Саймон Бествик: The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea

That didn’t sound right to me, even then. No matter how caned he was, some weird homing instinct always got Robin home at the end of a night. I didn’t know what it was—some sort of OCD, something that had happened to him—but he never felt safe under someone else’s roof, or in a strange bed. Similarly, anything like a knock on the door would snap him instantly awake, no matter what. But explaining how I knew that to Clive would have been awkward.

In the end, it made no difference. A few hours later, the tide went out, exposing the shingle beach. There’s an outfall pipe there, emptying fifty feet from the shore. Robin lay next to it, face-down, seaweed in his hair, arms outstretched towards one of the rusted iron struts holding the pipe in place. A pair of handcuffs were looped around it, fastened on his wrists. The pathologist said he’d still been alive when the tide came in.

“Must have been bloody horrible,” said Clive.

I stroked his hands. We were sitting at a table in a corner of the café. Technically I was at work, but it was a quiet day and Jeanette—the owner—likes being on good terms with the police.

“There’d be no one around to hear,” he said, “not that time of night—if he’d changed his mind, I mean. Even a train going by wouldn’t have seen him.”

This time of year, the tide takes about an hour to come in. An hour can seem very short or very long; I could guess which it would have been for Robin. Then I registered what Clive had said.

“Changed his mind?” I said. “You’re not saying he did that to himself?”

“Looks that way. Doesn’t seem to have had any enemies round here.”

“But he was handcuffed…”

Clive glanced round to ensure we weren’t overhead. “Just between us, Emily, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Gaunt was a known druggy. History of mental health problems. He’d tried topping himself two, three times before he came here. And you should have seen his forearms—Christ alive. Looked as if someone had been playing tic-tac-toe with a razorblade.”

I had seen them, but didn’t tell him. Robin had worn long-sleeved shirts, even in summer. He’d only taken them off in bed.

“Looks like he wanted to do himself in but kept bottling out. So he found a way to make sure. Cuff himself to the outfall, let the sea do the work. Like I said”—Clive took another sip of tea—“I hope he didn’t change his mind.”

Clive was working the night shift. Once I’d finished wiping down tables and serving customers, I went for a walk along the seafront.

The beach here is beautiful, but I prefer the far end of the promenade, where the yellow sand gives way to shingle and rock broken up by tall wooden groynes. It isn’t as pretty to look at or as nice to walk on, so there aren’t as many people. Not that there were many today in any case; it was raining—lightly, but enough to keep away the day trippers. That was why the Harbour Café had been so quiet that afternoon.

Normally, an evening like this, with no Clive to snuggle up with in front of the TV, I would have gone over to Robin’s for a coffee, maybe gone out with him for a spliff. But of course I couldn’t do that now.

It’s the absences that get you, with any death. The gaps, the depths, the holes people leave behind: they’re what we mean by ghosts.

I got to the end of the sea wall and looked up the rocky beach that stretched away beyond it. The small, shallow cove where Robin had died was about two miles to the north.

A druggy, a self-harmer, a mental case. That was the pigeon-hole Clive had put Robin in. He really had no idea, but that was my fault. There was a lot he didn’t know about me. I’d cut more carefully than Robin had, back in the day. My cuts had either healed without scarring, or the scars were where Clive hadn’t yet found them. And he wondered why he’d never made CID.

Not that they were any better. They’d put Robin in the same box. A suicide, because that’s the way the damaged and the broken are meant to go, if they’ve any decency. Take their mess and awkwardness out of everyone else’s life. And of course, we often do. Maybe I would one day, if the dark ever welled up in me again and I found no way to drain it off. Maybe Robin had.

But I didn’t think so. I might be wrong, of course; there were any number of reasons why I wouldn’t want to think it. All I had, really, was a feeling, and I couldn’t share the little I had to back it up with the one copper who might listen. More absences. More holes, more ghosts, more deeps.

There’s a little café at the end of the sea wall. It’s nowhere near as pretty or popular as the Harbour, but they get by. A quiet, friendly Kurdish guy called Hish runs it. He makes good coffee, so I went in.

“Emily. You’re well?” He took a closer look at me. “Ah. I see. No.”

“Did you know Robin?”

“Robin?”

I described him. Hish nodded, sighed. “Yes. Was he the one who drowned?” I nodded. “A friend of yours?”

“Yeah.”

I didn’t say anything else. Hish looked down. “You want some hummus?” he said. He’s not the most expressive guy. His first response to any situation is to do something practical, usually food related. That’s okay, though. He’s a good cook.

“Thanks,” I said.

The hummus came with a plate of toasted pita strips. I ate slowly, sipping coffee and watching as it got dark. It wouldn’t be hard to ask around, maybe see if I could dig something up, enough that Clive might take a closer look at Robin’s death. The worry was, as always, what else might get stirred up in the process.

I’m good at compartmentalising; I like to keep things well ordered. Things, and information: about me, in particular. There was plenty Clive didn’t know, and his uncovering one thing might quickly bring others to light. And what then?

I wasn’t that different from Robin, really. People break in different ways and places, and have different ways of coping. Robin’s and mine had been much the same: find a place to hide, and hide there.

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.