A Dark and Twisted Tide (7 page)

Lacey’s boat, one of the smallest in the yard, was moored on the outside and at the back of the raft of boats, and Dana had to cross several larger vessels to reach it. She clambered from one boat to the next, seeing the flicker of light in one cabin, hearing movement in another, and thinking that they were all nuts. These people had no running water, central heating or electricity. They had tanks that they filled from a hose in the yard every few days and oil-fired generators that gave them a basic level of power. They cooked using Calor Gas tanks. Some of the boats had wood-burning stoves; most didn’t. Just carrying groceries home would be a nightmare.

‘Evening,’ said the thin, sun-tanned man on the boat next to Lacey’s as Dana approached.

‘May I?’ she asked as she climbed down on to his deck, gesturing round the bow of his boat. He inclined his head, silently giving her permission. He held a cigarette in one hand, a beer bottle in the other. As Dana made her way carefully around the cluttered deck, she caught sight of a woman on the boat, watching her through the open hatch. Early sixties, younger than the man. As tanned and as grey-haired as he, but with more body fat.

Lacey’s boat was a sailing yacht, built in the 1950s, its hull painted a bright daffodil yellow. Dana stepped down on to what Mark had told her was white-oak decking.

And that tight, pressing feeling got worse again, just at the thought of Mark. It was as if some small creature was clinging to her chest, digging in with claws and teeth. Her foot caught something, sent it skimming across the deck, over the toe rail.

‘Damn.’

She leaned over, peering into the gap between Lacey’s boat and the bigger one. A small toy boat lay in the mud, its hull as yellow as Lacey’s new home.

‘Hold on.’

Without another word, the man on the neighbouring boat leaned over the rail, scooped the toy up with a long hook and held it
out to Dana. Trying to avoid the mud, she took it and thanked him.

‘Welcome aboard.’

Lacey was in the cockpit, her pale face and hair just visible against the darkening sky. Dana steadied herself on the guard-rail and climbed down.

‘Sorry about your toy boat. I didn’t see it.’

Lacey peered at the toy. ‘Never seen it before. Must belong to the kids in one of the other boats. I’ll rinse and return it.’

Like an odd house-warming gift, the small boat passed from one woman to the other.

‘I’ve got white wine in the fridge,’ offered Lacey. ‘Or tea. Not decaff, I’m afraid.’

‘Tea would be great,’ said Dana.

Lacey was still in uniform, the simple blue shirt and slacks that the Marine Unit wore most of the time. Her hair was flying around her face in the breeze. Uniform aside, she looked timeless, like a marble statue come to life.

Dana glanced behind. Cabin hatches were open all around them, and voices would carry. ‘Do you mind if we go below? I know it’s hot, but . . .’

Lacey took two large strides across the cockpit before swinging round and dropping to the cabin below.

The kettle was being filled as Dana climbed down. She heard the hiss of gas, the sound of a match being struck. Lacey was lifting mugs from a cupboard, finding tea bags, reaching into a box-like fridge for milk, giving Dana the opportunity to look around.

Dana had been in the boat before, but under exceptionally tense circumstances. Last time, she’d hardly been in the right frame of mind to appreciate what was, in fact, a rather beautiful space.

Surprisingly spacious, was her first thought. Her second was that it was a little like being in the private study of an exclusive gentlemen’s club. The entire cabin, from floor to ceiling, was panelled in a wood that looked like mahogany. Green-glass lamps glowed gently on the walls and the seats around the dining table were padded brown leather. The small galley on the starboard side was beautifully neat, the chart table beyond it looked like an antique desk, and there was even a glass-fronted bookcase above it. The books, all hardbacks,
were a mixture of classics and modern crime. At the far end of the cabin was a door that led to the bigger of the two sleeping cabins. Dana remembered a small, neat double bed enclosed within a wooden frame, the tiniest of wardrobes, a small bedside cupboard. It was all neat and pretty and cosy, but where on earth did the woman keep her stuff?

Lacey was watching her. Had probably been watching for some time. She had a way of moving that was so quiet, so economical.

‘I don’t have much stuff,’ she said, as though she’d been reading Dana’s mind. ‘What you see here is more than I’ve owned my whole life before now.’

‘That makes you pretty unusual. Most of us are obsessed with accumulating things.’

Lacey moved forward, putting sugar and milk on the table. ‘I find the thought of stuff quite claustrophobic. Something of a . . . what’s the word . . . tether.’

She served milk directly from the carton, sugar from the packet.

‘Some people see possessions as an anchor,’ said Dana.

Lacey smiled, before turning back to the kettle. ‘I have an anchor. A real one.’

‘I suppose on a boat stuff becomes inherently portable. You just set sail and off you go, stuff and all.’ Why were they talking about stuff? Why did Lacey always manage to throw her off kilter?

‘In theory.’ Lacey flicked off the gas. ‘But the sails on this boat are in storage, and I wouldn’t know how to sail it anyway.’

Dana opened her mouth to say that Mark would, and remembered why she was here. ‘Lacey, when did you last see Mark?’

Lacey put the kettle back on the gas burner and turned round. ‘Has something happened to him?’

Still an enigma, but so much easier to read than she had been. Dana breathed in the smell of old leather and the faintest suggestion of the perfume Lacey wore occasionally. ‘Mark came to see me towards the end of March.’

Lacey leaned back against the chart table as though bracing herself for bad news.

‘Shortly after – well, you know what happened in March.’

The smallest nod in acknowledgement. They both knew; neither wanted to talk about it.

‘He told me he was off on a case,’ Dana continued. ‘He had no real idea when it would be over or when he’d be in touch again. Asked me to keep an eye on Carrie and Huck. And on you, incidentally.’

A slight softening in those hazel-blue eyes. ‘He said much the same thing to me. Only without the keeping-an-eye-on-people bit.’

‘I know he didn’t really want to go,’ said Dana. ‘He felt it was too soon after all the business with the missing boys, not to mention Cambridge.’

‘Yeah, he said that to me, too.’

Not surprisingly, Lacey’s eyes had hardened again. After three bad cases – four if you counted that business in the park last Christmas – Lacey had been on the point of leaving the police service for good. Lacey Flint, who needed nobody, was starting to need Mark and he’d gone.

But Mark Joesbury was a detective inspector with SCD10, the special crimes directorate that handled covert operations. As one of the senior, more experienced field operatives, he was typically sent in as operations neared their head. Not being available for personal reasons could jeopardize months, sometimes years, of difficult and dangerous work on the part of his colleagues. It would be completely out of character for him to turn down an assignment. It was the sort of dedication that had cost him his marriage and that might now cost him Lacey.

‘So what’s happened?’ Lacey asked.

‘Maybe nothing,’ said Dana. ‘Almost certainly nothing. But there are rumours flying around and I didn’t want you to hear them.’

Lacey turned back, picked up the kettle again and poured. ‘Or rather you wanted me to hear them from you.’

Dana smiled to concede the point. ‘The rumours are he’s disappeared. That no one can contact him. That they haven’t been able to for weeks now.’

Lacey brought both mugs to the table. ‘Isn’t that normal? Isn’t that what being undercover is all about?’

‘Not really. Whoever’s in charge of the operation should always
be able to get in touch, if for no other reason than they might need to pull him out.’

‘Do they think something’s happened to him?’

‘No, because he has been seen. He’s alive and well, don’t worry about that. The rumour is that he’s turned.’

‘Turned?’

‘Turned bad. Joined the bad guys.’

Lacey stared, giving nothing away. Or rather, Dana realized, giving a whole lot away without meaning to. She was thinking about it. There hadn’t been the immediate denial, the Mark-wouldn’t-do-that protestations.

‘Would he do that?’ she asked, after a second.

‘I don’t know,’ said Dana, honestly.

‘You’ve known him fifteen years, how can you not know?’

‘He’s no angel, Lacey. But who is? I’ve done some pretty unconscionable things in my time to get results. Haven’t you?’

‘I did some pretty unconscionable things before I joined the police,’ Lacey said. ‘These days, I try to keep my nose clean.’

Great. Nothing like a constable taking the moral high ground. ‘Good for you. But I suspect that puts you in the minority.’

Silence. Dana knew she’d probably said too much. It was a part of the job that most officers understood but few acknowledged openly. Sometimes, it wasn’t quite so easy to see the distance between right and wrong. Sometimes, the moral code became blurred.

Nearly fifteen years ago, as young police officers, she and Mark had been staking out the flat of a known drug-dealer. They’d watch him leave the building and hurl a supermarket carrier bag into a rubbish skip. A couple of hours later, they’d taken part in a search of the flat and found nothing. The dealer had stripped his home of every piece of incriminating evidence. It was all in the skip outside and they had no way of tying the carrier bag to him. Mark had pulled back the duvet on the bed and found two short, black hairs. He pocketed them and when they retrieved the bag from the skip, let them slip inside unnoticed.

Unnoticed by everyone but her. She’d watched her friend cross the line and then she’d stepped over to join him. And that had been
right at the start of her career. Before she’d even had time to consider just how much integrity meant to her.

The dealer had gone down. One piece of scum less on the street. With no doubt as to his guilt, Dana’s conscience had been easy. Noble-cause corruption was the name given to the practice. Planting evidence, telling small white lies, holding back facts to secure the conviction of those you knew were guilty.

It was widespread and, for the most part, did no harm. On the other hand, it was the first step on a slippery slope. How big a step was it from planting evidence on someone you knew to be guilty, to creaming off a few quid from money snatched in a raid? And if you could square that with your conscience – the money was illegally gained anyway – how hard would it be to skim off half a bag of cocaine to sell on yourself? To pocket the two hundred quid and look away when a drunk driver asked nicely? To withdraw a few twenties with the fraudulently obtained credit card?

Most police work wasn’t hunting down serial killers and solving heinous murders. It was small and sordid, beating the scum at their own game. Coppers made the best villains. They knew the score. They knew how not to get caught.

And some small spark of light had gone from Lacey’s eyes.

‘There’s also a discrepancy in his bank account,’ Dana went on, wishing she could have spared her the most damning evidence of all. ‘Several hundred thousand pounds more in there than should be. Far more than he earns in the Met and no way of accounting for it.’

‘So what are you saying?’ said Lacey. ‘That you’re all bent and he’s just finally gone the whole hog?’

‘No, I’m not saying anything of the kind. To be honest, I don’t believe it. Partly because I think Mark knows where to draw the line and partly because he’s got too much to lose. If he goes off the grid, he’ll lose all his friends. Not to mention his son. Not to mention you.’

‘How, exactly, did you hear this?’

‘One of his mates phoned me. Someone I know from way back. Wanted to know if I’d heard anything. He may be in touch with you, too.’

‘I’ve heard nothing. Since he went, nothing.’

‘He should have been transferred out of SO10 before now.’ Dana was using the former, but still colloquially popular, name for the covert operations squad. ‘The work those guys do is incredibly tough, and no one should stay in the directorate for more than a few years.’

Lacey was nodding. ‘They get too close to the people they’re investigating. They start to see things from their point of view. They start to care.’

‘They make friends. Sometimes they even get involved. Romantically, sexually. They lose the ability to walk away. You know what? If Mark wasn’t so bloody good at blending in with villains they’d have moved him too, but it was always one more case, then one more.’

Lacey ran her hands over her face. ‘Where will he go, do you think?’

Dana got to her feet. ‘If Mark really has gone, then there’ll be people who will shelter him. He won’t put us at risk. He won’t come here.’

Nothing else to be said, really. Dana tried to smile and couldn’t quite manage it. She said goodbye and climbed off the boat. In the short time she’d been on board, all traces of sun had left the sky and the creek was starting to assume the gaping, canyon-like presence it acquired after dark.

From the shore, when she turned back, Lacey was nowhere to be seen.

13

Dana

HELEN WAS IN
the garden, wearing jogging bottoms and a vest top, a sweat-sheen around her forehead. At her side was a pint glass of water, a cold bottle of lager and crisps. It was how she replaced fluid, sugars and salts after hard exercising.

‘I expected you back before now,’ she said, as Dana came across the decking to join her. ‘Busy day?’

‘Mad. What about the meeting you were rushing off for? That go well?’

‘I know you want to talk about the clinic.’ Helen was smiling. ‘Did you get the forms sent off?’

Yes, somehow, in between setting in motion a murder investigation and dealing with the news that her best friend might have gone out of her life for good, Dana had found time to complete and post off the forms that marked the next stage in the process that would turn her into a mother. She’d also spent most of her lunch-break moving from one fertility web page to the next.