Vera Stanhope 06 - Harbour Street

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘Just into Newcastle with Stuart.’

  ‘Well, good for you! Don’t worry. I can see myself up to my room.’ He seemed tired too. His overcoat was crumpled and the jollity in his voice was rather forced. She supposed that perhaps he hadn’t received many orders for the novels he loved.

  ‘I’ll put some tea in the lounge,’ she said. ‘Though the biscuits aren’t up to Margaret’s standard, I’m afraid.’

  They smiled sadly at each other. ‘I’m sure they’ll be delicious,’ George said. He began to take off his gloves and added, as if it were an afterthought: ‘Any news about that? Have they caught the killer?’

  She was already on her way to the kitchen and turned back to answer. ‘I haven’t heard anything. There seem to be police in the town whenever I go out. They’re knocking on all the doors and asking questions.’

  And as if in response to his query there was the noise of sirens in the street and they looked at each other, sharing a frisson of anxiety.

  Stuart was late, so she was starting to panic, to wonder if she should call him. He was usually obsessively punctual and she was the one who made him wait. And now, with Margaret’s killing, she thought that he would make an effort to be on time because he’d know that she would worry. Then he was there. He had let himself in, and she heard his footsteps coming down the stairs to the basement. He was so tall that it seemed minutes after seeing his feet before his head appeared. He was wearing a brown leather jacket, very old and beaten-up, and jeans. It was what he always wore when they went out to town. A scarf was his only concession to the weather. Nearly sixty, but he looked good. Cool.

  ‘Sorry!’ His hands turned up in a gesture of contrition. ‘I don’t know what’s going on in Mardle this afternoon. The traffic’s a nightmare.’

  Then he put his arm around her, very easy and natural, and she wanted to reach out and touch his face because she thought he was so beautiful, felt the pull of wanting him in her guts. If they’d had the house to themselves she’d have suggested staying here instead of going into town.

  ‘Hi, Chlo? Everything okay?’ He’d already pulled away from Kate and had his hand lightly on Chloe’s shoulder, looking down at her work.

  ‘Yeah, well, you know.’ Chloe stretched. ‘I don’t know how much detail they want. What do you think?’

  He sat down beside her and leaned in to give his full attention to the laptop, and Kate felt jealousy, bright and sharp like the prick of a needle. She never talks to me like that. Does she think that I’m too stupid to understand? And, immediately afterwards: Does he find my daughter more attractive than me?

  She left them chatting and went to see George, who was lingering over his tea. ‘Are you okay?’ She thought he looked ill, still wrapped up in his overcoat. She bent and turned up the fire.

  He turned on his performer’s smile, the one he must use to charm publishers and booksellers. ‘You’re so kind to me, Kate. This is like a second home. You do know that?’ He smiled wistfully and she thought he was regretting the old days before Stuart had come into her life, when she would sit and drink with him all evening and listen to him talking about his magnificent wife.

  Newcastle was full of people and friendly. They walked arm-in-arm between the art galleries, crossing the Tyne by the Blinking Eye Bridge. Then on to the restaurant. Kate could smell the leather of Stuart’s jacket and the city, sweet and enticing, all around her. Mardle only smelled of salt and fish and seaweed, and there was no adventure in that. The restaurant was tiny and cramped and they sat in the window, looking out onto a steep cobbled street. Stuart joked with his friend, the owner, about the background music and ordered a bottle of wine. Then he took her hand across the table. The candle threw odd shadows across his face and for a moment she felt that she was sitting with a stranger. There was a heady excitement in that too.

  ‘I’m so sorry about Margaret,’ he said. ‘I know you were close.’

  She was disappointed. She’d hoped for something more romantic. At least a declaration that he was as obsessed with her as she was with him. She was sick of talking about Margaret, sick of the drop in her stomach every time the realization hit her again. She just wanted to forget about it. Move on.

  ‘It was dreadful,’ she said. Kate didn’t quite know how to explain out loud how she felt. ‘I don’t want to sound callous, but in a sense I have more options now. I can think of selling the house, for example. I know we’ve talked about it before, but really it would have been impossible when Margaret was still alive.’

  ‘A new start,’ he said. It was almost as if he was talking to himself, playing with the words, turning them into a riff.

  ‘Yeah.’ She found that she was grinning.

  ‘I could take early retirement,’ he said. ‘I’ve been teaching for long enough.’ He poured more wine. His face was flushed.

  ‘What would you do?’ She couldn’t imagine him as a pensioner, weekly walks in the hills, watching television in the afternoons, though the thought of him being free during the day when the kids were out of the house excited her again.

  ‘I’d manage your career – properly, not just the odd gig, like at the moment,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘We’d get you writing again. Performing. If you sold the Harbour Street house we could get somewhere smaller in town – a new start for the kids too, a better school. See if we can persuade Ryan to stay on for A levels.’

  She thought that he’d been thinking of this for a while. ‘Are you saying that we should move in together straight away?’

  ‘If we can find the right place, why not? We’d get something decent if I sold my flat too. A new start.’ Repeating the words again. He’d never talked about moving into Harbour Street with her, though she’d dropped plenty of hints. It was as if the building itself – so public when it was filled with guests – put him off.

  ‘I’d love that,’ she said. ‘Really.’

  ‘Then I’ll give the head my notice tomorrow. He’ll need a full term.’ And so, it seemed, the decision was made.

  He went to the counter to pay his friend and there seemed to be a flurry of anxiety for a moment. She wondered if he’d forgotten his cash or his credit card, but when she asked him he said it was nothing. A photo that he kept in his wallet seemed to have gone missing. She hoped he’d kept a photo of her, though she couldn’t remember him taking one. She didn’t like to mention it again because he seemed so put out to have lost it, and by then they were out in the street and on their way to the Sage.

  When they returned from Newcastle, George must have gone to bed because the lounge was empty, the curtains drawn against the dark. Kate was buzzing. The concert had been so awful that it had been funny and the audience had shared the experience like a joke. In the end it was as if they’d all been present at a really special gig, with the small hall at the Sage warm and intimate, and they’d all wandered out talking and laughing about it like old friends. The last Metro home was full of partying drunks, but everyone was good-natured. A policeman got on at Haymarket and stayed on the train; someone said that had happened every night since the murder. They’d got the seat right at the front, so the lights of the approaching stations rushed at them and Kate felt as if it was a fairground ride, as if she was about ten years old.

  Both kids were home when they arrived back. Ryan hadn’t long got in; it was raining and his jacket, thrown over the banister at the bottom of the stairs, was wet. Kate and Stuart had had a couple of drinks in the interval to keep them going through the second half of the gig and Kate was still not entirely sober. She felt very happy, in a tipsy, emotional way. Both her children were safe at home and she had this wonderful new man and her future seemed exciting.

  The kids were in the basement sitting room in front of the television.

  ‘There’s been another murder,’ Ryan said as soon as they were in the room. ‘They were talking about it in the Coble.’

  For a moment she didn’t take in what he’d said. She knew he went into the Coble occasionally,
but she didn’t like it. Stuart had once said in his dry, practical way: ‘Boys that age are going to drink anyway. Better that they do it in the pub where there are other adults around.’ Her worry, which she’d never discussed with Stuart, was about where Ryan got the money from for drink. She gave him an allowance, but would that run to pub prices? She knew Malcolm Kerr paid him, but Ryan always seemed to have cash. Deep down she was anxious that he’d started thieving. It was as if she had a stranger in the house. She remembered the small, affectionate boy who’d held her hand when they walked to the park, but this stylish young man bore no resemblance.

  Then the shock of another killing hit her and her concern about Ryan seemed petty.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Ryan seemed sober, but hyper, and he repeated the words with a kind of repressed excitement that made her feel ill.

  Stuart seemed not to notice the boy’s reaction. ‘Do you know who the victim was?’

  ‘Some woman,’ Ryan said. ‘She drinks in the Coble and lives in Percy Street. Dee Robson they call her.’

  Kate recognized the name and remembered that Margaret had talked about her. One of her waifs. Dee needs someone to look after her, and all they can do is call her names.

  ‘We’re waiting for the late local news.’ Chloe was wearing the same black knitted jumper as she’d had on for school; it was too big for her, and she seemed to disappear inside it. She was drinking a mug of tea.

  There was a strained silence. Kate was quite sober now, but she couldn’t find anything appropriate to say.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Stuart said at last. ‘Anyone else want a brew?’

  But nobody answered because the local news came on the television and there were the flats in Percy Street, with blue-and-white police tape stretched around the lamp posts, and scientists in white suits and masks making their way to the door. Even Stuart paused on his way to the kitchen to watch.

  Chapter Twenty

  Joe Ashworth found Vera still standing outside the flat in Percy Street when he arrived, as if she’d been fixed there since calling in the murder, waiting for him to arrive. He knew that she’d be upset. Something about Dee Robson had moved her. She could be as callous as hell, but occasionally she connected with a witness and, when that happened, she would move heaven and earth to help them. The objects of her pity were usually loners, clumsy, despised. And fat, Joe thought, grinning to himself despite the situation. Much like Vera herself.

  ‘What do you think happened?’ It was cold. A draught blew up the stairwell. He knew that the last thing she’d want would be sympathy.

  ‘She must have been killed not long after we came to see her.’ Vera was standing with her hands in her pockets. There wasn’t much room there and his elbow brushed against her arm.

  ‘A customer?’

  ‘She was dressed for work, but still wearing her knickers. No evidence that sex had taken place.’

  He could tell that she’d already thought this through. ‘It could still have been a punter,’ he said. ‘We know that she wasn’t much good at risk assessment. She went off with that guy Jason, without knowing where he lived.’

  ‘The link with Margaret Krukowski is just a coincidence, do you think?’ Vera gave a sharp little smile. ‘That’s some elephant-sized coincidence.’

  ‘What then?’ He was losing patience. If Vera Stanhope had a theory, why didn’t she just tell him? Why play games?

  ‘Dee Robson knew something about Margaret’s killer,’ Vera said. ‘But she didn’t know that she knew. Otherwise she’d have told us when we saw her yesterday.’ There was a pause. ‘Or maybe she was smarter than anyone thought.’

  ‘Blackmail?’ Sometimes he knew the way her mind was working. ‘She kept the information secret so that she could make money from it.’

  She gave a slow clap. ‘Well done, that boy.’

  ‘You think that she’d have been capable of that?’ He couldn’t see it. He didn’t think Dee had been bright enough to make the connections, and he’d been convinced by her performance the day before.

  ‘She was desperate,’ Vera said. ‘An alcoholic, living like this – there’d be an incentive to get money any way she could. Maybe Margaret said something to her when they last met. Something so obvious that you wouldn’t have had to be Einstein to work out who’d killed her.’

  There were footsteps on the stairs and Billy Wainwright appeared. He looked grey and ill.

  ‘You okay, Billy?’ Joe disapproved of Billy’s lifestyle choices – the string of young lovers seemed undignified for someone of his position – but couldn’t help liking him.

  ‘A bit of a hangover. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure.’ He was already in the scene suit and was putting on a mask, so the words were muffled.

  ‘I thought you were so busy with the crime scene in the Metro there’d be no time for partying.’ Vera’s words were sharp.

  ‘All work and no play . . .’ Joe could tell by his voice that he was grinning. ‘You could do with a bit of play yourself, Vera.’

  ‘Just go in there and do your work, Billy. Tell me who killed these women. Find some fibres or spit or fingerprints, and link the two investigations. That would be a good start.’

  He realized that she was serious, gave a mock salute and went into the house. Outside came the sound of sirens. ‘The cavalry,’ Vera said.

  Joe couldn’t face standing here for much longer, watching Vera tear herself apart with guilt, but bottling it all up inside. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Knock on some doors, Joe. Start in the flats and then move down the street. Dee would have been an object of interest. There might even have been a campaign to get her shifted. She was hardly a model tenant. Let’s hope there’s a busybody somewhere who’s made a note of the comings and goings. I’ve sent Hol back to the station to coordinate calls from the public.’ When he paused she continued angrily. ‘If it’s not beneath your dignity as a sergeant, sometime today would be good.’

  He put up his hands, a gesture of surrender, and walked away. When she called him back he thought she was going to apologize for being so sharp. But she handed him a greasy carrier bag. ‘Get rid of these, will you? Fish and chips. They’ll be cold by now.’

  He started at the ground floor and worked up. Two flats on each floor, six lots of tenants. Mid-afternoon and the week before Christmas he expected most people to be out, but he was 50 per cent lucky. The first door he knocked on had a handrail outside and a ramp to the front step. A tiny elderly woman with a walking frame opened the door. She had shining white hair permed into tight curls. He showed his warrant card.

  She stepped aside and let him in, sat him in front of the gas fire and chatted while she made tea. She couldn’t have been happier to see him if he’d been Santa. ‘It gets a bit lonely,’ she said. No self-pity. ‘Though I get out to the over-sixties on Thursdays, and that’s always a laugh. Our Christmas party tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m here to ask some questions.’ He sat with the tea and a plate balanced awkwardly on the arm of the chair. She’d insisted on him getting the Battenberg out of the cake tin.

  ‘About that woman who was killed on the Metro?’ She poked her head forward, eager for information. ‘The one with the foreign name. I remember her when she was a lass. Always a bit full of herself and stirring up the lads. Ricky Butt had his eye on her at one time, and Val threatened to bar her from the Coble.’

  ‘Ricky Butt?’ The woman obviously wanted to chat and she reminded Joe of his nan.

  ‘Oh, this won’t have anything to do with him.’ The woman shook her head. ‘Val was the landlady of the pub for years, but she’s long gone, and he left Mardle when he was still a boy.’ She smiled. ‘Sorry, pet, you’re not interested in me wittering on. How can I help?’

  ‘There’s been another incident,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’ Eyes wide with curiosity.

  ‘Dee Robson. She lives on the top floor. Do you know her?’

  ‘Oh, that
one! Peggy Jamieson lives next door, and her life’s a misery. Banging up and down the stairs at all hours. Men knocking. She told the police and the council, but nothing happened.’ She paused. ‘Not Dee’s fault, mind.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘I knew her mam and she was a bit daft too, like. Though not as bad as Dee.’ A thoughtful pause. ‘They used to lock up people like that in asylums.’

  Ashworth couldn’t tell if she approved or disapproved of the notion.

  ‘Dee’s dead,’ Ashworth said. ‘We think she died in her flat yesterday. Did you hear or see anything unusual?’

  The woman shook her head regretfully. ‘I was out all day yesterday. My daughter took me back to hers for my dinner.’

  He stayed for a few more minutes and had another slice of cake. Vera wasn’t the only one with compassion.

  The next inhabited flat was on the second floor. A woman in her early thirties with a toddler clinging to her legs. She didn’t ask him in.

  ‘I’ve already talked to you lot about the woman that was stabbed on the Metro.’

  ‘Did you know Margaret Krukowski?’

  ‘Nah, but when they showed me her picture I realized I’d bumped into her on the stairs a couple of times. She was on her way to the flat upstairs. I told them that.’ The toddler began to grizzle.

  ‘Perhaps we could go in and talk about it,’ Joe said. ‘We don’t want the bairn to get cold.’

  The flat was exactly the same in layout as Dee’s, but there was carpet on the floor and it was furnished. In the living room there was a box of brightly coloured plastic toys. The television was on. CBeebies. The woman was called Jodie and she didn’t like cops.

  ‘You’re here on your own with the bairn?’

  ‘Only since you put my man inside.’

  Here, then, he was unlikely to be offered tea and cake. ‘Dee Robson . . .’