The woman sat in the half-gloom, her face illuminated by the rising daylight through the portholes.
There was remarkably little blood on her face or on her hands. Remarkably little on the kitchen knife she still held clutched in front of her. Neila looked, and wondered if maybe the blood wasn’t real, and decided it was.
She called the woman’s name again—Marta, Marta, can you…?
The woman didn’t stir.
“Marta, it’s Neila. Marta are you… are you hurt? Did they…”
The woman didn’t raise her head, and held the knife close.
Theo peeked in behind Neila.
Saw the old woman.
Saw the blood.
Looked away.
At the sky and the water, at the city and the business school behind them, gearing up again into full swing, at the girl floating face down in the water.
He stepped inside the cabin.
Crossed slowly to the woman.
Squatted down in front of her.
Put his hand over hers, cradling the fingers that held the knife.
Her eyes drifted to his face, and her fingers tightened on the handle.
“Blessed are the mothers,” he whispered. “Blessed are the children. Blessed is the dawn on the day of release. Blessed is the mist that rises by the river.”
Her eyes dropped down again, her lips hung loose on a crackle-boned jaw.
Theo took the knife without a word, laid it on the counter to one side.
Burned-down incense sticks sat in a blue ceramic holder on the fold-down dining table. A half-finished copy of a romantic novel about a family in the south of France lay on the couch. The kettle on the stove had boiled itself dry, leaving a steaming scar on the ceiling above.
The woman stared at nothing as Theo held her hands.
He waited
waited
waited
as all things waited
for the woman at last to blink, look him in the eye, feel his skin on hers and say, “They came onto my boat.”
Theo nodded once, squeezed her hands, let go, walked away.
Neila called the police.
Theo said, “I can’t be here… if the police come…”
She replied, “There’s water at Nether Heyford. I’ll find you, I promise I’ll find you…”
To Neila’s surprise, the police came.
Marta had comprehensive security coverage. She turned out to be rich, had chosen to live on the canal with savings from managing space on cargo vessels. She’d sold her house, her second home in the Cotswolds Community, most of her ninety-plus pairs of shoes, her ex-husband’s wine collection, and now she sailed the waterways for reasons that no one knew. Because she loved it, perhaps?
And in the night the children had come and they had broken into her boat and she had panicked she’d simply panicked and…
They used long hooks to fish the girl out. It took two strong men to haul her onto land, ice water streaming from the tops of her boots.
“It’s all right, love,” said one of the coppers as they handcuffed the old woman and led her away. “Kid you popped was one of the children. Everyone knows you get a discount for that sort of thing.”
Marta cried silently when the man said that, though she hadn’t wept until that moment.
When the police were gone
Theo didn’t come back.
Marta’s narrowboat drifted, stern out, and after a while Neila realised no one was coming for it, so she climbed on board, slid along the narrow edge of the boat to the rear, threw a rope to shore.
Tied off.
Had a look at the smashed door, shattered lock, couldn’t see an easy way to repair it, thought of getting a new one for when Marta came back.
Couldn’t think of a way to make that work out, didn’t know if…
Let herself inside.
Cleaned up a bit.
Righted a smashed picture frame, Marta and a child, maybe a son?
Swept the glass up, threw it away.
Cleared out the stove, made the bed, put cups back in the cupboard, straightened everything out, didn’t want to do anything more, felt intrusive, felt that what she was doing wasn’t even close to enough.
In the end, she put a note in the window.
The note wouldn’t buy Marta much time before she exceeded her permit to moor, but maybe someone would come and help save the boat before the scavengers split it open and stripped it down.
At sunset Theo did not appear.
Neila slept badly.
There was no howling in the night.
The streets were silent, except for a voice, raised shortly after midnight, a child singing in the dark, somewhere beyond the water.
What shall we do with a drunken sailor, early in the morning?
Hey ho and up she rises,
Hey ho and up she rises,
Hey ho and—
As suddenly as the voice had begun singing, it stopped, and was not heard again.
“Cut his throat with a rusty cleaver,” sang Neila under her breath as she turned the lights down. “Cut his throat with a rusty cleaver…”
By the water
to the north
the man called Theo thinks he hears singing in the distance but can’t make out the words.
“Blessed are the ones who walk,” he whispers under his breath as he trudges, head down, hands buried, through the night. “Blessed are they who remember and fear…”
In the houses where the children live
the school burned down and the parents had no place to go there is only
the moon
the night
the howling at the sky
A girl is dead and the children are silent in the corners of the crowded rooms.
In the police station Marta said, “I won’t pay for an indemnity. I won’t pay. I won’t pay for the indemnity. I must pay some other way.”
And the coppers shake their heads in disbelief, and one brings her a cup of tea and sits next to her and whispers, “You don’t want to go to the patty line, luv. Not at your age. You won’t make it a year, it’s the work you see, it’s just the work, round here you gotta make Cornish pasties and I like a pasty I do lovely jubbly but the fat you know the fat? You take a bite and the fat it just burns like—you don’t want to get burned. It was just a kid you killed. Just a kid. She wasn’t going to be nothing, you don’t have to—it was just a kid. Pay the indemnity. They’re giving you that discount anyway!”
And in the office above the cells:
“What do you mean, two sets of fingerprints?”
“Two sets on the knife, and this second set you got there’s a…”
On the table in front of the man in charge, a kitchen knife, the blood dry, white forensic dust on the handle where another man’s hand gently prised the weapon away from an old woman’s fingers.
They wouldn’t have bothered to fingerprint it at all if the old biddy hadn’t been quite so peculiar about her need to be punished.
In London a phone rings.
“Mr. Markse? We’ve found a fingerprint and you won’t believe who it…”
The clouds skim across the moon.
On the towpath Theo stops suddenly, dead in his tracks, and sees a heron. It stands on one leg where a ledge creates a shallow step of water, waiting to strike with its raised claw, and does not move or turn its head.
He stares at it for a very, very long time
then raises one leg
and makes like a heron.
For a little while.