Salt Lane

by William Shaw

  ‘Milk? Sugar?’

  ‘Just black please. No dairy.’

  ‘If someone took her there and dumped her, you’d think someone would have noticed,’ said Zoë.

  ‘You sure she’s not part of Serious Crime?’ The constable smiled at Cupidi’s daughter.

  ‘Someone must have seen her.’

  ‘Round there?’ said Ferriter. ‘Christ, no. Walland Marsh is dead quiet. The place is deserted these days. Didn’t used to be. Walland Marsh is newer than Romney Marsh proper, see, which is the north bit. When I say newer, that’s meaning, like, after about 1400, so not that new. My dad’s got books on it all. I’ll bring ’em round, if you like.’

  Cupidi said, ‘Well…’

  ‘My family’s lived here for generations. Dad was in the bloody history society. They have meetings if you’re interested. Lots of people your age.’

  ‘My age?’

  ‘I go there,’ said Zoë. ‘To Walland Marsh.’

  ‘You got friends who live round there?’ said Ferriter.

  ‘Go round there sometimes on Mum’s bike.’

  ‘Do you?’ said Cupidi.

  ‘Yeah. Sometimes. It’s quiet.’

  ‘There’s nothing bloody there,’ said Ferriter. ‘Used to drive me nuts there when I was your age.’

  ‘My daughter is an ornithologist. She goes birdwatching.’

  ‘Why?’ said Ferriter.

  The toaster popped up. Cupidi interrupted Ferriter’s quizzing of her daughter. ‘Toast?’ she asked.

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Ferriter.

  ‘What about the dead woman’s address? Has someone gone to check it?’

  ‘I went past on my way home last night. Just south of Hamstreet. Place looked derelict to me. Didn’t look like there was no one living there.’

  ‘You think she’d given a false address to the chemist?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Cupidi buttered her toast. ‘Strange. Worth taking a proper look. Her son, what was the name again?’

  ‘Julian Keen.’

  ‘Have you got his date of birth?’

  ‘Somewhere.’

  ‘Make sure you have. We’ll need it. We don’t want to go telling the wrong person that their mother is dead.’

  ‘God, no. It’s not the wrong person. I checked. Hilary Janice Keen. Gave birth to Julian Shakti Keen. 1982. Stroud Maternity Hospital. There’s not going to be two Julian Shakti Keens, are there? That’s not a proper name, is it?’

  ‘It’s a big thing to tell someone their mother is dead, that’s all.’ Cupidi bit into her toast; crumbs flew everywhere. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  ‘She going to be all right on her own?’ asked Ferriter, as Cupidi drove the unmarked car Ferriter had arrived in.

  Cupidi held the half-eaten toast in her right hand as she drove. ‘Of course she is.’

  ‘Just saying. Didn’t mean anything.’

  ‘She’s fifteen. Almost sixteen. Why wouldn’t she be?’

  At the railway crossing, Cupidi took another bite. The toast broke, leaving her with what was already in her mouth, and a tiny triangle between finger and thumb. A car was coming the other way, so she didn’t have time to look where the rest had gone.

  Beyond the small town of Lydd, she accelerated. At speed, the marshland they passed through looked flat and unremarkable. The thing about a landscape like this, she thought, is that you could pass through it without even noticing the half of it.

  FIVE

  As Julian walked in the front door, pushing the bike, Lulu was at the top of their stairs, holding Teo on one hip.

  ‘She’s probably accused you of molesting her,’ hissed Lulu.

  The thought shocked Julian.

  ‘My Christ. Is that what they said?’

  The two women police officers had arrived at the flat late that morning and asked for him by name. Abandoning his work, he had rushed back home.

  ‘They won’t say anything. It’s you they want. I told you it was a scam. I bloody warned you. Jesus, Julian. You are such an idiot. This could get ugly.’

  He looked at himself in the mirror at the bottom of the stairs. He looked sweaty and out of breath. Cycling home in the midday heat had made him look pink-faced; as if he were already guilty of something. A taxi driver had sworn at him for signalling right in front of him; he had sworn back. He couldn’t go upstairs looking like this.

  ‘What did they say about her?’ he whispered.

  ‘Well, that’s the point. They wouldn’t tell me anything. I’m only your bloody wife.’

  He walked up the stairs, squeezing past her.

  There were two policewomen sitting on the couch in his living room. A strikingly tall woman with straw-coloured hair, dressed in a crumpled pale linen jacket, and a younger one in a neat white blouse and black skirt, who to Julian looked more like the sort of woman he’d expect to see behind a counter at Boots. Despite his anxiety, he found himself staring at the younger woman’s crossed legs. And, as he glanced back up at his wife, he saw her looking at him, unsmiling.

  ‘Julian Keen?’ said the taller woman, standing.

  He looked at her nervously. He was unused to dealing with the police. There had been burglaries of course, and the time someone had run keys down the side of his Saab, but he had never been in trouble himself. He noticed a stain on the older officer’s pale trousers; as if she had dropped her breakfast on it. ‘What exactly is this all about? I have a lot to do today.’

  ‘Thanks for coming back from your office. We appreciate it. I’m Detective Sergeant Alexandra Cupidi from the Kent Serious Crime Directorate. This is Constable Jill Ferriter.’

  The younger woman was standing too, a sympathetic smile on her face. Why? He thought. What had happened?

  ‘So?’

  ‘Before I say anything, I need to just confirm that you are Julian Keen, date of birth…’

  ‘Seventeenth of May, 1982,’ said Ferriter, reading from her notebook.

  Nervously he said, ‘That’s me. Why?’

  There was a flicker in the younger woman’s gaze. ‘In that case, I’m afraid I have some very bad news,’ Cupidi said.

  ‘Has she said something?’ interrupted Lulu. ‘Has she accused us of something? I think you should know that that woman, who we put up here out of the goodness of our hearts, interfered with our child.’

  ‘She didn’t interfere with him, Lulu,’ said Julian. ‘The worst she did was take him downstairs and stick him in front of CBBC.’

  ‘Don’t say anything, Julian.’

  The senior officer looked at them, first Julian, then Lulu, and back again, as if trying to figure out what had been happening here.

  ‘I think there must have been some misunderstanding,’ the policewoman said. She turned to Lulu. ‘A woman interfered with your child?’

  ‘No,’ said Julian. ‘It’s nothing. She didn’t interfere with our child. What were you going to say?’

  The woman’s face softened. ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Keen, but your mother is dead.’

  The tears came instantly to his eyes, rolling down towards his chin. Lulu looked at her husband, open-mouthed. The constable, too, stood awkwardly, not certain what to do.

  Julian himself was as shocked as his wife. He hadn’t even known the woman really, had he? It had just been a single night that she was here. And he hadn’t cried since he was a boy. So why was he dripping tears now, lip trembling?

  Somehow picking up on the disturbance in the room, the child on Lulu’s hip began to wail. Only the older of the two policewomen seemed to know what to do; she was standing with a tissue she had found somewhere, holding it out for him.

  ‘Here. Give yourself a minute.’

  Julian took it.

  ‘I apologise,’ she said as he dropped into a chair, shoulders heaving. ‘It must be terrible news. Take your time.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what got into me.’

  ‘It’s perfectly natural,’ she said.

  Fo
r a few seconds, aside from the sound of crying – man and child – there was quiet, until the sergeant looked up and said to Lulu, ‘Well, what about that cup of tea, now?’

  Lulu hadn’t actually offered to make her one in the first place, but as she moved to the kitchen to put the kettle on, Julian could see the obvious irritation on her face at the way this policewoman had asserted her authority over her in her own home.

  ‘Would you like a hand with that?’ suggested Ferriter.

  ‘I can manage perfectly well.’ But Julian watched as the younger officer followed her anyway.

  ‘How did she die?’ Julian answered, when his wife and child were out of the room.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s possible that she may have been the victim of some kind of assault,’ said the woman.

  ‘My God. What kind of assault?’

  ‘Her body was recovered recently from a drainage ditch in Kent. We’re still waiting for more detail. Obviously if it turns out to be an assault, we want to catch whoever did this to her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And there is the matter of identifying the body.’

  ‘Kent?’ It struck Julian that the woman had said they were Kent police, which was odd. ‘What was she doing there?’

  ‘We’re hoping you could help us answer that.’

  The constable returned with a tray with four black mugs on it.

  ‘Perhaps I can start by asking when you last saw your mother?’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Last night,’ said Julian. ‘She stayed here, actually.’

  He wondered why the calm-looking sergeant who had been so in control of the situation up until now was looking so shocked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, flustered. ‘Did you say last night?’

  ‘Not possible,’ said the constable.

  ‘There must be some kind of mistake.’

  And beside the sergeant, the constable was digging in a folder for pieces of paper. ‘You did say seventeenth of May 1982, right? Mother’s name Hilary Janice Keen?’ she said, anxiously.

  ‘Janice?’ said Julian, bewildered. ‘Is that her middle name?’

  The two police officers looked at each other, not understanding what had just happened.

  SIX

  ‘So if the woman we’ve found is Hilary Keen, who was the woman who knocked on their door last night?’ The obvious question.

  They were driving slowly north along Kingsland Road; the London traffic was as Cupidi remembered, sluggish and bad-tempered.

  ‘It is Hilary Keen. Hundred per cent. Her GP confirmed it,’ said Ferriter from the driver’s seat, inching the car forward. ‘Plus, we’ve got matching dental records too.’

  ‘You found her dentist?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘When were you going to mention that?’

  ‘I only just heard,’ she complained. ‘Give me a bloody chance.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Cupidi.

  Ferriter turned crimson. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that. It just kind of slipped out. But I found out this guy Julian Keen’s name and I tracked him down. I thought I was doing pretty well, but everything I do seems to piss you off.’ She paused, then added, ‘Sarge.’

  Cupidi looked at her. ‘You’re going to need a thicker skin.’

  ‘I thought I already had one, matter of fact.’

  Cupidi smiled to herself. ‘Well? What about the dentist?’

  ‘Just got the text a little while back while we were at the flat, as a matter of fact. Honest. The dentist’s surgery said it was her too. Definite.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Cupidi.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Ferriter glared at the traffic ahead.

  Cupidi sighed. ‘OK. Good work,’ she said. ‘Well done. You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Cupidi.

  Cupidi looked around at the people on the streets. London seemed so busy after Kent. Strange being here again. She hadn’t been back for months.

  ‘Weird, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Good weird,’ said Cupidi.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We find a dead woman,’ said Cupidi. ‘The night before we turn up to tell the victim’s son, a totally different woman knocks on his door impersonating his mother.’

  ‘Just a bit sad, I thought. I mean, poor guy. He was convinced the woman he’d met yesterday was his mother and now we tell him his real mother’s dead. And that wife. God, she was hard work.’

  ‘But what was the woman doing at their house?’

  ‘I’d say she was probably a con woman, like his wife said. Jesus,’ Ferriter said, looking in the rear-view mirror. ‘The cyclists here are insane. Are we allowed to hit ’em?’

  ‘You think it’s a coincidence?’

  ‘Yep. Got to be.’

  ‘What did you think of her? Lulu. Nervous, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I suppose she would have been upset, thinking that a con artist had been at her house.’

  Cupidi nodded, opened her handbag and took out a packet of mints, offered one to Ferriter.

  Ferriter shook her head. ‘Bad for your teeth.’

  So Cupidi took two for herself. ‘I just don’t get it. If this woman who turned up at their doorstep was a con artist, where’s the con? She arrives, says she’s Julian Keen’s mother, spends the night, gets up in the morning and disappears. No harm done.’

  ‘Checking out the place for a burglary, maybe? Maybe she actually nicked something and they haven’t spotted it yet.’

  Cupidi nodded.

  ‘Maybe she was mentally… you know.’ She whistled cuckoo notes.

  ‘The terminology is “mentally ill”,’ said Cupidi.

  ‘Maybe she goes round telling all sorts of people she’s their mother, only she just happens on one person who doesn’t know who his real mother is.’

  Cupidi sucked on her mints. ‘Know what, though? His wife seemed almost relieved when it turned out she couldn’t have been his mother. We go to tell her husband his mother is dead and she looks – I don’t know… almost happy about it.’

  ‘She was just happy it wasn’t the woman who had stayed in their house last night.’

  They drove past Turkish shops and Asian restaurants. She had grown up around here, but the place already seemed strange to her. From the road, you could only get a brief glimpse of Regent’s Canal beneath them at the bridge, but you could still tell it was there from the new apartment blocks that clustered on its banks.

  ‘I been thinking,’ Ferriter said cautiously. ‘What if there’s something about the location of where the body was left?’

  ‘Good. Carry on. What are you saying?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just… The entire place is covered in ditches and waterways. And they all connect up. So what if she was put somewhere else and floated there?’

  The hundred square miles of salt marsh north of Dungeness had been drained and reclaimed over many centuries. The water was held back by a precarious network of banks, ditches and dykes, pumps and sluices. Romney Marsh had been won back from the sea, field by field; a landscape as artificial as the urban one they were driving through now.

  ‘I mean. Water moves, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cupidi said again.

  ‘So what if the body wasn’t dumped there at all? There was heavy rain at the beginning of the month.’

  ‘So you think she might not have been left where we found her? She was in the water, what, ten days? This is very good. We need to look at how the water flows there. OK. Get on to the Environment Agency. See what data they have.’

  ‘Right.’ Ferriter nodded. ‘There’s the Drainage Board. They’ll know.’

  ‘The Drainage Board?’ said Cupidi.

  ‘Yes. Internal Area Drainage Board. My uncle’s a sheep farmer. Particular breed they have round there. Romneys. Own land on the marsh, you have to pay special taxes to them. They look after most of the drains. It’s, like, some medieval law th
ing from Henry VII or something.’

  ‘I like that. Good idea.’

  Ferriter glanced at her from the corner of her eyes. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Cupidi sucked her two mints thoughtfully. ‘It’s left here. Sure you don’t mind doing this? I’ll only be a minute.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Ferriter said, though they were on the clock. They should be heading back to Kent now.

  These were the streets where Cupidi had played, where she’d bunked off school, where she’d had her first cigarettes, had her first fights.

  ‘Just here,’ she said. ‘Right, then first left.’

  The house they had lived in was tucked away from the high street in a small cul-de-sac.

  ‘Won’t stay long.’

  ‘Take as long as you like,’ said Ferriter.

  Cupidi looked at the house; the big Victorian steps up to the front door. ‘I don’t really get along that well with my mum, to be honest.’

  ‘DI McAdam’s away today, anyway. He’s not going to be chasing us. He’s at a conference on the future of policing. If there actually is such a thing.’

  ‘I thought I was supposed to be the cynical one.’

  Ferriter grinned back. ‘I’ll just stay in the car.’

  Cupidi hesitated. ‘No. Come in,’ she said in the end. ‘She likes coppers.’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘Yep. She used to be one, as it happens.’ Cupidi rang on the doorbell.

  Cupidi’s mother opened the door dressed in a large man’s shirt, untucked above a pair of leggings.

  ‘What rank?’ she asked Ferriter, looking her up and down.

  ‘Constable,’ said Ferriter.

  ‘CID?’

  ‘I told you, we call it Serious Crime in Kent,’ said her daughter.

  ‘It must be pretty bloody serious if they’d have Alex,’ her mother said to Ferriter, and laughed with the rattle of a woman who had spent much of her life smoking. ‘Joke,’ she said.