Water Canvas
Chapter 1 – Discovery
He was the one who found her.
The day was bright, as all the summer had been this year. The sunlight pierced through the tangle of leaves and vines overhead as smoothly as a knife through butter, and made the sweat run down his brow in little streams, sticking his hair limply to his forehead and eyelashes. The sound of voices from the other side of the river path echoed in his ears like the buzzing of a swarm of tiresome bees.
The air became lighter with every step he took, closer to the water. He stepped off the path, and stood right on the edge of the river bank, the water running up the tops of his shoes, grabbing at his laces with icy fingers. Further out, the lake was light, polished and glassy smooth, the still reflections of the trees on the distant bank drawn with long, precise lines. Closer to him, among the tangle of reeds and rushes spilling into the lake from the bank, the water was darker, broken up with churned mud and gravel, the murkiness relieved only by a large pale smudge about ten yards away from him.
Dusk was falling, but no moon could make such a large splotch of colour.
Morse waded in two steps, and squinted.
Skin like marble and a length of blue and yellow material.
Pausing only to divest himself of his coat and already sodden shoes and toss them onto the shore, he plunged into the lake.
Six swift strokes had him right up against the body. It was heavier than he expected, with an arm wedged against a piece of driftwood, and one end of the material, which appeared to be either a shawl or a scarf, caught up in a mass of stalks.
Pulling it against him, struggling all the way, Morse made it to the edge, tossed the body up onto the grass, then scrambled up the bank himself, unmindful of the lacerations the ascent left on his knees, or the tears in his last pair of good trousers.
.
.
"Bloody hell, Matey, you gave me a right turn there."
Shivering, and dripping water from the ends of his hair, despite the brisk towelling he'd given it, Morse looked up at Jim Strange. Sergeant Strange, Morse supposed he should call him now, but glancing at the dusty shoes caked with mud from his sprint along the road, the blue uniform with rapidly-tarnishing brass buttons, the clear eyes with their unvarying kindly light, the word refused to form around his tongue.
Strange seated himself comfortably on a nearby tree stump. "You're the finding all the bodies these days," he observed, when Morse didn't answer, "you didn't know this one, did you?"
Morse shook his head, then held his breath to supress a sneeze that threatened to erupt when a trickle of water went into his nostril. "I don't know her. Slightly familiar – might have seen her around the town, but I can't put a name to the face."
"A rum thing, this. Even that last one – shot in the face, then fell into the water. This one doesn't look like a shooting, at any rate."
But everything else was eerily familiar. Lying on the grass, covered up with a plastic sheet until the medical team arrived, it was easy enough to imagine that the indigo and ochre silk dress was a black and white dress suit, that the blue and yellow scarf was a bowtie, that the shoes were black and polished instead of worn down satin high heels. Morse rubbed vigorously at his rapidly bluing lips, biting down on one corner, letting the sour tang of blood collect on his tongue when teeth met flesh. His spot on the grass under a tree could have been the same; even the stripes of the blanket Strange had draped around his shoulders looked familiar.
Strange was looking concernedly at him now. "You all right, Matey? Not about to catch your death of cold?"
Morse grinned crookedly. "I hardly think a five minute dip in a lake on a summer's night will kill me, Strange."
"Ah well, you never know. All it took last time was a bout of chopping firewood in your shirtsleeves and tie."
"I'll make sure and wear a coat next time," Morse said dryly.
Strange coughed. "What were you doing here all alone at this time? Not the safest place for a loner."
"There's a logger's cabin on the other side. Any trouble, and all I'd have had to do was shout. And it's on my way home." It was the long way home, a winding, twisting path that went by Bruce's house – now closed up, with the front gates padlocked and chained, and past Bix's too, where the Uniform were packing up and moving out the last of his possessions.
Taking off his helmet, Strange wiped his brow with a handkerchief, then dropping his hands back into his lap, twisted the slip of wet material in his fingers. "You… well, you weren't thinking… things, were you?"
Morse stared. "Things?"
"Or going to – to, you know – if there's any help you need, anything at all, you can ask."
Morse flicked his eyes to the body, now a shapeless form in the falling dusk, then to the water, which was breaking up in the distance too now, the surface rising in ripples to the wind's command. "I'm fine," Morse said finally. "Perfectly fine."
He let the silence fester, to grow and expand in the darkness, filling out the nooks and crannies of the woodlands that the streetlamp above their heads could not reach.
.
.
When the light was completely gone from the furthest reaches of the lake, Morse spoke again, voicing aloud the thought that had been niggling at him. "Were there any reports of girls missing from the area?"
"None at all in the past twenty four hours. Could have come from further afield – Dispatches from Carshall Newton won't be making their way through till tomorrow. She looks like she was dressed for a party too. Not much to amuse a girl of that age in this neck of the woods that would justify dressing up, mind you. She wasn't at any of this Bixby's parties, I suppose?"
"No – he did have fancy dress balls and masques, but nothing that would explain a costume of that type." Morse chewed the inside of his cheek, making a deliberate effort to keep his hands still in his lap. "Could have been killed somewhere else, then brought and dumped here. But there are no drag marks or disturbances of any sort in the undergrowth."
"There's a place a few miles up from the turning to the lake," Strange said. His voice had a curiously hesitant note. "A sort of boarding school for girls."
Morse eyed Strange closely. "A sort of boarding school – but not exactly?"
"A vocational school, more like. The lasses from the roundabout villages board there in term time. Mate of mine working at Richardson's had a sister there for a year or two. Could have come from there, this one." Strange nodded towards the corpse. "They have all these dos at the town and village halls. Could have got into a bit of trouble up at one of those."
Morse shrugged. "Rather far from this isolated body of water."
"What better way to dispose of the body – give the killer a bit of time to get away."
"Didn't find any luggage on her? No note – or a bag, or anything?"
"Haven't had the chance to look, have I, Matey? I'm to hand you over to the old man first."
"I told you, I can look after myself." Morse couldn't quite keep the bite out of his voice.
"I'm not contesting that," Strange said quietly, putting his handkerchief back in his pocket.
Morse sighed, and stretched out his legs. His thighs and calves were beginning to stiffen. "She couldn't have been killed up at the circus and dumped here afterwards?"
"The circus packed up and left two nights ago."
"What? Really – why?"
"Circus folk don't like murder in their midst." Strange gazed with unseeing eyes at the dark, still lake. "And with their magic show now disbanded, and all those drugs" –
It was true. In all those nights of rambling walks, following the trails towards the lake, his own ramshackle rented hut and the two great empty houses on the other side, he had never gone near the circus grounds, shutting off the memories of those nights at the booths, the throb of his pulse as he aimed at the soft toys with the pop-gun, closing his nose and refusing, even in his mind, to breathe in the sweet and heady perfume of Kay.
Since the file was closed, he hadn't spared a thought for the people behind the brightly painted front of Janus Greel and Conrad. "A purse will turn up, I expect," Morse said, drawing himself back to the present with an effort, "or a school bag, or a satchel. Though it probably won't be leopard print." He shrugged off the woollen blanket and rose to his feet, when the sound of two cars became audible on the other side of the road, signalling the arrival of Inspector Thursday and Dr De Bryn.
.
.
When Morse walked into the mortuary the next morning, the body was laid out on the slab, and Dr De Bryn was standing over it. He eyed Morse over the rims of his spectacles. "None the worse for your ice bath last night, I see."
Morse scoffed. "The water was not that cold. And contrary to everybody's assumptions, I actually do not have a death wish."
De Bryn's lips rose in the beginnings of a wry smile. "That knife wound giving you much trouble yet?"
"No limp, as you can see." The bruise, though healed, had a tendency to twinge on and off, though Morse would not give De Bryn the satisfaction of telling him that.
"Fifteen," Dr De Bryn said shortly. "Sixteen at most. Been dead about ten hours at time of discovery, I'd say. Death was not instantaneous. Strangled, by the edges of the scarf, which the killer then proceeded to tie around her hair."
"How do you know that?"
"It is a headscarf, Morse." De Bryn pulled out a pair of forceps, and took up a thin strand of thread from an open bowl. "Thread found in one of the neck bruises matches the material of the scarf. Judging by the intensity of colour, and the depth of the scratches, I'd say she was strangled from behind. She struggled, but only for a short while."
"Sneaked up behind her? It would have been easy, if it was someone she knew – unsuspecting" –
De Bryn nodded. "And then, hey, as it were, presto."
They were silent for a long moment, staring down at the corpse. In the harsh white mortuary light, the skin was paler than ever, bloated and blue at the edges, the eyes swollen shut, mottled creases on the skin where the frock was pressed against the flesh before being cut away. Coral pink lipstick, and a large tear in the left earlobe, the skin curling inwards from the rent edges. "She looks familiar," Morse said, brow wrinkling.
De Bryn sighed. "She was a pretty girl." Even in death, a shadow of grace remained. Framed, despite the cold slab of steel beneath her, like a painting.
A painting.
An icy hand gripped Morse's heart. "A painting – that's what she reminds me of. She looks like a painting" –
He had seen it before. Recently. One amongst many, hung not in a dimly illuminated gallery amongst other masterpieces, but mounted on a golden easel, too still, too perfect to be anything but a copy. Part of a collection, both valued and valueless, silent witness to the brilliant and entertaining antics of its owner.
De Bryn moved one end of the covering cloth with gloved fingers, peering intently into the girl' face, then flicking his eyes towards her clothing, which lay, bagged and labelled on his desk. "Ah," he said, sucking in breath in a hiss reminiscent of a snake, "the fruits of Dutch labour; Girl with a Pearl Earring."
"She's dressed like the painting all right, but in that case" –
"The million pound question," Dr De Bryn said quietly, "where are the pearl earrings?"
To be continued...