Dead Man's Grip

50

Dressed in a heavy fleece jacket, thick jeans, a lined cap and rubber boots, David Harris began his workday at 7.00 a.m. sharp, as he had every day for the past forty-one years, by checking the rows of smokehouses, where the fish had been curing overnight. He was in a cheery frame of mind: business was booming despite the recession and he genuinely loved his work.

He especially loved the sweet scents of the burning wood and the rich, oily tang of the fish. It was a fine, sunny morning, but there was still a crisp chill in the air. The kind of mornings he liked best. He looked at the dew sparkling on the grassy slopes of the South Downs, which towered up behind the smokery, a view which still, after a lifetime of working here, he never tired of looking at.

He might have been less cheery had he known he was being watched and had been since the moment he arrived here this morning.

Springs Smoked Salmon was a household name throughout Europe and the family were proud of the quality. Harris was second-generation, running the company that had been started by his parents. The location, tucked away in a valley in the South Downs, close to Brighton, was an improbable one for a fish company, and the place had an unprepossessing air – the ramshackle collection of single-storey buildings could have belonged to a tumbledown farm rather than containing a business that had become an international legend.

He walked up an incline, past a fork-lift truck and a line of parked delivery vans, between the identical cold-storage sheds. Inside them the rows of headless Scottish salmon and trout, his company’s speciality, were being smoked, hung on hooks suspended from overhead racks that stretched back the full hundred-foot length of the shed, or lay packed in white Styrofoam boxes, ready for dispatch to gourmet stores, restaurants and catering companies around the globe. Also stacked on pallets were other fish and seafood products they supplied to their customers, in particular langoustines and scampi, most of which came from Scotland as well as scallops, lobsters and crabs.

He unlocked the padlock on the first door and pulled it open, checking that the temperature was fine. Then he checked each of the next three sheds as well, before moving on to the smokery ovens. These were nearly fifty years old, but still going strong. Huge, grimy, brick and steel walk-in boxes, each with a wood-fired kiln in the base, and the ceiling covered with racks and hooks, on which hung rows of pink and golden-brown fillets of smoking fish.

When he had finished his inspections, and had topped up the burners with oak logs, he entered the shop. This was a long, narrow building with a counter running the entire length of one side, while on the other side shelving was piled with every conceivable canned seafood delicacy, as well as jams, pâtés and preserves. His staff who ran the retail side, all wearing dark blue overalls and white hats, were busy putting out the displays of freshly smoked fish and making up the orders that had come in overnight by phone and email.

Jane, the manageress, flagged up a problem. One of the overnight orders was from a hamper company who were infuriatingly slow payers. They had run up an alarmingly high bill and no payment had been received for nearly three months.

‘I think we should tell them we need payment before we dispatch any more, Mr Harris,’ she said.

He nodded. For the next ten minutes they continued to work on the orders, then he sat down and began, on the computer, to check his stock. At that moment the phone rang. As he was the nearest to it, he answered.

An American voice the other end asked, ‘How quickly could you supply two thousand, five hundred langoustines?’

‘What size and how quickly do you need them, sir?’

After a moment, the American said, ‘The biggest available. Before the end of next week. We’ve been let down by a supplier.’

Harris asked him to hold for a moment, then checked on the computer. ‘We are low on stock at the moment, but we do have a delivery coming down overnight from our supplier in Scotland on Tuesday, arriving here early Wednesday morning. If you want that quantity I could get it added to the consignment.’

‘When would you need me to confirm?’

‘Really as soon as possible, sir. Would you like me to give you the price?’

‘That won’t be an issue. The consignment would definitely be here? You could guarantee Wednesday morning?’

‘We have a delivery from Scotland every Wednesday, sir.’

‘Good. I’ll come back to you.’

In his rental car parked a short distance along the road from the smokery, Tooth ended the call on his cellphone. Then he turned the car round and drove back down the narrow road, passing the sign that said SPRINGS SMOKED SALMON – SHOP OPEN.

He wondered for a moment whether to pull into the customer car park and have a recce inside the shop. Perhaps buy something. But he’d already seen all he wanted and decided there wasn’t any point in showing his face. That was just an unnecessary risk.

Besides, he didn’t do smoked fish.