The Drowned Detective

by Neil Jordan

  A meandering ribbon of water flowed around it. It must have fed the allotments on the other side, the small communal gardens with their tangles of bean and tomato rows, with hooped coverings of plastic. There was an intermittent, ruined forest beyond, huge beeches and oaks separated by saplings. One could imagine Zhukov’s tanks ploughing through it, years ago. And Putin’s, doing the same, some day soon.

  We stopped in the shadow of the other arch. It seemed impolite to go further. I could see the coffin under the shoulders of four men, in the fierce, punishing midday sun. An Orthodox priest walking before it, holding Petra’s mother’s arm. There was a mechanical digger by an open grave. And as they made their way towards it, I recognised the face that had spat on the office carpet, the shoes that had ground the spittle on the floor. He was the left-hand bearer, in a dark Sunday suit.

  Why are we here? asked Istvan again.

  Because here is where she ran from.

  She didn’t run. The mother told us, she was snatched.

  No, I said. She ran.

  Every kid runs from these places, he said. Sooner or later.

  But she ran from him.

  I nodded towards him, diminutive in his Sunday suit, bearing most of the weight of the coffin. His face glistened with sweat in the heat. They were at that awkward point at which they had to loose it from their shoulders. There was a flurry of movement from behind them, hands gripping, taking the burden. He stood back, released, and rubbed his shoulder, as if to ease the pain.

  Ayee.

  Istvan whistled through his browning teeth.

  You have evidence?

  The only evidence was dead now. So I shook my head.

  It all makes sense.

  So how does she find – what you call closure?

  Like in the cable series?

  And the coffin was being lowered now, on brown leather straps.

  She is dead. Isn’t that closure enough?

  I suspect not.

  In these kinds of places, peasant places, they manage things in their own country way.

  Aren’t there laws to deal with things like this?

  No law out here. Soon no law anywhere.

  But they don’t know.

  No, he said. Not yet.

  He grimaced. I could have almost called it a smile.

  You go back to station. Have a beer. Leave this to me.

  I sat in the empty station as two trains passed. And the third was trundling by as Istvan joined me once more.

  Come, he said. We can’t afford to miss this.

  So we took the train back, along the endless berm, until the river made its appearance behind it, glowing gold, like the molten Euphrates. He said nothing for a long, long time.

  Then.

  I spoke with the mother.

  And?

  She already suspected.

  How?

  She is a mother.

  Was it why she hired us?

  Perhaps. And now she knows. She has brothers and cousins who will . . . how do you say it . . . deal with the whole sad situation, in their own special way.

  I had heard that phrase before. A baby-faced cleric, in a bouffant beard and turban. Kill them, he said, in your own special way.

  And Jonathan—

  He smiled, as if to change the subject.

  Your name is dactyl, you know that?

  Three syllables, I said. One long, two short.

  She told me to tell you to do what she can’t do.

  And what is that?

  Let go.

  Let go, I repeated.

  Sometimes there is no closure, Jonathan.

  47

  He drove me from the city station to the end of my street.

  The first time, he said, I ever saw where you lived.

  A suburban house, I told him, with Tyrolean pretensions.

  The Tyrol, he said. Maybe some day I will visit. I think I might prefer London.

  So might I, I said. And for some reason I gripped his arm.

  So, Jonathan, he said. Is this goodbye?

  No. Not yet, I said. Though I sensed it wasn’t true. I was getting good at this half-truth business. I slid my hand down his forearm and did a strange thumbshake. And I realised how bad I was with manstuff.

  As I approached that gate made of carved wooden gargoyles covered in roughly trowelled plaster I heard music playing again. Not the violin, this time, or the cello. But the lazily strummed guitar chords of Joni Mitchell. And I walked in to find Sarah cutting onions in the kitchen, an open bottle of wine beside her.

  I’m hoping Joni has powers of exorcism, she told me. And that dead cellists don’t like rock and roll.

  I tried to kiss her, but she turned her head away. There were tears in her eyes – from the onion, I hoped.

  You call that rock and roll? was my attempt at humour.

  But it fell almost immediately flat. Because the violin began to play again from Jenny’s room, in strange counterpoint. A gigue, or a gavotte, one of those baroque dances.

  She’s been playing on and off all evening, she said. She gets better every moment. Deceased teachers have a lot to recommend them, don’t they? Maybe we could open a music school. The Academy of Dead Music. Or what is that old stuff called? Baroque?

  I’ve booked flights, she said. If we get away from here, maybe it will all stop? Or will this thing persist at thirty thousand feet?

  She turned up the Joni Mitchell to a deafening volume.

  Never thought I’d miss it, she said. Those old three chords. And Joni’s right. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. I used to think it was noise, just noise. The thumping beat, the repeated phrases, love me do, heart of glass, I want to be your dog. Iggy Pop now, he’s the one to banish this shit, I saw him in the Marquee on Wardour Street when I was young and half a punk. Can you imagine me with my cropped hair and my pierced lip bouncing up and down in a slashed T-shirt to that divine skinny god pogoing on the stage? But I know what it was about now, Jonathan, it was about life, all that noise and that sweat and that spit, that chaos, that cacophony, the three chords and the voices you could hardly hear, it was about living, not this . . .

  And I could hear the violin, above it all.

  . . . this death . . .

  Then she swept the onions to the floor.

  Talk to her, Jonathan. Please make it stop.

  So I left the Joni Mitchell playing and walked towards the door behind which a thin and perfect violin etched out a different world. I opened the door to see Jenny reaching the end of a gigue or a saraband or a gavotte.

  I think Mummy doesn’t like me playing, she said as she turned towards me. Maybe I should stop.

  You should, love, I said. For the moment at least.

  And there was something dangling from the wrist of her bow-hand. A string of pearls, delicate and black. Symbols of hope, I remembered the shop assistant had called them. Hope, for wounded hearts.

  Where did you get those, darling? I asked in a voice so low it could hardly be heard over the raucous music from the kitchen.

  But Jenny heard me.

  Petra, she said. She gave them to me.

  48

  There will be no school tomorrow, I promised her, if you give those stones to me.

  Pearls, she said, they are pearls.

  Pearls, I repeated, and managed to slide them from her wrist.

  And there was no school, next morning. The computers were down, the electricity intermittent. The net had slowed to something less than a crawl. Maybe anything other than the most basic forms of communication were suspect. The riots had spread on the web and were multiplying, like a self-nurturing virus. We couldn’t print our boarding passes for the plane, and so drove into the city, taking Jenny with us. I had packed most of her things, and locked her violin under the full weight of her clothes. And there was a different kind of heat in the slow movement of traffic, something sultry in it, with a bank of cloud above the buildings that seemed as if it was waiting to
burst.

  London will be better, Sarah said from the back seat. Myrtle Drive, Wimbledon, and Granny Tilda.

  Do I have to leave all of my friends? Jenny asked.

  Only the imaginary ones, Sarah said.

  That’s almost funny, I told her, and caught her eye in the rear-view mirror.

  Why is it funny? Jenny asked.

  Because, Sarah said. Just because.

  Because I have no other kind, Jenny said, and Sarah’s thin smile vanished in the mirror.

  Oh God, she said. Play some music. Some bad rock and roll.

  So I found a station on the radio that played the kind of out-of-date rock they favoured there. Some strange time zone just after punk, around when the Wall fell. Milli Vanilli, the Fine Young Cannibals, Spandau Ballet, promising a future that seemed more past than the unmentionable baroque of Johann Sebastian Bach.

  There were soldiers at street corners in full riot gear and I wondered what government departments could afford those knee-pads of Velcro, those stun grenades, those Heckler & Koch machine guns, those Kevlar vests.

  I had the pearls in my pocket and played with them as I drove, like worry beads. And my main worry was that she would mention them to Sarah. But with that impeccable instinct of hers, all she talked of was the trip ahead of her.

  I’ve been in planes before, she said, brightly.

  Yes, said Sarah. Many times.

  And we’re going in a plane now because—

  She held up her fingers, as if she was about to count the reasons.

  Because of the trouble, darling, Sarah said. Because some things aren’t safe here.

  Because of my imaginary friends, she said.

  Because your grandmother wants to see you.

  Granny Tilda. Who lives in Myrtle Drive. In the house with the monkey-puzzle tree.

  You remember it?

  I remember the tree.

  The bridge was blocked to traffic, so I parked the car on the east side. I looked back at the building behind me and saw a slash of yellow in the upper window. So I knew Gertrude was awake, probably drinking her wheatgrass smoothie. I walked them both across the bridge then, and Jenny held my hand tight, as if she was afraid to let go. There was a scattering of rubbish on the bridge: broken glass, a twisted bicycle tyre, and the remains of what looked like gas canisters. But some things never changed. Groups of forlorn tourists took pictures of themselves with the river as a backdrop, and I noticed police barges, churning up the brown water. On the other side, the traffic was flowing and the streets seemed to have assumed some semblance of normality.

  I led them towards the half-finished mall that housed the travel agent’s and told them I would meet them by the corner there, in one hour’s time.

  Come with us, Jenny said.

  He can’t, darling. He has an office to close up.

  You have a meeting, Daddy, Jenny said brightly.

  Yes, I told her. I have a meeting.

  Then Jenny suddenly, and unaccountably, smiled.

  What’s so funny? I asked.

  Look, Mummy.

  What?

  Daddy’s trousers.

  I was standing on a grating. There was a hot wind, blowing upwards from it, making balloons of my trouser-legs. I thought of the giant blow-dryer of the river god and stepped backwards, as if burnt.

  An hour, said Sarah.

  Don’t be late.

  49

  She held the pearls in her hand as the dog made scraping sounds around the parquet floor.

  She can walk now, I said, to fill the silence.

  Yes, said Gertrude, patella is fine. But there will be other reasons to keep her housebound.

  So it is time to leave?

  How do you say it? High time.

  The pearls seemed to glow blacker in her pale, manicured hand.

  You bought these?

  In the jeweller’s, by the opera house.

  But they went on a dance then. Like in that play by Schnitzler.

  What play?

  La Ronde. Someone should make an opera of it.

  I would like you to have them.

  Why me? she asked.

  Because, I said, they would suit you.

  So they will end their travels here? In this old hand.

  Elegant hand.

  Nice try, Jonathan. It was elegant once.

  So you can keep them for me.

  Keep them for you? If you ever return?

  Something like that.

  Among my other souvenirs.

  She held them towards the window and turned them in the band of sunlight coming through it.

  Black pearls, she said. Be still, my heart.

  They can’t hurt you.

  Can they hurt, these pearls?

  Others, maybe. Not you.

  Is there something you’re not telling me now?

  Too many things.

  I closed her hand around them.

  Please, I asked. Take them. Do me one last favour.

  She smiled then, and raised her face towards mine.

  I can take them, Jonathan, she said. But don’t think it will help.

  Help what? I asked, rather stupidly.

  She’s not attached to these. She’s attached to you.

  I looked at her face, in that band of sunlight. It was unkind to her. The lines showed beneath the impeccable make-up. She looked for once like what she said she was. A retired croupier. Or a charlatan. Somewhere beyond, I heard a siren wail.

  But I’ll hold them for you.

  I kissed her, on the corner of her pencilled lips.

  Goodbye, Jo-na-than.

  Would I hear those three syllables again, separated just like that? I wondered, as I made my way back across the river. Some part of me hoped I wouldn’t. And some part of me knew I would.

  I walked to that grating, where what she had called the river god blew hot air from underneath. I waited there, feeling the hot wind fanning my hair upwards, but Sarah and Jenny didn’t come. I heard the sounds of running feet then, all around me, but could see nothing moving on the street, and realised the sounds were coming from below.

  It was a ventilator for a metro platform, the hot air was coming from the passing trains and I saw a mass of coloured balaclavas then, through the grating, surging towards some exit way beyond.

  There was a metro entrance by the half-built mall and I could see police running towards it, blowing whistles, pulling guard sticks, black vans screeching down the roadside, more police spilling out of the opening doors and the pastel-coloured mob trying to burst through, and I saw Sarah hurrying towards me, her arm around our daughter, as the mayhem spread about behind them. Then Jenny broke free of her and ran into my arms.

  Mummy bought me sandals, Daddy, she said.

  Just get us out of here, said Sarah, so I took one hand of Jenny’s as Sarah took the other and we hurried towards the river, half-swinging her between us.

  Pretend it’s a game, Sarah said, so I pretended, and swung her, with those coloured canvas plimsolls, across the wide empty road to the parapet on the other side.

  There was a thundering sound then, of a hundred running feet to my left, and I took her in my arms and pressed her body into the granite steps cut into the parapet wall and something hit me, a placard or a riot shield, and I fell and could see Jenny’s coloured sandals against the blue sky beyond through the wave of running figures like bright coloured hummingbirds in Doc Marten boots. I could see Sarah, pressed against the granite wall, and was trying to rise when they swarmed all around me in their coloured balaclavas and I was pushed to the ground and lost sight of them both. All I could see were the black-camouflaged ones and after them the Kelvar-suited military police. There was a chaos of boots, all of the same colour, rounding on the bridge, and I could see the real encounter happening there, the pastel-coloured dervishes running past the giant hawsers, underneath the monumental angels where they were trapped, by a phalanx of black ski masks coming from the other side.

 
; I heard a scream of loss, of hysteria, of pure unbridled terror. I hoped it was coming from the bridge. But when I got to my feet I realised it wasn’t. It was coming from Sarah.

  She was leaning over the parapet, like a drunk about to vomit. I pulled her back. I had seen what she had seen. A pair of coloured sandals, kicking in the brown water below. I jumped on to the parapet, and for the second time I dived.

  I hit the river badly and thought for a moment my back had broken. But I managed to turn in the soupy murk and could see a figure above me, arms spread-eagled, face down, the sunlight pouring all around her in fingers of amber. I flailed up towards it and managed to turn her body when I broke the surface.

  I could see that she was breathing, and called out her name.

  She spewed water from her mouth. She took a gulp of clear air.

  Jenny.

  She managed a word. It sounded like yes.

  Hold me.

  I’m saying goodbye, she said, with another huge inhale. To the river.

  Put your arms around my neck.

  I’m saying goodbye to her.

  Hush.

  But she doesn’t want us to go.

  Please, love. Please. Don’t talk. Hold me.

  I could hear the deep-throated rumble of police barges moving towards us. I could hear distant screams from the bridge. And I could see those pastel-coloured, vainly flailing figures subsumed in wave after wave of black.

  50

  The summer saved us in the end. The warm, fetid water. They wrapped us in those silver blankets when they had pulled us to the barge, but they were quite unnecessary in that punishing heat. They sprayed us down with disinfectant and there was time to wonder, as the barge passed beneath the bridge, if they would afford the same courtesy to the ones being bruised and broken above us.

  Sarah was waiting on the jetty. She almost crushed her daughter in her arms, burying her face into the crinkled silver.

  I saw her, Mummy, she said.

  Please, love, please.

  She’s down there and she doesn’t want us to go.

  Dear Jesus.

  It’s OK, I told her, it’s OK.

  No it’s not OK, she said. It will be OK when we get out of here.

  An ambulance took us home, one more siren to add to the general wail.