Under the Ice

by Rachael Blok

  ‘It wasn’t the water? You don’t think you were losing consciousness, dreaming, hallucinating?’

  Finn grabs her hair and he pulls. He’s been starting to try to sit up. She lifts him so that he sits on her knee, facing Jansen.

  ‘I don’t know what to think. But if you want to know, if you want me to tell you, then you’re really going to just have to listen. I don’t have any answers.’ She feels tears; the saltiness catches the edge of her lips, making its way to her tongue. She doesn’t wipe it away, and he doesn’t move.

  The water drips. ‘I wake, and I’m scared to open my eyes… in case I’m not at home. I feel something… the house, the streets, the lake… I feel it. And it’s scaring the shit out of me.’ There’s always a breath. A cold breath. Or is it the wind?

  Tipping slightly forward, Jansen remains silent. She looks at him, watching for some sort of flicker. There’s nothing.

  The room is quiet.

  ‘I think if you can find him, whoever did this, then I think it will pass.’

  ‘So, you’ve felt like this since the first murder?’

  Looking him up and down, she still can’t tell him about the first night. A figure in the trees. The darkness. Was I there? She can’t trust him enough. She’s not sure she trusts herself. And why my number?

  ‘To be honest, I can’t say when it started. I haven’t been… well, I haven’t been myself since I had Finn.’ His fingers grip hers. She can’t remember herself before Finn. Not right now. ‘The birth threw me. We moved here. I’m doing fine, but I’m still finding my way. And then when I heard about Leigh, about her drowning…’

  She looks across at Jansen. His frame remains still, his eyes clear.

  ‘I can hear her. Her voice calls to me. It’s a whisper, faint, but it’s there. It sounds mad, and it’s not all the time… but … this weather: the cold, the damp, the wind… It won’t burn away. Everywhere is fluid. And I’m so tired. But she says,’ she is whispering now, her breath leaving her and she doesn’t dare enunciate too clearly, ‘she says, “save her”.’

  47

  Ghosts, Maarten thinks, walking back. Jenny Brennan had spoken of ghosts. He can’t take that to the station. He can’t take that anywhere. He had texted Klaas: Following your advice. If they lock me up hold yourself responsible.

  The team are out viewing CCTV and touring small second-hand phone shops.

  Time presses like a falling brick. He still doesn’t know what to believe about Jenny Brennan, but she is at the heart of this. Without further headway, Becky will be lost. He thinks of looking Nic in the face if that happened. He has promised her.

  Brennan had stood like an island in the hallway, as he had nodded a goodbye. Despite the close walls of the cottage, she had been swamped by space. And the baby.

  There is something she isn’t saying. She had agreed to walk in the park with him. Covering her steps once more – she had found both phones. She is tied in.

  Almost at the station, he catches sight of Imogen climbing out of a car, her phone at her ear, and waves. She waves back, and Seb drives off.

  Imogen strides over to him, still talking on the phone. ‘We’re on our way in now.’ She looks at him. ‘They’ve got Leigh’s phone working. They’ve found only one number on there.’

  48

  ‘So there are two different numbers on the phones?’

  ‘Yes.’ Maarten leans back. The team are assembled for a briefing and tiredness has blanched their faces.

  ‘On Leigh Hoarde’s phone, there is an unknown number logged in the contacts list. Just the one number. We don’t have her call log back. On Becky’s phone, we have only one number stored: Jenny Brennan’s. However, her call log has come back. We’re still awaiting texts, but the calls made are to the same number found on Leigh’s phone – not to Jenny Brennan’s.’

  ‘It makes no sense,’ Adrika says.

  ‘What we know,’ Imogen says, ‘is that Jenny Brennan features in here somewhere. It could be that the other number belongs to her as well. Maybe she messed up somewhere along the way, and gave her real phone number out as well.’

  ‘Or,’ Maarten says, ‘that there’s someone else. Possibly working with Jenny Brennan? Possibly entangling her? Maybe her husband? Or even the neighbour – the proximity of Connor Whitehouse, another suspect, is not to be overlooked. This city is small. Lines are crossed.’

  Sunny shakes his head. ‘But I still don’t completely get it. Why have Jenny Brennan’s number on there, if you’re never going to use it? What can we accuse her of? I think she’s guilty. But we still can’t prove it.’

  Shaking his head, Maarten glances at his watch. ‘No, we need to wait for the full log from Leigh’s phone, and we need to try to ascertain the identity behind the second number. Sunny, can you go over the husband’s credit card et cetera? See if there is something on there we can link to somewhere that sells pay-as-you-go phones?’

  Sunny nods, scribbling on paper.

  ‘Adrika, can you go over the background for Connor Whitehouse, same thing? I know it’s a tenuous link but I want it checked out.’

  She nods, as Imogen finishes updating the whiteboard with the case details.

  ‘Good luck. Let’s hope we can unravel this today. I said I’d phone the Dorringtons with an update.’ He glances again at his watch. He’d better do it now.

  ‘Let me know how you get on. Right now, I’m going to go over the ground again with Jenny Brennan.’

  ‘Do you want me to come, sir?’

  Maarten thinks of Jenny Brennan, of how quickly she can close up.

  ‘She likes me more than you, you know,’ Imogen says, smiling.

  Maarten laughs. ‘That’s true. But no. I think she will feel it less of a threat if I’m there on my own. We can’t arrest her yet. I’ll keep it informal. Just see if her story holds up, if she lets anything slip. I want to see how she behaves on her own in the park – without her husband to leap in at any minute. Let’s keep this fairly quiet. The super will… well, there’s no need to shout about it.’

  Punching in the numbers from his desk phone, Maarten thinks of Nic. She’d not slept that night. Liv had been up with her. When she closed her eyes, she dreamt of Becky – sad and scary nightmares, she’d said they’d been filled with words she didn’t understand, and when she’d asked him to explain them he realised they’d seeped in from news reports, from overheard conversations.

  He wants desperately to save Becky, and also to wipe the slate for Nic. Sanne was picking up on it, and they clung to him each morning. Liv had to peel them off as he made his way out to work.

  ‘Hello?’

  Closing his eyes briefly, hearing the tremor in her voice, Maarten addresses Jess Dorrington. ‘Just an update…’

  He speaks as she begins to cry, and he tries to fill in some blanks, to create a feeling of movement, to sketch out a sense of hope. Each word so sharp, it cuts like glass. He imagines her sitting there, at the end of the phone, waiting for a daughter who may never return.

  49

  Waiting in the park is brighter than in the house. The slow burn of the sun has gathered pace, but hasn’t managed to penetrate the walls of the cottage. Jansen is late. She lays Finn down in his snowsuit, gently, like a snow angel. He giggles and waves his arms and she takes a photo. She lies down next to him, staring up at the sky. It reaches up and out, far above them. The blue melts the clouds. When she had been small, her mother had told her heaven lay on top of the clouds, that angels jumped from one to the other, using their wings to break their fall.

  Finn’s fingers wave in the air, and she catches them, holding them in her palm.

  ‘Jenny?’

  Jansen’s hand reaches down, and she takes it, pulling herself up.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  She nods, lifting Finn and fastening him onto the front of her chest.

  *

  They are almost at the huge weeping willow, winter-naked, before they speak. The silence is peaceful. The
air is sharp, and she keeps her head ducked under her hood.

  ‘Is this close to where you think you found the phone – you said you didn’t remember picking it up?’

  Jenny nods. Standing still, she braces herself against the turbulence, the scream. But there is nothing. The frost and ice, hanging from the leaning arms of the tree, brush her face as she leans to look beneath the branches.

  ‘Why did you come here? Why here?’ Jansen shifts his weight to the left, and lifts the curtains of the branches to peer with her. ‘Do you… feel anything?’

  Shaking her head, Jenny observes the silence of the ground. ‘No. I was anxious last time; you were pushing me here. The first time I didn’t choose it… I just came. It’s always the willow, here by the lake. But I don’t…’

  As she takes a step away, onto the path that bends towards the water, she shivers. There is something. There’s the sound again. The whisper. The noise. She stops.

  ‘OK?’ asks Jansen.

  Closing her eyes, she wills it. She’s been pushing it away, but this time she waits for it. But that’s all it is. Just one slow blink, and it’s gone.

  ‘Yes, fine. I hear… I hear a whisper. And a rustle of breath. I can’t quite make it out. I think maybe it’s the wind… but I can feel it. I can feel something. And then it’s gone, like now.’ Save her.

  Jansen nods. He looks lost, and he checks his watch.

  ‘Come on, let’s move round the lake.’ He steps out to join her on the path, and they walk, him matching her stride.

  She wants to tell him all her questions, uncertainties. She has spoken to Klaber, but it rolls out easily with him. He doesn’t ask – he makes her feel as though he’s been expecting everything she has to say. She has managed to tell him about the figure she sensed in the trees – and he had nodded. That the earth pulsed beneath her hands at the lake, and he nodded. That there was a voice – or more accurately – two voices. The half-scream in her head, ‘Jenny! Jenny!’ and the whisper – ‘Save her.’ Then the face that appeared at the window; like the one she saw at the watermill: black hair, green eyes.

  Not however, that it was the death that had begun the unease. Klaber had tilted his head as she had pinpointed the birth, the surfacing. Since then, she has simply been treading water, trying to keep her head above everything: Finn’s needs, Will’s discomfort, the crevasse that had cracked between them, become cavernous. And arriving here, at St Albans, with its sense of home and its lake that pulled her, arresting, mesmerising.

  Talking made things clearer, helped her sort through her thoughts, like she would a wardrobe: stacking a pile for throwing away, and a pile to be tried on later – somethings just waiting until their time beckoned.

  As they turn past the old pub, on the corner of the lake, Jenny halts. The lake lies out before her. Its stillness, its emptiness, quiet and stark. There are rows of flowers newly laid, up against the dying ones, black at the edges and wizened. The sun catches the cellophane and the burst of colour stands out, a rainbow heap against the muddy ice.

  The whisper again, and she closes her eyes. There is a dark figure before her, turning away, and it vanishes, and there is no light except the moon. Jenny feels suddenly like a small girl, hunched, sobbing and frightened. The half scream again: ‘Jenny! Jenny!’ But it’s not from that figure, dipping behind the trees: Save her.

  She trembles, folds and bends to the left. Jansen grabs her arm, and without him, she would have sunk to the ground. Her heart beats. Panic suffocates.

  No.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She doesn’t look at him. The flowers hold her eyes. ‘I can’t. I can’t go any further. I’m not some…’ She struggles with the words. They sound ridiculous out loud. This, this is ridiculous. Her pulse is still racing, her teeth chatter.

  ‘If I think of anything, I will tell you.’ But she doesn’t know that she will. Not until there is something real to say. This scrabbling round in the dark… And tears prick her eyelids.

  His bulk, more height than weight, hasn’t moved. She can’t look up; she doesn’t want to turn to see his face. He might be able to persuade her, but she’s sure that if she takes another step – she feels, deep within, with no sense of knowing how, that it might pull her in.

  Sinking sand, collapsing clay: something will catch her, and she won’t pull free.

  50

  22 December

  ‘Where are we at with Mrs Brennan?’

  Maarten looks up. The super has appeared in his doorway. His smaller frame has slipped in quietly.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Mrs Brennan. I hear you’ve been to visit her?’

  ‘I was just following up on procedure – going over the route she took when she found the evidence.’

  ‘You? Why you? Surely that’s a job for your team. Is there something more to this?’

  Maarten pushes his chair back, half-rising and gesturing to the chair at the other side of his desk, but he makes no move to sit.

  ‘I thought it might seem more courteous if I made the visit, sir. Considering. Keep the tone even.’

  The super looks at him hard. ‘Well, we’ve had a letter from her solicitor; if she did it then go after her, but you need to be a hundred per cent certain before you make a move. Don’t do it too soon. There’s a lot pointing that way, but the press we would get if we called it wrong…’

  Nodding, Maarten says nothing.

  ‘Any further leads? Surely with the evidence she found we’ve made some headway?’

  ‘Some. The first phone is working again, but the numbers are different. Jenny Brennan’s number on Becky’s phone, but an entirely different one on Leigh’s. One of the reasons I wanted to go over the route with her was to see if she let anything slip, if she tripped up.’

  ‘And did she?’

  ‘She seems as confused as we do.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘We’re ruling out both fathers now. There’s no link between the two girls – this isn’t a crime that comes from the home. Based on limited CCTV and eyewitnesses we know where the girls were last seen, so we’re interviewing again. We’re assuming the perpetrator knew the girls well enough to give each of them a phone. Likelihood is that he was someone they trusted, perhaps someone they looked up to. We’re pretty sure Leigh got into that car willingly. She was meeting someone she liked – we know that from the hearts and question marks in her notebook. I doubt she suspected how that night would end. If we’re right that her murder was a first offence, our theory is that she rejected his advances, he tried to rape her, she fought back and he killed her. Then he has to abduct Becky to keep her quiet. Did she witness something perhaps? Did she know Leigh? Or is it just that she was the only other girl he gave a phone to? We can only pray he hasn’t killed her, and won’t while the area is swarming with police. But what we still can’t figure out is the link between the girls. Different schools, different ages. Why did he choose them? And why is Jenny Brennan’s number on one of the phones? It just doesn’t fit. We need the phone records to come back before we can move again. I’ve been thinking we could pull together a re-enactment?’

  ‘Hmm… sounds good. Check the Hoarde father’s estate again. I’ve heard on the grapevine that the BMW had been seen near where the Hoardes live. Whoever took it, and presumably for this purpose, is someone who knows where stolen cars are easy to get hold of. Keep me informed. What’s the plan for Brennan?’

  ‘DI Deacon is fact-checking, but she will do it quietly. She’s pulled up Jenny Brennan’s history. Her mother died in Tonbridge, in Pembury Hospital as it was called then, when she was five, and we’re looking into the rest of her background.’

  ‘No PR nightmare, Maarten, not this close to Christmas.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And the car is from Sunderland? Where does that leave us?’

  Gesturing, moving his hands apart and his palms half turning upwards, Maarten says, ‘To be honest, not much further forward. We managed to trace the car, but it seem
s it was stolen and then sold on down here. To be able to trace the sale, we’d need someone to come forward to admit their part in dealing with stolen goods.’

  ‘Can we announce an amnesty?’

  ‘In my experience, that may work with the minor criminals, but not the professionals. It’s more than their livelihood’s worth.’

  ‘Well, let me know where you get to.’

  ‘Will do, sir.’

  As the super leaves, Maarten watches the empty space in which he stood; the whiff of aftershave slowly dispersing.

  51

  The phone sits on the coffee table, and it screams of Klaber. Jenny feels it. Outside is drenched white, and still it comes. Finn feeds as some terrible Christmas film plays out quietly on the TV: a missing Santa, elves in plain clothes.

  She hasn’t contacted Jansen, and she doesn’t think she will. It’s too much to cope with. But Klaber, he helps her cope. She glances again at the phone.

  The doorbell sounds and she jumps. Tucking Finn under her arm, she pulls open the cottage door to Connor, standing on her doorstep. He doesn’t speak, and she grips the lock, cold under her fingers.

  The waiting pause is long. She watches his face. It’s blank, and his eyes, bloodshot, swivel down the lane and back. All the better to see you with.

  ‘Everything OK, Connor?’ she asks. The silence is heavy.

  ‘I know you’ve been talking to Erin… ’ He breaks off immediately, looking uncertain. ‘Do you know… Have you told her…’

  A loud, metallic rattle sounds from the kitchen, as the washing machine finishes a cycle. She jumps, and Finn stares up at her in surprise.

  Connor takes a step towards her and, unthinkingly, she slams the door. It doesn’t catch him, but he’s only an inch away, and he punches the door, slamming hard on the old wood. With the ricochet a picture falls from the wall, and glass shatters on the floor; shards fly. Stepping backwards, she leans to put the chain on and holds Finn, and her breath.