Bleak Water

by Danuta Reah

  Someone came up the stairs behind him. He moved quickly to stand between whoever it was and the body. It wouldn’t be the first time reporters had managed to talk their way in. Then he saw it was Tina Barraclough, looking anxious and jumpy. He watched her, and saw her eyes look past him, down, then jerk quickly away.

  There was something he needed Barraclough to do…for a moment, he had trouble sorting out the myriad tasks that needed allocating, then his mind cleared. Eliza Eliot.

  She’d called it in. When Farnham had arrived, he’d found her with the officers who had responded to the call, huddled on the floor in the office clutching a bottle of vodka. Apparently she’d walked into the hanging figure in the dark – enough to get anyone started on the vodka, in Farnham’s book. But he needed to know what had happened – what she’d seen, what she’d heard and what she’d been doing in the lobby of the Hobson flat at that time anyway, and he needed to know before she drank herself into a stupor. He’d gently detached her from the vodka bottle, but he’d needed to get up here fast.

  ‘DC Barraclough,’ he said. ‘The gallery woman, Eliot. She’s downstairs. Go and see how she is, see if she’s fit to talk. She’s pretty shocked. Make sure they’re looking after her – I’ll be down to talk to her as soon as I can. I want it while it’s fresh, OK?’

  Barraclough nodded and turned back down the stairs towards the gallery. Farnham looked up at the ceiling again. A pulley wheel had been screwed into the joist, and the scenes-of-crime team had found plaster and sawdust on the floor. The rope, threaded through the wheel, looked new – no evidence of fraying or abrasion marks. He’d need to check the photographs taken when they were investigating Cara’s death, but he was pretty sure the pulley wheel was recent – very recent. He could remember putting one in once, in a garage. It had been fairly simple once he’d located the joist.

  He looked down at the draggled figure lying on the floor. A thirteen-year-old girl with her whole life ahead of her, transformed into this cadaver. It would have been dark along here when Eliza had made her find. Would it have been worse to stumble into the figure in the blackness, or to see it with the clarity that he had now? He couldn’t decide.

  As Tina went down the stairs, she couldn’t get the image out of her mind: the body lying on the floor, the blanket that had been draped round the shoulders falling back, revealing the small, chunky figure. And then Farnham had moved slightly and she had seen the face, starkly illuminated by the arc lights. The girl’s hair – what was left of it showed that she had been fair-haired – had been roughly shaved off, leaving wisps and strands. The eyes were gone. There were raw wounds on either side of the head, where the ears had been severed and the blood had run down the face and neck, staining the top the girl had been wearing that glittered with incongruous sequins. A skull. The head had been reduced to a featureless skull.

  Her mind came abruptly back to the moment. She was at the bottom of the stairs, in the entrance hall to the gallery, and she could see someone talking urgently to one of the officers who was controlling access. It was Daniel. Daniel Flynn. She thought he’d gone, left Sheffield the day after the private view. The morning after that disastrous encounter, she had hoped there would be no further involvement of the gallery. But that had been her fear of embarrassment at seeing Eliza Eliot again, Eliza who had watched her leaving with Daniel, an unreadable expression on her face.

  She hadn’t thought about the possibility of Daniel himself being pulled into the investigation. If he was, if she had to tell Farnham what had happened…She thought about the coke, about what Daniel could tell Farnham, if he chose. Oh, Christ, you stupid cow! She hesitated. Daniel had moved out of sight. She could see Eliza Eliot sitting on a bench at the far side of the gallery. She had a blanket wrapped round her shoulders and her hair hung in tangles round her face. This wasn’t the elegant, arty woman of Tina’s memory. She looked a wreck. Tina dithered for a moment. Farnham wanted her to make sure Eliza Eliot was OK, but she needed to talk to Daniel urgently, before he disappeared again. She needed to get some idea of what he was doing here. She made her decision and moved towards the entrance.

  But then she heard feet on the stairs behind her, and she moved back quickly from the door and pretended to be engrossed in one of the posters advertising the exhibition. It was the only reason she could think of for being close to the outside door. Farnham looked at her as he came past. ‘You’re not here to admire the pictures,’ he said. ‘I want to find out what the Eliot woman knows. Now, please.’ He was looking through the doors to where Daniel Flynn had been and his face looked set and angry.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ Tina cursed her luck, took a deep breath and crossed the room to where Eliza was sitting.

  Eliza watched the moon set over the canal, the water changing from the blackness of shadow to the steel gleam of a mirror as the light caught the surface, the air still with the clarity of frost. Someone had put a blanket round her shoulders, someone had pressed a hot drink into her hands. She could hear feet on the stairs, voices around her. It was like a party, like the private view. People came and went through the gallery, doors opened and closed, but she felt shut away from it, not part of the purposeful activity that must, surely, be able to explain that…Her mind switched away. She pulled the blanket more closely around her. She didn’t know if she felt cold or not. The tea slopped over her fingers and down her arm. She looked at the drops that had spilled on to the blanket as they soaked in, leaving a dark stain.

  ‘Eliza…’

  She looked up. It was Tina Barraclough, but she’d changed from the party, was wearing a dark suit, had her hair pulled back off her face. She must have…But it wasn’t the party. Eliza’s head swam, and she remembered how she had walked down the stairs into the gallery. She hadn’t gone to the flat. She didn’t want to take the touch of the thing that swung in the hallway into her home. She’d walked down the stairs past the alarms that had wailed an electronic cacophony around her as she spoke on the phone in Jonathan’s office, her voice sounding calm and distant. Then, and it had seemed the logical thing to do at the time, she had taken the bottle of vodka he kept in his desk, unscrewed the top, and choked down mouthfuls of the pungent liquid. Then she had sat down on the floor, wrapped her arms round her legs and waited, small and unnoticeable in the dark. With the noise of the alarms and the flashing lights, they might not see her. They might just leave her alone in the corner, in the shadows of the gallery, and maybe she could creep back upstairs and sleep until the dream went away.

  ‘Eliza.’ And Roy Farnham was there again. He was crouched down in front of her, looking at her. He took her hand and rubbed it between his own. ‘You’re freezing,’ he said, and looked up at Tina Barraclough. ‘Has the doctor seen her?’

  ‘Yes.’ Eliza could talk for herself. ‘Yes, I’m OK. I think I’m…’

  He let go of her hand as he stood up again. ‘You need to tell us what happened. What was it, Eliza? What made you go out and look?’

  And she was in the darkness again, and the smell was there. Someone needed to get into Cara’s flat and clear out whatever was in there, rotting, decaying…She felt herself begin to shake and the voices went on over her head. She can’t…in shock…seen the medic?…need this as soon as…Stacy’s mother before the papers…need to find out what she…

  She was in the gallery. There were police officers all round. She was with people she knew. Tina Barraclough was there, and Roy Farnham. She was safe. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. Her voice sounded odd, flat and distant, and her tongue felt too big for her mouth. ‘I can remember it all.’ And she closed her eyes and the evening scrolled against her eyelids as she told them. She told them about going out, about the light in Jonathan’s office, about the restaurant just round the corner from the library. ‘It was quiet,’ she said. What had she had to eat? That was Farnham wanting to know. For a moment she thought he was making small talk, then she remembered that she’d been sick, thrown up on the floor like some hopeless drunk. She felt emb
arrassed, then angry with herself for minding.

  And now she could feel the cold welling up from somewhere deep inside her and she wrapped the blanket more closely round her, but that seemed to be keeping the cold in, and she told him about waking up with the draught from the fire door blowing round her, and that creaking noise in the silence of the night.

  ‘Listen, Eliza.’ Farnham was sitting beside her now, trying to get her to focus. ‘Eliza?’ She had a sense that time had passed, and realized that he had finished asking questions. She tried to remember what she’d said, tried to get a grip of her thoughts, but they drifted again. She tried to concentrate on what he was saying. ‘You can’t go back to your flat tonight. Is there someone we can call? Or I can take you to a hotel. I can get someone to bring you some stuff.’

  Maggie, they could call Maggie. Maggie would know. The thought drifted oddly through her mind. Who to call? Laura? But Laura was away. Jonathan? She couldn’t go to Jonathan’s. Where were all her friends? She had no friends, not in this city. She shook her head again, trying to clear it.

  She could hear voices now, and someone was coming towards her. Tina Barraclough. Farnham stood up, and Tina spoke quickly to him. Farnham seemed to demur, then nodded abruptly, said something to Tina that Eliza didn’t catch, then walked away across the room. Tina looked at Eliza and said, ‘There’s someone here – Daniel Flynn.’ She waited for Eliza’s nod. ‘He says you can use his hotel room – he’s coming down to the incident room to talk to us.’ To help us with our inquiries… ‘He’ll take you to the hotel, if that’s what you want…’ Tina sounded uncertain.

  The hotel. Just up the road. That would be fine. ‘That’s…fine,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll drop some stuff off for you,’ Tina said. ‘Some clothes for tomorrow, stuff like that. What do you need?’

  Eliza realized she was in her dressing gown. ‘Some jeans, you know, and wash stuff…’ It all seemed too hard to think about.

  Tina had her coat from somewhere, and a pair of shoes and she was in the entrance to the gallery where Daniel was waiting by the receptionist’s desk. Eliza found herself passed from one to the other as though she had no will of her own. And a strange passivity was holding her. Shock, or the alcohol? She wasn’t sure.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Daniel was looking over her shoulder as he spoke, to where Tina was disappearing behind the closing gallery door, and then he put his arms round her, pressing her head against his shoulder. For a moment, he reminded her of the Madrid Daniel, the companion in the cafés, the lover in the night, the man who shared and understood her ideas about art. But this was Sheffield and it was cold and dark. And Daniel was changed.

  He had his car parked outside the door, in the restricted area. Jonathan wouldn’t…‘I’m a bit woozy.’ She couldn’t begin to explain what she felt.

  ‘They said you put away a fair bit of vodka,’ he said. ‘You look a bit spaced out – best thing, probably.’ Then they were driving fast along the road and the hotel lights were in front of her. He swung the car round into the car park.

  Except it was stopping her from being in control of her thoughts, and Eliza needed, really needed, to be in control of her thoughts. ‘What time is it?’ she said.

  ‘Almost five.’ He opened the car door and helped her out.

  ‘How did you…? What were you doing at the gallery?’ Helping the police with their inquiries.

  ‘I heard the alarm go off. I wasn’t asleep. I guessed where it was coming from so I thought I’d better have a look.’ She felt his arm move in a shrug. ‘The police were swarming round by the time I got there. Anyway, they’d have wanted to talk to me even if I hadn’t turned up.’

  ‘Why…?’ Eliza was having trouble following what he was saying.

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ he said. They were in the hotel lobby now and he was guiding her into the lift.

  She remembered a line from a joke or a cartoon: It sure is disobvious to me. ‘Obvious?’ she said.

  The lift stopped. ‘Don’t worry about it now, Eliza.’ He opened the door of his room. She blinked as the light snapped on. ‘OK, no one will disturb you. I’ll ring when I get back – see what’s happening.’

  She looked at him. She hadn’t realized he was leaving straight away. ‘Stay,’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘Bad idea, Eliza.’ He ran his finger down her cheek. ‘You’ll be OK.’

  She hadn’t meant that. She just didn’t want to be alone.

  The bed looked undisturbed. The room was as neat as if it was unoccupied. The only sign of habitation was a bag stowed in one corner. ‘Go to bed,’ he said. ‘You’re out on your feet.’ He pulled the curtains across the window and went to the door. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said. He hesitated, then closed the door behind him, leaving her alone in the room.

  Farnham leaned back in his chair, listening to Daniel Flynn accounting for his evening, for his sudden arrival at the gallery. A child had been killed, and yet Flynn seemed to be treating this as some kind of game of wits between them. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully, skirting around the edges of the trap he was waiting for them to spring. He had been carefully evasive, only offering information he seemed sure they already had and waiting for questions before he offered anything else. He behaved, in fact, like a man with something to hide, a man who had been coached by a solicitor who knew his job. He had no firm alibi for the evening, not from around nine the previous night, after he’d eaten. He’d gone back to his room.

  Had anyone been with him? No. Had anyone seen him? The reception staff would have seen him come in. Would they remember? Ask them. He had no idea. What had he done then? Watched television, read, had a beer from the mini-bar. He’d ordered a sandwich from room service a bit before midnight. What time had he gone to bed? He hadn’t.

  And how come he’d been at the gallery shortly after the police had arrived?

  He’d heard the alarms going off and had gone along to check.

  Why? Why not phone the police?

  He hadn’t been sure it was the gallery, but he had a valuable exhibition there. That was what he’d been thinking about. He had his mobile, he would have phoned if there was any sign of a break-in. He knew Eliza was there.

  He’d heard the alarms?

  Yes.

  And he’d known…?

  He hadn’t known but he’d thought they might be from the gallery.

  He’d been in his room at the other side of the hotel and he’d heard the alarms from the gallery? All that way?

  No, he hadn’t meant that. Sorry. He hadn’t been able to sleep, so he’d gone out for a walk.

  Where?

  Along the towpath. And that was when he’d heard the alarms. He hadn’t made the connection at first. By the time he’d got to the gallery – he’d made his way back to the hotel, picked up his car – by the time he’d got to the gallery, the police were there. He’d hung around trying to find out what had happened. Then he’d realized that Eliza needed help so he’d offered his room.

  So what time had he left the hotel?

  About ten minutes before the alarms went off.

  Could anyone corroborate that?

  The night porter had seen him.

  Did he know a girl called Stacy McDonald?

  No.

  Did he know the McDonald girl had been missing?

  No.

  Where had he been the night that Cara Hobson had died?

  In Whitby.

  Could anyone confirm that?

  Probably not. He’d spent the early evening in the pub, talked to a few people, had a game of darts.

  And then?

  He’d gone for a walk, got some fish and chips. And no, he hadn’t met anyone. He doubted they’d remember him in the chip shop. It was the first time he’d been there.

  When had he got back?

  Half nine? Ten?

  And Friday, the day of the opening?

  He’d spent the afternoon in his hotel room.


  Alone?

  Alone. He’d got to the gallery just after half past six. He’d left there about eight-thirty, gone for something to eat.

  And then?

  He’d gone back to his hotel, probably got in around midnight.

  Could anyone corroborate that?

  The staff at the restaurant? The hotel staff?

  Flynn was hiding something, but if the hotel staff could corroborate his story, Farnham had no reason to hold him. It didn’t prove anything, but whoever had strung Stacy McDonald up had spent some time in the lobby of Cara Hobson’s flat, if Farnham was right, and the pulley wheel had been put in the ceiling that night. Flynn told them he had no plans to go anywhere, that he might return to Whitby, but he would let them know if he did. In the end, Farnham let him go, pending confirmation of his story.

  It was well into the morning by then. Farnham left the interview room and went to his office. He was looking out of the window, watching the first glimmer of light to the east, when he saw Tina Barraclough leaving the building, walking briskly towards a car parked on the other side of the road, as Flynn came into view. She stopped when she saw him, and her face was tense and anxious. Flynn smiled at her and shook his head before he turned back towards the town centre. Barraclough stayed by the car, her hand on the door, her eyes on the retreating figure.

  TWELVE

  The day had started early. The team, gathered for the briefing, were showing signs of fatigue. They were under-staffed, Farnham knew. He needed at least two more senior officers and he wouldn’t get those for another couple of days – and he needed more people on the ground. Someone gave him a cup of coffee – black, bitter, from the machine. The plastic cup was almost too hot to hold, the liquid slopping over the sides, scalding his fingers. He ignored that and took a swallow, feeling the effect of the caffeine almost immediately. The briefing was coming to an end. The mood was sombre. Almost no progress on the first killing, and now they had a second. Cara Hobson had been nineteen and a prostitute. But Stacy McDonald had been a child.