Bleak Water. Danuta Reah
that Dave had been sorting out. It was like he had said. There wasn’t much. ‘I’m going to talk to the people who rent the flats,’ Tina said. ‘This Trust or whatever it is.’ She began going through her notes, looking for the number.
‘Here,’ Dave had found it.
She negotiated her way through the electronic answering system, pressing buttons as an automated voice issued instructions, until she made contact with a human being. The woman at the other end of the phone admitted that she did know something about the Second Site flat, took Tina’s number and said she would phone her back.
‘She said “flat”.’ Tina remembered that they’d gone to the gallery expecting to find just one residence.
‘Doesn’t give you a lot of confidence.’ West was packing stuff back into the boxes. ‘If the boss can get anything out of this lot, he’s a better…’
The phone rang. ‘We have one tenant,’ the woman from the Trust informed Tina. ‘Ms Eliza Eliot. She took the tenancy of the flat in August last year, as soon as it became available.’
‘And the other tenant – the other flat, I mean,’ Tina said. ‘Cara Hobson and her daughter.’
‘There is no other flat,’ the woman said.
Surprise silenced Tina for a moment. ‘Of course there is,’ she said. ‘That was where Cara Hobson was living.’
‘Well, I’m sorry…’ There was the sound of papers being moved around. ‘Let me go and check.’ Tina put her hand over the phone, and looked at Dave. She raised her eyes and pointed to her head. Brainless. Then the woman was back. ‘There are plans for a second flat,’ she said. ‘But the conversion isn’t complete. There are no plans to finish it before next summer. There’s only the one flat at present.’
Tina thanked the woman and hung up. ‘Hobson must have been squatting,’ Dave said, when she told him.
Tina thought about it. It explained the comfortless, unfinished appearance of the flat. But it seemed like an odd place for a squat. It would have been the simplest thing in the world to exclude her from the building – secure either of the access doors, and Cara would have been unable to get back in. On the other hand, if this was purely a temporary residence, it would explain why Cara had so few possessions and the lack of any paper evidence of her existence.
She expressed these doubts to Dave, who shrugged. ‘Who knows why they do anything?’
Who can understand the mind of a prostitute? Tina translated. Who cares?
‘What about this?’ Dave had a couple of sheets of paper in his hand and was unfolding them. She looked over his shoulder. They appeared to be press cuttings, photocopies of newspaper reviews. ‘Arty stuff,’ Dave said, dismissively.
Tina read through the first one, aware of a flicker of interest outside the routine of basic detective work that was – OK – important, but dull, dull, dull.
Gonna roll the bones!
Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, until 9 September
‘Entropy’ is an intriguing exhibition of film and computer images that is worth a visit. Ivan Bakst’s time-lapse animation, and the reworkings of stills into abstract designs turns the process of death and decay into something that has a strange if macabre beauty…
There was a photograph – a dead fox with its teeth pulled into a rictus snarl, the eyes fallen in. She checked the date: 1999. The second cutting was another review of the same exhibition. Tina read it. This review was dismissive. An obsession with death…cliché…gratuitous detail…
She looked at West, who shook his head. They didn’t mean anything to him. She turned them over. On the back, someone had scribbled: J – thought you might be interested. J? Jonathan Massey? She made a note to follow it up, and another to chase up the details of Cara’s arrival in the flat, then went back to her search through the paperwork. There was nothing else.
When Kerry woke up, she felt better. She got up early and ironed the grey skirt and maroon jumper that was what they made you wear for school. She’d taken the skirt in, and turned up the hem. She’d asked Mum for some money to buy a top, one of those with eagles and flowers like she’d seen Samantha Mumba wearing, but Mum had said, ‘I haven’t got money for T-shirts, Kerry. Don’t go on.’ So Kerry had got out her tiger one that came from the World Wildlife Fund, and she’d jazzed it up with sequins and things, but she couldn’t do much with the jumper.
She put on the top, pulling the sleeves down to cover the fine tracery of cuts that ran up the inside of her arm. It was chilly, but she draped the jumper carefully round her shoulders, tying the sleeves loosely at the front. That looked better. The skirt felt loose. She was going to have to take it in again. She brushed her hair and looked in the mirror. If she’d washed it yesterday, she could have worn it loose like Buffy. She tied it up with a band. She looked in the mirror and smiled at her reflection. Buffy smiled back. That was all right.
She went downstairs. There was post on the mat. She picked it up. A letter in a brown window envelope. A bill. It was in red with Final Demand written above the address. A letter addressed to Mum – it was from the school, Kerry recognized the postmark. She slipped it into her pocket. No letter from Dad.
Mum was in the kitchen, and she looked up as Kerry came through the door, picking up the green mug that was beside her. She was still in her dressing gown. ‘Are you off now?’ she said. She smiled, but she sounded anxious and there was a flat, strained look to her smile. She wanted Kerry to go. That smell, sweet and penetrating like nail polish, hung round her. Kerry knew what that meant.
She got down the cornflakes. ‘You want some, Mum?’ she said.
‘I’ll get something later.’ Mum lit a cigarette and watched Kerry pour milk on to her cereal.
‘Aren’t you going to work?’ Kerry could hear her voice sounding small and angry. She put the brown envelope on the kitchen table. ‘You’d better go, because there’s another bill you haven’t paid.’
Mum stared at the window. ‘Oh, Kerry, don’t nag,’ she said. ‘Hurry up. You’ll be late.’ She shifted restlessly from foot to foot. Kerry wanted to say something, but Mum looked at her so blankly that she couldn’t think of anything. She picked up her bag and looked in the mirror again. This time it was just Kerry who looked back, but somehow she couldn’t care about it any more.
She left the house, heading towards the bus stop, her feet moving slower and slower. She opened the letter from school as she walked. It was the usual stuff. Dear Mrs Fraser…Mum didn’t call herself Mrs Fraser any more, but the school kept making that mistake, because Kerry went on being Kerry Fraser. Dear Mrs Fraser…Kerry pulled a face. Blah, blah, blah…unexcused absences…blah, blah…She was about to screw it up and throw it away, when a phrase caught her eye:…excluded for a period…She read the letter closely, but it was all right. She wasn’t excluded, but she had to stay after school on Friday. She would be excluded if she missed that…without good reason…At least they couldn’t phone Mum now. She remembered the last time the school had phoned. Mum’s eyes had looked tired. ‘I can’t cope with this,’ she’d said. And Kerry had felt cold inside. What if Mum sent her away? What if she put Kerry in care? That’s what she’d done to Lyn. Then what could she do to help Dad?
But the phone had been cut off. That was another bill Mum hadn’t paid. Kerry had told Lyn, and Lyn had pulled one of those faces, but she’d given Kerry the phone. ‘Don’t let her get it,’ Lyn said. ‘I worked hard to buy that.’
She kept it deep down in her bag, where Mum