Turning the Tide (16 page)

As he pushed open the door he noticed a scruffy piece of lined paper lying untidily on the mat and picked it up, feeling irritated that he’d missed the window cleaner again. Flicking it open to see how much he owed, Matthew peered at a scrawled message.

‘No Yuppies or else. L.S.L.F. (Little Spitmarsh Liberation Front).’ This time he picked up the phone.

Halfway through a cafetière of her favourite coffee and the Sunday papers, Harry was disappointed to have to get up to answer the door. For a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses they were pretty flash, she thought, glancing through the glass; in fact they looked more like estate agents. He was in his thirties with receding mousy hair, sharp suit and lilac silk tie; whilst her sensible chain-store outfit was offset by dyed blonde hair wrenched into a high ponytail and too much make-up. Harry was on the point of telling them where to go when the man waved an impressive badge at her.

Detective Sergeant Silk Tie and Detective Constable Croydon Facelift asked a lot of questions, all suggesting that Harry might have some useful information about a fire in a rubbish bin round the back of Samphire. She thought it was probably wise not to say that, assuming no loss of life was involved, she would have been very happy to see the entire place razed to the ground.

‘I really don’t have anything else to tell you,’ she said, finally. ‘By the time I’d finished all the work on the moorings and put the dinghy away I was exhausted. I had a soak in the bath and went to bed
−
alone. Sorry, but that’s all I can say.’

The two police officers exchanged a glance and Harry, catching it, felt exasperated. All this effort for Matthew Corrigan. Would anyone else in the area get a couple of detectives investigating what had probably b
een a stupid prank by a couple of bored yobs?

‘Ms Watling, what do you know about the Little Spitmarsh Liberation Front?’ Croydon Facelift asked.

‘Wha-at?’ Harry hooted with laughter. Bored yobs with a crass sense of humour. ‘Somebody’s pulling your leg. There’s no such organisation, believe me. I’ve lived here all my life and this is the first I’ve heard about it. Little Spitmarsh Liberation Front! That’s marvellous! Where can I join?’

‘Ms Watling,’ Silk Tie warned her, ‘we’re talking about a very serious incident here; a pre-planned attack on a commercial premises which appears to be politically motivated. I don’t find that very amusing.’

‘Ms Watling,’ Croydon Facelift joined in, ‘a young couple down by the creek think they caught sight of an elderly gentleman close to the scene. Not much of a description to go on, dark coat, unkempt greyish hair. We’d like to talk to this gentleman to eliminate him from our enquiries. You didn’t happen to notice anyone like that when you were working yesterday evening, did you?’

The one I saw sneaking out his ’ouse first thing this morning
. What had George been doing outside Matthew’s house at that time of day anyway?

‘Sorry, Officer, but in case you hadn’t noticed that description could apply to half the men in Little Spitmarsh. Maybe, instead of standing here talking to me, you should start rounding up all the male pensioners?’

George slunk back into the shadows of his shed as the couple got into their Vauxhall Astra. Coppers. You could tell ’em a mile off, plain clothes or not. As the car shot off out of sight, he fumbled for his chair and sat down. What had he started?

As the extent of the damage to the restaurant sank in, Matthew became thoroughly depressed. He tried to call Gina, but received only the brief crumb of a text telling him she’d speak to him later when she was less busy. Jimi’s phone was switched off too. Oh well, it would take his mind off the tinned tomatoes, throbbing on the breakfast plates at The Admiral like sacrificial hearts, when the police turned up there this morning to run through his recollections of last
 
night.

Trying not to be paranoid about the fact that neither of the two people he was trying to get hold of would speak to him, Matthew headed to the secluded coil in the creek that was now, so it appeared, part of his feudal estate. The water shimmered in the heat and the dry tips of the long grasses whispered as he passed, sending unwary birds flapping into the still blue sky. Then he noticed a small figure hunched up by the water’s edge, hugging her knees to her chest. This, as he remembered too late, was the place where he’d first come across Harry Watling, but right now Matthew didn’t feel too sentimental about that; she was the last person he wanted to see. The velvet hours of the night with Gina had chased off any strange notions that catching sight of Harry on her balcony the previous evening had created. That and the small matter that she, or someone she knew, might just have been responsible for trying to burn his development to the ground. Just his luck that she had chosen to escape from the boat yard when he needed to find some space too.

Catching her off guard and seeing her look so small and defenceless, Matthew could almost feel sorry for her. But, if Harry Watling had problems, he didn’t really want to know – especially when they were probably to do with him. Any conversation between them now was going to be unpleasant. Maybe he could just pretend he hadn’t seen her and go back the way he’d come? Harry didn’t have a very high opinion of him anyway, so at least she wouldn’t be expecting him to offer her a shoulder to cry on. But why was she crying? Perhaps she did have a guilty conscience? Someone had set his restaurant on fire – what did Harry know about it?

Before he could decide what to do, her head snapped up and his stomach lurched at the sheer misery in her eyes. Then she pulled herself together and remembered to glare at him with a ferocity guaranteed to send most men packing. Ah, that was better. He was used to dealing with Harry’s hostility; it was familiar ground. Lowering himself beside her, Matthew felt he was dealing with a small, scared and potentially ferocious animal.

‘Oh, great! Just who I needed to see – my lord and master.’

Matthew doubted that anyone would ever be that.

‘Problems?’ he asked gently.

‘Well, what do you think?’ she spat out.

Someone really ought to get a muzzle on her, he thought, shaking his head.

‘You knew I would never willingly part with any land so that you could make a killing from your upmarket housing estate, so you had to find an underhand method to force me. Do you really think you can take the boat yard from me on the basis of a piece of outdated legislation?’ she said, angry tears thickening her voice.

Matthew decided, not for the first time, that, if everyone he had to deal with in his professional life was like Harry, his liver might not be able to take the pace. ‘You haven’t got a leg to stand on, Harry,’ he warned, in no mood to humour her. ‘I could put you out of business tomorrow if I chose. You’ve got six weeks to get your head around the idea and come to your senses, which is a lot more than most people would have given you, quite frankly. It gives you plenty of time to do your research about how much you can ask for your land. I’m not trying to cheat you out of anything. I’m willing to pay the market price, although why I’m bothering, I don’t know.’

‘The boat yard is all I’ve got,’ she pleaded, the catch in her throat making him feel like a pantomime villain. He took a deep breath before he lost his temper completely and lived up to her expectations of him.

‘For God’s sake, Harry. I’m only trying to buy some land. I’m not putting you out of a job – you’re quite capable of doing that for yourself. You’re following your dreams over there, but I love my work too and I can see how this space could be improved and work better for everyone. I do have some good qualities.’

‘Yeah? Well, you keep them very well hidden,’ she grunted.

Matthew smiled despite himself. That was Harry; always determined to think the worst of him. ‘Come on, Harry, look at me.’

Harry squinted round at him and his heart bled. With her little button nose all pink and thick black lashes brimming with tears, she looked like a twelve-year-old and he wanted to ruffle her hair and tell her everything was going to be all right. Except, of course, that would make him a complete shit. And there was also the small matter, he thought with a heavy heart, that, if what he feared was true, Harry Watling was facing a custodial sentence.

‘Harry?’ Might as well get it out in the open. ‘What’s upsetting you? Is there something you want to tell me?’

It all went a bit quiet whilst Harry fumbled in her pockets for a tissue and couldn’t find one. Then her shoulders stiffened.

‘Just a minute,’ she said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand and glaring at him. ‘This isn’t about manorial rights, is it? This is about more than just your pathetic attempt to bully me into selling my land, isn’t it?’

Looking at her indignant expression, he felt very much as if someone had trickled ice-cold water down his back. Whoever had tried to set fire to his restaurant it wasn’t Harry. Big mistake, Matthew, he thought as he saw the realisation of just what he was suggesting dawn on her.

‘You think I had something to do with the fire, don’t you? No wonder I had the police knocking down my door this morning!’

All the colour had drained from her face and her voice shook with emotion. ‘It wasn’t enough for you to threaten me with solicitor’s letters, was it? A lengthy legal battle would have slowed everything down so you decided to move things along quicker.
You
suggested to the police that I was somehow implicated in the fire. You even threw in a vague description that could fit George, to stitch him up too! Some vandal with nothing better to do than set light to a bin and you used it to your advantage!’

‘You’re jumping to conclusions. Trust me, I didn’t really believe you meant anything serious to happen, but it did occur to me that you might have invented some extremist group to try to scare me off.’

‘You know,’ she said, pulling herself up and dealing him a look of deep contempt, ‘with the kind of tactics you employ, I wouldn’t put it past you to have started that fire yourself.’

With Harry in this mood, Matthew almost felt like pleading guilty – just to show her how sorry he was and stop her feeling so bad. Except that part of the reason she’d taken it so hard was that there was no helping the person who had deliberately set out to harm the business. Harry wasn’t guilty of arson, but she knew the police had got a description of a suspect. That’s why she’d been crying.

Chapter Fourteen

The early morning clouds had been chased away by the sun and it was promising to shape up into what Harry might previously have called a scorcher. Since the days had rolled by and no one had been arrested yet for the attempted arson at Samphire
,
she preferred to avoid such language – just in case anyone was listening to accuse her, or George, of being a pyromaniac.

Little Spitmarsh was basking in sunshine, but Harry certainly couldn’t enjoy it. Maybe she was afraid. Having desperately scrutinized every piece of paper in her possession – and even unearthed a couple of mislaid receipts and the instructions to her DVD recorder, which would have saved her many hours of frustration several months ago – there was nothing to contradict Matthew’s rights to stop her crossing his land
.

When there was only the bank to fight, Harry had been optimistic about tackling the ordinary financial problems of running the yard. She could always console herself with the fact that, if she took on two paper rounds and gave up food, she might avoid bankruptcy. Now she was beginning to wonder how much fight she had left in her. She was one week into her six-week stay of execution and, unless someone came up with a useful document fast, her fate rested entirely with Matthew. To think that, not so very long ago, she’d mistaken him for a sympathetic soul in a gorgeous body who might … Well, never mind that, it just proved that you couldn’t trust first impressions.

Generating some interest from all the adverts for the boat yard would have cheered her up a bit and stopped her worrying about how she could afford to pay her legal fees; but the flood of publicity had produced only a trickle of enquiries. A few cruising sailors had been curious enough to nose their vessels through the marshes and wind their way to Watling’s, but no one seemed keen to stay.

‘Well, what do you expect?’ snapped George, after one couple had taken fright because the nearest supermarket was a taxi ride away. ‘They’re not going to pay through the nose for a bottle of wine at the General Store when they can just wheel it down to the boat a crate at a time from Tesco’s up at the marina. No one cooks no more, leastways no more than heating up a ready meal, and where can they get the choice they’re after round here? They can’t even eat out at the moment, can they?’

‘There’s the Paradise Café,’ offered Harry, who rather liked the ambience of glass vinegar bottles, plastic tomato-shaped ketchup containers and the boot-faced waitress, frilly hat clamped on shampooed and concrete-set hair, who sullenly served the food there.

George shot her a look. ‘Exactly. Damn shame about Mr Corrigan ’aving to do all that extra work. You’ll notice the difference ’ere when that restaurant opens, Miss Harriet, you wait and see. That was a damn shame, that was, that bin catching fire.’

She had a good mind to tell George that his sainted Mr Corrigan (a) suspected him of being an arsonist and (b) was about to snatch his home and income away; but, given that George had been looking so peaky, she decided to keep her thoughts to herself. ‘George,’ she said patiently, ‘it didn’t just catch fire – someone helped.’