Blackwater (DI Nick Lowry)

by James, Henry

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. We were gassing about food. This may surprise you, but myself and Lane do get on damn well usually, above and beyond the sparring in the ring. Anyhow, Oldham had told him of a new fish place that had opened up near the port and sold the finest oysters, just beyond the houseboats.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ Gabriel replied.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Detective Constable Kenton told me that the night he was attacked snooping around the houseboats he heard piano music. The captain was playing the piano when I visited yesterday.’

  ‘Piano music? Are you sure? Kenton never mentioned it to me.’

  ‘One hundred per cent. He didn’t mention it at Queen Street because he was too embarrassed. Having been knocked down, he thought, if he said he’d heard music, people would laugh all the more.’

  She watched Sparks contemplate the soldiers marching past. She couldn’t tell whether he was listening, but then he turned his back on the grand building they had just left and said abruptly, ‘Right, this is what we’re going to do.’

  As they walked towards the chief’s Rover, Sparks laid out their next move. Although flattered that he’d taken her into his confidence, and feeling sucked in by his enthusiasm, which she hadn’t felt with either Kenton or Lowry, she was slightly disturbed that the boss of Queen Street had decided to take matters into his own hands in such a direct fashion. She sat next to him as he dictated into the car radio precise instructions to have Captain Oldham placed under surveillance for twenty-four hours with immediate effect, and to advise immediately if he left the barracks.

  ‘In the meantime, let’s you and I check out these houseboats.’

  ‘Check them out?’

  ‘Yes. I’m very curious about Captain Oldham’s weekend retreat. And leaf through this and radio Lowry en route.’ He slapped Cowley’s file at her midriff. ‘Let’s go.’

  -54-

  1 p.m., Thursday, Hythe Hill, New Town, near Artillery Street

  Lowry watched Kenton open the Cortina boot from inside the Saab as he listened to Gabriel reel off Freddie Cowley’s stats over the radio. It sounded as though they had their unidentified man; Robinson would need to confirm but, on the face of it, the headless corpse washed up on the Strood was Felix Cowley’s brother Freddie. He remembered that the Green Flash tennis shoe had been a size ten, the same size as Private Frederick Cowley. Lowry was impressed with Gabriel’s discovery. Though how she’d arrived at the connection was not altogether clear, nor was why she was now in a car with Sparks, heading for Mersea.

  He watched Nugent’s silent protests at Kenton beyond the windscreen, but his mind was on the military involvement as he now saw it: ex-servicemen sourcing drugs on the Continent and shipping them over here through civilian couriers, then on to . . . who? Who were they for, ultimately? The men who had chased the two soldiers at Castle Park? But that was at the end of the deal, when things had already gone badly wrong. To answer the question he’d need to go back further, and Freddie Cowley ending up on the road across to Mersea was his starting point.

  Kenton and Nugent plodded back across the frozen mud. There was snow in the air again. Lowry wound down the window.

  ‘I niver looked in the boot; I ain’t got a clue what went in the boot. Honest.’ Nugent’s weathered face looked pleading.

  ‘Ted, you have to be the most honest bank robber in the land.’

  The forensic evidence pointed to there having been a body in the boot, at some point – and now Lowry was sure it had been Freddie Cowley. ‘Take Ted back to Queen Street,’ he said to Kenton. The morgue was five minutes away across town. If there were any clues to be had, it would be from the corpse of Freddie Cowley itself.

  1.20 p.m., Colchester General Hospital, morgue

  Lowry watched as they slid the shrouded body of Frederick Cowley on to the steel table. ‘The situation has changed,’ he said.

  ‘So I gather.’ Robinson’s spectacles slid down his nose as he laid out the corpse.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call you back, it’s just that—’

  ‘No need to apologize, inspector, I know you’ve been busy; as indeed we all have.’ The affable doctor indicated two white-shrouded gurneys behind him.

  ‘I did see the report about pooling blood which suggested that the body had rested on a firm surface and that the man was not killed at sea.’

  ‘Such as lying in the boot of a car?’ Robinson smiled knowingly.

  ‘Yes. News travels fast.’

  ‘Good to know. One always takes pride in one’s evaluation.’ He whipped the sheet back with such exuberance that Lowry half expected the body to have disappeared, as in a magician’s trick.

  ‘You’ll know then that the man was a soldier, hence the calloused feet.’

  ‘Yes . . . However, you feel I may have missed something.’

  ‘Not at all, doc. I fear we were at fault. The body was indeed found on the Strood; however, we failed to mention that it was hit by a car. So I want to check for impact marks.’

  ‘Clearly, there are none,’ the doctor said firmly.

  ‘How do we know until we’ve looked?’ Lowry crouched level with the trolley and started to examine the grey torso.

  ‘I have looked, inspector. I have examined the body fully and, were there any impact wounds, I would have noticed them.’

  Lowry was somewhat perplexed, but said politely, ‘Of course – thorough fellow that you are.’

  ‘What speed was the vehicle travelling at?’

  ‘I don’t know, to be honest, but the policeman who answered the call said he thought the car was travelling at speed. On that road, could be forty miles per hour? Fifty?’

  The doctor shook his grey head, his forehead concertinaed as he frowned over his glasses. ‘Very, very unlikely. What type of vehicle was it?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Well, assuming it’s an ordinary saloon, for the driver to get more than a jolt it would have had to have hit the body above here.’ He indicated the thighs. ‘You’ll have experienced enough RTAs to know that a half-ton car can pass over a shin or arm without fuss.’

  Lowry wasn’t quite convinced of the assessment ‘without fuss’, but that wasn’t the point. ‘So you’re saying there would be bruising at least from here to here.’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  Robinson flung the white sheet back over the body as theatrically as he’d removed it.

  ‘Unusual,’ was all Lowry could say.

  ‘Yes. I’d have a word with the driver, if I were you.’

  1.25 p.m., West Mersea

  The houseboats rested in the grassy mud two hundred yards from the road and were accessed by narrow wooden footways. Gabriel felt fraudulent. Despite special dispensation from Sparks, she was pretty sure she shouldn’t be doing this. Even if she were CID, she was pretty sure she shouldn’t be doing this.

  Sparks knew that Oldham had not left the barracks; his quarters had been under discreet observation. The chief had been dismissive with Gabriel. ‘If there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there. But look at the facts: he’s been obstructive – didn’t he fob you off and let Private Jones out of the country? He was on the ranges, and he knew, like Lowry said, that it offered a vantage point over the Colne estuary to see any escaping vessel. And didn’t Oldham pull Quinn out of Queen Street damn quickly – for fear the boy would speak out, maybe?’

  One footway led straight to Ahab’s Revenge. A breeze disturbed the grasses and tickled the mast riggings further off towards the port itself. The vessel Gabriel was to search was the neighbouring one – but on which side? Damn. To the right was a deep-hulled craft that looked imposing. She couldn’t see a name on it. It was sizeable, grand enough for Oldham: she could see large, double-fronted glass doors opening on to a spacious deck, but still she wasn’t convinced. She rounded the bow and passed along the length of the hull, dodging mud pools between tufts of grass. On the stern in ornate gold was inscribed the name Lily’s Fancy. Tha
t didn’t sound very Captain James Oldham. A weak sun sat beyond the channel, behind the old oyster sheds on the proud sandbanks. There was not a soul about. Next to Ahab’s Revenge on the other side was a low-sitting, turn-of-the-century boat with a high-standing wheelhouse.

  Discreetly etched on the stern were the words Così fan tutte. This was the one. Deftly clambering a rope ladder across the transom, she slipped into the cockpit and below eye level. Underneath the wheelhouse was a small wooden hatch leading to the galley below. The hatch was not locked but fixed only by a latch.

  She flicked on a torch and shot the beam inside the galley but then switched it off – the sunlight through the portholes was enough. Gabriel could almost stand at full height, which surprised her, given how low the boat appeared from the outside. The decor was tasteful and elegant; books and gramophone records lined the wooden interior, with lush upholstery between the cabinets. The boat was impeccably tidy. She passed into the galley, which was adorned with cut glassware.

  It didn’t strike her as the home of a drugs mastermind. Through the kitchenette and past storage cupboards were two berths, one holding a three-quarter-size bed, which she searched under and around before riffling through the wardrobes, which delivered nothing. The smaller berth was fitted with bunks. She ran her fingers along the flimsy mattresses, looking for a discreet opening; again nothing. Gabriel was starting to perspire; it was stuffy. She had to get out. As she was leaving the smaller berth, a dull thud from the passageway made her jump. She opened one of the mahogany doors: it was a cupboard holding tins of food and blankets. The next one wouldn’t open: it was locked. She shook it with annoyance, and there again was a thud. Her heart beat fast – there was somebody in there. She put her ear to the door. She heard a faint groan, and then another thud, against the door, which caused her to lurch back. Had they locked themselves in? No, wait, there was an outside bolt at the very top, presumably to secure the door when the vessel was at sea. Without hesitation, Gabriel slid the bolt and released the door.

  She leapt back in surprise: a nurse?

  -55-

  2.20 p.m., Thursday, Great Tey

  The two women embraced, sobbing, in the Lowrys’ front room. The tall WPC stood at a respectable distance, her face lined with concern. Lowry, always a figure of calm and composure, was visibly surprised by the turn of events and hung back awkwardly, unable to speak. The chief himself, standing there in the middle of the room, still in his Crombie, was not sure what to do now that they’d arrived.

  Sparks, initially jubilant in his recovery of Patricia Vane, had decided to grant the woman’s request to see her best friend, Lowry’s wife, before moving on to Queen Street. As a divorcee living alone in the Dutch quarter, it was a reasonable request. Also, Sparks was keen to see Lowry’s reaction to what could only be described as an extraordinary situation, and ordered the inspector to meet him at his own house.

  And it was extraordinary indeed. Where he had been expecting to find a ton of class-A drugs, he instead discovered a thirty-two-year-old nurse shackled to the boat’s toilet. This job never ceased to amaze him.

  The woman at the centre of it all, Trish Vane, was remarkably composed, considering she’d been cooped up inside a houseboat lavatory for the best part of two and a half days, ‘ . . . though I could hear the gulls, and smell the sea . . .’ she was saying.

  ‘Why would he want to kidnap you?’ Sparks asked, not for the first time.

  ‘She doesn’t know,’ Lowry’s wife replied stonily. Both women were in nurses’ uniform. ‘Give her time. Come on, let’s get a coffee.’ She gestured to Gabriel to join them.

  Sparks noticed that Jacqui avoided her husband’s gaze. He considered her for a moment, something he’d never really done on the times he’d previously met her. Fond of women as he was, a colleague’s wife was not his concern. Elfin – not his type, anyway. She was pale, so pale; almost translucent. She looked more washed out than her pal, who he’d just sprung. Something very odd was going on here. The Vane woman had said she’d been out with Jacqui on Saturday night; they’d had quite a time of it, apparently. That was odd in itself – he knew Jacqui had been assaulted in the town centre that night; what the hell had she been doing, out caning it? What had he missed? Very, very odd . . .

  The women left the room, leaving the two men alone. Sparks stepped over to Lowry, who was staring out of the patio doors. ‘Peculiar. This is my definition of a peculiar situation,’ he said in a low voice, thinking of the balling out he had given Gabriel earlier in the week. ‘We’ve known each other a long time . . .’

  Lowry nodded, not altering the direction of his gaze.

  ‘And so, if there was anything I should know, you’d tell me?’ He paused. ‘Because, from where I’m standing, the fact that a nurse ends up on a houseboat owned by a military police captain, cuffed to a toilet cistern, after a harsh night out with your missus, is fucking peculiar.’

  ‘There’s no denying that.’ Lowry could feel the chief’s eyes burning into him. On the surface he was calm, but inside he was in turmoil. Trish. Jacqui’s Trish, kidnapped. He had to remain level-headed. It had to be connected to Saturday night. Was Oldham linked to the murders on Greenstead, too? Lowry fought to keep events separate in his mind, even though he sensed that everything was connected, in a way he couldn’t yet fathom. Cigarette smoked drifted under Lowry’s nose as Sparks lit up. Lowry braced himself.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on out there?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Lowry said. Sparks’s eyes were on the garden.

  ‘That.’ He jabbed the glass. ‘An up-ended Workmate and timber all over the place. Some sort of DIY experiment?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Lowry was disturbed that Sparks had careered off down a path of investigation on his own, and without consultation. He accepted that the chief missed getting his hands dirty, but this seemed random. Rash, even. Gabriel re-entered the room and asked if they wanted coffee. Lowry shot her a glance as both declined: unreadable – God only knows what she was thinking.

  ‘Freddie Cowley’s death is a game changer. He’s the mastermind, arranges the deal, but he has to come back here to the UK? Why? To check the delivery went through? And then to discover what? That his gang’s about to get screwed over, and then he ends up dead himself? There has to be a key player coordinating this, between civilians and army.’

  Sparks nodded forcefully. ‘Oldham, it’s got to be Oldham – bumping off all the civilians involved in getting the drugs on to the shore.’ The chief looked around for an ashtray. There weren’t any – Lowry had chucked them all in the garage when he’d packed in smoking. ‘Maybe it’s connected to that soldier’s death on the castle wall, too. A reprisal, or turf war – call it what you like. I know we thought this before . . .’

  Lowry slid open the French doors, took the butt and flicked it on the lawn. ‘Why would he kill Freddie? His own man from Germany, who winds up in the back of a getaway car used to rob a post office by two men keen to buy what he brings ashore?’ Lowry asked.

  ‘Possibly Oldham was behind the post-office job too,’ Sparks guessed, then paused, before continuing, ‘though you’ve yet to explain: how did Freddie end up on the Strood?’

  ‘He was mutilated and dumped to make it look like an accident at sea, with the body being washed in on the tide. But I’ve sent Kenton back to Mersea. The pathologist’s report raises questions regarding the discovery of the body.’

  ‘Questions?’ Sparks frowned. ‘Like what?’

  ‘It might be nothing, but the body was hit by a car travelling at speed that night, but there are no signs of impact on it. I want to check out the car driver who discovered Cowley.’ He stared out at his own back garden and the ridiculous, up-ended Workmate.

  Lowry had been reluctant to dispatch Kenton to Mersea again – he’d much rather have gone himself, but Sparks had demanded that he return home, for what was indeed truly a ‘peculiar’ turn of events. He still couldn’t quite believe that Trish had been locked u
p in a houseboat. He shook his head. He had to focus.

  ‘Fred Cowley was back in the country the day before the robbery, and was staying with Stone in Artillery Street,’ Lowry continued. ‘His father confirmed this and handed over his son’s passport to Kenton. He must have been killed the day after his return.’ Jacqui re-entered the room, accompanied by Gabriel, who was clutching a mug. Lowry followed his wife’s movements with detachment and said, ‘Philpott and Nugent are both guilty as hell for the robbery – could they be working with Oldham? Is that what you’re suggesting? I can’t see them working together, and I don’t have Oldham as getting his hands dirty turning over a post office.’

  Sparks shook his head. ‘Not necessarily as a hands-on armed robber, but I’m more and more convinced he’s the mastermind. Stone was in on the drugs deal and part of the robbery and is ex-army – and he was putting Freddie Cowley up in his flat on Artillery Street. The Cortina can be traced to Stone and Philpott, both of whom were at the house on Greenstead. Cowley’s body was, we believe, in the Cortina. And Freddie Cowley can be traced back to Oldham and the rest of that unit in Germany.’

  ‘Why kill him?’

  ‘Money and drugs – a fatal combination. But maybe it was unintentional? Cowley fixes the deal in Germany, flies back here, has a disagreement with Oldham on the houseboat, there’s a scuffle . . .’

  ‘Cowley goes overboard, off the houseboat – at high tide,’ Lowry said, considering the idea. He knew the water came up that far; the park ranger had told him as much. ‘That explains why the body is wet. Oldham hacks him apart so he can’t be identified – the doc reckons the arm went because Cowley had a military tattoo; an army man would recognize its significance – shoves him in the boot and gets him dropped on the causeway at high tide so it looks like an accident, by whom, we’re not yet sure . . .’

  There was a pause. Lowry noticed that Sparks had switched his attention to Trish and Jacqui, who were now perched on the sofa and speaking in hushed tones to Gabriel. ‘You haven’t said so, but I know that Jacqui was out and about on Saturday – the night of the riot.’