The Red Shore, page 22
‘The police are looking into it. They’ll have some answers soon.’
‘You really believe that?’ She snorted.
‘I’m just so sorry, Molly.’
‘Yeah. I know,’ she said.
She cried some more when he told her he had to go to pick Finn up. ‘I’ll call you after. OK?’ he promised.
Pam turned out to live in a mock-Tudor new-build with a double garage on the east side of Teignmouth. She opened the door and beamed.
‘Hi, love. We just had spaghetti alla Norma. Quick glass of vino before you take the lad home? You absolutely look like you need one, darling.’
‘Ah, no. I need to get home. It’s been a pretty shitty day.’
‘Oh, you poor dear,’ she said.
‘Finn?’ he called through the open door.
‘Good as gold,’ said Pam. ‘Never heard a peep from either of them. I think they’re pals now. Absolutely sure you won’t come in?’
Finn appeared at the door, pale and silent. ‘Sorry,’ said Eden. ‘I had to do something really important. One thing, Pam. You said you had the name of a babysitter?’
She smiled. ‘You going out on the town?’
‘Just in case.’
‘Hold on,’ she said. She pulled her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and scrolled through. ‘There you go. Ella Sweet. And she is sweet too. She’s excellent. I’ll message you her number now.’
‘Sweet? Is she a relation of Mike Sweet’s? The police officer?’
‘Yeah. That’s the one. She’s his daughter. Lovely girl.’
‘Small town,’ he said.
‘Isn’t it? Don’t be a stranger, Eden.’ She leaned forward, presenting her blushered cheek, to be kissed.
At the car park at the seafront, Finn still hadn’t said a word.
‘What’s wrong?’ Eden asked him.
The boy didn’t answer. Eden took his hand as they walked home in the drizzle along the sand, past the ferry, to the small house on the back beach.
It wasn’t until he had brushed his teeth and was lying in bed that Finn finally spoke.
‘Cyrus says that Mum jumped off the boat on purpose,’ he said.
‘Oh, Finn.’ Eden leaned toward the boy and put his arms around him. ‘It’s not true. That’s not what happened.’
‘But how do you know?’ asked Finn quietly. ‘How do you actually know that?’
‘Because I knew her.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘Not as well as you did,’ said Eden. ‘No.’
‘The night she went, I was cross with her. I shouted at her.’
Eden still had his arms around him. ‘She loved you, Finn. You know that, don’t you?’
‘No one was there. I was angry. I was the only one who was there and I didn’t help her. You keep saying she didn’t jump in, but how do you know that if you weren’t there?’
It was a question Eden couldn’t answer.
Forty-Six
Eden and Finn sat together on the bed for a while, side by side, then Eden tried to cheer Finn up by saying, ‘Shall I tell you more stories about your mum and the boat?’
Finn nodded.
‘Where shall I start?’
‘Those men with the dark glasses.’
‘The ones in the hearse?’
‘OK. Get into bed, then.’
Eden thought for a while in silence, trying to work out how to tell this story. Finn seemed content with this. Eventually Eden said, ‘So the men in dark glasses, they took Dad away in the hearse.’
Finn settled back.
‘It was quite weird. I mean, a hearse is like a car for dead people. But Dad came back later in the evening and our mum asked him why they had wanted to talk to him. He said he was just doing some business. He had this plastic bag with him and I saw him stash it away in the tent.’
‘What was in it?’
‘Ssh,’ said Eden.
‘Was it money?’
‘Go to sleep.’
‘Only if you carry on with the story.’
‘OK. Anyway, after that we started sailing long-distance a lot more. We got pretty good at sailing, I suppose. Dad and Apple at least. These were the days before GPS. You know? Before you could find out where you were, just by looking at your phone. You had to do it all by looking at paper maps, and working out how far you’d come by looking at the stars. There were so many of them.’
‘How do you tell where you are by looking at the stars?’
‘There’s one star that doesn’t move,’ said Eden. ‘If you find that one, you know where North is. Now, close your eyes and let me speak.’
For once, Finn did as he was told.
‘So we carried on doing that. We used to sail to Morocco and Algeria. Not all the time. Just every now and again. Mum said she wanted to be left behind. She hated it. But Dad insisted she came. It looked better that way. Just a happy family, sailing on their boat. So this is really a story about the last time I ever sailed on the Calliope. It was the trip we did to a place called El Jebha in Morocco.
‘We all took turns sailing. We would have two hours at the wheel on our own, day or night. I hated it. I remember that time, sailing over to Morocco, I fell asleep in the night and we drifted way off course. Dad was absolutely furious. He made me do another watch as punishment, so it was four hours instead of two. I was so tired.
‘He went back down to the bunk he and Mum had in the galley and left me out on my own again. I was just angry with him. It was so unfair. We used to go to these beaches and there would be other kids just having fun, having normal lives. We had to do all these stupid things because of our dad.
‘El Jebha was this little fishing port nestling at the edge of mountains. There were always a few other yachts there but Dad insisted, like he always did, that we moor well away from them. And Dad also insisted we empty the water tanks when we got to places like that. It was a weird thing he always did when we arrived in Africa. He said the water would be stale if we didn’t. It’s funny how we just used to believe him when he said stuff like that. And then, the second night, he would always put us up in a hotel, which me and Apple used to love.
‘That time we had a room on the top floor of this hotel with four dark wood beds lined up in a row against the wall opposite a balcony that looked out over the port. Clean white sheets. Dad ordered dinner in French and the woman from the hotel kept telling him how beautiful his daughter was. He meant your mum.’
Eden looked down at Finn. He looked as though he was asleep, but Eden carried on with the story, all the same.
‘When the food came, I remember how Dad sniffed at the plates suspiciously and told us in English which ones we could eat and which ones we couldn’t because there was probably meat in some of them. When the meal was finished, Dad stood up and told us he’d see us all in the morning, and he set off down the hill to the port. We were way up on this hill above. He said someone needed to stay and look after the boat, like he was some kind of hero. It was always the same.
‘That night I was still angry with him for making me take a double watch. I think that’s why I forced myself to stay awake. I just needed to understand something. I remember getting up and walking to the balcony and sitting in this chair and watching the docks. There were cafés by the waterfront where the old men used to sit and play chess and drink tea. Some time after the lights went out, I remember seeing this dark shape on the water… and little ripples left by the oars of a boat. I could see the glow of cigarettes too, I remember. This boat going back and forth to Calliope.
‘And then in the morning, when I went back and looked, Apple’s bunk was all tidily made up and the water tank underneath it was full again.’
Eden leaned forward and kissed the boy on the forehead, feeling bleak. There was more of the story that he wanted to tell to Finn, but he was not sure if there was going to be time.
When he went downstairs there was a message from Bisi: We need to talk.
It was brusque and to the point. She would have heard that he had been witness to the murder of Frankie Hawkins. She might even have heard that he had been taken into custody. Though he had not been charged with anything, she would probably be thinking that he was not safe for Finn to be around any more. It would be the end soon. They would be taking the boy away.
He messaged Molly – Are you OK? – then waited for a reply. Sitting at the table, Eden made notes for himself on his laptop about everything that had happened that day, from the conversation with Molly in the morning, to his arrival at the boatyard and what he had seen there, right up to running through the woods looking for the gunman. He noted that the man on the motorcycle was around the same build as the man who had assaulted him on the shore.
In a notebook, he doodled the logo of the truck that had been in his way as he had tried to make it up the hill and remembered that there had been four words.
It came to him. Teign Valley Environmental… something.
He picked up his phone and searched for it on the web and there it was. Teign Valley Environmental Services. The logo was green, just like the one he had seen on the side of the truck.
He stared at it, puzzled, trying to figure out why it was ringing a loud bell in his head.
His phone buzzed. It was a message from Molly: You still awake?
Yes
Don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep
Shall I call you?
He waited for an answer, but it didn’t come. Looking back at the screen a second time, he blinked. TVES. He switched to his photos app and scrolled back until he found the photo he had shown Molly just that morning.
‘15W E14’ and below that, the letters ‘TVES’.
Forty-Seven
Teign Valley Environmental Services’ website contained little information. It was a company that offered waste-disposal services to local industries and farms. It was based on an estate on the outskirts of Newton Abbot, not far away.
It was too late to find out more. On his way to bed he looked in on Finn again. The boy was fast asleep, for which he was grateful.
That night, in his dead sister’s bed, he dreamed he was at sea in a boat all on his own. The deck was a tangle of ropes he didn’t understand, and when he turned the wheel it spun uselessly. His father was there too, with a frying pan in his hand. He held out the pan to Eden to show him what was in it – the overcooked remains of a fish, bloody flesh flaking off the bones.
The noise of a car woke him and he tried to work out where he was. It took a minute to remember. The noise hadn’t even been that loud; back in London he wouldn’t have even noticed it.
The window was open, and a freshening wind was
flapping at the blind. When he got up to close the window, he saw that a vehicle of some sort had driven onto the quay to the right of the house. It must have been that that had woken him. Looking out, he saw that the tide was high, and it wasn’t a car – it was an old Land Rover pickup, and Jackie’s husband was unloading a blue barrel off the back of it and rolling it towards the trawler.
When he gave Finn his clothes that morning, Eden realised he had given him his last clean school shirt.
There was no washing machine in the house – the kitchen was too small. Instead, there was a launderette nearby and he took a bag full of clothes over there. The machines were all coin-only, and Eden had no change. He was used to only ever using his phone to pay for things.
He went to the bank, took out cash, then went to the Co-op and asked for change. When he was back in the launderette, he called Molly.
‘Not great,’ she answered, when he asked. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m in the launderette watching Finn’s clothes go round and round.’
‘Police came to question me. That’s why I never got back to you. They wanted to know about what Frankie had got himself involved with. Truth is, I don’t know. I really don’t know.’
The slow rotation of the drier was hypnotic. He stared at it as she talked.
‘They’ve frozen our bank account and everything. They tore my house apart. Now they’re turning over the whole boatyard. There are so many people down there. They won’t let me near it. I keep telling them there’s nothing there to find, but what if there is?’
‘I have been thinking. I have a hunch there won’t be,’ said Eden.
The drier stopped, began turning the other way. Molly continued, ‘You didn’t know what your sister was up to. What if I didn’t know what Frankie was really up to all this time?’
With the phone tucked under his chin, he folded the clothes and put them back in the bag he had brought them in.
‘What if someone is making it look like Frankie was in a drug gang?’ Eden asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You think someone executed my brother to make it look like he was guilty? That’s insane.’
‘You’re the one who says he wasn’t like that. And the only evidence that he was that I can see is that someone killed him.’
‘I can’t think about this. It’s too much. Can I come over tonight?’ she asked. ‘I don’t think I want to be on my own. My house is a mess.’
Eden didn’t answer immediately. He sat in the warmth of the launderette, trying to figure things out.
‘Just as a friend,’ she added. ‘Your sister has a blow-up bed in that cupboard under the stairs.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Listen. I have to go. I have a few things to do today.’
‘Of course,’ she said quietly. ‘Right.’
He folded the last shirt, zipped up the bag and left.
Teign Valley Environmental Services was based in an industrial unit, between a tyre warehouse and a trade plumbing-supplies
retailer. The sign above the office doorway said Total Waste Management.
Through the glass door, Eden could see an empty desk. When he opened it he heard a buzzing sound somewhere deeper inside the building.
A man in his forties, wearing a light blue shirt and chinos, appeared, smiling. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I have a weird question. There was a guy I saw driving a flatbed truck of yours yesterday up on Haldon.’
The smile stayed fixed. ‘Was there?’
‘Yes. There was a bit of an incident.’
‘With our vehicle? I didn’t hear of anything.’
‘No. But your driver was witness to the incident. The driver had ginger hair.’
‘What’s the matter? Is there a problem? Is this a complaint of some kind?’ The man raised his eyebrows.
‘No. Nothing like that. I just wanted a chat,’ said Eden.
‘A chat?’
‘A conversation.’
The man eyed him. ‘Only me here today, I’m afraid, mate. Not a lot of time for chatting. That all?’
‘OK,’ said Eden. He looked around. The office was bland. It gave no clue as to the business being done in the warehouse behind. ‘What kind of stuff do you do here?’
‘What have you got?’
‘A big old fibreglass boat.’
‘Yeah. We could help you with that. We do glass fibre. Not cheap to dispose of, though. What kind of size?’
‘What about cars?’
‘Cars?’ said the man, puzzled.
‘I have an old banger I need to get rid of. I saw your sign. Total Waste Management.’
‘No, mate. Just waste. Industrial and domestic waste. Try Ogwell Salvage and Spares. They’ll give you a decent price for scrap. You done?’
‘Right. One more thing. Do you know this woman?’ Eden reached in his pocket, pulled out his phone and started flicking through his photographs.
‘What is this? I thought you were asking about a boat?’
‘Give me a minute.’ Eden didn’t look up from the phone until he found the photograph of his sister that they had used on the BBC News. ‘Did this woman ever get in touch with you?’
When he looked up, the man’s expression had hardened, his eyebrows moving a little closer.
‘Do you recognise her?’ Eden asked.
‘No. I don’t recognise her,’ said the man blandly. ‘Why would I?’
Eden smiled. ‘OK. Well. Sorry to bother you, then. Thank you for your time.’
He turned and left the office, returning to his car.
The man had lied about recognizing her, he was sure of that. It had shown in his expression. Besides, his sister’s face had been all over the news almost a fortnight ago. It didn’t mean a lot, but it made Eden curious.
There was another message from Bisi. Where are you? Need to talk. Urgent.
He drove away, up to a mini-roundabout, but instead of heading home he drove round it and headed straight back to the industrial estate, parking a little way off, the far side of the plumbing supplies company.
Dipping low in the seat, he called Bisi.
‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I called round to your house. We need to meet. Are you avoiding me?’
He came straight out with it. ‘Are you going to take the boy away from me?’
She hesitated. ‘We heard you were a witness to a shooting yesterday.’
‘I didn’t see it, but I was there just afterwards, yes. It was just a coincidence, Bisi. I had nothing to do with it.’
‘I have to tell you, Eden. We can’t do this. We have to put him in safe hands. It’s our job. I appreciate what you’ve done. I’ve seen you with him. You would be a good parent. But not now.’
It was what he had been afraid of.
‘We will be round tomorrow to take him back into emergency care. Mrs Sullivan is back from looking after her mother. She can take him for a few days. She’s a good woman.’
‘I’m sure she is,’ said Eden.
‘After that, I don’t know. We will have to consider our options. Most of the time, I really enjoy this job, believe me. Normally I think we make things better, not worse.’
‘I suppose it’s for the best,’ said Eden, eyes still fixed on the front of Teign Valley Environmental Services. ‘All in all.’
‘If you want my opinion, I think you’d have made a really good dad, Eden. I really do. But it looks like you got what you wanted in the end.’
‘Not really,’ said Eden. ‘Not really at all.’
