A Good Way to Go

by Peter Helton

  ‘There goes that theory,’ McLusky said, draining the last of his coffee. ‘I had hoped it was the right length. That would at least have pointed to someone who knew the depth of the canal.’

  The diver came up empty handed on his last dive, made a hand signal to his boss and heaved himself into the boat.

  Apart from the radiator the team had also brought to the surface a dozen drinks cans, bottles, a folded pram and a bent bicycle wheel.

  ‘That’s it, said the diver. There’s nothing else down there in the vicinity except mud and darkness.’

  It was getting dark. Impatiently, DI Kat Fairfield followed the trundling tractor and trailer along the B road, too narrow and winding to overtake safely. This was not what she had come here for. She had driven out of the city for a blast around the back lanes to let off steam. It hadn’t really been a row but it could easily have turned into one had she not left Louise’s place when she did. Louise had sprung dinner with her two friends on her and she had felt unprepared and on the back foot all evening. She was no match for Louise Rennie’s intellect and education, she had known that when they became lovers. Then it had not looked like a problem. Louise, being a lecturer, was patient and never patronized her when they were alone together, but when her friends were around and the wine was flowing she seemed to take a delight in talking about subjects she knew full well Kat could barely follow. Tonight it had felt as though those three were secretly laughing at her and she had made her excuses – early start, busy day – and no thanks, she’d see herself out. And had driven out of Bristol for a blast in the countryside. In her beloved, zippy little Renault.

  Zippy? Presently she was doing twelve miles per hour! She hung back a few yards, took a deep breath and floored the accelerator. It was a stupid place to overtake, a slight rise too, it seemed to take forever to get up to any sort of speed. Headlights appeared in front of her out of nowhere, the tractor slowed, a horn blared, she threw the car onto the correct side of the road just as a dark 4 × 4 slammed past her in the opposite direction, the driver still leaning on the horn. Her Renault dipped one wheel into the sandy verge and fishtailed before she finally managed to straighten up the car. Only then did she let out her breath again, giving voice to her shock in short, Anglo-Saxon syllables. She drove on sedately while her heart rate slowed to normal. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  And now McLusky was back, too. He had been suspended from duty at just the time when she had usurped his place in Louise’s bed. She hadn’t seen him since, which meant she had never had to deal with the consequences of it. But now, against all the odds, McLusky was back. So far she had managed to keep her relationship secret from her other colleagues. Her only two remaining girl friends – both in straight relationships and busy bringing up small children – had reacted with guarded bemusement. But she had been married once? What had happened? Where had that come from? Well, nowhere, it had always been there, only Louise hadn’t, end of story. But at work this story had the potential to run and run, especially if it became known that she had pinched a colleague’s girlfriend. She’d never hear the end of it and it probably wouldn’t help her career either.

  She speeded up now, no longer in the mood for a blast but wanting to get home quickly. She had drunk a large glass of wine at Louise’s but its effects had worn off, leaving her feeling scratchy and wanting more. She shifted easily through the gears, swung smoothly through the bends with one hand on the wheel. Then she saw it.

  A moving flashlight by the side of the road. Seconds later her headlights caught a camper van, half pulled off the road at an awkward angle, just where the fields were giving way to trees. The engine cover at the back was raised. Next to it stood a blonde woman. Fairfield slowed right down. No, it was a young man, with shoulder-length hair, mid-to-late twenties, she guessed. ‘If you can’t tell them apart anymore, Kat, perhaps you should take early retirement,’ she chided herself.

  She stopped her car, lowered her window. ‘Trouble?’

  The man skipped lightly over to her side of the car. He was wearing walking boots, jeans, a white tee-shirt with a fresh streak of car grease across it and a short denim jacket. Fairfield stored away the descriptive details automatically, without thinking about it. ‘Thanks for stopping, ma’am. I’ve been here for half an hour and lots of folks drove by but nobody stopped.’ He spoke with a soft transcontinental accent she was unable to place yet it somehow made her think of surfing and beach parties, even as the fumes from her car engine wafted around them. He was quite good looking, she supposed. She hoped he wouldn’t say something embarrassing, like ‘dude’.

  ‘You’ve broken down?’

  ‘Yup, sure have.’

  ‘Called the RAC? Breakdown recovery?’

  ‘I’m not a member of anything, I’m just a visitor to your fair country. I had sort of hoped not to break down.’

  Fairfield nodded towards the broken-down van. ‘I see. That’s why you bought a thirty-year-old VW camper.’

  ‘Bit retro, I know. But it’s been good to me so far and I only need it to get me back to London now.’ He patted his jacket pocket. ‘I’ve got my plane ticket home.’

  Fairfield smiled. Americans. Forever goin’ home. ‘I’m afraid I’m not a mechanic. But I’d be happy to call a breakdown service for you.’

  ‘I was hoping that wouldn’t be necessary. I know what’s wrong with it, it’s just a broken fan belt.’ He indicated the frayed fan belt on the ground at the rear of the van with his torch. ‘I don’t suppose you’re carrying replacement fan belts, ma’am?’

  ‘I’ll have to disappoint you there.’

  ‘Well …’ He shifted awkwardly on his feet. ‘There is one thing I know that works.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s kind of embarrassing. Erm, I know that pantyhose work as a fan belt. Or, or stockings. You, you don’t have a spare pair of those, either?’

  Fairfield had heard of using tights or stockings as fan belts. ‘Not a spare one, no.’

  ‘I couldn’t persuade you … I mean, I’d buy them off you, obviously … I know it’s quite an imposition.’

  Oh, what the hell. It was quite a mild evening and she was going straight home anyway. ‘Oh, all right, if it gets you on your way.’ She released her seat belt and stepped out of the car. The road was still empty and it was quite dark now, except for the lights of her Renault.

  The young man looked up and down the road. Just then a car appeared, travelling in the opposite direction. ‘You’re welcome to use my van to change in, obviously.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. You just stand by your van so you don’t get yourself run over. And turn around for a minute.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ The young man trotted off as he’d been told. ‘This is very kind of you,’ he said, facing the other way.

  ‘I know.’ The car passed by without slowing and disappeared into the darkness. Standing on the near-side of her Renault Fairfield pulled up her knee-length skirt, popped off one shoe, and with three quick movements and a changeover of feet took off her tights. ‘Right, you can turn around.’ She felt slightly awkward herself as she handed over her tights to the stranger who accepted her offering with an air of reverence.

  ‘I … I don’t know how much … what do I owe you for these?’

  ‘Forget it. In my job you get through a lot of those. As long as they get you going again you’re welcome to them.’

  ‘Thank you, I’m much obliged. In your job? What is your job?’

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ Fairfield said, walking back to her car, ‘who is glad she shaved her legs this morning. Goodbye. And good luck.’

  ‘Thank you ma’am. I’ll be fine.’ He waved as Fairfield drove off fast. ‘Police woman,’ he said as he watched her tail lights disappear into the distance. For a moment he buried his face in the crumpled tights and inhaled deeply. Then he stuffed them into his jacket pocket and went to fit the fan belt back on the engine with practised ease.

  FOUR

  ‘
It’s a weird one.’ DC French voiced the opinion of most of the detectives in the incident room.

  With his first coffee of the day getting cold in his left hand, McLusky pushed the squeaking pen across the whiteboard. He was no good at drawing, and drawing underwater scenes from imagination was an added challenge. He stepped back. ‘Yeees, and she wasn’t really eight foot tall, either.’ He wiped at the drawing with the eraser and re-fashioned the lower half. ‘That’s the second chain around her feet here and that’s supposed to be a radiator at the bottom there. That’s how we found her.’

  DC Daniel Dearlove, ‘Deedee’ to his friends and enemies alike, piped up: ‘Strange way to dispose of a body. Why hang it from a buoy like that?’

  McLusky dropped the pen into the tray of the whiteboard, apologizing with a shrug for his drawing. ‘Well, you get the idea. Why hang her from a buoy like that? You tell me, Deedee. There’s some chicken soup in it for you.’ Scattered laughter in the room. Everyone had worked late last night without result and the mood in the room was flat.

  ‘Perhaps he meant to let the body go and was disturbed before he could do it?’ French suggested.

  ‘No. You want to hide a body, you wrap it up, you weigh it down and drop it in the canal, then get the hell out of there before someone clocks you. No, this was how we were supposed to find her. Not simply washed up somewhere. The body was arranged like that and it took some doing. This body wasn’t disposed of, it was being displayed.’

  French tilted her head as she stared at the drawing. ‘Displayed yet out of sight.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Austin squinted at the board. ‘The way you drew that makes it look a bit like an exclamation mark.’

  McLusky sounded irritable. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Nothing, just saying.’

  ‘Never mind what it looks like, let’s concentrate on what it is: a dead woman suspended in the water in a canal smack in the middle of Bristol. Who, how, why and when? We have no one reported missing that even vaguely fits the description. About five foot eight, mid forties, well groomed, blonde hair, about shoulder length. We’ll have more to go on after the autopsy. Talking of which.’ He looked at his watch. It had stopped at ten to seven. McLusky turned around to check the clock on the wall. It showed ten twenty. ‘Is that the right time?’ Nods and affirmative grunts. ‘The autopsy is scheduled for eleven.’

  Austin nodded. The inspector hated attending autopsies so it usually fell to the sergeant to be there. ‘Am I going?’

  ‘No, not this time. See if you get any joy on the victim’s Gucci watch, instead. French, chase up the owners of the moored boats, Deedee, all the witness statements …’ McLusky rattled off a few more instructions and left for the mortuary, west of the city in Flax Bourton. He left behind a relieved DS. Austin hated attending autopsies even more than the inspector did and often suffered bad claustrophobic dreams after witnessing them, something he had never mentioned to any of his colleagues; in this job you were meant to be tough, unaffected, being able to take it. No one would offer you counselling because you witnessed a corpse being eviscerated.

  What McLusky had not mentioned to Austin was the superintendent’s insistence that from now on he, McLusky, attend all autopsies personally and, while DCI Gaunt was away, reported directly back to him. Which was why the inspector stood outside the mortuary one minute before the appointed time, fortifying himself with a hasty smoke. Judging by the amount of cigarette butts littering the ground outside the entrance this was a well-observed practice among visitors to the place. A curiously mild, blustery wind carried away his cigarette end when he flicked it towards the car park.

  ‘Inspector McLusky, what a pleasant surprise.’ Dr Coulthart squinted theatrically over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses at him. McLusky answered with a childish grimace. He had been reliably informed that Coulthart couldn’t see a thing without his glasses and peered over them purely for schoolmasterly effect. ‘I had expected your Scottish deputy,’ Coulthart continued. ‘Mr Austin is not unwell, I hope?’

  ‘In fine fettle.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. You are just in time.’

  The now naked body of the victim lay on the table, still often casually referred to as ‘the slab’, though the high tech, adjustable stainless steel support had little in common with the marble slabs of old, apart from the facility to drain away the fluids leaking from the body. In the viewing suite, separated from the procedure by a wall of glass, McLusky nevertheless thought he could smell death. He knew what it smelled like, and his nose, like an elephant, never forgot.

  Coulthart indicated bagged-up clothing on the counter behind him. ‘Knee-length dress, a leaf pattern, green on darker green, natural cotton fibre. Silk underwear. It all goes with the Gucci watch, I’d say, though the dress is mass produced, but not cheap, it’s silk lined.’ A quick look over his spectacles. ‘Try Debenhams, Inspector. Apart from the chains, which were of medium gauge, rusted and old, she was also trussed up like a pig on a spit with two lengths of nylon clothesline. Both have already departed to forensics. She couldn’t have moved a muscle.’ Coulthart’s quiet assistant, the video camera and microphone were all in place. ‘Let us begin, then.’

  McLusky settled down on the bench. On the wall to his right a monitor showed everything the movable camera saw. If there was one place where smoking ought to be allowed it was this one, McLusky thought. He had now given up giving up smoking but was once more trying to cut down. The very thought of smoking less seemed to stoke his cravings. ‘Was she strangled with the chains round her neck?’

  Coulthart moved the camera for a close-up of the area. ‘There is some bruising around the neck but she wasn’t strangled. She drowned, Inspector.’

  ‘You mean she was alive when she was thrown in?’

  ‘She could have been drowned elsewhere but I think once we open her up,’ Coulthart made the first, Y-shaped incision, ‘we’ll find she drowned in canal water.’

  McLusky looked elsewhere, at the white, antiseptic walls and stainless steel fittings. He tried to imagine the scene of the murder. ‘Was she conscious?’

  ‘There are no contusions, so she wasn’t knocked unconscious. Toxicology will tell us if she was drugged or not.’

  ‘She’d have screamed. Someone would have heard. The lock-keeper’s cottage was only yards away.’

  ‘She was gagged. With adhesive tape, quite broad. It eventually fell off under water but there are still traces of the adhesive on her face. Quite broad tape, electrical. Gaffer tape, I believe it’s called.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘Yes. Her head must have been only just below the water and she drowned, taking in water through her nose. Not a good way to go, I agree.’

  ‘Did she put up a fight at all? Would the killer have scratches or bruises?’

  ‘There are no signs that she fought him off, no defensive wounds, nothing under her fingernails that would be consistent with her having fought her attacker. Obviously, immersion in water always messes up trace evidence like that. I’m not hopeful.’

  ‘That could mean her killer was convincingly armed or she knew him.’

  ‘Yes, Inspector. Or both.’

  At lunchtime, in the neon-lit cavern that was the Albany Road staff canteen, McLusky surprised himself with an undiminished, post-autopsy appetite. There was not much left at the counter that looked edible. A few misshapen meatballs, some ladlefuls of potato-topped mystery mince and slices of pizza curling under the heat lamps. McLusky appreciated good food, only he rarely got to eat it. While his eyes travelled wearily over the offerings perishing under the heat lamps he filled his pockets with several types of chocolate bar, which he planned to use as replacements in his new reduced-smoking regime. Eventually he opted for what he considered the safest option, the all-day fried breakfast, a cholesterol bonanza known at the station as the ‘999 breakfast’. He found Austin drinking coffee at one of the tables, a puddle of mystery mince on a plate in front of him.

  ‘How did i
t go?’ Austin prompted.

  ‘I’ll call another briefing for three o’clock, after I’ve seen the super, tell them when you get upstairs, Jane. She died of drowning, almost certainly where we found her. The bastard stuffed a rag in her mouth, gagged her with tape, took her down there, got her on to a boat or something and chucked her in the canal. When the bubbles stopped he knew his work was done.’

  ‘He must be quite a charmer.’

  McLusky speared a wrinkled sausage. ‘Absolutely.’ He nodded grimly at his sergeant. ‘I have a bad feeling about this one.’

  ‘Don’t eat it, then,’ said Austin. ‘It looks like yesterday’s.’

  The picture board in the incident room had acquired a few more photographs, of the victim’s dress, underwear and watch, close-ups of the chains and of the woman’s face. McLusky had the room’s attention. ‘We still have no ID. Someone must miss her. She had had recent intercourse but there are no indications of rape. She was dressed, though her legs were bare and she was minus her shoes. She had no piercings or tattoos, which makes a change. Someone must have noticed she’s missing.’

  French tapped her chin with her biro. ‘Could she be a high class pro?’

  ‘It’s possible but we have nothing to suggest it. The watch …?’ McLusky turned to Austin.

  ‘No joy. Gucci watches are a bit expensive but they’re hardly rare. That one,’ Austin pointed to the photograph on the board, ‘is about six hundred quid on Amazon.’

  ‘Definitely not robbery then,’ said Dearlove.’ You’d hardly leave that on the body.’

  ‘That depends,’ said McLusky. ‘If she carried a briefcase with a hundred grand in it you might not want to bother with the watch. However, would you bother to tie her up with string, gag her with gaffer tape, put a buoy round her neck and chuck her in the canal? It’s hard work, takes time and forethought. Organization.’

  ‘And it’s risky,’ French added.

  McLusky nodded. ‘And it’s risky. But as it turns out, no one appears to have seen it happen. As usual.’ The general public’s immense capacity for being unobservant was one of McLusky’s many pet hates. ‘According to the autopsy results she went into the water between one and four in the morning. There’s of course very little light and no lighting at all on the north side of the canal.’