TheAurora II’s three-man crew, a father and his two sons, were sullen but cooperative. They were big men, bearded with scarred hands. Thick Cornish accents. Sounded like Worzel Gummidge. Work strong, not gym strong.
Clancy Bright asked to see their paperwork. He was smiling. Bright loved to order fishermen around. Loved to abuse the tiny bit of authority he had. Poe was surprised he hadn’t used a German accent. He thought Bright would have been an enthusiastic Nazi.
Everything seemed to be in order. The father provided an up-to-date fishing vessel licence, the boat had all the required safety equipment, and Poe didn’t need to weigh their catch to know it was under their quota.
But itwashalibut and that was a problem.
‘Cuff them,’ he said.
‘You’re not in charge of me, Poe,’ Anwar said. ‘You fucking cuff them.’
‘Actually, this is now a live crime scene, so I am in charge. If you don’t cuff them, I’ll assume you’re part of whatever this is and, as I’m outnumbered, I’d be within the law if I belted you around the head with this fishing gaff.’ He picked up a metal shaft. It had a wicked-looking hook on the end.
Anwar and Bright scrambled to get out their cuffs and it wasn’t long before the three fishermen were in custody. Poe read them their rights. They didn’t seem overly concerned.
‘You mind telling us what the hell’s just happened?’ Bright said. He picked up a halibut. Held it by its gill and rubbed off some of the ice. It was about a metre long, all fleshy and fat. Looked fresh. ‘Because these guys have a catch to land.’
‘This boat is fitted out for purse seining,’ Poe said. He looked at their blank faces and sighed. He hadn’t known anything about fishing when he’d started, but he’d learned what he needed to. It was a shit job but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do it properly. ‘Come on, guys, you can remember this.’ He waited. Sighed again and said, ‘Purse seining works by drawing a vast net around a shoal of fish. The bottom is weighted, and the top is buoyed by floats. When the shoal is in the net, the bottom is closed – orpursed– like a drawstring bag and the fish are trapped.’
‘Yeah, we knew that,’ Anwar said. ‘So what?’
‘So, purse seining is used for midwater fish like mackerel and sardines. The halibut is a flatfish and that means they live on the bottom of the sea. They’re caught with trawler nets, not purse seines. In any case, even if they had found a way to catch a bottom-dwelling fish with a midwater net, they have no way of getting their catch onboard. That winch hasn’t been used in months by the look of it.’
The father burst out laughing. ‘Is that it?’ he said. ‘You’ve arrested us because you think a fish that swims on the bottomof the seastayson the bottom of the sea? Let me ask you something, Mr Policeman. What do halibut eat?’
‘They’re predators,’ Poe said.
‘Yes, they are. And they’re ravenous. And in the waters we fish, halibuts are at the top of the food chain. That means they can venture up to feed. So yes, purse seine netsareused to catch them.’
‘Your winch?’
‘Yes, the winch is knackered and I haven’t got the money to replace it. It’s why I have my boys with me, dickface.’
Behind him, Poe could hear Anwar and Bright sniggering.
‘Hey, Brighty,’ Anwar said. ‘Maybe theydidn’tcatch them. Maybe there’s a serial-killer conger eel down there. Maybe these guys aren’t fishermen. Maybe they’re crime scene cleaners.’
Bright laughed so hard, snot came out of his nose. When he’d cleaned himself up, he said, ‘Just as well we have the great Washington Poe on the case then.’
‘No, no, he doesn’t do that any more, remember?’ Anwar said, a nasty smirk on his face. ‘Because he’s sooooo depressed.’ He clutched some imaginary pearls and Bright brayed like a donkey. He said, ‘Now, can we let these poor men go? It’s getting dark and I want to go home.’
‘And he’ll want to get back to that woman he’s stringing along,’ Bright said.
‘Got his feet right under the table with Miss Snooty Britches, hasn’t he?’
‘Snootybitch, more like.’
Poe didn’t answer. If the last couple of minutes had been the song ‘Coward of the County’, it would have got to the part where Tommy was about to lock himself in the bar with the Gatlin boys.
But it wasn’t a song.
Instead, Poe picked up a halibut, swung it around like an Olympic hammer thrower, and whacked Bright over the headwith it. Bright dropped to the deck of theAurora IIlike a bag of wet towels.
‘I don’t see my therapist for depression,’ Poe said. ‘I see her for anger management.’
Bright clambered to his feet and readied his fists. Anwar rolled his shoulders, then crouched.
This fight had been a long time coming.
