Nick Oldham - Fighting for the Dead

‘Not hungry.’ She blew her nose. ‘Couldn’t eat anything. Need a brew, though.’ She smiled feebly at him. ‘Thanks for being here.’

‘Least I could do — how about that brew, then?’ He picked up the kettle and filled it from the tap in the small loo at the back of the shop. As he plugged it in and switched it on, he said, ‘Had a bit of an adventure myself in your absence.’

‘Oh?’

‘Heaved a dead body out of the river.’

‘You what?’ she gasped.

Flynn told her his tale and included how he’d helped himself to a new wardrobe from the chandlery afterwards to replace his soaking wet clothes.

When he’d finished, Diane said, ‘Who was she?’

He shrugged. ‘Cops didn’t tell me anything.’

‘Probably Jennifer Sunderland.’

‘Who?’

‘Jennifer Sunderland… she went missing a few days ago. It was in the local paper and on the radio… it was thought she might have slipped into the river.’

‘Did you know her?’

‘Phh… sort of vaguely. Colin knew her husband. He did a bit of driving for him when he retired from the police, and we bought this place from him. But I wouldn’t say I knew her — or him, really.’

‘Oh,’ Flynn said absently. When he glanced into the tea jar he found it empty, neither was there any coffee or milk. And the kettle had just boiled.

‘Sorry — a bit scatterbrained at the moment,’ Diane said.

‘I’ll get some supplies from the shop across the way.’

‘OK — then I’ll try and show you how the shop works — even though you’ve already found your way around the clothing department.’

Operating with one good eye, Henry cautiously drove his Mercedes from the mortuary car park to the police garage at Lancaster nick and parked in the already overcrowded premises. He didn’t want to leave his car unattended in the hospital grounds, which had a poor record for car crime. He was also a touch reluctant to leave it in the police garage, where the cars were jammed tightly together and there was every chance a police motorbike would topple over and cause extensive damage. It was the lesser of two evils.

Ralph Barlow waited impatiently for him in the CID Astra. Henry dropped in alongside him, already regretting his decision to go AWOL from the hospital without getting his face X-rayed. It had swollen up even more and was bruising nicely purple now, throbbing like a pump, sending out pulses of agony. Definitely a cheekbone broken.

Now he was suffering. The adrenaline that had flooded his system at the time of the incident had dissipated and all he wanted to do was place his head on a soft pillow. But no. He’d been too keen, didn’t want to miss anything even though he knew he could easily have let the DI deal with Harry Sunderland, which he was more than capable of doing.

But Henry had an insatiable desire to witness people’s reactions to bad news first hand. He believed it was an intrinsic part of being a detective to judge how people dealt with things and the only way to do that properly was to deliver the news personally, watch, read, assess and feel. Especially in this case, as there was clearly not something right with the situation.

From what he’d skim-read on the MFH file, Jennifer Sunderland had gone out for a walk, as she often did, apparently, down to the bottom of her garden and along the banks of the River Lune. It had been a bad night weather-wise, so the theory went that she must have slipped and gone into the fast-flowing, deep water… with something in her possession that two armed men wanted.

Henry was therefore looking forward to seeing Harry Sunderland’s reaction to the news of her death confirmed. That was purely from a professional point of view. Not because he enjoyed delivering death messages. In fact that was an aspect of the job he had never been comfortable with. He had done it many times during his police service, but more frequently as an SIO, since it usually fell to the senior investigator to deliver the message because, sometimes, it would be to the actual murderer.

He touched his face gingerly.

‘You OK, boss?’ Barlow asked. ‘It looks really bad. Let me take you back to X-ray.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ Henry shook his head. ‘I need to see Harry Sunderland’s reaction… then you can take me back and I’ll throw myself on the mercy of the nurses.’

‘They don’t like people disappearing on them.’

‘I know.’

Barlow pulled away from the police station and eased the CID car into the traffic gridlock that was Lancaster’s one-way system.

‘Where are we going?’

Barlow said, ‘To Sunderland’s haulage depot out at Slyne. He’s most likely to be there. If not we’ll go to his house… you sure you don’t want me to ring ahead, Henry? Tell him we’re coming?’

‘No. I want to see his unprepared reaction.’

‘You think it’s more than a simple drowning accident?’

‘I’m making no assumptions — but you know the score: always think murder, then you don’t make a tit of yourself.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘I like to see the whites of their eyes.’

Barlow skipped from lane to lane to make progress through the city. Soon they were heading across Greyhound Bridge, which spanned the River Lune, taking westbound traffic out of Lancaster towards Morecambe. Henry’s one eye got a good view of the river as he looked across to St George’s Quay and south down the river itself, under Carlisle Bridge, which was just a footbridge. At that moment the river was fairly low, but ebbing quickly, and he thought of the terrifying vortex of a journey Jennifer Sunderland must have had in the river. If she had fallen in at the Crook o’ Lune, where her house was — maybe a mile and a half north of Greyhound Bridge — she had been dragged and dumped five miles away at Glasson on the estuary.

‘I wonder at what point she gave up struggling and accepted her fate,’ Henry mused out loud. She could have gone a long way, gasping and fighting, hoping to get snagged on an overhanging branch or washed up on the bank. Henry was reasonably familiar with the general geography of this area — as he was for most of Lancashire — and knew she had passed under seven bridges, including an aqueduct, and over a weir. She had been on a hell of a journey. ‘Unless she was unconscious before she went in,’ he added. ‘Or maybe she didn’t struggle at all. Maybe she just jumped in and killed herself intentionally.’

Barlow filtered across more lanes of traffic and picked up the A6 to head north out of Lancaster. He did not reply to Henry’s first stabs at forming a hypothesis.

Flynn trailed Diane around the shop, both of them with a mug of tea in hand. She showed him the ropes, literally and metaphorically, of how the chandlery operated. From how to use the till and credit/debit-card machine, to how items were priced, how stock was recorded and even how to bag up goods for customers, how to smile, make small talk, make them feel important, all that customer focus stuff.

He was amazed at how much stock there was and the value of it, running to tens of thousands of pounds. Upstairs there was a large storage room that was once a bedroom, jam-packed with boxes and crates, plus an upstairs toilet and shower, but they didn’t go up there.

He let her chatter on and could tell she was enjoying being distracted from the main issue in her life, which would very soon return to the forefront when she went back to the hospital.

After this introduction and the opportunity to deal with a couple of customers, they sat at the back of the shop with new brews.

‘I never asked how you are,’ Diane said. ‘I mean, pulling a body out of the river, for goodness’ sake.’

Flynn blew out his cheeks. ‘Not really bothered,’ he said. ‘Done it before a few times — y’know, back in the day, as they say,’ he spoke wistfully. ‘I’ve even hooked my fair share of bodies out of the Atlantic… boat people from Africa, you know. Thousands come ashore in the Canaries… and hundreds don’t make it.’