Seaweed Under Water Read online

  “Call it what you like,” she snapped. “Half-honest guys, they’re the only ones I get. When I do meet somebody genuine he’s not interested.”

  “Who do you think I am, Marcel Proust?”

  Her face hardened and her voice became husky. “Who?”

  “Proust. A guy who did all his best work in bed,” I said, grinning. “He was a writer, not a lover.”

  “Just who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “Silas Seaweed. I’m a cop, with the Victoria Police Depart-ment.”

  “I wish you weren’t,” she said, looking across the railing. “I wish you were just simple and uncomplicated.”

  “Like you?”

  A fleeting smiled curved her lips. “I tell you this much, Silas. If you ever do get interested in me I’ll never bore you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Driving away from Mowaht Bay, the MG’s speedometer registered an unsteady 40 kilometres per hour. When I pushed it faster, it skittered sickeningly from side to side—reminding me of the time I fell off a mechanical horse at Monty’s pub. When not actively wresting to keep my car on the long and winding road, I thought about Harley Rollins—putting together the things I knew, the things I suspected. As for Tess Rollins, I tried, difficult as it was, not to think of her at all for fear of losing track, driving off the road and ending up in the saltchuck, where my sex life, my supernatural life and all my other lives would reach a sad, sordid, inglorious finale.

  I made it back to Victoria about 8 pm and dropped the MG off at Ted Rushton’s Brit Car shop. After looking over the damage, Rushton’s service manager told me the car would be off the road for the better part of a month. He gave me a full-size Chev loaner, a car that, compared to my sprightly British coupe, drove like a tank.

  Back at my cabin on the Warrior Reserve, I had a couple of short drinks, showered Mowaht Bay’s dusty road off my sweaty body, put on a terry robe and uncapped a bottle of Foster’s. My spine felt stiff and my tongue tasted like a roofing shingle. I ate a carton of chicken and potato salad, cleaned my teeth, drank two glasses of water then went to bed and slept dreamlessly. A jangling telephone woke me up. I was gargling mouthwash when my answering machine clicked in. Detective Inspector Bernie Tapp’s voice said, “Silas. Put your feet on deck and pick up the goddam phone. We need to talk.”

  I reached for the phone and asked, “What time is it?”

  “It’s nearly 7:30. That’s ante meridian, in case you were wondering.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I need you at headquarters, right now,” Tapp said, banging the phone down hard.

  I had a cold shower, put on my sergeant’s uniform, pocketed my electric razor and went outside, Chief Alphonse was herding another bunch of chattering kids into the yellow school bus. The chief waved. I walked over to him and said, “Chief, we need to talk.”

  He nodded and said, “That’d be good. I’d enjoy that.”

  “How about after lunch, today or tomorrow?”

  “Fine, meet me at the band office, say four o’clock. Me and the kids are always back home by then.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  I got into the Chev and started driving. The car had a 383 V-eight under its hood. Before I knew it, I was doing 70 and still accelerating. The Chev wasn’t as much fun to drive as the MG, but it was a lot faster. I slowed down, plugged my razor into the lighter socket and started mowing. A red light brought me to a stop in Vic. West, where the Johnson Street Bridge had been raised to let a freighter move through to Point Ellice. Glancing in my rear-view mirror, I noticed a shiny Ford Mustang, parked two cars behind me.

  The bridge came down. I drove on and parked in the police lot on Caledonia Street. Walking upstairs to Bernie Tapp’s new office, I thought back through the years, resuscitated in memory some of the cases that Bernie and I had worked on together: murders, blackmails, rapes. After 10 years, many of those cases remained unsolved.

  Mrs. Nairn, the sad-eyed brunette who was the acting DCI’s private secretary, was typing in an anteroom. She waved me right on through. I tapped on Bernie’s door and went in, a malicious satisfaction stirring within me because DCI Bulloch now belonged to police history.

  Tapp’s office overlooked the Memorial Arena. I found him standing with his back to the door, spreading birdseed on a window ledge. Without turning around he said, “Shut the door, Silas. You’re causing a draft.”

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “I saw your reflection in this window, but I’m psychic as well.”

  Bernie Tapp is a little less than six feet tall. He has an 18-inch neck. If men were measured like automobiles, he would be a big-block V-eight running on high-octane. He is 50 years old. He has strong, blunt hands and he can bench-press hundreds of pounds. That day, he was wearing a red lumberjacket with burn marks on the pockets, a blue sweatshirt, faded jeans and leather boots with cleated rubber soles.

  I said, “What’s a matter? They didn’t issue your DCI’s uniform yet?”

  Bernie closed the window, placed the can of birdseed on a filing cabinet and sat behind his desk. A couple of pigeons landed on the windowsill and began to peck.

  “The harbourmaster called us three days ago,” Bernie said. “They’d found a body, floating in the Inner Harbour. We picked it up, put it in the morgue.”

  “Three days ago? That’s very interesting. But why ruin my beauty sleep and drag me over here to tell me about it?”

  “I thought you’d want to know. Guess whose body it was?”

  “Jane Colby’s,” I said, without even thinking.

  “That’s right. How did you know?”

  “Maybe I’m psychic too, but it was actually a guess. Also, somebody probably told you I’ve been making inquiries about Jane Colby.”

  “That’s correct. We had a phone call from a lady on Crowe Street. She’s accusing you of unprofessional conduct.”

  “Sister Mildred?”

  “No, her name’s Daphne-something.”

  I shrugged my shoulders, and at the same time, my hand moved reflexively toward the pocket where I used to keep cigarettes and matches. I’d quit smoking more than 10 years previously, so the reflex was a bit odd. This case was getting to me.

  “I talked to Sister Mildred, Terry Colby’s guardian. I called on Terry’s grandfather as well, but that was two days ago,” I said. “I’ll swear they knew nothing about Jane Colby’s death at that time.”

  “Perhaps not, but we knew. Mr. Colby should have been notified. Somebody screwed up, time was wasted, although there’s a reason,” Bernie said. “When Inspector Manners looked into it, he discovered that Jane Colby’s next-of-kin is a mentally handicapped child.”

  “We say mentally challenged, nowadays. Incidentally, Denise Halvorsen saw Jane Colby in Pinky’s, two weeks last Friday.”

  Tapp’s eyebrows came together. He said, “Okay, open up. Tell me everything.”

  I told him everything. I told him about meeting Terry Colby, visiting her Crowe Street care home, visiting Fred Colby, and about my trip to the Rainbow Motel. I told him about my stay in Mowaht Bay, and about my punch-up with Harley Rollins.

  Bernie said incredulously, “You came to blows with Harley Rollins?”

  “I merely defended myself. Later on I met Harley’s sister, Tess.”

  “Did you beat her up, too?”

  “No, but we came close to committing a biblical sin. When I went back to Mowaht Bay, three of Harley’s goons showed up. They tried to kill me and damn near succeeded.”

  “How do you know they were Harley’s goons?”

  “How do I know it’ll get dark tonight?”

  “Serves you right,” Bernie snapped. “Harley Rollins is too big to fool with. You should have been more tactful.”

  “Maybe. I gave one of his goons a broken jaw. Afterwards, I spent the night on Tess Rollins’ boat.”

  “There’s more; tell me the rest of it.”

  I told him about the goons who attacked me, and how I’d ended
up on Tess’s boat. I told him about the logging donkey, and my ghostly encounter. Bernie took the whole thing in stride. Grinning cynically he noted, “If one of these guys does have a broken jaw, identifying him will be a cinch.”

  Bernie was making a move to stand up when I said, “There’s more.”

  He sat down again, his face lengthening as I recounted Denise Halvorsen’s story about seeing Jane Colby in Pinky’s bar.

  “That’s all very useful. You’ve been a busy boy, Silas.”

  Bernie got up, put a tweed cap on his head and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Where to?”

  “The morgue. En route, you can tell me a bit more about this ghost you think you saw.”

  “En route, you can tell me what ‘Nice’ Manners is doing on this case.”

  “Detective Inspector Manners, if you don’t mind. He’s been promoted to the job that could have been yours, if you’d played your cards right.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The forensic pathologist had grown old at his trade. Age and experience had carved deep grooves down his long, bony face. He led Bernie and me into a cold, antiseptic chamber that smelled of formaldehyde. A minute later, we were staring down at the naked remains of a thin, middle-aged alcoholic. We’d already inspected the white shirt, jeans and runners Jane Colby had been wearing when they plucked her out of the water. Five dollars in loose change, a VISA card and a B.C. driver’s licence had been recovered from the leather billfold found in her pockets. The pathologist was gazing intently at the corpse’s ghastly neck wound. She appeared to have been garroted, almost beheaded. The pathologist nodded to a female assistant. Between them, they flipped the body face down on its marble slab. The pathologist pointed wordlessly, so Bernie Tapp and I leaned forward for closer looks. The dead woman’s back, shoulders and legs were covered with numerous deep parallel bruises, contusions and cuts. Pebbles were deeply embedded in the white pulpy flesh of her body. When Bernie and I had seen enough, the pathologist and his assistant turned the body back over.

  Bernie Tapp said, “It looks like a hit and drag, to me.”

  “Indeed,” the pathologist said, “Those abrasions suggest that a vehicle knocked her down on an unpaved road. It appears that the driver then hooked a line around the woman’s neck and dragged her behind his vehicle.”

  “Why road?” I asked.

  The pathologist pursed his lips.

  I went on, “She might have been knocked down in an unpaved parking lot. She might also have been knocked down on a glacial moraine, or in a gravel pit. Then she was towed. But not necessarily along a road.”

  The pathologist stated, “She had sexual intercourse before death. It is an interesting case because, despite all appearances, her death was probably caused by drowning.”

  Tapp’s brow knotted. “How long do you figure she’d been in the harbour?”

  “I don’t know. Long enough for deposited spermatozoa to die in situ. Two, maybe three weeks, but that’s just a guess at present. We’ll narrow it down after more tests.”

  Bernie cleared his throat. I looked at him. He raised his eyebrows and said skeptically, “Doctor. You just told us she’s been in water for weeks, yet you still found sperm in her vagina?”

  The pathologist gave him a pinched smile. “You are surprised, Chief Inspector?”

  “Acting Chief Inspector,” Tapp said, adding uncertainly, “Sperm is a liquid, right? You’d think it’d wash out.”

  “Not at all,” the pathologist said. “We’d expect to find traces of ejaculated sperm in a woman’s vagina as much as 10 weeks after intercourse. We’ve sent a sample of the sperm to the DNA lab.”

  Bernie and I took turns borrowing the pathologist’s magnifying glass and examining the dead woman’s neck injury. It looked as if a steel cable the diameter of a finger had been wrapped around her neck then tightened. Tiny flakes of rust were discernible in the wound. I said as much to Bernie, who had reached the same conclusion. I pointed out, “Technically, I guess, she wasn’t strangled. She was garroted.”

  “Quite right,” the pathologist returned. “The garrote appears to have been a multi-strand steel cable. It’s hard to believe, but a garrote was not the primary cause of death. She died by drowning, unquestionably.”

  Tapp and I had seen enough. We went out of the room and along a corridor to an inner office with windows instead of walls. The clerk working at a desk inside the office was a tired-

  looking older woman wearing a white lab coat. Dark liver spots discoloured the skin of her hands. A tin of breath mints lay on her desk. Bernie asked her when it would be convenient to bring Jane Colby’s father in to view the body.

  The clerk popped a mint into her mouth before making a telephone call. We heard it ring along the corridor. After a short conversation the clerk put her hand over the mouthpiece and said to us, “To identify it officially, right?”

  Bernie nodded impatiently.

  She put the telephone to her ear again. After listening she grunted, put the phone down and informed us, “They’ll clean it up a bit first, do cosmetics and that. Her father will have hysterics otherwise. Let’s say, three hours?”

  “Fine, three hours,” Bernie said tersely.

  Bernie and I left the building and stood on the sidewalk beside his unmarked Interceptor. He said, “According to you, Denise Halvorsen saw Jane Colby in Pinky’s two weeks ago last Friday.” I made a mental calculation. Bernie had made the same calculation. He went on, “That’s 17 days ago. Correct?”

  “Correct. It’s Janey’s last reliably reported sighting.”

  Tapp’s cell phone rang. He listened to the phone for a moment, returned it to its pouch and said, “I gotta go. B and E on Dallas Road,” Bernie said. “By the way, remind me: what’s Jane Colby’s dad called?”

  “Fred Colby.”

  Bernie got into his Interceptor and fastened the seat belt. I tapped on his window, and he opened it. I said, “I’ve got a special interest in this case. I’d like to stay involved, if that’s okay with you.”

  “A special interest,” Bernie repeated, smiling grimly. “You horny bastard. I’ll lay odds you’re humping witnesses. Again. Who is it this time?”

  “Again? What do you mean, again?”

  “You want me to give you a list?”

  “Pillow talk breaks plenty of cases.”

  “Plenty of careers get broken the same way.”

  “I’m concerned because Terry Colby’s a Native.”

  “Native? I’ve just seen Terry’s mother. I’ll lay you odds she’s white, 100 percent. That means Terry’s half Native, at most. And bollocks to the rest of it. Don’t tell me, because I can guess. You spent the night on Tess Rollins’ yacht. So that’s it, right?” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe it, you’re screwing the dead woman’s sister-in-law, and this is a murder case. Will you never learn?”

  “Bernie, I am not fucking and have never fucked Harley Rollins’ sister.”

  Bernie gave me a grin as tight as a fisherman’s knot. “Do you have a suspect in mind?”

  “Several, nothing definite.”

  “Okay. Go ahead, just don’t mess with evidence, is all,” he said, tapping the steering wheel with two fingers. “This woman, Tess. Good looking, is she?”

  “Attractive, not good looking.”

  “She must have something going for her.”

  “Let’s put it this way. I’d rather look at Tess Rollins, naked, than look at you in a detective chief inspector’s uniform.”

  Bernie drove away.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  I strolled back to police headquarters, deep in thought. Bernie had been right to suspect me, even though, this time, he was wrong. Having carnal knowledge of witnesses, although not expressly prohibited by Victoria’s police code, certainly is a high-risk activity.

  Back at Caledonia Street, I got into the Chev, drove it to the parking lot behind Swans Pub on Pandora Street, locked the car and walked across the st
reet to my office. I let myself in, picked up the mail lying on the floor beneath the slot and threw it on my desk. PC, taking her ease on my blotter, leapt to the floor and bolted into the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet, where she’d been shredding valuable papers. Then the penny dropped. PC was getting rounder by the day; the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet had become the designated maternity area.

  I opened the curtains wide and smiled at passersby for a minute before switching on my answering machine. There were two intriguing messages for me. The first, from “Killer” Miller, in forensics, informed me that fingerprints found on the plastic water bottle I’d left with him had been run through the computer. They did not match the prints found on the beer bottle that felled Jack Owens in Pinky’s Bar, nor those of any known felon.

  The second phone message was from Bernard Cole—the insurance adjuster I’d met at the Rainbow Motel construction site: Mr. Cole had an update on that missing speedboat. I rang him right away.

  Cole said, “We’ve located the boat. It had been driven onto a beach near the Cadboro Bay village. Its bows were damaged, and it’s undoubtedly the boat that rammed that seiner.”

  “So we know, within minutes, exactly when the speedboat was stolen?”

  “Correct,” Cole replied. “It rammed that fishboat 17 days ago.”

  “Sixteen,” I said. “It would have been 17 days if the fishboat had been rammed before Friday midnight. The actual ramming occurred at 3 am, Saturday morning, according to what you told me.”

  Cole laughed and said, “You’re exactly right. That was sharp. I don’t suppose you know who the thief is.”

  “Not yet, but I’m working on it. Where’s the boat now?”

  “It’s parked outside the repair shop at the Oak Bay Marina.”

  “Sorry, I know this sounds elementary, Mr. Cole. But there is no doubt that this is Harley Rollin’s boat?”

  “No doubt whatsoever; the serial numbers on the boat match those on Rollins’ policy.”

  “Good. I believe I’ll just pop around to the Marina, take a look for myself.”

  “Mind telling me why you’re taking such an interest? I mean, it’s only a missing boat.”