Bleak Water

by Danuta Reah

  She was impervious to his moods. ‘I think you’ll want to hear this,’ she said.

  It was Judith Martin. ‘The Fraser child,’ she said, without any introduction. ‘She wasn’t at school the afternoon Stacy went missing. I’ve found something you need to see, sir.’

  It was after six. Tina Barraclough sat at her desk. She could feel the eyes of other members of the team on her, knew that they knew she was in trouble, wondered if they knew why. She was aware of the buzz of activity, of action around her. She tried to tell herself that she had, at last, achieved some credit. Farnham had actually told her that she had done a good piece of work – but he wasn’t going to let it drop. She closed her eyes, sending her mind back to the interview. Farnham had got so close to the drugs – then the phone call had stopped him. Something was happening and she was being sidelined, might be off the case, might even find herself back in uniform, back dealing with traffic, back with paperwork and Saturday-night drunks and…Wasn’t that better than…? The tower block. The falling shape. The thump of the impact and then the silence before the voices started shouting, the running feet, the impetus to action as she stood there frozen, looking but not wanting to see what lay on the ground almost at her feet.

  ‘Tina?’ It was Dave West, looking at her with concern. She jumped and shook herself. ‘Is it right?’ Dave said. ‘They’re saying you’re in the shit with Farnham.’

  She nodded, not trusting her voice.

  ‘Look, things seem to be moving.’ His voice was low and urgent. ‘But I’ve got half an hour – let’s get a coffee, tell me about it.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  Dave cast a quick glance around the room and spoke quietly to her. ‘The Fraser kid – it looks as though she might know something about the McDonald girl’s movements on Friday. They’re trying to track her down.’

  ‘She’s gone missing?’ Tina felt cold. She had been involved in this investigation – she had done the bare minimum of everything she’d been asked to do. The one time she’d pulled the stops out and done a decent job, she’d come up with something. If she’d found it sooner, maybe they’d have their killer in the bag.

  ‘No. She went off with her friends after school. Her mate’s dad is picking them up at nine,’ Dave said. ‘Come on, let’s get a coffee.’

  ‘No.’ Tina put the last of her stuff into her bag. ‘Thanks, Dave, but I’m tired. I want to get home. And I’m not exactly flavour of the month with the boss, so…’ Better stay away from me.

  ‘OK,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Look, I’ll…you know…’

  ‘It’s OK, Dave,’ she said. She smiled. ‘I’ll give you a ring. Go on, get a break. You’ll need it.’ She kept the smile on her face until he’d left the room. It was almost empty now, just someone inputting data, someone else answering the phones. She looked round at the cluttered desks, the flip chart with the notes from the morning’s briefing, the photographs – Cara Hobson smiling bewilderedly over her baby’s head. What would happen to the child? Was there any family? Cara in the water, a bundle of rags caught in the weeds and the litter by the side of the canal. A close-up of Cara’s neck, the twine round it, digging deep into the flesh.

  Stacy McDonald, a child, her face plump under the carefully applied make-up. The mutilated cadaver hanging from the ceiling, harshly illuminated from below, the shadows hard across the ceiling, the head mercifully in darkness. A reproduction of the Brueghel dominated the wall, a celebration of death from centuries before, a celebration of murder, of mutilation, of torture and cruelty. The madness of artists.

  This was crunch time for Tina. She had decisions to make, and she couldn’t put them off much longer. If she resigned, would her nightmare of the falling figure, the sense of blame, of inevitability, finally leave her? Would it be worth giving up the years she had put into this job to start again, doing – what? Yesterday, the confrontation with Farnham would have given her the incentive she thought she needed to leave, but now…she had experienced that sense of triumph when she had followed up her idea and tracked down what might prove to be a vital link in the case they were investigating. Could she give that up? Would she be allowed to keep it?

  Her phone rang, making her jump. She checked the number, aware of the covert observation from the other side of the room. It wasn’t anyone she knew. She was tempted to let her message service take the call, but she answered. ‘Tina Barraclough.’

  ‘DC Barraclough,’ a voice said. ‘You probably don’t remember me. We met at the weekend. Steven Calloway.’

  For a moment her mind was blank, then she made the connections. Steven Calloway, the owner of the Mary May. She remembered the slight frisson that had passed between them. ‘Mr Calloway,’ she said. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you could call me Steven, for a start. I’m in Sheffield for the evening, and I wondered if you were free. I know it’s short notice, but if you are – we could get something to eat, have a drink, maybe? What do you think?’

  Tina blinked. She had been expecting some revelation, something to tell her that again, she’d screwed up, but it was just a come-on – and one that would have been welcome a few days ago. Would probably be welcome again tomorrow, but now…‘That sounds like fun,’ she said after a short pause.

  ‘But?’ he said. ‘There’s a but coming, right?’

  ‘It’s been a long day – I need to get home, get some sleep.’ Don’t try and talk me into it!

  ‘Well, that’s a pity. I’m only in Sheffield for one night,’ he said. ‘But I’ll be around again in a week or two. Would it be worth my while phoning you then?’

  She laughed, her mood lifting for a second. ‘Yes, why not?’ she said.

  ‘That makes me feel better about it,’ he said. ‘I might forgive you.’

  ‘Forgive me? For what?’ For turning him down?

  ‘Locking me out of my own boat,’ he said.

  It took a second for what he had said to register. ‘What?’

  ‘Locking me out of the Mary May,’ he said. ‘Is she some kind of crime scene?’

  Tina felt her breath stop in her throat. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘It wasn’t your lot? It’ll be the broker then. He’ll have lost the keys. I’ll get…’

  ‘No, wait.’ Tina felt a sense of urgency. The mystery cabin cruiser had to be on the canal – all the boats that had gone through the locks were accounted for. This was another part of the investigation she’d been responsible for. And though she had looked, she’d left it as an unsolved problem. ‘Tell me exactly what happened.’

  ‘Is it important? OK…’ He responded to the impatient catch in her breath. ‘I thought I’d take a look at her as I was over that way. I don’t usually bother, but I’m thinking about scrapping her. Anyway, when I got there, my key wouldn’t open the padlock. I tried for ages. I thought it was just stiff. But no joy. My key wouldn’t work. So I thought you lot must have locked the old girl up – might have let me know. But it wasn’t you. I don’t think it’s much of a mystery. It’s probably Charlie.’

  ‘Charlie?’ Tina said.

  ‘The broker. He’ll have put a new padlock on for some reason. Anyway, it was a good excuse to phone you.’ Charlie Norton. She remembered her visit to the boatyard.

  ‘So – let me get this clear – your key isn’t the right one for the lock on the Mary May?’

  ‘Got it in one,’ he said.

  Tina checked her watch. ‘What time does the broker’s close?’ she said.

  ‘They’re usually there until quite late,’ he said.

  ‘Could you go there, Mr Calloway? Someone will be there to meet you.’

  ‘This sounds like business…DC Barraclough, I’ll see you soon.’

  Tina was on the phone to the broker as soon as Calloway had rung off. She spoke to the man she had seen before, Charlie Norton. He sounded impatient and irritable. No, he hadn’t changed the locks on the Mary May. The key was the same one as always
. Yes, he’d check it now. There was silence for a few minutes and then he was back, his voice sounding more impatient. It was exactly the same key. No, no one had been to look at the boat since the last time he’d spoken to her. There was no interest in it at all. Yes – this said with a heavy sigh – he would wait until someone came to the office.

  Steven Calloway was already at the broker’s when Tina pulled up. She could see him in the office, talking to the man she recognized as Charlie Norton. Problem? She should have made sure she got here first. They looked up as she came through the door, and for a second, she wondered if she was looking at men who were capable of torturing a thirteen-year-old girl before they killed her, of stringing her up as some kind of joke or warped homage to an exhibition that celebrated the cruelty and depravity of humanity.

  But Calloway didn’t seem worried. ‘Officer Barraclough.’ His eyes were alight with interest. ‘The plot thickens.’

  The broker, looking impatient, interrupted. ‘It’s a wild-goose chase, Steve,’ he said. He looked at Tina. ‘He’s brought the wrong keys with him, that’s all.’

  ‘Tell me what’s happened,’ Tina said. She wanted clarification of Calloway’s story. She looked at him. ‘You went to get access to the Mary May.’ He nodded. ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ he said. ‘I came across to see friends, and I thought I’d take a look at the old girl.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s past it, really. I ought to…’

  Yesterday! ‘And what happened?’ Tina tried to hide her impatience.

  ‘Oh, well, I tried to unlock the padlock, and the key wouldn’t turn. I told you.’

  ‘Of course it wouldn’t,’ the broker said. ‘You were using the wrong key. Look.’ He held up a bunch of keys. Tina reached out for them. ‘That one,’ he said. ‘That’s the key for the Mary May.’

  Tina compared it with the one that Calloway was holding. They were the same size, very similar, but the blades were different. She felt a sense of anti-climax. It was nothing important, after all. Calloway had made a mistake.

  ‘Bull—Rubbish,’ Calloway said. ‘Think I don’t know my own keys? This is…’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Tina said. ‘Mr Calloway, are you sure the key you used is the one for the boat? You didn’t pick up the wrong key by mistake?’

  The broker shifted, but Tina shut him up with a look. ‘Yes,’ Calloway said.

  ‘Could anyone have taken the key?’ she said. ‘Switched keys on you somehow?’ It seemed like a lot of effort to find out who the owner of the Mary May was, find out where he kept his keys, perform the switch.

  He shrugged. ‘I never thought…’ He looked at the key closely. ‘No,’ he said. ‘This is the right key. Look.’ He was holding the key up against the light and Tina could see, scratched into the end, the letters MM that she remembered from the day she had talked to him in York.

  The broker was looking uneasy now. ‘I don’t know anything about this,’ he said. ‘This is the key you gave me, and this is the one we’ve always used.’

  ‘Let’s see.’ Calloway took the other key and studied it closely. He shook his head. ‘Dad marked all his keys,’ he said. ‘So unless you got another cut, this isn’t the key I gave you.’

  Tina was thinking. If someone had been playing games with the keys, then that meant they would have access to the boat. But that still left the engine key. Getting a spare key for a padlock wasn’t such a big deal, but getting a key for an engine, that was much more of a problem. ‘What about starting the boat?’ she said, voicing part of her thought out loud.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t have done that,’ Calloway said. ‘Charlie here’s got both the keys for that. Or he’s supposed to have them.’

  The broker held up the key ring. There were three keys – two for the engine and one for the padlock. He was looking more uneasy now. ‘It didn’t mean anything at the time,’ he said, ‘but when I took someone out, I found one of these was faulty.’ He looked at Tina and Calloway. ‘I meant to check it out sometime, but it didn’t seem urgent, not unless the boat sold.’

  Tina was beginning to see how it had been done. ‘Run through exactly what you do when you show people round a boat, Mr Norton.’ She could remember what he’d done when he’d taken her to the Mary May.

  ‘I just show them…’ he said.

  ‘In detail. Exactly what do you do when you get there?’

  ‘I unlock the boat and let them have a bit of a look, then I take them for a quick run, if that’s what they want.’

  ‘You do it?’ Tina said.

  ‘If they’re interested, they take her out. But I’m there with them,’ he said.

  ‘But no one was interested in the Mary May?’

  ‘There was one person came back,’ the broker said. ‘But that was it.’

  That was it. That had to be it. ‘So he came once and had a look round, then came back…’

  ‘Something like that,’ the broker said. ‘Bill’s the one dealing with the Mary May. I only remember because there was no one else showed an interest.’ He looked at Calloway. ‘Bill did his best for you, said you didn’t use the boat, you were looking for a quick sale.’

  ‘Well, that’s true enough,’ Calloway said.

  Tina tried to keep her patience. ‘Where’s Bill? Is he here?’

  ‘Not till tomorrow,’ the broker said. ‘He’s gone to look over a barge going for a song.’ He was talking to Calloway now. ‘Sailing barge on the Medway, at Upnor. Beauty. Only £110,000.’

  Calloway whistled. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘That’s what…’

  ‘Mr Norton.’ Both men looked at her. ‘What would Bill have done the second time he took this person to see the Mary May?’

  The broker shrugged. ‘Same as the first time, except they’d go on the canal.’

  Tina felt the tension of frustration. ‘Did Bill say anything – did anything unusual happen?’

  ‘Not that…Now you mention it, that was when we found the faulty key. He couldn’t get the engine to start. Bill tried, but he said the key wouldn’t go in. That’s why the spare’s on the key ring. He had to use that.’

  That was it! If the keys to the Mary May had been stolen, the broker would have contacted the police and secured the boat – unless he didn’t realize the keys had been taken. And to get access to the boat, you didn’t need to steal the key – you could steal the padlock. ‘When someone’s looking over a boat,’ Tina said, ‘what do you usually do?’ She tried not to make the question confrontational.

  ‘I wait,’ the broker said. ‘Talk to people, if there’s some out, while I wait. Have a quick check round the boat, see if anything’s in need of a fix. Just here and there.’

  ‘And Bill?’

  ‘He does the same.’

  So it wouldn’t have been difficult to perform the switch. Pocket the original padlock, substitute your own, switch keys on the key ring so the broker wouldn’t notice the change. That solved the problem of access. Was access enough? A cabin cruiser, an unidentified cabin cruiser, had been seen on the canal the night Cara died. Whoever had been running her had to have a key to start the engine, and for the ignition, you would need to steal a key.

  And one of the keys that Steve Calloway had given to the broker was suddenly faulty, the day the potential buyer had come back for a second time, a longer look around the boat, a boat he now knew a lot about. She looked at the ignition keys. They were close, they were not the same. Substitute a different key for the same kind of engine – pocket the original and claim the key you have been given is faulty. That way, both the broker and the thief had access to the boat. But the owner didn’t. How much of a gamble would that have been? He already knew that the owner showed little interest in the boat. Calloway had only checked now idly, perhaps wouldn’t have chased up the problem he’d had with access if he hadn’t been interested in contacting Tina.

  ‘Let’s go and have a look, Mr Calloway,’ she said.

  Farnham skimmed the diary Judith Martin had
found in Kerry Fraser’s room. Martin spoke quickly and quietly, keeping her voice low for the benefit of the woman slumped in the chair in the interview room next door. Farnham thought she could probably have used a megaphone and not made much impression. ‘It was late by the time I managed to sort out the mare’s nest Kerry had given me,’ Martin said.

  ‘What does –’ he gestured with his thumb to the woman – ‘say?’

  ‘She doesn’t say anything much.’ Martin’s mouth was tight with disapproval.

  Farnham thought. Kerry Fraser had been seen on the tram heading towards Meadowhall with a group of friends. He’d despatched a couple of cars to find her, but there was no report back yet. They could be anywhere in the vast mall’s shops, cafés, cinema. He checked his watch. Almost half-past seven.

  He looked at the diary again. Far from attending school on Friday afternoon, Kerry had truanted with Stacy McDonald. There seemed to have been some kind of rendezvous arranged – I looked but she wasn’t there and then Stacy went. Stacy went where? Where was the meeting, what had happened?

  ‘Who’s this “Lyn”?’ he said.

  ‘The half-sister. You remember, in the Fraser case – the stepdaughter accused him of abusing her.’

  ‘OK.’ He drummed his fingers as he thought. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She went into care,’ Martin said, ‘before Fraser’s arrest. The mother says she’s had no contact with her for over a year.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. We’re looking.’

  Farnham felt events running too fast ahead of him. The Chapman case again. He needed to have those facts at his fingertips, and they’d barely started looking at the old records. They needed to find the people who’d been on the boat that day, re-interview them, identify the mystery photographer. There was the link that Barraclough had found: Sheryl Hewitt, the dead junkie, Cara Hobson’s friend. And now this ‘Lyn’, Mark Fraser’s stepdaughter, a third girl who had been in care, a girl who was the same age as the other two. A picture was starting to form in his mind. Cara Hobson had gone into care around the time of Ellie Chapman’s disappearance. She’d made a complete break with her family, according to the care worker Tina Barraclough had talked to. ‘Cara’, ‘Lyn’ – Carolyn? Could Cara Hobson be Mark Fraser’s stepdaughter? But that didn’t work – Kerry Fraser talked about communicating with ‘Lyn’ after Cara was dead.