Simon Beckett - The Restless Dead

Even so, I knew we’d been lucky. If the tide had been coming in rather than going out this could have been a very different story. Watching Trask with his daughter I felt relieved for them both, but there was also a keen ache as I was reminded of my own loss.

But I couldn’t afford to let myself be distracted. Forcibly pushing the thoughts aside, I examined the barbed wire more closely. The creek here was partially dammed by a sandbank, forming a pool that looked deep enough to retain water even at low tide. Only a few strands of barbed wire broke the surface, disturbed by the girl’s struggles. Ordinarily it would be completely submerged, and it made me angry to think that some idiot had dumped it here.

Trask grimaced with effort as he groped below the water.

‘Good girl. Only one more,’ he told his daughter. He gave me a glance. ‘Get ready to pull the wire away.’

His shoulders tensed, and the young girl yelled in pain. Then Trask was lifting her out, water dripping from them as he straightened. The wire was heavier than I’d expected, moving slowly as I dragged it clear so Trask could carry his daughter up the muddy bank. Fay was sobbing, clinging to her father as he murmured reassurances. She was shivering and bleeding, but none of her wounds seemed serious. Thank God, I thought, letting go of the wire.

But then she stared past me and her eyes widened in shock. I looked back to see a disturbance in the middle of the creek. The water swirled as though a huge fish was turning underneath, and then something broke the surface.

Caught on the barbed wire, the body emerged slowly into the air, arms and legs hanging like a broken puppet. As Fay’s screams rang out, a pale head turned empty eye sockets to the sky.

Then, as though retreating from the daylight, it sank down again and the water closed over it once more.

The black-headed gull had found something. It stood with its head cocked, eye levelled at the mud, then stabbed down with its beak. There was a brief, uneven tug of war before the bird plucked a small brown crab from the creek bed. The crab’s legs wriggled as it was dropped on its back, the instinct to survive continuing even in the last moments of life. Then the yellow beak came down again, tearing at the vulnerable underbelly, and the crab became another part of the food chain.

I looked away as the gull went about its meal. Beside me on the bank, Lundy stared down at the waterlogged torso suspended on the barbed wire.

‘So this is what you call keeping a low profile, is it?’

It was said without any real heat. But we both knew this was different from when I’d found the training shoe.

This changed everything.

The body was strung out on the barbed wire like so much dirty washing. The water level in the creek hadn’t yet dropped enough to expose all of it, but from the waist up the torso was now revealed in all its decaying glory. Police officers and CSIs stood around in coveralls on the bank, waiting for the water to sink low enough for the unenviable task of recovery to begin. At least the tide meant there was no need for police divers: by the time they could have got here the creek would have drained enough not to need them.

Right now, though, it seemed like a long wait.

I’d gone back to Creek House after Trask and I had freed his daughter from the barbed wire. There was no point in staying with the body until the police arrived. For one thing it had sunk under the water again; it wouldn’t be going anywhere. For another, I needed to change out of my wet clothes. I’d only just shaken off one chill after standing around soaking wet, and I’d pushed my luck enough as it was.

I steered the boat while Trask huddled with his daughter. The sight of them together made me feel more of an outsider than ever, and stirred something that was uncomfortably like envy. Although Fay was older than my own daughter had been when she’d died, she was still younger than Alice would be now. The realization lay heavily on me as the boat droned along the creek.

Telling myself it was probably cold and fatigue talking, I focused on more immediate problems. We couldn’t do much for Fay’s wounds out there, but although she’d need stitches none of the cuts looked deep enough to have caused serious blood loss. More worrying was the risk of infection from the contaminated water. A decomposing corpse was host to all manner of bacteria, some of them potentially deadly. I’d received shots for most of them because of my work, and I was on antibiotics anyway. But the girl would need a full course of inoculations, and so would her father. We’d both gashed our hands on the barbed wire, and Trask’s cuts were much worse than mine.

Still, I didn’t think there was any great danger. They hadn’t come into direct contact with the body, and the creek’s saline waters were kept fresh by the constantly flowing tides. The most immediate threat to Fay was shock and hypothermia. Although the water temperature wasn’t as low as it could have been, we were only just coming into spring and it was still cold. I’d given Trask my dry jacket to wrap her in, but other than that there wasn’t much I could do. Except one, small thing.

Trask had looked stunned, his face bloodless as I started the engine and set us back on course for the house, keeping to the deeper water in the middle of the creek. He said nothing, but it wasn’t hard to guess what he was thinking.

He jerked, startled, when I touched his shoulder to get his attention. ‘It was male,’ I told him quietly. ‘OK? It was male.’

He seemed to sag, then made a visible effort to pull himself together. Giving a nod, he hugged his daughter to him while I opened up the motor and sent the boat roaring back down the creek.

I hoped I’d done the right thing.

The truth was that it was impossible to guess the corpse’s gender, and certainly not from the brief glimpse I’d had. Under normal circumstances I would never have committed myself like that. But the young girl needed her father, and Trask looked like a man close to the edge. Small wonder. Only two days ago the body of his wife’s suspected killer had been found. That was enough for anyone to deal with without having to agonize over whether we’d just found his missing wife’s remains as well.

And so I’d spoken as a doctor rather than a forensic anthropologist. If I was right, then it would spare the family days of tortured waiting. If I was wrong... well, I’d made mistakes before, and for worse reasons.

Back at the house, I’d called Lundy to let him know what had happened and agreed to meet him out at the creek. With Trask’s hands badly cut from the barbed wire, Jamie had driven his father and sister to hospital. I’d changed into dry clothes from my bag and patched up my own cuts as best I could. My jacket was no longer needed — Fay had been wrapped in a blanket — but it was wet and muddy. Leaving it there, I’d accepted Rachel’s offer of an old one of Trask’s, and also a pair of wellingtons to replace my waterlogged boots. The melancholy that had gripped me on the way back had faded now I had something to do. All things considered, physically at least I didn’t feel too bad. A little shaky, but that was more adrenalin than anything else. When I found out that Rachel was taking the injured dog to an emergency vet, I asked her to drop me off as close as possible to the stretch of creek where we’d seen the body.

It was easier reaching the place on foot than I’d thought. The road crossed a small bridge that was only fifty yards from where Fay had been caught on the barbed wire. It made a convenient landmark for the police to assemble at, and there was also a trail of sorts — a dirt path that ran from the bridge to the creek itself. From there, it took only a few minutes to walk along the bank to the trapped pool of water where we’d seen the body.