The Trawlerman

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?’