Blackwater (DI Nick Lowry)

by James, Henry

  Then Lowry felt a tug on his sleeve and turned to see a solemn constable. The man had the cold on him still. ‘Sorry to disturb you, inspector,’ he said, almost shouting.

  ‘What is it?’ Lowry said loudly, knowing that whatever it was signalled the end of his evening. But he couldn’t hear anything the lad was saying. ‘Speak up!’ he cried, still trying to follow the fight, which was getting tasty.

  ‘Murder!’

  The word scorched Lowry’s ear, taking him firmly away from the ring.

  -21-

  8.10 p.m., Sunday, Beaumont Terrace, Greenstead Estate

  Lowry stood back from the house, as was his way, taking in everything on the periphery of the crime scene before approaching the immediate vicinity of a death. There was sleet in the air, which was caught in the car’s revolving blue roof lights. The houses on this terrace had only recently been built and were much newer than the cars that lined the streets. Vehicles often told him a lot about an area and, unsurprisingly, there was nothing newer than a K plate here, and there was even a tatty Land Rover predating both alphabetical plate systems just up from the house he was heading to.

  Greenstead was already the borough’s biggest housing estate, and they were still building – hadn’t stopped since the mid-1950s. Lowry knew this part of town too well, having lived just a few streets away as a teenager.

  ‘More new ’ouses. These ones can’t have been up more than five minutes, and already they’re killing each other in ’em. Bleedin’ east-end trash.’ The young constable held open the garden gate, grimacing against the sleet. Lowry didn’t know him and met his comment on the residents with silent disapproval. He gently pushed open the front door, and a carpet of mail greeted him. This was probably a rental property. He remained outside on the doorstep a moment longer.

  ‘Who made the call?’

  ‘Bloke next door – smelt gas from the kitchen. He was in the shed fiddling with his homebrew – the smell must’ve wafted across the fence.’

  ‘The back door was open?’

  ‘Yes. The kitchen hob was on full blast.’

  Lowry took a step inside the house. The building itself may have been relatively new, but already the carpet was dirty and the skirting boards scuffed. This house was nobody’s home, that was for sure.

  ‘Anyone been in the kitchen?’

  ‘Only me.’

  ‘Who let you in?’ Lowry regarded the body, slumped at the kitchen table, its head face down in a plate of food.

  ‘The front door was open.’

  For the first time, Lowry took a good look at the constable and saw that he’d been wrong to judge him earlier. He was terrified.

  The remains of an Indian takeaway on a tray sat in the pool of blood, which covered half the table. Lowry removed a glove and, with one arm across his donkey jacket to keep it clear, leaned over and took a sniff. Spicy.

  ‘Vindaloo,’ he said with satisfaction.

  ‘Sorry, guv?’

  ‘Curry – and a hot one. One I’m rather partial to.’ He looked around the messy kitchen and located what he was after – a brown paper bag. Wanting to be on his own, he strategically dispatched the constable to pick up the mail, reminding him to be careful and note the addressees and frank marks. Then he took the brown bag and pulled out a takeaway menu: The Way to the Raj. ‘Shehab’s,’ he murmured. He knew the place well enough to be on first-name terms with the owner. He placed the menu back in the bag and turned and scanned the work surface: there were two more dirty plates and several takeaway containers. Numerous Special Brew cans also littered the place, one on the floor by the deceased’s foot. And there was something else underneath the table. He bent and retrieved a rolled-up one-pound note. He regarded it for a moment then ran his gloved finger across a section of the table. A line of white powder crested his finger. He lightly took a dab with his tongue, and ran it over his teeth. The taste was familiar.

  Content that he’d committed a snapshot of the scene to his memory, he approached the body. Taking hold of a tip of each ear lightly in each hand, he lifted the head from the plate and sat the body back in the chair, revealing a slashed jugular. The arms of the body hung limply. He noted that the wall immediately behind the body was free of blood – no spray or marks. And there was only a neat puddle on the floor. He looked at the hands. They were grubby, with traces of mud and dirt, but no blood. Lowry was confident there had not been a struggle: the man had known his attacker, or perhaps had decided to top himself after one last, last binge, except there was no sign of the weapon.

  He was disturbed by a scenes-of-crime officer at the back door.

  ‘All yours.’ He gestured towards the dead man, who promptly slumped forward into the half-eaten curry.

  Out in the street, residents had gathered, aware that something was up. Lowry was buttonholed by a man in a dressing gown.

  ‘What’s going on?’ the man, in his mid-fifties, rasped in his ear.

  ‘A fatality, I’m afraid.’ Lowry watched for his reaction in the light from the open doorway. The man was eager to know more – probably a neighbourhood busybody. Just the type the police love. ‘Tell me, sir – you strike me as an observant man – that Land Rover over there; who does it belong to?’

  ‘Land Rover? Bleeder’s taking up Mrs Fleetwood’s parking space. First noticed it yesterday evening.’

  ‘Thank you, and excuse me for a moment. If you saw anything out of the ordinary, have a chat with the constable there.’ He pointed to a marked Cortina, blue light rotating in the dark.

  ‘“Out of the ordinary”?’

  ‘You know,’ Lowry replied, fishing out a pocket torch from his donkey jacket. ‘Strange comings and goings, cars parked where they shouldn’t be, unfamiliar faces, that sort of thing.’ He walked over to the Land Rover.

  It was locked. Mud spray reached up to the door handle. He flashed the torch through a window, but he couldn’t see much. Crouching, he ran the light across the top of the vehicle’s dashboard. Then he examined one of the rear tyres. Something caught his eye and he reached forward to extract some kind of black thread hanging from the deep tread. He looked at it curiously, then flashed the torch up into the wheel arch.

  ‘Sir.’ The intrusion startled him.

  ‘Yes, constable. What is it?’

  ‘There’s another one upstairs.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘Person, sir. Deceased.’

  Lowry levered himself up from the cold road.

  The young PC had gone upstairs to relieve himself and discovered the second corpse. Lowry reflected that young officers often failed to search a crime scene properly – the shock of coming face to face with a gruesome corpse could render an inexperienced officer incompetent. It was understandable.

  Lowry followed the PC back into the house and up to the bathroom. The naked bulb hanging from the ceiling rose gave the all-white room a scorching glare that stung Lowry’s eyes. The victim, it seemed, had been attacked while he was on the lavatory. The features and fatal wound were hidden from view – the prone figure was wedged between the lavatory bowl and the bath. The victim’s jeans were bunched at the end of a pair of hairy legs, a wallet poking out of the back pocket. Blood lay undisturbed across the bare tiled floor – a lake of it, almost reaching the doorway.

  ‘Do you think he’s dead?’

  Lowry had forgotten the lad behind him. ‘No, I imagine he’s looking for the loo brush,’ he said. They stared at each other for a second, the constable wide-eyed with horror. ‘Nip downstairs and ask that SOCO to pop up, will you?’ Lowry said.

  The PC nodded and left. Lowry climbed into the bath to avoid the blood on the floor and pulled the victim’s wallet from his pocket.

  *

  Shortly afterwards, Lowry left the house.

  Inside the wallet there were two pound notes and a driving licence: Derek Stone, thirty-two, 19a Artillery Street. Lowry didn’t waste any time. Having left the SOCOs to it, he drove over to the south side of town, cutti
ng up through Brook Street, on to Barrack Street and turning right into Artillery Street. The Victorian terrace houses were close set and the numbers hard to see in the dark, so he bumped the Saab up on the kerb and walked up the street, his leather soles echoing in the cold night.

  The house at 19a, it turned out, was a flat on top of a hair salon, halfway down the street. Lowry buzzed on the door, which rattled loosely. No response. It gave a fraction when shoved, indicating it was on the latch, so he was able to enter easily. The stairs led straight up to a two-bedroom flat. Checking the bedrooms first, Lowry’s immediate observation was that both rooms had recently been occupied. The larger bedroom contained a saxophone and, judging from the military certificates on the wall, whoever lived there had a connection to the armed forces.

  Monday, 3 January, 1983

  -22-

  8.15 a.m., Monday, Maldon Road, West Colchester

  ‘Have a great day, Matt.’

  Lowry’s son did not reply, nor lift his gaze from the Saab footwell. It was too dark to make out the boy’s expression, but it didn’t take a CID inspector to deduce that the lad was not as keen to be dropped at his friend’s house as he had been when it was first suggested, before the weekend. It was back to school tomorrow, and Nick thought Matthew would enjoy some company of his own age, having so far spent most of the break in his bedroom or with his grandparents.

  ‘Why do you have to leave me here so early?’ he complained.

  ‘I need to get to work. Sorry, Matt.’

  ‘You’re always at work.’

  ‘Busy time of year, I’m afraid.’

  ‘And Mum’s always in bed.’

  Lowry felt a pang of guilt. Jacqui had returned to bed yesterday as soon as he and Kenton had shot off to Mersea, leaving Matthew to his own devices all day. Okay, so she’d been at Trish’s after the attack . . . but had she really needed to stay out that late? He glanced at his son, who was fiddling with his duffel bag. He and Jacqui had to talk; he couldn’t allow things to lumber on like this – he knew this was a symptom of something far more complicated. He replayed her reaction when he had pulled her to her feet in the street, there in front of half of Queen Street. He’d let things slide for too long. And, at the very back of his mind, he wondered why it had been Jacqui, out of the four friends, who had been singled out.

  Lowry returned to the present. ‘Have a great day, mate,’ he called, realizing too late he’d repeated himself.

  Matthew grunted and forced the heavy door of the Saab open and climbed out.

  ‘Matt . . .’ Lowry reached across but the car door slammed on him. He sat and watched the boy tramp, head down, bag weighing heavier on his shoulder than it really should, towards the detached house of his best friend. It saddened him to see his boy start the new year this way; he had thought getting the boy to pack a football in his duffle bag would get him in the spirit. When Lowry was young, each year had given him the chance to excel in yet another sport, and there was the added bonus that it got him out of the house, away from the screaming and shouting. He should spend more time with Matt. Maybe he could take him birdwatching? He held out little hope that Jacqui would get into it, but his son might. He swung the car round clumsily and made for Artillery Street.

  Lowry returned to Stone’s flat for a second look alone, undisturbed, before Forensics arrived at nine, pulling on some gloves as he entered. The living-room curtains had been drawn and pale winter light fell on an array of throws and rugs which looked Middle Eastern. The room looked bleaker by day than it had under artificial light, despite the various ethnic knick-knacks and cushions. It was musty and smelt of stale cigarettes. Lowry didn’t linger, passing instead into the main bedroom. Curled photographs on a cheap dressing table showed a young, uniformed Derek Stone with short back and sides – a far cry from the corpse in the Greenstead bathroom with his shoulder-length permed hair and tracksuit. On the wall above the dressing table was a creased poster of Chet Baker and Stan Getz: musicians from another era. As a proud photo from his sprucer days indicated, Stone was a military bandsman. His personal effects were slight: records scattered on the floor, an ashtray bursting with roaches, rizla papers, matches, empty Scotch bottles. However, the chest of drawers could have belonged to another individual entirely with its neat piles of crisply folded T-shirts and jumpers. Even the socks and underwear looked as if they’d seen an iron. That’s the army for you, Lowry thought.

  He moved across to the bed – a camp bed, also impressively neat, the Jaws duvet cover pulled taut – and knelt down beside it, sliding the albums on the floor to one side. He found a rucksack and, behind that, a shoebox, which he pulled out. Inside were nylon stockings. He removed a handful to reveal a revolver, a semi-automatic and some cartridges. Still wearing gloves, he examined the revolver: a Webley; without a doubt, it was an ex-army service revolver. The other weapon, the Browning, too. He replaced the guns underneath the stockings and returned the box to its hiding place behind the rucksack.

  The second bedroom was empty but for a bare mattress and a limp Rucanor sports bag. Lowry peeked inside but found nothing. There was a Spurs mug by the mattress. He picked it up and sniffed: tea. A cuppa with milk could grow mould within a week – at a guess, this was three, four, maybe five days old.

  He returned to the main living space. The room’s stuffy odour was cloying. Instinctively, he made for the large windows that looked out on to the street, but he doubted they’d been opened since the summer, and he wasn’t going to open them now. They were badly smeared from the outside, as though someone had started cleaning them but given up halfway. It was time for him to get going. He would leave the firearms for Forensics to discover. There was nothing unusual in finding revolvers such as a Webley in the homes of ex-servicemen, though, more typically, they’d be in a display cabinet rather than under the bed, beneath ladies’ undergarments and alongside live ammo.

  9.30 a.m., Queen Street HQ

  The murders on the Greenstead Estate had put a spin on the Bank Holiday – bringing all the senior members of the force in.

  ‘Ex-army, you say?’ Merrydown’s stress on the ‘ex’ was loud and clipped, causing Sergeant Granger to wince as he placed a coffee in front of her. Granger was supremely hungover – Sparks even caught a whiff of alcohol from across the desk – having got drunk after the fight. The ageing sergeant, having been forced out of retirement and back into the ring, received a severe hiding from a younger, fitter opponent, and chose to obliterate the experience in the Grenadier pub, which always had a lock-in after such events. Fortunately, Merrydown seemed not to notice – perhaps that fine Roman nose of hers filtered out unpleasant aromas emanating from the riff-raff.

  ‘Yes, ma’am, he was made redundant in 1980,’ Lowry, sitting next to her, answered.

  Merrydown twitched her nose.

  Sparks reached across the desk to grab his coffee. ‘Yes, it’s true, the army do give redundancies. There are fifteen regiments in Colchester, and each has a band. But the army’s cutting back; there’s little use for them. Other than for display purposes and doubling as stretcher bearers in conflict, they’re not up to much; they’ve spent more time standing in for striking dustman and the like during the last decade than playing music.’

  Lowry looked at him doubtfully. Sparks had a tendency to show off his dubious knowledge of the military in front of the ACC.

  But it seemed to be enough to impress Merrydown, who said, ‘Hmm, really? Well, it’s a relief, I suppose, given you already have one dead active soldier on your hands.’

  Lowry went on to give details of the scene at the Greenstead house: the traces of drugs in the kitchen, the lack of a murder weapon. The chief placed his rancid coffee back on his desk and winced in disgust as Granger exited the office. His trusty batman had been intoxicated even before he’d turned up to the boxing match last night, and, the state he was in now, he couldn’t even make a decent coffee. He turned to the assistant chief constable, who held her coffee cup affectedly, her little fing
er out as she listened intently to Lowry. Sparks wondered about her: posh and clever, she was always one step ahead of him. He never knew what she was thinking. The kohl eyeliner, which on Saturday he’d found alluring and exotic, like someone in an advert for Turkish Delight, only added to her mystery. He hadn’t reached such a senior rank without having a certain acumen in judging human nature, but the ACC unnerved him.

  ‘So, Stephen, what do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘A third man was at the house, as there were three plates out,’ Sparks said, catching on quickly. ‘And the evidence would indicate that the dead men knew their attacker – there was no sign of a struggle.’

  ‘Well, get on it.’ Merrydown crossed her legs, running her hands down a navy skirt, and sighed. ‘A drug-related double murder is the last thing we need.’

  ‘Drug-fuelled, without a doubt,’ corrected Sparks, reaching for his cigarettes, ‘but not necessarily drug-related – that’s different. Colchester doesn’t have a drug problem.’

  Lowry glanced at him in that sceptical way he always did whenever he made a bold statement.

  ‘Stephen, don’t be so defensive. You know as well as I do that the county is awash with amphetamines.’

  ‘Awash? I know they’re back, but we’ve just carried out a full clean-up operation the length of the Colne. Successful raids of barges moored at Wivenhoe and Rowhedge have closed down avenues into town and the university.’

  ‘I’m not interested in floating hippies dispensing pot to students,’ Merrydown said sharply. ‘This is a different matter altogether.’

  It was no use him interjecting. Merrydown had turned her attention back to Lowry and was now patronizing him with well-worn facts about speed now being the drug of choice. Since the recession had hit, use of amphetamines had been on the up: you got more for your quid and the buzz lasted longer than cocaine, which had fallen out of favour as the middle classes tightened their belts. And since amphetamines had been banned on prescription in the US only two years ago, there was plenty of stuff still flying around among chemists in the know. Speed had always been here, to a degree, even in the police force, until six or seven years ago. Sparks had no need of it himself, but had known it got his staff through shifts back then, and hadn’t questioned it. After all, his father had been in the Battle of Britain and had always maintained that the RAF only won because our boys had a better grade of whizz than the Luftwaffe.