This Thing of Darkness (73 page)
Mike has ‘cooked’ dinner, which means he’s taken things out of the fridge and put them on plates.
He says, ‘Did you kick down some doors and make people cry?’
I say no. Tell him what happened.
He’s disappointed.
I am too, I suppose, but I don’t feel like we’ve lost. Not yet. Wilson’s house will yield further clues as to his identity. It’ll give us DNA. And now that Wilson knows we’re on his trail, we can go public in our requests for information and help. If Wilson goes some place we can’t extradite him, we might lose. If he doesn’t, I still think we’ll get him.
But I don’t want to talk about that, and don’t.
We finish eating. Mike wants to go straight through to the bedroom, but I say I want to go into the forest. See what it feels like by starlight.
So we go. A silvery kingdom. The boulders seem even stranger by night than they do by day, as if we’re on tiptoe through a fairy tale. When an owl breaks from a branch and flaps away through the shadows with heavy wingbeats, it feels as though we’ve just witnessed a griffin, or a unicorn, or a centaur.
We make love under one of Mike’s beloved boulders. Naked on a picnic blanket in the cool dark. Lean up against the stone afterwards, feeling its heat. I sit nested up against Mike’s body, his arm spread over me
I’m lucky to have this, I realise. The sincere affection of a good man. This curled-up intimacy. Skin to skin and mingled breath.
I play with Mike’s hair and pull his shirt over me when I get cold.
I also notice, without quite paying direct attention, that the Rhayader barn has receded yet further. An injury starting to heal over.
My hand, I notice, is exploring the little pebbled hillocks around my right ankle. Little white fibroids, each of them nursing an old shotgun pellet. Remembrances of things past.
I make an announcement: ‘“Before long, all things will be transformed. They will rise like smoke or be scattered in fragments.”’
Mike stays holding me, says nothing.
I say, ‘“To do what needs doing. Because dying too is one of our tasks in life.”’
Rhayader, it seems, was one of my tasks in life. My little cork happening to bump up against that particular rock. Bumping up, moving on.
Marcus Aurelius watches the path of my little cork and murmurs, ‘Do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.’
Good advice, that. The only advice there is, in a way.
Mike says, ‘Is any of that meant to mean anything?’
I say, ‘I think I need to go to Portugal tomorrow. Sorry.’
Mike’s upset. Not big-bad upset. Just not-wanting-to-let-go-of-sexy-naked-girl upset. Or maybe, not-wanting-to-let-go-of-sexy-naked-girl-who-seems-quite-up-for-a-lot-of-sex-and-isn’t-too-fussed-when-her-mister-comes-back-an-hour-and-a-half-later-than-he-said upset.
I tell him that it’s nothing to do with him. That I’ve had a lovely time. Say there’s stuff I have to do.
We kiss. Proper, nice, best-buddy kisses.
Snuggle a little longer, then tiptoe back through our fairy tale to something that approaches real life.
Portugal.
The Algarve.
Sun and wind. People and beaches.
Whitewashed towns dazzling beneath the pressing light.
And my sister, Kay. Skinny, leggy, self-possessed, chic. Already ensconced in the villa I’ve rented for the next few weeks. Pleased to see me, but in that way of hers that always holds something back. Something which always retains her own independence of being.
The villa has a small plunge pool and I’m happy to plunge. Soak off the travel. Kay brings me a glass of orange juice, clinking with ice, and sits with her feet in the pool.
I tell her about my bank card. Explain what I need. Tell her how to use it: where, and how often, and how much.
Give her my phone. The same thing there.
Then we do some work.
Take a suitcase of clothes and a camera. Flit about various local sites and attractions. Take photos. Get other people to take pictures of the two of us together. Then change outfits, move on, repeat.
All that afternoon and evening. Some more first thing in the morning.
Then I’m done.
I kiss her. Say, ‘Have a
fab
time.’
‘I will.’
And she will, of course. She has friends coming out, one of whom is a boy whose name makes her laugh and look coy and change the subject. I’ve not met the guy – Cai – but I hope he’s nice.
She takes me to the bus station. She assumes I’m doing something very illegal, which I’m actually not. I say as much but Kay, I can tell, doesn’t believe me. Our father’s daughter.
Bus to Seville.
Train to Madrid.
Another train to Santander.
Arrive late. Spend the night in a perfectly OK station hotel. I don’t sleep much, but that’s my fault, not the hotel’s.
A ferry leaves for Portsmouth at eleven in the morning. I use the time beforehand to scout about. Find a chandlery with a small second-hand clothing section. Buy waterproofs, thermals. The clothes are my size, in theory, but when I try them on in front of a mirror, I look like a small animal trying to escape from a laundry basket.
The same chandlery sells cooking equipment and I buy pots and pans. Not the biggest ones, the ones where you can boil ten kilos of potatoes at a go. It’s not that I can’t lift ten kilos – I can, of course – but then there’s the water too, and every possible combination of roll, pitch, shudder and yaw. So I pick the mid-sized pots. Ones I reckon I could handle, even with heavy seas.
I wish I wasn’t completely bloody useless in the kitchen.
I wish I knew if I got seasick.
The chandlery sells me a big black bag with a shoulder strap that will hold my cookware and still leave a bit of room for my clothes. It’s big and clumsy, but just about manageable.
I buy a
pain au chocolat
still warm from the baker’s oven and eat it.
Then I board the ferry, a foot passenger only. I have to present my passport, of course, but anyone wanting to trace my movements would have to work pretty damn hard to jump from my flight to Lisbon and my holiday villa in Faro to a foot-passenger-only ticket from Santander to Portsmouth.
The ferry leaves Iberia’s sunny shores.
Heads for Britannica’s cloudy ones.
Marcus Aurelius watches his Spanish colonies vanish below that golden horizon and says, ‘Do not think upon the many and various troubles which have afflicted you in the past and which will come again in times to come. Instead, with regard to every present difficulty, ask yourself: “What is there here that is unbearable and beyond endurance?”’
He’s right. I stop worrying and go below on a hunt for peppermint tea.
Milford Haven.
Stone and twilight. Storms and fish bellies.
The same as last time, except that now I’m on the deck of the
Isobel Baker
. My big black bag at my feet. A tall Scotsman, the ship’s captain, Alexander Honnold, gazing down at me.
It’s not dark, but almost. Lights glimmering across the harbour.
‘You have experience, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would that be the sort of experience that comes with references?’
‘Yes.’
I worked on a case once that brought me into contact with a shipping company. I’ve spoken to one of the guys there – Andy Watson – and asked him to provide a reference for me in case anyone phones. I let him think that I’d be on regular police business and he was happy enough to say yes.
And anyway, I
am
on regular police business. It just so happens that no one in the regular police knows anything about it.
Honnold asks for details. I give them. Honnold strides away, long legs covering restless yards. Lights, yellow and blue, on the inkily violet waters beyond. He talks to Watson, who presumably says what he needs to say.
Honnold returns.
‘Bulk carriers?’
‘Yes.’
‘No trawlers?’
‘No.’
‘Ye might have a more bumpy ride than you’re used to.’
I shrug. Don’t care. ‘I might have to serve cold for a day or two, if the sea’s high.’
He nods.
My answer was the right one. My ‘experience’ as cook on bulk carriers won’t necessarily have given me the kind of sea legs you need to stay upright on a trawler, but a ship’s cook job is to provide food, come what may.
‘There’ll be cleaning up as well, not just the galley.’
‘I don’t mind working hard.’
We talk about pay. I ask for one-fifty a day. He offers one-twenty. I grumble, but say yes.
He looks sceptical about my ability to manage large quantities of food in high seas. Physically manage, that is. I tell him I have my own pots. That I cook in batches I can manage.
I ask about the length of the trip.
‘Depends on the catch. Anywhere from ten days to four weeks. We’ve got supplies for four.’
He doesn’t like having a woman on board. Doesn’t like it for superstitious reasons, but for practical ones too. Trawlers are mostly all-male preserves. Men alone with the dangerous intimacy of the sea. Throw a woman into that environment and you add a combustible element to what is already the country’s most frequently lethal profession.
Honnold looks at me, not liking it. ‘It’s risky,’ he tells me, ‘and I hate risk.’
But since Brian Penry managed, using big splodges of my cash, to buy off Honnold’s existing cook, and since – as Honnold told that cook, yelling down the phone with anger – the
Isobel Baker
now needs to sail within twelve hours, and since I’d been drifting around the docks for the past few days, seeking a position as cook, or cleaner, or skivvy, he didn’t have a whole heap of options.
So Honnold nods. Holds out a lean hand. Says, ‘Welcome aboard,’ and shows me brusquely to my tiny berth below decks.
I stow my bag. Take my pots and pans to the galley. Get used to the clamps that hold the cooking equipment stable. Go down to the holds. The giant freezers which will store the catch as it comes in. The ice-maker, which will make as much ice as those fish, and those freezers, need. The room-sized freezer compartment which holds food for the voyage. Boxloads of it, mostly heat and serve.
‘This is a trawler,’ Honnold told me. ‘I don’t know what you cooked on your other ships, but here we keep it simple. Serve it hot. Serve it big. And serve it on time. OK?’
As I start to inventory what’s there, I meet a couple of my crewmates – men I already know from their photos, Doug Pearson, Stuart MacHaffie. They nod, offer a handshake, but they’re busy and move off.
Steel corridors. Yellow guards over the bulkhead lights. The thrumming of an engine.
Boxes of food.
Man food. Simple, fatty, cheap. The kind of stuff that even I might be able to cook without ballsing it all up.
I figure out what I’ll cook for the next couple of meals, then leave it.
Go to my berth.
Working with Dyfed-Powys, Watkins secured a warrant allowing her to intercept communications to and from the ship. She was able to track the names and backgrounds of all six men on board, including Ted Huber, the cook whom Penry nobbled. All the six were fishermen with long track records at sea. None of them with any meaningful criminal record.
A more professional surveillance campaign, conducted by Dyfed-Powys in close liaison with Cardiff, has yielded better images of the
Isobel Baker
. Those images were scrutinised by marine experts in Scotland, and Lowe’s basic conclusions were emphatically vindicated. The
Isobel Baker
has been adapted to handle an ROV. But she isn’t carrying an ROV.
In London, Atlantic Cables has finished its basic line tests without problems.
The ship is still Cyprus-registered. Watkins has not obtained permission to board it at sea. She’s still trying.
I haven’t spoken to Watkins – who assumes I’m in Portugal with my sister – but I follow every detail of the inquiry from whatever internet connection I can find.
When the dark has settled further, I go out on deck.
Stand looking out to sea, my back to any cameras that Dyfed-Powys may still have trained on the ship. When I came on board, I was wearing a fleece with a hood. Hardly a perfect disguise, but enough that no one, watching from behind, will be able to identify me with certainty. And anyway, Dyfed-Powys doesn’t know me.
We’re in harbour, but the engines are operating at low power and a thrum runs through the hull. A breeze ruffles the waters. Somewhere, unseen, a wire clacks against metal.
The deck isn’t moving, but the ship still feels mobile, impatient, alive.
She wants to be gone, and so do I.
The sun rises at five, but we’re under way before four.
A rattle of anchor chain and the deep bass of the ship’s diesel. Honnold on the bridge and navigation lamps showing.
Blue water to port and starboard.
Water, and two huge oil refineries. Towers, pipes, tanks. Brightening silver in the dull light.
Dyfed-Powys can’t see me now and I stand on deck, watching the land slide past.
This waterway forms one of the deepest natural harbours in the world. A
ria
. A valley formed in the last Ice Age, then drowned as the seas rose and the land sank.
A submergent coastline.
I go below and get ready for breakfast.
A trayful of sausages. A vat of beans. A spadeful of egg. Toast. Take butter out of the fridge so it’ll be easier to spread.
Don’t burn the sausages.
Don’t burn the beans, or not much.
Because I’m anxious to be ready on time, I start the eggs way too early, so they go a bit funny. Pale yellow and somehow leathery. But I think they’ll be OK. I don’t do more anyway.
I forget all about tea to start with, because I’m worried about the food, but then I remember and put the urn on to heat. A ten litre thing, bolted to the wall.
Milk.
HP sauce. Ketchup.
Vinegar. Do you need vinegar if you don’t have chips? I don’t know. Put vinegar out anyway.
It’s ten to six and I don’t think I’ve fucked up.
Beneath my feet, the deck has started to move. When I use the sink – a big stainless steel affair, vaguely reminiscent of mortuary equipment – water heaves moodily from side to side. I stare at it. It stares back, malevolently, at me before, finally, draining with a subterranean gargle.
I wonder about seasickness, but think I feel much as I normally do. A bit spacey. A bit disconnected. But not particularly likely to vomit or turn green.
Good enough.
I serve up.
The galley backs straight onto the dining room. A long pine table, two benches, a caged ceiling lamp. The plates are acrylic, unbreakable.
The men enter.
Honnold, the captain. Lean, Scottish, vigilant.
He takes a plate of food and carries it out. Up to the bridge, I think.
The others follow. Jonah Buys, Honnold’s first mate. Swarthy. Bushily moustached. Disconcerting somehow, I don’t know why.
Then Doug Pearson, Stuart MacHaffie, Sean Coxsey. Sailors. Trawlermen, who look like what they are. Faces that have seen weather. Danger. Hauled nets and braved gales.
The men, both those who haven’t met me and those who already have, greet me with a little caution. A little reserve.
A woman on a boat: I’m not meant to be here, I realise that.
I hand out food. The sausages are a bit more burned than I’d realised, but it’s all OK. The guys take their food, but don’t start eating. MacHaffie has to jog me: ‘Cutlery?’
I give them cutlery.
Tea. Toast.
Keep the tea and the toast and the milk and the sugar coming, till no one asks me for anything more.
Take tea – milk, two sugars – up to Honnold on the bridge.
The land has vanished. We are travelling on sea the colour of wet rock. Of light falling on slate. Waves trouble the surface and a steady breeze rakes ripples into the broader swell. Our trail is marked out in a white that vanishes as you watch.
My gaze keeps reaching for the world’s rim. Looking for a glimpse of land, an anchor.
Doesn’t find it.
Honnold tells me what he wants from me.
Serve a mountain of food at six in the morning, midday and six in the evening. ‘Midnight as well, if the factory deck is busy.’ Keep the galley and bathrooms clean. Keep the processing room ‘vaguely clean, if you can.’ The processing room: the place where the fish are gutted under greenish lamps, before being cleaned in cold water and sent on down to the freezers.
‘Don’t take any shit from the men. Don’t give them any shit. If you have a problem with anyone, you tell me first. Is that clear?’
‘Yes.’
Honnold doesn’t say anything else for a moment. The ship’s engines are grinding away, but there’s no sign that we’re actually moving. A gleam of sunlight to port says we’re heading roughly south-west. Ireland a hundred miles to the north and west of us. Devon or Cornwall a hundred miles to the south and east. Wales, already out of sight, slips ever further from us.
The bridge is closed to the weather, but the doors to port and starboard hang open, bang loose in the wind.
Steel doors.
Waterproof seals in thick rubber.
A metal door-sweep three inches high.
And all the glass so thick, that fifty tons of water could crash over it and leave it unscathed.
Has
crashed over it, indeed. The
Isobel Baker
is twenty years old and more, and her elderly frame will have seen every sea, every wind.
Outside, to port and starboard, there are two orange buoys, holstered in plastic, some electronic gadgetry on top. I recognise these, from my research in port, as being marine EPIRBs – Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacons. Inactive now, but they’ll operate automatically if the ship founders or if they’re manually activated.
I say, ‘I don’t know what we’re fishing for.’
‘Nephrops. Plaice. Whiting. Sole. Turbot. Anything that gets into the nets, as long as we’re allowed to keep it and sell it.’
My face doesn’t know what nephrops are and presumably looks it.
Honnold says, ‘Lobsters, wee ones. You eat them as scampi.’
I nod, in an
ah yes, of course
way.
Honnold, who doesn’t believe my nod, watches me for a few moments, then says, ‘We’ll take a few men on board later. Four of them. You’ll be serving for ten.’
‘Ten? Today, you mean?’
‘No. Later. I’ll tell you when.’
I don’t say anything to that. My face probably does an ‘Is that normal in fishing?’ thing, but if it does, Honnold doesn’t react.
We stand for a few moments in silence.
I say, ‘I’ll need one fifty. If there are more men.’
Honnold half laughs. ‘OK. Do a good job of work, and ye can have it.’
Then there’s nothing else to say.
The sea is empty.
We’re heading for who knows where.
Nephrops. Baby lobsters. Scampi.
Somewhere in the waters beneath us, a telecoms cable links London and New York. A cable that has killed two. That would have killed me, if I hadn’t escaped its lethal touch.
I leave Honnold and go below. Clean the kitchen, the dining room, the toilets. Get ready for the midday meal.