Author: Simon Beckett
Category: Thriller
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I watched gulls swoop and dive over something in the mud, but it was only a plastic bag. ‘Does your daughter have a phone?’
‘No.’ I thought that was all I was going to get. He stared ahead of us at the creek. ‘I told her she was too young.’
There was no point saying anything to that. The only thing that would make him feel any better was finding his daughter safe. I could imagine all too well what would be going through his mind right now. ‘Are there many places she could have gone?’
He steered around a patch of ripples on the water, the only indication of a sandbank just under the surface. ‘A few, but it’s tricky on foot. We can cover more ground by boat.’
Saltmarsh gave way to tall banks of rushes. In places they reached above our heads now the tide was falling, so that the boat seemed channelled along between them. Every now and then Trask would shout his daughter’s name as the boat droned along. It produced a raucous response from disturbed birds, but that was all. We passed gaps in the banks that looked like secondary channels branching off the main creek, until we drew close enough to see they led to dead ends. No wonder few boats bothered to come here: it would be easy to become lost in this labyrinth of reeds and water.
The tide had fallen noticeably in the short time since we’d set out: now the creek’s banks rose above us on either side like miniature canyons. Even though we kept to the very centre of the channel, it was obvious we wouldn’t be able to go much further before we ran aground. When we came to a point where the creek was split by a long sandbank, Trask let the boat idle, gnawing at his lip as he studied the diverging waterways.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know which way she’ll have gone from here, and the tide’s getting too low to search them all.’ Abruptly, he killed the motor. The boat rocked as he stood up and shouted into the sudden silence. ‘Fay!’
There was no answer. Water slopped against the hull as the boat drifted backwards. Grim-faced, Trask yelled her name again before reaching to restart the engine.
‘Hang on,’ I told him.
I thought I’d heard something just as he’d moved. He stopped, listening.
‘I can’t—’
And then it came again. A young girl’s terrified voice. ‘Daddy!’
This time Trask heard it. ‘All right, Fay, I’m coming!’ he yelled, firing up the engine.
His knuckles were white on the tiller as he aimed the boat up the left hand fork. Rotten wooden posts lined the banks, sticking out of the mud like broken teeth. We passed the tumbledown remains of an old corrugated metal shack, and then the boat rounded a bend and we saw Trask’s daughter.
She was lying half in, half out of the creek, sobbing and covered with mud. All around her the surface was broken by what at first I thought was some kind of weed, exposed by the falling tide. Then we drew closer and I realized what it was.
The creek was full of barbed wire.
‘It hurts, Daddy!’ Fay sobbed as we jumped out of the boat and splashed through the cold water towards her.
‘I know. It’s all right, sweetheart, don’t try to move.’
She couldn’t have anyway. Only one of her arms was free; the other was caught on the rusty wire. The barbs had bitten into skin and clothing alike, and the mud that coated her was streaked with blood. Only her upper body was visible, but the wire obviously snared her underwater as well.
Her face was pale and blotched with tears. ‘Cassie jumped in the water and then just started screaming! I tried to help her but she got free and I fell in, and … and …’
‘Shh, it’s OK. Cassie’s fine, she came back home.’
Trask crouched beside her, carefully feeling the wire. This was a different man from the one I’d seen so far, tender and patient. But there was fear in his eyes as he turned to me.
‘I need you to hold the wire still,’ he said in a low voice.
‘We should call the emergency services …’ I began, but he shook his head.
‘It’ll take them too long to get out here. I’m not leaving her like this.’
I understood how he felt: if it had been my daughter I wouldn’t have wanted to wait either. I just wasn’t sure the two of us could free her without making her injuries worse.
But I could see Trask’s mind was made up. Fay began to panic when she saw what we were about to do. ‘Nonono, don’t!’
‘Shh, I need you to be brave. Come on, be a big girl.’
She squeezed her eyes shut, turning her face away as her father set to work. Knowing it would be needed later, I took my jacket off and flung it on the dry bank before joining him. Getting soaked again so soon after I’d recovered was asking for trouble but there was nothing else for it. Trask’s face was grim and intent as he crouched chest deep in the water, groping for the barbs below the murky surface. The mud sucked at my feet as I took hold of the wire strands, trying to keep them still. It wasn’t easy. Although I’d pulled my shirt sleeves down to protect my hands, both Trask and I were soon bleeding from where the sharp metal had ripped our skin like paper.
Even so, I knew we’d been lucky. If the tide had been coming in rather than going out this could have been a very different story. Watching Trask with his daughter I felt relieved for them both, but there was also a keen ache as I was reminded of my own loss.
But I couldn’t afford to let myself be distracted. Forcibly pushing the thoughts aside, I examined the barbed wire more closely. The creek here was partially dammed by a sandbank, forming a pool that looked deep enough to retain water even at low tide. Only a few strands of barbed wire broke the surface, disturbed by the girl’s struggles. Ordinarily it would be completely submerged, and it made me angry to think that some idiot had dumped it here.
Trask grimaced with effort as he groped below the water.
‘Good girl. Only one more,’ he told his daughter. He gave me a glance. ‘Get ready to pull the wire away.’
His shoulders tensed, and the young girl yelled in pain. Then Trask was lifting her out, water dripping from them as he straightened. The wire was heavier than I’d expected, moving slowly as I dragged it clear so Trask could carry his daughter up the muddy bank. Fay was sobbing, clinging to her father as he murmured reassurances. She was shivering and bleeding, but none of her wounds seemed serious. Thank God, I thought, letting go of the wire.
But then she stared past me and her eyes widened in shock. I looked back to see a disturbance in the middle of the creek. The water swirled as though a huge fish was turning underneath, and then something broke the surface.
Caught on the barbed wire, the body emerged slowly into the air, arms and legs hanging like a broken puppet. As Fay’s screams rang out, a pale head turned empty eye sockets to the sky.
Then, as though retreating from the daylight, it sank down again and the water closed over it once more.
14
THE BLACK-HEADED GULL had found something. It stood with its head cocked, eye levelled at the mud, then stabbed down with its beak. There was a brief, uneven tug of war before the bird plucked a small brown crab from the creek bed. The crab’s legs wriggled as it was dropped on its back, the instinct to survive continuing even in the last moments of life. Then the yellow beak came down again, tearing at the vulnerable underbelly, and the crab became another part of the food chain.
I looked away as the gull went about its meal. Beside me on the bank, Lundy stared down at the waterlogged torso suspended on the barbed wire.
‘So this is what you call keeping a low profile, is it?’
It was said without any real heat. But we both knew this was different from when I’d found the training shoe.
This changed everything.
The body was strung out on the barbed wire like so much dirty washing. The water level in the creek hadn’t yet dropped enough to expose all of it, but from the waist up the torso was now revealed in all its decaying glory. Police officers and CSIs stood around in coveralls on the bank, waiting for the water to sink low enough fo
r the unenviable task of recovery to begin. At least the tide meant there was no need for police divers: by the time they could have got here the creek would have drained enough not to need them.
Right now, though, it seemed like a long wait.
I’d gone back to Creek House after Trask and I had freed his daughter from the barbed wire. There was no point in staying with the body until the police arrived. For one thing it had sunk under the water again; it wouldn’t be going anywhere. For another, I needed to change out of my wet clothes. I’d only just shaken off one chill after standing around soaking wet, and I’d pushed my luck enough as it was.
I steered the boat while Trask huddled with his daughter. The sight of them together made me feel more of an outsider than ever, and stirred something that was uncomfortably like envy. Although Fay was older than my own daughter had been when she’d died, she was still younger than Alice would be now. The realization lay heavily on me as the boat droned along the creek.
Telling myself it was probably cold and fatigue talking, I focused on more immediate problems. We couldn’t do much for Fay’s wounds out there, but although she’d need stitches none of the cuts looked deep enough to have caused serious blood loss. More worrying was the risk of infection from the contaminated water. A decomposing corpse was host to all manner of bacteria, some of them potentially deadly. I’d received shots for most of them because of my work, and I was on antibiotics anyway. But the girl would need a full course of inoculations, and so would her father. We’d both gashed our hands on the barbed wire, and Trask’s cuts were much worse than mine.
Still, I didn’t think there was any great danger. They hadn’t come into direct contact with the body, and the creek’s saline waters were kept fresh by the constantly flowing tides. The most immediate threat to Fay was shock and hypothermia. Although the water temperature wasn’t as low as it could have been, we were only just coming into spring and it was still cold. I’d given Trask my dry jacket to wrap her in, but other than that there wasn’t much I could do. Except one, small thing.
Trask had looked stunned, his face bloodless as I started the engine and set us back on course for the house, keeping to the deeper water in the middle of the creek. He said nothing, but it wasn’t hard to guess what he was thinking.
He jerked, startled, when I touched his shoulder to get his attention. ‘It was male,’ I told him quietly. ‘OK? It was male.’
He seemed to sag, then made a visible effort to pull himself together. Giving a nod, he hugged his daughter to him while I opened up the motor and sent the boat roaring back down the creek.
I hoped I’d done the right thing.
The truth was that it was impossible to guess the corpse’s gender, and certainly not from the brief glimpse I’d had. Under normal circumstances I would never have committed myself like that. But the young girl needed her father, and Trask looked like a man close to the edge. Small wonder. Only two days ago the body of his wife’s suspected killer had been found. That was enough for anyone to deal with without having to agonize over whether we’d just found his missing wife’s remains as well.
And so I’d spoken as a doctor rather than a forensic anthropologist. If I was right, then it would spare the family days of tortured waiting. If I was wrong … well, I’d made mistakes before, and for worse reasons.
Back at the house, I’d called Lundy to let him know what had happened and agreed to meet him out at the creek. With Trask’s hands badly cut from the barbed wire, Jamie had driven his father and sister to hospital. I’d changed into dry clothes from my bag and patched up my own cuts as best I could. My jacket was no longer needed – Fay had been wrapped in a blanket – but it was wet and muddy. Leaving it there, I’d accepted Rachel’s offer of an old one of Trask’s, and also a pair of wellingtons to replace my waterlogged boots. The melancholy that had gripped me on the way back had faded now I had something to do. All things considered, physically at least I didn’t feel too bad. A little shaky, but that was more adrenalin than anything else. When I found out that Rachel was taking the injured dog to an emergency vet, I asked her to drop me off as close as possible to the stretch of creek where we’d seen the body.
It was easier reaching the place on foot than I’d thought. The road crossed a small bridge that was only fifty yards from where Fay had been caught on the barbed wire. It made a convenient landmark for the police to assemble at, and there was also a trail of sorts – a dirt path that ran from the bridge to the creek itself. From there, it took only a few minutes to walk along the bank to the trapped pool of water where we’d seen the body.
First to arrive were a pair of uniformed PCs. One of them waited at the bridge while I took the other to the creek, and shortly afterwards the rest of the orderly circus that attends a crime scene began to troop up as well. By the time Lundy and Frears got there the creek’s level had dropped as though a plug had been pulled, exposing loops of barbed wire that coiled from the water like rusty brambles.
Inch by inch, the body emerged. The head first, its crown breaking through the surface like the dome of a jellyfish. Then the shoulders, chest and arms. It wore a heavy leather jacket that could have been either black or brown, although it was too filthy and waterlogged to be sure. The body was suspended face down. One elbow was bent the wrong way, and the hands had fallen away to reveal stubs of bone and gristle inside the jacket cuffs. Tilted at a sideways angle, the head also looked on the verge of coming loose, supported more by the barbed wire than any remaining connective tissue.
Frears had waited until the water level was low enough for him to get a look at the body and then headed back to the mortuary. It was obvious that freeing the fragile remains from the barbed wire without damaging them was going to be a slow process, and the pathologist didn’t strike me as the patient sort. Not that there was much point in his staying. Clarke was tied up in court, but Lundy was more than capable of overseeing the recovery until she got there.
There was no reason for me to stay either: as a witness I’d technically no right to even be there. But no one suggested I leave, so I sat down on a convenient hummock with a plastic cup of coffee Lundy had provided and watched as the tide slowly revealed its secret.
‘Not something you’d want a kid to see, is it?’ the DI commented as the CSIs began to wade into the creek. ‘Bad place for her dog to go for a swim. You reckon it could smell it?’
‘Probably.’
I’d had time to think it over as I’d been waiting. A dog’s sense of smell would be sensitive enough to detect a badly decomposed corpse when the ebbing tide brought it closer to the surface. Rachel had told me that Trask had only bought his daughter’s pet after his wife disappeared, so they’d owned it less than seven months. It had been a long, wet winter that would have discouraged walks in the Backwaters. It was possible – likely, even – that the excitable young animal hadn’t had a chance to discover the intriguing scent coming from the water until today.
The CSIs began negotiating the barbed wire to get closer to the body. They were wearing heavy duty gauntlets and chest-high waders, but I still didn’t envy them the task. Lundy continued to watch them as he spoke.
‘I spoke to Trask on my way here. He said you’d told him it’s male.’ His tone made it a question as well as a reproach.
‘I thought he’d got enough to worry about without wondering if this was his wife.’
‘And if you’re wrong?’
‘Then I’ll apologize. But even if this is a woman I don’t think it’s Emma Derby.’
Lundy gave a sigh. ‘No, me neither.’
The lower half of the body was still under the water, so it was hard to gauge its height. But, even allowing for bloating and the thick leather jacket, there was no mistaking the broadness of chest and shoulders. Whoever this was, it had been a heavy-framed individual.
That didn’t necessarily mean it was male. Determining the gender of a body, particularly a badly decomposed one like this, wasn’t always as clear-cut as it m
ight seem. While male and female skeletal characteristics did exist, the line between them was often blurred. The skeleton of a juvenile male might superficially resemble an adult female, for instance. And not all fully grown men conformed to the traditional stereotype of large-boned masculinity, any more than every woman was petite.
I’d once worked on a case involving a skeleton over six foot tall. The skull had a heavy, square jawbone and thickly pronounced eye ridges, all strong male indicators. The police thought it could be a missing father of two who’d disappeared eighteen months before, until the oval-shaped pelvic inlet and width of the greater sciatic notch revealed the body to be female. Dental records eventually identified her as a forty-seven-year-old teacher from Sussex.
As far as I know, the missing man was never found.
Even so, from what little I could see of the body hanging on the barbed wire, one thing was clear. It was much too big to belong to the slender woman whose self-portrait I’d seen in the boathouse.
The level in the creek had fallen about as low as it was going to. The sandbank formed an effective dam on this side, trapping a pool of water perhaps twenty yards long and several feet deep. The efforts of the CSIs had exposed the body to its hips, but both legs were still hidden beneath the surface.
There was a debate between Lundy, the CSIs and the crime scene manager about the best way to get the body off the wire. ‘Can you drag the whole thing out?’ Lundy asked as the CSIs sloshed through the murky water.
One of them, a young woman rendered sexless and unrecognizable under the protective gear, shook her head. ‘Too heavy. I think the wire’s caught on the bottom. We’re going to have to try and get the body off.’
‘OK, but watch out for those barbs. I don’t want to have to fill out any accident forms.’
That merited a snorted laugh. Lundy stared at the body contemplatively. ‘How long would you say it’s been here?’ he asked me.
I’d been wondering that myself. Until Trask and I disturbed it, the body would have been submerged in the deeper water dammed by the sandbank even at low tide. That would make it decompose at a slower rate than if it had been exposed to sunlight and air, and with the barbed wire holding it in place it wouldn’t have suffered the wear and tear of being dragged around by tidal currents.