Death of a Mermaid

by Lesley Thomson

  The trawler tilted violently. At the other end of the hold, the door slammed shut. Freddy skidded on the metal floor as she plunged towards it. The rosary dangling from her hand, she turned the handle. The door was stuck fast. She pushed. The metal didn’t yield. Freddy heard someone on the steps.

  ‘Andy.’ Her voice echoed in the metal-clad hold.

  Whoever was on the steps was going up to the wheelhouse, not coming down. Over the wind and crashing waves and way above on deck, Andy wouldn’t hear her.

  Freddy smashed her shoulder against the door. Reality dawned. The door had not shut with the roll of the boat.

  Ricky had locked her in.

  Freddy sank to the floor, her back against the hull. She wanted to close down. To be nowhere. To give up.

  After a minute she forced herself to piece together the story of what had happened to Mags. It was like putting one foot in front of the other on a high wire.

  Mags had gone to confession, and afterwards told Toni she must tell Freddy something important. When she nursed Reenie, Mags could have overheard Ricky talking to someone about the scam. Mags would have confronted him. Ricky couldn’t risk Mags telling Freddy. He’d know Freddy would guess that Ricky – her baby brother – had also killed Karen. Ricky had attacked Mags. He’d hidden her in the battery. Mags was there when Freddy and Sarah were outside. Mags had deliberately left her crucifix and Julian for Freddy to find. Malcolm Lane had told the media Mags had not been killed there. Freddy pulled at her hair. Jesus. If she’d tried to get into the battery, Mags would still be alive. Was the rosary another clue from Mags?

  Freddy forced her brain to work. Something caused Mags’s kidnapper to think Mags would be discovered, so he moved her. That something must have been when Freddy asked Toni to help her break into the lunette battery. Freddy heaved with dry sobs.

  Part of her couldn’t believe it. Toni was a Mermaid, and she had offered to help her. Freddy found she couldn’t finish the story.

  51

  ‘What are you playing at, bringing Freddy on board?’

  ‘Listen, mate, I told you, I’ll sort Freddy. At some point, she’ll face facts and give up waiting for Mags McKee to come back from her pilgrimage. She’ll go back to her lawyer girlfriend. Be nice to her, OK? You have no reason not to be, now you know what Dad did to Freddy, that she didn’t just dump us.’

  ‘Mags is dead.’ Ricky wasn’t listening. He adjusted one of the many dials on the dashboard in the wheelhouse. Andy was standing behind him.

  ‘Or she’s worshipping at some Italian shrine. Will you leave Mags out of this? What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Toni says Mags is dead.’ Ricky hiccoughed, as if sickened by his words. ‘I’m telling you, Freddy will want her share.’

  ‘We’ve been here before, Ricky. Bail out, you lose the boat. That was the deal. Typical of you. Even as a kid you always wanted it both ways.’ Andy was leaning against the door of the wheelhouse.

  ‘You said it was a victimless crime,’ Ricky choked. ‘A few extra fish, you said. These trips are killing me.’

  They had reached the fishing grounds. The boat was anchored. The sea was rough, a heavy swell causing the trawler to rock wildly. Rain spattered the windows of the wheelhouse. Drops glistened against the black of the night.

  Freddy had been on deck since the trawler left Newhaven, but while the brothers were arguing she had gone below.

  ‘And when Freddy finds out Mags is dead?’ Ricky was puce.

  ‘You seem convinced she’s dead.’ Andy properly looked at his brother.

  ‘Why do you think Toni’s running a murder investigation?’ Ricky snarled.

  ‘All right, matey, keep your hair on!’ Andy opened the wheelhouse door and slid across the hatch bolt.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ricky demanded. ‘This is my trawler – do nothing without my say-so. There is one God in the sky and one captain of this boat. You will both do as I say.’ Ricky seethed on the edge of his chair, feet wedged behind, knees forward.

  ‘Toys in the pram, bro.’ Andy grinned. ‘Just getting some air.’

  ‘This weather is bad. I said we shouldn’t launch.’

  ‘You go out in worse than this. There are targets to meet, aren’t you always saying?’ Andy went to the window on the port side and, peered out. ‘Toni could be wrong about Mags. Plus, isn’t her dep running the show?’

  ‘I’m deploying the nets. Then it’s all hands.’ Ricky pulled on a lever. The boat shook. Near the aft, one of the derricks tilted off the gantry. A metal arm with the beam suspended from it swung out over the side. A net shot free and vanished in the boiling swell. Ricky leaned over the dash and, repeating the manoeuvre, shot the starboard net. He muttered lugubriously, ‘This storm is getting worse.’

  ‘Yes, you said.’ Andy clamped a hand on the back of Ricky’s neck. ‘Listen, Richard, we’re going to invite Freddy in. We owe her. She lost her share of the business when she came out to Dad. Mad mare, but you’ve got to admire her guts. He put her in free fall. I never once stood up to Dad, and nor did you.’

  ‘What happens when Freddy wants more than her share? People do that.’ Ricky swivelled in his chair to face Andy.

  ‘She won’t. I don’t want to be horrible, but I’m your big brother, aren’t I?’ Andy gave Ricky a matey slap on the shoulder. ‘We’re doing it my way, OK?’

  ‘How do you know she won’t get greedy?’ Breathing hard, Ricky got up, legs apart, staring at his boots as if limbering up. He looked down to the prow, where Freddy had been. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I’ll find her.’

  ‘I’ll go. She needs to learn the drill. She can’t wander off. You sort the deck and get the kits secured. That should have happened by now.’

  The brothers looked out at the deck, where the plastic crates were sliding back and forth amidst coils of rope with the roll of the boat. A thin moonlight shone on the boards, slick with water sluicing in through the freeing holes.

  Andy struggled down the ladder and prepared for the first catch. He lined up the boxes and set about getting the deck shipshape, stowing away twine and loose buoys for when the catch was landed. Seawater lashed his slicker, buffeting him as he worked. All around was pitch black. There were no stars. A fuzzy aurora haloed the deck lamps.

  Andy heard ringing. Faint. It came from the wheelhouse. Annoyed, he climbed the ladder and went inside.

  Ricky’s phone lay beside the control panel. Andy saw Toni’s name on the screen. He stopped as he reached it. Seconds later a text came in.

  Call me. I know who killed M. Come back. Txx

  Andy pocketed the phone and clattered down the wheelhouse ladder to the deck.

  He struggled across the whaleback towards the hatch to the net hold. He was nearly blown off his feet as a gust hit him broadside. A discordant commotion filled the air. High waves smashed against the hull and surged over the rail; the deck was awash. Andy’s oilskins were slick with water. The trawler, substantial in the harbour, was a toy tossed mercilessly by the elements. The sky and the sea were a wall of black.

  Another wave crashed over the side and the boat listed, the angle acute. Andy was flung against the guard rail, hanging over it, a metre from the curdling mass below. A list the other way and he flailed for the goalpost gantry aft of the gunwale. He caught it.

  Momentarily stable, Andy raised his arm and hurled Ricky’s phone into the sea.

  52

  TONI

  ‘I read her diary, boss.’

  ‘Where are you?’ Toni was snappish with fear. Sheena had rung seconds after Toni texted Ricky. She assumed it was him returning her call. She was furious for not calling him before he went to sea. Their ritual, at her instigation, was due to her anxiety – which Toni kept to herself – that if they didn’t speak, Ricky would drown.

  ‘I’m in Margaret McKee’s flat,’ Sheena said.

  ‘This late?’ Toni tapped her Fitbit. Two minutes past midnight. ‘We already searched it.’ Sheena’s work et
hic was all about brown-nosing Malcolm and back-footing Toni. Forget sisterhood.

  Detectives were pulling apart the fishery office. Toni had emphasised they must search all the desks. Yes, of course Ricky’s. She’d got the warrant when the CCTV came up with Daisy’s visitor. The man with the fish tattoo.

  The sniffer dog was being released from the cage in the dog patrol van. ‘I can’t talk now, Sheena.’ The handler was giving the dog the shirt they’d taken from Mags’s washing basket. Twenty years of policing hadn’t prepared Toni for this.

  ‘There was this weird phrase in Margaret’s diary,’ Sheena carried on.

  ‘What phrase?’ Even though someone had to do it, Toni resented Sheena reading Mags’s private journal. It felt like the byword in violation.

  ‘“R’s intention in Mary”,’ Sheena recited.

  ‘It will be religious, Mags is devout.’ Against the odds, Toni stuck to a sliver of hope that her friend was alive. ‘Sheena, we need you down at Power Fisheries.’

  Malcolm was gesticulating. Toni made a winding-up sign to him.

  ‘…I googled loads of stuff on Mary,’ Sheena was saying. ‘It means you offer an intention to Mary that you’d like to have prayed for. Or something like that. Anyway, the clue is Mary…’

  Toni reached Malcolm. The sniffer dog had caught a scent. They followed a snakes and ladders route between a maze of shipping containers. Once the dog ducked down a side alley up to the fence then doubled back. The containers weren’t there when she and Freddy used to hang about the fishery.

  ‘…she meant this statue in her front room.’

  ‘What statue?’ Toni was out of breath, although she was fit enough for the mild pace. She felt her heart would burst. She wanted to run in the other direction.

  The dog stopped at a container hard by the fence. Through the link fence was an abandoned junkyard. Beyond was a tract of scrubland cut in half by the railway line. With only the beach after that, the fishery, on the edge of the industrial estate, was a lonely place. A good place to hold someone prisoner. Out here, drowned by the sound of the waves and the railway, who would hear a person – Mags – scream? The sniffer dog was pawing at a container door. Toni’s legs went to jelly. She felt a hand on her arm, supporting her. Malcolm.

  ‘Guv, you still there?’ Sheena’s voice in her ear.

  Rory, one of the uniforms, twisted a handle on the container and pulled. The door screeched across the hard standing.

  ‘Mags!’ Toni shoved past Rory and blundered inside. A light shone over her shoulder.

  A mattress, a pillow. A bloody tarpaulin. The nights had been cold. A bait tub to shit in.

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘Boss, are you OK?’ Sheena shouted down the phone.

  Toni had a sudden flash of memory. Mags, perched on a camping stool, feet up on the bait tub, reading to them while they fished from the sea wall.

  ‘…and in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, it seemed, and it was as round as any ball. I looked thereupon with the eye of my understanding, and I thought, “What may this be?” And it was answered generally thus: “It is all that is made.”’

  Toni had gathered that the hazelnut represented the perfection of existence or some such. She’d once choked on a nut at Christmas; her dad had dislodged it with a wallop on her back. Julian could keep her nut.

  The Mermaids had had an exam on Julian’s Revelations the following week. Only Mags was prepared. She knew every word of Julian.

  The dog was nosing the mattress.

  ‘Yes, I’m OK,’ Toni told Sheena.

  ‘…it was hidden inside a statue of Mary.’

  ‘What was?’ Toni asked dully.

  ‘Irene Power’s will. Her “intention”. R is for Reenie. It’s dated the first of March 2019. That’s recent. It leaves everything to her daughter, Frederica. I’m wondering, could it have a bearing on Margaret’s murder? If that’s what happened…’

  Toni crouched down by the mattress, her hand hovering.

  ‘Yes, it could. Good work, Sheena. Very good work. Thanks.’

  A hair straggled across the stained fabric. Toni shouted, ‘Bag this.’

  ‘This vent hole has been damaged, guv.’ Malcolm was examining a tear in the metal. ‘Looks as if Mags tried to escape and gave up. It would be impossible to cut through the walls.’

  Mags had tried to escape. She had not been a passive prisoner. The sniffer dog had doubled back in a side alley between the containers. Mags had run for her life. The scent was lost within the perimeter of the fishery.

  Out beyond the scrub, waves pummelled the shore. A force gale blew. Gusts battered the containers and thrilled between the bars of the galvanised fence, making it sing. The Mermaids’ Chorus.

  ‘Ma’am.’ It was Darren, the PC. ‘We’ve tracked down the Powers. Kirsty Power says not to worry, Andy and Ricky are fishing. They’ve taken their sister, Frederica. It’s a family reunion.’

  Ricky had only got his tattoo because of Andy. Andy, Mr Golf and Rotary Club, came to regret his when it went septic. Word from the wise, if you’re going to be on the wrong side of the law, don’t give yourself a distinguishing mark.

  Toni peered through the fence. The familiar dread coiled inside her. Compartmentalise. It didn’t work. She could not put up walls against the growing panic. A storm was brewing. Ricky would be working hard out there, battling with the elements. Toni had to believe it was why he wasn’t answering his phone. Her gut told her it was not.

  53

  FREDDY

  The boat tipped. Freddy thought it must capsize. She assured herself that Ricky was a professional fisherman; he’d have submitted the trawler to a roll test. He’d never skimp on safety. Would he?

  She felt for her phone and swore. Andy had put it in a drawer in the wheelhouse so it didn’t get soaked with spray. Stupid. Sarah had bought her a waterproof phone on her last birthday.

  Freddy shouted but, above the cacophony of the storm, her voice would be lost. Andy wouldn’t hear. Ricky knew.

  A dreadful idea occurred to her. What if Andy was involved? It was his idea to go out on the trawler. Freddy felt the air being sucked out of her lungs and she gasped for breath. Except, if Andy wanted her to leave, why offer their mum’s house? He had known that, if she stayed, she’d look after the animal hotel. No, his motive was clear, he wanted a sibling reunion. Like Freddy, it would never occur to Andy that their young brother could be a murderer.

  When Andy had been prepared to give airtime to her theory that Ricky had tried to run her over on the road into Newhaven, Freddy had felt ill. Until then she’d wanted it to be paranoia. Imprisoned in a secret hold on Ricky’s boat miles out in the English Channel, a storm raging, she realised it was real. Andy had said it was odd Ricky hadn’t complained about the scrape to his car. Now it occurred to her to wonder why he had left it for Andy, and her, to see. Ricky must believe himself above suspicion.

  Freddy clung to a handhold as the boat heeled at least forty-five degrees. Ricky was running a fishing scam operation. There was no ice in the secret hold tonight, not because he wouldn’t risk her and Andy finding out, but because for him the night trip had another purpose. She had been doubtful when Andy told her Ricky had agreed to the reunion. She had not trusted Ricky. He didn’t want a grand making-up session – how would that benefit him? He’d kill her and toss her overboard. He’d tell Andy it was an accident. If Ricky hadn’t killed Andy too. Fear engulfed her. Freddy screamed. She crawled on her hands and knees crying. This could not be true.

  Freddy no longer kidded herself that Ricky would not hurt his sister. She had abandoned him and Andy to the mercies of their father. That she had not chosen to leave would not make a difference to Ricky.

  Ricky had got his dream by fishing outside his quota and dealing in black fish. He had risked everything to get the trawler and he’d do everything to keep it. His attempt to murder her on the road had failed. This time it would not. Sa
rah had said that whenever we imagine ourselves in a dangerous situation, we always escape. Freddy was in one now. She would escape.

  Freddy pulled on the handle with all her might. The iron door didn’t give. Was this how Mags had felt? Terrified and alone on a boat with a man who would kill her? Had she wrenched on the handle, shouted and smashed her fists on the unyielding door? Had her faith saved her? Had she, like Julian, waited to be received by God?

  Had she imagined herself as Ariel, sailing into the sunset with Freddy?

  Freddy knew Mags would have fought death until it won. Had the rosary slipped off her as Ricky was carrying her up onto the deck, or had she left it for someone to find?

  Ricky had used the tarp to throw Mags’s body into the sea.

  ‘Andy!’ He must wonder where she was and come looking for her.

  Andy wouldn’t come if Ricky had killed him.

  A terror Freddy had never thought possible tentacled over her, cold and insidious. Poison flooded her veins. Freddy scrubbed at her hair, which was stiff with salt from the spray. She clutched Mags’s rosary and tried to stay calm.

  Arching her neck, she arced the torch upwards.

  There was a hatch.

  Freddy staggered to her feet, falling as the boat tipped again. She had forgotten the purpose of the hold. How else would the nets be emptied into it? She waved the torch wildly about.

  An iron ladder was fixed to the wall. Freddy didn’t let go of the grab rail. She couldn’t face finding the hatch locked.

  She thought of Mags. She had to try. Freddy rushed at the ladder, pushing against a greater force as the boat rocked the other way. She dragged herself up rung by rung.

  She reached the top. Glancing down, the sheer drop dizzied her. It tilted and lurched with the trawler. At one point the tilt was so great that Freddy might have been on the float. The force of gravity pressed her against the ladder. Then tried to snatch her off it. She took a breath and twisted the handle. It was stuck fast. The feeling wasn’t disappointment. It was grief. All encompassing, the loss of everyone and everything. Freddy’s fingers loosened on the rung. She imagined falling backwards.