When Cassie set down Macavity’s evening meal, he seemed more interested in her hand than the food, and she realised he must still be able to smell eau de dead magpie.
Giving her hands a proper wash at the sink, she looked out across the canal. With no boat traffic it was as calm as an infinity pool and the alchemy of a London dusk had turned the surface silver. She pictured the way the magpie had floated out, drifting only slightly downstream, barely troubled by the current.
She jumped down onto the towpath and went next door to Gaz’s boat. He was swabbing the aft-deck – aka mopping the bit to the rear of the cockpit.
‘Silly question, but I assume rainfall affects the current, right?’
Gaz sent her the pitying look of a boating veteran to a newbie. ‘Yeah. It’s not strong at the best of times but when it’s been dry for this long it’s almost non-existent.’
‘And when did you say it rained last?’
He squinted up at the darkening sky, his satchel face creasing further. ‘Don’t recall off the top of my head. I’ll go and get the log.’
He went below deck, his gait bow-legged to accommodate any sudden movement of the boat, and returned with a pink and purple diary.
‘Is that, um . . . My Little Pony?’ asked Cassie, trying not to smile.
‘Yeah,’ said Gaz with a chuckle. ‘I got the brightest colour I could, makes it easy to find.’ He sent her a look. ‘You wait till you get old, you’ll find out.’ He leafed back through the pages, murmuring to himself. ‘Ah, here you go. Second of September – storm. Three and a half inches of rain. Sorry, I’m still on the old money.’
‘And you’re sure that was the last time it rained?’
Gaz sent her a steely look. ‘I might be an old git but I never miss a day recording the weather.’ He turned the diary around so she could see it and turned the pages: ‘See? sunny & dry . . . overcast & dry . . . drizzle overnight . . . broken sun & dry . . . a light shower two days ago . . .’
Counting backwards, Cassie calculated that when Sean had washed up against her boat it hadn’t rained for ten days. She strained to remember what Willets had said when she’d asked where the body went in. ‘Way upstream,’ he’d said, much closer to the lock.
‘So if a body washed up at my boat after ten days of dry weather, how far would you say it would’ve travelled to fetch up here?’
‘Ahh, we’re talking about your floater.’ He looked upstream. ‘With the current this sluggish? No distance at all really. Maybe thirty, forty metres?’
She pointed diagonally across the canal towards the hulking profile of the derelict estate. ‘Like round about there?’
Following her gaze, he nodded. ‘Yeah, possibly. I’m no expert but the lock-keeper’s a mate. I’ll give him a call.’
As he went below deck, Cassie looked out over the water, picturing herself pulling Sean’s body through the water, and how still it had been.
At this hour – gone seven – office workers had gone home but it was too early for clubbers, making it as silent as the inner city could ever get. Which meant that the scoot of a stone underfoot followed by a man’s muttered curse travelled clearly across the water. Squinting across the canal towards its source, she saw something odd: a man in a suit making his way down the unused section of towpath between the canal and the abandoned estate. That side of the canal was already in deep shadow, but from his halting progress it looked like he was having to pick his way through undergrowth. Her gaze swivelled to where the path dead-ended in a high mesh barrier.
Where the fuck was he going?
Reaching the dead end he turned to face the fence, his back to her. He appeared to fiddle with something at waist height and then he was through, pulling a section of fence closed behind him. As he turned, a sliver of his face was lit by the orange security lights just for a moment. It was enough, together with his silhouette and his walk, for her to recognise him.