Into the Water 5 страница

By the time he got back to the house it was mid morning, the sun high in the sky. Patrick spotted the tabby, the stray that Helen had been feeding, moving lazily across the courtyard, heading for the rosemary bush in the bed outside the kitchen window. Patrick noticed that its back was bowed slightly, its belly swollen. Pregnant. He’d have to do something about that.

THURSDAY, 13 AUGUST

Erin

MY SHITTY NEIGHBOURS in my shitty short-let flat in Newcastle were having the mother of all arguments at four o’clock this morning, so I decided to get up and go for a run. I was all dressed and ready and then I thought, why run here when I could run there? So I drove to Beckford, parked outside the church and headed off up the river path.

It was hard going, at first. Once you pass the pool you’ve got to get up that hill and then back down the slope on the other side, but after that the terrain becomes much flatter and it’s a dream run. Cool before the summer sun hits, quiet, picturesque and cyclist-free, a far cry from my London run along Regent’s Canal, dodging bikes and tourists all the way.

A few miles up the river, the valley widens out, the green hillside opposite, speckled with sheep, rolling gently away. I ran along flat, pebbled ground, barren save for patches of coarse grass and the ubiquitous gorse. I ran hard, head down, until a mile or so further up I reached a little cottage set back slightly from the river’s edge, backed by a stand of birch trees.

I slowed to a jog to catch my breath, making my way towards the building to look around. It was a lonely place, seemingly unoccupied but not abandoned. There were curtains, partly drawn, and the windows were clean. I peered inside to see a tiny living room, furnished with two green armchairs and a little table between them. I tried the door but it was locked, so I sat down on the front step in the shade and took a swig from my bottle of water. Stretching my legs out in front of me, flexing my ankles, I waited for my breathing and my heart rate to slow. On the base of the door frame I noticed someone had scratched a message – Mad Annie was here – with a little skull drawn alongside it.

There were crows arguing in the trees behind me, but apart from that and the occasional bleating of sheep, the valley was quiet, and perfectly unspoiled. I think of myself as a city girl through and through, but this place – weird as it is – gets under your skin.

DI Townsend called the briefing just after nine. There weren’t many of us there – a couple of uniforms who’d been helping out with house-to-house, the youngish detective constable, Callie, Hairy the science guy and me. Townsend had been in with the coroner for the post-mortem – he gave us the low-down, most of which was to be expected. Nel died due to injuries sustained in the fall. There was no water in her lungs – she didn’t drown, it was already over by the time she hit the water. She had no injuries that could not be explained by the fall – no scratches or bruises which seemed out of place or which might suggest that someone else had been involved. She also had a fair amount of alcohol in her blood – three or four glasses’ worth.

Callie gave us the low-down on the house-to-house – not that there was much to tell. We know that Nel was at the pub briefly on the Sunday evening, and that she left around seven. We know that she was at the Mill House until at least ten thirty, which was when Lena went to bed. No one reported seeing her after that. No one has reported seeing her in any altercations recently either, although it is widely agreed that she wasn’t much liked. The locals didn’t like her attitude, the sense of entitlement of an outsider coming to their town and purporting to tell their story. Where exactly did she get off?

Hairy has been going through Nel’s email account – she’d set up an account dedicated to her project and invited people to send in their stories. Mostly, she’d just received abuse. ‘Though I wouldn’t say it’s much worse than a lot of women get on the internet in the normal course of things, ’ he said, giving me an apologetic shrug, as though he was responsible for every idiot misogynist in cyberspace. ‘We’ll follow up, of course, but …’

The rest of Hairy’s testimony was actually pretty interesting. It demonstrated that Jules Abbott was a liar, for starters: Nel’s phone was still AWOL, but her phone records showed that although she didn’t use her mobile much, she had made eleven calls to her sister’s phone over the past three months. Most of the calls lasted less than a minute, sometimes two or three; none of them was particularly long, but they weren’t hang-ups either.

He’d managed to establish the time of death, too. The camera down on the rocks – the one that wasn’t damaged – had picked something up. Nothing graphic, nothing telling, just a sudden blur of movement in the darkness, followed by a spray of water. Two thirty-one a. m., the camera told us, was the moment Nel went in.

But he saved the best for last. ‘We got a print off the case of the other camera, the damaged one, ’ he said. ‘It doesn’t match anyone on file, but we could ask the locals to start coming in, to rule themselves out? ’

Townsend nodded slowly.

‘I know that camera was vandalized before, ’ Hairy continued with a shrug, ‘so it won’t necessarily give us anything conclusive, but …’

‘Even so. Let’s see what we find. I’ll leave that with you, ’ Townsend said, looking at me. ‘I’ll have a word with Julia Abbott about those phone calls. ’ He got to his feet, folding his arms across his chest, his chin down. ‘You should all be aware, ’ he said, his voice low, apologetic almost, ‘I’ve had Division on the phone just this morning. ’ He sighed deeply, and the rest of us exchanged glances. We knew what was coming. ‘Given the results of the PM and the lack of any physical evidence of any sort of altercation up on that cliff, we are under pressure not to waste resources’ – he put little air quotes around the words – ‘on a suicide or accidental death. So. I know there is still work to be done, but we need to work quickly and efficiently. We aren’t going to be given a great deal of time on this. ’

It didn’t exactly come as a shock. I thought about the conversation I’d had with the DCI on the day I got the assignment – almost certainly a jumper. Jumping all round, from cliffs to conclusions. Hardly surprising, given the history of the place.

But still. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like that there were two women in the water in the space of just a few months, and that they knew each other. They were connected, by place and by people. They were connected by Lena: best friend of one, daughter of the other. The last person to see her mother alive, and the first to insist that this – not just her mother’s death, but the mystery surrounding it – was what she wanted. Such an odd thing for a child to suggest.

I said as much to the DI on our way out of the station. He looked at me balefully. ‘God only knows what’s going through that girl’s head, ’ he said. ‘She’ll be trying to make sense of it. She—’ He stopped. There was a woman walking towards us – shuffling more than walking, really – muttering to herself as she did. She was wearing a black coat, despite the heat, her grey hair was streaked with purple, and she had dark polish on her nails. She looked like an elderly goth.

‘Morning, Nickie, ’ Townsend said.

The woman glanced up at him and then at me, eyes narrowing beneath beetling brows.

‘Hmph, ’ she muttered, presumably by way of greeting. ‘Getting anywhere, are you? ’

‘Getting anywhere with what, Nickie? ’

‘Finding out who did it! ’ she spluttered. ‘Finding out who pushed her. ’

‘Who pushed her? ’ I repeated. ‘You’re referring to Danielle Abbott? Do you have information which might be useful to us, Mrs … er …? ’

She glowered at me and then turned back to Townsend. ‘Who’s this when she’s at home? ’ she asked, jabbing a thumb in my direction.

‘This is Detective Sergeant Morgan, ’ he said evenly. ‘Do you have something you’d like to tell us, Nickie? About the other night? ’

She harrumphed again. ‘I didn’t see anything, ’ she grumbled, ‘and even if I did, it’s not as if the likes of you would listen, is it? ’

She continued her shuffle past us, down the sun-bright road, muttering as she went.

‘What was that about, do you think? ’ I asked the DI. ‘Is she someone we ought to speak to officially? ’

‘I wouldn’t take Nickie Sage too seriously, ’ he replied with a shake of the head. ‘She’s not exactly reliable. ’

‘Oh? ’

‘She’s says she’s a “psychic”, that she speaks to the dead. We’ve had some trouble with her before, fraud and so on. She also claims she’s descended from a woman who was killed here by witch hunters, ’ he added drily. ‘She’s mad as a hatter. ’

Jules

I WAS IN the kitchen when the doorbell rang. I glanced out of the window and saw the detective, Townsend, standing on the front steps, looking up at the windows. Lena got to the door before I did. She opened up for him and said, ‘Hi, Sean. ’

Townsend stepped into the house, brushing past her skinny body as he did, noticing (he must have noticed) her denim cutoffs, the Rolling Stones T-shirt with the tongue sticking out. He held out his hand to me and I took it. His palm was dry but his skin had an unhealthy sheen to it and there were greyish circles under his eyes. Lena watched him from beneath lowered lids. She raised her fingers to her mouth and chewed on a nail.

I showed him into the kitchen and Lena followed. The detective and I sat down at the table, while Lena leaned against the counter. She crossed one ankle over the other, then shifted her body and crossed them again.

Townsend didn’t look. He coughed, rubbed one hand against his wrist. ‘The post-mortem has been completed, ’ he said in a soft voice. He glanced at Lena and back at me. ‘Nel was killed by the impact. There’s no indication that anyone else was involved. There was some alcohol in her blood. ’ His voice grew softer still. ‘Enough to impair her judgement. To make her unsteady on her feet. ’

Lena made a noise, a long, shuddering sigh. The detective was looking at his hands, now folded in front of him on the table.

‘But … Nel was sure-footed as a goat up on that cliff, ’ I said. ‘And she could handle more than a few glasses of wine. Nel could handle a bottle …’

He nodded. ‘Perhaps, ’ he said. ‘But at night, up there …’

‘It wasn’t an accident, ’ Lena said sharply.

‘She didn’t jump, ’ I snapped back.

Lena squinted at me, lip curled. ‘What would you know? ’ she asked. She turned to look at the detective. ‘Did you know that she lied to you? She lied about not being in contact with my mother. Mum tried to call her, like, I don’t even know how many times. She never answered, she never called back, she never—’ She stopped, looking back at me. ‘She’s just … why are you even here? I don’t want you here. ’ She stalked out of the room, slamming the kitchen door behind her. A few moments later, her bedroom door slammed too.

DI Townsend and I sat in silence. I waited for him to ask me about the phone calls, but he said nothing; his eyes were shuttered, his face expressionless.

‘Does it not strike you as odd, ’ I said at last, ‘how convinced she is that Nel did this deliberately? ’

He turned to me, his head cocked to one side slightly. Still he said nothing.

‘Do you not have any suspects in this investigation? I mean … it just doesn’t seem to me that anyone here cares that she’s dead. ’

‘But you do? ’ he said evenly.

‘What sort of a question is that? ’ I could feel my face growing hot. I knew what was coming.

‘Ms Abbott, ’ he said. ‘Julia. ’

‘Jules. It’s Jules. ’ I was stalling, delaying the inevitable.

‘Jules. ’ He cleared his throat. ‘As Lena just mentioned, although you told us that you hadn’t had any contact with your sister in years, Nel’s mobile phone records reveal that in the past three months alone, she made eleven calls to your phone. ’ My face hot with shame, I looked away. ‘Eleven calls. Why lie to us? ’

(She’s always lying, you muttered darkly. Always lying. Always telling tales. )

‘I didn’t lie, ’ I said. ‘I never spoke to her. It’s like Lena said: she left messages, I didn’t respond. So I didn’t lie, ’ I repeated. I sounded weak, wheedling, even to myself. ‘Look, you can’t ask me to explain this to you, because there is no way of doing so to an outsider. Nel and I had problems going back years – but that doesn’t have anything to do with this. ’

‘How can you know? ’ Townsend asked. ‘If you didn’t speak to her, how do you know what it had to do with? ’

‘I just … Here, ’ I said, holding out my mobile phone. ‘Take it. Listen for yourself. ’ My hands were trembling and, as he reached for the phone, so were his. He listened to your final message.

‘Why would you not call her back? ’ he said, something akin to disappointment on his face. ‘She sounded upset, wouldn’t you say? ’

‘No, I … I don’t know. She sounded like Nel. Sometimes she was happy, sometimes she was sad, sometimes she was angry, more than once she was drunk … it didn’t mean anything. You don’t know her. ’

‘The other calls she made, ’ he demanded, a harder edge to his voice now. ‘Do you still have the messages? ’

I didn’t, not all of them, but he listened to the ones I had, his hand gripping my phone so tightly his knuckles whitened. When he finished, he handed the phone back to me.

‘Don’t erase those. We may need to listen to them again. ’ He pushed his chair back and got to his feet, and I followed him out into the hall.

At the door, he turned to face me. ‘I have to say, ’ he said, ‘I find it odd that you didn’t answer her. That you didn’t try to find out why she needed to speak to you so urgently. ’

‘I thought she just wanted attention, ’ I said quietly and he turned away.

It was only after he had closed the door behind him that I remembered. I ran out after him.

‘Detective Townsend, ’ I called out, ‘there was a bracelet. My mother’s bracelet. Nel always wore it. Have you found it? ’

He shook his head, turning again to look at me. ‘We’ve found nothing, no. Lena told DS Morgan that while Nel did wear it often, it wasn’t something she had on every day. Although, ’ he went on, dipping his head, ‘I suppose you couldn’t have known that. ’ With a glance up at the house, he climbed into his car and backed slowly out of the driveway.

Jules

SO SOMEHOW, THIS has ended up being my fault. You really are something, Nel. You are gone, possibly killed, and everyone is pointing the finger at me. I wasn’t even here! I felt petulant, reduced to my teenage self. I wanted to scream at them, How is this my fault?

After the detective left, I stomped back into the house, catching sight of myself in the hallway mirror as I did, and I was surprised to see you looking back at me (older, not so pretty, but still you). Something snagged in my chest. I went into the kitchen and cried. If I failed you, I need to know how. I may not have loved you, but I can’t have you abandoned like this, dismissed. I want to know if someone hurt you and why; I want them to pay. I want to lay all this to rest so that maybe you can stop whispering in my ear about how you didn’t jump, didn’t jump, didn’t jump. I believe you, all right? And (whisper it), I want to know that I am safe. I want to know that no one is coming for me. I want to know that the child I am to take under my wing is just that – a blameless child – not something else. Not something dangerous.

I kept seeing the way Lena looked at DI Townsend, the tone of her voice when she called him by his first name (his first name? ), the way he looked at her. I wondered whether what she’d told them about the bracelet was true. It rang false, to me, because you’d been so quick to claim it, to make it yours. It was possible, I supposed, that you only insisted on taking it because you knew how much I wanted it. When you found it amongst Mum’s things and slipped it on to your wrist, I complained to Dad (yes, telling tales again). I asked, Why should she have it? Why not? you replied. I’m the eldest. And when he was gone, you smiled as you admired it on your wrist. It suits me, you said. Don’t you think it suits me? Pinching a layer of fat on my forearm. I doubt it would fit around your chubby little arm.

I wiped my eyes. You stung me like that often; cruelty always was your strong suit. Some jibes – about my size, about how slow I was, how dull – I shrugged off. Others – Come on, Julia, tell me honestly. Wasn’t there some part of you that liked it? – were barbs embedded deep in my flesh, irrecoverable unless I wanted to tear open fresh wounds. That last one, slurred into my ear on the day we buried our mother – oh, I could happily have strangled you with my bare hands for those words. And if you did that to me, if you were capable of making me feel like that, who else did you make murderous?

Down in the bowels of the house, in your study, I began to sift through your papers. I started with the mundane stuff. From the wooden filing cabinets against the wall I retrieved files containing medical records for you and Lena, a birth certificate for Lena, with no father named. I’d known that would be the case, of course; this was one of your mysteries, one of your secrets held tight to your chest. But for even Lena not to know? (I had to wonder, unkindly, whether you genuinely didn’t know either. )

There were school reports, from the Park Slope Montessori in Brooklyn, and from the local primary and secondary here in Beckford. The deeds to the house, a life-insurance policy (Lena the beneficiary), bank statements, investment accounts. All the ordinary debris of a relatively well-ordered life, with no secrets to spill, no hidden truths to tell.

In the lower drawers were your files relating to ‘the project’: boxes filled with rough prints of pictures, pages of notes, some typed, some in your own spidery hand, in blue and green ink, words crossed out and capitalized and underlined, like the ravings of a conspiracy theorist. A madwoman. Unlike the other files, the administrative ones, none of it was in order, everything was a mess, all jumbled up. As though someone had been through the files, looking for something. My skin prickled, my mouth was dry. The police have been through them, of course. They had your computer, but they’d still want to see this. Maybe they’ve been looking for a note.

I flicked through the first box of pictures. They were mostly of the pool, the rocks, the little sandy beach. On some, you’d marked things on the borders, codes I couldn’t decipher. There were photos of Beckford, too: its streets and houses, the pretty stone ones and uglier new ones. One of these was pictured over and over, a plain Edwardian semi with dirty curtains, half drawn. There were photos of the town centre, the bridge, the pub, the church, the graveyard. Libby Seeton’s grave.

Poor Libby. You were obsessed with her when you were a child. I hated the story, sad and cruel as it was, but you wanted to hear it, over and over again. You wanted to hear how Libby, still a child, was brought to the water, accused of witchcraft. Why? I’d ask, and our mother would say, Because she and her aunt knew about herbs and plants. They knew how to make medicine. That seemed a stupid reason, but adult stories were full of stupid cruelties: little children turned away at the school gates because their skin was the wrong colour; people beaten or killed for worshipping the wrong god. Later you told me that it wasn’t about making medicine, it was because Libby seduced (you explained the word) an older man and enticed him to leave his wife and child. That didn’t diminish her in your eyes; it was a sign of her power.

When you were little, six or seven, you insisted on wearing one of Mum’s old skirts to the pool; it trailed in the dirt although you’d pulled it up under your chin. You climbed up the rocks and flung yourself into the water while I played on the beach. You were Libby: Look, Mum! Look! Do you think I’ll sink or swim?

I can see you doing it, the excitement on your face. I can feel my mother’s soft hand in mine, warm sand between my toes as we watched you. That doesn’t make any sense: if you were six or seven, then I was two or three – there’s no way I could remember that, could I?

I thought about the lighter that I found in your drawer, about the initials engraved on it. LS. Is this for Libby? Really, Nel? Were you really so obsessed with a three-hundred-year-long-dead girl that you had her initials engraved on your belongings? Maybe not. Maybe you weren’t obsessed. Maybe you just liked the idea of being able to hold her in your palm.

I returned to the files, looking for more about Libby. I sorted through printed pages of type and photos, print-outs of old newspaper articles, cuttings from magazines, here and there your indelicate scrawl on the edge of the pages, illegible usually, rarely clear. There were names I’d heard of and names I hadn’t: Libby and Mary, Anne and Katie and Ginny and Lauren, and there, at the top of Lauren’s entry, in thick black ink, you had written: Beckford is not a suicide spot. Beckford is a place to get rid of troublesome women.

The Drowning Pool

Libby, 1679

YESTERDAY THEY SAID tomorrow, so that’s today now. She knows it won’t be long. They’ll come to take her to the water, to swim her. She wants it to come, wills it to come, it can’t come soon enough. She’s tired of feeling so dirty, of the itch on her skin. Knows it won’t really help with the sores, putrid now and smelling bad. She needs elderberry, or marigold maybe, she’s not sure what would be best, or whether it’s too late to do anything at all. Aunt May would know, but she’s gone now, swung from a gibbet these eight months past.

Libby likes the water, loves the river though she’s afraid of the deep. It’ll be cold enough to freeze her now, but at least it’ll take the insects from her skin. They shaved her when they first arrested her, but the hair’s grown back a bit now, and there are things crawling everywhere, burrowing into her, she feels them in her ears, at the corners of her eyes and in between her legs. She scratches until she bleeds. It’ll be good to have all that washed away, the smell of the blood, of herself.

They come in the morning. Two men, young, rough-handed, rough-mouthed, she’s felt their fists before. No more though, they’re careful about that, because they heard what the man said, the one who saw her in the forest, her legs spread and the Devil between them. They laugh and slap, but they’re afraid of her, too, and in any case, she’s not much to look at these days.

She wonders, will he be there to watch her, and what will he think? He thought her beautiful once, but now her teeth are rotting, and her skin is mottled blue and purple as though she were half dead already.

They take her to Beckford, where the river turns sharp around the cliff and then runs slow, slow and deep. This is where she’ll swim.

It is autumn, a cold wind blowing, but the sun is bright and so she feels ashamed, stripped there in the bright light before all the men and women of the village. She thinks she can hear them gasp, in horror or surprise, at what’s become of lovely Libby Seeton.

She’s bound with ropes thick and rough enough to bring bright, fresh blood to her wrists. Just her arms. Legs left free. Then they tie a rope around her waist, so that should she sink, they can bring her back again.

When they take her to the river’s edge, she turns and looks for him. The children scream then, thinking she’s turning the curse on them, and the men push her into the water. The cold takes all of her breath. One of the men has a pole and he shoves it at her back, pressing her on and on and on until she cannot stand. She slips down, into the water.

She sinks.

The cold is so shocking that she forgets where she is. She opens her mouth to gasp and sucks in black water, she starts to choke, she struggles, she kicks with her legs, but she’s disoriented, no longer feels the riverbed beneath her feet.

The rope pulls hard at her, biting into her waist, ripping her skin.

When they drag her to the bank, she is crying.

‘Again! ’

Someone is calling for a second ordeal.

‘She sank! ’ a woman’s voice cries. ‘She’s no witch, she’s just a child. ’

‘Again! Again! ’

The men bind her again for the second ordeal. Different this time: left thumb to right toe, right thumb to left. The rope around her waist. This time, they carry her into the water.

‘Please, ’ she starts to beg, because she’s not sure that she can face it again, the blackness and the cold. She wants to go back to a home that no longer exists, to a time when she and her aunt sat in front of the fire and told stories to one another. She wants to be in her bed in their cottage, she wants to be little again, to breathe in woodsmoke and rose and the sweet warmth of her aunt’s skin.

‘Please. ’

She sinks. By the time they drag her out the second time, her lips are the blue of a bruise, and her breath is gone for good.

MONDAY, 17 AUGUST

Nickie

NICKIE SAT IN her chair by the window, watching the sun rise and burn the morning mist off the hills. She’d hardly slept at all, what with this heat and her sister prattling in her ear all night long. Nickie didn’t like the heat. She was a creature built for cold weather: her father’s family came from the Hebrides. Viking stock. On her mother’s side they came from the east of Scotland, driven down south hundreds of years ago by witch hunters. The folk around Beckford might not believe it, they might scoff and scorn, but Nickie knew she was descended from the witches. She could draw a direct line all the way back, from Sage to Seeton.

Showered and fed and dressed in respectful black, Nickie went first to the pool. A long, slow shuffle along the path. She was grateful for the shade offered by oak and beech. Even so, sweat prickled in her eyes, it collected at the base of her spine. When she reached the little beach on the south side, she took off her sandals and went in up to her ankles. She reached down and scooped up handfuls of water, splashing it over her face and her neck and her upper arms. Time was, she would have climbed up to the clifftop to pay her respects to those who had fallen and those who had jumped and those who were pushed, but her legs just weren’t up to it any longer, so whatever she had to say to the swimmers, she would have to say it from down here.

Nickie had been standing on pretty much exactly this spot the first time she ever laid eyes on Nel Abbott. It was a couple of years back and she’d been doing just this – having a bit of a paddle, cooling off – when she’d spotted a woman up on the cliff. She watched her walk back and forth, once and then twice, and by the third time there was a tingle over Nickie’s palms. Something wicked, she thought. She watched the woman crouch down, lower herself to her knees and then, like a snake slithering on its belly, manoeuvre herself to the very edge of the cliff, her arms dangling over the edge. Heart in mouth, Nickie cried out, ‘Oi! ’ The woman looked down, and, to Nickie’s surprise, she smiled and waved.

Nickie saw her around quite a bit after that. She was at the pool a lot, taking pictures, making sketches, writing things down. Up there at all times of night and day, in all weathers. From her window, Nickie had watched Nel walk through the village towards the pool in the dead of night, in a snow storm, or when bitter rain lashed down hard enough to strip skin from flesh.

⇐ Предыдущая 1 2 3 456 7 8 9 10 Следующая ⇒