The Descent (Detective Louise Blackwell)

by Matt Brolly

  Although the body had been moved, Louise was still careful not to contaminate the scene any more than necessary. The woman’s eyes were closed, a serene look on her face. An unwelcome image flashed before Louise’s eyes – Emily in place of the woman – which she banished with a furious shake of her head. ‘Where did you find her?’

  ‘She was in the Channel. Her back is caked in mud,’ said Strachan, holding up his sludge-coated hands as if in evidence.

  ‘Let’s cordon this area and wait for the SOCOs. Any sign of what killed her?’

  Strachan shook his head. ‘From a cursory glance, no. No sign of blood or broken bones.’

  Louise shone her torch around the surrounding area. It was hard to believe this was Weston. Despite the time of night, the heat was intense and there was a remoteness to the area only dashed when she looked to her right and saw the distant lights of the seafront, the pier poking out into the sea.

  Although the location was close to where Claire Smedley had taken her life, nothing about the location matched the other three deaths. The nearest cliff was back at the marina, the same cliff Claire had fallen from. From what she could see, and what Strachan had told her, the deceased woman had not fallen to her death.

  As she waited for the SOCOs to arrive, she thought back to Chappell. The relaxed way he’d been with her. Could he possibly have had a role to play in this? Louise had to concede that it seemed unlikely. If he’d been planning something he’d hidden the fact very well. However, she didn’t believe it was beyond him. He had a peculiar sense of confidence she’d rarely encountered. She could imagine him inviting her into his house, talking to her about DMT, his trip to the Amazon, while all the time planning the night’s events.

  Not that she would give voice to her thoughts. She was already obsessing in a way that contradicted her training, making uncharacteristic mistakes. She shouldn’t have visited Chappell earlier that day. But what if he was responsible? What if her turning up had prompted him to play a role in the woman’s death?

  The SOCOs arrived and she moved back towards the car park with the fire chief. ‘This has been happening a lot recently, young women . . .’ said McKee, as if needing to break the silence, his boots crunching on the dry ground next to the river.

  There was no judgement in his words, only a weary recognition of the situation. He would be aware of the other cases, the three women who’d taken their own lives. It was easy, if a little lazy of thought, to presume this was a similar case. ‘Let’s hope this is a coincidence,’ said Louise.

  ‘I’m from South Wales, you know,’ said McKee.

  ‘You would never have guessed,’ said Louise, deadpan.

  ‘Family in Bridgend.’

  Louise lowered her eyes as it dawned on her why he’d told her where he was from. ‘Tragic thing,’ she said.

  ‘Bizarre. All those young folk taking their lives. You think it’s happening here?’

  Louise recalled Tania Elliot making the same connection. Whether or not the woman back along the shore was another suicide, it was hard to get away from the fact that something unusual was happening in the town. Maybe that was why she was obsessing over Chappell. Searching for an explanation that just wasn’t there. ‘I don’t know, John. I hope this is just a sad coincidence.’

  They looked at each other, both acknowledging that hope was often another word for wishful thinking.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ said Thomas, approaching them.

  ‘I hope it’s not contagious,’ said McKee, walking off to the fire engine.

  ‘Here,’ said Thomas, handing Louise his phone. ‘The anonymous call we received.’

  Louise pressed the play button on his phone. After listening once, she pressed play again:

  Police, how may I help you?

  There’s a body. You need to get it before the sea takes it away. It’s the body of my friend.

  Can I take your name, please?

  There isn’t time. You must get there now.

  Is your friend in danger?

  It’s Megan. She’s dead.

  The caller’s voice was eerily calm. She went on to explain the location in detail before hanging up.

  ‘We have a trace on this?’

  ‘Only a number at present. Phone is switched off. I have someone back at the station calling. Coulson might be able to try and locate the caller. He’s heading towards the station now.’

  Louise listened to the message again. She placed the caller to be in her thirties though it was so difficult to tell with voice only. She closed her eyes as the woman spoke, picked up the laboured breathing behind her voice. It was as if she was forcing herself to stay calm. When she said, ‘There isn’t time’, her words ran into each other, slurred as if she’d been drinking.

  She handed the phone back to Thomas.

  He gazed at her as if trying to read her mind. ‘You look like you’re about to do something.’

  Louise ran both hands through her hair. A wave of tiredness came over her as she realised she hadn’t thought about Emily or Paul since she’d arrived at the marina; or rather, she hadn’t actively thought about them – they were always there, at the periphery of her thoughts, waiting to be dealt with.

  ‘We could go and wake Jay Chappell up?’ she said, more out of mischief than anything else.

  Thomas shot her an enigmatic smile, too similar to the expression she’d seen on Chappell for her liking. ‘I’m not sure that would be the best idea, do you, boss?’

  Louise grimaced. ‘If you’re calling me “boss”, you must really mean it.’

  ‘It’s just that—’

  Louise stopped him. ‘I know, I know.’ Of course it was a bad idea. Chappell had attended the station voluntarily. At the moment, the only thing connecting him to the case was the footage of him with Sally at the pier. Louise had yet to include her visit to him yesterday on the case record, but a call in the middle of the night for something that could be wholly unrelated wouldn’t be professional and could quite easily lead to a complaint. ‘Why don’t you go home and grab some sleep. Looks like we will have a long day tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘Far be it for me to comment, but maybe you should, too . . . boss.’

  Louise’s eyes widened in mock outrage. ‘Maybe you’re right again,’ she said, stifling a yawn.

  Chapter Forty-One

  It was after 3 a.m. by the time Louise reached her bungalow, and she’d barely managed to sleep when her phone rang at 6 a.m.

  ‘Mum?’ she said, shielding her eyes from the sunlight glaring through the bedroom window.

  ‘Sorry to wake you, Lou.’

  Louise sat up in bed, the events from last night, from the last few weeks, rushing at her. ‘What is it, Mum? Is it Paul? Emily?’ she asked, noting the high-pitched sound escaping her mouth as she said her niece’s name.

  ‘Everything’s okay. Paul called last night.’

  ‘What did he say, why didn’t you call me?’ It was too early, and she’d had too little sleep to deal with a cryptic conversation.

  ‘He called to say that everything is okay. Emily is having a lovely time and they will be back next week. I didn’t want to wake you last night, that’s why I’m calling now.’

  Louise stopped short of reminding her mother that it was 6 a.m. ‘What time did he call?’

  Her mother hesitated before answering. ‘Just after midnight.’

  ‘How did he sound?’

  ‘He was fine.’

  ‘Had he been drinking?’

  Her mother clicked her tongue, as if somehow Louise was in the wrong for asking the question. ‘He sounded a little slurred but I believe him, Lou.’

  They both knew she wouldn’t be calling if that was truly the case but Louise didn’t push it. ‘Did he say where he was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ask?’

  A sigh. ‘Listen, Lou, I think maybe you should try him again. I think he’ll listen to you.’

  ‘I’ll try, Mum,’ said Louise, though she�
��d been calling her brother every day since he’d taken Emily away.

  She showered and changed on automatic pilot, pouring a coffee to take with her to the station. Summer had vanished, its replacement a grey ocean of cloud hanging over the town in latent threat. Only the heat remained, her shirt clinging to her skin despite the early hour as she opened the car door. Soundlessly, she lifted her hand to Mr Thornton, who’d opened his front door in unison.

  Leaning in to place her coffee in the cup holder, Louise stuck her head back out. ‘Looks like rain,’ she said to the elderly man.

  Mr Thornton nodded and she was sure there was a hint of a smile on his lips as he retreated back inside.

  The clouds threatened to break but held as she made the short drive to the station. She played the anonymous call on loop as she drove through the empty streets. Had the caller left the woman by the sea? Had she left her to die or had she been dead when she left? Did the caller know Jay Chappell, or were the deaths unrelated? Such questions rolled through Louise’s head, each unanswerable at the present time.

  As she parked up and walked to the office, Louise discovered she wasn’t the only person searching for answers. ‘DI Blackwell. Can you confirm another body was found close to Uphill Marina yesterday evening?’ came the question, as soon as she’d left the car.

  Louise looked up at the clouds as if some answers could be found there, before turning to face the person who’d asked the question. ‘I can confirm a body was found near the marina, Tania, yes. As for it being “another” body—’

  ‘Another suicide, Inspector.’

  Louise closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them the journalist would have disappeared. She was acutely aware of her body at that moment – the heaviness of each muscle, the joints of her bones, the roar of blood in her ears – as exhaustion threatened to engulf her. ‘Print what you want,’ she said, opening the station front door and pulling it shut before the journalist could follow her inside.

  She was surprised to see Thomas already in the office. ‘I thought you were getting some sleep,’ she said to him, almost tearing the offered cup of coffee from his grip.

  ‘I could say the same thing about you.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ said Louise, though she felt if she lowered her eyes now she would do just that.

  ‘Ditto. Dempsey has taken the body. Looks like we have a name,’ said Thomas, pointing to the picture of the corpse he’d already posted to the crime board. ‘Megan Davies. I’ve just finished a search on her. I have an address if you want to join me?’

  ‘Inspector Blackwell, a word.’ DCI Robertson’s presence had been unknown to Louise, and the reverberation of his Glaswegian accent in the empty office permeated her bones like the sound of chalk on a blackboard.

  ‘Robbo’s in by the way,’ said Thomas, walking back to his desk.

  ‘Oh, thanks, DS Ireland,’ said Louise, heading towards her boss’s office.

  ‘Another one?’ said Robertson, before she had a chance to sit down.

  The tension was palpable, her relationship with her superior strained ever since the overtime fiasco. It had to be resolved, and the only solution she could think of was giving him a result on the case. If she kept presenting him with issues then sooner or later he would assume she was simply repeating her behaviour from her time at MIT. If it reached that stage her position would be untenable. She only wished she had something more to offer him.

  ‘Possibly. However, the manner of death is completely different to the others. We don’t know if it’s suicide at present. Could simply be accidental death.’

  ‘Let’s hope so, shall we.’

  ‘Thanks for the pep talk, sir, but I really need to be getting on with some work. We think we have a positive identification and address for the woman.’

  ‘You know what I’m doing after you’ve left this office.’

  Louise could almost visualise the energy leaving her body.

  Robertson’s upper lip protruded as if he were holding back a frown. ‘I’m going to call Assistant Chief Constable Morley.’

  ‘Well, enjoy that.’

  ‘Come on, Louise. A fourth body?’

  ‘It’s not as if I’m killing them, Iain.’

  ‘Maybe not, but what do I have to tell Morley?’

  ‘You could tell him there were over twenty suicides in Bridgend.’

  ‘Are you fucking mad? I tell him that and this will go to HQ before I have the chance to hang up.’

  Louise felt as if her whole time in Weston had been leading up to this conversation. Robertson had always supported her. He’d never come out and said it, but she was sure he believed what she’d told him about the Walton case. How Finch had lied, how Morley wanted her out of the force. She knew too that he had his own pressures. Morley thought of himself as some sort of media darling and hated nothing more than bad publicity. But something had to give.

  ‘Do you ever wonder why we even have a CID department here, Iain?’

  Robertson began shaking his head.

  ‘I’m serious. What is the point, if every time we have an issue with a case Morley and the rest of HQ threaten to take it away from us?’

  ‘You know it’s not as simple as that, Louise.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I don’t want to have to fight Portishead every time I’m trying to do my job. Do you think MIT would have even bothered with this case? Because I’ll tell you, they wouldn’t have. At least not until Sally’s death. And even then, I’m not sure. I was the one who found Claire Smedley’s laptop. I found the connection between her and Victoria Warrington. Maybe tell Morley that.’

  Robertson rubbed his brow as if he had something glued to it. ‘This witness. Jay Chappell. Anything there?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Louise, sighing.

  Robertson glanced up at her and appeared to concede he’d lost the discussion. He opened his arms out. ‘Fine, go,’ he said.

  Thomas drove them to the Brean Down holiday park where Megan Davies had lived. Louise snuck a glance at Thomas as he drove past the spot she’d stopped at yesterday, around the corner from Jay Chappell’s house. She didn’t know why she felt guilty. Beyond not having updated her report about her visit she hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe it was the way she’d surveyed the perimeter of the house, had toyed with the idea of breaking in to take a look at what Chappell was hiding, that bothered her.

  The book he’d given her was in her bag. She wondered what Thomas would think of it. She promised herself to add it into the report once they’d done visiting Megan’s home and tried to banish the feeling that she’d made another mistake by taking it. She’d almost finished it. Most of it was easy to dismiss. The translation was truly awful and much of the text featured abstract spiritual musings. What intrigued Louise was the detail the shaman recounted not only of his experiences on the drug, but those of his pupils. As Forrest suggested, there was a sense of a shared experience. The accounts discussed the so-called guides – some wildly described, alien and disturbing, others more human-like – that Dr Forrest had mentioned; and if it hadn’t been for her discussion with Forrest, she would have dismissed the book out of hand. But what she had to consider was Chappell’s reaction to the book. He’d told her it had changed his life and she had to unravel what exactly that meant.

  The sun had yet to break through the blanket of cloud. Under the grey sky, the holiday resorts and beach shops looked woefully out of place. It made her wonder why people would travel to the area, with its unpredictable weather patterns and brown sea when there were so many better alternatives.

  Not that the place wasn’t without its beauty. As Thomas drove into a caravan park, Louise glanced over at Brean Down. Through a fug of mist, the promontory jutted out into the sea. A group of walkers in distinctive waterproofs were out for a morning hike, climbing the stone steps that from Louise’s angle looked impossibly steep.

  Thomas parked up. Louise had been in the same caravan park before with Farrell. That had been in winter, but
she experienced the same feeling of bleakness when she stepped out of the car as she’d done in the colder months. With their identical doors all shut, the static caravans appeared empty, the park desolate.

  As Thomas took a set of keys off the park’s warden, Louise wondered how many more times she would have to go through this; how many more homes of deceased young women she would have to see before they got some understanding on what was happening.

  ‘It’s rented from the holiday park,’ said the warden. ‘They sometimes use it as overspill for their staff in busy periods.’

  ‘Thank you. We’ll get you if we need anything else,’ said Louise, waiting for the warden to reluctantly walk away before opening the caravan door.

  The interior was a great improvement on the derelict caravan where Sally had lived. Although dated, the furnishings were well maintained and the place had the feel of somewhere recently cleaned as if ready for new occupants. It wasn’t until they reached the small bedroom cabin towards the rear that they even saw any of Megan’s belongings. A neatly folded pile of clothes had been placed at the end of the bed, next to a toiletries bag.

  ‘That’s a bit strange,’ said Thomas, pointing to the pink pillowcase and duvet cover, with its picture of a Disney princess on it.

  ‘Comfort in childish things,’ said Louise. She tried not to let Thomas see that she was looking away. Emily loved the character plastered over the duvet. She had at least three doll versions of the Disney princess, as well as the outfit. Louise’s eyes began to moisten and she was forced to leave the caravan. Thankfully, Thomas didn’t follow.

  Louise pressed her back against the cold exterior of the caravan, the light breeze prickling her skin.

  Megan had been twenty-eight. Louise pictured her alone in the caravan at night, wrapped in her childhood bedspread. Loneliness was a plague Louise understood. It had threatened to overwhelm her on occasions and it was something all four women appeared to have suffered from. Had this been what had driven Megan to take her life? The potential of one more night alone in the desolate caravan park, when the world was going by just down the road, too much for her to take?