‘I didn’t see Rick again that night,’ Val said. ‘I thought that he’d made himself scarce. He could disappear like a ghost whenever he wanted to. Police, social security, probation – he seemed to know when they were on their way and he’d be nowhere to be seen.’
She looked at Vera with big haunted eyes. She was preparing herself for a confession. ‘I was pleased,’ she said. ‘I thought: You piss off back to the city with your gangster friends. Leave me here to make a life for myself.’
‘You thought that was what happened?’ Vera asked. ‘You thought he’d been involved in starting the fire and he’d run away back to Newcastle.’
‘That’s what Billy Kerr told me. He came in the next day. Everything quiet then and stinking of smoke. The ruins of the office black and the yard looking like a bombsite. He said that I wouldn’t see Rick for a while. “Your boy lost it, Val, and torched my place. I can’t have that. I’ve told him to stay away from Harbour Street. No hard feelings to you, but you know what it’s like.” And I just nodded. Was that betraying my son? Inside, part of me was singing, because I wouldn’t have that stress for a bit. All that time since he was a small kid I was wondering what he was going to do next.’
‘Where is Rick now, Val?’ Vera still had her hand on the woman’s arm. Despite the warmth of the room the skin felt cold and clammy.
‘I haven’t got a clue.’ Another confession. ‘I haven’t seen him since that day. At first I didn’t try very hard to find him. I put a few words out. Nobody was talking. And then I stopped trying. If he didn’t want to see me, I didn’t feel like making the effort. And it was so much easier on my own, with no other bugger to worry about. I thought I’d hear if he got into real bother.’
‘And now?’
‘Now he’d be an old man. He might have grand-bairns. He’d have calmed down, wouldn’t he? I’d like to see him again. A bit of company in my old age. Maybe you could help me look.’
‘This body we’ve found,’ Vera said. ‘It’s old. We think our victim died on the night of the fire in Kerr’s yard.’
Val gave an odd little sob. ‘You think it’s Rick?’
‘It’s the body of a young man.’
‘And all this time I thought he didn’t care enough about me to let me know he was okay.’ There were tears on her cheek. ‘Every birthday I looked out for a card. And I thought: Sod you, then. But he was here in Harbour Street all the time.’
‘We don’t know for sure,’ Vera said. ‘There’ll be tests to do.’
‘I know.’ Val turned away so that Vera couldn’t see her face.
Vera drove to Harbour Street. No real reason except that she couldn’t face going straight back to the office, and if there’d been news on Malcolm Kerr somebody would have told her. There was also an itch, the start of an idea, and she needed time to organize her thoughts. This was where everything had started, and this was where she’d find the answer. The street was quiet. The Coble was open for lunchtime drinkers, but the fish shop had already closed for Christmas. There was still activity on the crime scene at Malcolm’s yard, but you couldn’t see much because of the screens they’d put up to stop ghoulish gawpers. Through the guest-house window she saw Kate Dewar and Stuart Booth in the residents’ lounge. She was at the piano and he was leaning over her shoulder pointing at some sheet music. He scribbled on it with a pencil and she turned and ran her finger down his cheek. Vera had parked right outside, but they didn’t notice her.
Still sitting in the vehicle, she phoned Holly. ‘I need you to check one of the Krukowski witness statements.’ And then she called Joe, because she had a question for him too. But he was in a dreadful state and wouldn’t listen, almost shouted at her to get off the line because he was hoping for a call. His lass Jessie had got separated from her friends in town, and she’d left her mobile at home and nobody knew where she was.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Malcom Kerr was still on a mission, but he’d never liked the city and he was almost ready to give up. What business was it of his? He thought he’d just get the Metro back to Partington and pick up his car and drive to the police station in Kimmerston. There was something pleasant in thinking that he might find the fat detective there waiting for him; she’d be glad to see him. He pictured her smiling. She’d make him tea, and might even have a drop of Scotch to put into it. And he’d tell her what had happened. He’d let her take the responsibility. He pulled up his collar against the cold and stood still, so that the crowd eddied round him, like the tide around a rock. All around him was noise. Buskers with amplified music and yelling children and pedlars in his face, trying to persuade him to buy tinsel and cheap plastic toys.
A quiet interview room, just him and the fat woman. Plain painted walls. Nothing to jar the senses. Suddenly that seemed the most attractive thing in the world.
Then the group of young people ahead of him shifted, parted by six jostling youths coming in the opposite direction. It was early afternoon, but they were drinking cans of cheap cider and swearing. Malcolm felt a stab of anger. He wanted to teach them some manners. But he’d been a yob in his time. Worse than a yob. In the following confusion the louts moved on and a single figure was left, uncertain and isolated. The sky darkened. Shards of sleet blew up the street, sharp arrows sending the shoppers into the mall. This was Malcolm’s moment of decision. He could give himself up or he could give himself a chance to put things right.
Hesitating, he thought suddenly of the vicar, Father Gruskin. Gruskin had turned up at his house the day after Deborah had left him, offering sympathy and advice. Malcolm thought that Margaret had sent the vicar, because she was worried that Malcolm might do something daft. That he’d kill himself, or kill Deborah’s new man. Gruskin had sat in Malcolm’s front room and hadn’t known what to say. He’d only called because Margaret had asked him to. Another man who would do whatever Margaret wanted him to. He’d muttered a few words and then he’d gone. Vicars should be good men, shouldn’t they? They’d make the right decisions. What would Gruskin do now, in his position?
Then Malcolm remembered the way Gruskin had stared at Margaret, watching her longingly as she walked down Harbour Street away from the church. She’d been old enough to be his mother. Older than that even. But still the man had stared with hungry and lonely eyes. Were there no good men in Mardle, then? Did the place only breed liars and thugs?
I’m going mad. My father always said that I should be locked up.
The sleet was heavier now, filling the sky with pieces of ice, and Northumberland Street was almost empty.
What would Margaret want me to do?
Malcolm looked down the road and saw that there were two people on the opposite pavement now. They walked away from him, one after the other. He hesitated for a moment and then he followed.
Chapter Forty
Joe Ashworth drove home. Sal was almost hysterical and he couldn’t get any sense out of her on the phone. All the way there he wanted to yell at someone. At Sal for being so bloody daft as to let their daughter into town, especially with a gang of older kids that he’d never met. At the mother of the kids who’d said she’d keep an eye on them. And at Jessie, who’d pestered them for months to get her own mobile phone and then had left it behind, the one time that she really needed it.
Mostly he was furious at himself. He drove through the empty country roads and began to imagine scenarios. Vera would call them stories. Margaret Krukowski had been killed in the Metro. Dee Robson had been in the same Metro and she’d been killed, possibly because she’d seen the murder or guessed what had happened. And now he realized what hadn’t clicked before: that Jessie might have been a witness to Margaret’s murder too. Jessie, who was sharp as a knife, with a memory like an elephant’s. She’d gone missing and so had their prime suspect, whose car had been found at Partington Metro station. Maybe that was a coincidence, but Joe was so wound up with worry that he couldn’t believe in coincidence any more. He pictured his Jessie, in the train with her mates, chatting and laughing because it was nearly Christmas and she was getting her first taste of freedom. He saw Jessie glancing across the train and seeing someone she recognized through the crowd. Someone who’d been on the Metro when Margaret was stabbed. He imagined a flash of contact between them. Then the killer, threatened, following his daughter, and so desperate to escape that he might feel he had to kill her too.