The Salt Marsh (29 page)

‘Sam, sometimes it's easier not to know. The truth can be a burden. I'm trying to protect you.'

She thought then about Spyder, Sonny's insistence he hadn't shot him, wondered whether he had lied about that so she wouldn't be complicit in the killing.

‘I'm not a child. I can deal with it. You should have told me about Regan.'

‘I was afraid you would do something stupid, like go and spy on her.'

She flicked the safety catch on, let her arm relax. He locked his hands behind his head, sunk back into the pillow.

‘Where is this place she went to anyway?'

‘It's near the river, past Waterloo Bridge. It looked like some kind of warehouse conversion. If it's hers, she's obviously not short of money.'

‘So?'

‘So, as I said last night, your friend Frannie is right. Regan is involved in drug dealing. Money out, smack back.'

‘And this Stavros – you think he's involved in the drug smuggling as well?'

‘No. I think he's plugged into her network to get the caesium delivered – makes life easier for him. It's the same route, the Silk Road, to Afghanistan and back. Just add the caesium to the outward-bound packages.'

‘Oh,' she said.

‘Oh what?'

‘Reminds me of something Harry said about organized crime and terrorism, the overlaps.'

Sonny shrugged. ‘Well, the links are obvious, ja nee?'

‘I suppose so. It's what Crawford's lot deal with – the Sewer Squad.'

She returned to her room, replaced the Firebird in her bedside cabinet, hand on drawer, lost in thought, trying to understand the patterns. The phone rang. She ran downstairs, grabbed it.

‘Hello.'

Liz. She almost replaced the receiver. Thought better of it. How to explain her mother's knack for always phoning at precisely the wrong moment? Psychic. Occult tendencies ran in the family, the witchcraft gene, this dark power to needle. Perhaps she had inherited it from her mother after all, not Jim.

‘Mum, if you're going to ask about the postcard, then yes, it has arrived and yes, I have tried the recipe.'

‘Was it helpful?'

‘What, the recipe?'

‘Yes.'

Helpful? How could a recipe be helpful?

‘Yes, the recipe was helpful. Thanks. How is Milton?'

‘Heavy going.'

She could have told Liz that.

‘Actually, Roger and I decided we would forget the research and enjoy ourselves.'

Sam didn't want to know. ‘When are you coming back?'

‘Tomorrow.'

‘See you then. Bye.'

Sam was replacing the receiver as her mother said, ‘Take care.'

Too late to reply. Line dead already. She tried to swallow, there was a lump in her throat. She missed Liz. Shame about Roger. She'd just have to learn how to put up with him. The wanker.

Sonny was sitting at the kitchen table. He ferreted for his fag packet, produced his Zippo, flipped the lid, flicked the wheel, puffed. She watched him, stretching back on the chair so casually, doing his smoke ring thing, like a magician's trick or a skylark's song – a distraction. Look at the ring, not his face.

‘We can walk along the river to Waterloo,' she said. ‘Check out the place you saw this woman Regan go to last night. See what we can find out.'

‘What's the point?'

‘You know the point. The point is it could help me find Luke. What if Luke discovered something about this caesium stealing from his contact, the power station worker he met at Dungeness? What if the contact gave him Regan's name? What if he bumped into her, caught her in the act? That's probably the reason he's gone into hiding.'

‘I thought you'd decided that Stavros and Regan are stealing caesium from the research lab, not the power station. So what would a power station worker have to do with all that?'

He was irritating her again with his sceptical tone. He was right, though, the power station worker was a link that didn't quite join. She sighed, stuck her hands in her trouser pockets, dug out the piece of paper with the number of the contact she had found in Luke's bedroom. P. Grogan. What was it about the name? She ogled the scrap until her vision blurred, and she called up all the places she might have seen it before, had an idea, hurtled upstairs to Dave's room, flung open the cupboard door, pulled out his box of journal articles, dug down, yanked out the one she was looking for – an article Dave had written and had published in a refereed journal. He had been pleased with this one; she remembered him telling her how many hours of hard labour at the lab it had taken to produce the results. She went straight to the list of acknowledgements.

‘I would like to thank all the staff at the Dungeness experimental research station, including Patrick Grogan...'

That was where she had heard the name before. She ran back down the stairs to the kitchen.

‘The man Luke met the Saturday he disappeared. Grogan.'

‘What about him?'

‘He didn't work at the power station. He worked at the research lab with Dave. I met him there once when Dave showed me around. He's called Patrick. It's beginning to make sense now.'

*

The sky was overcast – rain pending, but at least not precipitating. The low tide was on the turn, sludge water wheedling. She wanted to walk in silence. Sonny was edging to talk.

‘How long have you been seeing this guy Luke anyway?' he asked.

‘About five months.'

‘Five months? Is that all?'

‘Longest I've ever managed.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes.'

‘I bet you're a dumper. I bet you're always doing a runner. Leaving men standing.'

‘No. Well. Maybe.' The truth was she hadn't cared about boyfriends one way or the other before she met Luke, couldn't be bothered with the game playing of relationships. Had a tendency to tell men to get lost if she felt they were intruding too much on her life, the things she enjoyed doing – hanging out with her friends, reading, archaeology, mooching around.

‘But Luke is different. You fell for him straight away. Love at first sight. Ja nee?'

‘It wasn't like that.'

She wasn't sure why she was denying it. Habit. She didn't like talking about her feelings, thought it was almost a weakness to acknowledge emotions. She must have inherited that attitude from Jim; maintain the cover, don't give away anything that matters.

‘What's so great about Luke then?'

She conjured up an image of Luke in her head, his skin close to hers, his mouth on her neck, his weight on her. The aching absence.

‘We share interests,' she said. ‘History. Nature. Bird watching.'

Sonny chortled. ‘Come on. You're this worked up for somebody you like watching birds with?'

‘He makes me laugh. He's fun. And we share the same political views.'

‘That's romantic.'

‘It's important to me.'

‘What are the political views you share then?'

‘Leftie. Don't think much of political parties.' She nodded her head in the direction of Westminster. ‘You know. Whoever you vote for, it's always the government that gets in. And in Britain, the government is usually composed of a bunch of public school boys. Thatcher and her bully boys. They're probably in there scheming away at this very minute, identifying some more heads to kick in now they've trampled all over the miners. So yeah – Westminster? Forget it. We are more interested in direct action. Protesting, campaigning. Anti-Thatcher. Against nuclear power and nuclear weapons. For nuclear disarmament. Luke's more militant than me, though.'

‘In what way?'

She thought of Luke's reaction to Alastair. He definitely had a thing about hippies.

‘Well, this protest we are organizing.' Are. She realized as soon as she said it that the protest was unlikely ever to happen. ‘This protest we were organizing. I enjoyed meeting people, hanging out in the pub, having a laugh. For me it's half the point. But Luke, he's more focused on getting things done.' Her hand went to the badges on her coat lapel: the feminist fist, Che Guevara, smiling sun nuclear power no thanks. She had bought the smiling sun when she was with Luke and they stopped to talk to a woman selling badges to raise money for the Friends of the Earth. Luke had rejected the smiling sun, said it was too wet, bought a badge with a radiation warning symbol – the three rays – and a red line through it. Nuclear-free zone. More his style.

Sonny said, ‘It's strange, isn't it, the things that draw people together and the things that keep them apart.'

She nodded, and thought of all the small, surprising things she had found she had in common with Luke. John Donne. February, a frosty, star-spangled night and they were walking home from their Soho shifts. ‘You remind me of John Donne,' she told him as they crossed Vauxhall Bridge. ‘The way you look.'

‘That's a compliment,' Luke said. ‘He's my favourite poet.'

Donne was her favourite poet too; she had a copy of his collected poems on the bookshelf in her room, between Blake and T.S. Eliot. Not only did Luke like poetry, they both liked the same poet. These little things confirmed the bond. Even their birthdays were close. She smiled to herself – they had a funny conversation about birthdays and star signs early on in their relationship. They were lounging around, reading the Sunday newspapers together. She found the horoscope page of the colour supplement. ‘What's your star sign?' she asked.

‘Capricorn,' he said.

‘The goat.' And then she said, ‘No, hang on. You must be Gemini. You told me your birthday was two days before mine – 7 June.'

He laughed. ‘Yes. You're right. I'm a Gemini. I've never taken much notice of horoscopes and all that stuff.'

‘Me neither.'

‘So what are Gemini people supposed to be like then?'

‘Quick-witted, imaginative, enchanting.'

‘Well, there we go – that's you.'

She laughed. ‘And you too.'

‘I meant it,' he said. She found herself tongue-tied, too touched to reply. That was another difference between Sonny and Luke, now she came to think about it – you wouldn't catch Luke with a copy of
Linda Goodman's Love Signs
in his bag.

The first gobbets of rain darkened the embankment paving stones, gave them a reddish gleam. They passed the squat concrete ziggurat of the South Bank, skateboard wheels reverberating around the concrete cavern below Queen Elizabeth Hall. Heading east – disused garages, rubble-filled skips, around the OXO building.

‘This way,' Sonny said.

South, leaving the river, threading through the backstreets; derelict warehouses, decomposing pigeons caught between shattered windows and iron grilles.

Sonny stopped at a corner. ‘It's at the bottom of this street.'

She spotted a row of shopfronts further along the road, boarded apart from a greasy spoon at the far end.

‘Let's go to the caff and have a coffee, take stock from there.'

The café was empty and stank of burned oil and greasy bacon. They sat at a corner table with a slanted view of Regan's building. A five-storey warehouse; the gibbet winding winch still had a rope dangling and the windows had horizontal wooden shutters below the frames for resting sacks before they were pulled inside. But you could tell it had been converted because it was the only building in the street that didn't have smashed panes and the entryphone by the door was visible.

‘Bet it's nice inside,' she said.

‘I'm in the wrong business,' he said.

‘I'm sure they'd employ you if you asked. I should imagine you've got a lot of the skills they're looking for.'

‘Thanks.' He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, flipped the lid of his fag carton, flicked a fag in the air, caught it in his mouth, lit it and puffed tersely. She wished she hadn't said anything, felt mean. She watched the road as they ordered from a waitress in a grubby apron. They waited. Nothing happened, the street deserted. The waitress plonked a full English in front of Sonny and a slice of buttered toast in front of Sam. He squirted HP sauce on his sausage, silently mouthed grace before tucking in. She picked at the toast, sipped her black coffee, imagined herself living in a converted warehouse with Luke. He would have a photography studio. She would be... what would she be doing? Writing up the finds from her latest archaeological dig? Teaching a history course in some part of London University? She gazed through the window, visualized the interior of the apartment, her future life with Luke, jumped. A crew-cut heavy was standing outside the warehouse; feet apart, shoulders squared, hoodie under leather jacket. He looked hard. Somebody must have buzzed him in, because he pushed the door and disappeared.

‘Did you see him?'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you think Regan's in there?'

‘How would I know?'

‘Let's see if he comes out, and then we can follow him.'

‘Why?'

‘Why not?'

‘He's obviously a heavy. An enforcer. Almost certainly armed.'

‘So are you.'

She paid for the food, sat down. The door of the warehouse opened, the heavy emerged, head jutting, neck bulging below the bristles, rolling hoodlum swagger down the street. He rocked off north, then right, east, heading deep into the docklands. They followed, kept their distance, under the criss-crossing viaducts, the grind and spark of steel on steel as trains passed overhead. He took a right, a left, across a main road, double-decker splashing dirty gutter water, into the maze of cobbled streets behind London Bridge. She wasn't about to let go. Past the straggle of market stalls underneath the arches, and then right again, doubling back. Under a low, dingy tunnel. They followed, then stalled. Their quarry had vanished. The street was empty apart from a black Audi Quattro pulled up against a warehouse door. They hesitated, then retreated around the corner.