Leo
Leo found Harry thanks to the blue lights of the ambulance. That had been parked to one side with its headlamps illuminating a stretch of bank. The river ran black under the willows and alders. Paramedics were huddled around what Leo assumed had to be the punt containing the victim. Harry was standing at the edge of a lawn running down to the riverbank. In the further distance, three figures waited, each sitting separately on a bench.
‘Harry.’ Leo raised a hand to his sergeant.
Harry turned, but with some reluctance in his stance. ‘Leo. Really, there was no need for you to come on your weekend off. I had it under control.’
‘That wasn’t why the Super called me in.’
‘You could’ve told her I was up to the job.’
He could’ve but he hadn’t. ‘Ours is not to reason why, Harry …’
Harry sniffed at that. He was not a fan of women in authority. According to those that went drinking with him, he suspected all of them of getting their promotions thanks to gender bias. He was not that keen on the new breed of university educated types like Leo either, displacing those who ‘learned the hard way’ on the beat.
‘As per orders,’ said Harry, ‘I haven’t fully questioned the witness who found the body, but I did do an interview with the park keeper, Bill Bethwin. Is that all right?’ He said this in a tone that implied it had better be.
Leo really wasn’t interested in a fight. He just wanted to get on with this before the storm hit. The fretful trees were already making it hard to hear his report. ‘Fine. What did Mr Bethwin have to say?’
‘Apart from the jogger, who called it in, and the witness who found the body, there were no other members of the public in the park when Bethwin did his final check. He thinks it’s likely that the punt drifted here from upstream, rather than came from one of the hire places near Magdalen Bridge.’
‘What makes him say that?’ Leo had his own ideas but he was interested in what an experienced groundsman might say.
‘No pole. Hard to punt without one so if it moves it will be with the stream, not against.’
‘Unless the killer punted it here and dumped the pole in the bushes? We’ll need to mount a search for it.’ Leo glanced up: it was already dark with an almost full moon that was playing hide-and-seek with the clouds. ‘At first light. Can you call that in?’
‘Already done. We’ll sweep the meadows on both sides of the river between here and the boathouses – there’s the hire place as well as a couple of college ones.’
Grappling for authority with Harry was like trying to catch a bar of soap in a bath. ‘OK. Let’s concentrate on getting the body processed before the weather changes. The Super said the victim is well known?’
‘Yes, the witness thinks he recognises him.’ Leo’s ears pricked up: connection was always worth a closer look. ‘He reckons it’s the bursar from Linton College, Dr Kingston.’
Linton College was just upriver from the park, sharing a long boundary on the north. ‘Has anything been moved?’
‘Unfortunately, yeah. The woman who found the punt moved it to this side of the river with the help of the Good Samaritan who went to her aid. Swam across towing it, can you believe it? To get help, or so she claims.’
Leo gave him a sharp look. ‘I thought you hadn’t spoken to her?’
‘I got this much out of her before I got my orders to stand down.’ And Harry was clearly furious about that. ‘The girl’s a liability, messing with evidence, prancing about buck naked. The victim is starkers too.’
‘Do you think she’s involved, with the killing? Some sexual encounter that went wrong?’
‘God knows, I haven’t been able to ask her, have I?’ Headlights appeared behind them, casting Harry’s craggy face into dissatisfied lines. ‘Thank Christ, SOCO are here. They took their own sweet time, didn’t they?’ And without waiting to ask if Leo had finished with his questions, Harry strode away to greet the scene of crime officers who’d just driven into the park.
Leo knew he was going to have to do something about Harry’s attitude, but not now. First, he wanted a look at the body; then he needed to talk to the witnesses, particularly the one who found him. The wild swimmer.