Dead Alone

‘Be careful of the run-off channels. We wouldn’t want to lose you to a sudden gush of effluent.’

‘You can’t be serious, guv?’

Jessie narrowed her eyes against the sun’s low-lying sharp reflection. ‘Deadly.’

Fry flounced off. Mark Ward, that bastard. Well, he picked the wrong girl to start a war with. She’d make him sorry he hadn’t simply put a bucket of water over an open door and been done with it. Jessie got on the phone to the riverboat police, the underwater team and the helicopter unit, then she went over to the first officer on the scene. ‘Hi, I’m Detective Inspector Driver, West End Central CID.’

‘PC Niaz Ahmet.’ He was lanky, with heavy hands that flapped like paddles at his sides. His narrow head was perched on a long neck, but his eyes were bright and alert.

‘Were there any markings when you got here? Tyre tracks, footprints?’

‘Indeterminate number of markings on the path. But the mud was flat as it is now. Except for where the water runs off the bank. Rivulets, I think they’re called.’ Jessie immediately warmed to the man. ‘Definitely no footprints, or tyre tracks down there.’

‘Anything resembling a skull?’ asked Jessie.

‘Not that I could see. But, like Detective Constable Fry, I haven’t been down there. Didn’t want to disturb the scene.’

Jessie blew on her hands and rubbed them together. ‘Anything else?’

‘No. Few bits of debris, broken bottle, bit of metal pipe, trolley wheel, a dead jellyfish. But no footprints. I noted that especially.’

‘Follow me. I want you to take statements from the girls. And anyone else who turns up.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

She walked along the footpath to where the rowers still stood, huddled over cold coffee, exhaling clouds of expectant breath. Gold letters adorned the navy-blue tracksuits: CLRC. Jessie introduced herself and began her routine questions.

Jessie climbed the frost-covered grass embankment on the other side of the pathway and peered over the iron railings. The so-called nature reserve looked like a filled-in chalkpit or a disused water reservoir. Steep banks surrounded the rectangular expanse of water. It seemed a desolate place, offering none of the comforts the name suggested. She turned away and walked back down the path after Fry to the stone steps. Like the wall, they were covered in algae. The river’s mucus. Fry was f-ing and blinding as he fought through the mud. It was almost worth the humiliation to see him pick his way like a girl in Jimmy Choos. Jessie took a step down on to the slippery tread. The slightest pressure on her heel and she’d lose what little grip she had. There was nothing to hold on to and the stairs were very steep. If these remains had been brought to the river, they hadn’t come this way. Above her was a canopy of branches, stretching low and wide over her head. There was no lighting on the path above, nothing opposite and no residential buildings for a quarter of a mile. For central London, this was an extraordinarily deserted spot. Perfect. Suspiciously perfect.

She rounded the wall and saw a tunnel entrance. No run-off channel emerged from the black mouth of the tunnel, but there was a silt fan. Did that mean the tunnel was active, or was the silt backwash from high tide? Jessie pulled a slim black torch out of her rucksack and pointed it into the darkness. Disturbed pigeons flapped past her. On the right was a raised stone walkway. Jessie mounted the slimy steps, stooped to the arc of the airless tunnel, and began to walk uphill away from the daylight. Below her on the gravel and silt floor were the beached whales of the river’s lifeless catch. A shopping trolley. A rusting bicycle frame. Two heavy-duty plastic sacks. There was something that looked like clothing caught under a plank of wood. Jessie jumped off the four-foot ridge and landed squarely on the solid ground. The cloth was a woman’s coat. She slipped on a plastic glove and took hold of the coat, gently tugging it free. She stared into the never-ending darkness ahead of her. Where would such a steep, dry tunnel lead?

‘Ma’am,’ shouted Fry. She could make out the silhouette of the lower half of his body at the tunnel entrance. He sounded anxious. ‘Ma’am, what are you doing in there?’

She walked back down the tunnel. It got softer underfoot the lower she got. Jessie passed Fry the coat without saying anything, then picked a high ridge and walked down the sloping bank to the skeleton. The ground was still getting softer with every step. She stood over the bones. Slowly sinking. Thinking. What had bothered her about the bones when she’d studied them through the binoculars bothered her even more now. She looked back to the gaping archway of the tunnel, staring at her like a one-eyed monster. Dormant. But dangerous. Her eyes returned to the skeleton. It wasn’t what Jessie expected a river to regurgitate. Bodies pulled from the Thames were the worst kind. Like leaves left in water, the skin formed a translucent film over flooded veins. Bloated with river water, corpses would burst at the touch, emptying their contents like a fisherman’s catch. There was something about the whiteness of this ribcage, rising out of the brown-black mud like a giant clam, that made her think the river had not claimed this body. Human hands had put it there. Nature was never that neat.

The forensic team arrived eventually. With no sense of urgency, they ambled along the sliver of countryside towards her, laughing and joking, in a pack. Shift workers all. Bodies had a habit of turning up at odd times; theirs was not a nine-to-five existence. They looked confused when they saw the bag of bones they’d been called out for.

‘I want everything picked up inside the area. Film it, photograph it, then bag it up. I’ve called the River Police. Low tide is in fifty minutes, then the tide will be racing back in. Take mud samples, water samples and get the temperature of the water and air.’

They looked at her the same way as DC Fry had. What? For this?

She felt unsure in front of these men. They knew more about the nature of death than she ever would. She tried to keep the nerves out of her voice. ‘The head, hands and feet are missing. Keep an eye out,’ she said.

‘They’d have fallen off during decomposition. The head is probably in Calais by now.’

‘Exactly,’ said Jessie. ‘So why isn’t the rest of this poor soul in Calais too? The tide is too strong. This skeleton should be completely broken up, not sitting neatly in the mud like that.’

‘What are you thinking?’ said one of them, softening immediately.

‘I don’t know yet. But bones don’t emerge clean and white from years of being buried in the mud, without a billion micro-organisms making them their home. Just because it’s a skeleton, doesn’t mean it’s old news.’

She left them standing in the mud.

‘This is a wind-up,’ said one.

‘Sounds like she knows what she’s talking about,’ said another.

‘Trust me,’ said the first. ‘I heard it from a mate at her AMIT. She’s being taken down a peg or two.’

DC Fry looked up into the sky. ‘Bloody Nora, you got the flying squad out!’

Jessie didn’t look up.

‘They are filming the foreshore and surrounding area. On my orders.’ Was she mad? She should never have risen to the bait. Jones would go ballistic.

‘Ma’am, that isn’t our lot up there, that’s the press.’ PC Ahmet pointed as he walked, his long frame almost reaching the sky.

‘What?’ She looked up. A helicopter hovered above. She could feel the telephoto lens aimed at them.

‘Like sharks, they have a great nose for blood,’ said the sombre PC.

‘Get that skeleton covered,’ she screamed at the scenes of crime officers. ‘Now! Jesus Christ, how do they know so quickly?’ she said. ‘The body was only reported to me an hour ago.’

‘Their technology is more advanced and they are permanently tuned in to police scramblers.’

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.