The Salt Marsh (42 page)

‘In a puddle?'

‘A marsh.'

‘I see.' He poked the fire with a stick. ‘I've brought some burgers with me. Fancy one?'

‘I'm vegetarian.'

‘Me too. I made them from aduki beans.'

‘Yes please, then.'

‘So, the file. It's in there.' He prodded the oil drum again.

‘You're burning my police file?'

‘Yep.'

She watched the flames reaching higher. ‘Burning awkward police files – is that standard procedure?'

He shot her a sideways glance. ‘Very droll.' He reached for a wire grill, placed it across the rim of the oil drum. Perhaps Sonny had been right – her jokes could be irritating.

‘How did you get hold of my file anyway?' she asked.

‘That would be telling.'

‘I'm not sure burning it will make any difference.'

‘It was at the bottom of the pile. Nobody got round to entering it on any computer list. There's no record. MI5 have nothing on you.'

‘Well, that's a relief. Thank you. But what about Crawford?'

‘I've had a word with him early this morning. I said it all sounded like a mistake, unreliable informant getting overexcited, short of cash, concocting bullshit to keep the money flowing. He agreed. In fact, Crawford said he thinks the whole investigation was a wild goose chase. It's all too easy to get your hands on firearms in this day and age, and unfortunately your mate Dave managed it, with very tragic consequences. Sad, but straightforward. Which is almost certainly the conclusion the inquest into his death will come to. It's sorted.'

He gave her a stern look, as if he was daring her to challenge him. She wondered what Crawford was up to. Did he reckon she'd frazzled in the flames at Dungeness? Or had he found another way of getting to her?

‘It's not sorted at all, Harry. Crawford is after me.'

‘Don't be daft.'

‘He engineered a contract on me.'

‘Sam. Are you listening? I said don't be daft. He's a senior police officer.'

‘Harry. Please. The fact that he's a senior police officer is hardly a guarantee of probity.'

‘OK. Fair point. But engineering a contract on a twenty-year-old girl is going it some, even for a senior police officer. It's a wild accusation. Certainly not one that I can see any benefit in you making.'

‘He's after me.'

‘Why?' He said it with irritation rather than disbelief, as if he already knew there might be some problem but was hoping he wouldn't have to deal with it.

‘Because I know something about him I don't know I know, but he does know I know.'

‘What are you going on about?'

‘Listen. Please.'

He ripped open a Tupperware box, flung a couple of burgers on the grill. ‘Go on then, tell me.'

He poked the burgers with a fork.

She hesitated. ‘Crawford is corrupt – he's taking a slice from the organized crime he's supposed to be stopping – drugs, robberies, whatever, you name it. And then he has to cover his tracks, so he leaks information about other cops and undercover operations, when he thinks they are on to him.'

Harry flipped a burger. ‘Listen. There is a mole somewhere in the Force's senior ranks who has dropped some extremely sensitive information about all sorts of operations, including undercover work, and some officers have been...' – he fished for the right word – ‘endangered as a result. But Crawford is not the man.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Because somebody has tried levelling those charges against him before, and they were proved to be totally baseless. Crawford is clean.'

‘Who made the accusations?'

Harry flipped the second burger.

‘Flint?' she asked.

‘Yes, it was fucking Flint. I knew I shouldn't have given you that bloody article.'

‘It wasn't just the article. I found a note of a meeting with Flint in one of Jim's old diaries.'

Harry tutted. ‘Fuck it. Fuck that arsehole Flint. He's one of those smart but stupid types. He can suss things out, but then he fucks up when he tries to do anything with the information.'

‘What information?'

‘Oh Christ, I don't know why we're getting into this. Look, Flint claimed that this contact of his, Holder – specializes in laundering gold – told him Crawford had kept him up to date on the investigations into this bullion robbery. Flint reckoned that Holder had noted down all the dates that Crawford had been to see him, all the things he had said. Flint claimed Crawford, and whatever snivelling sidekick he can drag along, takes a cut of the action. Then Crawford leaks information when anybody starts sniffing around. Names of cops, witnesses, details of investigations into the investigations. Pisses it all over the place. Gangsters. Journos. You name it. According to Flint, he'd been at it since the seventies.'

‘Crawford was at it in the seventies?'

‘Everybody was at it in the seventies. The relevant point is that it was easy for Crawford to dismiss Flint's claims.'

‘Flip them,' she said.

‘I have.'

‘I meant the accusations, not the burgers. Crawford flipped them back on Flint.'

Harry sighed. ‘Crawford's a smarter cop than Flint – that's why he was the boss and Flint was his minion. Flint claimed Crawford was out in the criminal belt doing deals with Holder, but Crawford had an alibi for all the dates he called. Flint was bloody stupid to put it about in the first place without more evidence. More allies. I mean, who is going to believe what some con says about a senior cop?'

‘The criminal belt. Is that where Holder lives?'

Harry rolled his lips, as if he was determined not to speak. A blackbird trilled. He wrinkled his nose. And then he said, ‘Where Holder lived, you mean. He's dead too. The old two bullets in the back of the head scenario.'

‘Like Flint.'

‘Like Flint. Dead as a fucking doornail.'

‘Did Holder live near where Jim is buried?'

Harry's eyes shot in her direction, slipped back. ‘Yes.'

Near the village where she had walked the dog with Jim when she was eleven, the site of the May Day fair. She touched the Dictaphone in her pocket again, replayed Crawford's words in her head.
I know she's stuck that fucking date, the May Day fair, in her silly fucking memory.
That fucking date. 1 May 1978. You don't always know what you know. Unknown known. She knew it, but she didn't know it mattered. Crawford did. She took a deep breath.

She said, ‘I saw Crawford on 1 May 1978 in the village on the edge of the criminal belt, where Jim is buried.'

‘You didn't,' Harry said.

‘I did. I'm telling you. I saw him. Jim disappeared because he didn't want Crawford to see him with me, which was a mistake, because then Crawford tried to talk to me. Crawford was desperate to find out what Jim was doing there. And that was his mistake. He went for me because I was a soft target. But I wouldn't have seen him, let alone remembered him if he hadn't offered me a stupid stick of candyfloss.'

Harry's face was red. He jabbed the burgers.

‘Listen to me,' he said. ‘You did not see him. You did not talk to him. There was no candyfloss. And let me tell you why.'

He grabbed a bottle of water he had left standing on the ground by his makeshift barbecue, swigged, swished, spat the water on the ground.

‘The May Day fair was what Flint was blathering on about before he copped it. Flint started saying it wasn't just Holder's notes, there were other witnesses. No names mentioned. But he did say something about a May Day fair near to Holder's gaff.'

‘And then Flint was shot.'

‘Yeah. Then Flint was shot.'

She jammed her hand in her coat pocket, shuffled around. ‘Harry, I've taped Crawford saying he saw me at a May Day fair.'

She pulled out the Dictaphone.

‘What are you doing? Put that bloody thing away. You do not have a tape with Crawford saying anything. Do you understand? We're not playing save the bloody world here, we are trying to make sure you get out of the shit and stay out of the shit.'

She closed her eyes, stomach sinking, too tired to argue. ‘Yes. I understand.'

She replaced the Dictaphone in her pocket.

‘But Harry.'

‘What?'

‘He knows I know.'

‘Will you stop with the he knows, you know, I know? It's doing my head in.'

‘Sorry.'

He gulped another swig of water. ‘You're going to have to put Crawford out of your mind. Go back to university, sit in a library and stick your head in a book. All this stuff about Crawford – the accusations, the evidence – it's irrelevant now. Holder is dead. Flint is dead, Jim is dead. You don't have any evidence that nails him. You know nothing, you remember nothing. If anybody is going to accuse him of anything, it's not going to be you. Because now you know what happens when you make accusations about bent cops in the Force.' He examined the underside of the burgers. ‘Don't mention Crawford again. Leave it to me. This is in-house. In hand. I'll sort it, OK?'

‘OK. Harry, one more thing.'

‘What?'

‘Crawford dropped the information that led to Jim's death warrant.'

Harry waved at the rows of vegetables as if he hadn't heard a word she had said. ‘It's pick your own salad.'

‘OK. Great.'

She let her feet sink in the soil, newly moistened by the night's rain. She wandered the plot, stooped to pick some leaves from a row of butter lettuces, glanced back at Harry, watched him wiping his brow with one hand, turning the burgers with the other. The smell of charred beans mingled with the wood smoke. She concentrated on the lettuce again, tugged at leaves, flicked a slug with her finger. Returned to Harry with a handful of green.

‘There's some bread in my bag. You can use the lid of that tin as a plate.'

She held out the tin lid. He shovelled a burger on to the white slice. She arranged the lettuce, topped it with a second slice of Sunblest. Took a bite.

‘Aduki burgers, great.'

‘Made them myself. Secret recipe, before you ask.'

‘I wasn't going to, I'm not very good at cooking. I can't be bothered with recipes. The lettuce is fantastic.'

‘Organic. No pesticides.'

‘How do you keep the slugs and snails at bay?'

‘Kill ‘em. Red in tooth and claw. Can't be pussy footing around. Don't take any prisoners. It's them or my lettuces.'

She wiped the bean juice from her mouth, caught a movement in the hawthorn hedge running around the bottom of the allotment. ‘Look, there's a fox.'

‘It's got a den down there. Smart. Knows its territory. Doesn't go straying into unmarked lands.' He nodded at her. ‘Good strategy. Stick to the safe paths. Stay on the dry land.'

‘The boundaries aren't always clearly marked,' she said. Especially not in the marshes.

TWENTY-ONE

T
HE OVAL GASHOLDER
was full. She had a bath, stretched out in bed, listened to the noises of the night: last-order drinkers, foxes overturning bins, car alarms. She waited for the ghosts, the whispering of the dead – but they said nothing. She slept.

The morning arrived in greyness. One of those sullen London summer days that hung around making everybody feel edgy with its presence. Liz rang early. She was back from Greece and wanted Sam to drive over and visit.

Sam parked the camper van by the graveyard where she had agreed to meet her mother – she didn't want to go to the house and find Roger there. Liz was already standing by the tombstone; she had laid some white star wood anemones on Jim's grave.

‘I picked them from the field down there,' Liz said. ‘They are very late flowering. I suppose it's all the cold and rain. Anyway, I thought he might appreciate them.'

Sam poked the earth with her toe. ‘Do you think he really is down there?'

‘Why are you asking me? He never told me where he was going when he was alive. Death hasn't made him any more communicative.'

Sam gave her mother a sideways glance. Liz continued. ‘He always was a difficult bloody sod, but I did love him, you know. Sometimes.'

Sam nodded. ‘Let's go for a walk,' she said.

Out of the churchyard gate, across the field, through the silver birches, heading into the criminal belt.

‘Did you have a good holiday?' Sam asked.

‘Yes. Fine after I gave up on Milton.'

‘What did Milton do wrong?'

‘Eve. She falls for the devil. And everybody blames her rather than Satan. It irritated me too much, I'm afraid. A man of his times, I suppose.'

‘At least Milton's not as bad as James the First with his
Daemonologie
and his accusations that women are weak-brained devil-worshipping witches who should be condemned to the flames.'

‘
Daemonologie
? James the First? You'd hardly expect a king to be anything other than an inbred half-wit. Milton was a poet, a supporter of Cromwell, a radical.'

‘Radical men aren't necessarily feminists.'

‘No. Nor necessarily to be trusted. Did you get my postcard? The one with the recipe?'

‘Yes, Mum. You've asked me that about five million times.'

‘Did you understand it?'

‘What, the recipe?'

‘The code.'

‘Code?'

‘I wrote you a message in code.'

Sam laughed. Liz frowned. ‘I'm serious.'

Sam was still laughing.

‘Really, Sam. I'm trying to help you. Roger is trying to help you.'

The mention of Roger's name pulled Sam up short.

‘I don't need his help, thanks.'

Liz folded her arms. ‘Sam, we were in a Greek taverna the first night of the holiday and Roger spotted somebody he recognized, a man who used to be in the CIA and who has now gone rogue, to use Roger's terminology.'