almost forgot, Pauline asked me to go shopping with her tomorrow afternoon – she wants to get a dress. She’s going to a wedding or something. So I won’t be here when you get in.’
‘Okay, Mum, I’ll see you tomorrow night then.’
Joanna sat for a while in the kitchen, looking out into the dark, listening to her mother moving about upstairs. She thought of the solicitor she’d met at the funeral and went out to the hall to check her coat pocket to see if she still had his card. She took it out and looked at it. She had a sudden urge to see the place where the man, Oliver, had found her father’s body. She decided that she would call him the following day when her mother was not around.
‘So where exactly were you when you saw him?’
Oliver pointed down the bank towards the lock. ‘Just there,’ he said. ‘I’d crossed over and come down the other side.’
He watched as the girl, Joanna, moved towards the water’s edge. She knelt close to the damp earth, lifted the camera and began to photograph the scene. She zoomed in on the reeds where he told her he’d spotted what he’d thought was a coat. She asked him to describe as clearly as he could what he had seen – the position of her father’s body and how the rescue team had removed him from the water. She moved back then and took some shots of the lock with the reeds in the foreground. He heard the sound of the shutter opening and closing repeatedly until she rose and walked stealthily onto the lock to point her camera at the murky canal beneath. It was coming on for four in the afternoon and the light had begun to fade.
Oliver took the opportunity to observe the girl as she stood there, eye to the lens, her attention focused entirely on the camera. She was quite striking, but in a different way altogether from the Hernandez sisters. Her auburn hair hung loose over her shoulders, and her skin was so pale that it appeared almost translucent. He wondered how old she was and guessed that she was perhaps mid-twenties. She had told him as they’d walked along the canal road about how she was the fruit of Vince Arnold’s early infidelity. He would have been, what, late twenties when he’d had the fling with Joanna’s mother? According to the papers, he was fifty-four when he died.
Oliver had not told Joanna about Patrick’s visit. He’d arranged to meet him that evening in Brogans’ pub, and he’d decided to tell him that he couldn’t take on the legal work he’d offered him. Given Patrick’s record and the circumstances in which Vince Arnold’s insurance policy had been taken out, he wanted no involvement. The last thing he needed was to become embroiled in a potentially dubious insurance claim. Patrick could find some other patsy to look after that one. His gut told him to stay clear.
The girl had finished taking pictures. She put the cover back on the lens and retraced her steps down the bank.
‘Do you reckon it was an accident?’ she asked.
Oliver looked at her, at her pale skin and eyes the colour of storms. ‘The family seems to think so,’ he said. There was no point in telling her about the autopsy result, raising questions in the girl’s mind. She was still trying to get to grips with having discovered the identity of her father.
‘Rachel said that you studied with Patrick?’
‘Yes, it was a long time ago now.’
‘Is he a solicitor, too?’
‘No. He hasn’t practised in a long time. He … well, to tell you the truth he was struck off. I asked him about it when we were speaking. He was quite frank, said he’d done something he shouldn’t have and got himself debarred.’
Joanna nodded. ‘Did he tell you anything else? Did he say anything about my father?’
Oliver hesitated, and then decided that it might be better to tell the girl the truth. She would hear it anyway, he assumed, from Rachel or Patrick if they were to keep in touch. ‘He mentioned that your father may have run up some debts. He was a sports journalist, I believe, and it’s not unusual for people involved to fall into the trap. Betting is a tempting game. I’ve seen men lose everything over it.’
‘Do you think maybe he … that he might have taken his own life? People often do, don’t they, when they have problems like that?’
Oliver shook his head. ‘It did occur to me when Patrick told me, but I asked him and he said no. They think that Vince was simply unlucky, another victim of the freeze.’
They had started walking, left the lock and reeds behind. Oliver pointed towards the camera. He wanted to change the subject and to get to know something about the girl.
‘You like taking pictures?’ he asked.
She smiled. ‘This probably looks a bit strange, macabre even. But yes, I take the camera most places, never miss an opportunity. I’m doing a degree at the moment in the IADT.’
‘That’s the art college?’
‘Art, yes. What – you don’t see photography as an art form?’
Oliver laughed. He knew that she was trying to bait him, make him say the wrong thing. ‘I’m sure it is. I never thought much about it.’ They were nearing the point where he turned off for home. He thought about the house and if there was anything there that he might not want the girl to see. He had an hour or more before he was to meet Arnold and, despite the circumstances, he was enjoying her company. ‘I live just round the corner,’ he said. ‘Do you fancy continuing this conversation over coffee?’
The girl hesitated, but then agreed.
‘Maybe you can show me some of your pictures,’ he said. ‘Convince me that it’s art.’
She laughed. ‘Not on this, I can’t. It’s your traditional wind-on camera, nothing digital going on here. I’ve got to develop these in the darkroom.’
‘Wow, people still use those things?’
‘Mostly only photography students, to be honest, but I love it. Some professional photographers still do it this way, but it’s more expensive – the money you have to spend on solutions and stuff makes it a costly hobby.’
‘And is that what it is – a hobby?’ Oliver asked.
‘For now it is. Obviously, I’m hoping it’ll pay the bills one day. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a lot of point in investing all this money in a degree course. At least that’s what my mother says.’
‘Doesn’t she approve?’
Joanna shrugged. ‘I think she finds the arts a bit whimsical. She’d have been happier if I’d gone on to study something more practical – business, or law maybe – like you. What area do you work in?’
‘I practise family law: divorces, custody cases, nothing too exciting.’
They had reached the house. The girl waited as he turned his key in the door, and he wondered again if there was anything lying around that shouldn’t be. ‘I hope you’ll excuse the mess,’ he said. ‘A man on his own tends to let things go …’
She followed him down the hall. When they entered the living room he saw her eyes travel quickly around, taking everything in. He followed her gaze – there was nothing particular in this room to suggest a woman’s presence. He had removed all evidence of Mercedes – packed everything away where he didn’t have to see them. Joanna took the camera from round her neck and carefully placed it on the coffee table. He asked her if she’d like tea or coffee, and she followed him into the kitchen and sat at the breakfast bar while he scalded the pot and put the teabags in. He felt very conscious of her presence and wondered what to do or say next.
‘So what do you do for fun?’ she asked him.
‘I sue people.’
She laughed. ‘No, really,’ she