The Trawlerman, стр. 34
Some time later, they started the winch and hauled the first net back up. To Alex the nylon seemed full of shiny wriggling fish, mouths poking between the holes, gasping for water. Danny’s face showed no particular emotion, but Curly looked contemptuous. ‘Rubbish,’ Curly said, tugging at the opening at the bottom of the net.
Fish and crabs poured out like a thick liquid onto the deck. She watched them disentangling the struggling creatures from the ragged net, bodies flashing silver in the dull afternoon light. Small dogfish, black-eyed and pale, writhed in their death throes, mouths opening and closing slowly. When the other two nets had been dragged up, Danny and Curly stood over them, dividing them between white plastic crates. The dogfish went into one. Crabs thunked into another, crawling slowly over each other to try and escape. Plaice and turbot went into a third, while a single skate went into the fourth; white sides up, their gasping mouths looking unsettlingly human to her.
Gulls gathered behind them, hoping to catch anything thrown back overboard.
They worked quickly, clearing the deck of what they had dragged up. For the first time, watching him pick out the fish, she noticed Danny had only three fingers on his right hand. ‘What happened to your hand, Danny?’
His face flushed. ‘Accident.’
‘He caught it in the winch, didn’t you, Danny?’
Bile rose in her throat again.
‘I’ll make tea,’ she suggested.
‘Best stay out here,’ said Danny.
She was going to object, but Curly added, ‘Going inside will make you sick again.’ And on cue, she retched again, though her stomach was empty now.
It took them the best part of an hour to sort the fish and sluice the decks, and then they set about dropping the nets for a second haul.
She joined the men in the wheelhouse, standing in the glow of the screen that showed the map of the seabed beneath them, and the line of the course they were travelling. They were approaching a strange black T-shape. ‘Is that a wreck?’
‘Plane,’ said Danny. ‘That one’s a Dornier.’
Looking closer, she could see it was a tiny symbol of an aeroplane.
‘See that one there?’ He pointed to another one further ahead that they would also pass close to. ‘Spitfire. I pulled up a window from that one in the net. It had bullet holes in the glass.’ He grinned.
‘Danny knows where they all are like nobody else does. Anyone different comes trawling round here and the chances are they’ll snag their nets on them.’
‘So this is his territory?’
‘Pretty much,’ said Curly.
‘You were on The Hopeful, the day Frank Hogben disappeared,’ she said to Danny.
She caught Danny giving Curly a glance, a roll of the eyes. ‘Yep.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Sleeping.’ He pointed to the opening at the front of the wheelhouse. Steep wooden steps descended to a cramped cabin in the ‘V’ of the bow. There were two small bunks in there. ‘I’d been asleep for half an hour, forty minutes maybe. Woke up, he was gone. Just me on the boat. That’s all.’
Alex watched him look over towards Curly, as if for help.‘The Hopeful was on autopilot,’ Curly joined in. ‘Maybe he was having a piss over the side and fell in. Maybe he just tripped. Frank never kept a tidy boat.’
‘Wouldn’t he have shouted?’
‘Might have. No way you’d have heard him down below. And The Hopeful was a bigger boat than this. Once you’re overboard, you’re gone.’
Danny spoke again. ‘Then I called up the coastguard. That’s all.’ He was staring straight ahead at the horizon as if concentrating on something he had spotted there, but when Alex looked there was nothing at all she could see.
It was starting to get dark now. Dungeness lighthouse flashed ahead of them. Only the rectangular bulk of the power station interrupted the otherwise flat horizon.
It was midnight when they dropped the nets for the last time. Away to the south, somewhere over France, there was a thunderstorm lighting the horizon in bursts of yellow. Alex had recovered, though she was hungry now and tired. Danny had offered to share a pale ham sandwich, but fearing it would set her off again, Alex turned it down. She moved to the back of the boat to watch as Danny played out the net. Curly stood by the other side, keeping an eye. It was mesmerising, watching the net disappear into the black water.
‘What about his father?’
‘Max Hogben? Why you asking about him?’
‘Did you ever know him, Danny?’
Danny nodded. ‘Got killed in his car, did Max. That red thing.’
‘Beautiful thing, that was.’ Curly shouted above the noise of the winch. ‘German engine. Went like the clappers.’ Curly knew about cars, loving them almost as much as he did boats.
‘I heard that Frank Hogben used to drive it around after his father died in it.’
Curly said, ‘That’s how it was. Think about it. Pretty bloody weird. Imagine driving round, sitting in the very seat your father died in. You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to figure that one out, do you, Danny?’
‘Nope.’
‘Hated his father. Can’t say I blame him either. Everyone hated Max Hogben. Whole family did. Even Mandy hated him.’
‘From what I heard, no one really liked Frank much either.’
Danny said, ‘Can’t say I really felt warm towards him.’
Curly said nothing at all.
The net was all out now and the winch was suddenly quiet, the noise replaced by the slapping of water against the hull of the trawler. Glancing at her, Curly and Danny seemed to be conferring about something in low voices.
Cautiously, she went to stand at the back of the boat, looking over the metal edge and down at the water. The cold depth beneath them made her suddenly shiver, and she had a vision of herself, drowned, half underwater. Shocked at how