Dead Tomorrow

32

Forget seasickness, Glenn Branson thought. The speed humps along the southern perimeter road of Shoreham Harbour were really doing it for his stomach. Those, combined with a bad hangover and an early-morning row with his wife, kicked him off on this Friday morning in a mood that was a long way south of sunny. It was as dark as the grim, grey, early-morning sky through his windscreen.

To his left he drove past a long, deserted pebble beach, to his right were the big, ugly, industrial structures, the warehouses, gantries, stacks of containers, conveyor belts, barbed-wire fences, power station, bunkering station and storage yards of a commercial seaport.

‘I’m working, for fuck’s sake, aren’t I?’ he said into the hands-free.

‘I have to be at a tutorial this afternoon at three,’ his wife said. ‘Could you pick the kids up and be with them until I get home?’

‘Ari, I’m on an operation.’

‘One minute you’re complaining I don’t let you see the kids, then, when I ask you to look after them for just a few hours, you give me crap about being busy. You need to make your mind up. Do you want to be a father or a policeman?’

‘Shit, that’s not fair.’

‘It’s perfectly fair, Glenn. This is what our marriage has been like for the past five years. Every time I ask you to help me to have a life of my own, you pull the I can’t, I’ve got a job on number, or, I’ve got an urgent operation on, or, I’ve got to see Detective Superintendent Roy Sodding Grace.’

‘Ari,’ he said. ‘Please, love, be reasonable. You’re the one who encouraged me to join the force. I don’t get why you’re so fucking angry about it all the time.’

‘Because I married you,’ she said. ‘I married you because I wanted a life with you. I don’t have a life with you.’

‘So what do you want me to do? Go back to being a bouncer? Is that what you want?’

‘We were happy then.’

The turn-off was ahead of him. He indicated, then waited for a cement truck that was racing down from the opposite direction, thinking how simple it would be to pull out in front of it and end it all.

He heard a click. The bitch had hung up on him.

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Fuck you!’

He drove in through a timber yard, past massive planks piled high on either side of him, and saw the quay of Arlington Basin directly ahead. Slowing to a crawl, he dialled his home number. It went straight to the answering machine.

‘Oh, come on, Ari!’ he muttered to himself, hanging up.

Parked to his right was a familiar vehicle, a massive yellow truck, emblazoned with the Sussex Police logo and the wording specialist search unit in large blue letters along the side.

He parked just behind it, tried Ari once more and again got the answering machine. Then he sat for a moment, pressing his fingers against his temples, trying to ease the pain that was like a vice crushing his skull.

He was stupid, he knew. He should have had an early night, but he hadn’t been able to sleep, not for ages now, since he had left home. He’d sat up late on the floor of Roy Grace’s living room, alone and tearful, going through his friend’s music collection, drinking his way through a bottle of whisky that he’d found – and needed to remember to replace – playing songs that brought back memories of times with Ari. Shit, such good times. They had been so much in love with each other. He was missing his kids, Sammy and Remi. Desperately missing them. Feeling totally lost without them.

His eyes misty with sadness, he climbed out of the car into the cold, wet, salty wind, knowing he needed to put on a brave face and get through today, the way he had to get through every day. He took a deep breath, sucking in air that was thick with the smells of the sea, and fuel oil, and freshly sawn timber. A gull cried overhead, flapping its wings, stationary against the headwind. Tania Whitlock and her team, all wearing black baseball caps marked POLICE in bold lettering, red waterproof windcheaters, black trousers and black rubber boots, were loading gear into a tired-looking deep-sea fishing boat, the Scoob-Eee, that was moored alongside the quay.

Even here in the shelter of the harbour basin, the Scoob-Eee was rocking from the choppy waves. On the far side of the harbour was a cluster of white petroleum storage tanks. Beyond them, steep grass banking rose up to the main road and a row of houses.

The DS, dressed in a cream raincoat over his beige suit and tan, rubber-soled yachting shoes, strode over to the team. He knew them all. The unit worked closely with the CID on major crimes, as they were trained in search techniques, especially in difficult or inaccessible places, such as sewers, cellars, river banks and even burnt-out cars.

‘Hi, guys!’ he said.

Nine heads turned towards him.

‘Lord Branson!’ said a voice. ‘Dear fellow, welcome aboard! How many pillows will you be requiring on your bed?’

‘Hello, Glenn!’ Tania said pleasantly, ignoring her colleague as she lugged a large coil of striped yellow breathing and communication lines over to the edge of the quay, and handed them down to another of her colleagues on the boat.

‘Where do you think you’re going dressed like that?’ said Jon Lelliott. ‘A cruise on the Queen Mary?’

Lean and muscular, with a shorn head, Lelliott was known as WAFI, which stood for Wind Assisted Fucking Idiot. He passed a folded body bag that reeked of Jeyes Fluid down to Arf, a man in his mid-forties, with a boyish face and prematurely white hair, who took it and tidily stowed it.

‘Yeah, got a first-class cabin booked, with my own butler,’ Glenn Branson said with a grin. He nodded at the fishing boat. ‘Presumably this is the tender that’s going to take me to it?’

‘In your dreams.’

‘Anything I can do to help?’

Arf held a heavy red anorak up to Glenn. ‘You’ll need this. Going to be lumpy and wet out there.’

‘I’ll be fine, thanks.’

Arf, the oldest and most experienced member of the team, gave him a bemused look. ‘You sure about that? I think you’ll need some boots.’

Glenn lifted a leg, showing his dainty yellow sock. ‘These are boat shoes,’ he said. ‘Like, non-slip.’

‘Slipping’s going to be the least of your problems,’ said Lelliott.

Glenn grinned and pushed back his coat sleeve, baring part of his wrist. ‘See that, Arf, the colour, right? Black, yeah? My ancestors rowed the Atlantic in slave ships, yeah? I got the sea in my blood!’

When they had finished loading the gear, they assembled on the quay for the pre-dive briefing, given by Tania Whitlock, who was reading her notes from a clipboard.

‘We are proceeding to an area ten nautical miles south-east of Shoreham Harbour, and the coastguard will be informed that we will be diving in that area,’ she said. ‘In terms of risk assessment on board, we will be out in the main shipping lanes, so everyone needs to keep a careful watch – and to inform the coastguard if any vessel is heading too close. Some of the larger tanker and container ships using the Channel have a clearance of only a few feet above the seabed in places, so they present a real danger to divers.’

She paused and everyone nodded their understanding.

‘Other than shipping, the risk assessment for the divers is low,’ she continued.

Yep, thought Steve Hargrave. Apart from drowning, decompression illness and risk of entanglement.

‘We will be diving in approximately sixty-five feet of water in poor visibility, but this is a dredge area and there will be an undulating seabed, with no underwater obstructions. The Arco Dee is dredging in a different area this morning. Yesterday we surveyed the area using sonar, where we identified, and buoyed, two anomalies. We will commence our dive on these today. Because of the tidal current we will wear boots for standing on the seabed rather than fins. Any questions?’

‘Do you think these anomalies are bodies?’ Glenn asked.

‘Nah, just a couple of first-class passengers enjoying the pool facilities,’ quipped Rod Walker, who was known as Jonah.

Ignoring the titter of laughter, Tania Whitlock said, ‘I will dive first, and then WAFI. ‘I will be attended by Gonzo, and WAFI will be attended by Arf. When we have investigated and videoed the anomalies, and brought them to the surface, if appropriate, we will consider whether any further diving will serve any purpose, or whether to spend the time scanning a broader area. Any questions at this stage?’

A couple of minutes later, Lee Simms, a burly former Marine, gripped Glenn Branson’s hand as he stepped off the quay and jumped down on to the slippery, rain-sodden deck.

Instantly Glenn felt the rocking motion of the boat. It reeked of putrid fish and varnish. He saw some netting, a couple of lobster pots and a bucket. The engine rattled into life and the deck vibrated. He breathed in a lungful of diesel exhaust.

As they cast off, in the falling rain and the gloomy light, no one, other than Glenn, noticed the dull glint of glass from the binoculars that were trained on them, from the far side of one of the petroleum storage tanks, across the harbour. But when he peered again into the gloom, he couldn’t see anything. Had he imagined it?

Vlad Cosmescu was dressed in a black bobble-hat and the dark blue overalls and heavy boots of a workman. Next to his skin he wore the latest in thermal underwear, which was doing a good job of keeping out the biting cold. But he wished he had linings inside his thin leather gloves; his fingers were going numb.

He had been at the harbour since four o’clock this morning. From a distance, in the darkness, he had watched Jim Towers, the wiry, heavily bearded old sea dog from whom the police had chartered the boat. He had observed him prepare her, filling up her fuel and water tanks, then motoring her eastwards from her moorings at the Sussex Motor Yacht Club to further up the harbour, to the agreed departure point in Arlington Basin. Towers tied the boat up, then left her, as instructed. The Specialist Search Unit had already been given a spare set of ignition and locker keys the night before.

It was ironic, Cosmescu thought, considering the number of fishing boats readily available for charter at this time of the year, that the police had chosen the same boat that he had. Always assuming, of course, that it was coincidence. And he was not a man who was comfortable with assumptions. He preferred hard facts and mathematical probabilities.

He had only discovered when he got talking to Jim Towers, when they were out at sea, that before he had retired to run his fishing trips, Towers had been a private investigator. PIs were themselves often ex-cops – or at least had plenty of friends in the police. Cosmescu had paid Towers big money. More money for that single trip than he would have earned in a year of charters. Yet now, just a few days later, he was letting ten cops go out on that boat!

Cosmescu didn’t like the way that smelled.

He had long believed in the old adage: Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

And at this moment Jim Towers could hardly be closer. He was bound up so tightly with duct tape that he looked like an Egyptian mummy, lying securely in the rear of Cosmescu’s small white van. The van was registered in the name of a building firm that existed but never traded, and he normally kept it parked out of sight, inside a secure lock-up.

For the moment, it was parked in a side street, just off the main road behind him. Just a couple of hundred yards away.

Quite close enough.

Twenty minutes later, after a slow journey through the lock, the boat headed out of the shelter of the harbour moles into the open sea. Almost instantly the water became rougher, the small boat pitch-poling through the waves in the rising offshore wind.

Glenn was seated on a hard stool, under the shelter of the open cabin that was little more than an awning, next to Jonah, who was at the helm. The DS held on to the compass binnacle in front of him, checking his phone every few minutes as the harbour and shoreline receded, in case there was a text from Ari. But the screen remained blank. After half an hour he was starting to feel increasingly queasy.

The crew took the piss out of him relentlessly.

‘That what you always wear on a boat, Glenn?’ Chris Dicks, nicknamed Clyde, asked him.

‘Yeah. Cos, like, usually I have a private cabin with a balcony.’

‘Get well paid in CID, do you?’

The boat was vibrating and rolling horribly. Glenn was taking deep breaths, each one containing exhaust fumes and varnish and rotted fish, and occasional snatches of Jeyes Fluid – the smell that every police officer associates with death. He was feeling giddy. The sea was becoming a blur.

‘Hope you brought your dinner jacket,’ WAFI said. ‘You’re going to need it if you are planning on dining at the captain’s table tonight.’

‘Yeah, course I did,’ Glenn replied. It was becoming an effort to speak. And he was freezing cold.

‘Keep looking at the horizon, Glenn,’ Tania said kindly, ‘if you feel queasy.’

Glenn tried to look at the horizon. But it was almost impossible to tell where the grey sky met the grey roiling sea. His stomach was playing hoopla. His brain was trying to follow it, with limited success.

Between himself and the skipper, Jonah, who sat on a padded seat, holding the large, round wheel, was the Humminbird sidescan imaging sonar screen.

‘These are the anomalies we picked up yesterday, Glenn,’ Tania Whitlock said.

She ran a replay on the small blue screen. There was a line down the middle, made by the Towfish sonar device which had been trawled behind the boat. She pointed out two small, barely visible black shadows.

‘Those could be bodies,’ she said.

Glenn was not sure exactly what he was meant to be looking at. The shadows looked tiny, the size of ants.

‘Those there?’ he asked.

‘Yes. We’re about one hour away. Coffee?’

Glenn Branson shook his head. One hour, he thought. Shit. A whole hour more of this. He wasn’t sure he could swallow anything. He tried staring at the horizon, but that made him feel even worse.

‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Are you sure? You look a little peaky,’ Tania said.

‘Never felt better in my life!’ Glenn said.

Ten seconds later he leapt off his stool, lurched to the side of the boat and threw up violently. Last night’s microwaved lasagne and a lot of whisky. As well as this morning’s single piece of toast.

Fortunately for him, and even more so for those near him, he was on the leeward side.