The Seagull

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘She could be round at her neighbours’ place. You know what mobile reception’s like up there.’ But Holly knew that Vera wasn’t at the neighbours’ home.

  Joe turned round and looked at them. ‘What should we do? I think we need an armed-response team out. We know Bradford’s a killer, and he’ll be desperate.’

  ‘No!’ Suddenly Holly was prepared to take responsibility for a decision. She knew that would be the last thing Vera would want, even if Bradford was at her house. Even if he was threatening her life. She’d see it as an admission of failure and she’d hate the drama. ‘We have to trust her, don’t we? She knows the man, and she got in touch with him and arranged to meet him in Whitley Bay this afternoon. She must think she can talk to him. She wants a confession. An explanation. After all this time, there’s no proof.’

  ‘She hasn’t seen him since she was a kid, and this afternoon she arranged to meet him in a public place, not at a house in the middle of nowhere.’ Joe’s default position was always caution. ‘I’m not prepared to take that risk.’

  ‘Vera would take it,’ Charlie said. Not his usual mumble. The words came out loud and clear. ‘I think Holly’s right. No panic, and keep it low-key. We’ll go ourselves.’

  * * *

  They went in Charlie’s car and he was driving. He said this had been his patch for years and he knew all the shortcuts. Holly was beside him and Joe was in the back. His choice. Nobody spoke as the car raced down the narrow country roads. They soon left the flatlands behind, and the hedges and overgrown verges were replaced by drystone walls as they climbed into the hills. The weather had changed again; it was no longer muggy and damp, but breezy with sharp, gusty showers. Holly shivered and Charlie reached down to switch on the heating. They flashed through a village, with a couple of street lights and a row of dark cottages. Then they were moving up the familiar track towards the house where Vera had lived since she was a child.

  Charlie pulled into a farm gateway when they still had a couple of hundred yards to go. ‘We don’t want to warn him, do we?’ He snapped off the headlights and switched off the engine. Everything quiet.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ Holly had turned to face Joe.

  ‘She doesn’t close her curtains. Let’s see what’s going on. Then we decide.’

  Holly was wondering what Vera would make of this, the three of them riding to her rescue when she probably didn’t need rescuing. Would she give one of those uncontrollable laughs that had her in tears, or would she have one of her cold, white rages? But better this than flashing blue lights and an armed-response team. They began walking towards the house, feeling their way, occasionally straying from the track into the cropped grass on either side. There was a bend in the road and there was more light then, because Joe had been right and light was spilling out through the windows. Bradford’s smart car was parked outside. By now they all recognized the registration number. That was when they smelled the smoke and saw that the light in the house wasn’t the steady glow of electricity, but that the place was on fire. There were flames licking around the front door, poking through the gap between the door and the lintel, as if they were struggling to escape.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Vera had been sitting in Hector’s chair closest to the fire. Bradford sat in the upright that looked comfortable enough, but knackered your back if you were in it too long. In her father’s day, that one had always been hers. Classic Hector.

  ‘Aren’t you going to offer me a drink, Vera? For old times’ sake.’

  ‘Nah, pet. I only drink with my friends. Not with criminals.’

  ‘Hector was a criminal. In purely legal terms. I’m sure you had a few drinks with him.’ But Bradford was less sure of himself now. Vera thought he was feeling his way through the conversation. Bradford had only had Hector’s opinion of Vera to work on, when he’d planned this encounter, and Hector had been dismissive of his daughter. Vera could tell that Bradford hadn’t expected her to be so strong, so hard to intimidate, and she felt a surge of confidence.

  ‘He wasn’t a killer.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  So that’s how you’re going to play it. You’re going to blame it all on Hector. Not sodding likely. ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘Because we know, you see. We know what happened. All those years ago, and again last week when Gary Keane died. We know the full story.’

  Bradford tried to lean back in the chair but it forced him upright again. Vera wasn’t sure why she’d kept it. Perhaps for moments like these. ‘I very much doubt that, you know.’ His voice oily. Too rich for her stomach. ‘But why don’t you talk me through it? Why don’t you tell me the story as you know it?’

  ‘We’ll start with the Gang of Four, shall we? Hector, Robbie Marshall, John Brace and you. Odd friends. All misfits of a kind. Just held together by a shared interest and an old-fashioned image of the English countryside, which you believed should only belong to people like you. Hector thought he was the leader, but you were always the young pretender, the power behind the throne.’

  Vera saw a smile flit over Bradford’s face and she thought he liked that. It was pathetic, but he needed to be told he was important. All those awards and accolades for his poetry and he still needed a middle-aged woman’s opinion to boost his self-esteem.

  ‘We were great friends, you know,’ he said. ‘Real friends.’

  ‘You all had your separate lives,’ Vera went on. He might not have spoken. ‘Hector got more set in his ways, drank too much, probably became a liability. It must have been a relief when he died. You followed your academic career, became a famous poet, got married. Had a child.’ She glanced up at him but there was no reaction and she continued, ‘Divorced. John Brace married and used his profession to further his own ends. Robbie Marshall was the strangest of the lot of you. Not really interested in fame, like you; or money, like John Brace. His interest was in doing deals. Making things happen. Pleasing the rest of you.’

  ‘Robbie was always a little…’ Bradford paused to choose the right word, ‘… feral.’

  ‘Eh, pet, you can be snobby about him now, but you didn’t mind him doing your dirty work for you then.’ She looked up. ‘And you included him when you socialized. He’s there in the photos. The Gang of Four out for public viewing. Dinner at The Seagull every now and again to celebrate your successes—’

  He interrupted again. ‘To celebrate our friendship.’

  She let that go. ‘Then John Brace fell in love. Hector was out of it by then. Not really part of the team, but Brace needed your help, didn’t he? Yours and Robbie’s. To rescue the woman of his dreams.’

  There was a silence. Perhaps Bradford had realized by now that she did know the story. Most of it, at least. She threw an apple log onto the fire and watched it flare, thought she could smell the fruit in it.

  ‘The lovely Mary-Frances.’ Bradford spoke almost in a whisper.

  ‘So you were taken with her too,’ Vera said. ‘I did wonder.’

  ‘Oh, we were all a bit in love with Mary-Frances. Even Robbie Marshall, and I’d never seen him have a sexual impulse of any sort before.’ The man stared at the flames.

  Vera went on with her story. ‘Brace pulled a few strings and got her taken on at The Seagull, but that wasn’t a good place for her to be. She was an addict and she needed more support than Sinclair was willing to give. Especially after she lost her daughter. And there were things going on at the club that even Gus Sinclair couldn’t control. So, she started the rehab course at Shaftoe House.’

  ‘But John didn’t like her being there.’ Bradford took over the tale. ‘He knew the sort of people she’d be mixing with. He couldn’t see how she’d stay straight.’

  ‘Besides, she’d upset someone, hadn’t she? She’d been to A&E not long before, badly beaten up, broken bones. Had one of her old punters refused to take no for an answer? Someone powerful that she needed to escape from? John could protect her from the police, but he admitted to me himself that t
here were people even he was scared of.’

  Bradford looked into the fire and said nothing.

  ‘So you had a brainwave,’ Vera said. ‘You’d ship her out into the country. The magic countryside that you all believed in – the place you thought would cure all her ills.’

  He stared straight at her. ‘Don’t sneer, Vera. You live here, don’t you? How long would you last in a town?’

  She didn’t have an answer to that, so she went on, ‘You called on your old friend Hector to help out. Did he know anyone who might take in a young lass who needed to hide for a while? To hide from her pimp, and from herself. Who could help her to stay clean. No matter that he couldn’t look after his own daughter, never mind some other bugger’s.’

  Bradford gave a little laugh. ‘I never expected him to do it.’

  ‘No, but he knew a couple who would. Lovely pair who’d never had a child of their own. They lived right next door to him. Norma and Davy Kerr took her in and told the world she was their niece. And Hector got paid every month for setting it up and keeping an eye. The money went through Robbie Marshall, of course. Robbie the fixer, who could make anything happen. Hector might have been one of the Gang of Four, but John Brace knew he was unreliable and he wouldn’t have wanted any cash traced back to him.’ Vera wondered if Hector had passed any of that money on to Norma and Davy. She hoped he had, but suspected it had all gone on rare birds’ eggs and cheap whisky.

  ‘Mary-Frances did an access course while she was living there,’ Bradford said. ‘Took her A levels and got a place at university. She still went back to the farm at weekends and during the vacations, though.’

  And Hector still got his five hundred pounds a month, right until the time Robbie Marshall disappeared.

  ‘Did she go to your place? Durham?’

  He nodded. Proud. ‘She got a first. I wanted her to do an MA, but she had other plans. A social conscience.’

  Aye, she told Alison Mackie she wanted to be a social worker.

  ‘But she didn’t study under her own name. What did she call herself while she was there?’

  ‘Hope,’ Bradford said. ‘Hope Lethbridge.’

  ‘Of course.’ Now Vera was enjoying herself. ‘I bet you dreamed that one up. Being a poet and all. Very significant, Hope. And of course I’ve heard that name recently too. In a very different situation.’ She was tempted to explain, to show how clever her team had been, but she didn’t want to get ahead of herself. This was a tale that had to be told in order. ‘I met Mary-Frances, you know. Or Hope, as she was calling herself then. At Hector’s funeral. She was there with Norma and Davy.’

  ‘We were all there,’ Bradford said, ‘to give him a good send-off.’

  There was a moment of silence, broken by the wind rattling the loose slates on the roof. Vera continued her story. ‘In the meantime, Robbie Marshall could see that he wouldn’t have a long-term future at the shipyard. His contract with the receivers was coming to an end. Perhaps Gus Sinclair was already planning his retreat to Glasgow. Robbie decided he should start making moves in that direction too. But he thought he’d go straight to the organ-grinder instead of dealing with the monkey.’ She allowed herself a little smile at that, though she knew Bradford wouldn’t understand the significance.

  ‘Robbie always did have ambitions beyond his intelligence,’ Bradford said. It was almost as if he and Vera were on the same side now. The tension between them seemed to have dissipated. ‘Yes, he started to ingratiate himself with Gus’s father, Alec.’

  ‘Who was spending more and more time in The Seagull,’ Vera said. ‘Washing all his dirty money through the business, recognizing Elaine as a competent woman who’d make a better business partner than his son. Until a schoolgirl died. I suspect that was the reason for the fire at The Seagull. It had nothing to do with insurance fraud – who cared if it was losing money, as long as it was laundering all his cash? It was about Alec covering his traces and heading back north.’

  Bradford looked across at Vera. ‘You do know the old man is dead?’

  She nodded, decided she’d better get a shift on, if this wasn’t going to take all night. ‘Alec Sinclair had a taste for very young women, and Robbie helped him to indulge his fancy by setting him up with a schoolgirl called Rebecca Murray.’ Vera looked at Bradford. ‘Do you know what happened that night exactly? Do you know how she died?’

  ‘No!’ He seemed horrified. ‘Really, Vera, I wouldn’t have had anything to do with that.’

  ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t, pet. After all, you had a daughter of your own by then, didn’t you?’

  There was no response. Outside the wind was getting even stronger. Vera was tempted to get up and draw the curtains to shut out the weather, but again she thought she needed to move on more quickly. There was still a lot more of the story to tell. ‘I’m not entirely sure what happened next.’ Her voice was brusque now. She didn’t have time for games. ‘Two of the people involved aren’t talking and the other two are dead.’ She looked at Bradford. ‘Were you there that night? The 23rd June, when the poor lass died? Did they call you out when Alec Sinclair killed the girl? Did they ask your advice?’

  ‘No,’ he said. Shut his mouth tight, to show there was nothing more to say.

  ‘Let’s move on a couple of days. It was 25th June. The others were out in the hills with Hector. Robbie was nervy and jumpy. Hardly surprising, because he had a body to dispose of. Rebecca Murray, killed by old man Sinclair. But he must have realized John Brace couldn’t get involved. Even our John would baulk at covering up the murder of a young schoolgirl from a respectable family. Hector was already unreliable. So Robbie had to deal with it himself. Brace told me he was meeting an informant at St Mary’s that night, but I think it was Mary-Frances that he’d arranged to see. I imagine they’d planned a romantic walk in the moonlight, followed by a night in a swanky Tynemouth hotel. She wasn’t a prisoner up here in the hills.’

  In her mind, Vera was there on the headland with Mary-Frances, looking out over the bay and waiting for her lover. ‘Brace kept as close to the truth as possible when he told me about that night. He did come across Robbie Marshall’s car by chance. But Marshall wasn’t dead then. He was very much alive and he was getting rid of Rebecca Murray’s body.’ She paused. ‘Who killed Robbie, Prof.?’ Her voice very soft, almost persuasive. ‘Was it Brace? Did he decide that Marshall was getting too dangerous to handle? That he had to be stopped before Brace got caught up in the scandal that was bound to surround him? Or was it Mary-Frances? Did she see what had happened to that poor girl and snap? Pick up one of the boulders lying on the shore and smash it on Marshall’s head as he was bending to put the body in the culvert. I think Mary-Frances realized in that moment that the dead girl could have been her. Because the man who’d beaten her up was Alec Sinclair and that was why she’d had to disappear so dramatically.’

  ‘I wasn’t there, Vera. I can’t tell you.’ He shifted in the uncomfortable seat again. ‘But I can tell you this: if you try to charge Mary-Frances, John will confess. He’d rather spend the rest of his life in prison than see that woman in court.’

  Vera was thinking about that, thinking she’d been right about John Brace being romantic to the point of soppy, when the lights snapped out.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Bradford seemed more thrown by the sudden darkness than Vera was. She knew that every time there was a bit of a gale, the power would go off. There was a faulty wire up to the two houses, which the electricity board had promised to fix but had somehow never got round to. She found her way to the front door and saw that Jack and Joanna’s farmhouse had been blacked out too. The problem would get sorted in the morning, and until then there were candles and the Tilley lamp. The candles were still in saucers on the mantelpiece, left over from the last time this had happened, and there were a few matches remaining in the box, from when she’d lit the fire. When she’d got the candles alight, she saw that Bradford hadn’t moved. There’d been a small grunt of shock a
nd then he’d seemed frozen. The Tilley was on the wide windowsill and she soon had that going too, lighting the wick and then pumping the brass handle until it glowed white.

  Bradford leaned forward as soon as she took her seat again. His face was lit on one side by the embers of the fire, and on the other by the harsh white glare of the lantern. He’d been preparing his pitch while she’d been fannying on to bring some light to the situation. ‘Don’t you think we’ve got the right outcome here, Vera? Nothing will bring the little schoolgirl back, and the man who killed her is dead. John Brace is ill and up for parole. Let him and his love spend their last years in peace.’ There was a slight sneering emphasis on the word ‘love’.

  Vera was distracted for a moment. ‘Have you ever loved anyone?’

  He gave a choking little laugh, astonished by the question, then he answered all the same. ‘Not my wife, certainly. That was a disaster from the start. I loved Hector, my mentor and good friend.’ He made his voice earnest. ‘He’d have known what the best thing to do here is. He’d have let things rest.’

  She wanted to tell him to stop playing her for a fool, that she didn’t give a damn about what Hector would have done. But she had other, more important things to say. ‘What about your daughter? You do care for her? You gave her the bookshop in Bebington, after all.’

  ‘Ah, I gathered you knew about Felicity.’ Another little laugh. ‘Perhaps Hector did underestimate your intelligence after all.’

  There was a moment of silence, then she was aware of the background hiss of the lamp and the wind still gusting outside.

  ‘You know I can’t let it rest,’ she said. ‘You and Hector got it wrong for all those years, thinking it was clever to break the rules. Stealing eggs. Trading in raptors.’

  ‘They were very foolish rules.’ His voice was amused. He could have been talking to one of his less bright students.