Bleak Water

Bleak Water
Danuta Reah

Disturbing, atmospheric suspense novel from the author of Only Darkness, Silent Playgrounds and Night Angels:‘Dark, edgy and compelling’ The TimesBeyond the new city centre developments, the old Sheffield canal is overgrown, run-down and deserted. Signs of regeneration creep along its towpaths, including a small, innovative gallery housed in one of the warehouses. But between the renovations it’s a dark and lonely place – the perfect site for an exhibition reworking Brueghel’s The Triumph of Death.For Elisa Eliot, the curator, the chance to show well-known artist Daniel Flynn’s work at the gallery is a coup. But when a young woman’s body is found in the canal, Flynn’s nightmare images begin to spill out into the real world. Still affected by the murder of her friend’s daughter four years earlier, Eliza is drawn deep into the violence that seems to surround the gallery. Is this the work of a psychopath or is there a link between present horrors and the tragedy of four years before?

Bleak Water

Danuta Reah

For Ken, who taught me everything I needed to know about the madness of artists

And in memory of Susan Sanderson Russell

And this is the occupation known as art, which calls for imagination, and skill, in order to discover things not seen, hiding themselves under the shadow of natural objects, and to fix them with the hand, presenting to plain sight that which does not exist.

Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, Il Libro dell’ Arte

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#uad298b17-3003-58e1-9444-90b3d3e5a648)

Title Page (#ua55a44da-64e0-558d-9f0e-d41c52168395)

Dedication (#u3d71957d-8e2e-54ee-87be-8f4e0eb51541)

Epigraph (#u6b694886-f1dd-5677-bd8a-ff6ab9fae54a)

ONE (#u2b8cecdb-a14c-586f-bab7-4d1283657813)

TWO (#u5a84d09e-66e7-5851-afe2-a0e4ecdd7be0)

THREE (#uf0fc163f-63eb-5493-9283-c13b5e8d4919)

FOUR (#uee0edd92-890f-5c1c-94f2-8b1929f7d671)

FIVE (#u831bdbc2-21ea-58ba-bd9a-74d9a4b2cd2e)

SIX (#u518915d3-d589-5ab4-b0a4-a8591438e1c8)

SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Danuta Reah (#litres_trial_promo)

By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

ONE (#ulink_5e9c96ac-7f84-52a7-b5aa-19a76d412348)

The grave seemed too narrow for what it was to contain. Eliza shivered in the wind that cut across the high cemetery. She stood with the awkward group that assembled round the burial place, noting with her artist’s eye the soil strata where the digger had cut through the frozen ground – the black of the topsoil, the yellow of the clay and down into the darkness of the grave itself.

The mound of soil around the trench was covered with artificial turf, and the grave diggers hung back against the wall, waiting for the interment to finish. The coffin was lowered and the ropes released. The minister stepped forward and said the words that the ritual required. Her voice was low, with none of the forced emotion that Eliza had heard at other funerals. This woman hadn’t known Maggie. There was no one here who had been really close to Maggie, not in the last few years. The one person who had been was already here in this burial ground.

Eliza’s gaze slid unwillingly to the dark headstone to the left of the new grave. Polished granite with gold lettering. The inlay of the lettering was fading, but the words were cut deep into the stone and would take centuries of weathering to vanish. They would last for as long as anyone who cared visited this place: Ellie Chapman, 1989–1998. Love is as strong as death is.

A man in a dark suit was watching her. He looked oddly formal among the ill-assorted band of strangers who had come to say their last goodbyes to Maggie. He’d come into the service late and was now standing to one side of the granite stone. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know any of the people who were here. Over the years, Maggie’s friends had drifted away.

The ceremony was over, and people were moving away from the graveside. Eliza looked at the flowers, all still wrapped in Cellophane that would, once the trench was filled in, be piled on the new burial. They would fade within their wrappings, the messages of sympathy would be obliterated by the weather, and, in a few days, they would be cleared away and destroyed. And then the whole episode would be over.

She found herself walking beside the man in the dark suit. She looked up at him. ‘I’m Eliza Eliot,’ she said. ‘I was at college with Maggie. We haven’t met, have we?’

‘Roy Farnham. No. I didn’t know her well.’ He seemed to realize this was a bit brief. ‘She consulted me about Fraser’s appeal,’ he said.

‘You were her solicitor?’ That would explain the suit.

He shook his head. ‘No, I’m a police officer.’

Of course. ‘Were you involved in the investigation?’ The investigation into the murder of Ellie Chapman, four years ago.

‘No, but I wrote an article about the appeals system. It ran when the news came out about Fraser. She thought I could get something done about it.’ They’d stopped now by the cemetery gate.