The Salt Marsh

by Clare Carson

  ‘Don’t look,’ she whispered. ‘It’s an Audi. It must be Regan’s heavies.’

  The Quattro slid past, continued down the road, disappeared in the distance.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Sonny said. ‘Before they come back.’

  She said, ‘Patrick’s place has the smell of a deserted house.’ She tried to catch her breath, but couldn’t, realized she was panicking. ‘Do you think we arrived too late?’

  Sonny shrugged. ‘Maybe he’s at work.’

  ‘Let’s get out of Lydd then find a phone box. I want to try something.’

  They drove to the coast, a straggle of bungalows lining the shore, spotted a telephone kiosk. She jumped out. In luck again, the directory was still intact, the phone in working order. She found the Grogans and this time dialled the number in Rye. She counted the rings. Eight. Nine. Ten. She willed somebody to pick up. They did. She jammed her coins in the slot.

  ‘Hello. Pete Grogan speaking.’ Trace of a southern Irish accent. She took a punt. ‘Hello, Mr Grogan, I was calling to see if I could speak to Patrick.’

  ‘Oh yes, hang on a moment, I think he’s here.’ She had guessed correctly; he had retreated to his parents’ home.

  ‘Sorry, can I ask who is calling?’

  ‘Yes. It’s Sam. I’m a friend of Dave Daley’s. I used to share a house with him in Vauxhall.’

  ‘Oh dear. Poor Dave. So very sad. Patrick has been upset by the news, he’s taken it very badly. Hang on, I’ll find him.’

  She fiddled with the loose change in her pocket while Pete went to fetch his son. Somebody picked up the receiver at the other end.

  ‘Hello.’

  His voice sounded timid. Scared.

  ‘Hello, Patrick?’

  Short silence. ‘Who is it speaking again?’

  ‘Sam Coyle. I live with Dave in Vauxhall... I lived with Dave in Vauxhall. I think we might have met once. Dave showed me around the research lab last year.’

  ‘Yes. I remember.’

  ‘I wondered whether we could meet up. I wanted to talk about Dave.’

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  She had to lie, she didn’t want to spook him, let him know she had been chasing him for days, found his number in the bedroom of her disappeared boyfriend. ‘I spoke to somebody at the research station and they said you were staying with your parents in Rye and gave me your number.’

  ‘Why do you want to talk to me about Dave?’

  ‘It’s just...’ She stammered, taken aback by his defensiveness. ‘I’ve been really upset about his death and I wanted to talk to somebody else who knew him well.’ She stuck her finger in the nine hole on the dial, waggled it around.

  ‘Why do you want to talk to me rather than anybody else who works at the lab?’

  She could hear the agitation in his tone. As he spoke her mind was digging, analysing his reactions, picking over the possibility that Patrick was complicit in whatever Dave had been doing. She tried to keep the wariness from her voice.

  ‘I was going through some of Dave’s old papers. Sorting out his room. I found one of his articles and saw you were first on his list of acknowledgements.’ Dave had told her they were both born in Birmingham, she recalled, both of Irish descent, both Aston Villa fans. ‘I thought I would try and talk to you because I remembered you and he were good mates. I’ve found it so difficult to make sense of Dave’s death.’

  Heavy sigh at the far end. ‘Me too.’

  ‘I’m in Dungeness now with a friend. I wanted to show him the beach. We could drive over to Rye. Meet up at a pub. The Mermaid perhaps.’

  ‘No. Not Rye. Romney. The marsh. There’s a pub called the Owler, out beyond Hope.’

  ‘I know it.’ Beyond Hope, that sounded ominous.

  ‘OK. Six?’

  ‘Six is fine.’

  He replaced the receiver abruptly.

  *

  She clambered back into the Land Rover. ‘Well, at least he’s still alive,’ she said. Then she wondered whether she had tempted fate by speaking her fear. ‘I’ve arranged to meet him at six in a pub out on the marsh.’

  An afternoon to kill. She sat with her head in her hands and tried to work out whether there were any other leads she could find that might guide her to Luke.

  ‘I’d like to visit Alastair.’

  ‘Alastair?’

  ‘He lives in one of the fishermen’s cottages down on Dungeness. He turned up at the meetings we organized.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Luke and me.’

  ‘Of course. Luke.’

  ‘I met him the evening Luke disappeared. I thought at first he was the informer feeding information about me to Crawford, but that was before you worked out that Spyder was the grass. There’s something odd about Alastair, though,’ she said. ‘He’s an old hippy. Drug dealer, I reckon.’

  ‘Could he be part of Regan’s smuggling network?’

  ‘Maybe, but I suspect he’s too small-time to be involved with Regan. Perhaps he’s seen something going on along the beach. He’s sharper than he seems. He’s observant. And he’s...’ She was going to say clairvoyant, changed her mind. ‘He’s perceptive. He’s something of a Magus. A shaman.’

  ‘Sangoma.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Witch doctor.’

  ‘Yes, one of those.’

  ‘I don’t want to visit him then.’ He folded his arms.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I don’t mess with that stuff. Witch doctors.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There was one who lived in a nearby village back home. I had a friend who wanted to visit and ask about a stomach pain, so I went with him to the sangoma’s hut for a laugh, to see what all the fuss was about. He was wearing this feather headdress and did some drumming, went into a trance, called up the ancestors, did a question and answer routine and gave my friend a diagnosis and some medicine. Pretty much as I had expected.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘We were about to leave, but the sangoma told me to wait, and he touched my arm, closed his eyes, went into a trance again. When he opened his eyes again, he said he could see I had a shadow. A ghost. I asked him what the ghost looked like and he described a young woman with long brown hair. I tried to laugh it off, but he said I should have a charm, some magic, to prevent the ghost from stealing my soul. I said no, but my friend was scared and said I had to do it. So I agreed and he asked me to hold my arm out.’

  Sonny lifted his forearm, rolled up his sleeve, revealed the crosses in a band around his elbow.

  ‘He made two cuts,’ Sonny continued. ‘Just here. He rubbed them with sand.’

  He pointed to the first cross – different from the others, less pen and ink, more like a scar.

  ‘I offered to pay for the charm but he refused, and it made me nervous, so I asked him more about my ghost, whether she had a name, an identity. Foreign name, he said, one he hadn’t heard before. Flavia.’

  Sonny’s eyes were welling.

  ‘Your mother?’ she asked. ‘I thought you said she’d run away to England.’

  ‘Ja. It’s what I hoped, it’s what I thought. I still search for her, but the sangoma made me doubt she is still alive.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That was the week before I left home for my military service,’ he added.

  First in his line of crosses, she thought. She glanced at the band, and saw there were two pen and ink crosses that looked as if they had been recently added, sore and raised. Two crosses. The last one Spyder, she was sure. Who was the other one, the one she had first noticed when they were sitting in the Portuguese café on South Lambeth Road? He rolled his sleeve down hastily. A crow alighted on the Land Rover’s bonnet, preened and strutted from left to right, flew away.

  ‘So I am wary of sangomas or people who have supernatural powers of any kind,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid they can do more harm than good. Tell you things you were better off not knowing. But I’ll come w
ith you, if you like. Don’t expect me to join in the conversation.’

  ‘No problem.’ She felt uneasy, a nagging fear that Alastair might say something she didn’t want to hear.

  *

  They parked the Land Rover at the end of the beach track. The concrete mass of the power station loomed, radiated an unnerving stillness, a hobby tumbled around the reactor tower. A weak sun shone through the low cloud, but whatever warmth it brought was whipped away by the onshore wind. They walked heads down against the buffeting, past storm-battered fishermen’s cabins, clumps of fading poppies. Further along the shore, a solitary fisherman sat motionless with a rod and line in front of his military green windbreak like some lone survivor of the apocalypse. They reached Alastair’s cabin; the funt was outside the front door indicating he was in – although the blankness of the windows made her suspect nobody was at home. She knocked on the door, wind chimes clanking above her head, peered through the glass when there was no answer, spotted a movement inside. She waited. The door creaked, Alastair peeped through the crack.

  ‘Sam,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, hello. Good to see you again.’ He pulled the door open, smiled – warily, she thought – then frowned when he saw Sonny standing behind her.

  ‘This is my friend Sonny,’ she said.

  He nodded, surveyed the beach over her shoulder, as if he were searching for somebody.

  ‘Come in for a moment, out of the wind.’

  Inside it was gloomy, the intermittent sunlight failing to reach the interior through the grimy panes. The gusts buffeted the walls, calling down the chimney, whispering through the floorboards, and Sam was reminded again of a ship’s cabin, lurching in a gale. Alastair retreated to the kitchen.

  ‘No tea for me, thank you,’ Sonny said. He stood by Alastair’s crate-top mortuary of bird wings and skulls, looked down at the collection with obvious disgust. Or perhaps it was dread. She was drawn to the desk. The test tube rack contained three glass vials filled with a mouldering greenish semi-liquid substance.

  Alastair emerged, holding mugs of tea, glanced at Sonny. He retreated into a corner of the room. Alastair tipped his head to one side as he handed Sam her cup. ‘Did your boyfriend turn up in the end then?’

  ‘He went to stay with friends,’ she said. She tried to sound offhand, not too concerned, didn’t want to give too much away. ‘It was a misunderstanding after all.’

  ‘Oh right,’ Alastair said. His features dropped, puzzled, realigned themselves. There was an awkward silence that Sam could not decipher. She searched for a safe topic of conversation, a route to the information she wanted, and pointed at the test tube rack on his desk. ‘Is that some sort of alchemical experiment?’

  He nodded, produced a packet of Rizlas, rolled as he talked.

  ‘One of the letters from John Allin in the archive had some details of his research lab. He had these...’

  ‘Test tubes?’ Sam suggested.

  ‘Flasks.’

  ‘Are you hoping to make some gold?’

  He snorted. ‘I don’t think it’s likely. Although, gold would come in handy right now. No. I’m just...’ He stared out the window. ‘I suppose sometimes your life starts... going into negative, a downward descent.’

  ‘When the gold turns to shit,’ she said.

  ‘Exactly. What was it you said? Reverse alchemy. Yeah, that’s it. When you reach a low point, feel like you’re cursed and you have to try and turn your life around, one way or another. Twelve steps. God. Drugs. Whatever it takes.’ He waved his hand at the test tube rack. ‘This is my therapy. I thought I’d give it a go, see if I can get myself out of the slough by concentrating on Allin’s experiments. It gives me something to think about, a ladder, a way of reaching a better place.’ His voice was maudlin. She wondered what had happened to make him so depressed.

  ‘What is in the test tubes anyway?’ She wanted to sound upbeat. It seemed to do the trick.

  ‘Different kinds of plant life. One of Allin’s letters has all the instructions – how to set up your own alchemical laboratory, notes on ingredients and methods. Collect the plants, heat them up, and leave them to brew.’

  He handed her the spliff he’d rolled, lifted a cork-stoppered tube from the rack, swished it in the air. More yellow than green, fizzing, sparkling.

  She toked and said, ‘You can see why Allin might have thought he could make gold out of that. What is it?’

  ‘Nostoc commune. A cyanobacterium. It used to be called witch’s butter, or star jelly because it’s only visible when it swells up after rain, so people thought it came down from the skies when it poured. It’s a strange plant, a survivalist organism. Radiation doesn’t kill it – which makes it a very suitable inhabitant of Dungeness.’

  He shook the test tube again; the yellow matter swirled and she glimpsed Luke’s face in the phosphorescent fronds. She narrowed her eyes and his image disappeared, replaced with her own reflection, coloured golden by the test tube’s contents, distorted by the curve of the glass – a deviant angel.

  ‘Where did you find the star jelly?’ she asked.

  He nodded at the floorboards in the far corner, behind the desk. ‘There’s a trapdoor and a space underneath.’

  ‘Oh. A space under the floorboards.’ She sensed she’d found a thread to pull. She pulled on the spliff, exhaled a cloud of smoke. ‘Can I look?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure. Why not.’

  She followed him across the room, peered over his shoulder as he levered up the boards to reveal an empty cavity, a shallow grave.

  ‘Do you think it’s an old smuggler’s store?’ She wasn’t sure she’d managed to make the question sound innocent.

  ‘Possibly. I don’t keep anything down there, though.’

  He lowered the trapdoor.

  She said, ‘I suppose everybody in this area was involved in smuggling once, one way or another.’

  Alastair walked over to the window. Sonny stepped back when he neared him, watched him from a safer distance.

  ‘Smuggling...’ Alastair stalled, eyes on a container ship drifting along the far horizon. ‘This place is a law unto itself.’

  He twisted his ponytail around a bony finger; the weak sunlight glinted on the steel strands among the black and deepened the lines in his olive skin.

  ‘People romanticize the smuggling now – the Hawkhurst Gang, Doctor Syn – but I would imagine the smugglers were terrifying thugs and most of the inhabitants around these parts were shit scared of them. People didn’t always have much choice in the matter,’ he said. ‘You find yourself in a situation you can’t escape. You don’t necessarily want to be part of it, but what can you do?’

  He swung round, hand groping for a spliff. She passed it to him and asked, ‘Do you think there is much smuggling along this coastline nowadays?’

  The question unnerved him. He tugged on the roach, inhaled, exhaled, obscured his face with a cloud of smoke and then he coughed, wheezed, spluttered, reddened. ‘Oh god, I need my aspirator.’ He scrabbled in his pocket for the blue lifesaver, sucked, pressed and inhaled deeply. Removed the aspirator, toked on the roach again, coughed, switched back to the aspirator. Sam watched him with alarm, and was relieved when he stubbed the spliff and his breathing became less laboured. She assumed his asthma attack had closed down the conversation, but then he pointed out the window in the direction of the lighthouse, and the research station.

  ‘I saw a boat pulled up on the shingle the other day.’ He frowned. ‘It might have been the day you were down here on the beach.’

  ‘You mean that Saturday?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He hesitated. Backtracked. ‘I’m not very good on time. But I do tend to notice the boats around here. This one was small. Room for a couple of people in the cabin. Strange thing... the boat.’

  The boat. She dimly recalled he had mentioned a boat before, although she couldn’t remember exactly what he had said; she hadn’t registered it as an important detail at the time.

  She asked, ‘
What was the strange thing about the boat?’

  The room was silent, a break in the wind’s nagging.

  ‘It was a ghost boat.’

  ‘A ghost boat?’

  ‘A smuggler’s boat. When you know what to look for, you can spot them. Sometimes it’s the vibe they give off, the air of secrecy, but I recognized the lines of this one because I’ve seen similar boats before. I reckon it was purpose-built with a double hull and a large void between the two skins for storage.’

  She scratched her neck. ‘Did you see anybody on board?’

  Alastair shook his head, wheezed alarmingly again, pulled on the aspirator, eyes wide, face sucked in like Munch’s scream, lined and petrified. He inhaled, exhaled. ‘I wouldn’t ask too many questions around here. People mind their own business.’ He dragged his foot along a faint chalk mark on the floorboards – the line of a pentagram. ‘There’s a story they tell here about an informer who was captured by the smugglers,’ he said. ‘They hacked his body to bits and distributed the pieces across the marsh. On nights lit by the full moon, his ghost can be seen wandering the ditches searching for his limbs.’ He glared at her. ‘You’ve got to be careful. You know what happens to witches if they are caught.’

  She twitched. Death by fire, King James decreed, and none should be exempted from the flames. She didn’t say anything, a sickness gurgling in her gut, wondered what he was getting at.

  ‘You have to control your powers, if you want to stay out of trouble.’

  Was that a warning or a threat? She sensed Sonny fidgeting behind her. He coughed, and Alastair looked his way, suddenly conscious of his presence. His eyes locked on Sonny’s face.

  Sonny said, ‘What is it?’ His voice had a timid edge – a child not wanting to ask their parent when they would be back in case the answer was never. He didn’t want to die alone. She moved closer to him.

  ‘Can you see something?’ Sonny asked.

  Alastair nodded. ‘I can see the shadows chasing you.’ His voice was flat.

  Sonny didn’t react, petrified, unable to move, pinned on Alastair’s gaze. She had to rescue him, she couldn’t stand to see him so disturbed.