The Trawlerman

“Kill them all. Let God tell them apart.”’
‘God will know his own.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Weird, huh?’
‘Prints?’
‘Nothing significant yet.’
‘This time of year, too. Not going to be easy.’
Jill knew what she meant without asking. Most of the year it was dead around here, but it was July: high summer, and the tourists were filling the caravan parks that were dotted throughout the marsh and its shoreline.
‘How long was Colin Gilchrist alone there?’
‘Twenty minutes.’
‘Poor lad.’
‘Yep. Poor lad. I went home last night and bought a packet of cigarettes for the first time in a year and smoked so many I felt sick.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I better go.’
‘You could stay over. Zoë hasn’t seen you for ages.’
Jill shook her head, looked up the coast towards where the Younises’ house was. ‘Sorry, lovely. Going to be a long day and a half tomorrow. If I stayed here, I know I’d just get pissed up.’
It would be a long day, Alex thought. They turned and headed back towards the Snack Shack, where Jill had left her car.
‘What about the murder weapons?’
‘Not found either yet. The gun was a nine-millimetre.’
‘Two different weapons. That’s strange. She was moved, and he wasn’t. Two different murderers?’
‘Maybe. Someone who had different ideas about men and women. Frankly, we have no bloody idea at all, right now.’
They walked north, past the solid red brick coastguard lookout station that had been converted into a luxury holiday home, past the contrasting tumble of sheds and wooden outbuildings that were clustered around an old first-class carriage, past the little art gallery that one of the owners ran.
Jill drove a mint-coloured Fiat 500 which she had hand-cleaned every Sunday. It was parked by the side of the road. The lights winked as she pressed her key fob.
‘Did they have any children?’
They were at the car now. ‘You have a dark mind.’
‘I do.’
‘They have a son, but if you’re thinking it could be him, then no. He has profound multiple learning disabilities. He’s in a care home up in Tunbridge Wells.’
It was after Jill started the car that Alex had another thought: ‘What had they ordered?’
Jill turned her head through the open window to look at her senior officer. ‘What?’
‘Find out what the supermarket order was.’
Jill’s head tilted back a fraction. ‘Is this all that, “I like to have it all in my head”?’
‘Good luck tomorrow,’ Alex said. She saw the light go on in the bungalow that Tina and Stella were renting. Reaching through the window, she put her hand on Jill’s resting on the steering wheel. Jill nodded.
— When we first talked, Alexandra, you said there were three incidents which you think might have been responsible for your trauma. Are you ready to talk about what they are?
— I don’t have any difficulty talking about them.
— It’s bright. Let me lower the blinds a little.
— I’m fine, honestly.
— Go ahead, then.
— The first was a stabbing. It was over a year ago now. I was the first to arrive at the crime scene. The victim turned out to be a young police constable I knew a little. Anyway, it was obvious he had lost a lot of blood. He was slumped against this bedroom wall and it was dark . . . The thing was, I couldn’t even find where the knife had gone in at first because there was so much of it, everywhere. I knew I had to put pressure on the wound, but I couldn’t even find it. I remember checking for a pulse and there wasn’t one, at least not one I could feel, but I waited with him until other officers arrived – and then the ambulance. It turned out he was still alive, but only just. I remember that feeling of the warmth of his blood. I was kneeling in it and it was soaking into everything I was wearing. When I left the room and went outside into the street I remember the looks of horror on people’s faces because I was literally covered in blood. I had it on my hands and my face. Even in my hair.
— That must have been awful. What happened to him?
— He didn’t make it. They weren’t able to revive him.
— I’m sorry.
— I’m sorry too. I had never liked him. I remember thinking, if I had liked him more, maybe I would have tried harder to save him.
— I’m sure it wasn’t like that.
— Are you?
— Go on.
— The second was in a cellar in a house in Gravesend. It wasn’t really a cellar. The homeowner was mentally ill. It was a really strange place. Over years and years he had dug out these tunnels and chambers under the house. The whole building was unstable. Long story short, I ended up being trapped in one of these chambers with a man who was . . . He was trying to kill me, pretty much. The fight dislodged one of the props that was holding the ceiling on us . . .
— Jesus.
— Right? When I say ceiling, it was just bare earth.
— Jesus Christ.
— It came right down on top of us. Most of it fell on him, the other guy . . . We were both trapped in there, in all this crap, in complete darkness. They got him out in the end, but he’s paraplegic now. The weight of it broke his back. I was lucky.
— Jesus.
— Are you OK? You don’t look great.
— Sorry. I’m not great in enclosed spaces. They give me the heebie-jeebies.
— Neither was I. I couldn’t breathe for dust.
— I was just imagining it. Do you need some water or something? I do.
— I’m fine.
— OK. Let’s carry on. And the third?
— Another sad story. I sent a friend to prison; a fellow officer. During the course of an investigation I discovered that when this man was a boy he had killed his own father. His father had been abusive. He had beaten his mother over years. One day this boy had just had enough and he killed his father. His father had a gun. The boy had found his father’s gun and he shot him with it. At the time there