Salt Lane Read online

  ‘No one will see your legs.’

  ‘Maybe you should get someone shorter to do it.’ But she dutifully bent her knees. ‘That better?’

  ‘Magic. Hold it there. In five, four, three…’

  Cupidi took a breath and read from the card. ‘Kent Police are requesting…’ She stopped, seeing the dead woman’s face again, staring back at her from the mirror. ‘Sorry. Can I start again?’

  ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘Sorry. Fine.’

  ‘Come on.’ He clapped. ‘Let’s go. Try again.’

  ‘Kent Police are…’ Again she faltered, straightened up.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked the man, looking out from behind his camera. ‘Is she going to be OK? We’re short on time you know.’ Behind him she saw Constable Ferriter and DI McAdam watching her, concern on their faces. McAdam would be wondering if he had made the wrong decision, asking her to do it.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she declared. ‘Just give me a second.’

  ‘Only I’ve got a deadline. It’s going to go to edit any minute.’

  ‘Go on then.’ She crouched down again.

  ‘Go,’ said the man.

  She ignored the cue card this time, looking straight into the camera. ‘We found a body,’ she began.

  A woman had called in three days ago. Her thirteen-year-old son had woken her in the night, crying. He and his mate had found a body when they were fishing for pike, but they didn’t say anything because they were scared they would get into trouble for not having a licence.

  ‘He’s a good boy,’ his mother had said. ‘Normally.’ That doubt in her voice that Cupidi recognised. We reassure ourselves that we know our children, that they will turn out fine.

  A pair of local PCSOs had gone to take a look. With no tools to hand, they had borrowed a pair of old golf clubs from a nearby house and had spent forty minutes prodding the layer of weed and had almost given up, thinking it was a hoax, when one of the clubs hit something heavy, floating below the surface. Whatever it was sank further down for a few seconds, and then rose briefly to the surface again, pale and white.

  The corpse had been lying face-down in the water off Salt Lane; she had remained concealed by a layer of thick green that lay across the top of the water like a blanket.

  ‘How we getting her out?’ Sergeant Moon demanded. The ditches round here were deep, the banks steep.

  ‘Call the Marine Unit,’ said Cupidi.

  ‘I don’t know. Cost a bit.’ These days everyone was so nervous about budgets.

  They stood looking down at the weed that covered her.

  ‘In you go then,’ Cupidi had said, nodding down at the water.

  In the end, the men from the Marine Unit had lifted her gently, carefully, with such respect it had almost made Cupidi weep. The dead woman rose from the water, dripping, arms splayed, her corpse pale and shiny, dressed only in a pair of white underpants.

  ‘She would have been in her early forties,’ Cupidi was saying, straight to the camera. ‘Her eyes are blue and her hair was brown, going grey. There were no identifying marks on her body. We searched the area as thoroughly as we could, but we’ve found no possessions and no sign of her clothing. If you recognise this woman, call us now. We really, really need to find out who she was.’ Behind the camera, the man was making circular motions. Wind it up. ‘We think she had been in the water about ten days before we found her. That would make it around the second of July. Think back.’ The man’s arm movements were becoming more insistent. He was short on time; the longer the news item, the less time he’d have to edit it. ‘If you saw her or anyone you think might have been her in the area around Romney Marsh, in the area that’s roughly between Fairfield and Lydd, please let us know. There was no abandoned car or bicycle present at the scene. We don’t know how she got to the place she was found. Did you see her walking? Did she get a lift? If you think you can help us in any way, call 0800 555…’

  ‘A bit bloody long,’ said the cameraman afterwards. ‘They’ll probably try and cut it.’

  ‘That’s why I didn’t pause for breath,’ answered Cupidi.

  ‘But you don’t even know how she died.’ He was packing the camera into its case. ‘What if it was just a swim that went wrong?’

  ‘What kind of weirdo swims in the ditches round here?’ interrupted Ferriter.

  The cameraman turned towards the constable, looked her up and down. ‘Just saying. Probably just an accident. How do you know she was actually killed?’ He stopped. ‘Hey. I’ve met you before, haven’t I? You do yoga, don’t you? Sundays, up at the Millennium Hall.’

  ‘Yeah. I recognise you.’ They smiled at each other.

  ‘You’re good.’ He zipped the camera case. ‘I’m almost done here. Fancy meeting up after, for a drink?’

  He’d lost interest in Cupidi. ‘Maybe later,’ Ferriter was saying. ‘I’m working a late in the incident room answering all the millions of calls that are going to come in once you’ve broadcast this.’

  ‘Billions, probably.’

  DI McAdam approached, all smiles. ‘That was very good, Alex,’ he said. ‘Very good indeed. Very… passionate. Very real. I liked that.’

  ‘Well, because it was real, obviously,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Indeed. I didn’t mean to say it wasn’t…’ He stood awkwardly. ‘I just wanted to say well done.’

  It was late. She needed to get home. Her shift should have ended twenty minutes ago. Her daughter would be wondering where she was.

  ‘You moved to a house at Dungeness, I hear. Settling in OK?’

  ‘Fine, sir.’ She looked down at her watch.

  ‘Extraordinary place. Some people hate it. I love it. Oh. My wife tells me you’ve joined her book group.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Colette. She said you’d gone to her book thing last week.’

  It was true she had joined a book group. It was part of her attempt to make new friends, to fit in around here. It wasn’t something she was good at, but here she was trying to make the effort. At the one meeting she had been to so far, she had drunk too much wine and been drawn into a pointless argument about sex offenders. She tried to think which one of the well-spoken women there could be McAdam’s wife.

  ‘We must have you around for dinner some time. I’m sure you and my wife would get along.’ Cupidi wasn’t listening; instead, she was watching Ferriter. The cameraman had taken out a business card, grinning at her while writing his number on the back.

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘Just a thought,’ he said.

  Ferriter had given the man a little wave goodbye and was now walking away, back into the station.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ Cupidi muttered.

  ‘Right. Of course.’

  She pushed past her boss, up the ramp towards the doors of the station, catching up with Ferriter in the lobby.

  ‘Are you going to call him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That man. The one who gave you the card.’

  ‘What card?’

  ‘You know what card. I bloody saw you take it.’

  Ferriter shrugged, smiled. ‘Maybe. He was all right.’

  Other officers pushed past them. Cupidi lowered her voice. ‘He was trying to get information out of you, you know?’

  ‘No. He was asking me out for a drink actually. He’s in my yoga class.’

  ‘He also happened to be asking you to discuss forensic details of the case which we haven’t revealed yet.’

  ‘It was just chat.’

  Cupidi looked at her; lips neatly glossed, blonde bob carefully combed. ‘Look. You’re young. All I’m doing is watching your back. If you meet up with him, be careful. That’s all.’

  Ferriter rolled her eyes. ‘Keep your hair on. I wouldn’t go out with him anyway. He’s old enough to be my dad.’

  Cupidi realised he probably was. ‘Right. I should go.’

  ‘What? Aren’t you staying for the news? Goes out in twenty minutes.
Then the phones will start. Hopefully, anyway.’

  ‘I need to be home for my daughter. Call me, won’t you?’

  Ferriter’s smile was small and tight. ‘Oh yeah. Right. Forgot.’

  Cupidi drove home fast, in a bad mood, cursing the summer insects that splattered on the windscreen.

  In the light of a summer evening, there was something lunar about Dungeness. It lay on the tip of a vast, flat stony landscape that jutted into the Straits of Dover; banks of shingle built over centuries by the churn of tides. The wooden shacks and chalets that dotted the promontory cast long shadows across the scrubland.

  She drove along the pitted track, past the old black lighthouse, towards the huge industrial bulk of the Dungeness nuclear power station, its orange lights already glowing against the red sky. Her mood lifted a little as she approached.

  At the security fence, the narrow road turned northwards towards lines of pylons that marched away across the flatland, past the empty Arum Cottage to the row of houses that sat, defiantly suburban, in this wild landscape.

  Zoë was sitting on the front door step of their house.

  ‘I don’t know why I even bother to pay for your phone,’ said Cupidi.

  ‘I forgot it, as it happens.’

  ‘And your keys?’

  ‘Obviously, yes. Else I wouldn’t be sitting here.’ Spindly-limbed, bleached hair tinted purple, she wore khaki camouflage trousers and a shabby military jacket. Around her neck she hung a pair of binoculars. ‘Hi, Mum,’ she said, standing. ‘Nice to see you too.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She folded her arms around the girl.

  The summer holidays; a nightmare for any working parent.

  The house in the country. Cupidi and her daughter. A fresh start.

  Though much of their stuff was still in boxes, she was doing her best to make it home on time, most days at least; cooking meals from scratch instead of heating them in the microwave. And while she had meant to start eating supper at the table, it was easy to slip into the habit of sitting on the sofa with the plates, watching telly with a big glass of white.

  ‘Seriously, though,’ said Cupidi. ‘I worry.’

  ‘Round here? I’m perfectly safe, Mum. I just forgot it.’

  ‘What if one day you’re not?’

  ‘But I am.’

  On the television, a chef was tossing a huge salad in a glass bowl. She shouldn’t be watching TV. She should be reading her book for the book group.

  ‘See anything good?’ she asked.

  ‘Birds? Not really.’

  ‘Trying to make conversation.’

  ‘I just mean, nothing you’d understand.’

  ‘Indulge me,’ she said.

  ‘Lesser whitethroat.’

  ‘Not a greater one?’

  ‘You’re taking the piss.’ Her daughter glared at her.

  ‘Sorry. Is it pretty?’

  ‘It’s not about being pretty, Mum,’ said Zoë, anger in her voice. Cupidi remembered standing in front of the mirror with the perky young Constable Ferriter. ‘It would have been getting ready to go to the Middle East. Sudan. Even further south than that,’ her daughter said. ‘Three and a half thousand miles. Just think. Travelling all that way.’

  ‘Just to come here, of all places.’

  ‘Amazing, though, isn’t it? Titchy little thing.’

  This obsession with birds. She wondered about this need to know every last detail, to record every species. Her daughter was a strange girl, which was almost certainly her fault. She was not the easiest woman to get along with either; on more than one occasion men had told her that. Or maybe Cupidi’s own mother’s fault; she was no better.

  She was topping up her wine in the kitchen when Zoë called from the living room, ‘Mum. You’re on the telly.’

  It was half past ten. They would be showing the segment again.

  She arrived back in the living room, glass in hand, to see the artist’s drawing of the dead woman on the screen.

  ‘What do you think happened to her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Cupidi. ‘I really don’t.’

  ‘Was she raped?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Strangled?’

  ‘It’s not really the kind of thing we should be talking about, you know.’

  ‘But was she?’

  ‘There are no signs of violence at all.’

  ‘Spooky.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The phone rang. ‘I’ll get it,’ said Zoë, standing.

  ‘It’ll be for me. Probably somebody’s called something in.’

  The screen cut back to her, standing in front of the station. Detective Sergeant Cupidi: Serious Crime Directorate. And then they were talking about the weather. Hot all week, they said, smiling, and getting hotter.

  Zoë came back with the phone in her hand. Cupidi held out her hand for it, but Zoë said, ‘It wasn’t anyone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I just said hello and they rang off. Must have been a wrong number.’

  ‘Right,’ she said. Nobody had called; it looked like the TV appeal had not worked, which was frustrating. A woman with no name; no identity. Any murder was disturbing, but this one had spooked Cupidi. No one knew who the dead woman was; nobody had missed her, or come forward to weep over her.

  When they’d both finished picking at their meals, Cupidi collected the dirty plates, and, as she straightened, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the fireplace. ‘Do you think my hair needs attention?’ she asked.

  ‘Thought you didn’t care about stuff like that.’

  Cupidi frowned at her reflection, offended. ‘What makes you think I don’t care about that?’

  And she would have said more, but for a second time, looking in the mirror, she saw the victim in the mirror looking back at her.

  When they had cut her open, they had found no sign that she had drowned; but the pathologist could find no other obvious cause of death. Everything about the dead woman was an enigma.

  THREE

  ‘I’ve made up the bed in the spare room,’ Lulu said, standing above the stranger with a towel in her arms and talking as if she was deaf. ‘Can I suggest you wash before you get into the bed? I’ll show you the bathroom.’

  ‘Sorry if I put you to any trouble,’ said the woman quietly. How thin she was, thought Julian.

  ‘You turn up unannounced on a Sunday evening. No trouble at all.’

  ‘Lulu,’ protested Julian.

  Lulu held out the towel. ‘Please use this one.’ It was a cheap one they had brought back from a holiday in Ibiza before Teo was born. Amnesia Espuma: I was there. ‘The other towels are for family.’

  The woman sat on the orange chair looking down at the polished wood floor, saying nothing, doing nothing. Lulu dropped the towel into her lap.

  ‘I’ll just go and check on Teo.’

  When she’d gone, the woman looked up. ‘She doesn’t like me.’

  ‘She’s very protective, that’s all.’

  ‘Who’s Teo?’

  Our son,’ said Julian.

  The woman’s smile showed a few teeth that were mostly brown. ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Nineteen months.’

  ‘Can I see him?’

  ‘No,’ he said, too abruptly. Teo would be terrified of this strange woman, jaw lopsided, skin wrinkled and dark from spending too much time outside in all weathers, eyes pale with untreated cataracts.

  ‘I understand,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe in the morning.’ He was normally good in tricky situations. It was why he was so well paid by the design agency. He could analyse a problem and know where to allocate resources in order to solve it. But he felt lost now. ‘The thing is, you can’t just walk in here…’

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered.

  It was all she seemed to say. ‘I mean. What kind of mother does that?’

  ‘It’s difficult to explain.’

  ‘Maybe you should prove it. Yes. Prove it.’


  The woman was still holding the mug of tea Julian had made her. It must be cold by now. She said nothing.

  ‘Tell me one thing about myself that only you would know.’

  The woman frowned. ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘I don’t know. I have a freckle on my left shoulder blade or something.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No. That was just a hypothetical.’

  ‘You cried a lot.’

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake.’

  The woman looked up, startled at his sudden anger. Julian was wishing he had never let her in. It was like hard old scar tissue breaking, letting blood seep through.

  ‘If you were my mother, and for all I know you’re just some madwoman who’s walked in off the street…’

  The woman seemed to shrink into the round chair as he raised his voice.

  ‘I mean. If you were. And I’m not saying you are…’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Did you ever even bloody once think about me, wherever you were hiding? Did you?’

  And then Lulu was at the door. ‘Are you OK, darling?’ And when the woman had finally gone upstairs clutching her towel, she opened the window and lit Jo Malone basil-and-mandarin scented candles.

  That night, lying beneath white linen, they lay listening for any movement from her room. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said.

  ‘You go to sleep. I’ll stay awake.’

  ‘She’s not going to do anything.’

  ‘How do you know that? You said she was asking about Teo. If she so much as looks at him…’

  His wife was lying with her back to him. He ran her hand slowly down the line of lumps of her spine. ‘What if he’s her grandson?’

  ‘Just because you want it to be true doesn’t mean that it is. People pretend to be other people. Did she say anything that even slightly proves that she’s your mother?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There.’

  ‘But think about it. What if she actually is?’

  The digital clock glowed red in the darkness: 2:07.

  ‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘there are teams of people in Israel who go through everything you’ve ever said on social media, every electronic record they can hack, and build up a file that knows everything about you. They know your date of birth, place of birth, your National Insurance number. They know where you buy your underpants. Anything. They put all this information together, and so anyone who buys it can pretend to be someone you should know, then they sell it on to gangs.’