Bad Sons (Booker & Cash Book 1) (11 page)

I threw my beer into his face and that probably saved me some serious injury. The fizzy lager temporarily blinded him and as he instinctively brought his hands up to wipe them I hit him with four days of pent-up aggression – a punch to his flabby midriff that jarred the joints in my wrist, my elbow and my shoulder. I heard the wind come out of him as he doubled over. Without thinking about the consequences of what I was doing I brought my knee up into his face and then his friend hit me – a right-hander that glanced off my cheekbone with enough force to send me sprawling backwards into a cluster of spectators. I felt strong arms on me then, restraining me, saving me from a good hiding. People came between us and the physical stuff was over. It had lasted seconds.

Pike was shouting he was going to kill me. His nose was pouring blood and his small piggy eyes burned with hate for me. People had hold of him too. Pam stepped between us.

‘You two, out.’

Pike’s friend, someone I hadn’t seen before but took a good look at now, started up: ‘What? He started it.’ He was jabbing a thick finger at me.

‘You want me to call the police?’

Pike shot her a nasty look then and I thought he’d just blotted his copybook and tainted his future welcomes with that. But he retreated. For his own reasons, he didn’t want trouble with the law. He shared a last and lasting threat with me, turned and left.

Pam looked at me with disappointment bordering on something more damaging. She might have been about to send me out too, but maybe she understood things might only flare up again outside. That wouldn’t be good for business.

The gentle hubbub of pub noise started up again. Someone said something that made someone else laugh and that was it. It was over.

Pam looked at my face. ‘Follow me.’ She wasn’t smiling.

I trailed after her into the big kitchen at the rear of the property. The chef regarded me briefly before shaking his head and getting back to his stove.

Pam indicated a chair. ‘Sit down.’

I sat. She took a tea towel, filled it with ice and twisted it into a ball.

‘Hold that against your face.’

‘I’m sorry, Pam.’ It was about all I could say.

She let out a long audible breath. ‘Never again, David. Understand? Not in my pub. Take it outside, or preferably somewhere well away.’

I nodded and apologised again. My cheek was numbing from either the punch or the effects of the ice. Probably both.

‘Was it your uncle they found this morning at Littlestone?’

Bad news and gossip always did travel quickly on the Marsh. I indicated that it was and then I understood why she hadn’t kicked me out but had shown me some compassion.

‘I’m very sorry, David. Have they said how they think it happened?’

I shook my head. ‘The police haven’t got a clue and the man in charge doesn’t seem interested further than thinking maybe I had something to do with it.’

‘I had a woman detective in here yesterday afternoon checking your story for Wednesday night.’ Her face showed concern.

I tried a smile. ‘She’s actually all right. I’m sure she believes I had nothing to do with anything.’

‘Well I know it too. They’re just doing their jobs. Give them time. They’ll work it out. Domestic violence is always going to be somewhere they look first.’

She still didn’t ask me to leave, which I took as a vote of confidence. Or it could have been that she didn’t trust a wounded animal like Pike not to be loitering around outside for some quick payback.

I ate in the back restaurant, had another pint and went for a late night walk up on the sea wall. The tide was almost at its highest and there was a good breeze coming off the water. It was bracing.

I walked east for a change towards the Martello tower that had been converted into living accommodation. That was before English Heritage got all sniffy about that sort of thing and decided it would rather stand idly by as historic buildings simply collapsed in on themselves with neglect rather than let someone with a bit of imagination and money make something of them and rescue them into the bargain.

It was a clear night. The moon laid out a glistening silver carpet of reflected sunlight on the top of the English Channel, which, like the false hope of a rainbow or my thoughts regarding my aunt and uncle’s deaths, led to nowhere.

***

17

My Sunday was not a day of rest. There was an email from my wife. It was short and pretty much what I would have expected. She understood. She politely offered her condolences. She wished me well. She didn’t ask when I’d be returning.

The school had not replied but it was the weekend in Istanbul too, so that was no surprise.

The American had responded. He managed to express eloquently his great sorrow at my loss without coming across as too American for it. He said he would, naturally, understand if I felt that his order could not now be completed for personal or legal reasons but that should I wish and be in a position to continue with the transaction he was prepared to be patient. That’s about all I could ask of him. I emailed him back letting him know I intended to fulfil the order and assuring him of my ability and qualifications to do so. This was no idle promise. The books had to go and with a buyer already lined up and a handsome deal agreed I’d be a fool not to take advantage of the situation. Besides, I’d come home to do just that and I felt I owed it to my dead relatives to see the order through.

I spent most of the day in the shop scouring the shelves, fussing over the books, selecting, cross-referencing, matching, ordering and wrapping protectively titles and editions. It didn’t seem to matter how many boxes I filled, how many of the books on the list I ticked off, the stock seemed not to get any smaller. In the morning I left the building only for take-away food and milk.

I kept an ear out for trouble. I didn’t really expect Pike to make a house call looking for retribution but I wouldn’t have put it past him. He was that sort. Better to be prepared. It’s why I moved my old cricket bat into the shop to keep me company.

I turned the stereo on and played some Chopin waltzes and Beethoven sonatas. They helped.

By late afternoon I’d had enough and needed some fresh air. I felt like a run and I had an ulterior motive. In all the excitement of my last outing to St Mary’s Bay I had neglected to take a look at the railings around the outfall, the place my aunt’s floating dead body had apparently become caught up. It was a factor that still bothered me keenly about the circumstances of her death.

*

Thirty minutes later I was standing on top of the outfall, panting, sucking in the clean fresh air off the sea. It was another glorious afternoon on Romney Marsh and I felt a twinge of regret at having kept myself inside most of the day.

The high tide of the early afternoon was receding. Gulls were swooping and shrieking around something that interested them in the swell. It was warm still and there was no breeze to speak of. The sky was a rich cobalt blue and clear apart from a thin band of dirty cloud on the horizon towards the Normandy coast and the ever present bisecting vapour trails of the jets in the stratosphere. The air quality was giving a good idea that the spring of daffodils, lambs and more temperate weather was hanging up its coat for a visit.

The shell of the outfall resembled a sturdy concrete box. It sat proud of the beach about ten feet from the sand at its highest point. A fall from there would have been unpleasant whether the tide was in or out. Fixed around the outer edges were galvanised tubular railings to help prevent that: three horizontal tubes supported by vertical posts of the same material about every six feet. There was a similar arrangement at foot level fixed around the outside of the big box. Simple, economical, functional, enough.

I spent the next ten minutes inspecting every inch of the metalwork trying to understand how someone floating in the sea could randomly get snagged on it. I tried and failed several times, quite determinedly, to puncture the fabric of my sweatshirt and attach myself to the railings. It couldn’t be done.

I ran home grimly satisfied.

I showered, went into the lounge with a glass of wine and for something to do picked up the book I’d been struggling with. I wanted a cigarette but I didn’t want to smoke inside and I couldn’t be bothered to traipse downstairs.

I read a few pages before other more urgent and important thoughts started shuffling out of my subconscious to crowd my immediate thinking and make reading for pleasure impossible. I went downstairs to smoke.

The building and everything in it was going to be mine now. Five days before I hadn’t had a pot to piss in. I’d never been one to think about the future regarding anything I earned. Easy come, easy go typically summed up my economic affairs. I had suddenly become quite well-off.

The property itself was a bit rundown but it was substantial. Being in the south-east of Kent didn’t hurt its value. It was big, well-positioned and my relatives had owned it outright. With a bit of investment it could look great. But what would I do with it? I didn’t want to be lumbered with commercial premises, and the warren that was the living space above it could shelter a fertile Catholic family without seeming crowded.

More pressingly, funeral arrangements would need to be made. I would have to find out who the family solicitors were and contact them regarding the process of probate. There would be bank accounts too and I remembered my uncle speaking of investments a couple of times.

With all that suddenly raised in my consciousness I couldn’t hope to escape reality through a book or a fix of nicotine.

I went back inside, stopped by the fridge, refilled my glass and climbed the steep narrow staircase to the room on the second floor that my relatives had turned into an office space for their domestic affairs.

The single penda
nt energy-saving light bulb barely illuminated the room in a depressing weak light. My aunt had been a well organised person. She’d been the one who managed the book-keeping, invoicing, accounts and everything else paper-related to do with the business, which left my uncle free to engage in what he did best: buying and selling books. I was sure she would also have handled the paperwork of their domestic existence and because of her meticulous care I was grateful for that.

The room contained an old battered metal filing cabinet, a couple of shelves of box files and a beautiful Victorian roll-top desk with matching Captain’s chair.

I sat down and randomly pulled open a couple of drawers: pens, paper-clips, rubber bands, loose staples, envelopes and stationery; all the usual detritus of a working desk. I stood up and pulled down the box file with the current year’s date on the spine. I sat down again at the desk and flipped it open, flicked through a few sheets of paper and came to something that caught my eye. It was a letter with the heading script of Flashman Builders embossed on it. Knowing the history between Flashman senior and my uncle I couldn’t see that they would have much to communicate about. I removed it and turned on the little desk lamp.

The letter was from old man Flashman himself and was handwritten. He was asking my relatives for first refusal on the purchase of their property if, now that they had made it public knowledge they were retiring from business, they were also thinking of selling up and moving on. He mentioned a price that made me read it three times to make sure the decimal point was in the right place. Flashman must have been very sure of his plans for the place.

My relatives had never mentioned this to me. There was no reason why they should but they had talked about one day leaving Dymchurch and buying a small place in Canterbury where they could sell the car, have everything they would ever need on their doorstep – the shops, the theatre, a cinema, train and coach travel and for my uncle Kent County Cricket ground – and whenever they felt like it they could take off for the sun.

Flashman’s offer seemed extremely generous and it didn’t take much figuring out why he’d made it – the right of way that went with my relatives’ property and snaked down the side of the village hall car park to Orgarswick Avenue. It might well have been the answer to the access problems that had seen his residential development plans for the yard out the back turned down time after time by both the local and the district councils. I thought that the price he was offering for the property was all about the right of way: a pot-holed strip of land a couple of hundred yards in length and fifteen feet wide. It had the potential to unlock his own patch of development land and knowing that the local council were not averse to infilling with residential property development would probably net him a very good return on his original investment.

The offer was dated two months previously. There was no record of a reply but I could guess what it had been: a flat no if my uncle was feeling polite.

There was no way my uncle would ever have considered selling to Flashman, even if the man was offering well over the market value. Twenty years before, the empty paddock out the back had been offered to my uncle. He had wanted it for a long time: coveted it. He had wanted the room to garden, grow a few vegetables, have a couple of greenhouses, keep a donkey and a few chickens, maybe a pig and just generally indulge himself in something he had a hankering for. The deal was as good as done when Flashman stepped in and unscrupulously hijacked it. He had paid a little more to get the land because he thought he could develop it to make a quick profit. When he had seen those development plans fall foul of the council planners he left it to become the eyesore it was today. Every day that my uncle had looked out of the back window and been forced to consider what could have been had hurt. He wouldn’t ever sell to Flashman – not even if the man offered double what he had. Not if his life depended on it.