The Drowned Detective

by Neil Jordan

  A good detective.

  You’re saying she’s here?

  I’m saying you’re close. No more, no less. And for that, you must pay me. No receipts.

  17

  The sound this time was like a summons, authoritative and plangent at once. I was standing by a café, trying to get whatever relief I could from the spray of the mist dispenser, when I heard it, carried on a wave of heat maybe, the same thermal that blew the mist towards my face. A series of descending notes to the lowest string, then a matching ascent with just a hint of melody in the progression. Here we go again, I thought, someone’s calling me, and perhaps my act of forgetting had been too effective, because I began walking towards the source without forming an image of who it was. And the progression kept going, as if the notes obeyed some sweet mathematical algorithm that didn’t want to end. I know now it was the prelude to the third cello suite – in time I would get to hear all of them, and that she practised them in sequence. Life begins and ends with Bach, she would tell me, and there turned out to be more truth to that than I could ever have imagined. But for the moment I just followed the sound. I would lose it traversing a bank of houses, then turn down another street and there it would be again. And I found myself at the entrance this time, with the river of sound flooding the arch with its tiled ceilings, tracing its arabesque round the balconies inside. And I walked, of course, up the steps, towards the open door and she was inside, playing, in a white summer dress appropriate to the heat of the day.

  Hello again, she said without breaking the stride of her bow. Have you come to tell me something?

  What could I tell you? I asked.

  I don’t know, she said. Something. About why you’re here.

  Because I heard you play.

  About what you do.

  You want to know what I do?

  And she must have come to the end of the prelude then, because she lifted her bow.

  I find people, I said.

  Ah, she said. Like a detective.

  Sort of, I said.

  You must be a good one then.

  Why do you say that?

  Because you found me.

  And she returned the bow to the strings and I wondered was it the shadow of the instrument between her legs, then realised it couldn’t be. There was something staining her dress, spreading from where she wrapped the cello between her legs, and it was red. Blood. She was bleeding, and didn’t know it.

  You’re bleeding, I said.

  What? she asked, and her eyes were half-closed as she was lost again in her playing.

  You’re bleeding. Badly.

  I moved towards her, touched the dress around her calf and raised my finger, soaked with blood.

  I know, she said.

  Don’t move.

  I won’t. Let me play.

  You need a hospital.

  I don’t, she said. It’s what happens.

  What?

  After you lose a child. Bleeding.

  Has it happened before?

  Yes.

  Stop playing.

  I can’t. I won’t. Music is the only thing that helps.

  That’s insane. You’ll damage yourself.

  I’m already damaged.

  Is that why you were on the bridge?

  Yes. You brought me back. So I’m yours now.

  What does that mean?

  But I already knew, somewhere inside me. I had cheated her out of what she wanted. She was alive now, and the fault was mine.

  And she stopped her bow.

  Help me up, she said.

  I took the cello from between her legs and rested it on the sofa. I put my hand beneath her armpit and brought her to her feet. She laid her head against mine then, with an infinite weariness, and I felt the nausea of sudden panic. I needed to get out of there, but didn’t know how.

  The shower, she said. Let me take a shower.

  I helped her towards it, and once in the bathroom, she raised her hands towards the ceiling, like a little girl.

  Pull the dress off.

  I did that and she stood there, almost naked but for a pair of cotton knickers that were half red, half white.

  You could rinse it, she said, in cold water, while I shower.

  She stepped inside the shower unit and the water came down the sad mottled glass, gradually steaming it, obscuring the shape of her body and the ripples of pink it left.

  You can go if you like, she said.

  I was filling the basin with cold water. I rolled her dress in it, kneading it, so the blood spread out through the water like printer’s ink.

  I can’t just leave you here.

  Yes, you can. I’m all right now. I expected this.

  And I was desperate to go just then. I felt I was drowning, in someone else’s life.

  Can I check on you again?

  To see if I’m all right? Yes, you must. Just tell me one thing.

  There was the barest outline now, of a naked body behind the misted glass. The voice carried over the hissing steam.

  What?

  Are we to be friends, or lovers?

  What kind of question is that?

  Friends help each other. Lovers hurt each other.

  Is that the rule?

  Generally.

  I dried my hands on the only towel there. I began walking very quietly towards the door. For some reason I didn’t want her to hear me going.

  Can we be both?

  I turned, and there she was. Standing in the wettened dress. Like a drowned thing again, and the cloth that had been white had a soft, drenched patina of pink to it.

  Both? I asked, rather stupidly.

  Yes. Both would be good. For a change.

  You put the dress back on, I said.

  Yes, she said.

  I had just rinsed it.

  It’s hot, she said, too hot. I can’t play in this heat.

  But she sat, back on the sofa, and began plucking at the cello strings.

  And you want to go now. Yes, she said, I understand. But you must answer, before you go. Can we be both?

  Perhaps, I said.

  Ah. Only perhaps.

  She raised her wet face to me and presented a brave smile.

  You want to think about it, don’t you?

  Perhaps I do.

  So. Think about it. And you must kiss me before you go.

  18

  So I kissed her before I left. I took her small chin between my fingers and raised those broad, wet lips to mine. I felt a rapid, darting tongue come between them, searching for my own. And I promised to check in on her again. Though as I walked back down the stone steps, as her neighbour glanced at me behind her lace curtain, as the cello sounded out again behind her door, I knew I wouldn’t, or shouldn’t. Some things are just too strange. They should be left in the realm of possibility, or imagination. I had pulled her from the river, yes. I had helped her home. But the thought of some ultimate responsibility, some promise, like the promise of her tongue, darting between her lips, was too much, much too much. I felt I couldn’t breathe, in that heat; I felt I was suddenly drowning in warm water. And there was a man standing on the pavement beyond the archway, dressed in a dark linen suit. How do they wear suits in this heat? I remember thinking.

  You hear that music?

  I had passed him before he spoke. So I had to turn to see if he had spoken to me.

  Do I hear that music?

  It was almost lost, out here on the street.

  Yes, I hear it. Barely.

  So it is not only me.

  No. I hear it.

  And a distant phrase came to its end. There was silence from inside the courtyard, the rattle of distant children’s voices.

  And now it’s stopped.

  Now you don’t hear it?

  No, I said, I don’t. How could I, when it has stopped?

  Don’t you find the phrasing is too – erzelmi?

  Erzelmi? I knew the word.

  Emotional.

 
Aha. A critic, I thought.

  Should music not be emotional?

  Good question, he said, and turned on his heel and walked away.

  It was to be a day like that. A day of abrupt transitions, of non sequiturs, of arbitrary connections. I walked behind him until the cobbled street ended in a broader one, a boulevard, and I wondered at the fact that he never looked around. Shiny patent-leather shoes on the hot cobblestones, which could have sweated in that heat.

  There was traffic held on the boulevard, a demonstration of some kind. Groups of men in haphazard military fatigues blocking the traffic island, arms punching the hot air, an incomprehensible slogan echoing. Lines of police in flak jackets, guard dogs on leashes.

  I would have followed him out of a sense of idle curiosity, if nothing else, but he was soon lost in the crush of bodies. And Istvan, when I finally made it to the office, was sitting in the breeze of the desk fan, cleaning a weapon in his hand with a handkerchief.

  You need that? I asked him.

  It was a Makarov double-action, and I had cleared him a licence for it.

  You hear that noise out there?

  I passed the demo.

  Well, he said. I might, some day.

  And what’s the issue now? I asked him.

  Balaclavas, he said.

  Balaclavas?

  We have our own pussy rioters. A demonstration. Which means they jump up and down with fake guitars and coloured balaclavas. Then some patriot punks put on black balaclavas to throw rocks at them. Police pretend to keep the peace. We will all kill each other soon.

  Dare I ask why?

  Doesn’t matter why. We are – how you say it? – a kind of blanket.

  You mean a patchwork quilt?

  Right first time. Patchwork quilt, with thread fraying. The black balaclava kills the coloured one, which might bring out the kefiah and the burkah that maybe kills them all.

  How soon?

  Doesn’t matter how soon. What matters is to be ready.

  He cocked the weapon and pointed it through the open window at the street outside.

  Pop, he said.

  That easy? I asked him.

  Sadly, yes.

  Put it away now.

  And he returned the gun to its drawer beneath his desk.

  I called the brothel. In the twelfth arrondissement.

  And?

  I asked for a Petra. They smelt – how do you call it? A mole?

  A rat, I offered.

  Correct. Smelt a rat. Put down the phone. So there’s only one way to check now. Pose as client.

  You?

  Hardly me. They know my type.

  How?

  I have Special Forces written all over me.

  You don’t mean me?

  Why not? British businessman. Alone in foreign city. What could be more natural?

  Or unnatural.

  As you wish. Ask for a blonde. Twenty years or so. Say a Petra was recommended.

  By who?

  Does it matter? A colleague. Any travelling scumbag. Maybe you meet her. In the small room that she cannot leave. Case closed, as they say on cable series.

  19

  Was mid-afternoon the time for sex? I wondered. Certain kinds, maybe. I parked the car by a small canal and looked from the image on my phone to the line of apartment blocks across the way. They looked different of course, without the sun reflected from the windows, less sinister, different yet the same. I had called, to ask for a girl. There was a long pause, and the sound of the telephone being set down, then lifted, and a woman’s voice replaced the man who had answered. Her English was refined, with a slight theatrical gravitas to it. Who recommended us? she asked. A colleague, I told her, from London. Mr Samuelson. And you? she asked. From London too, I told her. Mr Baker. Samuelson, she repeated. He recommended a girl called Petra, blonde, in her early twenties. Petra, she repeated. Yes, Petra is quite special. In some demand. We run a clean establishment. No funny business. And you, sir, do not demand funny business. And I wondered then what funny business entailed. But I assured her I wanted none of it.

  And as I crossed the road, walked down the broken pavement towards the building, the sun must have dropped a notch or two, because the upper-storey windows began to blaze it back towards me, like silvered reflective sunglasses. Was there something sinister in their apparent gaze, or was it my imagination? It was the latter, I persuaded myself. And I was a London businessman on a routine visit to a quite ordinary brothel.

  There was a rusty metal lift with a mother wheeling a buggy from it and, once inside, the acrid odour of urine. I pressed the button for the third floor, and, somewhat absurdly, turned up my collar, hoping no one else got in on the way up.

  It whined upwards, stopped at two empty floors and I saw two dim corridors stretch away from the doors, towards pools of afternoon sunlight. And the third floor was identical to the first and the second, down to the shaft of sunlight at the end.

  I stepped from the lift and the doors closed behind me. There were four doors to my left and four to my right, and a broken window to the end of them, with a pigeon standing in the metal frame.

  A door opened then, and the pigeon took to the air. A man stood there, playing with the zip on the top of his tracksuit.

  Mr Baker? he said.

  Yes, I said.

  You pay cash, he said. And yes, I had it ready. I reached for my inside pocket and he shook his head.

  Not here, he said. Inside.

  He nudged the door open with his foot, and I walked in.

  There were soft chintzy curtains covering the windows, dampening the hard daylight. There was a tailor’s dummy sitting incongruously to one side, her plaster face frozen in a smile, one hand held upwards that seemed to be waiting for a non-existent teacup. There was a sofa against the wall with a glass-topped table in front of it and I took a seat there, as the door closed softly behind me. There was a small bell sitting on the table, and I had no idea what its purpose was. Then I heard the door closing softly behind me, and I realised I had entered alone.

  I sat there for an unbearable five minutes or so, inhaling the odour of old cigarette smoke, and eventually, out of exasperation, I rang the bell.

  Be with you, a woman’s voice answered, and I recognised the anglicised tones coming from behind the door to my left. It was a room of doors, three of them: two of them facing each other and one facing the muted light from the window. And I wondered, did the establishment, as she had insisted on calling it on the phone, extend the length of the whole corridor outside? And then the door to my left opened and she was there.

  A capacious lady in a pink tracksuit, dark hair piled into a kind of nest on the top of her small head.

  Mr Baker, she said. I’m Maria.

  Maria, I said and rose and held out my hand before I realised the gesture was unnecessary and unwanted. I assumed the name was as fictional as my own.

  From London, she said, and took my hand, ever so briefly.

  Staying at the Radisson?

  Yes, I lied again.

  And you were recommended my Petra?

  I nodded and she smiled, stiffly.

  She is a special girl, she said, a little bit shy maybe but Englishmen like them shy.

  You know England? I asked.

  Mayfair, Windsor, Royal Ascot. Brighton.

  Margate, I added, hoping to fill out the list.

  Bath, Southend-on-Sea.

  I had only ever known it as Southend. But I nodded, appreciatively.

  Lyme Regis.

  Had she been a tourist guide? I wondered.

  Where they shot movie – you remember—

  The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

  Meryl Streep and my favourite—

  Jeremy Irons?

  Yes. Now, to the money business—

  You’ve been to all those places? I asked idly, as I took the rolled bundle from my pocket.

  Been to, read about. And Petra price, three hundred.

  How long
has Petra been –

  In this establishment? Not long. She is shy girl, you will see. And her fingers whipped through the notes, with alarming expertise.

  Two hours, condoms by the bedside. No funny business.

  I nodded, some shabby understanding. There would be no funny business.

  Hove, she said. Hastings.

  Harrow, I replied. This list seemed to substitute for conversation.

  Harrow-on-the-Hill, she corrected me.

  Of course, I said. Harrow-on-the-Hill. She held open the door and I walked through and found another door facing me.

  Inside, she said. And she held up two fingers.

  I opened the door.

  Blackpool, she said, as it closed behind me.

  20

  She was sitting with her back to me, in a salmon-coloured negligée that exposed her thin arms. Her hair was cut like a blonde pageboy’s and there were dark roots showing at the parting on the scalp.

  There was a bed, and a bathroom with a toilet bowl and bidet and a door that must have opened into another bedroom beyond.

  Petra, I asked, and she said, yes, that’s my name and somehow I immediately knew it wasn’t.

  I walked towards her and she lay back on the pink coverlet with the small fluffy pieces of cloth and I stupidly wondered what they called such a bedspread and the word candlewick came to me. So she lay back on the candlewick bedspread. Her face was waiting to be kissed and it was thin and there were lines around her lips and the soft dull bruising on her arms that the make-up couldn’t quite hide.

  How old are you, Petra? I asked.

  Nineteen, she said.

  And how long have you been here?

  Oh, she said, I come and go.

  Her face was waiting for the kiss, and when she felt it wasn’t coming, she flipped over on the bed and began to fumble with my belt.

  Don’t, I said.

  You wanted Petra, she said.

  But you’re not her.

  How can you tell?

  Because you’re not nineteen.

  And the lines around her sweet mouth deepened.

  Was nineteen once.

  I’m sure.

  Is Petra nineteen?

  She would be in her early twenties.

  What does it matter what my name is? You want Petra, I’ll be Petra.

  It matters, I said, because a girl named Petra went missing many years ago.