‘Did she enjoy it?’ He repeated the question. Thinking about it again, it wasn’t so much the sex that shocked him, but the fact that it had happened here, in Margaret’s own space. It seemed like a terrible invasion of her privacy, another example of living on the job. He could see why she’d invited so few people into her home once she’d retired.
‘She said it was better than working for a living. And once she’d got herself sorted, her own clients – regulars – I think she did like it. She only ever took on someone new if they were recommended. She never had to advertise.’
‘Not like Dee Robson?’
Susan gave a sad chuckle. ‘Poor Dee. She was an alcoholic and she enjoyed the drink too much to give up. Every couple of quid was important. And she needed the attention. But she was never a real professional. Not like Margaret.’
Joe sat beside her. ‘Did Margaret ever talk to you about her customers?’
‘Clients,’ Susan said. ‘She called them her clients. And no, she never talked about them. She said she was like a doctor or a priest, and what happened in the bedroom stayed secret.’
Joe took another tack. ‘Where was your room?’
‘On the ground floor. Near the front door. Draughty. And I never got it looking like this place.’ She looked wistfully at Margaret’s furniture. ‘Didn’t have the eye.’
‘But you’d have seen people coming in and out from there?’ Because Joe thought Susan would have been curious. Jealous even. He pictured her peering through stained net curtains, catching a glimpse of Margaret’s gentleman callers on the pavement outside.
‘Sometimes.’ Susan snapped her mouth shut, as if she’d just remembered that this pleasant young man was a police officer.
‘It might help us to find out who killed her,’ Joe said. ‘We think it might have started all those years ago.’
‘Nah! That’s just daft. Who’d care what happened then?’
‘Margaret was dying,’ Joe said. ‘Bowel cancer. We think she wanted to talk about what happened back then. And maybe somebody wanted to stop her.’
There was a pause. On the roof outside herring gulls were screaming. ‘I never knew their names. And there were only a few of them.’
‘But you saw them.’
‘All respectable,’ she said. ‘Suits, you know. Shiny shoes.’ She leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘Once there was even a vicar. He was wearing a scarf, but when he was leaving it was open at the neck and I saw that white collar they have.’
But not Peter Gruskin, Joe thought. He’d hardly have been born. He remembered Vera and her manic behaviour at the briefing the day before, her conviction that Pawel Krukowski was dead. ‘Tell me about Margaret’s husband?’
‘What about him?’
‘What was he like?’
It was as if she hadn’t heard him again. He wondered if she was lost in her memories, or if this vacant stare was a technique she’d developed to persuade social workers that she still needed to stay at the Haven.
‘Susan.’
She turned her head slowly. Her eyes were cloudy and it was as if she hardly knew him.
‘Tell me about Margaret’s husband. Pawel. The Polish guy.’
‘I never met him,’ she said. Her head was tilted to one side, as if she was listening to a far-away voice. ‘When I moved into Harbour Street he’d already disappeared.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
They had a fish-and-chip lunch in the Mardle Fisheries. Only a few days to Christmas, and the staff wore Santa hats and a crackly version of ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ played on a loop in the background. Joe didn’t think he’d get anything more from Susan, but Vera had told him to buy her lunch and, anyway, he thought it would be a treat for her. He’d started to think of her as a slightly batty aunt.
‘Were the fisheries here when you lived in the street?’ He thought Susan went in and out of reception like a badly tuned radio. Sometimes she listened and understood, and at other times she seemed in a world of her own.
She nodded, her mouth full of chips. ‘But only the wet-fish shop and the takeaway. Not a sit-down restaurant.’
‘And the pub was there?’
‘Yes.’ She scrunched up her forehead, a parody of someone thinking. ‘The landlady was called Val. She ran the place for years. I don’t know what happened to her. She had a son.’ Again Susan frowned in concentration, as if remembering the man’s name was a sort of test. ‘Rick? It might have been Rick. I never liked him. He was cruel to me. Made fun. There’s nothing clever about making fun.’ She put her hand to her mouth as if she regretted giving so much away and returned to her meal.
Now Joe’s mind was wandering. He couldn’t see what any of this could have to do with the murder of two women in the twenty-first century, but he imagined the Coble in the 1970s. It would be before all the pits and the shipyards closed. Lads in flared jeans and lasses in hippy skirts. The two small bars filled with smoke and the ceilings brown with nicotine. There would have been more commercial fishing then, and the men would’ve come for a pint straight from the boats, full of talk of their catch and the weather. What would they all have made of Margaret Krukowski? Perhaps the men wouldn’t have cared how she made her living, but some of them would surely have guessed. They’d have seen Margaret’s clients, even if they’d been few in number, out of place in their business suits and clerical collars, knocking at the door of Number One, Harbour Street. They’d have been curious. Would they have wanted some of the action too?
‘Do you fancy going in for a drink?’ he asked. ‘For old times’ sake?’
Susan shook her head immediately. Perhaps she thought that Rick, the landlady’s son, would still be there to jeer at her.
Joe took out the photo album from his inside pocket. ‘Do you recognize anyone here?’
She turned the pages slowly, but nothing registered until she came to the photo of Billy Kerr’s birthday party. ‘That’s Margaret! And Billy and Malcolm.’
‘Anyone else that you recognize?’
‘Val, the landlady.’ She pointed to the big woman.
Joe waited for her to point to Rick, the landlady’s son, but she shut the album without mentioning him. Again he wondered what exactly the boy had done to upset her. ‘Shall we get you back to the Haven?’ He wasn’t sure what good this was doing. He saw a police van pulling in beside Kerr’s yard and wondered what was going on there.
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘But it’s been canny, coming back.’
‘Not too many ghosts?’
She put on her blank, not-understanding face and didn’t reply.
They arrived at the Haven at the same time as Laurie and Jane, and Joe helped to carry in the carrier bags of food.
‘How did it go?’ Jane caught him, just as he was about to get back into the car. There was something complicit in the question, as if they were two professionals comparing notes on a shared case.
But we’re not, he wanted to say. You’re a suspect as much as Susan is. ‘Fine.’ He gave a bland smile. ‘I think she had a good time.’ Then he did get into his vehicle and drove off before she could pry further.
Back in the police station he searched out Vera, found her in the canteen staring into space over a mug of tea. He sat down opposite her. ‘What did you get out of Kerr?’
She looked up. ‘Not a lot. He’s hiding something, but he’s not talking.’ She paused. ‘I’ve got a warrant to search his yard. It still seems as if Pawel Krukowski disappeared into thin air. And I don’t believe in magic.’
‘The search team arrived just as I was leaving.’
She looked across the table at him. ‘Tell me that you got on better with Susan Coulson.’
‘I’m not sure. She lived on the ground floor of the house and saw Margaret’s clients coming and going. There weren’t many of them. But all respectable men, she said. Professionals. A vicar even. She claims not to know any names.’