Oliver Molloy woke abruptly and felt the urgent need to get out of the house. As he swung his legs over the side of the bed, he tried to rid himself of the remnants of a particularly disturbing dream, but it refused to be obliterated, even after he’d turned on the dim overhead light.
It had been almost a month since he had seen her, but every time he closed his eyes she was there. He had begun to dread the night, the time when he was most susceptible to these visitations. Mercedes had become like a cataract, something he couldn’t see past, and it was only daylight that could dispel her presence and allow him to breathe normally again.
Oliver pulled on his heavy winter coat and wound a scarf round his neck. The scarf caught on his unshaven jaw, but it was unlikely that he would encounter anyone out walking in the hours before dawn. He eased the front door open. The street was quiet. A lone cat crossed the neighbours’ garden and leapt onto the wall between them. It looked at him, eyes luminous in the semi-darkness, and then opened its mouth and let out a silent cry. When he didn’t respond, it moved on.
Finally, a thaw had begun. For three weeks the city had been held captive by an unprecedented freeze. A layer of ice still covered the canal, but already it had thinned at the edges to reveal the murky water beneath. It trickled slowly from among the reeds as the willows wept at the water’s edge and stained the ice grey. The cold crept through his leather shoes and he hurried his step to improve his circulation. Coming towards him, dressed in a grey tracksuit, breath streaming in the icy air, was a jogger. The man nodded an acknowledgement as he passed. Oliver dug his hands deeper in his coat pockets and marched on.
By the time he reached the last lock before the main road, the point at which he normally turned back for home, the sky had begun to lighten. He stepped onto the lock, crossed halfway and looked back along the canal in the direction of home. In the time that they had been together, he had never dreamt of Mercedes. Now, she wouldn’t leave him alone, and every dream was an attack, a vicious recrimination. The dream from which he’d woken that morning had been the most disturbing yet. With one hand on her hip, she’d stood there, body jutting slightly forward as she told him that he was nothing without her. She’d called him a fake, said that it wouldn’t take long for people to see right through him. Then she’d pointed to him and laughed, and when he looked down his body was transparent. There was nothing but a watery outline that showed where it used to be. Inside was hollow, bereft of organs; he was nothing – just like she said he was.
He shuddered and this time it had nothing to do with the cold. He walked down the opposite side of the lock and gazed into the water. There were no swans near the bridge where they usually gathered, waiting for the students from the nearby college to throw them crusts from leftover sandwiches. He supposed they’d return now that the thaw had come.
As he stood staring into the water, he became aware of something caught beyond the reeds. It looked like an old coat; something that may have been discarded before the freeze came. He stared harder, eyes straining in the half-light, and then he saw something glint among the bulrushes. Gingerly, he stepped down the bank. The mud was frozen beneath his feet and he edged closer to the water, crouching as near as he dared to peer between the rushes. Where the ice had melted a man’s hand rested above the water, fingers blue-white. On the second finger a gold wedding band caught the first light.
Hastily, Oliver retreated from the water’s edge. He could go home, try to forget that he had ever seen the body beneath the ice. He didn’t want to phone the guards; it was the kind of attention that he would rather avoid, but then there was the jogger. If he didn’t report