by Ann Cleeves
He stared at them with horror, before collapsing into a chair at a plain wooden table and putting his face in his hands. ‘I can’t believe it.’ It seemed to Vera that he was genuinely distressed and she felt a brief moment of sympathy for him. ‘What have we come to, when a fine old lady is murdered in public?’ He was posh, but local. Brought up in the city, Vera decided. Coddled. He looked as if he could do with a walk in fresh air.
‘You knew her well?’ Holly was sticking her oar in, but at least the priest looked up and answered, and he hadn’t responded to Vera’s comments.
‘She attended regularly and she was always willing to get involved,’ he said. ‘These days most churches only keep going because of the efforts of elderly women. My father was a clergyman and I grew up in a parish in the city. It was much the same even then.’ So there was a family tradition of dressing up in frocks.
‘We’re trying to trace her family.’ At least Holly wasn’t fidgeting with the electric gadget, but was giving the man her full concentration. ‘Can you help with that at all?’
‘I don’t think I can. She lived over the road in the Harbour Guest House. Perhaps Mrs Dewar would know. They were almost like family. Margaret used to bring the children to Sunday School.’
They sat for a moment in silence.
‘Margaret worked as a volunteer with you?’
‘Yes.’ He seemed preoccupied. Vera wondered if he was trying to rearrange the cleaning rota, to think of another old woman to take Margaret’s place. At last he gave his full attention to the matter. ‘Yes, at the Haven.’
Vera decided it was time for her to take over. ‘The Haven is a refuge for battered women?’
Again, it seemed that a simple answer was beyond him. ‘No, not really. It’s a hostel for homeless women. Some of them might have left home because of domestic abuse, but we care for any woman in trouble who needs accommodation. Some have been in prison, some have been in care.’
‘And it’s run by the church?’
‘It’s run by a charitable trust. I’m one of the trustees, along with a senior social worker and a local accountant. But, as a church, we support the project. Financially, practically and with our prayers. Margaret worked miracles with some of the women. She became a surrogate mother to them, I think. They’ll miss her very much.’
‘Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Margaret?’ The fumes from the gas fire made Vera feel light-headed, almost faint.
‘Of course not!’ The response was immediate. ‘This couldn’t be the action of a rational person, Inspector. This was an evil and random act of violence. A sign of the times.’
‘Did she have any close friends among your congregation?’ Holly’s tone was respectful, and again he answered her in a more considered way. He faced her so that his back was turned to Vera.
‘Close friends? No.’ He hesitated and then seemed to choose his words carefully. ‘A church is a community of different personalities. Of course we should treat each other with Christian charity, but we’re only human.’
Vera interrupted. ‘And get a bunch of women together and you have cliques and bitching. Must be a nightmare!’
He turned to her and for the first time he smiled. ‘It’s not always easy.’
‘Did Margaret belong to any one group?’ Vera again. The stuffy atmosphere in the small room was oppressive. She’d prefer to be out in the clear, cold air, and she wanted to move the conversation on.
‘No,’ the priest said. ‘She hated the gossip and kept herself rather apart. That’s what I mean when I say she had no close friends. She was always perfectly pleasant and played her part fully in the life of the church, but I don’t think she confided in anyone.’
‘Not even you?’
‘No.’ This time the smile was a little sad. ‘Not even me.’
‘And this hostel. The Haven? Where can we find it?’
‘It’s the former rectory.’ This time Gruskin’s smile was tight-lipped, even resentful. ‘In different times it might have been my home, I suppose. When the status of the clergy was rather different. Even in my father’s day the parish priest lived there. But now it’s hard to justify such a large house for a single man, and the diocese lets it to the charity at a reasonable rent. It’s a little way out of the town. That’s where the main settlement was, before commercial fishing took over from farming.’ He gave a sigh and Vera thought he would have been much happier as a Victorian priest, living in the big rectory, mixing socially with the gentry and delivering sermons to the peasants in the back pews.
‘You won’t get there tonight,’ he said. ‘There’s not much of a road and in this weather . . . The women always grumble about the isolation. I’m not sure it’s the best place for them to be.’
Outside it was quieter. The chip shop had closed and all the curtains in the Harbour Guest House had been drawn. The snow was covered with a hard sheen of frost. Gruskin shivered. For a long while he didn’t move. Vera thought he must be freezing, with only the thin cloak over his shoulders to keep him warm. At last he set off down the pavement away from them. When Vera turned to look at him she saw that he was talking into a mobile phone.
Chapter Eight
Malcolm Kerr stood at the bar in the Coble. Behind him four elderly men were playing dominoes, rowing about the kitty or whose turn it was to go to the bar. It seemed to Malcolm that the same four men had been sitting at the same table, always arguing, since his father had first brought him to the pub. Their squabbling voices and the screaming of gulls had made up the background music of his life.
Nothing in this place has changed for thirty years.
Except tonight Malcolm was drunk and he couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. Maybe when Fat Val was the landlady and he was young and fit and a bit of a firebrand. There was a painting of Val over the bar and she stared out at him reproachfully. She’d had a son called Rick, sly and weaselly, and remembering the two of them, Malcolm felt a sudden pang of guilt. He carried guilt around with him like extra pounds round the belly and he was so used to it that often he didn’t notice it. He wasn’t sure that he could blame the drink for that. These days he wasn’t usually a heavy drinker – he’d stop in the Coble most evenings after working in the boatyard. Have a couple of pints. Read the Chronicle. Watch Look North on TV if there was no sport on the set. Then take himself back to his little house in Percy Street – all that he could afford after the divorce.
But tonight he’d lost count of the drinks he’d had. Beer first and then red wine, when his bladder wouldn’t take pints any more. No spirits, though. He was proud that he hadn’t moved on to the Scotch. And proud that he was still standing.
The only conversation he’d had was with Jonny the barman, and to jeer at the old slag, Dee, as she wandered through the pub trying to bum drinks or pick up punters. God, he thought, you’d have to be desperate. Another moment of pride, because he hadn’t sunk to that.
Then through the drunken fug he was aware of a buzz of conversation behind him. Sudden animated voices. A name he recognized, even though it wasn’t pronounced properly. He turned to confront a middle-aged couple. He knew them vaguely by sight, thought he might have been at school with the man, but couldn’t trawl a name from his memory.
‘What did you say?’
‘There’s been a murder.’ The woman was scrawny. She’d taken off her jacket and was wearing a pink V-necked top. He could see vertical wrinkles between her breasts. ‘It stopped the Metro.’
‘Nah,’ Malcolm said. ‘That was the snow.’ He reached out for his glass of wine, saw in the mirror over the bar that it had left stains like fangs at the corner of his mouth, and wiped them away with the back of his hand. His fingers were callused and grimy, though he’d washed before leaving work.
‘There was a murder.’ The woman’s voice was high-pitched and carried across the bar. The room went quiet as everyone listened and she revelled in the attention. ‘Wor lass is married to one of the community support offic
ers, and she just texted us. It’ll be on the late news.’
‘Did they tell you who got killed?’ But Malcolm thought he knew already.
‘She lived just up the road here.’ The woman’s excitement was obvious. Malcolm thought if she were given the chance to view the body, she’d be there in the mortuary. Staring. Drooling almost. ‘They called her Margaret. She had a strange second name.’
‘Krukowski.’
‘Aye, that’s it!’ She looked at him with more interest now and something like respect. ‘Did you know her then?’
He paused for a moment and pushed himself away from the bar. ‘Once,’ he said. ‘A long time ago.’ He stood for a moment to get his balance and then he stumbled out into the cold.
In the street he had to stop again to steady himself by leaning against an overflowing bin. The fish shop was dark and the road was quiet. Suddenly his head was full of memories and pictures: a sunny day on the boat out to Coquet Island, a woman in a long floaty skirt and sandals, a wine glass in her hand and laughing. A group of people standing outside the Coble to have their photo taken. Then the flames of a fire licking across wood like a snake’s tongue, and the smell of smoke and tar.
It occurred to him that he could knock at the door of the guest house and ask snooty Kate for news of Margaret, but the cold had sobered him sufficiently for him to realize that wasn’t a good idea. He’d catch Ryan in the morning and get the information from him.
He walked towards the illuminated Metro sign. The priest, Peter Gruskin, was walking in the opposite direction, and for a moment Malcolm wondered where he was going. Surely not to the pub? But as Malcolm turned down the alley towards Percy Street, he saw that the man had changed direction and was following him, walking so quickly that the black cloak swung behind him, making him look like a huge, swooping black bird. Gruskin looked so odd – so unlike a human – that Malcolm felt a moment of unease and was tempted to run for home like a child frightened by imagined monsters. But the priest took the footbridge over the Metro line towards the town and Malcolm continued on his way. The alley had the bulk of St Batholomew’s Church on one side and only one light at each end, so his shadow was thrown ahead and then behind him on the hard-packed snow. Malcolm was taken by an overwhelming need to relieve himself and, looking quickly around, pissed where he stood against the spiked fence that separated the Metro line from the path. He thought he heard voices at the Metro end of the alley and, embarrassed, turned away quickly and hurried home.
Inside the house it was almost as cold as in the street, and this was a damp cold that clawed into his bones. In the living room he switched on the light and the gas fire and saw the room as if for the first time. Soulless. This place is soulless.
It had the same patterned carpet that had been in the place when he’d bought it, a mock-leather sofa and a glass-topped coffee table. A television.
I’ve worked my bollocks off for fifty years and this is all I have to show for it.
And a decent boat, he thought, and at least that notion gave him a brief moment of comfort. The Lucy-May had been worth fighting for, and Deborah hadn’t got her hands on that. He switched on the set, thinking he would catch the late local news. Still standing in his coat, he found that the earlier memories were spinning round his head again: fractured light on the water, bouncing onto the face of a young woman laughing. The warm planks of the deck on his back, and terns overhead weaving weird shapes in the sky. Then the whiplash sound of snapping wood and the gunshots of sparks as the fire took hold.
As he waited for the news to come on, Malcolm shook his head to dispel the pictures that crowded his head, and went to the window to shut the curtains. It came to him that he would never again see Margaret Krukowski walk down Harbour Street on her way to church or the Metro, her back straight and her eyes fixed ahead. Her mind full of charity and good works. She could make no more demands. He wasn’t sure whether the thought pleased or dismayed him.
Chapter Nine
They stood outside on the pavement. Vera stamped her feet. An attempt to keep warm, but also to wake herself up.
‘What shall we do now?’ Holly would never be the first one to call it a day. Her working life was spent persuading her colleagues that she was less of a wimp than the rest of them. ‘Do you want to try this hostel?’
‘Nah,’ Vera said. ‘We’ll go tomorrow when the weather’s better.’
‘Well then?’ Patience had never been one of Holly Clarke’s virtues.
‘Get off home,’ Vera said. ‘You live in town, don’t you? The roads should be okay. Briefing in the morning, eight o’clock sharp. Paul Keating is planning the post-mortem at ten.’
‘What will you do?’ More curiosity than concern. The whole team thought she was mad to live in her father’s house at the top of a hill, regularly cut off by snow and floods.
‘Ah, don’t worry about me, Hol. I’ll find a bed for the night.’
They walked together to the end of Harbour Street, surprised on the way by the sound of a train pulling into the station. The Metro system was open again. Everything was back to normal.
Vera stood in the street and watched Holly drive off. She was tempted by the light and the warmth of the Coble, could taste the fire of a whisky sliding down her throat. But a woman on her own in a pub in Mardle would attract attention. She might not be dressed like the big lass in the fishnet tights, but folk would stare and wonder all the same.
On impulse she walked back to Kate Dewar’s guest house. Her Land Rover was still parked outside, the windscreen now covered with ice. The lock was frozen and she had to tug on the handle to get the door open. In the back was her bag. A change of underwear and a toothbrush and toothpaste. She always kept it with her, just in case.
She knocked on the door. No reply. She knocked again and this time she heard footsteps. Kate Dewar appeared. Behind her stood a man. He was older than Kate, in his late fifties or early sixties, dressed in a checked shirt and a sweater. A grey beard and a weather-beaten face. Vera looked at her watch. Nine-thirty.
‘Oh, it’s you.’ Kate’s voice was a mixture of irritation and relief.
‘Why, who did you think it might have been?’
‘I’ve had the press on the phone. The Newcastle papers.’
Of course, Vera thought, the death of an elderly woman wouldn’t be sufficiently glamorous for the nationals.
‘I’ve switched off the phone, but that’s not brilliant for business.’ She seemed close to tears, the petty inconveniences pushing her near the edge.
‘Of course,’ Vera said. ‘It’s about business that I’m here. Your business. I wonder if you have a bed for the night? Full rate, of course. I’d need an early breakfast. Only I live halfway up Cheviot and I don’t fancy trying to get home in this. It’s always ten times worse away from the coast. I’d be very grateful.’
And suddenly Kate clicked into professional mode. ‘Of course. Come on in. Room six is free. Can I get you some tea in the lounge?’ Talking just a little too quickly and glancing at Vera every now and again, thinking there might be something more sinister behind the apparently simple request.
Vera didn’t answer immediately. She leaned against the door and stretched out her hand round Kate towards the man. ‘I’m Vera Stanhope. Good to meet you.’
‘This is Stuart Booth, my fiancé.’ The woman’s face lit up with a huge beam. She looked like a teenager in love for the first time. Vera tried to think if she’d ever felt like that.
‘Then good to meet you, Stuart.’ Vera smiled. His handshake was dry and firm. ‘You know what I’d really love? It’s been a bugger of a day. A real drink. Don’t suppose you’ve got a licence?’
‘A residents’ licence? Of course.’
Vera beamed at her. ‘Then I’ll have a large Scotch. And why don’t you two come and join me. I expect you could use a drink – the day that you’ve had.’ She pulled off her wellingtons and padded into the lounge in her stockinged feet, leaving Kate and Stuart no choice but to
follow. She sat in one of the leather chairs, waited for Kate to pour the drinks and then held her glass in both hands and looked at them. ‘How long have you been together then?’
They looked at each other. ‘About a year.’ Stuart’s voice was northern, but not local. Yorkshire?
‘Stuart teaches at the kids’ school.’ Kate looked at him as if he was some sort of miracle, as if she could hardly believe that he was real.
‘How does that work? Must be a nightmare to have your teacher turning up and telling tales to your mam.’ Vera set the glass on the arm of the chair.
‘None of us finds it easy. And, really, I’d never tell tales.’ He had a way of speaking slowly that was very precise, as if he was considering every word. He took Kate’s hand.
My God, Vera thought, they are like a pair of teenagers.
‘You knew Margaret Krukowski?’
‘Of course,’ Stuart said. ‘She was like one of the family.’ He gave a shy smile. ‘She was going to give Kate away at the wedding.’
‘You’ve planned your wedding then?’ Vera was tempted to ask why they’d bother, but held her tongue.
‘Well, we’ve fixed a date.’
‘When did you last see Margaret?’
‘At the weekend.’ He looked at Kate for confirmation and she nodded. ‘The kids were out and we invited her down for supper.’
‘You don’t live here then?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I stay over sometimes, but as you said, Chloe and Ryan find it awkward. We think they’ll find it easier to accept when we’re married.’
There was a silence. Stuart slid his arm around Kate’s shoulder. Vera felt uncomfortable, as if she were intruding, and thought the kids must feel like this all the time.
‘What do you teach, Stuart?’ Small talk had never come easily to her. It was one of the few things that she and Hector had had in common. She thought the man sitting opposite might struggle with it too.