Bleak Water

by Danuta Reah

  This time, Kerry met her eyes. ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

  TEN

  Sunday was the first free day Eliza had had for weeks. It was disorientating, having time to decide what to do. She planned to spend the morning going through the stuff she’d brought back from Maggie’s flat. It was still in the car, so she had to go out into the winter morning.

  The sun was pouring into her flat when she returned. She slanted the blinds to keep it out of her eyes. She dumped the folders on to the table, next to the paperwork for the exhibition, some of which had been there since the evening Cara came to the flat. She remembered the small figure leaning over the chair as she tucked the infant in, the rather helpless way she dumped the bags and baggage she’d been hauling around with her.

  She pushed the thought out of her mind and made herself a cup of coffee while she devised her strategy. She’d go through the papers – letters and Ellie memorabilia – first. And then she’d try and make some decisions about the photographs.

  An hour later, she was beginning to wish she had never started. Her hands felt dry from the dust that seemed to have accumulated round the papers. She had sorted them into piles: letters, mostly relating to Fraser’s forthcoming appeal, Ellie memorabilia, cards and drawings and some school work. A story about a dragon called Albert: meanwhile, Albert was enjoying a nice meal of roast damsel in distress and chips…Birthday cards and Mother’s Day cards, some clearly school-made, some bought. It looked as though Maggie had kept them all. Roses are red, violets are blue, best mum in the world, I love you!

  Eliza ran a grimy hand through her hair. Mixed up among the letters, she’d found an article written after the conclusion of the court case, after Fraser’s life sentence. The judge had said, ‘In your case, I recommend that life means life.’ Looking at the cards and the old school work, no penalty seemed to Eliza to be adequate response to the loss of Ellie. Roses are red…I love you!

  Maggie had loved Mark Fraser. She had believed in him, at first.

  ‘They’ve had Mark at the police station all night,’ she’d told Eliza. ‘They’re wasting time with Mark when Ellie could be…could be…’

  ‘Why Mark?’ Eliza didn’t know him. He was a name that had appeared more and more in Maggie’s letters and phone calls, an involvement that seemed genuine, but fraught with the problem of another relationship, other children.

  ‘They were with him,’ Maggie said. ‘I had a load of marking, so he took them out for the day…’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The girls, Ellie and Kerry. Kerry’s his daughter. He loves taking them out. He’s always taking them places…’ Her voice faded slightly as she spoke, then rallied. ‘I made them a picnic. It was cold last night. Ellie was lost in the woods. She’ll have been cold. She left her jumper on the boat…’ Maggie was crying now. ‘Lize, Mark wouldn’t hurt Ellie. He loves her.’

  Roses are red…Had Maggie been whistling in the dark even then? Had she begun to realize how she, apparently sophisticated and streetwise, had been deceived by the man who had come to her door bearing gifts? The knowledge had come brutally enough, not long before the canal side gave up its secret and destroyed any last vestige of hope that Maggie might have had.

  But by then, she had known. Fraser’s stepdaughter had come to Maggie with her story.

  ‘Kerry?’ Eliza said.

  ‘No, the other one. Lyn. She told me about him.’ Mark Fraser had been trying to abuse his stepdaughter. It had begun with charm. He had bought her presents, tried to take her to the places she liked to go to. ‘Ring any bells?’ Maggie said, and her laugh was bitter. Then he had started watching her, coming into the room when she was bathing, when she was getting dressed. ‘And touching her, she said. She told me he’d started touching her. She wouldn’t have anything to do with him, and she was scared he’d go after Kerry. She told me. She said, “He’s a pervert!” She told her mother, but the mother didn’t want to know. Do you know what she did? She threw the kid out. Weeks ago. So she came to me. It was too late, but she came to me.’ The hate in Maggie’s voice was chilling. ‘And that child must have known. Kerry must have known. And she pulled Ellie into it. She must have known.’

  A fortnight after that call, Ellie’s body had been found. Fibres wrapped round the skeletonized remains ‘could have come’ from Fraser’s sweater, the sweater he claimed he’d lost. He might still have got away with it – the fibres alone were not conclusive proof, though the evidence that had built up was damning. Fraser had sent Ellie into the woods. Fraser had gone after her. He had tried to assault his stepdaughter. But the clinching detail came from hairs caught in the fibres. They were Mark Fraser’s. The DNA profile convicted him.

  And the circumstances had convicted Maggie, both in her own eyes and in those of the tabloid press. Maggie was a single parent. She described herself as an artist. She’d had several relationships during Ellie’s childhood, one or two that had overlapped – all details that the press ferreted out. And then she’d got involved with a married man, a man with a wife and two children. A man who was a paedophile. And in the pursuit of her own gratification, she’d given this man all the access he’d needed to her daughter. The sympathy that Maggie had evoked in the press when she was ‘Ellie’s heartbroken mum’ and ‘courageous mum Maggie’ evaporated.

  And Maggie had accepted this picture. It was as if demonizing herself was the only way she could cope with her grief for Ellie. Nothing Eliza could say or do seemed to dent her determination. And eventually, Eliza had stopped trying.

  There were just the photographs now, Maggie’s life in a few slim wallets. She opened each one and flicked through the contents. These seemed to be early pictures. The more recent ones must still be at the house. College pictures. Photographs from Maggie’s childhood, student days, her degree show – Eliza could remember that. Ellie as a baby. More Ellie photographs. She looked at these more closely. They were from the summer she had spent with Maggie, what? Eight years ago. Eliza and Ellie in the park, Ellie in the pool with Eliza helping her to swim, a picnic on the grass.

  She ran her fingers through her hair again. She didn’t know what to do with these. She pushed the pile of stuff away from her, and the exhibition papers, followed by some of the photographs, cascaded on to the floor. Shit! She went round the table to pick them up. A couple of photographs had fallen out and got mixed up with the papers. She looked at them.

  These were later. Ellie was older. It was like a shot through a window on to a balcony, or…She suddenly realized what she was seeing. They were taken on a boat, from the cabin, as though the photographer had been focusing through the window into the bright sunlight. In the first one, Ellie hung over the side of the boat. She was wearing a bright yellow jumper and blue shorts. Her hair shone in the sunlight. It looked as though she was trailing her fingers in the water. Spray made a halo of colour round her head. She was laughing. In the second one, there were two girls leaning on the side, looking up at something that was beyond the camera’s view. Ellie was pointing, her face solemn. The prints were dated, 20.6.98. The day Ellie died.

  Eliza stuffed them into one of the wallets. She didn’t want to look at them. As if in tune with her thoughts, the shadows were creeping into the room. The afternoon was drawing in and the winter sun was almost below the horizon. The last rays were lighting up her window, illuminating the Madrid painting that was on her easel. She went across the room and looked at it, the blocks of hot light, the hard lines of the shadow contrasting with the tones and shadows of the canal side. She looked at the way the colour changed as her eye was drawn towards the edges, from brilliance, to a dull orange, to the monochrome of a Yorkshire winter. The painting was becoming a fusion of her experiences, the light of Madrid, its slow fading into winter darkness.

  She picked up her brush, put a blank canvas on the easel, and began to sketch in the outlines of something that had been in her mind for weeks. Her hand was deft and sure, and she became absorbed in the work
and the daylight faded and the moon rose over the canal.

  Madrid

  The moon faded in the dancing lights of the Madrid night. Eliza walked up the cobbled hill towards the Plaza Mayor, towards her last evening in Madrid. The people she was leaving behind, the friends she had made, had wanted to make a night of it, meeting up at a café for tapas, moving on later to a restaurant. But her plane left at eight the next day, so she arranged an early rendezvous – by Madrid standards – so she could get some sleep.

  Her address book was stuffed with cards. She had invitations to keep her travelling for the next ten years. She truly didn’t want to leave. She hated goodbyes. She had wanted this last evening to be like so many others she remembered – sitting outside a café in the summer warmth, listening to the chat, joining in one of the endless arguments about the merits of this medium or that medium, this artist or that artist. But it was different in one crucial way. Daniel wasn’t there.

  He’d decided to take an opportunity to visit Seville. A friend was going, he said. He’d left the day before.

  ‘I was going to ask you to see me off,’ she said.

  ‘I know. It can’t be helped.’ He’d been uneasy, keeping up that unacknowledged distance that had existed between them ever since the news of her successful interview had come through.

  ‘We don’t have to…’ she said.

  ‘I haven’t got much time,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to say goodbye.’ And they’d wasted their last few minutes in that awkward space of unacknowledged emotions.

  And that last encounter had cast a blight over the evening. By ten, as the streets were getting busy, she felt the need to get away. She made her excuses. The last hugs and goodbyes exchanged, she left. ‘Don’t walk me back,’ she protested as some of them rose. ‘I’ve had enough goodbyes.’ She edged her way through the crowds and left the plaza by one of the arched alleyways that led back on to the streets. She wanted to be home.

  She wasn’t sure where home was. Her apartment? But that had no welcome now with its empty cupboards and packed cases waiting in the hallway for the taxi. The workshops in the Prado? She had finished everything she had to do there. Her table was empty. The galleries of the museum? But all the light and colour that the galleries had been to her in those early days had changed. Home had to be in England. Home would be that dark northern city she had chosen. Chosen over Spain, over light, over Daniel.

  The lights in the alleyway seemed to flicker, the stone of the archway and the cobbled street gleaming faintly in the lamplight. This was Old Madrid. This was the city of the Inquisition, of tortures and burnings. This was the Madrid of Brueghel’s dark triumph: the inevitability of death.

  The air was breathless with heat. She wanted one last moment. One glass of wine – her own farewell. She would see her friends again, or most of them, in the itinerant world of the artist. She would see Daniel again. But Madrid – maybe she would never come back, and if she did, it wouldn’t be this Madrid she returned to. It is not what is seen, it is the eyes that are seeing it. Madrid was changing as she watched, because she was changing.

  There was a bar in the alleyway, still quiet as the busy time of the evening built up. She went in and sat at a table. The waiter brought her a plate of olives, and she ordered a glass of wine. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ she said in her halting Spanish. ‘I’m saying goodbye.’

  He nodded in half-comprehension, and smiled.

  The bar was almost empty. There was a man reading a newspaper at a table near Eliza, and at the back of the room, in the shadows, two men were talking, huddled across the table. She could hear their voices and occasional laughter. Something about the voices…She looked more closely. One of them, sitting in profile to her, was…she squinted through the shadow – it was Ivan Bakst. He was leaning forward, listening to his companion, then he leaned back and laughed as the other man gestured. Her attention focused on the second man as he joined in the laughter.

  It was Daniel. He’d said…

  The door opened, and the first surge of people arrived. Suddenly, the bar was lively, a Madrid evening was beginning. More people piled in through the door. She couldn’t see the two men any more through the sudden crowd.

  It didn’t matter. She and Daniel had said everything they had to say. So he couldn’t face saying goodbye, seeing her off? That wasn’t such a crime.

  She paid for the wine and threaded her way out of the bar. She didn’t look back.

  Saturday night, Tina Barraclough had tried to cure her hangover with wine and a couple of lines of coke. It had been a bad idea. It was still with her the next day, and the Sunday morning drive to York with Dave West exacerbated her headache. Dave was in exuberant good form and sang and joked his way up the M62. Her head was throbbing and her stomach felt uneasy as she shook hands with Steven Calloway, the owner of the Mary May, one of the cabin cruisers that was moored on the canal. He was a man in his thirties, a financial adviser, confident and successful. His house was spacious, overlooking the river, furnished with comfortable leather chairs, minimalist side tables and floor lamps. He was dressed informally in jeans and a sweater, and his large frame, his slightly weathered skin and bright blue eyes suggested to Tina someone who was happier outdoors and active than sitting inside, even on a cold winter’s afternoon. ‘Officer Barraclough. Officer West,’ he said. ‘Sit down. Do you want anything? Coffee?’ He had a glass of water in front of him.

  Tina shook her head to the coffee. ‘Just some water, thanks,’ she said, and thought she caught an amused gleam in his eye as he looked at her.

  Dave stepped in as Tina remained silent, and ran through the situation they were investigating.

  Calloway’s face lit up. ‘A mystery boat on the canal? It’s like Boy’s Own.’ He caught Tina’s eye and smiled, then made a conscious effort to look serious. ‘The Mary May?’ he said. ‘I’ve already talked to someone. I haven’t been near her for months.’

  Through her hangover, Tina found she was rather drawn to Calloway’s outdoor looks and easy-going manner – a total contrast to Daniel Flynn’s evasive complexity. She was aware of Dave giving her a quick glance, slightly puzzled, slightly impatient. She pulled herself back to the interview and tried to concentrate. Her head gave a thump. ‘Why is that, Mr Calloway?’ she said.

  He smiled at her. ‘Because she’s a wreck, a canal-going wreck. She isn’t good for much else. She belonged to my father and I inherited her. I’m trying to sell her – I fork out for mooring, and maintenance, for something I don’t use. If she was worth it, I’d move her. The South Yorkshire canal isn’t where…’ He looked at the two officers. ‘I prefer something ocean going. I keep my boat at Hull.’

  ‘Has anyone taken the Mary May out recently?’ Calloway had been asked to account for his time on the night of Cara’s death. He’d been in York all evening, he said, in the pub. And then he’d gone home.

  He shook his head, then said, ‘You’d need to ask the broker. It’s the place behind the stadium in Sheffield. They’re dealing with it. They’ve got the keys.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got that,’ Tina said. ‘So as far as you know…’

  ‘I’ve no idea. They’ll call me if they make a sale. People come and look – but no one’s bitten so far.’ His face went serious. ‘After the call I got from your colleagues, I gave the broker a ring and he went across to have a look. She’s locked up, the tank’s full, everything shipshape. Or as shipshape as that old boat ever gets.’ He looked at Tina. ‘I don’t want her, but my father thought the world of that old girl. I wouldn’t like to think she’d been used for…anything like that. So I got them to check.’

  ‘You don’t have keys to the boat?’ Dave said after a pause. Tina realized she should have checked that.

  ‘I’ve got a key to give me access,’ Calloway said. ‘But both the ignition keys are with the broker.’

  West nodded. ‘How long is it since you saw that key, Mr Calloway?’

  ‘I…’ He looked discomfited for a moment.
‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Could you check it, please?’

  Calloway went to the desk and rummaged round in one of the drawers. ‘It’s…somewhere here, I’m sure…Yes.’ Tina met Dave’s eyes. For a minute, she’d thought they had something.

  Calloway was holding up a key. ‘This is the one,’ he said.

  ‘Can you confirm that?’ Dave wasn’t giving up so quickly.

  Calloway didn’t seem to find the question odd. He held the key up to the light and squinted at it. He nodded. ‘Yes. See?’ He leaned across and showed it to Tina. At the top of the key, the letters MM had been scratched. ‘My dad used to mark his keys,’ he said. ‘Save them from getting muddled.’

  ‘If we wanted to have a look,’ Tina said, ‘we could get the keys from the broker?’

  ‘Oh, yes, any time.’ He looked at Tina again. ‘Or give me a ring and I’ll come across and show you round her – not that there’s much to see.’

  ‘Well, thank you, Mr Calloway, you’ve been very helpful.’ Tina shook his hand.

  ‘Let me have your number, Officer,’ he said. ‘In case I think of anything else.’

  She had to put up with West’s barracking about smooth bastards all the way back to Sheffield.

  Eliza worked on her picture until well into the evening. It was her first painting of the canal. What had been almost random blocks of colour were starting to form a complex pattern of inter-dependencies that built up the relationship between the reds and the greens and the blacks that made up the walls and the water and the undergrowth that thrived in the abandoned places of the canal side. Eliza breathed in the smell of the paint as she mixed the colours on her palette. She had spent so much time thinking about someone else’s work that she had lost sight of her own.