Bleak Water

The crying had changed to hiccuping sobs. Eliza shifted restlessly. There was nothing she could do. She sipped the milk and tried to shut the sound out. The milk was warm and soothing, and the chair felt soft and comfortable as she sank back into its cushions. Her eyes were heavy now and she let the empty glass drop to the floor. Soft and warm. A sob, and silence. A sob and silence. She was looking for the baby. The corridor was long and there were doors and the baby was behind one of them, then she was in the gallery and the painting on the wall was the graveyard, and she protested because she didn’t want that painting. ‘You must.’ It was Maggie’s voice, and she laughed. She reached out to the painting but as she touched it, it fell apart under her fingers, the paint flaking away, falling off the canvas and vanishing as her hands dug deeper and deeper into the darkness, through the black of the topsoil and the yellow of the clay and then it was the canal and she could see the figure reaching up and up from the depths of the water, from the painted grave.

And then it was morning, bleak and dreary. She woke in the chair feeling stiff and cold. The rain had stopped, and on the other side of the wall there was silence.

The empty buildings were a faint presence in the dawn now, their dilapidation becoming apparent as the sun rose higher. The converted warehouse looked incongruous, new. The water lay still, gleaming in the faint morning light. The canal was little used here.

A bridge crossed the canal further down the towpath. The canal ran under the road through a short arched tunnel. The bridge was a silhouette as the sky lightened, the water in the tunnel opaque and black. The sky was heavy with clouds, promising more rain. The sound of the early traffic disturbed the silence, and the smell of car fumes drifted through the air. The light crept across the water, across the mouth of the tunnel, reflecting up on to the brickwork. The colours began to appear, the dull green of the undergrowth on the towpath, the black of the sodden ground, the reds and yellows and blues of discarded crisp bags, softdrink cans, cigarette cartons. It illuminated the crumbling brickwork, the weeds growing in the pointing. The shadow of the tunnel lay sharp across the water which moved slightly as the wind disturbed it, slapping against the side of the canal.

The rain was starting again, making the light dull, making the surface of the water dance. And there was something in the water under the bridge. It was like a tangle of weed and cloth, half in and half out of the shadow, sinking into the oily water. As the water rippled, the bundle moved slightly, rocking gently in the eddies. Rise and fall back. Rise and fall back. And sometimes as it moved, a faint gleam of something almost blue white gleamed through the water in the thin morning light.

THREE (#ulink_f1743deb-d178-5014-b66a-37f1a088cb25)

Roy Farnham was tired. His head was aching and his mouth felt dry. The call had come through shortly after six, jerking him out of a deep sleep. He’d sat up late the night before. It had been after one by the time he’d got to bed, and then the burial he’d been to had lodged in his mind, the dark cemetery and the funereal shrubs, the sparsely attended service. What a waste of a life.

His mind had drifted to the woman he’d talked to, Maggie Chapman’s friend – what was her name? Eliza. She’d been striking in a long black coat, her fair hair escaping from under her hat. Maybe he should drop in at the gallery, see this exhibition…

He’d slept, woken, slept again. And now, as the heaviness of true sleep was carrying him away, the phone, the fucking phone was ringing and he was back on duty and he was going to have to answer it.

He rolled over in bed and picked up the handset. ‘Farnham.’ As he was speaking, his hand was groping around on the bedside table where he’d dumped a packet of aspirin the night before. He popped a couple out of the foil and sat up as the bitter taste of salicylate filled his mouth. He looked at the clock display on the stereo: 6.15. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK, I’ll be there.’ He gave the instructions more or less on automatic pilot, then lay back for a minute as he got his thoughts in order. A body in the canal – suspicious death. Shit. Not a murder, not on his first day back. A young girl, they’d said. With a bit of luck, it’d be an accident. Or suicide.

The room felt cold as he pushed back the quilt. The heating wasn’t set to come on until seven. He pressed the advance switch, but the warmth hadn’t really begun to permeate the flat until after he’d showered and dressed. A fine rain was falling as he left the house, and the steering wheel was cold under his hands.

It was colder by the canal side. A body in the water always has the potential to be a suspicious death and the early summons had put the responsibility for the decisions squarely on Farnham’s shoulders. His hopes for a simple accident or suicide faded as he stood on the canal bank, listening to the pathologist with deepening resignation. He didn’t want another murder inquiry. But the body that was pulled from the water allowed for little doubt. ‘Whoever put her in there made sure she wouldn’t come up again,’ the pathologist said. She pulled the matted hair away from around the neck, and showed Farnham the cord that was twisted round the woman’s throat. It was attached to a bag. ‘There’s a brick or something in there. Pulled her right under. Poor girl.’

Farnham, crouched on the canal side, felt the wind cut through his jacket as it funnelled through the archway of the bridge. ‘Suicide?’ he said.

‘Mm.’ The pathologist looked at the cord assessingly. She didn’t sound convinced. ‘It’s possible. But look at her hands.’ She showed Farnham the damage to the fingers. They were bruised and misshapen, and there were faint marks on the wrists. ‘That’s pre-mortem damage,’ she said.

Farnham stood up, feeling his knees protest. He wasn’t forty yet, for Christ’s sake. He needed to get to the gym, cut down on the beer, start…After this case. He’d think about it then. He looked at the dark water of the canal. The wind ruffled the surface, sending ripples lapping against the stonework. ‘I’ll get a team down there,’ he said. They’d need to search the water under the bridge where the body had been found. They’d need a search team along the canal bank, along the canal itself – house to house – or boat to boat. God help his budget.

He looked down at the dead woman again. She seemed young, very young. The pathologist stood up beside him. ‘I’ll tell you something else,’ she said. ‘There’s a baby somewhere. This girl had a baby not so long ago.’

Farnham closed his eyes. This was all he needed. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll get on to it.’ The rippling water reminded him of the sea. A dead woman in the water. A baby. What were they going to find when they searched the towpath and the canal? He pinched the bridge of his nose, and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. ‘OK,’ he said again. ‘Let’s get started.’

Eliza put down the phone. She’d been talking to Maggie’s landlord. Maggie had named Eliza as her executor, and suddenly, all of this was her responsibility. She’d contacted him shortly after Maggie’s death to let him know what she was going to do about the flat. ‘The rent’s paid to the end of the month,’ Eliza had said, the first time she had talked to him, when Maggie was just two days dead. ‘The flat will be cleared by then.’ After Flynn’s exhibition, when she could give it her full attention.

But he’d phoned this morning with worries about security. The upstairs flat was unoccupied and the house was standing empty. ‘Word gets around,’ he said. Someone had been seen hanging round. Eliza doodled flowers on the pad by the phone as she listened.

‘I’ll get to it as soon as I can,’ she said. The flat was a nagging irritation, but he had a point. An empty flat was vulnerable. There was little, if anything, of value there, but she didn’t want Maggie’s place vandalized, her books, her diaries, her photographs – all the memorabilia of Ellie – damaged or destroyed.

After she hung up, Eliza contemplated the task she’d set herself. It probably wouldn’t take long. She found the prospect of sorting through the remains of Maggie’s life depressing. She’d get started on it as soon as she had a couple of hours. She tried to put it out of her mind. She made breakfast and stood at the window watching the canal as she ate toast and drank coffee. Daniel was arriving today. She felt a twist of emotion in her stomach which she found hard to analyse. Excitement? Fear? Anger? It was the way she always felt when she was about to do something new, something that presented her with a challenge, that was all. But she dressed carefully, twisted her hair on top of her head the way he used to like it.

The gallery was busy when she came downstairs from her flat. Mel was unpacking boxes on the floor, surrounded by polystyrene and bubble wrap.

‘Hi, Eliza,’ Mel greeted her. Her hair, which had been black the day before, was pale blonde, carefully tousled. ‘This is that stuff from Daniel Flynn.’ She ran her eyes assessingly up and down Eliza. ‘You look nice. Jonathan, Eliza’s got dressed up for Daniel Flynn. Doesn’t she look nice?’

Eliza felt her face flush. Jonathan looked up. ‘Mm,’ he said vaguely. Mel smiled.

‘What time did Flynn say to expect him?’ Eliza started checking through the post.

‘Sometime this morning.’ Mel shrugged. ‘He didn’t say.’

Jonathan looked up from whatever was absorbing him at the desk. ‘Have you had a chance to talk to him properly, Eliza?’

‘Not really. I sent him a couple of e-mails, told him what I was planning. He didn’t reply, so I’m assuming it’s OK. I haven’t managed to get him on the phone. Everything’s in hand for Friday.’ Eliza kept her voice casual.

Jonathan was checking the diary and opening his post. ‘Oh, not again. Get a letter off to this guy, Mel. It’s the third time he’s sent me some photos of his stuff. If I was looking for wannabe pre-Raphaelites I’d go to the greetings-cards section in Smith’s. At least I’d get someone who could handle paint.’

‘I’ll do that now,’ Mel said. ‘While I’m waiting for Eliza.’

‘Thanks.’ He flicked through the diary. ‘We’ve got more school kids in tomorrow. I’d better deal with that. You know, I thought I was an artist, not a child minder.’

Eliza ignored this as she checked through her own post. It was just Jonathan’s usual complaint. He always moaned about the school visits – and almost always dealt with them himself. Jonathan liked children. He was a good teacher – she knew that from her own student days. But he was surprisingly good with kids; serious and sober, but able to hold their interest and arouse their enthusiasm. It was a side to Jonathan she never would have suspected.

The post was dull – some advertising and some charity leaflets that went in the bin, an invitation to a private view that might be worth going to, and some art catalogues she put on one side for later browsing.

‘…like some kind of charity for homeless kids.’

‘What?’ Eliza hadn’t been paying attention.

‘I said, this gallery is like some kind of charity for homeless kids.’

He was bitching about Cara again. He’d taken against her, almost from the time she’d first moved in. Jonathan would have preferred the flats to be let at full market rents, rather than the ‘affordable rents’ – high enough in Eliza’s opinion – that the Trust required. He thought that the flats should be taken by ‘young professionals’, not the socially needy. ‘That’s what you get for using taxpayer’s money,’ Eliza said. She remembered the night before, the shut-down alarm. ‘By the way, Cara…’ She stopped. ‘It doesn’t matter. Come on,’ she added to Mel, ‘let’s get this lot upstairs before Daniel Flynn gets here.’

Mel pulled a letter off the printer and put it in Jonathan’s in-tray. ‘OK.’ She sighed but stood up and she and Eliza began moving the boxes that contained Flynn’s drawings and sketches towards the lift.

Once they had moved the boxes into the upper gallery, they began to sort the remaining pictures, matching the numbers with the plan that Eliza had set out the night before. So far it was all going smoothly, and they should have everything set up in plenty of time for the opening. She made a mental note to go over the invitation list for the private view and make sure that no one had been left off.

Mel’s voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘Oh God, look at this!’ She was holding up a photo-assemblage, in which, against the barren incandescence of the Brueghel landscape, a man in the unmistakable uniform of an officer of the Third Reich was placing a noose round the neck of a young woman. The woman’s hands were bound. Eliza could see the fastidious care with which the man was positioning the rope, the concentration on his face, the woman’s white-faced fear. ‘Is it real?’ Her eyes were bright.

Eliza nodded. She had seen the photograph before – in fact, she had drawn Daniel’s attention to it. It was one of a series taken towards the end of the war when Hitler’s army was in retreat. ‘The triumph of death,’ she said. ‘Flynn’s right. Brueghel’s images don’t do it for us any more.’

‘It’s gross,’ Mel said.

Eliza wasn’t going to argue with that so she didn’t reply. She stood for a minute, looking down at the canal. There was some sort of activity further up on the towpath. She’d been aware of people hurrying past and now, as she looked, she saw a couple of police officers. There must have been some kind of trouble down there in the night. She shrugged, dismissing it.

She closed doors, shutting off the hum of activity from the floor below, and let the silence of the gallery close around her. She had work to do.

Madrid

The silence of the museum closed around Eliza as she walked through the high, light corridors. These were the times she treasured at the Prado, the early mornings before the gallery got too busy when she could have the spaces and the paintings to herself.

Her interest in the early painters had brought her to the rooms where the sixteenth-century Flemish paintings hung. They had developed techniques that produced paintings with a clarity and depth, and a saturation of colour that has never been surpassed. The big attraction for visitors was The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch’s enigmatic depiction of heaven and hell. The colours, after all the centuries, were still vivid and clear. Eliza had spent a long time studying it.

But gradually she was drawn to a smaller panel that hung on the far wall. From a distance, it looked dark, but closer, the detail began to appear, a bleak coastline, a sluggish river, fires that cast a sombre glow across a landscape where death marched as an army. Brueghel’s masterpiece: The Triumph of Death.

The painting exercised a fascination over her. She was intrigued by the meticulous techniques that had kept the paint so fresh, the luminescence of the water and the incandescent glow that suffused the landscape. Brueghel had probably worked with tempera white heightening into the wet or on the dry imprimatura, beginning with the highlights of the flesh…It was a painting that drew the eye, as the army of death advanced across a desolate landscape, hunting down and slaughtering the living, men, women and children, with a pitiless dedication and terrifying cruelty.

‘Un cuadro interesante, no?’