The Trawlerman, стр. 62
‘I never knew.’
‘You built him up,’ her mother said. ‘You’re still trying to live up to him. Maybe that’s your problem.’
‘I don’t really see that as a problem,’ said Alex.
‘Suit yourself,’ said her mother.
They ate at a gastropub in Islington, sitting at a table outside so her mother could smoke. ‘Was he nice, the man you broke up with?’
‘Absolute scum of the earth.’
Her mother smiled. ‘Life’s a lot better without men, sometimes, I find.’ That stung a little. Alex still resented it – how much her mother seemed to enjoy life now her father was gone. She had some financial business she had to discuss with her mother. Her mother never liked talking money, but Alex forced her to do it. She took out documents and a pen, and watched as her mother signed them.
‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right, Alex? You’re worrying me, you know.’
A busker was setting up a pitch close to where they were eating. He had a large, green metal frame with a small seat on it.
‘Don’t get me wrong. Your father was a very good man. But he wasn’t perfect all the time. He just hid that part well.’
Alex reached out and put her hand over her mother’s.
‘Is there any wine left in the carafe?’ Helen stared at her daughter. ‘You shouldn’t measure yourself against your father all the time. I know how much you two had this thing together. I was always a bit jealous of it, you and him. He was a good, kind man, and I suppose I was lucky with him, but sometimes I wish he’d have taken the stick out of his arse, know what I mean? You’re your own person, Alex.’
Helen picked up her wine glass and took a decent gulp.
‘It’s so easy to pull the wool over people’s eyes when you just show them what they want to see, isn’t it?’
For a second Alex thought she was still talking about her father and was about to start an argument, then she realised that her mother was not looking at her at all but at the busker. He had hauled himself up onto the metal chair, a metre above the ground, and tugged a Yoda mask over his face, then pulled on green rubber hands and rested one on the pole that held the chair. With the cloak falling around him it looked like he was floating in the air. Within a minute, the coins started falling into a copper pot he had left on the ground in front of him.
‘It’s just a trick,’ said Helen. ‘People are so stupid.’
‘That’s what it all is,’ said Alex, smiling at her mother. ‘A very neat trick.’
Afterwards, she made it down to Waterloo and caught the train back to Kent. She was trying to think things through, over and over, but she kept getting distracted by a young couple who were taking photographs of each other with an old Nikon camera, laughing. And then, before she realised she had fallen asleep, the girl with the camera was shaking her awake, saying, ‘Is this your stop?’
The train was at Folkestone. She had meant to get off at Ashford. She had barely time to leap up, disoriented, thank the girl, and jump out of the door before the train started moving again. On the platform she looked at her phone:
Where are you?
Are you OK????
Jill had been waiting at Ashford station to pick her up and drive her home. Alex called her. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t sleep that well, and I’m tired all the time now . . .’
‘Wait there. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be there in thirty.’
But with half an hour to kill in Folkestone, she took the opportunity to walk up the hill to the east of the station. She found the house again, and emerged through the arch into the space behind the old houses, where old street cobbles showed beneath worn tarmac. It was quiet. There was nobody around.
Lining the far side of the yard were several old workshops, most of them disused. From Bill’s description it was easy to see which the Hogbens’ lock-up had been. It still had the big wooden door, but there was a fat padlock on it and no way to get in.
She walked up to it, bending down to try and see in through the crack between the smaller door and its frame, but though she caught the whiff of old oil, it was too dark inside to make out anything inside.
‘And what do you presume you’re doing?’
Alex stood up and looked round. The woman she had disarmed at the Light Railway Cafe in Dungeness stood behind her, hands in the pockets of a faded purple housecoat.
‘Mrs Hogben,’ Alex said.
‘Do I know you?’ The woman leaned forward a little. There was a blob of spittle on her lip. From the puzzled expression on her face, it seemed she didn’t even remember the encounter they had had at Dungeness.
‘You live here still?’
‘Why not? It’s my fucking house. My son doesn’t need it any more.’
‘What about this lock-up?’ Alex asked, gesturing behind her.
‘That’s my son’s. Used to be his father’s. Both fucking dead now.’ She swore as old people do sometimes, when the fabric of their minds is worn too thin to hold the words in check.
‘Who uses it now?’
Mandy Hogben shook her head. ‘It’s that woman’s. She kept it.’
‘Tina’s? Do you know what’s in there?’
‘That bloody car.’
‘A Ford Escort?’
‘Yeah. Max loved that car more than he ever loved me. Same with Frank. Little bastards, both of them. Stupid car.’
Alex nodded. If she was right, the car that had killed Frank Hogben was still in there. ‘I’ve a question for you, Mrs Hogben. Have you seen her using it recently?’
‘Who?’
‘Tina. Your daughter-in-law.’
‘Ex-daughter-in-law, thank fuck. No. She’d never bloody dare come round here. She hasn’t been back since he disappeared. She