But I went to the Drowning Pool anyway, and Nel dragged me out. She pulled me to the bank and hauled me to my feet. She slapped my face hard. “You bitch, you stupid fat bitch, what have you done? What are you trying to do?”
2015
Wednesday, 12 August
PATRICK TOWNSEND
The Wards’ cottage hadn’t belonged to the Wards in almost a hundred years, and it didn’t belong to Patrick either—it didn’t really seem to belong to anyone anymore. Patrick supposed that it probably belonged to the local council, though no one had ever laid claim to it. But in any case, Patrick had a key, so that made him feel proprietorial. He paid the small electric and water bills, and he’d fitted the lock himself some years back after the old door had been smashed down by yobs. Now only he and his son, Sean, had keys, and Patrick saw to it that the place was kept clean and tidy.
Only sometimes the door was left unlocked, and if he was perfectly honest, Patrick could no longer be certain he had locked it. He’d begun to feel, more and more over the past year, moments of confusion that filled him with a dread so cold he refused to face it. Sometimes he lost words or names and it took him a long time to find them again. Old memories resurfaced to breach the peace of his thoughts, and these were fiercely colourful, disturbingly loud. Around the edges of his vision, shadows moved.
Patrick headed upriver every day, it was part of his routine: up early, walk the three miles al
ong the river to the cottage, sometimes he’d fish for an hour or two. He did that less these days. It wasn’t just that he was tired or that his legs ached, it was the will that was lacking. He didn’t derive pleasure from the things he’d once enjoyed. He still liked to check up on things, though, and when his legs were feeling good, he could still manage the walk there and back in a couple of hours. This morning, however, he’d woken with his left calf swollen and painful, the dull throb in his vein persistent as a ticking clock. So he decided to take the car.
He hauled himself out of bed, showered, dressed, and then remembered with a snap of irritation that his car was still at the garage—he’d clean forgotten to pick it up the previous afternoon. Muttering to himself, he hobbled across the courtyard to ask his daughter-in-law if he could borrow hers.
Sean’s wife, Helen, was in the kitchen, mopping the floor. In term time, she’d be gone by now—she was head teacher at the school and made a point of being in her office by seven-thirty every morning. But even in the school holidays, she wasn’t one for a lie-in. It wasn’t in her nature to be idle.
“Up and about early,” Patrick said as he entered the kitchen, and she smiled. With lines crinkling around her eyes and streaks of grey in her short brown hair, Helen looked older than her thirty-six years. Older, Patrick thought, and more tired than she should be.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she said.
“Oh, sorry, love.”
She shrugged. “What can you do?” She put the mop into the bucket and propped it upright against the wall. “Can I make you some coffee, Dad?” That’s what she called him now. It had felt strange at first, but now he liked it; it warmed him, the affection in her voice as she sounded the word. He said he’d take some coffee in a flask, explaining that he wanted to go upriver. “You won’t be anywhere near the pool, will you? Only I think . . .”
He shook his head. “No. Of course not.” He paused. “How’s Sean getting on with all that?”
She shrugged again. “You know. He doesn’t really say.”
• • •
SEAN AND HELEN lived in the home that Patrick had once shared with his wife. After she died, Sean and Patrick had lived there together. Much later, after Sean’s marriage, they converted the old barn just across the courtyard and Patrick moved out. Sean protested, saying he and Helen should be the ones to move, but Patrick wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted them there; he liked the sense of continuity, the sense of the three of them being their own little community, part of the town and yet apart from it.
When he reached the cottage, Patrick saw right away that someone had been there. The curtains were drawn and the front door was slightly ajar. Inside, he found the bed unmade. Wine-stained glasses stood empty on the floor and a condom floated in the toilet bowl. There were cigarette butts in an ashtray, roll-ups. He picked one up and sniffed it, searching for the scent of marijuana, but smelling only cold ash. There were other things there, too, bits of clothing and assorted junk—an odd blue sock, a string of beads. He gathered everything up and shoved it into a plastic bag. He stripped the sheets from the bed, washed the glasses in the sink, threw the cigarette butts into the dustbin and carefully locked the door behind him. He carried everything out to the car, dumping the sheets on the backseat, the rubbish in the boot and the assorted debris in the glove compartment.
He locked the car and walked to the river’s edge, lighting a cigarette on the way. His leg ached and his chest tightened as he inhaled, the hot smoke hitting the back of his throat. He coughed, imagining he could feel the acrid scrape against tired and blackened lungs. He felt suddenly very sad. These moods took him from time to time, seized him with such a force that he found himself wishing it was all over. All of it. He looked at the water and sniffed. He’d never be one of those who gave in to the temptation to submit, to submerge themselves, to make it all go away, but he was honest enough to admit that sometimes even he could see the appeal of oblivion.
By the time he got back to the house it was midmorning, 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 farther 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 doorframe 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 postmortem—he gave us the lowdown, 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 that seemed out of place or that 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 lowdown 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?