The Trawlerman, стр. 66
At the sixth hole, she opened her Tupperware and ate a cheese sandwich, drank a cup of coffee from her flask.
The eighth hole of the warren course was closest to where she was hiding. She watched them approach. Terry was playing with two men she didn’t recognise, both older than him. She could hear them all laughing when Terry mis-hit a shot into the rough alongside the railway track.
The last of their group was teeing off again when she saw the first blue light. A police car moving at speed down the Dymchurch Road. Then a second.
She watched the two cars speed past the golfers towards the centre of New Romney, disappearing behind the houses.
It seemed to take an age before she saw the police officers emerge from behind the red brick clubhouse, almost half a kilometre away. They seemed in no particular hurry.
A couple of times they stopped to ask other golfers for directions. Watching them through Zoë’s binoculars, Alex recognised Colin Gilchrist. He was talking to the women she had talked to the first time she had visited here. One of them was pointing straight towards the eighth hole. It was the former superintendent. Good for her, thought Alex.
She watched the officers walking towards Terry Neill; the group he was with stopped their golf and looked at each other. Only Terry might have had an inkling of what was happening, but he didn’t try to run.
The rest of the group watched, shocked, as the officers led Terry away, leaving his clubs unattended at the edge of the rough. They stood for a long while, as if dazed by what they had just seen happen, even after the cars had travelled back up the road past them with Terry inside.
Instead of completing the round, they put their clubs in their trolleys and wheeled them back towards the clubhouse, as if the whole day’s sport had somehow been ruined.
When they had gone, Alex finished her flask of coffee, savouring every sip, then packed up and walked back to the train station in time for the 3.45 home.
Forty-seven
Jill arrived at around nine in the evening, in the red suit she sometimes wore for work. She was carrying a plastic bag from Tesco Metro as she made her way across the uneven ground in matching red heels. ‘Something awful. I wanted you to know before you heard it on the news.’
At the back door, Alex tried to sound surprised. ‘What?’
‘They are investigating your boyfriend for the murder of Frank Hogben seven years ago.’
‘Terry Neill?’
‘Yeah. I know. Bizarre, isn’t it?’
‘Ex-boyfriend. Not even that. One-night stand.’
Jill was all sympathy. She put down her plastic bag, with a tell-tale clink of glass against the concrete door step, and flung her arms around Alex, squeezing her tight. ‘You poor girl. Did you know that Terry Neill used to be a smack-head? Frank Hogben was his dealer.’
‘Oh my God. No. Really?’
‘They just dug up Frank Hogben’s body. He never disappeared at sea at all. He was buried up in the woods off Boat Lane in Ashford.’
‘Has he confessed?’
‘We haven’t charged him yet. They questioned him this afternoon. We’re still making the case. God. To think of that. You must find this all so disturbing.’
‘I do. How did all this happen?’
‘Last night there was a call to Crimestoppers. It was a man’s voice, but he didn’t identify himself. He gave the location of Frank Hogben’s body and the name of the person who murdered him, that’s all.’
‘Any idea who the man who called was?’
‘No idea. Thing is, though, we found the body this morning up near Ashford in some woods, just where the guy had said it was buried. And they found, like, three grand in cash buried with him . . . Can I come in? I brought a bottle.’
She fished it out. Alex was touched. Normally Jill preferred pink wine; for Alex she had bought a nice red.
‘Forensics say the grave had recently been disturbed. Like . . . dug up. The notes were mostly those old twenties. They’re going out of circulation this year. We’re working on the theory that whoever buried it realised they’d be worth nothing in a few months.’
‘Wow,’ said Alex.
Alex wondered where Neill had stashed the £13,000 she had given him. She doubted he would have banked it yet. They would search his house; soon, if they weren’t already doing so. When they found the money, it would not take them long to discover Curly’s forged notes among them and to match some of the numbers on those twenty-pound notes to the ones they had dug up at Boat Lane woods.
‘Can I stay the night? Can I? I miss us just talking like we used to? I really miss you at work and everything. It’s not the same.’
Alex stepped forward and returned the hug. ‘Soon,’ she said. ‘Not tonight. OK? I have things I need to do.’
Jill stood there, crestfallen. ‘It’s OK. I get it. You’re still in a vulnerable place.’
‘In a way you’re right, yes. I am in a vulnerable place. Thanks for telling me in person. I love you, Jill, you know. You’re such a pal.’
‘Soon then? Promise?’
‘Yes. Very soon.’
‘Keep the wine. It’s OK. You’ll probably need it more than me.’
Alex watched her drive away, then took her bike out of the shed and locked the door behind her.
The advantage of not having a car was that her journeys were invisible. A car was traceable by the automatic cameras that stood along almost every road now. A bike was not.
In the darkness, she cycled out to Curly’s house in Littlestone. Just to be cautious, she took the back roads.
When she knocked gently, Curly