He climbed the fence.
“Where’s your mum?” I asked.
“She’s here,” he said. “Addy stayed over last night.”
“That working out for you guys?”
He grunted. “Didn’t come for an interrogation, copper.”
“It’s Dominic.”
He met my gaze and grunted again. “Dominic.” He followed me into my kitchen. “Natty okay?”
“Still asleep,” I said.
An uncomfortable expression crossed his face, and he smothered it with a scowl. “You’d better’ve gone easy on him last night.”
“What do you—Jesus!” I almost dropped the mug I was holding. “Oh, yeah, Will, that’s totally what happened! I brought home your injured brother and railed him hard all night long!” I took a step back, just in case he didn’t have a sarcasm detector. “I put him to bed, and he slept. Is it just me you think the worst of, or is it everyone?”
He stared at his boots for a moment. “Everyone,” he muttered, and then cleared his throat. “Where’s that coffee? I’ve got to get the boat out.”
I poured him a mug and passed it to him. “No days off for you guys, huh?”
He snorted, as though the very idea of it was a joke, and took a swallow of coffee. I finished making mine and leaned against the kitchen sink to sip it. I wondered if I’d have many mornings like this—inviting Nipper Will over for coffee and a chat. If we powered through the awkwardness, it’d eventually disappear, right?
Will’s narrow gaze travelled around the kitchen, as though he was making an assessment of some kind, and then he let out a long, slow breath. “You gonna do anything about those cigarettes?”
“Not my circus, not my monkeys,” I said, even though we both knew I could have picked up the phone and tipped off Border Force within minutes.
Nipper Will hummed. “Good.”
“But it better not happen again.” I was giving the islanders a lot of latitude here, and we both knew it.
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t,” Nipper Will said with a nod. “Young Harry’s son, Sea John, works on the Adeline with me. Between him and me and Big Johnny, we’ll keep Young Harry in line. Natty and Button John too.”
“Good,” I said. “And if we can just keep it between us, that’d be best.”
For the first time since I’d met him, Nipper Will’s eyes shone with genuine amusement. “Keeping a secret? On Dauntless? Good luck with that, copper.”
And then he swigged the rest of his coffee, set the mug down on the kitchen bench, and pushed his way out of my kitchen door.
And I might have imagined it, but I thought I heard him laughing as he strode away.
I took my coffee into my office and wrote up my report while Frank purred on the desk beside me. The awful floral curtains fluttered in the breeze from the harbour—apart from them, the view was incredible.
At eight, Natty was still sleeping, and I was back in the kitchen staring at the contents of my cupboards and wondering what the hell I was going to make us for breakfast. Toast was too pathetic, even for me. Toasted sandwiches? No, that was my go-to for when he was working in the yard. I had to be able to make something more than that, even if it was just scrambled eggs and bacon. I actually had eggs, but I didn’t have bacon.
God. I’m going to have to go to the shop.
I wrote a note for Natty and tiptoed into my bedroom to leave it on the bedside table: Gone to the shop. Back in 10 unless Mavis kills me. I didn’t want him to wake up to an empty house and no explanation.
I’d just left the station and was passing the museum when Eddie appeared, his red flannel overshirt flapping around him in the wind. “Dominic, hey! I was just checking some old maps. Are you ready to go?”
The anti-aircraft gun stations. It felt like it had been years ago, not just last night, that me and Eddie had arranged to go looking for those today. Probably because I’d aged at least a decade in that cave with Natty, thinking that every minute was our last. There was no way I was leaving Natty alone today to go and look for bits of brick and concrete and tin, or whatever the hell an anti-aircraft gun station looked like after eighty years of exposure to the weather and the islanders. It had probably been recycled into someone’s chook pen or barbeque the second the Americans left.
“Shit,” I said, and dragged my hand through my hair. “I can’t, sorry. Maybe next weekend? Natty’s at my place and?—”
“Oh, the whole island saw that last night!” Eddie grinned. “It’s the honeymoon phase. I get it.”
