Woman in the Water

by Katerina Diamond

  ‘I think for now we need to get more information on Reece Corrigan and then we can show our hand.’

  ‘Let’s go back and tell the DCI that we have identified the woman. That’s a huge break,’ Adrian said.

  ‘Yes, and then we need to find out everything we can about Reece Corrigan and that construction company. Maybe bring that Jimmy Chilton guy in for questioning, see if we can’t get him to tell us something useful. Find any other employees who have left and see what they have to say about the place. Maybe Fiona Merton will know someone else that her brother used to work with over there who we can speak to. Maybe Simon spoke to her about Corrigan,’ Imogen said.

  ‘Reece Corrigan just became suspect number one.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I dust the blusher on my cheeks and hope that it’s enough. I wash my hands in the sink, the residual foundation on the back of my hand running into the drain, then I inspect my face again as I dry my hands. I have my mask on again. My white privilege, my hundred-pound Christian Louboutin lipstick and Moschino dress, coupled with my white Blahnik shoes. Who wouldn’t want to be me?

  I didn’t choose any of these things myself. I have a personal shopper who consults with R. She has a luxury boutique in the city and keeps a clothes rail just for me at the back. I can choose from that rail, but that’s hardly a choice at all. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the things I have; it’s just what comes with it. Most people would give anything to have everything that I have. At least they think they would.

  I take several deep breaths with my eye on the clock – ten seconds of deep breathing before I go downstairs to meet R – we are going out. He likes to be seen out with me, likes people to know how much he has. I am nothing but a possession to him. He owns me.

  I grab the gold hoop earrings he took out of the safe and told me to wear today. I head towards the stairs.

  At the top of the stairs I hear R talking to someone. I can’t tell who at this point, but I am glad of it – he behaves much better in front of other people.

  I brace myself for a social interaction; they are always hard. The more I speak to people the more lost I feel, the further inside the lies. Do I even know who I am anymore? Always acting, always pretending to be someone I am not. I must pretend to be the doting wife, the perfect woman. I must make him look good. If anyone even gets a whiff of the monster he is inside, without him wanting them to, then I have to face his wrath. Something I am more than accustomed to. This is me. This is my life. To be a mark of his success, his virility, his desirability, his power.

  I gulp in a breath before treading on the first step down. I must keep my composure. I put my earrings in as I take each step – it gives me an excuse not to make eye contact – but I glance up and see them there. I’m tense anyway, I’m always tense, but seeing the police at the door knots my spine immediately. I recognise them. They are the ones who tried to help me. Did they find me? I thought I had got away without anyone knowing who I was. I mustn’t let R know that I know who they are. I hope they play along.

  They both look up at me, initially a little confused, probably because of the age difference between R and me – it always makes people uncomfortable. I see them totting up the cost of my clothes as they look me up and down, wondering how much it costs to keep a girl like me around. Then came that spark of recognition that I was dreading.

  They continue their conversation without skipping a beat and I hear them talking about Simon. Poor Simon. I thought there was more distance between R and Simon, but apparently not. R is smiling and he moves his elbow a little, signalling for me to play my part. I oblige.

  I walk forwards and slip my hand through his arm. I kiss him and I can feel the judgement from the female detective, or maybe I am projecting, maybe it’s me who’s placing judgement on myself. I hate myself for playing along with his game, but every time I try to break away I get hurt, or I get someone else hurt. Or worse, killed.

  DS Adrian Miles looks at me in a way that reminds me of so many people before him, people who have tried to help me, people who paid a price for that. It’s always men, which I find annoying. Do women just think I made my bed and I should lie in it, or is it more sinister than that? Is it because the men want me, is that all I am? Is it a hero complex? Is it because I am pretty, or is it because I remind them of someone else?

  I hate them for recognising that weakness in me, I hate them for wanting to help or maybe exploit that weakness, I hate them for giving me hope that they can free me from this gilded cage. I know they can’t. I hate myself for not knowing who or how to trust anymore.

  I want to go with them, but I know R knows how to get me back, he always knows. An image flashes in my mind. I don’t react because I never do, but it’s Simon, broken and bloody, begging for help, a split second and that’s it. My mind cuts instantly to lying in the river and praying for death but still somehow fighting to stay alive by pulling myself from the water, feeling both relieved and disappointed when DS Miles came to rescue me. I wish I could remember more, but it just won’t come. That whole night is a blur, I didn’t lie about that.

  I smile, make my excuses and go to the kitchen. I breathe out and suppress the urge either to scream or throw up. I pour myself a gin; I’m not driving today, not that that would stop me. I hear the door close a few minutes later and drink to another lost opportunity as the police walk towards their car.

  Bracing myself yet again for a moment alone with R, I finish what’s in the glass and hear R on the phone to someone from the company, chastising them for something. At least it wasn’t me who disappointed him this time – I would hate to have to do my make-up again.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  There was a plethora of information on the rise of Corrigan Construction. Adrian had found article after article online about contract bids won by the company, including many of the bigger construction jobs in the county and beyond. Over the ten years they had been in the area, their profile had increased exponentially. The head office building Adrian and Imogen had visited had been constructed when the company moved into the area, bringing with them hundreds of job opportunities.

  Adrian couldn’t stop thinking about the difference between the woman they had seen in that hospital bed and the polished Angela Corrigan with her Dynasty looks. They needed to speak to her alone, without being under the watchful eye of her husband. A husband who had never reported her missing, even though she was in the hospital for several days. Adrian could only imagine what kind of state she had been in when she turned up back at home.

  There was something else bothering Adrian. Something that had just occurred to him. Adrian had been all over the news when he rescued Angela Corrigan from the river, so unless Reece had been living under a rock then he would have seen that footage. Granted, Angela looked nothing like the woman they had seen at Corrigan’s house, but at the same time, if Reece had been involved in what happened to her, then surely he would have been paying attention when the news said she had been fished out of the water, that Adrian had pulled her out. This was the point that Adrian was stuck on. How much did Reece actually know?

  He obviously knew his wife was missing from their home, but did he know where she was? Did he know what had happened and why? When he opened the door and saw Adrian standing there, did he know that Adrian had pulled her from the river?

  More secrets. More lies.

  ‘Find anything interesting?’ Imogen said, putting a coffee in front of him.

  ‘Lots of stuff about the business, not much about the man. Literally pages of results online about Corrigan Construction. Charity things, building jobs, but they all seem to be kind of impersonal and distant. There’s got to be more to him than this.’

  ‘I was thinking about that, actually,’ Imogen said. ‘He said they got sued by someone a couple of years ago. Who was that? I bet they have a story to tell.’

  ‘Good thinking. I’ll see if I can find out who it was.’

  Adrian typed in the bu
zzwords and looked through the results. He found a small article four pages into the search engine in an old local paper about an accident that had happened on one of the Corrigan building sites. A man lost his arm owing to a faulty piece of machinery.

  ‘This guy lost his arm on a Corrigan building site two years ago. The timing fits. If nothing else, we know this guy used to work for the company. Maybe even at the same time as Simon Glover and Leon Quick.’

  ‘I just keep seeing it repeatedly. Leon Quick was a bit tense when we got there and then minutes later, he decided to take his own life,’ Imogen said, preoccupied by what had happened the day before. ‘Did we do that?’

  ‘I don’t think he was fine when we got there, to be honest. Did you see how jittery he was?’

  ‘I thought he might be on something, or you know, in withdrawal, but the preliminary path reports say he was clean.’

  ‘Just anxious; scared of something or someone,’ Adrian said.

  ‘Do you think Angela Corrigan knows why he killed himself?’

  ‘If she does, I don’t think she will tell us. No one seems to be telling us anything.’

  ‘You think Reece Corrigan is the one who gave her those injuries and left her in the river?’

  ‘He didn’t report her missing. He must have known where she was or thought she wasn’t coming back. Did he even care? But then, why would she go back to him?’

  ‘Is it a money thing? That house, that car, don’t come cheap. Is that why she stays with him? I always used to struggle to understand why a woman would choose to stay in an abusive relationship, but with the things I have seen in this job, I am just thankful for everyone who gets out. If he did think she was dead she could have been home free. She could have disappeared without a trace.’

  ‘I don’t think either of us are in a position to judge other people for their relationships. Maybe she’s too scared to leave. We need to speak to her alone,’ Adrian said.

  He would be lying if he said he didn’t hold some resentment towards his mother for not getting out while she could, for staying with the person who made their life hell. He wouldn’t hear anyone else say that, though; she was as much a victim as he was.

  ‘How are you with all this?’ Imogen asked as if reading his thoughts.

  ‘Right now? I’m really angry. I want to get her out of there.’

  ‘Until she confirms what we already think we know then we are powerless. She didn’t give us any fingerprints or DNA at the hospital, so we can’t even prove that she is Jane Doe. They will have top lawyer money and they could explain their way out of it. Say it was a lookalike or something.’

  ‘But it is her.’

  ‘So, we wait until he leaves for work and then we go and speak to her. We’ll brief the DCI today and we can go in the morning. If we blow this, then we put her in even more danger. Not to mention the fact that we have absolutely no proof that Reece Corrigan is to blame for Simon Glover’s death and Leon Quick never specifically named him. It could just as easily be someone else at the company. Corrigan himself said they employed plenty of ex-cons. We have nothing.’

  ‘It was him. I can feel it. I’d rather keep an eye on him. A violent man like that, he is bound to step out of line. I saw it time and again with my father. It didn’t matter how many times he claimed to have changed, he always resorted to that closed fist again.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ Imogen said.

  ‘I’m suggesting a romantic evening in the car with a chip butty and couple of Tizers. We can brief the DCI in the morning.’

  ‘You want to stake out the house?’

  ‘I feel responsible for that woman, Imogen. Isn’t there some old proverb that says if you save someone’s life it then becomes your duty to protect them? I feel like I have to make sure she is OK.’

  ‘How do you know that the violence is not the compromise she is willing to make for that lavish lifestyle?’

  ‘That doesn’t make it right. Besides, she was trying to leave, remember? At least that’s what the passport suggests.’

  Adrian tried not to sound as annoyed as he was. His words were clipped and his jaw clenched to stop himself from snapping at Imogen.

  ‘Of course not. I am not saying it’s right at all. I’m just saying, she might not thank you for getting involved.’

  ‘That’s our job, to get involved. Do you know how different my life would have been if the police got involved once in a while, how different my mother’s life would have been? Thankfully, we don’t have the same insane domestic abuse laws that existed when I was a kid. Did you know that up until 1991 it was legal to have sex with your wife without her consent? Can you imagine that? It wasn’t considered rape if you were married.’

  ‘You’re taking everything I say the wrong way. We’re both responsible for Angela Corrigan, but what’s happening to her isn’t our fault, though. It’s Reece Corrigan’s – we think.’

  ‘It has to be him,’ Adrian said, blowing the air from his cheeks, trying to calm himself.

  ‘And we’ll get him, we will. But we can’t go about this half-cocked. If we want to nail that shitbag then we have to do it by the book.’

  Adrian admired Imogen’s optimism, but he knew from experience that domestic abuse was so much more complicated than that. He saw his mother get hurt time and again, almost as many times as she defended his father’s behaviour to Adrian. Even when people tried to help, she would push them away.

  He wasn’t angry at Imogen, though. How could she understand? How could anyone who hadn’t been in that situation? It was hard to explain that it was possible to love someone who hurt you. That it was fear that kept you in line, not just the fear of what they might do to you when you were there, but also an amplified fear of what they would do to you if you tried to leave. And then there were the things they told you: that you would never make it without them, that you were nothing and that you deserved everything you were getting. How could you make someone who hadn’t lived through it understand?

  Chapter Thirty

  The smell of chips saturated in vinegar was less appealing after you had finished eating them. Imogen and Adrian had parked among some other cars on a hill behind the Corrigan house, the remnants of their takeaway tossed onto the back seat of the car.

  The back of the house was different to the front. It was almost completely windows and you could see everything inside. Fortunately, their position was fairly obscured by greenery. It felt like they were watching a TV show, a big glass box with little people moving around inside. Angela Corrigan sat on a chair in the lounge reading a book. She didn’t look relaxed or even engaged – it looked like a pretence, but then why would anyone keep it up when they were alone in a room? Reece Corrigan was upstairs in an office on the phone. He seemed angry, certainly not the personable man they had met earlier that day, but then they already knew that was a facade.

  ‘You wouldn’t like to live in a house like that, then?’ Adrian asked again, drinking the last of his can of Coke before stuffing it into a carrier bag full of rubbish.

  Was this a discussion about living together? Like proper grown-ups? Imogen wondered. They had so many things to think about before that could happen. He hadn’t even told his son, Tom, they were dating and she didn’t want him to, didn’t want to jinx it. They hadn’t even said the l-word to each other yet. Not that she was playing a game or anything, but Imogen didn’t want to be the one to say it first. Self-preservation, she imagined, especially when she considered how much more complicated that made things. When love comes into play the stakes get much higher.

  ‘It’s like a fishbowl. I have always seen myself as a cottage-by-the-sea kind of a girl,’ Imogen said.

  It was true; she had always imagined that kind of future. There was something decidedly un-Imogen about it, but that’s what she wanted. That was the dream.

  ‘Not in the city, then?’

  ‘It’s convenient, but if I didn’t have to go in to work every day, I would rather be looking at
the horizon. I mean, this is pretty and all, but there is just something about the sea that fills me with wonder. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I do know what you mean. I’ve always lived in the city, though. Couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. What if you want a cheeky kebab in the middle of the night or something?’

  ‘They have kebab shops in smaller towns, you know?’

  ‘Yeah, but they are usually shut by eight o’clock.’

  ‘How would you know? So, no midnight kebab shop is a deal-breaker for you?’

  ‘At this stage in my life, I feel like it is. I’m a simple man, Imogen.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  The office light turned off and they watched Reece go downstairs into the lounge where his wife was sitting. Although she didn’t stop what she was doing immediately, her posture changed. She seemed more alert. Something about the way Angela had tensed made Imogen feel a little nauseous. Reece said something, a command maybe, and Angela put her book down on the coffee table before standing.

  They spoke briefly and he brushed the side of her face with the back of his hand, bringing it down and gently holding her chin as he kissed her forcefully on the mouth. She recoiled, but he just pushed further. He moved his hand down further still, putting his fingers for a moment around her throat until she kissed him back, opening her mouth and accepting his tongue. He removed his hand from her throat and started to undo his trousers.

  Imogen’s stomach turned and she looked across at Adrian, who had the beginnings of a grimace on his face. From this distance it was hard to tell how Angela really felt about all of this. Maybe this was just the way they did things. No one knows what goes on inside a relationship except the people involved.

  She walked over to the sofa and lay down. He climbed on top of her. Imogen was grateful that from this aspect they could only see the back of the sofa, Angela’s fingers gripping the top for several minutes until Corrigan eventually stood up and buttoned his flies.