Water's Edge

Chapter X

Plain Clothes & A Pint

There were four pubs from what I could tell that were worth my time. The Thornbush seemed the most popular, with the SkySports streams and locally imported ales. This is where I had met Leo, evidently the haunt of Soames Construction workers. The old man lacking teeth had been at The Marsh & Bottle, the eccentric pub: the kind for three old regulars and a folklorist. The Queen Victoria was the staple Wetherspoons, and The Fox & Hound the staple Tom Woods public house, with a "no swearing" sign in the window everyone ignored.

I must have looked quite odd stood in the middle of the road deciding where to wander next, watching everyone with their heads down in the light drizzle. No one seemed too shocked by the pile of bodies at the dam, but people weren't surprised by anything nowadays. I picked up a Daily Star from the same off-license, and a packet of Marlboro' Lights. The front page already heralded the deaths.

To maintain a decent detective's patter it is good to mix up your routes of investigation. I could go back to Yazmin and find out who the bodies were, but history teaches the weird, old boy in the pub will find out first. And I didn't want to deal with Dobson Sykes again—Marsh & Bottle it is.

It was still morning and the pub was just as busy as it was the afternoon before. The landlady, a tiny dot of a thing with a hook nose and overtight blouse, served G&Ts to a grey woman at the end of the counter who seemed to be taking a nap. The old boy I had been talking to before – the one with the ragged hair, lack of teeth, and wheezing history lessons – sat at the other end nursing a dark ale. In the corner two men in flatcaps talked in a Humberside farming dialect I could barely comprehend, playing a game of shove ha'penny with pound coins.

"Back agin!" The old boy croaked. I ordered a half of Stella.

"I am." I sat by him just out of reach of the stench of his coat.

"Oi! Lady!" He tapped the counter for the landlord who didn't seem to mind the strange moniker, "You seen it, he's back!"

"He is indeed." She practically had to stand on tiptoes to put the pints on the bar, "£4.50 love."

I slid over the notes and coins. That was cheap for nowadays, "Can I get your name?"

"Why, do you think I did it?" She laughed before checking on the woman asleep at the other end of her kingdom.

"Her names Lucy." He went to shake my hand, "And I'm Cola Bux."

I shook his hand and stuck to it. He had a Saxon name, pronounced colla bucks.

"You one of those... you know..."

He cackled and sipped his ale, "I don't 'ang with the tribes if that's what you mean. Just like the memory o' it."

After Britain became Balkan all kinds of wild ideas began to float around. My least favourite was NeoSaxony. Run from a blog in Hemel Hempstead by a man calling himself King Ethelred Bluetooth (but with all those horrendous Saxon letters no one can pronounce), the Neo-Saxons were tribes of people living off the land. They had shirked civilisation, and believed England lost its way after we stopped being Saxon. Ridiculous. For some reason being Saxon also means thinking everyone black or brown is stealing your jobs – jobs you don't want mind – and secret swastikas in school notebooks. Odd that. But unsurprising.

Cola Bux bothered me but I was used to enjoying the company of racists. If there is one thing, racists are often very funny, and they always buy the first round. After a certain age you have to give people a bit of leeway; old racists are all bark, usually trying to find an answer to a question they never wanted asking. Young racists, they're the ones you have to look out for. They should know better.

"What takes you back to merry old England then Mr. Bux."

"Oh, no mister. Mister for 'onorbul men." Another cackle, "Did I tell you 'bout Gumbaud?"

"You did."

Lucy Carmichael chimed in, "He always does. Won't shut up." She had at least woken up the woman at the end who had just ordered another drink.

"I didn't expect to find any Saxons round these parts."

"Oh, ya need to talk to Babbitt about tha'."

"Babbitt?"

"Went to school with 'im. Good lad. Great fuckin' left foot, passin'. Could have gone pro."

"I'm a cricket man."

"Ah, yarra posh fuck." He cackled, "Ya know, posh stands for piss or shit 'ere."

I took out a cig and lit up, Lucy sliding the ashtray down to me. I offered one to Cola Bux who declined, saying he gave up years ago, and then he took one anyway. I began to read the Star. If I got too many threads at once I would never find time for my pint, the Saxons could wait.

It appeared one of those hedge-jumping journalists had got the scoop as well as I had done. Boy found amongst other bodies, water-logged eyes, unidentifiable. It was the Star, so they blamed immigrants, black lives matter, that kind of thing. I sipped my Stella and hoped something would pop out, but nothing did.

The door opened behind me.

"You want your coat back."

It was Yazmin Womack, suited & booted and prepared for the day, "More than anything, love."