The Trawlerman, стр. 71
Checking in to see how she was recovering, DI McAdam visited after work.
Sitting in her kitchen, Toby McAdam let slip that they were working on the theory that Frank Hogben’s murder had been a dispute over drug money; that Neill must have been involved with Hogben importing drugs. Neill denied it but was unable to explain the sums of money, not large, but very regular, that had appeared in his personal account over the last few years. There was something shady about his finances, for sure.
‘I’m sorry. This must be painful for you,’ Toby McAdam said.
‘Yes,’ Alex said.
‘How’s your daughter Zoë?’
Alex liked McAdam. He was the kind of boss who took care to know the names of his colleagues’ children; though, she realised now, she had never once asked about his. ‘Insane, as ever,’ she answered. ‘Though she looks after me well. Apparently I haven’t woken up screaming in the night for at least a week now.’
‘She must have been through a great deal.’
‘I suppose she has,’ said Alex, though she was a little offended by the suggestion.
‘As you have, obviously. We’ll see about bringing you back on light duties soon.’
And Alex’s heart shrank again, but she tried to look grateful, for his sake.
Fifty
‘All you have to do is drop me at Tina and Stella’s,’ Zoë said. ‘I don’t see what the big deal is.’
Alex had finally bought herself an ancient green Saab off Curly, and so, in theory, she could have driven her daughter to Folkestone. Instead she said, ‘I’m busy.’
‘No you’re not. You’re hanging around the house all day. Is there a problem with me being friends with them?’
‘No.’
‘You sure? ’Cause you’re acting like some kind of homophobe.’
‘What do you see in them?’
‘I don’t know,’ Zoë said spikily. ‘Maybe I’m a lesbian, after all.’
‘Maybe I’m a lesbian? Are you really saying that?’
‘No. I don’t have to decide, do I? It’s just society that makes people have to decide. I just like hanging around with people who are a bit different. They have nice friends.’
‘You don’t have to decide. That’s true.’ Her daughter had always liked hanging around with people who were a bit different. When they moved here, to Dungeness, Alex had thought it strange her teenage daughter had become so obsessed with nature that she hung around with adults like Bill all the time. Now she seemed more interested in hanging around with Tina and Stella, Alex found herself mourning the fact that she was spending less time with birders and naturalists, or out at the Marsh Visitor Centre.
That wasn’t why she didn’t want to drive her daughter to see them at their tiny house. Knowing what Tina had done, it was best not to spend time in their company. There were too many lies.
‘I might stay over, Mum. Hang out with some people in Folkestone.’
‘OK.’
Zoë softened. ‘Don’t sound so down about it, Mum. I’m seventeen. I mean, I can go out, now you’ve stopped having nightmares and stuff.’
‘I never asked you to do that. I was OK. You never had to stay and look after me.’
‘Didn’t I?’ said her daughter.
She no longer woke in the night to find her duvet twisted around her, and her daughter quietly sitting by her bed. She no longer smelt earth around her, weight on her chest, or the wetness of blood. She hadn’t returned to work yet, but that would come soon. She wasn’t frightened. Something had freed her, and now the ordinary dull patterns of the world had come back; tides came in and out, and they were just water. She felt in control again. She had done a bad thing, but she had made some sense of the world.
‘Get in the car, then,’ she said.
In a rare display of affection, her daughter kissed her.
‘So,’ Alex said, as lightly as she could as they drove past the bungalows that crowded the flat seafront. ‘Do you really think you’re gay then?’
‘No. I don’t think I’m anything.’
‘Of course you’re something . . . love,’ she responded, too quickly.
‘I don’t mean it like that.’
‘Sorry.’ She loved her daughter more than she had loved anything; sometimes, though, she felt they were further apart than ever.
They pulled up at the small terraced house.
‘Come in and say hello, Mum. They’d like that. Tina thinks you’re ace.’
‘Does she?’ Alex smiled. ‘That’s nice. No. I’m OK.’
She waved at her daughter as she drove off.
In the hallway she noticed the umbrella. She had forgotten to return it. It would be nice, she thought, to sit in a pub on her own and read a book. Strapping it to her bicycle frame and putting a book in a backpack, she set off for the nearby town. The Dolphin was mostly empty. She handed over the umbrella to a barman, and then a couple of young American tourists approached her because she was on her own, and they chatted for a while, and when they learned she lived at Dungeness they told her how fantastic and spooky a place it was and how they had come here because they were on a kind of pilgrimage to see Derek Jarman’s cottage, which was as close to a religious shrine as you got on the Ness. They talked for a while, but then she pulled out her book and they got the hint, and she finally sat alone reading about neuroscience while eating haddock and chips and drinking Pinot Grigio. It felt utterly luxurious.
When Curly came in, she noticed him tense a little as he spotted her, but she nodded hello at him, and he nodded back. That’s all. It was as if she had finally become a local; she was someone who held a shared secret.
‘Sit with me,’ she called to him. So when he had bought his pint of lager and a packet of sweet chilli crisps, he joined her at her table.
‘Have you seen anything of Bill?’ she asked. ‘I