Like This, for Ever

46




‘CHRIST, IT’S LIKE a f*cking royal visit. Don’t these people sleep? Or are they all the ruddy undead?’

Dana and Mark, in oilskins and lifejackets, were on the flybridge of the police launch as, a little over the speed limit, it emerged from the shadow of Tower Bridge and motored upstream towards Southwark. Directly in front of them, the turquoise and gold bridge had been cleared of traffic and pedestrians, but every square foot of pavement on the southern embankment seemed to have someone standing on it. Windows of the buildings that lined the river were awash with faces.

In the forty-five minutes since Peter Sweep had posted on Facebook that Oliver Kennedy was dangling from Southwark Bridge, the news had spread round London like a contagious and particularly unpleasant rash.

‘It’s sodding mental,’ the chief press officer at New Scotland Yard had told Dana ten minutes earlier when she’d spoken to him on the phone. ‘I’ve counted three broadcast crews already and more will be on their way. Just do what you have to do and let us know when you have something to give us. We’ll try and keep the feeding frenzy off your back.’

Mark had a baseball cap pulled low over his face and a scarf tied high around his neck. He’d spent his career infiltrating criminal gangs. If his face became known, even appeared once on television, that would come to a sharp end. He was risking a great deal, just by being here. In the cabin below, his uncle, Sergeant Fred Wilson, was at the helm and Neil Anderson and Susan Richmond were standing in frosty silence. As they neared the bridge, a tall man in uniform joined Dana and Mark on the flybridge. Chief Inspector David Cook was the officer in charge of the Metropolitan Police’s Marine Unit. He’d known Mark since he was a child.

‘The lad’s on a ledge about twenty feet above river level,’ he told them. ‘He’s in some sort of black bag, possibly a heavy-duty bin-liner. It’s difficult to see in the dark, but my lads have been under there already with binoculars and lights, so we know it’s there.’

‘What happened to dangling by the ankles?’ asked Mark.

‘Poetic licence on our friend’s part, thank God,’ said Dana.

‘There,’ said Cook as the boat reached the shadowed water beneath the bridge and slowed. ‘Count along four of those vertical iron struts, starting at the pillar. About twenty feet above the water.’

‘OK,’ said Mark.

‘Go directly up for about three feet, and you should just be able to make out a dark shadow. That’s it.’

The boat passed under the bridge and the three of them looked up. A dark, shapeless mass was all Dana could make out.

‘How the hell did he get it up there?’ asked Mark.

Once on the other side, Fred turned the launch towards the south bank. From overhead came the sound of a helicopter.

‘I hope to God that’s one of ours,’ said Cook, glancing up.

‘I didn’t call one,’ said Dana. ‘I think we can assume it’s not.’

‘Friggin’ circus,’ said Cook.

‘I think the question is, how did it get down there?’ Dana said to Mark. ‘David thinks it was swung on a rope and dropped from above. There might be something attached to the bag to help it snag, but basically it was touch and go whether it would catch on something or just go tumbling down into the water.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘The plan is to send a climber up to release it and lower it down to us,’ said Dana. ‘We’re just going to pick up and brief Spiderman, apparently.’

Mark did his one-eyebrow trick. ‘Who else?’ he said.

‘Spiderman’s the nickname of our best climber,’ said Cook. ‘Young officer, not been with us long. Bit of a loose cannon, just between us, but he got his name for a reason.’

‘He didn’t meet us at Wapping because no one ever knows what bed he’s going to be sleeping in,’ said Dana. ‘There’s a list of young women police officers and the team have to go through them systematically. It takes a while.’

‘He answered his mobile on the first call and he’s on his way,’ said Cook. ‘He’s a complete teetotaller so we never have to worry about calling him out. He’s the right man for the job, Dana. That’s a tricky climb, it’s dark and it’s wet. If the kid were definitely dead, we’d be taking much more time to prepare. Possibly even waiting till morning. If I send a less experienced climber up, there’s every chance he’ll slip.’

‘And you don’t want footage of one of your officers dangling in mid-air from Southwark Bridge while the world waits for us to bring down a child’s body,’ said Mark. ‘The man’s got a point, Tully.’

‘He’s arrived, Sir,’ Fred called from below. ‘He’s just kitting up.’

‘I’m rather curious to meet this bloke,’ said Mark. ‘Must get his autograph for Huck when it’s all over.’

When this was all over, they’d be transporting the body of a child exactly Huck’s age to the mortuary and she’d be on her way to tell his parents. Dana told herself to take it easy. Black humour was stock in trade for police officers. It was how they detached.

The launch reached the embankment, where another, smaller police launch was tied up. Waiting for them at the foot of the steps was a very tall, very thin man in his late twenties.

Mark had already left the flybridge. Dana watched him throw a line to a constable on the other launch and slide a fender along the hull a few inches so that the two boats could moor up together without one damaging the other. The tall constable, followed by a squatter, older man similarly dressed, stepped on to the first launch and strode across to board theirs.

In the dim cabin light, Spiderman’s hair looked black as soot and his face would have been stunningly handsome had it not been just a fraction too thin. His hands were thin too and looked twice as long as Dana’s. He blinked hard as though to drive away the last vestiges of sleep. He towered above everyone else on the boat. He had to be six foot five.

‘Have you had a look, Finn?’ asked Cook.

The young officer hitched his harness a little higher around his waist and was prevented from replying by an enormous yawn. The older man had followed him into the cabin.

‘We’ve got a line down from the ledge above,’ the older man explained to Cook, while everyone in the cabin tried not to copy the yawn. ‘We’ll fasten that to Finn before he sets off and I’ll guide it up. That’s our last resort. He’ll run a safety line up himself so that if he slips he won’t go far and should be able to sort himself out.’

‘Why would I slip, Sarge?’ asked Spiderman. ‘Did you grease it to make it extra interesting?’

Dana waited for Cook to give the young prat the dressing-down he deserved. Instead, like an indulgent uncle, Cook gave him a pat on the shoulder. ‘This is DI Tulloch,’ he said. ‘She’s in charge of the South Bank Murders investigation. Dana, Constable Finn Turner.’

‘Ma’am,’ said Turner respectfully. His eyes were a warm chestnut brown and the look he gave her was anything but respectful.

‘We need to do this as discreetly as possible,’ she said. ‘While you’re climbing, can you keep radio transmissions to an absolute minimum? Assume that everybody out there, including all the news crews, can hear you. Obviously, if you need help, or you’re stuck, then of course you have to talk to us.’

He nodded quickly in agreement. The look in his eyes said, You are kidding me, Ma’am.

‘But try not to comment at all on what you find up there. If it is Oliver Kennedy, I want his parents to know first and I want them to know from me.’

‘Of course,’ he said and she couldn’t help feeling she amused him.

‘I think we’re all set,’ said the line-access sergeant from the doorway. ‘Jim will take you across on the other boat, Finn. Give me a minute to get up top.’

Turner yawned again, raising his arms above his head. The roof wasn’t nearly high enough for him to stretch out fully. ‘Showtime,’ he said, and followed his sergeant from the cabin.

Dana, Mark, Cook, Anderson and Richmond went on deck too and watched the two members of the line-access team cross back to the neighbouring launch. If anything the crowd on the embankment had grown. A line of constables was trying to keep the press at bay, but they started calling out questions as the line-access sergeant climbed ashore and the two launches released their lines. As Uncle Fred steered them away from the embankment, all five passengers stayed on deck.

Southwark Bridge carries the A300 across the Thames and links the City of London on the north bank with Southwark on the south. Nearly eight hundred feet long, it is constructed of stone and iron, with four wide arches spanning the river. Constable Finn Turner would have to step off the bow of the other boat on to the third stone pier from the south bank, somehow scale the ten feet or so of pillar and then climb up and across the ironwork that formed the arch. It would be damp. The stone would be slippery, the iron very cold.

Lights shone from the base of the piers, Victorian-style lanterns ran along the edge of the bridge and the apex of each arch had amber-coloured navigation lights, but Dana felt a twist of nerves all the same. The lights weren’t nearly bright enough for any of them to be confident about the climb.

When Fred judged he’d reached the middle of the river, he put the engine to idle to hold them in place. Behind them, two more police launches kept other river traffic at bay. On the downstream side of the bridge, Dana could see a couple of RIBs, Rigid Inflatable Boats, doing the same thing. She looked up. They were almost directly beneath the bag that held the body of Oliver Kennedy. The second launch, with Spiderman on board, moved slowly towards the third pier.

‘Tide’s high,’ said Mark conversationally as they waited, each holding on to the rail to balance against the rocking and pitching of the boat. ‘Moon must be full.’

‘Couple of days yet,’ said Cook. ‘But you’re right. It was nearly a metre higher than forecast at Tower Bridge an hour ago.’

‘Why didn’t he leave him on a beach this time?’ said Anderson, to no one in particular, as they watched Spiderman walk to the bow of the launch, take hold of the line his sergeant had already lowered from above and fasten it to a cleat at his waist.

‘Exactly,’ said Richmond.

The sergeant on the bridge took up the slack on the safety line and Spiderman did an elaborate stretch then a fast little jog on the deck of the boat. On the shore, cameras flashed.

‘Half of me would love to see that twat dangling in the air with his arse uppermost,’ said Mark.

‘He is a pillock,’ said Cook. ‘But he’s something else when he’s climbing. He won’t slip.’

‘This is all wrong,’ muttered Richmond to herself. ‘This is not what he does.’

‘Am I good to go?’ asked Turner over the radio.

‘Dana?’ said Cook.

Dana raised her radio. ‘Go ahead,’ she said.

Several yards away, Turner made a long-legged stride on to the stone kerb of the pier. He shuffled his feet awkwardly, slid backwards, gave a little sidestep right, then the same to the left. He moved closer to the pillar and then gazed up at what seemed to be a sheer face. He looked as if he had no idea how to start. Dana felt sick. He couldn’t do it, they were going to look like idiots in front of the whole world.

‘What the f*ck?’ said Mark, who rarely let a thought enter his head without articulating it.

‘He does this,’ said Cook. ‘He’s getting the measure of the climb. Give him a sec.’

‘Bloody theatricals, if you ask me,’ muttered Uncle Fred from the helm. ‘Here we go.’

Once he started, Spiderman didn’t climb the bridge, he danced up it. He scaled the stone pillar as though he really did have sticky feet, and once on the ironwork, his feet hardly seemed to touch one bar before leaping up to find the next. He didn’t stop for a second. If he met a tricky section, he played with it, jumping to one side, then the other, sliding down a foot or two before springing back up again. At one point his feet lost contact altogether, he released one hand and swung like a monkey, grabbing another bar and swinging his legs back up until he was suspended upside-down. Then he wriggled up through the ironwork, until he was perched, frog-like, twenty feet above them. He looked directly down into the launch and Dana could have sworn he winked at her.

From there, it was a short crawl to where the body of Oliver Kennedy lay in a black bag. Turner reached it and sat back on his haunches, as though thinking.

‘Net and a line,’ he said into his radio, a second later.

His colleagues above were ready. Immediately, a line attached to a strong net was lowered down to where the climber was waiting.

‘How will they get him down?’ asked Richmond.

‘If he can, I imagine he’ll wrap that net round him and fasten it tight,’ Anderson told her. ‘Then lower it down to us.’

‘It’s coming on here?’

‘We’ll take it back to Wapping nick to do the initial examination,’ said Anderson. ‘The boss won’t make any announcements till we’ve been able to confirm that it’s Oliver.’

Richmond ran a hand over her face. ‘I can’t believe I got it so wrong,’ she said.

‘We can’t second-guess these bastards,’ Anderson told her.

‘DI Tulloch.’ It was Turner’s voice, coming from directly above them, transmitted by the radio.

‘This is Tulloch,’ said Dana, who hadn’t taken her eyes off Turner since he’d begun his climb. He’d pulled the net around the bag and secured it.

‘Coming now,’ he said, looking directly at her. ‘Heads up, Ma’am.’

As the small, black bag with its pitiful contents was lowered from the bridge, Dana counted a dozen flashlights going off and closed her eyes. She felt Mark move her to one side and knew it was about to arrive. She heard Anderson telling Richmond to go and wait below if she wanted to and Richmond refusing to move. She heard the clink of metal that told her someone – Cook or Mark – had unfastened the line. Then the engine firing up. She opened her eyes and saw Finn Turner still watching her. He was trying to tell her something and knew he couldn’t use the radio.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Fred, hold up. Get him inside.’

‘Dana, we have to get him back to Wapping,’ said Mark.

‘Get him in the cabin,’ she repeated. Mark and Cook shared a look, but Mark crouched down and lifted the child. Before he’d even straightened up, he’d looked at her in surprise.

‘Inside,’ she repeated, her heart thundering, a voice in her head telling her something she didn’t dare listen to.

This time no one questioned her. They watched Mark leave the deck and carry the black bag into the cabin. One by one they followed.

‘David, do you have a knife?’ asked Dana.

Silently, Cook handed one over and she dropped to her knees. The bag wasn’t the glossy black she’d expected. It was dull, dirty, spattered with bird droppings. ‘We have another bag on board, don’t we?’ she asked. Now that it came to it, she was almost afraid.

‘Of course,’ said Cook.

Dana reached out and pressed the knife tip into the plastic. It was heavy duty, thicker than a normal bin-liner, but the blade sliced through it easily. She made a ten-inch cut and pulled the plastic apart. That was enough.

Inside the bag were two pillows, wrapped tightly together with tape, and a dead fox.

‘Ten-year-old boys weigh a lot more than that,’ said Mark. ‘Turner knew before he lowered it down to us. And that bag’s filthy. It’s even got some sort of weed growing on it. It wasn’t left up there tonight.’

‘I knew it, I bloody knew it,’ gasped Richmond. Out of the corner of her eye, Dana thought she saw the profiler strike Anderson on the shoulder. He, in turn, seemed to shrink as the tension left him. ‘You have no idea how glad I am to be wrong,’ he replied.

Later, Dana was to think that the sight of Susan Richmond sobbing on Neil Anderson’s shoulder was not the least surprising event of the evening.