The End
Murder in Little Venice
Phillip Strang
Chapter 1
To those who lived on the houseboats that lined either side or the cyclists and the walkers who regularly used its towpaths, the Regent’s Canal was a place of beauty. Only a few would know of its history, and that two hundred years previously it had been busy with barges shipping cargo from the seafaring vessels that docked at Limehouse on the River Thames, to connect with the Grand Canal, and then up through England.
Even fewer would know that it was named after Prince Regent, a frivolous man, the son of a mad King. He was better known for his grossly expensive tastes in decorating palaces and wasting money, although some others may have known of his penchant for mistresses, including the infamous Mrs Fitzherbert.
Such history was far from the mind of Mary Harding as she walked her dog along the towpath between Westbourne Terrace Road Bridge and Harrow Road in an area of London known as Little Venice. It was still early, and it was only her and her dog, a sprightly Jack Russell. She had walked that stretch of the canal many times before and still enjoyed the atmosphere. She looked up at the elegant Regency houses as she walked; wished she could afford to buy one but knew she probably never would. She glanced over at the water, and sometimes into the open windows on the houseboats: some were modern and luxurious, others were run-down. The smell of early morning cooked breakfasts pervaded the air.
Mary Harding maintained her pace, trying to rein in the dog as it tugged on its lead. A waste of money for dog training, she thought.
‘Stop barking,’ she said, knowing full well that people were still sleeping in their boats no more than six feet from where she was. She had had problems with the dog before in the flat she shared with two others, just two hundred yards from the canal, although separated from the houses close to the canal by several million pounds in real estate value. The dog, of which she was uncommonly fond, would have to go, she knew that. A good home in the country where its barking would not offend anyone.
Mary Harding moved forward to grab the dog and to scurry away with it in her arms. The dog took one step forward, peering into the water, barking incessantly.
‘Shut that damn dog up,’ a voice bellowed from within the confines of a houseboat. A nervous woman, Mary Harding apologised as best she could, but the dog continued to defy her.
Looking into the water, the woman could see why. There, in the water, wedged to the rear of the belligerent man’s houseboat, was what appeared to be a dead animal.
She found a stick nearby and prodded the carcass; it turned over. Stricken with horror, incapable of using her phone, she hammered on the side of the houseboat. ‘Help, help!’ she screamed.
The man who had criticised the dog came out within seconds. ‘What the –?’
‘There, behind your boat.’
Still barefooted, and only wearing a tee shirt and shorts, the houseboat owner looked over into the water where the dog had been barking. Then, still half asleep, he rushed back to the houseboat, picked up his phone and dialled the emergency services on 999.
***
‘It’s enough to turn your stomach,’ Crime Scene Examiner Windsor said. They were the man’s first words apart from the pleasant early morning courtesies on arriving at the scene. The former towpath, now a footpath, had been blocked off at both ends from upstream at Westbourne Terrace Road Bridge down to Harrow Road – the people who would normally walk down there relegated to Warwick Crescent. From there the curious could watch the investigation unfold.
‘What do you reckon?’ DCI Isaac Cook asked. It was still early, and he would have preferred to be in bed, but when the phone rang, he had been out of the door within five minutes. After apprehending the murderer in his previous case, the psychotic Charlotte Hamilton, he was once again the shining star at Challis Street Police Station, especially after she had stabbed him in the shoulder, although he wondered if the murders in the area would ever reduce in numbers.
‘What’s left has been in the water for less than a day,’ Windsor’s reply. Gordon Windsor had been assigned to Challis Street for some years, and the man knew what he was talking about. Isaac Cook knew that the on-the-spot analysis from the CSE would be enough for him to bring the full team together. The pathologist and the autopsy would reveal more about the body, or what remained of it, on the towpath by the rear of the houseboat.
Jim Parsons, the owner of the houseboat, and Mary Harding, the dog’s owner, were both sitting down at the other end of the boat drinking cups of tea. Larry Hill, Isaac’s DI, was interviewing them. Parsons, previously annoyed with the barking dog, was patting it.
‘White, male, age uncertain,’ Windsor said.
‘Any chance of an identity?’ Isaac asked.
‘DNA, missing persons. It may be possible, but there’s not much to be going on with here.’
Isaac looked at the body, shielded from public view by a hastily-erected crime scene tent. He could see the CSE’s reluctance to be more precise. It was clear that whoever had done it had been a butcher. It was evident why the woman had thought it was a slab of meat that was bobbing up and down in the water. Apart from a torso, nothing else remained: no head, no legs, no arms. Even Windsor had felt a lump in his throat on seeing the body for the first time, and some of the other police
