The Body on the Shore Read online

  The Body on the Shore

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication page

  Book 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Book 2

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Afterword and Acknowledgements

  Deadly Proximity

  Deadly Proximity: Chapter One

  Also by Nick Louth

  About the author

  Copyright

  The Body on the Shore

  Nick Louth

  For Louise, as always

  Book 1

  Chapter 1

  A damp Friday morning in January, and in the south-west London suburb of Kingston upon Thames the rush hour was at its peak. Karen Davies was running a little late. She would normally be at her desk by 8 a.m., but rain had slowed the traffic to a crawl and she was still three miles away from the office in Roosevelt Avenue, between Surbiton and Esher. It was 8.13 a.m. when she nosed her Nissan Micra into the last available slot in the small car park behind the building where she worked. She had only been working as a receptionist in the architectural practice of Hampton, Deedes, Gooding for two weeks, but she already felt that her new life was going well. She had rented an eighth-floor studio flat in Kingston, expensive but manageable, with a glimpse of the Thames. She felt much safer here than in her old home in Cape Town. She had read about a wave of stabbings in the capital, bag- and phone-snatchers on mopeds, but most of that was in inner-city areas, and still a fraction of what occurred in South Africa. Here in the Surrey commuter belt, the worst problems seemed to be traffic congestion, the continually miserable weather, and some Londoners who seemed less friendly than she had hoped.

  Fortunately that wasn’t true of Hampton, Deedes, Gooding. The office was full of really engaging people, especially Peter Young. He was her favourite of the three junior partners. Always at his desk first, usually by eight o’clock, he always had a pot of coffee ready for others as they arrived. He was a handsome man in his late 20s with a shock of wavy blond hair, which contrasted nicely with his chiselled dark features and big brown eyes. Sadly, for Karen, Peter was firmly taken: a happily married man with two gorgeous children and a beautiful Peruvian wife. The family portrait on his desk looked like something from a fashion magazine. Peter always wore dazzling white shirts without a tie, tight blue jeans and highly polished shoes. Now she felt ready for a boyfriend, she would have to expand her horizons beyond work.

  Karen jogged up the stairs to the first floor and let herself in. The smell of coffee filtered into her nostrils as she shrugged off her coat, shook the rain off and hung it in the closet by her desk. As she filled her mug from the still-hot coffee jug, she called out to Peter and asked him if he wanted a refill.

  No reply.

  It was probably ten minutes later after she’d logged on, checked for any urgent emails and gathered the post that she walked into Peter’s office, coffee in hand. What she saw there made her scream loud enough to raise the dead.

  * * *

  Craig Gillard was the on-call detective chief inspector for that day, but as the shift didn’t begin until 9 a.m. he had taken the opportunity for a pre-work swim at the local leisure centre. He’d had the fast central lane of the pool to himself for the first hour, but now even on front crawl with tumble turns, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to finish his second kilometre. Heaving himself out, he went to the communal showers, finding the one reliably hot spigot to stand under as he considered his day. It had been a good week, his second with no boss as DCS ‘Radar’ Dobbs was still on leave of absence, and the vacancy for assistant chief constable was still unfilled. That had left him free to tackle the spate of moped robberies which had now spread out from Croydon into Surrey’s leafier suburbs. An arrest had been made in last Thursday’s knifing at Fast Chicken, and two were awaiting sentencing for a door-to-door fraud in Chipstead. That all made it a pretty successful week. As he walked to his locker, towelling his hair dry, he remembered he was taking Sam out for a meal tonight. It was the first anniversary of his marriage proposal, and he’d found a delightful Turkish restaurant in Carshalton, which had got great reviews.

  But before he got there, he heard the buzz of his phone. Amplified by the metal of the locker, it sounded like some gigantic angry insect trapped in a cocoa tin. His gut instinct told him, even before he answered, that this wasn’t going to be the quiet and easy day he’d wanted, and that the long-planned anniversary was going to be put on ice.

  * * *

  An hour later, DCI Craig Gillard stood on the threshold of Peter Young’s office. Hampton, Deedes, Gooding, or HDG+ according to the sign outside, was now a scene of carnage. The architect was slumped face down over his drawing desk as if he was asleep, with one arm stretched out. The drawing he’d been working on was creased underneath his body, the tracing paper flecked with blood, and his desktop computer screen was tipped over on its back. The wall behind him, originally white, was sprayed crimson, at first glance like some piece of conceptual art applied with a flick from an over-filled brush. Gory runnels had made their way down to the skirting board.

  The young constable who’d been first on the scene looked as sick as a dog. No wonder: even Gillard, with years of experience of murder and assault had never seen anything as heartlessly clinical as this. For PC Niall Weston, who only qualified from police college at Hendon a month ago and lived just round the corner, it was probably overwhelming. Weston had just happened to be walking past HDG+ on his way to get a bus into London for a training session when a hysterical woman burst out of the offices yelling for help.

  Looking to his left Gillard could see two neat bullet holes, just over four inches apart, through both panes in the huge double-glazed window, with just an inch-wide circle of frosting around the holes. Young’s office looked over Roosevelt Avenue, one of the main roads through the suburb, and traffic noise was now filtering in through those twin fissures.

  He’d have to wait for CSI before entering the room. He hadn’t let the paramedics in either. When they remonstrated with him he simply pointed to a thumb-sized lump of mauve matter that lay on the edge of the architect’s last drawing. ‘That’s a piece of his brain,’ he said. Fortunately, young Weston, having seen the victim was dead, hadn’t been in either. He’d remembered his crime scene course and secured the area as best he could until help arrived.

  Gillard wouldn’t be able to tell for certain for a while, but if Young had been sitting as he was now, the holes in the glass would have been about level with his head, indicating that he couldn’t have been shot from street level. However, if he had been standing and then fallen back into his seat, which was unlikely but possible, then perhaps he was. The blood spatters on the wall were low enough to indicate the former trajectory. He couldn’t see for cer
tain without entering the room where in that bloodstain the bullets had buried themselves. Establishing that would probably decide the debate very quickly.

  The detective steepled his hands on either side of his nose and took several deep breaths to adjust to the enormity of his task. The ‘golden hour’, that important first hour after a crime is committed, was over. If this was a professional job, the perpetrators would be long gone. The evidence in front of him was safe, so the first priority was to get into the building across the street from which the shots may have been fired. He radioed in for backup and instructed Weston to get some tape to seal off the pavement outside. Gillard exited HDG+, passing a bewildered group of architects on the pavement behind the bus stop who were waiting vainly to begin the day’s work. He crossed the broad tree-lined Roosevelt Avenue at the zebra crossing and approached the shops opposite. If the assumed trajectory was correct, the only possible sites for firing the weapon were two first-floor flats, one above a kebab house and the other above a tattoo parlour.

  There were two street doorways which looked like they reached the flats. The kebab house was closed, and the tattoo parlour just opening. Gillard bided his time awaiting the uniform backup which would be required to make these buildings two more potential crime scenes. While he waited he looked at the man who was moving about inside the tattoo parlour. He was a thickset fellow in his 40s with a moustache and a complicated razor-cut hairstyle. He had a sleeveless leather jacket which displayed his very large, muscular arms, decorated in an incredibly ornate monochrome. Gillard couldn’t help wondering how much, if any, of it he been able to do himself.

  Sirens heralded the arrival of two carloads of uniformed police and a CSI van. Gillard directed half of them to secure the flats and shops opposite the scene of the killing, locate keyholders and stop anyone entering or leaving. The uniforms were told not to enter either flat. He radioed in and asked for someone to contact the local authority for any CCTV of the area.

  The tattooist stood in the doorway of the shop, looking past the female PC who had come to speak to him, and instead asked Gillard: ‘What happened?’

  ‘We are investigating a serious incident opposite,’ the PC said, speaking to the tattooist’s ear. He continued to ignore her.

  ‘She will tell you anything you need to know at this stage,’ Gillard responded and turned away. ‘But can I ask you, do you know the people who live upstairs?’

  ‘Above me,’ he said pointing skyward. ‘There’s a young couple. I did a butterfly on her shoulder a couple of months ago.’

  ‘What about next door?’

  ‘I think it’s family from the kebab place.’

  A male PC had rung both the doorbells and got no reply.

  * * *

  Within half an hour the uniforms had located the owner of the kebab shop, the landlord who owned the flat above the tattoo parlour and, by telephone, the couple who lived there. Gillard was joined by Detective Inspector Claire Mulholland and Detective Constable Colin Hodges, who’d already got the Surrey Borough of Elmbridge to put together all of its Roosevelt Avenue CCTV footage for the last 24 hours. The back entrances into both properties had been secured and all that remained was to enter them. ‘Do you think there is anyone still in there?’ asked Mulholland.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘This looks like a hit. I can’t see any chance of the perpetrator still being around.’ He looked in at the uniformed police officer, a stocky woman who he thought was called Yvonne. She was sitting in a barber’s-style chair opposite the tattooist and taking a statement. Gillard had already established that the tattooist had neither seen nor heard anything suspicious since arriving at the shop half an hour ago. In fact, nobody that the police had so far talked to claimed to have heard a shot. If it was silenced, that would further support the idea of it being a professional hit.

  Chapter 2

  At 10 a.m. Gillard and Mulholland were in the flat above the kebab house, standing in the doorway of what was said to be the lounge, though it was hard to be sure. Clearly quite a number of people had been living here. There were two mattresses on the floor with dishevelled clothing on them. Damp washing was strung on a cord that zigzagged across the room. Crammed into the room next to a sliding-door wardrobe was a child’s cot and a cardboard box of infants’ toys. Gillard couldn’t see clearly to the window that looked out onto the main road, and wasn’t anxious to go further in until CSI got around to checking it over. There was no obvious sign of used cartridges, though if this was a professional job the shooter would almost certainly have retrieved them. The bathroom at the back showed more than a dozen toothbrushes, three or four sets of leather sandals, shower shoes and slippers, in both male and female styles.

  Mr Kaban, the Kurdish proprietor, explained that he had many visitors, some from his family which was spread between Kurdistan and eastern Turkey. They would pass through sometimes, working a few days or a few weeks with him at the shop, or at the building firm run by his brother. Unlike others, he said, they didn’t mind the noise of traffic or the overcrowding. ‘My rent is cheap, very cheap. And if they work for me, is free,’ he said. There were three people staying there at the moment, two men who worked with his brother, and the wife of one who did cleaning work in an office nearby. Kaban asked how long before his tenants could return to the flat.

  ‘Not today probably, but we’ll be as quick as we can,’ Mulholland said.

  Gillard meanwhile was using binoculars, trying as best he could to stare through the forest of hanging washing to the architects’ practice opposite. This was the view that an assassin would have had. It looked far from perfect, and he couldn’t even clearly see the window behind which Peter Young had worked. The only other window on this side of the flat was in the kitchen. Standing at the threshold he surveyed the cramped but clean surfaces, the Baby Belling worktop electric cooker and an old fridge-freezer leaning drunkenly against the window, blocking most of the light. The position of the fridge left only a six-inch strip of glass to the left which gave a view onto Roosevelt Avenue. It was an unlikely place for a hit man to choose, with a restricted position and a sliding sash that was old. The bottom half was clearly painted in, and had not been moved since. The upper sash would perhaps open, but he wasn’t going to try until the fingerprint technician had given it the once-over. In any case it would have made for an awkward shooting position.

  * * *

  By 10.30 a.m. Gillard had gained access to the other flat, above the tattoo parlour. Angela Dinsmore lived there with her boyfriend Ryan Hardcastle. She had taken a break from her hairdressing job in Richmond after she had got the call to open up for the police. She was a personable and friendly woman in her early 20s, clearly excited more than concerned about the police operation, and full of questions that Gillard was not yet ready to answer. She did confirm, however, that no one had been staying with them, and that no one but the tattooist landlord downstairs had a key to the place. Both she and her boyfriend had left for work shortly after 7.30 a.m. and had not seen anything unusual.

  Gillard stood on the threshold of the flat’s kitchen-diner and surveyed the large window which overlooked Roosevelt Avenue. Unlike the flat next door, this gave a clear view of Hampton, Deedes, Gooding. While a few branches of a plane tree outside would obscure the sightlines from the left of the room, the remainder gave a clear view, in the right light conditions, towards the desk from which Peter Young worked about 50 yards away.

  He descended the stairs and found Angela Dinsmore waiting for him at the threshold. ‘Someone outside told me there had been a stabbing across there,’ she said, pointing across the street.

  ‘We’re not really in a position to confirm the details of this incident,’ Gillard said as he watched crime scene technicians in their white plastic suits and gumboots emerging from the building opposite. ‘But there has been a death and we have urgent enquiries to make.’

  ‘Well I’m not sure why you’re on this side of the road,’ she said. ‘Like I said, we were gone by
7.30 and didn’t see anything.’

  Gillard nodded, then explained she wouldn’t be able to return to the flat for the rest of the day. He didn’t catch her next question, because he was looking at a text on his phone from DC Michelle Tsu.

  It seemed that Angela’s boyfriend Ryan Hardcastle had a substantial criminal record.

  That was interesting. Gillard’s reply was brief and to the point: bring him in.

  * * *

  Back on the other side of Roosevelt Avenue, PC Niall Weston had been facing something of an insurrection trying to keep everyone out of the building. The senior partner of Hampton, Deedes, Gooding was there, leading the charge. Kelvin Alexander was insistent that there were some designs in Young’s office that were needed on-site today. CSI were already in the office where Young had been shot. As Gillard stood at the threshold, he watched two technicians in Tyvek plastic suits and masks bending over the body, while a third was using a laser measuring device on the bloodstained wall.

  ‘Got anything for me, Yaz?’

  One of the bending technicians stood up and waved a greeting. Yaz Quoroshi was senior CSI for the forensic service shared between Surrey and Sussex police forces, and the most diligent of crime scene investigators. He stepped gingerly around the desk, picking up a paper evidence bag as he did so.

  ‘Found this on the carpet,’ Yaz said, showing him the evidence envelope as if it was a bag of sweets. Using tweezers, he extracted a bloodstained bullet. ‘A hollow-point round.’ The top end had opened up like a metallic flower whose petals were bent right open and back on themselves.

  ‘Remind me,’ Gillard said.

  ‘A hollow-point is designed to spread on impact, causing more tissue damage because of the bullet’s broader cross section. They’re designed to stop somebody with a single shot.’