Featuring David Hunter
The Chemistry of Death
Written in Bone
Whispers of the Dead
The Calling of the Grave
The Restless Dead
Other novels
Where There’s Smoke
Stone Bruises
For more information on Simon Beckett and his books, see his website at www.simonbeckett.com
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First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Bantam edition published 2017
Copyright © Hunter Publications Ltd 2017
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For Hilary
COMPOSED OF OVER sixty per cent water, a human body isn’t naturally buoyant. It will float only for as long as there is air in its lungs, before gradually sinking to the bottom. If the water is very cold or deep, it will remain there, undergoing a slow, dark dissolution that can take years.
But if the water is warm enough for bacteria to feed and multiply, then it will continue to decompose. Gases will build up in the intestines, increasing the body’s buoyancy until it floats again.
And the dead will literally rise.
Suspended face down, limbs trailing below, the body will drift on or just under the water’s surface. Over time, in a morbid reversal of its formation in the womb’s amniotic darkness, it will eventually come apart. The extremities first: fingers, hands and feet. Then arms and legs, and finally the head, all falling away until only the torso is left. When the last of the decompositional gases have seeped out, the torso too will slowly sink a second, and final, time.
But water can also cause another transformation to take place. As the soft tissues decompose, the layer of subcutaneous fat begins to break down, encasing a once living human body in a thick, greasy layer. Known as adipocere, or ‘grave-wax’ to give it its more colourful title, this pallid substance also goes by a less macabre name.
Soap.
Cocooned in its dirty white shroud, the internal organs are preserved as the body floats on its last, solitary journey.
Unless chance brings it once more into the light of day.
The skull was a young female’s, the gender hinted at by its more gracile structure. The frontal bone was high and smooth, lacking any bulge of eyebrow ridges, while the small bump of the mastoid process beneath the opening of the ear looked too delicate for a male. Not that such things were definitive, but taken together they left me in little doubt. The adult teeth had all broken through by the time of death, which indicated she was older than twelve, though not by much. Although two molars and an upper incisor were missing, probably dislodged post-mortem, the remaining teeth were hardly worn. It confirmed the story told by the rest of her skeleton, that she’d died before reaching her late teens.
The cause of death was all too obvious. At the back of the skull, a jagged hole about an inch long and half that wide sat almost dead centre of the occipital bone. There was no sign of healing and the edges of the wound were splintered, suggesting the bone was living when the injury occurred. That wouldn’t have been the case if the damage had been inflicted after death, when the bone dries out and becomes brittle. The first time I’d picked up the skull I’d been surprised to hear an almost musical rattle from inside. At first I’d thought it must be bone fragments, forced into the brain cavity by whatever object had killed the young victim. But it sounded too large and solid for that. The X-ray confirmed what I’d guessed: loose inside the girl’s skull was a slender, symmetrical shape.
An arrowhead.
It was impossible to say exactly how old the skull was, or how long it had lain in the ground on the windswept Northumberland moors. All that could be said with any certainty was that she’d been dead over five hundred years, long enough for the arrow shaft to disintegrate and the bone to darken to a caramel colour. Nothing would ever be known about her; not who she was nor why she’d died. I liked to think whoever had killed her – as she was either turned or running away – had received some sort of punishment for the crime. But there was no way of knowing that either.
The arrowhead shifted with a soft percussive noise as I packed away the skull, carefully wrapping it in tissue paper before replacing it in its box. Like the other historical skeletons in the university’s anthropology department, it was used to train undergraduates, a morbid curio sufficiently ancient as to be largely devoid of shock. I was used to it – God knows, I’d seen worse – but that particular memento mori always struck me as particularly poignant. Perhaps it was because of the victim’s youth, or the brutal manner of her death. Whoever she was, she’d once been someone’s daughter. Now, centuries later, all that remained of the nameless girl was stored in a cardboard box in a lab.
I put the box back in the steel cupboard with the rest. Rubbing a stiffness from my neck, I went into my office and logged on to my computer. There was the familiar Pavlovian expectation as the emails loaded. As usual, it was replaced by disappointment. There was only the everyday minutiae of academic life: queries from students, memos from colleagues and the occasional appeal the spam filter had failed to catch. Nothing else.
It had been like that for months.
One of the emails was from Professor Harris, the new head of anthropology, reminding me to schedule a meeting with his secretary. To review options regarding your position, as he delicately phrased it. My heart sank when I read that, but it was hardly a surprise. And it was a problem for the following week anyway. Turning off the computer, I hung up my lab coat and pulled on my jacket. A postgraduate student passed me in the corridor as I left.
‘’Night, Dr Hunter. Have a good holiday,’ she said.
‘Thanks, Jamila, you too.’
The thought of the long bank holiday weekend lowered my spirits even further. I’d foolishly accepted an invitation to spend it with friends at their house in the Cotswolds. That had been weeks ago, when it had seemed distant enough not to worry about. Now it was here I was less sanguine, not least since there would be a lot of other guests there I didn’t know.
Too late now. I unlocked my car, swiping my pass against the scanner and waiting for the barrier to rise. I knew it was stupid driving in to the university each day, contending with London traffic and congestion charges rather than catching the Tube, but the habit was hard to break. As a police consultant I’d grown used to being called out to different parts of the country when a body was found, often at short notice. It had made sense to be able to leave quickly, but that was before I’d been unofficially blacklisted. Now taking my car in to work was beginning to seem less like a necessary routine and more like wishful thinking.
On the way home I stopped off at a supermarket to buy the sorts of things I remembered a house guest ought to take. I wasn’t setting off until morning, so I needed something for dinner that evening as well, and wandered the shelves without any great enthusiasm. I’d been feeling vaguely under the weather for a few days now, but put it down to boredom and apathy. When I realized I was browsing the ready meals section I gave myself a mental slap and moved on.
Spring was late arriving this year, the winter winds and rain lingering well into April. The overcast skies did little to lengthen the days, and it was already growing dark by the time I pulled on to the road where I lived. I found a parking space and carried the shopping bags back to my flat. It occupied the ground floor of a large Victorian house, with a small entrance hall shared with another flat upstairs. As I drew nearer I saw there was a man in overalls working on the front door.
‘Evening, chief,’ he greeted me cheerily. He was holding a plane, assorted tools spilling out of the open bag at his feet.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked, taking in the raw timber around the lock and wood shavings littering the floor.
‘You live here? Someone tried to break in. Your neighbour called us out to repair it.’ He blew sawdust off the door edge and set the plane back on it again. ‘You don’t want to be leaving the place unlocked in this neighbourhood.’
I stepped over his toolbag and went to speak to my neighbour. She’d only been living in the upstairs flat for a few weeks, a flamboyantly attractive Russian who, as far as I could tell, worked as a travel agent. We’d rarely spoken beyond the odd pleasantry, and she didn’t invite me over the doorstep now.
‘It was broken when I came home,’ she said. A wave of musky perfume radiated from her as she tossed her head angrily. ‘Probably some junkie, trying to get in. They steal anything.’
The neighbourhood wasn’t exactly high-rent, but it didn’t have any more of a drug problem than anywhere else. ‘Was the front door open?’
I’d checked my own flat but its door was intact. There was no sign that anyone had tried to force their way in. My neighbour shook her head, setting the thick, dark hair bouncing. ‘No, only broken. The scumbag got frightened or gave up.’
‘Did you call the police?’
‘Police?’ She gave a phhf of disdain. ‘Yes, but they don’t care. They take fingerprints, they shrug, they go. Better to get a new lock. A strong one this time.’
It was said pointedly, as though the old lock’s failings were my fault. The locksmith was finishing up when I went back downstairs.
‘All done, chief. It’ll need a new lick of paint, stop the planed wood from swelling when it rains.’ He raised his eyebrows, holding up two sets of keys. ‘So, who wants the bill?’
I looked back upstairs at my neighbour’s door. It remained closed. I sighed. ‘Do you take cheques?’
After the locksmith had gone, I fetched a pan and brush to sweep up the sawdust in the hallway. A curl of shaved wood had wedged itself in the corner. I crouched down to brush it up, and as I saw my hand against the black and white tiles I had a dizzying rush of déjà vu. Lying in the hallway, a knife sticking obscenely from my stomach, blood spreading across the chequerboard floor …
It was so vivid it took my breath. I stood up, heart racing as I forced myself to breathe deeply. But the moment was already passing. I opened the front door, drawing in the cool night air. Christ. Where did that come from? It was a long time since I’d had a flashback to the attack, and this one had come out of nowhere. I rarely even thought about it any more. I’d done my best to put it behind me, and while the physical scars remained, I’d thought the psychological wounds had healed.
Obviously not.
Recovering, I emptied the sawdust into the bin and went back into my flat. The familiar space was just as I’d left it that morning: inoffensive furniture in a decent-sized lounge, with a kitchen and a small, private garden out back. It was a perfectly good place to live, but now, with the flashback still fresh in my mind, I realized how few of the memories I had of this place were happy ones. Like taking my car to work, the only thing that had kept me here was habit.
Perhaps it was time for a change.
Feeling listless, I unpacked my shopping and then took a beer from the fridge. The fact was I was in a rut. And change was coming whether I wanted it or not. Although I was employed by the university, most of my work came from police consultancy. As a forensic anthropologist, I was called in when human remains were found that were too badly decomposed or degraded for a pathologist to deal with. It was a highly specialized field populated largely by freelancers like myself, who would help police identify remains and provide as much information as possible regarding the time and manner of their dying. I’d become intimate with death in all its gory excess, fluent in the languages of bone, putrefaction and decay. By most people’s standards it was a gruesome occupation, and there were times when I struggled with it myself. Years before, I’d lost my wife and daughter in a car accident, their lives snuffed out in an instant by a drunk driver who’d walked away unscathed. Haunted by what had happened to them, I’d abandoned my work and returned to my original career as a GP, tending to the concerns of the living rather than the dead. I’d buried myself away in a small Norfolk village, trying to escape any connection to my old life and the memories that came with it.
But the attempt had been short-lived. The realities of death and its consequences had found me anyway, and I’d come close to losing someone else I loved before accepting that I couldn’t run away from who I was. For better or worse, this was what I did. What I was good at.
Or at least it had been. The previous autumn I’d become involved with a brutal investigation on Dartmoor. By the end of it two of the police’s own were dead and a senior ranking officer had been forced to resign. While I wasn’t to blame, I’d been an unwitting catalyst for the scandal that ensued, and no one likes a troublemaker. Least of all the police.
And suddenly the consultancy work had dried up.
Inevitably, there was a knock-on effect at the university. Technically, I was only an associate, on a rolling contract rather than tenure. The arrangement gave me the freedom to carry on with my police consultancy and allowed the department to benefit by association. But an associate who worked on high-profile murder investigations was a far cry from one who’d suddenly become persona non grata with every police force in the country. My contract only had a few more weeks to run, and the new head of anthropology had indicated that the department wouldn’t carry any dead weight.
It was clear that was how he saw me.
With a sigh I flopped back into an armchair and took a drink of beer. The last thing I felt like was a weekend house party, but Jason and Anja were old friends. I’d known Jason since medical school, and met my wife at one of their parties. Along with everything else, I’d let the friendship slide when I left London after Kara and Alice died, and never quite got around to re-establishing it when I moved back.
But Jason had got in touch just before Christmas, after seeing my name in news reports about the fouled-up Dartmoor investigation. I’d met up with them several times since, and been relieved there’d been none of the awkwardness I’d expected. They’d moved home since we’d lost touch, so at least I was spared the bittersweet memories their old house would have brought. They now lived in an eye-wateringly expensive house in Belsize Park, and had a second home in the Cotswolds.
That was where I’d be driving to tomorrow. It was only after I accepted the invitation that I learned there was a catch.
‘We’re inviting a few other people,’ Jason told me. ‘And there’s someone Anja would like you to meet. She’s a criminal lawyer, so you should have plenty in common. Police stuff and all that. Plus she’s single. Well, divorced, but same thing.’
‘That’s what this is about? You’re trying to set me up with someone?’
‘I’m not, Anja is,’ he explained with exaggerated patience. ‘Come on, it’s not going to kill you to meet an attractive woman, is it? If you hit it off, great. And if not what’s the harm? Just come along and see what happens.’
In the end I’d agreed. I knew he and Anja meant well, and it wasn’t as though my social calendar was exactly full these days. Now, though, the prospect of spending a bank holiday weekend with strangers seemed like a terrible idea. Can’t cry off now. Better make the best of it.
Wearily, I got up and began making myself something to eat. When the phone rang I thought it would be Jason, calling to check I was still going. The possibility of making a last-minute excuse crossed my mind, until I saw the number on the caller display was withheld. I almost didn’t answer, thinking it must be a marketing call. Then old habits kicked in again, and I picked up anyway.
‘Is that Dr Hunter?’
The speaker was male, and sounded too old for a telemarketing call. ‘Yes, who’s this?’
‘I’m DI Bob Lundy, Essex Police.’ The voice was unrushed, almost slow, its accent northern rather than estuary. Lancashire, I thought. ‘Have I caught you at a bad time?’
‘No, not at all.’ I set down my beer, thoughts of food forgotten.
‘Sorry to disturb your weekend, but I was given your name by DCI Andy Mackenzie. You worked with him on a murder inquiry a while back?’
His tone made it a question, but I remembered Mackenzie well enough. It had been the first case I’d been involved in after I lost my family, and hearing his name so soon after I’d been thinking back to that time was strangely apt. He’d been a DI back then, and it hadn’t always been an easy relationship. My fault more than his, so I appreciated his putting a word in for me.
‘That’s right,’ I said, trying not to raise my hopes. ‘How can I help?’
‘We’ve got a reported sighting of a body in the Saltmere estuary, a few miles up the coast from Mersea Island. We can’t do much tonight but there’s a low tide just after dawn. We’ve got a pretty good idea where it might have grounded, so we’ll be carrying out a search and recovery as soon as light permits. I know it’s short notice, but can you meet us out there first thing tomorrow morning?’
Jason and Anja’s party flashed across my mind, but only for a second. They’d understand. ‘You want me there for the recovery?’
I’d worked on water deaths before, but normally I was called in once the body had been retrieved. A forensic anthropologist was generally only needed if there were skeletal remains or if a body was badly decomposed. If this was a recent drowning, and the body was still in reasonably good condition, there’d be nothing for me to do. And this wouldn’t be the first false alarm sparked by a floating bin-liner or bundle of clothes.
‘If you can make it, yes,’ Lundy said. ‘A couple of weekend yachtsmen spotted the body late this afternoon. They were planning to drag it aboard until they got close enough to smell it and changed their minds.’
That was just as well. If the body had begun to smell that suggested decomposition had set in. Manhandling it on to a boat would likely have caused more damage, and although it was possible to distinguish post-mortem injuries from those caused before death, it was better to avoid them.
‘Any idea who it might be?’ I asked, hunting around for a pen and paper.
‘A local man went missing about six weeks ago,’ Lundy told me, and if I hadn’t been so distracted I might have made more of his hesitation. ‘We think there’s a good chance this is him.’
‘Six weeks is a long time for a body to be drifting in an estuary without being found,’ I said.
No wonder the yachtsmen had noticed the smell. It wasn’t unheard of for human remains to stay afloat for weeks or even months, but that was usually in deeper water or out at sea. In an estuary, where the body would be left stranded and exposed at low tide twice a day, I’d have expected it to have been noticed before now.
‘Not this one,’ Lundy said. ‘You don’t get many boats on it these days, and there’s a rat’s nest of creeks and saltmarshes feeding into it. The body could have been drifting in there for weeks.’
I scribbled on the notepad, trying to make the pen work. ‘And the missing man, anything suspicious about his disappearance?’
There was another hesitation. ‘We’ve no reason to think anyone else was involved.’
I lowered the pen, picking up on the DI’s caution. If no one else was involved that left either natural causes, accident or suicide, and Lundy’s manner suggested this wasn’t either of the first two. Still, that didn’t explain why he was being so cagey.
‘Is there something sensitive about this?’ I asked.
‘I wouldn’t call it sensitive, exactly.’ Lundy spoke with the air of someone choosing his words. ‘Let’s just say we’re under pressure to find out if it’s who we think. I’ll tell you more tomorrow. We’re mustering from an old oyster fishery but it can be tricky to find. I’ll email the directions, but you’ll need to allow plenty of time to get there. Satnavs aren’t much use in that neck of the woods.’
After he’d ended the call I sat staring into space. There was obviously more to this than the DI wanted to go into over the phone, although I couldn’t think what. A suicide might require tactful handling, especially when dealing with the family. But police officers weren’t usually so coy.
Well, I’d find out soon enough. Including why they wanted me present for the recovery. Even if they were right and the body had been in the estuary for weeks, the police didn’t usually need a forensic anthropologist’s help to remove it from the water. I wouldn’t normally expect to be involved until the remains were back at the mortuary.
But I wasn’t about to argue. This was the first consultancy work I’d been offered in an age, and hopefully a sign official attitudes towards me had thawed. Please God. Suddenly even the thought of Jason and Anja’s dinner party didn’t seem so bad. I’d have a longer drive to the Cotswolds, but the recovery shouldn’t take all day. They’d understand if I was a little late.
Feeling brighter than I had in months, I went to get my things together.
IT WAS STILL dark next morning when I set off. There was traffic even at that time, the headlights of lorries and early commuters snaking along the roads. But they grew sparser as I drove out of London and headed east. Soon the roads were unlit, and the stars brightened as the crowded suburbs were left behind. The muted glow of the satnav gave the illusion of warmth, but that early in the morning I still needed to turn on the heater. It had been a long, cold winter, and despite the calendar the promised spring was still no more than a technicality.
I’d woken feeling sluggish and aching. I’d have put it down to a low-grade hangover if I’d had more than a single beer the night before. But I felt better after a hot shower and a quick breakfast, too preoccupied with the day ahead to worry about anything else.
It was peaceful on the early morning roads. The Essex coastal marshes weren’t too far from London; flat, low-lying towns and countryside that fought a perpetual, and often losing, battle with the sea. I wasn’t familiar with that stretch of the south-east coast, though, and in his emailed directions Lundy had again warned to allow plenty of time. I thought he was being over-cautious until I’d looked up maps of the Saltmere estuary online. The ‘rat’s nest’ of creeks and saltmarshes the DI had mentioned was an area called the Backwaters, a tidal labyrinth of waterways and ditches that bordered one of the estuary’s flanks. On satellite photographs it resembled capillaries feeding into an artery, most of it only accessible by boat. And not even then at low tide, when it drained to become a barren plain of mudflats. The route I’d be taking only skirted its edges, but even so the roads looked small and tortuous.
The glow from the satnav dimmed as the sky directly ahead continued to lighten. Off to one side, the refineries of Canvey Island were silhouetted against it, fractal black shapes sparkling with lights. There were more cars on the road now, but then I turned off on to a side road and the traffic thinned down. Soon I was on my own again, heading into an overcast dawn.
I switched off the satnav not long afterwards, relying solely on Lundy’s directions. All around, the landscape was as flat as a stretched sheet, scribbled over by thickets of hawthorn with only the occasional house or barn. The DI’s directions took me through a small, dismal-looking town called Cruckhaven that lay close to the neck of the estuary. I drove past pebble-dashed bungalows and stone cottages to a harbour front, where a few dirty-hulled trawlers and fishing boats slumped at angles on the mud, waiting for the returning tide to give them grace and reason.
It looked an unprepossessing place, and I wasn’t sorry to leave it behind. The road continued alongside the estuary, the tarmac eroded in places where the tide had overflowed the banks. Recently, by the look of things. It had been another bad winter for flooding, but wrapped up in my own problems in London I hadn’t paid much attention to news reports of coastal storms. Judging by the sea-wrack stranded on the road and surrounding fields, they would be harder to ignore here. Global warming was more than an academic debate when you were this exposed to the results of it.
I followed the road out towards the mouth of the estuary. With the tide out all that was left was a muddy plain dappled with pools and runnels of water. I began to wonder if I’d missed a turn-off, but then up ahead on the shoreline I saw a row of low buildings. There was an assortment of police vehicles parked outside, and if I was in any doubt the wooden sign a little further along confirmed it: Saltmere Oyster Co.
A PC stood by the gate. He spoke into his radio before letting me through. I pulled on to a crumbling patch of tarmac, alongside where the other cars and a police trailer were parked behind the derelict oyster sheds. After the warmth of the car the cold morning was as bracing as a shower when I climbed out, stiff from the drive. The air carried the mournful cry of gulls along with a smell of rotting seaweed and the salty, earthier scent of exposed seabed. I took a deep breath, looking out over the tidal landscape. The drained estuary looked as though a giant had gouged a long scoop out of the ground, leaving behind only a muddy plain dappled with trapped pools. There was a lunar bleakness about it, but the tide was already beginning its return: I could see rivulets snaking back along channels etched into the estuary bottom, filling them up even as I watched.
A change in the wind brought the rhythmic thrum of a police or coastguard helicopter. I could see the distant speck tracking back and forth across the water. It would be making the most of daylight and the low tide to carry out a visual search of the estuary. A floating body wouldn’t ordinarily give off enough heat to be detected by infrared and would be hard to spot from the air, especially if it was drifting below the surface. There wouldn’t be much time to find the remains before the tide returned and carried them off again.
So don’t stand about daydreaming. A policewoman at the trailer told me DI Lundy was on the quayside. Skirting the shuttered oyster sheds, I walked around to the front. The tubular hull of a police RHIB – a rigid-hulled inflatable boat – was on a trailer at the top of a concrete slipway, and I saw now why the search was being carried out from here. The slipway ran down to a deep channel in the mud immediately in front of the quay. The returning tide would fill it first, allowing a boat to be launched without waiting for the estuary to flood completely. The water wasn’t high enough yet, but from the swirls and eddies ruffling its surface it wouldn’t be much longer.
A group of men and women stood by the RHIB, talking in low voices as they held steaming plastic cups. Several wore almost paramilitary-looking outfits, dark blue trousers and shirts under bulky lifejackets that identified them as marine unit, but the others were in plain clothes.
‘I’m looking for DI Lundy,’ I said.
‘That’s me,’ one of the group responded, turning towards me. ‘Dr Hunter, is it?’
It’s hard to gauge how someone looks from their voice, but Lundy suited his perfectly. He was early fifties and built like an ageing wrestler running to fat; out of shape but with bulk and muscle still there. A bristling moustache gave him the look of an affable walrus, while behind the metal-framed glasses the round face managed to look good-humoured and lugubrious at the same time.
‘You’re early. Find us all right?’ he asked, shaking my hand.
‘I was glad of the directions,’ I admitted. ‘You were right about the satnav.’
‘They don’t call it the Backwaters for nothing. Come on, let’s get you a cup of tea.’
I thought we’d go to the trailer, but Lundy led me back behind the sheds to his car, a battered Vauxhall that looked as durable as its owner. Opening the boot he took out a large Thermos flask and poured steaming tea into its two plastic cups.
‘Better than the stuff from the trailer, trust me,’ he said, screwing back on the lid. ‘Unless you don’t take sugar? I’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth.’
I didn’t, but it was welcome all the same. And I was keen to hear more about the case. ‘Any luck yet?’ I asked, blowing on the hot tea.
‘Not yet, but the helicopter’s been up since dawn. The SIO – that’s DCI Pam Clarke – is on her way with the pathologist, but we’ve been given the OK to recover the body as soon as we find it.’
I’d wondered where they were. The senior investigating officer and a pathologist always attended when remains were recovered on land, where the site where they were found was potentially a crime scene and had to be treated as such. But that wasn’t always practical for sea recoveries, where the operation was at the whim of tides and currents. The priority in situations like this was usually to recover the remains as quickly as possible.
‘You said you’d a good idea where the body might be?’ I asked.
‘We think so. It was spotted out in the estuary around five o’clock yesterday afternoon. The tide would have been ebbing, and it’d have carried the body out at a fair old lick. If it’s made it out to sea then we’re wasting our time, but we’re betting it’ll have grounded before then. See out there?’
He levelled a thick finger towards the mouth of the estuary, perhaps a mile distant. I could make out a series of long humps rising from the muddy bed like low brown hills.
‘That’s the Barrows,’ Lundy went on. ‘They’re sandbanks, stretch right across the estuary. This whole region’s been silting up ever since they put in sea defences further up the coast. Buggered up the currents so that now all the sand that gets washed down ends up dumped on our doorstep. Only small-draught boats can get in and out, even at high tide, so there’s a good chance the body won’t have made it past either.’
I studied the distant sandbanks. ‘What’s the plan for recovering it?’
I guessed that would be where I came in, advising on how best to handle the remains without damaging them if they were badly decomposed. I still couldn’t see that my help would be strictly necessary, but I couldn’t think why else they’d want me there. Lundy blew delicately on his steaming tea.
‘Going to be a case of suck it and see once we know where it is. If it’s in the Barrows we won’t be able to winch it up to the chopper. The sandbanks are too soft to land on, and there’s too big a risk of anyone lowered down getting stuck. A boat’s the best bet, so we’ll just have to hope we can get out to it before the tide floats it off.’ He gave a grin. ‘Hope you’ve brought your wellies.’
I’d gone one better and brought waders, knowing from past experience what water recoveries could be like. From what I’d seen this promised to be worse than most. ‘You said you’d an idea who it might be?’
Lundy took a slurp of tea and dabbed at his moustache. ‘That’s right. Thirty-one-year-old local man called Leo Villiers, reported missing a month ago. Father’s Sir Stephen Villiers?’
He made it into a question, but the name meant nothing to me. I shook my head. ‘I’ve not heard of him.’
‘Well, the family’s well known around here. All that land over there?’ He gestured across to the far side of the estuary. It looked marginally higher than where we stood, and rather than saltmarshes and waterways there were cultivated fields clearly marked with dark lines of hedges. ‘That’s the Villiers estate. Some of it, at least. They own a lot of the land on this side as well. They’re into farming, but Sir Stephen’s got his fingers in all sorts. Shale oil, manufacturing. These oyster sheds belong to him as well. He bought the fishery out about a decade ago and then closed it six months later. Laid everyone off.’
‘That must have gone down well.’ I was beginning to understand where the pressure Lundy had mentioned over the phone was coming from.
‘Not as badly as you’d expect. The plan is to develop it into a marina. He’s talking about dredging channels in the estuary, building a hotel, transforming this whole area. It’d mean hundreds of local jobs, so that took the sting out of closing the oyster sheds. But there’s a lot of opposition from environmentalists, so while the planning arguments go on he’s just mothballed the place. He can afford to play the long game, and he’s got enough political clout to win in the end.’
People like that usually did. I looked at the muddy bed of the estuary, where the tide was already returning. ‘Where does his son come into this?’
‘He doesn’t. Not directly, anyway. Leo Villiers was what you might call the black sheep. Only child, mother died when he was a kid. Got himself booted out of private military school and then dropped out of university officer training corps in his final year. His father still managed to get him enrolled in the Royal Military Academy but he didn’t finish. No official reason, so it looks like there was some scrape his father pulled strings to cover up. After that he went from one scandal to another. There was a trust fund from his mother so he didn’t need to work, and he seemed to enjoy stirring things up. Good-looking bugger, like a fox in a coop with girls, but nasty with it. Broke off a couple of engagements and got into all sorts of trouble, everything from drunk driving to aggravated assault. His father’s very protective about the Villiers name, so the family lawyers were kept busy. But even Sir Stephen couldn’t cover everything up.’ Lundy gave me a worried glance. ‘Obviously, this is all off the record.’
I tried not to smile. ‘I won’t say a word.’
He nodded, satisfied. ‘Anyway, long story short, for a time it seemed like he’d settled down. His father must have thought so, because he tried steering him into politics. There was talk of him standing for local MP, press interviews. All the usual fluff. Then all of a sudden it stopped. The local party found someone else to stand and Leo Villiers dropped out of sight. We still haven’t been able to find out why.’
‘And that was when he went missing?’
Lundy shook his head. ‘No, this was a fair bit before then. But someone else did. A local woman he’d been having an affair with.’
I realized then I’d read this all wrong. This wasn’t just about locating a missing man. I’d assumed that Leo Villiers was the victim, but he wasn’t.
He was the suspect.
‘This is strictly confidential,’ Lundy said, lowering his voice even though there was no one around to hear. ‘It doesn’t have any direct bearing on today, but you might as well know the background.’
‘You think Leo Villiers killed her?’
The DI hitched a shoulder in a shrug. ‘We never found her body so we couldn’t prove anything. But he was the only serious suspect. She was a photographer, moved out here from London two or three years back when she got married. Emma Derby – glamorous, very attractive. Not the type you’d expect to find somewhere like this. Villiers hired her to do his publicity photographs when he looked like going into politics, and then commissioned her to do some interior design for his house. Turns out that wasn’t all she did, because his housekeeper and gardener both claim they saw a half-dressed woman fitting Derby’s description in his bedroom.’
Pursing his mouth disapprovingly, Lundy patted his pockets and took out a packet of antacids. He popped a couple from the foil strip.
‘Looks like they had a falling out, though,’ he said, chomping the tablets. ‘We’ve got several witnesses who heard her ranting and calling him an “arrogant prick” at some swanky political bash not long before she vanished.’
‘Did you question him?’
‘For all the good it did. He denied having an affair, reckoned she’d thrown herself at him but he’d turned her down. Hard to believe given his track record, especially when he didn’t have an alibi for the day she went missing. Claimed he was away but wouldn’t say where or offer anything to corroborate it. He was obviously hiding something, but the family’s lawyers were throwing up every obstacle they could. Threatened to sue for harassment if we so much as looked askance at him, and without a body or evidence there wasn’t much we could do. We searched the area around where Emma Derby and her husband lived, but it’s mainly saltmarsh and mudflats you can’t get to on foot. Ideal place to get rid of a body. Hellish to search, so finding anything in there was always going to be a tall order. And then Leo Villiers went missing himself, so that was pretty much that.’
I thought back to what Lundy had said on the phone the night before. ‘You said his disappearance wasn’t suspicious, but someone like that must have made enemies. What about Emma Derby’s husband?’
‘Oh, we took a good look at him. Bit of an unlikely match, to be honest. He was a good bit older than her, and it was no secret they were having difficulties even before she hooked up with Villiers. But he was out of the country when his wife went missing and then up in Scotland when her boyfriend disappeared. His alibis checked out both times.’ Lundy turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘You’re right about Villiers having enemies, and I dare say not many people will shed a tear over him. But there’s nothing to suggest any of them were involved, or that there was anything suspicious about it. There was a report that the gardener scared off a prowler from the grounds of his house not long before he disappeared, but that was more likely just local teenagers.’
I looked out beyond the oyster sheds to where the muddy estuary bed was disappearing under the returning water. ‘So you think Villiers killed himself?’
The DI’s caginess on the phone had made me think this was something more than an accident. Lundy shrugged. ‘He’d been under a lot of pressure and we know he had at least one failed suicide attempt in his teens. Sir Stephen’s lawyers have been blocking us from seeing his medical records, but going on verbal accounts from people who knew him there was obviously a history of depression. And there was a note.’
‘A suicide note?’
He looked pained. ‘We’re not officially calling it that. Sir Stephen won’t have anyone suggesting his son killed himself, so we’re having to tread carefully. And the note was found in Leo’s bin, so either it was a draft or he changed his mind about leaving it. But it was his handwriting, saying he couldn’t carry on. Hated his life, that sort of thing. And the housekeeper who found the note told us his shotgun was missing as well. Handmade by Mowbry and Sons. You heard of them?’
I shook my head: I was more familiar with the effects of shotguns than with their manufacturers.
‘They’re up there with Purdeys when it comes to bespoke shotguns. Beautiful craftsmanship, if you like that sort of thing, and phenomenally expensive. Villiers’ father bought it for him when he turned eighteen. Must have cost nearly as much as my house.’
A cheaper gun would have been just as lethal. But I was starting to understand why Lundy had been wary about saying too much earlier. Suicide was a difficult thing for any family to process, especially of a man suspected of murder. It would be a doubly hard blow for any parent to accept, so it was no wonder that Sir Stephen Villiers was in denial. What set him apart was that he had the money and power to enforce it.
That might be harder if this was his son’s body.
The distant speck of the helicopter was still visible, although now the wind was carrying its sound away from us. It seemed to have stopped moving.
‘What makes you think this is Villiers rather than Emma Derby?’ I asked. I doubted the yachtsmen who’d seen the drifting body would have been able to tell its gender.
‘Because she went missing seven months ago,’ Lundy said. ‘Can’t see her body just turning up after all this time.’
He was right. Although a body would initially sink once any air trapped in its lungs had escaped, it would float back to the surface if the build-up of gases from decomposition made it buoyant again. When that happened it could drift for weeks, depending on the temperature and conditions. But seven months was too long, especially in the relatively shallow waters of an estuary. The combination of tides, marine scavengers and hungry seabirds would have taken its toll long before then.
Even so, there was still something about this I wasn’t getting. I ran through what Lundy had said, trying to put it together. ‘So Leo Villiers didn’t go missing until six months after Emma Derby disappeared?’
‘Around that, although we’re not sure exactly when. There’s a two-week gap between the last time anyone had any contact with him and when he was reported missing, but we’re fairly sure that—’
The DI broke off as a whistle came from the direction of the quayside. One of the marine unit had emerged from behind the oyster sheds. He held up a thumb before turning and heading back.
Lundy shook the last few drops of tea from his cup. ‘Hope you’re ready to get your feet wet, Dr Hunter,’ he said, screwing it back on to the Thermos. ‘Looks like the helicopter’s found something.’
SALT SPRAY STUNG my face as the RHIB heeled over to one side. I wiped it from my eyes, gripping the edge of my seat as we skimmed over the water. The estuary wasn’t particularly rough but we were heading against the tide and wind. The boat juddered as its bow smacked into successive waves, each one sending a curtain of cold spume into the open cockpit.
It was fully light now, although the sun was no more than a diffuse glow in the overcast sky. The smell of plastic from the boat’s hull mixed with diesel fumes and salt-soaked rope. The marine unit sergeant stood at the controls, riding the waves easily as he gripped the small wheel. I sat behind him with Lundy and three other lifejacketed officers from the marine unit. The boat was cramped. The six of us shared it with a stretcher and two piles of aluminium stepping plates, set either side of the boat so as not to unbalance it.
I was jerked in my seat as the boat hit a wave head on. Lundy gave me a smile, his glasses flecked with water. ‘You all right, there?’ he shouted above the noise of the wind and engine. ‘Shouldn’t be much longer!’
I nodded. I’d sailed when I was younger, and normally the choppy ride wouldn’t have bothered me. It wasn’t helping the vaguely washed-out feeling I’d woken with, but I tried to put it from my mind. I’d been given a lifejacket to wear as well, this one bright orange rather than the dark blue of the marine unit’s. My chest-high rubber waders were uncomfortable to sit in, as were the waterproof coveralls I wore underneath. Still, looking at the estuary’s muddy banks on either side, I knew I’d be glad of them later.
The tide had returned with surprising speed. By the time I’d changed and collected my flight case of equipment from the car, the marine unit were already manhandling the boat down the slipway and off the trailer. The channel in front of the quayside was almost completely flooded, water slopping around the concrete ramp as the estuary’s mud and shingle disappeared under the encroaching sea.
‘We’re not going to have much time,’ Lundy had warned me as we’d stood by the slipway. ‘The helicopter says the body’s grounded partway up a sandbank, but it won’t stay there long. The tide here comes in quicker than a man can run, so we’ll need to work fast.’
Very fast, by the sound of it. This was going to be a race to recover the body before the returning tide floated it off again, which made me question even more why I was there. Although I preferred to examine remains in situ given the chance, there wasn’t going to be much time to do that here. The priority would be to retrieve the body as quickly as possible, and Lundy and the marine unit were perfectly capable of doing that by themselves.
I stared over the RHIB’s blunt bow as we reached the deeper water in the middle of the estuary and then headed out towards the Barrows. The sandbanks lay dead ahead, a natural barrier stretching almost from shore to shore. They’d been isolated by the rising tide but they were still exposed, smooth brown humps emerging from the water like a pod of beached whales. Beyond them, where the estuary met the open sea, I could see three strange-looking structures rising from the water. They were too far away to make out any detail, but from the pitching boat they looked like square boxes perched on pyramidal stilts. Oil derricks, perhaps, although they seemed too close to the shore for that.
Lundy saw me looking. ‘It’s a sea fort.’
‘A what?’
We had to yell above the din of the engine. ‘A Maunsell sea fort. The army and navy built them along the coast during the Second World War to keep German ships out of the estuaries. This is an army one. It used to have seven towers all linked by walkways, but these three are all that’s left.’
‘Is it still in use?’ I shouted. Lundy said something but it was lost in the wind and noise. I shook my head. He leaned closer.
‘I said only by seagulls. None of the army forts are. A few of them were used by pirate radio stations back in the sixties, like the one here and at Red Sands in the Thames estuary. But most were either dismantled or fell down years ago. There was talk about turning this one into a hotel a while back, but nothing came of it.’ Lundy shook his head at the thought of such folly. ‘Can’t say I’m surprised. I wouldn’t want to stay there.’
Neither would I, but we were almost at the Barrows so I gave up attempting any more conversation after that. It became blessedly quieter as the RHIB throttled down, slowing to make its approach. It was possible to hear the chop of the helicopter now. It hovered ahead of us, lights winking as it held station above the body.
The marine unit sergeant eased the RHIB between the sandbanks. They rose up like small islands all around, waves lapping at their smooth sides. It wouldn’t be much longer before the rising tide covered them, and I understood what Lundy had meant about the Barrows making the estuary all but impassable. It was hard enough negotiating them even when they could be seen above the surface. Hidden by the high tide they’d be treacherous.
We were almost directly under the helicopter now. The wash from its rotors was deafening, buffeting us and flattening the water’s surface.
‘There it is.’