Swimming with the Dead

by Peter Guttridge

  Watts happened to know that this L-shaped room had long ago been the left luggage office where the Brighton Trunk Murder victim had been discovered in the sweltering summer of 1934. More recently it had been converted into the station’s toilets. Now, it was brightly and stylishly laid out with sofas and armchairs among the more formal tables.

  Although the bar had rum it didn’t stock peppermint, so Tingley’s signature drink of rum and pep had not been possible. Even so, as usual Tingley had laid out his cigarette packet and lighter in a neat line beside his drink – a beer. In a glass. He was a neat man in every way: medium height, slender physique, unobtrusive. He was occasionally looking with a mixture of bemusement and distaste at the younger people lounging on sofas and soft chairs in an outside area chugging on e-cigarettes or sending vapour trails drifting to the ceiling.

  Watts saw Tingley staring at a couple of people with vaporizers.

  ‘They are the ones I don’t get,’ Tingley said in a low voice.

  ‘They’re vaping – though I believe it’s called “grazing” among aficionados,’ Watts said. ‘Trying the different flavours attached to the nicotine.’

  Tingley looked at him suspiciously. ‘How come you know all about it?’

  ‘Article in the Observer,’ Watts said.

  Tingley nodded, straightening his already straight cigarette packet a little more. He gestured to Watts’s stomach.

  ‘Anyway, you might as well make use of some of that blubber you’ve put on sitting on your police commissioner arse all day.’

  Watts had no paunch but sucked in his stomach anyway. ‘I’m the same weight I’ve always been,’ he protested.

  Tingley chuckled. ‘Yeah. Except now it’s fat not muscle. But that’s good. Channel swimmers need a layer of blubber as protection from the cold, given the amount of time they’re in the water.’ He touched his own chest. ‘Someone with my physique wouldn’t last an hour.’

  Watts thought about Tingley’s suggestion over the next few days, in budget meetings and drinking wine on his balcony looking to the horizon, knowing France was just beyond it. He usually ran most mornings along the seafront beyond the West Pier and back the other way along Madeira drive as far as Black Rock. But he also liked to swim up at the pool on the university campus.

  Sometimes he bumped into Frank Bilson, the pathologist. Bumped into him literally, as Bilson did an arm-waving front crawl without goggles. With his eyes closed he assumed everyone else would get out of the way. He looked quite indignant when some didn’t.

  Watts disliked splashy swimmers. Usually they were men who slapped the water hard with the palm of their hands instead of sliding their arms in with each stroke. He prided himself on being un-splashy, unlike many men of his size.

  For better or worse, Watts knew he was a man with drive, the drive that made him the country’s youngest chief constable back in the day. But the truth was, his job as police commissioner was boring as hell. He had power over areas he wasn’t interested in and no power over the areas he was.

  He had inheritance money in the bank – a lot of money by most people’s standards – so actually didn’t need to work again. But he was not the retiring, life-of-leisure kind. He liked challenges and swimming the Channel was a pretty big one.

  He’d been astonished to read on one of the Channel swim websites that many more people had climbed Everest since Sir Edmund Hillary’s successful ascent in 1953 than had swum the channel unaided since Captain Webb’s accomplishment in 1875.

  Now, in the Serpentine, he did half an hour, keeping his mouth shut to avoid the duck, goose and swan shit he knew was in the water. He had a close encounter with a swan and a slight squabble with a coot as he did his lengths between a couple of buoys and the enclosed lido area.

  The triathletes were generally messier swimmers, hitting the water hard and wide as they powered along. For most triathletes he’d met the swimming was the least favourite part and it showed in the inelegant way most of them tackled it.

  He climbed out behind a man in Serpentine Swimming Club trunks with his name written on the back across his buttocks – a peculiarity of the club he didn’t quite get. He’d joined for just a few pounds for the year because the lido was for club members only between around six and 9.30 a.m. After that you had to pay a daily fee to swim.

  The small, mixed changing room was crowded, with no privacy for man or woman. As Watts towelled off he listened in on random conversations, cockney voices mixing with posher ones. He liked the friendliness here.

  ‘Good swim?’ the woman next to him said as she wriggled out of her costume behind a towel that didn’t actually conceal her left breast. She had long dark hair and a wide mouth. She was probably mid-twenties.

  He looked her in the eye and nodded.

  ‘You know your heel is bleeding?’ she said.

  He looked down at his left heel and blood was indeed pouring out of two parallel cuts either side of the tendon. The woman reached into her rucksack and produced a couple of tissues.

  ‘Use these. Did you scrape yourself?’

  ‘I felt something when I went in,’ Watts said. ‘I slipped and pushed my foot down hard to balance myself.’

  The woman bent to peer closer and now Watts could see both her breasts.

  ‘Crayfish,’ she said, straightening up. ‘Pincered you.’

  ‘Crayfish?’

  ‘Yes, there are loads of them in the Serps. Have you not seen the seagulls whacking them against stones to crack open their shells?’

  ‘I’m pretty new here.’

  ‘Some Mayfair restaurant used to have baskets here to catch them so it could serve them at lunch.’

  ‘I must have trodden on it.’

  ‘I suppose.’ She grinned. ‘Big man like you – savaged by a prawn.’

  He chuckled. ‘I’ve had more embarrassing things happen to me, I assure you,’ he finally said.

  ‘I’d like to hear,’ she said, then turned away – perhaps out of embarrassment.

  Watts looked away too. Jesus, this woman was almost young enough to be his daughter.

  They finished dressing at about the same time.

  ‘You fancy a cup of tea next door to warm up?’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘Sure.’

  There were two cafés on the Serpentine and usually he preferred the other one, at the far end. But he knew the club members mostly favoured the café immediately next to the lido and not just because they got a discount.

  ‘Out or in?’ she said.

  ‘You choose,’ he said.

  ‘In then – I’ve had enough cold for the time being.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Margaret, by the way, Margaret Lively.’ She grinned again. ‘And try to say something original about my last name.’

  Gilchrist and Heap had a raft of phone numbers from Gulliver’s mobile account to keep them busy. His lover’s number was the most frequent one called, of course. His name was Francis Shaw and he was in Paris on business. He broke down when he heard the news, and Heap gave him half an hour to compose himself.

  ‘When did you last see him?’ Heap asked when he called back. He’d put the call on speakerphone.

  ‘Two nights ago.’ Shaw sounded brittle now.

  ‘And he seemed all right then?’

  ‘You mean, had anyone stabbed him?’ Shaw said. ‘I think I would have noticed.’

  ‘I mean, did you have a row?’ Heap said, more sharply than he perhaps intended. Gilchrist saw him flush.

  ‘No, nothing like that. He was disappointed I was going away but it’s only for a few days.’

  ‘Did he have any enemies, Mr Shaw?’

  ‘That disliked him enough to kill him? None that I can think of.’

  ‘Did he ever put himself in risky situations,’ Heap said.

  There was silence then a gruff laugh. ‘You mean cottaging? Stereotypes don’t change much in Brighton, do they?’

  ‘Mr Shaw, he was found stabbed to death in a street. There is, sadly, some homoph
obia in certain sections of Brighton. It’s a reasonable line of inquiry for us to follow.’

  Shaw sighed down the phone line. ‘Roland had never been into cottaging even when he was keeping his sexuality secret from his wife and family. Once he had come out, as far as I’m aware, he was faithful to me. Sorry to spoil your caricature.’

  ‘When you return we’ll need a DNA swab, Mr Shaw, to help eliminate you from the enquiry. When are you home?’

  ‘You might want to talk to his wife. Vindictive bitch.’

  ‘Thank you for the suggestion, Mr Shaw. When did you say you were back in England?’

  ‘At the end of the week. I’ll come into the police station, shall I? Where is it?’

  ‘We’ll come to you, Mr Shaw, if you don’t mind confirming your address.’

  Gilchrist and Heap put their phones down at around the same time.

  ‘Fancy a trip to the seaside, Bellamy?’ Gilchrist said.

  He frowned.

  ‘We’re at the seaside, ma’am.’

  ‘No, I mean proper bucket-and-spade, candy-floss, windbreak, freezing-water seaside, not Pinot Grigio with fruits de mer.’

  ‘You get the old style here too, ma’am, down on the boardwalk, but I assume you’re meaning somewhere northern.’

  ‘Alice Sutherland can see us in Scarborough but it has to be today.’ She looked at the wall. ‘Scarborough. I haven’t been there for donkey’s years.’

  ‘I’m sorry to say I’ve never been, ma’am.’

  Gilchrist laughed. ‘Some would say that’s nothing to be sorry about but they would be missing out on its essential charms. I have fond memories of visiting my pen pal there. The castle, the boating lake with the pagoda on an island in the middle …’

  ‘Should we take some Brighton rock to trade with the natives?’ Bellamy said. Gilchrist gave him a look she couldn’t hide the fondness from.

  ‘Probably a good idea.’

  FOUR

  Gilchrist and Heap caught the next train up to King’s Cross just in time to catch the high-speed train from there direct to York. Within four hours they were sitting outside a Victorian pub on platform three at York station, tannoy messages of arrivals and departures echoing across the high-roofed station. They had half an hour to kill before their train to Scarborough arrived.

  ‘Do you know the north, Bellamy?’

  ‘I’m more of a West Country person, ma’am. I’m not sure I’ve been further north than Nottingham.’

  ‘A lot of Viking stuff up here, I seem to remember.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were interested in history, ma’am.’

  Gilchrist gave him a look. ‘You’d be right. I don’t actually know anything about the Vikings, I just know that they were here.’

  ‘There’s a link with Sussex, of course,’ Heap said, sipping his beer.

  ‘Of course,’ Gilchrist said, smiling.

  ‘Battle of Stamford Bridge – the one a few days before the Battle of Hastings?’

  ‘Oh, that one,’ Gilchrist said, watching a man walk along the platform opposite with his trouser cuffs buckled round his shoes, dragging on the floor at his heels.

  ‘King Harold was up here defeating the Vikings at Stamford Bridge, a few miles outside York, when he heard the news that the Normans under William the Conqueror – as he would prove to be – were heading across the Channel to Hastings. They think the forced march Harold’s soldiers had to make just after fighting one battle exhausted them so much before the next battle in Hastings they didn’t really stand a chance.’

  ‘That’s interesting, Bellamy,’ Gilchrist said, thinking that it kind of was.

  ‘Of course, the Normans were Vikings too,’ Heap added. ‘Originally.’

  Gilchrist rolled her eyes.

  ‘Enough already, Bellamy,’ she said.

  ‘Ma’am.’

  Heap had a great knack of keeping a straight face that broke Gilchrist up – if she allowed it to.

  She coughed, then: ‘So we’re meeting Sutherland at Scarborough yacht club.’

  ‘I thought the way you described the town they’d just have pedalos,’ Heap said.

  The journey to Scarborough on the local train took about fifty minutes through a flat but pretty landscape. The sky seemed massive, with black clouds gathering in the east. There was no Wi-Fi and only intermittent phone signal so Gilchrist gazed out of the window until Heap was shaking her awake.

  ‘Did I drool?’ she said immediately.

  ‘I was too distracted by the snoring to notice, ma’am,’ Heap said.

  She looked at his straight face and he allowed himself a smile.

  ‘You neither drooled nor snored, ma’am. You were an exemplary train snoozer – would that others were so placid.’

  There was a uniformed police inspector on the platform waiting for them. Gilchrist had called ahead to the local constabulary to clear them coming up. It was a formality really but an important one.

  The inspector – his name was Evans – was medium height with wavy black hair and a friendly manner. In his forties, carrying a bit too much weight. Introductions made, he ushered them into a waiting car that swept them across a bridge and down a steep road to the seafront. Another iron bridge towered high above their heads.

  Evans saw Heap and Gilchrist both craning their necks for a better look.

  ‘It takes you along to the spa from the town centre. Bit hilly is Scarborough.’

  ‘You don’t sound like you’re from round here, inspector,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Been here fifteen years but my heart is still in the Valleys,’ the Welshman said. ‘My fault for marrying a Yorkshire lass.’

  ‘Major problems here?’ Gilchrist said.

  Evans shook his head. ‘The problems poverty and drugs bring, of course. A couple of fatal stabbings; too many among youngsters. No big crime families or hassle from the Tyneside gangs. Although we’re keeping an eye on the Manchester connection – the train line is pretty quick.’

  ‘What do you know about Alice Sutherland?’

  The car was driving slowly along the front, Heap in front with the driver, Gilchrist and Evans together in the back. On the left, a series of cheap and cheerful amusement arcades, rock and candy shops, gift shops and fish-and-chip and burger outlets, with a couple of nice cafés with tables set outside. On the right, a long stretch of sand with the tide out and a harbour with a lighthouse at the end.

  ‘The yacht club is in the building attached to the lighthouse,’ Evans said. ‘They lease it from the council.’

  ‘Alice Sutherland?’ Gilchrist repeated.

  Evans took a breath.

  ‘She’s a big cheese around here and in the north-east generally. Generous giver to local causes. Has a fair bit of sway with the council and the county council – she knows how to play the game. On a few tourism committees. She was very involved in getting the Tour de France to the UK, here in Yorkshire, for the first time. That earned her a lot of kudos. What are you thinking she’s done?’

  ‘Brighton had it first, Inspector Evans,’ Heap said, twisting round in his seat. ‘The Tour de France. Brighton council brought it over in the 1990s – cyclists went over Ditchling Beacon. Brighton’s precedence seems to have got lost in the shuffle though.’

  Evans grinned. ‘That a fact?’ Heap nodded. ‘Well, it’s a fact you’d best keep to yourself, detective sergeant, when you meet Ms Sutherland, or you’ll find your meeting going rapidly downhill.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Heap said, smiling back.

  ‘This big hotel she wants to redevelop here?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘It’s back there looking down on us – you’ll see it clearly from the lighthouse. Beautiful, massive place, dominates the skyline from down here on that upper part of town. She has big plans for it but so does the hotel chain that owns it. And, to be honest, I don’t think Scarborough can sustain the kind of development she’s talking about – not without a better infrastructure.’

  ‘With respect
, sir,’ Heap said, twisting in his seat again, ‘that’s what they said about Margate.’

  ‘Bellamy, isn’t it, detective sergeant? Why not call me Wynn? We’re less formal up here. If that’s all right with you, detective inspector …?’

  ‘Sarah,’ Gilchrist said. ‘But don’t you be getting any ideas, Bellamy.’

  Bellamy chuckled.

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  Evans looked at her.

  ‘We tried that, Bellamy and me,’ she said to him. ‘Using my first name. Didn’t work. Bellamy is just too formal. It’s in his genes or something.’

  ‘That right, Bellamy?’ Evans said.

  ‘Afraid so, sir.’

  Gilchrist laughed. ‘See what I mean?’

  The car had gone round the small harbour by now and pulled onto a narrow causeway running between boat docks and heading for the lighthouse at the far end. There were nowhere near as many boats in here as in Brighton Marina – and no big ones – but there were fishing boats and larger vessels to take tourists out to sea with a couple of drinks and a barbecue thrown in.

  ‘You’ll have to explain to me about Margate another time, Bellamy,’ Evans said as the car stopped just before a short bridge from the dock to the lighthouse complex.

  ‘Happy to do so, sir.’

  The lighthouse was small – some fifty feet high – and was attached to a double-storey rectangular building. Evans led the way to a low door at the near end of the building. He opened it.

  ‘Commodore!’ he called. ‘Commodore?’

  ‘Come aboard, Wynn,’ a strong female voice from the floor above called back.

  Evans led the way up a short flight of stairs to a long bar with a balcony over the yachts on the left. A porthole at the far end seemed to peek through into a small circular space in the lighthouse proper.

  A woman in her mid-thirties was sitting on a stool at the bar. She was the only person in the room. Her skirt was perfectly tailored, her tan lacquered, her shins shiny with close shaving. She stood and smoothed down her close-fitting skirt and gave a little tug to her fitted cropped jacket.