Blood Salt Water

by Denise Mina

‘Can’t.’

  She clearly didn’t know Mark. He never took calls when he was away. Everyone who knew him knew that. Left the mobile at home when he was in Barcelona. Sometimes, when he came back he had to go away again almost immediately.

  Iain suddenly wondered if Susan was a cop. She looked like a cop. She was fit and slim, but she was emotional and she was bringing him home, which was not-cop.

  ‘Why d’you want to see Mark?’

  ‘D’you know who would have his number?’ She began walking down the corridor to the kitchen, careful scanning for someone as she went.

  Iain followed. He was about to ask if she had been broken into, what was going on, but he was startled by the state of the kitchen.

  The kitchen was massive and almost derelict. Big windows to the garden were netted with ragged cobwebs. Part of the ceiling had fallen in and lay crumbled on the worktop. At the far end of the room an archway opened onto a filthy windowed conservatory, filling the room with reproachful sunlight.

  She went into a pantry cupboard, checking it out.

  ‘Have you been living in here, Susan?’

  ‘No. Just got back a day or so ago. My mum died.’

  Iain thought old Mrs Grierson had died two years ago. He thought he’d heard about it on a day release. The house was messy enough to have been left for years. But Susan had just come back now. She stepped back into the kitchen, saw him again and seemed relieved.

  ‘Tea!’ she announced, her mood abruptly lighter. Looking through cupboards, she found an electric kettle under the sink and took it out. She blew the dust off. Iain was not a fastidious man but he didn’t think he’d be drinking anything out of that. She filled it with water from rattly pipes and plugged it in, watching with surprise as it went on.

  ‘I’ll go and find some cups,’ she said, and left the room.

  Iain couldn’t fathom what was going on. He wanted a smoke. That was all he wanted and then he’d leave. He dropped down into an armchair and a puff of dust rose around him. The chair was in the mouth of the archway to the conservatory, draughty because a hole had been dug in the conservatory floor under the outside wall, but at least it was blowing the dust away from him.

  He took out a cigarette paper, opened the tobacco pouch and teased out a pinch. Engulfed by the scent of chocolate, he laid it along the paper valley. It was harder to do than he remembered, his fingertips clumsy, but the smell and sounds, the cleanness of it filled his eye, batting away memories of his midnight qualms and the bloody dock and sailing with Susan. His mouth watered with anticipation as he licked the gum. Even though it had been a long time since he smoked, he remembered everything about the ritual of this. He remembered too all that it used to mean to him: a mood change, a cogent plan, a reward or compensation. Now he wasn’t hoping for any of those things. He just wanted to flood his lungs and smother her breath in him.

  Sitting the cigarette between his lips, he felt in his pocket and took out a sand-yellow lighter. He lit it, heard the crackle of the paper, tasted the warm toxins flood his mouth.

  He inhaled. A sharp, pebbled wave scratched down his throat. The tide of nicotine coursed across his inward ocean. Up it foamed, on, up estuaries and rivers, burns and rivulets, until every inland shore and bank was tainted and trilling.

  The smoke kick-started his heart in an irregular bossa nova rhythm. It throbbed in his throat, as if the fat fist of an organ had shifted to make room for the squatter in his chest.

  He felt her ebb. It was working. He tried to hold the breath but his diaphragm convulsed, expelled the smoke in wild, wet, spluttered coughs.

  ‘Here we go,’ sing-songed Susan as she came back and sat a tray of tea things on a dusty side table. She pulled a kitchen chair over and sat down next to him.

  Side by side, Iain and Susan looked out into the conservatory. Light filtering through dirty green glass. It wasn’t a modern conservatory full of sofas or anything, but an old greenhouse attached to the back of the house. A crack on one of the panels was mended with time-yellowed masking tape. Empty glass shelves lined the walls. A seedlings table, the wood bleached grey with light exposure, had been shoved to the side of the room, making way for the hole dug next to the ventilation grate.

  ‘Shall I pour?’ Susan Grierson smiled fondly at him. The tea things were tacky with dirt.

  ‘OK,’ he said, because she was holding the teapot and waiting for an answer. Iain wondered if she could see the dirt.

  He hadn’t heard the kettle boil. He wanted to ask her what was going on but she didn’t seem much more together than he was. It was a mistake, coming here. They weren’t going to help each other. He’d leave in a minute.

  She poured two small, prissy cups of weak tea and added a sprinkle of powdered milk. Iain said he took three sugars and she put them in as well, stirred with a little spoon and handed him a cup and saucer. He took it and put it on the arm of his chair.

  ‘What happened in there, then?’ He pointed to the freshly dug dirt floor on the conservatory.

  ‘Lead pipes,’ she said. ‘Had to be replaced. They replaced all the piping in the house years ago but that offshoot serviced the garden and the conservatory. Worrying, actually, because Mother was growing her own tomatoes and lettuce and watering them with leaded water.’

  ‘Worrying, actually,’ he echoed, glad they were talking normally.

  ‘Lead poisoning is cumulative. I mean, she didn’t die of lead poisoning, she had a heart attack. But it’s terribly bad for you.’

  The shape of the hole, long and deep and tucked away in a corner, it made him think of bad things.

  ‘The pipes were right deep down there… ’ She touched her hair and looked harried. ‘There’s so much to do to this house. A lot of it fundamental.’

  ‘Dusty.’

  ‘Hmm, it is dusty. There are damp spots in all the bathrooms, leaky pipes, and the decoration–dreadful. So old-fashioned. Oh–biscuits!’ She leapt up and went back to the counter again.

  Iain heard her moving about behind him. He was hoping she wouldn’t bring a dead rat over and say it was biscuits, she was a bit Baby Jane, but suddenly something sharp stabbed him in the back, from the inside. She was feeling for a way out.

  He took another tremulous draw on his cigarette. The pain cowered deep. He held his breath, held it, held it, his eyes shut, concentrating. He held fast, though his lungs were begging and his eyes throbbed.

  He felt her wither. He felt her gone.

  Iain let his breath out and found he couldn’t stop. He began to cry. He hadn’t cried properly for a long time. His tear ducts yawned, aching, as salt water dropped from his cheeks down the front of his top.

  ‘Jaffa cakes?’

  Eyes flicked open. Susan was holding a blue freezer bag inches from his nose. It had Jaffa biscuits in it, most of them broken. Iain slapped it away just as she let go and the bag slithered into his lap. He picked it up and shoved it at her. ‘GET THE FUCK—’

  But Susan didn’t mean any harm, he reminded himself, and she was in a state too. ‘Look, no thanks, OK? I just… I don’t like biscuits.’

  The blurred bag retreated. She walked away.

  Iain wilted forwards over his lap, his hands in his hair. He heard the cigarette singe, smelled the sulphurous tang of burning.

  ‘… upset?’ She was saying something, he wasn’t sure what she was saying, but she was saying something new. Now she had stopped talking. She was sitting. A warm palm came out and drew a circle on his back.

  The paralysing sadness was lifting. He wiped the wet from his face, pinched drips off his nose. He dried his hand on his trouser leg. The cigarette had burned out. Another cigarette maybe.

  ‘More tea? Oh, you haven’t drunk that one yet.’

  Iain glanced over. Her hands were folded in her lap. She smiled, politely, determined to keep to the script of tea, whatever he did. It was annoying how fucking insistent she was about the tea and biscuits and a fucking saucer. For all she knew his best friend might have died. He
might not be crying because he was guilty of a terrible thing. She didn’t know. He was angry at her and he looked at the hole in the conservatory floor again.

  Susan was smiling, an awkward moment at a minister’s tea party. They looked out into the smoke swirling in the empty conservatory.

  ‘Why did you ask me to come here? How d’you know Mark?’

  ‘Well, Iain,’ she spoke confidingly, ‘frankly, I wanted to ask a small favour. I don’t know anyone here, but I’d like a pinch and I heard Mark Barratt is the person to see about that?’

  ‘You want a what?’

  ‘A deal. Of white. Coke. Charlie. Prince? I want to buy. Can you help me?’

  9

  Robin Walker was furious when he opened the front door. He chewed his cheek as Morrow and McGrain showed their ID. They spoke to him on the phone? Half an hour ago, about the call this morning? They asked to come in to talk about his missing partner, Roxanna Fuentecilla?

  ‘Yes. Come in.’ He karate-chopped a hand at the hall carpet, ordering them to move, snorting with annoyance as Morrow and McGrain sidled into a narrow hallway.

  Policing meant spending a lot of time with angry people, not all of them members of the public. Morrow knew anger well, its moods and its nuances. She found that anger was usually just fear with its make-up on, so her question was this: was Robin Walker frightened because his partner was missing, or was he frightened because someone had called the police?

  ‘You said it was an anonymous call?’ He was tall and lean and loomed over them, avoiding eye contact, giving sharp, rhythmic pissed-off little nods.

  ‘Yes,’ said Morrow, taking in his thick dark hair and pale blue eyes. Smeary footage from distant cameras didn’t do him justice. ‘Yes, is Ms Fuentecilla missing?’

  Walker caught his breath, dropped his chin to his chest and looked back up. When he spoke his voice was thick with emotion: Yes, she is missing.

  ‘And you are…?’

  ‘Robin Walker. I’m her partner. Boyfriend.’

  ‘Can we go through? Talk to you there?’

  He waved an impatient hand at the living room door and stormed off through it.

  Morrow let McGrain go ahead of her, glancing down the narrow corridor to a rack of coats and saw a green parka with a fur-trimmed hood.

  Heading into the living room, Morrow’s eye was drawn to the carpet. It was new and white. She glanced at the skirting board, checking for carpet worms, telltale strands of wool that worked their way out as a carpet settled. She couldn’t see any and found that reassuring: Robin hadn’t beaten Roxanna to death and replaced the carpet. Probably.

  Compared to the narrow hall, the living room was dazzlingly grand. A chandelier the size of a shopping trolley hung from the ceiling. Two enormous floor-length windows framed heavy-boughed trees nodding gently in the street. Robin and Roxanna’s furniture was designed for a small London flat and the couch and coffee table, the dining table and chairs were dwarfed to doll-size in the high Victorian room. It looked as if the family were squatting in the lower third of a fish tank. Morrow was so distracted by the clash of scale that she didn’t notice the children at first.

  They were on the couch, watching her come in, sitting completely still. Martina and Hector Vicente. Their ankles were crossed, hands folded in laps, backs poker-straight, one a mirror to the other. They looked at Morrow and McGrain with the composed disinterest of Gainsborough portraits. Blonde like their mother, long-limbed and lush-lipped. Neither had a flicker in their expression. She looked at Hector and wanted to smile, remembering him with his mum in the bakery, but he dropped his gaze to the floor and she remembered herself. He was wearing the grey skinny-leg jeans.

  She told them her name, that she was here about their mother, and stood near them. She wanted them to speak. She had a voice recorder running in her pocket so that the bosses and the bosses’ bosses could read every word once it was transcribed. The audio would be useful too though: they could compare their voices to the call file.

  ‘Don’t you have school today?’

  ‘Our mother is missing,’ said Martina. ‘We thought it would be best if we remained at home.’

  ‘I see.’ She wanted a sample of Hector’s voice too. She nodded at him. ‘Don’t you have school, son?’

  ‘I do also but my sister’–he gestured to Martina very formally, it was clear he was talking in his second language–‘thought it would be best if I stayed home today.’

  Morrow nodded. ‘I see. Thank you.’

  He was still on the child side of twelve, his voice high. The caller could have been either one of them but Martina’s jeans were blue.

  Morrow felt she had to respond to the strained situation. ‘Sorry, Robin, were you having a chat in here, before we arrived?’

  Walker glowered at the children. Hector opened his mouth but his eyes flicked to Martina and she gave him a stare that told him to shut up. No one spoke. It had taken twenty seconds to reach deadlock.

  ‘OK.’ McGrain clapped his hands with synthetic cheer, making everyone jump. ‘Here’s a plan: how about you kids go and have kick-about next door and let us chat to your dad for a minute?’

  Everyone panicked in the silence. Then Hector spoke. ‘Robin’s not our—’

  ‘Shut up, Hector.’ Martina stood up, her eyes firmly on McGrain. ‘That man said for us to go.’

  She stood, gestured for Hector to get up and led him out. They moved like despondent dancers making the long walk off stage after a bad performance. Walker scowled and followed them, slamming the door, and came back, sitting in their place.

  ‘Were you talking to the kids before we arrived, Mr Walker?’

  ‘Yes. After you called I asked them and they told me Hector phoned you. About their mum.’

  McGrain smiled gently, ‘You don’t seem very pleased about that.’

  Suddenly animated, Walker looked up. ‘I’m fucking furious. Why did they think they had to go behind my back? I’ve been up all night, worried sick. Just tell me–that’s what I’m angry about.’ He raised his voice reproachfully at the door, continuing the interrupted argument. ‘That’s what I mean. I’m not an ogre.’

  His eyes reddened suddenly, but not with the slow grind of worry, not with sadness, something more intense than fear. It looked like panic. He wasn’t behaving like someone who had murdered his girlfriend the day before and then let the police into his house. He wasn’t trying to act innocent at all.

  Morrow looked away, giving him a private moment. She found herself staring straight at the sixty-four thousand quid display cabinet. It looked smaller than it did in the photographs, but just as ugly.

  ‘That’s a one-off. A Larkin and Sons.’ Walker took a deep breath. ‘A design icon, actually. Handcrafted.’

  ‘Nice,’ said McGrain politely.

  Morrow nodded and hummed as if she agreed. ‘What is “a design icon”? I’ve never really understood that.’

  Walker struggled to explain. It was a special design. Sort of a very good one? One that other people copied, he thought. He attempted a charming smile. The mouth managed it but his eyes stayed sad and angry. Walker was out of his depth. He was young. Being so handsome wasn’t making him less sympathetic.

  Morrow remembered who she was pretending to be. She opened her briefcase, took out the missing person form and a pen.

  ‘So, Mr Walker. Let’s see if we can find her, put an end to your worry. When did you last see Roxanna?’

  Robin Walker looked into the near distance, clutched his hands together and told them that Roxanna had left for work yesterday morning, dropping the kids off at school. He hadn’t seen or heard from her since. It was very out of character.

  McGrain nodded encouragingly as Morrow wrote.

  ‘You’ve just moved here?’ she asked.

  ‘From London. Two months ago.’

  ‘And how are you enjoying Glasgow?’

  ‘Great,’ he said, but a twitch in his jaw suggested otherwise. Morrow tried not to smile. Glasgo
w was strong cheese: not to everyone’s taste.

  How did Roxanna seem yesterday morning? Fine, normal. She took the kids to school at the normal time but then didn’t go into work, didn’t call anyone, had not been back to the house. None of her clothes were missing and her passport was still here: he’d found it in a drawer in the bedroom.

  She asked him: Had they argued? Most couples argue sometimes. He smiled. We argue all the time. But no. Nothing special. Do your arguments ever become physical? She hit me with a pizza once… He hurried to correct himself: but it was funny, she was trying to be funny because we got, sort of, you know, stuck, fighting about something. He refreshed his smile, wrung his hands.

  McGrain echoed the smile.

  Walker was giving a very bad account of himself. If Morrow had no previous knowledge she would be suspicious. The pizza story rang true. If Walker had killed his girlfriend he would be trying to misdirect them. He’d say they didn’t fight, theorise that she had run away. He would have hidden her passport.

  ‘Why didn’t you call us?’

  He looked her straight in the eye and, unblinking, said he didn’t know, he just didn’t know. That part wasn’t true: he did know. He hadn’t called because they were doing something illegal. Morrow noted his tell: the long, unblinking stare. He had the grace to wring his hands as he lied.

  She began to work her way through the set questions on the missing persons form: did he have a recent photograph of her? Walker stepped over to the mantelpiece and lifted a silver-framed photo of Roxanna. He handed it to Morrow. Roxanna, head and shoulders, grinning lovingly into the camera lens, a soft spring light behind her. She was gorgeous: high cheekbones, olive skin, scarlet lips. Her thick blonde hair was pulled up loosely, pinned with a feathered fascinator.

  ‘Is this your wedding?’

  ‘No. We’re not married. We were just at a wedding.’

  ‘We might do better with a more workaday one.’ As she handed it back, Walker’s eye fell on the image and yearning, unbidden, overwhelmed him. He turned away and laid the picture face down on the mantel. ‘I’ll get you another one.’