Among the Missing aka Across the Bridge

by Morag Joss

  I couldn’t get near the river, nobody could. I walked the road as far as the old bridge approach and went beyond that, farther up the bank toward the sea, and stopped on high ground some way from where the gathering of people was densest. Anchored together on the river, as Ron had told me, were the crane barge and the salvage barge. Around them, a dozen small boats swayed gently on the water. Speeding among them were three or four police launches that threw out white, frothy trails. The helicopters were back, one of them with the logo of a media group slashed in red across it. For half an hour or more, nothing much seemed to happen; I watched as men walked about on the barges, though I could not determine what exactly their purpose was, and I began to wonder if the operation was going ahead at all. Then quite suddenly two small dinghies moored to the back of the salvage barge moved out onto the water, and the men left on deck took up their positions at the far end. The crane swung out over the river. The winch chains, black against the pearly white water, unwound and dipped below the surface. The men in the dinghies went to and fro, guiding them down to the divers underwater. After another long wait, the chains tautened. The dinghies returned to the back of the barge. The crane head juddered and cranked and began to wind in its load, and a few moments later a dome of water began to rise and bubble and then the surface of the river darkened and swelled and broke, and up came the car like a drowned, hanging corpse, crushed and sodden and bleeding dark mud. It hung, swinging, as river water streamed off it. The helicopters came lower and hovered. All around me people were lifting mobile phones into the air and taking pictures, or scanning their screens for live news. One man fiddled importantly with his iPhone and relayed details in a loud voice to his wife and two teenage sons, who stood beside him, gaping and pointing. Others gathered to stand within earshot.

  He said, “There are six divers down there… Weather conditions almost ideal, very little wind… But operation may be hampered by strong currents and low visibility underwater.”

  Then out on the river we heard a faint metallic cranking, and the crane jerked and shook and pulled the sagging pendulum of the car a few feet across. Then it stopped. The car hung in the air above the salvage barge until the arc of its swings diminished, and then it was lowered slowly onto the deck. As soon as the winch chains came off and were swung clear, tarps went up all around it, screening it from view. Minutes later, three police vessels came alongside the barge, and several men were brought on board.

  There was nothing more to see. The small vessels around the barges began to move, some toward the jetty on the far shore, some over to our side. Ron’s boat would be among them, I supposed, but I was too far away to make out which was his. Around me the knots of spectators loosened, shifted, dispersed, but I stood where I was, and so did the man with the iPhone and his little audience.

  I knew what I should expect. Why then did I not expect it?

  “First images of the vehicle taken from vessels adjacent to the rescue suggest there are human remains inside,” he announced. “Police are not confirming anything at this stage and will make a statement later today.”

  The man’s two sons gasped and stared. One of them said, “Human remains, wow!” and grabbed at his brother, and they sniggered in mock revulsion, caught up in the thrill and horror of it. They weren’t being cruel. Laughter was the only route they knew away from what dead bodies in a car might actually mean.

  I turned to leave. I had to find Ron. How could I tell Silva? What could I tell her?

  The police announced that night that postmortem examinations were being carried out on two bodies found in the car, neither of which was believed to be that of the missing woman. They would not comment on the speculation in some news reports that one of the dead was a child.

  At the bridge site, the discovery of the bodies-the wrong bodies-unhinged the operation for several hours. Ron was busy into the evening with unscheduled relays of police, salvage crews, and journalists, and could not go to the cabin that night. He knew that Annabel’s mobile phone sat unused and uncharged on a shelf, and he could not bring himself to call Silva’s. They would have heard the news reports themselves on the radio. But the real reason was cowardice. Late that night he had a missed call from Silva but did not reply. He could not have borne to hear his own voice tell her there was a chance that the people who had died in the car were Stefan and Anna.

  The following day he took Mr. Sturrock across the river for the Saturday bridge tour. They were surprised to see more than thirty people waiting at the jetty; over the weeks the numbers had been dwindling. Rhona said she’d been swamped with bookings since yesterday, and this was, at last, evidence of the “penetration” she had been working for. The news of the found bodies was providing an essential “enhanced human interest factor” for the journalists, while being at the same time, of course, a tragic twist.

  Mr. Sturrock led them to the end of the bridge approach, gave his stern welcome, and fished out his notes (he never spoke without them). Ron knew the speech by heart now, and as he half-listened, he watched the audience. They were younger than usual, and many had camcorders and cameras. There was something else different about them, too. They were warmed up for something. This was a gathering of ghouls. Gone were the quiet attention of the regular audience of locals and the earnest types interested in bridge design, the sad concentration of people hoping for answers, paying respects to the dead.

  Mr. Sturrock was telling them about concrete. “We’re well ahead of schedule,” he read from his notes, “partly because we are fortunate in having suitable sites downriver for the casting sheds, thus minimizing the cost and transportation time for the replacement concrete components. Needless to say, we inspect every casting and reject it unless it meets our strict criteria.”

  As he spoke, three or four people detached themselves from the group, wandered away, and began taking pictures. Mr. Sturrock counted on his fingers. “One, concrete has to cure properly, in temperatures above zero degrees centigrade. Two, on top of the temperature, you have to think about what we call air entrainment, which is-”

  “Excuse me, are there any more bodies still down there?” somebody asked. Others murmured with interest.

  “What about that woman? Have they found her yet?”

  “Are the divers down there now? Have they called off the search?”

  “That’s a police matter,” Mr. Sturrock said. “Three, your basic concrete recipe has to suit your actual conditions. There are various chemical-”

  A few more people drifted away; two or three began a conversation.

  “How long would it take a human body to decompose down there?”

  “The fish eat everything, that’s what I heard. Everything. Hey, mister, is it true after five months there’d just be bones?”

  Mr. Sturrock paused and looked past the crowd. Two of the first defectors had strolled to the barrier at the end of the bridge road and were scanning the river with camcorders, homing in on the crane barge that had lifted the car. Their safety helmets sat on the ground at their feet.

  “Hoy!” Mr. Sturrock yelled. “Hoy, you! Stop right there! You’re in breach of regulations!” He pocketed his notes and strode toward them. “You fucking jokers, get your hats on! Get your fucking hats on and get your arses off the fucking bridge!” One man stopped at once and reached for his helmet. But the other swung his camcorder round and began filming Mr. Sturrock.

  Ron wasn’t in time to stop it. Mr. Sturrock let out a roar, broke into a run, lunged at the man, and wrenched the camcorder away. Holding the man off with his free hand and ignoring his shouts, he strode to the barrier and flung it into the water. He swung round to the rest of the group. “Aye, and that goes for the lot of yous! This tour is canceled! Fuck off! You are no longer authorized on these premises! So fuck off, the lot o’ yous!”

  Rhona came forward, protesting, but he held up a hand. “Rhona, hen, just get them out of here, okay? I’m no’ having it. Hear me? Get them fucking out of here.”

  He
strode off toward the jetty, stepped into the launch, took a seat in the bow as far as possible from where Ron operated the boat, and stared out at the opposite bank. Ron followed, started the ignition, and when they were midriver he slowed the boat right down so they could feel the soft tilting of the tide against the sides. The quieting of the engine or their distance from the shore, maybe the rhythm of the waves, calmed Mr. Sturrock. He turned and shuffled down until he sat close to the stern.

  “Lost my rag for a wee minute there,” he said. “Maybe I went a bit far, eh?”

  He had never before talked to Ron in a tone of voice that invited a reply.

  “No, served them right,” Ron said. He smiled. “Shouldn’t have taken their hats off, should they?”

  Mr. Sturrock laughed. “Aye, right enough, they shouldnae.” He shook his head. “See how they were carrying on, like it’s entertainment? Nae respect.” He paused. “It’s on my mind, I suppose. Him that wasnae there the day, the English fella.”

  “What English fella?”

  “Fuck’s sake, yon English fella, he’s here every time. Big quiet fella, comes up from Huddersfield.”

  “I know who you mean. He wasn’t here today. First one he’s missed,” Ron said.

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” Mr. Sturrock said. “You ken why? Rhona told me. See, she had him on his own for a wee minute, one time, over the coffee kinda thing. She makes an effort, Rhona. Turns out it’s his wife. The lady that hired that car, it’s his wife, for fuck’s sake. That’s why he keeps coming. And see they bastards the day, going on like it’s a photo opportunity…” He glanced back at the jetty. “Enter-fucking-tainment. Imagine being him when that fucking car came out the water.”

  “Will they ever find her body?” Ron asked. “So at least he’d know what happened to her?”

  “I’ve nae fucking idea,” Mr. Sturrock said. “Poor bastard. Put a bit of speed on, will you? I haven’t got all fucking day.”

  Ron’s phone rang again, and he didn’t answer. After he’d delivered Mr. Sturrock to the jetty, he checked for messages. The call was from Silva’s number, but it was Annabel’s voice.

  “She’s heard about the car,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get you. Can you come today? Please come.”

  When he arrived at the cabin, he found Silva sitting on the floor in her room with photographs of Stefan and Anna in her lap. She’d been that way, Annabel told him, since the news came. She had taken Stefan’s drawing of the cabin down from the wall and lit candles around it, and rocked to and fro with her hands clenched against her mouth as the candles burned, gazing at the drawing and whispering to the smiling stick figures he’d made of the three of them in fierce, spitting bursts of language of which Annabel and Ron understood not a word.

  All through Saturday and Sunday they tried to care for her, but she would scarcely be deflected by entreaties to eat or rest. When Annabel spoke to tell her there was food ready or to suggest she lie down and sleep, her voice seemed to reach her, if at all, from too far away to be understood. When Ron helped her gently to her feet and brought her to the table or to her bed, she walked carefully on her numbed legs and did not look at him. She ate and slept only to regain enough strength to return to her place on the floor.

  But she did not weep, and on Monday morning she was up and ready early to go to Vi’s. The radio was now repeating that the police had confirmed the bodies were those of a man and a child and that the car was the one rented by a woman tourist, who was still missing. And so, Silva announced to the others, these were the bodies of two other people. Stefan never hitched lifts when he had Anna with him because he always said if he ran into trouble he could defend himself all right alone, but he couldn’t be sure of defending her as well. Besides, she said, the police didn’t even say the child was a girl.

  She spoke in a firm but faded voice, as if she were under a kind of hypnosis of both hope and dread; an entranced, defiant look had entered her eyes. She got through the next few days at Vi’s, returning exhausted to her candles and photographs and incantations. On the fifth day, she did not go to work because she woke after a vivid dream of Stefan, who had borne a message that the answer to her prayers was nigh. This would be the day they came back. She waited at the cabin all day, and the next, and the next.

  For the entire week Ron’s workmates at the bridge traded rumors about the occupants of the car. People sat on in the canteen past their break times, talking and arguing. Ron just listened; nobody asked for his opinion, and he gave none, and least of all would he have said anything about Silva and her vigil for Stefan and Anna, or about the husband of the missing woman and his presence at every bridge walk. Even if he could have strung the words together, Ron believed he had no right to offer up for their scrutiny any stories, and such desperate ones, that belonged to other people.

  One rumor was that the child was strapped in the back and nesting in a tangle of blankets as if asleep and the man’s body was floating free and twisting, arms outstretched, toward her. Another had it the other way round, the child reaching for him; another, that the child was cradled in his arms. And who were they, the workmen speculated, and where was the woman who had been or should have been driving? Were they hitchhikers? No sane woman alone picked up hitchhikers. But had she stopped for these two (had it been raining that day?), either for the child’s sake or because the very presence of the child had made her feel safe? But suppose the man was just a car thief, albeit one who operated with a child in his care, and he had stolen the car; where then was the woman? Was the man also a murderer? Had he killed her in front of the child? So where was her body?

  The word went round that, when the car was hauled from the river, the driver’s door had not been closed. Ron sat quietly and heard the theories: the door lock must have burst on impact with the water; it had been broken in a collision with other wreckage; it had been corroded and prized open by the tides. But the favored version was that a third occupant, the woman driver, had managed to open the door and get out but had not made it to the surface. She must have been drowned and her body dragged out to sea. The bridge workers had it all worked out, they reckoned, on the balance of probabilities; meanwhile the police investigation continued with what they considered perverse slowness.

  Ron was grateful that the patterns of his physical life-work on the boat, food, jobs at the cabin, sleep-kept him immersed in practical tasks and with little time to think. Whatever had happened to the woman, and whoever the man and child had been, all three were lost. And while the deaths of people he had never known were losses abstracted and at a remove, loss recalled all losses. He was sad for their deaths and felt they should be contemplated in silence, in the unshared privacy of his own mind; the thought of their suffering hurt and frightened him. He returned gratefully at the end of each day to the cabin, where such matters could not be discussed.

  After two weeks, no next of kin had come forward. On its front page, under the headline POLICE APPEAL TO FAMILY OF MYSTERY VICTIMS, the Inverness Herald printed a photograph of the man’s neck chain and the half-perished remains of a toy giraffe. It also reported that DNA tests showed the bodies were overwhelmingly likely to be those of a father and child. Ron brought the paper with him that evening as well as a can of diesel for the generator, a tub of leftover coleslaw, and a bottle of whiskey. Silva was once again at her devotions. He showed the front page to Annabel, who was peeling potatoes at the table. These days she sat down to do such tasks.

  “Oh, God, no,” she said. “Don’t let her see it. Oh, God, what are we to do?”

  “She has to see it,” Ron said. “She’s bound to see it sometime. It’s better if we’re the ones to show her.”

  “Why?” Annabel said. “What good will it do?”

  Ron was taken aback. “If it’s not Stefan and Anna, think how relieved she’ll be,” he said simply.

  “But it is them… I’m sure it is. She won’t be able to bear it.”

  “If it is, she has to know. She’ll h
ave to know sooner or later.”

  Annabel gazed at the door to Silva’s room, her face suddenly white. “She’ll have to know sooner or later,” she repeated stupidly. She turned to Ron. “Don’t leave tonight. Stay. Don’t leave me alone with her.”

  Silva’s door opened and she wandered in, casting a severe little smile at Ron. Her eyes were overbright, and her hair, as it always was these days, was pulled back under an exuberant purple plastic chrysanthemum that looked doubly absurd above her pinched face. She glanced at the pan of potatoes and slumped into a chair at the table.

  “Not hungry,” she said. Then she caught sight of the paper lying under Annabel’s hand and snatched it up.

  “Silva, wait. Don’t. Silva!” Annabel said, getting to her feet.

  Silva cried out, once, and in the next moment she was at the door. She flung the paper down and was off and running, sobbing, stumbling over the rocks to the jetty, her screams sounding back across the wet stones of the shore.

  She was simply trying to get to them. I do not believe a thought of her own death was in her head. I still think it was blind need that drove her to the water, a need to be where they were, where they had died, and that was all. It was not an actual intent to kill herself.

  Ron dashed after her, ahead of me, but he wasn’t quick enough. I came out of the cabin just in time to see her throw herself forward off the jetty. The strange thing was that, from the moment she surfaced, everything was very quiet. She had stopped screaming. There was no kicking and flailing of arms, no splashing or wailing. Perhaps it was the shock of the cold water that stilled her. Then her head sank. The purple chrysanthemum in her hair bobbed for a second and disappeared, and the back of her pink cardigan floated up behind her and for a moment billowed across the surface of the river before its own waterlogged weight pulled it under and around her submerged shoulders. By then Ron was in the water, and I ran down to the jetty as he dived under and seized her by the jaw and struggled to drag her face up to the air. If she’d fought him harder and got a few feet farther out and into the current, she would have been swept away, but the strength went out of her. She surrendered. He brought her to the side of the jetty and dragged her out of the water. She collapsed against him as if all her limbs were broken.