Lock Me In

‘Left or right?’ Mae asked with a smile, aware that life was short and he wasn’t getting any younger.

Jupp sniffed and turned, leading Mae left along the metal gridding.

‘How does it work then, mooring here?’ Mae asked. ‘Your tenants pay in advance?’

‘Invoice them on the twentieth, payment due first of the month. Month’s notice either way.’

The first of the month was coming up in a few days. ‘People rent these boats then, or own them?’

‘Bit of both. Matt rents his off my brother.’

Mae followed Jupp along a floating pontoon stretching maybe thirty, forty metres along the river. The walkway dipped and bounced as they moved along it, their footsteps causing the sections to clank together.

‘Watch your step, boy,’ Jupp said, glancing at Mae. ‘Dangerous if you’re used to nice safe driveways.’

‘Don’t worry about me. Spent my childhood fishing.’

Jupp frowned. ‘Din’t know your lot fished.’

‘Police?’

‘Chinese.’

Mae blinked. ‘Korean.’

He shrugged. ‘Same difference. Thought it was snooker. Gambling.’

‘OK, yeah. We’re all ninjas, too.’

Jupp frowned, but Mae raised a hand to dismiss it. Just could not be arsed.

The pontoon bouncing under their feet, they passed an assortment of boats. Traditional narrowboats; flimsy-looking fibreglass cruisers; wide, curvy-bottomed things with wheelhouses and Dutch-sounding names painted along their bows. Twee Gebroeders, Derkje, Ziet Op U Zelve.

‘Mr Corsham been here long? Regular with the rent? Any problems?’

‘Moved down from Scotland somewhere a few months ago. Pays on time.’

‘No wild parties, anything out of the usual?’

Jupp cast a look over his shoulder. ‘People call us gypsies, you get that? Pikies, river scum.’

Mae waited, unsure where this was going.

‘We get it in the neck, is what I’m saying. Brick brigade making their judgements. So we stick together, yeah? You’re not going to get us dishing dirt on each other.’

‘I’m not after dirt. I’m checking on his safety.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Jupp stopped, flipping through a bunch of small keys. ‘This one.’

Matthew Corsham’s boat was a red and green narrowboat, last on the stretch, past a mains hook-up board. Reasonable nick from the outside. Through a window in the front end – the fore? – the place looked tidy, nothing immediately suggesting forced entry. Moving along he tried the next window when the boat suddenly listed, the water slapping underneath the pontoon. Jupp had grabbed the thin handrail running along the edge of the roof and was hauling himself up, keys in hand. But after an extended fumble with a circular padlock, he grunted and gave up, huffing and stepping down clumsily from the gunwales.

‘Changed the bloody locks. Supposed to supply the management with a working key at all times.’ So much for the Anarchists’ Manifesto of three minutes previously. ‘You can have a look through the windows, but I’m not breaking the door without my brother’s say-so.’

Jupp turned to head back the way they’d come.

‘Do you have CCTV here?’ Mae called after him.

‘No. And I’ve got jobs to do.’ He paused to light a cigarette, then stumped off back towards his office.

Mae stepped up onto the deck. The smooth metal was slippery under his feet as he braced to shove back the hatch. It wouldn’t give, so he ducked down to the level of the two tiny doors that came up no higher than his thighs. Cupping his hands between his forehead and the glass, he peered inside.

Bear would have given her thumbs to live in there. Not that there was enough money in the world to pay him to endure what looked like several inches of negative headroom, but the attraction of the cosy, simple lifestyle in evidence there wasn’t hard to imagine. Shallow shelves tucked under the windows held books and a few video games, secured against the inevitable rocking with taut lengths of curtain wire. A crocheted blanket was stretched neatly over the back of a sofa, and the few feet of wall space between the single-glazed windows were covered in mismatched picture frames holding photographs.

He was about to leave when something caught his eye. A single sheet of paper on the table opposite the wood burner and a pen next to it. Mae went along to the window next to the table, to get a better look. Carefully bending into a crouch on the narrow ledge beneath the glass, he wiped the rain from his eyes and squinted in.

It was a list. Toothpaste, toothbrush, razor. Blue holdall, phone, charger, wallet, tickets. Camera, film, batteries. All the items on it crossed off.

He read to the end. Footsteps approached, and he waved Jupp away with his free hand as he brought himself up to standing. ‘All right, I’m coming.’

But when he turned, Mae saw that Jupp was long gone. The person who had passed him, who was now on the back deck and unlocking the door with her keys, was Ellie Power.

16. (#ulink_cd667fbb-0fa7-5446-8d6e-2262bcb0c5ec)

Ellie (#ulink_cd667fbb-0fa7-5446-8d6e-2262bcb0c5ec)

The dirty remains of the afternoon sun quivered in the puddles at my feet as I approached the marina. The office was closed up, but as I headed down to towards the boats I saw Mr Jupp. He threw his cigarette on the ground like a dart when he saw me, and came lumbering up the gangway.

‘We’ve got the bloody police down here, looking for Matthew,’ he said, passing me. ‘You’ve got keys, you bloody let him in.’

Shit. Fear swelled in my chest, inflating in seconds. But I made myself go down before I could change my mind. Before I’d had a chance to think through what I was and wasn’t going to tell him, there was Ben Mae, hanging off the side of Matt’s boat.

‘All right, I’m coming,’ he said, waving me away without looking up.

I cleared my throat, and he turned.

‘Ellie.’

‘DC Mae.’

He smiled. ‘Been a while. It’s DS now. I’m the lead on Missing Persons, so that’s why I’m …’ he trailed off, gesturing at the boat, the yard. Me.

‘Congratulations,’ I said.

We stood there for a moment, before I remembered what I was doing. I climbed up, got both locks open and swung the tiny doors open and slid back the hatch.

‘Coming in?’ I asked him.

‘Are you inviting me?’