The Salt Marsh (31 page)

*

She went first, climbed the long ladder, pushed her hand against the manhole cover. For a moment she thought it wouldn't budge and they would have to return to their underworld. Then it shifted and the last dregs of the evening light fell on her head. She cautiously lifted her face above ground level – surveyed her surroundings. A derelict yard of nettles, lilac bushes and rubble, separated from the street by a bindweed-curtained railing. She hauled herself out. Sonny followed, shoved the manhole cover back into place. She lay on the damp ground, her body shaking.

‘Let's rest for a bit,' she said. ‘Get our bearings. If anybody comes down the road, they're not going to see us here.'

A fat black cat sauntered out from the jungle grass, gave her a nonchalant amber-eyed stare, sashayed away. Sonny took out his fags. They stayed silent for a while, recovering, glad to be back on the surface.

Eventually Sonny asked, ‘So did Regan say anything about Luke?'

‘No. Fucking cow. But I'm sure she knew something. I could tell by her smirk.'

She plucked a dandelion, wound it round her wrist to form a bracelet. Sonny lay back, head in the long grass, smoking. Another cat appeared. Ginger street fighter with a torn ear that reminded her of Harry. It yowled at her expectantly, as if they had some sort of arrangement. An unspoken deal.

‘What about your friend Dave?' Sonny asked.

‘What about him?' she replied aggressively.

‘I still don't see how he fits into this.'

She didn't want to talk about Dave, didn't even want to think about him, because it was painful, whichever angle she took.

Sonny persisted. ‘Do you really think Dave was the kind of person who would get himself involved in a plot to steal caesium?'

Her mate Dave; his sardonic attitude, the Aston Villa mug and Hobnob biscuit barrel.

‘I find it difficult to see him doing it, but scientists can be weird. Naïve. It was a bunch of American scientists who gave the Russians the information they needed to build atomic weapons. They thought everybody should have access to the information.' She paused. ‘Dave had a personal reason to hate the Soviets – his mother was raped by the Red Army. She committed suicide a few years ago. Which, as you can imagine, really affected him.'

‘You never suspected him before?'

‘No, but unlikely people turn out to be the spies. I assumed I was good at recognizing them because I grew up with one. Perhaps I'm blinded by what I know. I'm always on the lookout for middle-aged men who drink too much. Perhaps Dave fooled me.' She pictured the displaced papers in Dave's room, the photo she had found in Luke's bedroom of the article about caesium 137.
Listen, there's something else... Dave.
Perhaps Spyder's assertion that Luke had visited Dave without telling her the week before he disappeared was true. Perhaps Luke had secretly visited Dave, confronted him with his suspicions. That would explain Dave's edginess when she asked him about Luke, told him about the contact in Dungeness. She vocalized the thought crystallizing in her mind. ‘Although I suspect Dave might not have fooled Luke.'

Sonny raised an eyebrow. ‘Were they mates?'

‘Yeah. They had lots in common – dead German mothers for a start, which was a pretty large chunk of shared ground. They chatted a lot. Luke's more perceptive about people than me.'

She wondered now whether Luke had been worried about Dave from the start, picked up on his darker side, locked into his psyche in a way that Sam had been afraid to do.

‘I reckon Dave didn't know the dimensions of what he was getting involved with, he was sucked in, couldn't back out and then when Regan realized he was having second thoughts, clocked he was about to talk, she killed him.'

Sonny didn't comment. She cast her eye around the yard, searching for anything to lighten her mood. A magpie bouncing on a buddleia branch. Wheelbarrow. Cement mixer and spade. Signs of construction work stirring. She spotted the top of a worn grey stone protruding through the weeds. She pulled herself up, wandered over, cleared the nettles, oblivious to the stings, and revealed what looked like a rough-hewn tombstone set at an angle in the ground. No name or date. Only a skull and crossbones chalked on its rough surface. Nearby, a small mound of grey stones piled like a shrine, and the faded purple glaze of a chipped vase. A graveyard?

A gate in the railing creaked, swung inwards; the bag lady they had passed earlier shuffled into the yard. She was greeted by a river of cats springing from all corners, flowing and yowling around her. The woman muttered endearments to the animals, produced a bag of nibbles from her shopping trolley, emptied it into a couple of saucers, tickled their heads as they ate. Having dealt with the cats, she looked directly at Sam, without any real surprise.

‘So you found your way in,' she said. ‘Not too much water? The Neckinger behaving itself?'

‘Sticky trickle.'

‘I'm surprised. It's been raining so much. Although, the water collects in one part of the system, then they release it.' She remembered the treasure-seeker she'd met at Vauxhall had said something similar about about the Effra run-off; flood control. ‘You can hear the wave coming from miles off. The rumbling.'

‘Oh god, I think I heard it.'

‘You were lucky then – you just missed it, got out before the water hit you.' She tapped her crutch on the ground. ‘You must have friends in low places, keeping you safe.' She winked.

‘Where are we, anyway?' Sam asked.

‘Crossbones, a graveyard for single women. Hookers mainly.'

The click of Sonny's Zippo caught the bag lady's attention. She glared at him, her eyes following the movements of his fag. ‘Flash your ash.'

He obliged. She took two; stuck one in her pocket. ‘One for now, one for ‘ron,' she said. Sonny offered her a light. She puffed, studied the cats as they polished off their food.

‘Cats and hookers,' she said, ‘have a lot in common.'

‘Why is that?'

‘Won't hang around if there's no reward.' She tapped her fag. ‘I inherited the cat-feeding duties from an old pro who'd been coming here for decades. Pearl. She ended up in Guy's.' She nodded her head at the ugly tower block, looming over the far side of a viaduct. ‘Asked me to look after the cats while she was laid up in hospital. When she died, I had her cremated and brought her ashes here. That's Pearl over there.' She pointed her fag at the ceramic purple vase.

‘How long has this been a graveyard then?'

‘For ever. Southwark, it's the wrong side of the river, outside the jurisdiction of the City. The land was owned by the Church – the Bishop of Winchester controlled everything, he had the liberty of the clink. He charged the stew houses rent, taxed their profits, fined the whores when they failed to obey the Church's rules, but refused to allow them a proper burial. So this is the patch of unconsecrated ground they got dumped in when they flaked out.'

She inhaled deeply, one hand on her blanket to stop it from slipping, coughed. ‘This is the home for the unforgiven. The shunned.' She jabbed her fag at Sam.

‘Wouldn't worry about it,' she said.

‘Worry about what?'

‘Ending up in not quite the best circles. Sometimes the best place to be is beyond the pale.'

She prodded Sam in the arm. ‘Don't let anybody make you feel bad for being what you are. If they don't like it, fuck ‘em. That's what I say. Tell ‘em to piss orf. But whatever you do, don't feel sorry for yourself. I've no bloody time for self-pitiers.'

The bag lady straightened, surveyed the graveyard, drained now of all light. ‘Those arseholes that were after you have gone anyway.'

‘Did you see them?'

‘Four of them came down the street, cornered me after I'd passed you. They seemed a bit clueless. Asked me if I'd seen a girl. So I said no I hadn't. I don't see much very clearly these days.' She squinted at Sam.

‘Thanks.'

The bag lady collected up the saucers, fumbled with the zip of her shopping trolley, the ginger tom weaving around her legs between the skirt layers. She bent, scooped the cat, caressed its head, made it purr. Then she glared at Sam, beckoned her nearer. Sam obeyed, stood close enough to smell the woman's fag-kippered clothes, the dankness of the blanket pinned around her shoulders. The bag lady peered at her through milky cataracts and whispered, ‘Do you have a gun?'

Sam started, went red with surprise and guilt. ‘A gun?'

‘Don't repeat. It's bloody annoying.' She tutted. ‘I hope you know how to use it.'

The bag lady released the ginger tom and shuffled away, without another word.

*

The moon was covered in a flimsy shroud that reminded Sam of the bag lady's cataracts. They made their way through the creaking graveyard gate, past the Boot and Flogger, through the backstreets of Borough to the river. They walked back along the embankment, the river flowing in now, pushing upstream urgently. She stopped at a phone box at the bottom of Lambeth Bridge, dialled Harry's number. No answer. She tried Patrick Grogan's number. No answer. She dialled Directory Enquiries, asked for the number of the Dungeness research lab, noted it and dialled; there was always some egghead working there, somebody who could tell her how to get hold of Patrick. Except this evening, nobody was bothering to pick up the phone. She replaced the receiver, her gut a knot of frustration. Where was everybody when she needed them?

The searchlight of a police helicopter swept past, tracked across Vauxhall, down South Lambeth Road. The churring of its blades diminished. They turned into her home street. All quiet, the skeleton of the gasholder silver in the moonlight. She breathed a sigh of relief, reached into her pocket for a key. The floppy-fringed head of the anarcho-syndicalist next-door neighbour appeared above her through an open window, his face hanging in the air like the Cheshire cat.

‘The Filth were here this afternoon, banging on your door.'

‘Oh god. Uniformed?'

‘No. Plain-clothes. There were two of them, blokes. I came out when I heard all the noise, asked them what they wanted. They showed me their ID and said they were looking for you. Crawford was the name I remember.'

Her legs went numb. ‘Oh shit.'

‘He asked me if I knew where you were. I said I had no idea, but as I was shutting my door I heard them talking to each other and saying they would come back tomorrow.'

His face disappeared before she had time to thank him. She fumbled with her key, pushed the front door, stood in the hallway.

‘Well, that's it,' she said. ‘I've had it. Crawford is going to come back tomorrow and haul me off to the cop shop, ask me what I know about Dave, see if he can charge me with some firearms conspiracy story. I probably won't even be allowed out on bail.'

She twiddled her lip with her fingers, her mind fogged, panicked by the prospect of being locked up, alone in a tiny police cell. Prodded. Tortured. The more she claimed her innocence, the guiltier she would seem.
Daemonologie.
God, James the First declared, would not permit the innocent to be slandered with witchcraft accusations, which meant the accused were always guilty.

‘Maybe I should dig out the number of a good solicitor. That's what people usually do, isn't it? Call a solicitor. Unfortunately the only solicitor I know is an old mate of Jim's who's just been sent down for fraud.' She sighed. ‘Harry's obviously not managed to talk to Crawford and sort the file out yet.'

Sonny grimaced. ‘Perhaps Harry needs a little more time.'

‘I don't have any more time.'

‘We'll evade Crawford. We can make a plan.'

She said, ‘We could have a shootout. I'll use the Firebird. You use the Browning. We'll hammer him as he comes down the road, then leg it out the back and go on the run in the kombi.'

‘That was my plan.'

‘I wasn't serious.'

‘I'm not sure I can think of anything better.'

Tomorrow. Crawford was coming to get her tomorrow. She tried to work out how much she knew, how much she didn't, whether she was any closer to finding Luke, whether he was safe, how she could reach him before Crawford caught up with her. She spotted the red light of the answering machine blinking in the gloom. She pressed play. The whistle, the breath and then the man's voice. ‘Time to run.'

She pressed delete.

Sonny said, ‘Well, I didn't recognize his voice, but I think it's sound advice.'

‘Yes. Maybe he's right. Time to run.'

Go camping, she heard Harry say. The Lookers' Hut, her safehouse. Romney Marsh.

SIXTEEN

S
ONNY HAD LEFT
his Land Rover and camping gear in a lock-up behind Cold Harbour Lane. Her kombi was a non-starter, he said. They would be hunting for the number plate and anyway it was tangerine. They. She stood in the hall waiting for Sonny, listed the ‘they' in her head and saw the figures surrounding her: Crawford and the Sewer Squad. Regan and her enforcers. The whistler? Whose side was he on? She glanced at the answering machine, reached over, removed the micro-cassette and dropped it in her pocket. She wanted to have Luke's voice at her fingertips. She couldn't bear the thought of finding any more messages from the dead and disappeared waiting for her when she returned.

It was a relief to leave the house and walk in the first light of day to Brixton, birds twittering. Sonny had insisted on going at four a.m. because, he said, they couldn't rule out the possibility that Crawford would turn up at the crack of dawn. She had done the drive so often she didn't need a map. She sat in the passenger seat and directed Sonny, headlights on in the murk, the Land Rover merging with the muddy fields beyond the outer reaches of London. Occasional glimmers of sun pierced the low ceiling of cloud. Irregular shards of conversation filtered through the fug of Sonny's fag smoke.