Bleak Water

by Danuta Reah

  ‘OK,’ she said, finishing her salad. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  Mel, silenced in mid sentence, looked put out. ‘Jonathan wanted me to…’ she began.

  ‘And I want you to help me get the room set up,’ Eliza said. She had just about had enough of Mel, and for once, Mel shut up.

  They worked until late in the afternoon, then Mel said, ‘Eliza…?’

  Eliza was angling a display board. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Jonathan said I could finish early today. I’m going to the concert. He said it was OK with him if it’s OK with you.’ Her voice was unaccustomedly diffident.

  Eliza nodded. She’d worked her bad temper off, and she had no reason to keep Mel. They’d made good progress. ‘Fine. I think we’ve done as much as we can. I’ll go on for a bit. See you tomorrow. Make sure the door’s locked.’

  She listened as Mel’s footsteps faded down the stairs. She was glad to be by herself now. She could walk round, absorb the design that they’d carefully set up, note places where it needed refinement or alteration, begin to get the feel of the exhibition as a whole. Flynn would be back on Friday for the private view, and Saturday, they were opening. She needed to check the arrangements for the private view again, check with the caterers, see if there were any last-minute invitations to be sent out.

  She was holding up another of the enlargements from Brueghel’s original painting, the depiction of death on a red horse, this one taken from the centre of the painting where all the reenactments of death took place in the orange glow from the fires that suffused the dead landscape, when something made her jump – Too much time with the old masters – and she realized that there were two people, a man and a woman, standing in the doorway watching her. Mel must have left the door unlocked. She sighed. ‘The gallery’s closed now,’ she said. ‘We open at ten.’

  The woman looked at the painting Eliza was holding. ‘Death on a red horse,’ she said. ‘I thought it was a pale horse.’ She moved round until she could see the picture more clearly. ‘“And behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death,”’ she said.

  Eliza recognized the words. ‘Revelation,’ she said. The fading light fell on the woman. She was a Goya portrait, with full lips and dark eyes, her oval face framed by black hair. She looked pale and tired – a Goya with a hangover, Eliza diagnosed with the expertise of experience. ‘I don’t think Brueghel was painting Death specifically. I think they’re all deaths, if you see what I mean.’

  The woman nodded, still eyeing the painting. ‘It’s…striking,’ she said. Her tone changed. ‘You’re Ms Eliot, Eliza Eliot?’ Eliza nodded. The woman took something out of her pocket and held it up for Eliza to see. ‘Detective Constable Barraclough, South Yorkshire Police,’ she said. She looked too exotic to be a policewoman. ‘And this is DC West.’ The second officer nodded at Eliza.

  ‘We’re investigating an incident on the canal bank last night,’ DC Barraclough said. ‘You live in the flat upstairs, don’t you?’ Eliza remembered Mel’s story of the closed-off towpath, the body in the water. ‘We’re trying to put together a picture of what happened. Did you notice anything unusual last night?’

  ‘Unusual?’ Eliza shook her head. ‘How do you mean, “unusual”?’ An incident. A feeling of unease was beginning to stir inside her. What, exactly, had happened on the towpath last night?

  ‘Anything that sounded like trouble, a fight? Even kids messing around?’

  Eliza shook her head again. She couldn’t remember anything like that. She remembered the noise of the storm.

  ‘Do you get a lot of people along the towpath at night?’ DC Barraclough said.

  ‘Boats go by sometimes. Kids occasionally. It’s usually pretty quiet.’

  ‘But you didn’t hear anything like that last night?’

  ‘It was very stormy, so that kept me awake. But…’ Eliza shrugged. The sound of bad weather wasn’t what this woman was looking for. ‘Have you asked at the other flat?’ she said.

  DC Barraclough looked surprised and checked her notebook. ‘The other flat?’ she said.

  ‘There are two flats,’ Eliza said. So much for efficiency.

  ‘Who lives there?’ It was the man this time. DC Barraclough was flicking through her notebook, frowning.

  ‘Cara…’ Eliza realized she didn’t know Cara’s second name. ‘A young woman and her baby,’ she amended. ‘She’s called Cara. I don’t know her…’

  She was aware of a beat of silence, then DC Barraclough said, ‘There’s a baby?’

  ‘Yes.’ Eliza saw the two police officers look at each other. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Have you seen her today?’ the other woman said. ‘This Cara?’

  Eliza shook her head, suddenly feeling uneasy. She remembered wondering why Cara hadn’t come wandering into the gallery the way she normally did. She remembered Mel sitting back on her heels, her eyes bright with excitement as she talked about the police on the towpath and the body in the canal.

  DC Barraclough didn’t answer her. She was talking on her radio.

  The Second Site Gallery wasn’t far from police HQ. Roy Farnham was there within fifteen minutes of getting the call. He pulled into the car park in front of the old warehouse, aware, with part of his mind, of the beauty of the old brickwork, the elegant arch on the windows and doors.

  One of the officers was waiting for him. He’d noticed her before, the DC who always looked as if she had just got out of someone else’s bed. Tina Barraclough. What was it he had heard about Barraclough? Some kind of crack-up after a case that went bad a couple of years ago? There had been something about a suicide, a young man had jumped from a tower block…He couldn’t quite remember. He noticed that she looked rather ill and ragged as she came over and told him quickly about the young woman, known only as ‘Cara’, who lived in a flat above the gallery with a baby, and who hadn’t been seen that day.

  ‘Can we get access?’ he said.

  Barraclough shook her head. ‘Dave West’s been up.’ She indicated the blocked-in stairway running up the outside of the building. ‘The bottom door was open, but the one into the building is locked.’

  Farnham could hear the pathologist’s voice from early that morning. There’s a baby somewhere. This girl had a baby not so long ago. ‘We need to get in.’ As he spoke he was aware of someone coming from the gallery, a woman. He recognized her as she looked up. It was Eliza Eliot, the woman he’d met at the Chapman funeral – he’d forgotten for the moment that she worked at the gallery. He’d hoped if he saw her again it might be in a less formal setting. A funeral and a murder inquiry. Christ, Farnham, you know how to show a girl a good time. ‘Miss Eliot,’ he said. He saw recognition in her eyes. ‘You told my officers you haven’t seen the woman who lives upstairs all day. Is that unusual?’

  ‘Yes.’ She rubbed her arms against the cold. ‘Yes, it is. She usually drops into the gallery at some time. She’s a bit lonely, I think…’

  ‘Is there another way into the flats?’

  ‘I’ll get my key…’ she began, then said, ‘There are stairs in the gallery. It’s quicker that way.’ He followed her into the gallery, past an empty reception desk and through a turnstile. The gallery was empty, the long downstairs room in darkness. He could see the shapes of pictures on the wall, objects standing on the floor space, making odd, shadowy shapes in the fading light. Eliza Eliot led them to the back of the gallery and through a door that opened on to a staircase. She ran ahead and opened a heavy door at the top of the stairs.

  Farnham found himself in a long, straight corridor. There were two entrances on the corridor, open lobbies that led into the individual flats. The door that led to the external staircase was at the far end.

  ‘That’s Cara’s,’ Eliza Eliot said, pointing to the first door.

  Barraclough looked at Farnham, then knocked on the door. There was silence. She knocked again. ‘You heard her in the night?’ Farnham said to Eliza.

  Eliza nodded. ‘She was seein
g to the baby. It was crying.’

  Barraclough’s face was tense as she listened. ‘There’s no one there,’ she said, addressing herself to the other officer.

  Farnham nodded to West, who stepped back and kicked the door over the lock. It gave a bit. He kicked it again and it flew open. The small entrance lobby was dark. Farnham heard the click of a light switch, but nothing happened, then Barraclough’s voice said, ‘The light isn’t working,’ then, louder, ‘Cara? Police. Are you all right?’ He shone a torch at the ceiling. There was a bare bulb hanging from the light fitting. He went ahead and pushed open the door into the flat. The room was dark apart from the flicker of a candle. Heavy curtains were pulled across the window. It was icy cold. He pressed the light switch, but again, nothing happened.

  West was over by the window, tugging at the curtains. They fell away, landing on the floor with a thump, releasing the smell of dust. They were just old blankets hooked over the curtain rail. In the dim light, it was like being in a child’s room, the nursery print on the bedspread, the teddy bear and the doll propped on the floor by the bed, the sheets and pillows disarranged, a rocking horse pushed against the wall at one side. There were the remains of a sliced loaf on the worktop, a mug, an open milk carton, a baby’s bottle, unwashed. There was a cupboard on one side of the room, the doors hanging open, and beside it a chest of drawers, the drawers pulled out, stuff scattered over the floor.

  He heard Barraclough’s exclamation. She was leaning over a cot that was pushed close to the window. Farnham felt his heart sink as he saw the motionless shawl-wrapped bundle. He was already speaking into the radio as Barraclough began to run her hands over the infant. He saw Eliza Eliot standing by the door, her hands pressed over her mouth, her eyes shocked. He nodded sharply at West, who began to usher her back, back towards the door of the flat, the landing.

  Then Eliza was outside the flat, and the young man was looking down at her. He was holding a photograph. Eliza noticed that he held it carefully, protecting it from his fingers with a tissue. ‘Is this her? The woman who lives here? Cara?’

  Eliza looked at the photo. Cara smiled bewilderedly back, a very new baby held awkwardly in her arms. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Look, what’s…?’

  Roy Farnham came out, still talking on the radio. His voice sounded brisk and efficient, and somehow this was more reassuring than shouting and urgency and exclamations. He looked at her. ‘We’ll need to talk to you,’ he said. ‘Would you wait downstairs?’

  She shook her head. She found herself persuaded, firmly and inexorably back down the stairs to the gallery, back into the office where she sat down heavily. The sound of a siren was already audible in the distance, coming nearer and nearer. She was shaking. She looked wordlessly at the young officer. She couldn’t understand what he was saying. ‘I don’t know,’ she kept saying. ‘I don’t know…’ She tried to listen to what was happening two storeys above her, heard the sound of feet running on the outside staircase and silence again.

  Cara. Cara’s baby. She had a sudden vision of Ellie as a tiny bundle in Maggie’s arms, of Cara putting the baby down on the chair in her flat in response to Eliza’s clumsy invitation. ‘I’ve got to…’ she said, and stood up. She went to the gallery entrance, ignoring the efforts of the young man to keep her back.

  Two paramedics came down the stairs at speed, one of them carrying the tiny bundle that must be Briony Rose. The siren was still sounding as the ambulance drove away. Like a sleepwalker, Eliza went up the stairs to the exhibition space, and stood in front of the reproduction of the Brueghel that formed a centrepiece to the exhibition. ‘Miss Eliot?’ She heard the officer’s voice behind her.

  A river flowed across the scene, a bloated corpse drifting on the oily surface, another sinking beneath the water under an arched bridge. A burning tower dominated the landscape and the armies of the dead pressed forward.

  FOUR

  Kerry’s diary

  Ellie’s mum died. I went to the funeral but I went late because I didn’t want anyone to see me. It was creepy because there was all earth in a pile where she was buried, not like the other graves, and the flowers were all piled up. I don’t want to be buried when I die. There was a grave with Ellie’s name on it and someone had put red flowers on it. I felt sad when I saw them…

  I got lost and I was late. Lyn wasn’t there. She’ll be mad with me. She said that it was about dad. I don’t understand what she means. She told them things about dad. It wasn’t her fault. Dad says. Only now she says something else only I’ve got to see her. And now she’ll be mad at me.

  Kerry heard Mum’s footsteps on the stairs and she pushed her diary under the mattress. The footsteps came to her door and stopped, then they shuffled past and she heard the sound of Mum’s door shutting. That would be it for the night. She’d left Mum downstairs in the kitchen. Mum had been nice at tea, she’d asked Kerry about school and about her friends and all the things they used to talk about. Kerry had pushed her oven chips round the plate and tried to say the right things, but Mum had her big green mug at the table, the one she pretended had tea in it. ‘Tea without milk,’ she’d say with that laugh that wasn’t really a laugh, as if Kerry was a kid, as if Kerry didn’t know. And after a while, she began.

  ‘Where were you on Monday night?’ she said.

  Kerry thought that Mum hadn’t noticed how late she’d been. It must have been ten-thirty when she slipped her key in the lock and crept in, shivering with something that was more than cold. ‘Stacy’s,’ she said. She dipped her chip in the bean juice. The thin pink liquid dropped on to the cloth.

  ‘Kerry!’ Mum jumped up and came round the table to where Kerry was sitting. ‘That mess. On the clean cloth!’ She seemed about to cry. She grabbed Kerry’s arm. ‘Clear it up!’ she said, trying to rub the stain out with the sleeve of Kerry’s top, her best top that she’d sewed the sequins on to herself to make it look right. Kerry jerked away and she felt the sting across her face as Mum’s hand slapped out. There was silence.

  Kerry looked down at her plate. She knew what was coming next.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m sorry, Kerry, I didn’t…’ And she hugged Kerry against her, against the chemically smell and the smell of cigarettes and sweat.

  The tablecloth was mucky anyway. There were stains all over and some of them were from where Mum had splashed her drink over the table when she talked and laughed and waved her hands around. ‘Why don’t you bring Stacy back here?’ Mum said after a while. ‘You could have a sleep-over, I know that’s what you all like, having sleep-overs. Do you remember when you and Ellie used to have…’ Her voice trailed off and she picked up her mug and drained it. ‘I need some more tea,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Kerry said quickly. If Mum didn’t have any more now, she might go to sleep and then maybe she wouldn’t be so bad in the morning.

  ‘No, you stay where you are, sweetheart,’ Mum said. ‘You’ve been busy at school all day. I’ll get it.’

  Kerry slid off her chair. ‘You’ve been at work…’ she began, and saw Mum’s eyes slide away and knew that Mum hadn’t been to work, again. ‘I’ll get it,’ she said.

  ‘I said, I’ll get it!’ The shout was sudden and sharp, and Mum went into the kitchen and slammed the door behind her. Kerry sat at the table and squeezed her eyes shut tight. Her arms felt tingly and itchy, and she rubbed them. Then she pushed up her sleeve and dragged her nails across the skin, but the jumpy feeling stayed so she did it again and again until the skin was all sore, and the pattern of fine red lines that crisscrossed her arms stood out, red and angry. She could hear Mum moving around in the kitchen. She called out, ‘I’m going to do my homework.’

  Mum’s voice sounded muffled. ‘You…do that.’

  Now Kerry was sitting on her bed. It was dark outside. The streetlamp wasn’t working, but she knew it must be late because the kids who played out on the estate had gone in. She yawned. Mum ought to know why she didn’t bring Stacy home, or anyone. She h
ad brought Stacy home once, and Mum had been OK at first. Kerry had seen Stacy’s eyes going round the room which was so different from Stacy’s house. Stacy’s house had all cushions and dried flowers and little ornaments, and three different curtains on the windows.

  Only then Mum had started talking about where they used to live, and how it had all been different. Kerry had said, ‘Mum!’ in anguish, and Mum had started shouting and then she’d gone to sleep in the chair. The next day at school, Kerry had seen Stacy whispering with some of the other girls, but no one much liked Stacy anyway, so no one said anything.

  Kerry turned the light out and curled up under the covers. She’d bunked off school and now she’d be in trouble, but she’d dreamed, that night. She had dreamed about Lyn, about the canal and the towpath, that she was on the towpath in the dark and something was chasing her, and her legs wouldn’t move as though the air had got thick, like treacle. She remembered looking back through the arched tunnel, and the sound of something in the water. And then it had been a bright, hot day, and the river was glittering in the sun, and there was Ellie, only she was walking away from Kerry, faster and faster, and no matter how Kerry called, she didn’t turn round.

  She woke up in the darkness. Her face felt wet. It wouldn’t go away – the grave with Ellie’s name on, and the flowers all red like the jumper Kerry had been wearing that day. She wanted to see Lyn. She couldn’t talk to Mum, and she couldn’t talk to Dad. She used to talk to Maggie, but Maggie sent her away. And now Maggie was dead too.

  Maybe Lyn had been waiting somewhere else. Maybe Lyn had tried to get in touch. Kerry hadn’t looked at the phone, left it buried at the bottom of her bag, trying not to think about the way the water in the canal had swirled and rippled as though something was moving through the water, stealthy, silent, intent.