Vera Stanhope 06 - Harbour Street

by Ann Cleeves

  Chapter Thirteen

  Vera had found a cafe in the centre of Mardle on the other side of the street from the health centre. A new place with a hissing coffee machine and fancy buns. She’d already been into the medical centre and had been told by an unhelpful receptionist that Margaret Krukowski wasn’t a patient and that she couldn’t tell the inspector if, or where, Margaret had been treated for cancer. Vera drank tea and ate a sandwich, feeling virtuous because she chose wholemeal bread. When she finished eating she got Holly on the phone. ‘I need to track down Margaret’s GP. Can you sort that for me, Hol?’

  And Holly, still mellow because she’d be all over the local media, agreed without a murmur.

  Now the lunchtime rush was over and nobody seemed to mind Vera sitting there. The floor was swimming with slush brought in on people’s boots. She was waiting for Joe Ashworth and found herself grinning, wondering how he’d got on in the women’s refuge. Had they eaten him alive?

  He came in, his collar turned up against the weather. He always looked smart. A call-out at four in the morning and he’d turn up with a freshly ironed shirt and a suit. Something to do with the Protestant work ethic? Or a wife with nothing better to do than look after her man? Vera called for a fresh pot of tea and a couple of scones and ordered her thoughts back to the matter in hand.

  ‘Anything useful?’

  ‘Aye, I think so.’ Joe poured tea. ‘Margaret worked at the Haven the morning before she died. Somebody gave her a lift there. One of the women saw her get out of the car.’

  ‘But didn’t see the driver . . .’ Vera knew Ashworth. He’d not have been able to save the good news, if he had any.

  ‘I wondered if it might have been the priest,’ Joe said. ‘The church is involved with the place.’

  ‘Aye, maybe.’ But Peter Gruskin hadn’t mentioned it and he didn’t seem the sort to hide his good works.

  ‘The lass did see the car, though. Old silver Golf. X-reg.’ Joe cut open his scone and buttered it tidily. Vera had already eaten hers. ‘She’s an ex-offender car nut. Done for TWOC, driving without insurance, reckless driving. So I reckon she knows what she’s talking about.’

  Vera tried to remember if she’d seen a car like that in Harbour Street, but it didn’t ring any bells. George Enderby, the publisher’s rep, would drive something newer and more efficient. She’d always supposed that the Renault parked outside the guest house belonged to Kate Dewar. ‘Check out what Gruskin drives.’

  ‘There’s another woman they think we should talk to.’ Joe wiped the crumbs from his fingers with a paper napkin. ‘Dee Robson. I’ve checked her out too. A record that goes back twenty years. D&D. Soliciting. Shoplifting. Lives in a flat in Percy Street, but mostly to be found in the Coble drinking away her benefit, when she can’t find a punter daft enough to buy her a drink.’

  ‘I think I saw her.’ Vera remembered the woman in the fishnets, and the jeers that followed her out of the pub. ‘What could Margaret have to do with her?’

  ‘She used to stay in the Haven and Margaret befriended her. Still acted as a kind of mentor, once Dee got thrown out of the refuge for getting pissed and taking men back to the place.’

  ‘Margaret was ill,’ Vera said suddenly, realizing she hadn’t yet shared this information with Joe. It had been playing on her mind since the post-mortem, and even as she’d been listening to him. ‘Possibly terminally ill. Bowel cancer. Paul Keating thought she might not have survived very much longer anyway. I’m not sure if she’d seen a doctor. But if she knew . . . She was religious, wasn’t she? Maybe there was an idea of setting her affairs in order.’ She slapped her hands on the table in front of her. ‘I need to know where she’d been before she got onto the Metro that day.’ She stood up suddenly.

  ‘Where are we going?’ He hadn’t finished his tea.

  ‘To see Dee Robson. Alcoholic and occasional sex worker.’ Vera stamped across the wet floor to the counter and ordered a bag of cakes to take out.

  The snow in the street had turned to a grey mess and it was drizzling, rain mixed with sleet. The flat was in a Sixties box, built at the end of a street of 1930s houses, and Dee lived at the top on the third floor. It wasn’t as grim as an inner-city tower block, but there was graffiti all over the stairwell and the inevitable smell of piss and damp concrete. The door looked as if someone had recently tried to batter it in. An over-enthusiastic client or something more sinister? Joe knocked. Nothing. Vera banged on the door with the palm of her hand and shouted, ‘Come on, pet. Let us in. We’re not here to hurt you.’

  There was a movement behind the door, but still it didn’t open. Vera pulled Margaret’s keys from her bag and tried the one they hadn’t yet identified. The door opened. One mystery solved, then. Dee Robson stood just inside, legs apart, braced for a fight. When she saw Vera she spoke with loud and righteous indignation.

  ‘Hey, lady, you can’t just let yourself into my home!’

  Vera took no notice and looked around her. If she hadn’t known better she’d have thought the flat was derelict. There was the same smell as in the stairwell. Mould grew where the walls and the window frames met. There was no carpet on the floor, which was sticky underfoot. Through an open door she saw the bedroom. Here there was a stained rug and a double mattress covered with a shiny pink quilt. In there Dee must entertain the men, so desperate or so drunk that they’d been persuaded home with her.

  They stood for a moment in the hall, staring at each other. ‘Well?’ the woman demanded. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ She was wearing tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie and it smelled as if she’d been sleeping in them for days. She hadn’t cleaned off the make-up of the night before and the mascara had run down her cheeks. She’d been crying.

  ‘You’ve heard about Margaret,’ Vera said.

  Dee nodded. ‘They were talking about it in the Coble last night. Then it was on the news this morning. You’re the police.’ Not a question.

  She wandered into the living room and they followed her. Again the floor was bare. A Formica kitchen table stood against one wall, with two plastic stools at each side. There was an easy chair, the shape of springs visible through the orange fabric, and in the corner on the floor stood a small flat-screen television.

  ‘Margaret gave you the telly.’ Vera nodded towards it.

  ‘Aye. She said she didn’t watch it much anyway, and I’d have gone crazy on my own in this place without one.’ Still the woman was wary. ‘I didn’t nick it, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘We’re here to ask about Margaret. She was your friend, and you might be able to help us find out who killed her.’ Vera kept her voice gentle.

  Joe Ashworth was hovering just inside the door as if he was worried he might catch something. He must have been in hundreds of scuzzy houses since joining the police service, but the way some people lived still horrified him.

  Just wait until your Jessie becomes a student. Vera gave a quick secret smile.

  ‘Have you got tea, Dee?’ Vera asked brightly. ‘Milk? I’m gasping for a cuppa and we’ve brought cakes. I never go visiting empty-handed.’

  The woman looked at her as if she hadn’t understood a word.

  ‘Off you go, Joe. Kettle on. And if you can’t find what you want, nip out to the shop. Dee and me are going to have a chat.’

  ‘There’s milk!’ Dee seemed suddenly to come to life. ‘Margaret brought it with her when she came to visit. She always brings milk. She knows I forget.’

  ‘When did she last call round?’ Vera asked. She landed on a stool. Dee took the easy chair. In the kitchen there was the sound of a tap being switched on. Joe would be scrubbing the mugs.

  ‘Yesterday lunchtime. She said she was on her way into town.’

  ‘Did she say where she was going?’ Vera tried to imagine the elegant, well-dressed woman Joe had described from the train, sitting in this room, drinking tea from the stained mugs and talking to Dee.

  ‘No, just that she had business to sort out.’
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  Vera supposed that could mean anything. A visit to a solicitor? An accountant?

  ‘How did she seem?’ Vera asked. ‘Quiet? Upset? Angry?’

  But Dee just shook her head, as if another person’s feelings were beyond her.

  Joe came in then, carrying the tea. Vera put the bag of cakes on the table and tore open the paper so that Dee could see inside. Joe looked at the stool, but chose to lean against the door instead.

  ‘And before that,’ Vera prompted, ‘had you seen Margaret recently?’

  ‘Last week.’ Dee’s mouth was full of cream sponge. Joe looked away. Fastidious, Vera thought. That was the word to describe him. ‘We went shopping in town.’ She seemed suddenly excited, and Vera thought sadly that the trip into Newcastle could have been the highlight of Dee’s month.

  ‘Margaret took you shopping?’

  ‘Aye, she said I needed a proper jacket or I’d catch my death. The church has a fund. Mostly for the lasses at the Haven – extras they might not be able to afford – but Margaret said there was no reason why I shouldn’t get some of it.’

  ‘Why did you leave the Haven?’ This was Joe, not able to help himself, accusing. He’d bring back the workhouse, given half a chance.

  Dee muttered something that Vera could only just make out, about being stuck in the middle of nowhere, and a cow called Jane who picked on her.

  ‘Tell me about going shopping,’ Vera said.

  Dee’s face brightened again. ‘We went in on the Metro. Had our dinner in a caff. I had fish and chips. Margaret only wanted a sandwich. We bought the jacket in New Look. Dead smart.’ She launched into a description of the coat. Given any encouragement, she’d have brought it out to show them.

  Vera allowed her a couple of minutes, then interrupted. ‘Was it just shopping? You didn’t go anywhere else? An office? Or perhaps Margaret met someone she knew?’

  A pause. Great concentration. ‘She didn’t meet anyone, but she saw someone.’

  ‘Tell us what happened, Dee.’ Vera reached out for a vanilla slice. ‘No stories, mind, just the truth.’

  ‘We were walking down Northumberland Street and there was this man on the other side of the road. Margaret told me to wait where I was and she ran after him. But he was faster than her and she couldn’t catch him up.’

  ‘What did he look like, this man?’ Vera wasn’t sure how much faith to put in Dee’s account. She certainly couldn’t imagine the woman in a witness box. And a vanilla slice was tricky to eat without a plate and a knife. She turned to Joe. ‘Is there a knife in the kitchen? I’ll have cream all over me if I don’t cut this.’

  Dee shrugged. ‘Don’t know. I didn’t really see him. I wasn’t looking. He just ran off when Margaret saw him.’

  ‘He was young, was he? If he ran fast?’

  Dee thought again. ‘He was faster than Margaret, but she was an old lady. Most people would be faster than her.’

  ‘And you can’t tell me anything at all about him?’

  ‘Like I said, Margaret just ran across Northumberland Street, shouting for me to stay where I was. She wasn’t gone very long. I asked her who the guy was, but she wouldn’t tell me. I thought we might stay out for our tea, but she said it was time to go home.’ Dee looked at her. Panda eyes over the rim of her mug. ‘Margaret was out of breath after running. I thought for a minute she was going to die.’

  Ashworth came back with a kitchen knife and Vera cut the cake into bite-sized pieces. Nobody spoke. Footsteps clattered down the stairs outside the flat. Below a door banged shut.

  ‘Where were you yesterday afternoon, Dee?’ Vera kept her voice quiet, almost uninterested. No pressure. ‘After Margaret left you.’

  ‘Out.’ Her mouth shut tight like a trap.

  ‘We just need to know, Dee.’ Vera leaned forward towards her. ‘No one’s going to be cross if you were in the Coble all afternoon. None of our business. But we need to know.’

  ‘I was in the Coble,’ Dee said. ‘Then I met someone.’

  ‘A man?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Where did you go with him? Did you bring him back here?’

  ‘We went to his place.’

  ‘And where was that?’ Vera thought the woman was mad. A danger to herself. She allowed some of her anxiety through: ‘You shouldn’t go off with men you don’t know, pet. It’s not safe.’

  ‘I did know him. At least I’ve seen him about.’

  ‘And his name?’

  ‘Jason.’ Dee was behaving like a sulky child. ‘I’d never heard his second name. And I don’t know where his place was.’

  ‘Somewhere in Mardle?’

  ‘No. We went on the Metro. I can’t remember.’ She looked up and suddenly seemed very young. ‘I was a bit pissed.’ She paused for a beat. ‘He bought me a ticket!’ As if that made everything all right.

  ‘Where did you get out?’ Vera asked. ‘Which Metro station?’

  ‘I don’t know! Somewhere on the way to town.’ As if, once away from Mardle and its immediate surroundings, she was in alien territory. Vera realized that she probably couldn’t read.

  ‘And afterwards,’ Joe said, ‘what happened then?’ He’d pushed himself away from the door to join in the conversation. Dee looked at him properly for the first time and appeared to like what she saw. After that her replies were directed at him.

  ‘I came back. Spent some of the money he’d given me. Bought some chips and went back to the pub.’

  ‘Did he come back with you?’

  ‘Nah!’ She was indignant. ‘I thought that was the idea, that he’d spend the evening with me, but he just let me out of his flat and I had to find the Metro station myself. It was snowing. Fucking freezing.’

  ‘What time was that?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Dunno. It was dark, though.’

  ‘And you came all the way to Mardle on the Metro?’ Joe asked the question; Vera held her breath.

  ‘Nah, the train stopped at Partington. Because of the weather. We all had to get out and get the bus. It took ages to come. Total fucking waste of time for a few quid.’

  ‘Which carriage were you in, Dee?’

  She looked at Joe as if he was mad. ‘What?’

  ‘On the Metro? Were you near the front or the back?’

  ‘I can’t remember! Why?’

  ‘Because that’s where Margaret was stabbed,’ Vera said quietly. ‘On the Metro that was stopped by the snow.’

  ‘I didn’t see her!’ Dee turned to her, horrified. ‘If I’d seen her I might have saved her.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Holly tracked down Margaret’s GP to a practice in Gosforth. An efficient receptionist said that Margaret had visited a couple of times in the last month, but not on the afternoon of her death. If they wanted more details they’d have to make an appointment to come into the surgery and talk to the doctor. When Holly rang Vera to tell her, expecting at least to be thanked for her efforts, the boss only seemed disappointed.

  ‘Oh well, it can’t be helped, but I really need to know what the woman was doing in Gosforth yesterday.’ There was a pause before Vera added, ‘How’s it going there otherwise?’

  ‘I think the press conference went okay, but I’m going bog-eyed here, boss. It’s a nightmare trying to collate all the info we’ve got through so far, but I’m pretty well up to date. I don’t think we’ll get another surge of calls until after the six-thirty news.’

  It was already late afternoon. After the buzz of the press conference Holly had spent the next couple of hours in the police station, plotting names onto large pieces of graph paper. She’d tried to map the location of passengers in the Metro carriage electronically, but in the end it worked best to spread the graph paper over a double desk, each large square marking either a seat or a space. Still there were gaps. Some of the people Joe had remembered – the smooching kids and the partying businessmen – had failed to come forward. Other passengers had seen Margaret get onto the train at Gosforth, but hadn’t notic
ed if she’d been followed onto the platform.

  There was a moment of silence on the end of the line, so Holly wondered if she’d get a bollocking again for complaining. She felt every contact with Vera Stanhope was like an approach to a large and unpredictable dog. You never knew whether it would lick you to death or take a chunk out of your leg.

  ‘Do you want a break from the desk work?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind!’ Holly regretted the words almost as soon as they were spoken. The trouble with Vera was that she took advantage. Holly might be sent off on a wild goose chase that had no relevance at all to the investigation.

  ‘Have a word with Professor Michael Craggs,’ Vera said. ‘I can’t see him as any sort of suspect, but he’s on the edge of the investigation. He stays regularly at the guest house where Margaret lived and worked, and he might be able to provide an alibi of sorts for Malcolm Kerr.’

  ‘And who’s Kerr?’ Again Holly wondered if she might have missed something, some detail of the briefing, and waited to be yelled at for not paying attention. Vera always made her feel like a school kid.

  ‘Sorry, Hol. I should have explained. Kerr’s a boatman. He has that scruffy yard close to the harbour and lives in Percy Street, just behind the Metro line. Margaret Krukowski worked for him when she was a young woman. Kerr turned up at Kate Dewar’s place this morning in a bit of a state. She had the impression that he and Margaret might have been lovers. Anyway, he claims to have been out collecting samples of the North Sea with Craggs when Margaret was stabbed. So check out the alibi, but see if Craggs can tell us anything new about our victim too. At the moment we still have no family and no close friends, and the professor has been a regular at the Harbour Street guest house for years.’

  Holly replaced the receiver, shell-shocked, because she’d had an apology from the boss, and checked out the number for the university. She was told that the professor wasn’t in the building today, but was working with a group of undergraduates at the Dove Marine Laboratory in Cullercoats. She collected a pool car and set out for the seaside.