The Trawlerman, стр. 56
With no car she had only her bike, so she packed a thermos with more coffee, and two chocolate bars, and set off on the bike. Her limbs should have been tired, but they weren’t. She was itchy with energy.
On a bike around here it was like you floated above the land. The roads she cycled on had once just been banks, raised centuries ago to keep the water out of fields as the marsh grew, one field at a time. Over time they had turned into pathways, then tracks, then roads. It took her less than an hour riding from Denge Marsh, through Walland Marsh, into the oldest part of the landscape; what the locals called Romney Marsh Proper.
Midweek there were a few tents in the field. She looked around, wondering if he was in one of them. She wheeled the bike into the field, rattling it over a cattle grid, then walked towards them.
A European couple listening to music on their phone looked up and smiled. ‘God dag,’ they said.
She was approaching the next tent when she heard a cough behind her and turned, and there he was. Bill South had grown a beard. It was greyer than she wanted it to be.
She nodded, opened her arms wide and put them around him and hugged him tightly. ‘Stupid arse,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘You look a bit shit,’ he told her.
‘Yes. I probably do,’ she said. She reached out and pulled his beard. ‘You look worse.’
He had been staying in a wooden shepherd’s hut tucked into a corner of the next field. It was not one of the new ones, the caravans for the middle classes; it was an old one with a pitch-black corrugated iron roof and greying timbers, slightly askew on its base. ‘I know the farmer. I told her I needed a place to, you know . . .’
‘Hide,’ supplied Alex.
Bill nodded. ‘Yes. And she said I could have this for as long as I needed it.’
He opened the door. It felt even smaller inside; whitewashed wood, a pair of tiny casement windows, one on each side, fringed by faded curtains. A pile of clothes lay on the bed, neatly folded. There was no room for a chair. Stepping inside, he lit the gas hob under the kettle.
She looked around for empty bottles but saw none. ‘You still drinking?’
He shook his head. ‘Zoë told me she wouldn’t visit me if I carried on, so I stopped.’
‘Good girl.’
‘Isn’t she? She’s been coming to see you every day?’
‘Most days.’
‘How come you told her where you were and not me?’
He pulled two tea bags from a box and dropped them into a teapot. He knew Alex didn’t like tea, but that had never stopped him making it for her, as if he believed not liking it was just some kind of Londoner’s affectation. ‘Because I knew she would have been worried if she hadn’t known where I was.’
‘Like I wasn’t.’
‘It was you I was disappearing from. You know that, though, don’t you?’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Yes.’
He nodded. ‘I was worried you would figure out what had happened on The Hopeful. Thing is,’ he said without smiling, ‘you generally do.’
‘I found out you were on the docks when The Hopeful came in. You were the one who reported Frank Hogben missing all those years ago. You were in on it all along.’ She had asked Colin to send her the reports on Frank Hogben’s disappearance. It had been there on the printed sheets. Constable William South had been there on the dockside to take a statement from Daniel Fagg and the other crewmen.
He nodded. ‘Question is, what are you going to do about it? Same as last time?’
‘Frank wasn’t on board because he wasn’t ever on board. You made sure you were there that night so that it was you who made the report that he had disappeared. So you disappeared, because seven years ago you were part of the conspiracy to make him disappear.’
He looked at her oddly. He handed her the cup, and she took it and followed him onto the steps which were just wide enough to sit on, side by side. ‘Did he have something on you, Bill?’
Bill looked shocked. ‘What?’
‘You let him get away with it. You were the one who let him disappear. There has to be a reason for that.’
‘What do you mean, get away with it?’
‘I’m not sure entirely he’s even dead, Bill. I think I may have seen him. I think you arranged for him to disappear so that he would never be prosecuted for running drugs. In return he had to leave Tina alone. That was the deal. You did it to save her life. I understand. That was a good thing. But to do it, you let him get away. You, Curly and Danny concocted that whole charade of the search for his body but he was never on that boat.’
‘Jesus,’ he said.
‘Sorry, Bill. You’re a good man. A much better person than me.’
On the step beside her, he turned towards her. ‘Jesus,’ he said again. ‘You’ll be telling me you believe in all sorts now, Alex. Frank Hogben is alive, you reckon?’
His laughter grew until she thought she felt the whole hut behind them rattling with it as she sat there, bewildered.
Forty-one
‘I thought you were the copper who got everything right, Alex,’ he said, when he’d finally got his breath back. ‘What went wrong?’
She frowned.
‘Frank Hogben definitely didn’t get away. I saw him dead with my own eyes. And he has been for seven years. No question.’
She frowned. ‘You saw him dead? You did? You never reported that.’
‘The reason I ran away is because if you knew the truth, it would result in good people going to prison. You have form on that. But