The Death of the Elver Man (12 page)

‘They travel overland if the way is blocked,’ Eddie
continued
, warming to his theme. ‘It’s an extraordinary sight, hundreds and hundreds of tiny eels glittering in the sunlight as they wriggle their way over river banks and across fields. They’re almost transparent, you know, so some books call them glass eels.’

Alex did know that but she nodded anyway, hoping he’d get to the point more quickly. Eddie frowned as he
considered
the likely fate of Kevin’s haul.

‘Well, I’m not 100 per cent certain,’ he said finally, ‘but I wouldn’t expect the elvers at the bottom of the crates to last too long, especially if they were stacked up on one another. Silly boy, he could have lost a lot of money like that. They really need to be alive when they’re delivered to the
wholesaler
. They’re so fragile, you see, they can go off really fast once they’re dead.’

Privately, Alex thought this was a suspiciously high level of knowledge concerning the marketability of the elver.

‘So how long is not long do you think?’ she asked.

Eddie shook his head. ‘Couldn’t say really. Probably only a matter of minutes if they were crushed, of course. I don’t suppose anyone photographed the elvers at the scene?’

Alex considered this to be highly unlikely. It looked as if Kevin’s alibi was evaporating before her eyes. She thanked Eddie and went back to her room. Even if she could get Brian to testify she needed something more. His clothes had been wet but it was hardly definitive. Anyone who knew Kevin would assume he’d been wading in the river or splashed
himself
getting his elvers out of the net. She sat at her desk trying not to stare at the calendar. It was Thursday already and Kevin had been in the hospital since Tuesday evening. She was running out of time and had no idea what to do next.

Derek found himself in a quandary and he knew who was to blame. That interfering bitch of a probation officer – it was all her fault. He’d never intended to live in the cottage, just drop by to do his work and be off to somewhere a bit more comfortable. No-one in their right mind would want to stay in this poky little hovel, not if they had a choice anyway. It was cold, it was dark and it leaked when the rain fell. Derek sat in his armchair, feet up on an old crate he’d fished out of the canal at the back. He sniffed the air and pulled a face, convinced he could smell something in the kitchen. Just the smell of the river, he told himself. Just a bit of mould and rot coming up from the surrounding peat that’s all. Nothing to do with his work. He dismissed the thought as he
concentrated
on the problem posed by Alex-bloody- probation. He had to check back on Iris, see if she was pulling herself together a bit. He had business to attend to elsewhere and the whole organization needed a firm hand and he needed to check each day, see who had come by. He’d bought himself a couple of weeks with the story about the car, but she’d be back after that, unless he went into the office in town and that was out of the question, especially during the day. Too many people knew him, knew who he really was. He had to
get a move on, finish up and get out of there before someone dropped by and started nosing about. With a sigh, he pushed himself up out of the chair and went into the kitchen to
prepare
the next meal for the pike.

Newt lay on his bunk and stared at the ceiling. Although he was one of the youngest on the wing, his position had been enhanced by the support of Big Bill and his escape attempt. His cell mate, a wizened little safe-breaker who smoked the thinnest roll-up cigarettes Newt had ever seen, had insisted he should have the top bunk, and Newt was happy to accept. From his elevated position Newt was partially hidden from the eyes that peered in at odd intervals, and as the days ground on he was able to read by the security floodlight shining through the high barred window. The prison library had a reasonable selection of thrillers and war stories and he was content to pass the time and rebuild his reputation as a steady prisoner, his jog into the village appearing to be just a moment of recklessness. He was not likely to get an outside work-place for a long, long time, but at least his exploits had earned him a measure of respect amongst his fellow inmates.

There was a knock on the door and Big Bill looked in, beaming all over his battered face.

‘Watcha Newt,’ he said.

Newt sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bunk.

‘You’re looking right cheerful,’ he said.

Bill stepped into the cell, his head almost level with Newt’s as he grinned at him happily. ‘Heading for the great outdoors tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Time’s up and you’re on your own for a bit.’

Newt nodded, unconcerned by the news. He was more confident now, secure in his position as the heir to the Johns gang empire. Big Bill had been useful but he was not really needed any more. He held out his hand for Bill to shake.

‘Well, good luck then and thanks for the help. I made sure Dad got the message, about our one-time friend.’

Bill grunted. ‘Wouldn’t like to be in his shoes. Well, I’ll be
dropping in to see your family, so any messages I can take?’

Newt considered for a moment and then shook his head. ‘Just let Mum know I’m doin’ alright. Don’t want her
fussing
, what with Biff gone and all …’

There was a moment’s silence between them, which was broken as the door opened and Mack, Newt’s cellmate, strolled in. He stopped, turned abruptly and scooted out again mumbling an apology. Totally ignoring him, the two men shook hands again. Bill hesitated before turning to leave but Newt was already settling down to catch the last of the quiet spell before dinner.

‘Tell Mack he can come in again, will you,’ he said without looking up from his book.

‘Right, Boss,’ Bill replied before he realized what he’d said.

Up on his bunk Newt hid the traces of a smile behind his book.

Ada Mallory had been born on the Levels, arriving unaided in the front room of her parents’ small cottage over by the sluice gate on the main drain. Her father, a hard-drinking man with a tendency to spread his affections far and wide, had scraped a living from seasonal work – peat cutting, apple picking and poaching mainly. Her mother was tied to the family home by the needs of four young children and by the time she was ten Ada was working alongside her. Washing, cleaning and cooking took precedent over schoolwork,
especially
when her father was away ‘working’, as her mother put it, though he rarely brought much of his earnings home with him when he did come back.

Ada had quite enjoyed her time at school. It had offered a break from the endless demands of her younger siblings, a period of quiet away from the chatter and cries of the family. She was a good student too, picking up the basics of reading and writing ahead of many of her classmates. Only numbers defeated her. Try as she might, as soon as she ran out of
fingers
for counting, all the numbers mixed up together in her
head and she was left confused and angry by her inability to complete all but the simplest sum.

When she stopped going one November, the school sent a truancy officer, but it was to no avail as the Levels were still poorly drained and the roads mainly unmetalled and
virtually
impassable in winter. By the time the summer came they had pretty much written her off, just another child of uneducated and illiterate parents and not worth the effort. All except one teacher, that is, a student from the college in Taunton who believed every child was important and every one had potential.

Miss Nichols had been impressed by Ada’s ability, the quickness of her mind and her almost painful enthusiasm for any and all knowledge. So, in due course, she arrived at Ada’s home one evening on her bicycle with a basket full of books gleaned from the depths of the library store cupboards. For the first time in her life Ada cried in front of an outsider as she turned the pages of the old, worn textbooks and outdated dictionary. In some ways it made it worse, this unspoken acknowledgement that her formal education was over. She took the books inside and hid them under a loose floorboard beneath the big bed she shared with her two sisters, safe from her father’s periodic raids on the family’s possessions. On the rare occasions when she had time to herself and the house was empty she would take out a book and read, slowly and laboriously but with a sense of triumph in her heart.

The books, Ada’s only books, were now lined up neatly on a little shelf Kevin had made for her one Mother’s Day. She had read to Kevin from them when he was a baby, sharing tales of explorers in foreign lands, kings and battles, folk wisdom and ancient legend. She’d tried to help him learn to read himself but somehow he’d never managed it. Letters to Kevin were like numbers to her – unintelligible squiggles that taunted from the page as they refused to give up their
meaning
. She’d fought each day to get him to school and fought to keep him there, ignoring all his efforts to get himself expelled,
but despite everything he had left school at 16 with no formal qualifications – hardly surprising as he still could not read. He was good with his hands, though, as the bookshelf and many other little projects around the house demonstrated, and he was an absolute wizard with numbers. He would be sorting out the right coins to pay for something whilst she was still struggling to read a price and often he had stood beside the till in a shop and challenged the total. Somehow he was never wrong and it grieved her to know he could easily have passed his maths exams – if only he could have read the questions. She had heard on the radio that some children got help with their exams and she’d written to the school to ask about this but it seems it wasn’t for the likes of Kevin. The help was expensive and he’d needed a good attendance record and a willingness to work. The school didn’t even expect him to turn up for his exams so what was the point? And now he was in prison, locked up miles away and facing a possible life sentence. Ada stared out of her back window and tried not to weep.

The best way to cope with life was to just get on with it, she told herself. Enough moping around – that won’t help anyone. She took a deep breath and stood up straight, forcing her mind towards the mundane concerns of everyday life. She opened the back door and stepped out into her garden, her own little kingdom. Bordered by willows to the sides, it ran down gently to a stream that bubbled and frothed through the reeds until curving away towards the big drain to the front of the house. As she closed the door behind her the dogs materialized, moving in silence on their wide, soft paws. Mickey, the older of the pair, turned and walked back to the side gate where he stretched out in a sheltered spot, away from the wind that swept the Levels in the spring. Mouse, the younger dog, moved up and nuzzled her hand hopefully.

‘Get away you big daft thing,’ she said, and gave him a gentle shove. Mouse took up his post behind her, following as Ada walked down the cinder path peering at her rows of vegetables in search of something ready to eat. Late April was
a lean time of year: the last of the cabbages had turned
yellow
on their stalks and the early greens needed an extra week before they were large enough to eat. She carried on past the newly sown beds of salad leaves in their home-made cloches and on to a ramshackle greenhouse composed partly of a
garden
shed with plastic sheets for a roof and partly a variety of old windows nailed together into larger frames. Opening the door a fraction she ran her eye over the rows of seed trays, each labelled and sprouting a soft feathery green. She smiled to herself as she sniffed the rich, earthy smell of the peat, dug at night by Kevin from the surrounding bog. Who had the right to say she couldn’t have just a bit of peat she thought. This was her home and her family had been making their living from the land for generations. As far as Ada was
concerned
, everything inside her boundary (and most things she could see from the garden, if the truth be told) belonged to her and no busy-body, ignorant, bossy government man was going to tell her what she could or could not use.

Resuming her stroll she reached the banks of the stream and peered through the reed beds, searching for movement in the funnel shaped nets set at intervals under the water. A lean time indeed – nothing stirred and she sighed to herself as she pictured her potato and soup supper. A splash of brighter green caught her eye, nestling behind the lower willows, and she clambered over the fence to investigate. A patch of new nettles waved with the wind and she smiled as she bent to gather the crisp, sharp-scented leaves. She did not flinch away for her hands were roughened by a lifetime of hard work and it took more than a nettle sting to interrupt Ada’s foraging. When nettles were this young they were tender right through and if picked carefully they’d come back over and over again through the summer. She still had some useable onions in the shed and enough potatoes to thicken it without leaving herself short. Nettle soup would do fine for a starter. As she stood up she caught a flicker of movement in the field across from the stream.

Standing so still that she faded into the shadows, she 
waited until she saw the grass sway and the tips of two grey ears poked up. Damn and damnation, she thought. Hell with the nettle soup when there’s a chance of a sweet little coney and there’s me with the wrong dog by my side. Mouse was hopeless as a hunter but Mickey – he was fast, could run down a hare if need be, but he was asleep over by the gate and there was no way of waking him without disturbing the rabbits. She turned her head slowly and looked towards the cottage, but it was too far to the back door. By the time she’d got in, loaded the shotgun and got out again they’d be gone for sure. She looked back over the field, marking in her
memory
the location of those tempting little ears. It was a waste anyway, using a shotgun shell on a little’un, she thought, as she trudged back up the path with her nettles and a couple of onions. She’d go out early and look for the tracks in the dew, rig up a snare maybe. No point in scaring the whole lot of them off and, besides, she didn’t want to draw attention to the fact she had a gun in the house. Oh, where was Kevin when she needed him so much? Her head dropped again as she fell to worrying about her son.

Big Bill pulled up outside the Johns’ house and sat for a moment, relishing the quiet, the unfamiliar feeling that comes from being unobserved. It had been over a year since his arrest, just two days since his release and he was still in the ‘I’m never going back’ phase. Life, he thought, as he opened the car door and stepped out into the soft spring day, life was too sweet to waste any more of it behind bars. He glanced down at his feet, rubbing the toes of his shoes on his trouser leg and pulling his jacket straight before stepping up to the front door. It opened at the first knock and for an instant he didn’t recognize the woman in front of him. Big Bill had always had a secret crush on Iris, the stately and beautiful woman who had been swept off her feet by Derek just as Bill was summoning up the courage to ask her out. He’d shrugged it off, said the best man won, but although he’d had a string of women over the years he’d never married. The sight of this
pathetic, bowed figure awakened all his pity and roused a deep, burning anger.

‘Hello Bill,’ muttered Iris, her voice as flat as her empty green eyes.

She turned away without waiting for a reply, shuffling in to the front room where a fire roared in the grate. Bill closed the door, wiped his feet on the mat and followed her. The room was almost intolerably hot, stuffy with stale air. Iris sat down in a chair as close to the grate as she could get and gathered a knitted shawl around her shoulders.

‘Sorry,’ she said, still in that eerie monotone. ‘I can’t seem to get warm. All winter, I’ve been … just been …’ She trailed off, staring into the flames. Bill felt the sweat break out all over his body and he dropped his jacket on to the couch
farthest
from the source of heat.

‘How about I get us a cup of tea?’ he said.

Iris nodded, her gaze fixed on the fire, making no move to assist him. Bill hesitated for a moment and then went through the door into the kitchen. The place was a tip. The sink was piled high with dirty plates and cutlery, water with a layer of grease covering the items at the bottom. The worktop was covered in crumbs, suspicious looking splashes and vegetable peelings and used knives lay around, abandoned with their blades uppermost. The bin was full, he noticed, and there was a buzzing sound from within. He knew better than to open it inside the house in case an opportunist fly has got in and laid their eggs. It smelt bad enough for maggots, if not worse. Billy was truly appalled, not just by the evidence of neglect but by the contrast to the Iris he had known for so long. She had prided herself on the state of the house. Everything was washed and put away as soon as it was finished with, floors were swept every day and even the cushions on the big, plush couch stood to attention. This sort of mess would have been inconceivable before Biff’s death.

Gritting his teeth he plunged his hand into the cold, scummy water and pulled the sink plug. As it drained away he filled the kettle, setting it to boil, and then searched for something
to wipe his hands with. The only tea towel on the rail was stiff with dirt and he picked it up gingerly and placed it on the buzzing refuse bin before rummaging through the
drawers
in search of something a little more wholesome. Finally, armed with hot water and a clean cloth he tackled the sink, stacking the washed pots and crocks on the draining board he had wiped clean. There was no sound from the lounge and he peeked round the door: Iris was still sitting in exactly the same position, frozen in her despair before the fire. He took a deep breath and opened the back door, heaving the bin through and placing it next to the dustbin. Standing well back he flipped the lid open and was rewarded by a stream of flies that poured out and flew off into the wild to wreak more havoc. Trying not to breathe through his nose, Bill
jiggled
the plastic liner up and heaved the whole stinking mess into the dustbin. There was an outside tap set into the wall and he rinsed the bin out before setting it to drain by the door. After scrubbing his hands under the tap he made a pot of tea and set it out on a tray. Carrying it into the front room, he placed it on the low table next to Iris’s chair. He poured them some tea, adding milk and sugar and stirring it round before he held out the cup. For the first time Iris looked at him directly.

‘Thank you,’ she said softly.

Big Bill felt a rush of emotion, tears threatening to
overwhelm
him as he saw the depth of her anguish reflected in her eyes.

‘So,’ he said, coughing to disguise his reaction, ‘when is Derek out then?’

Iris turned her attention back to the fire, sipping at her hot tea. ‘Oh, he’s back. He should be home tonight, I hope. He’s out a lot at the moment.’

Bill couldn’t believe a husband would leave his wife in this state. If it were him, he’d be by her side, looking after her, trying to cheer her up, keeping the place tidy – but, of course it wasn’t him. It was Derek and even he, the loyal and trusted lieutenant, dare not criticize Derek.

‘Well, maybe I could pop back this evening then. Catch him then.’

Iris put down her cup and rose unsteadily to her feet,
reaching
out to the mantelpiece to pull an envelope from behind the clock.

‘Here,’ she said, holding it out to him, ‘he left you this.’

Despite the heat thrown out from the fire, Bill felt himself shiver as he took the envelope. Derek had known he’d come here. Of course he did – he’d expect him to pay his respects. But did he know how he felt about Iris? Bill made his
apologies
, suddenly desperate to get out of the choking misery of the house.