OxCrimes by Peter Florence

Author:Peter Florence
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books

DENISE MINA is a writer of novels, comics and plays, and a film maker. Her crime novels include the Garnethill Trilogy, the Paddy Meehan books (filmed by BBC Scotland/Slate), and the Alex Morrow books, which have won, among other prizes, two CWA Daggers and Theakstons Novel of the Year. Her comics include Hellblazer and A Sickness in the Family and she is adapting The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Her latest book is The Red Road (2013). She was born in Glasgow in 1966.

The Calm Before

Denise Mina

I remember that time as if I am living it now, the days before. Not the afterwards, not the noise and the headlines and the wails of the women. It’s just before that I remember. Calm.

It was one of those amazing moments when things seem like they were meant, there seemed to be signs everywhere, and I read the signs and knew what they meant. The world made a kind of sense.

All that summer the sea had been spewing up German bombs. They were old, and made a damp phut and sizzle on the water but the lights were beautiful.

They explained on the telly: during the war a German submarine was hit and dumped the bombs just outside the harbour. The bombs tumbled down the side of a deep dark valley, nestling there in their cast iron coats, waiting for their time to come. Then when the summer storms came up they sucked them out of their nest, pulled them along the valley so they shirked their casings and rose like bubbles in ginger beer, up up to the surface, bursting when they reached the air and drew their first breath, sending flashes and splutters of blue and red and orange fire over the water.

They’d been sitting down there for sixty years. All that time they’d been under the water, waiting for the salt to eat through the casing. I know what it takes to wait.

It’s dark down there. And cold: They sent an MOD unit to have a look at them and one of the divers got his equipment caught. We watched them drag him onto the boat from the loading bay doors.

They arrived in the town just when I did. How could that happen? Both coming to the town at the same time? A tiny, tiny chance. I thought they were beautiful. You’d be looking out at this grey water and then see a rip, a bob and bright sudden fire defying that broad, grey consensus.

The fishermen hated the bombs. They had to steer around the unexpected fires in the water and the town was losing visitors. In the soap factory they all gathered around the loading doors every lunchtime, looking out to sea and watching, moaning about the tourists not coming and the bed and breakfasts empty and the seal boat trips making no money. I didn’t say I liked them. I just watched with the others and tried not to smile. I’m a private person. Being private came to be a precious thing to me.

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