Bleak Water

by Danuta Reah

  Cara’s smile was rather strained as she nodded and gathered up the baby. ‘It’s been nice,’ she said.

  Eliza saw her out of the flat, then pulled out the sheaf of notes she had made downstairs. If Daniel was coming tomorrow, she wanted to be ready for him. The rain spattered across the window. It was just the night, just the weather for a couple of hours with Brueghel’s macabre vision of the apocalypse.

  TWO

  The road from the cemetery had been dark and wet. Kerry had got lost, taken a wrong turn, and then she had been wandering along dark lanes, like the countryside, where the wet grass slapped at her ankles and green tendrils hung over walls and caught and tugged at her hair. She’d found her way back to the main road eventually, but it was dark now. She looked at her watch.

  Lyn would be waiting for her at the café where they always met. She’d be mad if Kerry was late. Lyn was mad at Kerry anyway. They’d had a row about Kerry’s dad the last time they met. They always fought about Dad. But maybe Lyn was a bit sorry for what she’d said. Kerry’s phone was clutched in her hand and she looked at it again as she pressed the buttons. The saved message ran across the screen:…its abut yor dad meet u at the cafy 7 dont b 18… Lyn never said sorry, but Kerry could tell when she was.

  There was a bus stop ahead, and she limped up to it, sinking down gratefully on to the wall. She eased her feet out of her shoes – her best ones – and rubbed her toes. Her feet were wet and splashed with mud. She looked up the road, squinting through the rain that distorted the lights and dripped into her eyes. And there was the bus, pulling away from the lights.

  She scrambled on board, grateful for the warmth. The driver was friendly and smiled at her. ‘You’re a bit wet, love,’ he said cheerfully. It was almost empty. Kerry pressed her face against the steamed-up window. The bus jolted and rattled, bumping her head against the glass.

  She looked at her watch. She should be there by now. She keyed in Lyn’s number, but she got the answering service. She keyed in another message: pls w8. Please wait. Please, please wait!

  Lyn never did anything she didn’t want to. She used to try and teach Kerry that as well. ‘You don’t have to do what he says,’ she’d say, when Dad had told Kerry to go to bed, or tidy her room, or do her homework. But Dad wasn’t Lyn’s dad. Lyn’s dad had left. ‘She’s jealous, Kizz,’ Dad used to say. ‘She’ll get over it.’ And he’d tried to be friends with Lyn, but Lyn didn’t want to know. It drove Kerry mad sometimes. Dad would read her a bedtime story, and Lyn would come in and pretend to be looking for something. ‘You’re too old for stories,’ she’d say. Dad would promise to take Kerry swimming. ‘I’ll take her,’ Lyn would say. ‘She’s my sister.’ But then she usually forgot so Kerry never got to go swimming.

  And then Lyn had gone.

  She pressed her face against the window. They were nearly there. She stood at the door fidgeting with impatience. ‘Can’t let you out here, love,’ the driver said. ‘Got to wait till we’re in the stand.’

  And then the doors were open and Kerry was out of the bus and running as the driver’s ‘Take care, love,’ echoed after her. It had stopped raining, but her clothes were wet and her feet were hurting. She ran up the ramp that led to the tram tracks and across the bridge high over the road. That way to the tram and Meadowhall. That way was the old market.

  The steps took you to an empty road and a car park, and they smelled of pee. She used to run down those steps with Ellie, both of them holding their noses and laughing, pushing past slower people, excited about the shops and the lights and the people. And Dad used to follow behind laughing at them too, and saying things like, ‘Careful, Kizzy, slow down, remember you’ve got an old man here.’ And he’d get them a burger – Ellie’s mum didn’t like Ellie eating burgers, so it was a secret. Kerry and her dad liked secrets – and…Kerry didn’t want to think about that.

  She tried not to think about the afternoon either, about the way the mist made it hard to see as she walked along the path, about the black rectangle of earth, and all the flowers piled up, dead, like the people in the graves. And the names. They were only names, they didn’t mean people, until she saw the stone with the gold letters. Ellie… Ellie and Kerry.

  No Ellie now. She remembered the kids walking past her house that last morning, the day after the police had come and taken Kerry’s dad away. They had to walk past that way, there was no other way for them to go, and she waited for them to call out, ‘Hey, Kizz, you coming?’, waited, didn’t run out like she usually did to join the arm-linking huddle on the walk to school, but no one called, and no one looked, not really, just glances that Kerry could see from behind the nets where she was watching, and their faces were tight and frightened, and they said things to each other as they passed and they cast their eyes over the house again, and then they ran off up the road.

  And she’d gone to see Maggie. Maggie used to talk to Kerry when Mum was ill. ‘You’re fine, Kerry,’ she’d say. ‘You’re a great kid.’ And she meant it. Or Kerry had thought that she meant it. But Kerry had gone to Maggie and Maggie’s face had been all twisted and blotchy, like Mum’s was, and she’d looked at Kerry as though she hated her. ‘Get away from me,’ she’d said, and she hadn’t shouted it, she’d said it in a cold, dead sort of way. ‘Get away from me, you…’ And someone had come to the door and pulled Maggie inside, and had looked at Kerry in the same way as she pushed the door shut. And all Kerry could hear was the crying.

  And Dad had gone to prison. He wrote to Kerry. Once a week, the letters came, and Kerry wrote back. But they couldn’t say anything real to each other. Kerry couldn’t write about what it was like at home with Mum, or what had happened at her last school and the place they’d last lived. She could still remember the voices in the night, Paedo! Paedo! And the sound of breaking glass as a brick shattered the front window. She couldn’t tell Dad about that. And he wasn’t telling Kerry anything. He said things like It’s not so bad once you get used to it and Don’t worry, I’ll be home soon. Only he didn’t say that so much now. In his last letter, he’d said, Prison changes people, Kizz…

  She didn’t watch the TV news, she didn’t read the papers. The teachers said they all should. But Kerry didn’t want to read what they said about her dad: Pervert. Monster. Evil.

  She was there – Victoria Quays, the entrance to the canal basin. The water was black, reflecting the white of the moon. She hurried across the cobbles, her feet turning on the uneven footing, towards the café.

  She pressed her nose against the window. Lyn? The café door opened, and some people came out. Kerry bit her fingernail. She could see through the steamed-up windows. There were only a few people, and she was sure…She kept looking. Lyn wasn’t there.

  She tried Lyn’s number but got the answering service again. ‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘I got it.’ I got the message. That was a daft thing to say. Of course she’d got the message. Lyn knew that. It was so late, she’d got fed up and gone.

  She didn’t want to give up yet. She could walk along the towpath, walk to the gallery. Maybe Lyn was there. She could see the faint gleam of the water ahead of her. The city lights made an orange glow against the sky but the path itself was in darkness. She hesitated a moment, then stepped out of the light into the shadow of the first bridge. The air was cold and damp and the ground felt soft and slippery under her feet.

  She could see a faint gleam beyond the tunnel mouth and the dank smell of the water closed round her. Now she was feeling her way, her hands pressed against the curving stone wall that came down low, almost to her head. The water lapped against the brick in a sudden flurry of ripples as though something had disturbed it.

  As she came out of the tunnel, a shape formed itself in the water, a moored boat, dark and featureless, half concealed in the shadow of the bridge. The boards of the deck were grey and uneven. The path seemed to be petering out now, the buildings coming right to the water’s edge. She was faced with a blank brick wall. She was on the wrong side of the
canal. She needed to go back to the canal basin.

  The moon came out and the reflection of the canal side appeared in the water. The water was still now, and she could see the walls that lined the path, the bushes and the path framed in the mirror of the canal. She turned back, and the darkness faced her, the black mouth of the tunnel, the smell of the canal that had rippled as though something was moving through the dark water. She didn’t want to go back that way.

  Her throat felt tight. She turned round again, and the boat was low in the water beside her, and a brick wall in front of her. She looked back, but the tunnel waited, trapping Kerry between the canal and the wall.

  Eliza couldn’t sleep. The sheet kept twisting up as she tried to find a comfortable place to lie, and she felt too hot, then she felt too cold. It was raining again, and the steady beat on the window became an irregular rattle as the wind blew the rain across in a flurry. The roof creaked. She turned over and punched the pillow into shape again. She settled down and curled her arm round her head. Deep, slow breathing, relax into the bed, just let go and melt away…There was a clatter from the other side of the wall, like the sound of something dropped on to a bare floor, rolling to stillness. She was awake again.

  She was thinking about Maggie, and about Ellie. Seeing Cara’s baby tonight had reminded her of the first time she’d seen Ellie, a tiny bundle in Maggie’s arm. Eliza had been more engaged by the older Ellie, the bright girl with her mother’s talent for art and a delight in words that seemed to be her own. Raed Azile…

  Images from the exhibition began to form in her mind. She didn’t want them there, not now. Suddenly, she wanted no part of that medieval dance of death. She turned over again, disturbing the quilt. A cold draught blew round her. She looked at the clock. One a.m. Tomorrow was going to be difficult. She needed to get some sleep. She could feel the draught again. She knew what it was – it had happened before. Cara must have come in up the outside staircase earlier and not shut the door properly, so it had blown open.

  She braced herself and got out of bed. It was freezing. She pulled her dressing gown round her, shivering with cold, and looked out of her door. The passage was in darkness, but the door was open and banging in the wind. There was water on the floor where the rain had blown in. She pulled it shut, banging it hard to make sure it locked, half hoping that Cara would hear it and realize what had happened.

  She huddled back into bed, her hard-won warmth gone. Someone was moving around on the other side of the wall. She could hear soft footsteps moving backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. The baby had cried almost every night since Cara had moved in.

  The rain was heavier now, and she could hear the drips from the gutter hitting the fire escape. She drifted into the suspension of time that was neither sleep nor wakefulness. Her thoughts were starting to fragment into dreams. Then she was awake again. She had a residual awareness of a sudden noise. She listened. Only the rain and the blowing wind. Sometimes it blew through the broken roofs and windows of the canal-side buildings, making a shrill, wailing cry. She could hear the sound of the baby on the other side of the wall. She glanced at the clock again. Two. She was wide awake now. Maybe she should get some cocoa or something.

  She needed to sleep. She’d try the hot-milk treatment. She got up and went over to the fridge. There wasn’t much milk left, but there was enough. Just. She tipped the milk into a pan and lit the gas, yawning and shivering slightly with the cold. Maybe she should curl up in a chair in front of the fire, drink her milk and try and drift off to sleep there.

  The milk was starting to froth. She poured it into a glass, and sprinkled some chocolate on the top. She wrapped a blanket round her shoulders and curled up in the chair. The rain drummed on the skylight above her head. The wind was rising and the window rattled. She heard the staircase creak, and for a moment she thought there was someone out there, but it was only the wind making the building groan and rattle.

  The crying had changed to hiccuping sobs. Eliza shifted restlessly. There was nothing she could do. She sipped the milk and tried to shut the sound out. The milk was warm and soothing, and the chair felt soft and comfortable as she sank back into its cushions. Her eyes were heavy now and she let the empty glass drop to the floor. Soft and warm. A sob, and silence. A sob and silence. She was looking for the baby. The corridor was long and there were doors and the baby was behind one of them, then she was in the gallery and the painting on the wall was the graveyard, and she protested because she didn’t want that painting. ‘You must.’ It was Maggie’s voice, and she laughed. She reached out to the painting but as she touched it, it fell apart under her fingers, the paint flaking away, falling off the canvas and vanishing as her hands dug deeper and deeper into the darkness, through the black of the topsoil and the yellow of the clay and then it was the canal and she could see the figure reaching up and up from the depths of the water, from the painted grave.

  And then it was morning, bleak and dreary. She woke in the chair feeling stiff and cold. The rain had stopped, and on the other side of the wall there was silence.

  The empty buildings were a faint presence in the dawn now, their dilapidation becoming apparent as the sun rose higher. The converted warehouse looked incongruous, new. The water lay still, gleaming in the faint morning light. The canal was little used here.

  A bridge crossed the canal further down the towpath. The canal ran under the road through a short arched tunnel. The bridge was a silhouette as the sky lightened, the water in the tunnel opaque and black. The sky was heavy with clouds, promising more rain. The sound of the early traffic disturbed the silence, and the smell of car fumes drifted through the air. The light crept across the water, across the mouth of the tunnel, reflecting up on to the brickwork. The colours began to appear, the dull green of the undergrowth on the towpath, the black of the sodden ground, the reds and yellows and blues of discarded crisp bags, softdrink cans, cigarette cartons. It illuminated the crumbling brickwork, the weeds growing in the pointing. The shadow of the tunnel lay sharp across the water which moved slightly as the wind disturbed it, slapping against the side of the canal.

  The rain was starting again, making the light dull, making the surface of the water dance. And there was something in the water under the bridge. It was like a tangle of weed and cloth, half in and half out of the shadow, sinking into the oily water. As the water rippled, the bundle moved slightly, rocking gently in the eddies. Rise and fall back. Rise and fall back. And sometimes as it moved, a faint gleam of something almost blue white gleamed through the water in the thin morning light.

  THREE

  Roy Farnham was tired. His head was aching and his mouth felt dry. The call had come through shortly after six, jerking him out of a deep sleep. He’d sat up late the night before. It had been after one by the time he’d got to bed, and then the burial he’d been to had lodged in his mind, the dark cemetery and the funereal shrubs, the sparsely attended service. What a waste of a life.

  His mind had drifted to the woman he’d talked to, Maggie Chapman’s friend – what was her name? Eliza. She’d been striking in a long black coat, her fair hair escaping from under her hat. Maybe he should drop in at the gallery, see this exhibition…

  He’d slept, woken, slept again. And now, as the heaviness of true sleep was carrying him away, the phone, the fucking phone was ringing and he was back on duty and he was going to have to answer it.

  He rolled over in bed and picked up the handset. ‘Farnham.’ As he was speaking, his hand was groping around on the bedside table where he’d dumped a packet of aspirin the night before. He popped a couple out of the foil and sat up as the bitter taste of salicylate filled his mouth. He looked at the clock display on the stereo: 6.15. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK, I’ll be there.’ He gave the instructions more or less on automatic pilot, then lay back for a minute as he got his thoughts in order. A body in the canal – suspicious death. Shit. Not a murder, not on his first day back. A young girl, they’d said. With a bit of luck,
it’d be an accident. Or suicide.

  The room felt cold as he pushed back the quilt. The heating wasn’t set to come on until seven. He pressed the advance switch, but the warmth hadn’t really begun to permeate the flat until after he’d showered and dressed. A fine rain was falling as he left the house, and the steering wheel was cold under his hands.

  It was colder by the canal side. A body in the water always has the potential to be a suspicious death and the early summons had put the responsibility for the decisions squarely on Farnham’s shoulders. His hopes for a simple accident or suicide faded as he stood on the canal bank, listening to the pathologist with deepening resignation. He didn’t want another murder inquiry. But the body that was pulled from the water allowed for little doubt. ‘Whoever put her in there made sure she wouldn’t come up again,’ the pathologist said. She pulled the matted hair away from around the neck, and showed Farnham the cord that was twisted round the woman’s throat. It was attached to a bag. ‘There’s a brick or something in there. Pulled her right under. Poor girl.’

  Farnham, crouched on the canal side, felt the wind cut through his jacket as it funnelled through the archway of the bridge. ‘Suicide?’ he said.

  ‘Mm.’ The pathologist looked at the cord assessingly. She didn’t sound convinced. ‘It’s possible. But look at her hands.’ She showed Farnham the damage to the fingers. They were bruised and misshapen, and there were faint marks on the wrists. ‘That’s pre-mortem damage,’ she said.

  Farnham stood up, feeling his knees protest. He wasn’t forty yet, for Christ’s sake. He needed to get to the gym, cut down on the beer, start…After this case. He’d think about it then. He looked at the dark water of the canal. The wind ruffled the surface, sending ripples lapping against the stonework. ‘I’ll get a team down there,’ he said. They’d need to search the water under the bridge where the body had been found. They’d need a search team along the canal bank, along the canal itself – house to house – or boat to boat. God help his budget.