The Seagull

by Ann Cleeves

  Now, in the cramped and cluttered office in Kimmerston Police Station, she replayed that conversation in her head. The shouting younger man on the doorstep, and Hector, blunted by drink and sleep. Could it have been the voice she remembered, captured on Gary Keane’s office answerphone? Maybe, she thought. The recent recording was older, more measured, but there was the same confidence, the same hint of arrogance.

  Joe was still sitting on the other side of the desk, watching her. She wondered what he made of her lapses in concentration, the times she drifted away from reality. Perhaps he just put it down to age.

  ‘Get Charlie in here!’ Her voice sounded strange in her ears. It was the shift in time, the daydreaming. Had she half been expecting to hear her sixteen-year-old self?

  Joe knew better than to question or argue and got to his feet. Vera lifted a pile of files from the only spare chair in the place and pulled it up next to Joe’s.

  ‘Any luck in tracking down the Prof.?’ Vera was thinking he wouldn’t have been a professor when he came banging on their door in the middle of the night. He might have been doing his Masters or his PhD, the title affectionate but a little ironic. None of the others – not Hector or Robbie Marshall or John Brace – had a degree of any kind. But he might be a professor now. Probably in one of the natural sciences.

  Charlie shook his head. ‘Nothing definite. I played the tape to admin staff in the local unis, just like you suggested. There were a few people who thought he might sound familiar, but you know what it’s like with a murder inquiry. People want to be involved, like to think they can help. I’ve made a note of the names and I was just about to set up some interviews.’

  Vera nodded her approval but she was impatient. ‘There’s one person who knows the identity of the professor. He probably knows who the female corpse is too. And he’s sitting in Warkworth nick, watching us flounder and loving every minute.’

  She picked up the phone and dialled the prison, demanded to see John Brace that afternoon and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  * * *

  The interview rooms were full, so they’d arranged for her to see the ex-detective in the room on the Elderly and Disabled Wing where she’d done her lecture. An officer escorted her past the education block. The same teacher with short grey hair was running a class for younger inmates. One was standing and reading out loud from a poetry collection. There was that same institution smell of overcooked vegetables and disinfectant. Vera thought that in prisons nothing changed and perhaps boredom was the trigger for fights and riots, for the dependence on legal highs, the simmering desperation.

  She was shown again to the chapel. This time the room was arranged as a social space. Small tables held board games. Half of the people there seemed to be asleep. Once again the chaplain gave up his office so that Vera could talk to John Brace.

  ‘You’ll have heard about Gary Keane?’ Because although the dead man’s name hadn’t been released to the news organizations, Vera thought Brace would know. He might look like a frail old man in his wheelchair, but she wasn’t taken in by that. He’d have had a mobile phone smuggled in, and at least one prison officer on his payroll.

  Brace nodded. ‘We live in terribly violent times. Sometimes I think the police just aren’t up to the job these days.’

  ‘You never liked him. Never thought he was good enough for your daughter.’

  ‘I’m in here, Inspector. I’m hardly in a position to have killed him.’

  But you have money. Contacts.

  ‘Gary had a phone call from the Prof. just before he died,’ Vera said. Her eyes were fixed on the man sitting so close to her that she could see the places the razor had missed when he’d shaved that morning. There was no reaction.

  ‘That’s a rave from the grave.’ Brace gave a little smile. Cold and hard as iron. ‘A blast from the past.’

  ‘But you’ll have kept in touch with the Prof. over the years. You were so close. The Gang of Four.’

  ‘Things change. People move on.’

  ‘I need to talk to him.’ Vera struggled to keep her voice even. She couldn’t show Brace how much she needed this information. ‘I’m having a bit of trouble tracking him down.’

  ‘I can’t help you there. I lost touch with the Prof. years ago. Once Hector passed on, we went our separate ways. He always was a bit elusive, the Prof. He liked his privacy.’

  ‘But he was at the funeral. At Hector’s funeral.’ A statement, not a question. Of course he’d have been there to pay his respects. It would have been a matter of honour. Robbie Marshall would have been absent, of course. He was buried in the culvert near the St Mary’s wetland in Whitley Bay. But there’d been a romance about the idea of the Gang of Four. The loud young man who’d turned up at the house in the middle of the night, calling Hector a rogue, would have turned out to see him buried. The trouble was that Vera could remember very little of that day – she’d spent the previous night drinking Hector’s favourite malt – and there’d been lots of strangers who’d crawled out of the woodwork to fill the pews in the church in the village. Members of Hector’s family even, minor gentry who’d disowned him while he was alive. Perhaps they’d wanted to check they were finally shot of him for good.

  Brace said nothing and his head drooped a little, as if he was struggling to hold it up.

  ‘I need a name for him,’ Vera said. ‘For the Prof.’

  ‘I’m not sure I ever knew his name. That was all we ever called him. Hector would have known, of course. Hector was a bit older than the rest of us. Something of a father figure. He recruited us all.’

  As if you were spies! And of course you knew his name.

  ‘You should help me, Brace, if you ever want to get out of here. If you want to escape the stink and the boredom.’ She could see that had struck home. ‘You’re up for parole soon.’

  There was a silence. She thought she could hear one of the old men in the chapel snoring, even though the door was shut.

  ‘I’d help you if I could, Vera.’

  ‘Who are you scared of?’

  He shook his head, offended. ‘It’s not like that.’ Nobody can scare John Brace.

  ‘What is it like?’

  ‘Sometimes you just have to stick by your people. You should understand that.’

  Another silence, because she didn’t have an answer except that her people weren’t villains and, if they were, she wouldn’t stick by them. ‘I went to see Elaine Sinclair this morning,’ she said. ‘You’ll remember Elaine. She and Gus have a very flash pad on the sea front in Tynemouth. They’re too classy for Whitley these days, it seems. Gus is heavily involved in the regeneration of the area now. He has ambitions to be a politician, apparently.’ Another pause. ‘Elaine said something very interesting. She told me Robbie Marshall could procure anything for anyone. Any idea what she might have meant by that?’

  Brace raised his head a little. ‘Robbie was the first contact, when we were selling falcons to the Middle East. The Prof. was the front man, but Robbie knew the people. Sometimes he came across buyers through his work at Swan’s. There was lots of trade with overseas contractors. Robbie was always doing deals. He could strike a hard bargain.’

  Vera knew Brace was thinking about the parole board and was giving her as much as he could, without a name for the Prof. ‘What else was he procuring, John? Women? Drugs?’

  There was a tight, thin smile. ‘Elaine was right. Robbie could get you anything you wanted. For a price.’

  ‘What did he do with all his money?’

  Another pause. ‘You should talk to Gus about that.’

  ‘Robbie invested in Gus Sinclair’s business?’ Vera thought she should have considered that before. Perhaps the murder was the result of a falling-out between business partners. Or greed on Sinclair’s part, when things at The Seagull started falling apart. That great shiny edifice on Whitley Bay sea front had been a facade for all sorts of deals. What had happened to Robbie Marshall’s investment when he died? Vera doub
ted if his mother had seen any of the cash, but then she might not have wanted it, if she’d known how her son had made all his money.

  ‘I doubt you’ll find Robbie’s name as partner on the books,’ Brace said, ‘but yeah, he was a major shareholder.’

  ‘And what about you, John, were you an investor too?’

  He looked up and smiled slowly. ‘I was just a poor cop. Where would I find that sort of money?’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Vera sat in her car and thought about the Gang of Four, held together by loyalty and shared secrets, that strange kind of male friendship that seemed more important to those involved than either marriage or family. Two of the men were dead and John Brace was in prison. John wasn’t talking, so she needed to find someone else who might have an idea of the identity of the Prof. She wished now she’d taken more notice of the visitors to Hector’s cottage. As a teenager she’d dismissed them all as loners and weirdos: the men who turned up carrying freshly killed animals to be stuffed by her father, the ones with the lust of collecting in their eyes, parting with good money for the eggs her father had stolen. Now she’d have given anything to remember the name of anyone who might give her the Prof.’s identity.

  She thought again about Hector’s funeral. Had there been a tall stranger with a posh voice and the confidence to know he’d always be at the top of the pile? Always a survivor. But still her memory was blurred. It had been raining, a fine grey drizzle that dripped from the trees in the churchyard, and the mourners’ faces had been hidden by umbrellas and hoods. No matter how hard she tried, she knew she wouldn’t remember individual identities of the assorted group of men who gathered together afterwards. Not chatting exactly, but communicating in clipped monosyllables. She hadn’t sensed a strong friendship between them; they were acquaintances who shared an obsession, a collective group of Hector’s cronies, more businessmen than friends. Vera had just wanted the event over and hadn’t listened to the names being given, especially when she was being introduced to strangers.

  But there had been people she knew there, standing in the rain. People who’d provided real comfort. She’d been aware of Davy and Norma, the elderly couple who’d been Hector’s neighbours for as long as Vera could remember. They’d lived in the farm adjoining Hector’s cottage until they’d died within weeks of each other, and then Jack and Joanna had taken the place on. Norma was one of the few people Vera had ever met who’d known her mother. Hector had closed down completely whenever Vera had asked about Mary Stanhope, but Norma had stories that kept the woman alive for Vera, photos so that Vera could picture her. Growing up, Vera had been too proud to complain to Norma about Hector, and she would have stood up for her father fiercely if the woman had made any comment or criticism, but Norma’s kitchen had been her haven. A refuge where she could do homework in peace, get a decent meal. The couple had never had children, and now Vera wondered if she’d given them as much comfort as they’d given her, seen her even as a surrogate daughter.

  Vera felt a sudden moment of guilt, the realization that as a relationship, her friendship with the couple had been entirely one-way. She’d given nothing back. Davy and Norma had grown old, entirely without family support, and she’d ignored them, just because she couldn’t face spending time with Hector. Even when she’d gone back to live with him in his last few months, she’d used the excuse of work to be away from the house as much as she could and certainly hadn’t made the effort to visit the neighbours.

  Then she thought she was making a drama of the situation. She always did. Vera could never be part of a story without playing a leading role; this time the role was that of the heartless friend. Davy and Norma must have had family, a niece at least, because they hadn’t been alone at Hector’s funeral. A younger woman had stood beside them in the church, supporting them both. Now Vera felt a mixture of resentment, guilt and jealousy towards the stranger, which was quite irrational: That should have been me. I was the first pretend daughter. You took my place.

  Still in the vehicle, it came to her as a sudden realization that the Prof. couldn’t really have been in the business of countryside crime for the money. Even selling raptors to Arab sheikhs, he wouldn’t have made a huge profit. Hector had died with more debts than assets; the only things he’d owned when he died were an ancient Land Rover and a crumbling cottage with no mod cons. John Brace and Robbie Marshall had made their money from their involvement with men like Gus Sinclair. Even hiring out muscle to beleaguered country landowners would have seemed petty, compared to that. No, the Gang of Four had been in it for the game. The thrill. A sentimental attachment to the land and its bizarre traditions. So perhaps the Prof. was still playing. Perhaps he was still out in the field collecting eggs and trading them, killing hen harriers on grouse moors for profit and for sport. And while Charlie had contacts and informants in the city and the coastal towns, the uplands belonged to Vera. This was her territory. She still had contacts and she’d put out the word.

  It occurred to her then that if Davy and Norma were still alive, they might point her in the right direction. Davy had worked as a beater on the estates in the district and he might have come across the Prof. He’d known all the gossip, picked it up in the Lamb, the pub in the valley at the bottom of their hill. And that gave her another idea.

  She switched on the engine and headed inland from the prison, driving north-west down narrow lanes, first through farmland and then a steep climb onto open moorland. Not having to think where she was going because she was on her way home.

  She found her neighbours, Jack and Joanna, drinking coffee in the big, untidy kitchen in the farmhouse next to Hector’s cottage. They were an unlikely pair. Jack was from Liverpool and still had the accent, the chippiness and the warm heart. He’d been a drifter until he’d taken up with Joanna, but always a grafter. Joanna was from a grand family and had been through the whole aristo thing: public school, finishing school, marriage to an arsehole. She always said that Jack had rescued her. Vera had once rescued her too, saved her from a murder charge at least; now Joanna wrote about murder and turned it into entertainment. Vera wasn’t sure what she thought about that.

  Vera opened the door without knocking, but gave them a shout to let them know she was on the way in. The cluttered kitchen was poorly lit, so it always looked as if it was dark outside. Jack’s Border collie was slouched on the mat next to the Aga, and standing on top of the stove was a pot of coffee, the smell of it delicious, overwhelming the smell of dog. A need for good coffee was one of Joanna’s affectations. She said she’d inherited it, along with the passion for good red wine. Before Vera was through the door, Jack had fetched a mug from a dusty shelf and nodded for her to help herself. He was in his work clothes, mucky overalls and thick woollen socks. He’d left his boots at the door. Joanna had been working too; there was a pile of printed paper on the table in front of her. She nodded towards it. ‘Proofreading. Nightmare!’ But Vera could tell she was proud: this was what real writers did, and it had taken Joanna a long time to realize that she was a real writer.

  ‘How can we help you, Vee?’ Jack’s accent was as thick as when he’d first moved to the county.

  Usually Vera did turn up at their house because she needed their help – the Land Rover had broken down, or the dodgy electrics in the house had blown a fuse and she couldn’t stop the system tripping.

  ‘Just a chat,’ she said. ‘Just a social call.’

  ‘In the middle of the day?’

  She decided they knew her too well and gave a little nod. ‘Well, maybe I’ve just got a few questions.’

  ‘Work, Vee? You think we can help with your work?’ Jack sounded surprised. Vera never brought her work home.

  ‘You help out with the shoots, don’t you? On the Standrigg Estate and other places up the county?’

  He grinned. ‘Sometimes you have to mix with the devil to make ends meet. Not that we do much mixing with the shooters. I tug my forelock and do as I’m told. Act the peasant. That’s wh
at they like in their beaters, especially the nouveaux riches.’

  Joanna looked at Vera and rolled her eyes. ‘He’s such a snob.’

  ‘Are there many nouveaux riches?’

  ‘They’re the ones with the money. The gentry have all their cash tied up in land.’

  Vera made an imaginative leap. She could picture Gus Sinclair in tweeds and brogues, a gun under his arm. ‘Have you ever come across a man called Angus Sinclair? Lives in a smart apartment in Tynemouth. He’s something big in the regeneration of the coast.’

  ‘Yeah. He’s part of the consortium that shoots at Standrigg. Slimy. Not as bright as he thinks he is.’ Jack paused. ‘A nice enough man until something goes wrong. Or he doesn’t get the respect he thinks he’s due. He’s a great one for holding a grudge if he’s been slighted. Isn’t he into property? That’s what I heard. That he’s buying up most of Whitley Bay and waiting until the place is all gentrified. Then he’ll start selling, and he’ll be set to make a killing. He’s got his property out on short-term lets, so he can get rid of the tenants when he wants rid of them.’ Another grin. ‘But that’s the free market, Vee. Nothing wrong with that. Not legally at least.’

  Vera didn’t bite. The only time she got into politics with Jack was late at night after too much to drink.

  Jack was still talking. ‘Gus enjoys the shooting, but for him it’s all about business. He’s got the gift of the gab and pulls in investors while he’s out after birds. I’ve seen him in action. He almost had me persuaded that Whitley Bay was about to become the most desirable place in the North-East to live.’

  ‘What about someone called the Prof.?’ Vera asked. ‘He was a friend of my father’s. I have the feeling that he mixes with the county set. And he certainly knew Sinclair.’