Bleak Water

by Danuta Reah

  Farnham had a pretty good idea. What she was saying confirmed his suspicions. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘But why didn’t you keep the door locked once she started coming in?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s convenient for me. I keep a lot of my stuff upstairs – we’re short of office space. And Cara wasn’t a problem. She’d distract Mel sometimes, but, to be quite honest, that doesn’t take a lot of doing.’ He caught her eye and smiled slightly. He’d seen enough to know what she meant. She smiled back. ‘And it was easier for her to come down the gallery stairs with the baby than use the outside steps. There was no point in being…It was only when Jonathan got a bit funny about it…it wasn’t really much of a problem.’

  He began to get the picture as they talked. Cara would come through the gallery on her way to wherever she was going in the day, and would stop to chat, look at the stuff that had come into the gallery, and then go on her way. Minor nuisance value. Until she’d started messing round with the alarms. And then she’d died.

  ‘So what about that night you found her in here?’ he said. ‘Do you think she’d done that before? Let herself in when the gallery was empty?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so – we’ve done a lot of evenings here recently. Someone would have noticed, I’m sure.’

  ‘What was she doing that night?’ He stopped her as she began to speak. ‘I know what she said she was doing. What was she actually doing?’

  Eliza stood by the large window, her arms wrapped round her waist, looking down at the canal that glittered in the winter sun. ‘She was sitting on the sill,’ she said. ‘Downstairs. She was looking out at the canal.’

  He thought about what she’d said. ‘She was looking out of the window. Was she looking out for something?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Just looking, I think.’

  He looked round the gallery, struck again by the uncluttered lines, the arched windows, the clear light. The cruelty of Flynn’s images seemed to offend the simple beauty of the room. ‘Why this?’ he said.

  She looked up at him. ‘What would you rather have?’ she said, sharply. ‘The Hay Wain?’

  He’d hit a nerve there. Interesting. He nodded slowly, thinking about what she’d said. ‘Yes, probably,’ he agreed.

  She flushed slightly. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean…’ Though she clearly had.

  ‘Well, thank you for your time,’ he said. He looked round the room. ‘Perhaps I ought to come and see this once it’s up.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She stayed by the window, watching him as he went through the door. Something was bothering Eliza Eliot. He wondered what it was.

  Madrid

  The thought of Africa stayed with Eliza, but it seemed to stay in the realm of the abstract. Daniel fired his own enthusiasm for Africa spending time with Bakst, talking about Tanzania with him, but he was taking no practical steps to get there.

  Her contract had only another two months to run the morning she and Daniel had paused to look at the bookstalls outside the botanical gardens, on their way to the Prado.

  ‘Look,’ she said. She’d found a book on Tanzania. She flicked through the pages, looking at plates of the Serengeti. ‘We need to do something about this,’ she said. They’d need visas or permits, presumably. And inoculations, malaria…they needed to do some research. This was all stuff that Daniel had said he would do. ‘You haven’t got the time,’ he’d said. But that was as far as it had got. Eliza was a forward planner. She liked to have things organized and arranged well in advance. She liked things to happen smoothly, without the stresses and catches of last-minute planning.

  ‘Shall I start asking around?’ she said now. Flights, and they’d need somewhere to stay. What about transport – would they be able to get a car? What kind of car? A four-wheel drive?

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  They were at the entrance to the Prado. Eliza looked up the steps, to the pillars and the portico that ushered visitors into this temple of art. As a member of staff, she got to go in by the lower entrance. Daniel came in with her. He wanted to spend more time studying The Triumph of Death. For someone who claimed to abhor gallery art, he had developed what was almost an obsession with the painting.

  He waited while she checked her post. There were a couple of postcards from friends, a letter from her mother that she put in her bag to read later. The only other letter looked like business, a buff envelope, typed. She opened it, prepared to drop it in the bin.

  ‘…lottery?’

  She hadn’t been paying attention. She blinked. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said, “Have you won the lottery?”’ He gestured at the letter she had been staring at.

  ‘No, it’s…’ Eliza read it again. It was from her ex-tutor at college, Jonathan Massey. He was offering her a job – or inviting her to apply for one – a newly funded post at one of the Arts Trust galleries…

  I’m looking for an exhibitions curator, someone with a wide range, not just 20th century. It seems to me that you would be ideal. It will be advertised at the end of this month. I’ve taken the liberty of enclosing a copy of the advert…

  I’d very much like you to apply for the post.

  ‘It never rains,’ she said slowly, showing the letter to Daniel. ‘A job like that at one of the Arts Trust galleries. Even in Sheffield…’ The northern city held few attractions for her. But a post like that would put her firmly on the ladder for the arts career she was trying to carve out for herself. Her name would be in the right circles. She would be able to paint, and people in the know, people of influence, would look at her work. She wouldn’t be just another painter trying to struggle her way up from under the heap. She looked at Daniel, who was reading his way through to the end of the letter.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘What a choice. Admin in South Yorkshire or painting in Tanzania.’ He grinned at her. ‘How are you ever going to decide, Eliza?’

  He didn’t understand. It wasn’t an issue for him. His career as an artist was burgeoning. The name ‘Daniel Flynn’ was appearing in the arts magazines. Serious galleries were asking for his work. Important critics discussed him. She didn’t say anything.

  ‘Eliza?’ He was watching her closely.

  She could feel all the joy of Africa, all the satisfaction she’d felt at the recognition Jonathan’s letter gave her, leaking out of her, leaving her blank and empty. This was the irony of it. Two of the things she most wanted – and they had arrived together, and she had to make a choice. Her emotions were urging her towards one choice, but the practical voice that lived inside Eliza had a different counsel. There was no choice. An opportunity like this would only come her way once.

  He could see her decision in her face. ‘You’re going to go for it, aren’t you?’ His voice was suddenly neutral.

  ‘I’d be mad not to,’ she said. ‘I may not get it – the competition will be fierce. But I’d be stupid not to try. If I don’t, we can still…’

  He slid off the desk where he had been sitting waiting for her to finish with the post, and picked up his jacket, which he slung over one shoulder. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘I might have other plans.’

  They never talked about it again. They never talked about Africa again. Daniel became elusive, taking long trips away from Madrid, spending more time with Ivan Bakst. He still came to the Prado, still engaged her in discussions about the Brueghel. He said he was starting to get absorbed in his new work, though he wouldn’t discuss its progress with her. He was amiable yet distant.

  Nevertheless he seemed genuinely pleased for her when she interviewed successfully and was offered the job. ‘I knew you’d get it,’ he said, kissing her lightly. But in his eyes, she’d chosen the job over him, and he didn’t seem prepared to forgive that.

  Tina was trying to redeem herself. She could have shrugged off Farnham’s complaints about her timekeeping, even about her attitude – a couple of days when she was late in, a bit of inattention
at briefings – OK, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t a hanging offence. But messing up an important witness statement – she couldn’t forgive herself for that. And Farnham wasn’t going to forgive her either, unless she could do some really good work.

  Her chances seemed limited, though. Tracking down the missing boat had looked interesting, but, at the moment, she was having no luck. And looking into Cara Hobson’s background – which was what she was doing now – was routine. If Cara had been killed by one of her clients, then details of her early background wouldn’t offer much to the investigation. But Farnham had set her the task, and she was following it up, being good, being conscientious.

  She checked the street sign. OK, third road on the left, fifth house up. She pulled up outside a thirties semi and focused her mind on the interview. Her search in the records had produced Briony Rose’s birth certificate. It hadn’t been too hard to check back after that. She now had the basic information about Cara Hobson’s life. She’d been in local-authority care from before her fifteenth birthday. She’d come from a broken home and had cut off all contact with her family. Tina was having trouble tracking them down.

  She was on her way to talk to a woman who had worked in the hostel where Cara had lived for a few months after leaving care. She might be able to give Tina some leads towards Cara’s friends and contacts in those last years.

  Denise Greene was in her late forties, a tall, rather brusque woman. She invited Tina in, having given her identification card a desultory glance. She had been a care worker for years, working in a children’s home in the Firth Park area of Sheffield. She was disparaging about the system with the evangelism of one who has seen an organization from the inside.

  ‘It’s never satisfactory,’ she said in response to Tina’s question about the way the care system dealt with the children entrusted to it. ‘I mean, take me. I left. Can you imagine, as a kid, having a mother who can hand her notice in?’ She laughed out loud. ‘There’s plenty might want to,’ she said.

  She’d worked in the hostel for six months, before leaving the care system altogether. ‘It wasn’t a bad place,’ she said. ‘It’s closed now. It gave them a kind of halfway house – it’s hard to go straight from care into a place of your own, specially if you haven’t got any family to go to.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said when Tina asked her if she remembered Cara. ‘It’s going back a bit, mind. Nearly five years now. She was a nice kid, Cara, but she was one of those who was made for trouble. A bit of a Dilly Daydream, a bit slow. She was on the game by the time she arrived at the hostel. There’s nothing you can do, you know. They wait outside the homes – the men, the pimps. There’s a fortune to be made. Well, the girls, they don’t know any better.’ She looked at Tina. ‘There’s nothing you can do,’ she said again. ‘I left. I couldn’t stand it. I got another job, moved away.’

  ‘When did you come back?’ Tina found the woman’s defeatism depressing.

  ‘Six months ago. I missed Sheffield. I work in an office now.’ She looked at Tina. ‘You can’t beat it. At five o’clock, I leave, and I don’t think about it again until I walk through the office door at half past eight.’

  ‘Do you remember if Cara was friendly with anyone in particular?’ Tina said.

  ‘She had a friend used to come and see her. They’d been in the same care home. They used to go out together. And she got friendly with one or two of the girls who came in around the same time she did. But I left soon after that.’

  ‘This friend she went out with, was she another one who was on the game? Can you remember…?’ Tina had her pen poised.

  ‘Her name? Yes, I can. Sheryl, Sheryl Hewitt. And yes, she was.’

  Two young girls cementing their friendship over prostitution. No wonder Cara had ended up the way she did. But Tina could try to track Sheryl Hewitt down. It seemed likely that Cara would have kept up the contact, at least for a while.

  Nearly five years. Any trail would have gone cold by now. Maybe Sheryl Hewitt, if she could be found, would be able to fill in the gaps in Denise Greene’s story. ‘OK. I’ll need to talk to this Sheryl. Do you have any idea…?’

  The other woman shook her head again. ‘No. I don’t know where she went. She ought to have done OK for herself. She was bright. But I don’t know.’ And Tina had to leave it at that. At least she had a name now. It would give her something to take back to Farnham.

  EIGHT

  The restaurant was quiet, only three tables occupied when Eliza and Daniel arrived. The waiter showed them to a table by the window, and Eliza leant back in the cushioned chair as Daniel ordered some wine. ‘There’s a rioja.’ He smiled at her. Rioja had always been her choice. ‘That suit you?’

  ‘Fine.’ Eliza smiled back, letting the memories show on her face. She watched the comings and goings in the street outside. On the corner a bit further up, there was a barber’s shop, bright green with a large window. It was open, even this late in the evening, and a fair-haired woman stood behind the barber’s chair, brilliantly illuminated as though she was on a stage. It was like a painting by Edward Hopper, one of those late-night cafés, all hard light and bright colours.

  Daniel was sitting opposite her and his eyes followed hers. ‘Hopper,’ he said.

  Eliza nodded, pleased that he’d seen what she had seen. There was a moment of silence as they adjusted to the new context, then Eliza said, ‘What are you doing once the exhibition’s opened?’

  The waiter arrived with the wine, and Daniel didn’t answer until they were alone again. He swirled the wine round in his glass, and said, ‘I don’t know. I’ve got some ideas – I wanted to get to Bamiyan.’

  ‘Bamiyan?’ She was blank, then she realized. ‘The Buddhas,’ she said. The ancient statues destroyed by the Taliban.

  ‘I want to do some work – put together a show – about what exists after something is gone. It’s more than just nothing,’ he said. ‘That emptiness represents something. But it’ll have to wait for now.’ He rubbed his hand over his face. He looked tired. His hair was untidy and he hadn’t shaved. His eyes were unfocused. ‘It was that poor little cow that got killed,’ he said. ‘It got me thinking – how is the world different now that some teenage hooker isn’t here any more? We don’t even notice the gap – no books of remembrance for her,’ he said. ‘Or any of the others – the junkies, the runaways. No one notices. Yet they noticed the Buddhas. So…’ He swirled the wine round his glass but didn’t say any more.

  ‘Or New York?’ she said. What exists when something is gone…

  ‘Yeah. Maybe.’ He was looking out on to the road, and he moved his shoulders irritably when she spoke.

  ‘Do you never want to stay on in Sheffield?’ she said after a while. ‘I mean, do you have family here still? Friends?’ He’d never talked to her about his background, his family. He shook his head. There was silence again. When they’d talked in the gallery, it was as if there had been no lapse of time – they were together again, the words flowing, the ideas sparking between them. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That’s none of my business.’

  ‘No, it’s not that. I’m tired.’ He seemed to make a conscious effort and smiled at her. ‘I’ve told you my ideas for what I’m doing next. Your turn.’

  ‘OK. But I’m not sure what plans Jonathan…’

  ‘Not the gallery. Your own work.’ He filled her glass and the waiter came over to take their order.

  Eliza made a pattern on the tablecloth with her fork. She wasn’t sure, now, that she wanted to talk to Daniel about her work. ‘I’ve got something…’ she said.

  ‘The canal? Paintings of the canal?’ He too was thinking about their conversation earlier that day.

  ‘Something like that,’ she said. Why didn’t she want to tell him about her Madrid painting, and the ideas that were beginning to form in her mind around it?

  ‘So it’s still in the ideas stage,’ he said. She nodded.

  The silence was more comfortable now, and she waited to see what he
would say next. ‘I don’t have family in Sheffield any more,’ he said, going back to her earlier question. ‘And if I did, I don’t think I’d want to stay.’

  ‘Are your parents still alive?’ Eliza’s mother lived on the south coast. Her father had died six years ago.

  He shook his head. ‘My father might be, but, as I’ve never met him, it’s not an issue. My mother died three years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, with conventional regret.

  ‘Don’t be. I’m not.’ He refilled their glasses. ‘We’re going to need another bottle at this rate.’

  Eliza could feel the wine going to her head, but she was enjoying the slight recklessness that it created. ‘What about sisters? Brothers?’

  ‘I had a sister,’ he said. ‘A half-sister. She died when she was in her teens.’

  Eliza felt a twist of sadness. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘Yeah. Well…’ He shrugged, but then the waiter arrived with their order, and they didn’t go back to the subject.

  Later, they shared a taxi back. Eliza, relaxed by the wine and the good food, was in a mood to take risks, but when they got to her flat, he helped her out of the taxi, put his hands on her arms, kissed her lightly on the mouth and said, ‘I’ll see you at the do tomorrow, Eliza.’

  And the taxi pulled away, leaving her standing there on her own.

  Kerry’s diary

  Thursday, 17 January

  …There was a letter today. I dont now who sent it. I thought it was about dad but it wasnt. I’m going Friday afternoon like she said. I’m taking Stacy up the market. I got it wrong last time but it wasn’t my fault I got lost. I wrote a letter to Dad tonight. I can’t tell him about Lyn yet. He might get dissapointed but I said I’m doing something so he’ll now. Mum was on the sofa again tonight…

  There had been a letter addressed to Kerry on the mat that morning. Miss Kerry Fraser, typed. No one wrote to her, only Dad. She had stuffed it in her bag, and opened it when she was at the bus stop. It was a piece from a newspaper. She unfolded it and looked at it. THIRD DEATH AT SUICIDE JAIL.