Death of a Mermaid

by Lesley Thomson

  Freddy had come to the fishery because she couldn’t face her mum’s house. There was no logic in the decision, and it now struck her as idiotic. At her mum’s she could have locked the door and been safe. At nine at night, there’d be no one in the fishery. Why had she come here?

  Freddy turned away and the movement activated the security system. The car park was flooded with bright light. A door in one of the cabins opened. A man was coming across the car park.

  ‘Christ, Freddy, I could have killed you.’ Andy Power rested the flat of the blade against his thigh.

  ‘That would be the second attempt tonight.’ Freddy breezed past him. ‘Am I glad to see you!’

  ‘What do you mean, the second time?’ Andy followed her into his office.

  ‘I think someone tried to kill me.’ Freddy grimaced; the idea was new. She pulled out Andy’s chair and collapsed onto it. ‘For God’s sake, put down that knife.’

  ‘Self-defence, I wasn’t expecting a visitor. It’s too early for the delivery vans.’ Andy slid the knife into his desk drawer. ‘Who tried to kill you?’

  ‘I was nearly mown down. On the Newhaven Road near Tarring Neville.’ Freddy hugged herself as she started shivering. Sarah would say it was shock. So would Freddy, for that matter. ‘Any chance of tea with lots of sugar?’

  ‘Did you get the reg plate?’ Andy checked the kettle had enough water.

  ‘It was too dark.’ Freddy gave her brother a blow-by-blow account. She missed out the bits about Toni and her worries about Mags. Andy would be angry that Toni hadn’t helped her. And Mags, well, she knew where she was now.

  ‘It sounds like kids off their heads. There’s been gangs of vandals and hooligans smashing windows, wing mirrors, nicking stuff. Not forgetting Daniel Tyler killing Karen.’ Andy pumped hand cream into his palm from a bottle and briskly kneaded it in. Freddy wondered when he’d started caring about his skin. She could imagine what their dad would have had to say about that.

  ‘It was deliberate, the car veered right at me. Karen’s son murdered her. A tad more serious than breaking a window.’

  ‘You should tell the police if you’re sure. Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. No. How can I know? It slewed out of control. It was like the driver didn’t expect a pedestrian.’

  ‘You know the A26 is the devil. Foreigners off the ferry driving on the right and Brits pissed on duty free. They don’t know which side of the road is right, or wrong.’ Andy mashed the teabag on the side of the mug and added milk and sugar. He passed it to his sister.

  ‘So, did you call the police?’ Andy was opening a stack of envelopes.

  ‘They are useless.’ Fred wrinkled her nose. ‘I didn’t see anything – what could I give them?’

  Safely in Andy’s office, the tea warming her while Andy dealt with his mail, Freddy reflected that maybe she was being dramatic. How much more likely that it was a kid on vodka behind the wheel of a stolen car. Or, as Andy said, someone used to driving in Europe. No one wanted to kill her. She took another slug of tea and changed the subject.

  ‘Global Ghost Gear Initiative – are you involved in that?’ Freddy spotted a branded mouse-mat as Andy reached the last envelope.

  ‘We’re also in the Sustainable Seafood Coalition. We recycle tons of end-of-life netting each year.’ Andy sounded proud.

  ‘Bit different from Dad’s day. I don’t remember him giving a toss about anything except the profit margin. Least of all fish stocks.’ Freddy doubted that, in the end, Andy did either. He would have a firm eye on the bottom line.

  ‘Lots of things are different.’ Andy crossed his legs at the ankles. ‘If I didn’t get involved, my kids would kill me. They’re all for saving the planet.’

  ‘Good for them.’ Freddy recalled the three shiny-haired, rosy-cheeked keepers of the environment at the funeral. Dry-eyed, seemingly little moved by their grandmother’s death. Regal and confident, they had stepped from the car with the air of those who know that, whatever state it got in, the world was their oyster. Andy must have done well with the fishery. She asked, ‘How come you’re here so late? Are you doing the night orders?’

  ‘Yes. We’re short-staffed since… since Karen and Daniel.’ Andy fiddled with a broken stapler, catching staples as they fell out. ‘I was at her grave today.’

  ‘Karen’s?’

  ‘Mum’s.’

  ‘Oh. How was that?’ Freddy hadn’t thought of going to the grave.

  ‘I kind of expected she’d be there.’ Andy looked sheepish.

  ‘Wasn’t she there?’ Freddy was horrified. Had someone vandalised their mother’s grave?

  ‘I mean, I had this crazy hope that she’d be alive. You know, on a bench waiting for me.’ Andy rubbed at the back of his neck. ‘Insane. How can Mum not be here? I never felt this way with Dad. Mum, I thought, would go on for ever.’

  ‘Yeah. It is mad.’ Freddy leaned down and gathered up the staples that Andy was dropping without noticing.

  ‘You planning to hightail it out of Newhaven again?’ Andy opened the last letter and scanned its contents.

  ‘Actually, no. Not for a bit. I wondered…’ Freddy shoved her hands in her anorak pockets. ‘That job you mentioned, the fish round? If the offer is still on, I’ll do it.’ She hunched in the chair. ‘I could stay on at Mum’s and run her small animal hotel. Maybe instead of rent?’

  ’You’ve got some front.’ Andy was thunderous. Of all the reactions Freddy might had expected, this was not it. He waved the letter that he had just opened at her.

  ‘Is your little plan for the court’s benefit? Get a foot in the door and then prise it open?’

  ‘The fish van was your idea!’ Freddy was dismayed. What was the matter with him?

  ‘I offered you that before I got this.’ He flapped the letter.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘You know damn well what it is. Only a letter from your super-posh solicitor threatening to take us to the cleaners.’

  ‘What the hell?’ Freddy jumped up. ‘I didn’t send you that.’

  ‘What do you call this then?’ Andy flicked at the paper with a finger and tossed it on the Ghost Gear mouse-mat. ‘Nice as pie to my face. Coming here claiming you were run over, assuring me that you don’t want a share of this place and all the time getting your lawyer on to us. Nice move, Fre-der-ricah.’ He gasped for breath.

  Freddy snatched up the letter. She smacked it open and read it. She had to go over it twice to understand it.

  ‘It’s a joke,’ she said finally. Nothing more plausible occurred to her.

  ‘Do you see me laughing?’

  ‘No. It’s in poor taste.’ Freddy felt her way. She couldn’t tell him about Sarah, not yet.

  ‘Once your feet are under the dashboard of the fish van, you’re in. Is this the advice you paid your lawyer for?’ He snatched the letter off her. ‘You must be doing OK to afford one. You’re not at the mercy of shrinking fishing quotas and endless red tape.’

  ‘Andy, I’m sorry.’ Shocked by a mess not of her own making, Freddy babbled. Sarah would have no idea about quotas beyond a vague notion that they were a good thing for fish. ‘I’d been drinking. I was upset. About Mum. You know how I used to play practical jokes, hiding Ricky’s clothes at the pool, and that time I moved Dad’s car and he thought it was stolen?’

  Andy gave the slightest nod. ‘He let you get away with anything. If I’d done that, he’d have had a fit.’

  Freddy winced. She knew the outcome of her father’s fits. ‘Well, once, I pretended to Mags I was dead.’ Freddy laid the letter on Andy’s desk. ‘That wasn’t funny either.’

  ‘A posh firm like that would charge a hundred quid easy to send these to us. Got money to burn, have you? Or is it no win, no fee and you’re offsetting the bill against your winnings? You think we’re idiots?’ Andy gestured at what must be Ricky’s desk. ‘He’s got one as well?’

  ‘It’s not like that.’ My ex-girlfriend runs me. I didn’t pay a penny for the adv
ice. Unless you count being tracked every hour, never being allowed to buy my own clothes, posh meals out when I’m dead on my feet… ‘I am so sorry, Andy.’

  Andy sighed. ‘So, do you still want the fish round then? Why?’

  ‘So that I can mind the hotel. You never cancelled the animals. I’ll do it for Mum. Like I used to.’ Andy looked as if he didn’t believe her. Freddy didn’t believe it herself. ‘A month, or until you find Karen’s replacement. Until all the booked-in guests have had their holidays.’

  Andy appeared to be considering it. Freddy prayed inwardly. Then she counted to five.

  ‘A month. But only if your claim,’ Andy indicated the letter, ‘goes in the bin.’

  ‘Of course.’ Freddy snatched up the letter and began ripping it up. ‘Thanks, Andy.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. You’re on probation. I’ll destroy Ricky’s letter. If he sees it, there’s no deal.’ Andy retrieved an envelope from Ricky’s desk and ripped it in half. ‘Although, Freddy, no offence, but Karen bust a gut to make the round work.’

  ‘Dad said I could sell fish to fishermen. But if you need to talk to Ricky…’ Freddy opened the door, letting in a blast of freezing air.

  ‘I’m the boss on land.’ He waved a hand. All his good humour was gone. Their rapport had burnt out.

  ‘Andy, one more thing.’ Looking back into the dimly lit office, Freddy noticed how tired her brother looked, with dark circles under his eyes. For all the money he was making, the office was basic, a picture of his wife and kids on his desk, schedules on the wall. It was a cheerless place. ‘One of the animals belongs to Karen Munday. A hamster. How come he’s there – was Karen going away?’

  ‘She hadn’t asked for time off. Mags took that booking, check with her.’

  ‘Mags is away.’ Freddy remembered the text.

  ‘Oh, right, I forgot. She’s walking on one of her pilgrimages, to get over Mum. One thing’s certain,’ Andy tossed the stapler onto his desk and shot more staples onto the floor with a sweep of his hand, ‘Karen’s not going to pick up her pet up now.’

  In tentative rapprochement, brother and sister exchanged a grim smile.

  Outside, waves breezed over the shingle and from somewhere at the back of the fishery a vixen screamed.

  A car was parked by the gate. Freddy recognised it. She’d seen Ricky’s Mazda outside the house the day her mum died. The engine was ticking. Had the Mazda been there all along? Freddy touched the bonnet. It was faintly warm. The front bumper was dented.

  31

  MAGS

  Her captor came in the dark. She couldn’t see who it was. She scuttled into the corner; the wall behind chilled her bones. A figure stood against a black sky. She saw real stars. Whoever it was had a radio, or maybe a phone. The radio was playing a French station; she recognised the voice of Edith Piaf. Toni would tell her it was to drown out any external sounds. Silly if so, because she knew she was in the battery. She had no idea of time. She could have been there days or since yesterday She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. She assumed a man, but then she wasn’t sure. A sack was dragged with care over her head. Hands fumbled inside and carefully removed her gag. An alien-sounding voice told her to put the sack on whenever she heard a knock. Mags had had to ask some kids to stop playing with a voice-changer app on their phone in the library so she knew that these were pre-recorded instructions. Whoever it was had gone to great lengths to disguise their gender. Surely it was a man; no woman would treat another woman this way. Don’t shout or I’ll kill you. Cover your face when someone comes.

  Inside the bag, she had nodded to each of these. Shuffling. The door clanged. Piaf left her alone. Gingerly, Mags felt about and found a bottle of liquid. After sniffing it and pouring some into her hand, she decided it was water. When she had first tasted it, she recoiled and spat it out. Acid. In the morning, with sufficient light, she saw it was sparkling mineral water. She dared risk it. She had been left a cheese sandwich. Home-made, going by the uneven slices of bread and lumps of cheese. Not so much lack of skill as that someone was in a hurry. She managed half before fear closed her throat. Was it, she would ask Toni, a good sign that she was being kept alive? Toni didn’t reply.

  She fixed on Edward, her jealous colleague. Edward, who had said she was too old to work. He had looked at her with hate.

  The drawstring bag was made of brushed cotton like the bag Mags got with the shoes she’d splashed out on as an early fortieth-birthday present to herself before Reenie died. She had agonised about buying those shoes and, true to form, felt guilty afterwards. Was this her punishment? Don’t be an idiot, Toni would say afterwards. Would there be an afterwards?

  She had always believed that you were never alone if you had faith. God was always with you. But, cold and frightened, she couldn’t form the words for a prayer. It was thinking of what Toni would say that brought her some scant comfort. As if Toni was in there.

  The bag gave her hope. Toni whispered that if kidnappers planned to kill you, they didn’t bother to hide their faces.

  She had been obedient. She hadn’t shouted or screamed. She had put on the bag every time he or she bought her food. She was mortally afraid of angering whoever was keeping her prisoner. On their last visit, when her captor had tripped and dropped her bottle of water, Mags had wondered if he – or she – was as scared as she was.

  32

  FREDDY

  Freddy was parked by the mouth of the River Ouse. It was eight o’clock in the morning and she should have been starting the fish round.

  As she’d left the fishery that morning, she’d seen the square shape of the ferry coming in from France. She’d driven around to the car park on the opposite bank to watch. Ahead of her on the other side of the river she could see Power Fisheries, a grey huddle of buildings and ranks of rusting shipping containers that Sarah had called a dump. Misted rain blurred the view, so Freddy flicked on the wipers and the radio. ‘That will be yours one day, my darling,’ her dad had said to her as, when she was thirteen, they’d sat in his truck on this very spot, looking at his kingdom. ‘You’re the only who can carry on the Power dynasty. Ricky’s a baby and Andy’s a cripple.’ Freddy had vowed to herself, and to God, that she would share it with her brothers. There were three of them in the dynasty.

  Seven years after that day with her dad and two years after he’d chucked her out, aged twenty, Freddy had worked in a fishmongers’ in Liverpool. Being close to the sea, it was rare to buy in from suppliers down south. But a fire at the local fishery meant that for a couple of months her boss bought from further afield. One day, in December 2002, Freddy came into work to find Ronnie, one of her dad’s delivery drivers, unloading boxes of fish. He told her Fred wasn’t the same man since she’d left. He mopes about, shouts at your brothers. Between you and me, I think he’s too hard on Reenie. Come home, lass, we need you. Christ, girl, you were the bass and sole of the place!’ The old joke.

  Ronnie told Freddy that Reenie and Fred’s brother were throwing a surprise party for his sixtieth. If you pop out of the cake, he’ll be made up.

  She spent her savings on a brass nautical survey compass with a leather case. Fred would love it. She prided herself that no one else would have thought of it. The event was to be upstairs at the pub on the corner of Fort and Gibbon Roads. Fred’s local.

  Her legs shaking, Freddy had arrived. The barman knew her and greeted her warmly. He was so sorry. So so sorry. He insisted she had a drink. Jack D, isn’t it? Gradually, it sank in. There was no party. Her dad had died of a heart attack a month ago. He’d been taken to Eastbourne District Hospital but died in the ambulance before he got there. He’d left the fishery to his wife and sons.

  Freddy had taken the train back to Liverpool, the compass in her bag. No one had got a message to her. No one had told her Fred Power was dead.

  The Seven Sisters had reached the river. As it glided by, slow and majestic, Freddy became aware that dreamy music on the radio accompanying a trailer for Stev
e Wright’s ‘Sunday Love Songs’ programme fitted the ferry’s elegiac progress up the river. The ferry was vast in comparison to the moored trawlers and skiffs. The regular chock-chock of wipers beat time.

  ‘Go to Facebook, search for BBC Radio Two, leave your requests under the Love Songs post…’

  Freddy composed a message. Mags, this song is for you. I will always love… She couldn’t finish. She’d choose ‘Un-Break My Heart’.

  An old-fashioned bike with a leather saddle chained to railings was a static contrast to the Seven Sisters as she went past, while a motorhome, miniature against the ferry, appeared to slide backwards. The ferry glided towards Newhaven port, her orange funnel bright against the greys and greens of the beach and the sky. Freddy wept.

  The rain had eased as she reversed the van away and drove into town to begin the round. She consulted the map Andy had given her and pulled over in a street off Meeching Road. She sounded the horn. A cringeworthy fanfare that announced her arrival. She stayed at the wheel, checking her phone to give the impression she didn’t care if she sold fish or not. But mostly to see if Mags had replied to one of her texts. When she’d returned from the fishery after seeing Andy that night, she’d texted Mags to find out where she was walking on her pilgrimage – odd phrasing – and reassured her that I will not try to find you. Freddy tried to work out which pilgrimage Mags might be on. There were more than she’d expected. One to Germany, another to the Holy lands at the end of the month. Lourdes seemed obvious and one had begun two days ago and lasted a week. The longest was a fortnight. Most were sold out months ahead so Mags would have had difficulty booking at short notice. Had Mags known she would be away when she arranged to meet?

  Whichever pilgrimage Mags was on, she should be back soon. Freddy would see her then.