Читать книгу Turn a Blind Eye - Vicky Newham - Страница 19

Wednesday – Steve

Steve had never been good at being told what to do. The paramedic who’d checked him over had suggested an early night, but Steve couldn’t resist accompanying Andrea and their colleagues to the Morgan Arms. He was aware this was more to delay his sister’s inevitable lecture than it was to extend the time spent with his new work mates, dissecting what might have happened to Linda Gibson.

‘What d’you want to drink?’ Andrea asked as they entered the busy backstreet gastro-pub. ‘I’m having a pint of this.’ She pointed at the Bow Bells hand pump.

Steve swallowed down a surge of nausea. The place reeked of warm goat’s cheese and garlic. He’d resolved to have a soft drink but his colleagues were all ordering bottles of wine and double vodkas, so he felt a bit of a wimp asking for a Coke. Besides, after the events of the day, and with his hangover lingering, a livener seemed appealing.

‘I’ll have the same.’ He knew how good the local ale was, having sampled it after his interview a few months ago. In the pit of his stomach, dread was bubbling up in anticipation of the grilling his sister was going to give him when she got home. Even if she had already heard what had gone on with Lucy, and how the Christmas holidays had ended, she would insist on knowing every detail. And he wasn’t looking forward to having to explain quite how spectacularly he’d cocked everything up. He adored Jane but at times she took her big sister role too seriously, and delighted in giving him a hard time when she thought he’d behaved badly.

Steve glanced round the vast, open-plan bar, taking in its trendy décor. After the cultural homogeneity of Midhurst, and his last school, he was still acclimatising to how much East London had changed since his school days here. The contrasts seemed so much more obvious now. They’d just walked past a boarded-up social housing block with a demolition order, and now they were in a gastro-pub that sold packets of cracked pepper flavoured crisps for two quid, and which had a dedicated wine menu with separate pages for white, red, rosé and sparkling wines. In reality, though, with the high bar, made of what was supposed to look like old ship beams bolted together, the trendy music and shabby chic décor, they could be in New York, Hamburg or Liverpool.

Andrea was waiting to order.

‘Nice place,’ Steve said. ‘I wonder what the old East End dockworkers would make of it.’ He pointed at the bar, stroked the grain of the wood. ‘Bet it’s never seen a dock, let alone a ship.’

Andrea laughed. ‘It was probably imported from Central Europe.’ She waved her twenty-pound note at the barmaid. ‘I grew up in Cardiff so this part of London reminds me of home. For years, Tiger Bay – that’s where I’m from – exported coal. I gather this area specialised in wool, sugar and rubber. A bit like Cardiff: lots of tight-knit communities, all with their own distinctive cultures and dialects.’ She ordered their drinks.

‘My grandmother says there’s always been a strong community spirit here. And a survival instinct.’ He told Andrea that he’d grown up in East London. ‘The Luftwaffe bombed the shit out of the docks during the Blitz, and lots of them had to be re-built. My gran was one of the thousands of families who lived in the slums until they were cleared.’ Steve thought about the port in NYC that Lucy had taken him to for dinner. Container ships had brought changes there, she’d told him. Apparently, the salt marshes of the estuary had originally been occupied by Native American Lenape people but they’d been pushed out when ocean liners and prison ships moved in.

‘Yeah. It’s such a shame.’ Andrea paid the barmaid. ‘My dad said the container ships were the end for the London docks. The hulls were too deep. In the sixties, they lost all the trade to ports with deeper water.’ She handed Steve his pint. ‘It’s weird how cyclical it all is. One group of immigrants arrive and move on, and the next wave takes their place. It’s the same in Cardiff and Liverpool. Like how there are hardly any Jews in Brick Lane now. They’ve all moved to North West London and Stoke Newington.’

Scattered round the bar area were tables that had been carefully sanded and waxed to make them look old, legs painted in matt ‘barley’ and ‘seagrass’.

‘Shall we join the others?’

Steve remembered the comments and looks he’d got in the staffroom earlier. He picked his way across the busy bar and chose a seat. Several of his colleagues stopped chatting and acknowledged him as they sat down. Everyone had obviously figured out he’d been the one to find Linda because he’d gone to fetch her. What a mistake that was. He’d have to front it out politely. Presumably the police would find out what happened. It was sod’s bloody law it was the first day of his new job and none of the staff knew him from Adam. They were bound to be curious and – much as it bugged him – suspicious.

He glanced round the group of teachers; everyone looked as dazed as he felt. One guy was talking loudly, not to anyone in particular, and repeating himself. Moira was nursing a gin and tonic, and was staring into the distance, wide-eyed and catatonic, her curtain hair lodged behind her ears. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any more outbursts.

‘How are you feeling?’ a girl asked. Steve recognised her from the staffroom earlier. She had her arms round raised legs, the way a child sits. ‘We were all saying, this time last night, if someone told us what was going to happen today, we wouldn’t have believed it.’ She laughed nervously and took a swig of her drink.

‘It’s been a weird one for all of us, that’s for sure. And poor Mrs Gibson. I still can’t —’

‘What the hell is he doing here?’ Andrea’s question made everyone look up.

The room jerked.

A man, in jeans and a thick leather jacket, was weaving his way across the busy bar and heading for their table.