The Salt Marsh
Authors: Clare Carson
Clare Carson
About
The Salt Marsh
Sam Coyle's father lived in the shadows â an undercover agent among the spies and radicals of Cold War London. That world claimed his life, and Sam is haunted by his absence. He left nothing behind but his enemies; nothing to his daughter but his tradecraft and paranoia.
Now, her boyfriend Luke is missing too â the one person she could trust, vanished into the fog on the Kentish coast. To find him, Sam must follow uncertain leads into a labyrinth of blind channels and shifting ground. She must navigate the treacherous expanse of the salt marshâ¦
To Andy
âAnd oftentimes to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths.'
âB
ANQUO IN
M
ACBETH
, A
CT 1
S
CENE III
An Invitation from the Publisher
Monday 1 May 1978
J
IM DID HIS
vanishing act the day of the spring fair. Sam was sitting in her room reading, the last of the apple blossom drifting past her window, Jim and the dog downstairs, her mother Liz and her sisters visiting the new baby of one of Liz's old friends. Liz often went out on the days that Jim was at home. Her mother's departure had been preceded by an argument. Sam had half heard Liz shouting, Jim shouting back, but hadn't taken much notice because she had her head stuck in a book and, anyway, they always argued these days. Liz laughed, and that did catch Sam's attention because there was something manic about the cackle. She clocked Liz yelling, âSo if I want to know where you are, I'm supposed to call the fucking Home Secretary, am I?' The front door crunched.
Sam was glad to hide in her room, curled up on her beanbag with her book. As she read, she was vaguely conscious of Jim clattering around in the kitchen below, tasked by Liz with cleaning the sink's U bend while she was out. He was crap at DIY. Approached all domestic repairs with a rubber mallet, a bottle of Guinness and a stream of four-letter words â arse, piss, shit.
âFuck.'
The fuck was followed by the noise of china shattering. Then silence. She lifted her head from the pages again, wondered whether she should go downstairs and check that he was OK but was distracted by the auburn flash of a fox, visible through her bedroom window as it slunk along the railway track at the bottom of the garden. There was a den in the brambles that smothered the embankments of the London commuter line. Rabies threat, according to
John Craven's Newsround.
She focused on the gap in the thicket where the fox's brush had disappeared; if she watched long enough, perhaps she would see the cubs emerging to play in the unexpected warmth of the spring sun. She waited. A train rattled past. No sign of the cubs. She was about to return to her book when the notes of Jim's whistle floated on the air, growing louder as he clomped up the stairs; the tune familiar â âThe
Third Man
Theme'. His good-mood whistle. She loved that film,
The Third Man.
So did Jim. They had watched it together and he had promised her that one day they would go to Vienna where the film was set and they could ride on the Reisenrad, the giant Ferris Wheel. The whistling ceased. Jim's face appeared around her bedroom door and he smiled in his conspiratorial way.
He said, âI'm taking George for a walk.' She decided it was probably best not to ask him about the sink. Or the broken crockery. He disappeared, then he obviously had an afterthought because his face reappeared around the door.
âHow old are you now?'
âNearly twelve.'
âOh. I suppose you'd better come with me then. I don't want to get done for negligence.'
She sat in the back of the Cortina with the dog. George was large, black, part German shepherd, part hound from hell, and had failed the police sniffer dog test. Jim loved the dog, the only other male in the household. He shouldn't have been allowed to become a family pet, but one of Jim's mates in the Force had bent the rules, as coppers do. Jim worked for some strange part of the Force â half spy, half cop, secret missions away from home. God only knew what he was doing, Liz said. Well, God and the Home Secretary, apparently.
He swung the car around the roundabout, feeding the steering wheel through both hands, second exit along an oak-shaded lane.
âI'm in the dog house,' Jim said.
âWhy?'
âBecause I've got to go away again.'
âWhere are you going?'
Jim threw her a glance in the rearview mirror. âOver the hills and far away,' he said.
He always talked like that, in evasive riddles.
âWill you come back?' she asked.
She watched his shoulders heave. âI've always come back before, haven't I?'
âYes. I suppose so.'
âWell then.'
He didn't sound particularly convinced, but then he never did. She gazed out the car window; the hawthorn was flowering. The dog slobbered in her ear as they passed the golf course, forged deep into the criminal belt. That was what Jim called it. London's dirty tidemark where the city's mobsters washed up in their mock haciendas and kept a concrete mixer ready on the patio. He parked the Cortina by the graveyard at the edge of the village, the last stop on the bus route through the south London suburbs.
The dog leaped out as soon as Jim opened the car door, cocked his leg against a dumped mattress lolling on the pavement and bounded off. Jim strode after George, whistling the familiar tune as he went. She ran to catch up. Every now and then he stopped to identify a bird's song. Blackbird. Mistle thrush. The harsh call of the jackdaw. She named the wildflowers: violets, white star wood anemones glinting in the undergrowth. George ran loops around her and Jim, herded them along the lane, growling impatiently when they lingered.
The lane levelled off, merged with a freshly tarmacked road, one side lined by ranks of conifers, the occasional glimpse of red bricks visible through the trunks. Retirement community for the south London mob, Jim said. Cash down, he added. A break in the pine barricade revealed a wooden-framed Larsen trap with a bedraggled crow imprisoned behind the chicken wire, a decoy, a call-bird waiting for a mate to fall through the false floor of the death box.
âGod, they're breeding game birds,' Jim said. âA predilection for guns and shooting â funny how much bank robbers and the upper classes have in common.'
He sneered. âPheasant killers. They trap the crows to stop them raiding the pheasants' nests and when the chicks have grown and can fly, they shoot them.'
Sam wanted to release the crow; the bird looked so miserable, huddled in a far corner of the trap. Jim told her to leave it â he didn't want to attract attention. Not in those parts. Best put George on the lead, he added. He whistled; the dog trotted up meekly.
âWe've almost done the circuit anyway,' he said. He fought through a hole in the hedgerow and strode diagonally across a muddy field, away from the gangsters' villas. Jim hated retracing his steps. He was always determined to walk in a circle even if it meant clambering over barbed-wire fences and squelching through ditches. She trailed behind.
âLook.' He pointed at a grey church spire poking above a distant canopy of trees. âWe're almost back.'
They reached the Cortina eventually, jammed in now by a Fiat estate, a Mini and a line of motorbikes â Harleys and a couple of Kawasakis.
âLot of cars here,' Jim said. âI wonder what's going on.'
Sam spotted a poster pinned to an oak. âThere's a May Day fair on in the playing fields. Fun stalls and exhilarating rides it says. Maybe there's a big wheel. Can we go and look?'
âWe might as well; there's nothing much else to do today.'
That must have been what everybody else thought too. George strained at his lead, unnerved by the thickening crowds â leather-jacketed bikers swinging dog chains, scabby punks with glue-sniffer eyes and red-faced golfers in plaid trousers shouting blahdy typical at each other. The periphery always attracted an odd mix of people. Past the lychgate, the chippy, the Green Man, the sweet smell of candyfloss and hotdogs hit her before they reached the fenced fields where the locals played in Sunday leagues. The fair was a mishmash, an odd mix of funfair and village fete. A couple of crapola rides â a carousel and a waltzer â a collection of throw the ping-pong ball into the bowl to win a goldfish stalls with striped awnings and lightbulb fringes and a line of trestle-tables displaying less gaudy fete-type wares.
âNo big wheel,' she said.
Jim scoffed. âThat's not going to satisfy the punters. They've advertised excitement and it looks to me as if they've persuaded the lads from Peter Pan's Pool to drag their spare equipment over and set up a couple of dodgy carousels.' Sam knew all about Peter Pan's Pool, a small but permanent fairground in Catford â she had been taken there by her sisters. She hadn't been impressed by the dilapidated dodgems and the gold-toothed wandering fair-hands. Her sisters liked it there. A passing phase, according to Liz. Jim was right, she reckoned, as she watched the cranky waltzer jerking into life, this May Day fair was not going to please anybody who had come in search of excitement.
âNot sure Morris dancers will help,' Jim said.
He cocked his head towards a roped-off square between the funfair attempt and the trestle-table stalls. The bearded Morris dancers were loitering near the Maypole. Some girls in flimsy dresses were practising their dance routine and a bunch of adults decked out in green capes, tunics and face paint were fussing with the Maypole's limp ribbons.
âWhat do you think all those people in green are doing?' Sam asked.
âProbably some hippy Beltane nonsense.'
âBeltane?'
âOld pagan celebration to mark the start of summer.'
Jim had these odd pools of esoteric knowledge.
âWhat does Beltane mean?'
âBright fire. Shepherds used to light two fires and pass between them with their flocks. A sort of blessing. Protection for the yearling lambs when they moved from the uplands of the Kentish Weald to the lowland marshes.'
The waltzer was blaring âYou Sexy Thing'.
Jim scanned the fairground. âBet the crow-men are here somewhere.'
âWho are the crow-men?'
âDancers from the darkness. Men in black. Birds of death. They always turn up in these parts, looking for trouble. Oh well. At least there's something to drink.' He nodded at a sagging white marquee with a beer tent sign above its open flaps. âHere, you take George. I could do with a beer. Won't be long.'
He handed her the lead and the dog plonked himself on her shoes, pinioned her to the ground. She couldn't be bothered to shift the beast, stood with numbing toes and watched the girls in floaty dresses rehearsing. They made her squirm. She would never wear a dress like that; never wear a dress at all in fact if she could help it. She wore trousers.