The Trawlerman, стр. 32

Twenty-three

Saturday night Alex woke, bolt upright and switched the light on. The wind was banging a door somewhere.

Zoë was in the bedroom with her, sitting in the armchair at the bottom of her bed wrapped in a duvet.‘What’s wrong? Couldn’t sleep?’ Alex asked.

Zoë nodded.

Under her duvet, Alex was roasting. Her cotton pyjamas were soaked with sweat. She pushed off her covers and tried to remember what the dream had been. Zoë always looked so small, her bony head poking out of a mass of bedding.

‘Want to get in with me?’ She moved over, making space. Her teenage daughter inched her way across the room, dragging her heavy duvet with her, then flopped down on the mattress beside her.

‘There, there,’ Alex said, stroking her daughter’s forehead. ‘Is everything all right?’

Zoë didn’t answer.

‘What is it that woke you up?’

But her daughter was already asleep; she lay listening to the soft hum of her breath and remembered the fierce, unexpected love she had felt for her when she was newborn.

And then she was underground again; the earth falling in on her, roots growing around her, trapping her, crushing her chest so tightly she could not breathe. It was terrifying, but also familiar. This was a place she had become used to.

Her job was to disentangle herself, to work her way out of the darkness, but the earth on her chest pressed down so heavily she knew that would be impossible soon.

She wasn’t aware of having fallen asleep but when she woke it was bright in her room and someone was shouting. Next to her, her daughter was still asleep, wrapped in that mountainous duvet. Alex stood, opened a crack in the curtains and peered out. Curly was standing out there in a pair of camouflage trousers and a dirty white T-shirt.

She opened the window. He shouted, ‘Mate runs a boat called the Jenny B out of Folkestone. He’s going out on the high tide this afternoon. Want to come?’

‘On a Sunday?’

‘You’re the one who wanted to go out.’

‘Mum?’ Zoë’s voice croaked behind her. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Curly is taking me out on a trawler.’

‘Why?’

She didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure herself.

‘Trawling should be banned,’ said Zoë.

Alex looked at her watch and called down to Curly. ‘What time will we be back?’

‘Three in the morning, maybe four. Best to fish in the dark this time of year. They can’t see you coming.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ said Zoë. ‘I’ll have a party and invite lots of my friends around and we’ll all take ketamine.’

‘Do you actually have friends?’

‘Let me sleep,’ said Zoë. She stood, eyes not fully open, and shuffled back to her bedroom, two stick-like legs poking out from under her grubby duvet.

‘Just so you know,’ said Curly, as he was bumping down the track, too fast as usual. ‘Danny Fagg, guy who owns the boat . . . he’s Frank’s cousin.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah. And he was on the boat the day they lost Frank. So you might want to go a bit easy.’

The weather was overcast but still, the sea calm.

‘He was the guy who called it in to the coastguard?’

Curly nodded.

‘Did the police ever suspect that it was Danny that pushed Frank into the water?’

‘What do you think? Course they did. Interviewed him a few times.’ The tree-shaped air freshener dangling from the mirror swung from side to side as he swerved around a pothole.

‘Could he have done it?’

‘Not a chance. He wouldn’t have it in him to do a thing like that. You’ll see.’ Curly accelerated to make it through an amber traffic light, then slowed again as he rejoined the queue of cars ahead. ‘Say he had, though, not saying he had. You’d never be able to prove anything, would you? Two people on a boat.’

‘Nope. Not if they never found the body.’

‘Well, if it had been me and Frank on the boat, maybe then you’d have a point. Not Danny though.’

‘You didn’t like Frank much, did you?’

‘Nope. Don’t know many who did, to be honest.’

‘Why not?’

‘Bit full of himself, like his father before him. When his father died Frank reckoned he was the big man. Thought he owned the place.’

‘But you still worked with him?’

‘Sometimes. Beggars and choosers, you know? You don’t have to like everyone you work with. It’s all about the boats with me. My dad was a fisherman. If I couldn’t go out on the boats still, I wouldn’t know what I was.’

As long as she lived in Dungeness she had known Curly, though it had never been a friendship. He spent his life on the beach or in the pub. Everybody knew him and he seemed to know everyone’s business.

Without indicating, he pulled out to overtake a rubbish truck on the long straight Lydd Road. Coming in the other direction, a Jaguar flashed its lights angrily. Curly laughed.

Folkestone Harbour was an old mess of brick, stone, concrete, steel and wood; a collection of harbour arms, bridges and viaducts. Once, this had been a busy port taking train freight passengers across the Channel. Now they were building apartments where the ships had used to come in.

The trawler was moored in the harbour off The Stade; a fat blue hull, painted with thick white lines, on the bow in big letters designed to be read a long way off, FE128. Curly parked the truck outside the Ship Inn, facing the water.

‘That’s not the same boat . . . ?’

‘No. That was The Hopeful. She was a