Malcolm didn’t see her until he was at the foot of the dunes. He always walked looking down at his feet, avoiding eye contact with strangers, perhaps. Then he stopped for a moment and looked around him, and that was when he saw Vera. She gave a little wave. She didn’t want to appear threatening.
‘We need a chat,’ she said. Then, feeling hungry again, remembering the smell of toast: ‘Is there anywhere we can get some breakfast?’ Now that it had come to it, she was reluctant to take him to the police station just yet, to start the formal process that would lead to his arrest.
They ate sausage sandwiches in a greasy spoon on the road out of town. A steaming tea urn and a couple of German lorry drivers at the table by the counter. Vera sat Malcolm near the window.
‘Margaret Krukowski was a prostitute,’ she said. ‘You didn’t think it was important to tell me?’
‘No.’
Vera thought Malcolm was like a boy who hadn’t quite grown up. ‘I didn’t want her memory dirtied by that sort of talk.’
‘But she was a prostitute?’ Vera tried to catch his eye, but he was staring out of the window at the passing traffic.
‘Not like Dee Robson,’ he said immediately. His face was red, indignant. ‘Not cheap, tarting herself around the pubs. She had men friends and they paid towards her expenses. She had to live, she said. Once Pawel had left, and my dad let her go from working for us. And she’d always enjoyed the company of men.’
She enjoyed sex, Vera thought, but you can’t bring yourself to say that.
‘You can’t have liked it, though.’ She leaned forward across the table, where the remains of their breakfast lay. ‘The thought of her going with other men. You loved her.’
‘But she didn’t love me.’ His voice was so quiet that if she hadn’t been so close to him she wouldn’t have heard. ‘I had to come to terms with that years before.’
There was a moment of silence. The German drivers clattered through the door, letting in a blast of icy air.
‘Margaret was going to leave you some money,’ Vera said. ‘Enough for a decent car, at least. But she was killed before she signed the will.’
‘I didn’t know anything about that! And I didn’t want her money!’
‘Did she ask you to keep an eye out for Dee once she was gone?’
Malcolm’s gaze slid away from her. ‘Aye.’
‘And you said you would?’ He didn’t answer and Vera continued. ‘Of course you did. You couldn’t deny her anything. Would you have kept your promise, though? Not an easy woman to keep track of, Dee Robson?’
He shrugged. ‘I’d have done my best.’
‘But now the woman’s dead, you don’t have to.’ Vera wiped the grease from her mouth. ‘Must be a relief.’
‘I wouldn’t kill the woman because she was a bit of a nuisance!’ He’d raised his voice and the woman behind the counter was staring.
Vera ignored the outburst and continued. ‘Now we’ll have to trace Margaret’s relatives, because there’s no valid will. Her husband. I call Pawel that, because I’ve looked and I can’t find any trace that they were officially divorced.’ She looked up and this time she did catch his eye. ‘Any idea where he might be?’
He shook his head slowly.
‘We’re tracing other people who were around at the time,’ she said. ‘That mother and son who ran the Coble. If you don’t talk, there are folk who will.’
He shrugged and still he didn’t speak, but this time she sensed something unexpected in his reaction. Pleasure? A certain wry humour? ‘Pawel went back to Poland,’ he said. ‘He found a woman who suited him better and he went back home.’
‘If you know anything about his disappearance, and you don’t talk, you’re playing a dangerous game.’ She felt as she had with Ryan at the Dewars’ breakfast table: that she wanted to slap some sense into him. Demand some answers. Both knew more than they were letting on. ‘You could be charged with murder, man. All these secrets and lies. The truth won’t hurt Margaret now.’
He shrugged again, the eternal teenage boy.
‘You’ll have to come into the station and make a statement,’ she said. Not because she thought they would get more information from him – Malcolm was too stubborn for that – but because it was the only way she had to retaliate.
He shrugged once more and followed her in his car back to Kimmerston. On the way she thought that she would get a search warrant. Even after all this time there might be traces of Pawel Krukowski in Kerr’s yard.
Chapter Thirty-Two
When Joe Ashworth arrived at the Haven there was no sign of Susan Coulson. The house seemed quiet and empty. The road through Holypool hadn’t been gritted and he’d skidded turning into the track. Everything was white. Frost on the grass and on every tree and twig. A white mist rising from the low pasture. No tyre tracks marking the frosty drive. Walking to the front door, he saw that there was nobody in the office, but then he noticed a light in the kitchen. Jane and Laurie were at the table, bent towards each other, looking like conspirators. Or lovers. They didn’t notice that he was there. He stood watching for a while and then Jane Cameron looked up and saw him and he felt awkward, like a voyeur.
She opened the kitchen door to let him in. ‘Well, Sergeant Ashworth, you’re becoming a regular visitor.’ She poured him coffee and set it on the table. ‘We’re making a list. Our last shop before Christmas.’
‘How many of you will be here?’ He couldn’t understand how she could bear to spend Christmas Day with these demanding clients. Didn’t she have family of her own? When would she escape?
‘Laurie, Susan and me. And I’ve invited a couple of friends from town. We’ve got lots of space, so they can stay the night. I’m looking forward to it.’ Jane gave an easy smile. ‘No men to get in the way or make demands.’
‘Father Gruskin won’t be here?’
‘Good God, no.’ She seemed horrified by the idea. ‘The old ladies from St Bart’s will be fighting to cook him lunch. We’re planning a proper party.’
‘What do you want?’ Laurie looked at him. ‘If you need to talk to me, be quick, because I want to take the dog for a walk before we go into town.’
‘No,’ he said. He was surprised, but also faintly amused that she was so bossy. An offender had never spoken to him like that before. ‘I don’t need to talk to you.’
Laurie stood up and left. He heard her speak to someone in the hall and a dog barked, and then Susan Coulson walked into the kitchen. She was dressed in the sort of shapeless trousers that Vera wore on a bad day, with a baggy jersey across her swollen belly. Her grey hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was yawning as if she’d just stumbled out of bed. He wasn’t sure that she’d recognize him, but she nodded as she put on the kettle for tea. He thought she seemed more composed than she had on their previous meeting.
‘There’s been a development,’ he said. ‘A possibility that Margaret’s murder was linked to the way she lived a long time ago. I was hoping that Susan might help me.’ He looked at the woman. ‘Because you knew Margaret then, didn’t you? You both had bedsits in Harbour Street?’
She looked at Jane first, as if she needed her permission to answer, and then she nodded. No words. She squeezed the teabag in her mug, threw it into the bin and sat at the table.
‘I wondered if you’d like to go back to Harbour Street,’ he said. ‘See the house as it is now.’
Still silence. Through the window he saw Laurie in boots and jacket walking with the dog across the grass. Their feet left scuffmarks in the frost. The sun was burning off the mist.