The Death of the Elver Man

Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen

I would like to thank all the people who have taken the time to answer my stupid and seemingly endless questions whilst writing this book. In particular my thanks go to Dai Pearson for his knowledge of pike, Paul Humble for the Normark knife and ex-PC Stuart Smith for his knowledge of poaching laws. Thanks to everyone at Keiths Sports for your patience and good humour especially Jonathon Bonas and James Freeman for help with guns and fishing – your knowledge is tremendous!

Thank you to Carol Clewlow for the amazing ‘Detective Fiction’ module at Teesside University. I would never have managed without all your help and support.

I owe a great debt to the Lit Award Ruhr – without the award I would have struggled to complete this book and many thanks to Drina Paulovic for her support and help at the London Book Fair.

Special thanks go to Lynn McCormick, my avid reader, for your enthusiasm and encouragement.

Finally I would like to dedicate this book to Jackie. Her knowledge of the Criminal Justice system in general and the Probation Service in particular has been priceless. Thank you – this really would never have happened without you.

This is a work of fiction and I have occasionally taken
perfectly
good information and altered it to fit the story. Any errors or omissions in the book are mine.

The Somerset Levels are strangely flat. Once located below sea level, they emerge crouching but defiant due only to the graces of the great drainage ditches that cut through the area. Below the Zoy, an island hummock of land, the canal stretched into the distance, its water grey and thick with curdled mud. At one end was a sluice gate, over six feet tall and dulled by exposure to the harsh elements of this stolen land. The water flowed almost silently; the only sounds birds and occasional small animals burrowing into the surrounding reeds. A soft wind set the witheys and willows swaying, a constant
background
for eyes and ears. Above her the sky stretched away into the distance, but somehow the land did not, sight brought up short without an horizon as if at the edge of the world. It was a timeless landscape, untouched by modern life, carrying its human residents like ticks on its back.

The gear stick was fighting back again as Alex struggled to change down. She braked, stamped on the clutch and just slowed sufficiently to take the bend on the wrong side of the road.

‘Stupid piece-of-shit car,’ she muttered, as the aging
suspension
wallowed on the curve and one wheel dipped into a pothole. There was a clanking noise as she pulled away along the straight, a warning from the loose exhaust. Peering into the emptiness, she crossed her fingers in futile superstition against breaking down so far from anywhere. She slowed the car, wrestling with the gears again as she searched for the turning. Off to her right was a gap in the verge and a
gravelled
road ran away into the distance. There was no signpost and she hesitated before plunging off, leaving the main road’s minimal sense of civilization behind.

The cottage seemed to emerge from the land itself. Set in a hollow off to the left it huddled as if hiding from prying eyes. She stopped the car and got out into the chill November wind. The silence was shocking after the rattling and grinding of her aging Citroën, which was emitting soft ticking sounds as the engine cooled. She wondered whether she should pull off the road, but the ditch ran hard up against it on the right and the yard and drive of the cottage she had come to visit were piled high with the rusting remains of other vehicles. She’d seen no-one for several miles, so she decided it was probably safer to leave the car where it was. 

The smell she had noticed when she opened the car door, the smell she had attributed to the drainage ditches, became noticeably stronger as she picked her way towards the front door. Keeping a wary eye out for dogs, she reached the front step and pressed the doorbell. Her finger stuck to the greasy surface as she pulled it away. There was silence from inside the house. She glanced at her watch, relieved to see she was on time despite the journey. Deciding the doorbell probably didn’t work anyway, she tried knocking on the door, politely at first and then with increasing force. Just as she decided to abandon all dignity and shout through the letterbox an upstairs window flew open.

‘What’s you wanting then?’ demanded a female voice. A middle-aged woman glared down at her, her ample figure quivering inside a lime-green housecoat.

‘Good afternoon,’ called Alex, trying to inject some
friendliness
into her tone. ‘I’ve come to see Kevin.’

The woman stared at her and shook her head. ‘Kev’s not here. Not today.’

She began to close the window and Alex said, ‘But he’s expecting me! I wrote last week and made an appointment. I’m his new probation officer.’ The woman gave her a look of condescending pity. ‘Wouldn’t make no matter – Kev can’t read. Anyway, ’tis Carnival.’

She tugged at the window as Alex called up, ‘What do you mean, Carnival? He’s supposed to meet me every week. I’m going to have to take him back to court if he misses again.’

The woman laughed, a wide-mouthed cackle that revealed several brown teeth and a wasteland of gum.

‘You’m not from round here are you? Ain’t no judge’ll send anyone down for going to Carnival. Come back next week maybe. I’ll tell him to be here.’

The window slammed shut leaving Alex alone and
shivering
in the icy wind. She had expected the West Country to be warmer than London but November in Somerset could be bleak, very bleak, and cold.

It was just gone four when she got back to the office after a long, long drive across the Levels, for there was nowhere on the track wide enough to turn round and she had been forced to wrestle the car along a surface more suited to horses and carts than motor vehicles from the 1970s. She was in a vile mood as she pulled into the almost empty car park. The desk was deserted apart from Lauren, her diminuitive and
indispensable
assistant.

‘Where the bloody hell is everyone?’ Alex demanded.

Lauren looked up from her specially designed desk and shook her head. ‘Why are you back here? It’s Carnival tonight.’

‘Don’t you start,’ said Alex. ‘I’ve already had this
conversation
with Kevin Mallory’s mother. The little bastard was out – again.’

Lauren slid off her chair and crossed to the counter,
climbing
on to a stepped stool to reach the safety latch and buzz Alex in.

‘You should try to go now,’ she said. ‘It’s impossible to get out of town after about 4.30. They’ll close the roads and you’ll be stuck here until after the squibbing.’

Alex closed the door behind her and blinked. She was
getting
a headache and her eyes were itching horribly.

‘Is there another language I don’t know about being used around here?’ she asked. ‘Everyone keeps saying “Carnival” like it means something special. And what the hell is
squibbing
?’

‘Believe me, you don’t want to know,’ came a voice from the main room. She turned to see Jonny, Lauren’s elder brother, leaning on the counter. Tall, dark and with Lauren’s soft brown eyes, he was popular with the younger girls in the office and even managed to get a smile from Pauline, the formidable senior administrator.

‘After the parade they all gather in the High Street,’ he said. ‘Then they all light squibs – like roman candles on poles but much bigger. About a hundred they have, all going off at once with an explosive maroon in the base. Someone gets burnt nearly every year but it’s a real sight to see. Ready Sis? Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ve got the car outside.’

Lauren clambered down the steps, grabbed her bag and trotted out under Alex’s arm, which was stretched out to hold the door open for her.

‘See you,’ said Jonny. ‘You really should get off now. It’s …’

‘Carnival. Yes, I know.’ Alex gathered her files and headed for her office on the top floor of the building. At least she’d be able to get some work done this evening, free from the constant phone calls and flow of inarticulate and stubborn youths that comprised most of her case-load.

At half past six she dropped the last forms into her basket and locked her filing cabinet. She considered going to look at the
Carnival but the lure of her own space, a glass of wine and a good book in front of the fire was stronger than the
amateurish
antics of a bunch of small-town exhibitionists. She was turning off the lights and locking up the top corridor when Bert, the evening janitor, appeared at the top of the stairs.

‘Evening Bert, I’m just off. I think everyone’s gone early this evening,’ she said cheerily. Bert looked at her. ‘What’re you doing here then? Didn’t no-one tell you – ’tis Carnival. You’m not going nowhere now ‘til after midnight.’

How much disruption could a small town procession cause, she thought with rising irritation. She was crossing the car park, fumbling for her keys, when a blast of music,
bone-jarringly
loud, caused her to swing round towards the gates. The sky lit up with coloured lights and there was a roaring of applause and laughter. She peered around the gateposts and felt her mouth drop open in astonishment. The High Street was packed with onlookers, a solid mass of bodies jammed six or seven deep on each side of the road. Gliding slowly down the centre was the largest, brightest and noisiest float she had ever seen. Forty feet long, fifteen feet high and lit by hundreds of light bulbs, it was pulled by a tractor. A cast of thirty men in immaculate costumes danced and sang along to ‘I’m a Yankee-Doodle Dandy’, whilst a diesel generator crawled behind providing the power needed to run this
monstrosity
. Behind it came another, then another, all with different themes and conflicting songs. The resulting cacophony rose from the long line of floats that stretched as far as she could see, down the quayside and off out of town. Bert
materialized
at her shoulder.

‘Told yer,’ he yelled above the din. ‘’Tis Carnival night.’

A young man stood, deep in the crowd. He was thin and ragged with spiky, home-cut hair and dirty hands, a
scarecrow
of a lad who watched with his mouth open as the floats glided past.

‘What you think then?’ he shouted to his mate next to him. His companion shrugged his shoulders and yelled back.

‘Dunno. Maybe if you could raise the subs or had
something
special to offer. They’s all right picky mind and hard to impress.’

A man appeared behind the boys and laid a hand on each shoulder. ‘Now lads, how’s it looking then?’

He was a big man, heavy set with red, meaty arms and wrists. His hair was jet black and his eyes, a startling shade of blue, were hard and calculating.

‘Looks fine, Dad,’ said the second boy, a lean young man with russet hair and a disarming grin. When he started school several older, bigger boys had dubbed him ‘Carrots’ a name that stuck for less than a week. Even at the age of six Billy was fearless and although he rarely started a fight he never failed to finish one. ‘Kev was just wondering about joining a gang, maybe Watermen. What you think?’

Kevin looked at the man hopefully.

‘I could raise the subs, Mr Johns. I’ve plans for that, in the spring. I just need someone to speak up for me with the gang men.’

Derek Johns looked at the scruffy waif in front of him and felt nothing but contempt for this sorry specimen. Kevin looked younger than his age, still too young to drink, and seemed small and insignificant next to his friend. Why his son chose to hang around with the Mallory boy was beyond him, but then Billy had always had a soft streak in him. He tugged at the boys’ shoulders and steered them out of the crowd.

‘Come with me. We’ll find a quiet spot in the Judge
Jefferies
… get a pint in while the rest of the world freezes out here. See what we can work out, eh?’

In the relative calm of the pub, Kevin sipped his half of cider and waited to see if Derek Johns was going to help him. If he was honest with himself he was scared of Billy’s dad, deep down cold afraid. He’d grown up with Billy and his younger brother, known locally as Biff on account of his short temper and readiness to apply force to any obstacle. Billy was a
different
character entirely, a more thoughtful boy who resembled his mother, unlike Biff who was a miniature version of his
dark, menacing father. Despite their physical differences they were both prone to occasional fits of wild humour and lived their lives with a reckless disregard for authority. Billy was nicknamed ‘Newt’ by his friends, a title earned by his ability to shin up the sheerest of walls, his hands and feet sticking to any surface. It was rumoured he could shed body parts and re-grow them overnight, so easily did he slip through the hands of the law. Newt, at just twenty-one, was already the finest cat burglar in the county and he always had plenty of money in his pocket. His father’s connections helped smooth the way for his various enterprises and somehow Newt had never been fingered successfully by the police. Kevin’s dad had vanished when he was six, unmourned by his long-
suffering
and over-protective mother. He envied the Johns brothers their support network but was privately relieved he did not have to live with a father like theirs.

‘So,’ said Derek, taking a deep pull from his pint and
wiping
the foam from his upper lip, ‘you fancy joining a Carnival gang eh?’

Kevin nodded his head, as outside the noise of the crowd swelled to greet the town favourites, makers of the largest and most elaborate floats. Derek watched the boy’s face, his mind flicking over the possibilities. The lad was no use to him, he decided. No point in wasting any more time with him. Next to him, Newt nudged Kevin very gently in the ribs. Derek turned his cold gaze to his son, who looked at him quizzically.

‘Well now, seems you need to raise your money first,’ he said. ‘How much you got?’

‘About thirty quid,’ said Kevin proudly. Derek gave a cruel smile.

‘You’ll need more than that lad. About ten times as much at least.’

To his surprise Kevin didn’t seem crushed by this
impossible
amount.

‘I’m going to get it in the spring,’ he said, trying to
whisper
above the growing din. ‘Goin’ elvering. Got a nice little pitch sorted and my cousin, he knows the Elver Man so I can
sell on without no problems.’ This was more initiative than Derek had expected and he cast a second look over the boy. His father had been a dismal failure – still was actually – a petty thief who didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. Derek and his friends kept well clear of the Mallorys and their associates. They couldn’t be trusted. He shook his head, dismissing Kevin from his plans.

‘Well, you let Billy here know when you’ve got your money and we’ll see,’ he said, getting up. He drained his glass and turned to the door. ‘Come on Billy-boy. They’re about ready for the squibbing.’

Billy rose to follow his father, nodding to Kevin as he trailed obediently in the big man’s wake.

Outside, the shouting became a chant as the fireworks were lit and the sky filled with a hundred explosions. Kevin sat at the table in the empty pub hugging his glass and dreaming of the day he would march into the square, squib-pole slung over his shoulder.