Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Epigraph
Prologue
Saturday, 28 June
Chapter 1
Thursday, 19 June
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Tuesday, 12 February
Chapter 14
Friday, 20 June
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Sunday, 23 March
Chapter 30
Saturday, 21 June
Chapter 31
Sunday, 22 June
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Monday, 23 June
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Friday, 4 April
Chapter 39
Tuesday, 24 June
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Thursday, 26 June
Chapter 43
17 May
Chapter 44
Friday, 27 June
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Saturday, 28 June
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Sunday, 29 June
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Monday, 30 June
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Tuesday, 1 July
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Wednesday, 2 July
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Thursday, 3 July
Chapter 97
Friday, 18 July
Chapter 98
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Read on for an extract from Daisy in Chains
About the Author
Also by Sharon Bolton
Copyright
NOW YOU SEE ME
A savage murder on London’s streets, 120 years to the day since Jack the Ripper began his reign of terror. Lacey Flint hunts a psychopath whose infamous role model has never been found . . .
‘Probably the best thriller that you’ll read all year’ Choice Magazine
DEAD SCARED
A spate of suicides at a prestigious university, each more horrific than the last. The only way to find the killer is to send someone undercover: Lacey Flint becomes the bait . . .
‘Sharon Bolton is hot property in crime fiction right now’ Stylist
IF SNOW HADN’T FALLEN (A SHORT STORY)
Tensions come to the boil when a young Muslim man is brutally murdered by a masked gang. There’s just one witness: DC Lacey Flint.
‘Bolton knows precisely how to ratchet up the tension and tell a cracking story’ Guardian
LIKE THIS, FOR EVER
Twelve-year-old Barney Roberts is obsessed with a series of local murders. His neighbour DC Lacey Flint joins the hunt for the killer . . .
‘Spine-tingling’ Lisa Gardner
A DARK AND TWISTED TIDE
Police Constable Lacey Flint thinks she’s safe. Living on the river, working on the river, swimming in the river, she’s never been happier. It can’t last . . .
‘Bolton’s latest gripper. Suffused with menace’ The Times
HERE BE DRAGONS (A SHORT STORY)
Mark Joesbury is risking everything to stop a deadly attack on the capital. But it’s not just London he’s fighting to save: the terrorists have also got the woman he loves, DC Lacey Flint . . .
‘Bolton rules the world of the psychological thriller’ Huffington Post
SACRIFICE
Tora Hamilton, a newcomer to the remote island of Shetland, discovers a woman’s body preserved in the mud of her field. Who is she, and why is Tora so unwelcome here?
‘If she carries on like this she will have worshippers in their millions’ The Times
AWAKENING
A series of unnatural events are occurring in Clara Benning’s village. The reclusive vet discovers a connection to an abandoned house, and a fifty-year-old tragedy the villagers would rather forget . . .
‘This book writhes and glides and slithers its way into the reader’s psyche’ Guardian
BLOOD HARVEST
Harry, the new vicar in town, is subjected to a series of menacing events. What secret is his parish hiding from him, and who is the young girl lingering in the graveyard?
‘Well-crafted, original and spooky’ Daily Mail
LITTLE BLACK LIES
Living in a small, island community, Catrin can’t escape the woman who destroyed her life. How long before revenge becomes irresistible?
‘Creeps under your skin and doesn’t let you go’ Paula Hawkins
DAISY IN CHAINS
Hamish Wolfe is handsome, charismatic – and a convicted murderer. He wants bestselling true-crime writer Maggie Rose to prove his innocence. But will she be able to resist his charms?
‘Utterly suspenseful. A terrific, twisted read’ Paula Daly
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies
whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Doubleday edition published 2014
Copyright © Sharon Bolton 2014
Extract from Daisy in Chains © Sharon Bolton 2016
Sharon Bolton has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446487846
ISBN 9780593069189
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
In memory of Margaret Yorke, who was my neighbour, my mentor and my friend.
And according to the success with which you put this and that together, you get a woman and a fish apart, or a Mermaid in combination. And Mr Inspector could turn out nothing better than a Mermaid, which no Judge and Jury would believe in.
Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
I AM LACEY Flint, she tells herself, as dawn breaks and she lifts first one arm then the other, kicking hard with legs that are longer and more powerful than usual, thanks to a stout pair of fins. My name is Lacey, she repeats, because this mantra of identity has become as much a part of her daily ritual as swimming at first light. Lacey, which is soft and pretty, and Flint, sharp and hard as nails. Sometimes Lacey is amused by the inherent contrast of her name. Other times, she admits it suits her perfectly.
I am Constable Lacey Flint of the Metropolitan Police’s Marine Unit, Lacey announces silently to her reflection in the mirror, as she dresses in her pristine uniform and sets off for her new head quarters at Wapping police station, taking comfort in the knowledge that, for the first time in many months, a police officer feels like who she was meant to be.
I am Lacey Flint, she says to herself most nights, as she battens down the hatches of her houseboat and crawls into the small double bed in the forward cabin, listening to water slapping against the hull and the scrabble of creatures setting out for the night. I live on the river, work on the river and swim in the river.
I am Lacey and I am loved, she thinks, as a tall man with turquoise eyes steps once again to the front of her thoughts.
‘I am Lacey Flint,’ she sometimes murmurs aloud as she drifts away to the world of what-ifs, could-bes and still-mights that other people call sleep; and she wonders whether there might ever come a day when she forgets that it is all a massive lie.
THE PUMPING STATION sits near the embankment wall of the River Thames in London, close to the border of Rotherhithe and Deptford, like a woman at a dance who has long since given up hoping for a partner. The small, square building has mostly been forgotten by the people who walk, cycle or drive past it each day, if indeed they ever noticed it in the first place. It has always been there, like the roads, the high river wall, the riverside path. Not a striking building, in any sense, and nothing ever happens in connection with it. No deliveries come to the wide wooden doors on one side and certainly nothing comes out. The windows are all sealed with wooden planks and heavy steel nails. Occasionally, someone lingering on the riverside path might notice that the brickwork is a perfect example of Flemish diagonal bond and that the pattern surrounding the flat roof is beautiful, in an understated way.
Few do. The roof is above normal sight lines and the nearest road isn’t on a bus route. River traffic, of course, is far below. So no one ever appreciates that the pale grey of the building is relieved by bricks of white in a repeating criss-cross pattern, and by uniform pieces of stone set on the diagonal. The Victorians decorated everything, and they didn’t neglect this insignificant building, even if few of them would have mentioned its original purpose in polite company. The pumping station was built to pump human sewage from the lower-lying lands of Rotherhithe and discharge it into the Thames. It once played an important role in keeping the surrounding streets fresh, but bigger, more efficient stations were brought into play, and there came a day when it was no longer needed.
If passers-by were curious enough to find a way inside, they’d see that, Tardis-like, the interior is so much bigger than its external framework suggests, because at least half of the pumping station is underground. Two storeys up, the boarded-up windows and the large double door are all high in the walls. To reach them, it is necessary to climb an iron staircase and step along an ornate gallery that runs round the entire circumference of the chamber.
All the engineering equipment has long since been taken away, but the decoration remains. Stone columns rise to the roof, their once-crimson paint faded to a dull red. Tudor roses still entwine at the tops of the pillars, even though they no longer gleam snow-white. Mould creeps up the sides of the smooth brickwork, but can’t hide the fine quality of the bricks. Anyone privileged to see inside the pumping station would consider it a minor architectural gem, somewhere to be preserved and celebrated.
It can’t happen. For years now, it has been in private hands, and those hands have no interest in development or change. Those hands are unconcerned that a piece of riverside real estate this close to the city is probably worth millions. All those hands care about is that the old pumping station serves a purpose particular to them.
It also happens to be the ideal place to shroud a dead body.
In the centre of the space are three iron plinths, each roughly the size of a modest dining table. The dead woman lies on the one closest to the outlet pipe and the killer is panting with the exertion of getting her there. Water streams off them both. The dead woman’s hair is black and very long. It clings to her face like the weed on an upturned boat hull at low tide.
Above, the moon is little more than a curled blond eyelash in the sky, but there are streetlamps along the embankment and some light reaches inside. Together with the glow from several oil lanterns set in the arched recesses of the walls, it is enough.
When the hair is gently lifted, the pale, perfect face beneath is revealed. The killer sighs. It is always so much easier when their faces haven’t been damaged. The wound around the neck is ugly, but the face is untouched. The eyes are closed and that is good, too. Eyes so quickly lose their lustre.
Here it comes again, that heavy sadness. Regret – there is no other word for it really. They are so lovely, the girls, with their flowing hair and long limbs. Why lure them away with promises of rescue and safety? Why live for the moment when the hope in their eyes turns to terror?
Enough. The body has to be undressed, washed and shrouded. It can be left here for the rest of the night and taken out to the river tomorrow. Close to hand are the hemmed sheets, the nylon twine and the weights.
The woman’s clothes are soon removed; the cotton tunic and trousers are cut away easily, the cheap underwear is the work of seconds.
Oh, but she’s so beautiful. Slender. Long, slim legs; small, high breasts. Pale, perfect skin. The killer’s strong fingers run the length of the firm, plump thigh, trace the outline of the small round kneecap and go on down the perfectly formed shin, over the spreading curve of the calf. Perfect feet. The high, graceful arch of the instep, the tiny pink toes, the perfect oval of the toenails. In death, she is the absolute picture of unattainable femininity.
A rasping sound. Then a cold, strong hand clutching the killer’s arm.
The woman is moving. Not dead. Her eyes are open. Not dead. She’s coughing, wheezing, her hands scrabbling around on the iron block, trying to get up. How did this happen? The killer almost faints in shock. Eyes that have turned black with horror are staring. More river water comes coughing out of those pale, bitten lips.
Lips that should not have anything more to say.
The killer reaches out, but isn’t quick enough. The woman has scrambled back and fallen off the plinth. ‘Ay, ay,’ she cries, the sound of a terrified animal. The killer, too, is terrified. Is it all over, then?
The woman is on her feet. Bewildered, disorientated, but not so much that she has forgotten what happened to her. She starts backing away, staring round, looking for a way out. When her eyes meet those of her killer they open wider in dismay. Words come out of her mouth, which may or may not be the words the killer hears.
‘What are you?’
And it’s enough to bring back the rage. Not ‘Who are you?’ Not ‘Why are you doing this?’ Both of which would be perfectly reasonable questions in the circumstances. But ‘What are you?’
The woman is running now, looking for a window – which she won’t find on this floor – or a door, which won’t help her.
She’s spotted the upper floor, is heading for the staircase. There is no way out up there – the windows are all boarded, the heavy door can’t be opened – but there are skylights that she might be able to break, attracting the attention of people outside.
The killer surges forward, crashing painfully into the iron frame of the steps, catching hold of the woman’s ankle, biting hard on the fleshy part of the calf. A howl of pain. Another hard pull. A squawk, then she comes tumbling down.
The killer has her now, but the woman is naked and slippery with water and sweat. She isn’t easy to hold and she’s fighting like an eel. The biting and scratching and the continual wriggling are exhausting. The killer’s grip loosens. The woman is up. Reach out, grab. She’s fallen, slapped down hard on the stone floor, hit her head. Dazed, she’s easier to manage. Heave. The sound of flesh scraping along stone. Arms flailing, claw-like hands trying to grab hold of something – anything – but they’ve reached the smooth, metal pipe that in the old days took the water out of here. Lift her in. Climb after her. Push her along. The pipe is short, not much more than a metre in length.
There is water below, feet away, and gravity is helping now. Lean, pull and – yes – they both hit the surface.
And the world becomes calm again. Silent. Soft and easy.
Easy now. Let go. Let her sink. Let her panic. Wait for her to rise up, to take her last desperate breath, then make your move. Up and out of the water in one massive surge, and down again with your hands around her throat. Then down, down into the depths. Down until she stops struggling.
Two of them clasped together. A tight embrace. A good way to die.
A SINGLE DROP of rain falling on the village of Kemble in the Cotswolds is destined to become part of the longest river in England and one of the most famous in the world. On its 216-mile journey to the North Sea, that one drop will hook up with the hundreds of millions of others that wash daily past London Bridge.
Sometimes, as she swam amongst them, Lacey Flint thought about those millions of drops and her entire body shivered with excitement. Other times, the notion of the unstoppable force of water all around made her want to scream in terror. She never did, though. Catch a mouthful of the Thames this close to the estuary and there was every chance it could kill you.
So she kept her head up and her mouth largely shut. When she opened it to snatch in air, because muscles swimming at speed through cold water need oxygen, she relied upon a prior rinsing with Dettol to kill the bugs on contact. For nearly two months now, since she’d bought the vintage sailing yacht that was her new home, she’d been wild-swimming in the Thames as often as tide and conditions allowed, and she was healthier than she’d ever been.
At 05.22 hours on a June morning, as close to the solstice as made little difference, the river was already busy and, even staying close to the south bank, she had to take care. River traffic didn’t always stick to the middle of the channel and no boat pilot was ever looking out for swimmers.
The tide was as high as it was going to get. There was a moment at high tide, especially in summer, when the river seemed to pause and become still. For just a few minutes – ten, maybe fifteen – the Thames became as easy to glide through as a pool and Lacey could forget that she was human, dependent on a wetsuit and fins and antiseptic rinse to survive in this strange, aquatic environment and become, instead, part of the river.
A sleek arrowhead of a gull skimmed the water ahead, before disappearing below the surface. Lacey pictured it beneath her, beak open wide, scooping up whatever fish it had spotted from above.
She carried on, towards the jagged black pilings of one of the derelict offshore landing stages that ran along this stretch of the south bank. Built when London was one of the busiest commercial ports in the world to allow larger vessels to moor up and offload their cargo, they had fallen into disrepair decades ago.
Not for the first time, Lacey found herself missing Ray. She missed seeing his skinny arms ahead of her, missed the shower of bright water when he occasionally kicked too high, but he’d picked up a summer cold a few days earlier and his wife, Eileen, had put her foot down. He was staying out of the river until he was well again.
Less than thirty metres to the landing stage. Her senses on full alert, as they always were in the river, something caught her eye. There was movement in the water, over by the bank. Not flotsam – it had been holding its position. There were otters on the Thames, but she’d not heard of any this far down. Other people swam in the river, according to Ray, but higher up where the water was cleaner and the flow more gentle. As far as he knew, he and now Lacey were the only wild-swimmers this close to the estuary.
Slightly unnerved, Lacey struck out faster, suddenly wanting to get past the landing stages, turn into Deptford Creek and be on the home stretch.
Almost there. Ray usually swam through the pilings, a little ritual of his own, but Lacey never got too close. There was something about the blackened, mollusc-encrusted wood that she didn’t like.
Another swimmer, after all, directly ahead. Lacey felt the moment of elation that comes from shared pleasure. Especially the guilty sort. She got ready to smile as the woman came closer, maybe tread water for a few seconds and chat.
Except – that wasn’t swimming. That was more like bobbing. The arm that, a second ago, had seemed to be waving now moved randomly. And the arm wasn’t just thin – it was skeletal. For a second the woman was upright. Then she lay flat before disappearing altogether. Another second later she was back. Maybe not even a woman; the long hair Lacey had seen in the dazzling, reflected light now looked like weed. And the clothes, trailing like a veil around the corpse, had added to the feminine effect. The closer she got, the more sexless the thing appeared.
Lacey drew closer, telling herself there was nothing to be afraid of. She’d yet to see a body pulled from the river. Despite her two months with the Marine Unit, despite the Thames’s record of presenting its caretakers with at least a body a week in payment of dues, she’d either been off-duty or otherwise occupied when bodies had been retrieved.
She knew, though, from a briefing talk in her first week, that the Thames wasn’t like still water, where a body usually sank and then floated to the surface after several days. The currents and tides of the river swept a corpse along until it got caught on an obstruction and was revealed at low tide. There were sites along the Thames that were notorious body traps, that the Marine Unit always searched first when someone went missing. Bodies that went into the river were usually found quite quickly and their condition was predictable.
After two or three days, the hands and face would swell as internal gases began to accumulate. After five or six days, the skin would begin the process of separation from the body. Fingernails and hair would disappear after a week to ten days. Then there was the impact of marine life. Fish, shellfish, insects, even birds that could reach the corpse would all leave their mark. The eyes and the lips would usually be the first to go, giving the face a startling, monstrous appearance. Whole chunks of the body could be ripped away by boat propellers or hard obstacles in the water. Floaters were never good news.
Very close now. The figure in the water seemed to bounce in anticipation. I’m here. Been waiting for you. Come and get me.
Not a recent drowning, that much was clear. There was very little flesh left on the face: a few soggy pink clumps of muscle stretching along the right cheekbone, a little more around the chin and neck. Lots of bite marks. And the river’s flora, too, had staked its claim. The few remaining patches of flesh were attracting a greenish growth where some sort of river moss, or weed, had taken root.
Small facial bones, hair still attached to the head, weed that seemed to be growing from the left eye socket. And clothes, although these were usually lost in the river. Except not clothes exactly, but something that seemed to have been wrapped round the body and was now coming loose, trailing towards her, like the long hair. The corpse seemed to be reaching out towards Lacey. Even the arms were outstretched, fingers clutching.
Telling herself to get a grip, that she had a job to do, that a dead body couldn’t hurt her, Lacey began treading water. She had to check that the corpse was secure, and if not make it so, then get out of the water and call it in. In a pocket of her wetsuit she always carried a slim torch. She found it, swallowed down the rising panic, told herself that sometimes you just had to bloody well get on with it, and went under.
Nothing. Utter blackness that even the torch’s beam couldn’t penetrate. Then a swirling mass of greens and browns, light and shadow. Complete confusion.
And the sounds of the water were so much more intense down here. Up above, the river splashed, gurgled and swished, but beneath, the sounds suggested pouring, draining, sloshing. Beneath the surface, the river sounded alive.
Weird, alien shapes appeared to loom towards her. The black, shell-encrusted wood of the pillar. Something brushing her face. Mouth clamped tight – she was not going to scream. Where was the body? There. Arms flailing, clothes stretching out. Lacey ran the torch up and down the suspended figure. The river surged and the corpse was completely submerged. Now its eyeless sockets seemed to be staring directly at her. Christ almighty, as if her nightmares weren’t bad enough already.
Don’t think, just do it. Point the torch. Find out what’s holding it still.
There! One of the strips of fabric was wrapped tight around the pile, anchoring the body in place. It looked secure.
Lacey broke the surface with air still in her lungs and looked past the corpse to the bank. No beach – the tide was too high – but she had to get out of the water. The landing stage above her was largely intact, but too high to reach. Her only chance would be to clamber up on to one of the cross-beams until help arrived. A few yards away there was one that looked solid enough.
She struck out towards it, checking back every couple of seconds to make sure the corpse hadn’t moved. It held its position in the water, but seemed to have twisted round to watch her swim away.
The cross-beam would hold for a while. Out of the water, Lacey shrugged off the harness she wore round her shoulders. In a waterproof pouch that lay in the small of her back was her mobile phone; Ray insisted she carry it with her.
He answered quickly. ‘You all right, love?’
Lacey’s eyes hadn’t left the trail of fabric streaming out from the pier. As the waves rose and fell, she caught glimpses of the woman’s round, moon-like skull.
‘Lacey, what’s up?’
No one was close, but she still felt the need to speak quietly. ‘I found a body, Ray. By the old King’s Wharf. Fastened round the landing stage.’
‘You out of the water? You safe?’
‘Yeah, I’m out. And the tide’s turned. I’m fine.’
‘Body secure?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘Ten minutes.’
He was gone. Ray had worked for the Marine Unit years ago and knew the significance of a body in the water. Like Lacey, he and his wife lived on a boat moored in Deptford Creek, a nearby tributary. Ten minutes was an under-estimate; he couldn’t possibly reach her in fewer than twenty. In the meantime, she had to stay warm.
Easier said than done, wedged between two beams of wood and with the water splashing over her ankles every few seconds. The UK was two weeks into one of the longest heatwaves on record, but it was still early and the sun hadn’t reached the south bank yet.
Below, the water sloshed around the piles, creating mini whirlpools. The dead woman appeared to be dancing, the waves bouncing her playfully, the fabric flying out around her like swirling skirts.
‘Hey!’
Lacey almost collapsed in relief. She’d had no idea how tense she’d been. Ray must have flown to get here so— Steady! She felt the beam beneath her give a fraction.
And Ray was nowhere in sight. No small, busy engine chugging its way towards her, no wrinkled old boatman frowning into the sun. Yet, for a split second, the sense of another’s presence had been overwhelming. She was sure she’d heard him shout to her.
Lacey stretched up. The embankment was empty. She could hear cars, but at a distance. No sounds of bike wheels or jogging footsteps. There was traffic on the river, but nothing even remotely close.
There he was, at last, coming towards her as fast as his twenty-horsepower engine would take him.
She took the painter he held out and secured the boat before climbing down.
‘Put these on.’ He threw a bag her way. ‘There’s a patrol boat up by Limehouse. They’ll be here right away. Now, we will not be talking about swimming. You and I were out on the river in my boat when you spotted the body.’
Lacey nodded as she peeled off her wetsuit and hid her wet gear in the bag. Swimming in the tidal section of the river was a byelaw offence. Even if you weren’t a member of the Marine Unit.
‘Are you OK?’ Ray asked, as the police launch approached.
‘I’m fine,’ she said.
The master of the vessel was a young sergeant called Scott Buckle. He looked over at Lacey and waved.
‘Part of the job,’ Ray told her in an undertone. ‘Won’t be the last you pull out.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s a greedy river. People get distracted, a bit careless. It won’t give them a second chance.’
Almost a year ago, the river had given her a second chance. It had let her go, which was possibly why she didn’t fear it now. ‘This wasn’t the river.’ She watched her colleagues prod the corpse with boathooks. ‘And they’ll not get it with those. It’s fastened tight around the pile.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Ray told her. ‘No way would you know that unless you’d stuck your head under. Please tell me you didn’t do that.’
‘She didn’t go in accidentally,’ Lacey said. ‘She’s wrapped up tight like a mummy.’
Ray sighed. ‘Jeez, Lacey. How do you do it?’
IN THE SHADOWS, the other swimmer kept perfectly still. Sunlight couldn’t reach all the way in here, but the glinting boats with their head-splitting engines sometimes came dangerously close. And they had lights, those men who believed the river was their own. Powerful, searching beams that could find anyone, even in the darkest corner. So keep still, low in the water, eyes down, that was the way. They’d think your head was weed on wood, your arm a broken branch stripped raw by the water and bleached pale by the sun.
Anya had been found. The swimmer could see her now, shroud trailing out into the water, searching for an escape that was a lost hope. Soon more boats would come. They would lift her from the river, expose her poor, ravaged body to the sunlight, prod her, poke her with their fingers and their tools and their eyes.
The woman who swam as though she’d been born in the water was being helped on to one of the bigger boats. They lifted her easily. She looked tiny and slender, despite how strong and fast she was in the river. The breeze caught her hair, already drying in the sun, and it flew out behind her like a bright flag. The men would take her away, too. They thought she was one of them, after all. They had no idea how many secrets she kept from them.
The woman with the bright hair turned and, for a moment, seemed to look directly at the swimmer. It had been close just now. For a moment, only chance had prevented the two of them from coming face to face.
It was all a matter of chance, really. Sometimes it worked in your favour, sometimes it didn’t. Given more time – days, even hours – the water would have undressed Anya, the tide and the current left their mark and she would have become just another victim of the river. If the bright-haired woman hadn’t swum this morning, Anya probably wouldn’t have been found while her story could still be told.
It all came down to chance. And chance would take it forward. Because if Anya spoke to them, they’d find the others too.
‘TELL ME SOMETHING. The fifteen-year-old who thinks getting pregnant might inject some meaning into the grubby, state-subsidized existence that passes for a life. Whose permission does she need to reproduce? Or the crack addict, taking it up the arse to fund the stuff that gets more riddled with poison every time? Who signs the form that says she can have a baby?’
Dana closed her eyes, as if by doing so she could drown out the sound of her partner’s voice. It was over then. No baby, after all. Helen had always had a problem with authority (ironic really, given that she’d made her career in a field that demanded it) and medical authority was the hardest for her to stomach. One of her favourite rants was about the arrogance of the medical profession. She just didn’t usually do it in front of them.
Dana opened her eyes and looked at her watch. She’d make the ten o’clock briefing after all. She should have known it would end like this. Well, being thrown out of a fertility clinic would be a new experience.
‘We have no powers to determine who out of the general population can or cannot reproduce,’ said the consultant, who was also the medical director of the clinic. Trust Helen. If you were going to piss someone off, you might as well start at the top. He was a tall, thin man in his sixties, with large, dark-blue eyes and heavy, black eyebrows. His hair, still thick and slightly too long, was black speckled with grey. The name on his office door read Alexander Christakos.
Christakos’s office was directly on the river and the window behind him looked out at the honey and ivory stone, the arched river frontage and the gulls’-egg-blue roof of Old Billingsgate Fish Market. It was a conference centre now, a venue for huge and glitzy events, but in the old days, from this room, you’d have been able to smell the fish.
His voice had just the trace of an accent, but not one that Dana could place. ‘You and I could debate the merits of that for some time,’ he was saying to Helen, as though it were just the two of them in the room. ‘What I do know is that children conceived using donor gametes, and especially those brought up in single-sex households, will have specific issues to deal with as they grow up. It would be irresponsible for us, and for you, to ignore this.’
Out on the river, a Marine Unit launch was passing in front of the Billingsgate building. In the room, Christakos still had the floor.
‘A number of issues concern us,’ he was saying – and fair play to him for keeping Helen quiet for as long as he had. ‘First, the extent to which you’ve thought through the impact that an unusual conception and upbringing will have on a child. And then of course . . .’
This was their first appointment. Helen had flown down from Dundee, where she worked and lived most of the time, so that they could present a united front. They’d sat in the waiting room with several heterosexual couples, the women flicking eagerly through the clinic’s literature as though the secret to fertility might be found on a glossy sheet of paper, the men fidgety and embarrassed, looking everywhere but into the eyes of another person.
‘Our philosophy here is that parenting is about love, not biology.’ Christakos was determined not to be outdone by a gobby lesbian before suggesting they try elsewhere. Dana could almost have admired him if he weren’t about to break her heart. Another police launch heading downstream at speed. She was going to kill Helen.
‘Time, commitment, patience, generosity, even humour are important, but love is at the top of the list. Also, a healthy degree of selfishness helps. The patients we accept here very much want to be parents. Now, there is no doubt in my mind that Miss Tulloch wants to be a mother. The question is, do you?’
She didn’t, thought Dana, that was the problem. Helen could live her life childless and never feel there was anything missing. She’d only been going along with this for Dana’s sake. She’d walk out of here, shrug philosophically and say that at least they’d tried. She’d move on, expect Dana to do the same, and Dana really wasn’t sure she could. She wondered how long their relationship would survive, now that Helen had denied her this.
‘The truth is I never thought about children,’ Helen was admitting now, because Helen didn’t know how to lie. Outside, Dana watched a plane move slowly across the sky.
‘This is something Dana wants.’ As Dana’s thoughts drifted, the sound of Helen’s voice was fading. ‘But I want Dana on any terms. And to pick up on your point about love, if this baby is Dana in miniature, how can I do anything other than adore it?’
Dana’s mobile vibrated in her pocket. No reason not to look at it really. Well, that certainly explained the excitement she’d just witnessed on the river. But how . . .? Never mind, she’d deal with it at the station.
The other two had finished spatting. Christakos was on his feet, offering to shake hands. It would be rude not to, and it wasn’t as if she could blame him. It had been Helen’s fault.
Dana left the room first, walking ahead along the corridor, wondering how she was going to talk to Helen without screaming at her. You couldn’t do it, could you? You just couldn’t keep your mouth shut?
‘We hadn’t really thought about the ethnic thing, had we?’ Helen paused to let Dana step out of the lift first.
‘What?’
‘Well, you remember him saying that Indian donors are very rare? We’ll almost certainly not find one. Perhaps we can just look for dark hair, dark skin tones. I’d like it to look like you if possible.’
‘The Marine Unit have pulled a body out of the river,’ said Dana. ‘Doesn’t appear to be an accidental death. They’re taking it to Wapping. Oh, and guess who found it?’
Helen was looking at her watch now. ‘I’ll be home about six. Look, I may not be able to make the big appointment. Are you OK with that? Me not being there for the conception? I feel as though I should be, it’s just . . .’
They passed reception and went out through the heavy glass door. As they left the air conditioning behind, the heat hit them.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Dana. Helen was looking smart this morning, even by her standards. She was tall and athletic, and always looked good in well-cut trouser suits. Her long blonde hair was swept into a bun at the nape of her neck. She was wearing jewellery, even make-up. The meeting she was rushing off to was obviously important. Much more so than the one she’d just been in.
‘Dana, were you listening to anything in there?’ Helen sidestepped to let an office worker carrying a tray of coffee get around them.
‘Not really,’ Dana admitted. ‘I tuned out when you went off on one.’
‘Yeah, I thought so. OK, I have to go now, so focus for a second. Your period started last Friday, is that right? That means you have to start using the ovulation kit roughly a week today. They’ll want to book you in for a scan the first cycle, just to make sure everything’s doing what it should.’
Helen had stepped into the road in front of a black cab. She handed Dana a large brown envelope. ‘The forms for GP notification and the confidentiality waivers are in here – you need to get them sent off today. Also, the guidance notes on selecting a donor. I do want to be involved in that, because there is no way I want my son or daughter to be ginger.’
Dana was facing directly into the sun now. She blinked. ‘He signed the forms?’
Helen was in the cab, about to close the door. ‘Of course he signed the bloody forms! We’ll be awesome parents. Love you.’
The door slammed shut and the cab sped back towards the bridge. Dana realized she had no idea where Helen was going. She’d been completely mysterious about the reason for her trip down, other than the visit to the clinic. And now she was on her own, in the middle of a London street, with some vague idea that there was somewhere she needed to be, when all she could think about was that, in the last few minutes, her life had changed completely.
‘YOU SURE ABOUT this?’ asked Sergeant Buckle.
‘I’m sure.’ Lacey watched three of her colleagues approach with the body, now decently enclosed within a large, zipped black bag. Their movements were slow and respectful, conversation kept low, mindful of the fact that the jetty at the back of Wapping station was open to public gaze.
On the main arm of the jetty was a small, square building, painted deep blue. Within it were worktops, storage, and a large, shallow steel bath. Each body recovered from the tidal Thames was brought here for initial examination and identification if possible. An unpleasant, unpopular part of the job, it was highly unusual for an officer to volunteer, as Lacey had just done.
‘I can easily get someone else,’ Buckle tried again.
‘Got to do this sometime,’ said Lacey. ‘And I’ve seen her already, remember?’
‘It,’ corrected Buckle. ‘You’ve seen it. We don’t make assumptions about gender.’
‘Delivery for you, Sarge.’ The others left and Buckle looked at his watch. ‘Right, we’ve got around twenty minutes before CID get here. Let’s see what we can tell them.’
As the sergeant supported the body around the upper part of the torso, Lacey unzipped the bag. She did so holding her breath, but the smell that came out was no worse than a sort of concentration of river water, with a trace of rotting organic matter. The upper part of the woman’s body – it was a woman, she just knew it – was largely skeletonized, but the cloth binding her was tighter around her abdomen and upper thighs and appeared to have protected the soft tissue in that area.
Buckle had a recorder in the upper pocket of his overalls and he spoke into it, giving the date and time of the initial examination of DB 23, the twenty-third Dead Body to be pulled from the Thames that year. Lacey picked up the digital camera.
‘Corpse measures 165 centimetres and weighs just under 70 pounds,’ said Buckle. ‘Allowing for fairly advanced skeletonization, particularly around the head, upper limbs and torso, I’d say we’re looking at the remains of a small adult or teenager.’ From a few paces back, Lacey took full body shots of the corpse.
‘The size of the frame suggests it’s unlikely to be an adult male.’ Buckle glanced up and winked at Lacey. She moved up the side of the bath to take close-ups of the head. The weed coming out of the eye socket was vile, like something from a bad science-fiction movie. She was going to get rid of it as soon as she could. She photographed each hand in turn, then did a series of close-ups, starting at the head and moving down the body.
‘An unusual feature of this particular body is that it appears to have been wrapped,’ Buckle was saying, ‘head to foot, in some sort of fabric. Whatever the solution to the mystery, it seems highly unlikely this was an accidental death or an incident of self-harm. OK, let’s turn it over.’
Lacey put down the camera and helped Buckle turn the corpse. A patch of scalp with long hair streaming from it was still attached to the skull at the back. Decomposition on this side of the body was less advanced and the flesh of the shoulders and lower back shone red and raw in the bright sunlight.
‘This side’s different.’ Lacey picked up the camera again.
‘Probably lay on its back on the river bed,’ said Buckle. ‘If it was in mud, it would have been harder for fish and the like to get close. They’ve had a go – look.’ He pointed to the left shoulder. ‘But only in the last couple of days, I’d say.’
‘Any idea how long it’s been in the water?’ asked Lacey. Buckle had worked with the Marine Unit for several years. He’d have seen lots of floaters over that time.
‘More than a month, less than a year. I’ll tell you what is striking me.’
‘What?’
‘It’s not been moving around much. Let’s get this cloth off to be sure, but I’d say the skeleton’s pretty much intact.’
‘What’s that?’ Lacey pointed to the middle of the corpse, where the waist would have been. Buckle bent closer. ‘Cord,’ he said. ‘Tied tight around the waist, possibly to hold this fabric in place.’
‘It looks like nylon to me.’ Lacey stepped to the foot of the corpse. ‘Which means it wouldn’t have been eaten away. There’s some around the ankles, too. Any up at the head?’
‘Not that I can see,’ Buckle told her after a second.
‘That’s why the cloth has stayed in place around the abdomen and legs,’ said Lacey. ‘It was held by nylon cord that the river life couldn’t eat through.’
She looked up to see Buckle watching her strangely.
‘Do we take it off?’ she asked.
In response he reached behind him and took hold of a large pair of scissors. ‘Bag everything,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to try to get this off without cutting it.’ He was tugging at the wrapping around the feet, trying to find a loose end. Lacey labelled two evidence bags and put them down on the counter.
‘It doesn’t go the whole way up.’ Lacey indicated the upper part of the thighs. ‘There’s a bigger piece of cloth underneath these bandage-type things.’
‘And the bandages start again higher up, as though they’re keeping the cloth underneath in place.’ Buckle slid his hands beneath the corpse’s torso. ‘Right, I’ll lift, you unwind.’
Lacey had unwound almost three feet when something sharp and cold brushed against her hand. She jumped back. ‘Jesus, there’s something in there.’
Buckle, too, had started. He relaxed a couple of seconds before she did, and they watched the small creatures that Lacey had liberated scuttle across the corpse and try to climb the metal sides of the bath.
‘Mitten crabs,’ Buckle said. ‘The river’s full of them.’
Lacey nodded. Chinese mitten crabs, with bodies that could grow to the width of a human palm, had first appeared in the UK in the 1930s, escaping from ships’ ballast. With few natural predators, their numbers had soared and they’d done untold damage to riverbanks, harbour infrastructure and native wildlife. Their distinguishing feature being thick, hairy front claws, at low tide they gave a creeping, constantly moving look to the river floor.
Lacey had seen dozens since she’d been living and working on the river. Of course they’d be attracted to decaying flesh. But there was just something about the things – she could count six of them, racing in panic around the bath – that was creepy as hell.
THE RIVER SCARED Nadia. Even here, high above the city, it unnerved her. The rivers she’d known before hadn’t been like this one. In the countryside she’d left behind, rivers were fast and shallow, clear as glass and cold as night. They bounced over rocks and hurried through reeds, splashed and sparkled in the sun, gleaming like star-shine in the darkness. This river was massive: brown as old blood and unthinkably deep.
She’d been staring too long. She leaned away from the telescope and let her stinging eyes rest. This early in the morning, with the wind on her face, her hair flying free and her eyes closed, she could almost believe she was home.
At home, she’d sought refuge in the hills when the noise and anger of her war-beaten country had become too much. She’d fixed her eyes on the snow that frosted them for much of the year, breathed in air that was free of dust and smoke, and told herself that the muffled sounds and distant cries weren’t so very far from silence.
Here, on the other side of the world, old habits were proving hard to leave behind and she’d taken to climbing high in this ancient parkland to find air and quiet. Even here, though, it was impossible to get away from the river; telescopes fixed along the highest points made it all too easy to look. It had tasted her, this big, pitiless river, rolled her around in its mouth, getting ready to swallow her down, when she’d been plucked free, like a kitten from the jaws of a hungry dog.
Years ago, Nadia’s mother had told her a story of a big, greedy river. In the story, the river remembered everyone who ever came within its clutches. Once it tasted you, it never forgot. You were marked, then, for life, and as the years went by, its hunger for you would grow, until the day came when, in spite of every effort you made to stay away, it claimed you, finally, for its own.
The stinging in her eyes gone, Nadia leaned into the telescope again. Only one police boat left now. Half an hour ago there had been several, their blue hulls and white decks unmistakable as they formed a circle, holding their positions against the tide. The police boats were designed to be distinctive, even to people who’d never been on board one, had never been pulled from the freezing depths like a fish as its strength gives out. The night she’d been saved from the river.
But not forgotten. The river spoke to her in the darkness, as her dreams turned into nightmares in which the water was all around her and the weed and the mud was clinging, pulling her down. It told her then that she would never be free, that one day it would come for her, and the next time there would be no escape.
‘I SEE YOU didn’t stay out of trouble for long.’
Lacey started. She and Buckle had become so engrossed in the task of unwrapping the corpse that neither had noticed the two men who’d joined them on the jetty. Detective Sergeant Neil Anderson and Detective Constable Pete Stenning of Lewisham’s Major Investigation Team. Seeing her for the first time in uniform.
Anderson’s stomach was straining against his waistline. He seemed to have put on weight, and he hadn’t exactly been a lightweight to start with. In his mid forties, he had thinning red hair, an indistinct chin line and a florid complexion. He was one of those officers who didn’t take the stresses of the job in their stride. Stenning, on the other hand, was looking good. Of a similar age to Lacey, he was tall, in good shape. His dark curly hair was held in place with gel and he was wearing an aftershave or cologne that smelled of spice chests.
Back in March, on the brink of leaving the police service for good, Lacey had taken the highly unusual step of requesting redeployment. She’d turned her back on a promising career as a detective, on the hint of an imminent promotion to sergeant, and gone back into uniform. Several colleagues, including Anderson and Stenning, had tried to persuade her otherwise. They’d talked about the unprecedented bad luck that had brought her into the midst of three difficult cases in a row, of the unlikelihood of anything similar happening again in her whole career, had told her she’d be wasted in uniform. And bored witless. Still she’d clung to her decision.