Strange Tide (51 page)

‘Which is what?' asked Land impatiently.

Bryant gave a shrug. ‘That despite how it looks, Ali Bensaud is not the killer,' he said.

Fraternity was incredulous. ‘But Meera and I both saw him sink the boat and try to drown Freddie Cooper.'

‘Yes, I know, and that's exactly what he did. But something still felt wrong. Ali Bensaud is a sharp-witted man. I thought if he planned a murder he'd be too smart to leave evidence – so why would he use his own neck-chain to tie Lynsey Dalladay to the rock?'

‘You tried to convince us she committed suicide,' said May.

‘True. I thought that Bensaud possessed the perfect murder weapon: his charismatic powers of persuasion. But my theory had to be wrong, because as you pointed out, John, he had no allegiance to the Thames and its meanings. He was simply out to make money. Why would he come up with such a strange idea? Bensaud has assimilated our culture, but the concept of the sacred river eludes most Londoners, let alone those learning English as a second language.'

‘My thought exactly,' said May.

‘There were other things that bothered me, like the amounts of cash that were suddenly passing through Dalladay's account which couldn't possibly have been made from immoral earnings. It was an easy matter to implicate Bensaud, but there was no single hypothesis that would make logical sense of his actions. Persuade Dalladay to kill herself just because she was pregnant? No matter how confused she was, would she really be that weak? And she was known at the centre; being implicated in any sort of crime was the very worst thing that could happen to him.' Bryant turned to address the others. ‘I started thinking of Bensaud as something even he didn't foresee: the victim, not the perpetrator. And that meant looking at everything differently. At the heart of this wasn't revenge at all, but a love story. That was when I came to the realization that we were looking for a killer who wasn't smart, just opportunistic. I knew we needed to know more about Bensaud's past. How had he arrived here?'

‘He had no records, no background history,' Longbright pointed out.

‘That's not an uncommon thing in London,' said Bryant, ‘but I still thought it might hold the key. Bensaud accidentally left his real name in the stage-door log of the Rainbow Theatre, Finsbury Park. Maggie Armitage spotted it. Of course, the silly woman forgot to tell me for ages. I knew we wouldn't get the truth merely by asking him. It was when I was looking at Géricault's painting
The Raft of the Medusa
that I realized he might be a refugee. After all, we had an actual Medusa in the case – Freddie Cooper's company. Medusa transports engines, and that gave me links to the others.'

Bryant picked up his penknife again and began carefully removing black paint from the scorched wooden panel on the table. ‘Did you know, in rural Spain and Turkey it's not unheard of for neighbours to gamble away the adjoining rooms in their houses? When they have nothing left to put on the table they use their property rights. The Cossack Club is a proper old-fashioned gambling den where people will gamble anything, despite what its manager told Janice. So those were the pieces; all that remained was to put them in the right order. Anyone?' He peered around the room as if expecting to see raised hands.

‘Oh, for God's sake!' Land exploded. ‘Just for once can you drop your Miss Marple routine and give us the bottom line?'

Bryant would not be rushed. ‘Marion North's daughter Cassie was an enigma. She didn't really get on with her mother but still hired her to work in the company. She had an affair with Bensaud but stayed long after it ended, and didn't walk out when she discovered he'd got Lynsey Dalladay pregnant. She was at the centre of everything but kept such a low profile that we never suspected her for a minute.'

‘What, you're saying that Cassie North killed her rival and her own mother?' asked May. ‘That doesn't seem right.'

‘No, that's what I thought,' Bryant agreed. ‘As soon as I stopped thinking of this as the work of a clever manipulator and imagined someone trying to make the best of a series of disastrous accidents, I arrived at the only possible answer.' He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Freddie Cooper. It had to be him.'

‘But you just saved his life,' said Land.

‘I haven't finished.' Bryant silenced him with a hard stare. ‘It's a matter of looking at Cooper differently. He's feral and instinctive, a self-preservationist haphazardly covering up consequences. This time, all of the pieces fit except one. He had the most to lose if Life Options went down. But I thought he might kill for the simplest reason of all – in order to survive.'

While Bryant let that sink in, he walked to the front of the room and drew an odd pattern on the whiteboard. ‘Medusa delivers engines, trucks and boats. It's also involved in the smuggling of parts and people. Four years ago one of its vessels sank, drowning a hundred and eighty desperate refugees. One of the survivors was Ali Bensaud. I deciphered Gilyov's tattoo as a gorgon because it fitted, but I was wrong. If we draw in the missing sections we get something else – not snakes but tendrils. Not the Gorgon but a jellyfish. Not a Medusa but a
méduse
.'

Having filled in the image, he returned to the section of painted wooden hull and picked a scab of paint from it. Underneath the silver ‘A' in ‘Medusa' was an ‘E'.

‘Cooper's French-registered boat, the
Jellyfish
–
La Méduse
– was taking refugees from the coast of Libya, and its owner cared less about its human cargo than its contraband. It was never traced because he changed the company name. Dimitri Gilyov had the tattoo because he was the captain of
La Méduse
. By this time ship owners were regularly being prosecuted, and when Gilyov tracked the owner down in London he tried to blackmail him. Cooper punished Gilyov by cutting off his hand – the proof he bore on his tattooed skin – and throwing it in the river. The current did the rest. Gilyov harboured the grudge and drunkenly came at Cooper one night in the boatyard. He was knocked out and drowned in the shed's water trough. Cooper put the body in his car and drove it to the bridge.

‘By now Cooper was making more money than he could handle and needed someone to help him launder it, so he looked around for a dupe and chose Lynsey Dalladay. He got her a job in a gambling club and had his players pass her their “winnings”. She wasn't a call girl, she was a mule. There was a problem, though. Money couldn't stay in Dalladay's account without someone noticing.

‘Dalladay introduced Cooper to Ali Bensaud and Cassie North, and Cooper seized the investment opportunity they offered him. London is the dirty-money capital of the West. It arrives from Russian and Chinese sources and gets dumped into property and companies before it can be traced.

‘Everything should have gone smoothly – but something unexpected happened. Ali Bensaud fell in love with Lynsey Dalladay. He even gave her his precious neck-chain, to remind her to be strong. Dalladay announced she was pregnant by Bensaud and told Cooper she was donating his laundered cash to Life Options. She loved Ali and she would do anything for him.'

Land looked as if he was having trouble keeping up. It had been a while since his most senior detective had made this much sense.

‘Cooper insisted on meeting Dalladay at Tower Beach,' Bryant explained. ‘She had to climb the gate to get inside, but it was the kind of challenge she liked. He was waiting under the pier in the decommissioned MPU boat he used, and chained her with the neck-chain Ali had given her. Then he headed upriver, leaving her to drown. Hence, one set of footprints leading to the tideline.'

‘But he still couldn't get his hands on the money,' said May.

‘That's right. So he asked Marion North to help him. But by now Marion knew he was the owner of
La Méduse
.'

‘How did she find out?'

‘One of his invoices read “Méduse” instead of “Medusa”. Before Cooper could rectify the mistake she showed it to Bensaud. He must have been devastated. Cooper heard that a man called Bill Crooms was asking around in the Finsbury Park cafés where Libyans and Syrians gathered. Like Bensaud, he'd arrived in the UK under a new name. He heard rumours that Cooper owned refugee boats and had amputated Gilyov's hand. When Gilyov vanished, Crooms searched for evidence.'

‘Cooper must have felt that everything was closing in on him,' said May.

‘And that made him panic,' Bryant replied. ‘Police and press were sniffing around and gabby Marion North was likely to talk. Cooper moved in as soon as you left her, and strangled her with your scarf. Maisner, the skipper of the
Penny Black
, didn't see you, he saw Cooper.'

The truth dawned on May. ‘So Cooper directed blame on to Bensaud—'

‘—by encouraging you to investigate the centre. He didn't care about losing his investment. He painted out the evidence by changing the names of the remaining boats which were in for repairs. But he missed the vessel that was being used for the Thames pageant.'

‘The contusions,' Longbright reminded him.

‘Dan thought the wounds were similar but Dalladay didn't get dragged along in the tide like North. She wasn't hit by a starling. Cooper hit her with an old-fashioned boathook. A curved metal spike almost identical to the bridge starling that the bodies of North and Curtis ran up against.'

‘Do we have any proof for all of this?' asked Land.

‘We have Cooper's confession,' Bryant replied, ‘although his lawyer won't be pleased that I took it while he was still under the effects of medication.'

‘And you're telling me you got all of this from a bloody
painting
?' said Land, still unable to fully comprehend the details.

‘Actually it was John who gave me the idea,' said Bryant. ‘He suggested I should look at paintings.'

‘So you were working as a team behind my back.' Land thought about showing annoyance but decided to be magnanimous. ‘I suppose I should never have tried to stop you.'

‘I'm just sorry all this has probably come too late to save the unit,' said Bryant.

Land looked suddenly sheepish. ‘Actually, I may have found a way of temporarily protecting us from closure.'

‘You?' It was Bryant's turn to be surprised. ‘How?'

‘Hello, everybody,' said Barbara Biddle, leaning in the doorway and smiling conspiratorially at Land.

‘I don't care who you are or where you're from,' said Supervisor Elena Drosio, checking the call board above their heads, ‘all I want is results. You were top of your team last week. Now you're three places behind. I thought you wanted to be a winner.'

‘You don't have to worry,' he replied. ‘I'll make it up before the end of my shift.'

‘See that you do,' said Elena. She looked at him and softened. ‘Look at the people around you. They're from all over the world and they all want to make something of themselves. But you're smarter than any of your workmates. I'm sure you could get whatever you want if you put your mind to it.'

Bowing his head in deference, he took his place at the desk once more, donned his black plastic headset and checked the dazzling blue screen in front of him. ‘Good morning,' he said, picking up his pen, ‘am I talking to the lady of the house? My name is Ali Bensaud and I have a special offer for you today that I think you'll be very interested in . . .'

As he reeled his caller in, he shaded the drawing he had made of Lynsey's face, to remind him of who he had loved and lost.

In the great windowless grey hall of the call centre, 197 other employees set out to be kings of the city.

‘I don't think I'll be going near the Thames for a while,' said Bryant.

‘Nor will any of the others,' May agreed. ‘They've all got colds. I thought you deserved a treat after saving me like that, even if you did leave it until the last minute.' The detectives were perched on stools in the atrium bar of the Shard. Bryant was unable to obtain a pint of nice cloudy bitter and, at a loss for what to order, had settled on an Acapulco Sunset. It arrived with a sparkler, a curly straw and a red umbrella, and couldn't have looked more 1980s if it had been wearing legwarmers.