Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [11]
The houses became more dilapidated as the men drew near to the sea. Smashed windows looked out into the lanes, the rooms inside dark. The stench of brine overpowered everything else. Granger found Banks at his side again. ‘The trovers in Ratpen Pennow hide their boats on the rooftops,’ the private said. ‘Small canoes. They lower them down at night.’
Granger shook his head. ‘This isn’t the Ratpen,’ he said. ‘We should be able to find an illegal mooring in one of the sunken ruins. By the last Imperial reckoning, there were two or three dozen of them.’
‘Planks on the wall?’
‘That’s what I was thinking.’
The private nodded. ‘With any luck we’ll find a cache as well. What did Creedy tell you about his cannery man?’
‘A cousin of a cousin,’ Granger said. ‘Ex-navy. Works as a descaler now.’ He shrugged. ‘Creedy trusts him, and the price is fair.’
‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,’ Banks said. He hesitated for a long moment. ‘I never did get a chance to put very much away, sir. My old man back in the Ratpen lost his pension to some bad investments, so most of my salary went home to him and his sisters.’ He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘I don’t suppose Swan and Tummel are in much of a better state. You’ve seen them play cards.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Private,’ Granger said. ‘It’s been taken care of.’
Banks seemed about to say something, then changed his mind. Finally he said, ‘I’ll pay you back somehow, sir.’
‘I know,’ Granger said.
They arrived at a street running parallel to the coast. The houses here were utterly derelict, a crumbling bank of boarded-up windows and partially collapsed roofs. Graffiti covered the walls. Across the façade immediately before them, someone had scrawled in huge black letters:
WHY ARE WE PAYING TO KEEP THE UNMER ALIVE?
Most of the doors had been staved in, revealing cavernous rooms beyond. Granger poked his head through the nearest doorway. The reek of brine filled the darkness. Through an open doorway in the opposite wall, he heard the gentle slosh of sea-water coming from the rooms beyond. He glanced around. Nothing but wet rubble and the remains of an old fire.
They set off down the street, peering into each of the houses. After a short while Banks gave a low whistle and beckoned the others over to one particular house.
Inside, the room was as damp and miserable as any other, a gloomy, rubble-filled shell with two doorways in the opposite wall. The only thing different was a wooden plank leaning against the wall to the left of the door. Granger set down his kitbag, then picked up the plank and carried it over to the first of the doorways opposite.
It had been a kitchen once. The sinks had been ripped out and taken, but a rusted iron stove remained under the chimney stack. Most of the ceiling had collapsed, along with a good part of the roof above, and heavy beams lay strewn across the floor. A doorway led out into what must have once been a back garden or courtyard. The floor here was an inch deep in brine. In this gloom the brown water looked like tar.
‘There,’ Banks said. He was pointing to a place low on the back door frame. ‘You see those marks? Something has been knocked against the wood.’
Granger returned for his kitbag. He opened it and handed out hemp face masks and sailors’ goggles to his men. They wouldn’t need them unless the wind picked up, but it was best to be safe. With the lenses resting on his forehead, and the mask slung loosely around his neck, he traversed the kitchen again, stepping between mounds of rubble to keep his boots out of the brine. The back doorway led to a courtyard full of dark seawater. Steps vanished down into that toxic murk. Granger couldn’t tell how deep the water was, but it was unlikely to be more than a few feet here. Small waves came through an open gate in the back wall of the yard, pushing in from the lane beyond, and lapping around the edges of the enclosed space.