27. On All Sides #2
The caravan was hot and stank of weed. A television played silently in the corner; a news program about the Dungeness killing. On a coffee table, a glass ashtray overflowed beside empty takeaway cartons and a half-smoked joint in a saucer.
Spate shuffled in and sank into a sagging armchair. "I got health conditions. You start stressing me, I'll have an episode."
Sally stood before him. "We're making inquiries about the Rook family."
"About Reg? He's dead, love. You missed him by three years."
"It's about his sons. Roarke, Gabriel, Jerome and Silas."
Spate reached for the joint in the saucer.
"Don't," Liam cautioned.
Spate glared, withdrew his hand slowly, then laced his fingers over his ample belly. "Reg's boys, all right. Used to dandle them on my knee, didn't I? 20 year back. Don't know what they're up to now."
"So you're not working with Roarke Rook?" Liam asked. "Splitting the intake of immigrants off small boats landing on Dungeness?"
Spate peered at him, then laughed. The sound was sharp and volatile, like an engine backfiring. "Working with Reg's boys? You're joking, right, after they blew up our reactor deal?"
Sally's eyes narrowed. "You're talking about Reactor Maintenance Logistics? The company you and Reg started three decades back?"
"Course I am. That little shit, Roarke, pulled voting shares from Meeks and booted me, and that was that, after 30 years!"
"Meeks?" Sally repeated, thinking back to the three directors on their whiteboard. "Is that Crawford Meeks?"
"That's the pony. You've done your research. Reg called him a silent partner. Big money twat, is what he was and is. Financed us then profited for years off doing nothing."
"And Roarke leveraged him against you?"
Spate sighed. "Fitting way to put it. Story goes, Roarke went over to his place with a digger.
Meeks just had a new extension put in, some fancy-arse conservatory off the back of his house?
Roarke puts some bolts through his wall and straps Meeks to them, ties him to the digger and says he's going to pull until the extension comes down or his arm rips off. "
Spate watched them for a reaction.
"Complicated," Liam said.
"It worked. Meeks sold up. Majority shares brushed me to the side, and that was it for us. Cutthroat little bastard, is Roarke."
Sally's lips pressed tight. Wheels within wheels. "Roarke wanted sole control of the company. Why?"
"Not a clue. There's been no real money in it for years. Some clean-up every now and then, after a storm, moving shingle around on the beach. Bit of electrical work, bit of plumbing here and there. But that's pocket money, barely 20 hours a month at time and a half."
Sally tried to fit that in, but it didn't slot next to any of the data points they had so far. "Any other idea why he'd want sole control?"
Spate laughed. "Who the hell knows why that little prick does what he does? Maybe Meeks made it up, make himself seem a hard man. Maybe it's all just Chinese whispers over a shithole company nobody ever gave a crap about."
Sally tried to decide if any of it even mattered.
"So is that it?" Spate asked. "All your questions done?"
Sally refocused. "Where were you on Sunday night, Gerald?"
He chuckled. "Sunday night? In bed."
"Alone?"
He grinned, showing cragged brown teeth. "That one night, yeah. It ain't that way most nights."
"I didn't ask about most nights. Can anyone confirm you didn't leave the caravan park?"
"Just my blood pressure monitor."
Sally looked at Liam. They were getting nowhere.
"Do you know the name Jason Harrow?" Liam asked.
"No. Should I?"
"How about Tom Richter?"
Now Spate's eyes slitted. "That's the past. Why you want to go digging that up for?"
"Your friend Reg wasn't a serious suspect back then, was he? But maybe he should've been. We've heard he might've bought his way out of the firing line. Did you know anything about that?"
Spate stiffened slightly. "Never heard it, and there was no need anyway. Reg was with me that night, and about 50 others. In the pub. There was even a copper there, saw us both. It weren't Reg who killed that lad."
Sally tilted her head. That seemed to confirm what the records said, what she'd heard from Jack Mercer, too.
"But you knew the victim?" Liam pressed. "Tom Richter?"
"Everyone knew him!" Spate snarled. "Village idiot, that lad, wasn't he? Poking his nose everywhere. Looking for work. Asking questions at every business on the coast. But just too stupid to hire."
"You think someone killed him for asking questions?" Sally asked.
"You're really asking me about some dozy wanker from 30 years ago? Who cares?"
"Did you ever have a suspect in mind?"
"Did I have a suspect? I didn't care two hoots, love. Maybe it were the bloody tooth fairy, just missed his mouth?" He chuckled at his own joke. "I didn't care then and I don't care now."
A silence fell across the caravan, broken only by the low murmur of the TV.
"Was Tom Richter involved in trafficking across the Channel?"
"I doubt it. Too thick."
"Who do you work with, shipping small boats from France?"
His face was blank. "I don't ship small boats from France."
"And the groups of young men on your campsite?"
"What young men? We're a family site. You'll find no record of anything like that here."
Sally didn't doubt it. Spate might've lost a step, but she doubted he'd slid that far. "Last question, Gerald. Give us something we can use, and I'll hold back on handing your name direct to Tania Brown at the Gaze."
Spate's eyes narrowed slightly. "Brown? I read her stuff. She's good. Easy on the eyes, too. Or she used to be."
"You knew Reg and you know his sons. They've gone to ground. Where would they be?"
"Not a clue."
"Are they here? You want us to get a brigade out and toss all your caravans?"
He sighed heavily. "No, of course I don't. But they're not bloody here. I told you, we're not mates. We don't work together since Roarke kicked me out. I don't know where they are."
Sally took a step closer. "Think, Gerald. We've heard they might be in southern France already. They have properties down there."
Spate sat up slightly. "Who said France?"
Liam put his hand on Sally's arm, but she went on anyway. "Credit card record at Dover, near the ferry."
Spate laughed. "You dozy muppets. Of course they did. But the way I heard it, you had them cornered in the marsh, right?"
"So you have heard about our search."
"Everybody knows." Spate waved a hand irritably. "Don't mean I'm involved. But ask yourself, how many cameras you got on the route into Dover? You probably put road blocks everywhere, right? Roarke and his boys aren't magic. He's not getting through all that."
"So..."
"So it's the oldest smuggler's trick in the book, girl, goes right back to the Owlers, and Roarke always fancied himself some sort of swashbuckler. Even when he were a little lad."
"What's the trick?" Sally's tone turned cold.
"Misdirect, isn't it? Back before phones and card records, it were even simpler. Get yourself, or pay someone dressed as you, to get witnessed going out in a boat. Make sure the witness is someone respectable. Maybe even take two or three boats, but they're lashed together, right?"
A weight descended in the pit of Sally's stomach. That perfectly matched Gabriel Rook's testimony. "Two or three boats?"
"Yeah, looks like the whole gang's fled.
You take that little flotilla over the horizon, just a mile or two to be out of sight, less if there's a mist, then circle back into the marshes.
" He sighed and patted his belly contentedly.
"Wild goose chases were an Owler specialty.
Plenty of routes into the marsh from the sea back then, though they're all dammed up now.
Sea walls did for most. They'd row right in there, used to be miles and miles of nothing.
" He reclined deeper into the armchair. "No one's finding you. "
Sally's mind raced. "You think the Rooks never left Romney Marsh?"
"It's what I'd do," Spate said. "If I were a little shit like Roarke."
"OK. Where in the marsh?"
"No idea. Owlers had bases all over Romney.
Plenty of sunken villages out there, too, shelter, no access except by boat.
Great place to keep a safe house, leave a generator and some food?
Him and the boys could ride out weeks, maybe months.
" He stopped, leaned over his belly and snatched up the joint.
"Home field advantage. You'll never find him. "
He brought the spliff to his mouth and took a long, deep drag. The ember glowed red and the rolling paper made a crackling noise as it burned down. Then he exhaled a long, billowing cloud of bluish smoke.
"You're happy about that, are you?" Liam asked angrily. "That he's gotten away?"
"Of course I am," Spate said, waving the joint in the smoke. "I can't stand the Rooks, but you pigs? You're the real filth."
He started laughing, took another long drag and puffed it in their faces.
Sally let the smoke wash over her. Spate's words seemed to have the ring of truth. If she was Roarke, it's what she'd do. Misdirect. Hide. Weather the storm on home turf.
And if that was true, was there any way to find him?
She nodded to Liam then walked out without another word. Liam followed, chased by Spate's laughter. Back in the gray wash of the caravan park, it was raining again, a fine mist billowing in off the water.
The Channel. The marsh. Water on all sides, and somewhere out there, the Rooks.