Murder at the Flood Read online

  ‘We were just sayin’ – that there Roger Alcock – Eric reckons he’s done a Reggie Perrin in his canoe.’

  There is a further pause while they await the incomer’s response – he obviously carries some status in their clique.

  ‘Has he heck done a Reggie Perrin – he’s dead.’

  It is not just the bald statement but also the voice that causes Skelgill to react – and he is unable to suppress a twitch which is the beginnings of him swinging around to get a look – for the voice belongs to Levi Armstrong. And the twitch is enough to catch the latter’s eye, though Skelgill remains hunched inconspicuously with elbows on the bar.

  ‘Hey up – I spy strangers.’ There is venom in Levi Armstrong’s words.

  ‘Yer what?’ (Spoken by one of his confederates.)

  ‘There’s a horney ear-wigging on us.’

  Levi Armstrong has taken a stride through the group to confront Skelgill, who now turns and draws himself up to his full height – roughly parity with his antagonist, albeit the latter is a hulking figure in his greasy overalls with tools still dangling ominously from his belt loops. Curiously, one of the group pipes up in Skelgill’s defence.

  ‘He ain’t no horney – he’s one of the rescuers – that’s the gadgee that saved all t’ old folk.’

  Levi Armstrong, his nostrils flared, is glaring furiously at Skelgill, who returns a cold stare.

  ‘I know what he is. He’s just leaving.’

  There is nothing that silences a room like the smell of fear. It permeates the ether like a foul reek, infecting one person after the next with the ruthless efficiency of the bubonic plague. Drinkers fall mute as they try to ascertain its source and the threat to their personal safety. Eye contact is minimised, shoulders shrink down, escape plans are hatched. Except none of the above applies to Skelgill. He steps forward, into his opponent’s personal space. His arms are loose at his sides. Now he speaks quietly, his features implacable.

  ‘I reckon you and society are quits. I suggest you keep it that way.’

  Levi Armstrong’s upper lip curls into a snarl.

  ‘I might be quits with society – but I ain’t quits wi’ thee, Skelgill.’

  And now a sequence of events takes place in a kind of blur that the onlooker would find hard to recall exactly. Levi Armstrong reaches up as though he intends to grab Skelgill by the throat – or at least by the neck of his shirt – but halfway to doing so he suddenly recoils with a violent gasp – for unseen at close quarters (and certainly invisible to the CCTV) Skelgill has delivered a sharp blow to his solar plexus – leaving him doubled over and unable to speak – until, tears and mucous and spittle congealing around his enraged features he gathers himself to launch his bulk – but in this moment a person who has just entered the bar elegantly interposes their striking form between the pair – and like a boxing referee places a flat palm on each combatant’s chest.

  It is Rhiannon Rees.

  ‘Boys will be boys.’

  Such a dramatic intervention seems to do the trick – both men switch their concern to the lady close in their midst – and most male eyes in the room do the same, although for marginally different reasons. DS Jones now appears at Skelgill’s shoulder – she has her mobile raised in one hand – she might almost be filming – and her presence enables Rhiannon Rees subtly to take sides. She regards the younger woman between narrowed eyes – but then turns to Levi Armstrong and shoves him in the direction of the bar. Perhaps she has followed him, a minute or so behind – after closing up the café – and now she reminds him of their purpose in coming. Levi Armstrong resists – it is apparent neither he nor Skelgill is willing to blink first. But the impasse is broken by an external vector: the bell on the door jangles, accompanied by the crackle of two-way radios – and there enters a brace of uniformed constables summoned from duty just around the corner – the quick work of DS Jones.

  7. POST MORTEM – Thursday morning

  ‘Morning, Guv – I was just explaining about what happened in The Black Swan.’

  Skelgill scowls at DS Jones; then rather more phlegmatically he reaches for the tea procured for his delectation.

  ‘Aye, that’s blown my cover good and proper.’

  DS Leyton is hunched, forearms across his broad thighs.

  ‘Who is this Levi geezer, Guv?’

  Now Skelgill scoffs.

  ‘Just some halfwit – local blacksmith-cum-mechanic. The Armstrongs have lived in the area for donkey’s years. More outlaws than criminals – unless you count salmon poaching.’

  If his subordinates now detect some ambivalence in Skelgill’s attitude towards the latter misdemeanour they would be right. The phrase ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ would apply. As a boy in hand-me-down clothes, armed with home-made rod and tackle, the price of permits beyond his meagre pocket money, Skelgill grew up fishing by stealth – until adulthood and a job provided him with the means and, later, invitations to legitimate angling. He will enforce the law when called upon to do so, but he will neither deny his heritage, nor drop the fervent contention that no man can own a wild fish.

  DS Leyton, however, remains belligerent.

  ‘No offence, Emma – but I wish that’d been me with you, Guv.’

  Skelgill looks like he wouldn’t disagree. DS Leyton is not particularly tall, but once his feet are planted there is no reverse gear.

  ‘Aye, well – maybe the ladies came up with the best solution between them.’

  DS Jones is quick to capitalise upon the connection.

  ‘It must have been Rhiannon Rees that told him about Roger Alcock’s body being found.’

  Skelgill watches reflectively from behind the cover of his mug.

  ‘How did the identification go?’

  DS Jones hesitates – he has skirted around her suggestion.

  ‘Smoothly – if you could call it that, Guv. Maeve Alcock kept her composure.’

  ‘What about the pushy estate agent – did he come with her?’

  ‘He waited outside.’

  Skelgill nods pensively.

  ‘So when’s the announcement?’

  DS Jones has with her an electronic tablet, and she interrogates the screen to check the time. ‘About an hour – it’s scheduled for twelve.’ Now she notices something – an email alert – and taps on the icon to open the app. ‘That’s the preliminary post mortem report.’

  Skelgill does not appear to hear her, for he has begun to fiddle with his mobile – in fact the keen observer would see that he has retrieved the message thread between himself and Lucy Dubois, and is composing a short text. After he transmits, he looks up to see that DS Jones is now frowning at her own screen. DS Leyton patiently twiddles his thumbs. Skelgill gives DS Jones a few more seconds, and then aims a question at her.

  ‘Drowned?’

  DS Jones is still reading. She nods slowly, and then looks up. Her expression is puzzled.

  ‘Cause of death drowning – substantial quantity of saltwater in the lungs – but also a depressed fracture to the base of the skull, sustained prior to death – impact from a blunt object, probably stone or metal, possibly wood. A suggestion that it could have rendered him unconscious.’

  Skelgill’s features constrict, his front teeth protruding. However, he does not speak and it is DS Leyton that responds to this information.

  ‘Think he crashed into the arch of a bridge, Guv?’

  Skelgill is staring into space beyond his window. Strands of low cloud scud from the southwest against a curtain of powder blue sky; woodpigeons and jackdaws skim past on the breeze; the low winter sun makes a brief appearance.

  ‘How many bridges are there in the sea, Leyton?’

  DS Leyton senses that he is wide of the mark, and that this is a rebuke.

  ‘There’s one on every ship, Guv.’

  ‘Very funny, Leyton.’

  DS Leyton – reprieved – runs his fingers through his unruly mop of dark hair.

  ‘So, what are you saying, Guv?’


  Skelgill looks piqued.

  ‘I’m not saying owt.’ He casts a hand towards the tablet held by DS Jones. ‘The facts are saying he drowned in saltwater. Are you telling me he got knocked unconscious – fell in the Derwent and survived until he was carried out to sea?’

  But now DS Jones attempts an explanation.

  ‘Wouldn’t the sea be much more choppy, Guv – could his lifejacket have kept his head above water until then?’

  Skelgill stares severely.

  ‘Aye – it could. Except it hadn’t inflated – the bladder was still inside the cover.’

  Skelgill’s response is terse, though it is just his manner – he knows she is not privy to this information. However, DS Jones now holds up a palm, like a well-schooled pupil wishing to ask a supplementary question.

  ‘Is it plausible that he was stunned by a collision,’ (she glances collaboratively at DS Leyton) ‘and then remained in the kayak until the waves of the sea tossed him out?’

  But Skelgill is shaking his head before she has even finished the sentence.

  ‘You ever tried a kayak?’ He does not wait for an answer. ‘It’s hard enough to balance when you’ve got your wits about you. A kayak might be unsinkable but it’s massively unstable. The first thing you learn is a wet exit.’

  DS Jones nods.

  ‘And for the same reason you wouldn’t be strapped in?’

  ‘At most a spray skirt – but I saw no sign of one.’

  DS Leyton looks like he is racking his brains.

  ‘I’ll tell you something, Guv – one time when I was a nipper, playing footie – I always ended up as the goalie, right? I dived for this ball – smacked me bonce square on the goalpost. Thought I was right as rain – carried on – next thing I know I’m waking up in Lewisham hospital. Turns out I’d blacked out – couldn’t remember a thing about the rest of the game – apparently I saved a penalty – only one I ever saved, an’ all. Delayed onset concussion, the medics reckoned.’

  Skelgill regards DS Leyton musingly. His sergeant’s colourful analogy in a sense neatly fits the facts. If Roger Alcock suffered a blow from a bridge or a branch or another obstacle, he might have continued, disoriented but on autopilot, down the river and out to sea – thence unconsciousness came upon him.

  Or something else altogether?

  Now a thought strikes Skelgill.

  ‘What does the report say about time of death?’

  DS Jones looks uncharacteristically flustered.

  ‘Er, actually – it doesn’t, Guv.’

  He does not need to speak. She is out of her seat and en route to the pathology lab before the apocryphal words – Jack Robinson – can be uttered by either of her colleagues.

  While they wait, DS Leyton begins absently to rub his crown, as though he still feels the collision with the upright.

  ‘Bang goes that Reggie Perrin theory, Guv.’

  ‘That was just tittle-tattle, Leyton.’

  ‘Sounds like Roger Alcock wasn’t the most popular geezer about town.’

  ‘Probably a bit on the flash side.’

  ‘DS Jones said you met his business partner – naval type, she reckoned. I suppose between them they knew what they were doing.’

  Skelgill scowls rather disparagingly.

  ‘Fair enough the kayaking business – but a trendy shop like that in Cockermouth – they’d be pushing water up hill.’

  DS Leyton pulls a suitably ambiguous face, in case his superior intends a rather cruel pun.

  ‘Seems to be par for the course these days, Guv – all these well-off folks from The Smoke buying their holiday homes – then they expect shops and restaurants like you’d find down the King’s Road. Creeping gentrification, ain’t it?’

  Skelgill is thinking that gentrification has a long way to creep before its influence reaches The Black Swan and the likes of Levi Armstrong, when he receives a text alert. Casually he glances at his handset. It is a reply from Lucy Dubois.

  “Thanks! xxx”

  He is wondering if Lucy Dubois’ propensity to append her texts with kisses is a ‘London thing’ – or whether he should read more into it – when DS Jones returns to their midst with some purpose. Skelgill slides his handset out of range. DS Jones resumes her seat and leans forward, crossing her legs at the ankles and placing her palms upon her knees. She is wearing a close-fitting sky blue UCL hoodie – another capital coincidence, a third, like the city’s apocryphal bus convoys – and black skinny jeans with fashionable trainers; her naturally streaked blonde hair and tanned complexion somehow add to the youthful impression – she could easily be taken for an undergraduate intern, though she is in the second half of her twenties. She speaks a little breathlessly.

  ‘Analysis is ongoing, Guv.’

  What she declines to mention is that – through no fault of her own – she has taken something of an earbashing from the cantankerous police pathologist. DS Leyton’s initial report had failed to state that a detailed autopsy was required – not so much lackadaisicality on his part as taciturnity on Skelgill’s – the latter implying that he believed it was a matter of “accidental drowning, case closed”. She has navigated choppy diplomatic waters on their behalf, and now tactfully circumvents the inevitable bout of swearing over who was to blame (for DS Leyton will stand his ground in such circumstances). She continues from memory.

  ‘They’re running histology tests to assess chemical decomposition – that may narrow it down considerably. In the meantime certain physical factors can be used as indicators. Firstly, however, there are some problems. Body temperature is unreliable – the sea is about 45F at the moment – and immersion in cold moving water accelerates cooling. Likewise, rotation of the corpse in the waves means livor mortis is not particularly useful. There can also be distortion of the progress of rigor mortis – Dr Herdwick said ordinarily he would put the time of death between 8 and 48 hours prior to the body being found – but the effects can be artificially prolonged by the cold.’

  Despite the express caveat Skelgill seizes upon this latter item of information. He folds his arms and leans forward, placing his elbows on the surface of his desk.

  ‘48 hours is Monday midday. He disappeared on Sunday evening.’

  DS Jones nods – but she clearly has something more salient, for her eyes are bright with excitement.

  ‘The degree of skin maceration – absorption of water by the tissues – was not very advanced – just the fingertips and palms and soles of the feet. The doctor believes the body had been in the water no longer than 24 hours.’

  A small look of triumph possesses Skelgill’s countenance. Of course, he had noticed himself that Roger Alcock did not appear – for want of a better word – waterlogged. And now his hunch – however subliminal – is borne out by medical opinion. His gaze loses its focus, his expression hardens – for crystallising in his mind is a realisation that an apparently accidental death – at worst a death by misadventure, as the coroner might put it – may well indeed be something else altogether.

  *

  When Lucy Dubois’ news channel runs a short item that mentions a body found washed up on the Cumbria coastline has been formally identified as that of the missing kayaker, Roger Alcock, one fact goes largely unnoticed (except perhaps by her competitors, peeved that they have again been ‘scooped’) – that the broadcast takes place barely a minute after the noon announcement by a police spokesperson. Moreover, the sharp-eyed observer might deduce that the piece was pre-recorded – for in the background the hands of All Saints Church clock read eleven thirty-five.

  However, this minor anachronism is superseded when, in mid-afternoon, the police make a further announcement: that the death of Roger Alcock is being treated as unexplained, and an appeal is made for information that may shed light upon his movements between Sunday evening (when his mobile phone became inactive) and the finding of his body on Wednesday morning. Skelgill and DS Jones tune in on the car radio. As always the terrain hampers the sig
nal – but so too does Skelgill’s replacement aerial, which is fashioned from a metal coat hanger into the shape of a fish. Indeed, along such ichthyological lines Skelgill is only half-listening, since they skim beside Bassenthwaite Lake and he is wondering about the impact upon the inundated Derwent system – a 40-mile continuum extending from Styhead Tarn at the head of Borrowdale to the coast at Workington, and most notably feeding Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite Lake. Not much is known about the behaviour of fish during a flood, there are as many theories as there are anglers. Do they hunker down and let it pass, or do they take the opportunity of an adventure? Skelgill suspects it varies by species – oftentimes he has stumbled across an incomplete salmon, marooned, desiccated, crow-pecked, lying skeletal in a depression in the meadow of a floodplain – but never a pike, curiously enough.

  ‘Salmon or pike.’

  ‘Pardon, Guv?’

  It is the first time Skelgill has spoken for a while, and his question – or statement, it is not clear which – makes little sense to his colleague.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You said salmon or pike, Guv?’

  Skelgill takes his hands off the steering wheel and rather alarmingly rubs his eyes. DS Jones’s right foot makes an instinctive stab for a non-existent brake pedal. But Skelgill is unperturbed; he would argue that the stretch of road is so familiar he could drive it with his eyes closed, and offer to prove it.

  ‘Aye – I was thinking of Roger Alcock.’

  The connection is not obvious.

  ‘In what way, Guv?’

  ‘Did he stay or did he go?’

  ‘You mean in Cockermouth – at the flat over the shop?’

  ‘Or somewhere.’

  DS Jones nods. Preliminary test results already support the hypothesis that Roger Alcock did not die until after midday on Tuesday. And the notion that he could have spent two long winter nights – possibly three – aboard a kayak seems inconceivable.