The Missing Marriage (25 page)

He started to walk through the car park.

By the time he'd located the Vauxhall – somewhere he had no recollection of leaving it – he'd tried Laura's mobile, the landlines at number two Marine Drive, Starz Salon, and Don Hamilton. Laura clearly hadn't told her parents about the body in the mortuary.

Laura Deane was nowhere to be found.

He tried Anna's mobile, but she wasn't picking up either – so phoned the house. It had been too late and they'd drunk too much the night before for Anna to drive back to Blyth, so she'd spent the night on the sofa in the study. He hadn't seen her before leaving that morning – she'd still been asleep.

Mrs Kelly picked up. He could hear Harvey, in the background, irate. ‘Is Anna there?'

‘Anna?' Mrs Kelly – distracted by Harvey who was outraged that his pipe cleaner cuboid was refusing to stand level on the table – was at a loss.

‘Last night?'

‘Oh. Anna.' Mrs Kelly said the name shyly. ‘She left.'

‘When?'

‘Not long ago.'

‘Did she say where she was going?'

‘No, she didn't really say anything. Just a minute –' He heard her trying to calm Harvey. ‘I was going to do a stew for tonight – is that okay?' she said, hesitant.

‘Fine – that's fine.'

‘Oh, and Harvey's got his appointment in North Shields later – so we won't be back until six.'

Mrs Kelly's mention of North Shields was entirely incidental, but it triggered something in Laviolette. He'd forgotten about North Shields, and that was something he shouldn't have done.

The Deanes had a flat in North Shields that they rented out – at the Royal Quays Marina.

Anna had woken that morning on the sofa in Laviolette's study, in Laviolette's house with a feeling of empty panic at having given something away, drunk, that in daylight she regretted, and daylight was staring down at her through the skylight as she swung her legs over the edge of the sofa into a sitting position, staring down at her bare feet in the carpet as if they had nothing to do with her.

Laviolette had left without waking her.

Uncertain, she went downstairs and attempted to talk first to Harvey then Mrs Kelly. Harvey was easier, but Mrs Kelly did offer to make her coffee. She had the impression they were waiting to go out – had been waiting for some time – but that Mrs Kelly didn't want to leave her in the house alone. Anna also guessed – from both Harvey and Mrs Kelly's reaction to her presence – that visitors at number four Coastguard Cottages were a rarity. She tried to think of some way to reassure them both, but in the end gave up.

She took her coffee upstairs with her after telling Mrs Kelly she'd be leaving in ten minutes, and sat on the sofa in the study again looking round the room more intently now she was alone in it. She thought about Harvey – downstairs – and what Laviolette had said about him being there the day Roger Laviolette had been killed. A minute later, she was pulling down the old projector box with the interview tapes in it, from the shelves.

The cine projector was in the box still, the clearly labelled tapes slotted down either side of the incommodious machine. Anna found herself wondering – like she had with the car when she first met Laviolette the night Bryan disappeared – if the old projector was even his, and if it was, what had it been used for? She couldn't imagine – from the things he'd said the night before – that the early years of his married life were times anyone would want to capture and replay.

They'd listened to all the tapes, Anna realised, apart from the one she'd just come across – the one she'd seen Laviolette hesitate over the night before, and withhold. Anna stared down at the tape, which had her grandmother's name on it: Mary Faust.

She wanted to play it on Laviolette's machine then and there, but could hear Mrs Kelly on the stairs. So she'd taken it with her – without hesitation – feeling entitled to it while wondering briefly how long it would take for him to miss it.

Why had police interviewed Mary after Roger Laviolette's death?

It was starting to rain, but Laviolette barely noticed as he dialled DC Wade's number.

‘What have we got on the Deane's flat – the one at the marina in North Shields?'

There was a pause on the other end of the line. ‘I'm sorry, sir, I'm not following,' Veronica said at last.

‘The Deanes have a flat,' Laviolette said, tersely, articulating each word, ‘in North Shields at the Royal Quays Marina.'

‘I understand that.'

‘What did Laura Deane tell us about the flat?'

‘You want me to look in the case file?'

‘Yes, I want you to look in the case file.'

‘But, Inspector, this morning –'

‘This morning, what?'

‘The mortuary,' DC Wade said, helplessly, anxious to resolve the situation without dispute. ‘I was there in the room with Mrs Deane, sir. I was there.'

Laviolette was trying not to lose patience. He didn't want to push her too hard, even though that was his inclination, because if he pushed DC Wade too hard, she might go running to Jim Cornish, and this situation that Laviolette was playing out right now was just the sort of situation Jim was looking for.

‘We all want this case closed, Wade, but there's the coroner's report still to come and while we're waiting on that, I just want to review the case file – make sure we asked everything we were meant to when we were meant to. I don't want anything coming back to haunt us when this is closed, that's all,' he concluded.

‘So it's not an investigative request as such?'

‘Not as such, no. It's –'

‘Administrative?' she suggested helpfully, happy to have made sense of the Inspector's request at last. He was being thorough, that was all.

‘So you want me to check what went down on file regarding the North Shields property?'

‘Please.'

‘I'll take a look.'

Veronica phoned back twenty minutes later.

‘What did you find?'

‘Nothing much. Mrs Deane confirmed they had a second property let through Tyneside Properties – we cross-checked with them. That's it.'

‘Great, we can sign that off then.'

‘So – that's it?' Veronica said, relieved.

‘That's it.'

When Laura walked into the marina flat, Tom was standing by the dining table, absently shuffling some drawings into a pile.

‘I wasn't expecting you,' he said, his mind elsewhere.

He walked past her into the kitchen and started to methodically load the dishwasher. She remained where she was in the middle of the living room and watched him load it in the same perverse way he'd always done, which meant that everything had to be rinsed in the sink afterwards because it never got washed properly.

She'd stopped letting him stack the dishwasher at number two Marine Drive for precisely this reason, but here she'd felt no compulsion to do that.

The silence was awkward.

It was a silence that needed words, that tried seeking for them, but that couldn't find any.

‘D'you want a tea or coffee?'

‘I brought champagne,' she said, moving at last over to the kitchen doorway and leaning against the frame.

‘Champagne?' He didn't understand.

‘You died today – it's almost official.'

He carried on drying his hands on the tea towel. ‘I did?'

‘I saw you over an hour ago, laid out in the mortuary. I identified you. I cried.'

She was poised, watching him, waiting for him to get it.

‘You did?' he said, in the same distant tone.

‘You drowned. You got washed up in the harbour at Cullercoats. A fisherman found you.' She paused, still waiting. ‘Bryan – there's no catch. We've just got to wait for the coroner's report. Then –'

He walked slowly past her, still holding the tea towel, and sat down on the sofa in the living room.

‘So – we're nearly done here?'

She nodded, sitting down on the coffee table, on top of a pile of his drawings and taking hold of his hands. Instead of bringing them together, the body in the mortuary had somehow come between them.

‘What did he look like – this drowned man?'

‘Like – nothing.'

He pulled his hands out of her grasp and fell back against the sofa, preoccupied.

‘Please, Bryan,' she said, suddenly scared. ‘We're this close.' She held up her thumb and forefinger so that they were almost touching, trying to bring him back to her. ‘This close.'

He turned to her. ‘To what?'

Laura shifted position carefully – it was as if everything had suddenly become breakable. ‘Everything we talked about.'

‘What did we talk about?'

‘Don't be cruel – not now. It's too late for cruelty.'

‘Seriously,' he persisted. ‘I can't even remember any more, what it was we set out to do – what any of this is about.'

He stood up, preoccupied, and went out onto the balcony where his attention was taken by a young woman pushing a buggy out of the building and across the car park. There was a toddler in the buggy, asleep, her arm flung over the side so that the teddy she was holding hung out. A second later he watched it fall to the ground. The mother hadn't noticed, and he found it upsetting.

‘Bryan?' Laura said, joining him on the balcony.

‘A kid just dropped it – look,' he said, pointing to the teddy lying face down in the car park below.

Laura glanced at it without interest, waiting for him to turn back to her, but he didn't.

He walked straight through the flat, leaving the door open.

‘Bryan? Where are you going?' She could hear him running down the stairs, and a few moments later he appeared in the car park below.

Laura saw him pick up the teddy from where it was lying, and dust the muck off it then jog after the young mother, calling out and waving the bear.

‘Excuse me,' Laura heard him say, breathless, eventually drawing level. ‘You dropped this.'

‘Oh.' The mother nodded, surprised – pleased – as Bryan peered, smiling, into the buggy.

Laura remained on the balcony, unaware that she was crying, watching as the mother shunted the buggy forwards again, leaving Bryan standing in the car park.

He felt unaccountably relieved that he'd managed to return the teddy – a bear in a dress – to the sleeping child, and that the sleeping child would never know she'd lost it.

He felt unaccountably relieved that the bear was no longer lost.

Maureen at Tyneside Properties was standing at the back of the office talking to a decayed looking man in expensive clothes with a light covering of auburn hair that straggled across his cranium – a property developer whose small complex of four luxury mews houses in Gosforth they were hoping to sell. But she recognised the Inspector as soon as he walked in because everybody at Tyneside Properties – apart from the young man smiling affably at the Inspector now – had been interviewed after Bryan Deane's disappearance.

‘Inspector!' she called out, more irately than she'd meant to.

The property developer turned to him, momentarily curious, but the curiosity soon passed. He'd known Bryan Deane relatively well. Tyneside Properties sold all the units on another of his developments four years ago, down near the Quayside, and got above asking price on all of them. They'd spoken once about branching out into the commercial property market, but Bryan had lost the inclination to make that kind of money and the developer – who'd spent very little of the past twenty years sober – was no player.

Maureen approached – in a red suit with brass buttons running the length of it. The suits she'd worn in the late eighties and early nineties – when she first knew Bryan – that made her look like an estate agent, now made her look like an air hostess, and Maureen had always worn make-up like a transvestite; something that had never ceased to entertain Laura Deane.

‘Inspector,' she said again, smiling this time.

‘Can I just have a few moments?'

They went into the small kitchen where brown brick walls were covered in health and safety regulations, an aerial photograph of the coast from Tynemouth up to Blyth, staff targets, a sole postcard from the Isle of Wight, and a poster of an airbrushed woman in a wide brim hat eating a cherry. There was also the front page of
The Journal
from the day Bryan Deane's picture had been published. Someone had scribbled something in blue biro across it and up close, Laviolette saw that it read: Fess up, Greg, just how badly did you want that promotion?

He turned to look at Maureen, amused.

‘That shouldn't be up there,' she said, mortified, pushing past him and ripping it down. She placed the offending article on top of the microwave. ‘Greg's been made temporary Branch Manager. It's a tasteless joke, it's –' Words failed her. ‘Please –' She waved her arm at the bank of outdated office chairs, gesturing at Laviolette to take a seat.

‘I need to ask you something about the Deane's flat – the one in North Shields.'

Maureen nodded, and stopped smiling.

‘Mrs Deane told us the property was rented, and we just need a bit more information regarding that.'

Maureen looked thoughtful. She didn't know what she'd been expecting when she saw the Inspector, but it wasn't this.

‘When I saw you, I thought you might have some information for us – not that you'd be needing some
from
us.'

Laviolette thought of the body in the mortuary and smiled sadly. ‘Unfortunately not.'

‘Can I get you a tea or coffee or anything?'

‘I'm fine.' He watched her put the kettle on anyway. ‘The Deanes' flat is down at the Royal Quays Marina in the Ropemakers Building.'

‘I'll have to take your word for it,' she said, ‘it's Justin who works on lettings. Did you meet Justin? No, you wouldn't have done,' she carried on before he had time to answer, ‘he's only been with us a couple of weeks.'