the bar. Another man, old enough to be his grandfather, was stacking bottles of beer in a fridge.
‘Can I help you?’ the older man asked, his voice echoing down the hall.
‘Hi, I wonder if you can help me actually.’ Chris walked over towards the bar. ‘Somebody suggested I try this place, so hopefully you can. I’m trying to trace someone who lived here a while back. I’ve got a name, but that’s all I have.’
‘How far back?’ the younger man asked.
‘Oh, 1945… war time.’
He shrugged. ‘Too far back for me, sorry.’ The young man resumed gazing at the TV opposite.
The old man behind the bar sauntered over to stand opposite Chris. ‘What name have you got?’
‘Grady, Tom Grady.’
He stroked his chin as he pondered the name. ‘Hmm, Tom Grady. Can’t say the name rings any bells.’
‘He had a son, Sean Grady.’
The old man’s face lightened up. ‘Sean Grady, now that… that, yes… I remember Sean Grady. Yes, he was a lad in the school. A year above me if we’re talking about the same Sean… he was a character, there’s no doubt about that.’
Chris sat down on one of the stools. ‘Do you think his father might have been a member here?’
‘Easy enough to find out, young man. I can have a look at the member register. Just give me a moment.’
The old man came out from behind the bar and wandered across the hall to a doorway. He let himself in and closed the door behind him.
Chris nodded a greeting to the lad propping up the counter beside him. ‘All right?’
‘Sure.’ The lad studied Chris for a moment. ‘You Canadian?’
‘English.’
‘You the reporter guy come to look at the wreck?’
The question took Chris aback. He wondered if there was anybody left in Port Lawrence who still didn’t know about the wreck and Chris for that matter.
‘Yeah, that’s me, I guess. I’m just looking up a relative for a friend of mine back in England. They lost touch during the war.’
‘Right,’ the young man responded, uninterested in Chris’s tacked-on cover story; once more his dull gaze transferred back to the TV behind the bar.
The door opened and the old man returned with a large, dog-eared, leather-bound book.
‘Yes, we did have a Tom Grady as a member. I think that’s the one you’re looking for. Here — ’
He set the register on the bar and ran a finger down a column of handwritten names.
‘He was a member at the club for about ten years. Ahhh, I can see he left owing us a subscription!’
‘Would you have any details on his next of kin, or, I dunno… his employer, or bank details. Perhaps a forwarding address?’
The old man laughed. ‘This is a social club, not a census bureau. That’s all we have I’m afraid.’
Chris cursed under his breath.
‘But, I do recall they had family not so far away. Up the coast about fifty miles, a place called New Buxton. If you can find them, maybe they can help you.’
Chris looked up New Buxton on his road map when he got back to his room. It looked like a small town, and that was good news. If they were family on the father’s side, he was in business. Otherwise, that would have to be the end of the trail. If he was lucky there would be a few Gradys living there, and he could ring them up in turn. But first, he needed some numbers to ring.
He knocked on Mark’s door and let himself in.
‘Can I have a quick go on your lappie?’
Mark looked up from the laptop. Chris could see from the flickering screen he was mid-session in a game of CounterStrike.
‘For work?’ he sighed.
Chris nodded. ‘Yes, for work. Sorry, mate, I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Mark quit the game. ‘Here you go, all yours,’ he said, sliding the laptop across the bed. ‘Chris, how much longer are you thinking of staying up here? I know it’s easy money you’re paying me, but I’m sort of getting bored.’
‘Hmm, not much longer. Two or three more days I guess.’
‘Do you think you’ll want to do any more dives down on that plane wreck? You do, I’ve got to go and restock the cylinders, and that’s a drive.’
‘Right. I think I might want to do another one and that’s probably it. But I want to fill in a few more of the blanks first,’ he said. As an afterthought he added, ‘Bear with me, Mark. This feels like a bloody good story, I just need to snoop around it a bit more.’
‘Ah well, have fun. I’ll go sort the air tanks out, then. See you later on. We’ll get a beer this evening?’
‘Sounds good. Here — ’ Chris tossed him the keys to the Cherokee.
Mark closed the door behind him, and Chris listened to the heavy sound of his feet down the hallway before firing up Explorer. He tapped in the address for NeighborSnoop, a handy, if somewhat shady, search engine he used to make use of all the time during his paparazzi days to track down the details of his latest quarry. He had a surname and a town; more than enough to flush out the phone numbers of anyone living there under the surname Grady.
Five minutes later, he had three phone numbers to call, and had decided, and quickly rehearsed, how he was going to handle them. The first number he dialled was engaged. The second answered after three rings.
‘Hello?’ a woman’s voice answered.
‘Hi, this may seem like a very odd call, it’s not a sales call, though, okay?’
‘Who is this?’
‘My name is — ’ it occurred for the very first time to Chris that it might be wise to start being a little bit more careful ‘- Jason Schwartz, I’m from the New England Fishermen’s Union. We arrange, from time to time, reunion gatherings for crews, and get-togethers from various social clubs. I’m trying to track down one of our members, his old crew are looking to meet up, you see… so I’m trying to get hold of Tom Grady. I was told he had family living out in New Buxton. But I’ve got no record of his current address see, so… there you go, hence the call.’
There was a pause as the lady absorbed Chris’s story, and in turn Chris held his breath in anticipation. It had sounded okay in practice, but just now it had sounded forced, as if read from a script. Chris reminded himself not to rehearse next time; busking this kind of thing always ended up sounding more natural.
‘Tom Grady? That’s a name I’ve not heard in a long, long time.’
‘Ma’am?’
‘Tom Grady was my uncle.’
‘Was? Oh dear, I’m sorry — ’
‘Oh, don’t be. I don’t know if he’s passed on, young man, I haven’t seen him in sixty years. I guess he probably must be dead by now. He moved out of state with his son. I guess that was… not long after the war. I think only a few days after the war, thinking about it.’
‘Oh… why do you think he moved away?’
‘I heard he came into some money, but I think that’s just hearsay. More likely he knew, with our boys coming home soon, that they would fill up the places on the trawlers once more, and he’d have trouble finding work any more. There’s not a lot else to do in Port Lawrence, other than fish, you know? I guess that’s still the way?’
‘Yes, ma’am. Fishing, and processing fish, that’s pretty much what we got over here,’ replied Chris, wary that he was exaggerating the drawl too much. He decided to try another angle — after all it was always his mum who was the one who bothered to write out and send the Christmas cards each year.
‘Did you ever hear from Mrs Grady?’
‘Oh, there was no Mrs Grady, Mr Schwartz. My aunt died some years earlier, before the war.’
Shit.
‘Well, I must say it is a surprise to have someone ask after Tom and his boy after so many years,’ she added after a moment or two.
‘You never heard from them again?’ Chris probed.
