Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

‘You need to watch it,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘They’re skanky. Hold on to the rope.’

A weed-encrusted rope had been nailed into the embankment wall. It looked just like the one I’d clung to on the night Sam Cooper had drowned. The night I almost had. I didn’t want to touch it. And I certainly wasn’t going down to that beach.

I still hadn’t looked at the river, but I could hear it, had heard it the moment I got out of the car, even above the rain. The soft play of water against wooden pier struts, the insistent, rushing hum that always seems to hover around moving water.

‘I’ll wait in the car,’ I called, but the wind had picked up and I wasn’t sure he’d heard.

‘That would defeat the object.’ He’d turned on the last step and was looking back up at me.

‘I’m not comfortable near the river,’ I said. I still hadn’t looked at it but I had a sense of it creeping closer. The tide was about to turn. If you spend enough time near a tidal watercourse like the Thames, you learn to hear the particular dip in sound it makes at low water. The whisper that says, I’m coming back . Jesus, I was getting in the car now.

‘I know that,’ said Joesbury, who’d taken a step back up. ‘Who would be? But you can’t work for the Met and be potamophobic. Come on.’

He climbed another couple of steps and grabbed my hand. Then he was pulling me down. This was the moment. The knife was in my pocket. Straight into his stomach and pull hard upwards. He’d fall to the beach and within a couple of hours the river would take him.

‘Potoma-what?’ I said, as I stepped on to the crunching, litter-strewn surface of the beach. I could feel my trainers sinking into what I hoped was damp sand but had a feeling probably wasn’t.

‘Fear of rivers,’ said Joesbury, who was dragging me towards some dark shapes a few metres away. Directly ahead and soaring above us were the protruding, futuristic spikes of the Millennium Bridge. It glowed like beaten silver in the darkness. Down on the beach we’d moved out of the reach of the streetlamp and had just the thin, moonbeam trail of Joesbury’s torch to light the way. ‘Looked it up an hour ago,’ he went on.

The dark shapes ahead had taken the form of a low pier. It looked wet, half-rotten and far from stable, and there was no way on this earth I was stepping on to it. Joesbury leaped up and I tugged my hand free. He turned back to face me.

‘My grandfather worked for the Marine Unit,’ he said. ‘Back in the early fifties when health and safety wasn’t anything like what it is now. Officers got dunked on a regular basis.’

I folded my arms. Wherever this was going, I wasn’t interested.

‘They had to be pretty good swimmers,’ Joesbury went on, ‘but even so, when they were pulled out, nearly all of them got a serious case of the potamowhatsits. So they took ’em out again, in a small, low-slung boat, just as soon as they could. Sort of like putting someone back on a horse after they’ve fallen off.’

So this was about doing me a favour? ‘I appreciate the thought,’ I said. ‘But I’d rather do it some other time.’

‘That’s what they all say,’ said Joesbury, with what I was beginning to think of as his nasty smile.

‘Please can we go back to the car?’ I tried one last time.

Joesbury inclined his head at me. ‘Do I strike you as someone who gives up easily?’

Just get it over with. I kept close to him as we set off along the pier. Across the water, the ghostly dome of St Paul’s soared above the surrounding buildings.

‘This pier disappears completely when the tide’s up,’ said Joesbury, as I realized we were walking over water. ‘The Marine Unit use it for accessing the South Bank at low tide.’

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t decide whether it was better to focus on the lights of the opposite bank and have the glimmer of the river at the edge of my vision, or keep them firmly on my feet and see the swirl of the scum through the slats of the pier. Frankly, eyes tight shut and clinging to Joesbury felt like the best idea, but I rather doubted I’d get away with it.

We’d got to within two metres of the pier’s end when Joesbury stopped. The tide was coming in fast by this stage and the wind blowing up the length of the river was helping it along. Every tiny wave seemed to creep a little closer to our feet. Joesbury put his hands on my shoulders and moved me to his left side, effectively screening me from most of the wind. A gallant enough gesture, I suppose, but I really didn’t like the way the pier rocked.

‘I’ve suggested to Dana that you interview the children tomorrow,’ he said.

As clouds crossed the sky the river shimmered from black to purple, and bright circles of ruby-red light danced across it. I glanced up. The ruby lights were being reflected from a crane just by St Paul’s.

‘What?’ I said, as his last words sunk in.

He was looking downstream towards Southwark Bridge. ‘You’re the youngest on the team,’ he said. ‘You’ll be the least threatening.’

‘Actually I wasn’t planning to go in tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I left DI Tulloch a note.’

Joesbury glanced back at me, then down at his feet. ‘Yeah, it’s in my pocket,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t seen it yet.’

I stared at him until he made eye contact again. Only for a second though. Then his eyes were back on Southwark Bridge.

‘This is no time to get an attack of the vapours, Flint,’ he said. ‘You’re needed on the team.’

He was lying. Knowing that our killer was still at large, all his old suspicions about me had come back. He’d found my note, guessed I was planning to run and was deliberately getting in the way. All this talk of getting me back in the saddle had been so much crap. He’d be watching me non-stop from now on.

I turned from him to the beach. It was covered with rocks of various sizes. All I had to do was distract him, pick one up, hold it high and then bring it down very fast. In his car, I could be in Portsmouth before midnight.

‘Here comes our lift,’ he said.

54

A POLICE MOTOR LAUNCH WAS HEADING TOWARDS US, THE waves from its bow already sweeping over the low pier. It drew up alongside us and a middle-aged, uniformed sergeant threw a rope.

‘Tide’s fast,’ he muttered to Joesbury, who’d wrapped the rope around a rusty iron cleat. The sergeant held out a large, wrinkled hand to me. ‘Up you come, love.’

I’d run out of arguments. I gave the officer my hand, looked into eyes that seemed familiar and got pulled aboard. As well as the sergeant, there were two other officers on the boat, both in a sort of raised cockpit. The boat went into reverse and, at the last moment, Joesbury slipped the line off the cleat, reached for the boat rail and swung himself on board as though he’d been doing it all his life.

We were off, heading for the centre of the river, the engine loud and the rain battling spray to see which could wet us the most. A stray wave came bouncing over the bow and its tail end caught me full in the face. I could taste salt and something bitter and oily.

‘DC Flint, I’d like you to meet Sergeant Wilson of the Marine Policing Unit,’ said Joesbury. ‘Uncle Fred, this is Lacey.’

The officer who’d helped us on board nodded to me, threw a life-jacket to Joesbury and helped me pass one over my head and adjust the waist strap. Then he gestured for us to go inside the small, windowed cabin at the front of the boat.

‘Mark tells me you need to get your river legs back,’ he said to me, when he’d closed the door and the noise of the engine had faded a little.

‘Not sure I had any in the first place,’ I replied. The cabin was surprisingly plush, with padded seats, an instrument panel and a small kitchen area. It had a faint smell of plastic and diesel fuel.