The Seagull

by Ann Cleeves

  She couldn’t help grinning at that. ‘Aye well, he can go whistle. We’ve done enough chasing around after that man.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at the seaside. A wild-goose chase. But it was driving me crazy sitting in that office. No fresh air and no space to let in new ideas.’ She wondered if she should tell him about the message she’d left on Bradford’s phone, but decided against it. There was no way Bradford would pick it up and she’d just look foolish when he failed to turn up for the meeting. ‘Sometimes it helps to visit the scene again. It can trigger ideas. You know.’

  There was no reply and Vera thought Joe probably didn’t know. That wouldn’t be the way he worked.

  ‘What do you want me to do now?’ he said at last.

  ‘Same old, same old. Track down the people we still need to talk to. Stephen Bradford. Mary-Frances Lascuola. Even if she’s using an assumed identity, there must be some way of finding her.’ She paused for a beat. ‘Go and talk to that old friend of Mary’s. The one who teaches yoga. She might have an idea. And if she was waitressing in The Seagull, then she’d be a good person to talk to about Rebecca Murray.’

  ‘Holly has already talked to her.’ Joe sounded reluctant. Maybe he was hoping to slip home early, earn some brownie points from Sal.

  ‘Aye, but you can charm her.’ Vera was about to replace the receiver when something else occurred to her. ‘Get an up-to-date photo of Stephen Bradford. There must be something online. Holly and Charlie didn’t get anything useful when they went to Durham.’ Then she snapped shut the phone and got to her feet.

  There was moisture in the air, but it still wasn’t raining. Three huge cargo ships hung motionless close to the mouth of the Tyne. They’d been there for weeks; they weren’t just anchored, waiting for high water so they could slide up the river to dock. Vera had heard rumours that the Russian company that owned them had gone bust and they were just sitting there waiting for a new buyer, or until the money could be raised for them to get into harbour. The crew imprisoned, waiting for release. That made her think of John Brace, trapped in his wheelchair, trapped in his prison cell, and she felt a moment of sympathy until she remembered Fiona Fenwick, the gamekeeper’s widow, equally trapped with her anger and her grief.

  She walked north, keeping to the lower esplanade, and looked at her watch. One-fifteen. Forty-five minutes until the time she’d told the Prof. she’d be on the island. Past the Rendezvous Cafe, where there was a small queue for ice creams at the kiosk, and elderly couples inside tied their dogs’ leads to chair legs while they drank tea. Vera was tempted for a few seconds – she could have murdered a mug of tea – but she was anxious about being late and sauntered on, now taking the top path, which had a better view of the bay, her raincoat over one arm.

  At the wetlands nature reserve there was a group of men in the hide closest to the road, binoculars fixed on the wading birds on the pond, and on the other side of the lake one individual leaned across the fence, looking at the same group. He was too far away for her to make out his features and, besides, she thought now that she wouldn’t recognize Bradford even if she saw him. She should have waited until she’d seen a recent photo, before setting up this crazy meeting. Her own rendezvous. He certainly wouldn’t recognize her, because he hadn’t seen her since she was a girl, though he’d probably have been able to track down a photo on a local news website. He’d surely have had the sense to do that. More sense than her.

  In the car park closest to the island she stopped to look again at the big display that showed the proposed development of the place. A computer-generated image of a glass-and-concrete building. She realized that the new restaurant was very much in the style of the old Seagull and wondered how much say Sinclair had had in the design. And how much money he had invested in the project.

  Now it would be just a short walk across the causeway to the island. She could see the cottages, with the lighthouse behind. She’d checked the tide times before phoning the Prof. and knew that it would be safe to cross until five o’clock. She expected to be back in the station long before that. This was just a ridiculous escape from duty, an excuse to leave her office for half a day.

  She’d started down the slipway towards the path that had been built across the rocks to the island, when there was a disturbance behind her. The siren from an ambulance, on its way down the narrow road from the dual carriageway, pierced the calm afternoon, scattering walkers. It was followed by a police car. Both slowed at the causeway, so that families could pull their children from the concrete path onto the rocks on either side. On the island a uniformed officer jumped out of the police car and started moving the curious onlookers back towards the mainland: ‘Give us a bit of space here, folk. Let the paramedics do their job.’

  Vera was pushing against the flow of the retreating families. Kids were whingeing because their exploration of the rock pools had been cut short, because they hadn’t had the chance to climb the spiral staircase to the top of the lighthouse or spend their money in the visitor-centre shop. She felt a rush of adrenaline, almost of excitement, because she couldn’t believe that whatever incident had attracted the emergency services was a coincidence. She’d arranged to meet the Prof., and now this was happening. They’d needed something new to help bring the inquiry to a close and this might be it.

  The uniformed officer stood in her path. ‘Sorry, love, there’s been an accident.’ His voice not quite rude, but obviously irritated, because the stupid, overweight woman hadn’t realized earlier that he was turning people away.

  She pulled out her warrant card, feeling a ridiculous moment of triumph because she’d found it immediately. She enjoyed his surprise and the sudden change in attitude. ‘What sort of accident?’

  ‘Nothing life-threatening. A bairn climbing around on the rocks to get a better look at the seals fell awkwardly. The first-aider in the visitor centre thought the child’s wrist might be broken. I’m just here to clear a path for the ambulance.’

  Vera felt the adrenaline drain away and realized how ludicrous it had been to suppose that the accident had anything to do with her presence. That was the trouble when you got obsessed with a case: you lost perspective, saw everything through the prism of the investigation. She turned away from the island and began the walk back towards the car park, avoiding the causeway and plodging through the rock pools, occasionally losing her footing and nearly falling. She came ashore close to the culvert and rinsed her sandals in the closest pool, shaking out the grit and pieces of seaweed.

  When she straightened, the crowd had cleared a little, had seemed to realize that any drama was over. On the bank above her she saw a figure looking down at her. The same man who’d been birding on the opposite side of the pond on the wetland reserve, but closer now. There was a sudden jolt of recognition. She was the teenager in Hector’s house in the hills on a freezing winter’s night, hearing a jolly male voice. ‘Hector, you old rogue. I know you’re in there. Let me in. It’s fucking freezing out here.’ Staring out of her icy window and seeing him for a moment, when her father had opened the door and the light from the living room had spilled onto the path. This was the same man. Professor Stephen Bradford. Older, but dressed in almost identical clothes. Tweeds and boots and a waxed jacket. He might even be wearing the same cap. There was the same almost-military bearing. He looked nothing like her image of a poet. He was solid and big-boned but he’d never been overweight, and she realized that they’d been right: there was no way he’d been the fat man drooling over Rebecca Murray in The Seagull. He was too full of his own importance to drool.

  She called out to him, but he was just too far away to hear. As she began to walk up the bank towards him, the police car started back across the causeway, its siren blaring. Vera supposed it was clearing a path for the ambulance, but Bradford must have thought it was coming for him. He’d probably seen Vera talking to the constable on duty, and anyway he’d be as obsessed as she was. He’d always been certain that the world
revolved around him. He turned away, almost running. He must have had his vehicle in the car park, because by the time she pushed her way to the top of the bank there was no sign of him. As she walked back to Whitley Bay to collect her car it started raining.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  There was a sign on the door of the yoga centre at Whitley Bay metro station saying that it was closed for the afternoon. Joe bought himself a coffee in the cafe next door and sat at one of the outside tables while he decided what to do next. He was still running the visit to the prison through his head; he had a sense of something missed, something important. An itch that he couldn’t quite reach to scratch.

  Inside the cafe a group of half a dozen women sat around a table knitting. A couple of ageing hippies, one with purple hair, and three younger women who talking earnestly as the needles clicked. Joe had those down as stay-at-home mothers stealing an hour away from the kids. He couldn’t blame them. As he watched, they gathered up their belongings and made their way out, shouting goodbye to the girl behind the counter. There were a few drops of rain heavy on the glass roof of the station, then a downpour, rain bouncing off the concrete in the uncovered area of platform. The group of women gathered in the archway leading out to the town, waiting for it to ease, before running for their cars. As he left the cafe he saw that one of the older women was in the road, her face turned to the sky, laughing until she was drenched. The watching women cheered and clapped.

  Joe stood on the platform and phoned Holly. ‘Laura’s not here. And I tried her home on the way. Any idea where she might be?’

  ‘You could try Shaftoe House, the rehab centre. She does a weekly session there.’

  He decided that Shaftoe House was on his way back to Kimmerston anyway, so he didn’t bother ringing in advance. His car was parked in a side street close to Whitley Bay metro station, and the standing water in the road was already ankle-deep. He drove to Bebington with the heating on full, in an attempt to dry his feet. In the gloomy afternoon, looking in from the road, the rehab centre looked like something out of a cheap horror film, all turrets and pointed gables. Inside it was overheated and his wet trousers started to steam.

  Joe arrived at the centre just as Laura was finishing her class. They sat in one of the workshop rooms. Ian, the project leader, had showed them into it and he appeared outside in the corridor occasionally throughout the interview, peering through the glass door. Perhaps he’d once had a bad experience with the police and thought Laura needed protecting. Outside it was still raining and it was so dark that they needed the light on.

  Laura wasn’t unfriendly, but she was hardly welcoming. Perhaps, after speaking to Holly, she’d been expecting another visit and was slightly wary.

  Joe introduced himself. ‘I know you spoke to my colleague, but we have more information now and a few more questions. Different questions, perhaps.’

  ‘I’m really not sure how I can help. I told the other woman everything I know.’

  The centre was closing for the day and, through the window, Joe saw a group of clients run giggling from the front door to the bus stop in the street beyond. A couple stopped under the dripping trees to roll cigarettes.

  ‘When DC Clarke talked to you we hadn’t identified both bodies at St Mary’s wetland. As Mary-Frances was a friend of yours, we thought you deserved to hear. It’ll be in the press tomorrow. There’ll be a request for information.’

  ‘One of the bodies was Mary’s?’

  It was impossible to tell what she was thinking, to know if she was upset that her old friend might have been lying in a hole in the rock for so many years. Joe thought she’d always be in control. Of her body and of her thoughts. Perhaps, if you’d been an addict, you’d need that. He wondered if she had a partner, someone with whom she could relax, let down her guard. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We know that the man was Robert Marshall. He was a regular at The Seagull. The young woman was a schoolgirl who went missing in 1995. She’d just started working as a waitress at the club. Her name was Rebecca Murray.’ He looked at the woman, but there seemed to be no reaction to the name. ‘Do you remember working with her? There was a big media campaign when she disappeared.’

  Laura shook her head briefly. ‘Are you saying Mary-Frances might still be alive?’ Again, it was impossible to judge her response to the news. Joe couldn’t help feeling that she was holding back information. The itch that had disturbed him in the prison returned. It was a sense of unease and of connections missed.

  ‘If she is, we think she changed her name.’ Joe was feeling clammy, a bit feverish. He’d never been any good in thundery weather and now he was finding it hard to focus. ‘Did she ever work under a different name when you knew her?’

  The woman thought for a moment. In contrast to Joe, she seemed poised and perfectly cool. ‘Your colleague asked me that,’ she said. ‘And I told her Mary always worked under her own name. She made stuff up, but she was proud of the Italian heritage. It made her stand out.’

  ‘What do you mean – she made stuff up?’

  ‘She was always writing in a notebook. I thought it was a diary, but I looked once when she was out of her head, and it wasn’t. It was stories. Bits of verse.’ Laura glanced up. ‘Made-up stuff.’

  ‘Did she ever talk about it?’

  Laura shook her head. ‘She talked about what she was reading, though. She was always reading. Sometimes she was so excited by a book that she’d read it out loud to me. I didn’t usually get why she thought it was so special.’ A little laugh. It sounded unnatural, as if she didn’t laugh very often, as if she was always serious. ‘Mary was much brainier than me.’ Another pause. ‘Sometimes we talked about what we’d do when we got clean. It was when we were trying to get clean. Again. When we were in here.’ She looked round the room.

  ‘That would have been after Mary-Frances’s daughter had been taken into care and adopted?’

  Laura nodded. ‘It’s hard to believe I’m the same person as I was then. This is where my new life started. I always said I wanted to get fit, get into yoga, not just for the exercise. I was attracted by the spirituality, I think, though I didn’t really understand it then. It filled a gap.’

  ‘And Mary-Frances?’ Joe asked. ‘What was her dream, her ideal future?’ He’d never considered that druggies and winos might have dreams beyond getting their next fix or drink.

  ‘She wanted to get some A levels and then go to university, get a degree and a proper job. She wanted to do English.’

  It occurred to Joe that Stephen Bradford might have made that happen for Mary-Frances. Had she been in Durham, along with the professor? Maybe she’d done her A levels and got herself into further education. But she wouldn’t have called herself Mary-Frances Lascuola if she’d been studying. Holly would have found some record of her existence if she’d been using her real name. ‘You told my colleague you stopped working at The Seagull because you didn’t like some of the things that went on there. What sort of things?’

  Laura was staring out of the window and he could just see her profile, the skin stretched over fine bones. ‘I can’t remember saying that.’

  ‘Did you know Robert Marshall, the dead man?’

  ‘He came to visit Mary-Frances a few times. We were still living in the flat then, but the last time I saw him, we were coming here to Shaftoe House every day. I remember Robbie waiting for her outside thecentre one evening when we’d finished for the day. She didn’t want to speak to him, but he must have said something to persuade her, because she went with him in the end. She told me to go ahead and get the bus back to Whitley and she’d be along later.’

  Laura turned her head so that she was facing him. She had a tiny nose-stud and three small rings in each ear. He’d never been a fan of piercings of any sort, but somehow these looked classy.

  ‘It was about three hours later. I was getting anxious. I wasn’t sure she’d be strong enough if he offered her smack. I wasn’t sure what to do, who to contact. Then I heard her key in the door
.’

  A long silence. Joe thought she was reliving that moment. The relief of her friend appearing. ‘Was she on her own?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how was she?’

  ‘She swore she hadn’t taken anything, but she was in such a strange mood. It was as if she was glittering, hyper. She wouldn’t tell me where she’d been or what Marshall had said to her. She insisted that we went out for supper. There was a Greek place we went to sometimes when we had cash. Not smart at all, but friendly. Run by an elderly guy and his nephew. And the food wasn’t bad. She said it was her treat and, when she opened her purse, I saw there was a lot of cash there.’

  ‘How much cash, would you say?’ Joe tried to keep his voice even. He wanted the question to appear natural, for Laura to think this was an ordinary conversation, not some kind of interrogation. He didn’t want to break the spell that had taken her back more than twenty years.

  ‘I’d say about a hundred pounds.’ Laura gave one of the sharp, quick grins that changed the shape of her face. ‘Not a fortune, but a lot of money in those days and she certainly hadn’t had it that morning.’

  ‘You must have asked her where she’d got it.’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me anything. She said she’d been sworn to secrecy.’ Laura had turned again to look out of the window. It was cloudy with condensation. She rubbed a hole with her palm so that she could see through.

  ‘And the next day?’

  ‘The next day was much the same as usual. We got up, waited for the bus to come to Bebington. I asked her again about Robbie Marshall. “I don’t think he’s a very nice man,” she said. Something like that. “I’m not sure John should trust him.”’

  ‘She meant John Brace?’ Joe tried to put himself in that bus to Bebington. People would be on their way to work, and kids on their way to school. The two women talking. They must have been close. The sort of experiences they’d shared would bring them together. And yet Mary-Frances had kept secrets.