Tania Carver: The Creeper

‘What d’you think?’ asked Phil. ‘You’ve got a better idea than us. Is it her?’

Rose Martin straightened up. Keeping her eyes on the body she nodded. ‘I think so. Yes, I think this is Julie Miller.’

Phil nodded. Looked at the body again.

Definitely no time for personal stuff now.

Phil looked at the other three, all of them sweating inside their blue paper suits. He was aware what they must look like standing there, hoods up, feet and hands covered. A twenty-first century gathering of druids at a contemporary sacrificial altar.

‘Clearly not natural causes, then,’ said Fenwick, trying for a feeble joke.

No one laughed.

‘Her heart stopped,’ said Mickey Philips, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, ‘how natural d’you want?’

Phil turned to his new DS, the comment leading him to believe the man had regained his cocky composure after the vomiting incident. But the look in his eyes said something different. His words had been a genuine response to Fenwick’s weak joke. There was nothing funny or flippant about them. Phil began to warm to him a little.

‘Phil,’ said Fenwick, making a stab at some kind of authority, ‘I’d like you heading up the team for this case.’

Phil nodded.

‘And I think it would be a good idea if Rose, DS Martin, that is, joined your team. She’s had nearly a week working on this already. Knows the lay of the land.’

The lay of the land , thought Phil. King Cliché rides again.

‘OK.’ Normally Phil liked to choose his own team members, make sure he could trust them, but he could see the sense in Fenwick’s words.

‘Good. I’ll handle the media and leave you to it. You report directly to both me and the Super in Chelmsford as per usual.’

‘What about the media? We going public with this?’

Fenwick frowned. ‘Let’s get a definite confirmation before we release any names. Don’t want to jump the gun, do we?’

Jump the gun. ‘Of course not.’

‘Good. Well, I’ll leave you to it.’

Fenwick turned and moved away. As he did so, Phil noticed that his hand lingered on the small of Rose Martin’s back for a few seconds longer than it should have done.

‘Right,’ Phil said and made introductions. ‘Looks like you’re my team on this one. We may get Anni back but we can’t count on that so let’s get cracking. Gather.’

Phil always had his team group at the site of an incident, pool thoughts, ideas.

‘Before we do anything else, let’s see what this scene tells us. What’s important here?’

‘You mean was she placed here deliberately, that kind of thing?’ Rose Martin frowned as she said it.

‘That kind of thing, yes,’ said Phil. He looked again at the body. ‘Her head’s facing towards the front end of the boat-’

‘Bow,’ said Mickey Philips. Phil looked at him. The DS blushed. ‘Front end. Bow. My old man. Used to take me sailing.’

Phil surprised himself and smiled. ‘Really?’

Mickey shrugged. ‘Yeah. Hated it. Always threw up.’ He gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘No change there.’

‘Concentrate,’ said Phil. They did so. ‘So her head is at the bow, her body in a straight line towards the cabin and the light tower. Her legs are apart.’ He looked at the other two. ‘Is that deliberate? Did whoever did this want us to find her like that? Or is it just accidental, the way it turned out?’

‘Looks deliberate to me,’ said Rose. ‘I mean, the body could just have been dumped and left. He took the time to arrange her, place her like that.’

Mickey pointed to the wooden deck. ‘There’s the scuff marks. Could they be from who ever left her here?’

‘Could be,’ said Phil. ‘Might have taken a while to get her the way he wanted her. There’s blood on the floor too, smudged where he’s moved her.’

‘Just one bloke, boss? Or d’you think there was more than one?’

Phil shrugged. ‘Hard to say. She doesn’t look that big. One guy would have struggled, two could have handled her easily.’

‘Killers working in tandem?’ said Rose. ‘Rapist-killers?’

‘We don’t know she’s been raped yet, Rose.’

‘It’s a fair assumption,’ said Mickey, pointing at her mutilated vagina, swallowing hard.

‘Sexually motivated, you think?’ said Phil.

Rose looked around the boat. ‘Legs apart with a huge tower of light between them? That’s Freud for Beginners, isn’t it?’

‘It looks that way but let’s not jump to conclusions. Wait till Nick Lines has his say. What we do know is she wasn’t killed here. Not enough blood. But she was left here for a reason.’

‘Her flat,’ said Rose.

Phil looked at her, waited.

She pointed over the river to the apartment blocks. ‘She lived there. In one of those flats. In fact, I think you can see this ship from her window.’

Phil felt a familiar tingle inside him. Information was coalescing, forming patterns. He didn’t know what it meant but he was sure it was significant. He nodded. ‘Deliberate, then.’

‘And I think it’s safe to say he hates women,’ said Rose, trying not to look at the carving on the body’s forehead.

‘I’d say that was a given.’ Phil looked at his watch. ‘CSI on the way?’ Phil hated saying that. But since the TV franchise had conquered the world the department insisted.

Rose nodded. ‘Ben called them on the way here.’

Ben , thought Phil.

‘Probably stopped for an ice cream,’ said Mickey Philips, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his gloved hand.

Phil ignored him.

‘No one touch anything,’ Phil said then looked pointedly at his DS. ‘No sweat and certainly no more vomit. Let’s get this crime scene sealed off.’

The three of them left the boat as the uniforms stepped in and did their job. The roads were cordoned off, blue and white tape stretched across all access routes, traffic stopped down the road and turned back. The CSIs would assume the largest possible area for a crime scene then circle inwards, blue-suited birds of prey, narrowing their scope of reference down to just the body. Then, using their painstaking, occult sciences, hopefully recreate the path it took to reach there. And, more importantly, tell Phil and his team who put it there. And maybe even how to catch them.

There was a man sitting on a wood and concrete bench in front of an urban regeneration mural. Middle-aged and balding, in a blue polo shirt with an exercise-free stomach spilling over the complaining waistband of work trousers. He looked visibly shaken. A uniformed officer who had been sitting with him stood up, crossed towards Phil.

‘That the guy who phoned it in?’ said Phil.

She nodded.

‘Made a statement?’

She nodded. ‘Came to open the garage as usual. Saw some seagulls – an unusual amount, he said – congregating on the deck of the boat. Crossed over to shoo them away, saw the body.’

‘He see anything else? Hear anything? Vans? People acting suspiciously?’

She looked down the length of the quay. ‘You know what some of these firms are like down here, boss. If it wasn’t for suspicious characters they’d have gone out of business long ago.’

Phil sighed. ‘Point taken. But take him through it again. You never know, something might trigger a memory. Thanks.’

The officer nodded, turned her attention back to the seated man. Phil turned back to the boat. He couldn’t see the body for the lip of the boat’s side but he knew it was there.

Mickey Philips came and stood alongside him, his eyes as focused as Phil’s, his hood pulled down. The departure of Phil’s previous DS had been traumatic, murdered in the course of work, an act which had devastated the whole team. He knew Mickey Philips was aware of that, knew his attempts at humour, however misplaced, his strained bonhomie, were just his way of trying to fit in.