Leigh Russell, page 2
Geraldine smiled uneasily, wondering what lay behind her colleague’s remark. She and Naomi had worked closely together on several cases. Facing danger side by side on more than one occasion, they had formed a strong bond. Yet Geraldine knew almost nothing about Naomi’s personal life. It was a salutary reminder not to make assumptions about other people.
3
The boys were messing about on the dinghy. The boat belonged to Dean’s family, but no one ever used it apart from him and his friends. He and Benjy had often gone out on the river together when they were younger, but now they were away at different universities and only occasionally had time to go rowing together. They were both in York for a mutual friend’s party, and it was Benjy’s suggestion that they take the boat out on the water. At that time of year the river was deserted so early in the day, and they had the stretch between the railway bridge and Lendal Bridge to themselves. The morning mist had begun to lift as the late autumn sun broke through the clouds, leaving the air damp and fresh, but it was still freezing cold. Benjy was already regretting having persuaded his friend to go out. His gloves didn’t seem to be doing much good. He let go of his oar, one hand at a time, and wriggled his fingers. That didn’t help either.
‘I’m freezing to death,’ he called out as they reached Lendal Bridge. ‘It was a stupid idea to come out on the river.’
‘It was your idea in the first place,’ Dean pointed out.
‘Well, I’ve changed my mind. It’s no fun in this weather, and it’s going to start raining soon. I vote we go back and have a coffee or something to thaw us out before we die of hypothermia.’
‘All right,’ his friend replied, laughing. ‘If you’re going to be melodramatic about it. I’d hate to see you give up the ghost in my– Hang on. What’s that?’ He raised his oar and pointed at something floating at the edge of the water under the bridge.
‘Let’s just go back,’ Benjy repeated. ‘I’m freezing my bollocks off here.’
‘Yes, all right, but first, I want to go over and see what it is.’
‘Forget it. It’s only a log or something, trapped under the bridge. It’ll free itself in the current. And if it doesn’t, who cares?’
‘I think we should check it out. Someone could be in trouble.’ He looked round at his friend with a worried expression. ‘It looks like a body.’
‘Don’t be daft. Who the hell would want to go swimming? No one would last five minutes in the water at this time of year.’
‘I’m not saying anyone’s gone swimming, but they might have fallen in. Could be pissed. Come on, we’re going over there to take a closer look.’
They rowed towards the floating bundle, Benjy grumbling all the way. At last Dean leaned over the side to inspect the floating object and yelled out in alarm.
‘What?’ Benjy asked, intrigued in spite of his freezing fingers which were beginning to really hurt. ‘What is it?’
‘I was right. It’s a body. Bloody hell. Someone has fallen in. I can’t see his face but he’s not moving. Hello! Hello! Can you hear me?’ He poked at it with his oar and it bobbed about without responding. ‘Shit, I think he’s dead.’
Benjy said that was hardly surprising. No one could survive in that freezing water.
‘Are you sure it’s human?’ he added.
Dean nodded and said he could see it was a person, lying face down in the water.
‘You’d better call the police,’ Benjy said, snapping out of his fixation on his own discomfort.
They had left their phones in the locker at the boathouse, afraid of dropping them in the water. They now regretted what had seemed like a sensible precaution. After a hurried exchange they set off back to the boathouse. It wasn’t far, but their hands were numb, and it seemed to take forever. At last they reached the boathouse, shipped their oars and moored up as quickly as they could. A moment later Dean was calling the police, while they hurried back along the path to watch what happened. A cordon was already in place by the time Benjy and Dean neared the bridge, and a police boat roared up as they arrived. One of the officers on the bank stopped them.
‘I’m sorry, sir, I’m afraid you can’t go any further. This section of the footpath is temporarily closed to the public.’
The policeman didn’t look much older than Dean and Benjy, but he spoke with the authority of a man in uniform. Dean stepped forward officiously to explain that he wasn’t just any passerby but was, in fact, the witness who had called the police to report finding a body underneath Lendal Bridge. The young policeman nodded equably and asked him and Benjy to wait until someone was available to talk to them.
‘What happened to him?’ Benjy asked.
‘We don’t have any details yet,’ the policeman replied. ‘We’ll be bringing him out of the water shortly.’
‘Can we watch?’
‘You can’t go past the cordon,’ the policeman replied. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he added, ‘but that’s official. There’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘But we can’t see anything from here,’ Dean objected.
‘Someone will be here to question you in a moment and then you’re free to leave,’ the policeman replied, ignoring Dean’s protest.
‘We don’t want to go home,’ Dean insisted. ‘We want to see what’s going on. We found him in the first place.’
The policeman nodded at that, but didn’t reply. There appeared to be some activity on the far side of the bridge. They could hear shouts and someone calling out to ‘Be careful there,’ and ‘Just a little more and we’re clear,’ but without being able to see what was going on it was difficult to work out what was happening.
‘It sounds like they’re pulling him out of the river,’ Benjy said.
Just then, another policeman in uniform arrived. He was slightly older than the first one, and officiously echoed what his young colleague had told them. After making a note of their contact details and asking them what they had been doing before their discovery, he thanked them for their time and turned away.
‘Wait,’ Dean called out. ‘We want to know who it is – was.’
The older of the two policemen didn’t deign to reply.
The younger one gave an apologetic smile. ‘I’m afraid we can’t give out any details at this point.’
‘They obviously don’t know yet,’ Dean said.
‘Let’s leave them to get on with their job. Rather them than me,’ Benjy added, as they turned away.
‘He probably jumped off the bridge,’ Dean said.
Benjy shuddered. ‘I suppose we’ll read about it online.’
‘If it’s considered newsworthy,’ Dean replied. ‘It probably isn’t that unusual for people to throw themselves off the bridge. Just before Christmas as well.’ He sighed.
‘It’s a difficult time for a lot of people,’ his friend said.
‘Come on, let’s go out for breakfast. I’m starving,’ Dean added, cheering up.
Benjy nodded. ‘Me too.’ It had been an exhausting morning, even though they had spent most of the time standing around in the cold, waiting to be questioned.
It began to rain as they walked away, and they hurried along the path, debating where to go.
4
At lunchtime the three friends met in the canteen. They were halfway through their lunch, enjoying each other’s company and agreeing that it was ‘like old times’, when all of their phones buzzed simultaneously. They exchanged a glance.
‘Just like old times,’ Geraldine said, with a grimace
‘At least it’s not the middle of the night,’ Ariadne added.
‘Five minutes,’ Naomi told them, reading the message.
They turned their attention to their lunch, eating as quickly as they could, before they hurried off to the major incident room together. Detective Chief Inspector Binita Hewitt was already in place, waiting, as the team assembled.
‘A man’s body has been discovered caught in weeds under Lendal Bridge,’ she began straightaway, giving Geraldine a brief nod in acknowledgement of her return. This was no time for pleasantries.
‘A jumper?’ someone suggested.
‘Possibly,’ Binita replied solemnly. ‘But the initial response team have reported suspicious circumstances. We need to see what they’ve got for us.’
Leaving the police station shortly after the meeting ended, Ariadne drove Geraldine down to the river, parking near Lendal Bridge. On the way, Ariadne enquired after Tom. Geraldine gave an appropriate response. She couldn’t explain that she was trying to distance herself from her baby so she could concentrate on the crime scene. She trusted the childminder to do her job; she had to focus on her own. It was hard to believe how swiftly she had been able to switch from one mindset to another, as easily as flipping a switch. With luck they would solve this case quickly, leaving her free to think about her child once more. In the meantime, the investigation had to be her priority.
‘Faster,’ she said, switching on the siren, and grumbling about their speed as Ariadne accelerated for a moment only to hit the brakes again.
‘We won’t get there any quicker by trying to barge our way through the traffic,’ Ariadne said.
‘I know, it’s just that we need to get there before they move the body.’
‘Actually we don’t,’ Ariadne muttered.
As a rule, Ariadne was content to leave it to scene of crime officers and the medical officer on duty to determine what had happened at a crime scene, but whenever possible Geraldine insisted on viewing murder victims before they were moved. Observing the victim in situ could sometimes leave her with a sense of what might have happened, as though a kind of atmosphere hovered in the air around the scene. Many of her colleagues, including Ariadne, dismissed such speculation as irrational, but there was no doubt Geraldine’s hunches often proved correct.
It was early afternoon when they set off. The sky was overcast and a cold wind was blowing through the trees that bordered the river, making their sparse leaves flutter as they clung to the branches. The forensic tent had already been erected by the time they arrived and a cordon was in place, blocking access to the path by the river. A uniformed officer had been posted at either end of that stretch of the bank to turn back cyclists and pedestrians. A lone car was parked nearby. Geraldine and Ariadne learned that the vehicle was registered to a local man named Martin Reed. The initial suspicion was that Martin had been pulled from the river, although the dead man’s identity had not yet been confirmed. Several white-suited scene of crime officers were walking carefully over the muddy ground, examining footprints, taking photographs and marking potential evidence.
‘It looks as though he drove himself here when it was dark, and slipped and fell in the river,’ Ariadne said, adding that he might have thrown himself in.
It had been raining during the night, making the path slippery; it was reasonable to suppose the death had been accidental.
‘So what are we doing here?’ Geraldine asked, gazing around. ‘It looks as though he fell in by accident, or jumped.’
‘It’s not that simple,’ the officer leading the scene of crime team replied, coming forward and introducing himself. ‘It’s true the victim ended up in the river, but he didn’t drown and he didn’t freeze to death either, although both looked likely before we got him out.’ He paused and screwed up his eyes against the wind before adding that the victim had been shot before he entered the water.
‘Shot?’ Geraldine repeated in surprise.
‘Someone wanted to make sure he was dead,’ Ariadne muttered.
‘He was killed by a shot to the head at close range. Whoever did that wasn’t taking any chances. The entry and exit wounds are both within his hairline, so it’s possible his killer was hoping we would assume he fell in the water and drowned by accident.’
‘Someone hasn’t been watching enough CSI,’ another scene of crime officer quipped. ‘Anyone who watches crime on the telly knows there are obvious signs when someone’s drowned.’
‘And it’s not difficult to tell when someone’s shot,’ Geraldine added drily.
‘You’re welcome to take a look,’ the first scene of crime officer said solemnly, ignoring the flippant exchange. ‘The doctor’s gone, but his report won’t be very illuminating. That’s to say, he’ll just confirm what I already told you, that the man was fatally wounded by a gunshot to the head, and his body was then thrown in the water. It looks like the killer brought a cushion along to muffle the sound of the shot. We found it further up the bank. It’s been taken away for examination.’
‘How long after he was shot did he end up in the river?’ Geraldine asked.
The scene of crime officer shrugged. ‘You’ll have to wait for the report for a more detailed timeline. All we know is that he was dead before he hit the water, and he may have come here in his own car. There’s a vehicle nearby registered to a local man, Martin Reed. Whether or not he was driving, or came here alone, is something for the forensic team to look into. They’re checking the car now, but chances are they won’t be able to tell you much until they take it away for a closer examination. There’s not much more to say for now.’ Swearing about the weather, he turned away to speak to a colleague.
After they both pulled on protective shoe covers, Ariadne went over to talk to the officers studying the car, while Geraldine put on full protective clothing and made her way along the common approach path to the tent. The seeming confusion outside gave way to an atmosphere of quiet and orderly activity inside. Like their colleagues outside on the path, the scene of crime officers in the forensic tent were scrutinising the ground, studying footprints that were faintly visible under the bright lights inside the tent, and collecting samples of earth and other detritus scattered on the muddy grass.
In the middle of the tent, the mound of a man’s body was clearly visible. Geraldine approached as closely as she was allowed, and stared down at him. The dead man was lying on his back. Under the glare of brilliant electric lighting, she could see the thick dark grey hair on the top of his head was streaked with sludge. Through dirty crimson stains on his temples, tiny threads of white hair showed up like tapeworms. His open eyes bulged, blighting his otherwise handsome features. There were none of the usual visible signs of drowning, such as froth at the nostrils or around the mouth. The lips were stretched open in a semblance of a grin, and the tongue appeared swollen. The man’s skin was pale and wrinkled, signs of maceration.
‘Do we have a time of death?’ Geraldine enquired.
The nearest scene of crime officer shrugged. ‘Last night some time,’ she replied. ‘The doc thought any time from after midnight. She said it wasn’t—’
‘I know, I know,’ Geraldine interrupted her. ‘It’s impossible to give an exact time, or even an approximation of it, because the body’s been immersed in water for hours, not to mention exposed to all manner of muck and pollution.’
Her colleague’s eyes creased in a smile above her mask.
‘Well, he’s dead anyway, so it makes no difference to him,’ she said.
‘But knowing when he died could help us find out who killed him,’ Geraldine replied, more for herself than the scene of crime officer who had already turned back to her work.
5
The following day, Geraldine went to the morgue to find out as much as she could about the man who had been shot. She had often worked with the pathologist, Jonah Hetherington, and was pleased to learn that he was conducting the post mortem. His assistant, Avril, was happy to see her again. She was not the kind of girl Geraldine would naturally have befriended. For nearly a year before Geraldine’s maternity leave, Avril’s main topic of conversation had been her wedding plans, a topic which didn’t interest Geraldine in the slightest. All the same, over the years they had become cordial acquaintances, if not exactly friends, in addition to being colleagues. Avril was keen to hear about Tom, and even more eager to talk about her own marriage which had taken place while Geraldine had been on maternity leave. Avril chatted happily about her party, and Geraldine duly admired the pictures of her dress and her venue and her exotic honeymoon. In return, Avril wanted to see a photo of Tom.
‘He’s just a baby,’ Geraldine laughed, but Avril insisted.
‘He’s so cute!’ she gushed, when Geraldine finally took a small photo out of her wallet. ‘Are you planning on getting married?’ Avril went on. ‘You know I can give you lots of tips, and I can recommend the venue and the caterer we used. They get booked up so you’ll need to plan way ahead, but by the time it happens, you’ll be able to dress Tom as a page boy in a cute little outfit. Anyway, the point is, it all went really well for us in the end, so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. You can ask me anything and I don’t mind if you do the same as us. Quite the opposite, in fact. It would be brilliant for us to see it all as guests. You know I would have invited you and Ian, if you hadn’t just had Tom.’
‘We’ve got no plans to get married just yet,’ Geraldine interrupted her firmly. ‘It’s not long since Ian and his first wife divorced, and I don’t think he’s too keen on having another wedding.’
Avril stared earnestly at her. ‘He can’t let one bad experience scar him for life. That’s hardly fair on you. What about what you want?’
Geraldine shook her head. ‘Honestly, it’s not something we’ve ever discussed. There just never seems to be time to think about it, and I can’t say I’m that bothered.’ She didn’t add that with so many marriages failing, wedding celebrations had always struck her as a waste of money. ‘But I appreciate your offer of advice,’ she added kindly. ‘I know you just want to help. If we ever decide to tie the knot, I’ll be sure to take you up on your offer. And now, I’d better get on. Work to do.’
