A Dark and Twisted Tide

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘I visit a woman in Durham prison, the high-security wing,’ Lacey said. ‘She was given a life sentence for murder in January.’

  ‘Someone very close to you?’

  Lacey nodded.

  Thessa swirled her drink, letting the ice chink against the sides, waiting until it stopped moving. ‘It isn’t your fault, you know. What she did.’

  Being with Thessa was like playing paintball with the SAS – you never knew when the next strike was coming, only that it was inevitable and that it would be bang on target. Lacey opened her mouth to say, of course it isn’t, I fully understand that, everyone takes responsibility for their own actions.

  ‘Well, actually it is,’ she said instead. ‘But I don’t go out of guilt or as any sort of self-indulgent penance. I go because seeing her makes me happy.’

  ‘Is she family?’

  Lacey had to remind herself to breathe. ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘I can see love in your eyes. And tears.’

  Ah, now she was on slightly safer ground. ‘I never cry.’ She half smiled, half glared at Thessa.

  Who did exactly the same thing back. ‘They may not fall, but they’re there all the same.’

  ‘Drink up, ladies.’ Madge had stolen up behind them. ‘You have six hours before the tide goes out and you’re trapped here.’

  In spite of the heat, Madge was dressed like a gangster from the prohibition era, with a wide-striped suit, red shirt and black tie. A trilby was perched on her short hair.

  ‘Please don’t give Thessa any more alcohol,’ said Lacey. ‘She’s driving me home. Not to mention herself.’

  ‘We’re skinny dipping later.’ Madge was giving Lacey the sort of look she normally only saw on the faces of drunken men in pubs she raided. ‘See if we can catch the mermaid.’

  Thessa snorted. ‘If that’s a sexual euphemism, you’re wasting your time. Lacey’s in love. With a man.’

  Madge squeezed herself down on to the bench next to Lacey. ‘I can’t believe you’ve lived on the river since the old Queen died and you don’t know about the mermaid.’ Her voice was slurred, her eyes not quite focused.

  ‘I don’t know about the mermaid,’ said Lacey. ‘But didn’t the old Queen die quite recently?’

  ‘She doesn’t mean the Queen Mother,’ said Thessa. ‘She means that hairy old drag artist from the Duke on Creek Road.’

  ‘It’s practically a local legend.’ Marlene had crept up without them noticing. As had Eileen. ‘The beautiful dock-worker’s daughter who fell in love with a pirate. When he was hanged at Neckinger Creek she threw herself into the water in despair, but such was the power of her love that she lived, and grew a tail. And now she’s doomed to swim the waters of the creek and the Thames for all eternity, looking for her lost love.’

  Lacey’s eyes couldn’t help straying to the dredger, just yards away from them.

  ‘She’s been seen lots of times,’ said Marlene.

  ‘Yes, but it’s always a bloke who knew a bloke who’d seen her one night, usually after a few in the Bird’s Nest,’ said Eileen as Marlene strode away towards the main cabin, tottering on heels that seemed far too high for the deck of a boat.

  ‘Don’t give me that. Even Ray’s seen her. He told me so himself.’ Madge leaned even closer to Lacey. ‘He was out fishing one night, about twenty years ago. He saw a mermaid sitting on one of those old timber piles near the railway bridge.’

  Eileen laughed cynically. ‘Gazing into a mother-of-pearl mirror and combing her hair?’

  ‘When his boat got closer, she dived into the water and disappeared,’ added Madge.

  ‘He was drunk.’

  ‘Ray would never go out on the water drunk,’ said Lacey.

  ‘He was drunk when he told the story,’ insisted Eileen. ‘He saw a seal.’

  Lacey realized that Thessa had fallen quiet. ‘So have you seen her?’ she asked.

  Thessa shrugged. ‘I’ve seen odd things. Usually in the creek, sometimes in the main river. Very early in the morning, or late at night, just occasionally I see what looks like a face, staring at me.’

  For some reason, the story seemed more credible when Thessa, ridiculous old ham that she was, was telling it. The dancing twinkle had completely gone from her eyes.

  ‘Seals,’ said Eileen. ‘Or an old football bobbing up and down.’

  Thessa smiled.

  Marlene had come back, carrying a large photograph album. She handed it to Lacey, already open at a page containing press cuttings going back years. Dolphins in the Thames, seals in the Thames, porpoises, even a small whale in the river. At some time over the past few decades, most species that passed close to the Thames Estuary had lost their way and found themselves in the heart of the city. Most, sadly, didn’t find their way out again.

  ‘Go down a bit further,’ Marlene told her. ‘There you are.’

  She was pointing Lacey towards an article from the Illustrated Police News dated 1878. THE MERMAID AT WESTMINSTER AQUARIUM, said the caption. The story covered the new attraction at the Royal Westminster Aquarium: a manatee.

  The manatee, Lacey read, was a sea-dwelling animal from the South American continent, believed to have given rise to the legend of the mermaid, the beautiful half-human, half-fish creature that lured sailors to their deaths in perilous seas.

  ‘They’re also known as sea cows,’ said Marlene. ‘They have very long flippers at the front, which could look like arms at a distance. And they have the wide, strong tail that mermaids are supposed to have. Mind you, how anyone could look at one and fall in love is beyond me. Even after several months at sea and a bottle or two of the strong stuff.’

  She had a point. The manatee was a large, cumbersome creature without even the cute, humanoid face of the seal.

  ‘They’re native to South America,’ said Lacey. ‘And Florida. They couldn’t live in the Thames, could they?’

  ‘You wouldn’t think so,’ said Marlene, ‘but Ray used to tell some odd stories. It’s no good looking like that, Eileen, you know he did. Odd tracks, massive birds disappearing in split seconds. You get talk of crocodiles every few years. People release their exotic pets into the river all the time. Maybe they don’t all die.’

  ‘It’s too cold,’ Eileen scoffed.

  ‘Maybe they get lucky,’ said Thessa. ‘Find a drain near warm pipes. Hole up until the cold weather passes.’

  ‘I’d rather believe in the mermaid,’ said Lacey. ‘It’s a nice story.’

  ‘Yeah, woman falls for a bloke, he turns out to be a wrong ’un, she drowns herself and spends the rest of eternity as a fish,’ said Madge. ‘Just like a fairy tale. Who needs a top-up?’

  ‘Why do you love the river so much, Lacey?’ asked Thessa, when Madge and the others had wandered away. ‘Every time your thoughts drift, you stare at it.’

  Lacey hadn’t been looking at the water at all, but at the hull of the abandoned dredger, wondering if he could hear the music, whether he was watching them right now. Thessa was right about one thing, though. She did love the river.

  ‘I always loved swimming. I swam in the sea when I was a child. We didn’t live too far from the coast.’

  ‘Yes, Shropshire’s well known for its beaches.’

  The realization of her mistake was like a physical shock. Lacey had completely forgotten that she’d already told Thessa she was from Shropshire. It was the first time, ever, that she’d made such an error.

  ‘I expect you mean you stayed with relatives who lived near the beach,’ said Thessa. ‘Go on, dear.’

  She’d been let off the hook. No choice, really, but to go along with it. ‘Well, I swam competitively at school. It was about the only thing I was really good at. And then, about a year ago, I nearly drowned in the Thames.’

  The others had returned, gathering round to listen. Everyone loved a police story.

  ‘We were pursuing a suspect,’ Lacey said. ‘This was the early hours of the morning. I chased him on to Vauxhall Bridge and my
colleagues came the other way. We thought we had him trapped. Only he grabbed me and pulled us both over the side. It was a surprisingly long way down.’

  Gasps of shock, faces intent with interest.

  ‘I had surveillance equipment sewn into my clothes, a tracking device, so the Marine Unit pulled me out,’ said Lacey. ‘He wasn’t so lucky. His body was found several days later. I know it sounds daft, but I like to think the river took care of me.’

  ‘That means you can’t ever drown,’ said Marlene. ‘That’s the legend among watermen. If you cheat death in the water, the river loses its power to harm you.’

  ‘Claptrap,’ said Thessa. ‘Of course you can drown. Don’t you dare take silly risks.’

  The story over, some of the others drifted away again. Eileen and Madge stepped towards the rail and looked down into the water.

  ‘I’ve been trying to decide what month you were born, Lacey,’ said Thessa. ‘May is a possibility, like Alex and me, which would make your birth flower the Lily of the Valley.’

  Lacey smiled.

  ‘Hmm, I don’t think it’s as late as August, somehow,’ said Thessa. ‘So I’m going with June or July. July, I think. Larkspur.’

  ‘I was born in December,’ said Lacey.

  Thessa screwed up her face. ‘A carnation? I don’t think so, dear.’

  ‘I’m sure Lacey knows her own birthday, you daft old trout,’ Madge called back over her shoulder. ‘Anyone for a skinny dip?’

  ‘Eileen doesn’t approve of swimming in the creek,’ said Lacey, smiling at her neighbour. ‘She’s pretty much clipped Ray’s fins.’

  ‘Only because the silly old sod’s too old to cope with the Thames,’ said Madge. ‘Besides, who do you think got Ray into wild-swimming in the first place? Swims like a fish, our Eileen.’

  SATURDAY, 28 JUNE

  51

  Lacey

  ‘OK, LET ME get my head around all this crap,’ said Toc. ‘You pull the body of a woman out of the Thames and decide she’s an illegal immigrant.’

  ‘With reason,’ said Lacey.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. You find records of another body, pulled out two months ago, that may or may not have been an illegal immigrant – no way of knowing – so you decide there’s a whole load more of them at the bottom of the Thames and persuade your bosses to mount a multi-operational, massively expensive search that turns up zilch. Lacey, at best they’re questioning your judgement, at worst they’re writing you off as a bit of a loon.’

  ‘Way to make me feel better.’

  ‘I’m not trying to make you feel better. For a police officer living under a fake identity, you are not exactly keeping a low profile.’

  Lacey looked round in alarm. ‘Why don’t you just send a memo?’

  ‘I thought the whole point of going back into uniform was to stay clear of the high-profile stuff. Keep your head down, concentrate on being a good, solid copper.’

  ‘It was. I just can’t—’

  Toc was making her I give up, I just give up face. ‘I know. You never could. OK, let’s see what we can work out. Give me that pad.’

  Lacey had brought a notepad and pencil into the room with her. She pushed them across the table. Toc wrote the number one in a bold, heavy hand.

  ‘First problem,’ she said. ‘Mass ethnic graveyard at the bottom of the Thames.’

  ‘Glad you’re finding this funny.’

  ‘Even if you’re right, there’s nothing you can do. The search has happened. It found nothing. So unless you’re planning to stick on a wetsuit and snorkel and go down yourself, that avenue is closed. Agreed?’

  Lacey had a brief flashback to the seconds she’d spent under the water, looking at a floating corpse. ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Next, you have a gang smuggling young women up the Thames and keeping them somewhere near Deptford Creek, but not on the old dredger because that has treasure of a different sort entirely in the hold.’

  Far better not to react when Toc was in this mood. Just let her get it out of her system.

  ‘So is Tulloch the Terrible looking for this holding place?’

  ‘She’s got people on to it,’ said Lacey. ‘But it’s a big area and she doesn’t have a lot of manpower. It’s going to take time.’

  ‘You might want to tell them you’ve already checked the old dredger.’

  ‘Christ, I didn’t think of that.’

  ‘Lucky you’ve got me on the case, then. But this is something else you have to leave to Tulloch and the team. If they’re short on manpower, you’re on your own, working when you’re off duty. You can’t search the south bank by yourself.’

  ‘You’re making me feel like a spare part.’

  ‘Are you going to tell Tulloch you’ve seen Joesbury?’

  ‘I can’t. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone. I’ve already broken my promise by telling you.’

  Toc beamed. ‘So instead of confiding in a trusted senior officer in the Met, you blab to the most notorious serial killer of the twenty-first century? Love it.’

  ‘Anything else on this list of yours?’

  Toc drew a large, thick number three. ‘Nadia Safi. Someone who could shed a whole load of light on the mystery, but who is still missing. Is Tulloch looking for her, too?’

  ‘The whole of the Met is looking for her, but she clearly doesn’t want to be found. I’ve got a picture somewhere.’ Lacey reached into her bag and found the photograph of Nadia Safi taken shortly after her arrest the previous year. Toc peered over.

  ‘Oh, look at her,’ said Toc. ‘She’s a Pashtun.’

  52

  Dana

  DANA’S EYES WERE glued to a computer monitor, not two feet from her head, trying to make sense of the mass of grey matter on the screen. She lay on her back, her knees raised, a pink blanket over her bare legs, horribly uncomfortable.

  ‘There we are,’ said the nurse who had been guiding the probe inside Dana. ‘We’re starting to see the eggs now.’

  I’m not, thought Dana.

  The nurse pointed to the screen. ‘The round, black shapes,’ she said. ‘I suppose they look like holes more than anything else, if you’re not used to seeing them. Oh, that’s a good one. I’ll just take a measurement.’

  Dana watched, mystified, as the nurse marked the largest of the black holes with two tiny crosses.

  ‘Yes, that’s probably the one. Although you can never be sure. I could scan you again tomorrow and the picture could be quite different. The main thing is, everything’s as it should be and you should ovulate some time in the next day or so. Now, you’re using ClearPlan, is that right?’

  On the basis of several packets in her bathroom cabinet, Dana agreed that she was.

  ‘When you get your FSH surge, you need to phone us,’ the nurse continued. ‘We’ll book you in for the following day. It’s important you keep that appointment. I know it’s difficult for you professional ladies, but the eggs don’t wait and once we’ve taken the sperm out of storage, we can’t put it back. You’ll still get charged for it.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘You get yourself dressed, then we’ll have a chat about it.’

  When Dana emerged from behind the screen, the nurse had a file open on the desk in front of her.

  ‘Right, the lab have confirmed the donor you chose, you’ll be pleased to know. Let’s see. Economics graduate. Works in finance. Quite sporty. Keen on rugby, athletics. Always a good sign, I think, when they’re active.’

  ‘Is he kind to animals?’ asked Dana.

  The nurse blinked. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Does he have a good sense of humour?’

  The nurse smiled carefully. ‘The donors choose how much information they give us. We know a little about what he looks like. He’s just above average height. Slim build. Dark hair, brown eyes.’

  Is he married? Does he have a family already? Why is he donating his sperm? If he works in finance, it can hardly be about money. This man and I are going to have a child together. How
can I not know these things?

  ‘You know, since anonymity has been taken away from donors, the numbers have dropped considerably,’ said the nurse. ‘Some months we don’t have enough to treat all our ladies.’

  The subtext being, I’m lucky and should behave in a suitably grateful manner, thought Dana. Where’s Helen when I need her?

  53

  Lacey

  ‘SHE’S A WHAT?’ said Lacey, looking at the photograph of Nadia Safi.

  ‘Pashtun. Biggest ethnic group in Afghanistan, something like 40 per cent of the population. But there are quite a lot of them in the neighbouring countries as well.’

  Afghanistan?

  ‘Tulloch phoned me on the way up,’ said Lacey. ‘They’ve had the reconstruction done of the woman I found. They think she might be from Iran. Are those two countries close?’

  ‘They share a border,’ said Toc. ‘So it’s quite likely there’ll be Pashtuns in Iran as well.’

  Lacey looked again at the photograph on the table. ‘Is it significant?’

  ‘Could be. The Pashtuns are quite beautiful to Western eyes. Very similar to Europeans in terms of bone structure, but with darker hair and skin colour. Quite often they have blue eyes.’

  ‘Blue-eyed Asians?’

  ‘This girl’s are pretty light, look. A bluey-grey, I’d say. They’re certainly not the black you normally expect in people from that part of the world.’

  Lacey turned the photograph round. She hadn’t noticed it before, but now it was pointed out, the girl in the photograph did have unusually light eyes.

  ‘There was a famous photograph of an Afghan girl on the cover of Time magazine about twenty years ago,’ said Toc. ‘She was only about fifteen years old but she was really quite astonishingly beautiful. Mainly because of her striking green eyes.’

  ‘The woman in the Salvation Army hostel I visited talked about Afghanistan,’ said Lacey.

  Toc was shaking her head sadly. ‘One of the worst places in the world to be a woman. I’ve not heard of large numbers of female immigrants from there, but you certainly couldn’t blame them.’