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‘Why not?’ she said defensively. ‘They would have found out anyway.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘ They needn’t have done. Who was going to tell them? Not me. I’d not tell them anything. Not Angela Brayshaw. She’s too sly to get herself involved with the police.’

‘But if Kitty killed her husband,’ Patty said, stung to anger, ‘the police had to find out.’

They walked in silence. Patty had a hangover and the waves breaking on the beach echoed her thumping head. She pulled her thick padded jacket around her. She felt drained and ill.

‘You never told me,’ she said at last, sulky as a schoolgirl. ‘You never told me to keep quiet about it.’

‘You shouldn’t need telling!’ Jack said. His anger and unhappiness floated undirected over the sea. He could not really blame Patty.

He was wearing a long grey macintosh, exactly the same as the one he had bought after leaving the army, and his Sunday black shoes. He looked out of place: a Raymond Chandler detective on a Northumberland beach. All he needed was a hat. He had never enjoyed the beach. He had come there a lot with his dad when he was a boy, not playing like Patty’s children in the summer with buckets and spades, but for the fishing and to see what they could find washed up on the tide line. The water was beginning to seep into his shoes and he felt cold, though he would never admit it to her.

‘If Kitty Medburn had killed her husband,’ he said more quietly, ‘she would have told me so last night.’

‘You went to see her last night?’

He nodded. ‘I went to find out why they weren’t at the party.’

‘What did she say?’ Patty was fascinated. She still thought Kitty Medburn was a murderess. There was a ghoulish curiosity about the meeting.

‘She’d had a row with Harold. He said he was going to leave her for another woman. Then he had a phone call and he went out.’

‘What time?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Early in the evening. When she came in from work, I suppose.’

‘So she could have killed him,’ Patty said. ‘The school was empty between five o’clock and seven. The noose was made from bandages. She was a district nurse, she would have had bandages at home. The police said that. They think it was a dreadful sick joke, a way of paying him back for his infidelity.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘She might have killed him in a temper, but she would never have gone through all that charade. She would have told me when I went there that evening.’

‘How do you know?’ she demanded. ‘Why are you such an expert on Kitty Medburn’s state of mind?’

‘I used to know her.’ It was his turn to be defensive. ‘She was a friend. Before I met your mother.’

She could tell that there was little point in asking more questions about this mysterious friendship. He turned to face the sea and they watched the white shape of the Norway Line’s Jupiter move out of the mouth of the Tyne on its way to Scandinavia, the white gulls hovering over her.

‘Did the police tell you how he died?’ Jack asked. ‘They would tell me nothing.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘They say they’re waiting for the results of the post mortem.’

‘You seem to have got on very well with them,’ he said.

‘And why not? They’re not some kind of enemy.’ But as she spoke she thought she couldn’t be sure about that. There was something dangerous about the policeman who sat in the corner. It was hard to forget him.

Jack turned again towards the sea.

‘Medburn mightn’t have been a big man,’ he said. She knew he was trying to persuade himself, not her, of Kitty’s innocence. ‘But she would never have been able to carry him from the house to the playground.’

‘She could have killed him in the school,’ Patty said. She felt spiteful because of his hurtful comments. ‘That’s what the police said. Or they think she could have moved him in a wheelchair. She had one at home because of her work.’

‘He was dead when he was strung up like that?’ Jack asked sharply. ‘Did your friends from the police tell you that?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. She began to sob quietly. ‘I don’t want to think about it any more. It’s too horrible.’

He put his arm around her and pulled her head onto his shoulder.

‘Now pet,’ he said, as he had when she was a baby. ‘ Don’t cry!’

They walked back to the car. He bought coffee from a van parked by the side of the road and they sat in the car looking over the dunes down to the beach.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘ I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I was worried about Kitty.’ He hesitated. ‘I was very fond of her.’

She had mopped up her tears and was looking with horror at her red, blotchy face in the car mirror. She was determined to be sensible. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing we can do to help her: We’ll have to leave it to the police now.’

‘But she’s no friends!’ he cried. ‘ No one to speak up for her.’

‘The police will get her a solicitor.’

‘It won’t be the same,’ he said. ‘ He won’t know her. I feel responsible. I should have stayed with her last night.’

‘What good would that have done?’ Patty said. ‘Medburn was already dead then.’

‘I can help her now,’ Jack said with an outrageous gallantry which left her breathless. ‘I can find out who killed Medburn.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dad!’ she said. ‘That’s a job for the police. What could we do?’

He was encouraged by the ‘we’. Joan had always supported him, even when she thought he was wrong. Independence had come hard to him and he needed Patty now.

‘We could talk to people,’ he said. ‘We know them. Where do the police come from? Otterbridge? They know nothing about Heppleburn. We know what a bastard Harold Medburn was, and we know how many people hated him.’ He looked at his daughter. ‘You could talk to Angela Brayshaw,’ he said. ‘ She’s a neighbour of yours. That would be a start. Find out what she was getting from that relationship with Medburn. She wasn’t doing it for love.’

‘Oh Dad!’ she said. ‘I don’t even like her. I wouldn’t know what to say.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ He shouted so loud that a woman walking past the car turned and stared at them. ‘You’re always telling me there’s no purpose to your life and you’re sick with boredom. Well, I’m giving you a purpose. We’re going to prove that Kitty Medburn was innocent.’

He knew that she would agree to do as he said. She would agree to anything that was different, a bit of excitement, an excuse to let the housework slide for a few days. She turned to him.

‘Are you sure,’ she said, ‘that Kitty is innocent?’

‘Of course,’ he said uncomfortably, but they both knew that there was no certainty and that the thing would probably end in embarrassment and disaster.

As she stood on Angela Brayshaw’s doorstep, dishevelled from the wind, with sand still on her boots, Patty realized that she should have gone home and changed first. Then perhaps she would not have felt at such a disadvantage. Angela was as calm and immaculate as ever. She opened the door only wide enough to see who was there.

‘Yes?’ she said distantly. ‘What can I do for you?’

Patty might have been there to borrow sugar or sell insurance. There was no recognition in Angela’s face, no indication that they had shared an experience of such horror as the discovery of Medburn’s body.

‘Can I come in?’ Patty said, stamping her feet on the path in a vain attempt to shift the sand from her boots. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

It was already growing dark and lights were coming on in the other houses in the street. Angela could see the flickering images of colour television sets, the peering faces as neighbours, who had seen policemen call at the house earlier in the day, hoped for further excitement.

Reluctantly Angela moved aside to let Patty into the room. She was wearing a black skirt which reached to the middle of her calves and a black and white blouse. Her face was smooth, discreetly made up. She stood quite still and waited for Patty to speak.