Vera Stanhope 06 - Harbour Street

by Ann Cleeves

  He was in a hurry and now he had Vera down as someone official. ‘I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning.’ And he rushed away before she could ask anything more from him. She was tempted to try to get into the house. There’d probably be a spare key somewhere, under a flowerpot or the back doormat, but if Malcolm Kerr was inside sleeping off a hangover she’d be caught in the act of breaking in. Anyway something about the stillness of the house made her think it was empty, that Malcolm was probably at his yard. She imagined him there in his shed, wrapped in an old overcoat, dreaming of the love of his life. He’d have done anything for Margaret Krukowski and Vera thought now that the man could have killed Margaret’s husband, or at least helped her to dispose of his body. That was one of the theories she was working on, which had been spinning around in her brain all night. She wanted to get Kerr safely into custody, but without frightening him. The present murders could be the result of fear, she thought. Of a man trapped into a corner and fighting to save himself.

  When she arrived at the boatyard it was locked and padlocked. The street behind her was beginning to come to life, but there was no sign that anyone had been into Kerr’s secret domain. The hoar frost on the pavement was undisturbed. Now her anxiety increased. She saw Malcolm Kerr as a lost and friendless man with nothing to lose. Bad enough if he’d killed himself. But, again, she thought that he was desperate and that he might try to fight back. She wanted no more violence. She ran through the options for action. She could get a warrant to search his house and the yard. Any evidence was circumstantial and based on the fact that he’d lied to them, but with two women dead it should be straightforward. A phone call to Holly would set the process in train. Still she hesitated. She knew it was illogical, but she had a fellow-feeling for Kerr. She’d known him since she was a child. She wanted the chance to talk to him before he was labelled a killer.

  On impulse she walked back to the Harbour Guest House. She saw that George Enderby was eating breakfast in the dining room, at his usual table in the window. She’d forgotten that he’d told her he was staying an extra night. He glanced out and saw her and looked suddenly anxious. I have that effect on people wherever I go. She waved to him and smiled, then climbed the steps and knocked on the door. Kate Dewar answered. It seemed that she was in the middle of a conversation and something had made her laugh. She was still smiling when she saw Vera.

  ‘Inspector?’ A little wary, but not worried. Vera hadn’t seen her so happy. Then she noticed Stuart Booth standing in the shadow just behind Kate. The woman had been talking to him when Vera had arrived. Vera guessed that Booth hadn’t told her about his earlier relationship with Margaret Krukowski. Sensible. Vera had always thought honesty was an overrated virtue. Except during a police investigation.

  ‘Is your son in, Mrs Dewar?’

  Now Kate was suddenly worried. ‘Why do you want Ryan? What’s he done?’

  ‘Nothing!’ Vera smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way. ‘I’m looking for Malcolm Kerr, who seems to have gone AWOL, and I thought Ryan might have some idea where he might be.’

  ‘The kids are both downstairs having breakfast. We’ve just finished.’

  ‘Is it okay if I go down? You come along too.’

  The kitchen was the warmest room in the house and, after being outside, it felt like walking into a greenhouse. Chloe and Ryan were at the table. It was laid for four, all very proper, milk in a jug and marmalade in a bowl. Perhaps it was running a guest house for all those years that meant Kate couldn’t cope with cartons of juice, butter still in its wrapper. Or perhaps she was still trying to impress her lover. Vera was surprised that the kids were up at all. Teenagers in the school holidays – shouldn’t they still be in bed at lunchtime? Or perhaps Ryan was planning to work for Malcolm again today.

  ‘The inspector has some questions for you.’ Kate’s voice was a warning.

  Ryan was reading a music magazine and had toast in his hand. He looked up. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Malcolm Kerr.’ Vera sat down. The toast smelled wonderful and she was suddenly a child in Hector’s house again. Toast was one of the few things he could cook well. ‘I’ve been to his house and to the yard, but I can’t find him. Any idea where he might be?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Had you arranged to work for him today?’ She couldn’t keep her mind off toast, dripping with butter, and the sharp fruitiness of marmalade, spread very thick.

  ‘Yeah, but not until a bit later.’

  ‘Have you any idea where he might be?’ This time she directed the question towards the girl too. She was sitting with her elbows on the table. Vera thought how young she looked, but too serious for a girl of that age. Troubled. Someone else burdened with secrets. A looker. When she was older you might mistake her for that photo of Margaret Krukowski on her wedding day.

  The boy shrugged again and his glance slid back to the magazine. Hector would have slapped him for that. Show a bit of respect, boy.

  Kate Dewar said sharply, ‘Answer the inspector, Ryan.’ She looked at Vera and rolled her eyes as if to say: Kids these days. What would you do with them?

  ‘I don’t know where Malcolm is. Really.’ He looked at her with a wide-eyed innocence. Vera thought he could be hiding something, protecting his occasional employer. Boys this age, she could never tell what they were thinking.

  ‘Malcolm might be on the beach,’ Chloe said.

  It was the first time she’d spoken. She rolled her napkin in her fingers, so that it looked like a fat Christmas cracker.

  Bloody Christmas. This time of year you can’t escape it. Even in your head.

  They all stared at Chloe and she went on defensively. ‘I’ve seen him there before. Just walking.’

  ‘Which beach?’ Vera kept her tone chatty.

  ‘North Mardle,’ Chloe replied as if the answer was obvious. ‘He parks by the dunes and then he walks.’

  ‘Ryan?’ Vera’s voice was sharper now. So why didn’t you tell me? Why leave it to your sister?

  ‘He goes beachcombing,’ Ryan said. ‘Sometimes you get wood washed ashore from the Norwegian cargo boats. Long planks that he can use in the yard. He goes early to find the good stuff.’

  Vera looked at them both and nodded. Something was going on in this family, a tension between brother and sister, and she didn’t understand it. She had no siblings. As far as she knew. So no experience of the way they worked out their differences. She thought it could just be rivalry, both of them wanting their mother’s attention and approval. But at their age, shouldn’t they be over that? Then she thought of Joe and Holly and decided that some people never grew out of it. She smiled briefly at the idea that her team were like a big, dysfunctional family.

  She turned to Ryan. ‘Have you got a key to the yard?’ There was a possibility that Kerr had been there all night, holed up drinking in his bothy. Best try that before a wild goose chase to the beach.

  He nodded and pulled a key from his pocket. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Suddenly he seemed eager to get out of the house. To be walking again? Soaking up secrets?

  ‘Nah, you’re all right.’ She took the key from him and walked up the stairs to the hall. Stuart Booth was still there, standing awkwardly, not a paying guest, but not part of the family, either. She walked past him without a word.

  In the street it was quite light now. She unlocked the padlock and let herself into the yard, the metal sticking to her glove because it was still icy. All the time she was thinking about the family in Number One, Harbour Street. Perhaps they were all still mourning Margaret and the awkwardness she’d imagined was no more sinister than that.

  Kerr’s shed was empty and she left quickly, locking the yard behind her. She headed for her vehicle and for the beach. His elderly car was parked in the sandy space behind the dunes and she left the Land Rover next to it. Nobody else was about. She climbed the sand hills, pulling on the marram grass in places to help her up. There were patches of frost in the hollows. More memor
ies of Hector. This time of a trip away, a beach in North Wales with breeding little terns. They’d stayed in a dreadful B&B. Slimy nylon sheets, shelves covered with glass ornaments: cats and rabbits and a row of blue owls with bulging eyes. Hector had flirted with the landlady in the hope of a discount. Then they’d climbed the dunes, Hector with an egg box in each pocket of his long Barbour coat. They’d peered over the top of the dune to find a warden sitting just below them. A young man, frozen because he’d been there most of the night, huddled in a cheap anorak. Hector had pulled her down beside him. ‘We’ll wait. He’ll have been drinking coffee all night to keep warm and awake. He’ll soon need a piss.’ The words whispered, his face so close to hers that she’d felt his prickly chin on her cheek.

  And at last the warden had stood up. By now there were dog walkers at the far end of the beach and he’d jogged past Hector and Vera’s hiding place to the public toilets in the car park, deserting his post through embarrassment or a sense of decency. Immediately Hector was on his feet and amongst the tern colony, raiding the nests on the shingle beach. They passed the warden on their way back to their car and he smiled and said hello. Because who could be suspicious of a middle-aged man and an overweight girl.

  Back in the present, Vera reached the last sand hill and stood looking down at the long beach. A big orange sun over the horizon, and space that took her breath away. Rolling breakers and the smell of the sea. So much space that it made you dizzy to look at it. And in the distance a stooped figure, dragging a plank of wood behind him. He was on his way back to the car and she waited, taking in the view. She thought Chloe was probably right and he came here often. This was where he’d walked with Margaret Krukowski, discussing her illness.

  Malcolm didn’t see her until he was at the foot of the dunes. He always walked looking down at his feet, avoiding eye contact with strangers, perhaps. Then he stopped for a moment and looked around him, and that was when he saw Vera. She gave a little wave. She didn’t want to appear threatening.

  ‘We need a chat,’ she said. Then, feeling hungry again, remembering the smell of toast: ‘Is there anywhere we can get some breakfast?’ Now that it had come to it, she was reluctant to take him to the police station just yet, to start the formal process that would lead to his arrest.

  They ate sausage sandwiches in a greasy spoon on the road out of town. A steaming tea urn and a couple of German lorry drivers at the table by the counter. Vera sat Malcolm near the window.

  ‘Margaret Krukowski was a prostitute,’ she said. ‘You didn’t think it was important to tell me?’

  ‘No.’

  Vera thought Malcolm was like a boy who hadn’t quite grown up. ‘I didn’t want her memory dirtied by that sort of talk.’

  ‘But she was a prostitute?’ Vera tried to catch his eye, but he was staring out of the window at the passing traffic.

  ‘Not like Dee Robson,’ he said immediately. His face was red, indignant. ‘Not cheap, tarting herself around the pubs. She had men friends and they paid towards her expenses. She had to live, she said. Once Pawel had left, and my dad let her go from working for us. And she’d always enjoyed the company of men.’

  She enjoyed sex, Vera thought, but you can’t bring yourself to say that.

  ‘You can’t have liked it, though.’ She leaned forward across the table, where the remains of their breakfast lay. ‘The thought of her going with other men. You loved her.’

  ‘But she didn’t love me.’ His voice was so quiet that if she hadn’t been so close to him she wouldn’t have heard. ‘I had to come to terms with that years before.’

  There was a moment of silence. The German drivers clattered through the door, letting in a blast of icy air.

  ‘Margaret was going to leave you some money,’ Vera said. ‘Enough for a decent car, at least. But she was killed before she signed the will.’

  ‘I didn’t know anything about that! And I didn’t want her money!’

  ‘Did she ask you to keep an eye out for Dee once she was gone?’

  Malcolm’s gaze slid away from her. ‘Aye.’

  ‘And you said you would?’ He didn’t answer and Vera continued. ‘Of course you did. You couldn’t deny her anything. Would you have kept your promise, though? Not an easy woman to keep track of, Dee Robson?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’d have done my best.’

  ‘But now the woman’s dead, you don’t have to.’ Vera wiped the grease from her mouth. ‘Must be a relief.’

  ‘I wouldn’t kill the woman because she was a bit of a nuisance!’ He’d raised his voice and the woman behind the counter was staring.

  Vera ignored the outburst and continued. ‘Now we’ll have to trace Margaret’s relatives, because there’s no valid will. Her husband. I call Pawel that, because I’ve looked and I can’t find any trace that they were officially divorced.’ She looked up and this time she did catch his eye. ‘Any idea where he might be?’

  He shook his head slowly.

  ‘We’re tracing other people who were around at the time,’ she said. ‘That mother and son who ran the Coble. If you don’t talk, there are folk who will.’

  He shrugged and still he didn’t speak, but this time she sensed something unexpected in his reaction. Pleasure? A certain wry humour? ‘Pawel went back to Poland,’ he said. ‘He found a woman who suited him better and he went back home.’

  ‘If you know anything about his disappearance, and you don’t talk, you’re playing a dangerous game.’ She felt as she had with Ryan at the Dewars’ breakfast table: that she wanted to slap some sense into him. Demand some answers. Both knew more than they were letting on. ‘You could be charged with murder, man. All these secrets and lies. The truth won’t hurt Margaret now.’

  He shrugged again, the eternal teenage boy.

  ‘You’ll have to come into the station and make a statement,’ she said. Not because she thought they would get more information from him – Malcolm was too stubborn for that – but because it was the only way she had to retaliate.

  He shrugged once more and followed her in his car back to Kimmerston. On the way she thought that she would get a search warrant. Even after all this time there might be traces of Pawel Krukowski in Kerr’s yard.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  When Joe Ashworth arrived at the Haven there was no sign of Susan Coulson. The house seemed quiet and empty. The road through Holypool hadn’t been gritted and he’d skidded turning into the track. Everything was white. Frost on the grass and on every tree and twig. A white mist rising from the low pasture. No tyre tracks marking the frosty drive. Walking to the front door, he saw that there was nobody in the office, but then he noticed a light in the kitchen. Jane and Laurie were at the table, bent towards each other, looking like conspirators. Or lovers. They didn’t notice that he was there. He stood watching for a while and then Jane Cameron looked up and saw him and he felt awkward, like a voyeur.

  She opened the kitchen door to let him in. ‘Well, Sergeant Ashworth, you’re becoming a regular visitor.’ She poured him coffee and set it on the table. ‘We’re making a list. Our last shop before Christmas.’

  ‘How many of you will be here?’ He couldn’t understand how she could bear to spend Christmas Day with these demanding clients. Didn’t she have family of her own? When would she escape?

  ‘Laurie, Susan and me. And I’ve invited a couple of friends from town. We’ve got lots of space, so they can stay the night. I’m looking forward to it.’ Jane gave an easy smile. ‘No men to get in the way or make demands.’

  ‘Father Gruskin won’t be here?’

  ‘Good God, no.’ She seemed horrified by the idea. ‘The old ladies from St Bart’s will be fighting to cook him lunch. We’re planning a proper party.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Laurie looked at him. ‘If you need to talk to me, be quick, because I want to take the dog for a walk before we go into town.’

  ‘No,’ he said. He was surprised, but also faintly amused that she was so bossy. An offender had
never spoken to him like that before. ‘I don’t need to talk to you.’

  Laurie stood up and left. He heard her speak to someone in the hall and a dog barked, and then Susan Coulson walked into the kitchen. She was dressed in the sort of shapeless trousers that Vera wore on a bad day, with a baggy jersey across her swollen belly. Her grey hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was yawning as if she’d just stumbled out of bed. He wasn’t sure that she’d recognize him, but she nodded as she put on the kettle for tea. He thought she seemed more composed than she had on their previous meeting.

  ‘There’s been a development,’ he said. ‘A possibility that Margaret’s murder was linked to the way she lived a long time ago. I was hoping that Susan might help me.’ He looked at the woman. ‘Because you knew Margaret then, didn’t you? You both had bedsits in Harbour Street?’

  She looked at Jane first, as if she needed her permission to answer, and then she nodded. No words. She squeezed the teabag in her mug, threw it into the bin and sat at the table.

  ‘I wondered if you’d like to go back to Harbour Street,’ he said. ‘See the house as it is now.’

  Still silence. Through the window he saw Laurie in boots and jacket walking with the dog across the grass. Their feet left scuffmarks in the frost. The sun was burning off the mist.

  ‘Would you like me to come with you?’ It was Jane, talking directly to the older woman. ‘Laurie and I can go shopping later.’

  This time Susan shook her head and did speak. ‘I’d like to see where Margaret lived,’ she said. ‘She never offered to take me back there. Perhaps she thought I’d be too upset.’ She paused for a beat. ‘And I’m sure this bonny lad will take care of me.’ For the first time there was a glimmer of a smile. ‘My age, I don’t need a chaperone.’

  Joe didn’t talk to her as they drove away from the Haven. He wasn’t sure where to begin and he thought he’d wait until they were there. Susan sat beside him in the front seat, looking around her as if she were a tourist. She seemed to be enjoying the trip out, the low sun on her face. Occasionally she would lean back in her seat and shut her eyes, and he wondered if she was sleeping or thinking about the past. As they approached Mardle she sat up and was more alert.