Salt Lane

by William Shaw

  ‘So there’s no way it could have been put in here –’ she pointed to the spot close to Eason’s house – ‘and ended up where we found it?’

  ‘Simply not possible,’ said the man. ‘Couldn’t have crossed the Rhee Wall.’

  So that ruled out any idea that the body had been put into the water around Speringbrook House. Of course, if Eason had killed her, that didn’t mean he would have dumped the body near his house. He could have driven to Salt Lane, but why would he have come all that way to dump a body? Wouldn’t anybody have noticed the ancient orange Land Rover she had seen parked in his yard? It was an unusual vehicle. People noticed it.

  She looked at the map. ‘Why would someone leave a body there?’

  ‘Sure she didn’t just fall in? Happens every few years. The banks can be treacherous.’

  ‘No. She was definitely dead when she went in.’

  He looked back to the map. ‘See, it’s not guaranteed anyone would find her at all there, this time of year. Few years ago, we had a lad went missing down here –’ he pointed to the south-east corner of the marsh, closer to where they were now – ‘where the sewers are similar. He’d fallen in. Took us two weeks to find his body. She could have been there in the reeds until the weed cutters came.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘That’s a quiet spot. Gets quite overgrown up there. Some landowners are better than others, see. I know that stretch.’

  She looked at the map again. ‘So you think whoever put her there knew what he was doing? Or she was doing?’

  He held a mug of tea in one hand and patted the dog with the other. ‘Think about it. How are you going to get a body there?’

  ‘Drive it, we reckon,’ she said.

  ‘Exactly. Look at all these roads. He’d have driven past a hundred ditches on his way there, all in the middle of nowhere. Why not dump her in one of them?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Because that place is where she’s least likely to be found. And I’d say whoever dropped her there knew that.’

  ‘Someone who lives round here?’

  ‘Only a guess.’

  She nodded. ‘Good.’

  If it hadn’t been for the boy bunking off school, she would have been undiscovered for a few more weeks. Leaving her there had almost certainly been a calculated move.

  It suggested that whoever had dumped her there had been local. Which didn’t rule out Stanley Eason. But was he that kind of calculating man? And would he live long enough for them to be able to question him?

  NINETEEN

  When she got back to the office, Ferriter was carefully slipping her injured hand into a jacket sleeve.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Moon asked me to go and see if I could find a large-scale map of the area.’

  ‘Did he? You’re supposed to be working with me.’

  ‘There’s no “I” in Team,’ said Ferriter.

  ‘But there’s a “U” in Fuck him,’ said Cupidi. ‘Leave him alone, for God’s sake.’

  Ferriter laughed. ‘Aw. He’s cute. He still lives with his mum,’ she said. ‘She made him peanut butter and jam sandwiches to bring to work. I think it’s sweet.’

  ‘It’s pathetic. Where’s he taking you on Saturday?’

  ‘Nowhere special. Pub with his mates.’

  ‘That’s not a date, you know,’ said Cupidi.

  ‘It’s whatever I say it is.’

  ‘Go,’ said Cupidi. She had three calls to make.

  The first was to Julian Keen; she got through to him straight away. There was the sound of an electric drill in the background. ‘Sorry. I’m on site. Speak up.’

  ‘How are things with you?’ she asked.

  ‘Weird, really.’ He stepped out to somewhere quieter. ‘I’ve been finding it hard to concentrate at work. I can’t get her out of my head, whoever she was. Have you made any progress discovering who killed that woman?’ He spoke quietly, more hesitantly than he had before.

  ‘You still don’t believe it was your mother?’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe,’ he said dejectedly.

  ‘I want to ask you a few questions. Was there ever any talk of you having brothers?’

  ‘What?’ He sounded stunned by the question.

  ‘Among her belongings I found an old photograph of two boys. Neither of them were you.’

  ‘And you think they were her children?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘No. God. No. Nobody ever told me anything. But then they told me my mother was dead.’ He sounded bitter. ‘What if she went on to have other kids? Do you think I do have brothers?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Please don’t go assuming—’

  ‘I don’t know how I feel about that,’ he said. ‘It’s like, everything I knew has gone up in the air.’

  ‘It was just a photograph,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t prove anything at all.’

  ‘No, but…’

  ‘I have to ask something else. Do you know why your mother gave you up to your aunt for adoption?’

  ‘Yes I do, as it happens. First time I ever got drunk my aunt told me. My mother was a heroin addict. She was unable to care for me. My aunt was terrified I’d go the same way.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Why “Ah”?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, the woman whose death we are investigating – the one we think may have been your mother… she may have been a heroin addict.’

  There was a long pause. ‘So you really think the dead woman is my mother, then?’

  ‘The woman whose body we have appears to have been a heavy drug-user for a significant period of her life, yes.’ So maybe the dead woman was Hilary Keen, after all.

  It was not what he wanted to hear. She could tell he wanted so much for his mother to be the one who was alive. In a way, she realised, she did, too. ‘That doesn’t prove anything,’ he said. ‘The woman who visited me looked like she was a druggie too.’

  ‘I’d like to arrange for you to have a blood test. That way we’ll know for sure.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I’m happy about that.’

  ‘We could rule it out either way, then. That way, you’d know for certain.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Think about it,’ said Cupidi. ‘Please. It would be confidential.’

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I wanted to ask you something.’ He hesitated.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Thing is, me and Lulu, we’ve been having a rocky time. She would rather we don’t discuss my mother at all. These last few days, at night, after Teo’s gone to bed, I’ve been going out on my bike, round all the streets here, looking for her. The woman. The one who said she was… Last night, Lulu caught me coming back in… It was around five in the morning… and we had a big row about it. We’ve never argued much until now. Now we’re arguing all the time.’

  ‘I’m not so good on marriage advice—’

  ‘But I don’t want to upset her.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I was thinking of hiring a private detective to look for her. Are they any good?’

  ‘It depends what you want to hire one for.’

  ‘Did you know your parents?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her father, a wise and quiet-spoken man who drew and painted; her mother, wayward and spiky, a woman who danced in the kitchen.

  ‘See, I didn’t. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it until I had my own kid. It was starting to go around in my head already. And then this woman turns up.’

  ‘It sounds harsh, I know, but you have to accept that she probably wasn’t—’

  ‘I know. I know. But she was in my house. She slept in our bed. She played with Teo. And for a while, just a little while, I thought she was actually my mother. And you know what? I know she was a tramp… sorry, a homeless person. And she stank. And she was probably an alkie or a druggie… but it didn’t feel that bad, thinking that she was there after all this time.’

  A voice said, ‘He
y, Jules. You coming for coffee?’

  ‘Can’t you see I’m on the phone?’ Then, ‘I’d like to know she’s OK, whoever she is. I have to, for my own sanity now. And I’d like to find out what happened to my real mother. Whoever she is. I have to go now. Sorry.’ Then, before he ended the call, he said, ‘You will let me know, won’t you? Whatever happens.’

  The second call was to David Colquhoun. She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Were you drunk again?’

  She heard Superintendent Colquhoun talking to someone in his office. ‘I’m sorry. I have to take this. It’s an important call.’

  ‘You were, weren’t you?’

  He was alone now. ‘I may have been.’

  ‘Don’t. OK? It’s creepy. Zoë is getting suspicious.’ Like her mother, her daughter had never approved of her relationship with him. ‘Any news on my homeless woman?’

  ‘Sorry. No. I’ll chase it, I promise.’

  ‘And don’t call me at home anymore. Not like that. OK?’

  ‘Wait,’ said David. ‘I have something to say. I was excited about it. It’s why I called.’

  Cupidi looked up. Other officers in the incident room had stopped work and were looking at her. ‘What?’

  ‘I said I missed you. I know you missed me. So I’ve booked a cabin at Dungeness. A week’s holiday.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I miss you,’ he said again.

  She blinked. ‘You didn’t think to ask me if I thought that was a good idea?’

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased. We can see each other.’

  ‘We’re not seeing each other, David. It’s over.’ She looked around. Without realising, she had raised her voice.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be. When you lived in London it was complicated. But you’re not there anymore. It can be like it was. It was good, wasn’t it?’

  It had been good, yes, she thought, but it had been a mistake to call him. ‘Cancel it, David.’

  When she finished the call, everybody in the room was silent. They seemed to be concentrating very hard on their screens.

  She put her head in her hands for a minute.

  The third call was going to be to the hospital to check on how Stanley Eason was doing. In the end, it wasn’t one she needed to make. Before she had a chance, her phone rang.

  She assumed it was going to be David, apologising for his behaviour, but when she picked it up a nurse said, ‘We have a note on Mr Eason’s file to call this number if there was any change in the patient’s condition.’ Cupidi already knew what she was going to say. ‘I’m sorry to say that Mr Eason passed away about twenty minutes ago. Multiple organ failure. I’m afraid that’s often the case with burns victims.’

  ‘Bugger,’ Cupidi said, shaking her head. Then, ‘Apologies. Didn’t mean to say that.’

  ‘We say it all the time round here, believe me.’

  ‘And it would be too much to expect that he’d said anything in the last day?’

  ‘He’s been unconscious the whole time, I’m afraid.’

  She had hoped they would find something beyond the circumstantial suggestions that Eason had killed her for money, but there had been nothing. And now he was dead.

  She stood and went to McAdam’s office to tell him the news. She could see through the glass door he was on the phone, nodding as he talked.

  She knocked.

  ‘Well. That’s probably that, then,’ he said.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Obviously, we’d have liked it to be more clear-cut.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘I’ll contact the IPCC,’ he said heavily. He suddenly looked much older. The Independent Police Complaints Commission were not coppers, but they had the power to end careers. They would come in mob-handed now there had been a death following police contact, demanding to see the reports, questioning why McAdam had surrounded the house. It would be him they would be blaming. A single event like this could hang over an officer for years.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Can’t be helped,’ he said flatly, as if he knew how meaningless that sounded. They would be asking Cupidi why she had called for backup in the first place.

  ‘You have my full support,’ she said. ‘I promise.’

  ‘You advised me to stand down the officers. I ignored you,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t ignore me, sir. You were the one who had to make the call, not me.’

  He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. ‘They’ll ask for your account of the day, obviously.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She waited for him to offer his interpretation of events, the hint of what he hoped she should say, and was grateful when he didn’t.

  ‘It’s possible that I’ll be suspended, or at least be so tied up with all this that I’m not going to be able to give you much support,’ he said. ‘You should carry on as best you can. You’ll do that, won’t you?’

  She nodded. All of the team would be under scrutiny, but McAdam most of all. He could lose his job, his pension, his reputation, everything.

  He sighed. ‘So. What were you trying to tell me in the car park yesterday?’

  ‘I was thinking, what if it’s not Hilary Keen?’

  He blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure that that’s who’s dead.’

  ‘But she was identified from dental records.’

  ‘A woman turns up five years ago at a dentist and a GP’s surgery with an NHS number and says she’s Hilary Keen,’ she said. ‘But before that, she hasn’t had anything done to her teeth in thirty years. I called the pharmacist who first got in touch when we did the TV appeal. Know what she said? Hilary Keen signed on there in 2012. Five years ago. Before that, no records since 1985. Again, that’s thirty years, near enough.’

  She pulled the chair out from next to his desk and sat in it.

  ‘Don’t you think that’s just a teensy little bit weird? A woman disappears off the radar and appears thirty years later. How do we know it’s the same one?’

  McAdam tilted his head a couple of degrees to the side. ‘Does it actually matter now?’

  ‘I don’t know. From the body, it looks like the victim was a former intravenous user, and we know that Hilary Keen had a history of heroin abuse, so most likely it’s her. But what gets me is that the only fact we really know is that the same woman registered at the GP and her dentist under that name about five years ago. That’s as far back as she goes. Anyone can register at a GP and claim to be someone else. The weird thing is that Hilary has no other current records we can find. There’s no credit record. No bank account or anything. She appears to have paid for everything in cash, including her new teeth, and we have no details of any employer. You have to admit, that’s pretty suspicious.’

  McAdam picked up a pen and started flicking it round in a circle. ‘Go on.’

  ‘And we have someone else claiming to be Hilary Keen, who we assumed wasn’t her because we thought we had her in the morgue. But what if that woman in London was the real one?’

  He flicked the pen once more and then stopped, leaning back in his chair.

  ‘All our victim would have needed is an NHS number, and who’s going to know? That’s the only real piece of evidence that our dead woman is genuinely Hilary Keen.’

  McAdam chewed thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek.

  She carried on. ‘Either she wasn’t Hilary Keen at all –’ she paused – ‘or she was, and had some reason for keeping an extremely low profile for the last thirty years.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I realise this is an inconvenient line of enquiry.’

  McAdam gave a small, sad laugh. ‘It is, rather, isn’t it? If Stanley Eason had nothing to do with her death, I’m going to be completely hung out to dry, aren’t I?’

  If she proved that Stanley Eason didn’t commit the murder, then his escalating the siege at Speringbrook House looked more and more like a bad call. ‘Of course, it doesn’t mean that Stanley Eas
on didn’t kill her,’ she said.

  ‘But you don’t think he did?’

  ‘Honestly? I don’t know now. Whoever killed her was methodical. They knew what they were doing with the body to make it as hard for us as possible. Does that sound like Stanley Eason to you? But like I said, the point is, you did what you thought was right. That’s all we can do, isn’t it?’

  He looked up at her. ‘I somehow doubt our friends in the IPCC will be as charitable.’

  His phone started ringing again. Yesterday Eason had been a murder suspect; today he might be a martyr.

  By the time she emerged from McAdam’s office, Ferriter had returned from her errand. ‘Are you OK, guv?’ she asked. ‘You look a bit ticked-off.’

  Cupidi sat down at a spare desk and turned on the computer in front of her.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ she said. She paused. ‘No, actually,’ she added, looking back at her screen as it started up. ‘I’m not. Stanley Eason died this morning. Bloody stupid self-centred bloody idiot.’

  Cupidi was waiting for her email to load when she looked up. The bandaged hand Ferriter held up in front of her face didn’t quite hide the wetness on her chin, or the judder of her chest.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Cupidi said quietly to herself and stood. ‘I’m the idiot.’

  She went to the constable and put her arm around her awkwardly, feeling the shaking in her body as she wept.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ferriter mumbled. ‘It’s stupid.’ She wiped her eyes with the back of her shirtsleeve.

  ‘No. I’m the one who should be saying sorry. I was really thoughtless. That must have been a shock.’

  ‘I’m not normally like this. Fuck sake. He was a murderer, wasn’t he? I shouldn’t feel like this.’

  ‘You risked your life to try to rescue a man.’

  Cupidi sat there quietly for a minute or so while Ferriter wiped the tears away. She looked vulnerable and small, her skin blotchy and red from crying. ‘Just a bit bloody shocked,’ she said. This petite little constable had dragged the bulk of a man’s body towards the stairs. She had thought she had saved his life.

  ‘You sure?’ Cupidi released her from the hug.

  Ferriter nodded. ‘So he never regained consciousness again?’