The Salt Marsh (16 page)

The further into Norfolk she drove, the darker the sky became. She reached Thetford Forest, plunged into the gloom of overreaching trees. She shivered, too cold for June, reached over to the boombox with one hand, pressed play. Joy Division. ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart'. The sudden clatter of the raindrops almost drowned the music. She slowed, thirty, twenty-five miles an hour. Better not to go any faster in this weather, the wipers couldn't cope with the deluge, her view was obscured, only the blur of oncoming headlights visible through the sheets of rain. A nutter in a silver Mercedes sped past, sprayed water in its wake, disappeared in the blear. She glanced in the rearview mirror, hard to see much through the back windscreen. Was that a flash of green? A Land Rover. She almost jammed her foot on the brake, nearly swerved on the wet road, regained control, concentrated on her driving, emerged from the forest, out into the open air. She checked behind her again; the car hogging her bumper was a white Peugeot, no Land Rover in sight. Her paranoia. She put her foot on the accelerator, nearly at Skell.

The final stretch, hemmed in by hawthorn, caught behind a line of horses, steaming flanks, riders swathed in black raingear, heads down, faces shadowed inside their hoods. The riders peeled right at the junction beyond the bridge. She forked left, drove past the village green, the Butcher's Arms, the church. Two panda cars had parked precariously on the verge along the side of the road heading to the sea. Her stomach lurched. The right turn, the one that ran behind the village with access to the lokes, was cordoned off. Three coppers were standing in front of the lane, arms folded, repelling any inquisitive passers-by. Shit. Her brain raced. She drove on, swerved into the old harbour road, past a gaggle of people huddled by the post office, swerved left into the driveway that led down to the old windmill, parked in the gravel forecourt. Handbrake on. Sat back in the seat for a moment, trying to control the anxieties, think clearly. She leaned over to the glove compartment, rummaged inside, pulled out a pakol, an Afghan rebel's hat, the one Luke had bought her as a present from Kensington Market. The rough felt comforted her hand. She pulled the hat on, rolled the brim over her head, its rim scratching her skin, glanced at herself in the mirror. She looked stupid, but it might help keep her dry. Catching her reflection, some instinct made her tuck her sandy hair inside the hat. Disguise herself. She pulled the hat's rim further down over her brow to keep the hair in place. A lump formed in her throat. Her mind was numb, on the verge of tears, the fear in Dave's voice eating into her mind.

She splashed through the puddled path under the arch by the side of the customs house. The toad croaked at her as she passed, as if it recognized her from the previous evening. A familiar. The loke opposite, the entrance to the path that ran along the side of Dave's house, was forlornly draped with dripping yellow incident tape. Two rain-caped cops guarded that one as well. Jesus. She momentarily considered asking them what was going on, telling them she had a friend who lived up there and she wanted to find out if he was all right. Better not, she decided. Best remain invisible until she had a clearer sense of the landscape. Her gut was cramping now. Anxious. Shivery. Tired. Something had happened to Dave. Had he been kidnapped? Killed? She pictured the ghostly face in the window at Bane House, the figure walking away, the flash of the torch in the dark, and she suspected now she hadn't been imagining things, there was somebody there, watching them, tracking them. Whatever had happened to Dave, it was connected to Luke's disappearance, she was sure. And in the pit of her stomach, she knew it was connected to her. Luke was right, she was an undercover cop's daughter, she had been on the radar all along, she was like a flashing beacon of dots and dashes spelling watch me, watch my friends, track us. She had inverted the bellarmine. She had tipped the heart with its three pins and the bitter withy bark. No wonder all the people closest to her were disappearing.

She crossed the road, headed away from the coppers guarding the loke, tagged on to the bedraggled crowd – fifteen people or so, heaving, shifting, people jostling for space on the tiny corner of pavement bordering the road. Something of a mad carnival atmosphere; an incident in Skell, of all places, where nothing ever happened. She searched faces – women in Barbours, cagoules, headscarves, greying men in dark windcheaters, a younger man with a camera, local hack perhaps. Dave was absent. People were gabbling. She clutched at sentences, phrases, words. Who would have thought? Not here. Kept himself to himself. Nice lad. What a shame. Smart too. Field station. Always thought there was something odd about him. Not quite right in the head. What do you expect? Irish.

Sam edged her way into the huddle, searching for solid information, caught the eye of a middle-aged woman, damp peroxide bob falling out from the hood of her tan raincoat and a shoulder plumping stance that suggested she was enjoying the disturbance. Eager to tell everybody how much she knew. The woman smiled at Sam in a commanding way, and elbowed over. Sam found herself bustled into a twosome, apart from the mass.

‘I stopped off to pick up some milk from the shop on my way home,' Sam said. She nodded in the direction of the corner shop, which she had fortunately remembered was situated around the bend in the road. ‘I usually park up the back there, but it was blocked off.'

The woman nodded, savoured her moment, not ready to impart her information too easily.

‘What's going on?' Sam asked.

The woman inclined her head, smiled triumphantly. ‘Suicide.'

A surge of relief: Suicide? Phew. Not Dave then. That wasn't what she had been worried about with Dave. Murder. Kidnap, possibly. Suicide, no. Dave wouldn't have committed suicide. Not like his mother. He had told Sam as much himself, last night when they talked about it. Not suicide. Not the periodic repetition. Not Dave.

‘Up at the Professor's house,' the woman continued.

Sam tumbled down the bank, into the ditch, free fall, blood throbbing in her ears as she descended, brain misted up, no oxygen, unable to breathe. Drowning. The woman's voice was coming from far, far away, up above her, a gaping circle of coral lipsticked mouth talking, talking, talking as she sank down in the black marshy waters.

‘Nasty,' the mouth said. ‘Marge found him.'

Marge. The name tugged Sam upwards. A detail. Cling on to it, don't let go. Find the air. Oxygen. Listen to the details, they could save your life. Marge. Her head bobbed up, broke the surface. She gasped.

‘Who is Marge?'

‘The Professor's cleaner.'

Of course, Dave had mentioned her.

‘She cleans my house too,' the coral-rimmed mouth added hastily, in case there was any doubt about the nature of her relationship to the char.

‘Marge found him this morning. In the kitchen. There was blood everywhere.'

Sam nodded, her mind screamed no. Not Dave's blood. Please no.

‘Of course, Marge had to go to the station and provide a statement.'

Yes of course, Marge would have to do that.

‘She called me, though. After she had called the police and before they arrived. She needed somebody to talk to.'

Sam nodded again.

‘They can't find any of his relatives,' the woman continued.

No, they wouldn't be able to because Dave's father moved to the States after his mother drowned herself. His family splintered. Shattered. His brothers no longer spoke, no longer communicated with our kid Dave. Sam was one of his closest friends. Was. And now he was dead. She didn't care what he was involved in, what he had done, why he had done it. She wanted to have a laugh with him. She wanted to hear him say something condescending about her tendency to paranoia in his irritating Brummie accent. Above all, above everything else, she wanted him to be alive. Too late.

‘The Professor's going to have to come back and identify the body. If he's recognizable.'

‘How did he...'

‘Gun.'

Gun? She managed to swallow her shriek. Where would Dave have found a gun? She pulled her sodden coat around her, the damp cloth sticking to her already drenched jeans.

‘Did the gun belong to the Professor then?'

The woman's eyes narrowed. ‘No. The Professor didn't keep a gun.'

‘I thought he might have been a hunter.'

‘Good god no. Not the Prof. It was the lad's own gun. In the mouth.' The woman pointed two fingers into her gaping coral hole, hooked her thumb into a trigger. Then she smiled, thought she was being funny in some way. Jesus, the woman was mad, a seething Aga owner, fuelled by an ever burning fire of contempt. Sam wanted to kick her, wanted to cry. Poor bloody Dave. It couldn't be true. Even if he did find a gun, why would he do it now?

‘Unrequited love,' the blonde bob continued.

‘Oh. How do you know that?'

‘He left a note. Marge saw it. This girl from London.'

Sam spluttered, raised her hand to her face, wiped away the drips to cover her reaction.

‘He shot himself because of a girl from London?'

The woman nodded. Sam turned away, staring mad-eyed down the road for something, somebody, anything that might save her. There was nothing. Salty water rivulets poured down her face, dripped into her mouth. Surely Dave hadn't done himself in because of her. Maybe Jess was right, perhaps he did have a bit of a thing about her, but not that much of a thing. In her head, she replayed the message he had left on her answering machine; the barely suppressed fear. Fear of what? Himself? Fear he couldn't stop the periodic repetition. Like his mother, only shot, not drowned. Or was there something else going on with Dave? Sam turned back to face the woman, arms folded defiantly.

‘Long yellow hair according to Marge. She found a couple of them in the bathroom this morning. The hairs.'

Sam's eyes must have bulged.

‘Is something the matter?'

Sam shook her head. Christ. Long yellow hairs. She was glad she had tucked her rat tails into the hat.

‘Marge thinks she is a witch.'

‘A witch?'

She felt an urge to laugh; that would amuse Dave, the superstitious yokels and their peculiar beliefs. It couldn't amuse him now, though. She was struck by a wave of nausea.

‘Yes. The girl from London cursed him.'

The conversation was heading off into insanity. Her deepest fears surfacing, becoming real, as below so above, paranoia solidifying. She edged away from the rabble; tears pricked her eyes, lump in her throat. The rain was becoming heavier again, stinging, ditch water rising around her feet. She had to escape. The bobbed woman wasn't about to let her go, determined to continue her account, forced Sam to listen.

‘The girl was here last night, Marge reckons. Two wine glasses in the sink.'

Jesus, that would teach her to leave the washing up. Marge had probably given all the details to the police. Would she be hauled in for questioning? Sam pulled away. The woman edged closer, gawped at her face. For a moment Sam thought one of the strands of her hair had wriggled loose.

‘What's that on your cheek?'

‘It's a birthmark.'

‘A birthmark?'

Oh god, spare her.

‘You'd better be careful with that around here,' the woman said. ‘People will think you're the witch if they see that mark.'

The woman was speaking loudly now, and a couple of others from the crowd sidled over, catching the end of her sentence. Sam backed away, stepped off the pavement, into the road. A car honked and swerved into the ditch. A slosh of gutter bilge engulfed the gathering. People twisted and stared, muttering, sniping. She had a sense of slipping time: witches, shadows, ghosts, death. The periodic repetition, the time loop: history repeating itself, first as tragedy and then as even more tragedy. Sam stepped away, started down the road.

The woman's voice followed her. ‘Where did you say you lived?'

‘Next village along the coast.'

Sam strode briskly away. She glanced over her shoulder, caught the angry faces glaring at her, heard the malicious laughter. Birthmark; you just have to look at her to know. Hexer. Curser. Sam picked up her pace, defied the spears of rain. Trial by water. King James.
Daemonologie. For a supernatural sign of the monstrous impiety of witches, God hath appointed that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosom.
If she didn't drown, the water rejected her, then she would be hanged. Her tears mingled with the drops, dribbled, and she stuck her tongue out to taste the salt and she thought of Dave. Bullet in mouth, head blown apart. Her fault; she had cursed him with her presence. She was guilty, she caused the deaths and disappearances, tainted everybody she touched. She was a witch. She passed the cordoned-off loke leading up to Dave's house, came to a bend in the road and saw the blue spiral light reflected in the window pane ahead. She stepped back as the ambulance passed and picked up speed on the road to Norwich. Dave.

‘Ta-ra our kid,' she whispered.

A mosquito buzzed around her ear. She swiped, thought she had missed, opened her fist and saw the blood-stained streak across her palm.

EIGHT

T
HE SUNLESS DAY
was fading, rain picked her bones. The water had nowhere to run, collected in the scum-clogged gullies at the side of the road, soaked her feet. She thought of Dave pushing his glasses up his nose, explaining the secondary contamination, wash-off, bioaccumulation of caesium 137. She had to find out what had happened to Dave. Had he committed suicide? She drew up a mental map of the village, identified the rear loop and, after the last of the slate roofs, headed inland, followed a footpath across a fallow field, exposed, boots squelching as she tried to walk faster in the claggy soil, rooks cawing above her head. She reached the village back road, covered by a canopy of oak trees. A bat flitted through the dripping branches, pug nose, a barbastelle, the same creature Dave had spotted and identified the evening before – when she had been too angry with him to talk. She was unforgivable.