by Peter Helton
Austin picked up the phone. ‘DI McLusky’s office. Yes … okay … I know where it is. You can tell the super DI McLusky is on his way.’
McLusky glowered at Austin. ‘DI McLusky is on his way where exactly?’
‘Netham Lock. Body in the water.’
‘Suspicious?’
‘Highly.’
McLusky slammed the cabinet door shut. ‘Marvellous,’ he said, and meant it.
THREE
Traffic on the Feeder Road was light. The road was as straight as the Feeder Canal which it followed and McLusky was driving fast, the narrow canal to the left, industrial estates to the right. To Let signs flew by, too many of them, a sure indication that the recession had bitten deep.
‘And they said the body was still in the water?’ McLusky asked.
Austin was glad it was a warm day because it meant they could drive with both windows open. He let his left arm dangle over the sill to catch the breeze. ‘Yup. Suspended in the water, I think is what they said.’
‘How do you suspend a body in the water? Dangling from the bridge?’
‘I’ve no idea. We’ll find out in a minute, that’s the lock over there. Erm, Liam …?’
‘Yes?’
‘This car.’
‘I know.’
‘It smells bad. It sounds bad.’
‘I know.’
‘It looks awful.’
‘DS Austin, would you like to walk the last quarter of a mile?’
‘I’m only saying.’
The lights turned red just as they reached the lock that sat below the bridge. The lock gates were closed. Heavy traffic flowed in all directions on the road around the lock-keeper’s cottage below. ‘Welcome to Netham Lock,’ said a large sign beside it. Trees lined the towpath on the opposite side right up to the nineteenth century stone cottage. Several small motorboats were moored along the path. A narrowboat was manoeuvring to tie up behind them, another was puttering slowly towards the lock. Below them they could see uniformed officers and civilians standing by the water’s edge near the cottage. The lights changed and McLusky turned on to the bridge. Several police vehicles were already creating a bottleneck on the Netham Road. They left the car behind a police van and walked down the slipway to the canal. As they did, McLusky’s eyes darted everywhere, registering the entire scene.
He recognized PC Hanham who was talking to a civilian by the water’s edge. PC and civilian looked remarkably similar, both tall, broad-shouldered, serious, with greying hair.
‘Here they are now,’ Hanham said to the man. He greeted the arrivals. ‘Morning Inspector … Sergeant. This is Mr Marland, the lock-keeper. He found the body and made the call.’
McLusky held his ID up for the lock-keeper to inspect. ‘I’m DI McLusky, this is Detective Sergeant Austin. The body is still in the canal?’
‘It is. Out there,’ said Hanham, nodding his head downstream.
‘Male or female?’
‘A woman. Mr Marland is pretty sure it’s a woman.’
‘Can we not get her out? Isn’t there a boat we can use?’
‘That’s my boat there,’ said Marland. He indicated a small wooden dinghy tied up at the bottom of stone steps leading into the water. ‘But it won’t do you any good. I tried to get her out, she must be snagged on something.’
‘Where exactly did you see the body?’
Marland pointed to a buoy some twenty yards away, more or less mid-stream. ‘The red buoy.’
‘Ah, you tied a buoy to it,’ said McLusky, relieved. ‘Good thinking.’
‘I didn’t. It was the buoy tied to the body that alerted me. There’s not supposed to be a buoy right in the approach to the lock.’
‘Could it be the result of some kind of boating accident, perhaps?’ Austin suggested.
‘Not unless she was in the habit of sailing with a buoy tied round her neck. Anything’s possible, I suppose.’
‘Right, you’d better show us,’ decided McLusky. ‘Does your boat take three people, Mr Marland?’
McLusky and Austin sat on the thwart facing the lock-keeper who operated the tiny, puttering outboard. It took all of thirty seconds to reach mid-stream. Marland expertly cut the engine and they glided slowly alongside the buoy.
Austin noted with resignation that naturally the buoy ended up scraping along the boat on his side. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and reached down. ‘Got it.’
‘Let’s have a look then, pull it up.’
Austin found the chain on the bottom of the buoy and pulled. After only a few inches he felt strong resistance.
‘Well, go on,’ McLusky urged.
Austin pulled harder. Even though he knew there was a dead body on the end of it he recoiled when the slick top of a head broke the surface of the dark water. The boat swayed precariously as he pulled and the inspector leaned over for a better look.
‘Steady!’ warned the lock-keeper, ‘You’ll have the boat over.’
It was the head of a woman, middle-aged, Austin guessed. The skin looked grey and a little pink as light reflected off the plastic buoy. The eyes were shut, the features distorted.
‘The chain’s round her neck,’ Austin said. ‘And I think there’s stuff in her mouth. It’s definitely stuck on something, though, it won’t come up higher, I’m pulling quite hard. I don’t want to pull any harder, I might mess things up for forensics.’ He gently let the chain run through his hands and the head slid eerily back under the surface.
‘Right, let her be, at least she won’t go far.’ McLusky turned to the lock-keeper. ‘No voracious fish in here that’ll strip her to the bones, I take it?’
‘In the Feeder? Not many fish of any kind.’ He started the engine and reversed gently away.
McLusky took in the tree-lined towpath and the stone cottage on the north side. ‘Must have been quite idyllic here once, a hundred years or so ago.’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Marland, making the turn. ‘It was a lot filthier back then. Heavy industry all round, you couldn’t breathe for smoke and fumes round here in those days. As for the canal water, forget it. I doubt fish could have survived in it then.’
McLusky pointed downstream. ‘Those two narrowboats, are they normally moored here?’
‘No, there’s no mooring for those here. They’re waiting to go through the lock and upriver but they can see the lock’s closed, that’s why they’re tying up there.’ They had reached the bottom of the steps again and Marland steadied the boat so they could get safely ashore. ‘And if they’re not completely blind they’ll have spotted the red buoy in the middle of the canal and police just about everywhere.’
Both narrowboats were now stationary alongside the towpath. ‘Those three boats in front of them, are they always here?’
‘Yes, that’s permanent mooring,’ Marland said. ‘The one closest is mine.’
‘No one lives on them, do they?’ Austin wanted to know.
‘On those little tubs? They only have one tiny cabin below. No, and they’re hardly ever used.’
‘We’ll need the names of the owners all the same.’
‘I can give you those.’
‘And there isn’t a boat missing, or anything?’ McLusky asked. ‘Nothing amiss?’
‘Not a thing, as far as I can see.’
‘How about this dinghy? Is that secured at night?’
‘At night it’s chained and padlocked to that metal ring there.’
‘OK,’ said McLusky. They were all back in front of the cottage. ‘When did you first notice the buoy?’
‘A few hours ago. About nine thirtyish.’
‘And you went to investigate.’
‘Not immediately. I had a couple of enquiries on the phone so I had to deal with those first, but I kept the lock closed and then came out again to have a look at it. It was quite a shock when I pulled up a dead woman, I can tell you that for nothing.’
‘I can imagine. Not pleasant.’
The lock-keeper wrinkled his
nose in distaste. ‘I had to fish a dead dog from the lock last summer. That was not pleasant. But a dead woman is something else, Inspector.’
‘I agree. Thanks for your help. Someone will take a statement later. In the meantime, if you could find the names of those boat owners. Oh, and you might as well tell those people on the narrowboats that there won’t be any traffic through the lock for quite some time. Tomorrow at the earliest, depending on what we find.’
Marland set off down the towpath. ‘They’ll be ecstatic. It’s not like you can set up a diversion.’
Next McLusky went to find Hanham who was busy stretching police tape across the footpaths approaching the lock. ‘Go and stop those people from getting off their boats. Tell them to stay where they are. Get their names and addresses and the boat registration and see if they know anything at all. I want to know why they’re here and where they thought they were going and where they’ll be for the rest of their natural before you let them go again.’
Back at the cottage McLusky turned to Austin who had just finished a phone call on his mobile. ‘When can we expect the Underwater Search Team?’
Austin pulled a face. ‘They’re busy with a lorry that slid into the river.’
‘So what? The lorry can wait, it won’t go anywhere, will it?’
‘It was full of pigeons.’
‘Pigeons?’
‘Homing pigeons. And the driver is missing.’
‘Marvellous. How long?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
In the event that proved to be true. Austin had guessed ‘probably by lunchtime’ while McLusky had muttered that in his experience they could wait ‘all bloody day’. The Underwater Search Team arrived after just over an hour. The large Mercedes van of the unit caused even more of a bottleneck on the road above.
McLusky recognized the team leader but couldn’t remember his name. He was an athletic man in his thirties with a tanned face. McLusky vaguely wondered how people who spent their working lives underwater got a suntan. ‘Did you find your pigeon man?’ he asked him.
‘Please don’t mention pigeons to me. Ever again. But yeah, we found the driver. In a pub near the site of the crash. Pissed as a fart. He was adamant he was sober at the time of the crash.’
‘Naturally. Hard to prove otherwise.’
‘Quite. We charged him with leaving the scene of an accident. Is that it out there?’
‘The red buoy, yes. There’s the body of a woman underneath, we couldn’t get her out, she’s snagged on something. The lock-keeper will let you use his boat, I’m sure.’
‘No, ta, we always use our own gear. Who thought of tying a buoy to her?’
‘The killer did.’
‘Considerate.’ The officer walked off, calling instructions to his team of three. Thirty minutes later a diver let himself drop from a Rigid Inflatable Boat near the buoy and disappeared bubbling under the dark surface of the water.
‘Rather him than me,’ McLusky said. He was sitting next to Austin in the little boat, kept expertly at station by the lock-keeper at a respectful distance from the search unit’s RIB. The buoy bobbed a few times, then lay still on the water again.
Austin dunked his hand into the cool murk, pulled it out, sniffed at it. ‘How can he see anything down there? It’s like brown ink. Smells OK though. Riverish. I quite like it.’
‘Riverish, eh? Shouldn’t that be canalish?’
‘Same water, surely.’
The diver broke surface next to the RIB and spoke to the team leader in the boat. He reached inside for a tool – McLusky couldn’t see what kind – and slid under again. The walkie-talkie McLusky was holding crackled into life as the team leader called him. ‘We have a dead female chained to the buoy by the neck. Also tightly bound with some kind of rope or other material. There’s another chain round her feet and at the other end of that chain some kind of weight. That’s down in the mud at the bottom.’
‘You can’t tell what it is?’
‘Not yet. We’ll free the body first. Then we’ll bring up anything else we can find. I’m sending down a second man.’ As he spoke a further diver let himself glide into the water. By now the railings at road level above them were lined with spectators and so was the bridge above the lock. Every one of them appeared to be holding a mobile phone, some to talk into but mainly to take pictures with. On the north side of the Feeder, crime scene officers in white overalls had arrived. They too took copious photographs. Closest to the water stood the cameraman, taking continuous video footage with a large shoulder-held camera.
To McLusky and Austin in the puttering boat of the lock-keeper it seemed like an age before anything else happened. Then the heads and shoulders of both divers appeared. Straps were secured around the body, then all four men, two in the water and two in the boat, strained to manoeuvre the dead weight out of the water and into the RIB. McLusky noted the near shoulder-length blonde hair, a dress made from dark, patterned material. The body was trussed up tightly, arms stiffly by the sides. He thought he caught a glimpse of gold as the body disappeared into the waiting body bag. He nodded to the lock-keeper who gratefully returned the detectives to dry land.
By the time they had suited up to take a first look at the body the pathologist had also arrived. Dr Coulthart was in his fifties, had a suspiciously full and dark head of hair and wore delicate gold-rimmed spectacles. He was standing on the towpath over the unzipped body bag, which was roomy enough to accommodate even the largest corpse, or one of medium height with chains and red plastic buoy attached. ‘Ah, McLusky.’ He nodded at the detectives. ‘Sergeant …’ He searched for the name, then remembered. ‘Austin.’
‘Well?’ McLusky asked.
‘I’ve been here less than two minutes, Inspector. Please spare us both the traditional pathologist and police officer chit-chat, we’re not on television.’ He looked up, saw the scene-of-crime officer with the camera looming close, and added: ‘Yet.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, I’m sure,’ said McLusky, who knew all too well. It was a well-worked cliché that CID wanted instant results while pathologists liked to hedge their bets for as long as possible, lest the post mortem contradict any pronouncements made at the locus.
‘She’s in her forties, late forties, I’d say, well groomed. The dress looks expensive enough too. She is still wearing her watch.’
‘What make is it?’
Coulthart bent down to it. ‘Gucci.’
‘Not cheap, then.’ He glanced at his own watch, which had stopped again, despite a new battery.
‘We can rule out robbery, I think,’ Austin said, ‘watch or no watch. Who goes to all this weirdness for a robbery?’
‘Quite, quite,’ Coulthart agreed.
McLusky became aware of another white-suited figure in his peripheral vision. It was DSI Denkhaus. ‘Time of death?’ McLusky asked.
‘Couldn’t say.’
‘How long in the water?’
‘No more than twenty-four hours, I’d say.’
‘Was she strangled? With that chain?’
Coulthart gently moved the dead woman’s head from side to side. ‘Not sure. There are bruises on her neck so I can’t rule it out.’ He stood up. ‘And that’s all you’re going to get until I’ve had her open.’ He turned to Denkhaus. ‘Hello, Rob, what brings you out into the fresh air …?’ Denkhaus smiled and walked wordlessly off down the towpath. Coulthart joined him for a stroll along the canal.
The detectives watched them go while three SOCOs zipped up the bag and removed the body. ‘He’s definitely checking up,’ Austin said. ‘Either that or he was pining to see the pathologist.’
McLusky shrugged. ‘I think those two play golf together.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Can you smell something?’
The RIB of the search team was out in mid-stream again. Austin sniffed. ‘Canal? Rubber boat? Petrol fumes? Unwashed SOCOs?’
McLusky was already walking towards the lock. ‘No. Worse than that.’ He reached the c
ottage, still sniffing.
‘I can smell it now,’ Austin said behind him.
McLusky was about to knock on the closed door when his nose led him past it and around the next corner: two uniformed constables, beakers of coffee in one hand, half-eaten baps in the other, mouths full, frozen in mid-chew. One of them was PC Hanham. ‘What’s going on?’ McLusky demanded to know.
Hanham swallowed down a large unchewed chunk of food that an hour later would give him heartburn. ‘Sorry sir, we were starving.’
‘You’re not the only ones. What’s that you’ve got there?’
‘Bacon buttie. And coffee,’ said Hanham. He looked as though he was afraid he would be asked to hand it over.
‘Where from?’
‘Wheelies Diner, just up the road.’
‘Genius. Don’t get caught, DSI Denkhaus is on the prowl.’
‘I know, we nearly ran straight into him, that’s why we’re hiding here.’
The afternoon ebbed away while dark clouds rolled in over the city. As soon as the superintendent had left in the Range Rover that he used for police business, McLusky and Austin had stocked up on coffees, bacon butties and chocolate bars at Wheelies. Now they were standing by the edge of the canal with the team leader, watching the last dive of the search unit.
‘We’d initially cut the chain in order to free the body,’ the team leader explained. ‘We had one hell of a time finding it again in the sediment at the bottom. At the other end of it was that radiator.’ He indicated the rectangular, ribbed object on a tarpaulin nearby. ‘Same style as I have in my house, as a matter of fact. I hope that doesn’t make me a suspect.’
‘You never know,’ said McLusky encouragingly. ‘The chain. How long was it? I mean was it exactly the right length for the depth of the canal?’
‘Not quite, no. Far too long in fact, by several feet, I’d say. The body was actually like that under water.’ He indicated the slant with one hand. ‘The current dragged the body a bit sideways and the radiator anchored it about so far away.’ He stretched out one arm.
