Salt Lane

by William Shaw

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not being ridiculous.’ She wriggled away from him. ‘You’re the one who thinks… Your mother is almost certainly dead.’

  ‘Yes. Probably dead.’

  ‘And even if she was your mother, I for one wouldn’t want a woman like that to be Teo’s grandmother. But she’s not anyway.’

  They lay apart from each other, in silence and the hours passed with neither of them sleeping, listening for the sound of movement from the spare room.

  From somewhere far off came the beep-beep of a reversing lorry making deliveries.

  ‘Do you remember her at all?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I was too young.’

  ‘You never talk about her.’

  He tried to think. His mother must have held him, nursed him, but there was nothing there. A void. He had been too little. ‘Thing was, nobody talked about her. It’s not just me.’

  But she was asleep next to him now.

  He was awake when Radio 4 came on with the seven o’clock pips.

  Lulu sat up and exclaimed, ‘Jesus.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Teo. He’s usually up by now.’ She was out of bed, pulling on her gown. ‘Jesus bloody Christ, Julian.’

  Julian followed her out of the door and watched her knock at the spare room door. No answer.

  She flung it open and gasped: ‘She’s bloody gone.’

  The bed was empty; the crumpled duvet lying on the floor.

  ‘Teo,’ Lulu cried, and ran down the corridor. Teo’s door had a picture of a giraffe on it, drawn by an artist friend of theirs; it was always open a crack so they could hear if he woke in the night. Lulu flung it wide.

  ‘Julian!’ she screamed and turned to him.

  He pushed past her. With horror he saw the cot was empty.

  ‘Oh Christ Christ Christ.’

  How could it happen? He had heard nothing all night. He hadn’t even thought he had fallen asleep, but he must have.

  Lulu almost knocked him over shoving past him as she ran back down the corridor. She put her head round the bathroom door; it too was empty.

  ‘Call the police,’ she screamed.

  As Julian ran back to the bedroom to unplug his iPhone from the charger on the bedside table, Lulu clattered downstairs.

  The phone seemed to take for ever to wake up; his whole body shaking, he dialled 999.

  ‘Julian,’ came a voice from downstairs.

  ‘Hello? Emergency service operator. Which service do you require? Fire, police or ambulance?’

  ‘Julian!’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Julian to the woman on the phone. He followed his wife down the stairs.

  She was standing at the living-room door. Raa Raa the Noisy Lion was on TV. Sitting on the floor, surrounded by cushions, sat Teo, eyes fixed on the screen. There was no one else in the room.

  Julian dropped the phone, picked up the boy, warm and soft, feeling him squirming in his grip.

  ‘She’s gone,’ said Lulu.

  ‘Hello?’ said the phone. ‘Caller. Which service do you require?’

  As he squeezed his son tight, the child began to cry, upset by the suddenness of his father’s arrival, the desperation of his hug.

  ‘I didn’t hear her,’ said Julian.

  ‘She must have got up… gone and taken Teo out of his cot. Then let herself out. She’s not anywhere in the house, I’ve looked everywhere.’

  Teo’s grizzling turned into a full-voiced cry. The boy would be hungry.

  ‘Caller?’ said the phone.

  Lulu bent and picked it up. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Just a stupid mistake.’ She rang off.

  The boy’s Pull-Up nappy was heavy and damp. Julian went to fetch the changing mat, suddenly exhausted. He was supposed to be finishing an urgent job today. The agency designed high-end retail spaces. A major client had been unhappy with his latest work, demanding changes.

  His world had been disturbed. The woman had taken the child out of his cot. Lulu had been right. Anything could have happened.

  His wife watched him pulling the pyjama top off their son.

  ‘Good riddance,’ she said. ‘Don’t ever, ever, ever let her in here again.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was just…’

  She looked at her phone; there was a text message. ‘Oh Jesus. The bloody childminder,’ she said. ‘She’s got tonsillitis.’

  ‘Just… what if she was? That’s all. What if she was?’

  ‘Bloody, bloody hell.’

  As her husband dealt with their child, she went into the kitchen to put the kettle on for coffee. An analyst at a Middle Eastern-owned bank, she didn’t have time for this kind of nonsense. She would have the locks changed, she thought. Maybe install a security camera outside the door.

  It was only when she turned to open the fridge for the milk that she saw the note, written on the whiteboard in green marker.

  The handwriting was surprisingly neat and straight, the letters evenly rounded.

  I am sorry sorry I shouldn’t have come.

  It was a mistake.

  Goodbye.

  PS You asked did I think about you I promise I thought about you every single day.

  Staring at it, Lulu jumped when the kettle clicked off.

  ‘Lulu?’ he was calling from the other room. ‘Have you seen my bike helmet?’

  With the sleeve of her dressing gown, she carefully wiped the board clean.

  FOUR

  Alex Cupidi ran, screaming at the sea and the sea screamed back.

  It felt so good.

  ‘Yaaaaah!’ She kicked stones.

  Living here on the edge of the world, she found she rose early. While the teenage girl still slept, she cycled round the flat lanes or walked up the pebble beach beyond the power station. How long had it been since she had felt this wide awake? Out here, by the firing ranges, there was no one to listen. She could scream and shout until her throat turned raw.

  She shouted to nobody, for no reason at all. Seagulls drifted over, unconcerned.

  She was about to open her lungs again when she felt the phone, tucked into the pocket of her tracksuit, start to vibrate. A number she didn’t recognise.

  ‘Damn,’ she said to the gulls.

  ‘Bingo,’ the voice at her ear said. ‘We found out who she was. Thought you would want to know.’

  ‘Ferriter?’ Cupidi’s voice cracked from shouting.

  ‘Yes, skip. Are you all right? You sound funny. Have I just woke you up? Where are you?’

  ‘Are you at work already?’ She checked her watch, panting. It was just gone seven in the morning.

  A high, girlish giggle. ‘No. Just about to go.’

  ‘What is it you’re saying?’

  ‘Local chemist in Lydd phoned us last night. After you’d gone. Victim’s name is Hilary Keen.’

  Cupidi stopped. ‘Last night? And you didn’t think to call me?’

  The constable went quiet; she had been expecting congratulations. ‘That’s why I’m calling you now.’

  ‘You didn’t think I’d want to know last night? I’m supposed to be running Outside Enquiries.’

  ‘Only you’d left work. Gone home. I stayed on, if you recall.’

  New and eager; young, single. And she was right, of course. Cupidi had gone home to look after her daughter. She had no right to expect her to phone.

  ‘I just thought I should leave it till morning.’

  Cupidi frowned. ‘OK. Go ahead.’

  Ferriter took a breath. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘At 18.38 we received a phone call from a woman who said she was a local chemist. Said she thought she knew the woman.’ On the phone the chemist had explained that the victim came in regularly to pick up a prescription for ordinary blood pressure drugs. ‘Sergeant Moon and me, we jumped in a car and showed her the photo again. She had name, date of birth, everything.’

  Cupidi tried to remember which one Sergeant Moon was. The tall, dark
-eyed, handsome one who lived with his mother. The one women made lustful jokes about in the locker room. ‘And then, after we’d confirmed the name, we went back and checked online records. She has a son, apparently,’ said Ferriter. ‘Had, rather. Only next-of-kin on record. Nobody else I could find. I have found an address in London for him. And a number. I can phone him if you like.’

  ‘Whoever this man is, the one thing we know is his mother’s dead. It would be on the heartless side not to tell him in person.’

  ‘Oh. Right,’ said Ferriter, stung.

  ‘Which part of London is he in?’

  A gust of wind blew off the sea.

  ‘Sorry. Say again?’

  ‘Something with an E,’ said Ferriter. ‘London, E something.’

  ‘Because we will need to go there and tell him.’ She spelled it out for the young constable. ‘Besides, he might have some idea of what she was doing on our patch. And obviously he might even be a suspect.’

  Patronising again, and all because of that ‘I was working late’ thing.

  ‘Obviously, yes,’ Ferriter said.

  She kicked at the debris at her feet; a cracked red fishing crate with a crab shell in it.

  ‘Want me to pick you up in the car?’ said Ferriter. ‘I can be there in half an hour.’

  ‘Call DI McAdam first, let him know what we’re doing.’

  ‘Hold on. I got it. Postcode’s E1.’

  Aldgate, Whitechapel, she thought. The old ground she was so familiar with. Cupidi looked at her watch. ‘No point leaving till half eight. We’ll only be caught up in traffic.’

  She ended the call knowing she should have congratulated Ferriter, because it was good solid police work. The mystery woman was no longer a mystery. Cupidi should be feeling that surge of excitement; things were starting to fall into place. Instead she felt angry at herself. She picked up her pace, heading home.

  Out at sea, white birds were diving into the grey water. Were they gannets? Zoë would know.

  There was an entire medieval town out there somewhere, under the waves. Once, it had been one of the biggest towns in the south of England but the waves had sucked it away some time in the thirteenth century. Another town had grown up inland with the same name; but the old one was dead beneath the water. This was a shifting land, built by the sea and then washed away again. That was something; an entire town destroyed.

  In London she had been drowning. She had ended a go-nowhere affair with a married man to come here, to start again. It would be different here.

  She was about fifty metres from the nuclear station when she saw a grey shape the length of a man at the top of the bank of shingle about a hundred metres away.

  She stopped and stared at it. The longer she looked, the more sure she was about what she was seeing lying along the ridge and silhouetted against the morning sky. There was a herring gull pecking methodically at what looked like the head.

  She broke into a trot.

  Walking on a beach these mornings had made her wonder if she would come across a body. Police work made you morbid, but it wouldn’t be a surprise. This huge triangle of shingle reaching out into the Channel must catch that kind of flotsam from time to time. But why would a body be at the top of the rise, so far away from the waves?

  The steepness of the bank forced her to slow. The stones moved under her feet as she climbed, making each step an effort. Panting, she crossed the high line of sea debris – old green netting, old coloured lighters, white bleached yoghurt pots – made it to the top of the slope and stopped. Resentfully, the herring gull flapped away into the air.

  It was just a boat; a medium-size inflatable rib. What had looked like a head was just the round end of a buoyancy float. Somebody had taken a knife to the rest of it, ripping the grey rubber. She looked around. This had been happening all along the coast, these last few months. As they tightened controls at the ports and airports, people found other ways across the water. They would have beached the boat here and run off into the marshes.

  She would report it, of course, but the occupants would be long gone. They had been organised. The boat alone would have cost a few hundred pounds. The migrants it had contained would have paid the smugglers much more, or would be held somewhere until they had. Both, probably.

  When Cupidi let herself in the back door, Zoë was standing at the fridge with a bowl of Cheerios in her hand, dressed in a long T-shirt that had once been white. Her legs were so skinny, thought Cupidi; she got that from her grandmother.

  Cupidi put the kettle on. ‘I’ll be in London today,’ she said. ‘I may be late back. There’s some Brie; you can have it for lunch. You like that, don’t you? Fish fingers in the freezer. A bit of pie from last night. Some chicken in the fridge, but cook it properly. Vegetables if you want to make anything. Sorry, love.’

  ‘It’s OK, honest.’

  ‘For God’s sake if you go out, please remember your phone, love.’

  ‘What are you doing in London?’

  ‘That dead woman. It turns out we may have found a relative of hers.’

  Zoë looked at her. ‘I’ve been thinking. What if she was electrocuted? Would that have shown up?’

  Cupidi turned down Radio 1. ‘Listen. We’re not supposed to talk about this kind of stuff. It’s not a great idea. You know that.’

  ‘What? In case I tell my friends?’ she said sarkily. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have any.’

  ‘That’s not true. Twice you’ve been invited for sleepovers—’

  ‘I’m not seven anymore, Mum.’

  ‘They want to be your friends.’

  ‘I don’t like them. Girls round here, they’re so immature. So, what if she was electrocuted, Mum?’

  ‘Firstly, it’s hard to tell anything after a body has been that long in the water in summer.’

  Zoë mimed vomiting into her breakfast bowl.

  ‘You asked. Secondly… I’m not talking about this anymore. Will you be OK? On your own.’

  ‘I won’t be on my own.’

  Other teenagers her age would be hanging out at H&M in County Square in town on these long summer days. Zoë wasn’t like other teenagers. She wanted to spend her time with the birds. And birdwatchers. A teenage girl spending all her time like that.

  On the plus side, Zoë showed no interest at all in boys yet. At her age, Cupidi had been wild. Also, birds saved Cupidi a fortune on paying for childcare. The birders here all seemed to love her; to look after her. It was as if her daughter had become their mascot.

  Strange child. Sometimes she didn’t feel like she knew her at all. When had they grown so far apart?

  ‘So how do you actually, really, truly think she was killed, then? The woman. You must have a theory.’ Zoë dumped her bowl in the sink, still half full of uneaten cereal. ‘If she wasn’t drowned, that’s pretty weird, isn’t it? To be lying in the water. Very Ophelia.’

  ‘Not very Ophelia at all, if you saw her. Rinse it properly and put it in the dishwasher. Repeat. I’m not talking about the dead woman. I just want to know you’ll be all right spending the day on your own.’

  ‘I’ve told you. I’m not on my own.’

  ‘And don’t leave your keys behind either. Please, Zoë.’

  The teenager took a carton of orange juice out of the fridge and poured a glass. ‘Are you going to visit Nan while you’re up there?’

  ‘No time. Police business.’

  ‘You never go and see her.’

  ‘I do.’

  Zoë made a face. ‘When was the last time then? Not since Christmas.’

  ‘I’ve been busy. Moving house. And a new job.’

  ‘London’s only up the road.’

  ‘She and I don’t always get on.’

  ‘Understatement,’ said Zoë.

  ‘It’s not my fault. She’s difficult. Always has been.’

  Zoë snorted.

  Cupidi took the carton which Zoë had left by the sink and opened the fridge to return it. ‘What
if…?’ she said. She closed the door again and turned to look at her daughter. ‘What if I asked her to come stay here for a few weeks. It might be nice for her.’

  Zoë laughed, spitting orange juice back into her glass. ‘You don’t like her. You’d hate her being here.’

  ‘No I wouldn’t,’ said Cupidi, hearing a car pull up at the back of the row of cottages. Through the window she saw Constable Ferriter, stepping out of an unmarked car. ‘Besides. She could look after you.’

  ‘I told you, Mum. I don’t need looking after.’

  Cupidi pulled the back door open. ‘Time for a tea… If we set out too early, we’ll get stuck in traffic.’

  ‘Go on then,’ said Ferriter, a waft of floral perfume coming through the doorway with her. Too pretty, too well-turned-out for a copper, thought Cupidi.

  ‘So, what if she was suffocated, then put in the water, to disguise it?’ said Zoë. ‘You know, like waterboarding.’

  ‘Stop it, Zoë.’

  ‘Why leave her in the water anyway?’

  ‘Quick way to dispose of a body,’ said Ferriter, pulling out a chair and grinning at Zoë. ‘Plus, the killer might want to hide the time of death.’

  ‘The killer,’ said Cupidi. ‘We don’t know anything for sure yet.’

  Ferriter addressed Zoë. ‘The post-mortem interval is harder to determine if a body is left in water. It might be to keep the body clean. It’s trickier to find the offender’s DNA if it’s been in the water long. The evidence becomes degraded. In which case it’s someone who knows what they’re doing.’

  ‘You are aware my daughter isn’t actually part of Serious Crime?’ said Cupidi, though what the constable had said was perfectly true.

  ‘Sorry, guv.’

  Cupidi was aware she was not popular in Serious Crime; she was conscious she wasn’t doing much to improve her reputation. It hadn’t done her any favours that she had arrived here from the Met. Here in the provinces, nobody had much time for the London police. Nor had it helped that in her very first few weeks she had investigated and arrested a colleague for his part in a killing that had taken place forty years earlier, when he had been just a child. He had been a local neighbourhood policeman; a good man, well regarded around here. Now he was on remand, awaiting trial. Colleagues understood that arresting people for whatever crimes they had committed was the job they did, and she did it well, but it didn’t mean that they liked her for it.