A Dark and Twisted Tide

by Sharon Bolton

  Lacey brought both mugs to the table. ‘Isn’t that normal? Isn’t that what being undercover is all about?’

  ‘Not really. Whoever’s in charge of the operation should always be able to get in touch, if for no other reason than they might need to pull him out.’

  ‘Do they think something’s happened to him?’

  ‘No, because he has been seen. He’s alive and well, don’t worry about that. The rumour is that he’s turned.’

  ‘Turned?’

  ‘Turned bad. Joined the bad guys.’

  Lacey stared, giving nothing away. Or rather, Dana realized, giving a whole lot away without meaning to. She was thinking about it. There hadn’t been the immediate denial, the Mark-wouldn’t-do-that protestations.

  ‘Would he do that?’ she asked, after a second.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dana, honestly.

  ‘You’ve known him fifteen years, how can you not know?’

  ‘He’s no angel, Lacey. But who is? I’ve done some pretty unconscionable things in my time to get results. Haven’t you?’

  ‘I did some pretty unconscionable things before I joined the police,’ Lacey said. ‘These days, I try to keep my nose clean.’

  Great. Nothing like a constable taking the moral high ground. ‘Good for you. But I suspect that puts you in the minority.’

  Silence. Dana knew she’d probably said too much. It was a part of the job that most officers understood but few acknowledged openly. Sometimes, it wasn’t quite so easy to see the distance between right and wrong. Sometimes, the moral code became blurred.

  Nearly fifteen years ago, as young police officers, she and Mark had been staking out the flat of a known drug-dealer. They’d watch him leave the building and hurl a supermarket carrier bag into a rubbish skip. A couple of hours later, they’d taken part in a search of the flat and found nothing. The dealer had stripped his home of every piece of incriminating evidence. It was all in the skip outside and they had no way of tying the carrier bag to him. Mark had pulled back the duvet on the bed and found two short, black hairs. He pocketed them and when they retrieved the bag from the skip, let them slip inside unnoticed.

  Unnoticed by everyone but her. She’d watched her friend cross the line and then she’d stepped over to join him. And that had been right at the start of her career. Before she’d even had time to consider just how much integrity meant to her.

  The dealer had gone down. One piece of scum less on the street. With no doubt as to his guilt, Dana’s conscience had been easy. Noble-cause corruption was the name given to the practice. Planting evidence, telling small white lies, holding back facts to secure the conviction of those you knew were guilty.

  It was widespread and, for the most part, did no harm. On the other hand, it was the first step on a slippery slope. How big a step was it from planting evidence on someone you knew to be guilty, to creaming off a few quid from money snatched in a raid? And if you could square that with your conscience – the money was illegally gained anyway – how hard would it be to skim off half a bag of cocaine to sell on yourself? To pocket the two hundred quid and look away when a drunk driver asked nicely? To withdraw a few twenties with the fraudulently obtained credit card?

  Most police work wasn’t hunting down serial killers and solving heinous murders. It was small and sordid, beating the scum at their own game. Coppers made the best villains. They knew the score. They knew how not to get caught.

  And some small spark of light had gone from Lacey’s eyes.

  ‘There’s also a discrepancy in his bank account,’ Dana went on, wishing she could have spared her the most damning evidence of all. ‘Several hundred thousand pounds more in there than should be. Far more than he earns in the Met and no way of accounting for it.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ said Lacey. ‘That you’re all bent and he’s just finally gone the whole hog?’

  ‘No, I’m not saying anything of the kind. To be honest, I don’t believe it. Partly because I think Mark knows where to draw the line and partly because he’s got too much to lose. If he goes off the grid, he’ll lose all his friends. Not to mention his son. Not to mention you.’

  ‘How, exactly, did you hear this?’

  ‘One of his mates phoned me. Someone I know from way back. Wanted to know if I’d heard anything. He may be in touch with you, too.’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing. Since he went, nothing.’

  ‘He should have been transferred out of SO10 before now.’ Dana was using the former, but still colloquially popular, name for the covert operations squad. ‘The work those guys do is incredibly tough, and no one should stay in the directorate for more than a few years.’

  Lacey was nodding. ‘They get too close to the people they’re investigating. They start to see things from their point of view. They start to care.’

  ‘They make friends. Sometimes they even get involved. Romantically, sexually. They lose the ability to walk away. You know what? If Mark wasn’t so bloody good at blending in with villains they’d have moved him too, but it was always one more case, then one more.’

  Lacey ran her hands over her face. ‘Where will he go, do you think?’

  Dana got to her feet. ‘If Mark really has gone, then there’ll be people who will shelter him. He won’t put us at risk. He won’t come here.’

  Nothing else to be said, really. Dana tried to smile and couldn’t quite manage it. She said goodbye and climbed off the boat. In the short time she’d been on board, all traces of sun had left the sky and the creek was starting to assume the gaping, canyon-like presence it acquired after dark.

  From the shore, when she turned back, Lacey was nowhere to be seen.

  13

  Dana

  HELEN WAS IN the garden, wearing jogging bottoms and a vest top, a sweat-sheen around her forehead. At her side was a pint glass of water, a cold bottle of lager and crisps. It was how she replaced fluid, sugars and salts after hard exercising.

  ‘I expected you back before now,’ she said, as Dana came across the decking to join her. ‘Busy day?’

  ‘Mad. What about the meeting you were rushing off for? That go well?’

  ‘I know you want to talk about the clinic.’ Helen was smiling. ‘Did you get the forms sent off?’

  Yes, somehow, in between setting in motion a murder investigation and dealing with the news that her best friend might have gone out of her life for good, Dana had found time to complete and post off the forms that marked the next stage in the process that would turn her into a mother. She’d also spent most of her lunch-break moving from one fertility web page to the next.

  ‘You know, a lot of women in our position share the pregnancy,’ she said, sitting down and stealing a swig from the bottle.

  ‘Hmmn.’ Helen was suddenly intent on the crisps.

  ‘One of them donates the eggs.’ Dana put the bottle back down. ‘Which are fertilized in vitro and then the embryos are put into the womb of the other partner.’

  Helen put several large crisps into her mouth. ‘I think that pink thing needs dead-heading,’ she said.

  Humouring her, Dana looked towards the resplendent rambler rose at the bottom of the garden. It was safe. Helen had no interest in the garden, other than as a place to drink a cold beer and occasionally eat an al fresco supper.

  ‘So Partner A, the one who donates the eggs, is the biological mother, and Partner B, the one who receives them, a sort of surrogate?’ said Helen, after at least a minute had gone by. ‘Given that you’ve got me lined up for Partner A, what does that involve exactly?’

  Dana watched a butterfly settle on a purple, bell-shaped flower. ‘Well, it would be similar to IVF. You’d have to take artificial hormones that would stimulate follicle development. It’s mainly done by injection, but there are some drugs that you just sniff.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve come across a few of those.’

  ‘When the eggs are ready,’ said Dana. ‘God, I sound like Nigella. When the follicles are ready to
release the eggs, they’re retrieved surgically under a local anaesthetic.’

  Helen drank deeply. ‘We’d still need a sperm donor.’

  ‘No way round that, I’m afraid. So what do you think?’

  Helen put the empty bottle down. ‘Sounds hideously intrusive, hugely expensive and generally revolting. Other than that, it’s a great plan.’

  So did she laugh or get annoyed? That was the trouble with Helen. You could always go either way. ‘OK, I just wanted to give you the option.’

  Helen tipped her head back and emptied the crumbs from the crisp packet into her mouth. ‘I don’t need a biological link to this child, you know,’ she said, crumpling the bag. ‘It’ll be enough for me if you have one.’

  ‘I just don’t want you to feel left out. It’s going to be difficult enough with you in Scotland and me and the baby down here.’

  ‘Ah, now you can ask me about my meeting this morning.’

  She’d known there was something up. ‘Tell me about the meeting.’

  ‘Actually it was more of an interview. For a job.’

  ‘Who with?’ Dana asked, although what she really wanted to ask was, where based?

  ‘Interpol.’

  Interpol in the UK were London-based. Dana thought about it for a second. ‘I didn’t know you were looking to move.’ Helen had always worked in Scotland. She’d built her career in the Tayside Police, had been one of the youngest women in Scotland to reach the rank of Detective Chief Inspector.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ she said. ‘But if I’m going to be a dad, co-mum, whatever, it’s not really going to work if I’m three hundred miles away.’

  ‘You’d move to London?’

  ‘I have to get the job first. You have to get pregnant first. Lots of ifs and buts and far too soon to be counting chickens. Now, are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’

  She could never hide anything from Helen. ‘It’s Mark,’ she said.

  TUESDAY, 12 FEBRUARY

  (eighteen weeks earlier)

  14

  Yass

  THE TIDE CREEPS in. It comes slowly at first, like a predatory animal short on conviction. At first the only sign of the water’s approach is an almost imperceptible relaxing of the sand. Suddenly it’s not as solid as it was. It’s relaxing into its component parts, separating, starting to get – floaty. Then the damp becomes wet and Yass knows the time has come to move.

  So she moves. She jumps and twists and thrashes. She screams and cries as she hurls her limbs against the hard brick walls around her. She keeps it up until she can do nothing more than sink down, exhausted, on to sand that is softer still.

  A few minutes later and the smell around her has grown thicker, more solid. The air smells of salt that has been left too long in the storeroom. Of engine oil. Of a small, decomposing animal. She can smell sweat. No, that’s coming from her. Blood. That’s her, too.

  She sinks a little deeper into the mud.

  She can’t see the water. Not yet anyway. It’s too dark in here. Black as the night at home when the power failed. Except, just as the stars at home offered a hint of what lay behind the dark cloak, so there is a tiny stream of light finding its way in here.

  That’s a change. Instantly Yass is moving again, is up, on to her knees. Any change means new information, something she can process. It was night when she was brought here. Sometime after midnight. She’d taken the key that was given her, crept down the stairs, her heart thudding at every creak of the woodwork, and opened the back door. The boat had been waiting.

  They’d travelled away, using the oars as paddles, only switching on the small engine as they’d left the house behind. Without speaking they’d travelled up the river, before turning into a brick-lined tunnel beneath the city. A tunnel that had taken them further and further into darkness, until only the torch on the boat had stopped them from being completely submerged in it.

  It isn’t night any more. There is light coming from somewhere, enough to see her hand in front of her face, were she able to move her hands. She can hear the low roar of vehicles passing overhead. She is beneath the city and the city is awake.

  With the knowledge that she’s been here for hours comes the realization that she is freezing. The complete lack of light, the damp all around have leached all warmth from her body. Yass is shaking with cold.

  She can hear the water now. A steady, rhythmic sucking, the sound of a greedy young animal draining its mother, the hawking and spitting of old men on the street corners. The wall at her back feels colder, wetter. There are trickling sounds all around, as though a dozen taps have suddenly begun to leak. She is kneeling in water.

  She tries to stand. Not easy with her hands tied behind her back, but the water is covering her legs now and it is impossible to stay still. Impossible to stand, though, because the rope around her neck simply isn’t long enough. She twists round but can’t see what the rope is tied to. She pulls against it, thrusting her head forward, feeling the sharp stab of pain from raw flesh that reminds her she’s done this many times already.

  She shouts out loud. And the soreness in her throat tells her it isn’t the first time.

  The water is coming in fast, hard waves now. The predatory animal is swollen with courage now it knows that she can’t move, can’t fight back, is alone down here.

  Except she isn’t alone. Those are human eyes she can see, just yards away, gleaming in the trickle of light. That pale glow is a human face, the face that brought her here. Yass opens her mouth to beg, although she knows it’s hopeless.

  Those eyes are here to watch her die.

  FRIDAY, 20 JUNE

  15

  Lacey

  AS OFTEN HAPPENS when exhaustion has been sated, sleep slipped treacherously away and some time in the early hours, Lacey woke up. The boat was moving, bumping and bouncing like a baby in an elastic support swing. The tide was coming in.

  In the cabin around her the darkness was utter and complete. There were no streetlights in or near the yard and the boat owners didn’t waste their precious electricity keeping lights burning through the night. When the moon wasn’t around, or cloud cover was thick, her small bedroom became the impenetrable black of Hades.

  Joesbury.

  Lacey closed her eyes, feeling tears cold and ticklish against her lashes, willing sleep to take her again. After Tulloch had left, she’d gone straight to bed, refusing to think about what she’d just been told. Since moving to the boat, she’d been sleeping better than she had in years. She loved the unpredictable rhythms of the water, the cheerful slapping of waves against the hull. Even the wind whistling around the few remaining masts in the marina was soothing and she never minded the times when water disappeared completely from this part of the creek, when the boats were beached and skewed at odd angles. She simply rolled against the low wooden frame around the bed, like a child in a cot, and slept soundly.

  She’d been angry with him for leaving. He’d phoned in April, asking her to meet him after work, and she’d known immediately there was something she wasn’t going to like, because they hadn’t been alone for months. He’d been giving her space, seeing her only at weekends or early evenings, and always with his nine-year-old son, Huck, acting as a sort of skinny, cheeky chaperone. And just when she’d started to think that it might be possible after all, that, in spite of everything, there could be a way, he’d gone.

  In a pub by the river he’d told her he had to leave the very next day, that a job he’d been on the periphery of for months needed finishing, that no one else could do it. He couldn’t tell her where he’d be, what he’d be doing, or when he’d be back. He’d admitted that Carrie, his ex-wife, was furious, that she would divorce him again if she could.

  ‘Huck needs you,’ Lacey had said, knowing all the while that what she really meant was, I need you. It had hit home. She’d seen his eyes darken, his face tense up.

  ‘If I don’t go, kids like Huck might die.’

  And what could you say to that?
But how dare he take the moral high ground when weeks later he was going to turn?

  Did that mean she believed it?

  Tulloch believed it. Whatever she might say to the contrary, she believed it and she’d known him for years. She and Joesbury had joined the force together, trained together – she knew him better than anyone.

  And who would really be surprised? The service was riddled with officers who were on the make and half the eyes in the Met were blind. Such a fine, fine line, between poacher and gamekeeper.

  Tears were coming thick and fast now. Impossible to stop them. Would it even matter? If he turned up with half a million quid in his pocket and asked her to run away with him, to flee to some foreign land and live as fugitives for the rest of their lives, would she?

  Outside, on the creek, she could hear soft, rhythmical splashing.

  Impossible. For years now, her job had been all she had. It had meant everything. Upholding the law. Making a difference. Putting things right when they went wrong. She was her job. She could not walk away from it.

  Splash, splash.

  She was not bent, would never be bent. Years ago, as a wild teenager in the sink estates of Cardiff, she’d been in and out of trouble. Schools and local authorities and foster homes had despaired of her. And then, one night, her life had changed irrevocably and a chain of events had been set in motion that would turn her into a different person. Quite literally. She’d lost the person closest to her in the whole world, and the woman she’d been on the brink of becoming had died, too. Lacey Flint had appeared in her place and Lacey Flint was not bent. So if Joesbury came to her, under cover of darkness, and asked her to be with him?

  She’d do it in a heartbeat.

  Splash, splash.

  Lacey sighed and sat up. No one could sleep with this level of misery pressing down on them. Besides, she had a more immediate problem. Someone was swimming round the boat.