The Trawlerman

by William Shaw

  In the darkness, she cycled out to Curly’s house in Littlestone. Just to be cautious, she took the back roads.

  When she knocked gently, Curly opened the door, peering behind her, checking she was alone. ‘Everything go OK?’ he asked, his voice anxious.

  His living room was surprisingly neat. The furniture was brown, faded by sunlight. It looked like it had been untouched since the 1970s. There were two brass bedpans hanging on either side of the fireplace; above it was a black-and-white photo of a man standing on a trawler. ‘You and Danny on the boat. That was like a big pantomime, then. You trying to scare me into realising how dangerous a trawler can be?’

  ‘Sorry. Stupid idea. Didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘Your father?’ asked Alex, pointing at the photo.

  ‘He was a good bloke, my dad. Before it all went to shit around here. Tea?’

  ‘I thought you might need something stronger. I brought some wine,’ said Alex, taking the bottle Jill had brought her from her backpack. ‘You made the call, then.’

  ‘Just like you said.’

  ‘You said exactly what I told you to?’

  ‘Yes. I told them where the body was, and gave them Terry Neill’s name. Nothing else.’

  ‘What did you do with the phone?’

  ‘Smashed it up and threw it away. Just like you said.’

  ‘And the Mercedes?’

  ‘Took the plates off and towed it up to the scrapyard in Dartford yesterday. All gone.’

  It was a shame. It had been a nice car. She would have liked one like that. A classic, as Terry Neill had said. There would be no record of Alex ever having owned or driven it. Nothing about his account of her giving him the money would tally with the apparent facts.

  Alex cracked the metal cap of the bottle open. For Tina’s sake, Curly had conspired to cover up a murder. For Bill’s sake, she had just done the same. ‘If people think Terry Neill killed Frank Hogben, they won’t come looking for you and Tina.’

  Curly relaxed a little, then went to the kitchen to fetch two glasses, while Alex studied the photo of his father taken before, as Curly said, ‘it all went to shit around here’.

  ‘I should say thank you, then. They charged him?’

  ‘Not yet. But they will sometime over the next twenty-four hours, once they’ve found the money in his house and the mud from Boat Lane woods on his car, which they will do, even if it takes a few days.’

  Curly nodded slowly. ‘Reckon it’ll stick?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Too early to say.’

  ‘But Tina is in the clear?’

  Alex didn’t answer. It was too early to tell that, either. They drank the wine for a minute in silence.

  ‘Was it you who buried the body?’ she asked eventually.

  Curly nodded. ‘It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I hated that man with every bone in my body, even before I found out what he’d been doing to Tina. When Bill South let out that he was abusing her, I almost killed him myself.’

  He drained his glass. Alex poured him another.

  ‘I stopped going out on The Hopeful after that. I couldn’t bear to be around that man any longer. I’d have thrown him overboard, or vice versa. So when he was out at sea, I went to check up on Tina, told her I knew he was harming her. Course, she said everything was fine, he was just a bit moody sometimes. I could see the marks on her neck, though.’ He held up the red wine. ‘They were this colour. He used to choke her.’ Curly put down the glass and held his hand out, thumb and finger parted; he looked at his hand for a while before he lowered it.

  ‘How did you find out, then?’

  ‘She told me it all, in the end, piece by piece. I took my time. Each time he was out on a run, I would know. I’d see the boat go out. So I’d go up and say “Hello, fancy a cup of tea?”, just to make sure she was still OK. It took a long time for her to open up.’

  ‘She described the abuse to you?’

  ‘One time he choked her so long she was unconscious for, like, minutes. It was some stupid argument about her wearing a short dress in the chip shop. He didn’t like it. When she came around he was on top of her, as if he was frightened he’d killed her that time. Which he almost had, I’d guess. He would have killed her in the end. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I was trying to get her to go to a refuge. I’d almost got her to agree to go. I was that close. Then that Saturday, she called up and said something terrible had happened. She was a mess. She told me she was going to kill herself.’

  ‘The day she killed Frank?’

  He scrunched up his mouth for a second, so it looked tiny, just a dark line across his face, then he spoke. ‘I went straight up there with a tyre iron, all ready to have to fight Frank. Scared to hell. I’m not a fighter, Alex. Only, he was dead already, under the car. Frank had found out about how she was having this thing with Stella that morning,’ Curly went on. ‘His mother had seen the two of them together in town a few times when he’d been off at sea, and she’d put two and two together . . . That woman Mandy Hogben is a piece of work. When Mandy told him that, he went straight home and beat the crap out of Tina, and told her he was going to kill Stella. That day he beat Tina and locked her in their bedroom. And she believed that’s what he was going to do: kill Stella. He went out, and then, maybe an hour later, he let her out – all smiles, you know? Asked her what was for dinner.’

  The bungalow was on the main road. It had started to rain again. Alex could hear the sound of wet tyres on the tarmac.

  ‘She said he had blood on his shirt. Tina thought he’d gone and done it to her, you know?’

  ‘Murdered Stella?’

  He nodded. ‘Yep. He was all smug, you know. Wouldn’t tell her nothing. The more she asked him, the smugger Frank looked. He wanted her to think that. I don’t know . . . He’d probably just cut himself doing something stupid to his car. Maybe he put the blood there on purpose to make her more scared. But he was torturing her, mentally, you know? That’s what he did to people. So Tina was convinced he’d done exactly what he’d said he was going to do. He’d killed her lover, the one part of her life that wasn’t entirely shite. And then, after dinner, he goes back to work on his car. All part of the mental game. But then he’s under it, and she, I guess . . . she comes and sees the two jacks, holding that bloody car above him . . .’

  ‘She definitely killed him? Deliberately?’

  ‘And then she called me, because she trusted me and, because as far as she knew, Stella was dead and she had nobody else to turn to. You should have seen her, Alex. He’d done a number on her. Her face was in pieces. Her lips were out here.’

  ‘Did you take her to hospital?’

  ‘Couldn’t. Not the state she was in. The coppers might have come after whoever did it and found him there, dead. So I called up Bill and asked him what to do. He’s a good man. And after that I got rid of his body and I put every penny that cunt had ever given me in the grave with him.’

  Alex nodded.

  ‘You figure it out, Alex. Was Tina right, or not? She thought he’d killed her girlfriend. Far as I’m concerned, he would have killed Tina for real if she hadn’t killed him first. It was just a matter of time, whatever you say.’

  The point about being a police officer, thought Alex, was you never had to answer that question; you had the law to do it for you. She believed in that. She had relied on it all her life.

  ‘Are we square, then?’ asked Curly.

  ‘Yes. We’re square.’

  The question he had really wanted to ask came just as she was at the door, putting on her hi-viz jacket for the cycle home. ‘This man,’ he said finally. ‘You sure he deserves all this?’

  She took her time cycling home.

  Though the rain had stopped, the roads were still wet, and the water thrown up by her wheels soaked
through her. Car lights blared off the wet road. She took the coast path, riding along concrete slabs that seemed to jolt every bone in her body, then rejoining the coast road, cycling cautiously on a surface where water-filled potholes looked like any other puddles.

  The light was on in Arum Cottage when she passed, but she was exhausted and damp, so she continued up the hard track, dreaming of a shower, and was annoyed to find, when she reached the shed, that Zoë had left its door unlocked.

  And by the time she had remembered that Zoë couldn’t have done that, because she was in London, it was too late.

  Forty-eight

  Her helmet protected her from the first blow, but it knocked her sideways and she crashed against something hard and angular. Her balance gone, she fell hard onto to the concrete floor of the shed, and whatever she had banged into clattered down on top of her.

  When she looked up he was there, then he was gone, then there, then gone, then there. The flashing lamp from her bicycle, propped in the doorway, illuminated him for fractions of a second in the darkness. She watched, fascinated, detached, as if she were viewing some grotesque animation rather than a man attacking her.

  What had happened to that ability to predict the future? Her vigilance had deserted her, for better or worse. She had let her guard down carelessly.

  Terry Neill was above her now, swinging fists. A second punch caught her on the cheek, but she was able to turn with it this time, absorbing the force of the blow. When she tried to raise her leg to kick him in the groin she realised what it was that had fallen on her; she had been knocked against Zoë’s bicycle. It had tumbled and was now lying across her legs, trapping her. The man leaned down, grabbed her hi-viz jacket and tried to yank her upright, but her leg was caught under the bike and because he was standing on the frame he was forcing her lower half flat at the same time as trying to lift her. In panic, she screamed from the sudden pain in her legs.

  He must have forced the lock. He had been just inside the door waiting for her all this time. ‘Bitch,’ he screamed.

  He lunged at her a second time, trying again to pull her up. If he pulled any harder, she thought, curiously calm, he would break her trapped leg, the one he didn’t realise he was forcing down with his weight. It was pure fury. In slow motion, she felt parts of her brain fizz; the amygdala sending messages to the frontal cortex. A new clarity emerged. Despite the pain, she arched her back, destabilising him, then at just the right moment kicked out hard under the frame, making him topple. In the flashing light, the moments of blackness were absolute. Disorientated, with nothing to brace his weight against, the bulk of his body sailed forward, over her. In the blinking light she shot an arm up and grabbed him by his shirt collar, tugging him down right on top of her. He landed with a thump, knocking the air out of her, but giving her a new advantage. This way she could hold him close where his arms could do no damage. He struggled to press himself away but in the next second she had an arm around his neck now, locking him down tightly to her.

  He was a university professor, not a fighter, and now that he’d lost the element of surprise, she was the stronger. She was in charge.

  She pulled her arm tighter, the back of his neck in the crook of her elbow, forcing his head into her armpit, and heard him rasp for breath.

  ‘Let go,’ he whined.

  She started to laugh. Only days ago he had lain like this, on top of her. Tired, wet and wrung out from the last few weeks, she laughed like she hadn’t done for a long time.

  She held him a whole minute longer until he stopped struggling, then slowly loosened her grip.

  ‘Bitch,’ he gasped again, so she reasserted her grip a second time, this time a little tighter until she heard him start to choke.

  ‘Don’t ever call me that.’

  When she guessed he had finally had enough, she released him again, pushed him off her, then sat up and pulled Zoë’s bike off her legs and stood, leaving him lying on the floor. She would have impressive bruises in the morning. He too, she hoped.

  She propped the bike back up where it had been, switched off the light, and then stood by the open door. ‘Get out of here,’ she said.

  He sat up, rubbing his neck. ‘You stitched me up. You gave the police some cock and bull story about me killing a man seven years ago.’

  A light came on outside, shining on the ground behind her. She turned to see a man in grey tracksuit bottoms emerging from one of the back doors with a broom in his hand, held like a weapon.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  Alex emerged from the darkness of the shed and did her best to smile reassuringly. In the light she could see he was wearing the same T-shirt he’d been wearing the last time she had seen him. ‘Sorry. Me again. I fell over while putting the bike away.’

  ‘Is that the woman from number seven?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry to have disturbed you again.’

  ‘Your face is bleeding. Are you OK?’

  ‘Is it?’ She held her hand up and touched the cheekbone where Terry Neill had hit her; when she lowered it, she saw blood on her fingers. ‘Just a scratch. I’m fine. Go back to bed.’

  She waited until the man had closed the door behind him, then returned to the shed. ‘Go home, Terry.’

  He was sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor. ‘They took my bloody car away. They took the cash from my house.’

  ‘Yes. If we’re lucky, they’ll start looking into your banking affairs too.’

  ‘I told them you gave me the cash.’

  ‘And if I deny it, as I will, and tell them I have no idea what you’re talking about, who do you think they’ll believe? A police officer who’s always had a stick up her arse, or you?’

  He grunted. ‘You’re trying to set me up for a murder I didn’t commit. I did nothing but treat you well.’

  She took the light off her handlebars and switched it on again, to full beam, pointing it right at his face.

  He stood up, shielding his eyes from the light with his hand.

  ‘You’re framing me for murder,’ he said.

  ‘Because you are a murderer.’

  He stared back at her, pupils shrinking from the glare.

  ‘Let’s get this absolutely straight, Terry. You are a murderer. You killed Bob Glass.’ He blinked at her, scared now.

  He shook his head vigorously.

  ‘Bob Glass was squatting in the field when he heard you and Ayman Younis arguing. I guess that was you telling Ayman he wasn’t ever getting his money back. He would have been pretty hurt, wouldn’t he? When you heard about that, you figured that Bob Glass was the only person with real evidence to identify you as the one who had conned everyone out of their money, so you killed him. Given your past, I don’t think you’d have found it hard buying some street methadone. Something way stronger than he’d have been used to. How did you make him drink it? Did he want to? Or did you force it down his throat? What? Is that “No comment” again?’

  He found his voice again. ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘Isn’t it though? I think it was you all along. I’m pretty sure of that.’

  ‘I told them you gave me the money.’

  ‘And I’ll say you’re lying. Know what? I’ve never put a foot wrong as a copper. I’m as straight as they come. Always have been. I even shopped one of my best friends. You, on the other hand, were a known associate of Frank Hogben, someone who bought drugs from him at the time, someone who lost their job because of their addiction and then lied about it. You’re really asking the police to believe that someone like me would plant money on you?’

  She switched off the torch, leaving them in absolute darkness.

  ‘So which murder do you want to go down for, Terry? A seven-year-old murder of a drug dealer who nobody really missed very much, back when you were an addict and not in a good shape and not in sound mind? Or the premeditated murder of an ex-serv
iceman to cover up a financial fraud? It’s your choice. The more you tell them I gave you that money, or you don’t know where that money came from, the more they’ll dig into your finances. And I know you’ve covered your tracks, but what if they find something, and it all starts to unravel?’

  Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. He was still standing at the back of the shed, his face a dim moon in the blackness.

  ‘I’m going to bed now. Go home.’

  She turned and walked back into the overcast night.

  ‘I thought you were nice,’ he called out from the shed, like a boy who had had his toy taken away.

  ‘So did I,’ she said. Heart still thumping, she made sure she was at the door of her house, and her key safely in it, before she let herself turn to see him slink out of the shed.

  Letting herself in, she made her way through the dark house and upstairs to her bedroom. Through the window, she watched him walking away down the narrow track, bathed in orange light from the power station.

  Forty-nine

  —Do you want to tell me about it?

  —Not particularly. Best not, really.

  —How have you been, then?

  —Pretty good. Excellent, in fact. Last night I slept better than I have in months. I finally feel like I’m getting some control back over my life. Well. Maybe not over my own. I’m not sure I’ll ever get there on that. Over other people’s lives, at least. That’s something, isn’t it?

  The day after Terry Neill had attacked her, Zoë phoned to say when she would be back.

  ‘I already called up Jill and asked if she’d pick me up from the station ’cause I know we’ve got no car.’ Alex heard her mother’s radio on in the background playing pop music so loud she could barely make out what Zoë was saying.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ complained Alex.

  ‘I said, are you and Jill OK? Jill says she thinks you’ve been avoiding her. I told her that was nuts.’

  The one thing she hated about all this was that she couldn’t tell her friend the truth about what had happened.