Dark Tide

  I had absolutely no idea.

  When I woke up, it was raining. I’d slept through the dawn, the hours where the brightening of the skylight above my head usually woke me. It was nearly ten.

  I got dressed, waterproof jacket on, and took my bag with me down to the office. My bike was in the storage room behind the main building. I unlocked it and headed downtown, the rain falling more heavily and stinging my eyes.

  The city of Rochester was beautiful, even in the rain. I left the bike chained to a bike stand and walked past the pubs and the Indian restaurants. Today there was a food festival, and an Italian market was lining the cobbled high street. Some of the stalls had given up, drawing tarpaulins over bowls of olives and baskets of fresh bread. I looked at cheeses and jars of relish and chutneys. At the corner, a stall with a huge pan was selling hot farmhouse sausages in a baguette. The smell was enticing and I bought one, but a few bites in I realized I still had no appetite.

  I browsed through thrift shops and secondhand bookshops, looking for things for the boat. I was very careful about what I bought. I didn’t have room for piles of junk.

  The rain fell steadily and I walked up the hill to the castle, through the castle grounds, and back down to the cathedral. I wanted to walk until I was tired . . . until I was beyond tired.

  I felt lonely today. But I didn’t want to be with Malcolm, or Josie, lovely as they were. I wanted someone who knew who I was, knew what had happened in London. I needed Dylan. Part of me wanted to phone him again and demand to know exactly what had been going on in the club, how Caddy had looked, what she’d said—everything I’d missed from that last day right up until the moment she’d appeared in the water.

  But I couldn’t get the sound of his voice out of my head, that tone when I’d called him. I’d disobeyed his instructions. I’d pissed him off. Where was he? If something had happened to him, would I ever find out?

  When I got back to the boat, I made a hot drink and sat at the dinette, staring at Dylan’s phone, and at the scrap of paper with Carling’s number on it.

  Fuck it, I thought, and reached for the phone.

  But this time it didn’t even ring. There wasn’t even an option to leave a message.

  The number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please try later.

  Chapter Eleven

  The first time I met Dylan I was afraid of him, although I was careful not to show it.

  I’d been dancing at the Barclay for two weekends already, and I had arranged to meet Caddy for a drink on a Saturday evening. I woke up zinging with such energy that I decided to go to the Barclay first, to practice. It didn’t cross my mind that this was something out of the ordinary—it just seemed like the perfect way to spend a few hours, even though I’d only got to sleep at four that morning.

  The door to the Barclay was locked. I rang the bell and waited. Then I rang again, and knocked, and sat down on the top step and debated what to do with myself. I had my earphones in and was listening to a playlist of potential dance music and so I didn’t actually hear the door open behind me, wasn’t aware of his presence until I got a little kick on the bum.

  I jumped and looked up, and there he was. A mountain of a man. I pulled the earphones out.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  I got to my feet and climbed to the top step so at least I was on his level before answering. In fact, he was still at least a foot taller than me but I didn’t let that stop me. “Thanks for the welcome. I’m here to practice.”

  “Practice?” he repeated, and laughed as though I’d said something hilarious.

  I ignored him and walked in through the open door, into the main club. The place was empty, though the lights were on. No point bothering with the changing rooms if there was nobody here. I kicked off my boots and wriggled out of my jeans. Pole lessons with Karina had always been barefoot, and the one thing I found difficult was dancing in heels. The first few evenings in the Barclay I’d started off in heels and then kicked them off as soon as I started to do climbs and spins, but nobody else danced without their shoes. So in my bag were a pair of platforms I could just about manage to walk in, with ankle straps, and impressive spike heels that were sturdier than they looked.

  The air conditioning was on and it was chilly, so I stretched and jumped up and down a few times to warm up.

  Heels on, then. I walked around the room in them to start off with, trying not to look at my feet, trying to be purposeful, trying to “own the room.” I felt silly, but better to be doing this here on my own rather than stumbling in front of a club full of potential paying customers.

  “You look like you’re walking into a boardroom.”

  He was sitting in one of the booths near the door, almost in darkness. I was getting used to guys watching me, but having him there without my realizing it was just plain creepy.

  “Like I said, I need to practice,” I replied. “I could do without you watching, thanks all the same.”

  “Only trying to help.”

  He didn’t move.

  Creepy as it was, he had a valid point. I tried to put a bit of a swing into my hips, one foot in front of the other, head up, back straight . . .

  “Better, but now you look like you’re going to pounce on someone. Try smiling.”

  I ignored him this time. I was warm enough now, anyway, and I was feeling more confident in the shoes. I climbed up the steps on to the stage and into the glow of the lights. That was better. I couldn’t see him.

  I walked around the pole a few times to get used to the additional height the heels gave me, both ways, so I didn’t get dizzy. The floor seemed a long way down, my heels clomping inelegantly on the laminate stage.

  Without warning, a heavy beat started up. He was in the DJ’s booth. He turned the volume down to a reasonable thud.

  He wanted a show, I thought. Whoever he was. And I realized that actually I was better off with an audience. What was the point of practicing on my own? And the music helped.

  I started off with some easy climbs and spins, mixing it with some filler moves and kicks, then I gripped the pole and inverted, my head back against the pole, my ankles crossed and my legs squeezed tightly together to hold me steady. Normally, doing this I had enough grip in my legs that I could let go with my hands, but I didn’t know if I could trust my grip with the shoes on, and my legs felt so much heavier with them. It felt very strange. I transferred the grip back to my hands and opened my legs into the splits, spinning slowly to the floor and standing up, snaking my body against the pole. A hook and spin around the pole to get my breath back, then back to an invert, splits, back down into an attitude spin. The trick was allowing those few extra inches to land both feet back on the floor despite the heels. If I spun too far down, it would be harder to stand up, and not very elegant.

  I was so engrossed in the shoes and how different it felt moving around the pole with them on, I almost forgot he was there.

  “You’re a good dancer,” he said.

  He was near the stage now, sitting to the side at the bar.

  “Who are you?” I asked, back to the pole, sliding to sit back on my heels before kicking one leg up in front of me. Then a pivot on my hand, holding the pole above my head—bum out, straighten, toss head back.

  The song ended and before the next one started I stepped down from the stage and went to stand next to him. Seated precariously on a bar stool, he didn’t seem quite as intimidating as he had out on the front doorstep.

  “Dylan,” he said, holding out a hand like a shovel.

  I shook it. “You work here?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Haven’t seen you before.”

  “That’s because you’re new,” he said.

  I got a water bottle out of my bag and drank from it, watching him. “You don’t have to hang around, you know,” I said.

  He stayed where he was. It dawned on me that he didn’t trust me, that he thought I might be here to steal money from the registers or s
omething. His presence was intimidating and I was here on my own with him.

  His cell phone rang then and he answered it, heading for the door of the club. I stood, watching him, until the door shut behind him.

  I went back to the pole and tried some more spins. The track was much slower. I concentrated on getting on and off the pole with these stupid shoes on, trying to make it look effortless when it wasn’t. Despite the door between us I could hear Dylan’s half of the phone conversation and that was also distracting me.

  “. . . I don’t see it like that. He said he’d have it for us tonight . . . It’s not good enough, is it? Tell him if he doesn’t pull his fucking finger out, he’s going to get his head handed to him . . .”

  Inverted, looking up at my feet in those ridiculous shoes, I thought, I should get a pedicure, a nice bright color that would show up under the lights. The pole was thicker than the poles I’d learned to dance on. It made it easier for the climb and sit, harder for the hand grip.

  “. . . he doesn’t get it, though, does he? You tell him one thing and it’s like he’s not fucking listening . . .”

  There was no point having routines here. You didn’t get to select the music you were dancing to unless you were doing a private dance in the Blue Room. It was better to just get used to going with the flow, building the momentum of your spins if the music was faster, concentrating on snakes and hip circles when it was slower.

  “. . . no, you tell him. Seriously, mate, this is a warning, yeah? My contact is going to be fucking unimpressed. We need it tonight or else he’s going to have some big regrets, you got me?”

  I was back on my feet, looking toward the door. Being here on my own, half-dressed, with this huge lump of a man didn’t seem like such a bright idea right at that moment. The call was over. I saw him through the glass in the door, shaking his head. He still had his back to me.

  I kicked off the high heels and put them in my backpack. Jeans on, socks. I was lacing my boots when the door crashed open with a bang, as though he’d kicked it.

  When he appeared next to me, he was breathing hard, as if he’d been running.

  I gave him a hesitant smile. “I’m off now,” I said cheerily. “I’m going to meet Caddy for a drink.”

  “Are you, now?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Hope you behave yourselves. Come on, I’ll show you out.”

  The sunshine was bright outside. I turned to say, “See you later,” but the door had already been shut firmly behind me. Above the noise of the traffic I heard the sound of the locks turning.

  I left both phones on the table and pulled my boots on. I had had enough of being alone.

  Joanna was on board the Painted Lady. She was watching TV while cleaning out her gerbils’ cage and seemed pleased to see me.

  “Liam’s gone into town about a job,” she said. “Hope he gets it.”

  As far as I knew, Liam worked sporadically and seasonally, building and sometimes painting and decorating, taking cash-in-hand jobs where he could. The Painted Lady was a narrowboat like the Scarisbrick Jean, clean and tidy but cluttered. As well as the gerbils, two cats lived aboard. I sat at their dinette and folded the pile of washing on the seat next to me, while Joanna emptied damp sawdust onto sheets of newspaper next to me. Behind her the portable TV mounted at head height was showing the news.

  “Has it been on the news?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Nah. How are you feeling today?”

  “All right,” I said. “The boat just seems very quiet. I can’t get motivated to do anything.”

  “It was a good party,” she said. “Your friends are interesting.”

  I laughed, and then she did, too.

  “They’re not really my friends,” I said. “Not anymore. I think I’ve moved on.”

  “Good thing, too. You’re better off with us.”

  The gerbils were scratching around in the bottom of a big plastic tub, the same tub that Joanna used for transporting her wash to the laundry room. I could hear rain on the roof of the cabin, a rapid pattering.

  “Haven’t seen any police for a while,” she said. “Do you think they’ve done everything?”

  “I guess. Did they interview you?”

  Joanna nodded. “They interviewed all of us. I had a call from Rowena; she hasn’t been near her boat for at least a month and they still went to her house and talked to her.”

  Rowena was one of the people with a boat at the marina that was used sporadically, on the odd weekend. With the cooler weather, she visited it less and less frequently.

  “What did they ask you?”

  “Oh, you know—what happened at the party, what time we went back to the boat, what we saw, heard. Didn’t have much to tell them, to be honest. First we knew about it was when we woke up and heard you yelling.”

  “Sorry about that,” I said.

  “Are you kidding? Most exciting thing that’s happened here in ages.”

  One of the cats was peering into the plastic tub. “Jasper, no,” said Joanna, picking him up under his belly and throwing him up the steps onto the deck, shutting the door. “He’s always trying to get at them, poor little things.”

  “I wonder why they wanted to know about the party,” I said.

  “Maybe they think it’s linked. Can’t see how, though.”

  “When you went back to your boat,” I said, “did you notice if there were any strange cars in the parking lot?”

  She stopped scooping clean sawdust into the gerbil cage and stared at me. “The police asked us that, too. No, can’t say I remember. In fact, to be honest, I don’t remember much at all. Too much of that homebrew. It’s a wonder I even heard you yelling.”

  The cage was ready. She crouched over the plastic tub and crooned encouragingly at the gerbils, which squeaked and scrabbled in frantic circles until she managed to grab first one, and then the other.

  I was twenty minutes late meeting Caddy in the bar, but she hadn’t even noticed. The place was busy already, even though it was early evening, and she was sitting in a booth with a long drink in front of her, playing with her cell phone.

  “You missed the excitement,” she said, leaning toward me as I slipped into the seat next to her.

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Chanelle was in here with one of her regulars. She didn’t see me, though. They just left a few minutes ago. Probably gone to the hotel around the corner.”

  I must have looked blank.

  “Chanelle. You know—Summer? The one with the tattoo going up the back of her leg?”

  “I know the one you mean. What’s exciting about seeing her in here, then?”

  “Ah,” Caddy said, sipping her cocktail through a little straw. “It’s not that she was in here. It’s who she was with. We’re not allowed to meet up with customers. House rules.”

  “Maybe she’s seeing him, or something.”

  “She’s got a boyfriend. He’s a schoolteacher, poor bastard.”

  “They’re tough with the rules, then?”

  “Pretty tough. It’s for our benefit, though. Means we don’t have guys trying to take advantage all the time.”

  “Are you going to tell Fitz?”

  “What, that she was in here with a regular? No, of course not. He’d go ballistic. Things like that draw attention to the club. Can you imagine? He has enough trouble with the licensing people as it is. If they started looking into the way he runs the club, there would be absolute hell. And she would take the brunt of it.”

  I wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but just at that moment two guys came and sat down next to us. Casually dressed, already quite drunk by the look of them. “Ladies,” the taller one said, “you need to let us buy you a drink. What are you having?”

  The shorter of the two, his blond hair spiked with gel at the front, rested his arm on the back of the seat behind me.

  “Do you mind?” I said, my voice frosty. “We’re having a private conversation.”

  “Ah, don??
?t be like that,” he said, breathing beery fumes over me. “We were just thinking, you two look like two girls in need of a drink and some sensible conversation . . .”

  Caddy laughed at this.

  “We can buy our own drinks, thanks all the same,” I said.

  “And we can manage a sensible conversation on our own, too,” Caddy added.

  “Seriously, girls,” said the one leering at Caddy, “you could be missing out on the chance of a lifetime.”

  “I’ll risk it,” Caddy said, to my relief. “Can you please piss off?”

  They gave up, and without a further word of protest headed to the bar to look for other prey. We looked at each other and giggled.

  “I went to the club to practice this afternoon,” I said. “I met this huge guy called Dylan. Wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of him.”

  “Oh, Dylan’s all right,” she said. “He’s pretty decent, once you get to know him.”

  “Really?” I was remembering the one-sided telephone conversation—something about someone getting a kicking.

  “Yeah. At least he sticks to the rules. The others, and most of the doormen—they take kickbacks from the foreign girls. They turn a blind eye to things in the VIP suite—and they keep an eye out for the regulars, give the girls a nod so they don’t miss out.”

  “Don’t they do that anyway?”

  “Not unless you give them twenty quid every night.”

  “Is it worth it? Surely we can keep an eye out for our own regulars?”

  “It can give you a boost if you need more cash one month,” she said. “And it’s not just your regulars. They know who the big spenders are. When the club’s busy, if you get stuck talking to someone and you don’t notice who’s come in . . . or they come over and let you know who’s just arrived, who’s in the coatroom before any of the other girls see. It gives you a bit of an advantage.”

  It was looking more and more like sales, and less like a girls’ night out.