A Dark and Twisted Tide Read online

  Lacey drew closer, telling herself there was nothing to be afraid of. She’d yet to see a body pulled from the river. Despite her two months with the Marine Unit, despite the Thames’s record of presenting its caretakers with at least a body a week in payment of dues, she’d either been off-duty or otherwise occupied when bodies had been retrieved.

  She knew, though, from a briefing talk in her first week, that the Thames wasn’t like still water, where a body usually sank and then floated to the surface after several days. The currents and tides of the river swept a corpse along until it got caught on an obstruction and was revealed at low tide. There were sites along the Thames that were notorious body traps, that the Marine Unit always searched first when someone went missing. Bodies that went into the river were usually found quite quickly and their condition was predictable.

  After two or three days, the hands and face would swell as internal gases began to accumulate. After five or six days, the skin would begin the process of separation from the body. Fingernails and hair would disappear after a week to ten days. Then there was the impact of marine life. Fish, shellfish, insects, even birds that could reach the corpse would all leave their mark. The eyes and the lips would usually be the first to go, giving the face a startling, monstrous appearance. Whole chunks of the body could be ripped away by boat propellers or hard obstacles in the water. Floaters were never good news.

  Very close now. The figure in the water seemed to bounce in anticipation. I’m here. Been waiting for you. Come and get me.

  Not a recent drowning, that much was clear. There was very little flesh left on the face: a few soggy pink clumps of muscle stretching along the right cheekbone, a little more around the chin and neck. Lots of bite marks. And the river’s flora, too, had staked its claim. The few remaining patches of flesh were attracting a greenish growth where some sort of river moss, or weed, had taken root.

  Small facial bones, hair still attached to the head, weed that seemed to be growing from the left eye socket. And clothes, although these were usually lost in the river. Except not clothes exactly, but something that seemed to have been wrapped round the body and was now coming loose, trailing towards her, like the long hair. The corpse seemed to be reaching out towards Lacey. Even the arms were outstretched, fingers clutching.

  Telling herself to get a grip, that she had a job to do, that a dead body couldn’t hurt her, Lacey began treading water. She had to check that the corpse was secure, and if not make it so, then get out of the water and call it in. In a pocket of her wetsuit she always carried a slim torch. She found it, swallowed down the rising panic, told herself that sometimes you just had to bloody well get on with it, and went under.

  Nothing. Utter blackness that even the torch’s beam couldn’t penetrate. Then a swirling mass of greens and browns, light and shadow. Complete confusion.

  And the sounds of the water were so much more intense down here. Up above, the river splashed, gurgled and swished, but beneath, the sounds suggested pouring, draining, sloshing. Beneath the surface, the river sounded alive.

  Weird, alien shapes appeared to loom towards her. The black, shell-encrusted wood of the pillar. Something brushing her face. Mouth clamped tight – she was not going to scream. Where was the body? There. Arms flailing, clothes stretching out. Lacey ran the torch up and down the suspended figure. The river surged and the corpse was completely submerged. Now its eyeless sockets seemed to be staring directly at her. Christ almighty, as if her nightmares weren’t bad enough already.

  Don’t think, just do it. Point the torch. Find out what’s holding it still.

  There! One of the strips of fabric was wrapped tight around the pile, anchoring the body in place. It looked secure.

  Lacey broke the surface with air still in her lungs and looked past the corpse to the bank. No beach – the tide was too high – but she had to get out of the water. The landing stage above her was largely intact, but too high to reach. Her only chance would be to clamber up on to one of the cross-beams until help arrived. A few yards away there was one that looked solid enough.

  She struck out towards it, checking back every couple of seconds to make sure the corpse hadn’t moved. It held its position in the water, but seemed to have twisted round to watch her swim away.

  The cross-beam would hold for a while. Out of the water, Lacey shrugged off the harness she wore round her shoulders. In a waterproof pouch that lay in the small of her back was her mobile phone; Ray insisted she carry it with her.

  He answered quickly. ‘You all right, love?’

  Lacey’s eyes hadn’t left the trail of fabric streaming out from the pier. As the waves rose and fell, she caught glimpses of the woman’s round, moon-like skull.

  ‘Lacey, what’s up?’

  No one was close, but she still felt the need to speak quietly. ‘I found a body, Ray. By the old King’s Wharf. Fastened round the landing stage.’

  ‘You out of the water? You safe?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m out. And the tide’s turned. I’m fine.’

  ‘Body secure?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  He was gone. Ray had worked for the Marine Unit years ago and knew the significance of a body in the water. Like Lacey, he and his wife lived on a boat moored in Deptford Creek, a nearby tributary. Ten minutes was an under-estimate; he couldn’t possibly reach her in fewer than twenty. In the meantime, she had to stay warm.

  Easier said than done, wedged between two beams of wood and with the water splashing over her ankles every few seconds. The UK was two weeks into one of the longest heatwaves on record, but it was still early and the sun hadn’t reached the south bank yet.

  Below, the water sloshed around the piles, creating mini whirlpools. The dead woman appeared to be dancing, the waves bouncing her playfully, the fabric flying out around her like swirling skirts.

  ‘Hey!’

  Lacey almost collapsed in relief. She’d had no idea how tense she’d been. Ray must have flown to get here so— Steady! She felt the beam beneath her give a fraction.

  And Ray was nowhere in sight. No small, busy engine chugging its way towards her, no wrinkled old boatman frowning into the sun. Yet, for a split second, the sense of another’s presence had been overwhelming. She was sure she’d heard him shout to her.

  Lacey stretched up. The embankment was empty. She could hear cars, but at a distance. No sounds of bike wheels or jogging footsteps. There was traffic on the river, but nothing even remotely close.

  There he was, at last, coming towards her as fast as his twenty-horsepower engine would take him.

  She took the painter he held out and secured the boat before climbing down.

  ‘Put these on.’ He threw a bag her way. ‘There’s a patrol boat up by Limehouse. They’ll be here right away. Now, we will not be talking about swimming. You and I were out on the river in my boat when you spotted the body.’

  Lacey nodded as she peeled off her wetsuit and hid her wet gear in the bag. Swimming in the tidal section of the river was a byelaw offence. Even if you weren’t a member of the Marine Unit.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Ray asked, as the police launch approached.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said.

  The master of the vessel was a young sergeant called Scott Buckle. He looked over at Lacey and waved.

  ‘Part of the job,’ Ray told her in an undertone. ‘Won’t be the last you pull out.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s a greedy river. People get distracted, a bit careless. It won’t give them a second chance.’

  Almost a year ago, the river had given her a second chance. It had let her go, which was possibly why she didn’t fear it now. ‘This wasn’t the river.’ She watched her colleagues prod the corpse with boathooks. ‘And they’ll not get it with those. It’s fastened tight around the pile.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Ray told her. ‘No way would you know that unless you’d stuck your head under. Please tell me you didn
’t do that.’

  ‘She didn’t go in accidentally,’ Lacey said. ‘She’s wrapped up tight like a mummy.’

  Ray sighed. ‘Jeez, Lacey. How do you do it?’

  3

  The Swimmer

  IN THE SHADOWS, the other swimmer kept perfectly still. Sunlight couldn’t reach all the way in here, but the glinting boats with their head-splitting engines sometimes came dangerously close. And they had lights, those men who believed the river was their own. Powerful, searching beams that could find anyone, even in the darkest corner. So keep still, low in the water, eyes down, that was the way. They’d think your head was weed on wood, your arm a broken branch stripped raw by the water and bleached pale by the sun.

  Anya had been found. The swimmer could see her now, shroud trailing out into the water, searching for an escape that was a lost hope. Soon more boats would come. They would lift her from the river, expose her poor, ravaged body to the sunlight, prod her, poke her with their fingers and their tools and their eyes.

  The woman who swam as though she’d been born in the water was being helped on to one of the bigger boats. They lifted her easily. She looked tiny and slender, despite how strong and fast she was in the river. The breeze caught her hair, already drying in the sun, and it flew out behind her like a bright flag. The men would take her away, too. They thought she was one of them, after all. They had no idea how many secrets she kept from them.

  The woman with the bright hair turned and, for a moment, seemed to look directly at the swimmer. It had been close just now. For a moment, only chance had prevented the two of them from coming face to face.

  It was all a matter of chance, really. Sometimes it worked in your favour, sometimes it didn’t. Given more time – days, even hours – the water would have undressed Anya, the tide and the current left their mark and she would have become just another victim of the river. If the bright-haired woman hadn’t swum this morning, Anya probably wouldn’t have been found while her story could still be told.

  It all came down to chance. And chance would take it forward. Because if Anya spoke to them, they’d find the others too.

  4

  Dana

  ‘TELL ME SOMETHING. The fifteen-year-old who thinks getting pregnant might inject some meaning into the grubby, state-subsidized existence that passes for a life. Whose permission does she need to reproduce? Or the crack addict, taking it up the arse to fund the stuff that gets more riddled with poison every time? Who signs the form that says she can have a baby?’

  Dana closed her eyes, as if by doing so she could drown out the sound of her partner’s voice. It was over then. No baby, after all. Helen had always had a problem with authority (ironic really, given that she’d made her career in a field that demanded it) and medical authority was the hardest for her to stomach. One of her favourite rants was about the arrogance of the medical profession. She just didn’t usually do it in front of them.

  Dana opened her eyes and looked at her watch. She’d make the ten o’clock briefing after all. She should have known it would end like this. Well, being thrown out of a fertility clinic would be a new experience.

  ‘We have no powers to determine who out of the general population can or cannot reproduce,’ said the consultant, who was also the medical director of the clinic. Trust Helen. If you were going to piss someone off, you might as well start at the top. He was a tall, thin man in his sixties, with large, dark-blue eyes and heavy, black eyebrows. His hair, still thick and slightly too long, was black speckled with grey. The name on his office door read Alexander Christakos.

  Christakos’s office was directly on the river and the window behind him looked out at the honey and ivory stone, the arched river frontage and the gulls’-egg-blue roof of Old Billingsgate Fish Market. It was a conference centre now, a venue for huge and glitzy events, but in the old days, from this room, you’d have been able to smell the fish.

  His voice had just the trace of an accent, but not one that Dana could place. ‘You and I could debate the merits of that for some time,’ he was saying to Helen, as though it were just the two of them in the room. ‘What I do know is that children conceived using donor gametes, and especially those brought up in single-sex households, will have specific issues to deal with as they grow up. It would be irresponsible for us, and for you, to ignore this.’

  Out on the river, a Marine Unit launch was passing in front of the Billingsgate building. In the room, Christakos still had the floor.

  ‘A number of issues concern us,’ he was saying – and fair play to him for keeping Helen quiet for as long as he had. ‘First, the extent to which you’ve thought through the impact that an unusual conception and upbringing will have on a child. And then of course . . .’

  This was their first appointment. Helen had flown down from Dundee, where she worked and lived most of the time, so that they could present a united front. They’d sat in the waiting room with several heterosexual couples, the women flicking eagerly through the clinic’s literature as though the secret to fertility might be found on a glossy sheet of paper, the men fidgety and embarrassed, looking everywhere but into the eyes of another person.

  ‘Our philosophy here is that parenting is about love, not biology.’ Christakos was determined not to be outdone by a gobby lesbian before suggesting they try elsewhere. Dana could almost have admired him if he weren’t about to break her heart. Another police launch heading downstream at speed. She was going to kill Helen.

  ‘Time, commitment, patience, generosity, even humour are important, but love is at the top of the list. Also, a healthy degree of selfishness helps. The patients we accept here very much want to be parents. Now, there is no doubt in my mind that Miss Tulloch wants to be a mother. The question is, do you?’

  She didn’t, thought Dana, that was the problem. Helen could live her life childless and never feel there was anything missing. She’d only been going along with this for Dana’s sake. She’d walk out of here, shrug philosophically and say that at least they’d tried. She’d move on, expect Dana to do the same, and Dana really wasn’t sure she could. She wondered how long their relationship would survive, now that Helen had denied her this.

  ‘The truth is I never thought about children,’ Helen was admitting now, because Helen didn’t know how to lie. Outside, Dana watched a plane move slowly across the sky.

  ‘This is something Dana wants.’ As Dana’s thoughts drifted, the sound of Helen’s voice was fading. ‘But I want Dana on any terms. And to pick up on your point about love, if this baby is Dana in miniature, how can I do anything other than adore it?’

  Dana’s mobile vibrated in her pocket. No reason not to look at it really. Well, that certainly explained the excitement she’d just witnessed on the river. But how . . .? Never mind, she’d deal with it at the station.

  The other two had finished spatting. Christakos was on his feet, offering to shake hands. It would be rude not to, and it wasn’t as if she could blame him. It had been Helen’s fault.

  Dana left the room first, walking ahead along the corridor, wondering how she was going to talk to Helen without screaming at her. You couldn’t do it, could you? You just couldn’t keep your mouth shut?

  ‘We hadn’t really thought about the ethnic thing, had we?’ Helen paused to let Dana step out of the lift first.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you remember him saying that Indian donors are very rare? We’ll almost certainly not find one. Perhaps we can just look for dark hair, dark skin tones. I’d like it to look like you if possible.’

  ‘The Marine Unit have pulled a body out of the river,’ said Dana. ‘Doesn’t appear to be an accidental death. They’re taking it to Wapping. Oh, and guess who found it?’

  Helen was looking at her watch now. ‘I’ll be home about six. Look, I may not be able to make the big appointment. Are you OK with that? Me not being there for the conception? I feel as though I should be, it’s just . . .’

  They passed reception and went out th
rough the heavy glass door. As they left the air conditioning behind, the heat hit them.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Dana. Helen was looking smart this morning, even by her standards. She was tall and athletic, and always looked good in well-cut trouser suits. Her long blonde hair was swept into a bun at the nape of her neck. She was wearing jewellery, even make-up. The meeting she was rushing off to was obviously important. Much more so than the one she’d just been in.

  ‘Dana, were you listening to anything in there?’ Helen sidestepped to let an office worker carrying a tray of coffee get around them.

  ‘Not really,’ Dana admitted. ‘I tuned out when you went off on one.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought so. OK, I have to go now, so focus for a second. Your period started last Friday, is that right? That means you have to start using the ovulation kit roughly a week today. They’ll want to book you in for a scan the first cycle, just to make sure everything’s doing what it should.’

  Helen had stepped into the road in front of a black cab. She handed Dana a large brown envelope. ‘The forms for GP notification and the confidentiality waivers are in here – you need to get them sent off today. Also, the guidance notes on selecting a donor. I do want to be involved in that, because there is no way I want my son or daughter to be ginger.’

  Dana was facing directly into the sun now. She blinked. ‘He signed the forms?’

  Helen was in the cab, about to close the door. ‘Of course he signed the bloody forms! We’ll be awesome parents. Love you.’

  The door slammed shut and the cab sped back towards the bridge. Dana realized she had no idea where Helen was going. She’d been completely mysterious about the reason for her trip down, other than the visit to the clinic. And now she was on her own, in the middle of a London street, with some vague idea that there was somewhere she needed to be, when all she could think about was that, in the last few minutes, her life had changed completely.