The Salt Marsh (15 page)

‘I'm tired. I need to sleep.'

She walked into the kitchen. He followed behind. She pointed at the palm cross in the window. ‘There's something you could use as a signal to say you've left something in the drop box. It's easy to see if you're walking down the loke, even in the dark.'

She moved the cross to the right end of the ledge. ‘If it's on the right, that means no message. If it's on the left, it means you've left some information under the urn in the back garden. And look, if you turn it upside down,' she added, ‘that means danger. Something bad has happened. Be careful.'

She laughed unnaturally. Dave didn't join in. She tipped the palm cross to see if she could make it balance on its head, stood back to admire her handiwork and something in her head snapped. She righted the cross, and swivelled around to face Dave.

‘Why have you been talking to Luke about me? Why have you been stirring?'

She folded her arms, shifted her weight.

‘God, Sam, will you stop being so aggressive?'

She flicked her hair. ‘I thought you were my friend.'

‘I thought you were mine.'

‘I need some sleep. It's a long drive and I want to set off early tomorrow.'

‘Fine.'

She stalked to the kitchen door.

‘Listen,' he said.

She wavered.

‘Luke can look after himself. I think you should just forget about Luke for a while.'

‘I don't give a shit what you think.' Her hand reached out and found an object on the dresser. Her fingers grasped and hurled it at the far wall. It smashed, splinters raining on to the flagstone floor. She registered the mess but it took her a moment to work out what had happened.

‘Sam, that's my Aston Villa mug you've broken.'

She glared at him and she could see he had tears in his eyes. She was too angry and confused to say anything. She turned and marched up the stairs. She sat on the bed, listened to Dave pottering around downstairs. The kettle boiled. She pictured him making a cup of tea in his one remaining Aston Villa mug. She felt like a naughty child; she knew she should go downstairs and apologize for what she had done, but she wanted him to come upstairs and forgive her, put his arm around her and tell her she wasn't bad. He didn't. She could hear him cleaning up the mess she had made, the clink of china being swept and dropped in the bin. He padded out of the kitchen, into the hall. He was phoning somebody. Who would he be ringing at this time of night? Perhaps he had a secret girlfriend. She tiptoed over to the door, pulled it open a fraction. Whoever he was calling, they weren't answering. He left a message.

‘Hi, Dave here. Sorry to call so late, mate.' Obviously not a girlfriend then. ‘I just wanted a quick chat. Something slightly odd's come up. It's... I wanted to talk it through with you. Call us tomorrow if you are around. Cheers, mate. Ta-ra.'

Something slightly odd.
Was he talking about her? Their argument? Or was it something else? He coughed. He climbed the stairs. She closed the door quietly, leaped back into bed. She willed him to stick his head around the door and say good night, so they could make up. He walked past her door, went straight to his room.

SEVEN

S
AM ROSE EARLY
. Six a.m. Mainly because she didn't want to see Dave. She crept about the kitchen, made herself a mug of instant coffee, fiddled with the palm frond cross leaning against the window while she waited for the black liquid to cool, left the cross in its original place against the right-hand side of the ledge. She scalded her mouth as she drained her coffee, decided not to leave a message for Dave.

The blue flash and eerie snigger of a jay greeted her as she headed out the door, tiptoed across the gravel path, stole down the loke. The clouds had returned in the night, massed on the horizon. She clambered into the van, mildly hung over and strongly pissed off. Dave was supposed to be her friend but he had been talking to Luke about her behind her back, stirring, some kind of petty revenge on her because – because what? He was jealous of her relationship with Luke. Or was there something more going on with Dave?
Does the name Dave Daley mean anything to you? Trust nobody.
Perhaps she had been reckless, visiting him, confirming to anybody watching that she was his friend, a co-conspirator.

She followed the cobweb-festooned lanes back to the main road, grey tarmac ahead, queue of champing cars behind, tailing her through Thetford Forest. The day was still dismal even when she emerged from the shade of the pines. Low on petrol and energy, she turned off the road and pulled into a service station for breakfast. She pumped a few quids' worth of fuel in the tank, enough to see her home, grabbed a watery coffee and a cheese sandwich from the shop and perched on a picnic bench. She munched on the soggy bread in the thin daylight. Traffic droned. The pall of fumes hung heavily. Her eyes swept the forecourt; juggernauts on the far side, greasy-haired Harley rider filling his bike, family saloons parked in front of the shop. Volvo estate. Black Audi. Land Rover with a badly dented left front wing. Still in rich agricultural country then. She absent-mindedly rubbed her lip with her hand, tried to work out which of the figures wandering around might be the Land Rover's owner, watched the glass door, expecting to see a green-wellied farmer emerge or a Barbour-wearing City type pretending to be a rural lord. The Land Rover remained empty. She attempted to calculate her next move. Maybe for once she should do exactly as she had been told, sit tight, follow Harry's instructions and wait for him to sort out what was going on with the file. Steer well clear, as far away as possible from a potential terrorist list. MI5. R2. Let the professional handle it. But she had to find Luke, so she couldn't do nothing. She glanced at the Land Rover again, still waiting for its owner to return. Dawdling along the crisp and chocolate aisle in the shop perhaps. Time to hit the road anyway.

*

She arrived back in Vauxhall, locked the van, crossed the road. A poster on the boards of a long-empty shopfront caught her eye. Kennington Park funfair, a picture of a big wheel and a stall with a striped awning, coloured lights. She took a sharp breath, tasted sweetness at the back of her throat, conjured up a face, steel eyes, crescent-moon scar. The candy man. Her vision went fuzzy, her head heavy. She screwed her eyes tight, blocked it out, told herself she was fine. Opened her eyes, checked her watch – ten forty-five, pushed the front door, saw the red light blinking. Message. Her stomach knew it wasn't Luke. Was it the whistler? Or Liz again, assuaging her guilt for being a crap mother by phoning her to talk about Milton and Greek cuisine. Well, she could piss off. Sam ignored the light, ambled into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, proper Turkish coffee this time. Turkish coffee – everything led her back to Luke. She brewed the muddy sludge, knocked it back, walked along the hall, heading for the stairs, intending to retreat to her room and the solace of a good book. The answering machine winked at her aggressively as she passed. She paused. Could it be Harry? She pressed the button. The cassette inside the machine whirred, spinning back to the correct part of the tape. It crackled and sighed, as if somebody were breathing heavily into the phone, and then somebody spoke. Not Harry. Nor Liz. It was Dave.

‘Sam.' His voice wavered. There was something ghostly about his tone that startled her, filled her with a sudden dread. He paused. Then his disembodied voice again. ‘Sam. Are you there? Are you back yet?' Another heavy pause. ‘Listen, call me when you get in, will you? I need a quick word with you.' Heavy breathing. And then a sad, ‘Ta-ra.'

What was that about? She dialled his number. She heard it ringing at the other end, waited for him to pick up. Ring. Ring. And then his answering machine cut in. Dave's voice again, asking her to leave a message after the tone. She put the receiver down. He was probably in the toilet. He spent an immeasurable amount of time in the toilet. Men and toilets. Oh fuck, what was happening? She would give him five minutes. She took a deep breath, walked halfway down the hall then stopped; she could hear a noise upstairs, an odd, soft rattle. She climbed the stairs, hugging the wall. A blast of air brushed her cheek, as if somebody had rushed past. She froze. Counted to sixty in her head. Nothing. Continued up the stairs. Stopped, listened. The sound was coming from the back bedroom, Dave's room. She paused, hand on the door, pushed. The room was empty. Periodic table blu-tacked to the wall. Science textbooks neatly lined on the shelf. Silence. Then a buzz, coming from his built-in cupboard. She threw open the door; the familiar smell of mildew radiated from Dave's box of journal articles and a dozy wasp zapped past her face. The top paper was skew-whiff, its corners resting across the edges of the box.
Distribution of caesium 137 between abiotic and biotic components of aquatic ecosystems. By Simon Burns.
She bent down to square it up, then spotted the article underneath.
Microalgae and aquatic plants that can eliminate radioactive caesium from the aquatic environment. By Richard Avery.
Strange. B before A. The top article was out of place. Dave was fairly obsessive about ordering his information, journal articles always alphabetical. Had somebody been rummaging in his papers?

She decided to leave the pile as she had found it, returned downstairs, dialled Dave's number. He didn't pick up. Come on. Come on. The answering machine clicked in again. She put the phone down. What was he doing? She sat on the stairs. Agitated. Flipped her wrist and checked the time, watched the second hand do its round, once, twice – she dialled again, ringing, ringing. She would have to leave him a message. The answering machine clicked in. She put the phone down, on edge, didn't want to leave her voice, her name, on his tape. What if somebody else was there, in the house, listening? She shook, filled with a sudden fear that Dave might have disappeared, like Luke. She was being paranoid, she told herself. Then she went through his strange reactions, his edginess the evening before when she wanted to talk about the power station, his digs about Luke. Harry's question –
Does the name Dave Daley mean anything to you?
Yes, it did mean something to her, Dave Daley meant a lot to her, but now she was beginning to fear that she didn't have quite such a straightforward relationship with him as she thought she had.
Listen, there's something else... Dave...
She had to contain the doubts. It would all turn out to be nothing. Dave had nipped to the shop to buy a pint of milk and he would call her when he got back and start talking about something trivial. The breeding habits of spoonbills. She was being paranoid, as usual.

She retreated to her room, under the bedcovers with a book. Somewhere in the distance a police siren wailed. Traffic hummed. A train clunked across the railway arches en route to Waterloo. A neighbour's radio twittered. She pretended not to be listening for the phone. Who was she trying to kid? She levered herself out of bed, teetered at the top of the stairs. The hairs on her arms bristled, an icy breeze on the back of her neck. She clutched the banister as she traipsed down, crossed the hall, reached for the phone and dialled Dave's number. No reply. Somebody was playing mind-games with her, disappearing the men she cared about, one by one. She shut her eyes briefly, pushed back the dark void.

She forced herself to eat; a half moon of dry pitta wiped around the remains of an out-of-date pot of hummus. The only near-edibles left in the fridge. She called Dave. He failed to pick up. She played the message he had left again. Now the spaces between his words were obvious: breaths, silences, tightness in his voice, panic. He was trying to convey calm control, but she could hear the fear. She had to do something. She had to help him. She walked back into the kitchen, brewed some more muddy coffee in her battered saucepan, poured it into a thermos, located a packet of Garibaldi biscuits in the back of a cupboard, checked the back door was locked, picked up her battered boombox from the front room and a handful of cassettes. She passed the phone and it rang. She jumped for it. Dave. It wasn't. Her hand froze, the whistle playing in her ear and then the voice. ‘You are in danger.' Clunk of receiver. It didn't sound like Harry. Perhaps he was muting his Welsh accent in case there was a listener on the line. Or perhaps Harry had instructed somebody else to leave her a warning?
You are in danger.
God, how did a message like that help? It only made her more anxious. She couldn't call Harry right now anyway, she had to go. She double locked the front door, dumped her supplies in the back of the van, rested the boombox on the passenger seat, fiddled with the key in the ignition. The van chugged as the engine revved; usually comforting, now the familiar noise merely reminded her of the miles she had to travel, alone,
you are in danger
rattling around her brain.

Slow going east through the blackened terraces of London. The cruddy, never rebuilt bomb holes between the houses filled with discarded domestic appliances. North through Essex. Decaying factories and empty warehouses. She left the road at the same junction she had taken this morning, pulled into the same service station to top up the tank. This was proving expensive if nothing else. She used the toilet, grabbed a cup of weak coffee and sat at the same bench she had occupied eight hours previously. Her earlier presence was almost visible, a faint glimmer sitting at the bench eating a cheese sandwich. Her eyes wandered the sky, clouds hanging over the flat wheat fields, ratcheting up the humidity of the late afternoon. She ought to keep moving, face whatever was waiting for her in Skell. She drained the last of the coffee, scrunched the polystyrene cup in her hand, tossed it into the litter bin, wasps orbiting like Jupiter's moons around the overflowing debris. She turned and caught sight of an old army Land Rover parked in front of the petrol station shop. Odd, it looked exactly like the one she had seen earlier this morning, bashed front left wing. She strolled across the forecourt, stared into the petrol station shop window at the AA Road Maps of Great Britain display, and observed the Land Rover's reflection in the plate glass. Empty. She read the inverse number plate. C783 LLB. Was that a London registration? She made a mental note of the number, strolled back to the van, turned the ignition and pulled away.