Through the window Auguste could see the police arriving.
‘You were the bad egg,’ he continued. ‘Your mistake was that you asked me, a master chef, to cook it.’
Max Winner’s Shadow by Peter Turnbull
The man enjoyed the work. He always did. Just he and his dog and a summer’s morning. It was ‘their time’ – his feet crumbling the loose gravel on the towpath as the last of the haze rose from the canal and his dog twisting and turning, now ahead of him, now beside him, now behind him, now ahead of him, now beside him, now behind him, now ahead of him again. They rounded the bend of the canal and entered the phase of the walk that the man loved most of all, where thick vegetation grew at either side of the canal and reached out over the water, so that in summer especially, when the foliage was at its most lush, this part of the canal resembled a walk in a tunnel. It was in this section of the York canal that the man saw the greatest incidence of wildlife, the moorhens, kingfishers, stoats, and water rats. The latter he minded not, for like all creatures, they had a place in the scheme of things. Here they were wild, not scavengers living off the debris of humankind, and he chose to accept them as beasts in their own place. And he also saw insects, dragonflies, butterflies, spiders. At the end of the ‘tunnel’ ahead of him, he could see the black-and-white gates of the ‘Larkfield Three-Rise’, a tier of three locks which lifted the canal up a full thirty feet to its next section, which took it across the Wold towards Hull and the seaport there. Or lowered it for the final stretch into York, depending upon which way the barge, now a pleasure craft rather than a working boat, was travelling. The man walked slowly, savouring the walk, just he and his best friend. An onlooker would see a man in his sixties, plus fours, stout shoes, a tweed jacket, and a white Norfolk hat, and with him, a confident chocolate-brown Labrador. The man left the shade of the ‘tunnel’ and put himself at the inclined path which ran alongside the three-rise until he stood at the top. These days he was finding the incline difficult…even a short incline such as this he found hard. He could, he felt, walk forever upon the flat, but inclines were proving difficult. He paused at the top of the incline and pondered the next section of the walk, another six hundred yards of canal towpath and then he’d turn into the wood and begin the sweep back towards home. He expected to be home by nine-thirty…in time for Morning Service on the BBC. It was a good walk, about three hours long, and he and his friend did it together twice a week, in all but the most extreme weather conditions.
Then he saw a shiny black object in the canal, and tutted at folk who thought nothing of throwing their refuse into the water. With a jolt, he realised that he wasn’t looking at a black bin liner containing domestic rubbish, he was looking at oily water shimmering on a leather jacket which encased a human body, floating face down in the water.
The body was that of a female. The first police officer to attend waded into the canal and was eventually forced to swim the last few feet, the water being just too deep for a tall man to wade. He reached the body, gasping at the chill of the water despite it being high summer, and rolled it face up, just in case there was still time, but the pale and bloated, macerated skin said that all hope had gone. He swam sideways, dragging the body with him back to the towpath, where he and his colleague together hauled the body out of the water. Closer examination showed her to be a woman of middle years and possibly, probably, of privileged living. The leather jacket was not inexpensive, neither was the watch, nor the jewellery, nor the skirt, nor the shoes, which had remained on her feet, held firmly as the body expanded.
One of the police officers, the one who remained dry, stayed with the corpse. The other, saturated and chilled, walked to where they had parked the area car. He called Friargate police station, requested the police surgeon and CID attendance. He added that the death was probably suspicious, if only because middle-aged, middle-class women do not walk along canal towpaths alone at night. They just don’t.
When, thirty minutes later, the police surgeon arrived, he noticed a blue-and-white police tape around the body, which by then lay under a black plastic sheet. He noted a member of the public being told firmly but politely that he couldn’t walk along the canal despite the fact that he did that each morning. The police surgeon approached the tape, knelt by the body, lifted the plastic sheet, and let it fall reverently back in place as the member of the public turned and walked sullenly away.
‘I can confirm life extinct.’ The police surgeon stood. ‘At nine-ten a.m.’
‘Nine-ten a.m., sir?’ the police constable repeated and noted in his notebook. He glanced up and noted two figures walking towards them along the towpath. ‘CID here now, sir.’
‘Good…I think they’ll be needed.’ He turned and glanced and nodded at the approaching figures, one a white male, the other a black female. Both tall, both slim, walking easily in each other’s company, occasionally rubbing shoulders; two people who like each other. ‘Dr Truelove,’ he said when the officers were close enough.
‘DCs Pharoah and Markov.’ The woman spoke. ‘I’m Pharoah.’
‘We haven’t met. Not local, are you, by your accent?’
‘St Kitts, via Stoke Newington, London.’ Carmen Pharoah smiled.
‘Pleased to meet you. Well, to the matter in hand.’ Truelove turned to the body. ‘I think you’ll be needing a pathologist. The police constable who phoned it in was correct to assume suspicious circumstances. She didn’t drown, you see. I can tell that virtually at a glance. Eyes closed, you see. She was either unconscious or deceased before she entered the water. But that’s really the territory of the Home Office pathologist, not I.’
‘I see,’ Carmen Pharoah said. ‘Pathologist, as you say.’
‘I’ve pronounced life extinct at nine-ten, this day. It’s really up to the pathologist now.’
‘Wonder where she came into the canal?’ Carmen Pharoah said, more to herself than anyone around her. ‘No sign of a struggle here that I can see.’
‘Up there.’ The constable spoke. He pointed along the canal, away from the locks, towards Hull and the coast. ‘She would have drifted down overnight. Canals have currents, like rivers.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ Markov spoke.
‘It’s true, sir.’ The police constable spoke confidently. ‘All canals are the same. They benefit from rainwater which runs off the land into the canal, but each canal has a river or a stream or a lake close to the highest point and they flow down from there. This part of the canal drains into the Ouse at York.’ He turned. ‘In that direction. So she would have drifted down from the opposite direction until she reached the locks, where she was caught.’
‘Makes sense.’ Markov nodded. ‘We’ll take a walk up there.’ Carmen Pharoah pressed the Send button on her radio and called Friargate police station, requesting the pathologist and the mortuary van. She and Markov walked eastwards along the towpath in the opposite direction of the current. As she walked, she had to concede that this really was a very, very attractive part of England, lush fields and a flat landscape. She thought that she might settle here after all. She knew that she couldn’t go back to London…horror of horrors…the commuting…and while St Kitts would always be ‘home’, to return there was not an option. But York, and North Yorkshire…an ancient city… affordable housing…vast skies produced by a flat landscape.
There are worse places.
Every few hundred yards along the York and Hull canal, as with all British canals, there are stone ramps which lead from the towpath into the water, the ramps being inclined towards each other with a gap of about six feet between them. Their purpose was to enable a horse to be recovered from the canal, so that should a horse that was pulling a barge slip into the canal, it could be unhitched from the barge and worked along the canal, through the water, until a ramp was reached where it could easily walk back up to the towpath, and be returned and rehitched to the barge. Diesel engines have rendered such ramps redundant, but they remain, and the six-foot gap between each ramp tends to be a collection point for floating debris. It was between two such ramps that Simon Markov noticed a handbag, black leather, floating among the plastic bags and bottles. He knelt down and fished it out of the water.