Vera Stanhope 06 - Harbour Street

by Ann Cleeves

  The Metro pulled into a station. Malcolm glanced over the newspaper. They hadn’t reached Newcastle yet and he didn’t think the kids would leave the train until Newcastle. Why would they? What other reason could they have for being here, other than to go into town, last-minute shopping, last-minute fun? And there they were, still laughing and swinging round the pole at the centre of the carriage, behaving like three-year-olds. More people bundled in, but his quarry remained.

  He looked out of the window at the flat coastal plain, but in his head he returned to the evening of his father’s birthday. A sunny evening, warm, all the heat of the long day trapped in Harbour Street. The middle of the Seventies had brought years of dry summers, of droughts and empty rivers. The seaweed stinking on the rocks in the fierce sun. And that night Margaret had asked him a favour:

  ‘Sort him out, Malcolm, would you? Talk to him. Would you do that for me?’

  And of course Malcolm had done as she’d wanted. Like he’d told that fat woman detective, he’d have swum naked three times round Coquet, if she’d asked him.

  The rest of the evening had been a blur. Too much alcohol. Tension prickly, like static electricity. A series of images clicked through his memory, like the slides Prof. Craggs used to give his lectures, each one dropping into an old-fashioned projector. The show ended with the fire licking along the floor of his father’s office, a bright-orange snake’s tongue, fiercely hot. They’d stood with their backs against the railings, watching the varnish on the wooden walls blister in the heat, black and oozing like charred meat. Then the flames had been so high that they’d stood back to watch in wonder, the sparks soaring into the clear sky.

  Had that been the first of his sleepless nights? Certainly he and his father had both been standing in their clothes of the night before, when the police and the fire officer had come to sniff around in the morning. Another hot day.

  ‘Arson,’ the officer had said. ‘No question.’ He’d looked at them. ‘Any reason why anyone would want to set a fire?’ Accusing them with his eyes, but reluctant to go any further than that. More bother than it was worth, and he was a working man himself. If business was bad, he could understand that they might want to claim on the insurance.

  ‘No,’ Billy said. ‘Unless one of the lads at the party did it. Thinking it was a joke, like.’ And that was the story they’d put about. Some of the lads at the party had got a bit wild and leery, and thought it would be fun to set the place alight. And the Kerrs wouldn’t make a fuss, because the insurance would come in handy, and they were all mates in Harbour Street, weren’t they? Billy had gone into the Coble at lunchtime as soon as the bar opened, spreading the tale. And Billy was a respected man in the town, so the regulars all listened and shook their heads at the foolishness of youth. Val Butt had nodded too, her hands on her ample hips. She understood how these things worked. ‘Sometimes these kids are out of control.’

  That morning, the smoke in his nostrils, Malcolm had watched from a distance, letting his father take charge, as he always did. Malcolm had never been good at keeping secrets. Had he known even then that the knowledge of what had led to the fire would weigh him down like an anchor, dragging him under, drowning him for the rest of his life?

  The train pulled into Haymarket station. Malcolm watched the other passengers carefully. None of them had seen him. He thought they just didn’t see the middle-aged or the elderly. He’d wondered if the girls might get out here, at this end of Northumberland Street. The young girls in the group by the door were as flighty as moths, restless and unsettled, but they stayed where they were and it was at Monument station that everyone left the train. Malcolm folded his newspaper in his pocket and followed them onto the escalator and out into the heaving streets.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Vera blamed herself for Malcolm’s disappearance. She should have kept the man in custody while they searched the yard, evidence or no. Now she thought that he was dangerous and desperate. She felt trapped in her office in Kimmerston; she would have preferred to be at the crime scene in Kerr’s yard, squeezing early information from Paul Keating and Billy Wainwright. Or out searching for the killer.

  Joe Ashworth phoned.

  ‘Tell me you’ve got something for me.’ In her mind she’d seen Malcolm, hunched, walking along the beach, and now she imagined that Joe had him in his car, ready to bring in, ready to talk.

  ‘Nothing.’

  She slammed her palm so hard onto her desk that the skin stung. As soon as she replaced the receiver there was another call. Kerr’s car had been found at the station car park at Partington. So he’d got onto the Metro and could have taken off from Newcastle Central Station and be anywhere in the country by now. Or he could have taken the Metro to the airport and be anywhere in the world. But Vera didn’t see Malcolm as an international traveller. Did he even have a passport? Vera was back on the phone checking, when Holly knocked at the door. Tentative, but also smug. Vera hated it when Holly was smug.

  ‘Boss?’

  Vera waved her in.

  ‘I’ve tracked down Pawel Krukowski.’ Holly sat on the chair on the other side of the desk.

  ‘What do you mean you’ve tracked him down? He’s in a hole in the ground in Mardle. Unless Paul Keating has authorized removal of the remains to the mortuary.’

  ‘No, boss, he’s not.’ Holly paused. ‘He’s running a tour company in Krakow, arranging travel to the UK for students and workers. He lives with a Polish woman and they have three kids and five grandkids.’

  Vera’s mind went blank with panic. ‘It could be some other Krukowski.’ Knowing that she was clutching at straws and that her whole case was falling apart.

  Holly shook her head. ‘I’ve talked to him. He speaks good English. He left the country in 1970. He married Margaret because he thought she was rich. When he found out she didn’t have any of her own money, he waited for a couple of years to see if her parents would relent and welcome them back into the bosom of the family. When they didn’t, he pissed off home.’

  ‘What was the date of the office fire in Kerr’s yard?’ Vera kept the panic at bay by demanding facts.

  ‘The fifteenth of July 1975.’ Holly could do facts like nobody else in the team.

  ‘The same day as Billy Kerr’s birthday.’ This was Joe, still in his coat, leaning in through the open door.

  ‘And that’s relevant why?’ Vera was shouting now. Knowing she’d cocked up and needing to vent her anger.

  ‘Because they were all there, at the Coble to celebrate.’ Joe brought a tattered photograph from his pocket and laid it on the desk so that they could all see it. He leaned across and stuck his finger on each of the characters in turn. ‘This is Val Butt, landlady. She took over the licence that year, moved to Mardle after some bother with gangs in the West End. That was what she implied, at least.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to her?’

  ‘I told you I did. I was there this morning.’

  Vera sensed the impatience in Joe’s voice. Did he think she was losing her grip? Perhaps he was right. ‘Of course you did, pet. Go on.’

  ‘That’s Billy Kerr.’ And Vera could see the resemblance to Malcolm. Billy was more squat, bluff and robust, but the family resemblance was there in the face. ‘Mike Craggs, now Professor Craggs, then a postdoctoral student; Malcolm Kerr; Margaret of course. And that’s Val’s son Rick.’

  Vera looked up. ‘Have you told me about him before?’

  Joe nodded. ‘Susan Coulson mentioned him. She said he used to make fun of her.’ He paused. ‘I had the impression that she was scared of him. I’ve just checked out his record. He was in lots of trouble as a lad, hanging around with the West End hard men. No convictions since 1974.’

  ‘How old would he be now?’

  ‘Sixty-six.’

  ‘And where’s he living?’ Vera looked at him.

  ‘No record that he’s living anywhere. And no record that he’s lived anywhere since the mid-Seventies.’

  Sile
nce. In the open-plan office outside there was the murmur of voices.

  ‘And you think maybe he’s that pile of bones under Malcolm Kerr’s shed.’ Vera leaned back against her desk and tried to picture how that would work. Why would Malcolm Kerr have killed the landlady’s son. A drunken scrap at his father’s birthday party? And what relevance could that have to Margaret Krukowski, forty years later?

  Joe Ashworth shrugged. ‘Well, we know it’s not Pawel Krukowski.’

  Suddenly Vera thought that she couldn’t stay in the building any longer. She’d start climbing the walls or screaming like a lunatic. ‘I’m going to talk to the mother.’ She struggled into her jacket and headed for the door. ‘You hold the fort here. Let me know if they manage to track down Malcolm.’ The last sentence was shouted back over her shoulder as she ran down the stairs.

  Vera saw the woman through the window. She was leaning back on a sofa, with her legs propped in front of her, staring at a television. A piece of tinsel strung along the mantelpiece was the only concession to the season. Vera thought she’d better start swimming again and lose a bit of weight. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be old and trapped inside a monstrous body, force-fed crap TV, like Valerie Butt. She rapped on the window to get the woman’s attention. Val waved to her to come in. The door was already unlocked. Perhaps she was waiting for someone.

  ‘Another cop?’ Val pressed a button and switched the sound off the television. Pictures of smart country houses continued to roll across the screen.

  ‘We’ve found another body.’ Vera squeezed beside her on the sofa. There was nowhere else to sit.

  When Val didn’t respond, she added, ‘Tell me about your lad, Rick.’

  This time there was a flicker of interest.

  ‘When did you last see him?’ The room was very hot and Vera hadn’t bothered to take off her coat. She felt almost faint.

  ‘Ages ago,’ the woman said. She paused. ‘He had problems. He had to go away.’

  ‘What sort of problems?’ Vera pulled her arms out of her jacket, but didn’t stand up.

  ‘He got into a bad crowd,’ Val said. ‘When we lived in the West End. He wanted the excitement. That male-pride thing. He was never one for settling down. That’s why we moved out here. I didn’t think his mates would find him out on the coast.’ She was staring at the television set, at a woman showing off a kitchen the size of her bungalow.

  ‘And did they?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Val said. ‘Things were going on. Maybe he’d just got the bug and wanted to play the hard man, to get a bit of respect in his own right.’ She paused. ‘Sometimes I think it’s worse for the boys. People expect them to be tough. Rick always wanted to seem tough.’

  ‘So people didn’t like him.’ Vera thought she was getting to the root of the matter now. An idea fired in her head, bounced around the facts, shifted her perspective. ‘He was cruel and people were scared of him. He always wanted to be top dog.’

  ‘He was showing off,’ Val said. ‘Hardly more than a lad when he first got into bother.’

  ‘What happened?’ Vera asked. ‘The night of Billy Kerr’s birthday party? The night of the fire.’

  Val lay back in her chair as if she was suddenly exhausted. ‘I don’t know. Rick was wild that night. Drugs, I think. He was into all sorts.’ She looked at Vera. ‘You don’t want to believe that your kids might be bad. Because it’s your fault, isn’t it? Who else can you blame?’

  Vera put her hand on the woman’s fat slab of an arm. ‘Tell me.’ Tell me your story.

  ‘We’d decided to have a bit of a party for Billy Kerr. The boys in the boats organized it. Paid for some food, got one of the wives to make a cake. It was hot. That summer it was hot every day. And from the start of the evening I could tell there would be trouble. There was a kind of tension. You felt there’d be one wrong word and the place would go up.’ The woman turned to look at Vera. ‘That Margaret Krukowski was at the bottom of it. She wound the men up. All of them. I read about her in the paper when she was killed, and I couldn’t recognize her. Some sort of saint. Religious. Spending her time in that place for women with problems. Well, she’d know all about that.’

  ‘Your Rick fancied her, did he?’

  ‘No!’ The word rattled like a bullet around the room and then Val continued almost in a whisper, ‘If Rick fancied anyone, it was himself. I wondered if he was into men at one time, but there was no sign of that, either. He was a loner. His interest in Margaret was . . .’ she paused to find the right word ‘. . . professional.’

  And then Vera understood. ‘He wanted to be her pimp.’

  ‘He thought she’d do better with a man to handle things for her.’ Val stared out of the window and her words were defensive. ‘He’d been knocking around with the gangs in town. He knew how they operated and he saw himself running the same sort of schemes out here on the coast.’

  ‘Did he sell drugs to Susan Coulson?’ Vera pictured the man she’d seen in the photo. Dark hair, long over the ears. Hard grey eyes. It triggered another, more recent memory.

  ‘He’d sell his own mother,’ Val said. ‘If the price was right.’ Her voice suddenly bitter. Vera blinked and the pictures in her head shifted again and became firmer.

  ‘But you protected him. You let him operate from your pub.’

  ‘He’s my son!’ It came out as a wail.

  ‘So that night, Billy Kerr’s birthday party.’ Let’s get on with the story.

  ‘That night something was going on. I talked to Rick and told him I didn’t want any bother. But you could smell it. The violence. He was twitchy, angry. I wondered if some of the old crowd had threatened him, if he was expecting them to come and get what he owed them.’ The big woman closed her eyes briefly. Vera could tell that in her head she was standing behind the bar, pulling pints, cracking jokes, and all the time waiting for her son to ruin all that she’d achieved there. It would take a certain kind of courage not to fall apart. ‘Everyone had drunk too much, and it got wild and noisy, folk out in the street. I lost sight of Rick, but I couldn’t go and see what was happening. It was dark by then, but steamy hot, like it was a tropical country. You longed for a thunderstorm to clear the air. Or a bit of a breeze.’

  Her attention was caught by the television again for a moment. A middle-aged couple with a dog at their feet, standing arm-in-arm outside their dream cottage. A universe away.

  ‘Then we saw the fire in the yard. The flames so high that you could see them from inside the Coble. By then it was gone midnight and I’d carried on selling past closing time, because everyone expects a lock-in when it’s somebody’s birthday. And I knew the police would come and I’d be in danger of losing my licence, so all I could think of was getting the place cleared.’

  Vera wondered how many times Val had relived that scene. But she would never have talked about it before. The way the words came out, Vera could tell that it was new to express the thoughts out loud, and a kind of relief.

  ‘I didn’t see Rick again that night,’ Val said. ‘I thought that he’d made himself scarce. He could disappear like a ghost whenever he wanted to. Police, social security, probation – he seemed to know when they were on their way and he’d be nowhere to be seen.’

  She looked at Vera with big haunted eyes. She was preparing herself for a confession. ‘I was pleased,’ she said. ‘I thought: You piss off back to the city with your gangster friends. Leave me here to make a life for myself.’

  ‘You thought that was what happened?’ Vera asked. ‘You thought he’d been involved in starting the fire and he’d run away back to Newcastle.’

  ‘That’s what Billy Kerr told me. He came in the next day. Everything quiet then and stinking of smoke. The ruins of the office black and the yard looking like a bombsite. He said that I wouldn’t see Rick for a while. “Your boy lost it, Val, and torched my place. I can’t have that. I’ve told him to stay away from Harbour Street. No hard feelings to you, but you know what it’s like.�
� And I just nodded. Was that betraying my son? Inside, part of me was singing, because I wouldn’t have that stress for a bit. All that time since he was a small kid I was wondering what he was going to do next.’

  ‘Where is Rick now, Val?’ Vera still had her hand on the woman’s arm. Despite the warmth of the room the skin felt cold and clammy.

  ‘I haven’t got a clue.’ Another confession. ‘I haven’t seen him since that day. At first I didn’t try very hard to find him. I put a few words out. Nobody was talking. And then I stopped trying. If he didn’t want to see me, I didn’t feel like making the effort. And it was so much easier on my own, with no other bugger to worry about. I thought I’d hear if he got into real bother.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now he’d be an old man. He might have grand-bairns. He’d have calmed down, wouldn’t he? I’d like to see him again. A bit of company in my old age. Maybe you could help me look.’

  ‘This body we’ve found,’ Vera said. ‘It’s old. We think our victim died on the night of the fire in Kerr’s yard.’

  Val gave an odd little sob. ‘You think it’s Rick?’

  ‘It’s the body of a young man.’

  ‘And all this time I thought he didn’t care enough about me to let me know he was okay.’ There were tears on her cheek. ‘Every birthday I looked out for a card. And I thought: Sod you, then. But he was here in Harbour Street all the time.’

  ‘We don’t know for sure,’ Vera said. ‘There’ll be tests to do.’

  ‘I know.’ Val turned away so that Vera couldn’t see her face.

  Vera drove to Harbour Street. No real reason except that she couldn’t face going straight back to the office, and if there’d been news on Malcolm Kerr somebody would have told her. There was also an itch, the start of an idea, and she needed time to organize her thoughts. This was where everything had started, and this was where she’d find the answer. The street was quiet. The Coble was open for lunchtime drinkers, but the fish shop had already closed for Christmas. There was still activity on the crime scene at Malcolm’s yard, but you couldn’t see much because of the screens they’d put up to stop ghoulish gawpers. Through the guest-house window she saw Kate Dewar and Stuart Booth in the residents’ lounge. She was at the piano and he was leaning over her shoulder pointing at some sheet music. He scribbled on it with a pencil and she turned and ran her finger down his cheek. Vera had parked right outside, but they didn’t notice her.