The Trawlerman Read online

  When the mint-green car drew up outside, she stayed inside, but Jill came in anyway.

  ‘Are you OK, Alex?’

  ‘Yes. I’m fine. I just needed some time on my own,’ she said.

  ‘Mum! What’s wrong with your face?’

  ‘I fell off my bike.’ Another lie. ‘It was wet and I couldn’t see the potholes.’ Lie upon lie upon lie.

  ‘When are you going to get a new bloody car?’ demanded Jill. ‘You can’t live out here in the boondocks without one.’

  ‘What’s with the candles?’ demanded Zoë.

  ‘Something my therapist suggested. I thought you’d like them.’

  ‘Scented candles give you cancer.’

  Jill stood, waiting to be offered a drink or something. It broke Alex’s heart, but Jill would be working on the Frank Hogben murder case, and having her around only meant she would have to lie to her more about what she knew.

  Jill hovered uncomfortably by the door. ‘I don’t want to stress you out, Alex,’ she said eventually, ‘but you know they’re going to question you about Terry Neill?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He’s saying it was you that gave him the money. All sorts of stuff like that.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  Jill looked down at her feet. ‘I didn’t want to say it was too good to be true, you and him.’

  Alex frowned. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Just . . . that he played you.’

  Alex was suddenly offended at the suggestion, but unable to show it.

  ‘Don’t you see, Alex?’ She shuffled her feet. ‘I think maybe he was just using you. To me it looks like he was creating an alibi by going out for a copper. He probably never actually . . .’

  ‘Never what? Never fancied me?’

  Jill didn’t answer. Zoë stood with her bag in her hand, looking embarrassed.

  ‘That’s absolutely ridiculous,’ said Alex eventually.

  ‘Yeah. Of course it is,’ said Jill, backing out.

  Later, at Zoë’s insistence, she and Zoë walked down to Arum Cottage. ‘We’ve got to tell him,’ she said.

  When they arrived there, they saw that the Under Offer sign had been modified. It now read Sold.

  The bird bath looked splendid in the deep red of the evening, thought Alex, while her daughter knocked on the door.

  ‘Are you going to tell him, or am I?’ asked Zoë.

  ‘Tread carefully,’ Alex told her daughter. She was nervous now, in a way she hadn’t been for weeks. A sense that everything could go very wrong. ‘He’s a very independent man. This might have been a mistake.’

  ‘Weirdest thing,’ said Bill, when he came to the door. ‘Turns out I don’t have to move out.’

  ‘What do you mean, Bill?’ Zoë pretended not to know what was going on.

  He opened it to let them in. It was the first cool evening of the year. He had lit a fire in the stove and the red flame matched the colour of the sun on the stones outside.

  ‘The woman who bought it is letting me live here on pretty much a peppercorn rent. She just bought it as an investment, apparently. I mean . . . I know they go for a fortune now round here, but it’s, like, I’ve just been paid two hundred thousand pounds to live in my own house . . .’

  ‘Well, there’s a thing,’ said Alex.

  ‘What is it? Why are you grinning?’

  Zoë was practically shaking with excitement. ‘Is the woman who bought the house called Helen Breen?’ asked Zoë.

  ‘That’s right. How did you . . . ?’

  ‘You know . . . Helen. You know her, Bill. It’s my gran.’

  Bill’s jaw dropped. As he stared at Alex, the smile left his face. ‘Your mother Helen?’

  ‘It was Gran’s idea,’ said Zoë, hesitant now. ‘Not Mum’s.’

  Bill looked winded. ‘I’m not sure how I feel about that at all,’ he said.

  Zoë looked from one to the other, worried now.

  Eventually Alex spoke. ‘I owed it to you. But it was my mum’s idea, not mine. It’s just a financial transaction, that’s all. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. You sold the cottage and now you’ve got the money. But we’d like you to stay, obviously.’

  ‘Right,’ he said quietly.

  Alex wondered if she had miscalculated this badly.

  But Bill South was still living in Arum Cottage in mid-September when Alex’s old colleagues from Serious Crime formally charged Terry Neill with the murder of Frank Hogben.

  The headline in the Kent Messenger read: Disgraced University Professor Charged with Drug Murder.

  Neill’s protestations that the money police found at his house had not been his were contradicted by the fact that a forged note had been discovered in the till of the golf club where he regularly spent time in the bar; nobody noticed or remembered that it was Alex who had paid for the drinks on the evening she had spent with him there. The following day they found others had been passed in shops in the neighbourhood. There was even one in the yellow charity box on the table at the golf club. Members of the golf club who had previously vouched for his good character seemed to be falling away. It was easy for them to believe that a former drug addict had been up to something dark.

  Checking in to see how she was recovering, DI McAdam visited after work.

  Sitting in her kitchen, Toby McAdam let slip that they were working on the theory that Frank Hogben’s murder had been a dispute over drug money; that Neill must have been involved with Hogben importing drugs. Neill denied it but was unable to explain the sums of money, not large, but very regular, that had appeared in his personal account over the last few years. There was something shady about his finances, for sure.

  ‘I’m sorry. This must be painful for you,’ Toby McAdam said.

  ‘Yes,’ Alex said.

  ‘How’s your daughter Zoë?’

  Alex liked McAdam. He was the kind of boss who took care to know the names of his colleagues’ children; though, she realised now, she had never once asked about his. ‘Insane, as ever,’ she answered. ‘Though she looks after me well. Apparently I haven’t woken up screaming in the night for at least a week now.’

  ‘She must have been through a great deal.’

  ‘I suppose she has,’ said Alex, though she was a little offended by the suggestion.

  ‘As you have, obviously. We’ll see about bringing you back on light duties soon.’

  And Alex’s heart shrank again, but she tried to look grateful, for his sake.

  Fifty

  ‘All you have to do is drop me at Tina and Stella’s,’ Zoë said. ‘I don’t see what the big deal is.’

  Alex had finally bought herself an ancient green Saab off Curly, and so, in theory, she could have driven her daughter to Folkestone. Instead she said, ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘No you’re not. You’re hanging around the house all day. Is there a problem with me being friends with them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sure? ’Cause you’re acting like some kind of homophobe.’

  ‘What do you see in them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Zoë said spikily. ‘Maybe I’m a lesbian, after all.’

  ‘Maybe I’m a lesbian? Are you really saying that?’

  ‘No. I don’t have to decide, do I? It’s just society that makes people have to decide. I just like hanging around with people who are a bit different. They have nice friends.’

  ‘You don’t have to decide. That’s true.’ Her daughter had always liked hanging around with people who were a bit different. When they moved here, to Dungeness, Alex had thought it strange her teenage daughter had become so obsessed with nature that she hung around with adults like Bill all the time. Now she seemed more interested in hanging around with Tina and Stella, Alex found herself mourning the fact that she was spendi
ng less time with birders and naturalists, or out at the Marsh Visitor Centre.

  That wasn’t why she didn’t want to drive her daughter to see them at their tiny house. Knowing what Tina had done, it was best not to spend time in their company. There were too many lies.

  ‘I might stay over, Mum. Hang out with some people in Folkestone.’

  ‘OK.’

  Zoë softened. ‘Don’t sound so down about it, Mum. I’m seventeen. I mean, I can go out, now you’ve stopped having nightmares and stuff.’

  ‘I never asked you to do that. I was OK. You never had to stay and look after me.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’ said her daughter.

  She no longer woke in the night to find her duvet twisted around her, and her daughter quietly sitting by her bed. She no longer smelt earth around her, weight on her chest, or the wetness of blood. She hadn’t returned to work yet, but that would come soon. She wasn’t frightened. Something had freed her, and now the ordinary dull patterns of the world had come back; tides came in and out, and they were just water. She felt in control again. She had done a bad thing, but she had made some sense of the world.

  ‘Get in the car, then,’ she said.

  In a rare display of affection, her daughter kissed her.

  ‘So,’ Alex said, as lightly as she could as they drove past the bungalows that crowded the flat seafront. ‘Do you really think you’re gay then?’

  ‘No. I don’t think I’m anything.’

  ‘Of course you’re something . . . love,’ she responded, too quickly.

  ‘I don’t mean it like that.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She loved her daughter more than she had loved anything; sometimes, though, she felt they were further apart than ever.

  They pulled up at the small terraced house.

  ‘Come in and say hello, Mum. They’d like that. Tina thinks you’re ace.’

  ‘Does she?’ Alex smiled. ‘That’s nice. No. I’m OK.’

  She waved at her daughter as she drove off.

  In the hallway she noticed the umbrella. She had forgotten to return it. It would be nice, she thought, to sit in a pub on her own and read a book. Strapping it to her bicycle frame and putting a book in a backpack, she set off for the nearby town. The Dolphin was mostly empty. She handed over the umbrella to a barman, and then a couple of young American tourists approached her because she was on her own, and they chatted for a while, and when they learned she lived at Dungeness they told her how fantastic and spooky a place it was and how they had come here because they were on a kind of pilgrimage to see Derek Jarman’s cottage, which was as close to a religious shrine as you got on the Ness. They talked for a while, but then she pulled out her book and they got the hint, and she finally sat alone reading about neuroscience while eating haddock and chips and drinking Pinot Grigio. It felt utterly luxurious.

  When Curly came in, she noticed him tense a little as he spotted her, but she nodded hello at him, and he nodded back. That’s all. It was as if she had finally become a local; she was someone who held a shared secret.

  ‘Sit with me,’ she called to him. So when he had bought his pint of lager and a packet of sweet chilli crisps, he joined her at her table.

  ‘Have you seen anything of Bill?’ she asked. ‘I think he’s ignoring me.’

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ he said holding out the crisp packet.

  She shook her head.

  ‘He’s been alone his whole life. He doesn’t know how to react when other people try to help him. Bird bath is one thing. But the whole bloody house is another.’

  ‘So he told you, then? We had to do something.’

  Curly nodded. He had grown up around here, but could no longer afford to live on Dungeness himself. ‘Like I said. He’ll be fine. He’s a quiet man, best of times.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  Curly picked up another crisp and looked at it for longer than any bar snack deserved. ‘He loves you, you know? Kind of this old-man crush. If it wasn’t for that, he’d probably find it easier.’

  ‘He tell you that?’

  He popped it into his mouth and chewed. ‘Doesn’t really need to, does he? Want another wine? I’m getting another.’

  When he returned with the wine he leaned in. ‘I got you a large one as a thank you.’

  ‘For what?’

  He lowered his voice. ‘I heard that professor guy is going to plead guilty. Tina is definitely off the bloody hook.’

  Jill had told her that. Alex had been surprised, but his lawyer was probably advising him to. If he pleaded innocent, there was always the risk that the police would dig more deeply to make their case, and if they did, there was a risk, however small, they would find out the truth about Terry Neill and the bad things he had really done. However much money he had stashed away would be gone, and then they might start to connect him to the death of Ayman Younis and the death of Bob Glass. Pleading guilty to the murder of a drug dealer seven years ago was not the worst option. With good behaviour he would be out in five years and the money would still be waiting for him safely overseas or wherever it was.

  ‘Going out tomorrow on the boat,’ he said, as if he felt the need to change the subject. ‘It’ll be a bit of a blow out there. We’ll have some bream, I dare say.’

  It was a kind of pointless observation, and she was grateful for it.

  Despite too much wine, she slept well, but was woken thick-headed by the noise of a car horn.

  She blinked, went to the bathroom and looked down from the window.

  Below, engine running, was a Ford Escort, sunburst red, with alloy wheels and a biplane spoiler. Her daughter, sitting in the passenger seat in a big, baggy pink hoodie Alex didn’t recognise, waved.

  Alex stared for a while, open-mouthed, then ran downstairs and opened the back door.

  It was Stella behind the wheel. She got out and smiled. She was dressed in green dungarees and an orange sweater. Under her short, bleached hair, her face was still brown from the summer sun. ‘Just wanted to say thanks,’ she said, holding out her hand to shake. ‘For everything you’ve done for Tina. And me.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ said Alex, leaving the hand where it was, in mid-air.

  Stella tilted her head. ‘Yeah you did. I know. I’m not stupid. But I am very, very grateful. You’re a good woman.’ She held out her hand a second longer, but still Alex didn’t take it.

  ‘You shouldn’t be driving this car.’

  The wind had come up, as Curly had predicted it would. Dry grey leaves from the sunken woods were flying up into the air around them. ‘It’s a real bit of history, this car. German-built. Bosch fuel injection. Get a hundred and ten m.p.h. out of it no problem. And Frank doesn’t need it any more.’

  ‘What’s this about, Mum?’ Zoë sounded uncertain.

  ‘It’s mine. I don’t see why I shouldn’t drive it.’

  ‘Nothing, Zoë.’ Alex turned to her daughter. ‘Why don’t you go inside?’

  ‘I borrowed Stella’s jumper, Mum. It got cold last night. I’m just going to change and give it her back. Want to come in, Stella?’

  ‘I better not, Zo,’ said Stella. ‘I don’t think I’m staying.’

  Zoë ran inside the house.

  ‘The old thing’s been hidden away all this time. It deserves a good run.’

  ‘I thought it was your brother who fixed it,’ said Alex slowly, when her daughter had gone.

  ‘What brother? Who told you I have a brother?’

  Alex looked confused. ‘Mandy Hogben said he was up there fixing the car at night.’

  Stella laughed loudly. ‘It was me fixed the bloody car. I don’t know. Maybe she thinks a woman couldn’t do something like that, poor cow.’

  ‘Let me get this straight. It was you I saw up at the Air Force Memorial car park, wasn’t it?’

  Ste
lla didn’t answer directly but Alex knew she was right.

  ‘You fixed my car, too, didn’t you?’

  Stella leaned across the roof of the red car. Alex could see her face reflected in the shiny paint. ‘After a fashion. Yeah. Sorry about that. I was just trying to protect us, you understand? Me and Tina. That’s all I’ve ever been doing.’

  It was as if the temperature had dropped. ‘You restored this?’ Alex said again, looking at the car.

  ‘Like I said. I’m good with machines,’ she said quietly. ‘Been working on it for years.’

  Alex touched the scab on her face where Terry Neill had cut it. ‘It was you, that day in the lock-up too. Not Tina. It was you who dropped this car on him.’

  ‘What was it you said earlier?’ Stella said. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Except you did.’

  Stella got back inside the car. The Ford’s steering wheel had a red leather cover on it, held on with a red lace. Stella put her hands on it and spoke to Alex through the open window. ‘After he found out about me and Tina, it was a matter of time. You should have seen the state of Tina. It killed me. Curly just assumed it was her that killed him. So did your copper friend. And so did you.’

  She started the engine. ‘For a while I thought you were going to spoil everything. I tried to throw you off. But you’re a good person, Alex. You did good. Back then, I stepped up and saved her,’ Stella said. ‘Just the same as you did now.’

  ‘No,’ Alex said. ‘Not just the same. Not at all.’

  ‘I know why you’re angry.’ Stella scrunched up her mouth. ‘It just kind of worked out this way. If it’s any consolation, I don’t like what I did any more than you did. I’m not proud. It just needed to happen.’

  Alex looked her in the eye. ‘Just don’t come back here, OK? Not ever.’

  When Zoë arrived downstairs with Stella’s bright-pink hoodie bundled up, the car had already gone.

  Alex looked at her, standing there, disappointed that Stella hadn’t waited to say goodbye, puzzled by her mother’s hostility to her friend. Alex wasn’t sure where to begin. Luckily, before she could say anything, Bill South rounded the corner of the end house dressed in a yellow sou’wester, a bunch of bright-red supermarket chrysanthemums in his hand.