‘What did she do with the photo, please, Ryan?’ Because they hadn’t found it in her room, but she’d have taken it off the boy.
‘She took it from me and burned it.’ He sounded like a sulky toddler. ‘She held it over the flame of a candle.’
‘So let’s move on to the afternoon of her murder, shall we, Ryan? Your friends got off the Metro, and Margaret Krukowski got on. The woman who could land you in the shite big-time. She’d given you one last chance, but here you were bunking off school again. What did she say to you? Whatever she said, it must have been pretty strong, because you followed her to her seat and took out the knife you always carry…’ Just like Ricky Butt. ‘… and when she turned away from you – when she dared to turn her back on you – you stabbed her.’ Vera had allowed disgust to colour her voice. Kate Dewar was sobbing. She’d probably been sobbing all night.
‘Well, Ryan?’ Vera insisted. Looking, she saw that he was sitting upright now. Very tense. Reliving the humiliation of being put in his place by an elderly woman. White with anger.
‘She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to say anything. She looked at me. Kind as if I was a naughty kid. She’d been a prostitute. She had no right to look at me like that.’
‘So you killed her.’
‘Yes!’ Temper constricting his throat, so that his voice was hoarse. He half-rose to his feet and, when he spoke again, he sent a spray of spit across the table. ‘I killed her.’
There was a moment of silence in the room, broken only by Kate’s muffled cries.
Vera nodded at Joe Ashworth to continue the story. ‘I was in the Metro,’ Joe said. ‘I saw you with the girls, and I hated the way you treated them. It never occurred to me that you were a killer, though. Just a little jumped-up yob, I thought. And that’s what you were. A jumped-up yob who thought it was clever to sell drugs to vulnerable kids and stab an old lady to death.’
‘You left the Metro at Partington with all the other passengers,’ Vera said. ‘Hidden by the snow. The Metro bus was waiting and drove you back to Mardle. You got home late.’ Vera paused. ‘But your mother didn’t realize. She thought you’d come in from school with Chloe.’
Kate looked up. ‘I heard him come in,’ she said. Appalled, as if this tiny example of ignorance made her complicit in his guilt. ‘I heard the door and I thought it was just the wind rattling the letter box. It always rattles when the wind’s northerly.’
‘Did Chloe know?’ Vera thought this might be an even worse sin than murder, to involve his brainy sister, to make her choose between sibling loyalty and justice for Margaret. Because she’d feel guilty anyway – the favoured child, the apple of her mother’s eye. She had a brief flash of memory: her and the neighbours, and herself in a rare moment of honesty after too much drink, talking about a case when she’d failed; and Jack, wise and gentle, saying: ‘Hey, Vera. Just dump the guilt.’
Ryan looked up, suddenly defensive; the anger was spent, but he was still tense. ‘I didn’t tell Chloe.’
‘But she guessed?’
He turned away and said nothing.
Vera nodded to Joe Ashworth. The next part of the story was his.
‘When I first walked into the kitchen at Harbour Street, something was familiar,’ he said. ‘There was that sense of déjà vu. You were there, sprawled on the sofa, just a school kid in your uniform. I didn’t connect you with the lads I’d seen on the train. Then I recognized your mother – I’d been a fan when I was young – and I thought that explained the sensation of familiarity. If I’d remembered properly, we’d have had you in for questioning and the thing would have been over. Dee Robson would still be alive.’
Vera thought that Joe would have to live with that for the rest of his life. Thinking he’d been swayed by the soppy words of a popular song. Just dump the guilt, pet. In the end it was Val Butt talking about her violent son that had set them on the right trail. Besides, if they’d arrested Ryan on the first day, they’d never have found the body of Ricky Butt under the shed in Kerr’s yard. She still wasn’t sure what she thought about that, and the consequences for Malcolm. Sometimes perhaps it was better to let sleeping bodies lie. Then she decided that it would be an evil sort of world where a man could kill and get away with it, even if the victim was a toerag like Butt. Besides, this might give Malcolm a bit of peace in his last years. She could imagine him as an orderly in the prison library, catching up on the reading that he’d missed out on as a bairn. Vera thought she might even go and visit him there.
In the interview room the clear winter sunlight was pouring in through the narrow, barred window and Joe was continuing the interrogation.
‘Why did Dee have to die?’
There was no response from Ryan. He continued to stare at the scarred table in front of him.
‘Because she saw you in the Metro that night? She connected you with the lad who’d run away from Margaret in town? And she’d seen you at the winter fair at the Haven – might even have worked out that you were stealing from them.’ Vera pitched her voice a little louder, demanding a response from him.
‘She was on the bus that took us from Partington to Mardle. I couldn’t take the risk that she might tell somebody, could I?’ Ryan looked up now, aggressive again, proud because he’d had the nerve to kill two women, ready to boast. The solicitor touched his arm, a gesture of warning, but Ryan took no notice, and Vera thought the solicitor was as disgusted as the rest of them. Certainly he made no further attempt to stop the boy from talking.
‘Talk us through that, would you, Ryan,’ Joe said. ‘Tell us how you got into her flat.’ The voice bland, a schoolmaster’s voice. He could have been Stuart Booth. Talk us through that equation, would you, Ryan?
‘She invited me in.’ The boy gave a sudden wild, wolfish grin. ‘She was pissed and bumped into me on her way back to Percy Street. ‘Offered me sex. Stupid cow! As if I’d ever had to pay for that.’
‘Go on.’ No accusation in Joe’s voice. Vera felt a moment of pride. He was her protégé and he’d learned to control his emotions. He’d been soft as clarts when he’d first come to her.
‘The flat was a dump,’ Ryan said, as if that was an excuse for what would come later. ‘Filthy. She went into the bedroom to change. I mean, just looking at her made me gag.’
‘And then?’
‘There was a knife on the table in the front room. A kitchen knife. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I thought it would be safer. Better not to use my knife.’
He flashed a look at Vera. My God, he wants a gold star for being clever. She clamped her mouth shut. Best not to reply. He’d like any response better than being ignored.
‘But the knife did work?’ Joe made it sound as if he was truly interested.
Ryan didn’t answer that at first. ‘I switched up the telly,’ he said. ‘In case she made a noise, then I went into the bedroom.’ He looked up at Joe. ‘The blade was a bit bendy. It took some strength to get it in. But yeah, it worked fine.’
‘What did you do then, Ryan?’
‘I went into the bathroom and washed. I wiped my fingerprints off the door handles and the handle of the knife. Then I went back to school. I had music and I didn’t want Stuart telling my mother that I was bunking off again.’
Chapter Forty-Five
It was midday and they’d finished for the holiday. Stuart Booth had come to collect Kate Dewar. Vera wondered what sort of Christmas there’d be in that house, and if the relationship would survive beyond Boxing Day. Stuart had colluded with Kate to tell her what she wanted to hear: that Ryan wasn’t such a bad lad; the boy was misguided and had got caught up with the wrong crowd, but he was sound really. Had anyone in school seen the bullying and the drug-dealing, the petty cruelties? But perhaps nobody had wanted to see. Ryan came from a respectable family, his mam was Katie Guthrie, who had once been famous and would be guaranteed to pull in crowds at the summer fair. Only Margaret Krukowski was anxious, reminded of another cocky young man who’d thought himself above the law. And finally it was the parallel with Ricky Butt that had helped Vera and Joe to find the murderer too.