The Trawlerman, стр. 1

THE TRAWLERMAN

by william shaw

The DS Alexandra Cupidi Investigations

Salt Lane

Deadland

Grave’s End

The Trawlerman

The Breen and Tozer Investigations

A Song from Dead Lips

A House of Knives

A Book of Scars

Sympathy for the Devil

The Birdwatcher

THE TRAWLERMAN

William Shaw

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

an imprint of

Quercus Editions Limited

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

An Hachette UK company

The moral right of William Shaw to be

identified as the author of this work has been

asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopy, recording, or any

information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

Hardback 978 1 52940 182 0

Ebook 978 1 52940 184 4

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

businesses, organisations, places and events are

either the product of the author’s imagination

or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or

locales is entirely coincidental.

Ebook by CC Book Production

www.riverrunbooks.co.uk

For Tom

Also for Luke Noakes for taking me out on his trawler Valentine,

with apologies for depicting the trawlermen of Folkestone

as other than the fine community that they are.

Contents

The Trawlerman

Also By

Title

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Thirty

Thirty-one

Thirty-two

Thirty-three

Thirty-four

Thirty-five

Thirty-six

Thirty-seven

Thirty-eight

Thirty-nine

Forty

Forty-one

Forty-two

Forty-three

Forty-four

Forty-five

Forty-six

Forty-seven

Forty-eight

Forty-nine

Fifty

Thanks

One

Something really, really bad was about to happen.

What it was, Alexandra Cupidi wasn’t sure. She was sitting on a cafe bench with a coffee that could have been worse, surrounded in every direction by happy people. The sun was out. Summer bugs dipped in and out of the wild flowers that squeezed their way through the shingle beach. Multicoloured nylon kites flew in a blue July sky.

It was there in her chest; a cold, dark, malevolent slug.

Something really, really bad was about to happen.

However hard she looked around, she could see nothing that would explain what it was that made her so anxious.

The Light Railway Cafe was the terminus for the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, close to the house on the promontory in which she lived with her daughter.

It was July, the time of year when the misanthropes, artists, nature-lovers and eccentrics who lived on Dungeness were already tiring of the crowds of tourists who flocked here, disgorging from the comically small train to queue to climb the stone stairs of the old black lighthouse, and to wander around photographing the houses and the locals like they were exhibits, wondering what else you were supposed to do here in this strange, flat place.

Bungalows and shacks dotted the scrubby landscape as if scattered there like dice. The Light Railway Cafe was like most buildings here; a hotchpotch of rough rectangles joined at any angle the builder had fancied, held together with paint.

Something was wrong.

It made her skin itch. If only she knew what it was.

The next train was on its way, clattering down the curve of narrow track that ran along the shingle. This one, Alex noticed, was different. It was decorated with flowers; garlands hung from the windows, fluttering as it moved. She squinted through the afternoon sun at it.

Steam from the funnel drifted slowly south towards them, ahead of the train.

There was something comical about the small train. The light railway had been built as a tourist attraction, its terminus this ramshackle cafe. When the war broke out a few years later, the army commandeered the railway to shift the materials needed to build sea defences all along the shore, and the few tourists it attracted then vanished. This small train still ran, driven and tended by disproportionately large men, and dwarfed by this landscape. The huge bulk of the nuclear power station to the west only made it look more like a children’s toy, casually abandoned.

Abrupt laughter travelled ahead of the train, carried by a gust of wind. The passengers in the flower-decked carriages were having a party.

‘Wedding party,’ said someone. They were right. As the tiny train slowed at the Dungeness station, the engine driver blew the whistle – poop-poop! – and Alex saw the glimpse of white inside the flower-decked carriage. A weekday wedding. The bride emerged first, red hair buffeting in the wind, and then everybody piled out behind her, screaming and shouting, carrying bottles of sparkling wine by the neck. They were drunk, thought Alex, joyfully so.

And then a second white wedding dress stepped out of the carriage: a younger woman with short bleached hair; a wedding of two brides.

The wedding party poured out of the station and made their way to the cafe where Alex was sitting.

‘Congratulations,’ the tourists called out to them.

The red-haired woman, older than she had looked from a distance – late thirties perhaps – smiled a little shyly. ‘Thanks.’ Women in heels tottered on the shingle. Men moved among them, shirts half untucked, eyes losing focus from drink.

Alex recognised one. Curly was local; he had grown up close by in one of the wooden houses. His family had been fishermen here, and he still kept his twin-hulled boat here.

Curly smiled goofily at Alex when he spotted her there.

‘Who’s the happy couple?’ she asked.

‘That’s Tina,’ he said, pointing to the red-haired bride, ‘and that’s Stella. We’re stopping here for lunch.’

She had never seen Curly in a suit. It looked wrong. He had the sunburned leathery skin of someone who spent his days here on the beach; his hair was thin, a mixture of pale grey and sandy yellow. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ He pointed towards the small hut named ‘Ales on the Rails’.

The day yawned in front of her. ‘Why not?’

She had nothing at all to do today. It was driving her crazy.

They had arranged two of the tables in a single row, the brides at one end, and they had ordered fish and chips, and sandwiches. Alex joined them, squeezing onto the end of the picnic table bench seats.

‘You ever married?’