by Danuta Reah
The cold seemed to be in her bones. She tried to roll over, and felt the blood start to run down her neck again. She heard feet moving across the cabin, felt the floor underneath shake slightly. Something banged, and then again, and she heard the sudden gush of water, water running fast under pressure.
Then feet crossed the cabin again, and her body lifted off the floor as she was kicked in the side and she could feel the crunch of her ribs and then the pain and she rolled back on to her injured hand and she thought she was going to be sick. She needed to breathe through her mouth and she couldn’t. And then the feet were moving past her again. And she felt the cold water start to trickle round her as she heard the feet on the steps, on the deck and gone. And she curled around the pain, unable to move, unable to make a sound.
After Daniel had left, Eliza sat at her desk, trying to work, as her mind went over and over the information that he had given her. Had their relationship really been just a casual fling, fuelled more by proximity than anything else? Yet he’d stayed on in Madrid after meeting her, had resisted her own attempts to define the relationship as casual – though they had both known that circumstance might end it. She hadn’t wanted to love him, hadn’t wanted the concomitant pain, but in the end, she had allowed herself to relax her guard.
And it was like the end of the relationship all over again. In Madrid, it had never properly ended – it had evaporated in Daniel’s evasions. And now it was, irretrievably, completely over, she realized how much she had been building on having it back. But it had gone, and it had taken everything else with it. It was as if her entire career was up for grabs again. She had thought she’d found her niche in the art world – she had an almost instinctive understanding of the work of other artists, she knew how to present it, how to interpret it, how to exhibit it in a way that allowed people to make their own interpretations. And she’d thought that skill had been recognized and valued. But it had all been a sham.
Daniel must have phoned Jonathan soon after they’d met at the Prado. He’d wanted her to curate the exhibition – that was true enough. They’d talked about it as Daniel was working on it. Her ideas had influenced what he’d done, she knew. She could still remember their meeting in front of The Triumph of Death:
I always think that this is in the wrong place for it…It ought to be in the shadows…I’d put it in a current setting. A cityscape, industrial ruins, show people a modern triumph of death.
She’d said that, not Daniel. He’d called the painting a fifteenth-century video nasty. And it had been Ivan who had queried her desire to move it away from the other paintings: Where else would it belong but among the Boschs? Ivan who had recognized the words of Cennino Cennini: Do not apply any pink at all, because a dead person has no colour…Ivan who’d talked about modern attitudes to death and decay. Daniel had listened, as he’d listened to Eliza, encouraging her to talk again and again, returning to the Brueghel. Oh, he had come up with his own ideas – or had he? Daniel and Ivan had been travelling together, but they’d come to Madrid because Ivan had wanted to.
And Ivan was working on a modern Triumph, had shared his ideas with Daniel. He’d come to Sheffield to try and sell his work to Jonathan. And he’d said: I wonder, if you wrote a genesis of this – from conception to birth, what would you say? Ivan knew. The Triumph of Death wasn’t Daniel Flynn’s. It was Eliza Eliot’s and Ivan Bakst’s.
She gave up the pretence of working. She barely had the energy to get herself home. The thought of the drive to Laura’s seemed over-whelming. Why did this have to happen when her flat – which looked more and more inviting – was effectively out of bounds? She wished she could just crawl upstairs, run herself a hot bath, fall into bed and forget this wretched day.
But she couldn’t. It would be stupid. She hadn’t needed Roy Farnham’s caution – the events of the night before were warning enough. She needed to get away from here. She gradually became aware of the silence around her, and the fact that, away from the pool of light from her desk lamp, the gallery was dark. She checked her watch. It was after seven-thirty. She’d meant to leave before five, and she’d been sitting here staring into space, trying to come to terms with what Daniel had told her.
She began her routine for closing up. She locked the upper gallery and set the alarm. Something nagged at her as she came downstairs, something she’d forgotten. She couldn’t bring it to mind. She collected her coat and her work bag from the office, checking that her phone was fully charged before she tucked it into the side pocket. If anyone needed to contact her, they could. One of Roy’s team had dropped her car off. It was out the front. She’d meant to throw some overnight things into a bag, but it was late now and she didn’t want to go up to her flat. Laura could lend her the basics. It was only till tomorrow. She dumped her work bag on the floor by the door, and began to lock up.
She’d kept herself numb all day with fatigue and with work, but her defences were crumbling now, and as she moved wearily round the empty gallery, her mind kept taking her back into the darkness outside Cara’s door, back into Maggie’s, listening in the night for feet moving softly behind her, back to the haven of her home, feeling the sudden urgency of Roy Farnham’s mouth against hers. She didn’t want to think about it. Tomorrow. Tomorrow would do.
She was exhausted. She felt angry with herself for losing control of her life. What had she done these past few days apart from let herself be pushed around by events? She was angry with Daniel, even more angry with Jonathan for his deceit and his desertion, leaving her to cope with what was, in the end, his responsibility.
She checked the downstairs gallery quickly. It was getting colder. The windows looked out over the canal. It was snowing. The water was dark and leaden, the towpath in shadows. A boat was moored near the bridge, but the path was deserted. Roy Farnham’s warning echoed in her mind. She went to turn off the lights and set the alarm. Her feet echoed, tap-tap, as she crossed the wooden floor. She keyed in the alarm code and turned out the lights. The gallery faded into darkness, and, for a moment, she was back to the night she had seen Cara sitting on the window ledge, looking out along the canal.
And it was there again, that echo. The echo she’d heard the night that Cara died. She stopped and listened. Nothing. Silence. Her imagination? She’d set the alarm. If there was anyone in the gallery, it would go off – except…She realized then what had been worrying her earlier: she hadn’t heard the long tone that told her the alarm was working. She hadn’t heard it upstairs, either, but she’d missed it in her rush to get away. She keyed in the code again, but nothing happened.
There must be a fault, she told herself, trying to ignore the chill that was creeping down her spine. Her heart was starting to beat fast. She looked back. The security light was a dim glow in the ceiling, but the room itself was concealed in deep pools of shadow. If the alarm was faulty, she could phone the engineer and someone would be there soon. But what if the alarm wasn’t faulty? What if someone…? But no one knew the codes, apart from her and Jonathan. And Cara. Cara knew. Jonathan had changed the codes after that. No one knew those codes.
She needed to get out of there. Two people had been killed. She needed to get out of there, now. She turned towards the door, and heard the echo again, almost beyond audibility, hush-hush, soft shoes moving quietly across the floor behind her. Her eyes strained at the shadows. It was there again, coming from – not behind her, not from the gallery, but from the door. She spun round.
The sound – it was – where was it? The walls, the floors, the ceiling, all bounced the sound off them, making direction impossible to judge. The shadows danced as her gaze flew around the room seeing movement where there was nothing, hearing other things now that the faint sound of footsteps had stopped. She waited, trying to calm her breathing. OK. OK. She just needed to walk quickly to the door, and get to her car. Then she needed to phone Roy. No, she needed to dial 999 first and then get Roy and…
Her heart thumped. There was someone standing between
her and the exit, in the doorway to Jonathan’s office. ‘Who’s there?’ Her voice was high. Don’t let him know you’re scared!
‘Eliza?’ And the figure became Jonathan, standing uncertainly in the dim glow of the security light.
‘Jonathan.’ She could feel her heart hammering. ‘You frightened the life out of me!’
He came towards her. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ His voice sounded tired and dead. ‘I didn’t want to talk to anybody.’
‘The alarm isn’t working,’ Eliza said.
‘It’s OK.’ He was in the light from the entrance now and she could see his face. He looked terrible, white and exhausted with dark shadows under his eyes. He was at least two days away from a shave and his beard looked ragged. This disarray in the normally meticulous Jonathan unnerved her. ‘I changed the settings,’ he said.
‘Why? Why didn’t you tell me?’
He waved his hand vaguely, looking round the gallery as he spoke. ‘I thought you might go before I did. I didn’t want you to set the alarm while I was still in here,’ he said after a moment.
‘But that’s…’ He wasn’t paying her any attention. ‘You look awful. What’s happened?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘They think I did it,’ he said. ‘They think I killed those two girls.’
Eliza looked at him in bewilderment. ‘They don’t. They’ve let you go. Anyway, you were in Leeds.’
He shook his head. ‘They don’t believe me. Us. They don’t believe us. They’ve pulled Patricia in. They’ll put pressure on her. If she thinks she’ll get into trouble…’
‘But the night the girl disappeared – you were at the gallery, at Daniel’s party. We all were.’
He shook his head again. ‘No one knows exactly when she was taken. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m an artist, see? That makes me a psycho in his eyes.’ His? He must mean Farnham. ‘And they think an artist did it – the painting, the Brueghel. The one your boyfriend brought here.’ His tone was suddenly venomous.
‘I didn’t know you knew,’ she said, keeping her voice calm. ‘And Daniel isn’t…We don’t have a relationship any more.’
‘A relationship,’ he said. ‘No one has a relationship with Flynn. He used you, Eliza.’ His face seemed to crumple and he sank down into one of the chairs, burying his head in his hands.
Appalled, Eliza looked at him. She’d never managed to get close to Jonathan, never really got to know him. She remembered the conversation they’d had a couple of days before the party when he’d talked about his father, a deceptively light tone concealing deep bitterness. It had been one of the few personal conversations they’d had. And now he seemed to be having a breakdown. Under the stress of everything that was happening at the gallery, he was coming apart. ‘Jonathan?’ she said.
‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was muffled. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘I know about the job,’ she said. ‘About the exhibition. Daniel told me.’
He nodded, his head turned away. He pulled a tissue out of his pocket and wiped it over his face. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have thought of you if Flynn hadn’t mentioned you – but you gave the best interview. And you’ve done very well. Really very well.’
His voice was detached. He sounded as though she was a student who’d handed in a piece of work, but they were talking about murder, about the death of a woman and a child, they were discussing the possibility of Jonathan being charged with those murders. He seemed to have lost his grip on reality. She was starting to feel more and more uneasy. Suddenly, she wanted to get away. ‘I need to go,’ she said. ‘I’m staying with Laura tonight. We need to lock up here.’ Her voice sounded artificial and nervous.
‘Lock up,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ His eyes searched around the gallery again. Eliza could see through the window behind him that the snow was still falling. ‘Do you want a drink?’ He’d taken off his glasses, and his eyes had a naked, unfocused look. ‘I’ve got some whisky in the office – we could have a drink. We could go up to your flat. It’s nice there, peaceful.’
‘I haven’t got time,’ she said. ‘Laura’s expecting me.’ She moved across towards the door, towards the exit, where her car was parked. She could see her bag where she had dumped it by the door. Her phone! So close, and just too far.
He moved in front of her. She stopped. ‘Why won’t you stay?’ he said. ‘Half an hour. Have a drink.’
She tried to keep her voice steady. She couldn’t get past him to the exit, but there was another way out. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘But in the office. Wait here. I need to get my stuff from the flat.’ She waited a moment. ‘I’ll do that,’ she said carefully, ‘then we can have a drink before I go.’ Her smile felt awkward and artificial as she backed away towards the stairs leading to the flats. He was watching her, but he was letting her go. ‘See you in a minute,’ she said.
Then she was through the door and on to the stairs. She began to run as soon as she was out of sight. Up the stairs, along the corridor and out through the other door – get away and get some…But he might think of that, might come up the outside staircase and cut off her escape route. It couldn’t be Jonathan! Her rational mind knew the idea was ridiculous, but something was urging her up the stairs, quick, quick, hurry, before it’s too late ! The flat. She had to get to the flat, lock the door and phone. Get help. He might not realize what she was doing before the police arrived.
She heard a sound behind her and turned, but the stairs were empty. She remembered the night she had found Cara in the gallery, that sense of another presence, inimical, threatening. She remembered how she’d been half expecting the alarm to go off, she’d been so convinced that there was someone else in the gallery. She could remember the high note of the alarm as she and Cara had climbed the stairs.
She was through the connecting door. Something nagged at her as she fumbled in her handbag for her keys. Something she’d forgotten in the gallery? Her eyes were playing tricks, making movements in the shadows.
Her key, where was her key? That sense of something forgotten clamoured urgently at her mind, making her fingers clumsy, making her hands shake as she fitted the key into the lock. Because now her memory was working. She was walking up the stairs with Cara, a bit impatient with herself for getting involved, and the high tone of the alarm was sounding, letting her know that it was safely set. And it had stopped, and she’d tensed, expecting it to go off, only of course it hadn’t because there was no one in the gallery. Except – the sound of the alarm hadn’t just stopped. It had dropped a tone. She could hear it as clearly as if she was back there: Cara chattering nervously about Daniel’s painting, her rather impatient rejoinder as she was distracted from something she knew was important – the different sound the alarm had made, the sound it made when she had set it by mistake and had had to punch the code in again to stop it.
There had been someone else in the gallery that night. Someone who had waited until she and Cara were out of sight, someone who knew how much time there was before the alarm set, someone who had punched the code in at the last minute to turn the alarm off.
The door of her flat swung open and she was through it in a moment, slamming it behind her, snapping on the light. She could hear the phone ringing in the gallery downstairs. That didn’t matter now. She needed to lock the door and get to her own phone.
And then the lights went out. Without warning, she was in darkness. The key dropped from her fingers and hit the floor with a metallic sound. The sudden dark blinded her. All she could see was blackness and dancing colours. She reached out and touched the door, feeling across it for the handle. It was like the night in Maggie’s kitchen, when the power…Power cuts at Maggie’s, power cuts here? Now she could hear…could she? Or was it her imagination? Footsteps, slow and quiet in the corridor outside. The door! She dropped on to her knees, feeling around. The key, she couldn’t find the key! Her eyes were getting accustomed to the dark now, and she could see her hands feeling through the shadows, could see the d
oor, a faint glimmer of light wood in the darkness.
She touched something cold and metallic and she grabbed it, nearly dropped it again, her hands clumsy with panic. She was still kneeling as she tried to fit the key into the lock. It was upside down. She tried it the other way, but it still wouldn’t fit. The footsteps came closer and stopped on the other side of the door.
And the handle began to turn.
Farnham was back in the incident room before he could deal with an anxiety that had been growing on him since he had found the link between Mel Young and the gallery murders.
How had those photos got into Eliza’s flat? Had Eliza gone to her friend’s as she had planned? After a moment’s hesitation – of course she’d gone to her friend’s, what was he worrying about? – he rang the gallery. It would be typical if she’d decided to work late. He was reassured when he got the answering machine. He tried the number of her flat. The phone rang twenty times. Nothing. No reply. She must have left. He relaxed slightly, then he tried her mobile number – belt and braces. He wanted to be certain.
He got the message service. That was understandable – after the night she’d had, she’d probably switched her phone off and gone to bed. He left a message, asking her to contact him. There was nothing else he could do about it for now.