The Salt Marsh (41 page)

‘Sonny.' She put her hand on his, felt his warmth. ‘Sonny, you're not alone. I'm here. I'm with you. I won't leave you.'

‘Thank you. I didn't betray you.'

‘I know.' Tears streaming down her cheeks. His eyes damp too. She wiped a drop from his face. But he was gone. She sat there for a moment, numb, reluctant to move from his side. She heard the siren. Blue light swirling through the fog. Cops. She saw the figures advancing. She hesitated, wondering whether she should give herself up, explain. Luke. Self-defence.

No way. She wasn't going to get done for him. Fuck it. She grabbed the vial, lobbed it up as hard as she could, sent it spinning over and over, watched as it twirled higher and higher into the air, shining through the fog, turning and gleaming; a shooting star blazing a gold trail into the night. An alchemical transformation. And she wondered for a moment whether Luke was right and she should have stood by him, what was wrong with the idea anyway? Contained action, CIA involvement, only a little bit of caesium 137 to the Mujahedeen – they were freedom fighters after all – a one-time commie KO, better than a prolonged and bloody war. The vial had reached its zenith. A moment of pure gold. And then it flipped and started falling, twirling, dimming. Reverse alchemy in motion, a dark descent, dropping to the shingle.

A voice shouting, ‘What the fuck... stand back, it could be radioactive.'

She turned, skidded down the slope, headed for the sea as the crash of glass splintered the night and the fog closed in around her.

TWENTY

S
HE RAN AND
let the mist envelop her, screened out the sounds of car doors slamming, men shouting, skied down the shingle ridge, hit the shore, paused for a split second while she gained her bearings. To the west she could see the fuzzy lights of the
Pluto
slipping into the water. She headed east, her feet finding the firmness of the wet sand, forcing her legs to pump, soaked shoes clear in the slither between fog and ground. A shout behind her made her turn. A cone of light, the beam of a torch, swept back and forth carving a path through the darkness. A wave clawing the beach caught her unawares, knocked her stride. She stumbled. Found her balance, regained her breath, ribs aching from the effort, snorted back her tears as she ran on. She reached the line of gnarled sticks marking the pathway to Alastair's cabin, attacked the slope, struggling against the roll of the pebbles, hoping the fog would muffle the sound of her direction inland. Over the dirt track, illuminated by a solitary street lamp, she hobbled the final stretch across the mossy matting, headed for the back door, nudged it with her shoulder. It opened without much resistance. She closed it firmly behind her, searched for a bolt, but there wasn't one. Too bad.

Straight to the front room, its outlines just visible in the sodium glow of the external light. The test tube rack was still on the desk but now holding only two cork-stoppered test tubes. She had guessed correctly, Sonny had taken one of Alastair's alchemical experiments, stashed it in his jacket. Her eyes swept the floorboards, fixed on the trapdoor. She knelt, scrabbled, lifted, propped the door up with one hand, swung her legs into the void, slipped over the side. Her feet touched solid ground. The small space under the floor was shallower than she had thought. She had to squat to allow the door to move down, and even then it wouldn't close completely, its weight pressed on her back. She squirmed around, feeling for the most comfortable position in the cramped, dark space. An oubliette, a tiny prison cell. Not quite enough room for sitting without bending her neck and squashing her chin against her chest. She shifted her position again, slid her legs forward, lowered herself on to her back, lay flat on the ground below the floorboards, allowing the door to drop into place. Enclosed in darkness and damp, finally able to breathe easily. She couldn't make herself comfortable, the hard edges of objects in her pockets dug into her back. She squirmed around, dipped in her coat, located the Firebird, placed it next to her contorted body. Still she wasn't comfortable. She dug in her other pocket and produced the Dictaphone, rested that on the ground too.

No light, apart from the faint yellow crack where the trapdoor met the floor. She absorbed the distant waves rumbling through the joists, and then another noise: tap tap. Death watch beetles, clicking and calling to one another in the dark, their rhythm hypnotic, inducing drowsiness. Perhaps she should sleep for a few hours, a wounded animal curled up in its burrow. She lifted her arm to wipe a tear, and as she did so she heard the scrape of the back door. She froze, caught a sob mid-breath, half choked, placed her hand over her mouth. Waited. Footsteps, hard on the floorboards. A voice. She knew the speaker, his harsh tone unmistakable.

‘Check the other room.'

Crawford. She was sweating, conscious of every breath, every hair standing on end. Scalp prickling as boots trampled above her head. A black block in the crack of light around the trapdoor marked the place where he stood, the line of his soles. She could hear him breathing. The death watch beetle tapped. The boots above her shuffled, reacting to the sound. Then silence, followed by another beetle tap and the footsteps of the sidekick returning.

‘She's not here.'

Brief pause. Tap tap tap.

‘What's that noise?'

‘Don't know.'

Tap tap tap.

‘Is it a bird? Trapped somewhere?'

He was right; she was a caged bird, a crow lured into a Larsen trap. A surge of anger hit her, provoked her. She stretched her hand out, conscious of every rustle of her coat, touched the Dictaphone, felt the familiar buttons and pressed record. The button made a click. She hoped it sounded like the tap of a death watch beetle.

‘There's that noise again.'

‘Yeah. Odd.'

She held her breath. Silence. Then Crawford spoke. ‘If we don't find her today, we can catch her later on.'

‘Like her father,' the sidekick said. ‘I heard he was always worming out of tight corners. He had a reputation for being smart.'

The sidekick's comment must have touched a nerve. Crawford erupted. ‘Yeah, she's like her fucking father all right – a total fucking pain.' He ranted, out of control. ‘You could see it in her face, her stupid bloody eyes taking everything in. She irritated me even then. And so I made a fucking tactical error, I should have walked away. But I needed to know what he was doing there. And it turns out I was right; she's an evil bitch. She is like her father. I know she's stuck that fucking date, the May Day fair, in her silly fucking memory.'

‘May Day fair?' The sidekick sounded perturbed. ‘Isn't that what...'

Crawford interrupted with a scoff, as if he was dismissing his own outburst, realized he'd lost it.

‘It's nothing. Forget it. It's a fucking boring story anyway.'

A death watch beetle tapped by her ear. She jumped, brushed a joist with her arm, froze, held her breath.

The sidekick said, ‘Did you hear that?'

A moment of absolute stillness. Then Crawford said, ‘Yes, I heard.'

‘Do you think it is a trapped bird?'

Crawford kicked his heel against the floorboards. ‘Must be. A trapped fucking bird.'

She couldn't breathe, couldn't move a fraction. Had he worked out where she was hiding?

‘Why don't you go and fetch the car? I'll finish up here.'

‘Right you are.'

Footsteps as the sidekick departed. Another sound, a dragging noise. Like heavy furniture being moved. Scraping. She couldn't work out what was happening above her head. More silence. Feet on boards, Crawford moving away. Was that fabric being ripped? The back door pulled shut. She breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn't heard her after all. She was safe, for now anyway. She switched the Dictaphone off, replaced it in her coat pocket, lay back, arms languishing at her side, hit by a wave of indifference. She was numb, drained. She didn't care about anything any longer, all she wanted to do was sleep, down here among the dead – Dave, Jim, Sonny. Luke. Friends and enemies. Enemies who turned out to be friends. A friend – a lover – who had betrayed her; an enemy within. And she wondered whether she had killed part of herself when she shot Luke; died a little. Lost her heart. She closed her eyes. In the darkness the death watch beetles called. She could lie there for the night, float away, let bleakness descend. Even as she drifted off, a different noise registered in a far corner of her mind. Crackling. And a familiar smell that was comforting. Campfire. For some reason, her body failed to react as it should. She felt no panic, no sense of urgency. She could add the signs together, and yet she wasn't sure she cared. Perhaps she deserved it. Burned at the stake, a witch's sentence. Fate. The periodic repetitions, as above so below. She inhaled, wood smoke filling her lungs pleasantly, her mind. This girl looks ill, this girl is ill, this girl looks dead, this girl is dead. In the greyness she could see Jim's outline, waiting for her, although there was something sad about him, she could tell. He wanted to say something, his words were in her head.
Don't give up.
Don't worry, it's fine, she said. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born and a time to die.
No
, Sonny said,
not you. Not yet. A time to heal, to build up, dance.
I'm done with dancing, she said. When did dancing ever do me any good?

She reached up and felt the joists above her head with a sense of detachment, an emotionless assessment of the dimensions of her grave; her fingertips found a gelatinous substance, like an eye attached to the beam. What was it? She prodded. Laughed. Nostoc commune, star jelly, witch's butter; the special ingredient of Allin's alchemical experiments, the golden contents of the test tube she had lobbed in the air. What had Alastair said about nostoc? Survives radiation. She touched the gloop again, stroked its slimy surface and she heard Dave talking, telling her about the dogged plants of Dungeness, how they sent their roots to far places in search of water.
You've got to love the blackened spiky stems of the sea kale
, he said,
its hardiness. Durability. Fight. You owe me one. Do this for me.

She blinked and now she could sense the acrid smoke around her. Shit. Fucking hell. She roused herself. Crawford had set fire to the cabin. Fight, she had to fight. She reached up with her arms, pushed at the boards above her head. They didn't budge. The scraping noises she had heard earlier fell into place – he had moved the desk on top of the trapdoor. She was locked in. She pushed upward with as much strength as she could muster. No movement at all. Her eyes were watering. She couldn't tell whether they were tears of madness, or thickening smoke. She was going to die here, locked up under the floorboards of some stupid fisherman's cottage on a shingle desert at the end of the bloody world. And she only had herself to blame. Jim's voice said,
Get a grip, for fuck's sake, get a grip.

‘Fuck off,' she shouted. ‘You're no bloody help.'

She drew her legs up to her chest, kicked. Pushed and pushed. She heard the desk shifting a little as she managed to tilt the trapdoor. She twisted on to her knees. Placed her shoulders underneath the trapdoor's edge, pushed her back against the planks. Shit. Shit. The desk slid again. Move. Move. She heaved, strained. Finally the trapdoor budged, the desk lurched, she flipped the lid back, pulled herself out of her prison and into the room, momentarily confused by the smoke, flames crackling, dancing red lights. She ducked, thrust her arm over her mouth and nose and caught sight of the dim glow of the power station, through the kitchen window by the back door, pale amber against the rage of the burning curtain, fire licking the walls. She turned, ran the other way, fumbled with the front door lock, shoved her way out into the night air, heavy with water now, not fog but cold rain on her face mingling with the tears of relief.

*

She traipsed north away from the beach, the research lab, the fishermen's cabins, the commotion, the cops, the smugglers, trudged through the shingle desert, past the refugee cormorants in their willow tree shelters, the blackthorn clumps, and collapsed on the backseat of the Land Rover.

*

A spider crawled across her face, shimmied along her arm. The sun was climbing the sky, warming her skin through the Land Rover's window. She ached as she had never ached before, her coat was ripped, trousers salt-and-mud caked. She was starving. But she was alive. And that felt good. She scooped the spider on her finger. It rolled round, dived, swung away on its thread. She had to go too. Drive home. She stopped at the first phone box she could find, called Harry. He picked up. She shoved the coins in the slot.

‘Harry, it's me, Sam.'

‘Are you OK?'

‘Not really.'

‘Can you meet me at my allotment?'

‘When?'

‘How long will it take you to get there?'

‘I need to stop somewhere for food, otherwise I'm going to starve. Four hours.'

‘OK, meet you there at two. Drive carefully.'

‘I will.'

‘Don't keep checking over your shoulder.'

‘It's a habit.'

‘I know. That's why I'm telling you not to do it. You don't have to worry. I've sorted it.'

‘Do you think so?'

‘Yes.'

She replaced the receiver, relieved to hear his voice, even if she wasn't convinced he'd sorted anything.

*

Through the Great North Wood, gypsies laughing, woodpeckers tapping; the smell of drifting smoke almost made her panic. Gut reaction. She stood at the top of the hill, looked down on Harry's patch, watched him tending his oil drum fire. She wound her way around the neat beanpoles, fluffy carrot tops, blousy pink and orange dahlias.

Harry gaped when he spotted her. ‘What have you been doing?'

‘I went camping.'