The Trawlerman

by William Shaw

  ‘Said she was going to get a lift with Bill to the Wildlife Trust. We had a good little chat, her and me.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘You, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’ Alex sighed, made herself a coffee and sat down beside her. ‘Still no sign of the Unknown Male?’

  Jill checked her phone again. ‘Nothing so far. Early yet. I’ll let you know.’ She wiped oat milk from her mouth. ‘I had nightmares too,’ she said. ‘About that bloody starfish.’

  ‘What do you mean, “too”?’

  ‘You. Last night.’ She reached out a hand and laid it on Alex’s and gave a sympathetic smile. Alex looked back, warily.

  —Let me get this straight. You are concerned that you may be deliberately putting yourself into dangerous situations?

  —I wanted to chase after the man. He was clearly hiding for a reason. On a rational level I know it would have been a stupid thing to do. But at that moment I felt . . . I won’t say great, but I felt . . . connected.

  —That’s an interesting word.

  —‘Interesting’ as in ‘revealing’?

  —Let’s turn it around. Do you not feel connected the rest of the time? When you’re with your daughter? When you’re with me, now?

  —Of course I do.

  —But you would feel more connected when you are in a situation in which harm might come to you?

  —You make me sound like some kind of junkie.

  —It’s a question. Why is it important to go to places where you feel harm might come to you?

  —It’s a loaded question. I didn’t go there because I wanted a man in commando gear to creep up on me.

  —But you did want to run after him?

  —I suppose. Fair point.

  —OK. Let’s leave that. I don’t want to push you anywhere you don’t want to go. How are the superpowers?

  —Coming along nicely. Do you believe in ghosts?

  —Have you seen one?

  —I’m not sure. Can I get back to you on that?

  There was a traffic stop on the Dymchurch Road. Alex cycled past the waiting cars and recognised the lanky figure of Colin Gilchrist leaning towards one of the drivers’ windows.

  ‘About six foot tall, dressed in military fatigues,’ he was saying to the driver, a woman who had three children in the car who were craning forward in their seats, trying to hear every word.

  ‘Any luck?’

  Colin Gilchrist smiled shyly when he saw her. ‘Sorry about last time.’ In small, unexaggerated movements, he mimed leaning over and throwing up.

  Stepping back from the roadside to let another officer take his place, he said, ‘Plenty of people say they’ve seen him. Hard to miss because he dresses like a squaddie. It appears he’s been living rough around here for about six weeks. Even a couple of complaints from farmers about him being on their land, but finding him, not so easy.’

  ‘He’s always dressed like that, then?’

  ‘We think it’s a man named Robert Glass. Ex-serviceman, Second Battalion, The Rifles. He was living rough around Folkestone for a while. We’d been aware of him. Minor drug offences.’

  ‘Somebody who knew about guns,’ observed Alex.

  Colin nodded towards the west. ‘If it’s him, I bet he would have trained at Lydd on the rifle ranges.’

  The Lydd ranges were just a few miles away on Dungeness.

  ‘Nice bike,’ he called as she pushed off to head home.

  She reached the Dungeness estate in twenty minutes, sweating hard, and slowed on the uneven concrete track.

  As she passed the bungalow where Tina and Stella were staying she spotted a third figure sitting next to them. She paused and waved, but Zoë didn’t seem to notice her.

  Jill’s Fiat was parked behind the house. Jill had taken one of the pink cushions that she kept on her back seat out of the car and was lying on the shingle slope with her head resting on it.

  ‘Back so soon?’ Alex wheeled her bike to the small brick shed behind the house.

  Jill sat up and removed her Jackie O sunglasses. ‘I’m taking you out for a meal.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Do I have to have a reason? You’re my mate.’

  Alex closed the shed door and walked over to where her friend was lying. ‘What exactly was Zoë saying to you this morning?’

  ‘I ain’t going to lie, Alex. She said she didn’t think you were eating properly and if Zoë, who seems to live on air, is saying that, things would have to be pretty bad.’

  ‘Did she know about this? Did she ask you to talk to me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Because she’s worried about you. Go on then. Put something on. I’m not taking you in that cycling gear.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ Alex said. ‘I don’t feel like being around people.’

  Jill put her sunglasses on and laid her head back on the pillow. ‘I won’t tell you what I found out about the Biosfera scam then.’ And with that, she knew she had her.

  The meal, however, in the nearby town of Rye, did not go well.

  Seventeen

  ‘It was a scam,’ Jill said as she drove. ‘The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau opened a file on Biosfera Reforestation just a couple of weeks ago, it turns out. There appear to be victims right across the country. It’s not a particularly original one, but it seems to have been very effective.’

  Jill drove fast, braking hard for traffic lights and junctions.

  ‘A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Investors were told to keep it on the quiet because the government participation in the scheme hadn’t been officially announced yet, but once that happened they would have a guaranteed return because the Guatemalan government were matching investments with local subsidies.’

  ‘Win-win.’

  ‘Exactly. And, as it happens, the Guatemalan government do have reforestation subsidies and there are plenty of companies benefiting from it, but Biosfera Reforestation wasn’t one of them. Whoever set it up copied and pasted off government websites and companies that were legitimately involved in subsidy schemes to make it look legit. They made sure that the promised returns weren’t astronomical, just enough to make investors think they were being a bit cleverer than the rest . . . that they had found something a little special.’

  They reached Rye; an island of ground in a flat land, an old town of half-timbers, red bricks and cobblestones. Jill found a space in the dockside car park and adjusted the rear-view mirror to check her make-up, then turned in her seat, reached out a hand and placed it on Alex’s knee in the same unsettlingly sympathetic manner she had this morning. ‘There’s something else I need to tell you too. And I’m not sure you’re going to like it.’

  ‘What?’

  She hesitated. ‘Why don’t we talk about it in the restaurant.’

  ‘You’re actually worrying me.’

  The restaurant was in an old stone mill just down the road. It was one of those Italian restaurants with red-and-white-striped tablecloths and waiters carrying outsize pepper grinders.

  ‘Well?’ said Alex when a man in jeans had seated them at their table. ‘What is it you found out?’

  But Jill insisted they had to order drinks first, and then the waiter arrived to take their food order. A couple at the next table were talking now. He was complaining about their babysitter who had turned up late. The woman was asking him not to spoil the evening.

  ‘I’ll have a caprese salad,’ said Jill. ‘But no cheese.’

  The room was full of noise. Alex was conscious of that pressure in her chest; the same feeling she had had on the day she had taken the machete off Mandy Hogben; that unwelcome conviction that something bad was going to happen. She looked round the room trying to figure out what was making her feel like this.

 
‘You OK?’ Jill was looking at her, concerned.

  ‘Zoë’s hanging about with Tina and Stella,’ said Alex evasively. ‘It’s strange.’

  ‘No stranger than her hanging around with a fifty-year-old man who’s been convicted of murder.’

  ‘Something’s wrong with them – with Tina and Stella. I don’t know what.’

  ‘Right now you think something’s wrong with everything.’

  ‘Yes. I know. I’m sorry. Tell me, who reported Frank Hogben missing?’

  Jill looked exasperated. ‘I don’t know, Alex. It’s not what I’ve come here to talk about.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Alex said. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘OK. Listen to this then. This Biosfera scheme actually ran for about eight months, they reckon. There was an office in Guatemala and everything, to make it look legit. The real landowners of the place that was going to be forested turn out to know absolutely nothing about it. The whole thing is an invention.’

  The waiter arrived with Alex’s wine.

  ‘And then,’ continued Jill, ‘two months ago, the website disappeared, the phones went dead and everything went quiet. And poof! There was no money.’

  ‘Who has it?’

  She shrugged. ‘No idea. There were names of people on the company website – which no longer exists – but they were fake. The domain registration details were fake.’

  ‘So all that money Ayman Younis put into it is gone?’

  ‘Looking at his bank records, almost half a million we think now,’ said Jill.

  ‘And there were others presumably too?’ said Alex, looking around the busy restaurant, trying to work out what was making her feel so itchy.

  ‘I’m coming to that,’ said Jill. ‘A nice man at the intelligence unit said Ayman Younis paid his money into a legitimate-looking UK account in the name of Biosfera Investment. That bank account was paying regular amounts out to banks in Gibraltar and Malta, which are tax havens. In turn they were paying out to banks in much more dubious tax havens and so they can tell where their money came from but they have no idea at all where it went.’

  Their order arrived. Alex looked at the seafood spaghetti she had ordered and felt queasy.

  ‘Thing is, they’ve seized bank records for Biosfera Investments and so they have a list of people who’ve put money in. They’re contacting these people over the next few weeks. Most of the investors still have no idea at all they’ve been conned.’

  Alex was only half listening. The restaurant was full now. There were people waiting in line, and that made her want to finish the meal and leave quickly. The couple next to them had finished their main course and the woman was fidgeting as if nervous about something too. She kept looking over her shoulder as if she, too, were expecting something to happen. Alex blinked at her.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘Sorry? No. I wandered off somewhere.’

  ‘I said, one of the investors on the list was Terry Neill. He hasn’t lost anything like as much as Ayman Younis, but a few grand. Are you OK, Alex? You haven’t touched your food or your wine. I’m supposed to be feeding you up.’

  Alex realised her arms were crossed over her chest and she was rubbing her upper arms, as if cold. She unfolded herself, picked up a fork. ‘So. Terry Neill was caught up in this too?’

  ‘And what’s worse, there was another name on the list I recognised too.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Like I said, you’re not going to like this.’

  Alex felt a prickle on the back of her neck. Even the air around her was somehow different. It was just like before at the wedding that Thursday.

  And then the next thing, she was standing, knocking her chair backwards, sending it clattering onto the floor.

  ‘Knife!’ she shouted, loud as she could. ‘Knife.’ She pointed.

  The hubbub of the restaurant was instantly gone. Instead of looking where she was pointing, at the man who was holding a large silver blade, everyone was looking at her.

  Alex blinked. Looked around. There was a look of horror on Jill’s face.

  Behind the man with the long knife, the waitress stood, holding a cake, her face glowing from the candlelight. The sparkler in the middle of the icing showered golden sparks into the air for another couple of seconds, then fizzled out.

  The room was still and quiet for what seemed like an age, until the woman, sitting at the next table with her boyfriend, spoke.

  ‘Surprise,’ she said quietly.

  Eighteen

  —You asked about my superpowers?

  —Yes.

  —I think I’ve lost them.

  —Should I be sorry to hear that, or is that a good thing?

  —I had another premonition last night. Same as the other time. I was out for the evening and I became absolutely convinced that something awful was going to happen.

  —And did it?

  —Embarrassingly, no.

  —But you felt just the same as the time you saw the woman with the knife?

  —Yes. You’re right. Exactly the same. It’s hard to describe. You know that thing about the hairs on the back of your neck standing up?

  —Only this time there was no woman and no knife . . . ?

  —Well . . . kind of. But not. There was a knife . . . but it was just a knife.

  —Have you heard of the term ‘hyper-vigilance’? It’s one of the effects of trauma. When something violent happens to you it affects your sense of time. Typically, you may become unable to put what happened in the past. It’s as if it’s happening right now and you’re still in that moment. Your brain is expecting the traumatic event to happen again and again and again. You’re in a state of constant readiness to fight, or to run.

  —I’m a police officer. Half my job is about predicting whether bad things are going to happen or not.

  —Well . . . exactly. Like you did with the woman with the knife. Why do you think you were right the first time and not the second?

  —I would have noticed her anyway, is that what you’re saying? I would have noticed her whether or not I thought something terrible was going to happen?

  —What do you think?

  —I think I’m probably a pretty good copper to have noticed her when everyone else didn’t.

  —Yes. I think you probably are. I think you’re probably a very good copper. That’s why you’re in this mess.

  —Thank you. Shame about the superpowers, though. They would have come in useful.

  —How are you feeling now?

  —The same.

  —You feel that something terrible is about to happen?

  —Something pretty bloody bad, yes. I do. And absolutely nothing I can do is going to stop it.

  There had been another name on Jill’s list of investors, just like she had said. It had been Bill South’s.

  ‘Again. Maybe not so bad,’ Jill had said. ‘He only lost around thirteen grand.’

  Alex had been shocked. ‘Not so bad? You don’t understand. That’s all the money he has now. He lost everything else. Do you think Bill knows about this yet?’

  And Jill had shaken her head. ‘I knew this was going to freak you out. It’s not your fault, Alex. None of this is anything to do with you.’

  But it was. Because of her, he was not a rich man. After thirty years as a police officer, he had lost his job and his entire pension the day he had been dismissed from the force.

  ‘I am an idiot,’ Bill said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s definitely all gone?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Bill. Jill says the Guatemalan government say they have never heard of Biosfera Reforestation.’

  He sat down on the small weather-beaten bench at the back of his house and put his head into his hands.

  ‘It wasn’t just you. A
yman Younis and Terry Neill from the golf club. They both lost more than you did. Terry Neill is a Professor of Biochemistry, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Does Terry Neill know yet?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’m a bloody idiot,’ he said again.

  She stood in front of him, an awkward witness to his humiliation, torn between wanting to be respectful and wanting to know more. In the end, she asked, ‘Who told you about the scheme?’

  ‘Ayman . . . Terry . . . There were a few people at the golf club who were in on it. It was a conversation in a bar. There will be more names on the list. Tell Jill to check the bank details against the membership list of the golf club. They talked about it all in, like, whispers. I remember Ayman showing me the company website on his phone. I trusted him, you know?’

  ‘And you put everything you had in it?’

  ‘I know. The scheme was going public in September. There was a limit to the size of the fund and everyone knew it would be oversubscribed, so we had to get in early or lose out. It didn’t feel like greed because it was doing something good. It sounds so obvious now, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m an idiot,’ he said for the third time.

  She sat beside him on the bench in the afternoon sun and put her arm around him. ‘I’m so sorry, Bill.’

  It was as if her arm wasn’t around him at all. He sat, stiff as a soldier, watching the afternoon shadows lengthen away from them.

  After a while he said, ‘I wouldn’t mind being on my own.’

  She took her arm away from him and stood.

  ‘I don’t suppose you had any more thoughts about who was on duty the night The Hopeful came in . . .’

  ‘Still on about that, are you?’

  ‘Sorry. Not the time. If there’s anything I can do. Anything.’

  He didn’t answer.

  Zoë came back that evening from God knows where, skin red from the sun below the sleeves of her T-shirt.

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you to put sunscreen on?’

  ‘Skin cancer usually doesn’t show up till you’re old. By 2050 a little cancer is going to be the least of our problems.’ She poured herself a glass of water. ‘What’s wrong with Bill?’