End of the Bay by Kate Vane

Author:Kate Vane [Vane, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kate Vane
Published: 2020-08-04T22:00:00+00:00

19

The afternoon was passing slowly. After she got home with her purchases she realised they didn’t offer the diversion they’d promised in the highly charged atmosphere of the Ron Royce Superstore.

The air was heavy and humid and she felt a sense of foreboding. She moved restlessly from garden to house, from room to room, but couldn’t settle to anything.

Then she remembered it was bin day tomorrow and she set off, trundling up the road with her wheelie bin. The occupants of the remaining houses were required to bring their bins up beyond the barrier where they would be emptied. Charles had told her Gerry was pursuing a complaint about that, too.

She started from her reverie when she heard a voice. Or rather not a voice but the rattle of a throat being cleared of phlegm and then a much-relished spit.

It was Quinn.

‘I was rummaging in the bins,’ he said.

She smiled so he’d know she was cool with that. ‘Dumpster diving,’ she said.

‘Huh?’

‘Freeganism.’

He didn’t answer. He looked up at the sky and appeared to forget she was there.

She didn’t have anything more to say but she felt something was expected of her. She turned to that British staple. ‘It’s close.’

His head snapped down, so much so that she felt a sympathetic crick in her neck and she felt obliged to explain. ‘The weather. I meant the weather.’

He didn’t respond directly. Instead he said, ‘I don’t like the colours here. Too much. The blue sea, red rocks, yellow flowers, fluffy clouds. I’m from the town. Black and white. Straight lines. Streets and pavements. Up and down.’

He wasn’t like the others. She knew that much. He wasn’t choosing this life. He was running to, or from, something, she didn’t know what, but there was an air of desperation that clung to him. They’d seen it occasionally in Órgiva, among what Declan called the blow-ins. At times her dad had warned her about one of them and, being young, she had either taken his word for it or not.

So far she hadn’t paid the price for naivety or curiosity and maybe now she was a little less naïve and a little less curious but still, she was intrigued by Quinn.

‘You were very kind to Gloria at the funeral,’ she said. ‘Are you friends?’

‘She was a magistrate. She had me jailed a couple of times. I respect her for it.’

‘You do?’

‘I play by the rules. The rules are, I break the rules. When I get caught breaking the rules, I get punished.’

‘I see,’ she said. ‘But sometimes don’t you think the rules are wrong? That they’re loaded against people like you?’

He looked at her with something approaching pity.

‘Gerry thought the rules were loaded against him,’ she said.

‘Who’s Gerry?’

‘The man who was murdered. Gloria’s estranged husband. Surely you’ve been questioned, heard people talk about it, watched the news?’

‘I was asked to account for my movements, that’s all. I didn’t tell them what I saw.’

‘And what did you see?’

‘Someone in dark clothes, hanging around. Watching.’

Ayesha, she thought. ‘With binoculars?’

‘No.

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