Bleak Water

by Danuta Reah

  Farnham didn’t like the way this was heading. ‘Eliza Eliot?’ He liked Eliza. But she’d provided a partial alibi for Massey. If she had, in fact, been with Flynn, then she’d lied, and he needed to know why she’d lied. It also left Massey wide open.

  But Flynn was shaking his head. ‘No. Eliza and I – that’s been over for a while.’

  ‘I need to know who you were with, Mr Flynn,’ Farnham said.

  Flynn looked at Farnham. ‘It’s nothing sinister,’ he said. ‘I just don’t want to embarrass anyone.’

  ‘I understand that,’ Farnham said. ‘But this is a murder inquiry. You say that someone can confirm where you were on Friday night. I’ll need to get that confirmation.’

  ‘I spent part of the evening at the gallery – you know about that. Then I took…we went to get something to eat.’

  Farnham waited.

  ‘Then…’ Flynn was thinking. He seemed to come to a decision. ‘I went back to the hotel with the person I’d taken to dinner and, like I said, she left at around three. A bit after. Then I slept until about nine the next day.’

  Farnham shook his head. ‘I need a name,’ he said.

  ‘OK.’ Flynn gave a rueful smile. There was a gleam of – what? – amusement? Regret? in his eyes. ‘Actually, it was one of your officers. The one with the long black hair. Tina. Sorry.’

  Farnham kept his face expressionless. Barraclough! What the fuck – ill-advised choice of word – what the hell was Barraclough playing at? ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Mr Flynn. You should have told me this last time I talked to you.’

  Flynn stood up, looking uncertain. ‘Is that it?’ he said.

  Farnham nodded. ‘For now.’

  He waited until Flynn had left the room, then he picked up the phone. ‘Send DC Barraclough in to see me,’ he said. ‘OK, as soon as she comes back, then? Immediately.’ He hung up and took a deep breath. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so angry.

  Eliza worked quickly. She wanted to get through all the important stuff and get away from the gallery. She’d phoned Laura and arranged to spend the night over there. Laura had tried to persuade her to leave at once. ‘Can’t all that wait?’ she’d said.

  But it couldn’t, and as the day wore on, more and more work piled up on her desk – phone calls, letters, e-mails, all of which required urgent responses if the gallery was to capitalize in any way on the prestige of The Triumph of Death. And if it didn’t, then Eliza was out of a job and with a notable failure on her CV. She knew there had been some speculation when she got the job, speculation about her lack of experience, her suitability – there were people who would be happy to see her fail. Even with that pressure on her, she hadn’t found the energy to do more than compile lists, things to be dealt with tomorrow, and bite Mel’s head off when she came asking if she could have the afternoon off.

  She came into the office now, tapping on the door with ostentatious care. Eliza curbed an instinct to snap. ‘Yes?’ she said. Her voice sounded terse.

  ‘I’ve got some more people who want to talk to you about the exhibition,’ Mel said. ‘And one or two other things I can’t deal with. And what shall I do with Jonathan’s e-mails?’

  ‘I’ll check those in case there’s anything urgent. Is everything else OK?’ She shouldn’t have taken it out on Mel – it was Jonathan she was angry with.

  ‘There’s a list of people to phone,’ Mel said.

  Eliza took it and ran her eyes over it. Some of these should have been followed up at once. Her head swam with fatigue. It would have to wait until tomorrow. They’d understand.

  Mel hovered. ‘Yes?’ Eliza said, letting her impatience show.

  ‘Where’s Daniel Flynn?’

  Eliza looked at her in surprise. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Well…’ Mel was looking at her with an expression that Eliza found hard to classify; a bit anxious, a bit calculating. She seemed to come to a decision. ‘The police took him in,’ she said.

  Eliza looked at her. ‘Daniel gave a statement. So did I.’

  ‘Do you think they know…’ Mel was fiddling with the pens in Eliza’s desk tidy. She gave Eliza a sidelong glance and said, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t say anything.’

  ‘About what?’ Eliza said. She was uneasily aware that she’d concealed her relationship with Daniel from Roy Farnham.

  Mel shook her head. ‘Jonathan’s probably told them,’ she said. She wandered over to the window, looking down at the canal, where the light was starting to fade. ‘Oh, look, there’s a boat,’ she said.

  Eliza waited impatiently. ‘About what?’ she said again.

  Mel’s glance was almost sly. ‘You know,’ she said. ‘About Daniel. His arrangement with Jonathan.’

  ‘Arrangement…?’ She didn’t know what Mel was talking about.

  Mel was looking at her and smiling. ‘Didn’t you know?’ she said. ‘I thought you knew. With you being the curator.’

  What was Mel talking about? ‘Just tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Daniel arranged with Jonathan to have the exhibition here nearly a year ago,’ Mel said. ‘Jonathan didn’t want it, but he couldn’t really turn it down.’

  ‘Mel, that’s a load of rubbish.’ Eliza couldn’t understand what had put that idea in Mel’s mind. ‘You can’t go round saying things like that.’

  ‘Oh, it’s true,’ Mel said. ‘Cara told me.’ Her eyes were bright. ‘So I wondered,’ she said.

  Eliza could remember Daniel’s voice as they stood in front of the Brueghel together: I like the idea of a cityscape. Industrial ruins. He could almost have been describing the canal. She shook herself back to the present. ‘What would Cara have known?’ she said briskly. ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Before Mel could say anything, she went on: ‘You might as well go. But be in first thing tomorrow. We might be able to open.’ The police team had left at lunch-time. She needed to check with Roy, but they seemed to be finished with the gallery. For now.

  It was after three, and suddenly she wanted to be on her own to make these last few phone calls, and then she could be off herself. She waited until Mel left, pulling on her jacket against the cold evening air, then she went into the small kitchen and filled the kettle. Instant coffee might be foul, but she needed the caffeine.

  She was sitting back at her desk when she heard the sound of footsteps across the gallery floor. Mel must have come back for something. ‘What is it?’ she said, irritably.

  ‘Coffee.’ Daniel’s voice behind her, and a hand holding a carton appeared in front of her. ‘From down the road. Hot, sweet, sinful. A bit like you.’

  ‘Daniel!’ She spun her chair round and looked at him. He was unshaven and rumpled – he looked as if he’d spent the night on a park bench, not in a four-star hotel. ‘You look awful.’

  He yawned. ‘So do you, beautiful. With more reason. Are you OK?’ He ran his hand over her hair. ‘Poor Eliza.’

  She turned her chair slightly to move away. ‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘How did you get in?’ Mel’s words nagged at her mind.

  There was a moment’s silence before he said, ‘I bumped into your resident dysfunctional adolescent on her way out. I was on my way back, and she told me you were still here. So I persuaded her to wait for me while I got coffee for my good friend Eliza who will boost my flagging morale before I go and catch up on my sleep.’

  ‘Good friend? Convenient friend.’ Eliza opened the top of the carton. The rich smell of coffee filled the room.

  ‘I got her to do it extra strength. They don’t understand coffee here,’ he said. ‘What do you mean, “convenient friend”?’

  ‘I mean, I’m your good friend if you need me. Out of sight, out of mind if you don’t.’ She wondered what he wanted, what had brought him here.

  ‘That upsets me. Convenient friend. How have I made you convenient?’ he said. He sounded hurt. He had always responded badly to criticism, even as a joke.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I mean
t…You more or less ignored me for months, but now you’ve got the exhibition at the gallery, there are things I can do for you.’ If she hadn’t been so tired, she never would have said it. It was over and done with and not worth rehashing. She was too tired to get into the discussion. ‘Let’s not go over that now.’ Of all the times to start talking seriously…

  ‘I’ve always thought about you,’ he said. ‘From the time I first met you.’

  ‘Look, forget it.’ Eliza said.

  ‘As your “convenient friend” I put your name forward for this job,’ he said. ‘Massey would have gone for some boring administrator with more experience otherwise.’

  Eliza felt her fatigue fall away. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, I phoned Massey a few weeks after we met in Madrid. I told him you were available.’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Nothing was making sense any more. Or it was all making far too much sense. ‘What about Africa? Tanzania? You threw me over because I went for this job rather than go to Africa with you, remember.’

  ‘Not so,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t any big thing. We weren’t pretending it was any big thing, were we, Eliza? You were going to be at a loose end when your contract finished. Africa was just another option, that’s all.’

  She closed her eyes. Daniel hated conflict, he hated criticism. Had he got bored, taken the easy way of drifting out of the relationship by using something she had done as the lever? His defensive expression told her she was probably right. ‘You could have told me,’ she said. ‘Instead of leaving me to think…’ The hours she’d spent agonizing over her decision! But why go to all that trouble…and why would Jonathan listen to Daniel’s recommendation anyway? OK, they’d been students together, but that didn’t count for much. There was something else. ‘The exhibition,’ she said, slowly.

  He was looking a bit uneasy now. ‘You were the right person to put it together,’ he said.

  ‘But it wasn’t even coming here,’ Eliza said. ‘Not then.’ She remembered the letter that had come out of the blue, asking her to apply for the post as curator for the new gallery, and she could hear Mel’s voice: Daniel arranged with Jonathan to have the exhibition here nearly a year ago.

  He suddenly looked away. ‘It was on the cards,’ he said.

  I like the idea of a cityscape. Industrial ruins. She remembered how interested he’d been when he realized she shared his ideas about the Brueghel, more so when she told him she had roots in this city. ‘On the cards?’ she said. ‘You planned for it to come here all along, didn’t you?’

  He looked evasive for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yes, I did. I asked Massey to keep it quiet. I had – have – some good reasons, Eliza.’

  ‘And you let me think…I thought I’d got this job on merit. But you’d offered Jonathan The Triumph of Death. He’d do anything you asked, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘I told you.’ His voice was carefully neutral. ‘I wanted you to curate the exhibition. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing, if you’d told me.’ Eliza put her head in her hands, then looked at him. ‘I’ve been working here on the assumption I got the job through merit. I thought that we got The Triumph of Death because I put in the best bid. Now you’re telling me that it was all arranged behind my back, and I’ve been congratulating myself for something that was nothing to do with me. Can’t you see…?’ He was looking at her blankly. She was angry, but she was too tired to articulate her anger clearly.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I should have told you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What good is sorry?’ The damage was done. ‘Have you told the police?’ And now Roy would have to know what a fool they’d made of her.

  He started to say something, then stopped. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet. I wanted to tell you first.’

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you’d better go and do whatever it was you came to the gallery to do. I’m busy.’

  He raised his eyebrows at her tone. ‘For what it’s worth, I was going to ask if you wanted to go for a drink. Tonight,’ he said.

  She shook her head. ‘Daniel, that’s the last thing I want to do,’ she said.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘The DCI wants to see you,’ the officer on the desk said to Tina with relish as she came into the main offices. ‘As soon as you come in, he said. He’s on the war path.’

  Daniel. Tina had been waiting for it, and, now it had come, she felt more resigned than worried. She should have told Farnham at once. It had been inexcusable. She could lose her job for this. ‘OK,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll tell him you’re on your way, shall I?’ He picked up the phone.

  ‘No, I’ll be there before you get through,’ Tina said. He put the phone down with a look of disappointment – probably missing out on the vicarious glory of convicting the snotty DC Barraclough of whatever crime she had been guilty of. Tina let herself through the door, and headed up the stairs. She might as well get it over. She could hear feet coming down towards her, and Dave West swung round the corner, moving fast. He brought himself to a halt. ‘Tina, the DCI…’

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  He looked worried. ‘What’s wrong? Why’s he after you? Do you need any back-up?’

  She was touched by Dave’s concern. They’d worked together a lot, and they’d always watched each other’s backs, but she shook her head. ‘No. Thanks. I’ve dropped myself in it – best you don’t get involved.’ She made a throat-cutting gesture.

  ‘OK.’ He sounded reluctant. ‘Listen, did you find anything? The news stories?’

  ‘There’s something, not much,’ she said.

  She told him what she’d found. He nodded without enthusiasm. ‘Give Farnham something to get his teeth into,’ he advised. He checked his watch. ‘Look, I’ve got to go.’ He looked at her for a minute. ‘Good luck,’ he said.

  She nodded thanks at his retreating back, and began her climb up the next flight towards the incident room. Goodbye, career, it was nice knowing you! What had happened to the bright, efficient DC Barraclough with her quick mind and her clear ambitions? Barraclough who enjoyed her work, would do what was required of her with meticulous ease, who knew when to use her initiative? Barraclough who enjoyed her life, who had a life, and, OK, a slightly risky taste for the milder mind-altering substances, but who would never, never have got involved with a witness and lied about it, would never have risked class-A drugs, would never have missed important things in a witness statement.

  OK, maybe it was the sloppy, inefficient, unprofessional Barraclough who was going to lose her job, but she would give the other Barraclough, the real Barraclough, one more chance. There was a piece of the picture she had been putting together from the records that was missing. The real Barraclough wouldn’t have dreamt of coming back to the incident room without that information until she’d checked all possible sources. She wanted the name of the dead addict. Someone would have dealt with that case. If there was a name, it would be in the records in this building. She turned and went back down the stairs.

  She knew that records of cases over the past five years were kept in the basement. Without a name or a case number, she wasn’t sure where to start, but it was possible that the recent drugs investigation she’d been involved in might refer back to this older case. There were some parallels. Also, no one would wonder why she was looking at those files.

  It took her half an hour to find the information she wanted, and then another half-hour to track down the files relating to the dead addict. Farnham would be breathing fire by now. But she was determined to get the information, present it to him, and then, if he wanted her off the case, at least she’d have one credit against her name to balance out the black mark on her record.

  She skimmed through the reports from the finding of the body. It wasn’t quite as straightforward as she’d assumed. There had been an anonymous call in the early hours of the morning – the caller had never been found. Most probably it had been another junkie – one with a conscience, but one who didn’t wa
nt any involvement with the police.

  The dead junkie had been young – under twenty, the post-mortem said. The cause of death was an overdose of heroin. No one else was being looked for in relation to the death, apart from the suppliers. There was no indication of force or physical violence. The dead woman had apparently shot the means of her own death into her veins. But then, weren’t all drug users seeking a kind of oblivion? And what kind of oblivion are you looking for? The thought was unwelcome and she dismissed it. The only circumstance that was slightly unusual was the lack of any form of identification on or near the body.

  Tina went on through the file. Most of it related to the drugs investigation, the supply of pure heroin that was killing addicts. It hadn’t made a big splash in the papers – who cared if a few junkies were killing themselves sooner rather than later? And then it had stopped. As though the supplies had dried up or been adulterated by the street dealers, and the problem had drifted away.

  She stared into space, thinking. The person who had dumped Ellie’s body – she realized she was no longer thinking ‘Mark Fraser’ automatically – had chosen a good place. It was overgrown and secluded. It had been months before the body was found and, even then, only in relation to another investigation. How had the person – Fraser? Who? – known about the place? Was it someone who had been familiar with that part of the towpath, someone who knew it and knew that the thick undergrowth there was rarely disturbed, that the only people who came there were walkers who didn’t linger on that part of the towpath, or junkies on their way for a fix? Was Ellie’s killer one of the heroin-using fraternity?

  Why hadn’t the original investigation team looked at this? Had they looked at it and dismissed it because…The details of the case came back to her: because Fraser’s stepdaughter had made her accusation against him. The investigation had focused on Fraser as the prime suspect, on Ellie as the route to Fraser, and the dead woman in the boat had become, as the headline said, the forgotten victim.