Bleak Water

by Danuta Reah

  ‘OK,’ he said, summing up. ‘You all know what’s happened.’ He looked round the team. ‘We’ve got a firm ID. Ligature mark round the neck, cause of death: asphyxiation. There’s no evidence of sexual assault. But there’s something else.’ He described the mutilations to the head and face. He paused, giving time for questions, then introduced the woman who had been waiting quietly by the door. ‘This is Judith Martin,’ he said. ‘DS Martin is joining the team. She was working on Stacy McDonald’s disappearance.’

  Martin came to the front of the room. ‘I talked to Stacy’s friends and to her teachers after she was reported missing. We haven’t got very far. Stacy doesn’t seem to have had many friends at school. She seems to have led quite a sheltered life for a thirteen-year-old. I got the impression she was young for her age. Her best friend claimed that she was interested in a lad in her year. We’ve brought him in, but, to be quite honest…’ She gestured. Farnham knew what she meant. The murder looked too elaborate, too carefully planned, to be the work of another thirteen-year-old. ‘The other interesting thing,’ Martin said, ‘is that several people, including Stacy’s mum and her friend, say that Stacy took particular care with her appearance that day. We’re going to the school again later today to talk to the kids again.’

  After the briefing, Farnham returned to his office. He went back to the sheets of paper on the desk in front of him: the statements from the gallery staff about Cara Hobson, about the night that she died. Eliza had found Cara in the gallery when she finished work. The gallery had been locked up and the alarms set, but, somehow, Cara had managed to switch them off. He skimmed the statement. She’d claimed to have got the codes from Massey, from watching Massey set the alarms – something Massey vehemently denied.

  Cara Hobson and her baby had been living in the flat unofficially. The Trust knew nothing about her. The gallery wasn’t the kind of property to attract squatters – commercial premises that were used every day. To gain access, Cara would’ve had to have keys to the outside doors. Farnham had a pretty good idea of how she had got them, but he needed some supporting evidence.

  He went back to the statements. According to Eliza Eliot, and corroborated by Mel Young, Cara Hobson had spent a disproportionate amount of time at the gallery. Eliza’s statement said: I thought she was probably lonely, but I didn’t have much time to talk to her. Young’s statement said: She was there a lot. She was interested in the paintings and she liked to talk about them. But the information he wanted wasn’t there – who did Cara talk to and what times did she come to the gallery? He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to focus his mind. Had he let something slip past him? He looked at Massey’s statement again. He mentioned Cara’s presence in the gallery, but nothing about what she did when she was there. She was in the gallery too much. It got in the way of work.

  What did they know about Massey? Farnham pulled another sheet of paper towards him. Massey was thirty-eight, came from Birmingham originally. He’d worked in London, supporting himself by teaching. He’d had a successful exhibition and then moved to Sheffield Art School. After that, he seemed to have gone into art administration, and finally got involved in the setting up of this new gallery. No criminal record. One marriage that had ended in divorce in 1992.

  There was one thing in the three statements that puzzled Farnham. Eliza and Mel Young had both talked about Cara spending a lot of time in the gallery, but neither of them had sounded unduly hostile towards her. Massey, on the other hand, hadn’t had a good word for her. Farnham looked at the photograph he had pinned to the board above his desk. He always kept a photograph of the victim in sight, to remind him that he was dealing with a person, and that person’s life had been taken away from them. No matter what the provocation, Farnham could never find it in himself to forgive that.

  Cara Hobson had been lovely with her slight build, long hair and wide-eyed prettiness, looks she had, apparently, turned to good commercial use. And yet, in a way, he’d been seduced by it himself – he found the idea of the violence inflicted on her abhorrent, found the idea of her prostituting herself distasteful. She seemed too young and too vulnerable – which was exactly what so many prostitutes were. He was getting sentimental in his middle years.

  He wasn’t drawn to women like Cara – he preferred strong-minded, independent women. He wasn’t attracted to fragility, either physical or mental – he preferred adults. But a lot of men were, and most men would not have found the presence of an attractive young woman like Cara onerous. He looked at Massey’s statement again. Indifferent irritation was one thing, but this read like something closer to hostility. Was Massey protesting too much? He had an alibi for the night of Cara’s death, but there was something in the statement that didn’t ring true, something that jarred.

  He narrowed his eyes. Eliza. Massey was her employer, had, apparently, given her a real career break. She wouldn’t be willing to gossip about Massey, and, if Farnham’s suspicions were right, gossip was all that would support them. But he needed to ask Massey the right questions. He checked his watch. Eliza had had enough time to sleep it off by now, and she might still be a bit disorientated, a bit incautious. He’d go and see how she was. She could talk him through the exhibition – he needed that information anyway.

  Eliza lay in the darkened room, trying to get her mind to keep still. She couldn’t sleep, but she couldn’t manage to wake up properly, as if the combination of the alcohol and the shock had put her into a trance state and every time she relaxed her vigilance, she was feeling her way along that darkened corridor, breathing in that tainted air. In the end she sat up and turned the light on, squinting at the digital display on the bedside radio.

  She must have slept after all. It was after ten. She pushed back the quilt and stood up, feeling leaden with fatigue. A shower might bring her round. She wondered when she could go home, and what Daniel had done for the rest of the night. He’d gone to talk to the police. Maybe he was still there. She didn’t want to think about that.

  The bathroom was luxurious, warm, spacious, with an abundance of soft, thick towels. Eliza stood under the shower for a long time, letting the hot water wash away the feel of the night. She felt a bit better as she dried herself and she began to plan her way through the next stages of the day. She phoned down to reception and found that a bag had been left for her. Someone would bring it up straight away.

  She began drying her hair, listening out for the door over the noise of the drier. Her bag, when it arrived, contained wash things, clean underwear, jeans, a top and some shoes. She was getting dressed when the phone rang. She hesitated, then picked it up. ‘Daniel?’ she said.

  But it was Roy Farnham. ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he said. It was no more than a conventional apology.

  ‘It’s OK. I was up,’ she said.

  ‘I’m downstairs,’ he said. ‘I saw them take your bag up, so I thought you must be awake. I need to talk to you. Are you up to it?’

  ‘Now?’ What else was there to talk about? She’d told him all of it last night. She didn’t want to go over it again. The cold feeling was starting to come back.

  ‘Eliza? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry, I was just thinking. Yes, I’m OK. I mean, you know…’ She felt strangely detached, and seemed to have lost her ability to form a coherent thought.

  ‘Are you ready now?’ he said. ‘I need to see you at the gallery.’

  She stalled. ‘I’m just getting dressed.’

  ‘Have you had anything to eat?’

  ‘No. I’d better get something.’ That would postpone her return. Maybe he’d leave it, whatever it was, until later.

  ‘There’s a café in the hotel,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet you there, if that’s OK. I haven’t been home yet. I need something to eat too.’

  His night had probably been worse than hers. He’d looked drawn with fatigue when she’d left the gallery. ‘All right.’ She preferred the idea of talking to him in the café anyway. She checked the bag again. Who
ever had packed it hadn’t put in any make-up, but her brush was there. She ran it through her hair and glanced in the mirror. She’d have to do.

  She went through the hotel lobby and past the health club to the café. Roy Farnham was sitting at a table reading a newspaper. ‘You look like I feel,’ she said as she joined him.

  He gave her his quick smile, but didn’t relax into social mode. Business then. ‘But you’re OK for this?’ he said, folding his paper.

  ‘For breakfast? Fine. It’s a long time since I had breakfast with a strange man.’ She smiled at him.

  Briefly, he smiled back, and she thought about leisurely breakfasts on the balcony in the Madrid sun. Only now, the man sitting opposite her wasn’t Daniel but this rather reserved man with the warm smile. It was an attractive idea. He was watching her, and she hoped her stray thought wasn’t clear on her face. But all he said was, ‘And about going back to the gallery?’

  ‘You mean the flat?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, we’re not finished on that corridor yet. I want you to show me the exhibition, Daniel Flynn’s exhibition.’

  That surprised her. ‘The exhibition? OK, if you want. I mean, it’s there, go and look at it.’

  ‘I want you to talk me through it, tell me about the picture, the one that it’s all based on.’

  ‘The Triumph of Death?’ Eliza’s cappuccino and croissant arrived then, and she stirred the white foam of the milk, letting the coffee colour it. She licked the chocolate off her spoon as she thought. ‘I can tell you a bit about it now, but wouldn’t it be better to ask Daniel?’ Maybe he would tell her what had happened to him.

  He picked up his coffee. ‘I’m asking you,’ he said.

  ‘Is he OK?’ she persisted, ‘Daniel? He said he was coming in to talk to you.’

  His face was neutral. ‘He’s giving us a hand with something,’ he said, which was presumably a more friendly way of saying He’s helping us with our inquiries. He raised his eyebrows. ‘The painting? You were going to tell me about it.’

  Eliza thought for a moment. ‘It’s a bit difficult. It’d help if you told me what you wanted to know.’ His shrug suggested that he wasn’t sure himself. ‘It’s medieval,’ she said. ‘Not the dates, but what it’s about, the dance of death.’ She told him about the hierarchical systems of medieval society, the inequalities that were levelled in the face of death. ‘I suppose it made it easier to cope with the system if you thought it was all going to be balanced out in the end. You can see it in the painting. The powerful – cardinals and kings – are struck down with all the rest. Only Brueghel makes death an army, and there is only one escape route: the grave. It’s quite merciless. They take them all, men, women, children.’

  A group of women came into the café from the health club, laughing and talking.

  ‘How long have you known Flynn? Do you know him well?’ Farnham said. He was listening to her, leaning forward slightly to keep their talk private.

  ‘About a year. I met him when I was working in Madrid, at the Prado. The art gallery,’ she added.

  He looked at her. ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if you…’ He’d wrong-footed her, and she acknowledged it with a resigned smile. Fifteen–love.

  ‘I met him when he came to look at the Brueghel,’ she said. ‘The Triumph of Death. He was with another artist, Ivan Bakst.’

  ‘Bakst?’

  She looked at him. He’d recognized the name. ‘Do you know him? He’s in Sheffield. I saw him the other day.’

  ‘Has he been to the gallery?’ Farnham seemed distracted from the line of thought he’d been pursuing.

  She nodded. ‘He came to see Jonathan about an exhibition. Daniel’s a friend of his – I think he’s been pushing Bakst.’

  Farnham was silent for a moment. ‘Is he still around?’

  ‘I think so. I’m not sure, to be honest. Daniel might know,’ she said.

  ‘OK.’ He looked at her. ‘I’d like to get back to this exhibition. Why did Flynn choose that painting?’

  ‘I think it was partly something I said to him.’ She thought about the morning she and Daniel had met in front of the painting and the repercussions of that meeting. ‘I said that you couldn’t understand it properly if you didn’t have the background – it’s very biblical. The sources are Revelation and Ecclesiastes, but if you don’t know that, it looks like a splatter movie, really.’ She could remember what she’d said to him: I’d put it in a current setting. A cityscape, industrial ruins, show people a modern triumph of death. Something…

  ‘Someone who was religious would understand it?’ His question pulled her back before she could complete the thought.

  She nodded. ‘If they knew their Bible,’ she said.

  ‘Spare me religious nuts,’ he said. ‘Sorry,’ he added, in response to her inquiring look. ‘Just thinking about another case.’

  She told him about the fascination she and Daniel had shared with the beautiful, macabre panel. ‘I left Madrid six months ago – it was only a temporary contract – to take the job here. So I haven’t seen Daniel for a few months, not till he came here for the exhibition.’ She hoped that careful explanation would skirt round the difficult areas.

  ‘It’s unusual, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘An exhibition like this coming to a small gallery. Was that because of your friendship with Flynn?’

  She looked at him, but he seemed to have used the word with no sense of irony. ‘The Second Site put in a bid, same as all the rest. It was a good bid.’ That sounded a bit defensive, so she added, ‘Daniel’s connections with Sheffield helped, of course. And he knew I’d understand his work. So it had something to do with it.’ Luck, and connections always came into these things. Everyone knew that. But it was merit as well. If she hadn’t been able to handle it, none of the rest would have mattered.

  ‘He knows Massey as well, doesn’t he?’ Farnham tasted his coffee, pulled a face and tipped in some more sugar. ‘Got to give this up,’ he said.

  ‘Not that well,’ Eliza said. She’d always got the impression that Daniel and Jonathan didn’t have a lot of time for each other.

  Farnham rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He looked exhausted. ‘All I can get from Massey is what a pain Cara Hobson was,’ he said.

  His professional mask was slipping. Eliza smiled slightly, distracted by the thought of Jonathan’s querulous lament against Cara. ‘He never stopped complaining about her,’ she said.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Was she that much of a nuisance?’

  Eliza shook her head. She could see Cara’s small figure standing in the gallery, the baby cuddled in her arms. Sometimes, Eliza had found her chatting to Mel, distracting her when she was supposed to be dealing with the clerical work. Mel found the clerical work dull, and was more than willing to be distracted, but it was usually Eliza who had to deal with that. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not really. She hung around a lot, but she didn’t get in the way – and she seemed to like the exhibits. She just got on Jonathan’s nerves sometimes.’

  He nodded, concentrating on his coffee. He stifled a yawn. ‘Too much night work,’ he said. ‘Like your boss.’

  ‘He doesn’t do much night work,’ Eliza said. ‘Well, not recently. Last night was the first time for a while.’

  ‘But he used to?’

  Eliza was puzzled. Farnham seemed to be losing the thread of the conversation. ‘Before the exhibition, yes, he was there late most evenings,’ she said. ‘But it’s been quieter since.’

  ‘Same for you, I suppose,’ he said.

  She shook her head. ‘It’s a blessing and a curse living over the shop. If I need to work late, at least I can do it in the comfort of the flat. Until I began work on Daniel’s show. Then I needed to be in the gallery.’

  He was silent, then seemed to shake himself back to the moment. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see this exhibition.’

  She had finished her coffee, and the croissant had suddenly become
over-rich. ‘I’m ready when you are,’ she said.

  He took her out of the café via the hotel, where his car was parked. They were back at the gallery in a couple of minutes. Eliza looked at the mellow brick and the hard concrete of the stairway, and suddenly felt cold and sick. Farnham seemed aware of something, because he said, ‘OK?’

  She swallowed and nodded. ‘It’s like getting back on a horse,’ she said, and then wished she hadn’t. It sounded flippant. He didn’t seem to notice but held the door open for her. She was aware of activity around her, but she couldn’t see anyone she knew – presumably these were all Farnham’s people. Where was Jonathan? Or Mel, for that matter?

  She led the way upstairs, and stood in the cool light that illuminated Daniel’s vision of a modern apocalypse. Farnham went straight across to the Brueghel. She stood beside him, looking at it. She remembered the first time she had met Daniel. ‘Tell me about this,’ he said.

  She looked at the reproduction of The Triumph of Death, the multitudes of the dead rising up from open graves, disembarking from ships, hunting down the living without mercy and without regret.

  Farnham was pointing to the detail where a chorus sounded trumpets above still water with brick walls and arched bridges, and figures of death on a raised platform threw a man into the water, a man with a heavy weight tied round his neck. Decaying corpses floated in the stagnant pool below. A figure struggled in the water beneath an arched bridge. She had a sudden memory of Daniel standing by the window, looking down at the canal. It’s like the Brueghel landscape – you’ve even got the arched bridges and the dead trees. She shook her head to clear the image. ‘Libertines,’ she said. ‘Thrown into the water with millstones round their necks.’

  She let her eyes wander over the familiar vision of a nightmare from centuries past. A man had fallen under the wheels of a cart that was being driven relentlessly forward. A supine figure exposed his throat passively to the knife. A dead woman lay on the ground, her baby in her arms, a starving dog sniffing hungrily at the infant. A fleeing woman was embraced by skeletal hands.