Murder at the Flood Read online

  Someone calls to him as he lumbers close by the side of the inn. He has no spare breath with which to respond; he raises a hand, but of course the gesture is unseen. The cry was not one for help; it sounded more like “good luck”.

  *

  Fortune, however, is not necessary in order to find Bassenthwaite Lake – and with the leeward shoreline close by his port side the conditions are his ally. There are few waves to speak of, and the strengthening south-westerly lends him an extra oar. However, as he pulls around the inundated wooded mangrove that is normally Banks Point his fingers are crossed. In dry weather the outflow beneath Ouse Bridge can be impassable owing to inadequate depth – but now he faces a diametrically opposed difficulty. As the Derwent resumes its identity after four miles subsumed beneath the lake, its level is already threatening the crowns of the twin arches. Skelgill can hear the rush of water, the slurp as the reconstituted river is sucked beneath the stonework. He ships his oars and extracts his baton torch from his bag. He is trying to judge whether there is sufficient headroom – when fate takes over. Too late for him to grab the oars and backwater, the undercurrent gets a subtle grip. With a sudden surge he is swept into the downturned mouth of the nearest arch. All he can do is double over and grab the gunwales – thinking he should have worn his climbing helmet – but it is for a mere second that he is consumed by the monstrous roaring larynx – it coughs him out and sends him spinning down the Derwent.

  The ten-mile stretch of river from Ouse Bridge to Cockermouth is a popular trip for paddlers, as canoeists like to call themselves. Under regular conditions it has the lowest of difficulty grades, and is classed as ‘easy touring’. But take the most rain that has ever been recorded to fall on this part of Cumbria in a single day, and set forth in a clinker-built rowing boat designed as much for spacious practical occupancy as manoeuvrability, and the grade zooms off the scale. Not to mention pitch darkness, a howling gale, and a river that now extends well beyond its banks into neighbouring fields – with attendant submerged obstacles, walls, barbed wire fences, trees and outbuildings. But then there is Skelgill. Like some ancient Viking raider high on Amanita – the blood of his Norse forebears coursing hot in his veins – he abandons himself to the river god. Over the sounds of the storm comes deranged laughter; it beats fear.

  Using his oars as rudders and gut feel for a compass he finds the line of fastest flow – and goes with it. A small voice in his head tells him he ought to be timing this – for he is probably about to set a new record. For sure it could have taken him longer by road, even if a clear route were available. It had occurred to him to row across the flood and climb the embankment at Peel Wyke. He could flag down a passing vehicle and hitch a lift to Cockermouth. But that would have left him short of the one most precious commodity that he could bring to the besieged town: his boat. So now, like a river rapids joyrider at some great outdoor theme park, he lets the Derwent do its work. It is a first for him to navigate these waters, but down the years he has fished most of its favoured pools (and not always by invitation or permit – though he is on nodding terms with its bailiffs). And now he keeps track of his progress by counting the meanders – there are twenty-five swings of direction, Isel Bridge with its three arches roughly halfway – here a little more clearance, while it lasts. Of course there is no scenery to enjoy – he inhabits a lonely cone of light that expands from his head torch, a capsule defined by silver tracers of rain and sprays of white spume from the river.

  *

  An unsettling spectacle greets Skelgill as he approaches Cockermouth – if black nothingness can be a spectacle. The little town’s lights are out. What he knows to be the castle towering above the river is no castle at all – maybe just a darker shade of night – but it could be his imagination at play. What is not imagined is the sound of the Cocker. Above the sporadic plunk and plop of the water around him comes a persistent rush, like the distant wash of the sea yet close at hand. It is the bloated tributary surging into the swollen Derwent. And he must breach this turbulent interface – for his goal lies directly ashore. He employs his oars in opposition to flip the boat onto the diagonal – then rows as if his life depends upon it, cursing between gritted teeth, using up the first four letters of his A-to-Z of swear words (‘e’ always being something of a stumbling block, unless the euphemism ‘effing’ is admitted). As he escapes the current he snatches a glance over his right shoulder; and his head torch reveals the horrible truth of the disaster that has befallen Cockermouth. The adjacent terrace of old riverside properties – agonisingly named Waterloo Street – is under eight feet of water.

  Skelgill skirts alongside the buildings; there is slack water as the main flow of the Cocker is deflected out into the Derwent. He is at eye level with the sills of bedroom windows – no immediate signs of occupancy here, and surely wise residents of these most at-risk properties were first to evacuate. He paddles along until he reaches what must be the recess of a submerged back yard. He glides into the little harbour – the first proper respite for forty minutes, no current to speak of here – then he spies a flicker of candlelight from a gap in partially closed curtains. He knew it!

  He allows the prow to scrape against the harled wall of the house, and stretches to wrap the painter around a cast-iron downpipe. He ties a half hitch and clambers back from the bow to the centre of the boat. He raps several times in quick succession on the window.

  Almost immediately a spectral face appears – wraithlike, and angry, like some spirit summoned in contravention of their strictest dying wish. It is a woman – very old, her features gaunt and lined, her tangle of grey hair a great unkempt bird’s nest; a beak of a nose, pale watchful eyes seeking prey. Aged 88, it is his mother’s eldest sister, Mary Ann Graham.

  Skelgill realises she is dazzled by his head torch – though she seems more riled than distressed by this state of affairs. He tugs it off and at arm’s length directs the beam into his own face. The window opens.

  ‘Our Daniel. What’s thoo efter noo?’

  Skelgill cannot suppress an ironic laugh.

  ‘Want owt fetched from the chippy, Annie?’

  There is the tiniest twinkle in her eye. She seems entirely unperturbed by her predicament.

  ‘Yer daft ha’porth. Divvent bother theessen.’

  ‘You can’t sit this one out, Annie. There’s above a foot of rain fallen on the Honister. And listen to it – it’s still stotting down. This is not the end of it, by a long chalk.’

  The old lady makes a disapproving face – but it is one that acknowledges his point. After all, this is an eye-to-eye conversation conducted between a bedroom and a boat.

  ‘I’m reet int’ middle o’ Coronation Street.’

  Skelgill scowls. How can she be watching television?

  ‘There’s no power.’

  Now she grins, somewhat toothlessly, and produces from out of sight an iPad, the image on its screen paused mid-scene. Skelgill shakes his head.

  ‘Come on Annie – I’d get the sack if they found out I’d left you here. And what would me Ma say to that?’

  This appeal to her clan loyalty seems to do the trick. She reaches and passes him the electronic tablet for safekeeping. Then – before he can lend a proper hand – she is up on a chair and backing out through the window. He guides her into the boat as best he can – though she is sprightly and needs little help. He directs her to sit on the thwart at the stern. She is wearing a long thick tweed coat over a quilted nightgown – it will keep her warm enough but not dry for long. Skelgill fumbles in the bottom boards – he produces and unfurls a fishing umbrella, which she understands she should shelter beneath. He is just about to untie the painter, when she reproaches him sternly.

  ‘Mind there’s Gerald.’

  ‘Gerald?’

  Skelgill is perplexed. Gerald – Gerald Tyson from Whitehaven – was Annie Graham’s husband, who by legend perished three decades ago when an ash tree he was illegally felling spontaneously shed a great bough upon
him. (Never park your ass under an ash, has been an unofficial family motto ever since.) Does Aunt Annie mean he should rescue an urn of ashes that sits on the mantelpiece? The mantelpiece downstairs?

  But Skelgill’s exclamation of “Gerald” has a reciprocal effect – and from the open window emanates a melancholic yap. A dog!

  Skelgill clambers across and leans into the casement. He scans methodically, from left to right with the beam of his head torch. He sees a bed piled with blankets, a nightstand stacked with provisions – pints of milk, packets of biscuits, several candles, tins of dog food – and an empty dog’s basket on the foot of the bed. Annie Graham was adequately prepared; he ponders for a moment. To all intents and purposes two generations apart from his, she hails from an era that did not know central heating or inside toilets – an event like this does not rob her of entitled home comforts. Moreover, most inside toilets hereabouts are probably regurgitating the contents of the sewers this very minute.

  A second yap – more of an attention-seeking yip – breaks his reverie. He looks down. Beside an enamel chamber pot, gazing up at him expectantly is a young Rough-Coated Patterdale Terrier.

  ‘Aye – Gerald.’

  It might be just a whippersnapper, but there’s no keeping a good Patterdale down – and this it demonstrates by springing from its sitting position into his arms and almost disappearing over his shoulder. Thankfully Skelgill gets sufficient a grip on its hindquarters to prevent a second Gerald catastrophe. He pulls shut the window and passes the wriggling creature to his aunt. Swiftly now, he casts off.

  ‘Right Annie – let’s see if Bridge Street’s fit for boating.’

  2. THE LONELY CLOUD – Monday

  ‘Cor blimey, Guv – how you can do it, beats me.’

  Skelgill, a habitual tea drinker, slurps at his third or fourth black coffee of the morning. However he assumes his subordinate refers to his night’s exploits, and not his concomitant need for caffeine. He raps his knuckles against the café window, in reference to the general direction of the flooded town centre.

  ‘It’s only water, Leyton.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say, Guv – you’ve grown up fishing and whatnot – all these lakes and rivers – it comes natural to you. First time my old man took us down the Thames – we’d never seen anything like it. Next thing I’d fallen in and was floating away. Only survived ’cause I was a fat little devil back in the day. Some old geezer jumped in and hooked me out. Like a drowned rat off’ve one of the ships in Millwall Dock, I was.’

  Skelgill is squinting with some scepticism at his colleague. His sergeant’s build remains substantially more suited for survival in cold water than his own spare frame.

  ‘Can you swim, Leyton?’

  ‘I passed the entry test, Guv.’

  ‘That’s a different question.’

  DS Leyton squirms uncomfortably.

  ‘I’ve lost the habit, Guv. The thought of water makes me feel queer – going on it, let alone in it.’ He runs the fingers of one hand through his mop of dark hair. ‘Don’t get me wrong – we’ve got the nippers at lessons an’ all that. And the missus is a good swimmer – school champion she was. I stick close to her.’

  Skelgill nods but now he becomes possessed by an epic yawn.

  ‘Hadn’t you better get some kip, Guv? By all accounts you’ve put in a sterling shift.’

  Skelgill shrugs and leans against the window for a better look at the sky, powder blue with the odd wisp of cirrus. The weather is cruelly benign. It is a day for a bracing winter’s walk, or a cycle – except that outside the town and across the county the lanes are blocked by rock and mudslides and collapsed walls and tidal pools, bridges are down or deemed unsafe. And here in the town – or at least a good part of its commercial hub – access is closed off to all but emergency services.

  A ghost town would be a more apt description, and spectral hallucinations invade Skelgill’s mind as he suffers waves of impending sleep, scenarios that are black and cold as death, of fearful grey faces of elderly residents, extracted painfully from their homes in the most severely inundated area, a block bounded by Main Street, High Sand Lane, Waterloo Street and Bridge Street. After depositing his aunt and her canine companion Gerald into safekeeping Skelgill had joined up with a combined Mountain Rescue/RNLI operation. He soon became the kingpin – not through force of personality, or his police rank – but through a peculiar happenstance. One of the many shops to have its plate glass windows pushed in by the rising tide was Knit-Wit – whose stock of five thousands balls of wool dispersed into the floodwater. Enough yarn to stretch to Paris and back unravelled and became strung between submerged lampposts and road signs and trees and benches and bins like a great spring abundance of unbreakable toad spawn. It continually clogged the propellers of the two RNLI inflatables.

  Thus Skelgill and his seemingly indefatigable oars became the go-to boatman for all deep-water rescues, where wading alongside the lifeboats became treacherous. It could take half an hour to coax and lift an elderly or disabled person into the craft, all the time the risk of a terrible outcome, were they to pitch or panic and flail about and fall overboard – sudden immersion in water at a temperature of just 39 degrees Fahrenheit invites cold shock response, and rapid death through vasoconstriction and subsequent heart failure. And this same existential threat faced the brave rescuers. Even those trained as specialist swift water rescue technicians – if swept away unseen – might have ten minutes at most while their muscles could perform useful work, before the body protectively cut off blood flow; then another twenty of consciousness. And so his troubled features are engraved with a record of this longest of nights; the bone-chilling cold, the soaking squalls, the accidental jag of a blinding flashlight, the constant fear of the strengthening current as the Cocker increasingly diverted through the old town; the mute resignation of its inhabitants.

  It is into Skelgill’s distracted consciousness that a voice now penetrates; it is soft, angelic, ethereal.

  ‘Danny?’

  Skelgill does not respond immediately. Few people outside the family call him by his Christian name, and hardly anyone by this particular diminutive; one that he discourages for reasons best known to himself. The voice could be a figment of his delirium.

  ‘Danny – it is you?’

  Skelgill slowly draws his gaze away from the window. Beside their table stands a woman of above average height and about his age – mid-to-late thirties perhaps – she beams engagingly, showing even white teeth. Her appearance is striking –– most notably long strawberry blonde hair braided into beaded cornrows, and an outfit of faded cut-off denim shorts teamed with striped lilac and navy over-the-knee socks and a matching crop-top, revealing tanned flesh at the intended intervals. Her lithe form carries off the Bohemian ensemble – which, on reflection, befits the proprietor of The Lonely Cloud Café – and the discerning observer would recognise it complements the décor and style of the little emporium. In the couple of seconds that it takes Skelgill to make contact with her inquisitive blue eyes she flashes a smile at DS Leyton, who responds with a quick forced grin that conveys his innocence in this matter, whatever it may be.

  ‘It’s me – Rhiannon.’

  She widens her stance as if to invite inspection. Though her underlying accent is British, there is an Antipodean inflection.

  Skelgill leans back and considers her through narrowed eyes, disoriented like a man woken by bright sunbeams shining through curtains suddenly cast asunder.

  ‘Aye – happen it is.’

  DS Leyton is watching with a small amount of trepidation. He can see that the colour has returned to his superior’s complexion – indeed there is a distinct blush around his prominent cheekbones, and Skelgill shifts uneasily in his chair, conscious of his unbecoming attire, scarred and stained by the night’s exertions. In turn, the woman is plainly assessing Skelgill’s reaction – she appears amused, but in equal measure there is compassion in her eyes – and, when she might be ex
pected to extend what promises to be a revealing personal exchange, she leapfrogs to the prosaic.

  ‘I’m so late this morning. I had a forty-five minute detour to get here. Luckily both of the girls live this side of the river. They tell me you fellas have been at it all night.’ She casts a glance about the café – there must be another dozen emergency services personnel recovering, like Skelgill. ‘Heroes one and all – so they’re saying on the news.’

  Skelgill lowers his gaze and sinks deeper into his seat. DS Leyton, seeing this uncharacteristic response – and perhaps not wishing to share in any unwarranted acclaim – is prompted to make a little intervention. He chuckles self-effacingly and in his movements he affects incompetence.

  ‘Not all of us, girl – as you can see I’m just sitting here, all dry and comfy in me civvies.’

  The woman looks sympathetically at DS Leyton, and then she nods by way of introduction – it prompts him to bow his head and for a moment there is an awkward silence – until Skelgill interjects.

  ‘This is Leyton.’

  She offers a hand and makes a slight curtsey.

  ‘G’day, Leighton. Any friend of Danny’s.’

  She seems entertained by the cliché – but she senses that both men are feeling cornered and she indicates with spread arms their respective mugs on the table top.

  ‘Can I get you fellas a refill?’

  Skelgill rather ponderously checks his wristwatch.

  ‘The RSPCA are expecting me – they’ve made a list of likely stranded pets – from the owners who’ve been evacuated to the community centre.’ He looks up to see she is regarding him quizzically, and he adds an explanation. ‘I’ve got a boat.’

  ‘They’ll be calling you Noah.’

  Her retort is quick, and there is a mischievous glint in her eye – but before the exchange can evolve an older woman’s voice, somewhat gruff – one of her ‘girls’ – calls from the kitchen at the rear – it is a council officer on the telephone. The manageress acknowledges with a wave of a hand. As she begins to back away she addresses Skelgill directly.