Bleak Water

by Danuta Reah

  Jonathan arrived late. He’d had a bad night, he explained irritably, and he didn’t want to spend all day shut in his office in the gallery. That reminded Eliza she was supposed to check and sign the statement she’d given to DC Barraclough the day before. She was probably the last-known person to have seen – or at least to have heard – Cara alive. Jonathan sighed when she told him.

  ‘I’ve got to go out,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a meeting and I don’t want to leave Mel on her own.’

  This was the first Eliza had heard of any meeting. ‘Can’t it wait? Mel needs supervising.’ Or she’ll spend all morning with her feet up and her magazines.

  ‘Mel’s fine,’ he said.

  She looked at him. He seemed tense and anxious. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Oh…’ His sigh was audible. ‘The police have been in touch. They’ve searched her flat, and the stairs, and now they want to look over the gallery.’ So that was the reason for the sudden appointment. He didn’t want the hassle of dealing with them. There was nothing she could do about that. ‘When will you be back?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said, more sharply than she’d intended. ‘I’ve never been involved in a murder inquiry before.’

  He looked a bit shamefaced at that. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Oh, well, you’ll have to go. Oh, I suppose I can rearrange things.’

  Eliza left early for her appointment. She wanted ten minutes to herself with some decent coffee before she had to think about Cara again, about Cara’s death, about the shabby flat and the still bundle in the cot. She walked along to the canal basin, to the café, and sat in the window in a soft chair, watching the boats, people coming and going along the towpath. Something caught her eye. A picture in a newspaper being read by a young man, glimpsed as he ambled by.

  There were newspapers in the racks and on the tables. She went to look, flicking through the nationals, not seeing what she was looking for. Then she saw that the early edition of the local paper was out. She opened it, and the photograph looked back at her. Cara and Briony Rose. She put the paper down on the table in front of her. What had she expected? Of course it would be in the local paper. It was probably in the nationals somewhere. She looked at the headline. She read it once without taking it in, then she read it again. CONCERN FOR CHILD IN PROSTITUTE KILLING. It must be the wrong story. The story didn’t go with the picture. It…

  She read the article slowly, her heart sinking. The police were treating Cara’s death as suspicious; and they believed that Cara had been a prostitute. She had been out on the streets the night she was killed, the article said. That was ridiculous. Cara hadn’t been a prostitute. She…But Eliza’s rejection of the idea was starting to lose its force. The gallery was very near to the red-light areas of West Bar Green and Corporation Street. Eliza had seen the prostitutes waiting at the kerb side often enough. And Cara had been young, lonely and poor.

  But the main focus of the article was the baby. Eliza had a feeling that, if it hadn’t been for the involvement of the child, Cara’s death – Cara’s murder? The police hadn’t said anything about murder – would have merited only a brief paragraph on an inside page. She read on. Briony Rose had been hypothermic and dehydrated when she was found, having been shut in the flat for over twelve hours. She was still being treated, but was ‘expected to make a full recovery’. Cara must have left the baby while she went out to work. And then the editorial rehashed Ellie’s murder in a dramatic ‘canal of death’ paragraph.

  She read through the article twice, trying to make sense of it, then she looked at her watch. Shit! She was late. She grabbed her things and ran along the road and up the hill towards the brick block that housed the police headquarters.

  ‘Ms Eliot, thank you for coming in.’ It was DC Barraclough, the young woman Eliza had talked to the day before. She was still tired and heavyeyed. It looked as though she had a social life to match her appearance. ‘I know you’re busy at the gallery.’

  ‘It’s the private view on Friday,’ Eliza said, moving automatically into PR mode. ‘Why don’t you come?’ she added, remembering the woman’s interest – I thought it was a red horse…

  DC Barraclough looked surprised. ‘Maybe I will,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll send you an invitation,’ Eliza said.

  The other woman focused on the papers in front of her. ‘There’s one or two things in your statement I wanted to check…’ she said now. She frowned as she looked round the room. ‘Thank you for coming in,’ she said again. She shook her head, trying to organize her thoughts.

  ‘Before we start…’ Eliza said.

  DC Barraclough shot her a quick look and waited.

  ‘The baby,’ Eliza said. ‘Briony Rose. How is she?’ She couldn’t get the image of that still bundle out of her mind.

  ‘She’s doing well, she’ll be out of hospital soon.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to her?’

  DC Barraclough shook her head again. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, taking out a sheaf of notes. ‘That’s in the hands of social services. Now,’ she changed the subject briskly, ‘let me run through those timings with you again,’ she said. ‘We’d like to get them a bit more specific.’

  ‘You said it was a general idea you wanted,’ Eliza said. She felt a mixture of relief and anxiety about the baby.

  ‘Just a bit more specific. You closed the fire door a bit before midnight –’

  Eliza nodded. ‘It must have been, because I heard her walking around in the flat later.’

  ‘– and then you say you heard the baby crying, and that was when you heard Cara? Can you remember the time?’

  ‘I remember I looked at the clock,’ Eliza said. ‘I was so fed up about being woken up again. But I can’t remember what time it was. You said it must have been around midnight.’ She frowned, thinking back. That was the way it had happened, wasn’t it?

  She saw DC Barraclough look past her, and turned round. A tall, fair-haired man had come into the room. It was a moment before she recognized him as Roy Farnham, the man from the funeral, the man who had been at the gallery yesterday, taking charge when they found the baby.

  ‘Thank you for coming in, Miss Eliot,’ he said.

  ‘Eliza,’ she said. He nodded and looked thoughtfully at DC Barraclough, whose face was a bit pink.

  ‘Is everything all right, Barraclough?’ he said. His voice was polite, but DC Barraclough looked more flushed. He turned to Eliza. ‘I’d like a clearer idea of the evening. Can we go over it again?’

  She nodded. ‘I was explaining to DC Barraclough,’ she said. ‘It’s really hard to remember.’

  He dismissed that. ‘Don’t worry. Let’s see what we’ve got here.’ He took her through the evening with Cara, the time Cara left her flat, what Eliza had done next. ‘You don’t give yourself much time off,’ he said with a quick smile. She smiled back. ‘Right, so you worked for – what – all of the evening? Did you do anything else?’

  ‘No, I worked, then I felt tired, so I got ready for bed.’

  ‘And then…’

  ‘I went to bed. I read for a while…’

  ‘Let’s go through that again,’ he said. ‘It was about half past seven when you went upstairs with Cara Hobson. You had coffee and then she went – how long did she stay?’

  ‘Oh, only as long as it took to drink the coffee. Twenty minutes or so.’

  ‘OK. So about half past eight, you started working. How much work did you get through?’

  ‘There was a folder of stuff – I got that finished. It must have taken me more than a couple of hours…Yes. The news was finishing – I meant to watch it and I missed it.’ He didn’t say anything, just waited. ‘I had a shower,’ she said. It was coming clearer.

  ‘So it would have been about eleven by the time you got to bed.’

  She nodded again. ‘And then I read until I began to fall asleep, you know.’

  ‘And something woke you up?’ he prompted.

  ‘It was the draught f
rom the door,’ she said. ‘There’s a fire door leading on to the steps, and sometimes Cara didn’t shut it properly when she came in. I had to get up and shut it.’

  ‘So you were wide awake,’ he said. His smile was sympathetic. ‘And an early start the next day?’

  She looked at him. ‘I remember now, I looked at the clock. It was after one. I was really pissed off. And that was when I heard the footsteps. I was trying to get to sleep, but I could hear Cara walking around with the baby.’

  ‘And then…’

  She frowned. ‘Something else woke me up later, I remember that. I spent the rest of the night in the chair. The baby was crying. But it was something else woke me up.’ She shook her head. She didn’t know what it was.

  ‘Someone going out? Opening the fire door?’

  Eliza shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t hear that. I don’t know what it was.’ In her mind, she could hear the wailing cry of the wind as it blew through the empty windows of the derelict buildings. She shook her head. She’d be guessing now. ‘I made myself a drink. It was about two, I think. I’d forgotten.’ She felt pleased with herself for remembering.

  Farnham nodded. ‘Did you hear anything else from Cara’s flat? Apart from the baby.’

  Eliza thought. ‘No, it was only the baby. I don’t remember hearing anything else.’

  ‘OK,’ he said again. ‘And you didn’t see Cara at all after she left your flat?’

  ‘No.’ Eliza remembered Cara as she walked towards the door. Hindsight – was it hindsight? – made her a sad and lonely figure. ‘No, I didn’t see her again.’

  He stood up. ‘Thank you, Miss Eliot, you’ve been very helpful. DC Barraclough will sort out your statement with you.’ Eliza was aware suddenly of the other woman as a silent presence in the room, aware of a tension in the air.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘There was something I wanted to know…I don’t know if you can tell me…’

  Farnham waited, his hand on the door.

  She knew he must be busy, but she had to ask. ‘The paper,’ she said. She could see his expression changing, becoming cautious. ‘They said something about the canal, they called it “the canal of death” and they mentioned Ellie Chapman. Why are they making a connection? Is it just the canal?’

  He looked at her. ‘You knew Ellie,’ he said. He seemed to hesitate, then he said, ‘We found Cara Hobson’s body near Cadman Street Bridge.’

  Of course. The place where Ellie’s body had been found dumped in the undergrowth by the towpath, an accidental find. The police were searching the towpath after a junkie had OD’d in a boat moored by the canal side.

  ‘It’s a deserted place,’ he went on, ‘but it’s bang in the centre of the city – and there’s a lot of dodgy places close by, you must be aware of that – a good place to shoot up, a good place to take a punter. A good place to dump a body.’ He looked at her to make sure she understood. ‘There’s no other link,’ he said.

  It was gone twelve by the time Eliza left the police station. Somehow, she had expected the news of Cara’s death to have more impact, for the people going about their business in the city to be concerned, aware, talking about the death that had occurred in their midst. Eliza only felt that sense of involvement, that sense of something cataclysmic having happened, because she had known Cara. Otherwise, would the death of a prostitute have weighed heavily on her mind?

  The thought depressed her and she returned to the gallery in a bad mood. The police had been and gone. The search of the gallery had revealed nothing, and Jonathan was preparing to leave for the meeting he’d been agitating about earlier. She showed him the paper and he scanned it in trepidation. ‘They mention the gallery,’ he said.

  ‘Well, they would.’ Eliza hung up her coat and pulled on the smock she used to protect her clothes when she was moving stuff around. ‘Cara lived here.’

  ‘She lived in the flats, Eliza. They’re nothing to do with the gallery.’ He rattled the paper irritably.

  ‘Yes, well…’ Eliza’s mind was moving between the events of yesterday and the work she still needed to do.

  ‘I knew it was a bad idea letting the flat to that child,’ he said. ‘And now we’re going to have all the pimps and kerb crawlers knocking on our door. It was bad enough when it was a kindergarten, but now we’re a fucking brothel.’

  ‘What other kind of brothel would there be?’ Eliza said wearily. ‘Shut up, Jonathan.’

  He looked a bit abashed. Eliza wasn’t really angry with him. He’d had a stressful day, the preparation for the opening disrupted by the visit from the police team. She supposed he was just dealing with it in his own way. He pulled his coat on. ‘I won’t be back today,’ he said. ‘Phone if anything urgent comes up.’

  ‘It won’t,’ Eliza reassured him. She made herself some coffee – instant, yuk – and took it upstairs so that she could get on with her work for Flynn’s exhibition. She was behind now. But the words ‘suspicious death’ kept resonating in her mind, and she kept thinking of feet moving silently through the gallery in the dark, in the night, a couple of floors below where she slept, coming to the stairs, beginning their stealthy climb…Stop it! ‘Drama queen!’ she said out loud. No one had come into the gallery. The police had checked. The paper said that Cara had gone out, gone working, leaving the baby alone in the flat.

  Cara had been in the flat during the night – Eliza had heard her. She must have gone out after that. She could remember the sound of crying. The crying had sounded almost hysterical, and then it had gradually faded into hiccuping sobs, and then into silence. Eliza stood still in the empty gallery, the light from the low winter sun casting long shadows across the floor. What had been going on, on the other side of the wall, in the dark, in the night, when she, Eliza, had been curled up in her chair, drinking cocoa, slipping away into dreams?

  Madrid

  Eliza’s eighteen months in Madrid slipped past her like a dream. Once Daniel Flynn had arrived, time seemed to kick into overdrive in a whirl of excitement, of art and books and travel and sex and wine.

  It was a month since they’d first met. Their relationship had taken off with a giddy speed that still made her uncertain about its status and durability. In her experience, a swift tumble into intimacy was usually followed by an equally – but less pleasant – tumble into indifference or enmity. His arrival in Madrid originally had been a random zag in an unplanned drift around Europe. But he’d prolonged his stay in Madrid, taking a summer rental. Ivan Bakst, the man he’d been travelling with had moved on, but Daniel had stayed. He’d started spending a lot of time at the Prado, his status as a rising young artist making him a welcome visitor, gaining him entry when the museum was closed, and giving him access to off-limits areas, such as the workshops where Eliza was now.

  She picked up her magnifying glass. The portrait on the easel in front of her was illuminated by a raking light, showing the brush strokes that a living artist had placed on the canvas almost five hundred years before. Portrait of Sophia. She moved the glass across the surface, studying the paint. The picture had been damaged at the bottom left. She could see the multi-layered structure of the red paint of the woman’s cuff. She made a note.

  Daniel would be upstairs in the Flemish rooms, studying the Brueghel. He was beginning to share her obsession. He was searching, he’d told her. He knew what he wanted his next work to be about, but he couldn’t decide on its form. He was an eclectic artist, prepared to use any materials that came to hand and seemingly competent in most traditional and non-traditional media. He found Eliza’s interest in Renaissance art hard to understand. ‘It’s gone, it’s past,’ he’d said once when they’d discussed it. But he was spending more and more time in front of The Triumph of Death, more and more time listening to her ideas about it.

  Later that morning, they met for coffee in one of the pavement cafés that abounded in the city. They sat in the sun as the waiter came over to fill their cups and take an order for churros, the sweet batter sticks that El
iza had developed an addiction for.

  His exhibition was starting to come together in his head, he told her. He wanted to focus on The Triumph of Death. ‘I want to put it in a current setting,’ he said. ‘A cityscape, industrial ruins. I want to show people a modern triumph of death.’ He had a small reproduction of the Brueghel, and he wanted to pick her brains about its background, the nature of its composition. The waiter put a plate down in front of her and he helped himself.

  ‘It’s heavily symbolic,’ Eliza said. She dipped her churros into her coffee, and let the crisp sweetness melt on her tongue as she thought about it. ‘It’s a series of tableaux that people would have recognized. You’d need some modern equivalents. Look here, for example –’ She pointed out the fallen woman about to be crushed under the wheels of the death cart. ‘She’s holding a spindle, and the scissors in her other hand are about to cut the thread. That’s Fate. When the thread of your life is cut, you die. I don’t know what that image would mean to a modern audience. Or here, the lovers.’ They were singing to each other, absorbed, close, doomed, as Death added his counterpoint to their duet.

  SIX

  Farnham’s summons came sooner than Tina expected. She’d gone back to the incident room and was sitting at her desk making a pretence of going over her notes. She just needed a few minutes. Her eyes were starting to close, and she jolted awake as Dave nudged her. ‘Get a grip,’ he muttered. Farnham was coming into the room.

  He looked at Dave. ‘There’s someone waiting for you in interview 2, West,’ he said. Dave vanished with alacrity.

  Farnham stayed where he was, looking at Tina. She felt a twist of nerves in her stomach, and swallowed. She could remember the way he’d looked at her as Eliza Eliot was leaving, a long, assessing look.

  He said. ‘My office. Five minutes.’ He went out through the double doors, towards his room.

  Tina took a deep breath. OK, better to have it out in the open. She went along the corridor and knocked on his door. He was sitting at his desk, a sheet of paper in his hands, a witness statement. He looked tired. ‘So, Tina,’ he said, his tone conversational. ‘You’re planning a move to Traffic?’