The Trawlerman

by William Shaw

  THE TRAWLERMAN

  by william shaw

  The DS Alexandra Cupidi Investigations

  Salt Lane

  Deadland

  Grave’s End

  The Trawlerman

  The Breen and Tozer Investigations

  A Song from Dead Lips

  A House of Knives

  A Book of Scars

  Sympathy for the Devil

  The Birdwatcher

  THE TRAWLERMAN

  William Shaw

  First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

  an imprint of

  Quercus Editions Limited

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 2021 William Shaw

  The moral right of William Shaw to be

  identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any

  information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library.

  Hardback 978 1 52940 182 0

  Ebook 978 1 52940 184 4

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  businesses, organisations, places and events are

  either the product of the author’s imagination

  or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events or

  locales is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook by CC Book Production

  www.riverrunbooks.co.uk

  For Tom

  Also for Luke Noakes for taking me out on his trawler Valentine,

  with apologies for depicting the trawlermen of Folkestone

  as other than the fine community that they are.

  Contents

  The Trawlerman

  Also By

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  Forty-eight

  Forty-nine

  Fifty

  Thanks

  One

  Something really, really bad was about to happen.

  What it was, Alexandra Cupidi wasn’t sure. She was sitting on a cafe bench with a coffee that could have been worse, surrounded in every direction by happy people. The sun was out. Summer bugs dipped in and out of the wild flowers that squeezed their way through the shingle beach. Multicoloured nylon kites flew in a blue July sky.

  It was there in her chest; a cold, dark, malevolent slug.

  Something really, really bad was about to happen.

  However hard she looked around, she could see nothing that would explain what it was that made her so anxious.

  The Light Railway Cafe was the terminus for the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, close to the house on the promontory in which she lived with her daughter.

  It was July, the time of year when the misanthropes, artists, nature-lovers and eccentrics who lived on Dungeness were already tiring of the crowds of tourists who flocked here, disgorging from the comically small train to queue to climb the stone stairs of the old black lighthouse, and to wander around photographing the houses and the locals like they were exhibits, wondering what else you were supposed to do here in this strange, flat place.

  Bungalows and shacks dotted the scrubby landscape as if scattered there like dice. The Light Railway Cafe was like most buildings here; a hotchpotch of rough rectangles joined at any angle the builder had fancied, held together with paint.

  Something was wrong.

  It made her skin itch. If only she knew what it was.

  The next train was on its way, clattering down the curve of narrow track that ran along the shingle. This one, Alex noticed, was different. It was decorated with flowers; garlands hung from the windows, fluttering as it moved. She squinted through the afternoon sun at it.

  Steam from the funnel drifted slowly south towards them, ahead of the train.

  There was something comical about the small train. The light railway had been built as a tourist attraction, its terminus this ramshackle cafe. When the war broke out a few years later, the army commandeered the railway to shift the materials needed to build sea defences all along the shore, and the few tourists it attracted then vanished. This small train still ran, driven and tended by disproportionately large men, and dwarfed by this landscape. The huge bulk of the nuclear power station to the west only made it look more like a children’s toy, casually abandoned.

  Abrupt laughter travelled ahead of the train, carried by a gust of wind. The passengers in the flower-decked carriages were having a party.

  ‘Wedding party,’ said someone. They were right. As the tiny train slowed at the Dungeness station, the engine driver blew the whistle – poop-poop! – and Alex saw the glimpse of white inside the flower-decked carriage. A weekday wedding. The bride emerged first, red hair buffeting in the wind, and then everybody piled out behind her, screaming and shouting, carrying bottles of sparkling wine by the neck. They were drunk, thought Alex, joyfully so.

  And then a second white wedding dress stepped out of the carriage: a younger woman with short bleached hair; a wedding of two brides.

  The wedding party poured out of the station and made their way to the cafe where Alex was sitting.

  ‘Congratulations,’ the tourists called out to them.

  The red-haired woman, older than she had looked from a distance – late thirties perhaps – smiled a little shyly. ‘Thanks.’ Women in heels tottered on the shingle. Men moved among them, shirts half untucked, eyes losing focus from drink.

  Alex recognised one. Curly was local; he had grown up close by in one of the wooden houses. His family had been fishermen here, and he still kept his twin-hulled boat here.

  Curly smiled goofily at Alex when he spotted her there.

  ‘Who’s the happy couple?’ she asked.

>   ‘That’s Tina,’ he said, pointing to the red-haired bride, ‘and that’s Stella. We’re stopping here for lunch.’

  She had never seen Curly in a suit. It looked wrong. He had the sunburned leathery skin of someone who spent his days here on the beach; his hair was thin, a mixture of pale grey and sandy yellow. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ He pointed towards the small hut named ‘Ales on the Rails’.

  The day yawned in front of her. ‘Why not?’

  She had nothing at all to do today. It was driving her crazy.

  They had arranged two of the tables in a single row, the brides at one end, and they had ordered fish and chips, and sandwiches. Alex joined them, squeezing onto the end of the picnic table bench seats.

  ‘You ever married?’ Curly asked.

  ‘Just the once. Zoë’s dad. You?’

  ‘Nobody wanted me,’ he said.

  ‘Can’t say I’m surprised.’

  ‘Lovely girl, Tina,’ said Curly. ‘Known her since she was a baby. Worked with her dad on the trawlers. She deserves a little happiness.’

  Squeezed on the end of the table, Alex looked up towards the two women. They were holding hands across the rickety table, smiling. It didn’t look like a little happiness to her; it looked like a lot of it. She felt that familiar pull in her guts; that something was wrong here. Nothing would make this feeling go away.

  ‘Not working today?’

  ‘Off sick,’ said Alex.

  ‘Oh. Nothing bad, I hope?’

  Alex didn’t answer. She picked up the wine Curly had brought her and took a generous swig. The guests chattered. Everything was bright with summer sunshine. She took in every detail, as if looking for something out of place, something that could spoil this perfect day.

  She looked at children playing tag in the car park. She looked at a kite shaped like a comma, dipping down over the flat ground, then soaring up again. She looked at lovers, holding hands as they walked by the tiny art gallery by the lighthouse.

  And then she saw a woman, a long way off, striding with a sense of purpose.

  As the guests chatted, she approached. She was walking towards them at speed.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Alex said to Curly. She untangled herself from the packed picnic table and stood. The woman was in her fifties or sixties, dressed in a plain grey mac, gloves still on, as if defying the summer.

  Alex’s skin prickled. From a distance, Alex could see the sheen of unwiped tears that ran down her face; occasionally she gulped for breath.

  By now Alex had left the group she had been with and was approaching the woman walking along the concrete track. Alex called out, ‘Is everything OK?’

  The woman ignored her; strode up towards her, and then straight on past. Alex turned to look where she was heading and saw that she was unbuttoning her grey coat.

  Nervous now, Alex ran back towards the group to get ahead of the crying woman, and as she did she saw, tucked into the belt of the woman’s dress beneath the open coat, a long, grey steel blade.

  Ants were suddenly crawling all over Alex’s skin. ‘I’m a police officer,’ Alex said, voice as low as she could. ‘I can help.’

  The woman paid no attention yet, grasped the handle with her right hand and pulled it out, holding it horizontally out in front of her.

  ‘Stop,’ said Alex, louder this time.

  The woman blinked, twisted to her right to point the weapon straight at Alex’s midriff.

  ‘Shut up,’ the woman screamed.

  The chatter and laughter stopped abruptly.

  Alex stood, arms raised up, drawing her midriff back from the machete in front of her. The edge had been sharpened recently and glittered in the brightness. The woman shook.

  ‘Put it down. Let’s talk about this.’

  One of the revellers saw the blade and screamed; the scream stopped as quickly as it started.

  ‘Put it down,’ pleaded Alex.

  Everything was suddenly quiet. The wind seemed to drop. Gulls hung, stationary in solid air.

  And to her surprise, the woman did as she had been told, dropping the weapon onto the ground where it clattered on the tarmac.

  The woman in grey raised a finger of the hand that had dropped the weapon and pointed it at the red-haired bride.

  ‘Murderer!’ the woman screamed. ‘Bloody murderer.’

  And the red-haired woman, open-mouthed, eyes huge, paled; her skin almost as white as the dress she was wearing.

  Two

  The wedding party broke up; most of the guests caught the next train back to Hythe, shaken by what had happened. Taxis arrived to collect others, who muttered apologies before they departed. Curly stayed behind with the two brides, who sat close on the bench, arms around each other, whispering together, shocked by what had happened.

  The first police car to arrive was driven by a Civil Nuclear Constabulary officer. He was based at the nearby power station. He offered Alex handcuffs and started collecting names and addresses while the woman in the grey coat sat in his car waiting for someone from Kent Police to come and collect her.

  ‘You’re the police officer who lives round here, aren’t you?’ The young CNC officer was new. Alex didn’t recognise him.

  Curly had brought Alex a fresh glass of wine because he said she looked like she needed one. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Weird place to live, isn’t it? Right next to that lot.’ He nodded at the power station.

  ‘Weird place to work, when there’s nothing for you to do,’ she answered.

  The boy looked hurt; but it was true. The CNC were a heavily armed unit, guarding a nuclear facility that no one wanted to attack anyway. ‘You not at work today, then?’

  ‘I have been told to take a little time off for the good of my mental health,’ she said.

  ‘Sick leave?’

  ‘Yes.’ She held up the glass.

  ‘Unlucky for you; lucky for everyone else here, by the sound of it. Did you know the woman with the machete?’

  ‘Never seen her before in my life,’ said Alex.

  ‘Only, some of these people . . .’ He looked around. ‘They’re telling me you stood up and approached her well before she pulled out the weapon.’ He looked at his little dark-blue notebook. ‘And you had some words with her. Why did you approach her?’

  ‘I’ll be honest,’ said Alex, ‘I have been asking myself exactly the same thing.’

  ‘She was acting suspiciously?’

  She had been dressed for the wrong weather, that’s all. ‘Not really. I just . . .’ She tried to think what had made her do it. ‘I just knew something really bad was going to happen,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a copper’s instinct, then. Seeing something out of place. Knowing that something was wrong.’

  Alex shivered.

  ‘Pretty bloody impressive,’ said the copper. ‘I’d buy you a drink too, only some of us are still on duty.’

  Back at the table, Curly lit a cigarette and said, ‘Poor cow.’

  ‘You know her?’ asked Alex.

  ‘Mandy. Tina’s mother-in-law. Ex-mother-in-law, I should say. She’s not right.’

  ‘Ex-mother-in-law? You mean . . . ?’

  Alex looked at the woman, stationary in the police car, staring straight ahead, no regret on her face for what she’d just tried to do.

  He lowered his voice so the brides could not hear. ‘Mandy Hogben. Tina used to be married to her son Frank Hogben. They married young, you know? Tina was eighteen years old. Frank’s dead. Died in a fishing accident. Nothing to do with her, but Mandy never believed that.’

  ‘What kind of accident?’

  ‘Fell overboard on a trawler out of Folkestone.’

  ‘Why does she blame Tina, then?’

  ‘Like I said, not right in the head. Not her fault. Just tough on Tina.’

&nbs
p; At the other end of the table Tina was crying; her new wife was trying to make fun of her, wiping her tears with her veil.

  ‘Not a great thing to happen on your wedding day.’

  ‘You said it,’ said Curly.

  ‘So he just fell overboard?’

  ‘No life jacket. No harness. No chance at all.’

  ‘Why didn’t anybody save him?’

  ‘Nobody saw it happen. The other guy on the boat was asleep down below. Came back on deck, engine running, nobody on deck.’

  Alex thought for a while. ‘So how can they be so sure he fell overboard, then?’

  ‘I thought you were off work.’

  Alex had two more weeks of counselling ahead of her. She would soon be returning to work on what they called ‘light duties’. The phrase filled her with dread. ‘So?’ she demanded.

  ‘If you’re on board a trawler one minute, and the next you’re gone, that’s about the only explanation there is.’

  She studied his face for a second. The sun never reached the bottom of Curly’s wrinkles, she noticed; little deltas of white skin beneath the reddy brown.

  ‘I used to go out on that boat sometimes,’ said Curly. ‘It was called The Hopeful.’

  ‘Some name. Did they go back and look for him?’

  ‘You have any idea what it’s like to lose a man at sea? Worst thing in the world that can happen. They called out the coastguard and everything. But there wasn’t much point. They were in the Channel. It was March. Unless you’ve got an immersion suit on, you’ve got ten, maybe twenty minutes in the water and then you’re gone.’

  ‘Find his body?’

  ‘No life jacket on. They never did.’

  Alex looked round. The face of the woman in the car was like iron.

  ‘When was all this?’

  ‘Seven years ago.’

  ‘So his body never turned up in all that time?’

  The sound of waves on shingle a long way off. ‘That’s right.’