Bad Sons (Booker & Cash Book 1) (26 page)

She turned something on me then, something womanly and as potent to a red-blooded male as a snake-bite to a mouse. The female of the species is more deadly than the male. I was destined to be kneaded like the proverbial putty. But I’d want something in return.

Across the short physical distance between us she gazed with something approaching a desperate feminine pleading sincerity into my eyes. ‘Our priorities are going to be different. I understand that. You’ve suffered a terrible personal loss and you want quick justice for those responsible. Believe me, I do understand that. But you’ve highlighted the possibility of a much bigger picture here. We could bumble in and make some arrests, if they’re still there, but those responsible higher up the food chain would get away with it. Also, I won’t pretend that exposing a big drugs operation, if that’s what’s at the root of this, and solving three murder enquiries wouldn’t hurt my career. It’s your call, David. You want me to rouse the troops and storm the pumping station that’s what I’ll do. But if you want to see whether there is a bigger picture here, others involved in the deaths of your family members, not to mention the possibility of an international drugs ring threatening the UK, then we should hold back and tread softly, increase our understanding and knowledge and then act.’

I think it was her openness and honesty that got me in the end. But it could have been the promise of something I’d not been getting for a long time that I believed I saw in the look she gave me. Still, she’d left me with a card to play.

‘What if I said my cooperation and connivance will cost you? I want to be involved?’

She weighed that for a few seconds. I realised that with that simple demand I’d risked significantly altering the dynamic of our relationship. If she went for it, she wouldn’t feel she owed me anything and with that I would virtually scupper the possibility of her demonstrating her appreciation in other ways. We would become partners. I would need her and she would need me. If not exactly equals then collaborators.

‘I’ll think about it.’

If it wasn’t an outright no then she’d have to. But I was encouraged. Despite being physically drawn to her, as I was increasingly becoming, I’d rather have a direct influence in bringing those implicated in my relatives’ murders to account than anything else I could think of.

‘Could I find my own way to the pumping house easily enough?’

‘You could, but I could show you and maybe it would look less conspicuous two people out for the air at Dungeness rather than one. I’m not doing anything tomorrow morning I can’t put off.’

‘What about your book order?’

‘You know what, I’m having second thoughts about fulfilling it.’

That surprised her. ‘Really? Why? What second thoughts?’

‘Actually, it was something you said, suggested.’

She frowned at me.

‘About the potential for this place.’ I took a deep breath to explore further and give voice to something I’d fleetingly thought about in the last couple of days. ‘I might keep the place on and turn it into a book-themed coffee shop.’

I waited for that to sink in and become something. She just stared at me with a bemused look.

I went on. ‘I need something that can offer some permanence in my life. I’ve been drifting aimlessly for too long. I stand to inherit quite a bit of money, as well as all this.’ I indicated our surroundings. ‘I could turn this into something good, something people might travel to see, to enjoy. Dymchurch already has a number of regular visitors who come for the beach. They don’t all want to sit in steamy cafes, eating fish and chips and suffering other people’s kids tearing around high on fizzy drinks.’

‘So what? No kids allowed in here?’

‘Sounds like a plan.

‘There’s something else, right?’ She was being insightful.

‘Yes. There’s something else. My relatives worked hard for years to build up this business and their collections only for some ruthless bastard to rob them of their reward. It’s their money. I’ll do it to keep something of their memories alive.’

She shook her head at me, not in a bad way. ‘I didn’t have you down as a sentimental.’

‘Me neither. Maybe it’s got something to do with my near-death experience.’

‘What about your life in Istanbul, your wife?’

‘I don’t think either of us is harbouring any illusions about our future.’

She rolled out her bottom lip and looked sad.

The reminder of the responsibility I’d shirked did something disagreeable to the atmosphere. After a moment of awkwardness she stood and said she’d better be getting home. There was nothing to argue. I said I’d walk her out to her car.

There were no lights out the back and, with only a sliver of moon, it could be darker than a dirty secret. Add to that a recent spate of violence and I was feeling a little responsible, if not a little protective towards Detective Cash. Mind you, with my injuries still troubling me, I’m not sure I would have been any use in a fight if it came to it.

There was a chill in the air. The sky was as clear as a baby’s conscience; stars shone down brilliantly from the heavens in their trillions. Our feet crunched across the gravel as we walked without speaking side by side. She went around to the driver’s door and I stood at the passenger side, four feet of metal between us, a fine buffer for misguided intentions.

‘I’ll call you in the morning. Let you know what I’ve decided.’

I nodded but couldn’t be certain she’d seen it. ‘Thanks for the meal and for the company. And thanks for listening.’

‘Goodnight, Mr Booker.’

‘Goodnight, Detective.’

I lit up and watched her negotiate the car park until her tail lights disappeared around the fence at the end.

Another car started up outside the village hall and drove sedately away. I didn’t think anything of it.

***

39

Saturday. I woke early and thought I’d give my feet and ribcage a try out on the beach. It didn’t have to be a run. A brisk walk would do. I’d settle for a spirited hobble. I was feeling stale. I needed fresh air and exercise.

It was a glorious morning: bright sunshine, a seasonal chill in the crisp salty air. A rich belt of virgin sand spread out before me. The sea seemed at peace with the world. Gulls did what gulls do with unswerving regularity. I was able to put one foot in front of the other, switch on the autopilot and think.

I hadn’t heard from Jo. I couldn’t say whether she’d agree to my proposal or not once she’d slept on it and there wasn’t much to be gained from second-guessing her. It was out of my hands. It didn’t stop me though.

In truth, my hopes were not high for involvement. She had all the help she needed behind her and she had her position, her career and her professionalism to consider. This was, after all, modern Britain not the Wild West of America where mavericks made up the rules as they went along. I’d given her plenty to take to her seniors that would still make her look good as a detective. She didn’t need me. But still, I wondered whether she might have her reasons for going off the procedural piste.

Once I’d gained the beach, I’d started west towards St Mary’s Bay out of habit, again. When I noticed where I was headed I swore and stopped, again. My aunt’s floating corpse surfaced in my memory, again, reluctantly dragged up as her sodden dead form had been dragged out of the sea.

I had been more than half serious with Jo the night before when I had mentioned my business plans for my new home. If I were truly serious about it, I would have to confront and deal with the ghosts of my dead relatives. If I sold up, took the money and hid away on the other side of the world, I’d still carry the memories around in my head. You can’t run from that sort of thing; you can’t run from knowledge. If I were to try to carve a life out for myself in Dymchurch then I would need to develop an attitude that enabled me to live with what I couldn’t unknow without continually being brought up short when unsavoury recollections were turned over like roadkill with the toe of a boot.

Even so, I turned for home before the outfall. It would take time and maybe I’d feel, if not better about it all, more at peace when I had some closure.

The sun was on my face now. Simple, hard and uncompromising. I took something from it. I’d been walking. I started to run.

*

Jo rang as I was making toast. Her voice was becoming something familiar and to be enjoyed, savoured even.

‘You’re up then?’

‘Probably before you, Detective.’

‘I enjoyed last night. Thank you for it.’ She sounded like she meant it.

‘I enjoyed it too. Thank you.’ I tried to sound like I meant it. ‘What have you decided to do?’

‘Trust my instinct.’ That wasn’t very helpful.

‘Not knowing you well enough to understand the implications of that, I’ll need you to be a bit more specific.’

‘I want you to show me the pumping station for starters.’

I had a job keeping the pleasure out of my reply. ‘When?’

‘I can pick you up in an hour?’

‘Toot your horn out the back and I’ll come down’.

*

She arrived fifty minutes later. Our greeting was friendly. I was glad to be back in her company and so soon. She drove and I was able to relax and enjoy the scenery.

It occurred to me that I was seeing the Marsh in a new light. I was coming to acknowledge a new-found sense of belonging I was not resistant to. Perhaps my impending inheritance combined with my self-imposed exile for too long in a concrete jungle was responsible for this, or perhaps it was the promise of a purpose, a goal, some ambition that had brought about this change in my outlook.

I broke the silence before it degenerated from comfortable to its opposite. ‘What are your intentions?’

‘Honourable.’

‘For today, I mean.’

‘For now, I just want to see the place. To be honest, I’ve woken up really struggling with this as a concept. The cold light of day and all that.’

‘I thought you might. Is that why you haven’t involved Sprake?’

‘Who says I haven’t?’

‘I do. If you had, I wouldn’t be getting a free drive out to Dungeness.’

She allowed herself a smile. ‘True. Yes, it’s why I haven’t involved my DI.’

‘What do you think you can learn just from driving past the place?’

‘Probably not much, but I’ve got to start somewhere.’

We didn’t talk much the rest of the way. I pointed out a couple of places to her, memories of my childhood: where the old landfill site used to be that we would pick through as boys looking for treasure in other people’s trash; the hotel that was once a sanatorium for the mentally ill; my old school where I failed at everything; the pub where I used to get drunk as a minor. She didn’t seem particularly thrilled with the guided tour.

Dungeness was enjoying fine weather and looked the better for it. A huge tent of blue sky with a distant mountain range of pure white clouds rising up in the west.

An enormous cargo ship was an impressive sight as it made its way around the point.

The occasional abandoned vehicle lay disintegrating into the shingle outside the shanty town shacks with their higgledy-piggledy shapes and unregulated, uncontrolled, mostly unsympathetic exteriors. Imaginative uses for old car tyres and unwanted household items littered front ‘gardens.’ If one could shield one’s eyes from the intrusive blot dominating the shingle-scape that was the aging nuclear facility, and if one could avert one’s gaze from the non-biodegradable wind-blown detritus of people’s lives that had escaped their rubbish bins, their cars and their consciences as it lay caught on and fluttering against the various hardy indigenous plants and grotesque man-made obstacles that dotted the beach, the area could almost be described, if seen through narrowed unfocussed eyes, as picturesque. If Romney Marsh ever needed an enema, Dungeness is where they’d stick the tube.

As we crossed over into the twilight zone, Jo made an observation: ‘This is different.’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

She gave herself a few minutes to take in the ‘scenery’.

‘Could do with a tidy up, maybe.’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

She sent me a sideways glance.

‘Don’t you like it out here?’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

‘You’re sounding like a broken record.’

I smiled at her and opened my mouth to repeat myself.

The look she gave me said
don’t
.

She asked me for directions. There was only one. Keep going.

When we rounded the bend at the pub I sat up in my seat. ‘About a quarter of a mile up on the right. It’s set back off the main road behind a five-bar gate.’

‘Where’s the main road?’

‘We’re on it.’

We cruised past and she had a good look. There was no van in evidence. I directed her on to where I had turned around the day before. She pulled off the road on to the well-worn verge. We sat looking out over the big lakes, a haven for birds and twitchers.