Silent Waters, page 11
‘Oh,’ says Sam.
Bill lives minutes away in a red-bricked block that could once have been pretty and sought after but now is run-down and poorly maintained. He could afford so much nicer and bigger if he was better at saving money, but she knows his gambling addiction has been present in both of their lives since what happened at the barn, and then worsened a year later when their mother died. The apps are the result of a swirling black mass of guilt and grief and shame in his heart that he harnesses into self-destruction, but whenever she tries to address it, he laughs it off, and then manages to claw himself back from the precipice. But he’s balanced on a knife-edge, she knows.
Aren’t they all.
She thinks that maybe she could help him with money now that Mark has set up the trust for Sam. She’s a trustee and can draw from it whenever she likes, but even if she did so, it’s not what Bill needs long term. He needs years of therapy.
Don’t they all.
The key is smooth and cold in her hand. She opens the door and as they step inside, Jen’s nostrils are hit with the smell of damp washing, and the citrus tang of Bill’s expensive aftershave.
‘Bill?’
She walks the footprint of the flat.
‘He’s not here, Mum.’
‘No . . . Can you do me a favour, bub? Can you see if Uncle Bill left any food in the fridge? He’s always got chocolate in, hasn’t he?’
Sam wonders through to the kitchen happily and Jen starts to leaf through all the dog-eared books, looks behind the sofa cushions in the living room. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but she’s a police officer, a specialist at searches, and there are clues everywhere to a person’s mental state of mind, if nothing physical.
‘I found a Twix.’
‘My favourite. One finger each, yeah? Do you want to put the TV on while I tidy up for him a bit?’
Sam nods and she smiles and when he’s engrossed in a programme, she goes to Bill’s bedroom, turns cupboards upside down, takes out all the linen in the trunks and removes the top of the toilet to look into the cistern. She riffles through his bathroom cabinets, tries to ignore how many packets of pharmacy pills and prescription Prozac packets he’s got stacked up. She checks under the bed, strips it, turns the mattress over, goes to the wardrobe and checks on top of it, and inside it. A suit hangs on the wardrobe door, the suit he wore for that interview. He’d sent a picture of himself in it because she’d lent him a tie. He looked good and she told him so, but that pride in him is now uncomfortable.
She leaves the bedroom, opens all the kitchen drawers, tips up the cutlery tray, pulls out the plates and the bowls. She looks in the larder, the fridge, the freezer.
Nothing, nothing. She stands, hands on hips and thinks. He wouldn’t be at the barn, would he? He sometimes liked to camp out there, but she knows now he only associates it with bad feeling. He wouldn’t be there, but where the hell is he?
‘Come on, bub,’ she says.
‘Aren’t we waiting for Uncle Bill?’
‘I don’t know when he’s coming back,’ she says and then chokes on her own words.
She locks up.
‘What now?’ Sam asks.
She looks down at him, feels the swell of guilt wash over her. She can’t go to Bill’s site, no one would be there anyway, and she can’t break in.
‘Now I take you to the park like I promised, weeks ago.’
Flowers are out with their heads tipped up, paying worship to the midday sun. There are other kids here from school, but Sam won’t play with them yet – not while Jen is here and he has her all to himself. He’s excited to be with her, he’s always excited to be with her, and she knows she should treasure this time, even though she’s exhausted, because there will be a time, not too far in the future, where he won’t let her pull him in for a cuddle whenever the whim takes her, won’t let her muss his hair, or let her read to him.
‘Look, Mum!’ he cries.
He’s on the high climbing frame, standing right at the exposed edge, and it sets her heart on fire, but she doesn’t rush to tell him to step back. He grins at her and then flies down the metal slide and she exhales.
‘Nice one,’ she says as he goes again.
‘Put on your stopwatch,’ he says and races to the obstacle course.
She obliges, sets her watch, and shouts go. There are two mums near the swings that have kids in Sam’s year and she thinks maybe it would be nice to speak to them, strike up some sort of interaction, if only for Sam’s sake, but she can’t because her head is completely filled with worry. Where is Bill? Where is Claudia?
‘How many seconds?’
‘Twenty-three! Go again.’
She finds a free bench to sit on, one that’s not covered in coats and bags like a sunbed on holiday, and takes her phone out to scroll the news pages again for something to do, to feel like she’s trying to navigate this mess, even when she’s in a children’s playground, for God’s sake.
‘How many now?’ Sam shouts.
‘Twenty-one,’ she calls, flashing him a smile even though she hadn’t been watching.
Sam beams and runs off to the climbing frame. She watches him for a while and then looks to the copse of trees behind the playground. She and Bill used to play in this park. There is the chestnut tree standing slightly apart from the rest. It used to have a partner, an oak tree that had been storm-wrecked over the years, but it was cut down a few years back. Bill told her when the council had wrapped tape around it; he said he wanted to warn her that it would be taken down because he thought she might cry about it. She remembers that she had laughed at that because she’d never thought much about that tree, but when it was cut down, she’d been devastated. She didn’t even really know why. But he’d known before she did that she would be sad about it and that was her brother all over. He cared about her, he loved her. And she loved him – loves him – so she has to trust him now.
The air is cool on her face, she wants the wind to whisper in her ears like a conscience, and tell her what to do to make all this better. She looks for Sam, sees him at the top of the slide with a young woman next to it, her head tilted upwards and talking to him. Jen gets up and starts to walk over, but as soon as she does, the woman walks swiftly out of the park gate.
‘Who was that?’ she asks.
‘One of the childminder people,’ Sam replies, running round the climbing frame to go down the slide again. ‘She’s nice. She comes every week.’
Jen looks over towards where the woman walked, but she’s disappeared in a throng of other parents and children.
‘What was she asking you?’
‘She asked if were you a police officer.’
‘What did you say?’
Sam grins at her. ‘I said you were better than a police officer. I said you were a police diver and I call you Superhands.’
She doesn’t want her son targeted because of what she does, but perhaps she’s been naive to this – the police and the investigation into Claudia’s disappearance are the talk to the town, of the nation.
‘We don’t talk to strangers,’ she says.
‘But she’s not, though,’ he says, and then he pulls her arm. ‘Your phone’s ringing, Mum.’
She answers it before reading the screen. ‘Bill?’
‘It’s me,’ Idris says. ‘You need to get to the base. It’s about Claudia Franklin.’
She looks at Sam.
‘I’ll come in now,’ she says and she touches Sam’s cheek gently because she sees it – that whisper of sadness that crosses his face before he stoically rearranges it again into a smile for her.
EIGHTEEN
The holiday let is a remote, old farmhouse with views over Eden Valley, and with no neighbours for miles. It’s perfect. In the lemon light of the afternoon, Bill steps outside and drinks in the towering hilltops beyond the stonewalled garden, soothed by the knowledge that this vast landscape cloaks all within it.
Inside, he is equally reassured there is invisibility. There are heavy blackout curtains to aid sleep, white walls so everything feels clean. There are spotless mirrors, plants in ceramic pots in every room, and a dog basket. Bill wishes he had a dog, feels like he’s a man that should have one, a Lab or a setter or another sort of big hound. But right now all he has is the view and the sounds of birds calling and the warmth of the rising sun on his skin.
He thinks back to what Kerry said to him at dinner, how she accused him of not fighting for Jen when she had missed the British Championships and, if he’s being honest with himself, her words hit a nerve, because they were true. Jen had missed one competition, but forfeiting it had closed all the door to the Olympics for her. Mark had made up his mind, and set his sights elsewhere, on Claudia, and by that time, after what happened at the barn, neither Bill or Jen were in a position to challenge it.
After that missed event, Jen faded into the background of the swim club, like a burnt-out star. Once showered with praise from Mark, and then dismissed. It was impossible for Bill to ignore the increasing hurt on her face when they cycled the ninety minutes home again from the diving pool together. Her hurt was like something physical – a needle stabbing him in the heart.
‘Hey,’ he said one day. ‘You’re better than what Mark has done to you. You deserved to have been picked.’
Her face changed then and she was angry. ‘What would you know about it? Mark is the coach, the everything. My everything, but I wasn’t good enough for him.’
Her words stunned him, surprised him, and he stopped cycling. ‘He’s not the “everything”,’ he said. ‘Maybe you should stop diving now, sis, it’s making you sad.’
Jen stopped too, and turned back to look at him. ‘You don’t get it, Bill. Diving is the only thing I know how to do well and it was the only thing that could have changed things for us. Proper care for Mum, a better life for her when—’
He made a sharp noise to cut her off. ‘Don’t say it.’
‘I will say it. Proper care for when she gets worse. Because she is getting worse – she’s so bad now.’
‘Leave Mum to me,’ he said firmly. ‘I can look after her. Just promise me you’ll think about other things you’re good at. Focus on other things other than diving, aside from Mark. You could be a swimming instructor?’
‘I have to be in the water, not out of it.’
She went on, of course, to join the police and specialise in the murkiest of units. But the lure of the water wasn’t why she joined. No, it was the guilt that she carried – that she still carries. As does he. He sighs into the stillness and a bird flits from the hedgerow and onto the stone wall in front of him. He knows that he’ll need to check in with Andy at some point, but he can’t turn his phone on yet because he’s worried about being tracked. He’ll have to drive elsewhere to look at it, in case someone thinks to check on his location.
God, it’s all such a mess.
He took a leap, he thinks, and it was for love, but love makes people do stupid things.
NINETEEN
Jen steps up into the dive lorry, dumps her bag on the floor. The others are already all there – even Gareth.
‘I called you an hour ago,’ Idris says, in a tone that’s tells her he’s pissed off.
‘I had to wait for Kerry to say she could pick up Sam for me,’ she says, in a tone that tells him to back off.
‘Fine,’ he says, in a tone that tells her he won’t.
He doesn’t get it, she thinks, none of them do. How can they possibly understand how hard it is to raise a child as a single parent, and keep focus on this job. She puts her hands on her hips. She loves her job, loves being a police diver, but being a parent at the same time takes all the energy she has. She’s wrung dry from so many moments of heartache, of guilt. And now Claudia on top of it all.
‘Sit down,’ he says. ‘We’re going.’
‘I’m fine standing,’ she replies, a tiny rebellion of his command.
‘Fine, but you’ll fall over,’ he says.
The lorry makes its guttural splutter and starts to move. She’s immediately unbalanced, tuts loudly and straps herself in.
‘One of the pieces of material that we bagged is back from the labs and it’s got Claudia’s DNA on it.’
‘Shit, really?’
‘Her husband’s DNA is on it, too.’
Jen’s heart sparks.
‘What does that mean?’ Joe asks. ‘He’s back in the picture again as a suspect?’
Idris gets out his map. ‘It could be an item of clothing that’s entirely unrelated, but it’s enough evidence to inject some funding into a new dive search. Right now there’s no more reason to suspect Mark Mason than any other person, but obviously he’ll be coming in for questioning again.’
Jen’s heart is thumping wildly. She forces herself to breathe.
‘What’s most interesting is that there are DNA strands from two other people, as yet unconfirmed, but one of them matches the DNA on the fence panel where traces of Claudia’s blood was found.’
‘Seriously?’ Joe whistles. ‘That’s big progress.’
‘The fence backs onto the woods. The woods lead out to fields, eventually out to the water-meadows.’
‘We’re going back there?’
‘Yup.’ Idris points to the map. ‘The likelihood is that it could have drifted downstream from one of these streams here.’
‘What’s the item?’ Amir asks.
Idris holds up a clear bag and Jen squints to see inside it. There’s something small, wound up, red. ‘A tie.’
Jen can’t trust herself to open her mouth. She knows that red tie. She took it from Mark and gave it to Bill to wear for his interview.
TWENTY
For the two hours that Oli is underwater in the north part of the river, Jen is feverish beneath the blazing sun. She feels like she’s in some sort of parallel universe where nothing makes sense, because why would that tie be in the water? Did Bill have it last or did Mark? Bill’s DNA will be one of the strands unidentified, so, God Almighty, what would that mean? Is it also the DNA on the fence alongside Claudia’s blood?
They stop to eat shop-bought sandwiches that Gareth runs out for, drink their shock-victim teas – she has two – and then discuss where to search next. The lorry is hot and humid and stinks. Jen loosens her button on her shirt, catches Joe’s eye. He winks and smirks flirtatiously as is his wont, and usually she would mouth a causal ‘fuck off’ at him, but her mind is preoccupied, flipping over itself with questions. She keeps telling herself that there’s been no body so far so why should there be one now? They’ve dived here for her before, haven’t they, and they found nothing.
‘Jen, you’re next in, OK?’
‘I . . . yeah.’
‘We’ll get things ready outside. Amir, can you dress her?’
Amir nods and the others troop out of the door.
‘I’ll get the kit sorted,’ Amir says.
Jen changes swiftly while he hums, retrieving her fins, her mask, her tank.
‘Where are her friends in all this?’ he says as he bends down for her to step into the suit. ‘Her mother?’
‘She didn’t have many friends,’ she says absently.
‘I read that too. Perhaps a person like that picks up friends, has them for the moment.’
Their friendship was definitely of the moment, Jen thinks. Cut short.
Amir pulls at the zip of the suit. ‘Ready for the tank?’
She nods, already sweating, as he fastens it with precision and care.
‘All right?’ Idris asks as they step out.
She nods.
‘In you go.’
Jen breaks the surface and sinks down, crossing the gateway into the liquid world. She often thinks of a diver being akin to the children who found Narnia through the wardrobe. Both enter worlds that are secretive, magical, but where Narnia was blinded by thick snow, she’s blinded by muddy amber water.
The heat of her body embraces the coldness before it’s regulated by her suit, and the sound of the water – a gentle humming – replaces the noise above of her colleagues talking and of birds overhead. She slowly follows the jackstay, one hand on it, as she travels along the river bed, breathing steadily, and hunting through the silt and the snarl of reeds and water grass that are like silk threads.
She loses track of time. Her team will be counting the minutes for her, so she needs only to concentrate on finding what they’re looking for, but she now doesn’t want to find it. The water darkens and deepens the further she goes, changes from gold to a forest green, and the fronds from the bottom begin to cluster, thick and reaching. She parts them carefully, tries not to entangle herself or the equipment, but it’s slow progress to sieve through, the visibility is near nil, save for the occasional gilded shaft of light that cuts through from above. As always, she imagines the black winged horse with her, sometimes a friend, sometimes a foe.
And then, all of a sudden, there is something in front of her. A white material that drifts, ghost-like, between the grasses. She jerks backwards, wants to vomit but can’t because she’d choke herself. Please, God, don’t let this be what she fears it might be. She needs to press beyond the drifting trail of material, needs to know for certain. She’s never been so scared in her life, but she reaches forward and her fingers find that there is bulk beneath the white and that’s the moment she knows – she knows it’s a body. With a sob choking in her throat, and her breath ragged in her ears, her fingers move upwards to feel shoulders, a thin neck, and a woman’s delicate head tipped backwards. She makes herself lean forward to see better. Her hand is inches from the woman’s head and she can see hair floating with the current on the palm of her hand, like something alive. Blonde.
Claudia. Claudia is dead down here.
Jen wants to scream, her mind spiralling out of control and falling away into dark places. Has Claudia drowned or has someone killed her? Has Bill done something – has he made a split-second mistake – and tried to desperately bury it? Her big brother, the only one who has ever looked after her. Has he murdered Claudia?
