‘My mother sat by my dad’s hospital bed for three weeks. She didn’t sleep, she didn’t eat, she just sat there and waited for him to wake up. He fought, I’ve seen the records, I’ve spoken to one of the nurses who was there, she remembered my mum, sitting there, praying for him. Mum refused to leave, she wouldn’t let anyone in neither, except her friend Irene, of course. They remember Dad fighting to stay alive. He fought so hard he came round a few times, just to tell Mum he loved her, and us, but it was a losing battle. Stray bullet? Stray? Tell me, how does a stray bullet hit a man point-blank in the heart?’
‘We can’t change the law,’ said Jones. ‘He served nine years behind bars. That’s a long time.’
So, thought Jessie, the man who ruined Clare’s life was out. A free man again. Jessie believed in repaying one’s debt to society. She believed time served meant a slate wiped clean. She actively dissuaded her team from reaching for the con-list every time a body appeared. But she could see in Clare Mills’ saucer-sized eyes that she would never be free of this crime. Her sentence meant life.
‘Not long enough for three murders.’ She was shaking now. ‘No, make that four.’
Clare had no other family. Her father’s parents had died before she was born. Clare’s mother, Veronica, hadn’t spoken to her family in years. Clare had never met them, her mother had never talked about them. All the information Clare had came from Veronica’s best friend, Irene. A hairdresser who had never left the area.
‘They changed my name. Those people in care. Care! Don’t make me laugh. I knew I wasn’t Samantha Griffin, I was Clare. I kept telling them, “I’m Clare.”’ She paused. ‘I was punished for lying.’ Clare closed her eyes for a brief moment. The nervous energy was eating her alive.
Jessie and Jones exchanged knowing glances. The seventies were not childcare’s proudest era. ‘We’ll start with his birth date and the day he was taken into care. I don’t know who has tried to help you with this, but the truth is that you’ve been misdirected at every turn, and for that I am truly sorry. You have my word,’ said Jones, ‘we’ll find him.’
Clare seemed to retract into herself. ‘Dead or alive?’
Jones nodded. ‘Dead or alive.’
The timer on the video switched itself on to record. Clare stared wide-eyed at the empty television screen. ‘I’m not normally here in the daytime,’ she said, sounding far away again. ‘There are certain programmes I can’t miss.’
Jessie wondered which daytime host held Clare’s attention. Kilroy. Oprah. Trisha. Vanessa. Ricki. Springer. Pick a card. Any card. ‘I’m surprised you ever get time to watch television,’ she said.
Clare bit at her forefinger. ‘I don’t sleep much.’
‘Pull. Pull. Pull. Three, straighten up.’ The tip of the boat cut through the deep cold water, parting the mist. ‘Three, are you listening?’ Oars collided. A whistle blew long and loud. The boat started to drift out of line, carried along by the rush of the tide. The muddy brown water slapped heavily against the fibreglass hull. Cold spray covered the girls’ bare pink thighs, mottled with exertion. ‘What on earth is going on?’
‘I thought I saw something on the shoreline. I’m sorry, it looked like …’ the girl paused, her fellow rowers peered to where she was pointing, ‘… bones.’
‘Oh God,’ said the cox. ‘Any excuse for a break! It’s pathetic – get rowing.’
‘No, I swear. I think we should turn around.’
They rowed the boat round and backed towards the muddy stretch of bank. The tide was rushing out, they had to fight it to stay still. The five girls stared over the water. Patches of mist clung to the river, reluctant to leave.
‘There!’ shouted the girl.
There was something lying on the thick, black, slimy surface. Strange outstretched fingers, poking out of the mud like the relic of a wooden hull.
‘It’s just wood,’ said the cox.
‘White wood?’
‘Yes. Let’s go.’
The girl at the back of the boat was closest. ‘I think I can make out a pelvis and legs.’
The girls began to row away from the bank. They didn’t want to get closer. They didn’t want to get a better look.
‘What do we do?’ asked a shaky voice from the back of the boat.
‘Row. We’ll call the police from the boathouse. Get a marking so that we can tell them where it is.’
‘It’s right below the nature reserve. We’d better hurry, it’ll be open soon.’
‘Oh shit. Okay, okay … um, pull, pull – fuck it, you know what to do …’
A fully decomposed skeleton had been found in the mud on the bank of the Thames. No skull. No extremities. Probably a forgotten suicide. A local PC was on site. It warranted nothing more from CID than a detective constable. It was perfect. Jessie was early to work, as usual, and when she asked what was in, as usual, all he had to do was obey.
‘Headless body on a towpath,’ said the duty officer, crossing his fingers. Her leather-coated arse didn’t even touch the seat.
Jessie parked her motorbike on Ferry Road in south-west London. Here, secreted between a man-made nature reserve and a primary school, was a little-known cut-through to the Thames. As pavement gave way to mud and puddles, and buildings became trees and brambles, Jessie had the distinct impression of being drawn back in time, to Dickensian London. She feared the worst. A young woman, sexually assaulted on this heavily wooded, unlit, desolate path, strangled and then dumped. Decapitated.
She marched on through the puddles, the swirling Thames far below her. She saw DC Fry up ahead, sipping coffee from a Starbucks cup. He was chatting to five women all wearing matching tracksuits. Jessie assumed he had his back to the body. His eye on the girls.
‘Good morning,’ she said loudly.
Fry turned and looked at Jessie.
‘Morning, ma’am. What are you doing here?’
Another police constable she didn’t know hovered nearby. Jessie beckoned Fry over. ‘Where is the body on the towpath?’
‘There’s another body?’ he asked, excited. Bones in the Thames were too run of the mill to be inspiring.
‘What do you mean, another one? Where’s the first?’
He pointed over the edge of the wall. ‘Careful, it’s slippery,’ said Fry. Jessie left the path, crossed the few yards of brambles and low-growing branches, and stepped on to the stone wall. It was covered in a film of algae, as frictionless as ice. She felt the soles of her boots slip. Jessie grabbed a branch and looked over the edge. It was a twenty-foot drop to the mud. Down a steeply angled slope of greenish stone. Leading away from the base of the wall was a beach. A fool’s beach. The tide had gone out, leaving a wide expanse of deep, dangerous mud. Gulls criss-crossed it with their weight-bearing webbed feet, searching for titbits, leeches, worms, tiny spineless organisms on which to dine. By the look of the algae-coated wall, Jessie guessed the tide often reached as high as where she now stood. She looked back at the glistening mud. A semi-submerged ribcage jutted out of it. Was this her