The Trawlerman

woman.’
‘In the car,’ said Jill looking up at him, ‘taking her to the nick, she said Tina had murdered her son.’
The grin vanished from Curly’s face. ‘He was lost at sea. I know for a fact.’
‘Yup,’ said Jill. ‘I went and checked the records when we got back. They said it was an accidental death. Lost overboard.’
The sun dropped lower. The red light flooded the flat land around them. ‘’Xactly,’ said Curly, and without another word he marched off again, silver fish swinging by his side.
Alex watched him heading across the road, towards the shack Stella and Tina had rented for their honeymoon. ‘You went back through the records?’
‘Course. Mentally ill or not, she was making an accusation of murder.’
‘Does it bother you?’
‘Course it does. That doesn’t mean there’s anything in it.’
Alex smiled at her. She was a good copper. ‘Tell me about the Younis family then. What happened to them?’
The names of the people murdered at the house called The Nest had been on the television this morning. Ayman and Mary Younis; a retired couple in their early sixties.
‘Nope,’ said Jill. ‘Fuck off.’
They sat a little while longer and watched the sky turn red.
‘You know I’ll find out anyway.’
‘Nope.’
‘Suit yourself.’
Eventually Jill said, ‘It’s driving me nuts. Might as well drive you nuts too.’ She sighed. ‘I wish I hadn’t had the chips now. You’ll be wishing the same, time I’m finished. First thing I’ve eaten since yesterday lunch.’ She looked around. ‘Let’s walk somewhere quieter,’ she said. ‘Quieter’ meant heading south, away from the huts and chalets, towards the industrial bulk of the nuclear power station.
They walked side by side until they reached the tall boundary fence.
There had been a Waitrose supermarket delivery due at the Younises’ house at eleven in the morning on the Thursday, Jill said. When the delivery woman arrived at the house, she noticed that all the curtains were closed, upstairs and downstairs, but she didn’t think anything of it, because though she had been working in this area for six months, she had never delivered to this house before.
She took out her box of groceries and rang the doorbell, but nobody answered. Unsure if the doorbell worked or not, she opened the porch door and went to knock on the door inside.
The inside door to the Younises’ house had a clear glass panel. The lights were on, but she didn’t look inside at first. She knocked a couple of times, called out, but nobody came, so she leaned forward and put her face against the glass.
At first she could not make out what she was looking at.
Sitting at the bottom of the stairs was a woman, legs splayed out on the floor, back against the newel. The driver thought at first she had fallen and perhaps passed out there. As her eyes accustomed themselves to the low light, she realised that the woman was not dressed at all. She was completely naked. The darkness covering her torso was not clothes, but blood.
Some people panic when they come across scenes like this. Others find a strange calm takes them over, almost as if their mind has been hijacked. The woman couldn’t explain why she acted so rationally, but she felt inside her pocket and pulled out her mobile phone, switched on the torch and looked again.

Six
‘Colin Gilchrist was the first responder,’ Jill said, looking out over the evening sea. A ferry, navigation lights on, was heading south to France. ‘Poor bastard. On his own. When he got there the woman from Waitrose was back in her van, bawling her eyes out.’
‘The victim was Mrs Younis?’
‘Yep. It was her. Her throat had been cut. I was the first person from Serious Crime. I went in, kitted up.’
‘There was more?’
Jill didn’t speak again until they reached the far side of the gaggle of fishermen who sat on the beach casting lines out towards the hot-water pipe that took the water from the reactors and pumped it out to sea.
Jill stopped, sat on the shingle facing the Channel. ‘And then I went outside to look for signs of an intruder and I found Mr Younis at the back of the house. Naked, like his wife. Single gunshot to the neck, right at the jugular. He bled out on the grass, poor bastard. His nose and lips were missing, but forensics say that was probably foxes or badgers. And then there were two dogs. They had both been stabbed.’
‘Where were his clothes?’
‘In the kitchen.’
‘The killer made them undress first, then murdered them?’
‘Looks like it.’
The stars were starting to appear now; Venus and Mars were high and bright. ‘See what I mean?’ Jill said. ‘Horrible.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It’s what we have to do, isn’t it? Go to places like that.’
Alex nodded. ‘What sort of dogs?’
‘Labradors. Why?’
‘I just like to have it all in my head.’
In the disappearing light, Jill looked at Alex. ‘You like to have it in your head?’
‘Wrong phrase.’
‘Your trouble is you have too much in your head already.’ Jill sucked in air. ‘That’s not all.’
‘I didn’t imagine it was.’
To the east, a fishing boat, port light showing as it headed in to Folkestone. The Channel was busy.
‘The man was killed where he was. Mrs Younis was murdered in her bed. The bed was soaked. It was disgusting.’
‘Whoever killed her took her downstairs? But they left Mr Younis where he died?’
Jill nodded. ‘The thing was, the killer had written a message on the mirror in the bedroom in her blood.’
‘What?’
‘Kill them all. God will know his own.’ Jill shook her head. ‘It’s psychotic. Like, serial killer stuff. Colin found it on Wikipedia. It’s from the crusades, apparently.’
‘Yes.’
‘You actually knew that?’
‘It was a monk,’ said Alex. ‘These soldiers were going to attack some town where Catholics lived alongside a sect that the pope had declared to be heretics. A general asked the monk, “How do we know which are Catholics? They all look the same. They live alongside each other perfectly happily.” The monk replied,