Into the Water(21)

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?’