Strange Tide (17 page)

He'd tell me off for thinking like this
, she reminded herself, making tea and settling at her terminal, determined to concentrate on today's subject: the last days of Lynsey Dalladay. Bryant had been right about the parents. They had been anxious to distance themselves from their daughter. It was as if by dying she had finally found a way to publicly blame them for the way she had lived.

She scanned Dan Banbury's summary of the crime scene. Only one set of footprints leading across the beach. No CCTVs covering the river. A lone homegoing witness who had heard a cry but thought nothing of it. Why? ‘Because there's always someone screaming around here – the pubs were turning out.'
Fair enough
, she thought,
there isn't much to be learned from her death so the answer lies somewhere in her life.

The phone log showed that Freddie Cooper had already called this morning to ask about the status of the case. She wondered if anyone had informed him about the paternity result, and called him back.

‘I went down there,' he said before she could give him the news.

‘Down where, to the river?'

‘To the spot where you say you found her. I thought I might see something.'

‘Like what?'

‘Hey, I don't know. Something that would explain why he took her there. She liked the river. She couldn't swim. Maybe she wanted to go for a walk and asked him along for company. Maybe he was just a stranger and they got into an argument. She could be incredibly stroppy. He might have just lashed out—'

‘Mr Cooper, she was shackled to the remains of a concrete post. It was premeditated. I'm sending you over a photo of the chain that was locked around her wrist. Take a look at it and tell me if you've ever seen it before. And we have your results back. You're not the father of her child.'

‘I told you I already knew that.'

‘We needed proof. You still don't have any idea where she went or who she was seeing?'

‘She made new friends all the time, then dropped them.'

‘You said she partied a lot. You also said she spent time trying to find herself. Did she belong to any groups?'

‘She tried AA, a couple of religious things – those people who have the happy-clappy place in Finsbury Park – not a cult, but not far off. Some mystical societies, getting in touch with the elements and your inner child. When I first met her she told me she'd been a water goddess in a past life. I should have been warned off right then.'

As Cooper was keen to help, Longbright gave him a series of questions to answer and told him to call back. Dan Banbury arrived in a yellow plastic rain hood with a Mumsnet logo on the side. ‘It's just started bucketing down out there. I had to borrow this from the missus,' he said, slapping it against the radiator.

‘Did you have any luck with the chain?' Longbright asked. ‘Cooper says she didn't wear one.'

‘It's solid silver, not made here,' Banbury replied. ‘There's a hallmark – 84, the outline of a woman's head and the initials PT. That's not someone's name, it's an assayer's mark that was stamped on imported Russian silver. There's also a little triangle – a delta symbol standing for “Moscow”. The links can only be opened if you know the trick, so she had no chance of getting it off. It's quite old, maybe as early as 1920s. However, they're fairly common and can be picked up in jewellery markets around the world. The crescent moon makes it a narrower search. There's something else. The red bus, Golden Dreams, the one Mr Bryant mentioned, it just paid off.'

‘I'm not with you,' said Longbright, correcting her notes from Cooper's conversation.

‘The old man was right. It parks outside the Tower of London every weekend. It's an Anglo-Japanese company used by tourists from Tokyo and Kyoto, and of course they all have good cameras, Go-Pros, selfie sticks, you name it. I started running checks last night. They're all in the same hotel, and very helpful. I found a couple who went down to the water's edge late on Sunday night to take some shots. Look at what they came up with.'

He plugged a USB stick into the back of Longbright's screen and opened the file. The flashlit shots showed the foreshore and the glittering black water beyond. At a distance of about two metres into the water was a dark, ragged hump. To the tourists it would have looked like a rock, but Longbright knew from the position that it had to be Dalladay's body. It exactly matched Giles's shots from the following morning.

‘They must have arrived there just after she'd drowned,' said Dan. ‘There's no depth. You can almost see through the water. They were trying to take shots of themselves against the skyline with the selfie stick but you know how difficult it is to hold those things still. See what they got instead?'

Longbright spotted it at once. ‘That's not possible,' she said. ‘Those are her footprints?'

‘Let's have a look.' He magnified the shot as much as he could. ‘You can see that they're going the wrong way. They're leading down to the water's edge.' The photographs clearly showed a single track of trainer-prints going to the stanchion, and none coming back.

‘Where the hell are the rest of the footprints?' asked Longbright. ‘That sand looks soft enough to have picked them up. What are we dealing with, the Invisible Man?'

For once the crime scene manager was at a loss for words.

‘You want to know how I think? It's very simple,' said Bryant, allowing his worn silver pocket watch to turn on its chain. ‘Do you know why I keep this?'

‘As your every move is a mystery to me, no,' said May, leaning back in his chair. ‘You told me it hasn't worked since the old king died.'

‘And indeed it has not, which at least means it tells the correct time twice a day. It belonged to my grandfather on my mother's side. Look.' He picked open the back and revealed some tiny, illegible scrollwork. ‘It was supposed to be presented to him for long service. They handed out a silver watch to any employee who lasted fifty years in the same government department. He started there when he was sixteen and left when ill health drove him out at sixty-five. But that was after forty-nine years and eleven months. So they said no, you can't have a long-service pocket watch, you weren't here for the full fifty years. My mother was furious. She put on her best coat, jumped on the first tram that came along and went up to Whitehall, where she had a word with his boss. She never told anyone what was said, but the very next morning my granddad was given the watch. On his way home after the presentation the old man dropped dead in the Whitechapel Road. You would have thought his heart had been wired to the lights in his office. The watch landed in the gutter and never worked again. My mother said she kept it to remind herself of what happens to London's invisible, loyal workers.'

May shrugged, puzzled. ‘Well, that's a fantastically depressing story. Am I supposed to attach a moral to it?'

‘The city rewards the ambitious and dumps on everyone else,' said Bryant. ‘For half a century my grandfather did exactly what he was told, and at the end of it they tried to gyp him out of a cheap silver-plated watch. That's why my father never held down a steady job. He hung around the streets of Whitechapel doing a favour here and there, scoring a few bob whenever he was short of beer money. If you just keep your head down and do what's expected of you, you vanish and get less than nothing. If you want anything more, you have to stand up and make yourself visible. Our victim, Lynsey Dalladay – we know nothing about her so far except that she was “lost” and attractive and got pregnant. Do you see my point?'

‘I want to say yes,' May began, ‘but . . .' He waved his hands at the air.

‘She wasn't ambitious, but she stepped in the way of someone who was. A pregnant girl in a skanky club with a history of unpredictable behaviour explains that she wants to keep her lover's child, and that's why he gets rid of her. She blocks his path and puts his future at risk. Do you understand now?'

May sat down on the edge of his desk, amazed. ‘Do you know, that's the first time in all our years together that you've even come close to explaining how your brain works? I can see the kind of person we're looking for.'

‘Exactly,' said Bryant with a shrug. ‘I told you it was very simple.'

The auditorium was over half full; not bad for mid-week. It had been built as a concert hall, then converted to a nightclub, an African temperance hall, a recording studio, an Indian disco and now a council-leased community centre. The audience could see the new red curtains and gold paintwork coating an art deco sunburst, but if they looked any higher they'd spot the peeling paintwork on the ceiling and the damp patches at the back of the upper circle.

Cassie looked out from her position behind the mixing desk at the top of the hall and flicked the switch on the black plastic box at her hip.

‘We need to run another sound check,' she said. ‘I was picking up static every time your lapel moved last night.'

‘There's no time,' said the voice in her ear. ‘Just give me the rundown.'

‘OK, who are you going to use as a spirit guide?'

‘I thought I might switch between Hiawatha and Dr Millingen.'

‘Who's he?'

‘The physician who brought back Lord Byron's body from Greece.'

‘How do you even know about something like that?'

There was a crackle as Ali fiddled with the earpiece. ‘I read a lot about the English. You should try it sometime.'

‘OK, which section do you want me to start with?'

‘How about something easy near the front centre aisle, then we can skip further back and go for more detail.'

‘All right, C-12, overweight female, red jacket, lives in Streatham, bad lower back. She's scared of having an operation on her spine. D-17, elderly female, grey sweater and scarf, Lewisham. She has trouble walking, left leg, probably related to a car accident she had a few years ago. E-8, middle-aged male, black leather coat, Deptford, thinks his grandson is on drugs – how many do you want to do in one go?'

‘Let me try for six or seven. You can give me a prompt.' They had a signal for that: if he got stuck, Ali took two half-steps across the stage instead of a single full stride.

‘OK,' said Cassie, ‘let's take it up a notch. L-20, overweight male, pale blue shirt, started drinking heavily after his wife died and had to have his left leg amputated.'

‘I can't promise his leg will grow back.'

Cassie laughed. ‘No, but you could tell him to lay off the booze. Say that the Lord says—'

‘I'm not bringing religion into it, Cassie. We had an agreement.'

‘If you did, we could get a wider range of venues. I'm just saying, that's all. N-6, little boy—'

‘I told you no kids. Keep the ages above forty.'

‘All right, P-22, older female, fluffy pink sweater, worried that her mother's cancer has come back.'

‘Give me a couple more.'

‘A-9, middle-aged black female in orchid-print dress and big glasses, depressed because her husband Ronald died of a respiratory illness last month. Want to try a tougher one?'

‘Bring it on.'

‘Back row, end seat, I don't have the number. Young male, checked shirt, defensive, arms folded. His wife made him come along. He's been tweeting a lot about dental problems, either the bills or the work he's had done. Do you want that?'

‘Do I have to look inside his mouth?'

‘See if you can make him smile for me.'

‘I'm on it.'

Ali took a deep breath, stepped on to the stage and raised his hands. The rounds of applause had been steadily growing over the past month. Their tour around the North Circular halls and concert venues was starting to attract regular followers. Cassie made a note to renegotiate their performance fee.

London has a unique quality that is hardly ever spoken of. If you look in the crowds and find someone who appears to be the most complete Londoner you can imagine, an almost parodic image of someone born within the sound of Bow bells or the clubs of Westminster, listen until you hear them speak and you'll often find they've been assimilated from a far-off place. The city attracts those who aspire to it. But listening to Ali gave away no clues to his origin. He was remaking himself so completely that no remnant of his past survived.

‘I'm feeling a wave of pain here from somewhere in the third row,' said Ali, hovering his hand over the seats like a metal detector. ‘The lady in the red jacket, you've come here from quite nearby today – Streatham, I'm guessing, because it's just a short bus-ride away? You can't go far, can you? You feel every jolt and bump in the base of your spine, right here.' As soon as he saw her nodding, anticipating his words, he pressed the same spot on his own back, sympathizing with her pain.

‘This may not work but let's try,' he said, suddenly vaulting down from the stage with his legs together, landing so nimbly that the crowd gasped. ‘Violet, is that your name? Don't be alarmed, it's not mind-reading. I overheard your friend sitting next to you – I wouldn't want you to think that I was cheating or making things up.' The crowd relaxed in approval.
Nice touch
, Cassie thought.
He always tells me to remember they're not stupid.