by Danuta Reah
She looked at the unfinished letter to Marcus Holbrook. Everything there was consistent with what Holbrook had said. Sean had told Gemma that the archive wasn’t available. Gemma had appealed directly to Holbrook – on what grounds? Why would Gemma feel that Holbrook might be prepared to give her access to an archive that was in the process of being catalogued? Roz looked at Gemma’s letter. You’ll remember the tape I…The tape I…what? Gave you? Asked about? Offered? Whatever it was, Holbrook apparently didn’t remember it.
Gemma had spent three years in Novosibirsk researching for her PhD. She must have collected hours of tapes. Maybe she had offered the whole collection to Holbrook, though it seemed unlikely, under the circumstances, that he would have forgotten that. Also, tapes of Russian speakers would hardly be unusual. Gemma had travelled from Arkhangelsk to Dudinka in the course of her research into – she racked her brains – Nenets, a language spoken in northernmost Russia, from the White Sea to the Yenisei River. There were about 25,000 people who spoke the language. Roz’s geography of Russia was rudimentary, so she went to get her atlas to check on her locations. Novosibirsk was nearly a thousand miles south of the areas where Nenets was spoken. She looked at the map again, running her finger along the northern coastline. Gemma had enjoyed her time in Siberia, and she had travelled. Where was it, the place where they had given her the tapestry that glowed on the wall of her poky flat? There it was: Dudinka, on the mouth of the Yenisei River.
She felt a sense of achievement, which faded as she realized that it didn’t get her any further. She racked her brains. Something in her conversation with Holbrook had rung bells and she couldn’t think what it was. She tapped her pencil against her teeth as she thought. She looked at the letter again.
Dear Professor Holbrook
Holbrook Archive
I contacted your assistant recently about access to the archive to do some tape comparisons. Apparently the collection is currently being catalogued and isn’t available at the moment. You’ll remember the tape I
It looked as though Gemma was writing to someone she knew. There were assumptions of shared experience and knowledge – You’ll remember…And the apparent assumption that Holbrook would do her a favour. The letter was obviously building up to a request for access to the archive, or part of the archive, presumably the tape that Holbrook would ‘remember’. And yet Holbrook didn’t remember. Nor had he said anything to Roz about Gemma. It had seemed odd at the time that he’d made no expression of regret, no reference to what had happened, just a rather querulous complaint that the police had talked to him. She had assumed it was just the way he was – the totally self-centred academic. But if he and Gemma had been friendly…Maybe he just hated any display of emotion. English male, stiff upper lip.
Hull, Wednesday evening
The post-mortem report had landed on Lynne’s desk in the middle of the afternoon, but she hadn’t had time to read it. It was after six before she managed to clear the backlog on her desk and start to look at the new tasks that had come in. Then she pulled the pathologist’s report from her in-tray and looked at it. Once she knew how the woman she thought of as Katya had died, she would have a clearer idea of whether there was any link between her death and the murder of Gemma Wishart.
The report came down, in the end, to a conclusion of atypical drowning. There was evidence that the woman had been assaulted before she died, but those injuries – old and more recent bruises – had been documented at the hospital. There were in addition injuries to her hands that the hospital hadn’t recorded. Her hands were bruised and one of the nails on her right hand was torn right down. The report noted that these injuries could have been sustained while she was in the water, but it was not possible to state definitively if the injuries were ante- or post-mortem. The toxicology study revealed nothing unexpected. There was a blood alcohol level consistent with a glass of wine or a double whisky, but no evidence of other drugs. The woman had eaten a few hours before she died, just some bread, nothing cooked or complicated.
There were few of the expected findings of drowning – no evidence of aspiration of water and no foam in the airways – but the report said that there were pinpoint petechial haemorrhages on the upper chest and neck. These are not usually seen in drowning, the report said, but are found in cases of laryngeal spasm. The pathologist noted that conditions around the time of Katya’s death would make this a possibility and account for the lack of other signs of drowning. The sudden immersion in cold water would have chilled the neck and chest. If there had been immediate inhalation of water, the larynx would have gone into reflex spasm leading to rapid asphyxia. The report suggested that the body had been in the water for two to three days, but the low temperature made a more accurate assessment impossible.
Lynne frowned. She wanted something more conclusive. She went back over her notes. Katya had turned up at the Welfare Advice Centre on a Wednesday shortly after six. Nasim Rafiq and Matthew Pearse had spoken to her. Pearse had taken her to the hospital about an hour later. She was there for about an hour, then she had disappeared. Pearse had seen her near the car park, waving to someone. There was a final sighting near the Humber Bridge around midnight. Three days later, she had been found in the estuary mud. The pathologist’s report fitted with the timings she had worked out. If Katya had jumped or fallen from the bridge shortly after the last sighting, then the two to three day immersion figure was about right.
But where had she eaten? And, more to the point, where had she had a drink? There was still food in her stomach, so she must have eaten within four hours of her death. They might have given her food at the Welfare Advice Centre, but they wouldn’t have given her alcohol. And anyway, that had been too early. She had arrived at the hospital at seven-thirty. She wouldn’t have been given food there – in fact, she would have been told specifically not to eat until a doctor had seen her. So she must have eaten after she left the hospital, but where? Lynne thought. The security cameras recorded her leaving the hospital just after eight-thirty. It had been a cold night for wandering the streets. Attempts to track her between the hospital and the Humber Bridge had so far been unsuccessful. There was no record of a taxi picking her up, no one had seen her on the relevant buses, and no one, so far, had come forward to say they had seen her walking.
There would be an inquest and the verdict would almost certainly be accidental death. But Lynne wasn’t ready to leave it yet. Now she had Gemma Wishart’s report, she could send fingerprints and post-mortem dental records to Interpol. Katya had been young. She must have a family somewhere, and maybe that family was looking for her. East Siberia. She’d looked on the map. She imagined a cold, inhospitable place, flat plains and tundra, the icy Siberian wind cutting through a bleak, industrial landscape. She read the description of Katya – dark hair, high cheekbones, oriental eyes – and tried to picture the young woman going about her life, working, studying, or taking the first fatal steps into the sex industry that had brought her, finally, to the fading outpost of capitalism on the east coast of England where she had died.
Sheffield, Wednesday evening
Roz was reading in her study. She had lit the floor lamp behind the easy chair – old and tattered but so comfortable she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of it – and lost herself in Bleak House. The rain was falling on Lincolnshire, on Chesney Wold. On the ghost’s walk, the footsteps went back and forth, back and forth. A woman dressed in servant’s black walked towards the iron gate to look into the darkness of the burial ground.
Roz hadn’t bothered to pull the curtains across the window – the hedge was high enough to give her privacy from the road, and she liked to look up and see the moon, and watch the branches of the trees swaying in the wind. There was the distant roar of traffic from the main road, but here, on the side streets, it was quiet. She ought to do this more often, sit and read, not for work or for research or for anything practical, but for enjoyment. Reading was a habit she had lost when she left Bristol. She and Nathan us
ed to read to each other sometimes, each trying to enthuse the other with the books they particularly liked. Nathan tended to favour bleak, hi-tech science fiction, which she didn’t like, but she had read all the Gormenghast books after he had started her on Titus Groan.
Bleak House had been one of her failures. It was probably her favourite book, but Nathan had greeted it with polite boredom. ‘Dickens?’ She could remember his look of dismay. ‘What is this, Roz? School?’ On Bleak House nights, they’d usually ended up at the pub, and eventually she’d given up. But the novel, with its dark web of corruption that spread from the centre to enmesh the highest and the lowest, still had the power to grip her, and she was surprised as she surfaced from its pages to find that it was nearly nine.
She let the book close over her index finger and sat for a while, staring at the moonlight reflected in the mirror. Her life had been on hold for too long. There were so many things she used to do that she never did now. She had lost touch with her university friends, now scattered around the country. She had made only a few friends in Sheffield – it was easier, sometimes, not to get close to people, not to run the risk of questions, explanations, talking about things she’d prefer not to think about. She had manufactured a life out of work and pretended that that was enough.
Maybe she should do what Jenny Bishop wanted her to do – go down to Lincoln and see Nathan. Maybe, after all this time, she would see him as he was and stop looking for the man he used to be. Then she would know that the man she married was gone, that it was over and that she had the right to move on. She could phone her mother-in-law now, and then the decision would be made. She went to the phone, and hesitated before dialling. Did she want to do this, or was it one of those impulsive decisions she would regret tomorrow? She…
There was someone outside. She could hear the sound of footsteps on the gravel of the drive. Someone was walking up the side of the house and round the back. She put the phone down and listened. The footsteps faded. Whoever it was, was in her back yard.
She hadn’t turned the hall light on. Maybe a passer-by thought the house was empty. Most of the break-ins in the area were by opportunistic thieves who took advantage of empty houses. She didn’t like the idea of someone creeping around the back. No one could see into the yard. The house next door was empty and derelict.
She knew the door was locked, but she wasn’t sure about the garage or the kitchen window. Phone the police? How long would it take them to get here? It was probably kids. She picked up her mobile and walked quietly through to the kitchen. She tried to see out, but it was too dark. She could still hear those soft footsteps moving surreptitiously around the yard.
Dialling 999 seemed too dramatic, but she set her phone and kept her finger on the SOS button. Then she moved across the kitchen to the back door where the light switches were. She hesitated for a moment, then pressed the switch and light flooded the yard.
There was a clatter as she dropped the phone on to the tiled floor. She was looking through the window face to face with…The figure outside resolved itself into Luke, who had his hand raised to knock on the door. They stared at each other in shock for a moment, then Roz unlocked the door and pulled the bolts. ‘Luke,’ she said as she opened the door. Then, ‘You frightened the daylights out of me. Luke.’ She took his hand and after a moment’s hesitation he came in and she put her arms round him. He felt stiff and awkward, then he relaxed and pulled her close to him, burying his face against her neck.
‘Roz,’ he said. ‘Oh, Christ, I…Roz!’
For a few minutes, they just stood there in their clumsy embrace. Eventually, he freed himself and slumped down in a chair at the kitchen table. She closed the door behind him and looked at him. He was unshaven and pale. He looked as if he hadn’t had much sleep, as if he’d been drinking or had taken something. His eyes had a hectic glitter. ‘I’m not exactly feeling sociable,’ he said as he sat down. ‘I came to get the bike.’
She sat down opposite him. ‘You look awful,’ she said.
He gave a faint grin. ‘Thanks, Roz,’ he said. Then he shivered.
‘Joanna told me…’ she said.
‘Oh, fuck Grey. I’ll get it sorted.’ He was so dismissive, she felt a flicker of relief. Whatever had happened, it sounded as though Joanna had got hold of the wrong end of the stick.
‘Coffee?’ She didn’t want to offer him alcohol. He nodded. ‘You’re cold. I’ll turn the heater on.’
She switched on the fan heater and opened a jar of coffee. The smell drifted into the room as she spooned it into the percolator. ‘I’ve been phoning you all day,’ she said.
‘I know. I got your messages. I told you, I’m not feeling sociable.’ He was hunched back in his chair, his hands on the table in front of him. He picked up a place-mat and began unravelling the woven threads. His eyes were narrowed with tension. She concentrated on what she was doing, aware of the silence in the room, of the faint drift of music from the road, the sound of a car pulling away, the night call of an owl. She poured milk into a pan. When he spoke, it made her jump. ‘They said she was doing escort work.’ His voice was flat. ‘They think that’s why she was killed.’
Roz turned round, the milk bottle in her hand. ‘Gemma?’ she said. ‘What do you mean, escort work?’
‘A prostitute, Roz. What do you think I meant? A call girl, a hooker, a tom. That’s what they meant.’
‘That’s…’ It was ridiculous. It was impossible. She remembered the photographs carefully stored on a disk that had fallen out of Gemma’s bag. Bondage pictures. Porn on the net.
‘They think I was her pimp. Or I didn’t know and I found out. Either way, they think I killed her.’
Roz closed her eyes. ‘But they’ve let you go,’ she said.
‘For now.’ He discarded the destroyed place-mat and picked up a pen that was lying on the table. He began turning it round and round in his hands, watching the light catch it. ‘They turned my flat over and they’ve talked to everyone I know…’ Roz remembered the questions she’d been asked. ‘They think I did it.’ He shrugged and looked at her.
‘Why do they say Gemma was a prostitute? What gave them that idea?’ He didn’t say anything. ‘Was she?’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Roz! What do you think?’
‘That they must have had a reason,’ she said. There was silence as he sat and stared at the pen he was turning in his hands.
‘Look, Roz, there’s something…’
‘I didn’t know her that well…’
They both began speaking at once, and he shook his head when she gestured at him to go on. ‘I just said I didn’t know her that well. Not like you.’
He stared at the pen in his hands. ‘I didn’t know her that well.’ His eyes met hers across the table. ‘She was just passing through. I told you she planned to go back to Siberia, to Novosibirsk. There was someone over there, and she was going back to him. We didn’t talk about it.’
No one talks about anything. Roz stood looking at him, wondering what to say next. She poured two cups of coffee and sat down. ‘Why did they think that about Gemma?’ she asked again.
She thought he wasn’t going to answer, then he said, ‘Those photographs. They showed them to me. They’d got them off a website – an escort site.’
That could be why Gemma had them on disk, so that someone could post them on a site. ‘That disk…?’ she said.
He rubbed his face. ‘I don’t know. They were just photographs, for fuck’s sake. She must have scanned them…I don’t know.’ His hands were gripping his cup tightly. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ His eyes were haunted.
But they weren’t just photographs. The images were still vivid in her mind. The bright light made the kitchen seem stark; the red tiles on the floor, the black square of the window, the dishes lined up on the draining board. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what he should do, either. ‘Do you need to talk to a solicitor?’ That seemed like such a clinical decision. Gemma was dead, a
nd she was talking about solicitors. ‘They want it to be you because you were having a…relationship. That makes it easier for them. But they’ve let you go. They’ll have to look somewhere else.’
Suddenly, he looked exhausted. ‘It only takes one thing Roz. I’ve got no alibi. If they catch me in one thing…They’ll make a case, once they’re convinced.’ He put his face in his hands for a moment. ‘The thing is…’ He stopped. ‘I’m too tired for this, Bishop. I’ll tell you in the morning. Can I use your sofa tonight?’
‘Of course. You know that.’ She held her cup in both hands and watched the reflection of the light. She shouldn’t drink coffee this late. Then she thought of something. ‘They know, do they? The police? About the photographs?’
He looked at her impatiently. ‘I told you, Bishop. They showed me.’
‘No, I mean, do they know you took them?’
He looked at her. ‘Of course they do. I told them.’
She felt a tension she hadn’t known was there vanish. The fact that she hadn’t told the police about the photographs, about Luke, had been an undercurrent of unease ever since her interview. If they found out…but they already knew. Luke had told them.
