The Trawlerman, стр. 67
His living room was surprisingly neat. The furniture was brown, faded by sunlight. It looked like it had been untouched since the 1970s. There were two brass bedpans hanging on either side of the fireplace; above it was a black-and-white photo of a man standing on a trawler. ‘You and Danny on the boat. That was like a big pantomime, then. You trying to scare me into realising how dangerous a trawler can be?’
‘Sorry. Stupid idea. Didn’t mean any harm.’
‘Your father?’ asked Alex, pointing at the photo.
‘He was a good bloke, my dad. Before it all went to shit around here. Tea?’
‘I thought you might need something stronger. I brought some wine,’ said Alex, taking the bottle Jill had brought her from her backpack. ‘You made the call, then.’
‘Just like you said.’
‘You said exactly what I told you to?’
‘Yes. I told them where the body was, and gave them Terry Neill’s name. Nothing else.’
‘What did you do with the phone?’
‘Smashed it up and threw it away. Just like you said.’
‘And the Mercedes?’
‘Took the plates off and towed it up to the scrapyard in Dartford yesterday. All gone.’
It was a shame. It had been a nice car. She would have liked one like that. A classic, as Terry Neill had said. There would be no record of Alex ever having owned or driven it. Nothing about his account of her giving him the money would tally with the apparent facts.
Alex cracked the metal cap of the bottle open. For Tina’s sake, Curly had conspired to cover up a murder. For Bill’s sake, she had just done the same. ‘If people think Terry Neill killed Frank Hogben, they won’t come looking for you and Tina.’
Curly relaxed a little, then went to the kitchen to fetch two glasses, while Alex studied the photo of his father taken before, as Curly said, ‘it all went to shit around here’.
‘I should say thank you, then. They charged him?’
‘Not yet. But they will sometime over the next twenty-four hours, once they’ve found the money in his house and the mud from Boat Lane woods on his car, which they will do, even if it takes a few days.’
Curly nodded slowly. ‘Reckon it’ll stick?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. Too early to say.’
‘But Tina is in the clear?’
Alex didn’t answer. It was too early to tell that, either. They drank the wine for a minute in silence.
‘Was it you who buried the body?’ she asked eventually.
Curly nodded. ‘It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I hated that man with every bone in my body, even before I found out what he’d been doing to Tina. When Bill South let out that he was abusing her, I almost killed him myself.’
He drained his glass. Alex poured him another.
‘I stopped going out on The Hopeful after that. I couldn’t bear to be around that man any longer. I’d have thrown him overboard, or vice versa. So when he was out at sea, I went to check up on Tina, told her I knew he was harming her. Course, she said everything was fine, he was just a bit moody sometimes. I could see the marks on her neck, though.’ He held up the red wine. ‘They were this colour. He used to choke her.’ Curly put down the glass and held his hand out, thumb and finger parted; he looked at his hand for a while before he lowered it.
‘How did you find out, then?’
‘She told me it all, in the end, piece by piece. I took my time. Each time he was out on a run, I would know. I’d see the boat go out. So I’d go up and say “Hello, fancy a cup of tea?”, just to make sure she was still OK. It took a long time for her to open up.’
‘She described the abuse to you?’
‘One time he choked her so long she was unconscious for, like, minutes. It was some stupid argument about her wearing a short dress in the chip shop. He didn’t like it. When she came around he was on top of her, as if he was frightened he’d killed her that time. Which he almost had, I’d guess. He would have killed her in the end. I’m sure of it.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I was trying to get her to go to a refuge. I’d almost got her to agree to go. I was that close. Then that Saturday, she called up and said something terrible had happened. She was a mess. She told me she was going to kill herself.’
‘The day she killed Frank?’
He scrunched up his mouth for a second, so it looked tiny, just a dark line across his face, then he spoke. ‘I went straight up there with a tyre iron, all ready to have to fight Frank. Scared to hell. I’m not a fighter, Alex. Only, he was dead already, under the car. Frank had found out about how she was having this thing with Stella that morning,’ Curly went on. ‘His mother had seen the two of them together in town a few times when he’d been off at sea, and she’d put two and two together . . . That woman Mandy Hogben is a piece of work. When Mandy told him that, he went straight home and beat the crap out of Tina, and told her he was going to kill Stella. That day he beat Tina and locked her in their bedroom. And she believed that’s what he was going to do: kill Stella. He went out, and then, maybe an hour later, he let her out – all smiles, you know? Asked her what was for dinner.’
The bungalow was on the main road. It had started to rain again. Alex could hear the sound of wet tyres on the tarmac.
‘She said he had blood on his shirt. Tina thought he’d gone and done it to her, you