Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

One of the police officers, the one who remained dry, stayed with the corpse. The other, saturated and chilled, walked to where they had parked the area car. He called Friargate police station, requested the police surgeon and CID attendance. He added that the death was probably suspicious, if only because middle-aged, middle-class women do not walk along canal towpaths alone at night. They just don’t.

When, thirty minutes later, the police surgeon arrived, he noticed a blue-and-white police tape around the body, which by then lay under a black plastic sheet. He noted a member of the public being told firmly but politely that he couldn’t walk along the canal despite the fact that he did that each morning. The police surgeon approached the tape, knelt by the body, lifted the plastic sheet, and let it fall reverently back in place as the member of the public turned and walked sullenly away.

‘I can confirm life extinct.’ The police surgeon stood. ‘At nine-ten a.m.’

‘Nine-ten a.m., sir?’ the police constable repeated and noted in his notebook. He glanced up and noted two figures walking towards them along the towpath. ‘CID here now, sir.’

‘Good…I think they’ll be needed.’ He turned and glanced and nodded at the approaching figures, one a white male, the other a black female. Both tall, both slim, walking easily in each other’s company, occasionally rubbing shoulders; two people who like each other. ‘Dr Truelove,’ he said when the officers were close enough.

‘DCs Pharoah and Markov.’ The woman spoke. ‘I’m Pharoah.’

‘We haven’t met. Not local, are you, by your accent?’

‘St Kitts, via Stoke Newington, London.’ Carmen Pharoah smiled.

‘Pleased to meet you. Well, to the matter in hand.’ Truelove turned to the body. ‘I think you’ll be needing a pathologist. The police constable who phoned it in was correct to assume suspicious circumstances. She didn’t drown, you see. I can tell that virtually at a glance. Eyes closed, you see. She was either unconscious or deceased before she entered the water. But that’s really the territory of the Home Office pathologist, not I.’

‘I see,’ Carmen Pharoah said. ‘Pathologist, as you say.’

‘I’ve pronounced life extinct at nine-ten, this day. It’s really up to the pathologist now.’

‘Wonder where she came into the canal?’ Carmen Pharoah said, more to herself than anyone around her. ‘No sign of a struggle here that I can see.’

‘Up there.’ The constable spoke. He pointed along the canal, away from the locks, towards Hull and the coast. ‘She would have drifted down overnight. Canals have currents, like rivers.’

‘I didn’t know that.’ Markov spoke.

‘It’s true, sir.’ The police constable spoke confidently. ‘All canals are the same. They benefit from rainwater which runs off the land into the canal, but each canal has a river or a stream or a lake close to the highest point and they flow down from there. This part of the canal drains into the Ouse at York.’ He turned. ‘In that direction. So she would have drifted down from the opposite direction until she reached the locks, where she was caught.’

‘Makes sense.’ Markov nodded. ‘We’ll take a walk up there.’ Carmen Pharoah pressed the Send button on her radio and called Friargate police station, requesting the pathologist and the mortuary van. She and Markov walked eastwards along the towpath in the opposite direction of the current. As she walked, she had to concede that this really was a very, very attractive part of England, lush fields and a flat landscape. She thought that she might settle here after all. She knew that she couldn’t go back to London…horror of horrors…the commuting…and while St Kitts would always be ‘home’, to return there was not an option. But York, and North Yorkshire…an ancient city… affordable housing…vast skies produced by a flat landscape.

There are worse places.

Every few hundred yards along the York and Hull canal, as with all British canals, there are stone ramps which lead from the towpath into the water, the ramps being inclined towards each other with a gap of about six feet between them. Their purpose was to enable a horse to be recovered from the canal, so that should a horse that was pulling a barge slip into the canal, it could be unhitched from the barge and worked along the canal, through the water, until a ramp was reached where it could easily walk back up to the towpath, and be returned and rehitched to the barge. Diesel engines have rendered such ramps redundant, but they remain, and the six-foot gap between each ramp tends to be a collection point for floating debris. It was between two such ramps that Simon Markov noticed a handbag, black leather, floating among the plastic bags and bottles. He knelt down and fished it out of the water.

The handbag, by its contents, belonged to one Sadie Winner. The driving licence in that name gave an address of Dovecote Cottage, Lesser Listlea, North Yorkshire.

‘I wonder what sort of car she drove?’ Markov pondered. ‘She wasn’t without money. Lesser Listlea is a wealthy village, it’s not far from here…and this handbag alone…’

‘She drove a Beemer,’ said Carmen Pharoah.

Markov smiled at her. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Ah…’ Pharoah grinned. ‘And I also know the colour. It’s silver. German racing silver, as you’d expect of a BMW’

‘How -?’

‘Because it’s there.’ She pointed to a road bridge over the canal about fifty yards away. The car was not fully visible, just the roof, but sufficient to be able to identify it. A BMW in German racing silver. Stationary, where a car would not be parked.

Markov placed the handbag in the self-sealing production bag and he and Carmen Pharoah walked yet further along the canal, to the bridge, to the steps from the towpath to the road. They examined the car. The doors were not locked, the keys were still in the ignition.

‘The only reason this is still here is that its location was not known to the car thieves,’ Markov said softly, more to himself than to Carmen Pharoah. ‘So, did she fall or was she pushed?’

‘Oh, pushed, I expect,’ Pharoah replied matter-of-factly, but with tongue in cheek.

‘I expect so as well.’ He reached for his radio and pressed the Send button. He reported the location of the car and its possible relevance to the incident, requesting a constable and a roll of blue and white police tape. ‘She didn’t commit suicide… The police surgeon believes that she was not breathing when she went into the water. It’s not a suicide spot anyway… So if she was attacked, the attacker had no interest in her possessions…the motive wasn’t robbery. Her handbag, her jewellery say so.’

‘Didn’t want the car, either,’ added Pharoah. ‘He or she or they had to have had a personal motive, unless it was a random attack.’

‘It’s not the place for a random attack,’ Markov said. ‘On the one hand it’s isolated, but on the other, there’s quite a lot of traffic down the road. My money is on a personal motive.’

Leaving a constable on duty by the BMW which had blue and white police tape fastened round it, Markov and Pharoah drove to Dovecote Cottage, Lesser Listlea. They found that Dovecote Cottage was a cottage in the same sense that the chapel at Kings College, Cambridge, is a ‘chapel’ despite being as large as a small cathedral; and in the same sense that York is a city despite the fact that in terms of its area, it could fit within the confines of a housing estate in a major city. Dovecote Cottage revealed itself to be a half-timbered Elizabethan manor house, built in an L shape in front of a gravelled courtyard in the middle of which stood a stone fountain belonging to a later, possibly Victorian era… So thought Markov as he slowed the car to a halt beside the Bentley which stood near the front door. The door of the house opened as Markov and Pharoah stepped out of their car.