In Deep Water

by Sam Blake

  McIntyre caught the look on Cathy’s face.

  ‘What’s up, girl?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

  Cathy hit instant call back. It only took seconds to connect.

  Sarah Jane’s mum sounded breathless as she answered. ‘Cathy? Have you heard from her?’

  ‘No.’ Cathy paused, not wanting to panic Oonagh Hansen any more. ‘Not yet, she didn’t come to training.’

  Sarah Jane’s mother’s intake of breath was instantaneous, the tone of her voice unmistakable, ‘Oh God. You have to find her. She . . . Her dad said . . .’ The words were tumbling over themselves . . . ‘He said . . . Ted said . . . he spoke to her on Friday. He’s stuck up a mountain in Syria and the line was really bad, but I think he said she’d got a lead on a story. He told her to leave it alone, that it was too dangerous for a student, they had a row about it . . .’

  ‘I’ll do my best. I’ll call you as soon as I find her. Try not to worry, I’m sure she’s buried in an essay at home and hasn’t realised the time . . .’

  ‘Please, Cathy. Please find her . . . Call me as soon as you can. I’m going to see if I can get up to Dublin in the morning, I just have to get a lift to Killarney and I’ll get the train . . . but I don’t know if I should stay down here where she can get hold of me . . .’

  The call dropped.

  For a moment Cathy looked blankly at the phone, trying to gather her thoughts. Deep inside, a feeling of worry uncurled and stretched its claws. What on earth could she be working on that she hadn’t talked to Cathy about? Was it something that had only just happened? One thing she knew for sure: Sarah Jane would never miss training. No matter what. Cathy swung around to relay the conversation to McIntyre.

  Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  2

  She might have left the gym behind, but there was a fight going on in Cathy’s head as she drove towards Sarah Jane’s house. One part of her was forcing herself to relax, to concentrate on the heavy traffic as she headed down the M50, tail lights blazing red through the darkness and drizzle. The other part of her was making her hands grip the steering wheel of her grey Mini so tight it hurt.

  Sarah Jane was never late. That was it. That was just it. She was never late and she never didn’t call. The words rolled around Cathy’s head like ball bearings. Cathy knew you couldn’t never not do something, but she knew what she meant, Sarah Jane just never didn’t turn up.

  And she’d had a row with her dad. On Friday. Three whole days ago.

  One thing she and Sarah Jane had in common was what McIntyre called sheer bloody-mindedness. Tell either of them not to do something and it was guaranteed to have the opposite effect. Sarah Jane was striving so hard to get a really fabulous degree, to make a name for herself in her own right, to prove that her dad could be proud of her, that she was sometimes even more headstrong than Cathy – and that was saying something. But that was why they got on so well: Cathy had been known to jump in before she checked the depth too; was getting a reputation for getting herself into deep water, into situations that would have finished off most people – they understood each other.

  Cathy had realised Sarah Jane idolised her dad from the first time they’d really got chatting. But this argument, over a story?

  For Sarah Jane’s mum, panic mode was the default response to any problem – she was infamous for getting into a total stew about everything. Perhaps it was being so far away in rural Kerry that was part of the problem, but if there was a power cut, Oonagh Hansen was on the phone to Sarah Jane in hysterics. It was entirely possible, Cathy rationalised, trying to keep calm herself, that Oonagh’s interpretation of what had actually been said or not said was way off the mark. Cathy took a deep breath. But that still didn’t explain where the hell Sarah Jane was.

  The minute Cathy had got out of the shower at the gym she’d called all their mutual friends. Cathy knew that Sarah Jane had a pile of assignments to catch up on, that she’d been working in the restaurant covering the lunch shift yesterday. They’d talked about it on Friday morning – she remembered Sarah Jane’s words as she’d raised her voice over the clamour of the canteen:

  ‘I’m working Friday afternoon and Sunday but I told Billy I couldn’t do Saturday. No way. I’ve got three features and another article to do and I need to research a load of stuff. I’ll see you at the gym on Monday evening. I’ll be in the library all day.’

  Leaning on her locker, Cathy had tapped her phone on her teeth while trying to work out who to call next. Someone must have heard from her or seen her today. Even if she was spending the day in the library, why hadn’t she called if she was going to miss training? Maybe her phone battery was dead, maybe her car wouldn’t start, or her assignment had taken longer than she thought?

  That was a lot of maybes.

  If her phone was dead she could have emailed from her laptop . . .

  Cathy’s gut twisted again. Why did she have such a bad feeling about this? Was she jumping to conclusions? Maybe . . . There was that word again.

  And if Cathy had learned anything during her six years in the job, it was that you didn’t do maybe. Maybe didn’t stand up in court. Maybe was about speculation, not evidence.

  Sarah Jane’s house didn’t have a landline phone anymore, and Cathy didn’t have the numbers of any of Sarah Jane’s housemates . . . or did she? She didn’t have their numbers in her contact list, but she did have a text from one of them, Slug. God only knew how he’d got her number, but he’d texted once looking for advice from her brother Aidan – looking for a favour, more like . . .

  Scrolling back through her messages, Cathy prayed she hadn’t deleted it. She rarely deleted anything, this was her own version of OCD, an obsession with keeping data . . . She spotted it and hit call.

  Not surprisingly, Slug wasn’t quite with it, and it took him a few minutes to work out who she was.

  ‘Sarah Jane? Nope, not seen her since . . .’ His pause was too long, made Cathy want to reach into the phone and grab him by the neck.

  ‘Since?’

  She’d prompted him, battling to keep the desperation out of her voice.

  ‘I’m pretty sure she was here last night. I was on the Xbox but I think I heard the door slam. Haven’t seen her since I got up.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘About three or four maybe.’

  Who the feck got up at three o’clock in the afternoon? Cathy kept her thoughts to herself. ‘Is she there now?’

  ‘I think maybe she went out.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘I dunno, she’s not here now.’

  Helpful.

  It only took Cathy a second to decide what to do. Maybe Sarah Jane had left a note on her calendar about a meeting, or something on her desk that would provide an explanation.

  ‘I’m coming over. If you see her, tell her I’m looking for her, will you?’

  ‘OK.’

  *

  Cathy gripped the steering wheel more tightly. Something wasn’t right, something big. Had to be. What on earth would make her miss training without getting in touch? Had she landed an interview with someone at the last minute and forgotten? Unlikely, but when she got an idea into her head she just couldn’t see anything else. Which sometimes caused friction with her dad – because he was exactly the same. If anyone needed tunnel vision to get his job done, it was Ted Hansen. If he started thinking for one second about the stuff around the edges, about what might happen when he was out in the field reporting from some war-torn part of Africa or Syria, where he was now, he’d never leave his apartment overlooking Central Park.

  Oh Jesus, please don’t let anything have happened to her. Sarah Jane was her best friend, they had a connection. Cathy could feel cold sweat on her back. But all Cathy’s instincts were telling her she should be worried, and Cathy had good reason to know her instincts were good. It was her instincts that had changed h
er career path one long hot summer.

  The sound of Maroon 5’s ‘This Love’, playing at full volume on someone’s stereo down the terrace, the smell of sausages on a barbeque, of hot dry earth, parched by three months of real summer heat. She’d been twelve years old, sitting on the low wall outside their house, half reading her magazine. She’d looked up to see a little girl on her own, lost and lonely, vulnerable and on the verge of panic, the tears starting to fall. And a man striding purposefully across the parched green towards her, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up to conceal his face.

  Later the Guards had told her that the little girl was only four and the man had a string of previous convictions for assaults on children.

  She hadn’t thought about the dangers then, that the man could have been armed, that he wasn’t the type a twelve-year-old should challenge. Instead she’d taken off towards the girl, shouting at her to run, yelling at her brothers to come and help. That had been the day she’d decided to follow in her big brother Aidan’s footsteps and become a member of An Garda Síochána. That was the day that had changed her life.

  One night over a few pints after a late shift, Aidan had told O’Rourke all about it. It had just been the three of them in the corner of the pub, the doors locked, the barman wiping down the counter further along the mahogany bar. O’Rourke had raised his eyebrows, his ‘She hasn’t changed’ said with amusement as his eyes had met hers across the creamy head of his Guinness. She’d glared back at him, trying to mask her reaction to his stare, one that seemed to look deep inside her, the underlying tone, teasing, one he saved for her. He was right, she hadn’t changed. There were times when you had to get involved, to make other people’s business your business, and her gut was telling her that this was one of them.

  Cathy slipped the Mini down a gear as she headed up the ramp off the M50 towards Cherrywood, the traffic lights ahead of her changing. She was getting the same feeling now that she’d had way back then on the garden wall, that same feeling that something wasn’t right. She’d had it again when she’d entered the bedroom in Dalkey and seen the cream silk of a wedding dress tangled amongst Zoe Grant’s clothes, a wedding dress that had turned out to have a grisly secret hidden in the hem . . . But that was history, and this was the present.

  It was bizarre how she and Sarah Jane had clicked. They’d bumped into each other at the gym in Dún Laoghaire after how many years? Five? The digital locks on their lockers had both failed at the same time and Sarah Jane had gone to get one of the staff to open them. They’d got chatting while they waited for rescue, laughing about girls from school they were still in touch with, comparing notes on what they’d done since they left. Before they’d even realised they’d both be studying in DCU that September, Sarah Jane in her final year of her masters in journalism, Cathy starting her masters part-time in forensic psychology, juggling her lectures with her job, they’d arranged to train together.

  The traffic lights changed to green, the vehicles in front of her sluggish as they moved off. What was it with the bloody traffic in this city? Sarah Jane lived on the south side of Dublin, had taken over her parents’ old house when her dad moved back to New York and her mum went to find herself with her brushes and paints in rural County Kerry. It was only about ten minutes from Cathy’s own shared rented house in Shankill, a stone’s throw from Michael’s Hospital.

  Hospital. Had Sarah Jane had an accident? She was a terrible driver, but she was pretty safe – it was the other motorists she drove mad, crawling below the speed limit.

  Bad news travels fast. Her housemate – although technically her landlord – Decko’s favourite phrase.

  Glancing in the rear-view mirror, Cathy activated the hands-free phone set integrated into her dashboard and scrolled through her most recent dialled numbers. She hit the call button.

  It took Decko a few minutes to answer, the sounds of the custody office in the Bridewell Garda Station filling the void as he caught up with what she was saying, ‘Slow down, Cat. Sarah Jane’s missing? She’ll be fine. Bad news—’

  Cathy cut him off, would have laughed if she’d been feeling less sick, ‘But it’s not like her. Can you run her plate, see if her car’s been involved in an accident?’

  ‘Christ, Cat, you know PULSE shows every log-in. I need a better reason than that she missed training, it’s not a notifiable offence.’

  ‘Decko . . .’ It came out more panicky than she’d expected.

  ‘All right, all right. Give me a minute. What’s her reg?

  ‘It’s 07 D 80305, a silver Micra. Sarah Jane Hansen, Royal Avenue, Dún Laoghaire.’ Cathy reeled off the number. Car registrations were like people’s names when you were in the job, were just something you remembered. The year of manufacture, the county – the Irish system made it easy. But then in this job you were trained to be highly observant. Attention to detail could save your life.

  ‘Got it.’ She could hear Decko tapping at his keyboard as he continued. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In the car. Ring me back. I’m on my way to her house but the traffic’s crap, I’m going to be at least another fifteen minutes. I know there’s something wrong, Dec, I just know it.’

  ‘OK. I’m on it. J.P.’s working tonight. I’ll get him to meet you there. But honestly, Cat, bad news travels fast.’

  He was right of course. Bad news always got to you before good. But knowing that didn’t slow Cathy’s heart rate.

  As she turned into Royal Avenue, lights glowed from the elegant Georgian houses on each side of the open green. Across the far end, facing her, was a row of substantial 1930s semis; Sarah Jane’s house was on the corner. There was no sign of J.P. yet. Between herself and her three housemates, their stations covered a good chunk of Dublin city from the Bridewell to Blackrock and up into the mountains. Dún Laoghaire was her and J.P.’s patch.

  Cathy swung right, around the end of the green, and pulled up outside number thirty-two, yanking on the handbrake. Slamming the door of the Mini behind her, the sound ricocheting across the square, Cathy was across the broad pavement and heading through the wrought-iron gate, held permanently open, and across the lawn before the sound had died.

  Pausing outside the glazed porch long enough to catch her breath, she hit the doorbell. Needle-like darts of rain headed down the back of her neck. Yanking the hood of her black sweat top up over her head, she lifted her hand to hammer on the glass, her voice raised, ‘Christ, can’t you hear the bell?’

  Inside the porch, the front door swung open and the sounds of car wheels screeching and bullets flying reached her. Head shaven, shirt off, his tattoos on full display, Slug looked at Cathy like she’d beamed in from the planet Lunatic. Cathy banged on the glass again with the heel of her hand, ‘Hurry up!’

  Shoving an Xbox controller into his jeans pocket, Slug stepped reluctantly into the porch and pulled back the sliding door, opening his mouth to speak over the racket of what sounded like Grand Theft Auto coming from inside the house. But Cathy didn’t wait to hear what he had to say. Instead she pushed past him and ran up the stairs two at a time, her Nikes pounding the pale green stair carpet.

  ‘Sarah Jane?’

  Calling out as she swung onto the landing, dominated by a mountain bike and piles of dirty washing, Cathy almost tripped over a skateboard abandoned at the top of the stairs. The unvarnished wooden door to Sarah Jane’s room was closed. Cathy knew it was her parents’ old bedroom, the big one at the front of the house. In a stride Cathy was at the door, her hand raised to knock.

  But there was no need.

  The door wasn’t closed.

  It had been pulled firmly to, to make it look like it was closed, but Cathy could see indentations in the soft wood beside the Yale lock, where it had been levered open. When Sarah Jane had started letting the other rooms in the house her dad had insisted everyone had their own door key, for privacy – and safety.

  ‘Oh holy feck.’

  Behind her, Slug arrived at the top of the stairs,
the sounds from downstairs continuing like they were inside an arcade.

  ‘What’s the panic?’

  Cathy glanced back at him, fighting to keep her voice level.

  ‘It’s been jemmied. Looks like a crowbar.’

  3

  Gloves, she needed gloves. After four years as a detective the procedure was ingrained, but it had never been this personal before. And right now Cathy didn’t have time to wait. She’d used the last pair in the box she kept in her car at a forced entry yesterday. Great.

  Cathy thought fast then pulled her sleeve down over her hand and gently pushed Sarah Jane’s bedroom door. It didn’t move. She put her forearm up against it to apply more pressure.

  ‘Shouldn’t you call her first?’ Slug hovered at the top of the stairs.

  Cathy shot him an acid look. ‘I’ve tried that. Do you think you could you turn that noise down so I can think?’

  Slug shrugged, not moving, focusing on the smooth wood of the door as Cathy pushed a little harder. Something behind it was stopping it from opening. She pushed again, widening the gap until it was big enough to for her to see inside.

  Even through the narrow gap she could see the room had been turned over. Completely trashed. What the . . . ?

  Deliberately keeping her body away from the door jamb, from the door itself, Cathy eased her head inside. The curtains were open, the weak light from a street lamp illuminating the rain on the window, throwing most of the room into shadow. Every drawer had been pulled out, Sarah Jane’s clothes jumbled on the floor along with notebooks and files, the sheets from her bed. There was a strong smell of perfume, rich and spicy, like a bottle had been broken. The bright strip of light from the landing cut through the mess like a blade.

  Taking a sharp intake of breath, Cathy withdrew her head.