“So you found the body around six,” Killian said, “then what?”
“Then what?” Dean giggled nervously. “I screamed, that’s what. I screamed my bloody head off. I almost threw the body back where it came from.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Then I turned the boat round and came back here as fast as the engine would let me. I got back at around seven and phoned you lot.”
“How long have you been fishing these waters?” Taylor asked.
“Over twenty years. I used to fish with my dad and now he’s gone, the boat’s mine. I’m thinking of selling her after this.”
“Twenty years.” Taylor was genuinely interested. “How many sharks have you seen in that time?”
“Quite a few. They get caught up in the nets sometimes. But they’re just small ones. Two or three feet.”
“Nothing bigger than that?”
“You don’t see the bigger sharks. They certainly see you though.”
“So you haven’t seen any sharks that could do that to a man?” She pointed to the tarpaulin on the deck.
“Bloody hell, no. You’ve seen the film Jaws, haven’t you? That’s the only shark I can think of that could do this.”
“Are you ready?” Killian asked Taylor. He nodded to the tarpaulin.
“If it’s all right with you,” said Dean, “I’d rather not go with you. I’ll stay up here.”
“Of course,” Killian nodded again and stepped down to the deck. The tarpaulin lay next to a crate full of fish. Most of them were dead but a few were flipping around in a desperate attempt to cling to life. “Here goes.” He took hold of the tarpaulin.
Taylor wasn’t sure how she was going to react. She had seen dead bodies before, but they’d still had their legs attached. Please don’t faint in front of the DI, she told herself.
In fact, the body did not even look like a body. It was more like a checked shirt with a blue head and two blue hands. Taylor stared at the face. It was slightly bloated and one of the eyes was missing. Thin grey hair sprouted in patches from the dead man’s head.
“My God.” Killian turned away.
Taylor just stared. The hands were shrivelled. One of the fingers was missing. The lips and eyelids were a lighter shade of blue than the rest of the face. She took in everything, starting from the top of the head and continuing to where the shirt ended and the legs ought to have been.
“Seen enough?” Killian looked as though he was going to be sick.
“Yes.” Taylor replaced the tarpaulin. “Enough to know this wasn’t a shark attack.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Taylor watched as two paramedics put the body in a bag, hauled it onto the wharf and placed it on a stretcher. She followed them to the ambulance parked at the end of the pier. Jack Killian walked after her. He looked queasy.
“Jack,” the older of the paramedics said, “do you want us to check you over? You don’t look too great, my friend.”
“I’m fine,” Killian said gruffly. “What now?”
The paramedic looked at the body bag on the stretcher and then back at Killian.
“We’re good, Jack,” he smiled, “but we’re not that good. I don’t think this one’s going to make it.”
Taylor started to laugh, slightly hysterically. Killian cast her a stern glance and she tried to stifle it.
“Where are you taking him?” he asked.
“Back to the mortuary.”
“Here or Plymouth?”
“We’ll keep him in town. I’m sure you’re curious as to what happened to old Arthur here.”
“Arthur?” Taylor broke in. “Do you know who it is?”
“It’s his sick attempt at humour,” Killian told her. “Meet Carl Morton. Veteran paramedic and terrible stand-up comedian.”
“Let’s go,” Morton said to his colleague. They wheeled the stretcher into the ambulance, jumped in behind it and closed the doors. It drove off at a leisurely pace.
“Quite a character, that one,” Taylor said.
“Carl? An acquired taste, I can tell you that.”
“Why did he call the body Arthur?”
“You’ll figure it out. What did you mean back there when you said this wasn’t a shark attack?”
“I’ve watched the odd documentary on sharks. Did you know that they don’t actually like the taste of humans? They usually bite and let go. Unfortunately, that’s sometimes enough to kill you.”
“I’m ignoring your liking for nature documentaries. I suppose it’s better than those awful so-called police dramas. Go on.”
“One bite from a shark would have ripped that body to pieces. They’ve got serrated teeth — each tooth has rows of much smaller teeth. But the shirt on that body was hardly torn. It can’t have been a shark, even a massive Jaws-style one.”
“Interesting. We’ll see what the path guys have to say.”
“And how did he get in the water in the first place?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he went for a midnight dip?”
“In a checked shirt? No, I don’t buy it. Something else happened to him.”
Killian sighed. “Be that as it may, for the time being we keep to the story of a shark attack.”
“Damage control?”
“Precisely. Better to let the public believe a shark did it than have them coming up with all kinds of wonderful theories.”
On the way back to Killian’s car, Taylor’s vision went black for a few seconds and she had to steady herself on the railing of the jetty.
“Are you all right?” Killian asked. Taylor could see his lips move but the words seemed to come out in slow motion.
“Taylor?” Killian looked very concerned now.
Taylor felt extremely cold. Her legs were numb. She sat down on the concrete of the wharf and leaned against the railing. She tried to concentrate on one of the boats in the harbour, a large pleasure craft with ‘Kittiwake’ on the hull and a family of gulls sitting on the bow. She took a few deep breaths and the feeling slowly started to come back to her legs.
“Harriet?” Killian was leaning over her. He never used her first name.
“I’m all right,” she said, “I think the shock of seeing that body is catching up with me.”
She knew this wasn’t true. The sight of the severed torso had hardly troubled her. The numbness was the after-effect of the combination of an entire bottle of wine and the sleeping tablets. Taylor promised herself never to mix the two again.
“Help me up.” She reached her hand out to Killian. The DI pulled her to her feet, but he still looked extremely concerned.
“I’m fine,” Taylor insisted. “We’ve got work to do.”
On the way back to the station, Taylor gazed out of the window and thought about the body. She could not think of a plausible explanation as to why he’d ended up in a fishing boat’s nets. It didn’t make any sense.
“How do you think he ended up in the sea?” Killian asked. He was clearly thinking the same thing.
“I can’t imagine. Do you think we’ll be able to find out who he is?”
“That depends. The pathology guys will be able to tell roughly when he died. If he was in the water for some time, it’ll be a bit harder to get a precise time of death though.”
“Somebody must know who he is. Surely somebody will be missing him.”
“Not necessarily.”
“What about missing persons?”
“We don’t even know if he’s from around here. It’ll take forever to check the database for the whole country and if he’s a foreigner, it’ll be almost impossible to find out who he is.”