According to the police, none of his fellow homeless friends had seen him around in a long, long time. My determination to finish off Ryan meant I’d left very little time for anyone else in my life. I’d neglected Olly, and the guilt of that weighed heavy on my shoulders.
Only now did I realise that Olly had appointed me as his anchor. It’s why he’d returned to Northampton from prison, because I’d been here. Through everything he’d suffered as a teenager to his time behind bars and beyond, I had prevented him from being washed away by the tide. Ironically, he’d died in the water, and it was my fault for casting him adrift these last few months.
It turned out Olly’s body had not been very far away from me; he’d been tangled up in reeds in the River Nene, waiting for a canal boat’s hull to knock against him just hard enough to dislodge him and float him to the algae-covered surface.
He was only identifiable through his DNA, which had been matched to his criminal record. I was his listed emergency contact.
‘I still want to see his body,’ I told the police officer assigned to his case.
‘Like I said on the phone, I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mrs Morris, because of the time he has spent in the water. He has been what is known as “partially skeletonised” . . .’
‘I don’t care if it haunts me for the rest of my life. I owe him this.’
Eventually she agreed, and I was led into a small side room to gather myself until the mortuary manager had finished preparing Olly in the body-storage area. I was led into a viewing room and it struck me that it was nothing like the hi-tech, super-modern places you see on television programmes. There were no corpses stored in filing-cabinet-like fridges or neon-lit metal drawers. It was just a plain, inoffensive room with no personality, no special features and no religious artefacts. At its centre, Olly lay under a dark blue sheet on a wooden trolley. A solitary chair was placed next to it, in case it all became too much for me and I needed to sit, I assumed.
The police officer and mortuary manager remained with me and, at my insistence, the sheet was slowly folded backwards until it reached Olly’s shoulders. There were wisps of hair but no eyes, no lips and barely any facial features left. I’d assumed he’d been picked apart by fish, water rats and bacteria. All that remained were patches of thin flesh and bone.
‘How long had he been in the water?’ I asked the officer.
‘We won’t know until the post-mortem results are released, but our best guess is around a year.’
‘No, that’s not possible,’ I replied, and shook my head. ‘I was with him five, maybe six months ago, so it definitely hasn’t been as long as that.’
‘Not according to the coroner’s preliminary findings.’
‘Could his body have been preserved, perhaps, depending on where in the Nene it was found?’
‘The Nene? Who told you he was found there?’
‘You did when you called me to say his body had floated to the river’s surface.’
The police officer looked at me with a puzzled expression. ‘I think there might be some confusion here, Mrs Morris. Your friend’s body was found washed up in a cove by the beach in East Sussex.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
RYAN
The air inside the leisure centre was humid and smelled of beer and sweat, despite several sets of double doors being propped open.
The packed crowd was made up almost entirely of men cheering, groaning or hurling foul language towards two boxers standing in the centre of the ring, waiting for a man in a short-sleeved white shirt and black bow tie to make his decision.
The white-collar fights had consisted of three two-minute rounds, and were every bit as brutal as professional ones I’d watched on television. It was beyond me how the fighter in the red shorts, vest and headguard had managed to remain on his feet during the continued onslaught from his blue opponent.
Finally, the referee held up the arm of the man in blue shorts as the winner. Tattoos ran the length of the champion’s arm, but despite his bloody nose and the perspiration dripping down his face, Tony Morris was still instantly recognisable. A cheer went up when it was announced he’d won his bout. He embraced his opponent, and a pal in the audience helped remove his gloves before he made his way to the changing rooms.
I hovered in the background until he re-emerged wearing casual tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt. He gravitated towards the bar and sank several vodka and Red Bulls in quick succession before I approached him. I took a deep breath and hoped to God my instinct was right, and that he didn’t have any idea what his estranged wife and daughter were up to behind his back. I reasoned that if he had been told, he’d have accompanied them when they’d turned up at Bruce Atkinson’s office to accuse me of being a child molester.
‘Mr Morris.’
‘Yes?’ He gave me a polite smile for a second as he tried to place me. He wasn’t quite drunk yet, but he wasn’t far from it either. ‘Mr Smith?’ When he smiled, I knew he was in the dark as to the accusations against me.
‘Please, call me Ryan. I didn’t know you were a boxer.’
‘I didn’t know you were a fan.’
I hadn’t been until that afternoon, when I’d called him at work to be told by his secretary he’d left early as he had a fight that evening. I was glad. I’d rather come face to face with him in public, where there was less of a chance he’d try to kill me if he knew what his wife and daughter had said I’d done.
‘I’m pretty new to the sport,’ I replied.
‘Think you might fancy having a go at it yourself ? We get people from all walks of life here: bankers, solicitors, council workers, even teachers.’
‘I think I’d be flat on my back after the first punch. Can I get you a drink?’
‘Sure,’ he replied, and I ordered us two vodkas. We made conversation for a little longer about why he’d taken up the sport and his insurance business, and I quietly hoped he’d bring up Effie and lead me into why I was really there. When he didn’t, I knew I’d have to steer the conversation.
‘This is a bit awkward, Tony, but I need to talk to you about something.’
‘Is everything all right with Effie?’
‘Actually, it’s about your wife, Laura.’
‘My wife?’ I’d caught him off guard and he took a step back. ‘What has she done?’
His question surprised me. He didn’t ask ‘what’s wrong?’ or ‘what’s happened?’ but ‘what has she done?’, suggesting this wasn’t the first time Laura had given him cause for concern. I took a breath and tried to explain it without sounding as if I was the mad one, rather than her.
‘While volunteering at End of the Line, I believe Laura talked my wife into committing suicide.’
Tony did not seem surprised. He downed the rest of his drink and picked up his gym bag.