The Source of the Thames, a detective mystery by Faith Jones

A bright little kingfisher flecked away from the riverbank and, with a surprising turn of speed, razzled through a rail of bulrushes without touching… and gone.

Jansen looked ahead, his wrinkled expression always observing the detail of the matter. It was force of habit, in the force. Azure, carrot orange. Why did people always remember them as emerald green? A trick of the light perhaps. Jansen wore plain clothes, innocuous. “Unusual to see those nowadays.”

“What?”, Kagiso responded. “Just some bird, innit?” The younger man opened the five bar gate and crossed onto a million Cotswold pebbles of the canal footpath, none the same, polished by the footsteps of four generations of travellers from Gloucester to London. “Bloody canals. I hate picking this grit out of me boot treads. Then there’s them sticky seeds stuck to me trousers.”

“If you solve some cases, Detective Constable, you might be able to advance to the Metropolitan Police and live in one room at a section house in London. They don’t have the natural world there.” Although, you have a long way to go before they even look at you, thought Jansen.

“Wages are better. This is the River Thames though’ right?”, asked Kagiso.

“Yes. About two hundred miles from the source to the estuary. Thank your lucky stars we’re at the clean end. Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

Kagiso peered with distaste at what he saw before him. “This is it?”

“This is the place”, confirmed Jansen. “What do you see? What can you tell me?”

“It’s a boat? Come on! I haven’t read the file so give me a clue.”

“You only get to ask direct questions, I’m afraid. If the answer is already in the case notes, I’m allowed to tell you. This is an observation exercise.”

“What if I solve it?” If in doubt, get cocky. That was Kagiso’s motto.

Jansen smiled and looked at the passing water. “If you can do that, trainee Detective Constable, then we can both go home.” If he managed it, the dynamic between them would of course change, not that Kagiso called him Sir anyway. It didn’t concern Jansen, who was old, wise and self-assured enough to enforce what needed enforcing.

A squirrel regarded them with watchful, nervous tension. It went back to what it was doing when they both boarded an unoccupied canal barge. Jansen handed Kagiso a key, with the minimum of ceremony.

“The classification code then. I noticed the front page was removed from the case file.”

“You noticed. Good.”

“The uniform Bobbies escalated this, so… is this a missing persons or a murder?”

Jansen slipped into teaching mode. “At Hendon, your case histories were all on paper. You would never study this one because the facts collected so far have not been enough to interpret a conclusion. You represent a fresh pair of eyes. Look around. Observe, enjoy the air and give me your conclusions. The missing can tell you a lot if you pay attention, get inside their heads and do a bit of thinking.”

“So it is a missing persons. On a big body of water too. Ooh, where did they go? Could we look downstream d’ya reckon?”

“Let me see how you think. Put the case notes out of your mind and don’t jump to any conclusions. See and think for yourself first, draw your own insights and then compare it to the notes to see what you missed.”

“What they missed, you mean”, Kagiso answered with the habitual over-confidence of a 25 year old.

Kagiso couldn’t see anything worth noting down about the vessel’s surface. Bending to pass through the deck hatch, the next chore was once around the boat’s living area and through the occupant’s belongings, before putting them back in mostly the same places. “Do people live like this? I mean, in winter and shit?”

“Some do, some don’t. Why? Where are you from, Kagiso?”

Kagiso paused for a beat to decide if this was offensive, then gave a level answer. I’m from a wonderful far off place, a tower of hamlets.”

Jansen nodded. The kid had self-control. He liked that.

Around the main cabin, a lot of abstract art was visible. Everywhere except the windows and the stove they could see small paintings on the surfaces, but also larger canvasses stacked in corners. There was something about the style. An attitude, somehow.

“They’re all by the same hand”, said Kagiso.

Jansen’s expression of quiet approval seemed to beckon for more but there was no more, so Kagiso changed tack.

“So where are you from then, if you don’t mind my asking, Detective Chief Inspector? — and I don’t mean what decade.”

Jansen let the intangible insolence go past, on this occasion. “I am not sure, to be honest. I was fostered. I have solved a lot of cold cases across the years, but not that one.”

It was Kagiso’s turn to grin. “You can’t do a bit of diggin’ in police records?”

“No. That would be against the law, DC, and the law is our business.”

Wow, respect. Kagiso continued assessing. “The clothing and accessories, the sanitary bin and cosmetics say female. The shoes are all the same size and there’s only a single bed. Place setting for one. Arty type. She lived alone and I can’t see evidence of visitors. No dog or cat. It doesn’t even smell of weed. Were any hairs or fibres found that ain’t the owner’s?”

“No, unusually. As a rule, every residential property has hair or skin cells left by a guest, tradesman. Not this one though.”

“Could be she was socially anxious or running away from something?”

“Why is she not here now?”, asked Jansen.

“No signs of a struggle. If she chose to go on shore and was unable to come back, then…”

Jansen’s eye was fixed, expecting more.

“Okay. The paintings are all by the same woman. She was an artist then, like for a job, yeah?, but she’s trying to live as cheap as possible so maybe she can’t rent. Either can’t pay, which is not bloody surprisin’ around here, or she’s got herself a criminal record.”

“No criminal record”, confirmed Jansen. “A positive balance in the savings account but not what you’d consider healthy.”

“So… she would have taken her work out of here to sell or post to customers. That doesn’t work unless the customers know there’s somethin’ to buy. Where’s the internet? Nowhere. She’d need to go somewhere to check email. Does she have a website? We could be looking for one of her clients.”

“We could. What else do you observe, Kagiso?”

Jansen untucked a curtain and looked behind it. Treble lined. Insulation or just bright light from the East? Light for painting, blackout for sleeping, probably.

Kagiso had more. “There is a small shower cubicle with a window for ventilation. A stack of soap boxes is blocking the window, which looks improvised as a barrier because there’s no curtain there.”(beat). “She wanted to prevent someone from looking in.”

“Conclusion?”

“She saw someone bugging around before, recently because it’s a temporary fix, boxes. A man is likely.” Kagiso awaited a response.

“Use ‘probably’, Kagiso. Get in practice for court. Probably is a measurement but likely is a guess. You can defend ‘probably’.”

Kagiso craned uncomfortably to look outside the small window. “What’s that?”

Kagiso proceeded to the small steps, then outside and up on deck, approaching some electrical power cabling leading down to a large battery.

“What do you see, Detective Constable?”

“This is the on-board power supply, from a panel up there to a battery here. It looks like the coupling has been pulled apart by force, bending these pins, as it twisted. Then it has been botched back together again and taped. Were there any fingerprints?”

“Well done indeed. Yes, the prints were not hers but were all from the same person. Forensics calculated the probable size of the hand by extrapolation. Larger than average.”

“Male, definitely. He came on board and broke the coupling. Then… he then came back later and offered to repair it for her. She’d want it fixed on the cheap and soon but didn’t have a lot in the bank, but she didn’t trust him — because she never invited him in!”

“My thoughts exactly, Kagiso, but what are you forgetting?”

Kagiso looked non-plussed. “Ah, right! Forensics knew it was a male because they have his prints on file already!”

“Spot on. He’s been in custody before, but not prosecuted; for following unaccompanied women along the canal but never doing anything. The local paper called him The Kingfisher.”

Kagiso looked astonished. “Fetch him in then.”

“We can’t, at the moment. He’s gone to silent. Not even using his debit cards. There are two missing persons.”

Kagiso took the three wooden steps back inside and Jansen followed.

“She travelled along the river to get away from him”, Kagiso said.

“Evidence?”

“None”, Kagiso conceded.

“Likely is just a guess.”

“Except,” Kagiso added, “Why isn’t this barge on a permanent mooring? To save paying charges? That sounds about right, but why not go to a proper river?”

“It’s a flat-bottomed boat”, Jansen clarified, “so it can’t leave the river. She bought it already in place when she came down from St. Martin’s College but then she stopped paying the mooring fees and started moving up and down the canal.”

“How do you know that?”, Kagiso quizzed him.

“Good question. We have something of a file on her too. Complaints about anti-social behaviour, sort of thing. Starting campfires. In summer and winter too.”

Kagiso thought. “It’s not for heat then. Not for cook-outs because she ain’t got friends. Saves her paying for waste removal?”

“If you say so. Igniting conflagrations in the precincts of the county. We’ve been prosecuting open fires since 1667, especially areas of outstanding natural beauty such as this. It just takes one spark. The file says she did that a lot, regularly straying onto other people’s land. The fire residue usually consisted of loose sticks, brush and suchlike, rarely a log and no domestic waste or plastics. She would kick up a fire at night and move on before daybreak.”

“But why then? She has got a stove inside for heating and a gas-can cooker, so for what possible reason?”

“You tell me, Kagiso. Genuinely this time. Solve it.”

“There’s also turpentine and white spirit for the painting. Those are gonna be flammable.” Kagiso glanced around the cabin, heartbeat elevating, around the sleeping area, knocked over medicine which is readable but isn’t of interest, pulled curtains and lifted cups, eventually arriving again at the paintings, one of which is worth staring into.

“What medium is this?”, asked Kagiso.

“It looks like an extra-large to me.”

“No, I mean what’s it painted with? It’s not oils, watercolours or acrylics. It’s not even coal. It looks more like…”

Jansen is looking too. This was something they’d missed. “Ash?”

“Yes”, replied Kagiso. “Different colours of ash, used as pigment. They’ve been mixed into a clear gel or something to make paint. I mean, I wouldn’t coat my garage door in it but it kinda looks okay.”

“You have made a significant contribution to the case, Kagiso. Good work. It explains the fires, but why didn’t she collect all the ash in one go?”

“There’s ash and ash. Look at all the tones and hues.”

“Tones and hues, Kagiso?”

“Yeah. You’re not the only generation that’s allowed to read.”

“Point taken. You have specialist knowledge. Please continue.”

“This abstract isn’t about the subject, it’s about the complementary textures and colours that are…”

“Smeared”, Jansen concluded.

“… smeared, if you like, about the canvas to consolidate the whole. It’s like the many directions of wind and particles making up an overlapping storm of emotion; or a city with many purposes. The art in this is to conceal the art.” (beat) “There’s bone white and the light and dense grey, all these earthy browns; and yellow ochre. A Van Dyke kind of reddish brown here. I thought she was just getting rid of stuff but who’d have thought fire ash would leave so many different residues?”

“Van Dyke, ochre? Not the case officer, clearly. You’re on a roll, don’t let me stop you.”

Kagiso pulled out from the stack one painting which was slightly different from the others. “The ash hues used in this are not the same, more like, I mean probably, burned bone.”

“How so?”

Kagiso turned the painting around and read the title of the work charcoaled onto the back of the canvas. It read: ‘My Stalker’.

Kagiso fumbled the painting and stepped back. “I think we know who was murdered and where the body went.”

Kagiso handed the painting to Jansen, who inspected the scrawl to verify.

“As I live and breathe, Detective Constable, you are a copper bottomed wonder.” He paused. “Although, as long as she’s on the run, we’ll not get a confession.”

“I already have her confession.”

Kagiso turned the canvas around in Jansen’s hands.

“She’s signed the painting.”