River Deep

by Priscilla Masters

  River Deep

  PRISCILLA MASTERS

  “The intention of the coroner’s enquiry is to establish who died, how, where and when that person died and the cause of death.”

  This is not always as simple as it sounds…

  “Who saw him die?”

  “I,” said the fly

  “With my little eye,

  I saw him die.”

  Anon. “Who Killed Cock Robin?”

  Contents

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  About the Author

  By Priscilla Masters

  Copyright

  1

  Monday 11th February. 4pm.

  Nature is a free spirit. It has no master or mistress. Rain falling on hills will trickle down to the river and a thousand trickles turn a meandering body of water, usually obedient to its constrictive banks, into a wild and destructive torrent. Water will find its own level, ignoring homes and businesses, restaurants and even temporary graveyards. Instead of protecting a town it can threaten it. Embrace it as a python encircles its victim.

  You cannot tame nature.

  Even on such a wet day it is a pretty fisherman’s cottage, seventh in a row aptly named Marine Terrace, its blue-painted windows staring out over the rebellious river whose level creeps slowly up its brick walls, unable to defend itself as the river rises, almost invisibly, sneaking first to the top of its banks, moving towards it with stealth, as though if seen the town will somehow defend itself. But the town has no defences–except vigilance and sandbags, and sandbags do not hold back a torrent.

  You cannot contain nature. Rivers will go where they will. Corpses and the living, treasured possessions, crimes and the innocent. All can be drowned in the rampant waters of the Severn.

  The cellar below number seven, Marine Terrace, is not quite so pretty as its exterior. Small, square and dark, the only light a watery grey streaming in through a tiny, dirty, nine-paned window. Rain batters the glass seeking an entry but the putty stays firm. There is no leak. It is watertight.

  Although it is only mid-February the cellar is warm, insulated from the weather. Warmer than the 12º centigrade the bluebottle (Calliphora) requires to lay her eggs, more than one thousand of them. She has been attracted by a scent irresistible to her but disgusting to anyone else. Putrefaction.

  Calliphora has been lured down to the cellar by the rising river which carries a cocktail of aromas, but this particular scent is the most alluring of them all. She has followed her instinct and now she fulfils her life’s function to reproduce. She has found the source, moist and warm, temptingly rich and has gained access through the large, old-fashioned keyhole, drawn by the smell as a man is to a woman’s perfume. And she has been rewarded with an ideal breeding ground. An open wound in a slowly decaying body.

  While the body decays the river still rises. Nature progresses inexorably.

  The river licks the panes of the window and whispers, “Let me in. Let me in.”

  She will have her way. She creeps up the glass, one millimetre at a time.

  Though the cellar is still dry, rats are sensitive to the rising water level. One scurries along the back wall, its whiskers tickling in alarm. If not for the threat of the water he might have been tempted by the food source. But survival is more important than food. He runs past. And looks up. The only exit from the cellar is a climb of irregular stone steps, at the top a door. The rain is growing ever more fierce. More insistent. It spits beneath the front door, rat-tats against the outside walls, splashes onto the walkway outside and forms puddles which spread by the minute. Like moving inkblots. Expanding. Joining. Irregular shapes which keep growing.

  Outside in the cooling evening air a man stands halfway across the English Bridge, his head turned towards Marine Terrace. He is both fascinated and appalled by the power and the will of the river. He stares into the water and studies the antique lamp-posts crazily reflected in the moving black waters, saplings and debris bouncing along in the flow.

  And now he turns from the river and accepts the invitation of the town.

  In the cellar Calliphora has finished laying her eggs. She buzzes around the room searching for an exit but no scent guides her back to the surface so she settles on the cellar wall and awaits her chance to escape.

  A lone hitchiker stands on the Copthorne road, thumb out, hoping for a lift to Oswestry. Aware that the rain is simultaneously both friend and foe. It makes the hiker less visible to the traffic but those who do spot the unfortunate are more likely to stop – out of sympathy.

  A lorry driver pities the drenched figure, slews and stops, making the hitchhiker run eighty or so yards. A door is flung open. Words are exchanged. Fate is sealed.

  He will be a useful witness.

  During the night the inkblots join to form a huge black pool which spreads across the walkway in a swift movement, pauses for a moment at the front doorstep of number seven, Marine Terrace, before inching up the steps and pouring beneath the door.

  Once inside she joyfully heaves the cellar door open, descends the steps in a gleeful waterfall and fills the cellar.

  Water will find its own level.

  Safely above the water Calliphora flies up the stairs to the ground floor room. There is only one – apart from the kitchen – and that is clean. Nothing to tempt her in there. The rats in the cellar squeak and scream. Some of them will drown.

  But rivers have no conscience. Only determination.

  In the corner Calliphora’s eggs are growing fat, well-fed on flesh and blood.

  Their food source lifts and bobs a little, an apathetic swimmer in a waterlogged suit, air in his clothes creating a buoyancy aid.

  Tuesday 12th February 2002. 7am

  A grey, misty dawn.

  The man wakes to silence, crosses the room and draws back the curtains. There is no traffic. So the silence is explained – yet unexplained.

  The scent and sound of sizzling bacon drifts up the stairway and distracts him. But in spite of the mouth-watering aroma of his breakfast this morning he is less comfortable than the night before. Stale cigarette smoke fugs the windows; the atmosphere is sour. The man feels unaccountably nauseous. He descends and stands in the kitchen doorway.

  She turns to greet him from the stove. “Well,” she says, frying pan in her hand. “The river’s beat us all.”

  The man starts.

  “Rose higher in the night. They’ve closed both bridges. I hope your car …”

  “Sorry?”

  She slews round. “Haven’t you noticed how quiet it is?”

  The man listens. A pulse of silence pounds away in his ear.

  “No traffic.” She tips the bacon and a slimy egg onto the plate, shovels a tomato to join it. Turns to hand it to him.

  The man is gone.

  She spoke the truth. The decision has been made to close the bridge. Both bridges. Welsh and English simultaneously. Frankwell is flooded, Abbey Foregate under water, Mardol drowning. The river is winning her battle. She is the tyrant now. So Shrewsbury is sealed off to traffic, to become, once again, a moated medieval island town, safe, isolated and unwilling as a virgin within the embracing waters of the River Severn. Those outside must stay. Those inside are trapped.
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  He is inside.

  He is walking down Wyle Cop, approaching the English bridge from the safe height of the town, panicked by the blue strobes of the emergency services. He is ordered back by a firm but friendly Police Constable new to the job, PC Gethin Roberts, a Welshman. It is his first crisis and he feels proud and important to play his part. He puts the man’s anxiety down to the fact that properties nearby are filling with water. Maybe … His eyes drift towards Marine Terrace. “Not your house, I hope, Sir.” He speaks in a pleasant, Shropshire burr.

  The man says nothing.

  “We’ve had to shut the bridge to all traffic. Too dangerous, you see. The flooding’s terrible round the Abbey.” They both glance at the tall, red castellations of the site of Brother Cadfael’s adventures surrounded now by duckboards and oily waters. A few brave shoppers, determined not to be beaten by nature step gingerly over the slippery planks. A cyclist swishes through, creating a wash behind him. “We’re sending crews in to make sure nobody is left inside.”

  The man starts. “No body, Constable?”

  Gethin Roberts pulls his yellow waterproof tightly around his shoulders. Glances up at the darkening sky. “Will it ever stop raining, do you think?”

  No one answers. The man has gone. Vanished again into the rain. Afterwards the constable will scold himself for not taking down details. A description. A name. Something to identify the man by other than his strangeness. For the rest of his career in the police force PC Gethin Roberts will regret not having fingered a hot suspect when he had the chance. But like most significant moments in a life, he did not know it was a chance. And now he is distracted by a van driver approaching the bridge from the other side, anxious to make a delivery. “Sorry, mate,” he says chummily. “Can’t go across there. River’s still risin’. You’ll just get stuck.” The van driver tugs a mobile phone from his jeans pocket and starts shouting into it, waving his free hand. The constable watches the driver execute a clumsy three-pointed, one-handed turn and vanish into the grey back towards the Abbey.

  A grey Hyundai van sits, abandoned, in the car park behind the Lion & Pheasant.

  Inside the empty house the body floats towards the top of the stairs, bumping against the half-open door. Calliphora sticks to the wall. Biding her time.

  The waters continue to rise until eleven o’clock in the morning, the weather dry now but the mountain streams still draining from up river. The town suffers with quiet dignity as she has done ever since the Saxons named it Scrobbesbyrig in times approaching prehistory. Far downstream the sea tide turns and the water level rises suddenly, its escape route cut off. It spills into meadows, floods the football ground, seeps into homes, bumps the kegs in the cellars of the Abbey Inn. The pressure of river-water heaves against the front door of the house in Marine Terrace. An open invitation to the four policemen and two firemen who have been detailed to make a final search of riverside properties.

  Inside the cellar of number seven, Marine Terrace, the river has reached the top of the cellar window, now a porthole which peers into subaqua scenes of greeny brown, indistinguishable shapes of debris. Tins? Bottles? A shoe? A plank of wood? A duck’s feet?

  At the top of the steps the cellar door creaks like an ancient galleon and moves with the will of the wash. It is a sea battle between wood and water; the floating corpse an inert witness.

  Still standing on the middle of the English bridge PC Gethin Roberts continues, bossily, to dissuade people from walking into the town.

  So the day passes.

  The hitchhiker has reached a destination.

  At four o’clock in the afternoon, wearing fisherman’s waders PC Gary Coleman tries the door of number seven, Marine Terrace. Calliphora escapes and joyfully buzzes along the waters. Freer than the people of Shrewsbury town who cannot fly.

  The sudden gush of water hits the far wall of the room and creates a wave which surges towards the cellar door. Coleman flashes a beam strong enough to penetrate the gloom. And picks up the flaccid swimmer. For a second he is too stunned to say or do anything but stands with the water swishing around his ankles. Then he fumbles in his belt for his two-way radio. “Ten nine. Ten nine,” he manages.

  The code for a police officer in need of urgent assistance.

  2

  It always begins in the same way – with a telephone call invariably reaching her at a time and place which is inconvenient. And it is always the same person who initially rings her, Jericho, her assistant, as stolid as a Shropshire potato and with as sharp a pair of eyes.

  He had caught her in a packed Tesco’s this time, and she with a basket of perishables. Agnetha’s day off, nothing for tea and hungry mouths to fill at home. Hence the trip to Tesco’s. So, recognising the number, she was wary with her, “Hello.”

  “I thought you’d want to know about this one, Ma’am. Straight away.”

  She nestled against the corner of the deep freeze. “Carry on, Jerry,” she said. “I’m all ears.”

  “Washed up by the floodin’ river,” he said in his deep Shropshire burr, the word floodin’ as powerful as a profanity. “John Doe. Unidentified male.” He allowed himself a slice of poetic licence. “Nearly knocked Police Constable Coleman off his feet. He was checking the properties flooded by the river and this guy swims towards him.”

  Martha rolled her eyes across the packets of oven chips. “If he was dead, Jerry,” she pointed out needlessly, “he wasn’t able to swim, was he?”

  “Well –” He was miffed. “In a manner of speakin’. What I mean is he floated towards him. It was a terrible shock. Knocked into ‘im.” There was a certain amount of malicious pleasure in his voice.

  “I’ll be home in half an hour, Jericho,” she said decisively. “Get the Senior Investigating Officer and the police surgeon to ring me then, will you?” Mentally she substituted steak au poivre for frozen pizza and chips for tea. The facts, she already anticipated, would be unsuitable for twelve-year-olds’ ears. And she would need the privacy of her study to absorb them. She glanced around her. Not the public arena of Tesco’s Superstore.

  She queued for her turn at the checkout and wondered why she ever gave Agnetha a day off. Particularly on a Tuesday. It was practically bound to attract an urgent case referral.

  Her curiosity was awakened as she covered the few miles home, the roads jammed with traffic turned away from the town centre. Shrewsbury was sealed off by the ‘floodin’ river’, yet again.

  She swept into the drive that led to the white-washed house and parked around the back. Easier to unload the shopping. She opened the front door cautiously. Bobby, her Welsh Border collie, was ballistic to see her. He hurled himself at her legs, barking his urgent demand for a walk. But Sam would have to walk him tonight. She would be occupied.

  There were eight messages flashing on the answerphone. She worked her way through them. Her mother, wondering how she was as she hadn’t been in touch for a day or two and was she eating properly? Martin’s mother, wondering how she was as she hadn’t been in touch for a day or two and was everything all right? Miranda, wondering whether she fancied going to see a new film at the pictures and was everything all right? Click. No one, wondering nothing. A friend of Sam’s suggesting they play football tonight, two for Sukey; one a pipe-voiced girl and the other a half-broken-voiced male and finally, click. No one again. She wished people would at least inform her who they were before they turned tail in front of the answer-phone.

  The front door burst open at precisely half past four and, not for the first time, she reflected how very unlike two twelve-year-olds could be. Sam, with his lop-sided grin, dropping his sports bag on the kitchen floor (without investigating she knew it would contain the filthiest washing) and opening the fridge. When he spoke his mouth was already full of a peanut butter doorstep.

  “‘Llo, Mum.”

  Sukey, on the other hand, delicate disco queen, minced in on the highest heels she was allowed, and gave her a sideways look. “Hi, Mum,” she said wari
ly.

  Martha smiled back at her son and daughter. “Nice day at …?”

  “Don’t even ask”, Sukey practically spat, cat-like. “I lost my hair elastic. The one with the gold fish on. And that awful Robin Pearson…” She wrinkled her face. “I think I hate him, Mum.”

  Martha opened her mouth but Sam got in there first. “He isn’t awful.” Spraying bread and peanut butter across the kitchen.

  “Pig.” Sukey made a face as some landed on her maroon school sweatshirt. “And he is awful.” Trying to pick the sodden crumb off the sweatshirt. “He grabbed hold of me…”

  “Well – don’t hang on to the football when it lands your way then. Women,” Sam finished disgustedly.

  Sukey wasn’t even listening. She was rinsing the speck of half-chewed peanut butter from her sweatshirt. Martha wondered whether they would ever stop quarrelling.

  “There are some telephone messages for you both. I’ve written them on the pad and left them on memory. And … ,” she hesitated, “I’m going to have to take a couple of calls before tea. And possibly go out later.”

  Immediately they both shot the same swift, guarded glance at her. It took her aback. She knew they knew a little about her work but she wasn’t always quite so aware of its effect on them. It wasn’t something you readily shared with a pair of twelve-year-olds.

  “I’ll take the calls in the study.”

  “What’s for tea?” Sam again, ever conscious of his stomach. He’d finished his peanut butter doorstep.

  “Pizza.” She felt apologetic.

  As she closed her study door behind her she heard them whispering to each other, their differences forgotten. She hated it when they whispered. She felt so excluded – so lonely – so aware that they were twins and had each other whereas she had no one. When Martin had been alive it had not mattered. She had him – they had each other. Nicely paired. But since he had died she was very aware that they had shared her womb for nine long months. They were bonded. She was alone. The outsider. And her job isolated her even more. She’d had to tell them so much when they had been so young. That anything they heard in connection with her work was secret. That they were never to talk about it outside this house. That on the other side of the whispered conversations and scribbled names on the telephone pad was often suffering and grief, bewilderment and loss. Sometimes terrible violence and dark secrets. Headlines too. Whatever they overheard – through half-open doors, or extension phones accidentally picked up, or the answering machine, or on stray papers – they must stay silent. They had known this for all their conscious lives. She closed the door behind her.