Strange Tide (6 page)

‘How can you tell the period?' May asked.

‘Post-war concrete.' The CSM held up a fragment of wet cement and rubbed it in his fingers, watching it dissolve. ‘The good stuff was in short supply so they bulked it up with pebbles and shale. You don't think she was chained here alive, do you?'

‘God, I hope not. I wouldn't want to die by ingesting this stuff.'

‘Our noble Mayor says the Thames is clean now.'

‘I think it's safe to say that drowning in it would still be a fairly unpleasant experience. What a lonely, miserable death.' May frowned. The ghost of an idea had formed.

Banbury fought the breeze and erected the tent. ‘If I get this logged in the next half-hour you can whip her straight over to Giles and he can run tests on her lungs.'

‘Punishment.'

‘Sorry?'

‘Isn't that what it feels like to you?' May pointed at the position of the body. ‘Chaining someone to a post in a public place and letting them die? It's almost a tradition in this part of the city. Smithfield is just behind us. Thousands died there. Like putting someone in the stocks.'

‘You're talking about centuries ago,' said Banbury. ‘Don't start sounding like Mr Bryant.'

‘Somebody has to, now that he's not around.' May rose unsteadily to his feet and stretched his tight spine. The November air was damp and cruel to older bones. ‘If she was still alive when she was chained up, why didn't she cry out? You'd think somebody might have heard her.'

‘Why would they?' Banbury wrestled with a telescopic leg. ‘It's deserted around here after midnight, and if you go back a bit there's the noise of all-night traffic on the A3211. Maybe she did scream and there was nobody to hear her.' As if on cue, a shriek of laughter came from somewhere on the walkway – the sound of children was rare in this part of the city.

‘A good spot for a murder, if you can reach it.' May studied the few boats that traversed the greenish-brown expanse ahead of him. ‘I don't suppose there's any CCTV on the river itself, or the foreshores. But there must be on Lower Thames Street and at the entrances to the underpasses. Know what I'd do if I wanted to kill someone here? Strangle them in the middle of the subway, out of the sight of cameras, lift the body over that steel gate – causing the contusion on the back of the head – then drag them down to the beach.'

‘Then you wouldn't make a very good murderer,' said Banbury. ‘Why not leave her in the subway? And you're going to toss a dead weight over an eight-foot gate? Why go out of your way to make things complicated?'

May shrugged. ‘You're right, we're missing something. After I've got her off to St Pancras, see what you can turn up in the way of video footage. Can you make—' He stopped and turned. ‘Wait, that's no good.'

‘What?' Banbury rose and followed May's eyeline.

‘I was going to say can you make casts, but there shouldn't be anything to make a cast from.' The sand had dried a little while the tide was out, but the high water table and the deep green shadows would ensure that it remained permanently damp, even in the height of summer. The same ancient mix of sand and clay had preserved the most unlikely items all along this part of the Thames, from the phallic silver brothel-brooches of Southwark's whores to a single banana found in 1999, which had been discovered lying whole under the waterlogged beach and dated back to 1560, a full century before the fruit was ever known to be exported to Britain.

Banbury heard nothing more and looked up. ‘Sorry, John, not with you.'

May pointed down at a faint wavering line of crescent indentations in the sand, leading from the embankment wall to the concrete stanchion. ‘You don't think they could still be the remains of footprints?' He tried to see where they ended.

‘Why would there be any prints at all?' asked Banbury, checking his watch. ‘It's past noon. The tide's been in and gone out again.'

May headed to the edge and bent down, placing his fingers in the water to feel its pressure against them. ‘Maybe there weren't many waves last night. There's no river traffic passing near here. The Tower's restricted and boats can't get in close because the pier's in the way.'

‘But there's still the current, John. I would have thought it would wash out most of the markings.'

‘The tidal flow must be less pronounced in this stretch. Look at the rise in the shoreline. There's a hump left by the residue of the old Tower Beach.' A row of seagulls regarded May insolently. One of them was pulling at something best left unexamined. ‘They didn't take the sand away when they closed it, they just left it where it was, so the water washes around it. Those marks – OK, there are no details left but they're definitely prints from a small shoe size.'

‘If they're the remains of hers, where are his?' asked Banbury. ‘How did he get her down here? I mean, seriously? It would be impossible. If she was already dead he would have had to drag her right across the forecourt to the offices, get her through the building and out of the back. Either that or over that gate beside the stone house. Come to think of it, if she was alive he'd have had the same problem.' He stood and stretched his back. The cold river air was getting to him as well.

May felt a chill. ‘The water at the front, the wall at the back, one set of prints, it doesn't make sense.'

‘There's something else about these prints,' said Banbury. ‘The heavy indentation is the heel. They're facing towards the waterline, as if she went down there alone.'

May traced the route with his raised hand. ‘If she was alive he could have rendered her unconscious on the staircase and carried her out on to the strand.'

‘What, you think they had a fight on the embankment and he knocked her out by reaching around to the back of her head with something long and heavy? Without anyone seeing or hearing a thing? Even though it's empty, this section of the river walk is still pretty exposed. There's usually a bit of foot traffic nearby.' Banbury turned and stared back at the green staves supporting the embankment like animal ribs. ‘You might be able to see it from the next reach.'

‘But not at night.'

‘Even so, you'd think
someone
would have noticed them.' He took out a fresh packet of gloves and tore it open. ‘The last time I walked down this new stretch was after a mate's birthday. I thought I'd take a look at the commemorative poppies in the Tower of London moat. It must have been around midnight. I don't really remember, I wasn't exactly sober.'

‘Why would you have come down this bit?' asked May. ‘It doesn't lead anywhere.'

‘Oh, I probably needed a wee. It certainly wasn't for the view. Apart from the police launches there were only one or two private vessels moored along the reaches of the river. Maybe she was already on the shore, and he came in by boat and surprised her.'

‘God, Dan, I hope there's a simpler explanation than that.' May sighed. ‘I wish Arthur was here.' Working without his partner was like having his hands tied behind his back.

Above them, an ambulance had arrived. As its crew disembarked, one of the EMTs came to the railing and called out, ‘How do we get down there?'

‘You have to go through the office building to your right,' May shouted back. The pair stood beside the tent waiting for the emergency team. They might have been extras on location, waiting for the director to go for a take.

‘John, before they get here, can I ask you something?' said Banbury, concerned.

‘If it's about—'

‘You know who it's about. Is he coming back?'

‘I don't see how he can.' May glanced down at the damp sand on his shoes. ‘I've been summoned to a meeting with his doctor. I don't suppose he has any good news for me. I think he's going to say that Arthur's reached the end of the line.'

‘We won't survive without him, John. The only reason why our strike rate is so high—'

‘You think they don't know that?' said May angrily. ‘The performance targets come up in every Home Office assessment we've ever had. They stood us in good stead while everything was running smoothly. You know how many officers would be covering a case like this if CoL had to handle it? They save a fortune by using us.'

Banbury didn't like suggesting the idea, but he felt somebody had to say it. ‘Don't take this the wrong way, John, but have you thought about finding a replacement for Mr Bryant?'

‘There's no one who could take his place,' said May flatly.

‘What about promoting Fraternity DuCaine? He's young, he's smart, he's got a lot of energy.'

‘He doesn't have enough experience, and he certainly doesn't have Arthur's weird way of looking at things.'

‘You're right, but you're never going to find someone who has that. Maybe what's needed now is a fresh approach.'

‘It wouldn't be any good. Fraternity's mainly a tech-head. Can we not talk about this right now?'

‘It's just that . . . there's a woman I worked with a few months ago,' said Banbury, shifting the last of his equipment. ‘She's a forensic specialist with a lot of unusual ideas, clever, geeky, a bit on the autism spectrum. She came to the CoL from Munich and is looking for a change. Her name's Steffi Vesta. Maybe you could trial her.'

‘It's out of the question,' said May. ‘Can you imagine what it would do to Arthur, knowing he'd been replaced? It would destroy him. This unit is all he has left to live for.'

Dan glanced back at the steps and lowered his voice. ‘You don't have to tell him, John. You always said the case has to come first. This girl was chained to a rock and left to drown. We're going to need more help. What are you going to do, tell Raymond to turn it over to the CoL? It's our case; nobody else will be able to do a better job, even without Mr Bryant.'

‘This German woman,' said May. ‘What's her specialization?'

‘She's a lab rat but prefers being out on the street. Not a lateral thinker but very determined. Hell, she's so keen to get into an outsource unit that she's prepared to intern with us. What harm could it do?'

‘No, maybe later,' said May stubbornly. ‘I'll see Arthur's doctor first. I owe it to him to exhaust every possibility.'

The Emergency Medical Team had followed Banbury's path and were standing by, awaiting a briefing session. ‘What if Dr Gillespie says there's absolutely no hope?' Banbury insisted.

‘Then we'll have to consider taking someone else on board,' May replied. ‘But not before. I'm not giving up yet.'

Ali Bensaud kept on the move and constantly changed the way he looked. This week he was in Victoria, the next in Hampstead. He worked out in the public parks. He knew he was handsome. When he smiled, even the most suspicious people were drawn to him.

He had tried to find Zakaria Rahman in London, without any luck. He missed Ismael, his brother in all but blood. He missed his family. He sent a message to his father to say that he was fine, but heard nothing back. He would send money when he could, even if he heard nothing. This was a different world, where all about you people shed cash unthinkingly. You could almost see it falling from them like goat hairs. In small amounts: pounds for ice creams and soft drinks; ten-pound notes for beers. In large amounts: credit cards for designer clothes and theatre tickets and restaurant bills, cards placed unthinkingly into the hands of total strangers. If they were told that something would cost more they just shrugged and paid. No one ever apologized to them or offered a better service, they just took more money, and more money. The British were trusting and lacking in caution because these amounts meant nothing to them. They didn't seem to know what anything was worth. Would this amount buy a loaf of bread, a packet of cigarettes, a phone? Half of them had no idea. There was water in every tap but they bought it in bottles. There were meals you could make but they paid fortunes to have them cooked. He stood in the station watching people buying railway tickets, being charged different amounts for the same ticket again and again, and hardly anyone complained. He saw a sea of opening wallets.

Londoners were the worst; they were far too worried about time to care about money. There was a sign outside the Armenian barber shop in Victoria that promised to cut hair in five minutes or your money back. If a haircut took a minute more, would the world end? The Queen lived in Victoria. Did Prince Philip go there to get his hair cut? No, because he did not care about time. But everyone else who was rich did. People would hand over their phones because they could not be bothered to learn how to take a photograph. They left food, binned clothes and threw away computers because a new one had come out. Why shouldn't you take from them that which they wouldn't miss?

He listened to them on tube trains and in shops, always talking about the time it took to do this or that. Then there was the thing about houses. Every day, the same conversations about houses, how much they were worth, how near they were to schools and stations, how much they could be sold for. Why would two people choose to live in a building that had ten rooms? An unused room was a sin. Why would they send their parents into care homes when they had room in their houses? He longed for a day when he could take the houses from them too, to make them see that they could be happier with less. To make them rediscover themselves and each other.