‘That doesn’t get us any further then.’ Vera looked up at him and he saw how tired she was. She’d burned herself out with her excitement of the day before. Perhaps she was no longer so convinced by her idea that Margaret had killed her husband.
‘Susan mentioned the landlady of the Coble. The woman called Val. And her son, Rick. Val’s probably dead by now, but the man might still be around. Do you know if Charlie ever traced him?’
‘He hasn’t said.’ Vera was preoccupied.
Joe persisted. ‘There’d have been gossip in the neighbourhood about Margaret. Not something you could keep secret in a place like Harbour Street: strangers turning up at her door.’ Joe knew he was throwing Vera these ideas in the hope of cheering her up. ‘I thought it might be useful to talk to people who were around at the time, but not involved in the present case.’
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘You’re probably right. See if Charlie has managed to get anything on this Rick. He’s babysitting Kerr in the house in Percy Street.’ But there was no enthusiasm in her words and she got up suddenly and stomped away from him and back to her office. She sat there with her door shut until mid-afternoon, when she left without a word. Joe knew she’d be going back to Harbour Street. The tension of waiting for the search results would be killing her and she couldn’t stop herself from meddling.
Charlie answered his phone on the first ring and told Joe to hang on until he found somewhere private so that they could talk.
‘How’s it going?’ Joe could tell from the first response to the call that Charlie was gloomy.
‘Well, I can think of better ways to spend the week before Christmas.’
‘Have you tracked down that mother and son who used to run the pub in Harbour Street?’
Charlie hardly paused for a beat. ‘The Butts? I haven’t got anything on the man, but the mother still lives in Mardle. The address is on my desk.’ And then he was gone.
Joe got home before the kids were in bed. They had that wild energy that came of being shut in the house all day, too much sugar and too much anticipation of Christmas. Jessie was sulking because Sal had refused to let her go into Newcastle with her friends. ‘I’ve told her that she’s too young to go in without a grown-up. It’s mad this time of year.’ Sal was crotchety and resentful after having to battle the issue all day. He could see that one more push from Jessie and his wife would relent, just for a quiet life. There were times when being a parent was the hardest thing in the world. And being a daughter-in-law too. In a moment of madness Sal had offered to cook Christmas lunch for his parents this year and she was already stressing about it. The fridge was so full of food that it would hardly shut.
He’d got the kids upstairs and poured Sal a big glass of Pinot when his phone rang. Vera. Just wanting to chat.
‘How’s it going?’ He walked into the kitchen so that he wouldn’t disturb Sal – there was a series she liked on the telly. She rolled her eyes when she realized it was Vera on the phone.
‘They’ve stopped the search for the night. Seems to me it’ll take days to go through all that stuff. And even if there’s anything important among all the crap, I’m not sure we’d recognize it.’ He could tell that she was exhausted and frustrated. She was losing faith in her ability to see the case to an end. He was tempted to offer to meet her. He wouldn’t have minded sitting in her untidy house talking through the strands of the investigation. But as soon as the thought came into his head, he knew it was impossible. Sal would have a fit. The fantasies of Margaret set up in her small oasis of civilization in Harbour Street and receiving her gentleman callers had excited him. Instead he would share a bottle of wine with his wife and they would have an early night. Vera Stanhope could do without him for once.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Kate Dewar tried to drive to the end of Harbour Street to turn around. She always liked her car to be facing the right way outside the house when she parked. But she had to back all the way up the street again, because a uniformed officer waved to show that there was no way through. Outside Malcolm’s yard there was a minibus and a van, dozens of police officers in dark-blue anoraks. They were putting up screens so that you couldn’t see anything from the road. Blue-and-white tape, like on television detective shows, but twisted upside down and back to front so that she couldn’t read what it said. She guessed: Police. Do Not Enter. Did that mean Malcolm had been arrested? She shivered at the thought that her son had been working so closely with a killer. Perhaps the investigation was nearly over and life would go back to normal. She and Stuart could continue making plans to move and start their new life.
In the house Chloe was in – she helped Kate carry the shopping down the stairs to the kitchen – but there was no sign of Ryan. She wondered briefly what he was up to, imagined him prowling. He needs a girlfriend, she thought. Someone stable, without too much imagination. She was sorry Ryan was out; he would have known what was going on in Harbour Street.
George Enderby was in the lounge. He’d helped himself to whisky.
‘I put some money on the dresser,’ he said. ‘I hope that’s all right. I spoke to the inspector. She said that I can leave tomorrow, so you’ll be rid of me then, Kate.’ He gave a lopsided grin and she thought that really he would have liked to stay. Or he wanted her to say that she would miss him.
‘We’ll miss you,’ she said, wondering if there was really any difference sometimes between kindness and desperation to please. ‘But Diana will be glad to have you home.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Diana’s moved on. She has a new man. Just like you.’ Kate wondered if he’d been sitting here all afternoon drinking her whisky, or if he’d been brooding in the lounge bar at the pub, buying drinks in return for company. He didn’t seem drunk, but still he was hardly himself.
‘Do you know what’s going on at Malcolm’s yard?’ If he’d been in the pub he might have heard the gossip.
‘No.’ He seemed hardly to care.
Back in the kitchen she put away all the food she’d bought for Christmas.
Chloe was on the sofa in the living room and there was a book face-down beside her. She’d changed into different clothes, though, a pretty top that she usually only wore for going out, and she’d put on eye-liner and mascara. Kate wondered if one of her friends had been round. Chloe called through to her mother, ‘Oh, Stuart phoned.’ Implying that any call for her mother could have no importance and that she’d only just remembered. ‘He said that you weren’t answering your mobile.’
Kate stood in the doorway between the two rooms. She was clasping a huge bag of washing powder to her stomach as if it were a baby. ‘What did he want?’
‘Nothing.’ That breezy voice. ‘He just said to tell you that he’d called.’
Kate phoned Stuart, but there was no response. She left him a message, saying that she was in. ‘Come round, if you’re not busy. It’d be lovely to see you.’ She thought that the balance of power had shifted between them. In the beginning Stuart had been the eager one, turning up on her doorstep, excited. Now she felt more needy, less certain of his affection.
She couldn’t settle and climbed the stairs to the landing close to Margaret’s room. From the round window there was a view over Malcolm’s yard. It seemed to her that the police officers were searching for something specific. They had their own method, she could telclass="underline" meticulous, shifting all Malcolm’s gear to one end of the yard. It was almost dark and suddenly the street lights came on and quite clearly she saw Ryan, peering through the railings, trying to see past the screens, along with other rubber-neckers. No doubt there’d already be a photo on his smartphone and he’d have sent it to all his friends. Then he’d move on, pacing the pavement, restless as ever.