The Trawlerman, стр. 28

Twenty

Georgia Coaker was a freelance photographer and freelance photographers always need work, so she was easy to track down.

‘Oh. It’s you.’

‘I found something that I think belongs to you.’

The address Georgia Coaker gave turned out to be an old pub. The Prince George Hotel had closed but the ground floor had been taken over by an architectural salvage company. Alex peered inside what had been the lounge bar. It was now crammed with old tables, lamps, electric fans, glass carboys and ship’s fittings.

‘Can I help you?’ A man too young for a beard and wearing tortoiseshell glasses was sanding down a door at the back of the shop. The place smelt of wood dust and old paint. He wore a denim woodworker’s apron.

‘Just looking.’

The shopkeeper returned to his work. He was sanding by hand, paper wrapped around a small wooden block. There were machines that did this kind of thing much quicker, thought Alex, suspecting that the activity was intended more for ambience than function.

At the back, she found an old small square sink on a plain white china column. The plughole had been filled and a copper cup-stand, verdigrised and slightly bent, had been fitted with a small feeder, filled with peanuts.

‘It’s been upcycled into a bird bath,’ explained the shop owner. ‘Or bird sink, if you prefer.’

And he resumed his sanding.

‘How much is it?’

‘Two hundred pounds.’

‘You’re kidding,’ she said. ‘That’s absurd.’

When she had enquired about Georgia Coaker, he had directed her to a door to the right of the pub’s side entrance. What had once been hotel rooms for travelling salesmen had been rented out as small flats. Alex checked the number then pressed the bell. The door buzzed.

Georgia lived upstairs in a small one-bedroom apartment whose walls were decorated with black-and-white photographs from the fifties and sixties.

‘Tea?’

‘Do you have coffee?’

As she waited in the living room, Alex looked at the framed photos crammed onto two of her walls. A couple on a London bus, a woman standing on a wooden roller coaster, her skirt flying up in the wind, two women in a smoke-filled pub arguing.

‘Quite a collection,’ said Alex.

‘I love that stuff. Real people.’ The third wall was windows, looking out onto the street. The second was blank; painted white. ‘Not just the people in the photos either. Nobody wants to pay for pictures like that any more. I do quite a few like that, street photographs, but these days nobody wants them. I just do them for my Instagram, which is a joke.’

‘So you take photos for the scandal sheets instead?’

‘Like you love everything about what you do for a living.’

‘I didn’t mean it to come out like that, I’m sorry.’

Georgia put the coffee down and drew the curtains, turning the room dark, then switched on a projector and Alex realised what that third white wall was for.

They sat together on a big old brown leather sofa that had been covered in blankets. Georgia pulled a laptop towards her. The home screen showed a photograph of her with a young fair-haired man in a wheelchair. She was behind him, smiling.

‘That’s your brother?’

‘Yes.’

She opened up a folder and clicked on a file. Projected onto the wall opposite them, Callum Younis sat in another wheelchair, this one more sophisticated, with big pads for his head and arms. It had been taken on the day when Alex had met Georgia on the footpath that ran alongside Loftingswood Grange. Callum’s head was slightly to one side, his hands pressed tightly against his own chest. It was the first time Alex had seen Ayman and Mary Younis’s child.

‘Are you going to shop me for taking that?’

‘Not as long as you don’t try to publish it anywhere.’

‘Pinkie promise,’ Georgia said. ‘So he’s all right then? Or is he going to have to give up living there now his father’s dead?’

‘They had insurance, apparently. There’s no reason why he can’t carry on being cared for there.’

‘Bully for him.’ She pressed the next photo. A care assistant was sitting beside him in a chair, holding a spoon to his mouth. ‘I shouldn’t be bitter. It kills my family, paying for care for my brother. Callum’s lucky to have rich parents. Or to have had them, at least. It’s cleaned us out and I bet we don’t pay the half of what they’re paying for Callum.’

The photos were all similar. She must have squatted there on the path photographing him for a while before Alex had disturbed her.

‘It’s not like we’re complaining. We’re proud to do it. And the carers at his home are just as good.’

‘What about the pictures you took at the house in New Romney? From by the garage.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘I’m a genius.’

‘Why do you want to see them? You checking I haven’t done anything illegal there too?’

‘I’m curious, that’s all.’ She pulled the lens cap from her pocket. ‘It looks like you found yourself a pretty good vantage point.’

‘Ah.’ Georgia took it from her. ‘Yes. As it happens, I did. There’s a pathway. You can’t really see it from the road. I don’t think it’s official. There’s this homeless guy who’s been living in the next field who’s obviously been using it to get to his tent.’

‘He’s the murder suspect.’

‘You’re shitting me. I was this close to him and I was going to take his photograph but he gave off these vibes . . .’

‘I know exactly the vibes you mean,’ said Alex. ‘I have personal experience.’

‘Shit, shit, shit. That photo would have been worth thousands. Where is he now?’

‘If only we knew. He’s vanished. I wouldn’t try to find him either. He’s a dangerous man. Show me the pictures then, will you?’

Georgia closed the folder on the laptop, opened another one and brought up a new photo on the