Stephen Gallagher - The Boat House

"I don't know," Pete said.

By the Toyota's interior light, he looked again at the cuttings that Diane had handed to him. They were out by the lake, having pulled off the road onto an unmade strip of soft shoulder that overlooked the water. It was a pleasant spot with a view, but at best there was space for no more than half a dozen cars. No one ever stopped here for long, and most went by and never stopped here at all. Some people had pulled in ahead of them, and had walked the few yards down to the shore with a big golden dog that was now splashing around after a ball. The long shadows of the mountains lay across the water, deepening by the minute.

On top of all the accident and incident reports that were in the familiar layout of the area's local newspaper, there were three or four sheets of facsimile paper with the header line of a London based cuttings library. Two of the faxed items were marked as coming from the Herald Tribune . The others were from something that he'd once heard of but had never before seen, the English language edition of Pravda .

Diane said, "Petrovna? Peterson? That's got to be her, hasn't it?"

And Pete nodded.

Diane went on, "I had to pay money to get all this, but it was worth it. She's mentioned by name in the index of some archive, as well. We could probably get a copy, but it's somewhere in Munich."

"Radio Liberty," Pete said absently, leafing through some of the other cuttings without actually reading any.

"She told you?"

"I think she mentioned it one time."

"She talked about all that to you? About being Russian and being in hospital, and everything? Then you know it's all true."

He closed the book. "I know that the first part is true. The first part. But she never told me she'd killed anybody."

"Oh, sure. She wouldn't want to hold back on something like that, would she? I mean, if it was me, I'd work it into the conversation every chance I got."

Pete said quietly, not meeting her eyes, "You can stop trying to sell this to me. You don't have to."

He was thinking; It's like there's two of me. One who knows what she wants, and the other who tells her what she can have.

He was thinking; Rusalka, you'd say heartbreaker. I have it on the best authority .

He was thinking of how the woodland seemed to know, falling silent when she stepped out; here walks madness, let it pass.

And even now in his heart he could sense the lure of the Rusalka, her siren call to the hungry and the incomplete.

"I can believe it," he said. "I think I just… I just don't want it to be."

There was silence in the cab for a while. On the banking below them, the big golden dog emerged from the water and shook off a spray like a hail of diamonds.

Diane said, "What do you want to do?"

"I think we ought to talk to her," Pete said.

He watched the fire for a while. It was spreading to the main building now, running in tongues along the gutters. There was a big fire hose on a standpipe across the yard, but on its own it could be of little use. Sparks were lifting and floating toward the trees, dying like fireflies before the journey was completed; it would only need one to reach the tinder of the undergrowth, and he'd have the beginnings of a major woodland blaze on his hands.

But right at this moment, that was the least of his concerns.

The sight of destruction was almost hypnotic, but Aldridge tore himself away and made for his car. The keys were gone and his radio, as she'd promised, had been taken out, stamped upon, and neatly put back into its place. He had no less than three personal radios that were intended for issue to volunteer Special Constables and which could be clipped to a lapel or carried in a pocket, but all of these were at the house on their plug in charger.

He looked around. On foot, it would take him anything up to an hour to make it to the lights of home. He had to get a message through somehow. He wondered if there was a working phone in the ski centre itself.

The air inside was already hazy with smoke and, of course, the lights had failed; he made his way by the fireglow from the windows and found the phone in the place where the carpenter had been sleeping. He picked it up, and heard a tone. He dialled quickly, not knowing how long it would be before the line came down. The smoke was getting perceptibly thicker. Any minute now, the walls or the roof would burn through and he didn't want to be inside when that happened.

He closed his eyes and gave a brief, teeth baring groan of frustration when he heard the ringing tone stop and the line switch to the distinctive hiss of the answering machine. His own voice came on a moment later and he drummed his fingers, looking around; the message seemed endless. He wondered if Loren was home, or not. Sometimes she just ignored the phone and let the machine take care of business; she'd stand by and listen, but she wouldn't pick it up.

"Loren?" he said. "It's me. It's Ross. If you're there, lock the doors and windows. Or better still, get out of the house. Don't leave a message or anything to say where you've gone, I'll phone around and find you. Don't be scared. I'll explain when I get back."

An intense, reddish light under one of the doors told him that it was time to get out of there, and fast.

He hung up, and he ran. He was coughing when he got outside. The building was lit from within now, like a shadow theatre, and it was almost as if he could see figures dancing across the big foyer windows.

But he turned his back, and started away.

He'd only one regret.

And this was that he'd told her, Don't be scared .

It was dark when he finally got there, but the outside light was on. Maybe Loren had only just arrived back from wherever she'd been. The side door to the house was on the latch but there was a window open alongside it. Village life had tended to make them lazy about home security. He went in and called her name.

There was no response. The house gave back nothing but an ambience of emptiness.

She'd heard the message, and had gone around to a neighbour. What else could she have done? But she should have secured the place behind her, at least. He went through into the small police office to check on whether the answering machine had been reset.

It hadn't.

It had been unplugged. Both cassettes had been removed, the one for the incoming messages and the looped cassette that carried his own voice. They were nowhere around. He looked at his desk. There was no definite sign, but he knew almost immediately that it had been searched and then set right again. It was still something of a mess, but it wasn't quite his mess anymore. He turned around and went out, intending to call Loren's name to the empty house once more.

He found her on the stairs.

She was lying just above the middle landing, around the corner where she couldn't be seen from the hallway. She was head-down, feet pointing back the way she'd apparently fallen. One shoe had come off and was sitting on the third step from the top. To his eye it looked too neat, too much as if it had been placed there for an effect rather than simply lying where it had landed.

Aldridge sat down heavily on the lower stairway, and put his head in his hands.

He didn't make a sound. He didn't do anything. His mind raced, but to no purpose whatsoever. He seemed to stand apart from his own thoughts, watching them go by like an out of control carousel too fast to be boarded. And all that he could say was a low, "Ohhh, shit ," again and again.

After a while, he sighed and straightened.

She was still warm. And she was damned heavy.

There had been a time when he could lift her like nothing. These last few years, he hadn't ever lifted her at all. They'd outgrown those kinds of games. Seemed to have outgrown everything, in fact, and nothing had come along to fill up the spaces. Their time in the Bay and the valley hadn't been their best.