Ann Cleeves: The Sleeping and the Dead

© 2001

She had the lake to herself. She wasn’t given to fancies, but on a morning like this she knew the water was what she was born for. The water, then her and the canoe. Like they were one creature, one of the strange animals out of the myths they’d had to read when they were at school. But she wasn’t half horse. She was half boat.

The spray deck was fastened so tightly round her waist that every movement she made with her upper body was reflected in the canoe, and if she capsized her legs would stay quite dry. Not that there was any chance of that today. The sun was already burning off the last of the mist and the lake was flat. There were mirror images of mountains all the way up the valley. The blades of her paddle sliced sharply through the water, pushing her back towards the shore.

The water level must have dropped again because the row of staithes, which had only recently appeared running out from the beach, seemed more prominent. She turned the canoe towards them, partly out of curiosity, partly to put off the moment of her return to the school. The figure floated just under the surface, moving gently. From a distance she’d thought it a piece of polythene. She tilted the paddle so one blade was submerged and pushed against the pressure of the water to stop the canoe. Still interested. Not scared. Waiting for the silt to clear. Then she found she was shaking and held on to the wooden post with her free hand to steady herself. It was as if she’d stumbled into a bad horror movie. The corpse swaying below her was white, like a wax, witchcraft effigy.

Peter Porteous walked to work. It was still a novelty. He liked it all, the overgrown hedges, birdsong, cow muck not dog muck on the road. Having made the decision to walk, he walked every day. Whatever the weather. Even in this heat. He was a man of routine. On the edge of the town he went into the newsagent’s by the bridge to buy the Independent . He checked the time on the church clock. In the office he would drink a mug of decaffeinated coffee and begin to sift through the overnight reports before meeting his team at the ten o’clock briefing. And at the briefing he knew there would be nothing to cause anxiety. Cranford was a small town. The team covered a huge geographical area, but there was seldom the sense of being swamped by uncontrollable events which he had experienced in his previous post. That was why he had transferred to Cranford and that was why he would enjoy it. He knew colleagues who functioned better under pressure but he hated panic and chaos. Stress scared him. He had designed his working life to avoid it.

He was waiting for the kettle to boil for his coffee when the telephone rang.

‘Porteous.’ He continued to make neat, pithy notes in the margin of the report on his desk.

‘We’ve got a body, sir.’

He took a breath. ‘Where?’

‘In the lake. Only visible now because the water’s so low. It was found by an instructor at the Adventure Centre.’

‘Natural causes then?’

‘Unlikely, sir.’

‘Why?’

‘It was tied to an anchor. Weighed down.’

‘So.’ The kettle clicked off. Still holding the phone he poured water on to coffee granules. ‘Murder.’

There was a brief silence. Perhaps the sergeant was expecting a rush of orders. Instructions and queries fired one after another. None came. Instead Porteous asked calmly, ‘Any identification?’

‘Can’t even tell the sex. It looks as if it’s been there some time.’

‘No rush then. They haven’t done anything daft like trying to lift it from the water?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Tell them to leave everything as it is. Are you clear? Exactly. I want the pathologist there. I seem to remember that water has a preservative effect. Once the corpse is lifted from the lake it’ll start to decompose very quickly. Make sure they understand.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘Get hold of Eddie Stout. Tell him I’ll meet him there. And Sergeant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll need a car.’

Before leaving his office Peter Porteous drank his coffee and finished reading the report on his desk.

The town had its back turned to the lake, was separated from it by a small hill and a forestry plantation. There were no views. Many of the older residents could remember the valley before it was flooded to create a vast reservoir and still disapproved. They had quite enough water. In the hills it never stopped raining. Let the city dwellers fend for themselves.

The road to the lake was signposted Cranwell Village and showed a No Through Road symbol. Beneath it was a brown tourist sign which said Cranford Water Adventure Centre. Cranwell Village was a scattering of houses on either side of the single-track road. There was a church and a pub and a country-house hotel where, the month before, Porteous had briefly attended a colleague’s engagement party. Then there was a bend in the road and a sudden, startling expanse of water, this morning dazzling in the sunlight. The lake had a circumference of thirty miles. The valley twisted, so although Porteous could see across the water to the opposite bank, each end of the reservoir was invisible. The lane ended in a car park, with a grassed area to one side and a couple of picnic tables. There was a noticeboard with a map showing a series of walks and nature trails. A gravel track followed the lake a little further north to the Adventure Centre, a wooden building of Scandinavian design, surrounded by trees. Porteous parked by the noticeboard and studied it before walking up the track.

Detective Sergeant Stout had arrived before him. His car was parked in one of the residents’ marked spaces next to the building. He wore, as he always did, a suit and a tie, and looked out of place in the clearing, surrounded by trees, with pine needles underfoot. An officious garden gnome. Next to him stood a fit, middle-aged man in shorts, a black T-shirt with the Adventure Centre logo on the front in scarlet, and the rubber sandals used by climbers. Porteous always treated Stout carefully. The older man had been expected to get the promotion which had brought Porteous to the team. He was well liked but too close to retirement now to move further.

‘Thank you for getting here so quickly, Eddie.’ As soon as the words were spoken he thought they sounded sychophantic, insincere. Stout only nodded. ‘Perhaps you could introduce us.’

Stout nodded again. He was a small, squat man with the knack of speaking without appearing to move his mouth. He would have made a brilliant ventriloquist, though Porteous had never passed on the compliment. ‘This is Daniel Duncan. He’s director of the Adventure Centre. One of his instructors found the body.’

Porteous held out his hand. Duncan took it reluctantly.

‘Perhaps I could talk to him,’ Porteous said.

‘Her,’ Duncan said. ‘Helen Blake. She’s a bit upset.’

‘We should give her a few minutes then. Is there anything we can see from the shore?’

From where they were standing the view of the lake was obscured by trees. Duncan led them along a path to the back of the building, to a dinghy park, where there were half a dozen Mirror dinghies and a rack of canoes. A concrete slipway sloped gently into the water. He walked very quickly, bouncing away from them on the balls of his feet, as if he hoped the matter could be dealt with immediately.

‘This is the last thing we need,’ he said crossly. ‘We’ve only been going three years and this is the first season we’ve shown any profit.’