The Trawlerman

by William Shaw

  ‘This is your kind of penance, you mean?’

  ‘I don’t really go for the religious thing, but yes, in a way.’

  He thought for a minute. ‘Find another way. I don’t want to be part of this.’

  ‘Think of it as a favour. I won’t tell anyone what you did. Just do this and I’m gone from your life.’

  ‘You want to give me thirteen thousand pounds, and for me to give it to him?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘For me. Just as a last favour.’

  He finished his glass; squinted at her. ‘If I was to do that, it wouldn’t prove anything at all. Just that I’d pretended to be someone who knew where his money was.’

  ‘There’s nothing at all linking you to the money, for better or worse. But he’d believe it was you because you are from the golf club. You knew Ayman. I believe it’s you. He would too.’

  He shrugged. ‘He’s not stupid.’

  ‘No. He’s not. But I think he’d actually believe it. The thing about Bill is that unlike me, he always thinks the best of people.’ She picked up his glass. ‘Let me get you another one while you think about it.’

  She returned to the bar and got him another drink.

  ‘If I do it,’ he said when she sat down again, ‘you never come back to this club again.’

  ‘What if I suddenly discover the joys of golf?’

  ‘Not here. Ever.’

  She nodded. ‘OK. Deal.’

  ‘No electronic transfer. Cash only. Nothing you can turn around and try to pin on me.’

  ‘I can’t just go to the bank and take out thirteen thousand in cash.’

  ‘Find a way. And I don’t want you bringing the money to my house.’

  ‘You’re quite paranoid, aren’t you?’

  ‘And I’m not coming to yours, either.’

  Again, she nodded. ‘You sure about this?’

  ‘Not really. So where can we meet? Somewhere quiet where nobody’s going to see me.’

  She nodded. ‘Agreed. Do you know a place called Boat Lane?’ she asked. And she described the place in exact detail.

  On her way out, she took a twenty-pound note and placed it in the yellow charity box on the table; the one that Ayman Younis must have put there. When she left the room she was sure she could hear him laughing, but didn’t dare look back because she wouldn’t know what she would do if she did.

  —You say you’ve changed in the last few weeks. In what way?

  —I’m about to do something that would have been unthinkable to my old self.

  —Is that good?

  —You tell me. I’ve never felt less certain of something in my life. I’m letting someone who I believe has committed a terrible crime get away with it.

  —How terrible? You know you probably shouldn’t tell me. If you tell me about a crime, I’m not obliged to keep that confidential.

  —Don’t sound so nervous. I’ll spare you the details. Remember I told you about that man I sent to prison?

  —The one who likes birds?

  —He’s a good man. Best man I’ve ever known, really. He always looked out for Zoë, from the moment we knew each other. I let him down before by doing what I thought was right. I know he was very hurt by that. I want to do something good for him, but I don’t think the old me would have ever done something like this.

  —I can’t pretend to understand what you’re telling me, but I do know that at the heart of this is empathy. You care very much about what happens to this man. Empathy is good.

  —Maybe you think so in your profession. In mine, I’ve never been convinced. If empathy means we only do good to the people we know, what good is that? Know what? I’m actually kind of sick of empathy. Empathy for one person means we value them over the people we can’t see. We’re just looking out for our friends and family. That’s like the mafia. I don’t want empathy. I want some rationality, for a change.

  —Rationality isn’t going to help you. If you’re feeling that kind of empathy for this man, maybe it’s like that part of you that you’ve kept under the skin for so long that’s coming alive again.

  —Maybe. I’m not so sure I like it, though. I miss my old, cold-hearted self who knew how she felt about everything and knew exactly what she was supposed to do. Why are you laughing?

  It was raining when Curly delivered the car to her door. ‘It’s a classic,’ he said.

  ‘I bet it absolutely soaks up petrol,’ complained Zoë.

  A twenty-seven-year-old gold Mercedes estate. ‘I like it, though. I can see myself in a car like that.’

  ‘I said we should get an electric car.’

  ‘It’s what we can afford. We’re going to have to tighten our belts a little, one way or another. Is that rust?’ Alex peered at the sills.

  ‘It’s a bargain, that’s what it is,’ said Curly.

  ‘I don’t see why we need a car at all, Mum.’

  Curly handed her mother the heavy old key. ‘Don’t worry, Zoë. We’re just taking it for a test drive, love. I somehow doubt your mother is going to like this one.’

  ‘We’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Don’t I get a say on which car we buy?’

  ‘No,’ said Alex, getting into the leather driver’s seat. She put the car into gear and moved away, turning the big wipers on to clear the rain from the windscreen. As she passed the new lighthouse, the wheel dipped into a pothole, and the sump cracked against the concrete track.

  ‘Careful,’ said Curly. ‘I hate to see a car like this treated badly.’

  After that, they drove, north, neither saying anything.

  She dropped Curly at his house. It was already evening by the time she turned off a lane in woods just outside Ashford and drove cautiously down a hundred metres of uneven track beneath the trees, to a place where it was wide enough to turn the car around, then switched off the lights and waited.

  The woods were thick and old. They smelt of decades of rot. Behind the silhouetted trees, small chinks of pinky blue sky broke into the blackness.

  Terry Neill was late. She watched his headlights shining through the trees as they came towards her.

  When he was alongside her, he rolled down the window. ‘Why here, of all places?’

  ‘Private,’ she said. ‘Out of public view. Like you wanted.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  She got out, and stepped into fresh mud, loosened by the day of rain.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, looking down. He was wearing white trainers. ‘Come on then. Get it over with.’

  ‘Come and get it then.’ She had the money waiting for him in a Sainsbury’s shopping bag in the boot. He tiptoed towards the car. Before taking out the bag, he lifted a couple of the wrapped bundles and flicked through them. When he’d looked enough, he waddled through the wet soil with them and put them in the back of his own car.

  ‘When will you do it?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe at the weekend.’

  ‘Sooner,’ she said. ‘He’s about to sell his house. There’s no time to be lost.’

  ‘And then we never see each other again.’

  ‘That’s not soon enough.’

  ‘Nice car, by the way,’ he said as he opened his car door. ‘It’s a classic.’

  She washed the mud off at the twenty-four-hour BP station in Ashford, and drove back towards the coast.

  When she got home it was dark, and Zoë was sat on the couch on her own watching TV.

  ‘Where’s the car?’

  ‘I decided it wasn’t right for us,’ she said. ‘The petrol consumption was too high.’

  ‘Told you,’ said Zoë.

  That night she slept for the first time in what felt like weeks. When she woke, thick-headed, as if she had a hango
ver, it was to a steady, welcome drizzle, blowing in from the sea in grey waves. ‘Oh Christ,’ she said out loud. ‘What the hell have I done?’ But Zoë was already up and out of the house.

  Forty-six

  On the following Saturday she and Zoë walked down to Arum Cottage with a pot of coffee, half a dozen eggs, and a loaf of bread that Zoë had made. They walked with a big fishing umbrella covering both of them. Summer had turned into autumn. There was an Under Offer sign outside now. Rain was cascading out of the bird bath onto the stones around him.

  ‘Did you hear anything from Mr Neill?’ she asked when he let them inside.

  ‘Guess what? Not a thing,’ said Bill.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Zoë dumped the bread onto his kitchen work surface.

  Alex put her hand on Zoë’s head and stroked her short hair. ‘Just a man who owes Bill some money,’ she said.

  ‘That’s so unfair. Is it a lot?’

  ‘You could say so,’ said Bill.

  ‘That’s horrible.’

  ‘He’s a very horrible man. Why don’t you call him, Mum, and tell him to pay it?’

  ‘Because I know exactly what he’ll say. He’ll say, “What money?” He must think very little of me.’

  Bill put his arm around her shoulder. ‘He thinks very little of everyone but himself.’

  ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ said Zoë, looking from one to the other.

  ‘That’s good,’ said her mother. ‘It’s much better if you don’t.’

  Bill changed the subject onto coal tits. It was September. The migrations were in full swing already. Zoë started arguing about the reasons why the continental variations of the species were turning up in larger numbers, which was, Alex guessed, exactly what Bill had intended. And then Zoë went on to say that Kenny Abel had seen a Eurasian treecreeper up at the wildlife sanctuary. ‘That’s, like, a mega-find,’ she said.

  ‘A what?’ interrupted Alex. Zoë didn’t bother explaining.

  Alex and Bill ate scrambled eggs with mackerel that Curly had brought round. Zoë just nibbled her homemade bread.

  ‘When are you going to exchange?’ asked Alex eventually.

  ‘Don’t know. The client wants to do everything in a hurry.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ asked Zoë.

  ‘I’ve lived round here almost all my life,’ said Bill. ‘I don’t know, exactly.’

  The conversation stopped. Alex pushed bread around her plate to soak up what was left there but no longer felt hungry enough to put it into her mouth. On the way back, clutching the half-eaten loaf, Zoë said, ‘I didn’t want to cry in front of him, so I didn’t.’

  When she got back home, she packed herself a lunch from the rest of the loaf and asked Zoë if she could borrow the binoculars she had given her for her seventeenth birthday.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You don’t need them today. You’re going up to London to visit Gran.’

  It was true. She was sending her daughter up to London for the day; she would spend the night and come back on the train in the morning. Jill had agreed to give her a ride to the station.

  ‘And your poncho.’ The camouflage one that Zoë had bought with her own money, which she used to improvise her own hide with.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going looking for a Eurasian tree-sneaker. My own mega-find.’

  Zoë didn’t even bother to correct her.

  At the Dungeness light railway station, Alex bought a return ticket and waited on the platform for the 12.40, which arrived, disgorging only a handful of tourists. The season had ended. Soon it would be quiet again here. Ducking down, she pulled herself into the small wooden compartment and thought about the day she had seen Stella and Tina arrive on the same train.

  The little engine eventually tugged them around the big loop, across the stones, back towards the edge of the estate. In twenty minutes she was at New Romney station, next to the edge of the golf course. A family got off with her. She waited until they had disappeared into the station building before setting off in the opposite direction, walking along the narrow railway track.

  Away from the road, the land opened out. It took her a little while to find the right spot, a rise of land to the east of the course, hidden by gorse bushes. Nobody had seen her. She watched Terry Neill arrive at around two o’clock, as he always did. He had made new friends now. Today he was wearing a yellow shirt that made it easy for her to keep an eye on him.

  At the sixth hole, she opened her Tupperware and ate a cheese sandwich, drank a cup of coffee from her flask.

  The eighth hole of the warren course was closest to where she was hiding. She watched them approach. Terry was playing with two men she didn’t recognise, both older than him. She could hear them all laughing when Terry mis-hit a shot into the rough alongside the railway track.

  The last of their group was teeing off again when she saw the first blue light. A police car moving at speed down the Dymchurch Road. Then a second.

  She watched the two cars speed past the golfers towards the centre of New Romney, disappearing behind the houses.

  It seemed to take an age before she saw the police officers emerge from behind the red brick clubhouse, almost half a kilometre away. They seemed in no particular hurry.

  A couple of times they stopped to ask other golfers for directions. Watching them through Zoë’s binoculars, Alex recognised Colin Gilchrist. He was talking to the women she had talked to the first time she had visited here. One of them was pointing straight towards the eighth hole. It was the former superintendent. Good for her, thought Alex.

  She watched the officers walking towards Terry Neill; the group he was with stopped their golf and looked at each other. Only Terry might have had an inkling of what was happening, but he didn’t try to run.

  The rest of the group watched, shocked, as the officers led Terry away, leaving his clubs unattended at the edge of the rough. They stood for a long while, as if dazed by what they had just seen happen, even after the cars had travelled back up the road past them with Terry inside.

  Instead of completing the round, they put their clubs in their trolleys and wheeled them back towards the clubhouse, as if the whole day’s sport had somehow been ruined.

  When they had gone, Alex finished her flask of coffee, savouring every sip, then packed up and walked back to the train station in time for the 3.45 home.

  Forty-seven

  Jill arrived at around nine in the evening, in the red suit she sometimes wore for work. She was carrying a plastic bag from Tesco Metro as she made her way across the uneven ground in matching red heels. ‘Something awful. I wanted you to know before you heard it on the news.’

  At the back door, Alex tried to sound surprised. ‘What?’

  ‘They are investigating your boyfriend for the murder of Frank Hogben seven years ago.’

  ‘Terry Neill?’

  ‘Yeah. I know. Bizarre, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ex-boyfriend. Not even that. One-night stand.’

  Jill was all sympathy. She put down her plastic bag, with a tell-tale clink of glass against the concrete door step, and flung her arms around Alex, squeezing her tight. ‘You poor girl. Did you know that Terry Neill used to be a smack-head? Frank Hogben was his dealer.’

  ‘Oh my God. No. Really?’

  ‘They just dug up Frank Hogben’s body. He never disappeared at sea at all. He was buried up in the woods off Boat Lane in Ashford.’

  ‘Has he confessed?’

  ‘We haven’t charged him yet. They questioned him this afternoon. We’re still making the case. God. To think of that. You must find this all so disturbing.’

  ‘I do. How did all this happen?’

  ‘Last night there was a call to Crimestoppers. It was a man’s voice, but he didn’t identify himself. He gave the location of Frank Ho
gben’s body and the name of the person who murdered him, that’s all.’

  ‘Any idea who the man who called was?’

  ‘No idea. Thing is, though, we found the body this morning up near Ashford in some woods, just where the guy had said it was buried. And they found, like, three grand in cash buried with him . . . Can I come in? I brought a bottle.’

  She fished it out. Alex was touched. Normally Jill preferred pink wine; for Alex she had bought a nice red.

  ‘Forensics say the grave had recently been disturbed. Like . . . dug up. The notes were mostly those old twenties. They’re going out of circulation this year. We’re working on the theory that whoever buried it realised they’d be worth nothing in a few months.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Alex.

  Alex wondered where Neill had stashed the £13,000 she had given him. She doubted he would have banked it yet. They would search his house; soon, if they weren’t already doing so. When they found the money, it would not take them long to discover Curly’s forged notes among them and to match some of the numbers on those twenty-pound notes to the ones they had dug up at Boat Lane woods.

  ‘Can I stay the night? Can I? I miss us just talking like we used to? I really miss you at work and everything. It’s not the same.’

  Alex stepped forward and returned the hug. ‘Soon,’ she said. ‘Not tonight. OK? I have things I need to do.’

  Jill stood there, crestfallen. ‘It’s OK. I get it. You’re still in a vulnerable place.’

  ‘In a way you’re right, yes. I am in a vulnerable place. Thanks for telling me in person. I love you, Jill, you know. You’re such a pal.’

  ‘Soon then? Promise?’

  ‘Yes. Very soon.’

  ‘Keep the wine. It’s OK. You’ll probably need it more than me.’

  Alex watched her drive away, then took her bike out of the shed and locked the door behind her.

  The advantage of not having a car was that her journeys were invisible. A car was traceable by the automatic cameras that stood along almost every road now. A bike was not.