The only conversation he’d had was with Jonny the barman, and to jeer at the old slag, Dee, as she wandered through the pub trying to bum drinks or pick up punters. God, he thought, you’d have to be desperate. Another moment of pride, because he hadn’t sunk to that.
Then through the drunken fug he was aware of a buzz of conversation behind him. Sudden animated voices. A name he recognized, even though it wasn’t pronounced properly. He turned to confront a middle-aged couple. He knew them vaguely by sight, thought he might have been at school with the man, but couldn’t trawl a name from his memory.
‘What did you say?’
‘There’s been a murder.’ The woman was scrawny. She’d taken off her jacket and was wearing a pink V-necked top. He could see vertical wrinkles between her breasts. ‘It stopped the Metro.’
‘Nah,’ Malcolm said. ‘That was the snow.’ He reached out for his glass of wine, saw in the mirror over the bar that it had left stains like fangs at the corner of his mouth, and wiped them away with the back of his hand. His fingers were callused and grimy, though he’d washed before leaving work.
‘There was a murder.’ The woman’s voice was high-pitched and carried across the bar. The room went quiet as everyone listened and she revelled in the attention. ‘Wor lass is married to one of the community support officers, and she just texted us. It’ll be on the late news.’
‘Did they tell you who got killed?’ But Malcolm thought he knew already.
‘She lived just up the road here.’ The woman’s excitement was obvious. Malcolm thought if she were given the chance to view the body, she’d be there in the mortuary. Staring. Drooling almost. ‘They called her Margaret. She had a strange second name.’
‘Krukowski.’
‘Aye, that’s it!’ She looked at him with more interest now and something like respect. ‘Did you know her then?’
He paused for a moment and pushed himself away from the bar. ‘Once,’ he said. ‘A long time ago.’ He stood for a moment to get his balance and then he stumbled out into the cold.
In the street he had to stop again to steady himself by leaning against an overflowing bin. The fish shop was dark and the road was quiet. Suddenly his head was full of memories and pictures: a sunny day on the boat out to Coquet Island, a woman in a long floaty skirt and sandals, a wine glass in her hand and laughing. A group of people standing outside the Coble to have their photo taken. Then the flames of a fire licking across wood like a snake’s tongue, and the smell of smoke and tar.
It occurred to him that he could knock at the door of the guest house and ask snooty Kate for news of Margaret, but the cold had sobered him sufficiently for him to realize that wasn’t a good idea. He’d catch Ryan in the morning and get the information from him.
He walked towards the illuminated Metro sign. The priest, Peter Gruskin, was walking in the opposite direction, and for a moment Malcolm wondered where he was going. Surely not to the pub? But as Malcolm turned down the alley towards Percy Street, he saw that the man had changed direction and was following him, walking so quickly that the black cloak swung behind him, making him look like a huge, swooping black bird. Gruskin looked so odd – so unlike a human – that Malcolm felt a moment of unease and was tempted to run for home like a child frightened by imagined monsters. But the priest took the footbridge over the Metro line towards the town and Malcolm continued on his way. The alley had the bulk of St Batholomew’s Church on one side and only one light at each end, so his shadow was thrown ahead and then behind him on the hard-packed snow. Malcolm was taken by an overwhelming need to relieve himself and, looking quickly around, pissed where he stood against the spiked fence that separated the Metro line from the path. He thought he heard voices at the Metro end of the alley and, embarrassed, turned away quickly and hurried home.
Inside the house it was almost as cold as in the street, and this was a damp cold that clawed into his bones. In the living room he switched on the light and the gas fire and saw the room as if for the first time. Soulless. This place is soulless.
It had the same patterned carpet that had been in the place when he’d bought it, a mock-leather sofa and a glass-topped coffee table. A television.
I’ve worked my bollocks off for fifty years and this is all I have to show for it.
And a decent boat, he thought, and at least that notion gave him a brief moment of comfort. The Lucy-May had been worth fighting for, and Deborah hadn’t got her hands on that. He switched on the set, thinking he would catch the late local news. Still standing in his coat, he found that the earlier memories were spinning round his head again: fractured light on the water, bouncing onto the face of a young woman laughing. The warm planks of the deck on his back, and terns overhead weaving weird shapes in the sky. Then the whiplash sound of snapping wood and the gunshots of sparks as the fire took hold.
As he waited for the news to come on, Malcolm shook his head to dispel the pictures that crowded his head, and went to the window to shut the curtains. It came to him that he would never again see Margaret Krukowski walk down Harbour Street on her way to church or the Metro, her back straight and her eyes fixed ahead. Her mind full of charity and good works. She could make no more demands. He wasn’t sure whether the thought pleased or dismayed him.
Chapter Nine
They stood outside on the pavement. Vera stamped her feet. An attempt to keep warm, but also to wake herself up.
‘What shall we do now?’ Holly would never be the first one to call it a day. Her working life was spent persuading her colleagues that she was less of a wimp than the rest of them. ‘Do you want to try this hostel?’
‘Nah,’ Vera said. ‘We’ll go tomorrow when the weather’s better.’
‘Well then?’ Patience had never been one of Holly Clarke’s virtues.
‘Get off home,’ Vera said. ‘You live in town, don’t you? The roads should be okay. Briefing in the morning, eight o’clock sharp. Paul Keating is planning the post-mortem at ten.’
‘What will you do?’ More curiosity than concern. The whole team thought she was mad to live in her father’s house at the top of a hill, regularly cut off by snow and floods.
‘Ah, don’t worry about me, Hol. I’ll find a bed for the night.’
They walked together to the end of Harbour Street, surprised on the way by the sound of a train pulling into the station. The Metro system was open again. Everything was back to normal.
Vera stood in the street and watched Holly drive off. She was tempted by the light and the warmth of the Coble, could taste the fire of a whisky sliding down her throat. But a woman on her own in a pub in Mardle would attract attention. She might not be dressed like the big lass in the fishnet tights, but folk would stare and wonder all the same.
On impulse she walked back to Kate Dewar’s guest house. Her Land Rover was still parked outside, the windscreen now covered with ice. The lock was frozen and she had to tug on the handle to get the door open. In the back was her bag. A change of underwear and a toothbrush and toothpaste. She always kept it with her, just in case.
She knocked on the door. No reply. She knocked again and this time she heard footsteps. Kate Dewar appeared. Behind her stood a man. He was older than Kate, in his late fifties or early sixties, dressed in a checked shirt and a sweater. A grey beard and a weather-beaten face. Vera looked at her watch. Nine-thirty.
‘Oh, it’s you.’ Kate’s voice was a mixture of irritation and relief.
‘Why, who did you think it might have been?’
‘I’ve had the press on the phone. The Newcastle papers.’
Of course, Vera thought, the death of an elderly woman wouldn’t be sufficiently glamorous for the nationals.