Dead Alone (3 page)

This young constable continued to surprise her.

‘Right,’ said Jessie, trawling her memory for correct procedure. ‘Fry, get on to Heathrow, get an exclusion order and get that thing out of here.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘On the grounds that its propellers are disturbing a murder scene!’

‘With all due respect,
ma’am
, you don’t know that it is a murder scene –’

‘And you don’t know that it isn’t.’ She faced Fry full on and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Unless there is something you aren’t telling me?’

He shook his head. She smelled a rat, but there was nothing she could do about it now.

Jessie watched the helicopter withdraw to the limits of the exclusion order. The tide was rising, and she’d been denied a Home Office pathologist. News was out about the circus she was whipping up on the banks of the Thames. Mark was probably somewhere watching her hang herself and Jones was nowhere to be found.

‘Ma’am, the pathologist has arrived,’ said DC Fry. Her reluctant shadow.

A smart, auburn-haired woman held out her hand. She looked almost too delicate for the job, but her handshake was firm and her boots were caked in mud from previous grisly expeditions. ‘Sally Grimes,’ said the pathologist.

Jessie turned back to DC Fry. ‘I want those rowers filling out PDFs.’

Fry looked horrified at the amount of paperwork Jessie was accruing, but kept his mouth shut. The two women walked out to the skeleton. The water level was rising. ‘PDFs?’ queried Sally Grimes.

‘Personal description forms,’ Jessie said, ducking under the tarpaulin. ‘They describe themselves on it for the Holmes database back at the station.’

‘I know what they are. I was wondering why you were using them.’

‘Because I haven’t got a clue who this person is, or why they ended up here, and I’ve got to start somewhere.’

‘Bodies from the river are usually just picked up and matched to missing persons.’

Jessie studied the pale-skinned woman. ‘I was told you weren’t an investigative pathologist?’

‘I’m not. Yet. So what do you think you’ve got here?’

‘No idea, to be honest. I suspect I’ve been set up with a dud call by my fellow DI, who thinks I need bringing down several pegs. I thought I’d get
him back by going by the book, give them the classroom detective they are waiting for.’

The police helicopter made another pass, its shadow gliding over the milky-white tarpaulin. It was getting hot under the plastic.

‘With bells on,’ said Sally.

Jessie shrugged. She wouldn’t admit she was wrong to call out the police helicopter. Not yet.

‘So they sent me and not a Home Office pathologist, because they don’t think you have anything,’ said Sally.

‘Like I said, I’ve been set up. Thing is, while I’ve been here, something about this skeleton has been bugging me.’

Sally smiled conspiratorially at Jessie. ‘Well, let’s see if we can find something to wipe the smile off your fellow DIs’ faces. What’s been bugging you?’

‘The smell.’

‘It is aromatic, I agree.’

‘I don’t mean the river smell. There’s something else. I only noticed it when the tarpaulin went up. It isn’t organic. In fact, it’s almost like bleach.’

Sally got down on her knees in the mud and smelled the bones. Jessie made a mental note to buy the woman a drink. The pathologist repeated the action at two more locations on the skeleton, nodded quietly to herself, and stood up. From her bag she took a swab and ran it along the exposed clavicle, then another down the fibula.

‘I’m not touching this until I’ve sent these to the lab.’

‘What is it?’

‘This corpse is too clean and too intact to have been here for years, and too decomposed to have died recently, unless someone has taken a cleaning fluid to it. How far would your DI go to make you look a fool?’

Jessie couldn’t answer that. She was too new on the scene to know. ‘He doesn’t like me.’

‘Would he get a freshly preserved lab skeleton, place it here and call you out to get you fired?’

Jessie’s face collapsed in panic. ‘A lab skeleton?’

Sally nodded. ‘I’m pretty sure these bones have been treated.’ They emerged from the tent. Sally arched backwards, stretching her spine. Jessie was too distraught to speak. ‘The undertakers are here. Let them bring the remains to the hospital. We’ll wait for the results on these swabs, see what we’ve got. If your DI has borrowed this from a medical college, we’ve got him. If he didn’t, then we’ll do a PM tomorrow and find out what we are dealing with. Okay?’

No, she was not okay. She had danced right into Mark Ward’s trap.

‘Tell all the undertakers to wear protective clothing,’ said Sally.

Jessie lifted her head. ‘Why protective clothing?’

‘The smell could be a cleaning agent mixed with formaldehyde, but it could be worse. We don’t know and it isn’t worth taking the risk. Plastic gloves will protect them from germs, not acids.’

‘Acid?’

‘It’s possible. Acid is still used as a way to make people disappear. No skull means no dental records. These bones are virtually unidentifiable.’ Sally touched Jessie’s arm. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing. Leaving it to the undertakers to pick up without examining it first could have got someone hurt.’

‘You think so?’

‘Yes. Something is not right here. Stick to your guns, Detective. Whoever this dead woman is, she did not end up here by accident.’

‘So it’s a woman?’

‘Yes. But that’s all we know.’

The two women made their way laboriously up the bank. The mud sucked at their boots. Jessie looked back at the staked-out area. Already the furthest two poles were being licked by the rising water.

‘We going?’ said DC Fry hopefully.

‘Once you’ve checked that lot have picked up everything and photographed everything. I’m making you exhibits officer, don’t let me down.’

‘Come on, ma’am. You’re not still going through with this?’

‘Through with
what
, Fry?’

He did not answer her. Not directly. ‘It’s just … I thought you were doing something special with DCI Jones.’

There was no point in saying anything. Jessie left him smirking. Fry sat so neatly in Mark Ward’s
pocket she kept forgetting he was there.

PC Ahmet was still taking the rowers’ statements. ‘Can you stay here, guard the site until it is completely covered in water, then be back here when the tide falls?’ said Jessie.

‘Would overtime commence at the appropriate time?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then I accept your request.’

‘Thanks. Here’s my card – if anything strange happens or anyone comes asking questions, take their details, get a PDF and call me. Only me. Got it?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Thanks, PC Ahmet. You’ve been great.’

Clare Mills stood at her father’s grave and listened to the belching buses trundle by. Cars hooted, mopeds buzzed and boys swore loudly. Not a very peaceful resting place, Whitechapel. She knelt down and swept away dead leaves.
Here lies Trevor Mills. Loving husband and father. Born May 13th
,
1933. Died April 27th
,
1978. RIP
. When Clare had first found the plot, she’d been angry that it didn’t say murdered. ‘Died’ implied that her father had something to do with his own death. He’d had a bad heart, weak genes, hadn’t eaten his greens, or had fallen at work. Drowned. Clare watched a drunk urinate against a once majestic headstone.
The angel’s head was missing. Vandalism was a great leveller.

She looked back at the small flat square of stone under which her father’s bones lay. ‘Good news, Dad,’ she said quietly to herself. ‘The police are finally taking us seriously. I’m going to find Frank.’ Her mother was in Woolwich burial ground. Another almighty disaster in a life coloured by other people’s mistakes. Even in death, they couldn’t be together. Clare always felt bad that she visited her father more often than her mother. She felt guilty whenever she walked into Woolwich and saw the fresh yellow roses that Irene had dutifully brought. Irene had been her Mum’s best friend. It was Irene’s family who took Veronica in when her mother had run off. In a way, Irene was Clare’s only real friend too, if she thought about it. Irene never said she left the flowers. Clare knew that it still hurt her to talk about it. Irene missed her friend as much as Clare missed her mother, they were united by that common denominator. It was their foundation. Irene had been with her all through the search for Frank. Given her valuable clues and held her when, again, they came to nothing.

A man stood by the bench behind her. She glanced at her watch. Trawling time again. She was due at work. She blew a silent kiss to the ground and turned away. Two men were emerging from behind an ivy-clad tree. One was rolling up a rug, the other was struggling with his flies. It made her
sick what went on in the graveyard, but she’d never seen anyone do anything near her father’s grave. No grip on a small flat stone. The tombs were the worst off. Illicit sex: another of life’s levellers. Judges or bricklayers, they all looked the same with their trousers down.

Clare took the bus to work, changed into overalls for the morning shift and began to sweep. She liked autumn. Red leaves made a welcome change from fag butts and beer cans.

In the police station’s yard Jessie rinsed the mud off her boots, watching the dirty water mingle with the soapsuds that bubbled in the drain. Above her was the shower-room window, where the washing men’s words billowed out into the yard, enveloped with steam and the smell of expensive soap. Jessie wished she smoked; she needed more time to think about how she would handle Mark. The men were talking football. Something about transfer rules. Then she heard something that made her concentrate.

‘That was gross, wasn’t it?’

‘This fucking job is bad enough without rotting jellyfish pouring out all over us.’

‘Insides is one thing, jellyfish have always given me the willies.’

Jessie catapulted herself into a run.

‘Do you think it was part of the joke?’

‘What, some metaphor about a stinking fish?’

They laughed.

‘Fucking hell, ma’am!’

‘What jellyfish?’ demanded Jessie.

The scene of crime boys slipped around on the wet tiles, frantically trying to protect their modesty.

‘Jesus Christ –’

‘Do you mind –’

‘This is the
men
’s locker room.’

‘What fucking jellyfish?’

A ballsy lad put his hand on his hips. Jessie’s eyes did not leave his.

‘The one that fell out of the skeleton’s torso.’ He gave her a challenging half-smile.

‘Did you bring it in?’

‘No way.’

Jessie turned to leave. They could tell she was pissed off.

‘It was just a rotting piece of fish. It was nothing.’

‘One jellyfish maybe, but not two, not in the Thames.’ She hurried to the evidence room, where the booty from the morning’s crime scene was being examined and labelled by DC Fry. ‘Where’s the jellyfish?’

‘What?’ he said, looking up.

‘I asked you to bag everything around the body. There was a jellyfish. Where is it?’

‘I didn’t think you meant that. It was dead, slimy, it wasn’t anywhere near the thing.’

‘When I said everything, I meant everything.’

‘Sorry.’

‘What about the one that fell out of the body?’ He looked at her blankly. ‘You did stay until the others had finished, like I asked you?’

He looked around the room nervously.

‘Fuck!’ She glanced at her watch. ‘The tide will be back up by now. We didn’t have a second chance.’

‘Sorry.’

She ignored the tone in the guy’s voice. If he didn’t like taking criticism from someone his own age, he shouldn’t get things wrong in the first place.

Jessie put on a pair of waders and some long rubber gloves. The tide had turned and was lapping at the area where the body had been found. Smaller bits of the river’s cargo moved in rhythm with the tide: a condom, a small plastic bottle, a recently devoured packet of cheese-and-onion crisps. A pole had been sunk into the mud to mark the crime scene. She couldn’t risk taking the steps and wading a hundred yards back through water. It had been bad enough when the tide was fully out. She was scared that if she attempted it now she might step into a run-off channel, lose her footing and be dragged out by the current.

As she removed the rope from her backpack, Jessie was glad of the hours she’d spent being dragged up mountains by her brothers. She
wrapped the rope around a tree trunk and tied a slipknot. She pulled against it and, when satisfied, threw the length of rope over the side of the river wall. Waders did not make good rock-climbing boots. Her arms had to take all the weight as she slid down the wall on the base of her boots and landed in a few inches of water that disappeared as quickly as it reappeared. She’d had no idea the Thames was so mighty. Every time she looked back, the water seemed to be reaching higher up the wall.

Sinking deeper with each step, Jessie waded through the mud until she got to the pole. As each wave receded, she put her hands flat and felt around the area where she thought the chest cavity would have been. It was no use. Everything felt the same through the thick rubber. Reluctantly, she peeled off one glove and bent forward again. The glistening top layer of mud felt like thick, viral mucus. She withdrew her hand and waited for the water to be sucked back by the weight of the Thames. Then she dug her nails and fingers in deeper and found purchase on the more compact riverbed below. It was no use with one hand, the water was coming in too fast. She took off the other glove and began to dig. She stepped into the hole left behind by the search for the skull, but still nothing.

Jessie stood up and looked around her. More condoms, more crisp packets and Coke cans. Further down the bank, she thought she saw something
move in the water. She trudged towards it as quickly as she could, knowing she was getting dangerously deep. Many anglers drowned in shallow stretches of water, held down by water-filled boots. She felt the cold water push against the rubber. She saw it again. A semi-suspended jellyfish. She watched it ebb and flow with the rest of the flotsam. Her hands reached out for the slippery lump. Resisting the urge to pull away, she made a cage with her fingers and held on to it as an incoming wave rushed between her forearms. The water was now above her knees and the mud had sucked her into a vacuum. One boot was stuck. Jessie looked up to the bank. Even if someone had been on the path, they wouldn’t have been able to see her unless they were standing on the wall. This was not a spectator sport. If she got sucked under, no one would know until she rose to the surface two weeks later, bloated with river water and methane.

She tried to pull her leg out of the mud again, but it was only making the other foot sink deeper. Jessie took a deep breath, exhaled, fixed her vision on the post and, once she’d found her balance, slowly lifted one leg fully out of the boot. The tide nearly toppled her, but she threw the bare foot out behind her and her arms in front, with the jellyfish oozing between her fingers, and somehow she managed to stay upright. The mud squelched between her toes as she retraced her steps.

The area PC Ahmet had shown her earlier was under two foot of water, the saturated mud was
even more dangerous. If she fell, she would be dragged under and carried downstream within seconds. She had one jellyfish. It had to be enough. Water was rushing in and out of the tunnel. It was too dangerous to stay down there any longer. With stinking, itchy, cold arms and a filthy, numb foot, Jessie carried the jellyfish back to the wall. She shrugged off her rucksack and placed the jellyfish in the container she had brought. Then, flinging the bag back over her shoulder, she grabbed the rope. It had got wet lying against the sodden brickwork. The first few times her hand simply slipped straight off it. She was getting very cold. Jessie rubbed her hands together, kicked the other boot off, peeled off her wet socks, wrung them out and wrapped one round each palm. The looped cotton absorbed the damp and gave her something to hold on with. She lifted herself out of the mud and, with burning biceps and frozen feet, worked her way back up the slimy wall. At the lip she dug her knee into a small ridge and hauled herself over the top. Lying face down on the wall, breathing heavily, she looked back to where she’d found the jellyfish. The wader had already been claimed as the river’s own.