“I can see boats on the far side, past that bank. There must be a channel.”
“All right. Lead on, then.” He gave a mock-gallant little bow and stepped aside.
They ventured out onto the walkway single-file, unable to walk abreast without brushing the tubular metal railing which provided some measure of safety.
Halfway out they reached the weir. Gemma stopped and Kincaid came to a halt behind her. Looking down at the torrent thundering beneath the walkway, she shivered and pulled the lapels of her jacket together. “Sometimes we forget the power of water. And the peaceful old Thames can be quite a monster, can’t it?”
“River’s high from the rain,” Kincaid said, raising his voice over the roar. He could feel the vibration from the force of the water through the soles of his feet. Grasping the railing until the cold of the metal made his hands ache, he leaned over, watching the flood until he began to lose his equilibrium. “Bloody hell. If you intended to push someone in, this would be the place to do it.” Glancing at Gemma, he saw that she looked cold and a little pinched, the dusting of freckles standing out against her pale skin. He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder. “Let’s get across. It’ll be warmer under the trees.”
They walked quickly, heads down against the wind, eager for shelter. The walkway ran on another hundred yards or so past the weir, paralleling the bank, then turned abruptly to the left and vanished into the trees.
The respite proved brief, the belt of trees narrow, but it allowed them to catch their breaths before they came out into the open again and saw the lock before them. Yellow scene-of-crime tape had been stretched along the concrete aprons on either side of the lock, but not across the sluicegates themselves. To their right stood a sturdy red-brick house. The French-paned windows were symmetrical, one on either side of the door, but the one nearest them sported such a thatch of untrimmed green creeper that it looked like a shaggy-browed eye.
As Kincaid put a hand on the tape and bent to duck under it, a man came out the door of the house, dodging under stray twigs of creeper, and shouted at them. “Sir, you’re not to go past the tape. Police orders.”
Kincaid straightened up and waited, studying the man as he came toward them. Short and stocky, with gray hair bristle-cut, he wore a polo shirt bearing the Thames River Authority insignia, and carried a steaming mug in one hand. “What was the lockkeeper’s name?” Kincaid said softly in Gemma’s ear.
Gemma closed her eyes for a second. “Perry Smith, I think.”
“One and the same, if I’m not mistaken.” He pulled his warrant card from his pocket and extended it as the man reached them. “Are you Perry Smith, by any chance?”
The lockkeeper took the card with his free hand and studied it suspiciously, then scrutinized Kincaid and Gemma as if hoping they might be impostors. He nodded once, brusquely. “I’ve already told the police everything I know.”
“This is Sergeant James,” Kincaid continued in the same conversational tone, “and you’re just the fellow we wanted to see.”
“All I’m concerned with is keeping this lock operating properly, Superintendent, without police interference. Yesterday they made me keep the sluicegates closed while they picked about with their tweezers and little bags. Backed river traffic up for a mile,” he said, and his annoyance seemed to grow. “Bloody twits, I tell you.” He included Gemma in his scowl and made no apology for his language. “Didn’t it occur to them what would happen, or how long it would take to clear up the mess?”
“Mr. Smith,” Kincaid said soothingly, “I have no intention of interfering with your lock. I only want to ask you a few questions”-he held up a hand as Smith opened his mouth-“which I’m aware you’ve already answered, but I’d prefer to hear your story directly from you, not secondhand. Sometimes things get muddled along the way.”
Smith’s brow relaxed a fraction and he took a sip from his mug. The heavy muscles in his upper arm stood out as he raised it, straining against the sleeve-band of his knit shirt. “Muddled wouldn’t be the half of it, if those jackasses yesterday set any example.” Although he seemed unaware of the cold, he looked at Gemma as if seeing her properly for the first time, huddled partly in the shelter of Kincaid’s body with her jacket collar held closed around her throat. “I suppose we could go inside, miss, out of the wind,” he said, a bit less belligerently.
Gemma smiled gratefully at him. “Thank you. I’m afraid I didn’t dress for the river.”
Smith turned back to Kincaid as they moved toward the house. “When are they going to take this bloody tape down, that’s what I’d like to know.”
“You’ll have to ask Thames Valley. Though if the forensics team has finished, I shouldn’t think it would be long.” Kincaid paused as they reached the door, looking at the concrete aprons surrounding the lock and the grassy path leading upriver on the opposite side. “Doubt they will have had much luck.”
The floor of the hall was covered in sisal matting and lined with well-used-looking rubber boots, the walls hung with working gear-oilskin jackets and hats, bright yellow slickers, coils of rope. Smith led them through a door on the left into a sitting room as workaday as the hall.
The room was warm, if spartan, and Kincaid saw Gemma let go of her collar and take out her notebook. Smith stood by the window, still sipping from his mug, keeping an eye on the river. “Tell us how you found the body, Mr. Smith.”
“I came out just after sunup, same as always, have my first cuppa and make sure everything’s shipshape for the day. Traffic starts early, some days, though not so much now as in the summer. Sure enough, upstream there was a boat waiting for me to operate the lock.”
“Can’t they work it themselves?” asked Gemma.
He was already shaking his head. “Oh, the mechanism’s simple enough, but if you’re too impatient to let the lock fill and drain properly you can make a balls-up of it.”
“Then what happened?” prompted Kincaid.
“I can see you don’t know much about locks,” he said, looking at them with the sort of pity usually reserved for someone who hasn’t learned to tie their shoelaces.
Kincaid refrained from saying that he had grown up in western Cheshire and understood locks perfectly well.
“The lock is kept empty when it’s not in operation, so first I open the sluices in the head gate to fill the lock. Then when I open the head gate for the boat to enter, up pops a body.” Smith sipped from his cup, then added disgustedly, “Silly woman on the boat started squealing like a pig going to slaughter, you’ve never heard such a racket. I came in here and dialed nine-nine-nine, just to get some relief from the noise.” The corners of Smith’s eyes crinkled in what might have been a smile. “Rescue people fished him out and tried to resuscitate the poor blighter, though if you ask me, anybody with a particle of sense could see he’d been dead for hours.”
“When did you recognize him?” asked Gemma.
“Didn’t. Not his body, anyway. But I looked at his wallet when they took it out of his pocket, and I knew the name seemed familiar. Took me a minute to place it.”
Kincaid moved to the window and looked out. “Where had you heard it?”
Smith shrugged. “Pub gossip, most likely. Everyone hereabouts knows the Ashertons and their business.”
“Do you think he could have fallen in from the top of the gate?” Kincaid asked.
“Railing’s not high enough to keep a tall man from going over if he’s drunk. Or stupid. But the concrete apron continues for a bit on the upstream side of the gate before it meets the old tow-path, and there’s no railing along it at all.”
Kincaid remembered the private homes he’d seen upstream on this side of the river. All had immaculate lawns running down to the water, some also had small docks. “What if he went in farther upstream?”