by Ann Cleeves
‘You’re so late,’ she said, following him into the room with a drink. She stood close beside him. ‘I was worried. You hear such dreadful things. All this violence …’
‘Oh,’ he said automatically. ‘You listen too much to your old man.’ Then he realized what he had said and how close he had been to violence and he started to laugh.
‘It’s not fair,’ she said. ‘You know how hard it is to get away. I need to talk to you …’
He looked down into the street and watched two drunks stagger from the pub two hundred yards away as they made their way along the quay, stumbling on the cobbles.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Jackie cried. ‘ Did you speak to Mrs Wood? What did she say?’
‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t listen.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It hardly seems to matter now.’
‘Of course it matters!’ She was beside herself with frustration. ‘We’re talking about your future. Our future.’
He turned back to her, suddenly sad and calm, he saw with detachment that she was a nuisance, that he could never be happy with her.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I can’t talk about it now. Gabriella Paston’s dead.’
Amelia Wood’s husband was an architect. When she had married him as a young woman this had seemed a promising career, glamorous even. She had imagined him as an artist, creating brilliant designs in glass and steel. She had been working as a secretary in a solicitor’s office and saw marriage as a romantic escape. The reality had been rather different. The loft conversions and garage extensions which comprised her husband’s bread and butter work did little to inspire her and she soon decided that if she wanted glamour and excitement she would have to provide them herself. She had few qualifications—the small private girls’ school she had attended prided itself on its caring atmosphere rather than its academic achievement—and she knew she would never have the persistence to take a lowly position in a company and work her way up.
Her background made her turn naturally to voluntary work, community service. Confidence and an ability to get things done were all that seemed needed in that sector and she had those qualities in abundance. As her three children grew up she became steadily more influential. She chose high-profile projects with a satisfying element of social contact. In the organization of luncheons and celebrity appearances she became indispensable. The Grace Darling Project became her favourite charity. It brought her into contact with artists, musicians. She loved the bustle of the place, the strains of music, the younger people in leotards and tights gathering for the dance classes, the press attention. It made her feel important.
When the local councillor resigned she allowed herself, with some modesty, to be persuaded to stand as Conservative candidate for Martin’s Dene, one of the few safe wards in Hallowgate. She impressed the voters with her style, flair, and commitment, and won with a much increased majority. It seemed that all her energy was devoted to public life.
Dennis, her husband, was content to allow his wife to take centre stage. He was busy making money. He supported her, of course, it did no harm for someone in his business to have connections on the council. As the recession developed in the south, the north-east became suddenly a more fashionable place to live. He bought up an old chandler’s on the Hallowgate Fish Quay for next to nothing, converted it into flats which he sold at a profit. He saw the venture as a prototype, the first of many. But he was a grey, silent man, and he preferred to remain anonymous.
When Amelia left the Grace Darling Centre she was pleased with herself. Lynch was no fool. He had the sense to realize that his future lay, indefinitely, with the project. They would find it impossible to find another actor, with as high a profile, to be director. She drove down Anchor Street and along the edge of the Starling Farm council estate. A row of shops was boarded up and covered with graffiti and she felt a stab of personal annoyance that such vandalism could not be prevented. On a patch of wasteland a group of children were setting fire to the rubbish that had been dumped there. Their silhouettes against the flames had a demonic quality and she wondered automatically what their parents were thinking of to allow them out so late. Her children had been submissive, apathetic, and she had never had any difficulty in controlling them.
She drove past the concrete square of the sixth-form college towards the coast and the streets began to change. There were more trees and the gardens were bigger. She passed a tennis court and a church, a row of small shops, selling expensive dresses and French cheese. Martin’s Dene had once been a village and still considered itself separate from the urban sprawl of Hallowgate which had grown up to the west of it. There was a prized open space—a hill where children flew kites on Sunday mornings and a scrubby valley beloved by dog walkers and the riders of mountain bikes.
The Woods’ house was large, solid, rather unexciting. Dennis had bought it as an investment soon after they had married. He had recognized Martin’s Dene as a place where property would keep its value. Amelia found it rather dull. When she invited the arty friends met through the Grace Darling to parties there, she felt she had to apologize for it. She found Dennis rather dull too.
He was sitting in front of the television with a cup and saucer on his knee. He had removed his jacket so that it would not crease. She knew that he would already have eaten. He was quite used by now to providing his own meals. The plates would be stacked in the dishwasher. All trace of mess would be cleared away. She knew his routine exactly. He would watch the evening news, make a general comment on the weather forecast, then retire to his office for an hour to catch up on paperwork.
‘Had an exciting day?’ she asked, sarcastically, hoping to provoke a fight, knowing there would be no response.
‘So, so,’ he said, not noticing the irony. He was grey haired, bespectacled. She wanted to scream.
She took off her coat and hung it up, then returned to him.
‘What are you watching?’ she asked, just to disturb him, because she knew perfectly well already.
‘Only the local news.’
‘Anything interesting?’ she persisted.
‘Yes,’ he said. He turned his attention from the screen and looked at her directly. ‘There’s been a murder. In that Arts Centre where you’re trustee. A young girl has been stabbed. They found her body in the boot of Lynch’s car.’
When Prue Bennett returned to the house in Otterbridge where she had lived as a child she opened a bottle of wine. She and Anna sat at the kitchen table and drank it, quickly.
‘I nearly brought out three glasses,’ Anna said. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the fact that she’s not around.’
Everywhere in the kitchen there were reminders of Gabby’s presence—her underwear strewn to dry on the radiator under the window, a jersey thrown over the back of a chair, a self-portrait stuck on the fridge, which had been a present to Prue on her last birthday. It occurred to Prue that Gabby must have made an impact wherever she went. Anna had lived in the house for most of her life yet there was little indication of her existence.
‘Isn’t it strange,’ Prue said suddenly, ‘that you were such good friends. You were really terribly different.’
‘You mean that she was amusing, friendly, and attractive, and I’m dull,’ Anna said sharply.
‘No, of course not.’ Prue was shocked by the bitterness.
‘I’m sorry,’ Anna said. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that. But sometimes it was hard not to be jealous. Not of the life she’d had. It must have been dreadful to lose her parents like that. But because she was always so popular.’
‘Did she have a boyfriend, at the moment?’ Prue asked. ‘I suppose the police will want to know.’
‘Oh,’ Anna said. ‘Gabby always had a boyfriend.’ She paused. ‘ I don’t know how serious it was,’ she went on, ‘but I thought she was rather keen on John.’ She kept her voice even. ‘I don’t know if anything cam
e of it. And she’d always had a crush on Gus, of course. If he hadn’t been old enough to be her father she might have had a go at him.’
‘She liked John Powell?’ Prue’s voice was tactfully calm. ‘I didn’t realize.’
‘She never talked about it,’ Anna said. ‘She never talked about anything that was really important to her, if you think about it. She made everything out to be a great joke.’
‘Didn’t she even talk to you?’ Prue said. ‘I thought you two were so close. I could understand her not confiding in me…I thought perhaps I intimidated her…’
‘Oh, Mum,’ Anna said. ‘Don’t be so silly. She liked you. She really liked you.’
‘Did she?’ Prue looked up from her glass. ‘As you say, with Gabby it was impossible to tell.’
When the bottle was empty Anna went to bed. She had to step over the slippers shaped like seal pups which Gabby had left at the bottom of the stairs and in the bathroom she stood for a moment, quite transfixed. The smell of Gabby’s perfume still lingered there, so Anna felt that if she called out Gabby would answer her.
Prue stayed in the kitchen until past midnight. She opened another bottle of wine, which she began to drink more slowly. The cat jumped on to her lap and she stroked it absentmindedly, shivering slightly. She realized that the heating had gone off an hour ago, that she was very cold and a little drunk.
Joe Fenwick left the Grace Darling Centre at 11.30. The relief security man had been there for an hour but he had hung on, afraid of missing something, brewing tea for Ramsay and his men in the cupboard where he kept his things. There were no lights on in Hallowgate Square. Even the curious neighbours, who had heard of the murder on the telly and watched out for the police cars, had gone to bed. Usually, when he left work, Joe liked a quick drink in the Ship in Anchor Street. He liked the warmth, the conversation, even the piped Christmas music. He was well known in there. But tonight the doors were shut and the windows were dark. He walked on down the hill towards the river.
Joe Fenwick had lived in a basement flat at the bottom of Anchor Street for more than twenty years. During that time he had shared it on and off with Sal Grainger, the barmaid in the Anchor. She had been a big, impulsive woman who disappeared occasionally with other lovers, but they had got on well when she was there. They had shared a lot of laughs. Her death after a sudden illness had shaken him more than anyone realized. It had left him lost and lonely.
He was thinking of Sal when he was fiddling with the keys to his flat. He missed the anticipation of seeing her, sharing the news of the day, sitting in the stuffy little room in front of the gas fire, drinking tea or whisky. He was so lost in thought that the screeching brakes of the car turning from the square into Anchor Street shocked him. The car hurtled down the road, swerving from one side of the street to the other.
Bloody hooligans, Joe Fenwick thought, moving into the steps down to his flat, frightened that the car would mount the pavement and hit him.
The car sped past him. He saw that there were three people inside. The face of the driver was vaguely familiar, but disappeared so quickly that Joe could not place it. He swore again, under his breath, and opened the door to the cold and empty flat.
Chapter Five
The next morning Ramsay arrived at Hallowgate police station early. It was an impressive grey-stone building close to the quayside next to the Seamen’s Mission. Along the street in the greasy café fishermen were eating breakfast and their laughter spilled out into the street. It was just getting light and very cold. Against the grey sky floated the white shapes of herring gulls, calling continuously. It was all very different from the inland county town of Otterbridge where he was usually based and he enjoyed the novelty of the surroundings, thought again that a new patch might rekindle his enthusiasm for the job.
Inside he was offered a bare, cold room on the first floor with a faulty radiator and no view but he accepted it gratefully. He would need somewhere away from the noise and hysteria of the Incident Room to collect his thoughts. Most of the morning was spent in meetings, organizing manpower, a press conference, negotiating overtime. Gabriella Paston was almost forgotten.
In the canteen Detective Inspector Evan Powell was giving Hunter a lecture about joy riding and ram raiders. There had been three more cases of TWOC in the night and a ram raid on the Co-op Hypermarket on the Coast Road, during which thousands of pounds’ worth of small electrical goods, spirits, and cigarettes had been taken. Powell had had little sleep.
‘It’s all a symptom of the same lawlessness,’ he said, his Welsh voice rising in passion as he spoke. ‘There were villains on the patch in the past. Of course there were. But they came from the same families. We knew where to find them. We could control them. This is a different thing altogether. Far more widespread. On some of these estates there’s a generation of kids who’ve been brought up without hope…’
Hunter, who had been hoping to enjoy a bacon sandwich in peace, muttered that Powell sounded like a bloody social worker. Powell, a Presbyterian, frowned in disapproval at the swearing, then continued:
‘Their parents haven’t got the wit or the interest to care about them, the schools can’t control them, they live in a dump that the council tries to pretend doesn’t exist… And then there’s the boredom factor! They’re not all dumb, you know, those kids. The Home Office like to think they’re stupid. But they need a challenge like the rest of us. I know some of the joy-riding gangs go specially for the cars with the most elaborate security. Would you believe it? It gives them status, you see, in the eyes of their friends. And the ram raiders! Well, man, they’re really at the top of the heap. Everyone on the estate knows who they are. They’re heroes. You’d think every one of them was Robin Hood!’
He paused for breath. Hunter looked around him, searching for some means of escape. He was a policeman not a sociologist. All this talk made him uneasy. But Powell was going on.
‘We let the situation get out of hand, of course,’ he said. ‘That’s why we had those disturbances on the Starling Farm earlier in the month. The Chief decided we’d have to crack down on joy riding after that little girl was killed but by then it was too late. The kids had been getting away with it for years. We’d shown we weren’t prepared to deal with it seriously. When we did go in hard they were ready for a fight. It was the boredom again. They liked the arson and the petrol bombs. It was like November fifth every night.’
Hunter saw that Ramsay had come into the room. Never before had he been pleased to see his superior. Powell, distracted at last, jumped to his feet to greet the Inspector.
‘Stephen!’ he said. ‘I’d heard you were joining us. It’s really good to have you on the team. I was just explaining to your sergeant here some of our special local difficulties.’
‘They’re hardly relevant to the Gabriella Paston case, though, are they?’ Hunter said bluntly. ‘No suspicion of auto-crime here.’
‘All the same,’ Powell said, a little offended, chiding. ‘ It never does any harm to understand your patch.’ Pointedly he got up and walked away.
‘He’s a good policeman,’ Ramsay said. ‘You should listen to him.’
‘I have been listening to him,’ Hunter grumbled, ‘for at least half an hour. He’s a fanatic.’
Ramsay felt his usual irritation at Hunter’s attitude returning. It would be hard enough in Hallowgate without offending their colleagues.
‘Powell’s a local man,’ he said. ‘He knows this patch inside out. We might need him.’
Hunter shrugged. If I ever need to ask for help from someone like that, he implied, it’ll be time to give up.
‘I’m on my way to the Starling Farm,’ Ramsay said. ‘ I want to talk to Gabriella’s grandmother and to the aunt again. At present she’s the last person to have seen the girl alive. And there was something very odd about her attitude, didn’t you think? No grief at all. It might just have been the shock, but all the same …’ If he had been talking to Powell he might have added that he wan
ted to be out, on the ground, listening, building an image of the girl he had lost during a morning of meetings. But Hunter would have considered the idea fanciful and he kept it to himself.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Hunter demanded. He too was bored with a morning of administration. He wanted some action.
‘Go to Hallowgate Sixth-Form College,’ Ramsay said. ‘Talk to her teachers, her friends. Find out if she was there at all yesterday. Did she give any idea where she was going in the afternoon? Get a list of all her special friends, especially boyfriends—’
‘All right,’ Hunter interrupted. ‘I get the picture.’ He had never liked being told what to do and the thought of going to school made him nervous.
The Starling Farm was still not the worst estate of its kind in the area. It could not compete, for example, with the Meadow Well along the river, where the houses were almost derelict and the residents were bitter, embattled, or on tranquillizers. The Starling Farm still had some streets where the gardens were tended, and the houses were all occupied. It was still safe for children to play in the streets during daylight, if they kept away from the broken glass. Women on their way to the only food shop which remained stopped to gossip and exchange jokes. But the place was shabby and dispirited. The disturbances had left it in a state of shock.
Alma and Ellen Paston lived in one of the older, more pleasant streets, in a crescent of semi-detached brick bungalows which had been built specially for the elderly at a time when the council could afford to care for you from the cradle to the grave. Some of the residents of Seaton Crescent had been children during the depression. Their dads had marched from Jarrow. They stood in the back gardens, with their rows of vegetables and home-made pigeon lofts, and discussed with puzzled voices the fact that nothing had changed. Starling Farm had been built with such hope just after the war and now it was just a slum, like the old slums of Jarrow and Shields. They blamed the young people, of course, for disturbing their peace with car chases, the loud unfamiliar music played from stolen ghetto-blasters in the streets, but they had grandchildren themselves. They understood the frustration. They wondered if they might be in some way to blame.