by William Shaw
Alex stepped forward, closer to the woman and said in a low voice, ‘That’s a very big lens. You know it’s illegal to take photographs of people inside their own homes without their permission, don’t you?’
The woman frowned. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’
‘I think you probably do.’
The two women stood, toe to toe on the narrow path. ‘Who do you think you are?’ asked the photographer.
‘Nobody,’ said Alex. She took out her phone, held it up and quickly took a photograph of the young woman.
‘What the are you doing, doucheface?’
Alex replaced the phone in her bag. ‘Public space. It’s fine for me to take your picture here. Bit rude possibly, but not actually illegal, because this is a public footpath, clearly marked as such, so there is no expectation of privacy. And if any photographs of Callum Younis turn up in a newspaper, I’ve got a photograph of you, so people will know who took them.’
‘You got some nerve,’ said the woman.
‘Thanks,’ said Alex.
The woman hesitated; her tone was suddenly less hostile. ‘You know Callum, then?’ she asked.
Alex laughed. ‘Got to hand it to you. You’re a trier.’
‘Aren’t we all these days?’ In a single swift movement she lifted the camera, adjusted the lens and fired off five or six quick shots.
‘Do you know, I suppose we are.’
The woman looked at the screen on the back of her camera and gave a small smile. ‘Well. Do you? Do you know him?’
‘I should introduce myself. I’m a police officer. At least, that’s what I try to be. How about you?’
The woman smiled, showing that cute little gap again. ‘Shit,’ she said.
‘You’re OK,’ said Alex. ‘I’m not on duty. Besides, the offence would be publishing the photographs in a newspaper, not taking them, so there wouldn’t be much I could do.’ Alex hitched herself up onto the iron railing that ran alongside the path, tucking her feet onto the bottom rungs, leaving room for the photographer, but now the woman seemed less anxious to get past.
‘So what are you doing here, then?’
‘I can’t give you a decent answer either. Not one that makes any sense. What about you? How did you know the Younis boy was here?’ She nodded at the house.
‘Was at the pub in Rye last night. I had an unexpected windfall. Little bit of money came my way and I went out to celebrate. One of the nurses from the home was in there drinking and after a couple he was on about Callum. Poor lad. Can’t do anything for himself except piss and shit, apparently. Bit indiscreet, I know, but the nurse was upset about it all. He’s worked with him two years now. You must get pretty close. Thing is, the parents were paying for him to be in there. Now they’re both dead, who’s going to cough up? The nurse was saying he’d be taken to a state-run home, probably, but God knows what that would be like for a lad like him.’
‘That’s the story you wanted a picture for?’
‘The murders were yesterday’s news. What’s the follow-up? This was a human angle. So yeah. Not a bad story.’
‘I suppose not. Stitches up the nurse, mind you, for leaking confidential details of a patient.’
She shrugged. ‘They don’t have to know it was him. Besides, it wasn’t just me he was telling. It was half the bloody pub. Public space, like you said.’ The photographer jumped up onto the fence beside her, making the old ironwork sway. She hooked her legs over one by one, turning to sit facing towards Loftingswood Grange, the opposite direction to Alex. ‘Shit life, eh?’
‘Could be worse,’ said Alex. ‘It’s a good question, though, isn’t it? Who’s going to pay for him to be there now?’
‘He’s one of the lucky ones,’ said the photographer. ‘He’s in there. They must have been paying thousands for that.’
Alex turned, too; both of them now sitting facing the private nursing home and its carefully maintained garden. ‘What’s that to you?’
The woman looked straight ahead. ‘My brother is autistic, categorised as requiring substantial support. Only we can’t afford private.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. The people who look after him love him just as much as them lot do, only they don’t get paid half the money to do it or have half the facilities. And don’t think that’s me trying to justify what I’m doing here, because I don’t actually feel I need justification. It’s a story, and people want to know. That’s all the justification I need.’
Vapour trails cut the blue sky into parallelograms. Summer hung hot and heavy over them. ‘I wasn’t judging you.’
‘Yeah you were. Kind of.’
Alex smiled. ‘The law’s there to protect people like Callum and your brother. I’m all about the law.’
‘From what I hear, Callum’s not going to read anything I ever put in any paper so he doesn’t really need a lot of protecting, does he?’
‘You’ve been to the house too?’
The photographer eyed her warily. ‘Close as I could get, yes. Was there on Thursday. Crawling with you lot there too. Got one photo in yesterday’s Mirror.’ She reached down and plucked a long stalk of grass, put it into her mouth and chewed.
‘That was your windfall?’
‘Exactly. Quite good money for a change. Nobody else got close.’
‘Congratulations.’
The woman turned the camera on Alex again and fired off a couple of shots. ‘You want my take on it? I reckon this coast attracts psychos. Something about it. The way the wind blows. I don’t know. Not so bad in summer, I suppose, but in winter it can feel like everyone here’s just hopped the wall of some kind of institution. All the devils are here . . .’
‘You live nearby?’
‘Hythe.’ A few miles up the coast.
Alex climbed back over the fence and jumped down. ‘Do you think I could see your photographs some time?’
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘The ones of the house. To see what you saw, that’s all.’
‘Would you pay me?’
‘Not a single penny.’
‘Like you said, got to try, haven’t you?’ Still sitting on the fence, the woman reached into a pocket in her utility vest and pulled out a card. Alex read it. Georgia Coaker. Freelance photographer.
‘I’ll call you,’ Alex said, and set off back down the path towards her car.
Georgia Coaker called after her. ‘There’s actually no such bird as a lesser spotted wood pigeon, is there?’
When she got back to Dungeness it was afternoon, and Bill South was balancing himself on the roof of his house with a hammer in his hand, dressed in faded blue shorts and a loose shirt, sweat showing on its back.
Alex parked the car, went inside the shack and emerged with a glass of water, then climbed one-handed up the ladder. ‘Nice view,’ she said, looking around when she’d reached the top.
She put the glass down carefully on the guttering and, when she had manoeuvred herself onto the slope of the roof, stood, picked it up and approached South with it. ‘You must be thirsty,’ she said.
‘Careful. Not sure how much weight these rafters can take.’
‘You’re not supposed to say things like that to a woman, Bill.’
He took the glass from her and gulped it down. She could see now that he had cut a rectangular hole in the corrugated zinc roof. ‘Putting in ventilation,’ he explained. ‘Too hot in there now, summers like this.’
‘So you just saw a hole in the roof?’
‘That’s the beauty of a wooden house.’
She looked around at the surrounding landscape from this new elevated angle: the haphazard bungalows, the lines of railway track, the expanse of stones dotted with plants that were strong enough to survive here. ‘Maybe you should build another floor up here while you’r
e doing it. The view’s great.’
‘Works for me like it is,’ he said.
‘I wanted to ask you something,’ she said. She bent to sit down but when she put her hand down, the zinc sheets were sizzling. ‘About Frank Hogben,’ she said, straightening again.
Thirteen
They stood on the roof, a suitable distance apart so as not to put too much strain on the timbers.
‘Well?’ said Bill.
A gaggle of tourists, possibly Japanese or maybe Korean, who were walking up the narrow track alongside the power station fence, paused and stared. One of them raised a camera to photograph them, up there on South’s roof. There must have been something comical about the pair of them, she supposed. Maybe they imagined it was how the locals lived here, on their roofs, and would tell their friends about it back home. Soon another raised his camera, then a third.
‘Look. We’re an attraction,’ said Alex, and waved back. The entire group waved at them now.
‘You’re encouraging them,’ said South disapprovingly.
So she waved harder. The tourists didn’t seem to think it was OK to leave while she was still waving at them. They stood there politely waving back until she had finally stopped, then turned and walked on, chattering.
South had the ability to stay silent for long periods of time. He picked up a rasp and started rubbing it against a burr of metal on the roof. The noise was raw and loud, like an animal in pain might make.
‘So,’ said Alex eventually. ‘You were a community copper when that went on, when Frank Hogben was reported missing. You must have heard stuff.’
‘Not really.’
‘You never thought there was anything in what Mandy Hogben said?’
‘That Tina killed him? What makes you think there is?’
‘I don’t know. There’s something about Tina that’s off. I can’t put my finger on it. She reminds me of a deer caught in the headlights, somehow.’
He got back to work, dulling the sharp zinc edge with the rasp.
‘What?’ she said, annoyed.
‘You’re not that different,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘That look. Sometimes you have it too. Like those rabbits you see on the tracks around here. At night when you catch them with the torches.’
‘No I don’t,’ she protested, offended. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Irritated, Alex got up and made her way back to the ladder, ready to descend. The tourists were on their way back down the path, waving at them again.
She picked up Zoë from the nature reserve at five, watching her say goodbye to Kenny and the others. ‘I thought we could go to the beach and swim. Salt water is good for blisters,’ she said. She had put the barbecue in the back.
The tide was out. Unlike Dungeness, Greatstone beach was wide and sandy when the tide was low. They set up camp on the edge of the dunes and wriggled into costumes, then ran across the rippled beach into the water, which was always freezing whatever the season, and plunged in regardless, laughing.
When she had been pregnant with Zoë, Alex had always been determined to be a better mum than her own mother, Helen, who she thought had never been that interested in children. Zoë had done everything to make that task hard. As a young child, she was prone to tantrums and sulks. The only times she had seemed genuinely happy had been in the bath or in swimming pools. There was something mysterious about water.
Alex swam until her arms tired, got out, wrapped herself in a towel and went back to the dunes to light the barbecue and start putting vegetables on skewers, watching Zoë still moving in the water. The charcoal took a long time to heat. She put the first of the skewers on the coals and heard the hiss.
‘I thought it was you.’
She looked up to see Terry Neill, the man from the golf club, dressed in a T-shirt and sky-blue swimming shorts. ‘I live over there,’ he said, pointing towards the houses that backed onto the beach. ‘I could see you.’
Zoë was out of the water, teeth chattering. ‘Who’s this?’ she demanded.
‘A man I met at the golf club today. Terry, this is Zoë.’
‘Golf club?’ Zoë had found a pair of dead starfish and brought them with her, flattening the sand and laying them on it, then holding her water-wrinkled hands above the coals to try and warm herself. ‘You hate golf.’
‘So do I,’ said Terry, laughing.
‘Do you play it?’ Zoë said.
‘Yes. I do.’
‘That’s stupid,’ said Zoë.
Terry laughed again. ‘It’s an addiction. I don’t enjoy it at all. What are those?’
‘Asterias rubens.’ Zoë looked down at the starfish. ‘I’m going to take them home and dissect them.’
‘Oh,’ said Terry. ‘A biologist. How splendid. Did you know that the starfish has no blood?’
‘Obviously,’ said Zoë.
‘Don’t mind her. Sit down. Do you want some food?’
Terry squatted on his haunches and watched her as she turned the vegetable skewers. The coals hissed as marinade dripped onto them. ‘I’m sorry I cried today.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘Why were you crying?’ asked Zoë bluntly.
‘A friend of mine died . . . very suddenly,’ he said. ‘I miss him.’
Zoë nodded.
‘It’s ready,’ said Alex, rummaging in her picnic bag. ‘I’m afraid I only brought two plates,’ she told Terry.
‘Maybe we should have some wine with it?’ he said.
‘Mum always wants wine.’
‘I’m driving, Zoë,’ protested Alex.
‘One won’t hurt, then,’ Terry said. ‘I’m only a couple of minutes away.’ He stood and set off towards the houses.
Alex’s phone buzzed. It was a message from Jill:
Call me. X.
‘I don’t always want wine,’ said Alex.
‘Why did you offer him food? You hardly know him.’
‘He’s a biophysicist, Zoë. He probably knows all about starfish.’
Zoë looked doubtful. And then Terry was back with a chilled bottle of Zinfandel and three glasses. ‘I didn’t know if Zoë wanted some.’
Zoë softened a little, pleased to be counted as an adult, but she said, ‘Not much.’
They ate marinaded onions, mushrooms, aubergines, tofu and courgettes, much of it slightly charred, in flatbread, feeling the warm juices run down their chins as the coals faded from red to grey.
‘You told me you were seeing a counsellor,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I ask why? If it’s prying, don’t worry.’
‘I have been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Work stuff. Nothing serious.’
Zoë watched her as she spoke.
‘You’ve probably seen some pretty grisly stuff,’ Terry said. ‘I believe it’s very common in the police and emergency services.’
‘My boss said I should try it.’
‘Mum!’ Zoë protested.
‘What?’
‘Stop saying it’s not that bad.’
‘Loads of people have it worse than me.’
‘Mum,’ muttered Zoë.
‘You shouldn’t dismiss it,’ said Terry quietly. ‘The damage can be real. If you look at an MRI scan of someone who has been through significant trauma, you can often see how their brains have physically changed. The hippocampus can be diminished. You can see the damage.’
With a soft rattle, charcoal settled in the metal barbecue pan.
‘I’m not on that scale.’
‘How do you know?’
‘You think my brain would be like that?’
‘I don’t know. Imaging shows you physiological differences in traumatised people. You can watch how prefrontal activation of brains is different. The physical changes are visible. Wh
at’s much less easy to understand are the mental processes that have been rewired through trauma.’
‘If that’s true, it’s hard to see how someone can fix that by just talking.’
‘Would you prefer us to go in with knives?’
‘See, Mum?’ said Zoë, clearly warming to Terry a little.
‘I could show you the photographs some time, if you’d like.’
‘Is that a kind of intellectual’s Netflix and chill?’ asked Alex. ‘Come up and see my etchings?’
Terry laughed and held up his palms. ‘I can think of more exciting dates than that, if you like.’
‘Were we talking about dates?’ Alex said, a little frostily. ‘I didn’t realise.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean . . .’
Alex reached out and took his plate. ‘We need to get back,’ she said.
‘Mum. He was still eating.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Terry. ‘I should probably go.’
‘Why were you like that?’ Zoë demanded when he’d left them with his half-drunk bottle of wine.
‘Like what?’ Alex poured water onto the coals and felt the warmth of the steam on her face.
‘He was asking you out.’
‘I am aware of that.’ Alex made a face. ‘Not my type at all. Anyway, I thought it was you who didn’t like him.’
‘You never go out with anyone.’
‘You’re a one to talk.’
‘I’m seventeen, Mum.’
‘When I was your age I was hanging out with boys all the time.’
‘And you’re my role model?’
Alex sighed; examined her daughter, hair matted with salt. ‘Fair point.’
As she tidied up the picnic, Alex heard her phone buzz again in her bag. It would be Jill. ‘I don’t know. There’s something off about him,’ she said.
‘You think that about everybody right now.’
‘I met him today, and then he just happens to turn up when we’re at the beach?’
‘Because he lives just over there, Mum. You sure there’s not something off about you, just like he was saying?’
‘He’s just one of those men who asks women out all the time.’
