The Salt Marsh (24 page)

She spotted a brown flash at the edge of the allotment, a fox patrolling a row of raspberry canes.

Harry continued. ‘The only lead they've got so far is this old lady who was taking her dog for an evening walk. Westie, I believe – the dog. She insists she passed a man with a funny halo walking along the road where it happened, shortly after the time the murder took place.'

‘A funny halo?'

He nodded. ‘It's what she said. The man had a funny halo floating above his head. But the witness is eighty-six and somewhat short-sighted, so I'm not sure anybody is taking the description too seriously. Wanted, pistol-carrying member of the angelic horde. Doesn't quite stack up.'

‘No, I suppose not.'

He stuck his hand in his back pocket, produced a newspaper cutting.

‘I spotted the report in the local paper this morning. Made me laugh – the haloed hitman – so I tore it out. Have a look if you want a bit of light entertainment.'

‘Thanks.'

He handed her the folded article. She put it in her coat pocket.

‘Anyway, hopefully Crawford will be kept busy by old ladies and their Westies for a couple of days and by the time he gets round to contacting you, I'll have worked out what's what. Sorted out where all this dodgy information is coming from. So don't do anything stupid, please, and certainly steer clear of protests around nuclear power stations, thank you very much.'

She dug her toe into the soil, prodded around, sent an earthworm wriggling. ‘We've got a right to protest. We weren't planning anything illegal.'

‘I'm not saying you were, but you've got to be careful if you want to stay out of trouble. Watch it. Stay below the radar. We need to contain this, we're trying to keep you off a bloody MI5 computer index, not issue a minute with your name underlined three times in red. Be circumspect about who you choose to hang out with. Trust nobody.'

She was about to bite back, an instant reaction, when she registered his words.
Trust nobody.

‘Harry, I meant to ask, somebody has been leaving messages on my answerphone, whistling that
Third Man
tune.'

‘
The Third Man
?' He hummed. ‘The one Jim always used to whistle?'

She nodded. He frowned.

‘No, not me. I can't whistle. One of your mates messing about?'

‘Don't think so.'

‘Well, I suppose it's a reminder, in case you needed one, that you can never be sure who is on the other end of a line. Never trust a spy you cannot see.' She remembered Jim using that line when she'd told him she had heard a click on their home phone – spooks, he said, different parts of the secret state monitoring each other. Never trust a spy you cannot see, he added, and then he laughed and disappeared. Harry continued. ‘Use a phone box when you call me. And don't keep using the same one.'

He walked over to a pile of carrier bags at the edge of the potato patch. ‘Here, take these, some tomatoes I picked this morning.'

‘Thanks.'

‘My pleasure. And Sam.'

‘Yes?'

‘Stay out of it, will you? Go camping for a couple of days.'

‘OK.'

‘And go easy on the whacky-baccy.'

Raindrops splashed her face as she pushed her way along the side of the allotment. She looked over her shoulder; Harry back at his digging, the fox slipping along the hedgerow behind. Harry glanced up and she caught the concern on his face, the furrowed forehead, before he had a chance to smile. She waved, trudged up the slope to the Great North Wood, under the shadow of the dripping trees. She pulled out the cutting he had given her, the case of the haloed hitman, read as she strolled, ignored the wet splodges on the newspaper. The name of the ex-cop turned private investigator then killed by a haloed hitman almost made her trip. Flint. The same name she had seen scribbled in Jim's diary, 6 June 1984, the stick of candyfloss doodled underneath. A gagging sweetness filled her mouth, her throat, her nose. She retched. Her legs buckled.

*

She slumped on the path, stuck her head between her knees, blood beating in her ears, fragments flying around her brain. Flint. The candy man – cold steel eyes, scythe-shaped scar. The man she had seen at a May Day fair in 1978. The man Jim had been desperate to avoid. She had assumed he was a murderer, or a terrorist. But now it looked like the candy man was a cop. A bloody cop. A bent cop taking a cut from the criminal belt bullion launderers. And, if that was the case, why had Jim met up with him in 1984, two weeks before he was killed? Maybe it was all irrelevant, because this was 1986 and if Flint was the candy man, then he was dead. Killed by a haloed hitman. Perhaps it was good news, of sorts. Yet it felt more like bad news, uncomfortable news, news that made her feel small, vulnerable, exposed to danger, but unable to identify its source. She stood, stuffed the newspaper cutting in a pocket, brushed her trousers, listened to the oak leaves rustling, jays laughing. A fat droplet ran off an overhanging branch, plopped on the back of her neck, and for a moment she thought it was a bullet.

TWELVE

S
HE WANDERED INTO
the kitchen, bag of Jim's belongings picked up from her parents' house in one hand, bag of tomatoes from Harry in the other. Sonny was cooking. Head bent over hob, stirring whatever was in the saucepan, steam billowing hellishly round his dark head. The sight of him being domestic in her kitchen flipped her momentarily. He stood back from the oven and smiled at her coyly. Or was he being sly? She took a deep breath.

‘What's on the menu?'

‘Spanakopita.'

‘Is that a South African recipe?'

‘Greek.'

She must have grimaced, although she wasn't conscious of any facial movement.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I found a postcard on the mat this morning.'

He handed her the card lying on the counter top.

‘I couldn't help reading it. There was nothing personal on it.'

There wouldn't be, if Liz had written it.

‘It said you must try this recipe, so I thought I would. It's vegetarian, spinach is the main ingredient. I walked over to the Sainsbury's on Wandsworth Road, bought the ingredients and some other food. You don't have anything to eat in the house.'

‘You cook a lot?'

‘I had to do the cooking when I was a kid. In fact I had to look after the house. I was a surrogate wife, I suppose, for my father.' He looked ashamed when he said that.

‘Cooking is a useful skill to have.' She said it quickly, avoided his eye, didn't want to show him too much empathy, examined the postcard. The front was an idyllic scene – topaz sea, turquoise sky, whitewashed villas. The message on the back was typical Liz. Lots of randomly underlined words that she undoubtedly thought were incredibly important but the significance of which left everybody else completely mystifed.
You must try this recipe. We think it's
lovely
.
We. Bloody we. She didn't want to know about any we. Liz and Roger.
Spanakopita.
Ingredients.
Unsalted
butter. Flour.
Instructions with more random underlinings.
Love from Mum.
Not underlined.

‘I'm sure it would please my mother to know that somebody bothered to use one of her recipes.' She said it tersely.

‘I'm sorry. Have I upset you?'

‘No. Not even slightly.' She handed the postcard back to Sonny, wondered whether he was chipping away at her psyche, searching for the vulnerable spots before he struck. Bushcraft: the hunter had to know his prey. He was back at the stove, tilted the frying pan, allowed the flame to lick its sides, peered at the postcard, reached for a lemon squeezer. The absurdity of it hit her then, her father's killer preparing a meal for her using a recipe posted from her mother. She cracked. Caught herself off guard with her bottled-up mania. Started laughing and couldn't stop. Hysterical. Had to lie on the floor. She rolled around wheezing, her sides hurt, she couldn't breathe. Foetal position. Cheek on lino. Down among the dead matter; hair balls, toenail clippings, sloughed-off skin. Dave's remains, his last traces. She was slipping, below the earth's crust, among all the dead people, a danse macabre with her favourite corpses. Everybody was dead. Jim was dead. Dave was dead. Luke was dead too.

*

He must be dead; she could see his bones, his hair down here in the catacombs. She had to get a grip. She turned and lay on her back, breathed deeply, let her eyes travel the cracks in the ceiling, traced the drab edges of the bat-shaped water stain. Bath leak. Normal. She had surfaced, back in the realm of the living. Luke wasn't dead. There was a lot of muck under the kitchen table, but it was just normal household grime. And yes, she had found a bone and some hair in the Lookers' Hut, and she had shown them to Dave and he had left them under the urn in his back garden. But they weren't Luke's remains. They were a shepherd's charm left in the hearth to ward off evil. She became conscious of Sonny watching her warily.

‘Are you OK?'

She levered herself upright. ‘I'm fine, thanks.'

‘I thought you were having a fit.'

‘I was. But it was a fit of laughter and I'm over it now.'

‘You looked as if you were crying.'

‘I wasn't.' She licked her lips, tasted the salt.

‘Ek verstaan.'

‘I don't think you do understand.' Prudish schoolteacher voice. Her head was fuzzy; she rubbed it. ‘Did I bring some bags in with me?' She was asking herself, still dazed.

‘You put them over there.' He pointed to the small table in the corner of the room.

She said, ‘Jim's relics. Nothing very interesting. Couple of old police issue diaries.'

He nodded.

‘And some tomatoes.'

‘Tomatoes? I could make a salad.'

She handed him the bag.

‘From Harry.'

‘The ex-cop who now works for some part of Intelligence?'

‘Yes.' Sonny didn't forget details, she noted. ‘I went to see him at his allotment.'

‘Did he have any more useful information for you?'

She detected an edge of nervousness to his voice, she was sure.

‘Yes. The cop who has the file on me is called Crawford. He's in charge of the investigation into Dave's death.'

She watched Sonny concentrating on the frying pan, checking the recipe, reaching for the spinach.

‘Do you have a colander?' he asked.

‘What for?'

‘So I can rinse the spinach.'

‘I don't normally bother doing that.'

‘You should. You don't know what it's been sprayed with.'

She rummaged in a cupboard, located a colander, tipped the dead spider on the floor.

‘You should look after yourself better,' he said.

She passed him the colander. He walked to the sink, turned the tap, washed the spinach.

She said, ‘Crawford works for the Sewer Squad, this strange unit that investigates the links between terrorism and crime.'

‘Why do you think Crawford is interested in Dave? And you?' he added.

She stared at his back, bent over the sink, uncertain how much she should tell him. He smiled at her as he crossed to the oven.

She said, ‘Because they think the gun he had came from the Provos.' She rubbed her neck, blurted, ‘And for some fucking reason I can't fathom, he thinks I was plotting with Dave to use this gun to hijack one of the nuclear waste lorries from Dungeness as a protest to show how easily it could be done.' She could hear her voice cracking as she spoke.

‘There's an informer who has been feeding crap about me to the cops for months, apparently. Reliable unnamed source. What kind of a jerk makes up information and sells it to the police?' She answered her own question. ‘Drug dealer, I reckon.'

‘Any idea who the informer might be?'

She paused, considered whether she should share her suspicions about Alastair. Better not.

‘No. No idea.' She changed the subject. ‘I'm going to try the Romney number again, the one for the power station contact. See if anybody is at home yet.'

‘Good idea.'

She picked up the bag of Jim's leftovers, walked out of the kitchen, closed the door behind her and deposited it in the damp cupboard under the stairs. She dug in her back pocket, removed the scrap with the number she had found in Luke's bedroom. P. Grogan, Romney. Dialled. The phone rang. And rang. No answer. Not good. She put the receiver down. Took a deep breath. Dialled Directory Enquiries and asked whether they had any telephone numbers listed for the fishermen's cottages on Dungeness. She knew it wouldn't work, but she thought she'd give it a go anyway.

‘Sorry, love, you need a surname.'

‘OK, thanks.'

She wasn't sure what she would have done with the number even if Directory Enquiries had given it to her. She could hardly phone Alastair, demand to know whether he was a police informer and expect a straight answer. She returned to the kitchen. The windows were steamed up. She walked over to a pane, wrote her name in the condensation as she had always done when she was a child. Sam Coyle. She stood back, examined her handiwork, the letters already smudged and dripping. Her father yelled,
You shouldn't have done that, you'll leave greasy fingerprints on the glass.
Why was he always shouting at her, telling her off? It wasn't her fingerprints that were the problem, it was Jim's; the traces he had left that could only be seen from certain angles or when the sun was low in the sky. In the pit of her stomach she sensed this mess was Jim's fault, although she couldn't trace exactly why or how.

‘Dinner is ready.'

Two plates on the table. She took slow mouthfuls of food, enjoying the taste, perused Tom's article while she was eating.

‘I was told it was rude to read at the table,' Sonny said.

‘So was I.' She carried on reading.