Authors: Morag Joss
There was nothing more to see. The small vessels around the
barges began to move, some towards the jetty on the far shore, some
over to our side. Ron’s boat would be among them, I supposed, but I
was too far away to make out which was his. Around me the knots of
spectators loosened, shifted, dispersed, but I stood where I was,
and so did the man with the iPhone and his little audience.
I knew what I should expect. Why then did I not expect it?
“First images of the vehicle taken from vessels adjacent to the
rescue suggest there are human remains inside,” he announced.
“Police are not confirming anything at this stage and will make a
statement later today.”
The man’s two sons gasped and stared. One of them said, “Human
remains, wow!” and grabbed at his brother and they sniggered in
mock revulsion, caught up in the thrill and horror of it. They
weren’t being cruel. Laughter was the only route they knew away
from what dead bodies in a car might actually mean.
I turned to leave. I had to find Ron. How could I tell Silva?
What could I tell her?
T
he police announced
that night that post-mortem examinations were being carried out on
two bodies found in the car, neither of which was believed to be
that of the missing woman. They would not comment on the
speculation in some news reports that one of the dead was a
child.
At the bridge site, the discovery of the bodies – the wrong
bodies – unhinged the operation for several hours. Ron was busy
into the evening with unscheduled relays of police, salvage crews
and journalists, and could not go to the cabin that night. He knew
that Annabel’s mobile phone sat unused and uncharged on a shelf,
and he could not bring himself to call Silva’s. They would have
heard the news reports themselves on the radio. But the real reason
was cowardice. Late that night he had a missed call from Silva but
did not reply. He could not have borne to hear his own voice tell
her there was a chance that the people who had died in the car were
Stefan and Anna.
The following day he took Mr Sturrock across the river for the
Saturday bridge tour. They were surprised to see more than thirty
people waiting at the jetty; over the weeks the numbers had been
dwindling. Rhona said she’d been swamped with bookings since
yesterday, and this was, at last, evidence of the ‘penetration’ she
had been working for. The news of the found bodies was providing an
essential ‘enhanced human-interest factor’ for the journalists,
while being at the same time, of course, a tragic twist.
Mr Sturrock led them to the end of the bridge approach, gave his
stern welcome and fished out his notes (he never spoke without
them). Ron knew the speech by heart now, and as he half-listened he
watched the audience. They were younger than usual, and many had
camcorders and cameras. There was something else different about
them, too. They were warmed up for something. This was a gathering
of ghouls. Gone were the quiet attention of the regular audience of
locals and the earnest types interested in bridge design, the sad
concentration of people hoping for answers, paying respects to the
dead.
Mr Sturrock was telling them about concrete. “We’re well ahead
of schedule,” he read from his notes, “partly because we are
fortunate in having suitable sites downriver for the casting sheds,
thus minimizing the cost and transportation time for the
replacement concrete components. Needless to say, we inspect every
casting and reject it unless it meets our strict criteria.”
As he spoke, three or four people detached themselves from the
group, wandered away and began taking pictures. Mr Sturrock counted
on his fingers. “One, concrete has to cure properly, in
temperatures above zero degrees centigrade. Two, on top of the
temperature, you have to think about what we call air entrainment,
which is – ”
“Excuse me, are there any more bodies still down there?”
somebody asked. Others murmured with interest.
“What about that woman? Have they found her yet?”
“Are the divers down there now? Have they called off the
search?”
“That’s a police matter,” Mr Sturrock said. “Three, your basic
concrete recipe has to suit your actual conditions. There are
various chemical – ”
A few more people drifted away; two or three began a
conversation.
“How long would it take a human body to decompose down
there?”
“The fish eat everything, that’s what I heard. Everything. Hey,
mister, is it true after five months there’d just be bones?”
Mr Sturrock paused and looked past the crowd. Two of the first
defectors had strolled to the barrier at the end of the bridge road
and were scanning the river with camcorders, homing in on the crane
barge that had lifted the car. Their safety helmets sat on the
ground at their feet.
“Hoy!” Mr Sturrock yelled. “Hoy, you! Stop right there! You’re
in breach of regulations!” He pocketed his notes and strode towards
them. “You fucking jokers, get your hats on! Get your fucking hats
on and get your arses off the fucking bridge!” One man stopped at
once and reached for his helmet. But the other swung his camcorder
round and began filming Mr Sturrock.
Ron wasn’t in time to stop it. Mr Sturrock let out a roar, broke
into a run, lunged at the man and wrenched the camcorder away.
Holding the man off with his free hand and ignoring his shouts, he
strode to the barrier and flung it into the water. Then he swung
round to the rest of the group. “Aye, and that goes for the lot of
youse! This tour is cancelled! Fuck off! You are no longer
authorized on these premises! So fuck off, the lot o’ youse!”
Rhona came forwards, protesting, but he held up a hand. “Rhona,
hen, just get them out of here, OK? I’m no’ having it. Hear me? Get
them fucking out of here.”
He strode off towards the jetty, stepped into the launch and
took a seat in the bow, as far as possible from where Ron operated
the boat, and stared out at the opposite bank. Ron followed,
started the ignition, and when they were mid-river he slowed the
boat right down so they could feel the soft tilting of the tide
against the sides. The quieting of the engine or their distance
from the shore, maybe the rhythm of the waves, calmed Mr Sturrock.
He turned and shuffled down until he sat close to the stern.
“Lost my rag for a wee minute there,” he said. “Maybe I went a
bit far, eh?”
He had never before talked to Ron in a tone of voice that
invited a reply.
“No, served them right,” Ron said. He smiled. “Shouldn’t have
taken their hats off, should they?”
Mr Sturrock laughed. “Aye, right enough, they shouldnae.” He
shook his head. “See how they were carrying on, like it’s
entertainment? Nae respect.” He paused. “It’s on my mind, I
suppose. Him that wasnae there the day, the English fella.”
“What English fella?”
“Fuck’s sake, yon English fella, he’s here every time. Big quiet
fella, comes up from Huddersfield.”
“I know who you mean. He wasn’t here today. First one he’s
missed,” Ron said.
“That’s what I’m
telling
you,” Mr Sturrock said. “You ken
why? Rhona told me. See, she had him on his own for a wee minute,
one time, over the coffee kinda thing. She makes an effort, Rhona.
Turns out it’s his wife. The lady that hired that car, it’s his
wife, for fuck’s sake. That’s why he keeps coming. And see thay
bastards the day, going on like it’s a photo opportunity…” He
glanced back at the jetty. “Enter-fucking-tainment. Imagine being
him when that fucking car came out the water.”
“Will they ever find her body?” Ron asked. “So at least he’d
know what happened to her?”
“I’ve nae fucking idea,” Mr Sturrock said. “Poor bastard. Put a
bit of speed on, will you? I havnae got all fucking day.”
Ron’s phone rang again, and he didn’t answer. After he’d
delivered Mr Sturrock to the jetty he checked for messages. The
call was from Silva’s number, but it was Annabel’s voice.
“She’s heard about the car,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get
you. Can you come today? Please come.”
When he arrived he found Silva sitting on the floor in her room
with photographs of Stefan and Anna in her lap. She’d been that
way, Annabel told him, since the news came.
She had taken Stefan’s drawing of the cabin down from the wall
and lit candles around it. She was rocking to and fro with her
hands clenched against her mouth as the candles burned, gazing at
the drawing and whispering to the smiling stick figures he’d made
of the three of them in fierce, spitting bursts of language of
which Annabel and Ron understood not a word.
All through Saturday and Sunday they tried to care for her, but
she would scarcely be deflected by entreaties to eat or rest. When
Annabel spoke to tell her there was food ready or to suggest she
lie down and sleep, her voice seemed to reach her, if at all, from
too far away to be understood. When Ron helped her gently to her
feet and brought her to the table or to her bed, she walked
carefully on her numbed legs and did not look at him. She ate and
slept only to regain enough strength to return to her place on the
floor.
But she did not weep, and on Monday morning she was up and ready
early to go to Vi’s. The radio was now repeating that the police
had confirmed the bodies were those of a man and a child and that
the car was the one hired by a woman tourist, who was still
missing. And so, Silva announced to the others, these were the
bodies of two other people. Stefan never hitched lifts when he had
Anna with him, because he always said if he ran into trouble he
could defend himself all right alone, but he couldn’t be sure of
defending her as well. Besides, she said, the police didn’t even
say the child was a girl.
She spoke in a firm but faded voice, as if she were under a kind
of hypnosis of both hope and dread; an entranced, defiant look had
entered her eyes. She got through the next few days at Vi’s,
returning exhausted to her candles and photographs and
incantations. On the fifth day she did not go to work because she
woke after a vivid dream of Stefan who had borne a message that the
answer to her prayers was nigh. This would be the day they came
back. She waited all day, and the next, and the next.
For the whole week Ron’s workmates at the bridge traded rumours
about the occupants of the car. People sat on in the canteen past
their break times, talking and arguing. Ron just listened; nobody
asked for his opinion, and he gave none, and least of all would he
have said anything about Silva and her vigil for Stefan and Anna,
or about the husband of the missing woman and his presence at every
bridge walk. Even if he could have strung the words together, Ron
believed he had no right to offer up for their scrutiny any
stories, and such desperate ones, that belonged to other
people.
One rumour was that the child was strapped in the back and
nesting in a tangle of blankets as if asleep, and the man’s body
was floating free and twisting, arms outstretched, towards her.
Another had it the other way round, the child reaching for him;
another, that the child was cradled in his arms. And who were they,
the workmen speculated, and where was the woman who had been or
should have been driving? Were they hitch-hikers? No sane woman
alone picked up hitch-hikers. But had she stopped for these two
(had it been raining that day?), either for the child’s sake, or
because the very presence of the child had made her feel safe? But
suppose the man was just a car thief, albeit one who operated with
a child in his care, and he had stolen the car. Where then was the
woman? Was he also a murderer? Had he killed her in front of the
child? So where was her body?
The word went round that when the car was hauled from the river,
the driver’s door had not been closed. Ron sat quietly and heard
the theories: the door lock must have burst on impact with the
water; it had been broken in a collision with other wreckage; it
had been corroded and prised open by the tides. But the favoured
version was that a third occupant, the woman driver, had managed to
open the door and get out, but had not made it to the surface. She
must have been drowned and her body dragged out to sea. The bridge
workers had it all worked out, they reckoned, on the balance of
probabilities; meanwhile the police investigation continued with
what they considered perverse slowness.
Ron was grateful that the patterns of his physical life – work
on the boat, food, jobs at the cabin, sleep – kept him immersed in
practical tasks and with little time to think. Whatever had
happened to the woman, and whoever the man and child had been, all
three were lost. And while the deaths of people he had never known
were losses abstracted and at a remove, loss recalled all losses.
He was sad for their deaths and felt they should be contemplated in
silence, in the unshared privacy of his own mind; the thought of
their suffering hurt and frightened him. He returned at the end of
each day to the cabin, where such matters could not be
discussed.
After two weeks, no next of kin had come forward. On its front
page, under the headline ‘Police Appeal to Family of Mystery
Victims’, the
Inverness Herald
printed a photograph of the
man’s neck chain and the half-perished remains of a toy giraffe. It
also reported that DNA tests showed that the bodies were
overwhelmingly likely to be a father and child. Ron brought the
paper with him that evening as well as a can of diesel for the
generator, a tub of leftover coleslaw and a bottle of whisky. Silva
was once again at her devotions. He showed the front page to
Annabel, who was peeling potatoes at the table. These days she sat
down to do such tasks.
“Oh, God, no,” she said. “Don’t let her see it. Oh, God, what
are we to do?”