The Girl in the Water

by A J Grayson

  The final file in Chloe’s email is an image. I double-click and a moment later a nearly full-screen window appears. The image is a satellite photograph, the logo in the corner marking it from Google Earth, and Chloe’s annotated it with a big, bulky red arrow and a single, square-pixel word: ‘Here’.

  It’s zoomed into a tight scale, and I don’t recognize the landscape except for one feature that’s unmistakable, snaking through its centre. A river, treed in on both sides, the water a greyish-green rather than blue.

  And I know what ‘Here’ means. Just as I’ve begun to get to know Emma Fairfax, I’ve been led to the site of her death.

  I stay with my computer for another hour. By the time the facts I’m able to chase up are starting to blur together, the bottle of wine is mostly gone. A coincidence, I’m sure. It’s clear that it’s time to call it a day. The clock above me is perilously close to chiming nine and David still isn’t back, which means I ought to start thinking of supper without him. I’d shopped for a whole box full of organic veggies earlier in the week, thinking a nice stir fry might be fun; but I’m worn out, now, tipsy, and the thrill of cooking just isn’t the same when you’re only doing it for yourself. I’m pondering a frozen lasagne and a packet of microwaveable broccoli as I pry myself out of my seat and head towards the bedroom. Before anything, I need to free myself from a few of the more enslaving garments of the day. I’m wearing shoes that look fantastically better than they feel and a bra with an underwire designed by a masochist, and I’m anxious to be out of both of them.

  I step into our walk-in, Loralees already off my heels and dangling from my toes in an awkward little dance all women learn at birth. My balance isn’t perfect with this much wine in me, but I kick them into what is roughly their place along one of the walls, then set about unbuttoning the muted orange blouse that I’ve had for – damn, I can’t think how long I’ve had it. A long time. Old-fashioned, not today’s style, but I love it.

  The buttons are undone with a few finger-flicks, and I toss it towards the hangers, and —

  — and that’s when I spot it. There, where it shouldn’t be.

  David’s briefcase is in the closet.

  Where it never is.

  Oh God, my heart is stopping. No gentle transition of emotion. No whats or wonderings, just my pulse’s immediate threat to abandon me entirely.

  The briefcase is oddly positioned in a little space that’s been fashioned behind his shoes, which is even stranger. A pair of gym shorts is clumsily draped over it.

  Despite the tipsiness, I immediately notice the trajectory of my thoughts. The shorts ‘are draped’ over the case, which is so very different from saying ‘he draped them’ over it, which in that instant is something I don’t want to think about.

  Because David doesn’t hide things from me. He doesn’t conceal. He’s open, and loving, and caring, and the man I trust more than any other in the world.

  And he doesn’t hide his briefcase in the closet.

  20

  Above the inconspicuous den of torture was a quite ordinary kitchen. This is a lesson for life, as well. That even in a kitchen, evil can be born.

  ‘The kind we want you to bring, they can’t be the kind from good homes.’

  Savage words, camouflaged by their outward simplicity.

  ‘Why not?’ A girl’s voice answers, uncomprehending yet sassy at the same time.

  ‘If their ties to their parents are too close, then … you know. They might be listened to.’

  ‘You mean, if they talk?’

  A nod, nothing more.

  ‘But I thought you said no one was gonna talk,’ the girl’s voice protests, pouty, with the confidence of a practised know-it-all.

  ‘No one will. We’ve been good about ensuring that.’

  A harrumph.

  ‘You haven’t talked, have you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ the girl objects. ‘But that’s ’cause you, like, you know … you give me good reasons not to.’ There’s a stylish portable CD player clipped to her hip, the headphones dangling round her neck, and she runs her hand over the obviously new device.

  ‘Exactly. We know what sort of things help you keep your thoughts to yourself.’ The words come with a paternal, warm smile, though there are also unspoken threats – voiced in the past but now simply recycled in silent glances – of darker gifts to be given if ever she would turn the other way. But for now the girl seemed happy, but her quizzical look soon returned.

  ‘So, why don’t you just find them yourselves?’

  A hesitant silence. A brow folding up in contemplation of how much to share, how much to keep hidden.

  ‘Let’s just say it’s better if we leave that to you. You bring them here, and there’s a reward for each one. Something to spice up your life a little.’ A nod towards the CD player.

  Then a big grin over dental braces, each tooth’s equipment wrapped in a different coloured elastic band.

  ‘But like we said,’ the man’s voice continues, ‘none from strong families. You’ve got to do a little studying before you pick ‘em. Make friends. Find out about their life at home.’

  ‘Like, whether they’re all hugs and kisses around the supper table.’

  A knowing smile. ‘Exactly like that. And if they aren’t …’

  ‘Then bring them by.’

  ‘That’s all there is to it.’ A pat on a shoulder, kitchen chairs sliding over linoleum and a scuffling back to standing.

  ‘You do that for us, and we’re good to go.’

  And the devil smiling, his power over man never more absolute.

  21

  Amber

  I know there are a dozen different ways I could react to my discovery. I could calm myself, that’s the most obvious. Call it no discovery at all. It’s just a briefcase, and my suddenly spiked tension is an overreaction – the after effects of too much wine and a long day.

  But I have have the distinct feeling I’m beyond that option. I could ignore what I’ve seen – that’s a second choice. Pretend the briefcase isn’t there, or that it doesn’t matter that it is. Why should I take any notice, after all? It’s a shared life and a shared home. David can keep his things wherever he likes. Yes, he’s consistent in his ways, but none of us behaves in exactly the same way all the time. I look over at my shoes, lying helter-skelter on the floor. They’re sort of in the place that I usually kick them, but not precisely. Variety is normal.

  God, the word feels awkward in my head.

  Normal. Normal. Normal.

  The cover of an issue of Variety magazine flashes into my mind. Some comment about it being the spice-rack of life. But then, that’s not quite right …

  I force the odd silliness aside. There are serious issues in front of me, and it’s strange that I should feel playful in their presence, even with wine inside me. Ignoring reality isn’t going to work; and pretending this situation isn’t odd would be precisely that – ignoring what is self-evidently real. David is spontaneous in so many things: he’ll swerve the car across two lanes of traffic to screech it to a halt at a roadside flower vendor, all in order to buy me a dozen yellow tulips (always my favourite flower, so much more delicate and beautiful than the showy over-doneness of a rose); he’ll say he’s taking me out for a snack at the diner round the corner, only to produce two tickets to Les Misérables or Wicked or some other show I’ve been longing to see down in the city. Yet around the house, with his daily routines, he’s absolutely predictable. Socks are always on in the morning before trousers. Brushing the hair always comes before switching on the electric razor. He always hangs his brown jacket on the second peg by the door; never the first, never the third.

  All of which mean that his briefcase, here in our closet, can’t simply be written off as an act of spontaneous variety.

  No, no, no. Not normal at all.

  The realization causes my thoughts to swirl in a pattern that is surprisingly colourful at the backs of my eyes.

  Damn, my head
really hurts.

  I stare at the gym shorts hanging loosely over the briefcase’s frame, suddenly feeling more like a foreigner than I ever have in my own home.

  I realize there’s only one thing I can reasonably do. No, I won’t say ‘reasonably’. I’m not sure I’m having any reasonable thoughts at this stage; everything’s foggier than it ought to be. But there is, nevertheless, only one thing I can do.

  I reach down, toss the shorts aside, and pick up the case. Two brass flip locks are positioned aside the leather handle, like always.

  Locks I’ve never before undone.

  The fact that David thinks I don’t know the combination to his briefcase is one of the tender signs of trust between us that I cherish. He’s never told me how the six dials are meant to line up, and we’ve had more than one discussion about the reality that privacy in this regard is essential to our relationship. When we were first married I think he was concerned I’d find the idea troubling, that I’d be resentful of some corner of his being that wasn’t wholly exposed to my scrutiny. Honestly, I don’t know when the men in my life started being more feminist than I am. We’re husband and wife, not a hybrid being. Even if we do it side by side, we still both occupy our unique sections of life.

  So maybe I did feel it was a little condescending when he ‘took the time’ to explain to me, twice, that ‘some of the paperwork I bring home from the pharmacy, in order to file the insurance claims and that sort of thing, it’s confidential. I know we’re open with each other, but some things have to remain off limits, and so I’m going to keep the combination to this case to myself.’ I remember the discussion. I was pondering the order in which I might rack the next day’s papers in the shop while he spoke, that’s how little my emotions were tugged at by the idea that his briefcase combination wasn’t going to be posted on the refrigerator with the shopping list. He said it with such purpose, though. Sweetie.

  Still, predictable.

  There are six dials on the case, their shiny metal now reflecting the ceiling light back into my eyes. Mathematically, this makes for a lot of possibilities. Significantly more than I’d ever be willing to try at random, which, I presume is why briefcases have six dials instead of two or three.

  But the math doesn’t matter. I’ve left the bedroom, walked into another room and set the case down in front of me, laying my right hand over the left on top of it for a brief, contemplative moment. It’s not quite a prayer, but I am willing the throbbing in my head to disperse and my eyes, which seem far too wobbly, to focus. The brass is playing with the light again. The reflected beams are far, far too bright.

  I unfold my hands. The dials rotate easily, slick from frequent use. I haven’t fully exhaled a single, normal breath before I’ve got them lined up in the only combination I know it could possibly be.

  0-7-1-3-8-1.

  Or, in its more familiar form: 07/13/81. My birthday. I said David was predictable, sweet, even wonderful. I never said he was clever.

  I press my fingers outwards against the two brass knobs next to the dials. With twin clicks, the clasps open.

  22

  Amber

  The earth doesn’t shatter.

  Big, expectant moments – we’re led to believe they’ll resolve like that. Definitively. The door to a serial killer’s apartment is opened and, surprise, there are photographs of his victims pasted all along the walls, linked together by brightly coloured strings. The hotel room of suspected government spies is kicked in and, voilà!, there they are, each holding mag lights with stacks of files on the bed. Big reveals. The world halts a second: revelation splinters normalcy.

  This moment isn’t like that at all. The leather top to David’s briefcase opens and the orbit of the earth remains entirely as before. I have no idea what I thought I might find inside. Another woman’s lingerie? Drugs? Printed bios from Ashley Madison? There’s none of that. Nothing that in any way counts as a shocker. A few manila folders. Cheap plastic pens in their elastic holders. Some envelopes.

  What else did I think I was going to find in a briefcase?

  The absurdity of my situation suddenly hits me: a woman standing barefoot in her bra and rooting through her husband’s things. There’s a good wife.

  Yet I’m tugged by some thread that still won’t let me lower the lid. It shouldn’t have been there. That’s the clincher that won’t let me alone, and won’t let me see nothing in nothing. So I shake the fog from my head, remove my fingers from my lips where I have subconsciously been biting at my nails, and reach a hand inside and pull out one of the folders. It’s the one right on top, all but ready to be plucked out and examined.

  I slide a finger under its cover and leaf it open. Inside are an array of documents, some loose leaf and some paper-clipped together. I examine the header of one of the single pages: ‘LEVOTHYROXINE PATIENT ADMINISTRATION INSTRUCTIONS – UPDATED PHARMACIST GUIDELINES’. I flip to one of the bundled documents. Its cover page speaks of contents even more mundane. ‘REORDER QUOTA GUIDELINES FOR OPIOID PHARMACEUTICAL SUPPLIERS IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA’.

  It’s precisely the kind of thing I would expect in David’s briefcase.

  Of course.

  But I keep going, nevertheless. I remove the folder and set it aside. Beneath it is another, which I in turn flip open to find more of the same. Then another. Beneath that, I can feel there are even more.

  But I can also feel something else. As I lay the folders aside, one by one, the stack remaining in the briefcase gets thinner, and lighter. And starts to bend. Or rather, starts to wobble. The folders aren’t lying flat, I realize now. There is something beneath them that’s creating a little rise in the middle.

  It’s a curiosity, hardly suspicious. But I’ve come this far.

  I reach my fingers around their edges and remove the remaining folders all in a single pull.

  And here, at this moment, the world does halt. Just for an instant.

  Beneath the folders, wrapped into a coil, is a rope.

  Not a rope, a leash. Sadie’s leash. The one David always uses to walk her.

  It’s red. It’s always been red.

  I’m not sure if I’m breathing as I reach down to touch it. And then I’m certain that I’m not, as my fingers press against its rough fibres and feel moisture still bound within them. Sadie’s leash, wet, and through the tears forming in my eyes, I can see dirt and sand and grime along its length. And I can smell the outdoors, and a river, and …

  A face flashes into my sight. The same face from the car. Black hair. Porcelain skin.

  She looks peaceful.

  My stomach curls and tightens. My fingers wrap around the wet leash. The woman’s face won’t leave my vision.

  It’s the face from yesterday, the face that nearly forced me off the road. The face that caused me to say that word – that name. Emma. And deep within me I know, with every instinct I possess, that this rope in my hands is the one the police are after. The one mentioned in the paper.

  The rope that killed the woman in the river.

  Whether it’s the cosmos that begins to fall apart in this instant, or just me, I can’t be sure; but the pieces of my world are breaking, and that seems as cosmic as anything else in creation.

  Her.

  The memory of David’s body going cold and firm as I’d whispered the woman’s name into his ear.

  Emma.

  And this horrible reality I now hold in my fingers, extracted from his briefcase. A reality that links him to her in a way I can’t fathom. My David, with our Sadie’s leash, such an innocent thing. But innocence nowhere in the air.

  David. David …

  I’d rushed home to tell him of my discovery. To tell him about my story. To tell him about her.

  But he already knows her. God, he knows her. And God, my head hurts.

  This leash, hidden away. His case. His locks.

  He knew her last night. He knew her before I’d said anything at all. He knows her now.

  And he doesn’t wa
nt me to find out.

  PART TWO

  TWENTY-THREE YEARS AGO

  23

  David, Aged 17

  With The Counsellor

  I always hate these sessions. It’s been so many years of them already. Too many. Always the same nonsense, too. Like dealing with dirty hair or dirty clothes: rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat – only you never get any cleaner.

  ‘Did it upset you when your parents died?’

  The typical kind of question. Can’t think of how many times this guy’s asked it. As if parents dying ever doesn’t upset someone. Even when you don’t particularly love them, and they obviously don’t have the time or the inclination to love you. You don’t have to love someone to be upset by their sudden absence.

  ‘It was a boating accident. There wasn’t anything that could be done.’

  I know the man in the sweater isn’t interested in the details of the accident, or really even in my response to it. We’ve covered all this territory a hundred times before. Dr Williams is after Evelyn. Always, always after Evelyn. He can’t let her go. Guy hasn’t been as successful as me in putting her out of mind after all these years, and you’d think that’s pretty much the thing he’s still getting my parents’ money to do.

  ‘Neither of ’em talked about what’d troubled Evelyn,’ I blurt out. ‘Not after she offed herself, and not till their deaths. They just didn’t care.’

  I may only be closing in on eighteen, but you don’t need a lifetime’s maturity to know how to read that. I know it now. I knew it back when they were still alive. Neither of them were worth the space they took up on the planet, and they sure as hell made clear to Evelyn and me that they felt the same way about us.