The Salt Marsh (25 page)

‘What is it anyway?'

‘It's an article by Tom Spiller.'

‘Who?'

‘Friend of mine. Journalist. Haven't heard from him for ages. I pissed him off.'

‘I can't imagine you pissing anybody off.' He must have been picking up tips on sarcasm from her.

‘He was offered a job with
The Times
but he turned it down because of Wapping.'

‘Wapping?'

‘Some of their journalists went on strike last year and they were sacked. Murdoch moved the newspaper offices to a building in Wapping, introduced electronic printing processes and made a lot of the printers redundant.'

‘Where is Wapping?'

‘Docklands. On the north side of the river, opposite Rotherhithe in fact, near where we were the other night. Spyder's house.'

Sonny nodded.

‘So anyway, Tom turned down a job in Wapping. Although, I suspect it couldn't have been a particularly good job – he's not that noble. He ended up working as a stringer for Reuters and he's been in Afghanistan, reporting on the war with the Soviets.

*

Hanging out with the Mujahedeen, the Afghan rebels. And he's written me this note, which, typical Tom, doesn't say much other than he's had this piece published in some newspaper and he thought I might like to read it.'

She finished the article, folded the cutting. She missed Tom every now and then. She would contact him again. At some point.

‘I've got to hand it to him,' she said. ‘It's quite well written. He can be a bit of a tosser, though.'

‘You don't believe in stroking men's egos, do you?'

‘No.'

She glared at him, attacked the spanakopita with her knife. ‘The food is good.'

‘Thanks.'

‘You're welcome.'

He finished his food, lit a fag. Something twinged in Sam's gut. She rummaged in her pocket again. ‘Here's a newspaper cutting that might interest you.'

She handed him the folded report about Flint's murder that Harry had given her.

‘What's it about?'

‘A dodgy ex-cop, an old woman, a Westie and a haloed killer.'

He stubbed the not even half-smoked fag out on the ashtray.

‘Why are you giving it to me?'

‘Dunno.' She wasn't lying, she didn't know. Instinct. ‘Thought you might find it entertaining.'

*

She was woken by a noise. She sat up, urban semi-darkness, the street lamp shining through the curtains. The house was heavy with an empty silence and the whiff of mildew. She heard the noise again, outside. Car engine starting – the camper van. She leaped out of bed, ran to the window, yanked the curtain, headlights fuzzy in the streaked pane as the van performed a nifty three-point turn. She banged on the glass. The van's orange behind trundled along the street, heading east. Keys. The spare van key was on the ring with the one from the front door she'd handed him that morning. She stormed down the stairs, out the front door, shouted. Too late. The van turned north on the main road, to Vauxhall Bridge. Sonny had pulled a fast one on her. A warm prickliness made her look down, she was standing in a puddle, sludge lapping around her bare feet. She kicked the oily water, stubbed her toe on the pavement, yowled with pain. She had been duped by his bloody spanakopita. What an idiot. Trust nobody, least of all a hitman. She knew next to nothing about Sonny, except for the fact that he had killed her father and god knows how many other people too. He was a monster. A psycho. Yet she had let him into her life. Her home. How stupid was she? She ran back into the house, slammed the door, up the stairs, into Dave's bedroom. The duvet had been straightened in an anal military way. She spotted his bag, tidied away in a corner. Green canvas rucksack with leather straps, like the one Jim used to carry. She rummaged, removed its contents. Thick grey socks, rolled in a pair. Couple of white tee shirts. Boxer shorts. Cassette with
LOVER'S ROCK
written in red felt-tip capitals on one side. Two books: the King James Bible and
Linda Goodman's Love Signs. Linda Goodman's Love Signs
? What was he doing with that? She rummaged in the bag again. The Firebird was at the bottom, wrapped in a rag. She unwrapped and examined it. Loaded. She laid it on the bed, tipped the bag, shook. Nothing left. The Browning was missing. Wherever he was going, he had taken the Browning with him. She ran back to her room, pulled on her jeans, moth-eaten jumper, overcoat, was about to run down the stairs when she changed direction, swerved into Dave's room, grabbed the Firebird, double-checked the safety catch, stuffed it down the waistband of her trousers.

*

She caught the scent of damp again as she ran through the hall, realized the door to the cupboard under the stairs was open and Sonny had removed the bag of Jim's belongings. She flicked the kitchen light switch; Jim's broken aviator glasses lay on the floor, the rest of his remains emptied on the table. The soft black police diaries unbundled and fanned out as if Sonny had picked them up, one by one, examined them. She selected one, pressed its soft cover in her hand, retraced her steps back to the day at Jim's graveside, the remembrance ceremony, her failed attempt to draw the line. The diary left by his tombstone. She had neglected to ask Sonny whether he had tailed her to the church but, of course, it had to be him who had moved the diary, replaced it open at the pages for the week at the beginning of June. An image flashed into her brain. Sonny holding another small black notebook in his hand, identical to Jim's police diaries. That evening they had broken into Luke's place; while she was in her boyfriend's room, Sonny had rummaged around in Spyder's. He had found a black diary alongside Spyder's needles. Spyder the junkie dope dealer. She screeched with frustration, rapped her knuckles against her head. Sonny had worked out the obvious and she had missed it: Spyder was the tout. Spyder was a small-time jerk of a drug dealer who had been selling any old information to the Force about her and Dave. Spyder had set her up, probably for some petty cash. She should have guessed, it was so fucking, fucking obvious. And now Sonny had taken her van and driven over to Rotherhithe to deal with Spyder, the informer.

Shit. She had to find Sonny, stop him before he annihilated Spyder. She hated the jerk, but she could do without another gruesome death haunting her. And anyway, she wanted to talk to him, make him confess, torture him, extract any information he had about Luke. She jammed her plimsolls on, pelted out into the steamy night, down the street and hailed a black cab trawling the main road.

Through the backstreets of Southwark, beyond London Bridge, roads disembowelled for gas pipes and sewers, red no entry signs looming in the dark. Sam clambered out of the cab, its rear lights dissolving in the steam as it pulled away. The odour of rotting river vegetation hung in the air. She heard a whistle, the familiar tune, caught sight of a figure melting into the darkness of the embankment, started down the road to investigate, stopped halfway. Stupid. No time for chasing shadows. She inhaled, wiped her face, retraced her steps, walked to the front door of Spyder's house, knelt down, lifted the flap of the letterbox, peered inside. Murky, silent hallway. Empty. She walked around the side of the house. The back door leading to the fire escape was open. She called Sonny's name softly. No response. She backed away and stepped along the cobbled road running parallel to the river. Three pigeons tiptoed along the kerb. Why weren't they roosting? Disturbed by something, or somebody. Sonny had chased Spyder down this road waving his Browning. She paced a few feet, spotted a black rectangle lying in the gutter. Police issue diary. Spyder's. She scooped it up, stood under the nearest street lamp, drizzle drifting through its haze, and turned to the latest entries in the diary.
S called to ask about L's whereabouts. S came to nightclub to ask about L's whereabouts. Said she knew about D. Agitated. Said he hadn't turned up at Dungeness. Seemed to think it was something to do with planned Dungeness protest.

She flicked back, January was full of Ss, Ds and Ls too. She remembered now how he had sauntered up and chatted to her last September, when she started working at the Ballroom, told her he could supply her with dope, good stuff, cheap, asked her what she did in her spare time, where she lived, with whom. Casual chat. Innocuous pieces of information, she thought. The fucking bastard. Reliable unnamed source. He was about as reliable as a... as a junkie who needed a fix. She stuffed the diary into her pocket. In the distance she heard a shout – Sonny's voice – quickened her pace, the grey high tide waters of the river visible through a break in the derelict wharves and houses. The rain slashed harder as she paced the street. Through the downpour she could discern the rusting metal supports of an old pier, jutting out into the water, a perilous platform high above the river. Two figures danced along the jetty. A rubbish barge slid past, the backwash slapping the river walls. As she neared, she could hear Sonny ranting. ‘To every thing there is a season...' His words were drowned by the barge horn sounding as it approached London Bridge. Through the long note she heard a splash. A click, then two cracks. Seagulls squawked.

She sprinted, arrived breathless – the pier gate padlocked, a sign warning
Danger. Keep out.
Sonny was standing alone on the far point of the jetty. A cormorant came in to land on the upstream end, then pulled skywards at the last possible moment when it caught sight of the gun-pointing man standing there, staring into the water.

‘Sonny, what the fuck have you done?'

He turned to face her, hesitated, replaced the Browning in his jacket pocket, picked his way back along the rickety jetty, feet sliding in the wet, vaulted across the gate. He was soaked. He put his hands up, palms outfacing.

‘He jumped.'

‘Jesus. Don't lie.'

She craned over the embankment wall, studied the choppy Thames. A disco boat appeared around the bend, ploughed a middle furrow, ‘Stayin' Alive' blaring from its speakers, tipsy deck-top dancers doing John Travolta moves oblivious to the river's dramas. Flashing lights – red, green, blue – illuminated a dark hump in the water. The river boiled, glugged and swallowed the body. Sonny came and stood by her, steam rising from his torso.

‘That's some big fucking rat,' he said.

‘Spyder. He's dead.'

‘He's a fucking tout. He's a – what do you call it – a nark. A copper's nark.'

‘You shot him.'

‘I didn't. He jumped. He was off his face.'

‘You're lying.' The anger was making her cry. ‘You shot him. He's not a cop or a spook. He's a civilian and you killed him. You're a psycho. You can pen another bloody cross on your arm and go to fucking hell.'

‘He ran when he saw me coming. He was tripping. High.'

‘I heard two shots.'

‘That was the splash when he hit the water.'

‘And the quote from Ecclesiastes?'

‘He didn't stand a chance once he was in the water. It was all I could think to say. Last rites. Ja. A blessing.'

‘A fucking blessing.' She didn't believe a word of it. ‘We could have found out who asked him to spy on me, whether he knew who else is involved in all of this.' Her voice rose in a crescendo. ‘We could have asked him about Luke.'

Sonny gazed across the river, spoke into the middle distance. ‘He wasn't about to talk. His brain was so frazzled.'

‘I would have made him talk. I would have stuck pins down his fingernails ‘til he told me what I wanted to know. Don't you get it? I have to find Luke. I owe it to him.'

She checked herself; remembered it was a bad idea to shout at a hitman, especially when he was carrying a loaded gun. Although, Sonny seemed calm, emollient even.

‘You should think about yourself. I wanted to protect you.'

‘I don't see how you're protecting me by shooting somebody. The river always gives up its bodies. Somebody will find him washed up on a sandbank down by bloody Gravesend. And then they'll start doing enquiries, follow a trail back to you. Me.'

‘Nobody's going to give a shit about him. There's so much gear in his place, they will know he was a junkie snout.'

She gazed along the river, the distant beat of ‘Staying Alive' pulsing and the coloured lights bleary on the rain-pocked water as the disco boat limped home to Chelsea Harbour Pier. She couldn't take it – the deaths, the lies – she had to escape. She strode off in the direction of London Bridge. She didn't care what Harry said, she wasn't going to sit around and wait until some poxy cop showed up and told her that Luke was dead, like Dave, and dragged her off to the station because a fucking junkie had sold them a load of bullshit about firearms and they'd decided to believe him and stick it in a file marked terrorist. She was going to find Luke, make sure he was safe. And then she would extract them – her and Luke – exit this shadowy world that she wanted nothing to do with. Hitmen. Junkies. Cops. Spooks. Arseholes. They could all go take a flying fuck at the moon.

Sonny caught up with her. ‘It's stopped raining.'

She tried to outpace him. It didn't work.

‘You know, Sam,' Sonny said. ‘Spyder, he might be a civilian, but he wouldn't have cared if you were killed. You've got to understand, these guys mean business.'

She caught her breath, tried to think clearly.

‘Which guys?'

‘I don't know. But we have to stay one step ahead of the hunters.'

‘How do we do that if we're not sure who the hunters are?'

‘I can protect you.'

She searched the contours of his face. Helen had once told her that everybody's face had a devilish side and a more angelic side. She had checked her face in the mirror. The left side had a cherubic softness to it. The right profile, the side with the birthmark, had a sharper edge. She could see the same contrast in Sonny's face: angel and devil, light and dark. He was a liar, a murderer. And yet, he had a kinder, caring, good side that she couldn't help liking even if she still wasn't entirely prepared to believe that it was genuine.