The Salt Marsh

by Clare Carson

  The house was dark. No movement. No sounds of life.

  ‘I’ll knock,’ Sonny said.

  ‘Spyder’s not the kind of person who would answer, even if he was in. I’m certain he’s not there anyway. He’s working at the Wag.’

  ‘Do you know this Spyder guy quite well then?’

  ‘No. Thankfully.’

  ‘Did you meet him through Luke?’

  ‘I met Spyder first, before I knew Luke. Last September when I started working at the Ballroom. He turned up one evening and introduced himself. He’s a dope dealer as well as a barman. He tends to get everywhere, like a virus.’

  She wasn’t sure Sonny was paying attention, too busy assessing the house, searching for an entrance.

  He said, ‘Over the wall round the back?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Why don’t you stay here, and I’ll go inside and look around.’

  She tutted. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  They clambered over the brick wall into the small courtyard behind the house, littered with upturned tables, broken wardrobes, smashed crockery and three-legged chairs. Spyder had chucked the unwanted rotting furniture out the back when he moved in. Something scuttled.

  ‘Rat.’

  They picked their way across the yard to the back of the house. Sam took the credit card that Barclays had sent her the first term she was at Oxford and slipped it between the bottom and top frame of the sash window. She jiggled the catch free and then wiggled the bottom frame upwards.

  ‘Where did you learn that trick?’

  ‘Jim.’

  He had demonstrated on their back window – emergency measures in case she was ever locked out. She edged over the windowsill. The kitchen was scuzzy; the orange street light cast a sickly glow on the sink full of dirty plates and the tin foil takeaways stacked on the table. She suspected this was more evidence that Luke hadn’t been here for days. He knew how to use a rubbish bin.

  ‘I’m going to look in his room first,’ she said.

  ‘Use a torch,’ he said. ‘Here, take mine.’

  ‘I’ve got my own.’

  She stuck her hand in her pocket; touched her Swiss Army knife and found her torch. The thin beam picked out dirty underpants, dirty mags; Spyder’s scum. She picked her way through the debris, up the stairs, into Luke’s room, sat on the bed and put her face in her hands, overwhelmed.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Sonny was standing in the doorway.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘We’ll work it out. Don’t worry. I’ll go and check the other rooms.’

  She wiped her nose, stood, opened the door of Luke’s cupboard, ran the torch over its contents, spotted his donkey jacket, his prize shirt from Johnsons with the skulls and roses print. His leather jacket wasn’t there; he would have taken it with him to Dungeness. She pictured him, tried to imagine what he would be wearing – biker jacket with the badges on the lapel – nuclear-free zone, Anti-Nazi League, his anarchy and peace Crass badge – black jeans and eighteen-hole DMs. She closed the cupboard, went over to Luke’s desk; nothing there apart from some pencils, a couple of empty film canisters and the shoebox he used to store his favourite photos. She opened the lid. She was top of the picture pile – a black-and-white photo of her sitting by the campfire at the Lookers’ Hut. She hated having her photo taken, she always pulled a stupid face at the wrong moment, but Luke had managed to capture her smiling. She riffled through the pile; a couple of power station shots, close up of a starfish, the Lookers’ Hut, and then a photo that caught her by surprise – a shot of the article she had found lying on the top of Dave’s academic papers in his bedroom cupboard. Distribution of caesium 137 between abiotic and biotic components of aquatic ecosystems. By Simon Burns. The photograph disconcerted her – she had no idea what to make of it. She couldn’t remember him taking it or mentioning anything about it. She stared at the photo for a moment before replacing it in the box with all the others.

  She backed away, lost in thought, swept the beam around the room. The bookshelf held a selection of his favourite authors – Herman Hesse. Camus. Sartre. Orwell. The walls were bare. He didn’t have many possessions, didn’t like to hold on to stuff. Was he the same with people? Spyder’s voice intruded. Maybe he’s got a new bird. She shook her head, she was letting his venom infect her.

  She shone the torch along the bedding, unruffled apart from the dent she had made when she had flopped in despair on the duvet. She squatted down, peered under the bed. A dirty sock gathering dust and hair. An A4 notebook. She stretched, hooked the wire spiral with a finger, pulled. Unused, but half the first page had been ripped off. She directed the beam at the paper, the torch caught the indentations of a pen on the page behind the missing half. Bingo. She almost shrieked with glee. Somebody had written what looked like a telephone number with a degree of pressure on the top page, as if they were writing under stress, determined to get the number right, and then had torn it out, leaving the indentation underneath. She leaped over to the desk, grabbed a pencil and scribbled over the lines to reveal them, held the paper at an angle to the torch beam. P. Grogan 01797 66364. Grogan. The name sounded familiar, but maybe she was mistaken. She certainly recognized the area code – Romney. She bubbled – a breakthrough, a clear lead to Luke.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In here.’

  He was in Spyder’s room, studying a small black notebook.

  She said, ‘Look at this.’

  He glanced up, moved as if to put the notebook in his pocket, changed his mind, and left it by the side of Spyder’s grotty bed.

  ‘He’s a junkie,’ Sonny said. ‘I found his works.’ He pointed to the bedside table and an open case cradling a syringe.

  ‘Well, he’s a dealer, so it’s hardly surprising. But look what I’ve discovered.’ She waved her efforts with the pencil triumphantly under his nose.

  ‘It’s a name and a Romney phone number. I found the notebook under Luke’s bed. I bet you anything it’s the number of the person who works at the power station. The man he arranged to see on Saturday.’

  ‘Great. We’re...’

  His sentence was interrupted by a crash from below. Furniture banging. Plates smashing on the floor. Sonny’s hand went straight for the inside pocket of his jacket. A scream cut into the air. He drew the Browning.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. Jesus, he really was trigger happy.

  The scream was answered by another. And another.

  ‘Cats,’ she said.

  ‘Is it?’

  A hiss, a scuffle. Sonny’s arm relaxed, he replaced the gun in his jacket.

  She said, ‘I left the window open. They’re probably fighting over the remains of Spyder’s chicken tikka masala.’

  A mangy specimen ran off as they entered the kitchen. Sonny scooped the surly beast sitting on the kitchen counter into his arms and cradled it like a baby. He tickled its head and it purred contentedly.

  ‘I love cats,’ he said.

  ‘Me too.’

  *

  She heard the distant chimes of St Paul’s striking midnight as she clambered into the van. Too late to call the Romney number; that would have to wait until the morning.

  ‘I’m turning into a nocturnal creature,’ she said. ‘I only sleep during the day. What about you? Don’t you sleep?’

  ‘I don’t need much sleep.’

  She gave him a sceptical look.

  ‘Military training,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And a little bit of poor man’s toot as well.’

  That didn’t bode well, she didn’t fancy having to deal with him when he was having an amphetamine-induced psychotic attack with his hand on his Browning.

  ‘Might be better if you gave it a break. The speed. Rots your brain cells. Makes you paranoid.’

  ‘OK. You’re right.’ He was so submissive. It could go to her head, the power. She’d never experienced it before, never wanted to order anybody about, bend them to her will. She c
ould be an irritating smartarse, she knew, but it was a product of her determination to avoid doing what anybody else told her rather than a desire to dominate.

  ‘Why don’t you give me the toot so I can look after it and make sure you don’t stuff any up your nose without thinking.’

  He nodded, handed her a fold of paper. She wound the window down and emptied the packet outside; the crystal grains whirled and glittered in the street light, a decaying city snowglobe.

  ‘Oh man,’ Sonny said. ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘If the Old Bill stop us and find a packet of speed, they won’t even have to bother planting something on us to haul us down the cop shop.’

  He curled up in the front seat like an admonished child and she felt mean. She glanced at him and smiled, he caught her eye and smiled back. She looked down and caught sight of his forearm, bare, sinewy below his rolled-up sleeves, a band of pen and ink crosses like an incomplete bracelet near his elbow. Or were they gravestones? One cross for each of his victims? She blinked, her stomach tightened. He sat up, pulled the shirt cuff down. But not before she had spotted the last cross in the line, more recent than the others because the skin was raised and bruised around the lines, like a grave that had not been filled long enough for the earth to settle. She shivered. Roger was right, she could be quite naïve sometimes. She’d bought the soft, submissive guy under the hard nut exterior act; it was just as likely that he was leading her on, and she was the one who was following meekly.

  ELEVEN

  THE SNAIL WAS sitting on the doormat. She lifted it gently, carried it outside, noticed the dextral spiral of its shell as she placed it gently in the gutter, returned inside. The answering machine flashed – two blinks. Sonny tactfully removed himself to Dave’s room. She took a deep breath, pressed play. First message from Liz.

  ‘Sam, are you there? You’re never there these days when I want to talk to you. I’ll try again later.’

  Seriously, Liz was accusing her of being unavailable. She pressed erase. Played the second message.

  ‘Sam, it’s Jess. I don’t suppose you could come over tomorrow, could you? I’ve got something for you.’

  *

  She watched the moon through her bedroom window as it edged behind the rusty struts of the Oval gasometer. She gave up the search for rest. Sonny was sprawled across Dave’s bed, slumbering peacefully. She tiptoed down the stairs, dialled the Romney number she had found in Luke’s room. Grogan. Where had she heard that name before? Nobody picked up. Not reassuring. She crept to the kitchen, brewed a saucepan of thick coffee as the grey morning light slipped in.

  Eight a.m. The phone rang. She ran and grabbed it so Sonny didn’t wake.

  ‘Hello, Sam. Sorry to call early. I wanted to make sure I caught you in.’

  The therapist.

  ‘I’m on my way out,’ Sam whispered.

  ‘Sam, I wanted to go over something with you quickly.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’m worried about you and I’m trying to help you see what’s going on here.’

  ‘Look, maybe...’

  ‘Do you remember we had a conversation about the event that precipitated your crisis at university?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You told me that a man walked up to you on Cornmarket and he said he knew you were Jim Coyle’s daughter.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wanted to go back over this ground very quickly, because what I want you to see, Sam, is...’

  She flipped her mind back to that event in the spring of the previous year; the strange man on Cornmarket who had left her feeling marked, caused a crisis. But then she hadn’t heard or seen any further signs of anybody on her tail, shadowing her. Piece by piece she had rebuilt herself: the house in Vauxhall, Dave, archaeology in Dungeness, the Lookers’ Huts, Luke. A wall against the strangers whispering in her ear, the spooks and counter-spooks; knicker sniffers. It had worked, she thought; kept them all at bay. Then she had heard the whistle on the phone and Luke had disappeared. And now, as the therapist encouraged her to recall the Cornmarket event again – I know you. You are Jim Coyle’s daughter – she wondered whether she had been under surveillance all along, ever since that day. She dismissed the idea, it didn’t make sense. Not entirely anyway. The therapist was still yabbering in her ear; Sam wasn’t sure how much of the conversation she had missed.

  ‘... I’m trying to help you understand these anxieties, your fears about people watching you, eavesdropping on the phone – these are ways of holding on to your father. His life. It’s a denial of his death.’

  ‘Yeah, I see what you mean.’ She needed to wrap up this pointless conversation, get on the road, find out why Jess wanted to see her.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve found it helpful. You’ll need to process what I’ve been saying.’

  ‘Yes. Thanks. I’ll think about it. I have to go now.’

  ‘OK. We’ll talk more at our usual time.’

  ‘Right. OK. Bye.’

  She replaced the receiver, mind elsewhere, arguing with herself about leaving a front door key for Sonny, concluded it was no greater risk than letting him sleep in Dave’s bed, dropped the spares on the kitchen table, left the house, headed for the South Circular in the van.

  The silver chopper parked on the verge in front of the house meant Jess was at home. Sam examined the panes of glass in the front door as she fiddled with the key; the tiny etched schooners that once all sailed the same way were now sailing in opposite directions. Ships that had passed in the night. She pushed the door. Jess ran down the stairs to greet her.

  ‘I got your message,’ Sam said. ‘So I came over. The ships...’

  ‘Is it obvious?’

  ‘Oh. You did it. What happened?’

  ‘I had a party. It got slightly out of control. I wasn’t paying much attention when the glazier came round to repair the damage. I doubt whether Liz will notice. Interior decoration has never been one of her preoccupations.’

  ‘Well, if somebody had spray-painted “Shakespeare is shit” across the front room she might have been annoyed. But mainly because of the sentiment rather than the deed.’

  ‘Liz just phoned, anyway,’ Jess said. ‘She wanted to know if I’d seen you, in fact. She’s worried you’re not eating properly. She says she sent you a postcard with a recipe on it.’

  ‘What’s that all about? She never cares what I eat when she’s here, so why is she worrying about it now that she’s in Greece?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she’s afraid you’ll go off your rocker again and won’t go back to university in October.’

  ‘I didn’t go off my rocker.’

  ‘So what if you did anyway. There’s nothing wrong with going off your rocker. I mean, why wouldn’t you go off your rocker? We had a mad dad doing a fruitcake job and he dies suddenly just as you’re about to go to university. Of course you go off your rocker. We’ve all gone off our rockers a bit since he died. We’d be mad if we didn’t.’

  Jess was shouting. She didn’t usually shout. Jess was the easy-going one of the family.

  ‘Shall I skin up?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Yes. No don’t. That’s been playing on my mind too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Smoking a reefer on Jim’s grave the other day.’

  ‘What was wrong with that?’

  ‘I didn’t want to be disrespectful to Jim.’

  ‘I doubt whether Jim would mind you smoking on his grave. He didn’t object to you doing it when he was alive.’

  Jess was rubbing her hands, face distressed. Sam couldn’t think of anything to say to make her sister feel better. She licked and joined a couple of Rizlas.

  Jess said, ‘You’re right, though, Jim didn’t object. He only ever gave me one lecture about smoking. Did I tell you what he said?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He said he was hardly in a position to pontificate about the risks of smoking, given the amount he drank. But what he wanted me to know was that half the
dope dealers in London are touts.’

  ‘Touts?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She inhaled, blew out. ‘Narks. Grassers. The cops are letting them deal in exchange for information.’

  ‘What sort of information?’

  ‘Anything they can squeeze out of them.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Seriously? I did. But it was useful to hear Jim confirm it, and remind me to be careful around dealers, especially small-timers, because they are the ones most desperate for cash.’

  ‘Right.’

  In her head she compiled a list of dope dealers she had said too much to recently. Dungeness Alastair was top of the list.

  Jess said, ‘Jim was always fairly pragmatic; he knew he couldn’t stop us smoking, or you and your protests. He never tried to intervene, so long as we didn’t get ourselves into too much shit.’

  Sam inhaled, tried to crack her jaw, blow a smoke ring. Failed. ‘Why did you want me to come over anyway?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’ She dug in her pocket. ‘Harry dropped a note round for you yesterday morning. He knocked on the door and asked whether I could make sure you got it early today. I said I’d give it a go. He told me not to mention his name if I spoke to you on the phone.’

  Sam unfolded the paper: ‘Meet me at the allotment Friday afternoon.’

  Perhaps Harry had sorted the file – the thought cheered her.

  ‘Whistle-stop visit, I’m afraid. I’d better be moving, I’m supposed to meet Harry this afternoon.’

  ‘Is something going on or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘No. Don’t ask.’

  ‘I won’t then.’ She paused. ‘But if there is anything you want to talk about, you’d better tell me now. I’m going down to Cornwall with a couple of mates tomorrow. We’re riding the bikes down, doing a camping tour of the coastline, so I’m not going to be around for a week or so.’

  Sam opened her mouth, let the smoke drift and curl in the window’s light.

  ‘Sam.’

  She jolted. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘I said, is there anything you want to talk about?’

  ‘No. No, I’m fine. I’d better go now anyway.’