Revenge of the Tide (28 page)

Jim was holding my hand against his chest. I thought he might be falling asleep. I thought about getting up, getting dressed.

‘You’re still angry,’ he said. He was stroking his thumb against the back of my hand. ‘I can tell. You’re so tense.’

‘I feel like everyone’s been using me,’ I said.

‘I prefer to think that we’re just helping each other out.’

I moved, sat up in bed, hugged my knees. I wanted to be able to see his face. ‘Why did Dylan ring you to tell you about Caddy? I don’t understand. Didn’t you know already?’

He took a deep breath, ran his hand over his forehead. ‘I’m not – well – I’m not part of the investigation team.’

‘So who are you, then? You mean you’re not police?’

‘I am a police officer. I just work on different things, and I’m Met Police, not Kent.’

This didn’t make sense. ‘How come you’re allowed to turn up and interfere with an investigation you’re not a part of? Don’t you have to do what you’re told?’

He smiled. ‘I’m not, strictly speaking, interfering. And if you’re going to get pedantic, I’m not actually on duty at the moment.’

‘Does Dylan have something to do with Caddy’s death? Is that why he’s not answering his phone?’

He didn’t answer.

‘He wouldn’t do that,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t have hurt Caddy.’

There was something in his expression, something that he tried to hide.

‘You think he killed her?’ I said.

‘I don’t think he killed her,’ he replied. ‘But I don’t know why he’s been out of contact for so long. Do you know?’

I shrank back a little, unprepared for the focus to be turned in my direction. ‘I have no idea.’

‘You knew Dylan from the Barclay,’ he said. ‘You must have some feeling about what he was like.’

‘Dylan was different: he wasn’t like the others. He was kind. Well, he was kind to me, anyway.’

Jim grinned. ‘I’ve never heard him described quite like that.’

‘Well, maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do.’

He must have noticed the edge in my voice because he sat up, then. He didn’t pull the duvet up around himself and he was sitting there, on my bed, arrogant in his nakedness, totally at ease with his body.

‘I don’t want to fight with you any more,’ he said.

‘We shouldn’t talk about it, then.’

‘I’m just trying to keep you safe, Genevieve.’

‘Bollocks you are. You’re trying to find Dylan. And I don’t need anyone to keep me safe, thank you very much.’

He laughed at that, and it stung.

‘Another thing that’s been bothering me. How do you know Dylan? I mean – he doesn’t exactly move in police circles, does he?’

He got out of bed, abruptly, and pulled his clothes on. I watched him, wondering if I’d managed to hit a nerve. He didn’t answer straight away, which made me think he’d lied to me and he wasn’t friends with Dylan after all. What if he was trying to find him because he was going to arrest him? What if that was why Dylan was keeping away from me? Was Jim using me as bait?

‘We were at school together,’ he said. ‘We’ve gone our separate ways over the years, but we’re still mates.’

‘Where?’ I said, trying to catch him out. Not that I knew the answer. ‘Where were you at school?’

‘Don’t, Genevieve,’ he answered. ‘You’re just going to have to trust me.’

‘Why should I trust you, when you kept something that important from me?’

He looked me straight in the eye. ‘You’re still keeping important things from me,’ he said, ‘and I trust you.’

I stared at him, furious.

‘I’d better go,’ he said, pulling his socks on.

I didn’t answer.

‘You know what your trouble is?’ he said, looking back over his shoulder at me briefly and then turning back to pull on his other sock.

He was clearly going to tell me anyway, so I didn’t see the need to respond to this question either.

‘You don’t have a clue what you’re mixed up in. You’re flitting around the edge of this – mess – not knowing just how fucking dangerous it is. You think you can take care of yourself, but actually, you have no idea. No fucking idea.’

I glared at him. He was right: I had no fucking idea – but that was because nobody ever fucking told me anything. A few moments later he was putting his shoes on in the galley, and after that there was a bang as he pulled the door of the wheelhouse shut behind him.

I
t would have been easy just to go to bed, to hide under the covers and cry, for what was left of the day if I needed to. But instead I went and had a shower, got dressed, went to the woodburner and tried to get a fire going. It gave me something to concentrate on, with my shaking hands, trying to get the fire started and then sitting in front of the open door, watching it in case it died down again, feeding it until it grew strong enough for me to build the wood around it. And then I shut the door to the stove and sat looking at the flames and the logs starting to glow.

I was still sitting there an hour later when I heard a noise outside, and a few moments later a knock at the door of the wheelhouse.

It was Malcolm, complete with an ancient box of tools. I looked at it doubtfully.

‘I thought I’d take a look at your generator,’ he said.

‘I’ve got tools,’ I said indignantly.

‘Yeah. So – er – what happened to your new fella? Saw him earlier, didn’t look too happy.’

‘Oh, he’s fine. He had to go to work.’

Malcolm gave me a look that said he didn’t believe me. He lifted the hatch in the wheelhouse that gave access to the engine and peered down into the engine space.

‘The batteries should be all charged up,’ he said. ‘Then once I reconnect them you can transfer over – here – like this…’

I looked and tried to pay attention while he showed me a series of buttons and switches.

‘The generator will run off your fuel supply so that’ll go down quicker than normal. But you won’t need to use it all the time, like, during the day and stuff. You’ve still got gas bottles for the stove, haven’t you?’

I nodded. ‘And I’ve got the woodburner.’

‘Exactly. Electricity is overrated,’ he said with a smile.

He went back to tinkering with the generator, connecting wires and tubes and bashing things. I clambered over him and went down into the cabin.

‘I need to turn the power off,’ Malcolm shouted down the steps.

‘Alright,’ I called back.

The saloon was nice and warm now from the woodburner. I sat in front of it, hugging my knees, trying not to think about Dylan and Jim and thinking about nothing else. I’d thought about Dylan every day since that last time, but not like this. I wanted him to come back for me. I wanted him to be here, with me. I wanted it so badly it was like an ache, like a void inside me.

And Jim – what was I supposed to do about Jim? The thought of him made me shiver. There was something irresistible about him, some force that made me lose my senses and want him, no matter what he said or did. And he was maddening at the same time.

I would ring him tomorrow, once I’d had a chance to catch up on some sleep and get my head straightened out.

‘Genevieve!’ Malcolm shouted from the deck.

‘What?’

‘It’s all connected.’ He came down into the cabin.

I didn’t turn around. It must have looked a bit odd, me sitting there on the floor facing the stove.

‘You alright?’ he said.

I didn’t answer and he came to sit on the sofa. ‘Gen? What’s the matter?’

‘It’s been a tough day,’ I said.

‘What happened? Is it that policeman? He been bothering you?’

‘No. He’s been fine, Malcolm, honest.’

‘Maybe you should go and stay with him for a bit, then, till it all quietens down again.’

‘I’m not leaving the boat.’

‘No one else been around – you know, like before?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve not seen anybody,’ he said, quickly.

I looked at him then, turned my head slowly. He was sitting on the edge of my sofa, hands hanging between his knees. He looked wired. His left knee was jiggling up and down.

‘Malcolm?’

‘What?’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing, nothing.’ He looked almost afraid, just for a moment.

‘Hey,’ I said.

He looked back at me. There was something in his expression; I should have been able to tell what it was. But I was too tired and too numb to think hard enough about it.

‘I just wanted to say thanks, for helping with everything.’

‘Okay,’ he said.

We stood awkwardly in the cabin, Malcolm shifting his weight from one leg to the other. ‘You know I used to live in London,’ he said at last.

‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.

‘Before I met Josie. I lived all over, but for a while I lived in Leytonstone. In a squat. Well, digs. I guess it was a kind of a squat, anyway, since we didn’t pay anyone any rent. But still.’

‘What were you doing in London?’ I asked, wondering where this was going.

‘Oh, this and that, you know – a bit of construction work, a bit of plastering sometimes when someone would take me on. Just earning enough for beer really. It was alright.’

He looked at me sideways.

‘What is it, Malcolm? What are you getting at?’

‘Well, I knew of this Fitz. The one who was your boss at that club.’

‘You knew Fitz?’

‘I never said that. I said I knew
of
him. Some blokes I knew from the pub, they was talking about stuff one night, where to score drugs mostly, and they was complaining about the quality of the gear on the streets at the moment, and they said it was because Fitz had moved on to something else.’

‘Something else?’

‘Like he wasn’t supplying any more. Or he’d moved on to supplying different gear.’

‘Oh,’ I said, sitting back. ‘Doesn’t mean it was the same Fitz, though.’

‘He used to hang around with this guy, Ian Gray. He was a hard bloke, like his protection, you know, his muscle.’

‘Gray?’

‘Big bloke, tattoo on his neck. He was missing half his earlobe.’

That was Gray, alright. No wonder Malcolm had been so interested in hearing about life at the Barclay.

‘I should have said something earlier,’ he said.

‘Yes, you should,’ I said.

‘I was thinking – you know – I might be able to call a few people, find out who it is who’s putting the pressure on you. Tell them to lay off.’

‘Are you fucking kidding? If you know of Fitz then you know these people aren’t going to lay off just because some nice bloke rings them up and asks them not to.’

‘Yeah, all right!’ he said, affronted. ‘I’m not a complete fuckwit. I just meant – you know – I could do some digging for you.’

‘I somehow doubt that’s going to help,’ I said. ‘But thanks anyway. They might just get bored.’

‘Or they might come along tonight and kill you.’

‘If they were going to do that, they would’ve done it by now,’ I said.

‘Yeah, you say that. But they never got their hands on that parcel of yours, did they?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘I’d better go,’ he said, heading for the steps. ‘You just shout me if you need anything.’

‘Are we still going to move the boat?’ I said. ‘How about tomorrow?’

‘Sure, yeah,’ he said. He was already at the door, and moments later he’d waved goodbye and disappeared.

I looked at my phone and thought about ringing Jim. I sat in front of the stove for a while, allowing the warmth from it to take the chill out of my bones. I couldn’t stop thinking about Caddy. I kept coming back to Caddy’s last moments, how she must have felt. Had it hurt? Had she had time to feel pain, fear? Had she known she was about to die? And all the time I was so close by – and I’d had no idea she was even there.

I got to my feet and stretched. Everything felt achy, my neck so stiff I could hardly turn my head. I turned off the lights and locked the wheelhouse door, and went to bed.

I
woke up early and lay still in the greying light from the skylight, wondering what had woken me. And then the scrabble on the deck above, and the cry of a gull, fading as it took off. I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t, and the boat felt too quiet to be lying still waiting for morning.

I got up, dressed and lit the woodburner while I was waiting for the kettle to boil, the crackling of the logs keeping me company while I made coffee. I looked doubtfully for something to eat for breakfast, and made a piece of toast with the last of the bread that was on the verge of being stale. I definitely needed to do some shopping later.

I wondered if there was anything I could do to the boat that didn’t involve power tools this early in the morning, and I thought about the black plastic bag full of fabrics I’d thrown into the storage compartment when I was tidying up for the party. Maybe I could make some curtains for the portholes, something to cover over those black circles which had never bothered me much before.

When I finished my coffee I put the mug in the sink and went to retrieve the bag of fabric. I opened the hatch and in the darkness crawled down the three steps, along the pallets to the bow, until I was sitting next to the box.
KITCHEN STUFF.

I pushed the box with my finger. It moved. I pushed it again, and it tilted.

No, no! That wasn’t right at all.

Without a second’s thought I grabbed hold of the box and tipped it upside down, the contents spilling all over my lap, over the pallet, some bits falling through the gap into the smooth curved space of the hull.

The false bottom of the box came away, and with it – nothing.

It was gone. The parcel was gone.

I pushed the empty box to one side and sat there in the semi-darkness, trying to think. My brain felt fried by all this, exhaustion, fear making me irrational. Who had been in here? I tried to think when I’d last checked the hatch before Saturday night – whether I’d actually felt the box or just seen it, like last time when Jim was here, and thought it was fine. It was Thursday, I was pretty sure, and today was Monday, so it might have been empty for several days. Could it have been the police? If they’d found it, why the hell hadn’t they arrested me?

I crawled out of the bow again and shut the door firmly behind me. I went back to the saloon, found Dylan’s phone and dialled the number. I didn’t expect it to ring, and I got the same voice telling me that the phone was switched off. Damn him!

I paced up and down in the cabin, waiting for dawn, wondering what to do next. Dylan had given me the parcel to look after, and it was gone. Someone had taken it. Someone had come on to the boat, maybe when I’d been at the police station, or maybe last night when I’d been hiding, and taken it. I’d let Dylan down. It was all a mess, a complete hideous mess.

I thought again about phoning Jim, but what would that achieve? I couldn’t tell him the parcel was missing, because to do so would be to admit to its existence, to implicate myself in whatever it contained.

I wanted to get off the boat, then. It was daylight now. I needed fresh air, to be outside in the real world where shitty things like missing parcels full of cocaine did not exist. It would be a good idea to go shopping and get some food. I couldn’t live off stale bread forever. And there was nothing left on the boat that needed my protection.

I took my jacket and hat and locked up the boat behind me. When I got to the car park Cameron came out of the office. I didn’t want to talk to him but he waved at me and shouted hello. ‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘What’s this Malc was telling me about you going for a trip?’

‘Yeah. I just thought I’d try taking the boat out for a bit.’

He stood there a full head taller than me, kicking at a tuft of grass that was growing up through the tarmac. ‘Just be careful out there, won’t you?’

‘Oh, don’t worry. Malcolm’s going to help me. I wouldn’t go out on my own.’

‘Technically you can’t take the boat out without a licence. It’s really easy to run aground,’ he said, ‘especially if the tide’s on the way out. And it’s not easy steering a boat the size of yours. I know Malcolm thinks he knows what he’s doing, but your boat’s fifteen feet longer than his.’

‘Malcolm’s licensed, isn’t he? And he’s taken the
Scarisbrick Jean
out for trips?’

‘Not for a while.’

‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ I said with a smile.

‘No, no,’ he said. He looked shifty. ‘I just – I think you need to be careful, that’s all.’

‘Of Malcolm?’

Cameron’s cheeks were colouring. ‘No, Malc’s alright, you know that. He just… sometimes he does things without thinking through the consequences. You get my drift?’

‘Would you help me move the boat, then?’

‘If you really wanted to, sure. But I don’t see why you need to go anywhere.’

‘It’s a long story,’ I said. ‘Really, it’s just because – I don’t know – it seems a bit silly having a boat and never going out on the river. And I want to have a look upstream before the winter comes. That’s why.’

‘Have the police been hassling you?’

The dramatic change of topic bothered me. He was standing there with his back to the office door, arms folded across his chest. I wondered what this was leading to.

‘No, not really. Why?’

‘I saw them come to see you, day before yesterday. Those two from London.’

‘Do you know them, then?’

‘No, they called at the office. They were asking after you.’

I looked at my feet. ‘They were okay. That body I found – turns out she was from London. They’re doing the investigation.’

‘Right.’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m going to get some shopping in. Want me to get anything for you?’

‘Just that there’s been a lot of strange things happening since then, haven’t there?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like the cable to the light being cut.’

I stared at him for a moment. I couldn’t think what to say, and the conversation was taking an awkward turn.

‘Just saying,’ he said. ‘Thanks. Don’t need anything.’ He turned and went back into the office.

I got my bike out of the storage room and pedalled forcefully out of the gate and up the hill.

The supermarket was just opening, a small crowd of early birds gathered around the entrance waiting for the shutters to rise. I wandered up and down the aisles distractedly, bought the bare minimum of provisions and stuffed the shopping into my rucksack.

When I got back to the marina it was deserted. The office was closed; even the door to the laundry, usually hanging ajar, was firmly shut.

I stepped aboard the
Aunty Jean
to see if Malcolm and Josie were home, but their hatch was locked. The tide was going out, the brown, silty water caressing the hulls of our boats.

Nothing for it, then, I was all on my own. I went back to the
Revenge of the Tide
and stoked the remains of the fire that was smouldering in the woodburner. While I waited for it to warm up I looked for the parcel. I started in the storage space, with my torch this time, opening boxes and moving them methodically from one side to the other, lifting things out of the way, taking it slowly to make sure – what? That I’d not accidentally misplaced it, that I’d not absent-mindedly moved it myself?

It was pointless. The parcel was gone.

Nevertheless I carried on, checking everything and sorting things out as I did so, putting things into some kind of order so that when I next came in here I could find what I was looking for. The bag of fabric and the tins of paint near the door mocked me and I decided that it would be better if I just got on with things, kept busy. My hands were trembling slightly. Not good for sewing: painting was a much better option.

By the time I’d emerged again, the boat was sitting on the mud. I went to look at the spare room. It was just as I’d left it: two coats of paint. The walls looked pale and almost transparent in the grey afternoon light.

I got the paint and brushes out of the hatch and levered the lid off the tin of paint with my gooey screwdriver. There wasn’t a lot of paint left. Even if the tins claimed to be the same colour, on wooden cladding like this the slightest variation in shade would show up. I would start with the berth; that way if I ran out of paint I could always do the final coat of the walls with a different tin and it wouldn’t look as odd as if one wall were a slightly different shade.

The rest of the tin just about lasted for the berth. By the time I’d finished I was wiping the inside of the tin with my brush, dragging every last drip of paint from the sides.

When I was washing the brushes in the galley sink I heard noises outside. I went up the steps and opened the wheelhouse door. Malcolm was on the deck of the
Scarisbrick Jean
. He saw me and ducked out of sight. I didn’t have to ask where he’d been. He looked as though he’d had an argument with a strimmer, his scalp showing pink through the short grey spikes.

‘Malcolm!’ I shouted. ‘I like your hair.’

His face popped up again and looked so depressed I thought he might actually cry. ‘Never again,’ he said.

I went down the gangplank and over to the
Scarisbrick Jean
so I didn’t need to shout. He stayed where he was, one foot on the step down into the cabin, right hand on the roof.

‘Is this Josie’s revenge for the fact that you didn’t notice her hair the other day?’

‘Let’s not mention that,’ he said. He was gripping the roof of the cabin so hard that his knuckles were white.

‘How is Josie?’ I asked. ‘Has she got a hangover?’

‘Yeah. She’s having a kip.’

‘Oh,’ I said. Then I added, ‘Is everything alright, Malcolm?’

‘Yeah,’ he said.

I didn’t believe him.

‘Sounds like you’re a bit busy today, then…’

‘I am a bit, yeah.’

‘Maybe we could move the boat tomorrow?’

‘Maybe, yeah.’

I tried not to look disappointed, but lack of sleep and general misery at the situation was starting to get to me. Malcolm was watching me intently, his body blocking the doorway, his whole bony posture rigid.

‘Alright, then,’ I said. ‘Tell Josie I said hi.’

I left him and went back up the gangplank to the
Revenge
. When I turned to shut the wheelhouse door, he was still standing exactly as I’d left him, fixed and motionless, staring straight ahead.

The boat was quiet, and still.

I went back to washing the brushes, and when they were clean I stood them on their ends in an empty jam jar to dry. I should really go back to bed, I thought, try to sleep for a little while. I felt numb and empty. I felt as if I was waiting.

The sound of the mobile phone ringing, loud and discordant, made me jump. The phone was on the shelf behind the dinette, under some papers. It took me two rings to find it.

GARLAND.

‘Hello?’

‘Genevieve?’

The relief, at hearing his voice. ‘Yes! Dylan?’

‘Yeah. You need to get out, now. Right now.’

‘What?’

‘Get off the boat. Take your phone. Ring Jim – understand?’

‘What’s going on?’

‘They’ve been watching you. But they’ve gone, I don’t know how long for. Fitz is on his way to meet them. Get off the boat.
NOW
!’