‘Maybe you won’t have to bother with baking, if you hit the big time with the music again.’ Vera squinted across at her. She couldn’t understand what was going on with this music thing. Was it just a dream, encouraged by Stuart Booth, or were there concrete plans?
‘Aye’, Kate said. ‘Maybe. Though I’ll not hold my breath. It’s a precarious business. Stuart’s not one for wild dreams, either.’ She smiled, though, and Vera thought that secretly she was excited by the whole package – the music and the man.
‘When did Malcolm and Deborah separate?’ There was nothing Vera liked better than this talk about the personalities on the edge of a murder. Gossip, but legitimate because it was work.
‘Five years ago? Something like that. Deborah had invested in Malcolm’s business and he was forced to buy her out. They had a nice house up the coast at Warkworth at one time, but he had to sell it to pay her off. He lives in a poky little ex-council place in Percy Street now.’
‘Is that in Mardle?’
‘Yes.’ Kate poured the coffee. ‘Just behind the church.’
‘Did you ever know that Malcolm and Margaret were close?’ Vera eyed up the shortbread, but it seemed that Kate was going to leave it to cool.
‘No, but I didn’t know Margaret had worked for him at one time, either. In the office, he said. It must have been before we moved here.’ She paused. ‘Margaret never mentioned it and Malcolm doesn’t have an office now, just that eyesore of a shed.’
There was a moment of silence and then Vera asked, ‘Do you have a health centre in Mardle?’
The question came out of the blue, and Kate obviously thought she was mad. ‘Yes, just over the Metro line towards town. A new place close to the high school.’
‘Handy.’ Vera drank the coffee. ‘Is that where Margaret’s GP was based?’
Kate thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know. Isn’t that weird? We lived in the same house for all those years and I don’t know where she went to the doctor. Perhaps because she was never ill. I suggested that she have a flu jab once. Everyone in the town was going down with it. But she wouldn’t. She said she’d never liked needles.’
‘Had she seemed herself in the last few days?’
This time the response was quicker. ‘Actually, not really. Not as sharp. She was a bit preoccupied, wandering around in a kind of a daze. I asked her if anything was the matter, but she said she just had a few things to sort out.’
That obsessive privacy again. All those secrets. Oh, Margaret Krukowski, what did you have to hide?
Outside, there was an odd milky light. Thin cloud obscured the sun and Vera thought she could smell snow. She decided that as soon as it started, she’d head for home. She needed a night in her own bed and a chance to think things through. Her neighbours would have cleared the track by now and would make sure she got out in the morning. It was lunchtime. There were school kids queuing up at the chip shop, some only in their uniform sweatshirts, seeming not to feel the cold. She thought she caught a glimpse of Chloe Dewar with some boy, but she couldn’t be certain. Teenage girls all looked alike to her.
Kerr’s boatyard was surrounded by tall spiked railings, and you got into it through double wooden gates. Trawling back through her memory, Vera thought they’d met the men here, that night she’d gone with Hector on his raid of roseate terns’ eggs. Then they’d gone to the harbour and into a boat. Not the tripper boat, the Lucy-May, but a small boat with a powerful outboard. She tried to picture some sort of office, but nothing came. The gate’s padlock was open, but the gate had sunk on its hinges now and she had to lift and push it against the snow to get inside. There was no immediate sign of Kerr, but a track through the snow led to a shed made of planks and corrugated iron, and that was where she found him. It had one small window, so grubby that it was hard to see inside, but she made out a shape slumped in a battered armchair and she tapped on the glass. There was no movement and for a moment her imagination ran wild. Another murder. Or a suicide. Plenty of tools to stab a woman with, in a place like this. And knives to slash your wrists with, if the guilt got too much.
She knocked on the glass again, this time more fiercely, and Kerr stirred in his chair, then got to his feet. Before he had the chance to come out to her, she opened the door and went inside.
It felt suddenly very warm. There was a tiny wood-burning stove in the corner and the place smelled of smoke and sweat. He’d drunk too much and slept too little. She recognized the signs.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Vera Stanhope,’ she said. She didn’t mind the question. She could be like a bear with a sore head too with a hangover. ‘Detective Inspector.’
‘Stanhope.’ He repeated the name as if he recognized it.
‘Aye, I think you knew my dad.’ She thought Hector must have worked with this man over a number of years. Kerr wouldn’t remember the name after just one outing. Where else had he taken Hector in his rubber dinghy? What other eggs had they stolen together?
‘My God, you’re Hector’s daughter.’ The man spluttered, halfway between a cough and a chuckle. ‘A cop. He’ll be turning in his grave!’
Vera shifted a pile of old boat magazines from a stool and sat down. ‘Margaret Krukowski,’ she said.
He sank back in his chair and stared ahead of him. ‘What about her?’
‘She used to work for you?’
‘That was a long time ago.’ He was wary now, determined to give nothing away. Vera wondered what else he had to hide from the police, besides the raids out to the island nature reserve. Dodgy tax and VAT returns almost certainly. Black fish? Smuggled fags and booze?
‘I’m only interested in the murder,’ she said. ‘Anything you can tell me about Margaret will help.’
‘She worked for us years ago, about the time that I knew your father. The business was better then. We still took trippers out to the island, but there was fishing too. And charters. We had a proper little office in the yard then, a kind of wooden Portakabin. Margaret was hardly more than a kid. A posh kid, looking for work. My dad took her on because he thought she’d sound good on the phone. Classy.’
‘Was she married?’ Vera asked.
He hesitated. ‘I never knew much about her private life.’
‘Hey, Malcolm man, who’re you kidding here? A bonny thing like that. You a young man in your prime. You’d have remembered if she was single or not.’
He looked up and glared at her.
‘I told you,’ Vera said. ‘I’m only interested in finding out who killed her. Seems to me you might have an interest in that too.’
‘I think she might have been married.’ He paused. ‘Some foreign seaman. It didn’t last long. I think she only did it to spite her folks.’
‘Did he knock her about?’ Vera put the question as if it were the most natural one in the world.
‘What makes you think that?’ The same anger and the same suspicion.
‘According to the priest, she volunteers in a hostel for homeless women. I wondered if there might be a connection. That’s what my job’s all about – making connections.’
‘Nah,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t think he hit her. Margaret loved the bones of him. She was young and daft, and he was all good looks and romantic gestures. They were happy enough, I think, until he got bored with having no money and ran off with someone else.’
‘Did you fancy your chances with her when he went away?’ Vera looked beyond Kerr to the small window. A few snowflakes melted on the glass and slid towards the frame.
He shook his head. ‘She’d never have gone for a local lad when she was thinking she might get Pawel back.’
‘That was his name?’
‘Aye.’ Reluctantly Kerr spelled it out.