Still Waters Read online

  She, however, had to gain access a more legitimate way. There seemed to be someone inside a Portakabin just inside the gates, but a gentle toot on the horn failed to make him respond. Eventually a particularly loud and prolonged burst of the siren drew his reluctant attention, and he emerged to walk slowly towards her. Getting out of the car, she strode to the gates and rattled them.

  ‘Hold on, hold on. You’re not allowed in here.’

  She flourished her ID and obviated any problems he might have with missing reading-glasses or inability to read with a loud declaration of who she was and what rank she held.

  ‘I told you, we’re not open. There’s a bit of a problem and I can’t allow anyone in. Specially a lady.’ He sounded genuinely outraged at the thought.

  ‘I’m not a lady, I’m a police officer and I’m in charge of the investigation.’

  ‘Young lady like you? You’re not in uniform. You don’t want to get that nice suit muddy.’

  ‘I’m a plain clothes officer – a detective! Open these gates, please.’

  ‘Nah, you don’t want to see what they’re up to.’

  ‘Indeed I do. Now, are you going to let me in or do I have to radio one of my colleagues down there to come and arrest you?’

  ‘You don’t want to do that.’ He shuffled a little closer, producing an impressive-looking key from a sagging side pocket.

  ‘Indeed, nothing would give me greater satisfaction. Unless,’ she added silently, ‘it would be to pop you in the reservoir yourself for a spell.’

  Since the site was only now being set up, presumably her colleagues had had similar problems, despite their large official van brightly declaring it carried the Kent County Constabulary Underwater Search and Recovery team. The van even had some sort of boat on the roof, complete with impressive-looking outboard motor.

  So all that haste and adrenalin had been a waste of time – worse, a risk to herself and others. She tore a strip off herself at least as vigorously as she would have dressed down a junior officer who had been as rash, and then settled down to observe real policing at first hand, as opposed to from the far side of a wide, wide desk.

  ‘Didn’t expect to see you here, ma’am,’ said the DCI in charge of the operation, striding over and saluting. He was carrying a superfluous couple of stone, and had a tendency to puff. ‘Dan Coveney, ma’am.’

  Another one who knew she had problems with names. ‘Guv,’ she said with a smile. ‘Well, I always like to be in on an inquiry right at the start, and Mr Henson can’t cover everything at the moment. In fact, he’s off sick this week.’ Why did she need to justify herself? And to a colleague, who, judging by the look on his face, knew which of the two he preferred. Encouraged, she continued, ‘Plus today, Dan, I’ve got this project for the deputy chief constable, checking what people on the ground – or in this case in the water – need to make them more efficient.’

  ‘Get rid of another layer of top brass, for a start, begging your pardon, guv. The more chiefs, the less money for Indians’ work.’

  ‘Mark Turner apart, I wouldn’t argue. But then I’m biased.’

  ‘Now he’s a good bloke, they say. A worker.’ There was no higher praise. ‘That’s Sergeant Mills over there – he’s the diving team leader – calling me over. Would you excuse me, guv?’

  ‘Of course. Just ignore me and I’ll watch.’

  If her other colleagues were disconcerted by her presence there, they knew better than to query it, especially when she produced a clipboard. In her experience, whatever you were doing, a clipboard lent authority to it. Even if she didn’t need a spurious token, since with luck she’d be running the investigation, she clutched it like an amulet. Perhaps it would ward off Gates’ evil eye.

  Everyone scuttled round obligingly, ostentatiously taking no notice of her.

  At last, she spotted a familiar face among the lads in the diving team. She beckoned the young man over.

  ‘How’s things, Roo?’ He’d acquired his nickname through his habit of running to work, burdened only by a bumbag that inevitably slipped round his waist. His colleagues thought this made him look like a marsupial; Fran had considered that since he was so tall and skinny him it made him more like a pregnant lamppost. He’d filled out in the five or six years since she’d known him, and was rumoured to have turned his sporting sights on the triathlon.

  ‘Fine, ma’am, thanks.’

  ‘Guv. And Kanga?’ Inevitably, Roo had met a young woman his opposite in build. Sharon was a constable who neither sought nor particularly deserved promotion, a rounded girl whose nickname, Kanga, bestowed by Roo’s mates, was far more appropriate than Roo’s had ever been. Fran could always imagine her doling out medicine.

  ‘These days she actually looks more like a Roo than ever I used to – she’s expecting. Due next month, ma’am. Guv.’

  Hadn’t she read somewhere that it could be harmful to carry too much weight while you were pregnant? ‘And is she well?’

  ‘Her blood pressure’s up a bit, so it looks as if she may have to start her maternity leave earlier than we’d hoped.’

  ‘And you’re going to be present at the birth?’ Fran hoped she sounded as if she knew about such things.

  ‘You bet! We’ve been going to these classes together, guv.’ All six-foot five of him demanded an approving pat on the head.

  ‘Excellent. Don’t forget to take your paternity leave, Roo, will you? All of it!’

  She could have spouted about bonding and all the other buzzwords in the documentation she’d helped prepare for the policy, now standard in forces across the country, but she was all too aware that they were no more than words to her. Would she ever have made a good mother? She doubted it. But at least she hoped she had helped young people like Roo and his Kanga to be happier parents.

  But now it was clearly time to don his diving suit, so she gave him a comradely pat on the arm to dismiss him. The atmosphere became perceptibly tense, the hum of the generator recharging the compressed air bottles taking over from conversation.

  Soon Roo would be down there in an environment so totally alien to her that she couldn’t imagine it. Hazel, her sister, had been born, according to her parents, with webbed feet. She’d certainly won medals at a number of school swimming galas. How would even Hazel feel about plunging through that ludicrously small manhole or whatever they called it into icy darkness? About groping for dead flesh, whether human or animal, and lugging it to the surface? All Fran knew was that, state-of-the-art underwater floodlights illuminating it or not, she couldn’t do it.

  Roo, now unrecognisable apart from his height, gave a cheery wave as he and two colleagues, all dressed like something from a nautical horror film, headed for the water. She waved back, a grin of encouragement strapped to her face. She hoped he wouldn’t notice the finer details such as the fact it didn’t reach her eyes and her teeth were clenched in a rictus, not a smile.

  As soon as they lifted the hatch to the access hole there were yells. She didn’t need Mills to beckon her over – she set off at a run. Junior officers parted like corn in the wind to let her through.

  Immediately beneath the hatch, floating face down, was a fully dressed woman, her hair drifting around her as if she were a mermaid. As they watched, she moved a few inches, just out of sight.

  Mills pointed. It was clear what the divers had to do. Roo was in first, and she could see him reach for the white hand and touch it. He would pull it back to the hatch where the others could grab it to heave it onto the grass. There. He was almost there. Fingers reached for fingers.

  And hers came off in his. Huge flakes of skin and tissue, soft green-blue threads and fair hair exploded in slow motion around the corpse. And Roo’s vomit filled his mask.

  Fran did everything by the book, including offering a possible ID. That green-blue top – would that be the same colour as the thread in the Lenham woman’s hand bowl? And the blonde hair the same as in the sinks of Mrs Green and even the unreliable Mrs Carter? Giv
en the age of the young woman and her clothes, Fran wondered if she’d just looked at the remains of Janine Roper. She uttered a silent prayer of thanks to St Anthony – who else could have set this up? – that this had occurred in the middle of the case review, not after everything had been wrapped up. Then, without doubting his efficiency for one moment, she checked that Coveney had set up everything needed at what had clearly become a crime scene – one look at the remains of the body had convinced everyone that it had not been the young woman who had strung herself onto the concrete beam immediately above the water line. Meanwhile, the Home Office pathologist was on her way. All the mobile paraphernalia of modern crime detection would be lumbering past the unwilling gatekeeper within the hour.

  Good. She had another job to do she couldn’t see Coveney volunteering for. But first she called him over. ‘This is clearly going to take a long time,’ she said. ‘And the fewer people tramping round here the better. So I’m going to take myself off. We’ll use HQ’s incident room since it’s so close.’ She rather thought that that would prevent any argument about who took on the case.

  He nodded his understanding, if not total approval.

  She was halfway to her car when she turned back to him. ‘And I’d like a list of everyone who’s ever used or had access to those manhole keys.’

  He pulled a face, hands gesturing an object eight inches long. ‘They’re not the size you could slip into your back pocket, guv.’ He stopped short. As people tended to do when they saw that glint in her eye. ‘On your desk first thing, ma’am.’

  Wearing nothing but a foil blanket, Roo was sitting dithering in the ambulance. Fran gripped his hands. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right, Roo. We’re taking you to hospital, and then I’m going to see Kanga and tell her what’s going on.’

  ‘This woman. Those fingers… I’ve seen bodies before, guv. Lots of them. I’ve seen them run over and crushed in a steel mill and dying in a cot at six weeks. So why am I like this?’

  Fran couldn’t tell him. She’d once shifted a man to give him mouth to mouth only to have the whole head come off in her hands. She was as well acquainted with maggots and blowflies as most. But there was something that made even her hardy gorge rise at the sight – now the memory – of the tissue that Roo had had to deal with.

  ‘I could have shifted the whole corpse, no sweat. So why did just a few fingers…? Have they got the rest out yet?’ She could hear the effort in the question – he was desperate to return to normality, wasn’t he? But maybe he’d never be able to return to diving again. At least, not until he’d had a huge amount of therapy.

  ‘Yes. In some sort of plastic cradle-cum-stretcher thing – I’m sure you know the right term, Roo. They anchored her to it and then shoved the lot in a big polybag the fire service provided.’

  He was silent.

  Fran wanted to say all sorts of comforting rubbish, but waited, still holding his hands.

  ‘What did I think I was doing?’ He gulped convulsively. ‘I emptied my mask in the rezzer, for goodness’ sake. After I threw up.’

  ‘That’s it. Nice deep breaths through your mouth…What were you doing? Not choking to death, thank God. It’ll all be sorted out. The water people will deal with everything.’ She very much hoped so, as one intimately involved with the quality of the water round here.

  ‘Everything. Christ, no! Oh, God!’ He covered his face, but then pulled his hands away again. ‘Fran, will it ever go away?’

  More tears coursed down his face. She heard them splatter on the tin foil.

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly, passing him tissues. ‘Yes, I promise you it will.’ Better to make a lying promise than to upset him with the truth. She put her arms round him and held him tighter.

  She left Roo in A&E at William Harvey, Ashford, calling round herself to the section in Maidstone nick where Kanga was currently on light duties. Half of her had wanted to snap with some exasperation that a police station was no place for a woman in Kanga’s condition, but she told herself off for being old-fashioned about pregnancy, for having views derived from male cops of the old school who made even period pains the butt of their doubtful humour. The other half wanted to smile at the sight of a young woman waddling determinedly round the office, more like a penguin than like a marsupial.

  She briefed the duty FME, but made sure he was only hanging round in the wings, as it were. Then she ejected the resident sergeant from his little office and commandeered it for her own use, summoning a bemused Kanga, whom she seated comfortably. Since she was still flourishing her clipboard, she hoped to give the impression that the interview was routine, and not set off panic where none was necessary. After all, there was no earthly reason why Kanga should associate her with any problem with Roo.

  But then she had to break it to this cheery young woman that certainly for weeks, probably for months and possibly even for years, she was going to have to mother not just her newborn baby but also the strapping man she’d waved goodbye to that morning. At least she could promise her that every expert going in post-traumatic stress would be consulted, that every aspect of best practice care would be extended to him. But while he might soon be ready to return to some sort of role in the police service, he might never rid his nightmares of that particular sight.

  ‘Roo is perfectly fine, Kanga, I promise you.

  Kanga’s eyes widened in fear. ‘But—?’

  ‘But there was an incident in a dive he was doing about an hour ago.’

  ‘Incident?’

  How stupid of her to have used the word everyone knew was synonymous with a disaster! She said quickly, ‘He found a body – somewhat decayed. Not a nice thing to find when all you can think about is your new baby and your wife’s health. He was a bit upset, so I packed him off to A&E. Just for a check-up – you know me!’

  Kanga didn’t look convinced by this confession of bossiness.

  Fran came round the desk, squatted beside her and took her hand. ‘I promise you he’s not injured in any way. He’s just had an unpleasant experience. In the old days we’d have sent him down to the pub and told him to drink himself silly and think no more about it. It’s not like that these days.’

  ‘So—?’

  ‘He’s still in A&E, Kanga,’ Fran said, ‘but I doubt if they’ll want to keep him in. Now, I’m going to get one of your mates to run you home to pick up some warm things for him and I’ll clear some compassionate leave for both of you – both, you understand? Not just him. No arguments. You’ve got your blood pressure to think about, he tells me, and it wouldn’t do it any good at all if you’re toiling away here worrying about him being on his own at home.’

  The tightening about Kanga’s mouth and eyes suggested she knew all the implications without being told. But her question was quite at odds with her grip on Fran’s hand. ‘Will he be well enough to paint the nursery, do you think?’ She managed a smile meant to be cheerfully ironic but slipping painfully into distress.

  Fran stroked the girl’s hair back. ‘I should imagine there’s no finer therapy. But he’ll have to be debriefed, I’m afraid. We’ll need to know exactly where he found the corpse and anything else he noticed. It’ll all be done under the supervision of the shrinks, I promise.’ Was the young woman convinced? Fran released her hand the better to heave herself to her feet, using the desk to assist her.

  ‘I was in the middle of—’

  ‘Go, Kanga! I told you, I’ll sort everything here.’

  Which didn’t take long, Kanga’s sergeant knowing when simple obedience was best. As for Human Resources, they generally found themselves ready to concede defeat when Fran stuck her oar in. But she must remember to tell Cosmo – she didn’t want to get his back up.

  Surprising herself at her consideration she sank back behind the desk with a sigh. God, she was tired. And hungry, in whichever order.

  ‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ Someone was looming over her.

  A hard blink and a stare confirmed it was the FME, a man of
about her own age, disappointed, perhaps, that his skills had not been called upon to minister to Kanga.

  ‘I’m fine. Had a busy day, that’s all.’

  ‘And quite a long one. You know it’s nearly five?’

  ‘What?’ she squeaked. ‘No, lunchtime, surely.’ Not that she wanted to eat.

  He shook his head emphatically.

  ‘Well, I’ll go to the bottom of our stairs, as one of my old sergeants used to say. I’d better head back to HQ, hadn’t I?’

  ‘Want a coffee before you go?’

  ‘Caffeine at this time of day? I’d never sleep, doc.’

  ‘Nor would I,’ he conceded, withdrawing with a smile.

  Would poor Roo? With or without caffeine?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘As crime scenes go, the reservoir and its environs are pretty corrupt, but that won’t stop the entire site being cordoned off for the forensic scientists to have a nose round and then the old fingertip search going ahead,’ Fran told Mark over a quick bite in the canteen. ‘We’ve already got Janine Roper’s DNA on record, of course, so if the body is hers the lab should be able to ID her pretty soon. I’ve managed to get the PM set up for tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Will you want to be involved with that? Didn’t you see enough—?’ Not unreasonably he sounded disbelieving.

  ‘You bet I want to be there.’ She firmly suppressed the images that still floated like the detached skin before her inner eye. ‘I shall go straight to the hospital. Apart from anything else, Ashford’s a reasonable distance from HQ. If Gates is back I don’t want him impeding me.’