by Ann Cleeves
At first Jane let the women walk ahead of them and spoke to Holly herself. ‘Have you met Peter Gruskin before?’
Holly nodded. She’d thought she would be the one to ask the questions. She felt that she was being dragged along by this assertive woman and had the sense that she was losing control of the situation.
‘What did you make of him?’
Holly hesitated. She could hardly gossip about other witnesses.
Jane didn’t wait and answered her own question. ‘He’s a horrible man. The last priest was lovely. Gentle, and the women liked him. Peter finds us incomprehensible. He’s anxious that the press will pick up the Haven connection between Margaret and Dee. Is that likely, do you think? He would rather that we just went away.’
‘I don’t know. We haven’t said anything.’ They were walking along a footpath that skirted the edge of a bare field. A small flock of brightly coloured finches fed on dead thistle heads.
‘What’s it like working for Vera Stanhope?’ Jane sounded amused.
Holly paused, torn between loyalty and a desire to let off steam. In the end she restrained herself. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘Inspector Stanhope is a fine detective.’
Jane chuckled and Holly walked ahead to talk to the women. This route-march might be the only opportunity she’d have, and she had to get something to take back to Vera.
At first Emily had nothing useful to say. She was preoccupied with the prospect of getting home for Christmas. ‘My mother thinks it might work this time. We’ve talked about my going back to school to retake my A levels.’ The voice wistful and not very optimistic.
‘Where do you go to school?’
‘St Anne’s in town, but Mummy thinks I might be better at the local comp. Less stress. I’m not sure, though. I think that might be a bit scary. I’ve never been at a school where there were boys.’ She blinked and was quiet for a while. Holly thought this fragile young woman would never survive for a week in a big high school. Her parents had saved hard for her to go private. ‘Margaret was going to come and visit, to see how I was getting on,’ Emily said. She turned to Holly and her voice was pleading. Perhaps she saw Holly as a substitute saviour.
‘Did you know Dee Robson?’
‘No.’ A pause. ‘Well, I met her once at the winter fair – she’d come with Margaret – but I had a bit of a panic attack. All those strangers. I didn’t really talk to anyone.’ And Emily walked on, leaving Holly to follow. She must have realized that Holly wasn’t someone who could help her. When Holly caught her up, Emma continued talking about the murders. It seemed that she hadn’t spent any time with Dee Robson at the Haven because she’d only been in the hostel for a few weeks, referred from the adolescent unit of the local psychiatric hospital. ‘The girls told me about Dee. They always made out she was a bit of a joke. Nobody deserves to die like that, though, do they?’ They walked for a while in silence, the only sound the cawing of rooks in the nearby trees and the engine of a distant tractor.
‘Did Margaret mention if anything was bothering her?’ Though Holly thought the last person Margaret would have chosen as a confidante would be Emily, who was weak and had so many problems of her own.
Emily shook her head. ‘You had the feeling that nothing bothered Margaret, that she’d seen it all.’
Laurie knew Dee, though. ‘She was one of those lasses who were always around in Mardle. Like people got so used to seeing her making a spectacle of herself that they didn’t notice her any more. It’s the same with the Big Issue sellers. They’re there, but you don’t really see them.’ Laurie swiped at the dead brambles by the side of the path with her stick. ‘Margaret thought that some time at the Haven would sort Dee out.’
‘But it didn’t?’
‘Nah. She hated it from the time she got here. I love the countryside, me, but Dee didn’t know anywhere outside Mardle.’
‘Where did she stay before she came to the Haven?’ Holly hoped that she’d remember all these details when she got back to the station. She was lost without her iPad.
‘Prison. She’d got into a scrap with some guy in the Coble and got done for ABH. She was already on a suspended for shoplifting. At the end of the sentence she wanted to go back and stay with her gran, but they’d stuck her into a home when Dee was inside. So the probation brought her to us. Jane didn’t want to take her, but Margaret persuaded her to give Dee a chance.’ Laurie shrugged. ‘I could have told them it was never going to work.’
‘Did Margaret know Dee from before?’ That, after all, was the information Vera had wanted.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe she knew Dee’s mother. I think that was it.’ Laurie threw the stick for the dog again and it ran after it. Of all of them, she seemed most at home in this place. ‘Dee’s family have always lived in Mardle.’
They’d turned back towards the house on a different track through the trees, when Holly spoke to Susan. The older woman had been struggling to keep up and Holly had to wait for her. The wind was blowing in the bare branches above them, and because Susan seemed not to hear well, at times Holly had to shout to make herself understood. The others had wandered far ahead.
‘How long have you been at the Haven?’
It seemed a safe way to start, but Susan appeared threatened by the question.
‘I don’t have to move, do I? Margaret said I could stay as long as I wanted. I know it’s only supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but she said I was a special case.’ The voice surprised Holly. It was anxious, but soft and articulate.
‘Had you known her for a long time?’
‘Oh yes, we’d been friends for many years.’ The woman paused. ‘But Margaret was always much stronger than me.’ Another pause. ‘My nerves have never been very good. And now my memory is going too.’ She gave a strange little giggle. ‘I’m falling apart.’
Ahead of them the other women had disappeared from view. The wood was all dark shadows.
‘Did you know Margaret’s husband?’ Holly asked.
‘Not him, no. He’d gone by the time we met. I knew her other man. The one she worked for.’
‘Malcolm Kerr?’ Holly was thinking that Vera would love this. There was nothing she liked better than an unexpected connection.
‘Is that what he was called?’ Susan looked around her vaguely as if she couldn’t quite remember where she was. ‘I don’t recall the name.’
‘Were you living in Mardle then?’ Holly wished this woman were more reliable. These might not be memories, but Susan’s weird imaginings.
‘In Mardle? Oh yes. I was living in Harbour Street, in a ground-floor flat. Margaret was in the attic. I had a baby, you know, but they took her away. I wonder sometimes where she might be now. She’d be quite grown-up. But it was all for the best. Yes, I’m sure that it was all for the best.’
‘Do you know what Margaret did for a living?’
There was no response. Holly wasn’t sure that the woman had heard the question and she repeated it.
But still Susan didn’t answer. Instead she started humming. At first Holly couldn’t make out the tune and then she recognized it. She’d had a boyfriend once who was into Nineties music. ‘White Moon Summer’ by Katie Guthrie.
When the two of them arrived at the house, Emily was back hovering by the front door waiting for the social worker. Laurie had disappeared and Susan shuffled off too, still humming, to a room at the end of the corridor. There was the sound, very loud, of a television game show. Holly found Jane in the kitchen making tea.
‘Did you get what you wanted?’ The woman turned round. She’d been slicing cake and still had the knife in her hand.
‘I’m not sure.’ And what business is it of yours, lady? Perhaps it was the resemblance to the schoolteacher, but Holly found herself distrusting this woman. Disliking her at least. ‘Tell me about Susan.’
‘Ah, poor Susan. She has a history of depression and psychotic episodes. In and out of mental hospital. They tried everything from talking therapies
to ECT, but I’m not sure there’s ever been a reliable diagnosis. She seems quite stable at the moment.’
‘Has she been here for a long time?’ Holly sat down at the table, took out her iPad and discreetly started to make notes. She tapped out what she could remember of her conversation with the women on the walk. Vera liked these things word-for-word.
‘More than two years. We’re supposed to provide temporary accommodation in an emergency, and honestly she should be moving on, but it suits her here and I’m not sure that I’ve got the heart to ask her to leave.’ Jane poured two mugs of tea. ‘Where would she go?’
‘She said she used to live on Harbour Street in Mardle.’
‘Did she? I’m sure she has no family close by. Social services would have checked.’ Jane joined Holly at the table.
‘She told me that she knew Margaret Krukowski years ago.’
‘Really, you shouldn’t take too much notice of what Susan tells you.’ It was Jane in schoolmistress mode again, patronizing. ‘She gets confused, hears things that people say and repeats them, or turns them into a narrative about herself. She’d make a very unreliable witness.’ The words sounded almost like a warning.
Then there was a commotion at the door. It seemed that the social worker had arrived early for Emily after all. The girl rushed into the kitchen with her holdall to say goodbye and Jane went out to the car to see her off.
‘I hope it works out for her,’ Holly said, when Jane returned.
‘Aye, well, I’ll not hold my breath. Last time her mother could only cope with her for one night and was outside social services with her in the morning, waiting for the office to open. She has problems of her own. A new partner with money, but no time for Emily. This time social services will have closed for Christmas, and I expect I’ll have to pick up the pieces.’ Jane must have realized that she sounded hard. ‘Sorry. Compassion-fatigue. I’m just tired.’
Holly thought that she felt tired too – and she’d only spent an afternoon in the place.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Professor Craggs lived in a low stone cottage in a village not far from Hexham and the Roman Wall. All the way there Joe Ashworth was thinking that this was a waste of time. A phone call would have done. But Vera was a great one for face-to-face contact. ‘It’s much easier to lie on the phone,’ she’d said before he set off. ‘And Craggs has known all the players for a long time. Get his take on the set-up at Harbour Street, and dig a bit further for information on Kerr and Enderby. I know Holly spoke to him, but she’s impatient; she doesn’t always give people time to get the words out.’
In the end he enjoyed the drive. Charlie fell asleep as soon as they left Kimmerston, and Joe felt he had every right to play his own music. There was a CD of Jessie’s choir and he had that on as they approached Craggs’s house. He’d chosen the Military Road, built by the Romans. It was straight as the eye could see, following Hadrian’s Wall, and there was little traffic. The soaring children’s voices suited the wide, empty landscape and were only partly spoiled by Charlie snoring beside him. Joe shook Charlie awake as they drove down the narrow road towards the house, a low cottage that could have done with a fresh coat of whitewash. The professor was in the garden, raking dead leaves from an untidy lawn. He heard the gate and turned round, leaning on the rake, faintly hostile. Joe saw that the man had decided they were salesmen or Jehovah’s Witnesses, and he got in first.
‘DS Ashworth. Northumbria Police. And this is my colleague Charles Laidler.’
Craggs was big and square, with cropped grey hair. He hadn’t shaved today and had holes in his trousers and his sweater. A grey mackintosh was tied at the waist with a bit of binder twine. Stick him on Northumberland Street in town, with a ratty dog, and you’d have him down as a well-fed tramp. Joe thought clothes were important, and he wouldn’t have dressed like that even in the garden. The professor and Vera were two of a kind. Maybe she should have driven all this way to do the interview herself.
‘How can I help you, Sergeant?’ Craggs set down the rake.
‘It’s about the murders of Dee Robson and Margaret Krukowski.’
‘I saw on the television that there’d been another killing. A dreadful business. You’d better come inside. I was going to stop soon anyway. Mary was going to make some coffee. Though I’m not sure if I can provide any useful information.’
The professor left his boots in a rackety porch tacked onto the back of the house. It held seed trays on the windowsill, a couple of fishing nets and a child’s bucket and spade. Joe followed him into a long, thin kitchen and on to a living room. There was a table close to a French window, covered with a patterned oilskin cloth and a pile of newspapers. Light came in through the window and fell onto the woman sitting there, but the rest of the room was in shadow. Joe had an impression of paper – books, files, notebooks – on shelves and chairs and on the floor, and of dust. The woman looked up and smiled.
‘My wife, Mary,’ Craggs said. It was a simple introduction, but Joe could tell that he adored her. She was small and her hair was held back from her face with a comb. ‘These men are detectives, my dear, and they want to talk about those dreadful murders in Mardle.’
‘I’ll make coffee then.’ She got to her feet and Joe saw that she wore faded denim jeans and sandals, an Indian cotton tunic in bright colours. She still dressed as she probably had as a student.
Underneath the table there was a box of apples, individually wrapped in newspaper. The room smelled of them.
‘You were lucky to find me in, Sergeant. We’re quite often on childcare duties in the school holidays.’ It was a gentle reproof, a reminder that the detectives had turned up without warning.
‘We need to talk to you about George Enderby.’ The view from the window was from the side of the house. A small orchard and, beyond it, a high wall of old red brick covered in ivy.
‘Ah, poor George. I’m afraid he’s got himself into a bit of a state. When I told Mary, she said it was his own fault and that it seemed as if he’d treated his wife appallingly for years, but I can’t help feeling sorry for him.’
‘You’ve known him for a long time?’ In the distance Joe heard a kettle boiling, cups set on saucers. In a corner Charlie was taking notes.
‘That house in Harbour Street had become a second home for both of us. There was something very appealing about the company there. Kate and her children. Margaret Krukowski, so gracious and welcoming. The regular guests. It won’t be the same now of course, but then I fancy it would have changed anyway. Kate has found other interests: Stuart, who seems to have made her very happy, and a renewed enthusiasm for her music. From my own point of view I was rather glad that they were all moving on. It made my decision to retire much easier. Less to miss.’
‘Was Margaret moving on?’ She was dying, Joe thought. But that’s moving too.
‘You know, I think there was a change in her,’ the professor said. ‘She seemed distracted on my last visit. Somehow disengaged.’
‘Could you go through your movements again, for the afternoon that Margaret was killed?’ Joe couldn’t imagine this man as a murderer, but Vera had found discrepancies in his evidence and she’d slaughter him if he didn’t check. ‘You were out in the boat with Malcolm Kerr?’
‘That’s right. Part of my regular fieldwork off Coquet Island.’
‘And what time did you get back to Mardle?’
‘I told that young woman who came to the laboratory to talk to me.’ There was no resentment in his voice, but a kind of resignation. ‘It was about three o’clock.’
‘And what did you do then?’ This was the important question. Craggs had told Holly that he’d driven straight home, but Enderby claimed that they’d met up in Harbour Street later in the day.
‘I went to the Dove Laboratory in Cullercoats. I had equipment to drop off there.’
‘And then?’ Joe leaned forward across the table.
‘Then I went back to Mardle. It was a nuisance. It was snowing
heavily and I wanted to get home. But I’d left my briefcase in Malcolm’s yard – one of those senior moments that seem to happen more frequently these days – and I had an important phone call to make the following morning. I knew I’d need the papers. I have a key to the yard and to Malcolm’s shed, so I didn’t need to disturb him. And in Harbour Street I bumped into George. He seemed so miserable that I couldn’t leave him there alone. We had one drink in the pub. I thought if the snow was really bad I could always stay the night at Kate’s. In the end it seemed to have cleared a bit, so I drove home.’
The words came easily. Too easily? Joe wondered if they might have been rehearsed. ‘And you invited Mr Enderby to spend a night here with you?’
‘Not that night, but two days later, yes. He’d got himself into a state. He’s obviously told you that his wife has left him. He’d run away to Harbour Street, still pretending that he was working. Because he couldn’t face telling Kate what had happened, I invited him here on the day that he claimed to be in Scotland.’
Mary arrived with coffee and melted discreetly away.
‘How did he seem when he was here?’ Joe asked.
‘Distraught. He drank too much of my whisky and became incoherent. We knew that Margaret was dead by then, of course. Her death seemed to have upset him almost more than his wife’s leaving him. We spent a lot of time talking about her.’ The professor drank coffee, leaning back in his chair.