Simon Beckett - The Restless Dead

The coffee shop was actually called just that, the words capitalized in case anyone wasn’t sure. It was more like an old-fashioned tea room than a café, with cakes and sandwiches behind a glass counter and red-and-white checked cloths on the cramped tables. There was even a bell that tinkled merrily when I went inside.

There was no Rachel, though. Or anyone else: I was the only customer. A tired-looking woman with a warm smile was serving behind the counter. I ordered a coffee and went to a table in the window. Even though I was feeling much better I was glad to sit down after the walk. Outside, the harbour didn’t look quite so grim now I couldn’t see the oil-stained estuary bed. Once upon a time I could imagine Cruckhaven might have been a nice place, before the estuary silted up and the water abandoned it.

I tried not to glance at my watch as I waited, but as soon as I stopped making a conscious effort not to I did anyway. Rachel was ten minutes late. Not long, but I found myself worrying that she’d changed her mind, or even forgotten we were meeting. And then I looked up and saw her hurrying along the harbour front.

She was carrying a shopping bag and looked distracted. Her expression cleared when she glanced through the window and saw me. The bell over the door chimed again as she came in.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Hi, Debbie, how’re you doing?’

‘Oh, surviving.’ The woman behind the counter seemed pleased to see her. ‘We’ve got some freshly baked orange and cinnamon muffins. Or there’s a coffee and walnut cake I made yesterday.’

Rachel looked mock-pained. ‘You’re a bad influence, you know that? What are you having?’

She looked at me expectantly as she sat down, but I didn’t have much of a sweet tooth. ‘I’ll stick with coffee, thanks.’

‘He’ll have the cake,’ Rachel told the woman with a grin. ‘I’ll have a muffin and a latte, please.’

I raised my hands in surrender. ‘Coffee cake it is.’

‘You can’t let me eat alone.’ Rachel glanced across at the counter as the woman began making the latte, masking our conversation beneath a chug of steam. ‘I always try and stop off here when I come into town. Debbie lost her husband last year and she’s got two kids, so she needs all the support she can get. Plus everything’s homemade and she’s seriously good at cakes.’

‘It’s OK, I’m sold. Did you get everything you came for?’

‘Yeah, it was just a few things we were running short of. Someone finished off all our eggs and milk.’

‘Just as well I bought some,’ I said, lifting up my carrier bag.

She laughed. ‘That’ll teach me. Seriously, you didn’t have to do that. I wanted an excuse to get away from the house for an hour or two. Doesn’t hurt to give everyone a bit of space sometimes.’

It was the first real hint she’d given of the strain the family must be under, but it seemed more of a slip than an invitation. She quickly carried on.

‘So did you get the spark plugs?’

‘I did, yes. I had a fun encounter at the marine salvage yard as well.’

Her face fell. ‘What happened?’

I told her about trying to hire Coker to repair my car, and his subsequent antagonism. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any love lost between him and your brother-in-law.’

‘You could say that.’ Rachel stopped as the woman brought over the coffee and cake. She gave her a smile. ‘Thanks, Debbie. That looks evil.’

She was right. Looking at the slab of cake on my plate I wondered if I’d be able to finish it. Rachel’s smile faded as the woman went back to the counter. With a sigh she turned to me.

‘I’d no idea you’d had a run-in with him or I’d have warned you to steer clear. He’s got sort of a vendetta against Andrew and Jamie. Well, all of us really. It’s a long story, but I didn’t think you’d get caught up in it.’

‘You don’t need to explain. I just hope I haven’t caused any trouble.’

She smiled grimly as she stirred her coffee. ‘Believe me, when it comes to Darren Coker you can’t make things any worse.’

I wasn’t so sure about that. ‘His daughter was there as well.’

‘Stacey?’ Rachel looked up, the coffee forgotten. ‘How do you know about her?’

‘I saw her at the house the other day. She recognized me and her father picked up on it.’

‘Oh, God, she’s been out to see Jamie again ?’

I had the feeling I was getting into murkier waters than I’d intended. ‘I didn’t say anything, and she denied it to Coker. But I don’t think he believed her.’

Rachel closed her eyes and sighed. ‘No, he wouldn’t. You probably gathered that Jamie’s got a history with Stacey. They were only kids but things got messy and... well, it caused problems. Her father’s banned her from seeing him, and to be honest Jamie’s not interested any more anyway. He hasn’t been for a while, but Stacey’s not the sort to take no for an answer.’

‘I sort of guessed that.’

That earned a smile, but it was strained. She prodded at the muffin with her fork. ‘I can’t blame her father for being protective. She’s his only daughter and Andrew isn’t exactly tactful when he loses his temper. But Coker’s gone way overboard, turning it into this ridiculous feud. It’s like the Montagues and Capulets, except it’s all one-sided and Stacey’s no Juliet.’

She looked surprised when I gave a laugh.

‘I know, that sounds biased. But this happened before I came here, so it wasn’t anything to do with me. The first I knew about it was about a month after... after I arrived and I bumped into Coker in town. I’d no idea who he was but he launched into this rant , going on about how it served Andrew right that Emma had gone missing, calling her a “stuck-up bitch” and worse. I mean, who says something like that? And to someone he’s never even met before?’

Her face had flushed, but I wasn’t sure if she was more upset or angry. ‘What did you do?’

‘I told him to fuck off.’ She picked up her fork and stabbed it into the muffin. ‘Seemed to work.’

I tried to imagine the slim woman in front of me facing down the loudmouth owner of the boat yard, and decided it wasn’t so difficult a stretch. ‘Did you tell the police?’

‘About that? No, but they’d questioned Coker when Emma disappeared, because of the trouble over his daughter and Jamie. More routine than anything else. He’s an arsehole, but that’s all.’ She tilted her chin at my plate, mouth quirking in a smile. ‘You should eat your cake.’

I took the hint and let the subject drop. We kept the conversation lighter after that, avoiding anything personal. She told me how Cruckhaven used to be a thriving little harbour town, benefiting from the nearby oyster fishery and home to a small fleet of fishing boats. But dwindling fish stocks and the silting up of the estuary had changed all that.

‘I don’t think anybody realized the silt was such a problem at first,’ she said, hands cradling her coffee cup over the remains of the muffin. ‘Because it didn’t happen overnight people tended to ignore it. They were more concerned with the fishing drying up than the harbour, and by the time everyone woke up to what was going on it was too late.’

‘Can’t it still be dredged?’

‘It could, but it’s so bad now it’d be prohibitively expensive. Give it another decade and this whole area will be like the Backwaters, either mudflats or saltmarsh. Which is no bad thing from an environmental point of view, but it’s like a slow motion disaster for the people who live here. In some ways it’s worse than a flood. At least once a flood’s over people can rebuild, even after something like the big North Sea one. Have you heard about that?’