The Trawlerman

by William Shaw

  ‘Flat tyre?’ A red-faced man leaned out of the window. ‘Want me to help?’

  Woman on her own, dressed in Lycra. ‘No. I’m fine,’ she said.

  ‘Take off the front tyre. We can bung it in the boot. I’ll give you a ride if you like.’

  ‘You don’t know where I’m headed.’

  ‘Nor you me,’ he said.

  ‘You pick up a lot of women this way?’

  He looked offended. ‘I was trying to help. It’s not safe around here. Haven’t you heard?’ He put his hands back on the steering wheel, ready to drive away.

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘About the killings? Didn’t you see the police back there? He was a member of my golf club,’ he said.

  ‘Who was?’

  ‘Ayman. The man who was slaughtered with his wife. In that house just there.’ He pointed back towards the high hedges. ‘Sweetest people. Some bloody lunatic.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Friend in the police.’

  ‘Golf club?’

  The man frowned. ‘Yes, actually. So like I said. It’s not safe for you around here, OK?’ Offended, he drove away. Alex stood for a minute, then pushed the bike off and swung her other leg over onto the pedal.

  When she reached Five Vents Lane, she couldn’t help feeling that the darkness in that house was chasing after her; that this would not be the end of it.

  At Burmarsh church, she stopped and drank from her water bottle. Inside the cool of the Norman arch, a pointy-toothed imp scowled down at her. The noticeboard said the church was four metres below sea level. She could imagine the weight of water this land was holding back. A certainty of bad things about to get worse.

  Suddenly weary, she lay down on the grass and sorrel. Had she slept badly last night? She tried to remember the night, but it was a blur.

  ‘Hey.’

  She was almost home when she heard the voice and braked.

  Jill was sat at one of the wooden tables outside the Snack Shack, a converted freight container that became a pop-up restaurant during summer months.

  ‘What are you doing here, Jill?’

  Tourists in swimming trunks lounged in deckchairs, eating fish perched on their bellies. ‘Came to see you, obviously. Hadn’t eaten all day, and now I’ve just scarfed a plate of chips. Colin Gilchrist says he saw you. At the house.’

  Alex nodded. ‘Did he? I was passing.’

  ‘Hell you were, Alex.’

  ‘I was curious. That’s all.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be protecting yourself from all this shit so you can get better, and here you are noseying around like you’re still on duty.’

  Alex propped her bike against the table and sat down. ‘I was going to my counsellor, that’s all. It was on the way back.’

  ‘I was worried you weren’t going to go. How was it?’

  ‘Yeah. Well. Early days.’

  ‘Course, that house is only on the way if you take a detour.’

  ‘I’m still a police officer. I’m interested, that’s all.’

  Jill grunted. ‘Want to finish my chips? I can’t eat them all. I’m stuffed.’

  ‘Poor lamb,’ said Alex, leaning over to take one. ‘Let me help.’

  Jill stood to buy another bottle of water. A dad, eating a fisherman’s roll with his kids, looked up as she passed, followed each step of her walk across the shingle, oblivious to his wife next to him.

  ‘How’s Zoë?’ Jill asked when she was back.

  ‘I barely see her. She’s clearing grass to let the orchids grow, apparently.’

  ‘She’s got a job?’

  ‘Of course not. She’s just volunteering.’

  Curly appeared, trudging up across the beach towards them in a pair of wellingtons that had been worn so thin in places you could see the canvas that held them together. From his right arm a large fish dangled; he had one finger slipped through the gill for purchase.

  ‘Good day?’

  ‘Bass,’ he grinned. ‘Big bugger. Caught three. This one’s for Tina and her . . . you know, wife.’ As if he found the phrase slightly awkward to say. ‘See if they want it for their supper.’

  ‘Thought you were only allowed to take one.’

  ‘Yeah. Obviously.’ He grinned shyly. ‘I wouldn’t go telling a copper if I kept the others for myself. I chucked them back.’

  ‘Believe that, you’ll believe anything,’ muttered Jill.

  ‘Hope you bloody did, Curly.’

  ‘Is Tina OK – after what happened?’ Jill asked.

  ‘Bit shaken up. She’s mentally ill, that Hogben woman.’

  ‘In the car,’ said Jill looking up at him, ‘taking her to the nick, she said Tina had murdered her son.’

  The grin vanished from Curly’s face. ‘He was lost at sea. I know for a fact.’

  ‘Yup,’ said Jill. ‘I went and checked the records when we got back. They said it was an accidental death. Lost overboard.’

  The sun dropped lower. The red light flooded the flat land around them. ‘’Xactly,’ said Curly, and without another word he marched off again, silver fish swinging by his side.

  Alex watched him heading across the road, towards the shack Stella and Tina had rented for their honeymoon. ‘You went back through the records?’

  ‘Course. Mentally ill or not, she was making an accusation of murder.’

  ‘Does it bother you?’

  ‘Course it does. That doesn’t mean there’s anything in it.’

  Alex smiled at her. She was a good copper. ‘Tell me about the Younis family then. What happened to them?’

  The names of the people murdered at the house called The Nest had been on the television this morning. Ayman and Mary Younis; a retired couple in their early sixties.

  ‘Nope,’ said Jill. ‘Fuck off.’

  They sat a little while longer and watched the sky turn red.

  ‘You know I’ll find out anyway.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  Eventually Jill said, ‘It’s driving me nuts. Might as well drive you nuts too.’ She sighed. ‘I wish I hadn’t had the chips now. You’ll be wishing the same, time I’m finished. First thing I’ve eaten since yesterday lunch.’ She looked around. ‘Let’s walk somewhere quieter,’ she said. ‘Quieter’ meant heading south, away from the huts and chalets, towards the industrial bulk of the nuclear power station.

  They walked side by side until they reached the tall boundary fence.

  There had been a Waitrose supermarket delivery due at the Younises’ house at eleven in the morning on the Thursday, Jill said. When the delivery woman arrived at the house, she noticed that all the curtains were closed, upstairs and downstairs, but she didn’t think anything of it, because though she had been working in this area for six months, she had never delivered to this house before.

  She took out her box of groceries and rang the doorbell, but nobody answered. Unsure if the doorbell worked or not, she opened the porch door and went to knock on the door inside.

  The inside door to the Younises’ house had a clear glass panel. The lights were on, but she didn’t look inside at first. She knocked a couple of times, called out, but nobody came, so she leaned forward and put her face against the glass.

  At first she could not make out what she was looking at.

  Sitting at the bottom of the stairs was a woman, legs splayed out on the floor, back against the newel. The driver thought at first she had fallen and perhaps passed out there. As her eyes accustomed themselves to the low light, she realised that the woman was not dressed at all. She was completely naked. The darkness covering her torso was not clothes, but blood.

  Some people panic when they come across scenes like this. Others find a strange calm takes them over, almost as if their mind has been
hijacked. The woman couldn’t explain why she acted so rationally, but she felt inside her pocket and pulled out her mobile phone, switched on the torch and looked again.

  Six

  ‘Colin Gilchrist was the first responder,’ Jill said, looking out over the evening sea. A ferry, navigation lights on, was heading south to France. ‘Poor bastard. On his own. When he got there the woman from Waitrose was back in her van, bawling her eyes out.’

  ‘The victim was Mrs Younis?’

  ‘Yep. It was her. Her throat had been cut. I was the first person from Serious Crime. I went in, kitted up.’

  ‘There was more?’

  Jill didn’t speak again until they reached the far side of the gaggle of fishermen who sat on the beach casting lines out towards the hot-water pipe that took the water from the reactors and pumped it out to sea.

  Jill stopped, sat on the shingle facing the Channel. ‘And then I went outside to look for signs of an intruder and I found Mr Younis at the back of the house. Naked, like his wife. Single gunshot to the neck, right at the jugular. He bled out on the grass, poor bastard. His nose and lips were missing, but forensics say that was probably foxes or badgers. And then there were two dogs. They had both been stabbed.’

  ‘Where were his clothes?’

  ‘In the kitchen.’

  ‘The killer made them undress first, then murdered them?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  The stars were starting to appear now; Venus and Mars were high and bright. ‘See what I mean?’ Jill said. ‘Horrible.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s what we have to do, isn’t it? Go to places like that.’

  Alex nodded. ‘What sort of dogs?’

  ‘Labradors. Why?’

  ‘I just like to have it all in my head.’

  In the disappearing light, Jill looked at Alex. ‘You like to have it in your head?’

  ‘Wrong phrase.’

  ‘Your trouble is you have too much in your head already.’ Jill sucked in air. ‘That’s not all.’

  ‘I didn’t imagine it was.’

  To the east, a fishing boat, port light showing as it headed in to Folkestone. The Channel was busy.

  ‘The man was killed where he was. Mrs Younis was murdered in her bed. The bed was soaked. It was disgusting.’

  ‘Whoever killed her took her downstairs? But they left Mr Younis where he died?’

  Jill nodded. ‘The thing was, the killer had written a message on the mirror in the bedroom in her blood.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kill them all. God will know his own.’ Jill shook her head. ‘It’s psychotic. Like, serial killer stuff. Colin found it on Wikipedia. It’s from the crusades, apparently.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You actually knew that?’

  ‘It was a monk,’ said Alex. ‘These soldiers were going to attack some town where Catholics lived alongside a sect that the pope had declared to be heretics. A general asked the monk, “How do we know which are Catholics? They all look the same. They live alongside each other perfectly happily.” The monk replied, “Kill them all. Let God tell them apart.”’

  ‘God will know his own.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Weird, huh?’

  ‘Prints?’

  ‘Nothing significant yet.’

  ‘This time of year, too. Not going to be easy.’

  Jill knew what she meant without asking. Most of the year it was dead around here, but it was July: high summer, and the tourists were filling the caravan parks that were dotted throughout the marsh and its shoreline.

  ‘How long was Colin Gilchrist alone there?’

  ‘Twenty minutes.’

  ‘Poor lad.’

  ‘Yep. Poor lad. I went home last night and bought a packet of cigarettes for the first time in a year and smoked so many I felt sick.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I better go.’

  ‘You could stay over. Zoë hasn’t seen you for ages.’

  Jill shook her head, looked up the coast towards where the Younises’ house was. ‘Sorry, lovely. Going to be a long day and a half tomorrow. If I stayed here, I know I’d just get pissed up.’

  It would be a long day, Alex thought. They turned and headed back towards the Snack Shack, where Jill had left her car.

  ‘What about the murder weapons?’

  ‘Not found either yet. The gun was a nine-millimetre.’

  ‘Two different weapons. That’s strange. She was moved, and he wasn’t. Two different murderers?’

  ‘Maybe. Someone who had different ideas about men and women. Frankly, we have no bloody idea at all, right now.’

  They walked north, past the solid red brick coastguard lookout station that had been converted into a luxury holiday home, past the contrasting tumble of sheds and wooden outbuildings that were clustered around an old first-class carriage, past the little art gallery that one of the owners ran.

  Jill drove a mint-coloured Fiat 500 which she had hand-cleaned every Sunday. It was parked by the side of the road. The lights winked as she pressed her key fob.

  ‘Did they have any children?’

  They were at the car now. ‘You have a dark mind.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘They have a son, but if you’re thinking it could be him, then no. He has profound multiple learning disabilities. He’s in a care home up in Tunbridge Wells.’

  It was after Jill started the car that Alex had another thought: ‘What had they ordered?’

  Jill turned her head through the open window to look at her senior officer. ‘What?’

  ‘Find out what the supermarket order was.’

  Jill’s head tilted back a fraction. ‘Is this all that, “I like to have it all in my head”?’

  ‘Good luck tomorrow,’ Alex said. She saw the light go on in the bungalow that Tina and Stella were renting. Reaching through the window, she put her hand on Jill’s resting on the steering wheel. Jill nodded.

  —When we first talked, Alexandra, you said there were three incidents which you think might have been responsible for your trauma. Are you ready to talk about what they are?

  —I don’t have any difficulty talking about them.

  —It’s bright. Let me lower the blinds a little.

  —I’m fine, honestly.

  —Go ahead, then.

  —The first was a stabbing. It was over a year ago now. I was the first to arrive at the crime scene. The victim turned out to be a young police constable I knew a little. Anyway, it was obvious he had lost a lot of blood. He was slumped against this bedroom wall and it was dark . . . The thing was, I couldn’t even find where the knife had gone in at first because there was so much of it, everywhere. I knew I had to put pressure on the wound, but I couldn’t even find it. I remember checking for a pulse and there wasn’t one, at least not one I could feel, but I waited with him until other officers arrived – and then the ambulance. It turned out he was still alive, but only just. I remember that feeling of the warmth of his blood. I was kneeling in it and it was soaking into everything I was wearing. When I left the room and went outside into the street I remember the looks of horror on people’s faces because I was literally covered in blood. I had it on my hands and my face. Even in my hair.

  —That must have been awful. What happened to him?

  —He didn’t make it. They weren’t able to revive him.

  —I’m sorry.

  —I’m sorry too. I had never liked him. I remember thinking, if I had liked him more, maybe I would have tried harder to save him.

  —I’m sure it wasn’t like that.

  —Are you?

  —Go on.

  —The second was in a cellar in a house in Gravesend. It wasn’t really a cellar. The homeowner was mentally ill. It was a really
strange place. Over years and years he had dug out these tunnels and chambers under the house. The whole building was unstable. Long story short, I ended up being trapped in one of these chambers with a man who was . . . He was trying to kill me, pretty much. The fight dislodged one of the props that was holding the ceiling on us . . .

  —Jesus.

  —Right? When I say ceiling, it was just bare earth.

  —Jesus Christ.

  —It came right down on top of us. Most of it fell on him, the other guy . . . We were both trapped in there, in all this crap, in complete darkness. They got him out in the end, but he’s paraplegic now. The weight of it broke his back. I was lucky.

  —Jesus.

  —Are you OK? You don’t look great.

  —Sorry. I’m not great in enclosed spaces. They give me the heebie-jeebies.

  —Neither was I. I couldn’t breathe for dust.

  —I was just imagining it. Do you need some water or something? I do.

  —I’m fine.

  —OK. Let’s carry on. And the third?

  —Another sad story. I sent a friend to prison; a fellow officer. During the course of an investigation I discovered that when this man was a boy he had killed his own father. His father had been abusive. He had beaten his mother over years. One day this boy had just had enough and he killed his father. His father had a gun. The boy had found his father’s gun and he shot him with it. At the time there had been an investigation but the murderer was never found. This was in Armagh during the Troubles, so there were a million other things going on. The man’s father was caught up in all that business too. People were getting shot all over the place and people weren’t exactly owning up to things. Nobody imagined it was his thirteen-year-old son, so he got away with it. Except . . . I figured it out and I ended up having to arrest him. He went to prison. He was a good man who was only trying to protect his mother, but he’d got away with it. Because of me he lost his job and his pension and everything.

  —And?

  —That’s it. He’s out now, but I don’t think the same. He used to be a respected man around here.