‘I always had a soft spot for you. Lovely little thing, you were, not scared of anything.’ Bromyard bit his bottom lip. ‘It wasn’t fair how it went. You couldn’t help being keen on… girls and that.’
‘What do you mean?’ Freddy knew what he meant. Bromyard had found out she was gay. She didn’t care who knew, but who had told him? Fred.
‘Your dad came to see me after he made you go. He told me everything. I said it was wrong of him. How could he do that to you? What with him, with me. It wasn’t kind.’
‘You obviously didn’t know my father. He didn’t do kind.’ Freddy was getting angry now. ‘My dad believed the only kind of love was in the Bible. He was a good Catholic boy.’ How dare this stranger tell her what to think about her own father?
‘Fred was good, really. He kept his best side hidden. I’m glad he isn’t around for this Munday business – it would have broken his heart.’ David Bromyard held up the hand with the ring on what would have been the wedding finger, were it on his left hand. He licked his lips. Freddy had never seen someone look so terrified. ‘Fred gave me this. One for him,’ he stammered. ‘One for me. It was the nearest thing.’
‘Why did Dad give you a ring?’ Freddy heard whistling in her ears. All the presents her dad had given her were fishing related. He gave Reenie household stuff, a washing machine, vacuum cleaner, iron, gifts designed to service his own life.
The ticking clock merged with her heartbeat. A sonar signal for evidence of a wreckage. Of drowned souls. Lives lost. Lost lives.
‘Fred and me, we were… together. I loved him.’ David Bromyard spoke with gigantic effort.
‘Together? Dad didn’t have friends.’ When she’d told Sarah that, Sarah had called her dad a sociopath. The air was like sheet steel, convex, concave.
‘Like you and Margaret McKee.’ Bromyard was tomato red. ‘Fred said he loved me. He said it just the once. After he threw you out. I said he was wrong. Why couldn’t he tell you about us? He loved you, he wasn’t so good with Andy. He’d ask me what presents you’d like, he said I was clever, like you. I suggested books about the sea. Malcolm Saville, Little Tim stories.’
‘That’s not true.’ Freddy thrust the carrier at Bromyard. ‘This is shit.’ She fumbled with the door. ‘Go. Now.’
‘…Fred wouldn’t tell you kids. We fell out over it. I’d come back from sea and he was waiting on the dock.’ The choking sound again. ‘Freddy, your dad liked it with blokes. I wasn’t the first. I think I was the last.’
‘My dad’s not here to defend himself. Those rings are two a penny. His ring belonged to my grandfather. Andy will leave it to his son.’ Freddy made it up as she went along. She shouted, ‘Take Roddy home to your wife.’
‘I hated the hole-and-corner thing, slinking in darkness, and Fred felt disgusted after.’ Bromyard was crying. Obscurely, through dismay, Freddy wondered if Bromyard was the first man she’d seen cry. The boys had been stiff upper lip at her mum’s funeral.
Her dad had cried when she told him about Mags.
‘…in this industry you’ve got to be a real man. Fred and me were real. If we’d come out, that was our livelihoods sunk. We’d have been drummed out. We had to keep it quiet. I still do. Apart from stuff on those apps sometimes, I’m with my wife. I loved Fred.’ Bromyard spoke between sobs.
‘This is such crap. My dad was the personification of homophobia.’ Freddy wouldn’t normally think of taking on a man of Bromyard’s build who, although about seventy, could go a few rounds in the ring. Thrilling with fury, she could smash his face in. Shut. Him. Up.
‘My mum is barely in her grave. Dad loved her. She loved him.’ Had Reenie loved Fred? ‘Go.’
Freddy slammed the door on Bromyard. She was unaware of getting a glass of Jack Daniel’s and slugging it. Her phone rang.
‘Freddy.’ Toni’s voice sounded muffled, as if she had a cold.
‘Toni.’ Freddy poured out another drink.
‘We’ve had a DNA match. The crucifix you found at the battery does belong to Mags.’ Toni cleared her throat. ‘We found minute traces of her blood in the links.’
‘Blood?’ Freddy said the word as if it was new to her.
‘We’re holding a press conference in a few minutes. I wanted to tell you. We’re announcing’ – Toni cleared her throat again and, as if reading the announcement, continued: ‘Mags was attacked at the battery, she was rendered unconscious and taken to a different location where a person or persons unknown murdered her.’
45
FREDDY
The fishery was shrouded in darkness. Freddy opened the gate and the car park became awash with pale white light. She waited. If any fishery staff were in, she would say she was checking on tomorrow’s pre-orders. That was true. Whatever, Freddy was the sister of the proprietors, she didn’t have to explain herself.
Andy and Ricky were on the trawler. Andy had said he liked to keep his hand in. Now of course, with Daniel dead, Ricky didn’t have a mate. Despite him being unpleasant to her, Freddy did feel for him. He’d lost not only his mum, as she had, but his young apprentice.
Beyond the railway bridge, waves pounded the shore, punctuated by an insidious hiss as water pulled back. The gale was strengthening.
It was something that Bromyard said. The remark rose to the surface of her exhausted brain. Something about being glad Fred wasn’t around for the Munday business. She’d assumed he meant Karen’s murder. Then she remembered the numbers written in Karen’s order books. Numbers that didn’t tally with the pre-order totals. The anxiety of some of the pre-order customers, their furtiveness.
Had Karen Munday been operating a scam? If so, how did David Bromyard know about it?
Freddy decided to start with Andy’s office. She plugged in the numbers on the keypad and got a red light. The lock stayed locked.
As kids, she and Andy had been alike; two peas in a pod, her mum said. Freddy knew how Andy’s mind worked, what he liked, what he hated. He’d loved football, although he was rubbish at it. Freddy taught him to fish. He’d done better than her but their dad only praised Freddy’s once-in-a-blue-moon catch. A skilful artist, Andy had once drawn the structure of a fish for Freddy’s homework. She got the top mark. But she couldn’t guess the code for his office. She didn’t know what mattered to Andy now.
Freddy had no idea of his children’s birthdays. Her nephews and niece had greeted her shyly at the funeral. They had grown up without knowing their aunt.
Andy had said Kirsty had the same birthday as Mags.
Freddy didn’t need to trawl her mind for Mags’s birthday. The first of May 1979. Sister Agnes had said she was Mary’s girl. Freddy prodded the buttons. One, five, seven, nine. The red light.
Freddy had put Mags’s birthday. Kirsty was a year younger. She tried again, swapping the seven for an eight and the nine for a zero. She got the red light. She reversed the month and day; the American way would be very Andy. The red light taunted her.
If it was one of Andy’s kids, Freddy had no hope. Andy wouldn’t have favourites. He had experienced the damage preferential treatment did to the other siblings. In the face of their dad’s criticism, he’d developed a hard shell. Even before she left Newhaven, he’d got colder. Less reachable. He’d learnt to look out for himself.
Andy had loved football. The only date she knew was when England won the World Cup. Freddy stood close to the gutting room door as a gust of wind harassed her. Andy had had a poster of the winning team on his bedroom wall. She could have told a quiz master that the captain was called Bobby Moore; his curly hair was lighter than Andy’s had been.
Sarah said, walk away from a problem, turn your back, then the answer will come. At the start of their relationship, Freddy had won a game of Trivial Pursuit using this method. Resistant to Sarah even now, Freddy nevertheless walked away from the containers. The car park was dark again. By the faint light of the moon, she made out one delivery lorry and her fish van.
The area flooded with light. F
reddy had strayed within the arc of the sensor. Ricky’s car shone as if recently polished. Again, Freddy found it hard to equate her baby brother with the expensive Mazda, with any car.
She looked at the dented bumper. A scrape ran right along the paintwork. Gingerly, she touched it. Grit. Her mind raced. The grit suggested Ricky had come up against a kerb or a stone, not another car.
Headlights powering towards her, the grind of metal on stone. The purr of the accelerator. Silence.
Ricky could have done the damage in the car park, anywhere.
1966. Out of a miasma of doubt, fear and misery, Freddy plucked the answer. She jogged back to Andy’s office and, pulse going ten to the dozen, keyed in the numbers. She was rewarded by a green light: the door opened.
When she turned on Andy’s computer Freddy was faced with a password request. Despite the numbing chill in the room, she pricked with heat. Without expectation of success, she tried 1966 again. She sent up a silent prayer that her brother put ease of access before security.
He’d always been a trusting boy. Sarah, who had defended more than one teenaged hacker, would have had a fit.
Freddy opened the sales processing software and scrolled to the last week’s orders. It was fiddly. She had to compare the nightly catches purchased from the various trawlers, including Ricky’s, with the orders delivered locally by her and in the vans around the country. Power’s delivered as far as Grimsby, which, given it was itself a fishing port, was mad. She found none of the orders that she sold on the fish van. She searched all the files but found no trace of them. Freddy recalled Sarah’s query about the lack of a paper trail. The uneasy feeling grew. She had told Sarah the orders were handled in the office, but she had no idea if that was true. Nothing referred to the thousands of pounds she had taken in the few days she’d done the round.
An idea began to form. She had few ‘walk-in’ customers. Most of the sales she had been making in the short time she’d been on the round were pre-orders. It was a glorified delivery van. Had Karen Munday been selling fish purchased outside quotas behind Ricky and Andy’s back? It would explain the hefty discount the customers were getting.
The only way landed fish would not be registered on the system was if it was never officially landed. Freddy grabbed some paper from the printer and the recycled fishing gear pen. She sketched out a diagram of how it would work. A trawler – it would be several, but keep it simple – took in a catch beyond the allotted allowance for a specific species. She drew a picture of a fish next to the boat and labelled it ‘Skate’. Some or all of the crew would be in on it. They would stow the illegal catch in a secret hold in the trawler. Freddy added a square to the boat with a cross. The legitimate haul would be unloaded at the harbour and registered by the inspectors. An arrow indicated this. The catch was sold to Power’s. She added a signpost saying ‘Harbour’ and a rectangle for the fishery. The trawler was berthed and the crew went home. What happened to the secret catch? Freddy sucked on the pen.
It would be unloaded at a different time and somewhere further up the coast to avoid attention. Or someone was paid not to see. Freddy drew a stick figure with a line from the harbour. Where was it stored? That was the easy bit; for the short amount of time the stash would be stored, it could be a lock-up. Freddy drew a cube and fussed over making it three-dimensional with an arrow pointing from the trawler. A shipping container.
For the scam to work, there must be customers willing to take top quality fish at knock-down prices, no questions asked. Rosie had said Alistair, the would-be councillor, ran a restaurant in Hastings. His margins would be vulnerable to price. Better to pay less for the fish in the first place. Obviously, he’d have to hide the illicit stock from inspectors his end. A chest freezer in his home would sort that. Freddy added in the end-customer. Alistair would bring in quantities daily and infiltrate them into the recorded supply.
The scam was low risk with high dividends.
Freddy knew from Sarah that crimes operated best with as few involved as possible who might blab to the police or make an error. Karen would have ruled with an iron rod. She was creaming off a fat profit. In one day, Freddy had delivered twenty pre-orders worth five thousand pounds. Karen could pay the fishermen a decent whack, give a discount to the restaurants and still have plenty for herself. Everyone would have a reason to toe the line.
Freddy sat back in Andy’s chair. Her diagram only worked if the fishery was involved. She knew it was; she had been processing the pre-orders. It was Ricky’s job to take the phone messages and make up the orders. Since Freddy had taken over the round, Andy had done it to avoid her and Ricky crossing paths. Did they both know?
Ricky had to be one of the fishermen supplying the secret catches. Even though it was inconceivable he would risk losing the business their father and grandfather had built up, inconceivable wasn’t the same as impossible. Ricky had been against her working at the fishery. He didn’t want her discovering exactly what she had discovered. Even as a kid, Ricky had wanted a trawler. Had he got it at any cost?
Was Andy involved? No. Andy would not have offered Freddy the fish round. One morning, when Ricky was at sea, Andy had had to text him to find where the pre-orders were kept. He’d had no idea. Where did he think the pre-orders came from?
Andy had still been at the office late the night when someone – Ricky? – had nearly mown Freddy down. Did he suspect it was deliberate? Was that why he’d asked her to work with him? She’d assumed he was pleased to have his old ally back. Then Sarah sent that letter and his trust in Freddy blew up in his face. She would be Andy’s ally again.
Did Toni know?
Toni was still shoplifting. She’d spent years in the Met. Was she a bent copper? Freddy couldn’t bring herself to add the police to her diagram. Sarah talked about officers compromised by greed who were in her clients’ pockets. Of evidence lost, papers mislaid and the memories of key witnesses failing before they got to court. Not because the villains got to them, but after they’d had a visit from the police. Was Toni – a detective inspector – helping Ricky and Karen Munday run an illegal fishing business? A business that, from an early age, Freddy’s dad had told her was very bad.
It was illegal.
The Munday business that David Bromyard had been grateful Fred Power hadn’t lived to see.
The sums Freddy had taken over the last days, if usual, would go a long way towards a new car and the expensive clothes Toni had seen in Karen’s bedroom. And Ricky’s Mazda. Freddy’s van could not be the only channel for selling on the black fish.
Freddy had been surprised at how upset Toni seemed by Karen’s death. She had put it down to Toni being a good person; she could forgive and move on. What if it was the business that they’d operated together which Toni missed? She shook her head. No way had Toni been involved in something illegal with Karen Munday. With anyone.
Freddy circled the office. She stopped by the desk that Ricky used when he was there. The drawers were locked. She scoured around it. Something was behind the monitor. She pulled it out. It was a file of green cardboard. The letters ‘GL’ were on the front. She flipped it open.
GL was Gold Light. Freddy was staring at the list of pre-order customers.
Outside, the security light was triggered. Freddy switched off the light and crept to the window. She became aware that the wind was battering the Portakabin, like a ship in a storm. It was half past two. Christ. Staff would be arriving to meet the catch. Ricky and Andy would have landed.
Freddy fumbled as she tried to shut down the computer and clicked restart. She reached round the back of the machine and turned it off. When Andy fired it up in the morning, a message would pop up saying it hadn’t been properly turned off. She doubted he’d give it a second thought.
She heard the scrape of a shoe outside the door. Hot now, despite the artic temperature, Freddy cast about the office, but she knew already that there was nowhere to hide. A shadow filled the frosted door panel. She heard the click of the c
ode. One. Nine. Six. Six. Her mind whirred. What would she say? She retreated to the filing cabinet, as if she could slip between the tiny gap behind.
‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’ Ricky raised his voice above the roar of the wind. Freddy strained to hear who he was talking to. Silence. She prayed that Andy wasn’t with him. Since Sarah’s letter, Andy’s trust in her was wafer thin.
Freddy had been reckless – stupid – to come to the fishery. Ricky would jump to the conclusion that she was scoping out the company’s worth, that she did intend to contest the will. He would fear she was on to him. He must not find her there.
The shadow had gone. Freddy tiptoed to the door and put her face to the glass.
The memory of hiding behind a stack of crates with Andy in the fishery reeled like a film in her head. Other kids would have played hide and seek for fun. Whenever she and her brother hid from their dad, they were terrified. It was not a game.
Freddy felt it now. Worse. Ricky knew she was hiding there. The car park light went out. A ruse to make her think he had gone.
In the dizzying blackness, Freddy stumbled for the door. A tiny light made her freeze. It was the luminous face of her watch. She was losing it. She found the door and, breath held, eased it open. The handle was snatched away. She was smashed against the wall.
An eerie cry funnelled along the criss-cross of alleyways between the shipping containers. The wind howled. From the containers came a thump as wind battered the metal.
Cold air whipped her face. Shadows flitted across the Bait Motel. Shadows of what? There were no trees, no bushes. Freddy edged along the prefab wall to the corner by the kitchen.
Off to her left, the factory door was closed, the pink glow of the fly-killer lamp showing in the windows. The high galvanised fence, the spikes like spears, was unscalable; the only way out was through the gates. It would activate the light.
Death of a Mermaid Page 25