Dead in Time

Chapter Thirteen

My interview date with Charlie Davies came round quicker than I’d hoped. I’d had to spend more time on campus, dropping into a few seminars and putting in some library time, trying to catch up on my work. Also, and most importantly, dodging Helena, my supervisor, who wanted to know where I’d been and where that chapter of my thesis she expected to be reviewing had got to. It all just felt so unreal now, that was the trouble. The fact that Damon took off for another day or so should have helped matters, but it didn’t. It left me in a constant state of anticipation, always waiting to hear him, see him. Thinking didn’t help, either. I found it hard to write cogent academic prose with all those questions about the nature of reality flitting around inside my head.

I’d tried calling Inez again. She hung up on me. Still, at least she hadn’t threatened to phone the police or block my number. I supposed it could have been worse. I was still wondering how to phrase the questions I needed to ask about her when I got off the tube at Kensal Green station. I found a cab to get me to Charlie Davies’ place and put up with listening to the driver’s opinions about immigration, congestion charging, and everything in between until we arrived at what, for all the world, looked like the overgrown entrance to some kind of secret garden.

Kensal Green Moorings, tucked in at the top end of Ladbroke Grove and at the far end of the Grand Union Canal, held eight residential berths and, frankly, wasn’t the sort of place I was used to finding hidden away in London. I picked my way around the gate and found myself on a narrow walkway, cracked paving stones underfoot and a mellow brick wall to one side. Abandoned clay flowerpots, crops of dandelions, and stray sweepings of gravel littered the path. The air was richer, with that slight hint of ozone and bilge that spoke of the river, growing stronger as I reached the end of the walkway and came out onto the moorings proper.

Damon had tried to explain about places like this. How the city had its hidden corners, its villages, and its enclaves within enclaves. He’d said I ought to get it, living in Kemp Town; same kind of thing, he assured me, just on a bigger scale. Standing with my back to the bridge, the noise of the traffic echoing above me, I wondered which boat belonged to Charlie. His last email, confirming our appointment, had said I would find him aboard Curly Sue but, right now, that didn’t really help. I passed two boats that were what I thought of as the conventional thing to find on a canal—long and vaguely rectangular, with all that brightly coloured curlicue artwork—and noticed that they each had mini gardens on the mooring. Here, two white plastic chairs and a coloured glass lantern on a white plastic table. There, terracotta troughs stuffed with a selection of herbs and salad leaves. Further along the mooring, I spotted something that looked suspiciously like a pergola.

Berthed beside the pergola was a long, low boat that didn’t look anything like the barges. A simple black and white paint job kept it—her—looking clean, and she had a somehow more streamlined profile than her neighbours. As I got closer, I noticed a figure bent over her midsection, presumably doing something esoteric with knots. All I could see of him was a broad back clad in a striped blue and grey hoodie, a scuffed and muddy pair of black wellies and, between the two, an elderly, baggy pair of blue jeans. 

“Mr. Davies?” I enquired tentatively, picking my way past a mosaic bistro table with a cardboard box full of empty wine bottles on it and four wrought iron chairs stacked nearby.

Charlie straightened up and turned to look at me, wiping his hands on his jeans. A half-smoked cigarette dangled from his lips. As his staff photo from the clinic had shown, he’d aged, but he was still a big man. I put him at around six foot three and, though most of his bulk had dropped to a paunch and the outline of his face had slackened, he still cut an imposing figure.

“Miss Ross,” he said, coming up to me with something a little like a slow swagger. “Nice to meet you at last.”

His handshake was solid, firm, the hand itself dry and rough. His face, as he looked me over, showed wary scepticism, for which I supposed I couldn’t blame him.