me questions, and to each of them I gave the answer, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’ I was only half-aware of all the people in the cabin, and people were talking about me as though I wasn’t there at all. In truth, my presence was mostly physical.

Caddy was dead. An accident? Had she tripped, somehow, in the darkness? Had she come to the party earlier, and I’d not realised? Had she fallen over, stumbled against something and hit her head on one of the posts? Why hadn’t I heard anything? Why hadn’t I noticed?

‘What’s happened?’ It was Roger. He’d managed to sleep through it all.

‘It’s a body in the water. Against the
Revenge of the Tide.
’

‘Is she alright?’ Malcolm’s voice.

‘She’ll be fine, I’m keeping my eye on her. She just needs a bit of peace and quiet for a while, that’s all.’

‘Genevieve?’

‘I said leave her alone, Malcolm, alright? Honestly, you should know better.’

‘I just wanted to ask her if she wants me to talk to the police for her, you know, kind of like a liaison…’

‘What’s she want a liaison for, you big twat? Honestly, she’s perfectly capable of speaking to the police when they need her to. Anyway, she didn’t see anything, she just found the body. Could have happened to any of us.’

‘Her boat’s nearest the river. It must have come down the river from Cuxton. Her boat’s the one that would catch it first if it came downstream.’

‘Who says it went in at Cuxton?’

‘I never said that. I said it must’ve come from the Cuxton side, that’s all. That’s where the last one came from, remember? That bloke that got stuck in the mud. Last Christmas.’

‘You’re wrong. The last one was that stupid fool who jumped off Aylesford bridge in the summer.’

‘That one ended up in Gillingham, not here.’

‘I
know
that, I was just saying, that was the last body.’

‘Why are you all arguing about it?’

This last voice was Sally’s. She’d been crying, off and on, not noisily but dabbing her eyes with a tissue, mourning someone she didn’t know.

They were all silent for a while.

I said, in a voice that sounded somehow different from my own, ‘Aren’t you going shopping?’

It felt as if they were all staring at me and my face grew hot.

‘Oh, don’t you worry yourself about that,’ Josie said. ‘We can go later.’

‘Shall I get you a drink, Genny? A cup of tea?’ Sally said.

She’d made one for me an hour ago. It was still there on the table, cold.

‘I don’t know,’ I said again. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘Wonder who she was,’ said Malcolm.

‘Let’s not talk about it any more,’ said Josie, patting me on the knee. ‘Plenty of other things to talk about, after all.’

But that didn’t work either. A man came down the stairs from the deck, a man in a suit. He had thinning grey hair cut short, dark eyes, a lined face.

‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Detective Sergeant Andy Basten. I’m looking for Genevieve Shipley?’

They all looked at him and then at me, despite themselves, and almost imperceptibly they all seemed to move a fraction closer to me as if to afford me some sort of protection.

He showed me his warrant card and his badge. The badge had rubbed against the card in the tatty leather wallet and you could hardly see his picture, let alone his name. He looked as though he liked a beer or two.

The
Souvenir
was a big boat, but not as big as the
Revenge of the Tide
,
and it felt crowded in the saloon with all these people.

‘We’ll – er – leave you to it, shall we?’ said Malcolm.

‘I’m staying here,’ Josie said, ‘unless she wants me to leave.’

I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to tell him to go away, the policeman; tell them all to go and leave us alone. I wanted to rewind to last night and that terrible, insistent noise and, instead of going to look, turn over and put my hands over my ears and go back to sleep.

‘I’m alright, Josie. Honest,’ I said at last.

They all went up on deck, leaving me there with the policeman.

‘This won’t take too long,’ he said. ‘Must have been a terrible shock for you.’

I nodded, rapidly. My head felt wobbly, as though it wasn’t connected to my body properly. ‘I was half-asleep. It woke me up very quickly when I realised what it was.’

He sat down on the armchair opposite me and took out a notebook. ‘I know you’ve been through all this with the officer earlier. I just want to check we’ve got things straight. You said you heard a noise?’

‘I heard a knocking on the side of the boat. It woke me up. I went to find out what it was.’

I was repeating myself already, babbling. My mind wasn’t functioning properly; it was working at least three beats behind my mouth.
Think. Concentrate. Don’t say anything. Don’t tell him anything.

‘That sort of thing happen often?’

‘No. Sometimes rubbish gets caught against the boat when the tide goes out. That’s what I thought it was.’

He nodded. ‘It’s a nice boat,’ he said. ‘Live there alone, do you?’

‘Yes. I’m renovating it. I had savings from my job in London. I’m taking a year out to do the boat up. I’ve been here five months already, I’ve done most of it by myself. All the cladding. The plumbing.’

I was rambling now, but he didn’t stop me. Just watched me with tired-looking eyes.

‘I’m sorry it was such a mess in there. We had a party last night. Why did you need to go in my boat, anyway?’

‘We’re finished with it now,’ he said. ‘Just needed to check it wasn’t part of the crime scene, that’s all. Birthday party, was it?’

‘Kind of a boat-warming, I guess. Some of my friends from London. Lots of people who live here.’ I indicated the marina with a vague sweep of my hand.

‘I’ll need to get you to write me a list. Everyone who was here last night. That okay?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you all had a good time? At the party?’

I nodded.

‘The woman you found,’ he said, ‘she wasn’t one of your party guests?’

I stared at him. ‘They all left. All the London lot. They all went early. I saw them leave the car park.’

His question had reminded me of something and, before he had a chance to ask me anything else, I said, ‘There was a car, last night. I’ve just remembered. In the car park. When I went outside to see what the knocking noise was, I heard a car driving off. I thought it was odd because it didn’t have its lights on and it was still dark. And the light’s supposed to come on in the car park, it’s on a motion sensor, and it didn’t work. The light didn’t come on.’

The sergeant was noting all this down and when I ran out of words he was still writing. ‘You didn’t see what sort of car it was? Registration number? Colour?’

‘It was dark. I mean the colour. That was all I could see.’

He nodded slowly, made another note.

‘Do you know who it is?’ I asked, trying to keep the trembling out of my voice.

‘You mean the body? Did you recognise her, Genevieve?’

‘No,’ I said, quickly. ‘I couldn’t really see the face, anyway. I just saw that it was a body and I started screaming.’

He didn’t say anything. He was looking at me curiously, as though he knew something I didn’t. As though I’d said something particularly interesting.

He’d written everything down, laboriously, on three sheets of lined A4 paper headed with various official titles, and he handed them to me. I looked at them blankly, at the rounded letters on the page, thinking how his handwriting was girlish, not what I’d expected at all.

‘I need you to sign it,’ he said.

‘What is it?’

‘Your statement. You need to read it through carefully and check that you agree with everything I’ve written. Then you need to sign the bottom of each page. There – see? And there.’

I read through it. He’d written it on my behalf, as though I’d done it myself. It was odd seeing my words summarised in that curiously rounded script. I kept thinking how I would have phrased it differently – ‘it was dark and I didn’t see the face of the person clearly’ – but I couldn’t bring myself to question it. I signed each page with a rough approximation of my signature and handed it back to him.

‘Can I go back to my boat now?’

‘Not just yet. We’ll come and find you when we’re ready, okay? Are you feeling alright?’

‘I think so.’ I unwrapped myself from the blankets slowly, as though I was peeling off bandages. My body ached as though I’d fallen over. I felt a wave of relief: maybe I’d got away with it.

‘We’ll come and talk to you again, maybe tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Can I take your phone number?’

I recited it to him. ‘I don’t think I can tell you any more,’ I said. ‘It woke me up, I went to look, and I found it. That’s it.’

‘Yes,’ he said, giving me his card.
Detective Sergeant Andrew Basten, Major Crime
. ‘But you never know. You might remember something else. Like the car in the car park. Your brain does funny things when you’ve had a shock; it’s like it only lets you remember one thing at a time.’

He led the way up the steps on to the deck of the
Souvenir
. Sally and Josie were sitting on the wooden bench, with Sally’s petunias and pelargoniums, just starting to look autumn-bedraggled, in pots around them.

‘Alright?’ said Josie when she saw me coming up the steps.

‘I’m fine. Thank you.’

‘You look terribly pale,’ said Sally.

Basten cleared his throat. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. ‘Let me know if you think of anything else in the meantime.’

He didn’t head for the car park; instead he climbed off the
Souvenir
and headed towards the pontoon where the
Revenge of the Tide
was moored. There were still lots of people around; crime scene tape fluttered across the start of the pontoon and he lifted it and ducked beneath it. At the end of the pontoon, two figures dressed in white boiler suits were on their hands and knees doing something. The whole area was illuminated by lights on metal rigging, as though they were preparing to make a movie. It was daylight, and yet still cloudy enough to make the lights necessary. I thought about what they were illuminating, down there, and shivered. The space between the end of the pontoon and the side of the hull was draped in a huge blue tarpaulin.

The tide was out now.

‘They’ve not taken anything away,’ said Sally. ‘I think the body must still be down there.’

Along with all the other cars in the car park, a black Transit van with ‘Private Ambulance’ in grey letters on the side had arrived. At the main gate, two police officers were standing guard to prevent vehicles entering or leaving.

‘I heard one of them say they were going to move it soon. Before the tide turns.’

We watched the activity as people came and went. The road filled up with spectators and a constable was stationed there to move people on. Then the press arrived, and spent the rest of the morning hanging around trying to take pictures of anything interesting. Sally made sandwiches. Josie ate two. I stared at them because I didn’t want to look at anything else. In the end I lay on the sofa in the saloon of the
Souvenir
and tried to sleep. I could hear them talking, on the deck, commenting on the action in the marina. I tried to block out the sounds, but they still came through.

What seemed like hours later, I heard Basten on the deck of the
Souvenir
, telling Sally that I could go, if I wanted to.

I went up to the deck but he’d already left.

‘He said you can go back,’ Sally said. ‘They’re still working down there but you can go back if you want to.’

I looked doubtfully down to the pontoon, where the
Revenge
was still surrounded by people in white boilersuits. Josie pulled me into a hug. She was big and warm and soft. ‘You poor girlie,’ she said into my hair. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll just go back to bed and try and get some sleep. I’m so tired.’