The Body Under the Bridge

by The Body Under the Bridge (epub)

  A flash of bull bars in his peripheral vision, then he tumbled over the handlebars to the ground, the vehicle ran right over him, a dark growling monster swallowing him and spitting him out the other end. He glimpsed blue sky above with little puffy white clouds, then pivoted to look uphill. His face and neck were in agony, and there was blood and a screaming fizz in one ear, but he had no time to deal with that. The four-wheel-drive fifty yards further up was now reversing back towards him, transmission whining. Survival clicked in. He rolled to the side of the road, into a thick patch of nettles, and tumbled down a damp bank into a culvert. But not before he had taken a mental photograph of the back of the pick-up truck: Mitsubishi Warrior, olive green, double cab, and a Reading registration number beginning RG, from 2016.

  Brakes and the slam of a car door heralded that the attack was not over. Gillard scrambled to his feet, now woozily aware of blood pouring down his left cheek. He was standing in a small ditch which ran alongside the edge of the lane. Behind him was a steep upward slope, thickly wooded and carpeted with freshly green bracken. His assailant was now revealed. A big, broad man in a dark car coat with a ski mask. He had a two-foot-long adjustable spanner in his hand, and was scanning the roadside vegetation for someone to hit.

  The detective knew he would be found quickly, so began to scramble up the bank behind, his cycling shoes too smoothly soled to get much purchase, so it was hand over hand grasping and pulling his way through saplings of hawthorn, rowan and spiky blackthorn. The pursuer roared at him, in almost choking anger: ‘I’m going to fucking kill you.’ Gillard had no doubt that was his intention, and hauled himself up the steep slope. A quick look behind showed the pursuer, shod in yellow Caterpillar boots, had set off after him, but had to stow his weapon to get a grip on the foliage, and was cursing to himself on every clumsy, scrambling footstep up the disintegrating bank. Over fifty years old he might be, and panting with the exertion, but with years of climbing experience, Gillard was clearly more nimble than his heftily built and seemingly younger attacker. Now, twenty feet above the road, and hearing the heavy breathing well below, the detective risked a look behind.

  The man had a fist-sized stone, and was weighing up his aim. The shot when it came was all power and no accuracy, embedding itself with a thunk! into the ground to his right. With a few seconds of respite while the assailant looked for more projectiles, Gillard reached behind him for the phone that he kept in a small pocket on the back of his cycling tunic. A photograph or two, and some video, might be invaluable.

  It was gone.

  All he felt was his bare back through the torn textile, and a weeping fag-packet-sized graze that was, from nothing, now agony to the touch. The pursuer was now following a shallower lateral route through the bushes that in a minute or so would bring him across from the left-hand side. Gillard, now with shallower woodland above him, would need to move to keep ahead of his assailant. But had an idea. He unbuckled his new digital watch from his left wrist, wrapped it in his torn cycling glove, and tossed it underhand down the slope into the bed of the vehicle. The dull clang of its impact drew the attention of his pursuer, who scanned the slope and road looking for the source of the noise.

  The detective, now feeling a little more confident, settled for a little diversion. He held his right hand to his ear, as if it contained a phone, and loudly said, ‘Yes, police please, and an ambulance.’ He read out his mobile phone number, as would be required for a real emergency call, and then continued. ‘Yes, hit-and-run, Mitsubishi Warrior, olive green…’

  Before he’d even finished the sentence, the attacker had begun to flee back to his vehicle, with a final parting shout of ‘fucking cyclists’. Gillard continued the charade call as he watched the Warrior roar off and up the hill. Only after two or three minutes of silence, when he was sure that he was safe, did he check himself over. He was lucky. His arms, pulled in to protect himself, had not been crushed by the big fat front tyres. The Warrior’s high suspension had enough clearance not to grind him to pieces. As he was later to discover it was his own bike that caused the worst injuries. Partially embedded in the bull bars of the four-wheel-drive, it was dragged over his shoulders and face, a sharp pedal slicing up his cheek and ear.

  Five minutes after the attack, agonising bruises making themselves felt all over his body, Gillard stood on the tarmac and surveyed the crushed and twisted wreck that was his expensive racing bike. Plastic fragments on the road depicted the destruction of his mobile, his wraparound sunglasses, and various other bits and pieces. He’d need to hitch a lift, get someone with a mobile who could genuinely call emergency services. This was a quiet road, but someone would surely be along in a few minutes. In fact it only took one. The squeal of brakes, something coming downhill, just one invisible bend above him. He looked up, ready to flag the car down.

  One second later, he realised he’d made a huge mistake.

  Green Warrior!

  The vehicle thundering down to him was doing at least forty. The driver had given Gillard just enough time to get down from his haven in the woods to make him a target all over again. With just thirty yards before impact, the cop instinctively threw himself to the inside of the curve, the other side from where he had been knocked off, making himself much harder for the assailant to target. The Warrior went the other way on the outer curve, brakes squealing as it slid to a halt another fifty yards down the road.

  Now the detective really was stuck. The bank on this side was impossibly steep, and he might not be able to get across to the other side in time. A renewed climb would be agony. Every part of him was screaming in pain.

  Help arrived immediately. Another vehicle could be heard descending the road, much more cautiously and slowly. Gillard tried to run uphill, as best he could, towards it. A white Nissan Micra, Eric’s School of Motoring emblazoned on its side, did a perfect emergency stop. There was a young woman behind the wheel and a tall man next to her. Gillard staggered up to the passenger-side window, which slid down to reveal a thin-faced, grey-haired fellow of sixty or so.

  ‘I’m an off-duty police officer,’ Gillard gasped, holding up an expired Surrey Police ID card that he always kept in a thigh pocket of his cycling trousers. ‘I’ve just been a victim of a hit-and-run and I need you to dial 999.’

  ‘You mean that vehicle ahead?’ the instructor said, pointing at the Warrior, which was now driving away.

  ‘Eric, shouldn’t we chase him?’ the young woman asked her instructor, her eyes lit with excitement.

  Gillard sensed the dual controls being firmly depressed on the instructor side. ‘No, Briony. Not on your third lesson. I think hot pursuit comes some weeks after reversing around a corner.’ He shared a thin smile with the detective.

  * * *

  It was later that afternoon when Sam came to pick up her husband from Redhill A&E, with a big bag loaded with everything he’d asked for. He had a blanket around his shoulders, and was wearing only the shreds of his favourite red and green cycling trousers. They had patched him up but he still looked quite a mess, even worse than she’d expected, given how together he seemed when he had rung her. He got up gingerly as she approached but he held up a warning hand when she tried to embrace him. He flipped up the blanket to show her his back, where there was an enormous dressing. ‘That’s what my iPhone did to me as it broke up,’ he said. ‘And this was a bicycle pedal.’ He pointed to the five inches of fresh stitches on the top of his cheek and across his ear.

  ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘And I’ve been so worried.’

  ‘I’m fine really.’ They hugged carefully and he said, ‘I’m sorry to say your Christmas present to me is gone for good.’

  ‘Broken? Is that why you need the paperwork? You should look after yourself before writing your insurance claim.’ She opened the bag and handed him the papers. She had also brought him a complete set of casual clothing, and thought getting dressed properly should be his first priority.

  Gillard was reading the watch instructions.
‘It’s got a fitness tracker on it with GPS. I managed to chuck it in the open back of the Warrior, so once we get the details and unique ID to Rob Townsend, he can get on to the manufacturer and track the truck.’

  ‘Wow, that watch was a better gift than I realised,’ she said. ‘So was this just casual road rage, do you think?’

  Gillard shook his head and then winced slightly at the pain it caused. ‘He wanted me to think it was random, by cursing cyclists in general. But when the driver is wearing a ski mask on what is not a very cold day, you know that it was planned in advance.’

  Sam was horrified. ‘But how would he know where you would go?’

  Gillard shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve had plenty of time to think about all the people who might hate me, going back years. Some of them, like Charles Allerdyce, Paddy Kincaid and Ronnie Evans, are still inside, though that doesn’t mean they don’t have mates who would do such a thing. There’s lots of others: Rodney Wells, Sam Akos, a few of the Croydon gangsters from when I was in the drug squad. And of course we mustn’t forget your old mate, Gary.’

  Sam shuddered at the mention of her old boyfriend Gary Harrison. ‘I think you frightened him off for good. I’d be more worried about Paddy, seeing as he’s ex-police. But who’s your favourite candidate?’

  ‘Ronnie has got to be my favourite. Today is the tenth anniversary of putting him away. He’ll be eligible for parole in a year. And it has to be said he’s a totally psychopathic bastard who would arrange something like this.’ He looked at the bag. ‘Did you bring my spare phone?’

  She nodded and passed it to him. As her husband started tapping out numbers she realised that even now, an hour or two after a near-death experience, sitting half dressed in A&E, he wasn’t able to stop working. Even as he waited to see the neurologist to get the all clear, he was thinking ahead. She listened as he first spoke to Rob Townsend about fitness trackers, and after that asked to be passed on to Carl Hoskins.

  ‘Hi Carl. No, fine really, just a few bruises.’ He winked at Sam. ‘You know that car theft from Woking. Yeah, that’s right, the flying slipper. What was the plate on that olive green Mitsubishi Warrior?’ He waited while Hoskins checked. ‘Yeah, that’s the one. And it was driven by a bloke in a balaclava and a navy car coat with high-vis stripes on the sleeves.’ He laughed at some joke Hoskins had told him. ‘Yeah, well that same guy has just had a go at me.’

  Chapter Eleven

  The moment that DC Rainy Macintosh heard Gillard had been a road rage incident victim, she messaged Rob Townsend to see if any of the details of the threat message signed by IC had been traced. It took a while for the research intelligence officer to reply that the phone in question was a pay-as-you-go, and had been used only a few times.

  She walked over to his desk. ‘Rob, I think cell site analysis on this would be useful. If someone is making threats, however vague, against the senior investigating officer, and someone has just tried to kill him with a car…’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, not really looking up. ‘I’m really snowed under, I’ll get to it as soon as I can.’

  Rainy felt exactly the same kind of disappointment she had got when working as a junior doctor. Not quite the exacting hours, perhaps, but a feeling of being under-appreciated, her judgement questioned because she was junior, and because she was a woman, a woman of size. It was that curious version of physics, where a woman was progressively less visible to the male gaze the larger she was. The police were, if anything, even more misogynistic than the medical profession, something that had come as an unwelcome shock to her.

  She leaned forward and whispered in Townsend’s ear. ‘Laddie, when I was on A&E at 4.30 a.m. at the dog end of a sixteen-hour shift, I sewed up the torn scrotum of a young man who looked just like you.’

  She had his attention now, a kind of crazed horror scribbled all over his face.

  ‘He had slipped trying to climb a razor wire fence during a burglary. Went right through his jeans and sliced into the scrotal sac. Imagine that, eh? Needed nine very careful self-dissolving stitches.’ She mimed the action, slowly, her hand just above Townsend’s crotch.

  ‘Anaesthetic?’ croaked Townsend, his eyes bulging.

  ‘Aye, but only a local.’ She held up one hand between their proximate faces, as if grasping something tiny between finger and thumb. ‘A wee sharp needle. I just want you to remember what I’m capable of. A bit of respect might be handy. Okay?’ She tweaked his ear.

  Townsend’s head moved like one of those dogs from the parcel shelves of 1990s cars. ‘Okay, Rainy. I’m really sorry. I’ll get it started now. Should only take a couple of hours.’

  * * *

  It was early afternoon when Gillard hobbled in to the Mount Browne incident room for the meeting that he had called. He had a bandaged ear, a dressing on his cheek, and hobbled like a man of ninety. He got plenty of sympathy from the female members of the team, and plenty of jokes from the men.

  ‘Blind dentist you were seeing?’ Hoskins asked.

  ‘You’ll be blacklisted as a no-show for your appointment,’ Rainy Macintosh warned.

  After he had given them a brief account of the morning’s hit and run, he turned the meeting over to DI Claire Mulholland, so he could sit down. It seemed that it was his back, and the wound caused by the disintegrating mobile phone, that was causing the most pain.

  In his absence, Hoskins had combed the police national computer and the DVLA to see what exactly they could learn about the Mitsubishi Warrior. Of course all the information pertained to the owner, Mr Kyle Halliday, not to the thief who’d stolen it. Hoskins rang Halliday, who said it did not have a fitted satnav. In fact the detective constable fully expected to find the vehicle burned out somewhere, having outlived its usefulness, but so far there were no reports.

  ‘The first thing I want to concentrate on are the messages from IC,’ Claire said. ‘As you know some of them referred to DCI Gillard by name. It could simply be a hoax, but then it could be significant, particularly in light of the attempt on his life. Using cell site analysis we’ve traced the location where the first message was sent from, and as close as we can establish it is the bus stop from which Beatrice disappeared. The second message was sent from an even more significant location. Just north of the village of Bletchingley, almost the same spot at which our SIO was attacked, and just a few minutes later.’

  A gasp went around the room.

  ‘So I think the entire inquiry is morphing.’ She turned to a whiteboard on which the various salient points had been listed. ‘We’re now linking the murders of the two women whose bodies were found in the River Wey to the attempted murder of our own SIO, and the theft of a Mitsubishi Warrior on Monday of last week.’

  Rainy put up her hand. ‘Ma’am, do we know yet who the second woman is?’

  ‘Not for certain. I was hoping DI Perry would be able to tell us.’ She looked around and could see he wasn’t there.

  Hoskins spoke up. ‘He’s on the phone to Dr Delahaye. He told me he’d be here in a couple of minutes.’

  The detective constable’s prediction was spot on. The incident room door burst open, and DI Perry stood in the doorway looking amazed.

  ‘So have you an answer to our little conundrum?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘Yes. Delahaye has all the test results now, and believes it almost certainly is Jane Morris. Her body has until recently been deep frozen, at a temperature low enough to preclude any deterioration.’

  ‘What, since 1982!’ Rainy exclaimed. ‘Like a thirty-seven-year-old fish finger?’

  Perry nodded, walked up and took a seat. ‘Cause of death seems to be strangulation.’

  ‘Well, perhaps that’s him then, the one sending messages,’ Rainy said, her face suddenly lighting up. ‘Maybe IC aren’t initials, but the word icy, as in frozen water.’

  ‘That’s certainly plausible,’ Gillard said.

  ‘One thing we can be certain about,’ Claire said, ‘is that whoever was strangling a woman
to death in 1982 would have been, let’s say, a minimum age of sixteen back then. They would be fifty-four now. How old would you say your assailant was, Craig?’

  ‘I didn’t see his face, but from the speed he moved at I would be surprised if he could be in his fifties. More like mid-thirties to early forties. But that’s only a guess. It could possibly be the same man. From his build it was definitely not Adrian Singer.’

  ‘And definitely not the bird in the hat on the train,’ Hoskins said. Gillard saw him looking around expectantly for the eye-rolling from female colleagues. They did not disappoint. Hoskins grinned, another successful feminist bait trip concluded.

  The DCI popped out another couple of painkillers for his throbbing ear, and washed them down with lukewarm coffee. ‘I’m getting more optimistic about this. We’ve got three separate crimes to map, a male and a female suspect, and two dead bodies recovered. That’s a lot more to work on than we had a week ago.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Rainy said, ‘our wee killer seems quite active. There may be other bodies out there that we don’t know about.’

  Gillard and Claire shared a glance of agreement. ‘We hope you’re wrong, Rainy,’ Gillard said.

  ‘We also need to think about your security,’ Claire told him. ‘How can this man have known where you were cycling? You started from home, didn’t you?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about that, and haven’t come up with any satisfactory answers. However, I do believe we can make a lot more progress on the vehicle. The manufacturers have promised a trace on my fitness tracker by this afternoon.’

  * * *

  PC Lynne Fairbanks rang the doorbell of 16 Wensleydale Walk. She heard the gradual clattering of a metal crutch as Kyle Halliday came to answer. He’d obviously got her text, as he was wearing a dazzling white shirt and well-fitting jeans, and had the same big broad smile she had noticed before.