by Ann Cleeves
‘Were you on duty last night?’
‘Yeah, I was on the late shift. Did you leave something? I don’t remember you.’
Holly explained as quietly as she could what she was doing there. The women with the buggies fell silent and stared. ‘Can anyone take over from you for a bit, so we can talk outside?’
The barista nodded and called a young man from the back to take her place.
Outside, Holly felt a second stab of guilt and handed the coffee to the constable. ‘Sorry, I didn’t know how you like it.’
‘Hey, it was just nice of you to think of me.’ He seemed very young – a schoolboy in a grown-up’s uniform – and she couldn’t help grinning back.
The women walked into the community garden.
‘I heard what happened there,’ the barista said. ‘That Gary died. Is it true someone killed him?’
‘Did you know him well?’
‘Not outside the shop, but he was a regular. He came in at least once a day. He needed his hit of caffeine to get moving in the morning.’ Perhaps she was a caffeine junkie too, because she seemed all activity. It was hard for her to stand still to carry on the conversation. They walked past the raised vegetable beds, cleared now for the autumn.
‘Did you see him yesterday?’
‘I didn’t start until lunchtime. He was always in before nine, when he opened the shop. A large flat white and an almond croissant.’ There were old-fashioned roses growing up a trellis, the blooms faded but still reddish-brown, the colour of dried blood. She bent to smell them.
‘Did you see him later in the day?’ Holly knew she was no good at this. She lacked the patience to listen to a witness’s story in detail. She needed them to jump straight to the relevant information.
The woman considered. ‘He didn’t come into the cafe, but I saw him. I came outside into the garden to have a cigarette.’ Still she jiggled, a child unable to keep still. ‘Do you mind if I have one now?’
Holly shook her head. She hated people smoking close to her, but better to have the woman focused.
‘What time was that?’
‘Five o’clock.’ She’d lit the cigarette and drew on it, narrowing her eyes.
‘You’re sure of the time?’
‘Yeah, that’s when I take my break.’
‘What was Gary doing?’ Holly thought this must narrow down the time of the man’s death. Vera would be pleased with the information.
‘He was standing at the door of his shop. Maybe business was slow, because usually if he didn’t have any customers he was working in the back.’ The barista paused. ‘But I think perhaps he was waiting for a visitor. That’s what it seemed like. He kept looking up the street for cars.’
‘Did you see anyone?’
‘No, I could see the cafe was busy, so I just waved to Gary and went back to work.’
‘Perhaps you noticed a car parked outside later?’
She shook her head. ‘It was manic. I didn’t get outside at all.’ A pause. ‘I think there was a couple working in the garden at some point. A guy turned up a long time later, just as I was closing. He’d parked outside Gary’s and I saw him knocking on the door of the flat.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘About your age. Mousy hair. A suit.’ She paused. ‘Could have been baby-sick on his tie.’
Joe Ashworth. ‘Nobody else?’
‘Not that I can remember.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and threw it into a bin. ‘Time to go back.’
Holly watched her cross the street to the shop and moved on. There were two more business in the same block: a deli selling local cheese, beer and meat, artisan bread and organic wines; and, on the far corner, a small bookshop. She’d never have thought she’d come across these in a town like Bebington. She thought it unlikely that either would survive for more than a year.
The woman in the deli was middle-aged and motherly. The deli was called ‘Celia’s’ and the woman wore a name-badge with the same name. She was inside, pinning a poster about a wine-tasting on the window. Holly stopped to look at it.
‘Why don’t you come along?’ Celia had moved from the window out onto the pavement and was standing beside her. For a plump woman, she was very light on her feet and Holly was startled for a moment. ‘It’s all good fun. The great thing about somewhere like Bebington is that nobody gets snobby or pompous at a tasting. They just tell you what they like.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Nearly a year.’
‘It must be hard going, a place like Bebington.’
‘Don’t you believe it! This place is on the way up. The rent and rates are low and the people have come out to support me. There’s a real community feeling.’ She nodded up the pavement towards the PC and the crime-scene tape. ‘Are you here because of that? Press?’
‘No!’ Holly wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or a little bit flattered. ‘I’m a detective.’
‘Do you want to come in? I suppose you have questions.’ She paused. ‘I hope you find the killer quickly. It’s bad for business, unsolved murder.’ But she gave a little self-mocking smile to show that wasn’t really her priority.
The shop was dark and cool and smelled of cheese, garlic and yeast. Celia leaned against the counter. ‘I didn’t really know Gary. He came in occasionally for a bottle of wine. I don’t think he was much of a foodie. Not the kind to cook, at least.’
Holly remembered Joe’s description of the interior of the flat. ‘Did he buy a bottle of wine yesterday?’
The woman nodded. ‘In the afternoon. Chablis. More than he usually liked to pay. I asked if he’d found himself a woman.’ Celia was a gossip. The best kind of witness.
‘He didn’t have a regular girlfriend, then?’
‘I don’t think so. Nobody living in, at least.’ Celia smiled. ‘I did wonder if he had a thing for Felicity.’
‘Felicity?’
‘She works in the bookshop. Anchor Books. Her dad’s the owner. I always thought she was a bit young for Gary, but when did that ever bother middle-aged men?’ She paused again for a moment, laughed. ‘But then I’m a cynic. My husband ran off with my best friend’s daughter, and we’d been married for nearly thirty years.’
* * *
Felicity had long red hair, wild and curly, and reminded Holly of the poster of a Pre-Raphaelite painting she’d had on her wall as a student. The shop was long and narrow and every wall was covered with shelves. Felicity sat on a tall stool, reading. She wore a long green dress made of embroidered cotton and patent-leather Doc Martens boots, and seemed posed like an artist’s model.
‘You’ll have seen there’s been an incident along the street.’ Holly thought incident was a useful word. It gave very little away. ‘Can I ask a few questions?’
‘Is it true Gary was murdered?’ Felicity’s voice had no accent at all. Holly would have bet twenty pounds that she’d been privately educated. If Gary had designs on her, he’d certainly had plans to move up in the world. Felicity was very different from Patty Keane.
‘It was a suspicious death. I’m speaking to everyone in the street, in case they heard or saw anything. Were you here yesterday afternoon?’
‘Yeah, I’ve been here all week. Dad’s away at an indie booksellers’ conference. It’s easy enough, because I live over the job.’ Felicity flicked her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘My own tiny stab at independence. I mean, you can’t live at home forever, and it’s quite a decent little flat.’
‘When did you last see Gary?’
‘The night before last, at the reading group. We run a few here. You have to, these days, if you want to survive. It builds an audience for our events. There’s one for teens and one for kids, and a couple for adults. Gary’s a member of the non-fiction group.’ She paused. ‘Mostly blokes. We buy in beer from next door.’
Holly tried to picture Gary Keane, who’d grown up on the edges of organized crime, who’d fathered three kids and then deserted his family, sitting in a
circle discussing biography and narrative history. It made her shift perspective and wonder if he was the villain they’d all thought. ‘Were you friendly?’
‘We’re all friendly here on the street. We have to be.’ Which wasn’t any kind of answer, as Felicity knew.
‘Only I heard he took a romantic interest in you.’ Holly winced as soon as she’d spoken. She sounded like something out of a Mills & Boon novel. What would Vera have said? I heard he was sniffing around you?
Felicity didn’t mock, though. She sat on her stool and smiled serenely. ‘He was actually quite an interesting guy. Self-educated. You know.’
‘So you were going out?’ Holly wondered if the relationship had been another form of rebellion, a way of Felicity distancing herself from her classy parents, like her choice to live in the Bebington flat.
‘I cooked him supper a few times,’ Felicity said. ‘We saw a couple of films.’
‘You don’t seem upset that he’s dead.’ Because, so far, the young woman had shown no grief, just a dispassionate curiosity.
Felicity thought about that. ‘I was shocked when I heard, but he wasn’t the love of my life or anything. I mean, if you met him, you’d know we’d never have had a future together. For one thing, he was ancient. We got on okay, but it was just a friendship of convenience really. Do you understand what I mean?’
Holly did understand. She too seemed incapable of finding anyone with whom she’d be willing to share her life. And in the end, she was sure, Felicity would choose someone suitable, someone from the same background and with a similar education. ‘You didn’t see Gary yesterday?’
‘No, we had a loose arrangement to go out later in the evening after I’d finished work, but he texted to say something had turned up. Business.’
‘He wasn’t more specific than that?’
Felicity shook her head.
‘Did you see any strangers in the street? Early evening?’
‘No, but then I wouldn’t. I didn’t get a chance to go outside at all until it was time to pack up. I’d had a delivery of stock in the morning and I was sorting that out for most of the day. There were some regular customers and a couple of drop-ins, but that would have been at lunchtime.’ She pulled her fingers through her hair. ‘I had to shut early because I was selling books at a library event in Morpeth. A big-name YA author was speaking to a group of kids. It started at six and I had to get there and set up. Parking’s often a nightmare.’ She set down her book and came down from the tall stool. ‘Would you like a coffee? I was going to make one.’
Holly was tempted, but she shook her head. She felt that this conversation wasn’t leading anywhere. ‘YA?’
‘Young adult.’ Felicity gave the impression that everyone knew that.
‘What time did you leave here?’
‘About four-thirty. There aren’t many customers in the late afternoon. You get some mums and kids on their way home from school, but most of our business comes from events.’
‘Were there any unfamiliar cars in the street?’
Felicity shook her head. ‘Not that I noticed.’ She seemed bored. There was a tray on the counter with a kettle, a mug and a jar of instant coffee and she switched on the kettle.
‘Did you ever meet his friends? His old friends, I mean. Not the people he’d met through the book group.’
The question seemed to amuse her; she gave a little shrug. ‘Like I said, we didn’t have that sort of relationship.’
‘How was Gary the last time you saw him?’ Holly asked this almost as an afterthought. It was a Vera sort of question. She was always more interested in mood than in facts.
Felicity stood poised, the kettle in her hand, ready to pour out the boiling water. ‘He had been a bit odd recently. Excited, but kind of jittery. When I asked him what the matter was, he gave a little laugh and said his past had come back to haunt him.’
Chapter Thirty
Vera left the grand terrace where Gus and Elaine Sinclair had made their home and walked along the sea front. It was a struggle back up the bank towards the car, but she was glad to be away from the smart apartment and the woman who’d given very little away. Except that comment about Robbie Marshall being able to procure anything anyone wanted. To Vera, that suggested sex, and her mind was racing, forging strange connections. Robbie had been a traveller. It was what he’d been famous for, according to Hector and the gang. An adventurous streak that had seemed at odds with his reluctance to move away from home and his mother. He’d travelled alone to exotic places in search of birds, returned with a list of species designed to make Hector and the others jealous. There’d been slide shows in the house in the hills and afterwards Hector had sneered at the poor quality of the photographs, at Robbie’s obsession with seeing species that were new to him. ‘That’s not real natural history. It’s birding tourism of the worst possible kind.’
But at around that time a number of single and lonely birdwatchers in the region had acquired foreign brides. Women who had seemed subservient, at least at first. It occurred to Vera that Robbie might have procured these women on his wanderings. She remembered that Thailand had been one of his favourite destinations. And if he’d provided that service, could he have been involved in the same business in the UK? The procurement of women for clients with specific tastes and needs. Charlie had said that Gus Sinclair’s father, Alec, had been involved in smuggling women. Perhaps Robbie Marshall had been a partner in the business.
Vera stopped halfway up the bank to look down at the dinghies racing at the mouth of the Tyne and to catch her breath. Her mind didn’t stop, though. That was still chasing wild ideas and theories. Robbie Marshall had been frightened just before his disappearance. In Whitley Bay in those days, prostitution would have been a competitive business, and if Robbie had set up in opposition to the big boys, he could have upset his rivals. And if Mary-Frances turned out to be the second body in the culvert, there might have been a rational explanation for the pair to be together. Had her regular pimp killed them both, as an example to other working women who might consider looking to Robbie to organize and protect them? That was a lot of ifs. A big supposition. But it made a kind of sense.
* * *
When Vera got back to the police station, Holly was still in Bebington, but Joe was there and she called him into her stuffy office.
‘Did anyone look at Marshall’s finances when he disappeared?’
Joe shrugged. ‘I assume they’d have checked he hadn’t withdrawn any cash. That would have proved he was still alive and would have given some indication of where he might be.’
‘I’ve called in the financial investigator to go through his affairs, but it’ll be hard because the accounts are so old. I’d love to know if he was getting money from other sources.’ Vera explained the theory she’d dreamed up as she’d walked through Tynemouth. It seemed a little less credible when she described it to Joe.
‘He still lived with his mam,’ Joe said. ‘In Wallsend. That’s not exactly the profile of a major people-trafficker.’
‘Which is why we need to look at his bank accounts. If he had any unexplained money, we need to find it.’ She looked at Joe. ‘Have you got any further in tracking down the Prof.? Any joy on the phone number from which he called Gary Keane?’
‘It was from a pay-as-you-go mobile. No name registered and, if he had anything to do with Keane’s murder, I guess it will have been thrown away as soon as he finished the call.’
Vera sat for a moment and dug back into her memory, tried to get a fix on the man they’d all called the Prof. She remembered Hector talking about him, but wasn’t sure that she’d actually met him. Then at last there was a glimmer of recollection. It was late one night and she’d have been sixteen. Her last year at school before she joined the police force as a cadet. Winter. She’d made Hector’s supper and they’d eaten it together in front of the fire, because the rest of the house was freezing. She’d cleared up and taken herself to bed, not because she was tired, but b
ecause Hector had been drinking and that made him argumentative and she just couldn’t be arsed to argue. She’d heard a car pulling up outside and had looked out of the window, still wrapped up in the sheet and blankets from the bed. Ice on the window had blurred her view, but the house was single-storey and she’d been very close to the action. There’d been a sliver of moon and just enough light to make out shadows and silhouettes. It had been a big car. The man who’d emerged had been big too, tall and vigorous. Young, it had seemed to the young Vera. Nowhere near as old as Hector. She’d been of an age to be interested in any young man.
He’d banged on the door. ‘Come on, Hector, you old rogue. I know you’re in there. Let me in. It’s fucking freezing out here.’
Of course she’d heard the F-word in the playground, but not used by adults, and had been strangely shocked by it.
She’d been aware of her father moving in the living room with the fire. He’d stumbled as he’d reached the front door and fumbled with the bolt. They might have lived miles from anywhere, but Hector had always been conscious of security. There’d been too many secrets hidden away. She’d heard the creaking of the door.
‘Prof.! I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.’
‘You know me, H. Always strike while the iron’s hot. Our Arabian friends need the goods now.’ Vera had taken ‘the goods’ to mean the peregrine eggs in the incubator in the lean-to. Falconers in the Middle East set a high store on birds from traditional sites, and rumour had it that the first Queen Elizabeth had used birds from the Borders.
