Fallen Gods

Four

Deputy Chief Constable Andrew Martin flexed his heavy shoulders as he walked into the big kitchen, feeling the muscles stretch his formal white shirt. Bob Skinner had always disliked wearing his uniform, and now that he had attained command rank, his closest friend had come to feel the same way.

However he was still new to the Tayside force, and understood that he had to be seen in it, if for no other reason than that the men under his command would know who he was. Happily, the day promised warmth, and he had been able to discard the heavy jacket for the white shirt, with shoulder-panels to denote his rank.

"Now there's a picture," said Karen as she turned to look at him. "You look just like Sir James Proud in that get-up." He smiled, knowing that it was a copper compliment; nobody could wear a uniform like his former chief constable.

"Where are you going today?" his wife asked him; she had been up for two hours, since the baby had wakened her just after six a.m." demanding her first feed of the day. Danielle Martin was two weeks and two days old, and for all that he had had half a year to prepare for her arrival, her father was still slightly stunned by her very existence.

"Uhh?" he asked. His mind had been on other things.

"Are you awake yet?" she laughed. "I asked where you were going this morning. Dundee is it? And why, on a Saturday? The football season's over, is it not?"

He blinked. "Sorry, love; I was just thinking about Bob for a second or two."

Karen patted his shoulder as he fed four slices of whole meal bread into the toaster. "I understand," she said quietly. "It still gets to you, I know; me too."

His green eyes flashed as he smiled at her; there was a new warmth in them, a depth of feeling that had appeared at the moment of Danielle's birth, and had stayed there ever since. He nodded towards the infant, asleep in her carry-cot. "At least we've got her to take our minds off it."

He pushed down the lever to start the bread toasting. "As it happens I'm not going to Dundee. No, I'm going down to the North Inch; the flood water's subsided, and it's just about dry enough for us to begin the clear-up operation. In theory it's down to the householders, but I've detailed fifty officers to help them. Community policing, remember; that's part of my remit now'

Karen frowned. "Is there anything that isn't part of your remit?" His duties were a sore point with her. An ex-detective sergeant herself, she knew how badly her husband had wanted a break from criminal investigation, yet during his first month on the Tayside force, he had come to realise that within the smaller force he had joined, there was nothing over which the DCC did not have a level of oversight.

"No," he agreed, 'probably not. But I'm enjoying it, nonetheless; the chief and the senior officers are all first-class professionals and good to work with. And don't tell me you don't like living in Perth, either."

"I don't know yet whether I do or not," she replied. "Fine, it's prosperous, the streets are clean, and we have this nice old house up on the hillside, but we're lucky. Suppose we'd bought that place we looked at in the town centre. We might have been flooded out with the rest of those poor sods."

He laughed. "But we didn't and we weren't, so don't damn the whole town because of something that didn't happen. Anyway, it was an absolute freak of nature. There were precautions taken after the last time, but nobody could have predicted last week's weather. If you didn't believe in global climatic change before, believe in it now."

Karen Martin frowned. "So that's what our daughter has to look forward to, is it?"

The toaster popped; he took out the first slice and began to spread it with honey. "It won't be that dramatic all the time," he replied;

'besides, it'll be her norm. We were brought up during the Cold War, remember; that was ours, frightening as it seems now. I was at a dinner last month and I met a guy who'd flown nuclear bombers. He told me that in 1962 the world was literally five minutes away from the edge. The crews were in their cockpits, with sealed envelopes containing the bits of

Russia they would be expected to find and obliterate. You know what else? They didn't have enough fuel to get back… not that there would have been much to come back to. No, I'm glad she hasn't been born into a world like that."

"She hasn't? What about September 11, and the aftermath…"

"Ah but…" He stopped. "Let's change the subject. That wee girl over there represents the start of the finest years of our lives. She's a shining light in all the gloom we've had recently. Let's just focus on the good times and enjoy them."

"That's a deal," Karen agreed, pouring coffee into two mugs. "We can start with our holiday this summer. Where are we going to take Danielle?"

Andy took his two slices of toast and honey, and his mug, and sat down at the kitchen table. "Well," he began, "Broughty Ferry's quite nice."

The baby was still asleep when he left the house fifteen minutes later, having agreed with his wife's proposal that they find a rental villa somewhere in France, in early September, and drive there. He climbed into his metallic blue Mondeo, reversed it carefully out of the driveway, and headed into the centre of Perth.

Even in the morning traffic, it took him less than ten minutes to reach his destination. He parked beside a row of five police transport vehicles, each one full of officers, and stepped out into the morning sunshine. He looked out over the flat plain of the North Inch; the sun of the previous few days had begun to dry it out, but it was still muddy and unsightly. He dreaded to think what the insides of the houses looked like.

He glanced around him as he walked towards the terrace that faced the River Tay, where, he knew, the worst of the flooding had happened. His eye fell on a uniformed inspector, in summer dress, as was he. "Good morning, Harry," he called out.

Inspector Sharp turned and made an involuntary move to attention as he recognised the newcomer. He was one of the two senior officers in charge of policing Perth and its surrounding area. In the larger

Edinburgh force, which Martin had just left, his opposite number carried a much higher rank.

"Hello, sir," the dark-haired, middle-aged policeman responded; he made to salute, but the deputy chief constable waved it away with a smile.

"Don't start that, for Christ's sake; on my first week in this job I started to get tennis elbow. How's it going?"

"It's not yet, sir, but then it's not quite time. As you ordered, we contacted all the householders who moved out and told them we'd pick them up from their temporary lodgings and get them here for nine." He nodded towards two patrol cars that had just drawn up. "That's them starting to arrive now. I've got our boys and girls waiting in the minibuses over there, ready to help with the really dirty stuff, and with the heavy lifting. Some of these people have lived here for years, and are quite old."

"Fine. Have you got plenty of tools; shovels and stuff for shifting mud? I guess there'll be plenty of it down there."

"There'll be all sorts of stuff down there in those cellars, sir. I was a young constable the last time something like this happened, and I was involved in an operation just like this one. There was fish, rats, condoms, you name it… and this flood's been a lot worse." He frowned, briefly. "Mind you, it's not quite right to call them cellars; with these houses they're more like basement floors, some of them with several rooms. Their gardens are well below street level, and they back on to the houses in the street behind; so they've filled up, and the water's come in from there as well as from the front door above."

"How deep has it been?" Martin asked.

Sharp scratched his chin. "The water was over four feet deep across the Inch," he replied. "That means it was above ground-floor level in the houses. So it must have been fifteen to eighteen feet inside them, anyway."

"Bloody hell; I understand now what you mean about the mess. We'd better see for ourselves, then. Go on, Harry; get the show on the road."

He stood back and watched as Inspector Sharp went about his business, speaking to each of the householders who had been brought to the scene, then waving the waiting constables and sergeants, some of them smiling, no doubt at the prospect of overtime, from the transport vehicles. They were all wearing overalls, and green rubber boots. Suddenly, Martin felt gripped by guilt; or perhaps it was only the eagerness of a new commander to set an example.

"Inspector," he called again. Sharp turned back towards him. "Do you have a spare set of waders, and boots, my size? Ten at a pinch, or bigger. Oh yes, and a shovel."

"Probably, sir," he shouted. "Bobby," he yelled across to a sergeant, who seemed to be supervising the helpers. "See if you can sort out some gear for the DCC The officer nodded, and headed off towards the minibuses; Martin decided that he would be as well to follow, to simplify the process.

The waders and boots that were left in the limited carry space of the vehicles were, not unnaturally, the dirtiest and scruffiest in the police stockroom, fifty officers having had their pick of the rest. He grabbed a set that looked as if they would fit him adequately, and struggled into them, trying not to guess where and why they had last been used.

When he returned to the terrace, he found Inspector Sharp speaking earnestly to a second group of homeowners who had been brought to the scene. There were five of them, and from the way they stood together, he guessed that they were two couples and one single person, an old lady who looked at least seventy-five years old. She was white-faced, and her dull grey hair was tied back in a bun, from which a few wispy strands had escaped, to wave on the morning breeze. She was dressed in a long, shabby blue coat, even on a day that was already fulfilling its promise of warmth, but, like the other four, she had come prepared for her task, in that she wore a pair of black, ankle-length rubber boots over her thick brown stockings.

She looked apprehensive; Martin moved towards her, almost automatically. "I was just suggesting to the people, sir," said Sharp, as he approached, 'that they might like our officers to go in to their houses first, to do what we can to make sure that the stairways are safe, before they venture in."

"That seems sensible to me," the deputy chief constable agreed. He looked round the group. "Is everyone happy with that?"

The male halves of the couples nodded, but the old lady pursed her lips and knitted her brow. "Ah'll go in ma ain hoose, son," she said.

"It might not be safe, Mrs…"

"Miss!" she snapped, cutting the inspector off short. "Miss Bonney, Wilma Bonney. Ah've been through this before, and the last time your lot cleared up for me wi' their big feet they broke half my china.

That'll no happen again. Ah'll be fine goin' in there. At my age, Ah've learned to watch my step."

Martin was on the point of suggesting that it might have been the flood that had broken her china, when he thought better of it. "In that case, Miss Bonney," he suggested, 'maybe you'll let me come in with you … just in case some of your furniture's been moved about by the water, and has to be shifted."

She stared at him, as if she was weighing up his sincerity or his trustworthiness. Whatever test she was applying, he passed. "Och, all right," she muttered. "You'll be careful where you put your feet, though."

"I promise." He smiled at Sharp behind her back as he followed Wilma Bonney's brisk walk across the street. He kept close to her, for the mud on the roadway was still damp in places, and he was afraid that she might slip, but she was as surefooted as he was in his clumsy footwear.

"Number twelve," she announced, leading him towards a blue doorway, on the far side of a broad flagstone landing, just a single step up from the pavement. Martin looked down and realised that it formed a bridge across a narrow basement yard, on to which three barred windows looked.

The glass in each was broken.

Miss Bonney delved deep into her purse and produced a Yale key, which she used to open the door. Martin saw that the frame around the keeper of the lock had been repaired, and remembered being told by Sharp that he had sent carpenters to the scene when the flood had receded sufficiently, to secure several houses where the water had smashed its way in.

"Oh dear." He heard the woman sigh as she looked into her home, and he sympathised at once. There was a watermark eighteen inches above the floor level; the carpet runner in the entry hall lay twisted and filthy, embedded in an undercoat of stones, mire, paper and other detritus. "Ah could dna have expected anything else, could Ah, son?"

"No', he agreed, solemnly. "I suppose not." He stepped into the hall and looked into the living room that opened from it. He was both surprised and pleased to see that it was empty of furniture, although its fitted carpet, whatever colour it had been originally, was now almost black.

"Ma nephew helped me move my stuff upstairs," she said, reading his mind, 'or at least, as much as he could. He's a good boy. He'd have come wi' me this morning but he's at his work."

"What about the basement?" asked Martin.

"He moved what he could, but there's some big kitchen furniture and wardrobes and the like that he could dna shift up the stair. He moved ma good china… the stuff that your lot didna' break the last time.. but all ma usin' stuff's still down there, and ma washing machine, and ma fridge."

"Let's go and see it, then."

"A'right." She led him to a steep, narrow staircase behind a door at the back of the hall. She was about to lead the way down, until he stopped her. Every tread was covered with mud.

"Please, let me go first. I insist."

She frowned at him, but let him go ahead of her. He took the stairway slowly, as carefully as he could, gripping the rails on either side as hard as he could, for they too were slippery. The walls on either side were sodden, and in places the plaster bulged outwards.

It was only when he got to the foot that he realised she had been following behind him. She stepped carefully off the last tread, and stood beside him, looking around the big room into which they had emerged. "This is ma kitchen," she announced; unnecessarily, for he could see, or at least make out the shapes of a cooker, and a tall fridge. He glanced down at his feet, and saw that he was standing in mud up to his ankles. The place was an almost indescribable mess; it was strewn with more stones, crockery… some of it broken, he noticed… and with tins and packets of food from storage cupboards and from the fridge. But it was more than just the mess; the place smelled terrible. For some reason, he remembered a holiday in Spain, when a truck had come to pump out a blockage in the sewer not far from

Bob Skinner's villa.

He looked at Miss Bonney; she caught his glance and gave him a faint smile. There might have been a tear in her eye, but then again, there might not.

"I'm very sorry," he said, sincerely.

"It's no' your fault, son," she replied, quietly. "It's God's; naebody else's but his." He heard himself sigh.

"What else is there down here?" he asked.

She pointed to her right, to a door in the far corner. "Ma laundry room's through there, wi' a toilet off it." Then she nodded to her left. "Through there, there's a big bedroom, a smaller one, and a cupboard. Ah'll just go and see whit they're like, and then, Ah suppose, Ah'll have to let your folk in after a', tae help me clear oot this mud."

"Yes," he murmured. "It's best."

He watched her as she squelched across the kitchen, towards the door on the far left. Her boots made a sucking noise with each step.

She reached the doorway, and turned, laboriously, to step through.

Then, without warning, as he watched her, Martin saw her hand fly to her mouth. She gave a short gasping cry, and stumbled back until she lost her footing, and sat down with an audible splash on the muddy riverbed which had invaded her home.

He did his best to rush over to her, but his footwear made haste impossible. When he reached her, the old lady was trying to push herself up. He leaned over her, took her gently under the arms and raised her to her feet. "There, now," he said, hoping to soothe her.

"What happened?"

She neither answered him, nor looked at him. Instead she kept her eyes fixed on the doorway. He turned; when he saw what held her gaze, he almost stumbled himself.

In the short corridor that led through to the front rooms, there lay the body of a man. It was on its left side, half submerged in the mire. Looking at it, Martin knew at once why the smell had been so bad.

"Jesus!" he whispered. "Is that your nephew? Could he have come back here and been caught in the flood?"

"No," Miss Bonney whispered. "Ma nephew's a great big lad. Ah've never seen thon before in ma life."

The Deputy Chief Constable cursed himself for not having brought a two-way radio. Then he remembered the cellphone in his trouser pocket.

He fished inside his waders until he found it. His white shirt was unimaginably muddy, but he gave it no thought as he dialled the headquarters number.

"This is Mr. Martin," he told the switchboard operator, as soon as he answered. "Patch me through on the radio to Inspector Sharp." The man obeyed, without a word.

"Yes, sir?" Sharp's voice was remarkably clear. "Anything up?"

"Very much so," he answered, tersely. "Have we had any missing persons reports in the wake of this flood?"

"No, sir," the inspector replied. "None at all. We had an eye out for them too, don't worry."

"Well, we've missed one. He's down here in Miss Bonney's basement. Get an ambulance along here will you, but tell them no lights and siren, I don't want any unnecessary fuss."

He ended the call, and turned back to the old lady. "Can you stand on your own for a bit?"

She gave him a withering look. "Of course."

In three long strides he stepped over to the door, then shuffled his way through, until he stood over the body. Years of experience had taught him to ignore, or at least tolerate, the smell. He crouched down and leaned over, to see better. It was in a filthy state, and there were early signs of decomposition, but it was still clearly the corpse of a middle-aged man. It was clad in what looked like a heavy shirt, rough jacket, and flannel trousers. He glanced along towards the feet and saw socks, but no shoes.

He leaned further across, meaning to use the opposite wall to lever himself upright again, then paused, unusually aware of his contact lenses as his eyes narrowed. The body was lying awkwardly, and its right arm seemed to have been twisted behind it by the water.

From this new angle he could see clearly a mark on the wrist; it was vivid, the kind of groove that could have been left by a ligature.

"Bloody hell," he murmured, then pushed himself to his feet off the wall, fumbling for his cellphone once again.

Within a minute he had Sharp back on line.

"It's on the way, sir," the inspector reported, briskly.

"That's fine. Now, still without causing any fuss, I want you to call the head of CID for me. Get him here, with whoever's on duty in the Western Division office, plus a full scene-of-crime team, including a medical examiner. And do not, repeat do not, let anyone into this house."