The Salt Marsh (44 page)

She turned to Sam. ‘What are you doing back here then?'

‘I came to bury a few old friends. Outcasts,' she added.

Sam held the micro-cassette in the air. ‘Voices, ghosts, whispering in my ear. I don't want to live in the past. I don't want to harbour toxic grudges. I want to let it all go.' Luke, Sonny, Jim. ‘I've forgiven them.' She remembered Crawford was on the tape. ‘Well, there's one on there I don't forgive.'

‘Who's that then?'

‘Crawford. Bent cop. More than bent. Evil.'

‘I knew a bent cop called Crawford,' the bag lady said.

Sam jumped. ‘Really?'

‘It was a while back. Soho. In the sixties.'

‘Must be somebody different then.'

Sam wrapped the cassette in a plastic bag, dropped it into the hole, sprinkled the loose soil on top, pressed it down, wondered whether she should say something. Anything. A few words. Decided against. She stood, wiped her hands on her trousers.

The bag lady said, ‘Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself.'

Sam grimaced. ‘But what if you've done something so terrible it shouldn't be forgiven?'

‘What would that be? What could you have done that was so terrible you couldn't forgive yourself?' The bag lady was assessing her shrewdly.

‘Maybe I've killed a man.' She hoped she sounded vague, casual – the emphasis on the maybe.

The bag lady didn't blink. ‘Was it necessary? Would he have killed you if you didn't kill him?'

Sam nodded. ‘He was a ghost,' she said. ‘He didn't exist in the first place.'

‘Oh? You've killed a man who didn't exist. So you can't be caught. Sounds to me like you've committed the perfect crime.'

Sam managed a smile; the perfect crime. She'd killed a ghost.

‘Wouldn't make too much of a fucking song and a dance about it if I were you,' the bag lady said. ‘You don't want to draw attention to yourself.' She was staring at Sam's face as she spoke, examining her cat-face splodge. Sam's hand rose to cover it.

‘Birthmark,' Sam said.

‘Marks, scars,' the bag lady said. ‘They are reminders that our past is real. Not fake.'

She made a harrumphing noise in her throat that sounded almost like an expression of empathy.

*

Sam left the bag lady pottering around the Crossbones graveyard, pulling up ragwort, grubbing for fag ends. She walked beside the river, mud banks merging with water in the dwindling light of the day, headed west. Past the OXO building, the South Bank, St Thomas' hospital. The path joined Albert Embankment at Lambeth Palace. She strolled along, hands in pockets, oblivious to the noise of passing traffic and the wail of distant sirens, reached the wasteland below Vauxhall Bridge. She found the hole in the fence, crawled through, headed to the slipway, crouched and looked for her bellarmine. Still there, the grey pot belly snug in its gutter hiding place. She picked it up, ambled to the bottom of the slipway and was startled by an unfamiliar noise. Gushing water. The Effra sluice gate was open. She walked over to the chute; the summer's rain had been unleashed, washing away the footprint trails in the sludge, carrying off the debris from the sewers – hair, bones, trainers, dead goldfish, caesium particles. Swept out of the drain, down the chute and into the Thames in a manic torrent, past Westminster, Wapping, Tilbury and to the sea. Well, the Effra might have been cleared out and sanitized, she thought, but now all the shit was flowing through the heart of London.

She trailed alongside the chute, down the foreshore to the edge of the river. Beyond the line of rotting timbers of the ancient Bronze Age jetty, she saw the shadow of a man standing. She called his name. He disappeared. She squinted but could see nothing except the water rippling, as if there were land below the surface – undiscovered country. She tasted saltwater, realized she was crying, wiped her eyes on her coat sleeve. She suspected he wouldn't reappear again. Not this time.

She was still holding the bellarmine. She lifted the bottle, the gurning face grinning at her from its pot belly, tipped it upside down and emptied the contents into the Thames. The soggy willow bark and the felt heart with its three rusty pins – Dave, Luke, Sonny – washed away. She watched the grey water swirling for a while, and then she stuck her free hand in her pocket, grasped the penknife from Luke, fondled it in her palm, wondered whether it would fit. She tried it for size, found it slipped quite easily down the bottle's neck into its belly. She rattled the bottle to check the penknife was secure, unable to escape, raised her arm and lobbed the bellarmine into the Thames. A counter-charm to protect herself from future heartbreak and betrayal. The bottle bobbed around for a few seconds, disappeared; she imagined some future riverside walker finding it lodged in the muddy banks of the Thames, and the thought cheered her. She put her hand in her pocket again, touched the toad bones that Alastair had collected to increase his sorcerer's powers. I'll sort it, Harry had said. In-house. She wasn't sure she could afford to take any chances. She needed to be ready for Crawford if he came back at her – ready for any other fucker who wanted to take a swipe. She was hit by a surge of anger, a desire to wreak revenge on her tormentors, the pointing fingers, the unknown threats, the secrets, the lies – throw the curses back with added venom. Fuck the bastards, whoever they were, wherever they were, they weren't going to get her. She'd survived trial by water, punishment by flames – whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. She clutched the toad bones tight in her hand and claimed the magic of the Magi and the necromancers, the knowledge of the alchemists, the spells of the cunning folk. She would be mistress of the House of Levitation. She aimed the toad bones high. They twirled in the air, hung for a moment, then spiralled down like apple blossom on to the water and were snatched by the ebbing tide. She touched her birthmark with her finger; if she had to be a witch, she might as well be a powerful one.

Epilogue

T
HE CORONER RELEASED
Dave's body. In the absence of anybody else stepping forward, Sam had taken charge of the funeral arrangements. Cremation or burial was a conversation they'd had more than once and Dave was always certain he wanted to be cremated. He liked the idea of the physical transformation by fire. She arranged for a cremation and service at West Norwood. She managed to contact his estranged father in the States, and he asked her to dispose of the ashes in a way she thought that Dave would like. Which was why she ended up taking the box of his remains to Skell when she went to collect his belongings from the Professor's house.

One of those rare English summer days when the sky was cloudless, sapphire blue. She headed off, past the customs house, the windmill still up for sale, along the causeway across the marsh, carrying a rucksack on her back with the ash box and Dave's other Aston Villa mug stowed inside. She swished the rushes as she walked. She was watching a marsh harrier hover above a distant reed bed when she heard a whistle behind. At first she ignored the familiar tune, dismissed it as pure coincidence, but the whistler was persistent, drawing closer. She increased her speed. He was still behind, closing the gap. She felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned, what else could she do? Found herself face to face with an anonymous-looking man in a Harrington. She had seen him before, she was sure, although she couldn't place him immediately; a bank clerk, the manager of the local Tesco? And then it clicked: he was the man who had precipitated her crisis in spring last year when he whispered in her ear.
I know you. You are Jim Coyle's daughter.
Left her feeling marked.

He caught her eye, she twisted away, searched for an escape route, but was trapped by the steep slopes down to the marsh on either side. She turned, he caught her arm.

‘Not bad,' he said, ‘for a beginner.'

She recognized his voice then, of course, from the telephone messages he'd left. She yanked her arm free. ‘What do you want?'

He said, ‘Mad plots by rogue CIA agents, bent coppers, psychotic hitmen. Quite a high body count, but nobody that anybody would care about losing.'

She cared, she wanted to shout. She cared about her friends. Dave. Sonny.

‘I have no idea what you are talking about,' she said.

‘Oh, really? The test tube you chucked into the air at Dungeness was quite a good touch. A little bit of drama. Good thing it wasn't caesium, but I presume you'd worked that out when you lobbed it.'

‘You've lost me.'

‘The foghorn on the perimeter fence of the research lab. Actually it's a security camera. You don't think they would leave that area unprotected, do you? All those nuclear facilities.'

Her stomach sank.

‘It was a foggy night,' he said. ‘As you may remember, so not the best picture. As I said, the glowing test tube showed up nicely. Your face not quite so clear. Never mind.'

She hesitated. ‘Who are you anyway?'

He smirked, showed his yellowing teeth. ‘I'm a man with intelligence.'

He winked. He was a man who made her flesh crawl. Then her mouth opened when she realized what he meant. Intelligence with a capital I.

‘You're a man who left me weird messages on my answering machine.' She heard the click, the whistle, the familiar tune playing in her head. ‘You tapped my phone, listened to my private conversations.'

‘I thought I was being helpful. Checking up on the ins and outs, giving you a couple of prompts. Letting you know what was going on.'

She gasped, almost choked on her sharp intake of air.

‘Jesus. You tap my line and then have the nerve to pretend you were helping me.'

‘Oh, please spare me the outrage. You know the score. It's your bloody family's business.'

‘It's nothing to do with me.'

‘Come on. It's in your DNA. It's on your birth certificate. Father's occupation.'

Jesus, he was a loathsome knicker sniffer. ‘My father's job has nothing to do with my life, what I choose to do.'

‘Are you sure? We thought maybe you might like to do some work for us.'

‘You've got to be kidding.'

‘It's the dodgy cops we are interested in; we want to find out what they are up to. You're ideally placed.'

‘I'm not. I'm a placard-waving leftie.'

‘Really? A leftie? There isn't a file on you – I ran a check.'

‘That's because...'

He laughed. ‘We're not asking for anything difficult. At least not at the moment. Rumour has it you have a tape, a recording with some interesting information on it. Crawford, digging his own grave, we gather.'

She panicked. Had Harry told somebody about the tape? Surely not.

‘There is no tape,' she said.

‘Strange. A friend of mine told me she'd seen you disposing of it. Wrapped it in a plastic bag she said. I know she's getting on a bit and her eyesight isn't what it used to be, but she's still pretty sharp as old spooks go.'

The bag lady. An old spook. She should have guessed.

‘I thought you were a person of principles. Ideals. Here's your chance to do your bit for democracy, the rule of law. Shaft the bent coppers.'

‘Oh come on, don't give me that shit. You're not interested in democracy. All you're interested in is your own turf. Making sure nobody invades your patch.'

‘So cynical for one so young.'

‘Piss off.'

‘It's extra money. You could top up your bank account.'

‘Not interested.'

He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. What are you going to do with a history degree anyway?'

‘Archaeology postgrad.'

‘Archaeology? Messing about with skeletons. Sounds like a suitable occupation for the daughter of a dead undercover cop.'

She peered over his shoulder, hoping to see a dog walker or a twitcher, anybody who she could use as a life raft to escape from this creep. The path was empty, the marsh deserted.

‘The thing is,' he said, ‘the Force has all these strange operations going on, the Sewer Squad. Your father's lot. And nobody knows what any of them are doing.'

She was about to say he wasn't quite right; if her memory served her correctly, the Home Secretary knew exactly what they were doing. She decided it was probably best to keep shtum.

‘And we in Intelligence like to know what our comrades in the Force are up to.'

Of course, as Jim had once explained, their home phone was being tapped by another part of the secret state. The spies and undercover agents, they all monitored each other. Never trust a spy you cannot see.

‘Not what you want from the Force in this day and age. Unaccountable cops. It's not good. We're beyond that now. We're a modern democracy. It's all about new technology – the information age. So we had this idea, which we thought you might be interested in.'

‘No. I'm not.'

‘Hear me out. You're always protesting about something or other. Maybe you could keep an eye open, see if you attract any of these dodgy cops. See if any of them turn up and join one of your groups. Then we can find out what they are up to.'

She almost laughed. ‘You're asking me to be a decoy?'

‘Yes, I suppose so.'

‘No bloody way. I want to be free to do what I want to do. And what I want to do has nothing to do with spooks, undercover agents of any description whatsoever.'

‘We're not always quite as free as we like to think we are.'

‘You're wasting your time. I'm not interested. Leave me alone.'

‘Think about it.'

‘No.'

‘You could avenge your father's death.'

She hesitated. ‘Get stuffed.'

‘Take my card.'

He leaned over, dropped it in her coat pocket, turned around and walked away. She watched his back diminishing and she half wished she hadn't left the Firebird in the cellar underneath the floorboards of the fisherman's cabin in Dungeness. Fuck him. Disturbing her peace. She had no interest whatsoever in being an informer. A spy. A bedraggled crow in a Larsen trap trying to snare some mates. What grubby corner of Intelligence did he work for anyway, she wondered. She reached into her pocket, removed the card the spook had forced on her. Plain white rectangle. Name and number. No indication of the office, address, anything. Just a quote. ‘Confession is not betrayal.' She stared at the card for a while, then placed it in her back pocket. Confession is always betrayal, she reckoned, no matter which side you were standing on. She thought then of the bones of the informers spread out across the marshes, the ghosts of the waterlogged meadows, the saltpans and ditches, searching for their missing limbs, trying to make themselves whole again. And she remembered the witches, trial by water, ducked and ducked again until they squealed or drowned.