‘He’d been drinking. The knife was in his hand. It’s obvious, isn’t it?’
‘You don’t know. Perhaps it was the man he was after. Perhaps he was provoked.’
Karleen’s right, of course. A single flashback of a drunken fisherman with a knife doesn’t mean she was Tom Hall in a previous incarnation. She needs to keep an open mind until she’s worked systematically through all the information she has. And then, if it starts looking likely, she’ll set off to Lyme Regis with her rucksack and ask Karleen to regress her.
‘Is there a good B and B near your house?’ she asks.
‘My darling Mary, you’ll stay with me and I won’t hear a word of an argument. I have a young girl that helps me these days, so it’s no trouble. And there’s a bottle of Bushmill’s in the cupboard with your name on it.’
‘It will have to be next month, if that’s all right with you. I can’t see Ian agreeing to me absenting myself for a week in the middle of filming.’
‘So how will you manage in the meantime?’
‘I’m going to look through all my old transcripts now, to see if there are any clues there. With any luck I’ll find something to disprove my suspicions. And it’s possible that some more evidence will emerge from regression sessions with Ben and various other people who were a part of Annie’s life.’
‘What other people?’ Karleen asks sharply, and Mary can just imagine her friend sitting forward with interest.
‘I’ll explain when I see you. I’ve been trying something completely new with this case. Time will tell whether it will prove fruitful.’ Then: ‘I can’t believe Ian phoned you! He offered to fly you up here, I suppose.’
‘He can be very persuasive, your Ian.’
‘He’s not “my Ian”.’
‘But I said I’d have to discuss it with you first.’
‘Oh, Karleen. I would so love to see you. It’s just—’
‘You’d rather I had nothing to do with this film. Look, I’ll call him now and tell him no. I’ll play the sweet old lady and say my back’s giving me gyp.’
Mary lets out a long sigh of relief. ‘Don’t you want to be on the telly? According to Ian, it’s all that seems to motivate people these days.’
‘I won’t grace that with a reply. And I’m sure you’re more than capable of holding your own against Hester without my help. It’s a shame, though. I was rather looking forward to the chauffeur-driven car.’
Mary stiffens. ‘What’s that about Hester?’
‘Oh, this documentary’s all her idea according to her. She says it’s a pilot for a series about paranormal phenomena she’s cooked up with some BBC producer – your Ian presumably. That’s why I was so pleased to be invited to take part. I thought you could do with someone batting for your side.’
‘He never mentioned Hester was involved.’ She grips the phone tight.
‘In retrospect it occurred to me that might have been why she wrote such a stinging review of your paper. To impress the BBC and set out her stall, as it were, as an opponent. For what it’s worth, I didn’t get the impression that your Ian was trying to set you up. On the contrary, he seemed genuinely concerned to give you a fair crack of the whip.’
‘I’m not sure that “fair” or “genuine” are appropriate adjectives in this case,’ Mary says tiredly. ‘And for heaven’s sake stop calling him “my Ian”.’
Chapter Forty-One
2007
Ben’s phoning New Zealand. His mum’s on speed dial on the landline phone in the flat. All he has to do is press three and the tinny jingle of her overseas code trickles into his ear. It’s lunchtime here, but four in the morning where she is. He imagines the handsets trilling in the dark in his mum’s bungalow on the other side of the world – there’s one in the kitchen, she’s told him, and one in the lounge – and his mum grunting and rolling onto her back in the double bed, waiting for the answerphone to kick in. He always dials 141 before pressing the speed-dial button, so she doesn’t know it’s him, though she probably guesses.
After she left she kept a phone by the bed to begin with, and always used to pick up when Ben rang her in the middle of the night. But her new bloke complained, so she unplugged it and arranged a regular time for Ben to call, which is embarrassing because Dad’s usually there listening in, plus Ben doesn’t always feel like talking to her at his regular time.
Calling her answerphone is like a bad habit that he can’t break, like playing Sims 2 at night when he’s supposed to have his light out, or eating a whole pack of Doritos. It’s totally pathetic, and it doesn’t even make him feel better, which is usually the reason he’s phoning her in the first place. It just buries him deeper into being miserable: because it makes him think of her big new bungalow, with the sandpit and swing in the garden, and her big new life with the kids and her big new bloke: a proper family, when all he’s got is Dad, who’s never there, and Nana, who’s useless.
‘Hi there!’ goes Mum in her jolly answerphone voice, and she’s got a kiwi accent now, so she doesn’t even sound the same any more. ‘You’ve reached the Taylor residence. Nessa and Callum and the girls can’t take your call right now, but we want to hear from you, so please leave a message before you hang up. Bye-ee!’ It’s that ‘Bye-ee!’ that always gets him, like she’s just running out of the door, like she can’t wait, off to somewhere sunny and exciting, back to her new life, when he’s stuck at home on the fifth floor by himself, heating up some crappy pasta ready meal in the microwave.
She sent a photo at Christmas, showing her new blonde hairdo, and a letter which was all about her job, and the weather – which she goes on about every Christmas – and about how weird it is sunbathing and having a barbeque on Christmas Day, which she also goes on about every year.
The microwave pings as he hangs up the phone. Then Nana’s at the door too, with an armful of chicken and chips. And suddenly he can’t face it, all that crap food coming at him from all angles, so he grabs his diving gear and says he’s got to rush. Which is a stupid lie, because now he has to carry his diving bag, and he’s still hungry, but it must be better than staying cooped up with Nana and talking about why he’s not doing the film any more.
He ends up at the caff in Tynemouth without meaning to, because if he’d been concentrating he’d have avoided it like the plague, because if Dad finds out he’ll be livid. But he wasn’t concentrating, at least not on that. He was just trudging along, staring at the pavement, pretending his diving bag was a Dick Whittington sack, and he was running away to seek his fortune. So when he finds himself at the caff he can hardly believe it. But his shoulders are so tired by then, from lugging the bag, and his tummy’s so totally rumbling, that he goes in anyway and sits down.
He’s such a regular by now that Molly, the waitress, gives him a wave and ‘howay’, and all the old ladies swivel their cauliflower heads to see who she’s waving at. ‘Hot chocolate, right?’ Molly calls out, grinning away. ‘With cream and sprinkles?’
‘And a ham roll, please, and a glass of water.’ He’s blushing, but it’s nice to be recognized.
‘If you’re after Laura, she’s not in,’ says Molly when she brings over his tray. ‘Pay at the till, OK, pet? I’m up to my eyes with her off.’
Ben spoons whipped cream and sprinkles, wondering what the doc’s doing, and if that’s where Laura is, and if the Ian bloke’s found someone else for the film. It’s only two days since the bust-up with Dad and already it feels like everything’s going on without him. Like he’s stuck in the middle of the Billy Mill roundabout, with cars whizzing round him, carrying all the people he knows then heading off in all directions leaving him behind.
After lunch, he wanders down to St Edward’s Bay. Now he’s lugged the gear this far, he thinks he might as well use it. It’s a sticky grey day, so the beach is almost deserted. Just an old bloke with a spaniel, and a couple of mams huddled on a towel in their hoodies and smoking, while their kids sleep in their buggies.
He sits on t
he bottom step to change, wriggling quickly into his wetsuit, which is really hot and clammy in this weather, so he feels like a boil-in-the-bag meal when he’s ready. But the sea’s perfect when he gets in: flat as a grey mirror, so you can see everything, every ripple in the sand, every little strand of seaweed.
He goes in along by the rocks and swims slowly round the headland beneath the old Priory, where he’s never been before, because the Deep Blue lads normally take them out towards Whitley Bay, where the wrecks of the Wansworth and Ethel Taylor are. For a while he just snorkels, checking out the marine life – though it’s more like checking out the litter in some places, with old drinks cans and plastic bottles dotted about and carrier bags caught on the rocks and drifting like weird-coloured seaweed. Which makes him even more depressed than he was when he started. He’s read on Google that they’ve found used condoms and plastic bottles in the remotest parts of the Antarctic, because the different seas are all joined together, so whatever crap you chuck in at North Shields could end up anywhere in the world.
After a while he decides to practise freediving, holding his breath on the surface to start with, then actually diving with his snorkel flapping against his cheek, compensating his mask and ears carefully as he goes down, then finning along close to the sea bed. It feels like he’s down for ages, but when he checks his watch it’s only two minutes – though that’s not bad for dynamic apnoea.
Next he tries a bit of hyperventilation before he goes down, though he knows he shouldn’t really, because it prevents you wanting to breathe out by lowering the CO2 in your blood. Because it’s too much CO2 that makes you want to breathe out and rush to the surface, not lack of oxygen like most people think. So you can trick your body into not breathing for longer, even though you’ve run out of oxygen in your blood, by getting rid of the CO2.
So he hyperventilates for a bit, then goes down again, and fins along like before, and it’s true: he can stay under for much longer – thirty seconds longer, in fact, which is loads more. He hyperventilates again and when he goes down this time he spots a pipefish bustling along, all businesslike, and follows it for ages, thinking about how impressed Dad will be when he tells him how long he’s held his breath – then remembering, with a little stab of anguish, that he’s not talking to Dad any more. He’s not talking to anyone any more.
Sitting on the rocks tugging off his fins afterwards, he notices a small dinghy chuntering away at anchor a bit further out, and some old dude bent over a couple of crab pots. This is the kind of fishing Ben approves of, where it’s a battle of wits between the fisherman and the crab, and you only catch what you’re looking for. It reminds him of tribes in the Amazon and Borneo, where hunters really understand the animals they hunt, and set snares in places they know the animal will be; so the ones who pay the most attention always catch the most food.
Ben thinks that makes it fairer, but with some kinds of fishing it seems the less you know the more you catch. Dad says that in some countries people set off explosives in the water, which kill every living thing, and they all come floating up to the surface, so all you have to do is pick out the big ones. But all the tiddlers are killed too, plus everything else, so the water’s coated with a scum of dead creatures for the gulls to eat, and no fry to grow into adults the next year. How stupid would you have to be to do that? It’s the same with the big factory boats, because they have state-of-the-art computers to track the shoals, and trawl rigs to drag along the bottom, and machines to gut the catch. Anyone who can press a few buttons could do that job.
The old dude straightens up and Ben sees that it’s Skip, which is a bit of a shock, because he didn’t realize he still had a boat, but not that surprising really. Then he sees that Skip’s calling him over, and waving a flask of tea, so before he knows it Ben’s pulling on his fins again and swimming out to the dinghy.
Skip’s busy stowing a long line of hooks when he gets there, pulling off the uneaten baits of mussel meat and chucking them over the side. He looks different somehow; Ben can’t quite work out why – then realizes it’s because he’s had a shave and washed his hair.
In a bucket by his feet is a small heap of fair-sized plaice. ‘Wow!’ Ben whistles in admiration. ‘Where did you catch those?’
‘Up south aways,’ says Skip, nodding gruffly in the direction of Sunderland. ‘Not far. You use the motor to get away from the shore, then let the current take you. I reckon it takes the fish along too.’
‘Are they all for you?’
‘One or two of the littluns maybes. I’ll sell the rest to Turnbull’s. Lad there gives us a fair price and no questions asked.’
‘What does he do with them? I mean, he can’t sell them, can he?’ Dad’s told Ben all about this; about how everything has to be on the books these days or you get done by DEFRA.
Skip shrugs. ‘I don’t ask so he don’t tell. Gives them to his mates for all I know.’ He leans over the side to swill out the lid of his flask, then pours a fresh cup for Ben.
Ben takes a wary sip. He’s not keen on tea usually, but this is dark brown and sweet as toffee, with a hint of salt from the water round the rim; not like normal tea at all. ‘Dad says you were the best skipper in Shields,’ he says.
‘Does he now?’ If the old bloke’s pleased, he’s not showing it.
‘Why did you give up, then?’
‘Ach, my heart wasn’t in it anymore.’ He coughs, then spits neatly into the water. ‘First she went – then the fish. Mind you, the fish had been going for years before that. Time was they were landing that many herring they were just hoying them on the land as fertilizer. Then they just disappeared. One year the catches were spotty, next they were gone. Just like that.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Bigger boats, bigger engines, bigger nets. Once they started on with the seine purses, the herring never stood a chance. Ten year on, there was nowt left.’
‘Like with the cod.’
‘Ay. You’d think they’d have learnt wouldn’t you?’
‘Dad says the flatties are going the same way. He says DEFRA should stop giving so much quota to the factory ships.’
Skip sighs and lights a rollie-up. ‘You don’t need a trawl to catch a plaice. See, your plaice isn’t too canny as a swimmer. So she uses the tides to move along the coast. All you have to do is wait for the tide to run, then you run with it.’
‘And you’d just catch plaice and nothing else?’
‘Ay, pretty much. If you timed it right.’
‘So why doesn’t Dad do that?’
‘You’ve got to know your fish, that’s the trick. And your tides, and that. How the currents move over the sea bed. It’s not something your sonar can help you with.’
‘I’ll ask him to try.’
‘Ay, lad. You do that.’
But they both know it’s pointless. If you’ve got a powerful engine and a heavy twin-rig you go trawling and that’s that. You don’t go drifting along quietly following the tide with a long line.
‘Can I come out with you some time?’ Ben asks shyly, after a while.
‘Don’t see why not.’
‘Really? Wow! Can I bring my diving gear? I’ve never seen a plaice swimming.’
‘If Paul says it’s OK.’
‘Will you show me where you put the lobster pots? And the crab creels?’
‘I’m going out Sunday if the weather holds. Bring a proper gansey, mind. It can be chilly when the wind gets up.’
‘I’ve only got a puffa jacket,’ says Ben, ‘but it’s got two zips.’ He’s staring at the old man’s gansey; it looks like there’s some writing knitted into the pattern. ‘RS,’ he reads aloud. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Robert Simpson. Them’s my initials. She knitted it for me, didn’t she? Had it over thirty year. Look after a good gansey and it’ll last for ever. She knitted the patches an’ all. See, it’s made so you can turn it front to back when the elbows go. It’ll see me out, I reckon.’
Nana’s
gone by the time Ben gets back to the flat. She’s left the chicken supper for him, wrapped up by the microwave, and the whole place smells of vinegar. He chucks it in the bin then wanders down the hall to his room and unlocks the door.
There are some days when he doesn’t even see his room; it’s just the place he goes when he wants to be on his own. But other times he can’t ignore the decor, it’s so in his face, and he feels like he’s been forced to share with a macho brother or cousin. The thing that offends him the most is the black-and-white striped Newcastle United wallpaper. Until now he’s just put up with it – because Dad chose it and he hasn’t wanted to upset him. But after what happened with the doc and the film, he doesn’t care about Dad’s feelings any more. So he starts picking at a loose bit with his thumbnail and soon there’s a big raggedy hole where he’s scraped the paper away, and loads of little black and white curly bits on the carpet.
He stands back and looks at the mess he’s made. It’s more difficult than he expected; he thought it would peel off in big satisfying strips, but you have to scratch at each little bit and it takes ages.
‘You want a steam gun for that,’ says Dad, who’s suddenly materialized in the open doorway. ‘And a proper scraper.’
‘I sort of started, then I couldn’t stop,’ Ben explains.
He’d expected Dad to be cross, but he seems to be OK with it. ‘It’s your room, buddy. Do what you like with it.’
‘I want to get rid of the paper,’ says Ben, but what he means is, I want to get rid of your paper.
Dad comes into the room and looks round. ‘So what do you fancy instead? Another paper, or some kind of paint job?’
Ben shrugs. ‘Paint probably. I don’t know.’
‘Howay, then. I’ll take you to B&Q before they close. We can grab the stripping gear and some colour charts at the same time.’ He picks up a hoodie from the bed and chucks it at Ben to put on.
Ben makes a show of draping the hoodie over his chair. Does his dad think he won’t see through all this, that he’s being all nicey-nice to make up for ruining the film?
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