The Devil and the Deep Read online

  My time here had been a good one: I’d hidden enough of me away to pass for normal. If the hidden stuff came out, I couldn’t live here anymore. I’d have to go. Find another hiding place, try and root myself there. I supposed I could do it, but I didn’t want to. I was tired of running.

  Robin and I had been enough alike that he’d have understood that. But still, the idea he’d be dismissed as a suicide when he wasn’t bothered me more and more. I told myself we fucked-up ones had to stick together, but most likely I was thinking of myself. People usually do. My own death—my own murder—might as easily be passed off the same way.

  I shivered, and drank more coffee to chase the chill and the black dog’s shadow away.

  When you pass over them, the deeps are cold.

  “Inquest’s next week,” said Clive in the morning, when he got in, “but by the look it’ll be open and shut. Like I said, with his history …” He shrugged and carried on undressing.

  He slept, but I couldn’t. I got out of bed, drank some coffee and watched the sun come up over the estuary. I’d already more or less made up my mind, but that clinched it. If I could find anything that might make Clive look again—without revealing anything about myself I didn’t want him to know—I’d do it.

  Frankly, it wasn’t as hard as it might sound. Most information came my way as gossip sooner or later. The trick here was to get hold of something specific, ideally without making it too obvious I was digging.

  With Clive still sleeping, I slipped out for a long walk—I do that, sometimes, when I can’t sleep. I walked up and down the prom, letting the sea calm me, till it was time to go to work.

  After the lunchtime rush, when I finally got a half-hour break. I slipped to the ice-cream parlour further along the quayside. “Daniela around?” I asked Krisztof, the owner.

  “Out back, having a smoke.”

  “Thanks.”

  I found Daniela in the yard behind the parlour. “Emily.” She hugged me. “I heard about Robin. Are you okay?”

  I shrugged. “I’m still here.”

  She led me to the bench in the corner of the yard, gave me one of her Marlboros. “What are you thinking?” she said.

  The face of a Vogue centrefold, the eyes of an interrogator. Daniela’s my best friend in the town. I’d never told her about Robin and me—compartmentalising, again—but I think she guessed at least some of it. Just as she doesn’t know what my secrets are, but knows damn well I have them. She’s smart like that: make a better copper than Clive ever would. But she’s not a copper, and she’s smart enough not to ask about anything I haven’t volunteered. She has her secrets, too, I know—most likely about how she got here from Prague. She’s a little broken, same as Robin and me—not as much, but enough. That, or she hides the cracks better.

  “They’re saying he killed himself,” I said.

  “I heard. But you don’t think so?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I know.” I dragged on the Marlboro. “Did you see him? I mean that night, before he—”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It was quite late—gone midnight, I think. I was walking back from the Lion.”

  Daniela does the odd night shift at the Lion on Church Street. I don’t know where she finds the energy, but she seems to manage.

  “I was going up the coast road,” she said. Home for Daniela is the caravan park just out of town, along the coast road leading north. “He was on a bench there. Looked pretty wiped out. I was going to see if he was okay, but a guy came along, started talking to him. He woke up then, anyway.”

  “Did you know the guy?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I’ve seen him around.”

  “Tourist? Local?”

  “Tourist,” she said. “He brought his boat into the harbour a couple of days ago. It’s still there.” Daniela grinned. “It’s named after you.”

  It was a nice boat, too—a white motor yacht with EMILY emblazoned across the stern. The man on its deck wasn’t quite as good-looking, but not bad. He was about ten years older than me, late thirties or so. Around Robin’s age, within a couple of years.

  When the café closed, I slipped home and got changed. A quick shower, then some careful make-up and an outfit that ought to catch the eye: a red T-shirt with a white skull, black-and-white-striped tights, boots and a short black skirt. I put my black bobbed hair into bunches and skipped back down to the quay.

  “Nice boat,” I called down to him. He looked up and smiled. He obviously liked what he saw, even though he was as conservatively dressed as you could be on a boat.

  “Thanks,” he said. “You work in the café, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Want to come aboard?”

  I hesitated. Too easy for word to get back to Clive; too many questions I wouldn’t want to answer that way. But how else was I going to talk to him? If I sat on the edge of the quay, I’d be even more visible to prying eyes. “Okay, then,” I said, and climbed down.

  “Coffee?” he said, motioning belowdecks. “I was just making some.”

  “Okay.”

  He passed me a mug. “Ed York.”

  “Eh?” I realised that was his name. “I’m Emily,” I said, and grinned. “Like your boat.”

  “No way.” He smiled. “Named it after my Mum.”

  “Ooh.” I pulled a face. “Oops.”

  “Why ‘oops’?” He filled his own mug. “Same name, that’s all.”

  There was something familiar about this, tickling the back of my brain, but I wasn’t sure what it was. “True. Like I said, anyway, it’s a nice boat.”

  “Hm.” He wasn’t particularly tall, but there was something imposing about him. He was well groomed and tanned, in shorts and a T-shirt that were probably a lot more expensive than they looked. Wavy brown hair, greying at the temples, crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. Good-looking, though, with or without the money. Not movie-star handsome, but the kind of face you’d want your dad to have: warm, kind. My dad hadn’t been either.

  That thought took me by surprise, and not pleasantly. I don’t like remembering my dad, what he did to me or what I did to him in the end. Luckily Ed claimed my attention back by moving closer to me—no prizes for guessing what he thought I was here for. “I’m a good cook, too,” he said. “If you want to stick around.”

  “Okay, then,” I said.

  I was a little uncomfortable when he steered the Emily down the estuary inland, but on balance I decided eating on the deck in the middle of the river was better than doing so at the quay, where anyone might spot us.

  Ed had caught a couple of bass earlier on, and grilled them on a barbecue on the deck, serving them with a squirt of lemon and not much else. We ate with the river lapping gently at the yacht’s hull, the hills rising either side.

  “This your first visit here?” I said.

  Ed nodded, sipping from a bottle of beer. “Always meant to come to this part of the world,” he said, “but I never did. Pressure of work, as much as anything else. Funny, really.”

  “Funny?”

  “Well—now I’m in charge I’ve got a lot more free time. You’d think it’d be the other way round, but now I get to delegate. Before, I was the one it got delegated to.”

  “Rank hath its privileges,” I said. Clive had come out with that more than once.

  “That’s the one. What about you? You lived here long?”

  “Five years.”

  “You happy here?”

  “Yeah, course.” I gestured round. “Who wouldn’t be?”

  “Yes, but—you must want more than this?”

  “Why? I’m happy, I have a home. And I’m here. What else would I want?”

  “Money? A career? A family?”

  “I’m happy with what I have.”

  “You seeing anyone?”

  “Are you?”

  He shook his head. “Divorced. Now what about you?”

  �
��A boyfriend,” I said. I saw Clive’s face for a moment, but pushed it away. Back into its box. Its compartment.

  “You’re so happy with what you’ve got,” Ed said, “that you’re out on a boat having dinner with a stranger?”

  “I’m happy with what I have,” I said, “and I take what I can get.”

  “That’s more like it.” He smiled. “So what about your family?”

  “What about them?” I wasn’t able to keep an edge out of my voice.

  “They don’t live around here?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have a family.” I looked at him long and level, willing him to get the hint that this wasn’t a topic for discussion. When I saw him open his mouth to speak again I knew he hadn’t, so I spoke first. “What about you?”

  “Me?” His smile turned crooked and a little sour, as if he’d suddenly developed a gut pain. “I’m the same, actually.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes. No family. Not anymore. Another beer?”

  “Okay.” I’d tipped judicious amounts of mine over the side when Ed hadn’t been looking, as I wanted a clear head. “So what about yours?”

  “Oh, it’d just been me and Dad for years, ever since Mum died. It’s the family business, you see. That I work for. That I run, now.”

  “That’s why you don’t have to delegate anymore,” I said.

  “Right.”

  “So it’s just you now? No brothers or sisters?”

  Again his smile went funny. Again that look, as though something had turned sour in his belly. “No,” he said. “I had a brother, but … he’s gone.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  And that was when I realised what had seemed familiar before. I took another swig of beer to make sure he didn’t see anything in my face. I didn’t think he would have, anyway. I’m good at that.

  “So.” Ed got up and moved towards me, crouching beside my deckchair. “What next?”

  I could have played hard to get, I suppose. But I wasn’t sure of him, and I might need to keep on his good side. More to the point, he was used to getting what he wanted.

  So I put my beer down and I let him kiss me. Not long after that he took me belowdecks again, and I let him fuck me. I sucked him off, too. I’m good at that. No, I didn’t feel dirty. It was—necessary. To be safe. To maintain control. I’d had a lot of practice with that. You go away, step back from it. It’s just your body; it isn’t all of you. It’s a good way of coping with things you don’t want to be there for. Things you don’t want to remember afterward. The kinds of things that live in the deeps, that you have to keep at bay with pills, or by cutting yourself, or whatever other ways you can find. Dad taught me a lot, without meaning to. In the end, he wished he hadn’t.

  In a distant way I registered that Ed wasn’t a bad lover. Quite sensitive, in fact. I had a good time, or would have if Robin hadn’t been hanging over me. Clive? Well, Clive was never going to know what I’d had to do. Compartmentalising again.

  Afterward, while Ed was in the toilet, I slipped his wallet out of his shorts and checked inside. There was a business card for a company called Yorkguard: E. York, Managing Director and Chairman. I put the card back in the wallet and the wallet back in his shorts before he came back.

  “Tide’s turning,” he said. “Best get back now.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I dressed and went up on deck. Ed was in the wheelhouse, guiding us back up the estuary. He didn’t turn around, but I saw a red flush creeping up his neck.

  “Will I see you again?” he said at last.

  “Sure,” I said. “Tomorrow?” Clive was working nights the rest of the week.

  “Okay.”

  I slipped off the Emily, hoping I’d gone unnoticed, and made my way home, where I showered to get every trace of Ed York off and out of me. After that I made a strong cup of coffee, lit a cigarette, and sat by the window of my flat in a thick bathrobe, a towel around my hair, watching my laptop power up.

  I checked out Yorkguard’s website first. They were a security firm, based in Kent, and the Managing Director and Chairman, Edmund York, was indeed the man I’d just slept with. A quick shufti at the Company History section of the site gave me the details of his father—Sir Richard York, no less, who’d died six months ago. No mention of another York brother, though, past or present.

  I googled Sir Richard next: he’d been a big enough name to have garnered three obituaries on major newspaper sites. I scrolled through them, skipping the details of York’s career and achievements, looking for information about his family.

  And then I had what I needed.

  Clive woke me up in the early hours by crawling into bed with me. By the time I was awake, though, he was asleep, so I just lay there for a while, watching him. He looks about twelve when he’s sleeping.

  I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and went for another walk. To clear my head, and be ready for what was coming.

  I went to the Harbour for another day’s work, taking orders and wiping down tables as fast as they were vacated. Even from inside the café I could see the Emily, moored at the quay. While I was cleaning the tables out front, Ed came out on deck. He waved at me and smiled. I smiled back, but didn’t wave.

  “So,” said Daniela at lunchtime, “I hear someone went on a little boat trip yesterday.”

  “They don’t miss much around here,” I said. “Do they?”

  “Does Clive know?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Does he?”

  “Well, he won’t from me, you know that.”

  I smiled. “True.”

  Daniela tapped ash from her cigarette. “Emily, I know it’s not my business, but …”

  “Nothing happened,” I said. “Nothing like that, anyway.” And in a funny way, it was true. Yesterday’s fuck had been no realer than any other act I put on to keep things separate.

  “As long as you know what you’re doing,” said Daniela.

  “I think I do,” I told her. “But in case I don’t …” I gave her an envelope. “Can you hold onto that for me? And promise not to open it?”

  Daniela studied me, then nodded. “Okay,” she said. She didn’t understand everything, but she didn’t have to. She understood enough.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Can I steal one of your Marlboros? I’ve run out.”

  As the end of my shift approached my stomach became a knot, and it only tightened as I walked home to get changed.

  Clive had left a note for me. Nothing much, just that we had to have dinner once he was off nights. He’d booked a table at the Nook. I had to smile; the Nook’s the best fish restaurant in town, and he knows I love seafood. Even though he hates it, and they only have about two meat dishes. That’s Clive. He’s not the sharpest, but he’s sweet.

  Love? I don’t really know what that is, but he’s mine. So I look after him.

  I went into the wardrobe and took out a small box hidden at the back. There were things in it I hadn’t used in a long time. Pieces of old lives. I took what I needed, and went down to the quay.

  “Hi there.” Ed smiled up from the deck of his boat.

  “Yo,” I said. “Permission to come aboard, Cap’n?”

  He laughed. “Board away.”

  I climbed down the ladder to the deck, knowing he’d be watching my arse. Good. Let him. He looked at my body and thought it was me, while the real me was in a control room, working levers and gears and watching everything unfold.

  “So,” I said, “where to now?”

  “Another trip along the estuary?” he suggested.

  “Maybe,” I said, “or …”

  “Or what?”

  I nodded out towards the bay.

  “Yeah?” he said. “We could do a trip along the coast. There and back. Weather’s supposed to be good, so we could just drop anchor and …” He ran a finger down my arm.

  I kept the smile on my face and managed not to draw back. “Sure. Why not?”

  “Okay, then. Let’s
get underway.”

  The sky was grey and dull, but the sea was flat enough. The town and the harbour shrank away from us, merging into the low dark ridge of the coast. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact spot where Robin had been found, but it wouldn’t have been far from here.

  “Okay!” said Ed. “Left at the first star and straight on till morning.” He put his hands around my waist and pulled me against him. He was already getting hard. “Shall we go below? Or do you fancy doing it on deck?”

  “In our life jackets?” I said. At his insistence, we’d both donned them.

  “It’d be different, anyway,” he mused.

  “Maybe,” I said, slipping out of his grasp and sashaying back towards the rail with a come-hither look. He grinned and followed me. “Actually,” I said, “I just wanted to ask you something first.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  He spread his hands. “Well, then. Ask away.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Why did you kill your brother?”

  There was a moment that he blinked, still grinning, thinking it was a joke. Then his smile changed, became the crooked, soured thing it had been yesterday, and he went very still. The way a conger or a moray eel will, lying in its hole and waiting to strike. “What?” he said.

  “Robin,” I said. “Robin York. Or Robin Gaunt, as he called himself around here.”

  Ed licked his lips and his gaze strayed off to the side. I didn’t look, but I guessed there was something he thought he could use as a weapon. His eyes were uneasy, but there was a predator’s coldness in them. “How did you know?”

  “His mum was called Emily, too,” I said. “He told me once.” It had been after the first time I’d slept with Robin; I’d forgotten about it until yesterday. “Twenty minutes on Google took care of the rest. Your brother vanished, didn’t he?”

  “More than ten years ago,” Ed agreed, very still now, except for the slow tensing of his arms and legs. He was readying himself to leap; a moment’s inattention and he’d go for me.