George Enderby must have heard her steps, or perhaps he was listening out for her, because the door of his room opened and he stuck out his head.
‘Everything all right, Kate?’ His voice seemed genuinely concerned. Then a little embarrassed. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘Margaret’s dead.’ She felt suddenly light-headed and leaned against the wall.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ He started out into the corridor before realizing that his door would swing shut and lock automatically behind him. Then he made a strange little hop, holding the door open with one foot, but leaning out towards her. ‘I didn’t know her well, but I never thought of her as an old woman. Was it something sudden? A heart attack?’
‘She was murdered,’ Kate said. ‘Stabbed on the Metro on her way home from town.’ Again it seemed as if the world was spinning around her. She sat on the bottom step and put her head in her hands.
George disappeared briefly and she saw he was reaching inside for his key; then he was sitting beside her with his arm around her shoulder. She could smell his aftershave and the sweetness of the biscuit he’d just eaten. Cinnamon and ginger. Kate wondered how different things would have been if Rob had been as kind as George Enderby. She sat for a moment, enjoying the physical contact, and then she pulled away gently. ‘I have to tell the kids.’
‘Of course,’ he said. He stood up and gave her his hand to help her to her feet. ‘If there’s anything at all I can do to help, please do tell me.’ And he vanished back into his room, as if he thought his presence might be contributing to her distress.
In the basement Ryan was in his bedroom. She heard the sound of his computer. Some game about monsters and the end of the world. Chloe was sitting at the table with a pile of books at one side, scribbling into a jotter. She seemed pale and tired.
‘Ryan, come in here. I need to talk to you both!’
‘Okay.’ There was no sign of him, though. And that was Ryan all over. He always agreed with her and then went his own way. Chloe had turned in her seat and saw that her mother had been crying. ‘What is it?’ The words accompanied by a brief look of distaste, the teenage default response to parents behaving differently. Then she registered that this was serious and not an overreaction to a domestic drama. She was on her feet. ‘Mum, what is it?’ And, as Kate started to cry once more, Chloe shouted to her brother and this time he did emerge from his room. He stood looking at them with a kind of helpless confusion, as if women were a different species and it was safest not to intervene.
They shifted the textbooks onto the dresser and sat round the table. Chloe fetched a bottle of wine from the fridge and opened it with an ease that would have had Kate worried in different circumstances. She poured Kate a large glass. ‘Tell us what’s going on.’
‘Margaret’s dead.’
‘How?’ It was the first time Ryan had spoken. They looked at him.
‘I mean how did she die? An accident? She was fine this morning when I was on my way out.’ He frowned and again Kate was reminded of Robbie.
‘She was murdered.’ Kate thought this sounded like a refrain, the chorus of one of those songs Ryan played on his iPod. Shouted noise. If she repeated it often enough to all the people she needed to tell, perhaps she would believe it. She looked at the kids. In both faces she thought she saw a flash of excitement, before disbelief and distress took over. Murder was the stuff of stories. She imagined they’d both be on their phones to their classmates as soon as she released them from the table. You’ll never believe what’s happening in our house… For a while they’d have a vicarious celebrity, the popularity they both seemed to seek.
‘Why would anyone want to murder an old woman like Margaret?’
Kate looked at Chloe and thought she had lost weight recently. Had Kate been so wrapped up in Stuart and this strange infatuation that she’d been neglecting her children?
‘I don’t know.’ Kate paused. ‘I never thought of her as an old woman. She had too much energy.’
‘Where was she killed?’ It seemed that Ryan needed details to satisfy his curiosity. She suddenly saw him almost as a stranger. He was a good-looking boy; he’d be a heart-breaker. She’d seen him round Mardle with attractive girls, but he’d never introduced them. Neither of the kids ever brought friends back to the house.
‘On the Metro apparently. On her way home from town.’ Kate looked at him. ‘Did she tell you where she was going when you saw her this morning?’
He shook his head.
‘Only I expect the police will want to know.’
‘The police?’ The question asked with studied indifference. But of course he wanted to hear about the investigation. More snippets of information to stick on Facebook.
‘They’re in Margaret’s room. That’s how I know that she’s dead.’
There was a silence. ‘Poor Margaret,’ Chloe said. ‘Where is she? I mean, where’s her body? Will there be a funeral?’
‘I suppose the police have organized a post-mortem. And that there’ll be a funeral eventually. I don’t know how these things work.’
I expect I’ll have to organize that, Kate thought. Who else would do it? Then it occurred to her that she would have to discuss it with Father Gruskin, a man she’d never liked. She felt suddenly very hungry. ‘I’ll get a casserole out of the freezer. We still have to eat.’ It was a relief to get to her feet and leave the room for a while.
She was on her second glass of wine and laying the table for supper when the two detectives turned up at her flat. She’d thought she’d seen the back of them, at least for the day. She’d supposed they would let themselves out of the house. Now they stood in the dark basement corridor and she could tell they were about to make more demands.
‘You’d better come in.’
‘Sorry to bother you again.’ But Vera Stanhope was smiling and Kate thought she wasn’t sorry at all. ‘We’d like to get in touch with Mrs Krukowski’s family and her friends, but we can’t find an address book in her flat. Perhaps you can help.’
Kate led them into the kitchen. Ryan and Chloe had vanished back into their rooms. Like shy animals, they usually avoided adult company. Chloe would be working again. Ryan might be listening at his door. He was an observer, and she’d caught him eavesdropping before.
‘Margaret never mentioned family,’ Kate said. The casserole was whirring around in the microwave to defrost. She wished Stuart would arrive. The oven pinged. ‘As I told you, there was a breakdown in relations when she married. I don’t think she ever saw them again. Her parents would probably be dead now, though I can’t remember her going to their funerals.’
‘No brothers or sisters?’
‘None that I know of.’
‘Did she ever tell you where she grew up?’ Vera Stanhope had settled herself at the kitchen table. She was so big that she seemed to take up all the space there, and to be so comfortable that Kate could imagine her staying all night.
‘Gosforth,’ Kate said. ‘One of those grand terraced houses not far from the High Street.’ She saw a glance flash between the two officers and thought the information might somehow be significant.
‘What about friends, then?’ Vera asked. She looked up at Kate. ‘She’d lived in Mardle for a long time and she doesn’t seem to have been a recluse, your Margaret. She must have had friends, even if they didn’t come to visit her here.’ Vera smiled. ‘Friends other than you, I mean.’
Kate thought about that. Margaret had never seemed to feel the need for friends away from Harbour Street, but she didn’t want the detective to think Margaret was some sort of loner or loser.
‘I think most of her social life away from here revolved around the church,’ she said. ‘You should ask the priest, Father Gruskin.’