Deadland

by William Shaw

  ‘Well, it’s somebody’s bloody arm. What’s number two?’ she asked Moon.

  ‘Oh yeah. Sorry. Almost forgot.’ As if he had already moved on to the new case. ‘New pathology report on the arm.’

  ‘Did you read it?’

  Ferriter was on the main road now, heading back to base.

  ‘You’d asked if it had been frozen? No obvious signs. You’d asked if there were any indications it had been stored for use by the Human Tissue Authority.’

  She had wanted to know whether it was possible it had been a body part donated to science that someone had stolen.

  Moon continued: ‘No clear indication. No signs of preservative but unable to rule out refrigeration. If unrefrigerated . . . blah blah blah . . . estimate the remains to be between twelve and twenty days old.’

  ‘Gender?’

  ‘DNA says male.’

  ‘Was that Moon?’ said Ferriter when the call had ended.

  Cupidi nodded. The constable scowled.

  ‘Apparently they’re moving you to another case. There’s been an attempted murder of a paedophile. DI Wray says you’re to move on to work on witness statements. With Peter Moon.’

  ‘Fuck sake,’ muttered Ferriter.

  ‘I know.’

  Frowning, Ferriter opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it again.

  Next Cupidi tried phoning the man whose name Zoya Gubenko had given her, Abir Stein. He wasn’t picking up either. ‘Mr Stein. This is Detective Sergeant Cupidi of the Kent Serious Crime Directorate . . .’

  When she ended the call, she was conscious of Ferriter’s silence.

  ‘Jill?’

  Ferriter said nothing.

  ‘What’s wrong? Don’t say you’re upset about being taken away from Astrid bloody Miller.’

  Ferriter seemed to be wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

  ‘I’m the one being abandoned here,’ protested Cupidi. ‘This is a potential murder but nobody’s taking it seriously.’

  And then she realised that Ferriter didn’t just have something in her eye.

  ‘Oh shit.’

  Blousy, perfect, undentable Jill Ferriter was crying as she drove the car.

  ‘Bollocks. What did I say?’

  A second time the young woman lifted her arm from the wheel, wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt.

  ‘Was I being a cow? I am sometimes. I don’t mean it. I’m just a bit insensitive. Zoë tells me that all the time.’

  Something was up. She tried to think what it could be. She remembered the night before when Ferriter had wanted to talk.

  ‘Want to come to mine, for a bite after you’re done? Talk about it? Spend the night with us?’

  Ferriter shook her head.

  ‘What about a drink, then, after we’ve clocked off? Tell me what’s wrong?’

  Ferriter rode for another mile before she said, cheeks still shiny and damp, ‘Yeah. A drink would be good.’

  PART TWO

  On Margate Sands

  TWENTY-SIX

  They didn’t speak again until they were back at the nick, shift over, Cupidi dropping the police car and swapping it for her ancient Nissan. ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Somewhere there’s no coppers.’

  Cupidi drove to Folkestone, picking up a bottle of rosé and two plastic cups from a mini-market on the way, then parked up at the harbour.

  ‘Fancy some chips?’

  ‘Starving.’

  They walked to the Stade and sat on the dockside, legs hanging above the water. Below them, small trawlers and day boats bobbed on the dark water.

  ‘So. How is Zoë?’ asked Ferriter.

  Whatever it was, Ferriter would talk about it in her own time, figured Cupidi. ‘Still strange,’ she said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘She has some new friends that she hangs out with, but she won’t tell me who they are. She sits in her room all day on the computer talking to them.’

  ‘Like every other teenager.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what’s so strange.’

  The sky on the eastern horizon was the deep blue of an early spring evening. ‘She must be happy William South’s back. She used to like him, didn’t she?’

  Cupidi didn’t say that South had barely said a word since he’d been back at Dungeness; it was starting to bug her. She handed Ferriter two cups, opened the screw-top bottle and poured.

  ‘It’s your job to worry.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Cupidi smiled. ‘And you? Should I be worrying about you?’

  Ferriter took a mouthful from her cup, then took a breath. ‘Thing is, what I want to say is . . . I can’t work with Peter Moon.’

  ‘OK.’ Cupidi reached for a chip. They had gone cold but she ate it anyway. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I slept with him on Friday night.’

  ‘Bully for you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about sleeping with other officers. You know I’ve made that mistake.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t mean to. I was drunk.’ The constable took another gulp. ‘Really drunk.’

  As a divorced woman who had run out of London after an affair with a married man had gone bad, she was hardly qualified to offer advice on successful relationships. But as far as she knew, Ferriter had no close family to talk to; no siblings, no dad, and her mum had died a few years ago. ‘I thought you’d just had a fling with him.’

  ‘That was ages back. I used to fancy him stupid, but then when I finally slept with him, it was over. Bang. Rose tint gone.’

  Somewhere out on the black water, a pair of ducks started arguing. She would tell her to just get on with it. That’s what she had done. Pretend it never happened.

  ‘Top me up,’ said Ferriter.

  ‘Already?’

  ‘I’m drinking for the both of us. You’re driving.’

  Cupidi poured. ‘I can always catch a cab.’ She took a sip from the wine; it was too sweet, but Ferriter didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Last Friday night. Everybody on the team is feeling strung out with the workload, so we all go for a drink. You were there too, only you sneaked off.’

  ‘You were pretty pissed when I left.’

  ‘You’re old. You can’t keep up.’

  ‘Try me,’ said Cupidi. ‘I just wanted to go home. I’m a single parent, you know.’

  ‘Respect. I was raised by a single parent too and she never bothered coming home much.’

  She had never talked about her mother, Cupidi realised. ‘Did she work?’

  ‘After a fashion.’ Ferriter dropped a chip down into the water below. A herring gull scrabbled for it.

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She was . . . a kind of expert on criminal behaviour. Are you trying to change the subject?’

  ‘Is that why you wanted to join the police?’

  ‘That’s not what we’re talking about here, is it?’

  ‘No. Just you never . . . Sorry. Carry on.’

  Ferriter kicked her heels against the harbour wall below them. ‘After you left the bar on Friday, we started doing drinking games. Jesus. Like we were adolescents or something. I spend the whole week looking after my body, wheatgrass smoothies and chia seeds. My body is a bogging temple. And then Friday night it’s lager and vodka Red Bull chasers. I’m twenty-five years old on Friday and I’m still behaving like a big child.’

  It was the top of the tide. The water beneath their feet looked deep and dark.

  ‘I do remember talking to him. But I was talking to everybody. I’m like that. We were all there, weren’t we? But by ten o’clock I was wrecked. We were in Cameo. I was feeling if I had one more unit I was going to deposit the contents of my stomach right there. So I stood up and said I had to go home. It’s only, like, ten minutes’ walk. And that’s what I remember, mainly.’

  Cupidi felt apprehensive, the way this was heading. She said, ‘I should probably try and stop you here, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Yep. But please don’t
though. I’ve thought a lot about this. And who I can tell. And there’s just you.’

  Cupidi said quietly, ‘OK.’

  ‘And then a million years later I’m waking up and my phone’s going, to tell me someone has found a fuckin’ arm, and I’m in bed and I’m naked and so’s he. And I feel like a rat that’s just eaten poison and . . . I’m sore.’ She looked ahead, out to the harbour entrance. ‘Obviously I know what happened. I just don’t really remember it . . .’

  ‘What about consent?’

  Ferriter scowled. ‘Don’t remember.’

  Cupidi put down her plastic cup, put her arms around the young woman and sat there for a minute.

  ‘I’m not normally like this,’ said the constable.

  ‘I know.’

  A dinghy with an outboard chugged slowly across the water, loaded with lobster pots.

  And then the police officer in her kicked in. It was who she was, after all. ‘You don’t recall anything else after leaving for your flat?’

  ‘Bits. You know. Maybe.’

  ‘Do you remember having sex?’

  Ferriter said nothing.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Cupidi reached in her bag for a tissue, but Ferriter had already found one of her own.

  ‘I’ve got to ask this, Jill. You understand why, don’t you? Did he rape you?’

  Ferriter looked away. A little way down the quayside, a middle-aged man in a wetsuit was loading a kayak onto the roof-rack of a 4WD. Cupidi suspected he was aware of being watched by two women. The male of the species putting on a kind of display.

  Ferriter said, ‘It wasn’t like that. No. I just don’t remember. I’m not saying . . . I mean, I’ve interviewed the girls who’ve accused men of rape. Sometimes I’ve sat there saying to myself, “You’re a lying cow.”’

  ‘That’s what our job does to us.’

  A third time, Ferriter held her cup out.

  ‘If it was just any man who I’d picked up when I was drunk, I wouldn’t give a toss. I would chalk it up to shit luck and alcohol. But I have to see him every day.’

  Did Ferriter have any idea what she was doing, telling this to a senior officer? She must. If it was assault, it would be the end of Moon’s career; possibly the end of Ferriter’s too. She knew better than anybody that nobody liked a snitch who ended another copper’s career. ‘Did he rape you?’

  ‘I know what rape is. I was steaming. I suppose it must have been more like I was too drunk to be bothered not to.’

  ‘Did you consent to sex?’

  ‘Don’t be like that, Alex. I knew I shouldn’t have started this.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. I don’t remember. I was drunk. It was just a shag, wasn’t it? How pathetic is that?’

  ‘Not if he took advantage of the fact you were drunk. That’s a sexual assault.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Wasn’t it? Just because it might not meet evidentiary standards, that’s what it sounds dangerously like to me.’

  ‘Evidentiary standards? God’s sake. Listen to yourself.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t you get it, Alex? I’m not even interested if it was a sexual assault or not,’ she said, a little too loud. The man looked round, he had finished tightening the straps on his roof-rack and was tugging the sleeves off his wetsuit. He peeled the neoprene off his chest. He was muscled but darkly hairy.

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake,’ muttered Cupidi, looking away from him.

  ‘But I can’t be in Moon’s team. Not right now.’

  Cupidi had somehow finished her small cup of wine. She felt like reaching out and pouring herself a little more. ‘You know what you’ve just done, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have just told me, a superior officer, that you may have been assaulted by another officer.’

  ‘And that’s why I didn’t ever, ever, ever want to tell you. I swear. Because I knew you’d be all like this.’

  ‘All like what?’

  ‘All official. But, thing is, I really don’t want to work alongside him. I’ll end up doing something really stupid. I just wanted you to help me, Alex.’ She dropped another chip into the salt water. This time several gulls gathered to snap at it.

  The water looked black now. ‘You’ve just told me something and you know very well I have to act on it. It’s not like I have a choice.’

  Ferriter put a chip into tomato sauce and chewed on it. ‘Yes you do. I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve told no one else about this,’ she said. ‘Swear to God. I don’t really have anyone else to tell.’

  ‘What we do isn’t like any other job. If if there’s even a hint he’s a sexual predator I have to report him. All this shit we officers talk about us being on the victim’s side,’ said Cupidi bitterly. ‘It’s not true. You know that. When it comes to rape, if someone like you says what you’ve just said to me, you know what we do. We always protect our backs. We don’t have any choice. Whether the victim likes it or not.’

  ‘But no one else knows. I’ve gone over and over it in my head. I’m only telling you about this.’

  ‘If it comes out later that I’ve done nothing about something like this I’d be disciplined. That would be my career over. Not just his. Or yours.’

  ‘I promise. Million per cent. It won’t.’

  The man was finally covering his hairy chest with a black Ramones T-shirt. As his head popped through the neck he smiled at them, standing with the two empty neoprene arms of his wetsuit flapping at his side like a penguin.

  Ferriter turned to her, fiercely. ‘I don’t want to be known forever as the copper who got drunk and was fucked by another policeman. The copper who wrecked another officer’s career. It’s not fair. I didn’t want any of it.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ said Cupidi. ‘But you’ve told me. I can’t un-know it.’ And Cupidi suddenly remembered saying the exact same phrase to her daughter, three days earlier when they were talking about William South. I can’t un-know it.

  ‘See, this wouldn’t happen if we were, I don’t know . . . chiropractors, or farmers,’ Ferriter said. ‘There wouldn’t be these procedures. It’s so stupid.’ She drank from her cup again. ‘See, I’m not a victim. I despise victims.’

  ‘In our line of work, you’re not supposed to say that.’

  ‘Bollocks to that.’ Behind the huge bulk of the Grand Burstin Hotel, the sun was red. The granite of the quay suddenly felt cold. ‘So you’re going to tell Professional Standards, aren’t you? Wish I hadn’t bloody told you now.’

  The man meanwhile had packed up. There was no reason for him not to leave, but he lingered, checking his roof straps, walking round the car once, then leaning back against their side of the car, pretending to look at the scenery, though the setting sun was in the opposite direction. Cupidi supposed he was waiting for them to offer him a drink. There were Peppa Pig stickers on the rear window of the kayaker’s 4WD. He was a dad, a married man possibly too.

  ‘No,’ said Cupidi. ‘You’re OK.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ll try and work something out. I don’t know what.’ She would have to persuade McAdam that she needed to keep Ferriter on her team, though she was not sure how.

  Ferriter put down her cup and put her arms around her boss. And as Ferriter held on to her, Cupidi was wondering if this would turn out to be the stupidest thing she’d ever said in her career. If word got out that she had concealed evidence about a potential assault on another officer, it could be her career, and her pension. Like Bill South, it would all be over. ‘I can’t promise anything, you know?’

  ‘Sorry, boss,’ said Ferriter. ‘I’ve really fucked up. Such an idiot.’

  ‘You’re not to blame, Jill.’

  ‘But I’m still an idiot.’

  ‘Obviously.’ She felt stiff now, from sitting down so long on the cold dock. She hoped that Ferriter was not expecting to
o much of her.

  She felt drunk already. She would have to leave her car on the Stade overnight.

  *

  William South’s shack was dark as the taxi passed.

  Zoë had cooked something; it was sitting in a pot on the stove.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Zoë. ‘It has chickpeas in it. Want some?’

  ‘I had chips already.’

  ‘I bet you’re just saying that.’

  Cupidi tried to think of something funny back but she couldn’t. Her daughter looked at her curiously. ‘Bad day?’

  ‘On the bright side, a multi-millionaire offered me a chance to swim in his pool.’ She flopped down onto a kitchen chair. ‘You seen anything of William South?’ she asked.

  Her daughter shook her head. ‘You still waiting for him to come around and make up with you?’

  ‘I’m just worried about him, that’s all. He’s being weird.’

  For the first time, she noticed her daughter was wearing a jacket indoors despite the fact it was warm; a black faux-leather jacket she had picked up at a junk shop. ‘Are you going out somewhere?’

  Her daughter coloured. ‘No. I was just cold. Are you sure you’re OK?’

  At the time, Cupidi didn’t think anything more of it. ‘Woman at work . . . offloaded on me.’

  ‘Want to talk?’

  ‘Maybe another time. What about you? Aren’t you bored, hanging round here all day on your own? I could ask at the Fish Shack if they are looking for help?’

  ‘Mum. I can’t work there. I’m a vegan.’

  Zoë scuttled upstairs to her room before her mum could offer any other helpful suggestions.

  That night before bed, Cupidi looked out of her bedroom window. On dark nights the lights of the power station seemed even more lurid. Jill Ferriter would be alone at home. Still no light from William South’s small house. He was in there though, she knew.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘I know DI Wray wants Jill Ferriter to start work on the paedophile attack,’ Cupidi told DI McAdam, keeping her voice low, ‘but I’d like to keep her with me for a couple more days.’

  It was early on Wednesday morning. She had pulled her chair close to DI McAdam’s so that no one would be able to listen in to their conversation. McAdam looked puzzled. ‘Why?’