The Salt Marsh (43 page)

Sam folded her arms now. ‘Does Roger have contacts in the CIA?'

‘Of course he does. As you know, Roger was in the Special Boat Service, he attends all the reunions. The SBS are well connected with the security services – abroad as well as at home. Roger had a chat to this man, this rogue officer, and he mentioned the CIA operations in Afghanistan.'

Sam wasn't sure where this conversation was heading, but she didn't like the turning it had just taken.

‘He was talking about an aid project the CIA were using to provide support to the Afghan rebels.'

‘Oh right.'

‘A photography project. Providing cameras to the Afghan rebels so they could record their lives. It was a cover so the CIA could supply the Mujahedeen with weapons. It wasn't aid workers running it, it was agents.'

The path they were following joined a lane, conifers along one side.

‘Luke told Roger he had worked on a camera project in Afghanistan,' Liz said.

Luke had never mentioned working in Afghanistan to her. Perhaps he was showing off, playing the hard man in front of Roger, made a tactical mistake and let the truth slip out. Perhaps that was where Stavros found him – working on a CIA-funded fake NGO project in Afghanistan.

‘So what if he did mention Afghanistan anyway?'

‘Roger thought there was something fishy about Luke and it turns out his suspicions were right. Roger thought you ought to know that Luke might not be exactly what he seems to be.'

‘As in?'

‘As in he's probably a spook of some kind or another.'

‘And you conveyed this information to me in a code embedded in a spanakopita recipe on the back of a postcard?'

‘Yes. It was Roger's idea. He was worried your phone line might be bugged. It was quite a straightforward code. The first letter of every underlined word.'

‘That's so straightforward it's not a code.'

‘You understood it?'

‘No, Mum. I didn't.'

‘It can't have been so straightforward then.'

‘Mum. The not straightforward bit wasn't the code, but the fact that you would think of sending me a message about my boyfriend embedded in a recipe for spanakopita on the back of a fucking postcard.'

‘There's no need to swear.'

‘Since when have you cared about swearing?'

‘Roger thinks swearing shows a limited vocabulary.'

‘Fuck Roger.'

‘Sam. We are trying to help you.'

‘By telling me my boyfriend is a spook?'

‘It's quite an important piece of information, don't you think? I mean it could be a problem.'

‘Problem? In what way? You married a bloody spook of sorts.'

‘Yes, but at least I knew what he was.'

They had come to a gap in the pines.

‘Good god, what's that?' Liz asked.

She pointed at a wooden-framed box sitting on the ground, covered with chicken wire, a bedraggled crow cowering inside.

‘Larsen trap,' Sam said. ‘The crow is a decoy. It's there to attract other crows – they fall through the false roof and then they are trapped.'

‘That's terrible. I think we should set the poor bloody crow free.'

‘Good idea. I've got my Swiss Army knife on me.' The one that Luke had given her. ‘I can prise out the staples.'

She flicked the large blade, tried not to look at the engraving.
Sam – love you. Luke.
Hacked away at the frame, the pathetic bird huddled in a corner. The trap wasn't particularly well constructed so it didn't take her long to loosen enough wire for the bird to escape, but it seemed reluctant to move.

‘We're intimidating it,' Liz said. ‘It needs space.'

They walked a short distance down the road, watched as the crow found a way through the wire, hopped, tested its wings, flapped off into the wood.

‘Good,' Liz said. ‘So, Luke.'

‘Well, it's irrelevant anyway,' Sam said. ‘I dumped him.'

Dumped. She glanced down at the unfolded penknife she was clutching in her hand, couldn't avoid seeing the engraved words –
love you. Luke
– felt a stab in her ribs, like a stitch but worse, much worse, head spinning with the pain. She clenched her fist, felt another sharp stab in her palm, unrolled her hand, saw the line of blood where she had cut herself on the open blade. She folded it, wiped her hand on her trousers, considered dropping Luke's gift on the ground, decided against it, and replaced the penknife in her pocket, vaguely conscious of Liz chuntering away.

‘I'm sure it's a good thing that you dumped him,' Liz said. ‘I wouldn't have any regrets about that if I were you.'

‘I'll try not to let it bother me,' Sam said.

*

The phone rang as she entered the door. She grabbed it. The therapist.

‘Finally. I've been trying to get hold of you for days. Are you OK?'

‘Yes.'

‘Perhaps we should talk.'

‘It might be too late to talk.'

‘It's only midday.'

‘No, I mean it's too late because I think I'm through with the five stages of grieving. I've definitely done the denial. And I've been very angry.'

‘Hang on a moment, Sam. Let's talk about anger.'

‘Must we?'

‘Well, if you can't talk about it, you're still in denial.'

‘Right.'

‘What is it about your father that makes you angry?'

She sighed. ‘I'm angry with him for dying.' She paused, recalled the day of the fair, Jim's vanishing act, the candy man's stare, his parting shot;
tell your dad he should take more care of you, otherwise something nasty could happen.
Crawford had made good on his threat. ‘I'm also angry with Jim for exposing me to the risks of his work.'

‘Risks. Let's think about risks. Parents have to enable children to face the risks and dangers of life, they can't cocoon them in cotton wool.'

‘Yeah, I know, but there are general risks that everybody has to face, and there are specific risks you have to deal with if your father works for the secret state.'

The therapist sighed. ‘Sam, I thought we were moving away from abstract entities, paranoia.'

Sam wasn't paying much attention, she was hearing her parents arguing, Liz cackling, shouting – So if I want to know where you are, I'm supposed to call the fucking Home Secretary, am I? – slamming the door. ‘Although, in the end,' Sam said, ‘in the final analysis, I don't entirely blame Jim.'

‘OK, back on track. So why don't you blame your father?'

‘It was the seventies.' ‘The Candy Man Can' played in her head. How did that song go? Something about childhood wishes – as if any child would wish for a creep with a bag of sweets. ‘Who gave a shit about children in the seventies?' she continued. ‘Nobody. Certainly not the Force. But whatever Jim was trying to do, he did it because the Home Secretary wanted somebody to do it.'

‘I've lost you. You're blaming government ministers?'

‘Yes.'

‘For...?'

She hated that patronizing tone of scepticism, the implication that she might be deluded, wrong-thinking. She was telling the therapist what she remembered. Wasn't that the point of these conversations? A dialogue about her childhood, her memories.

‘Sam, can we focus on your relationship with your father?'

‘Could we continue this session another day? I'm feeling sick.'

‘Oh, OK.'

‘Bye.'

‘Bye for now.'

Bye for ever, Sam decided. She was done with talking.

*

She found the postcard Liz had sent her lying on the kitchen surface where Sonny had left it, splattered with oil, words partially erased by watermarks. She picked it up, left the house. The sun was heading west to Battersea as she crossed to the green patch in the centre of the square, found a spot in the long grass where she could lie down without being seen. She removed the postcard from her pocket and perused it, noted all the underlined words which she had dismissed as random and could now see, despite the cooking stains, formed a painfully obvious coded message:
lovely, unsalted, knife, eggs, spinach, pepper, oil, only, keep.
Luke spook. Examining it again made her laugh. Who else but Liz would think of telling her daughter that her boyfriend was some kind of secret agent via a spanakopita recipe on the back of a postcard from Greece where she was, supposedly, researching the classical references in
Paradise Lost
? She was laughing so much she started to cry. She couldn't stop. Her life was absurd. She couldn't believe she had been so stupid. Roger had seen through Luke's cover and she had fallen for it. Swept along by the chemistry. He must have had a false identity. Same first name as his real name perhaps, different last name, different date of birth. Were the stories about his parents true? Had he made them up to try to win her sympathy? Maybe there were some half truths there. Perhaps his dad had dismissed his wife in favour of Ottoman culture, and Luke's commitment to the Afghan rebels was a way of proving to his father that he was worthy of his love. But there was obviously a vast tangle of deception holding the truths together. Luke had set her up, used her to build a relationship with Dave so he could keep an eye on what was happening in the research lab. He had fed all sorts of crap about her and Dave to Spyder so he could pass it on to Crawford and Crawford could claim it as legitimate information for a file on her. Not any old stuff it in a cupboard with all the millions of others and forget about it file, but a file marked terrorist.

Dave had suspected Luke. She'd got it all wrong. That evening in Skell, her last evening with Dave, he had tried to warn her about Luke. Tried to persuade her to back off, walk away from danger. She had shouted at him, her mate Dave, smashed one of his favourite mugs. And he'd paid the price for being too smart. She flicked an ant crawling across her arm. How come she was so dumb? She had made the mistake of thinking the only men who did that sort of thing were middle-aged saddos like her father. What an idiot she was. Hadn't she spotted anything? She remembered Luke's slip over his birth sign. She'd pulled him up when he gave the wrong zodiac sign – Capricorn instead of Gemini. But he'd wriggled out of it, turned it into a compliment for her, flipped it smoothly. Give him his due, he was good at his job. Fucking bastard.

She dug around in her pocket, pulled out her pocket knife, stared at the words engraved on the blade.
Sam – love you. Luke.
He had wheedled out her vulnerabilities, encouraged her to confess her guilt, her doubts, her fears and played them all back to her. Bastard. But she'd got him in the end. She really had loved him – she wasn't a bitter withy – and yet she had killed him. She still couldn't quite believe she'd done it. Two shots. How could she deal with that? She pictured Sonny's cross-marked arm, scarred by guilt, the burden etched on his skin. She was distracted from her contemplation by a robin – it alighted near her feet, cocked its head on one side, gave her a cheeky wink then flew away. The robin was right, she decided, she could manage. She stood, brushed the grass seeds from her overcoat. She needed to draw a line. Bury it.

*

She emptied her duffle bag, the one she had taken from Dungeness to Skell and back to Romney, spread its contents on the floor of her bedroom: dirty knickers, toothpaste tube with white gunk oozing from a crack in its middle, Dictaphone machine containing her answerphone cassette. She rewound, pressed play. The illicit recording of Crawford. She rewound some more. Pressed play again, expecting to hear Dave's voice. There was a crackle, and then, unexpectedly, Sonny.

‘Sam. I wanted to leave you a message.'

She pressed stop. He must have taped a message on the Dictaphone that evening at the Lookers' Hut when she went out for a walk in the thunderstorm. She pressed play again.

‘I don't know where I will be when you find this message. Wherever it is, please don't worry about me. And I'm not worried about you, because I know your heart is strong. There is something I wanted to tell you. So... I... the last words I heard your father speak were from the Book of the Preacher. I think you know the verse. To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven.'

The message ended. Hearing his voice made her cry. And cry. Sonny's confession. She made herself a coffee and replayed the message again. Only this time it didn't make her cry, it made her think. Perhaps it was nothing more than Sonny's South African phrasing, but there was something ambiguous about his message, a lack of finality – these were the last words I heard your father speak, not these were your father's last words – as if he was telling her that Jim had recited the verse from Ecclesiastes and then walked off some place else. Hinting that he had done the same thing with Jim as he had with her, taken the contract to stop anybody else implementing it. She replayed the message one more time. No, it was all in her mind. Of course. Jim was definitely dead. She removed the cassette, stuck it in her pocket.

*

The shadows were lengthening as she pushed on the gate to the Crossbones graveyard for the unforgiven. A wave of cats flowed out from the grass, swirled around her ankles.

‘I don't have any food for you.'

She walked to a far corner of the graveyard, found a secluded spot, a bare patch of earth among the grass and nettles. She knelt on the ground, started to dig with her hands, soil under her fingernails, dirt in the creases of her palms. A ginger tom nudged her elbow. She rubbed its head, it purred, scampered off in the direction of the gate. The bag lady appeared, the cats cavorted around her in an impatient flurry.

‘Oh, it's you again,' the lady said.

She rummaged in her trolley, removed the saucers, the bag of nibbles, dished the food out, the plates a seething mass of multicoloured fur. She placed her hands on her hips, gazed affectionately at her followers.