Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

“All right, love. Slow down. It’s all right now, right? You all right? You safe?” He’s with me. His tone concerned, supportive. It’s all going to be okay now. Eddie’s here.

“Er, yes. Yes, I’m fine. My head—but it’s okay. I don’t know what to do, Eddie….” I’m finding it hard to know what to focus on. What’s important. How much to say or not say.

“About what, love? About what? The money?” He’s patient but I can tell I’m making no sense. He’s not a mind reader.

“He’s…he’s, um, and someone else. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t want to go to prison, Eddie.” And there it is. The heart of it. The reason I called him and not the police.

“It’s all right. No questions. Don’t say anything else about it. First of all, Erin, I need you to calm down, all right? Can you do that for me, sweetheart?” I think I can hear him getting out of bed, the squeak of springs. Somewhere in Pentonville two bare feet hit the floor.

“Yes. Okay. I understand. Calm.” I struggle to concentrate on my breathing, to slow it down. I start to notice the hedges along the road, the early morning hush. I hear the murmur of a yawn down the line and the clank of metal echo around his cell. I imagine Eddie sitting, hairy-chested, in the heart of Pentonville, on his smuggled-in burner phone.

“Good. Now where is he? Them? Where are you?” He’s going to sort it out. I can feel it.

“Norfolk. The woods,” I manage.

Silence. I guess that wasn’t what he was expecting.

“Right. Fair enough. And it’s just you?”

“Just me. And him. And there’s another one.” It’s clear from my tone that I am now talking about bodies. Not people .

“Two. Gunshot?”

“Yes. No, one gunshot. And the other one is, er, knife. Knife wound.” I’m aware that I’m not coming across well in this conversation. I breathe in again, exhale.

“Okay. You’re alone?”

“Yes.”

“Isolated there?”

“Very.”

“Perfect. Now, Erin, here’s what you need to do, sweetheart. You need to bury them. Do you understand? Go back and bury them. That’s going to take a while, all right?”

I can’t focus right now. I can’t think. I’m just glad of any direction. I’ll do whatever I need to do.

“Are you near any houses right now, love?”

I look around. Opposite the phone box is a church. Farther down the lane is one other building. A run-down cottage, shabby and overgrown.

“One house. Yes,” I say.

“Okay. Nip around the back and see if there’s a shovel or something. Take it with you. Now listen to me: be careful, sweetheart. You’re going to have to bury them properly. It won’t be easy but you’ll do it. And call me back once you’re done. Different phone box, remember. We’ll sort this all out, don’t you worry.” He sounds confident. It’s so unbelievably reassuring I want to cry. Right now I’d do anything for Eddie.

“Okay. Okay. I’ll call you after. Bye.” I hang up and head for the cottage garden.

—

And you know what happens next.

I’m ruddy-cheeked and covered in mud by the time I get back to the hotel, but my wound is safely hidden under my hat and my appearance is nothing that can’t be explained by some pretty hard-core hiking. I’ve got the sweat to prove it.

In my rucksack are bleach and other cleaning products that I bought from a petrol station on the long walk back from the forest. If you ever need to buy anything suspicious, it helps to buy some Super Plus Tampax at the same time. Cashiers seem to get so flustered by them they rarely pay attention to the rest of your purchases. They’ll want to get that box in a bag for you as fast as possible. Try it.

Thankfully, my room is as undisturbed as my door sign requested. It’s a mess. Blood, glass, signs of a struggle. I find the bathroom key in the bin. Patrick must have dropped it in there on his way out last night. I looked through Patrick’s burner phone before I dragged him into the grave with Mark. Patrick wasn’t working for the plane people at all. Mark was the one paying him to follow me. Patrick attacked me last night on Mark’s orders. Mark wanted me put out of action—not killed, to be fair, but hurt enough to stay away. Was he planning on killing me himself later? I push the question away for another time.

The texts between their burner phones stretched back as far as our second day back from honeymoon. But Mark’s tone changes after I had the diamond valued in Hatton Garden and he found out about DCI Foster and the SO15 investigation into Holli. It gets darker then, angrier, as he tells Patrick what to do, to keep an eye on me, to frighten me. I remember Mark trying to make me believe I was in danger, trying to make me believe that Patrick was part of SO15’s investigation into Holli. It was Patrick calling the house, leaving those answerphone messages. Mark was the person Patrick was waiting for in that restaurant in that message. Mark was trying to spook me, really scare me. He’s the one who left the back door open. Who moved our photo. Who tried to convince me I was going crazy. He wanted me to back off the diamonds. He wanted us to dump them. So he could go back alone, retrieve them, and sell them himself, without raising my suspicions. He must have feared I’d ruin his plans if the investigation into Holli’s disappearance got too close to me and thus to him. He created his own Swiss account; he must have done it while I was out of the hotel depositing the money and setting up our Swiss account. I’d find that out from Mark’s burner phone. He planned to put the money from the diamonds in it, and then start syphoning the mutual Swiss account dry over the next few months, and, finally, he was planning on trading the USB himself. But, oblivious as I was, I kept finding new ways to keep us both in the game. I sold the diamonds through Eddie. And then I found the USB and planned to sell that too. It must have infuriated him. I interfered with his plans and he had to act.

Before I buried him I searched his pockets. Looking for a clue, I suppose, something, anything that might prove it was all a huge misunderstanding. That he loved me really. I hoped I’d find something that would, somehow, show that Mark had actually done it all for me, for us. Of course, I didn’t find anything like that. But Mark had two phones on him. His iPhone and the new burner phone he’d been using to contact Patrick, the phone he’d checked our Swiss account with during the deal. He was clever. His own phone was on airplane mode; he must have done that after he texted me that night. Turned airplane mode on in London, no doubt, before he came for me, so that no signal towers would ever know where he was. The last text he sent me was cleverly vague as well, all circumstantial in a court of law. I know where you are. I’ll be back soon, honey xxx. If I had happened to go missing for some reason on my trip to Norfolk, Mark could have pleaded ignorance. He’d covered his bases.

A brief scan of his emails, on the burner, revealed he’d been looking at apartments in Manhattan over the past two days. New houses. For his new life. Without me.

I wonder what I did. When exactly it was that I drove him away. I wonder how I could have been so wrong about us. About him. I truly believed he loved me. More than that, I saw it. I swear I saw it. I knew he loved me. Didn’t I?

But now is not the time. I have to sort this out, because things can get much, much worse if I’m not fast and careful now. I have to tidy up. Mistakes come down to three things: (1) lack of time, (2) lack of initiative, (3) lack of care.