The Seagull

by Ann Cleeves

  Jack thought for a minute. ‘I think I’ve heard him mentioned by the county set, but I’m sure I never met him.’

  ‘Mentioned in what context, Jack?’ Vera leaned forward across the table.

  ‘Important, is it, Vee?’

  ‘Oh yes. A matter of life and death.’ Her voice light and flippant, but meaning every word. The dog snored and twitched.

  Jack leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes and for a moment he could have been sleeping too. ‘Like he was the Pope and Paul McCartney rolled into one. Second only to God bloody Almighty.’ He spoke again, mimicking the accent of the landed gentry in a falsetto. ‘“Did you hear, darling? Guess who’s joining us next week? Only the Prof.!”’

  ‘Anything else you can tell me about him?’ Vera wondered what it was about the Prof. that generated such reverence among a group that was usually aware only of its own importance.

  ‘Sorry, Vee. I’m not part of the in-crowd. I only pick up snatches of conversation.’

  Joanna had set down her manuscript. ‘I heard something similar not very long ago. A quite different situation, though. Probably a different professor.’

  ‘Might be helpful, though, pet.’ Vera thought she had nothing to lose. The Prof. was like a shadow in the mist drifting ahead of her, always just out of reach. ‘Where was it?’

  ‘Two writers were chatting at a book event I was doing in the Lit and Phil Library in Newcastle. One of those overheard snatches of conversation that you pick up in a crowded room. It was after the talk and the signing, and people were milling around drinking the last of the wine. One of them mentioned the Prof. It was like Jack said. It was as if he were some kind of celebrity, and so famous that they didn’t need to use his name.’

  ‘Could you get a name for me? Chat to one of your literary pals?’

  ‘Sure,’ Joanna said. ‘But there are lots of professors in the world. I can’t believe we’re talking about the same man.’ Her attention had already drifted back to the typescript on the table in front of her.

  ‘Was there anything left behind here, when you moved in?’ Vera was still thinking of Norma and Davy Kerr. ‘Any belongings, I mean.’

  ‘Masses of stuff,’ Jack said. ‘We bought all the furniture along with the house and just cleared out what we didn’t need. One of the reasons we got the place so cheap was that nothing had been touched since the old couple died.’

  Vera nodded and thought that must be why she felt at home here. Nothing much had changed since she’d escaped to Norma’s kitchen as a child.

  Joanna looked up from her work. ‘What were you thinking of?’ Her voice gentle, realizing this was important.

  ‘I wondered if you’d come across some photos.’

  ‘In a wooden box?’

  ‘Yes!’ Vera was back in the kitchen with Norma, sitting at this table. When Norma opened the box, there’d been a smell. Sandalwood? And then they’d laid out the photographs, spread them like playing cards all over the table. They’d looked through all Norma’s family pictures: her father in uniform, Davy in uniform. The images faded and brown now. But Vera had really only been interested in the record of her own history. There’d been snaps of her parents’ wedding. Not official wedding photos, but a few taken by Davy. Her mother in white, holding a bunch of deep-red roses. Hector looking happy. Vera thought now that she’d seldom seen Hector looking happy. And there’d been a later picture of her mother, sitting outside the farm on the white wooden bench that was still there. Obviously pregnant. Her hands folded across her belly. Smiling.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Joe was doing as Vera had ordered and trying to dig into Robbie Marshall’s finances. The case notes just showed that none of the man’s credit or debit cards had been used after he’d been reported missing. Phone calls to Marshall’s bank were unproductive. First he had a twenty-minute wait, trying to answer automated questions, then a conversation with a call handler that left both of them tense and frustrated. It was so long ago. The woman on the other end of the line wouldn’t know where to start and was reluctant to pass him on to someone who might be able to help. In the end the line went dead. Joe knew there would be ways through the maze – he could pass on the task to officers specializing in fraud and financial crime – but he was impatient. He needed the sort of material he’d found in Gary Keane’s office: records that he could understand and access immediately.

  That made him think of Eleanor Marshall in her tidy house with its view of the Wallsend park. If she’d had no proof that Robbie had died, might she have kept his room just as he’d left it, in case he turned up out of the blue? Joe wondered if Robbie would have had a computer in 1995. He’d had a very basic Amstrad, just for playing games on. But perhaps Gary had bought something more sophisticated for Robbie and set it up for him. Perhaps it was still in Robbie’s room, a treasure chest containing records of the man’s travels and his finances, all his business dealings with the Gang of Four and Gus Sinclair. Joe grabbed his jacket and keys and drove south towards the Tyne.

  When he arrived, he was surprised to see that Eleanor had a visitor. He’d imagined her leading a solitary life, keeping a lonely vigil for her son, but there was a small car parked in the street outside the house and a stranger opened the door to him. She was a little, busy woman, a member of Eleanor’s church, here to provide some support at this difficult time. That was explained while he was still standing on the doorstep. When Joe introduced himself, Eleanor recognized his voice and shouted from the living room, ‘Come on through, Sergeant. Doreen was just leaving.’

  Leaving was clearly the last thing on Doreen’s mind; she was curious and would have been delighted to stay. But Eleanor’s voice had brooked no dissent, and Doreen had no choice but to gather together her things and go. Joe watched the little car drive away.

  ‘I’m sorry to have interrupted.’ He sat on the sofa that Vera had taken on their previous visit.

  ‘Don’t be.’ Eleanor paused for a moment. ‘Doreen is a good woman, but she hankers to be told how good she is. I don’t have the patience for her at the moment. Or for any of the others who’ve turned up over the last couple of days. But they did bring cake, Sergeant, if you’d like some with your tea.’

  ‘I was wondering if you still had any of Robert’s belongings.’

  ‘Of course. I haven’t been into his room since he left. Not even to clean it. That was something he was always very firm about. His privacy. If we were going to live together, we had to have our own spaces.’ She hesitated. ‘When the inspector told me he was dead, I was tempted to go in. After all, that agreement no longer stood and Robert would never know, but I couldn’t quite face it. Not on my own.’

  ‘Would you mind if I checked in there?’ He paused. What could he say to persuade her? Not: There might be evidence that he trafficked women and drugs. ‘There could be something to help us discover who killed him.’

  ‘I’d be very pleased.’ She paused again. ‘Just to have the door opened would be helpful, I think. It’s been shut for so many years.’

  ‘Did Robert lock it?’

  ‘Oh no! He asked me not to go in, and he trusted that I never would.’

  ‘Would you like to come up with me? I’d ask you not to touch anything. Not yet. But if you’d just like to look inside.’

  There was a moment of silence that stretched. ‘I think I’d rather you went in first, Sergeant. I need a little while to prepare myself. I find the idea of seeing all his possessions rather disturbing.’

  ‘You must have looked when Robert first disappeared,’ Joe said. ‘You’d have been worried that he might be lying ill inside.’

  She nodded her head in agreement. ‘I did open the door, but I didn’t go in. I could see from the landing that the room was empty and the bed hadn’t been slept in. But I’m afraid I’ve allowed my imagination rather to run away from me and I’m frightened about how I’ll react to the place. His place. Waiting for news about him sent me a little bit mad, I think.’

&
nbsp; ‘I think it would drive anyone a little bit mad,’ Joe said. ‘But you seem very sane to me. Are you happy for me to go up?’

  ‘Yes, see yourself up. I’m very slow on the stairs.’

  ‘It might take me a little while to search properly.’

  ‘I have plenty of time, Sergeant, and when you’ve finished we’ll have tea and some do-gooders’ cake.’ She gave a little smile. ‘And then perhaps you’ll be kind enough to come upstairs with me and see me inside. His room is at the back of the house, next to the bathroom.’

  The hall and the landing were gloomy, covered in mock-Tudor wood panelling. Joe thought that little had been changed since the house had been built in the thirties. Light came through a stained-glass window on the landing. The stairs twisted, so he had no idea of the layout upstairs until he reached it. The doors were identical and must have been original. Six panels with Bakelite handles. The bathroom door was ajar and he glanced inside at the black-and-white tiles on the walls and the floor and a large enamel bath. He paused for a moment outside the room where Robbie Marshall had lived since he was a boy. Something of Eleanor’s superstition about the place had made him anxious too. He pulled on the latex gloves he’d brought with him, turned the handle and looked inside.

  The first impression was of light. It was a large room with a big bay window looking out over the garden and the park beyond. Sunshine flooded in. Joe took a step and shut the door behind him. Apart from the dust that lay on the flat surfaces and a stuffy, rather airless smell, Robbie Marshall could have left the place that morning. Although this had been Robbie’s room since he was a teenager, there was nothing of his childhood here. Any posters or models had been removed. There was a double bed against one wall and a desk in the wide bay window. No computer. If he’d used one, it must have been at work and Joe knew that would have disappeared long ago, along with the rest of the shipyard’s assets. In the alcoves on each side of the chimney breast, shelves held maps and notebooks. There were travel and field guides, but Joe could see no light reading. A small television seemed oddly old-fashioned now, square and boxy; it stood on one of the shelves and there was an easy chair positioned to watch it. Joe wondered how much company Robbie had provided for his mother and how much time he’d spent alone in his room. He wondered if she’d worshipped him as much when he was alive as she had after he’d disappeared.

  The notebooks had been arranged in chronological order and started when Robbie was still a schoolboy. The first ones recorded birds seen on the Bebington Grammar School field trips. There were little sketches that Joe found strangely moving. Later books detailed Robbie’s travels further afield. He’d been to countries in Africa and South America that Joe had only ever heard of on the BBC news, but seemed to return regularly to Eastern Europe and to Thailand and Indonesia. There were acronyms and symbols that meant nothing to Joe; he thought Vera might be able to decipher them. She’d grown up with a birdwatcher, after all. He wondered about the practicalities of bringing all this material into the station, then decided to take a few of the later notebooks and to leave the early ones where they were. He couldn’t see that a boat trip to the Farne Islands from Seahouses in 1972 would have much significance to the inquiry.

  Against the wall on each side of the bay there was a cupboard, sturdy and painted white. In one, Robbie had kept his clothes: two suits and a few smart shirts on hangers, the rest the sort of outdoor wear he’d have worn on his forays into the countryside with Hector. The second cupboard had been fitted with shelves and was filled with folders. This had been his home office and Joe felt a moment of triumph; within all this paper it should be possible to find out more about Robbie’s secret business dealings. He flicked through the files, looking at the references on the front, and at once found one labelled ‘Seagull’. He pulled it out and could tell that it would take time to read it properly and check the contents. There were contracts, scraps of paper that had acted as receipts, something that looked like a formal partnership agreement. He thought how delighted Vera would be with his find, how cross that she hadn’t considered that Robbie’s room would be just as he’d left it.

  He lifted out each of the folders and stacked them on the bed. He’d take them all back to the station for the team to work on there, along with the most recent notebooks. The last file held Marshall’s bank and building-society statements. There was fifty thousand pounds in the Northumbria Building Society. Joe thought that would have been a fortune in the mid-nineties – certainly more than a middle manager could have saved or made from trading in a few birds’ eggs. Joe hoped there’d be some explanation in the mountain of paper on the bed, and then he wondered how much interest would be due. He supposed the money belonged to Eleanor now, and that at least she’d spend her remaining years in some comfort.

  The bank statements were held separately in a plastic envelope within the Manila file. As in Gary Keane’s office, everything was ordered, and Joe wondered if Marshall had been some sort of mentor for the boy. Sal looked after the finances in their family and she was pretty good at keeping on top of things, but their household accounts looked nothing like this. Sal kept their receipts and bills jumbled together in an old shoebox. Joe scanned through the last couple of statements. He was aware of Eleanor waiting downstairs, knew she was building up the courage to come into this room after more than twenty years of staying away, and didn’t want to delay any more than was necessary.

  Regular income came from the liquidators of Swan Hunter and from one large monthly payment that was marked only by a reference number. The financial investigators would check that later. Joe wondered if it had come from Gus Sinclair, and what service Marshall could possibly be giving to the man to earn that sort of reward. The only other item of note was a payment from Marshall by cheque to Hector Stanhope. That was for five hundred pounds. Looking at the previous statement, Joe saw that the same sum had been paid to the same place the month before. And the month before that. Not a direct debit but a regular payment. Why would Robbie be paying his old friend a sum that would have been substantial at the time? What service could Hector be providing? In other circumstances, Joe would have suspected blackmail. But these were friends, weren’t they? Surely Hector wouldn’t have stooped so low that he’d blackmail his friend.

  Joe carried the files from the bed in two journeys and locked them straight into the boot of his car. He’d shut the door to the living room when he’d left Eleanor and now, if she’d heard his feet on the stairs, she made no move. He would ask her permission to remove the files, but he thought it would have upset her to see him carrying armfuls of her son’s belongings out of the house. Back inside, he tapped at the living-room door.

  ‘Have you finished, Sergeant? Did you find anything useful?’ She was already getting to her feet with the aid of a walking frame.

  ‘I’ve taken away some paperwork. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Will you bring it back?’

  ‘Of course, though it might take a little while. I’ll make sure you get the building-society passbook as soon as possible. You’ll need that to access Robbie’s money.’

  ‘Robbie had money?’ She seemed surprised. ‘He was always generous of course, but I doubt there’s very much left. He travelled so much.’ A pause. ‘He said he wouldn’t be able to take it with him when he died.’

  ‘He seems to have had savings. You don’t know where that might have come from?’

  ‘Ah, he was always very careful with his money, even as a boy.’

  ‘Your husband didn’t leave him anything when he died?’ Though Joe doubted that a butcher would have had fifty grand to bequeath to his son. Even in the nineties, when Robbie had disappeared, that would have been an enormous sum.

  She shook her head. ‘There wasn’t much, and that all came to me.’

  ‘Did you ever meet a man called Hector Stanhope?’

  She had to think for a moment. ‘I knew the name, of course. Robert went birdwatching with him.’ A pause. ‘He came here once,
and that was a year or so before my son disappeared. I remember because Robert didn’t bring many friends home. Not even when he was a boy. There was only John Brace. Robert never needed much company.’

  ‘But Hector did come?’

  ‘Just once and he didn’t stay for very long. I offered to cook a meal for them, but he said he was in a hurry and Robert took him to his room. It seemed like a business meeting. When they came back down they shook hands. It looked very formal, as if they’d just agreed a deal. Not at all like pals who were having a chat.’ Eleanor Marshall looked up towards the top of the stairs.

  Joe climbed slowly with her one step at a time until they reached the landing, and then he took her arm and they walked to the door of Robbie’s room. ‘Would you like to go in on your own?’

  Eleanor steadied herself. She’d have been getting on in years the last time she looked inside, but spry and fit, happy to be sharing her home with the son she adored. ‘If you wouldn’t mind just waiting there.’

  Joe stood on the landing, with his back to the bannister, and watched her walk inside.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The team was in Vera’s house, seated around the table where once Hector had stuffed his birds and animals. There’d been a formal briefing in the police station and Holly had struggled to keep up with all the new information that was coming in, resorting in the end to pen and paper to make her lines and connections and still feeling that she was missing a lot of it. Vera had been out all afternoon and had returned to the office in a strange mood. Distracted. Holly had asked tentatively if she was feeling okay, and instead of getting the usual tart reply, her boss had only smiled and said, ‘Ah pet, I’ve been wandering down memory lane. Not always a comfortable place to be.’

  In the office, they’d made a start on the files that Joe had found in Eleanor’s house, but it had been frustrating, each find leading to a question rather than an answer. Joe had seemed reluctant to go into details – he’d said they should all leave that until the morning, when they’d come to it with fresh eyes – and Vera had still seemed vague and unfocused. In the end, she had invited the core team back to her house. ‘I’ll be able to see things more clearly out of the office, and with a couple of beers inside me.’ So here they were in the house in the hills, Vera’s gang of four, with photocopies of Robbie Marshall’s bank statements scattered over the table. Vera was drinking Wylam beer from the bottle and, when the others turned down the offer to join her, she’d made them surprisingly good coffee. A packet of chocolate digestives, ripped open, sat on top of the paper.