She drove back to Kimmerston. In the police station colleagues were in a meeting room gathered around a television set, waiting to see the coverage of the press briefing. She arrived just in time for the opening titles and there was a cheer when there was a shot of her at the top of the programme, plus lots of ribald comments when it was over. Holly thought she’d handled it well. She’d come over as professional and hadn’t given anything away. As soon as the piece on the press conference was over, the phones began to ring.
Chapter Fifteen
Vera and Joe stood in the entrance of the flats in Percy Street waiting for a shower to pass. Across the road someone was playing a CD of Christmas songs, so loud that the music spilled out onto the street. The Pogues followed by Slade. Vera wondered what Dee Robson would do on Christmas Day, and if Father Gruskin would be a good Christian and invite her into his home. The notion was so unlikely, so incongruous, that it made her laugh out loud. She shook her head to dismiss it and then decided that the old ladies in the congregation would be fighting among themselves to give their priest Christmas dinner.
‘What do you think?’ Joe stamped his feet and put his hands in his coat pocket.
‘I’m not sure our Dee will manage on her own without Margaret to support her.’ Vera knew that wasn’t what he’d meant. ‘Poor lass. Perhaps the Haven would take her back. We should give social services a ring.’
Joe looked impatient. Perhaps he thought her sympathy for Dee misplaced; the woman had disgusted him. ‘What should we do now?’
‘The evening briefing, then I’m going home.’ Suddenly she felt tired and old. ‘I need a hot bath and an early night in my own bed.’ She looked at him hopefully. ‘Fancy calling in for a quick bite on your way back to the family? There’ll be something in the freezer. Joanna dropped in a lamb casserole last week. Their own meat. It’ll soon heat through. And it’ll give us a chance to talk about the investigation in the warm.’
He stood for a moment, his hands in his pockets. ‘It’s not on my way home. And your house is never warm.’ But she could tell he was weakening.
She drove ahead of him and had a fire lit before he arrived. The casserole had already been in the microwave and was now in a pan to finish it off. She knew he’d smell it as soon as he walked through the door. There were bottles of Wylam beer on the table under the window. She’d grown up in this house in the hills. Her mother had died here when Vera was still a child and she’d nursed Hector, her father – the man who still taunted her from the grave – until his death. The house was impractical and mucky, but she knew she’d never move. She hoped that she’d die here too.
In the kitchen she reran the briefing in her head. It had been Holly’s show. She’d been full of the information that Malcolm Kerr drove an old Golf and that he’d been back in Mardle at around three o’clock. Kerr had no alibi for the murder, then. And if he had given Margaret a lift to the Haven, he’d lied to Vera when he said he’d not seen her to talk to recently.
Joe came in without knocking. Vera nodded towards the beer. ‘You could have just the one to keep me company.’ Another ritual. Joe and her hippy neighbours were the only people who ever came into her house. She always offered them beer.
They ate the casserole with spoons from bowls on their knees. It was too cold to eat at the table away from the fire. A loaf stood on a board on the coffee table between them. They drank the beer straight from the bottle. Vera opened a second before they started discussing the case. Joe cleared the crockery into the kitchen – she would have left them on the floor. He came back shivering. ‘You don’t need a fridge out there. Have you never thought of getting central heating?’
‘Maybe when I retire. No point when I’m never here.’ Hector had thought central heating sapped a person’s strength.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Margaret Krukowski. How far have we got?’ She thought this was the happiest she could be. An intricate case and a beer. And someone to share her ideas with: Joe Ashworth, whose wife had ambitions for him and who could move with promotion at any time. Was it only possible truly to enjoy something if you knew there was a danger that it might be taken away?
‘Margaret Krukowski.’ Ashworth repeated the name like the chorus of a song. ‘Kept herself to herself. Why? Because she valued her privacy or because she had something to hide?’
‘George Enderby, that rep who stays at the guest house, thinks she was a spy during the Cold War.’
‘Nah!’ Joe shook his head. ‘This is domestic, isn’t it? Personal. Or some random, delusional crazy on the train. Not political.’
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘I think you’re right.’ But she didn’t believe in the random loony theory, either. He’d been right first time. This was personal.
‘We know that Malcolm Kerr, the boatman, hasn’t been telling us the whole truth.’ Vera had liked Kerr. She could understand his drinking and his desperation. But she disapproved of witnesses who weren’t straight with her. ‘He drives a Golf that matches the description of the car that dropped Margaret at the Haven. And he got back to Mardle earlier than he told me. The discrepancy in timing could have been a genuine mistake, but there was something going on between him and Margaret. Why not tell me that he’d given her a lift that day, otherwise?’
‘Should we bring him in?’ Joe finished his beer and set the bottle on the floor. ‘He might be a bit more forthcoming in a formal interview, under caution?’
Vera thought of the man she’d met in the shed in the boatyard. In the bare interview room of the police station he’d be angry and frightened and he would shut down completely. And she didn’t want lawyers involved at this stage. ‘Let’s leave it for a day,’ she said. ‘I’ll try him again on home territory.’
They sat in silence. Vera wondered if she needed anything else to drink and decided against it. ‘I’d like you to go and see the priest,’ she said. ‘Peter Gruskin. Margaret was a regular at the church and he’s a trustee at the Haven. He didn’t take to me. Maybe he just doesn’t like strong women. If there was anything going on between Margaret and Kerr, there’d have been gossip in a place like Mardle. He’d have heard about it. All those old women bitching as they made tea and polished the silver. Make it clear to him that he’s doing no favours to Margaret by keeping her secrets now.’
Joe nodded.
‘And we’ll send Holly into Kate Dewar’s, shall we?’ Vera felt that she was on a roll. ‘She’ll be a fresh pair of eyes in the place. I can’t remember when George Enderby was leaving. If he’s still there, she can talk to him too.’
Joe nodded again and held his hands to the fire. He shot a look at the clock that stood on the mantelpiece. Hector’s clock, which had always been there.
‘Off you go,’ Vera said, making a shooing motion with her hands. ‘I’m ready for a bath and my bed. I’ll catch up with you at the briefing tomorrow morning.’ She got to her feet.
Joe seemed almost reluctant to leave, but he stood up too. ‘Holly’s press conference will have been broadcast again tonight on the late local news. Perhaps something will have come out of that.’
She gave a little laugh. ‘Our Holly as the face of Northumbria Police. She’ll love that.’ She opened the door to see him out. The rain had stopped and the sky was clear. The stars seemed very bright.
At the briefing the following morning Vera felt full of energy and ready to spread goodwill around the team. ‘Holly had a very productive meeting with Mike Craggs, Professor of Marine Biology at Newcastle University. She filled us in yesterday about Kerr’s car and the time that the boat got back into Mardle, but I’ve been thinking that I’d like a more general overview of the conversation.’