Revenge of the Tide

  ‘What if something goes wrong?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing’s going to go wrong.’ He was getting impatient. ‘It will be fine, I promise you. Nothing will go wrong. When I’m ready, when I’ve got everything sorted out here, I’ll ring you and we can meet up somewhere. Alright?’

  That had been more than five months ago. All that time, I’d kept the phone on me, kept it charged up, and I’d never used it. Not once.

  I tossed the phone clumsily on to the wooden shelf behind the sofa. There was no point sitting here thinking about Dylan. Wherever he was, he certainly wasn’t thinking about me.

  The toilet, which I’d emptied only this morning, was full and backed up. None of the liveaboards would have left it like that. I felt desolate, and alone. I should have said yes to Ben. It would have been nice to have just been here with him. He wasn’t Dylan, but he was someone.

  I turned the lights off, and climbed into bed.

  I dreamed about the phone, Dylan’s phone. It was ringing, the name GARLAND coming up on the display as if to emphasise further that this was it, this was the call; but every time I pressed the green button to answer, nothing happened.

  I was half-awake and half-asleep for most of the night, opening my eyes to see the square of inky blackness above my head. Then Ben was in my dream, too. He was lying here with me.

  ‘You lied about the stars,’ he said.

  I looked up to the skylight and it was full of stars, so bright that they blended together, just one dazzling light shining down on us.

  Then I opened my eyes for real, and it was still just dark. There were stars – I could see them – but they were faint.

  Alcohol always does this to me, I thought crossly.

  I was properly awake, because I needed the toilet. I remembered mine was backed up and I wasn’t about to go across to the shower block in the middle of the night, so I crawled into the storage space at the front of the boat and found the bucket I used to mix adhesive in. It was clean, which was a bonus. I left the bucket in the bathroom after I’d used it and went back to bed.

  For a while I lay there listening to the lapping of the water against the hull. The tide must be going out by now. Before too long the boat would settle back into the mud and lie still, and then it would start to get light.

  As well as the water, there was another sound. It started out as a gentle bump, distant, as though the bow had nudged the pontoon or one of the fenders had lifted in a sudden swell and fallen back against the hull. It was easy to ignore at first. But then it came again, and again, rhythmic now – part of the song of the boat, the percussion of the river.

  The gentle bumping became a knocking, more insistent. A soft thud, a scrape of something along the hull. I was awake again, listening to the sound and trying to work out what it was. It sounded as though something was trapped between the boat and the pontoon, just outside my bedroom. And the tide was receding, which meant it was unlikely to be washed clear again. It would stay there, knocking, until the hull of the boat came to rest on the mud. Which was still hours away.

  With a sigh, I sat up in bed, listening. It was coming with the rise and the fall of the water, a rhythmic bump. It was nestling against my boat, big enough to make a sound. What could it be? A plastic container, something like that?

  Shivering, I pulled my jeans on in the dark, a sweater from the pile of washing. The boat was cold now; the stove had long since gone out. Just inside the hatch to the storage area was my torch, big and powerful and cased in rubber. I’d had a Maglite but I’d dropped it in the water during my first week on the boat and never got it back again. One of the first pearls of wisdom Malcolm had dispensed was: ‘Put a float on anything important.’

  I opened the door to the wheelhouse, my teeth chattering. It was bitter up here, freezing, the sky above barely grey. I slipped on the trainers that were by the wheel; they were cold and damp, but better than bare feet on the wet boards outside.

  No sign of anyone. The boats in the marina were all silent and dark, the ones on this pontoon still rising and falling gently on the outgoing tide, the ones nearer to the shore already sitting on their bank of river mud.

  To my surprise, I heard a noise from the direction of the car park – a door shutting? Then the noise of an engine starting up, and tyres on gravel. A dark shape of a vehicle driving out of the car park. No rear lights, no headlights. Why didn’t they put their lights on? And why hadn’t the lights come on in the car park? They were motion-sensitive. I remembered someone complaining to Cam that the lights shone into their cabin when the foxes were out by the bins. Solution – the bins were moved. But surely the lights should come on if someone was in the car park?

  Silence, apart from the lapping of the water against the bow. Even the motorway bridge was silent. Then it came again. A soft bumping, accompanied now by a gentle splashing as a little wave drifted over whatever it was. It must be something big.

  I crept along the port side of the gunwale, holding on to the side of the cabin for support. I was still a little bit drunk, the gentle rocking of the boat making me nauseous.

  For some reason I felt afraid. Out here, away from London, it felt wrong to be awake at this time of the night.

  When I got roughly alongside the bedroom, I turned on the torch, surprisingly and suddenly bright, a powerful beam shining out from it and hitting the vast conifers that rose behind the marina office. Then I directed the beam down into the space between the Revenge of the Tide and the pontoon.

  I couldn’t tell what it was, at first.

  A bundle. Something covered in fabric.

  My first thought, my first crazy, misplaced thought, was of the black plastic sack full of random fabrics that I’d thrown carelessly into the storage space in the bow. But it couldn’t be that. This was clearly something heavy, judging by its sluggishness, its reluctance to be moved by the water. It was floating, knocking into the side of the hull – right where my bed was.

  I went back to the wheelhouse and found my boat-hook, a long pole which had come with the boat and to my knowledge never been used, not by me at any rate – the Revenge hadn’t left this mooring since I’d moved in. The hook was heavy and unwieldy, and for a moment I contemplated leaving everything where it was and going to sleep on the sofa with my duvet, but it was no good. The knocking was regular but not regular enough – just random enough to slowly but surely drive me crazy.

  I tucked the boat-hook under my right arm and clutched the torch in my left, but the hook was too heavy – it needed both hands. I put the torch down on the roof of the cabin, its beam shining across the tops of all the narrowboats and all the way over to the office.

  I fished around with the boat-hook until it made contact with the object. I jabbed at it. It was solid, and heavy. I tried a couple of times to grab at it with the hook but, when it finally connected, the bundle was too heavy for me to lift. I felt it roll, turn, pulling the pole almost out of my grasp, so I wriggled it until it was free and peered over the edge of the gunwale into the darkness below.

  Something pale, something shapeless, part of the object but somehow different from it. I got the torch, shone it down into the space – and Caddy’s face looked back up at me. One eye closed, one eye half-open, gazing up at me in a bizarre, twisted sort of a wink. Her hair, a dark tangle, swirling and washing over her face in the muddy water.

  I dropped the boat-hook. It clattered at an angle on the gunwale and tipped over on to the pontoon, rolling to a stop. I was breathing fast and hard and then I found my voice and screamed, screamed louder and harder than I ever had in my life.

  Five

  By the time it was daylight, the shock started to kick in. Josie, who had been a paramedic in a former life, sat with me in the saloon of the Souvenir and was keeping a close eye on me.

  The police were on my boat.

  Malcolm had called them. He and Josie had been the first ones to get to me, although not long after that the whole marina was awake and milling around in vario
us states of undress, waiting for the police to arrive. They all took turns to look down the side of the boat with the torch, at the body. Eventually Malcolm had shouted at everyone to go to one place and wait for the police – they were contaminating the scene – and most of them went back to their boats.

  One police car had arrived, and two patrol officers. We’d met them in the car park of the marina. The automatic lights still didn’t appear to be working, so it was dark and by that time I was shaking, shaking from head to foot. One of them asked me questions about what I’d seen and heard while the other one went to look.

  I hadn’t cried. Instead I’d found myself making a sound that started out like a wail of panic, something I couldn’t control, a noise from somewhere inside which came from fear and horror at finding her like that; finding Caddy of all people, my beautiful Caddy. The noise went on and on, rising and fading again as I ran out of breath, while Josie held me against her bosom and shushed me and rocked me, and I held on to her.

  When I’d calmed down again, they made me go with Sally and Josie to the Souvenir. More police cars came, and a motor boat came up the river with other police on it. They put some kind of net over the end of my boat and tied the other side of it to the pontoon, presumably so the body didn’t float off on the outgoing tide, although it didn’t seem to want to go anywhere. Now it was daylight, low tide, and I was sitting in the saloon with two blankets around me, one around my shoulders and the other across my knees, but even so I was shaking. I couldn’t stop thinking about how filthy my trainers were, and whether anyone would notice if I took them off.

  People kept asking me questions, and to each of them I gave the answer, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’ I was only half-aware of all the people in the cabin, and people were talking about me as though I wasn’t there at all. In truth, my presence was mostly physical.

  Caddy was dead. An accident? Had she tripped, somehow, in the darkness? Had she come to the party earlier, and I’d not realised? Had she fallen over, stumbled against something and hit her head on one of the posts? Why hadn’t I heard anything? Why hadn’t I noticed?

  ‘What’s happened?’ It was Roger. He’d managed to sleep through it all.

  ‘It’s a body in the water. Against the Revenge of the Tide.’

  ‘Is she alright?’ Malcolm’s voice.

  ‘She’ll be fine, I’m keeping my eye on her. She just needs a bit of peace and quiet for a while, that’s all.’

  ‘Genevieve?’

  ‘I said leave her alone, Malcolm, alright? Honestly, you should know better.’

  ‘I just wanted to ask her if she wants me to talk to the police for her, you know, kind of like a liaison…’

  ‘What’s she want a liaison for, you big twat? Honestly, she’s perfectly capable of speaking to the police when they need her to. Anyway, she didn’t see anything, she just found the body. Could have happened to any of us.’

  ‘Her boat’s nearest the river. It must have come down the river from Cuxton. Her boat’s the one that would catch it first if it came downstream.’

  ‘Who says it went in at Cuxton?’

  ‘I never said that. I said it must’ve come from the Cuxton side, that’s all. That’s where the last one came from, remember? That bloke that got stuck in the mud. Last Christmas.’

  ‘You’re wrong. The last one was that stupid fool who jumped off Aylesford bridge in the summer.’

  ‘That one ended up in Gillingham, not here.’

  ‘I know that, I was just saying, that was the last body.’

  ‘Why are you all arguing about it?’

  This last voice was Sally’s. She’d been crying, off and on, not noisily but dabbing her eyes with a tissue, mourning someone she didn’t know.

  They were all silent for a while.

  I said, in a voice that sounded somehow different from my own, ‘Aren’t you going shopping?’

  It felt as if they were all staring at me and my face grew hot.

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry yourself about that,’ Josie said. ‘We can go later.’

  ‘Shall I get you a drink, Genny? A cup of tea?’ Sally said.

  She’d made one for me an hour ago. It was still there on the table, cold.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said again. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Wonder who she was,’ said Malcolm.

  ‘Let’s not talk about it any more,’ said Josie, patting me on the knee. ‘Plenty of other things to talk about, after all.’

  But that didn’t work either. A man came down the stairs from the deck, a man in a suit. He had thinning grey hair cut short, dark eyes, a lined face.

  ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Detective Sergeant Andy Basten. I’m looking for Genevieve Shipley?’

  They all looked at him and then at me, despite themselves, and almost imperceptibly they all seemed to move a fraction closer to me as if to afford me some sort of protection.

  He showed me his warrant card and his badge. The badge had rubbed against the card in the tatty leather wallet and you could hardly see his picture, let alone his name. He looked as though he liked a beer or two.

  The Souvenir was a big boat, but not as big as the Revenge of the Tide, and it felt crowded in the saloon with all these people.

  ‘We’ll – er – leave you to it, shall we?’ said Malcolm.

  ‘I’m staying here,’ Josie said, ‘unless she wants me to leave.’

  I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to tell him to go away, the policeman; tell them all to go and leave us alone. I wanted to rewind to last night and that terrible, insistent noise and, instead of going to look, turn over and put my hands over my ears and go back to sleep.

  ‘I’m alright, Josie. Honest,’ I said at last.

  They all went up on deck, leaving me there with the policeman.

  ‘This won’t take too long,’ he said. ‘Must have been a terrible shock for you.’

  I nodded, rapidly. My head felt wobbly, as though it wasn’t connected to my body properly. ‘I was half-asleep. It woke me up very quickly when I realised what it was.’

  He sat down on the armchair opposite me and took out a notebook. ‘I know you’ve been through all this with the officer earlier. I just want to check we’ve got things straight. You said you heard a noise?’

  ‘I heard a knocking on the side of the boat. It woke me up. I went to find out what it was.’

  I was repeating myself already, babbling. My mind wasn’t functioning properly; it was working at least three beats behind my mouth. Think. Concentrate. Don’t say anything. Don’t tell him anything.

  ‘That sort of thing happen often?’

  ‘No. Sometimes rubbish gets caught against the boat when the tide goes out. That’s what I thought it was.’

  He nodded. ‘It’s a nice boat,’ he said. ‘Live there alone, do you?’

  ‘Yes. I’m renovating it. I had savings from my job in London. I’m taking a year out to do the boat up. I’ve been here five months already, I’ve done most of it by myself. All the cladding. The plumbing.’

  I was rambling now, but he didn’t stop me. Just watched me with tired-looking eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry it was such a mess in there. We had a party last night. Why did you need to go in my boat, anyway?’

  ‘We’re finished with it now,’ he said. ‘Just needed to check it wasn’t part of the crime scene, that’s all. Birthday party, was it?’

  ‘Kind of a boat-warming, I guess. Some of my friends from London. Lots of people who live here.’ I indicated the marina with a vague sweep of my hand.

  ‘I’ll need to get you to write me a list. Everyone who was here last night. That okay?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you all had a good time? At the party?’

  I nodded.

  ‘The woman you found,’ he said, ‘she wasn’t one of your party guests?’

  I stared at him. ‘They all left. All the London lot. They all went early. I saw them leave the car park.’

&nb
sp; His question had reminded me of something and, before he had a chance to ask me anything else, I said, ‘There was a car, last night. I’ve just remembered. In the car park. When I went outside to see what the knocking noise was, I heard a car driving off. I thought it was odd because it didn’t have its lights on and it was still dark. And the light’s supposed to come on in the car park, it’s on a motion sensor, and it didn’t work. The light didn’t come on.’

  The sergeant was noting all this down and when I ran out of words he was still writing. ‘You didn’t see what sort of car it was? Registration number? Colour?’

  ‘It was dark. I mean the colour. That was all I could see.’

  He nodded slowly, made another note.

  ‘Do you know who it is?’ I asked, trying to keep the trembling out of my voice.

  ‘You mean the body? Did you recognise her, Genevieve?’

  ‘No,’ I said, quickly. ‘I couldn’t really see the face, anyway. I just saw that it was a body and I started screaming.’

  He didn’t say anything. He was looking at me curiously, as though he knew something I didn’t. As though I’d said something particularly interesting.

  He’d written everything down, laboriously, on three sheets of lined A4 paper headed with various official titles, and he handed them to me. I looked at them blankly, at the rounded letters on the page, thinking how his handwriting was girlish, not what I’d expected at all.

  ‘I need you to sign it,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your statement. You need to read it through carefully and check that you agree with everything I’ve written. Then you need to sign the bottom of each page. There – see? And there.’

  I read through it. He’d written it on my behalf, as though I’d done it myself. It was odd seeing my words summarised in that curiously rounded script. I kept thinking how I would have phrased it differently – ‘it was dark and I didn’t see the face of the person clearly’ – but I couldn’t bring myself to question it. I signed each page with a rough approximation of my signature and handed it back to him.