Vera Stanhope 06 - Harbour Street (12 page)

‘What did he look like, this man?’ Vera wasn’t sure how much faith to put in Dee’s account. She certainly couldn’t imagine the woman in a witness box. And a vanilla slice was tricky to eat without a plate and a knife. She turned to Joe. ‘Is there a knife in the kitchen? I’ll have cream all over me if I don’t cut this.’

Dee shrugged. ‘Don’t know. I didn’t really see him. I wasn’t looking. He just ran off when Margaret saw him.’

‘He was young, was he? If he ran fast?’

Dee thought again. ‘He was faster than Margaret, but she was an old lady. Most people would be faster than her.’

‘And you can’t tell me anything at all about him?’

‘Like I said, Margaret just ran across Northumberland Street, shouting for me to stay where I was. She wasn’t gone very long. I asked her who the guy was, but she wouldn’t tell me. I thought we might stay out for our tea, but she said it was time to go home.’ Dee looked at her. Panda eyes over the rim of her mug. ‘Margaret was out of breath after running. I thought for a minute she was going to die.’

Ashworth came back with a kitchen knife and Vera cut the cake into bite-sized pieces. Nobody spoke. Footsteps clattered down the stairs outside the flat. Below a door banged shut.

‘Where were you yesterday afternoon, Dee?’ Vera kept her voice quiet, almost uninterested. No pressure. ‘After Margaret left you.’

‘Out.’ Her mouth shut tight like a trap.

‘We just need to know, Dee.’ Vera leaned forward towards her. ‘No one’s going to be cross if you were in the Coble all afternoon. None of our business. But we need to know.’

‘I was in the Coble,’ Dee said. ‘Then I met someone.’

‘A man?’

She nodded.

‘Where did you go with him? Did you bring him back here?’

‘We went to his place.’

‘And where was that?’ Vera thought the woman was mad. A danger to herself. She allowed some of her anxiety through: ‘You shouldn’t go off with men you don’t know, pet. It’s not safe.’

‘I did know him. At least I’ve seen him about.’

‘And his name?’

‘Jason.’ Dee was behaving like a sulky child. ‘I’d never heard his second name. And I don’t know where his place was.’

‘Somewhere in Mardle?’

‘No. We went on the Metro. I can’t remember.’ She looked up and suddenly seemed very young. ‘I was a bit pissed.’ She paused for a beat. ‘He bought me a ticket!’ As if that made everything all right.

‘Where did you get out?’ Vera asked. ‘Which Metro station?’

‘I don’t know! Somewhere on the way to town.’ As if, once away from Mardle and its immediate surroundings, she was in alien territory. Vera realized that she probably couldn’t read.

‘And afterwards,’ Joe said, ‘what happened then?’ He’d pushed himself away from the door to join in the conversation. Dee looked at him properly for the first time and appeared to like what she saw. After that her replies were directed at him.

‘I came back. Spent some of the money he’d given me. Bought some chips and went back to the pub.’

‘Did he come back with you?’

‘Nah!’ She was indignant. ‘I thought that was the idea, that he’d spend the evening with me, but he just let me out of his flat and I had to find the Metro station myself. It was snowing. Fucking freezing.’

‘What time was that?’ Joe asked.

‘Dunno. It was dark, though.’

‘And you came all the way to Mardle on the Metro?’ Joe asked the question; Vera held her breath.

‘Nah, the train stopped at Partington. Because of the weather. We all had to get out and get the bus. It took ages to come. Total fucking waste of time for a few quid.’

‘Which carriage were you in, Dee?’

She looked at Joe as if he was mad. ‘What?’

‘On the Metro? Were you near the front or the back?’

‘I can’t remember! Why?’

‘Because that’s where Margaret was stabbed,’ Vera said quietly. ‘On the Metro that was stopped by the snow.’

‘I didn’t see her!’ Dee turned to her, horrified. ‘If I’d seen her I might have saved her.’

Holly tracked down Margaret’s GP to a practice in Gosforth. An efficient receptionist said that Margaret had visited a couple of times in the last month, but not on the afternoon of her death. If they wanted more details they’d have to make an appointment to come into the surgery and talk to the doctor. When Holly rang Vera to tell her, expecting at least to be thanked for her efforts, the boss only seemed disappointed.

‘Oh well, it can’t be helped, but I really need to know what the woman was doing in Gosforth yesterday.’ There was a pause before Vera added, ‘How’s it going there otherwise?’

‘I think the press conference went okay, but I’m going bog-eyed here, boss. It’s a nightmare trying to collate all the info we’ve got through so far, but I’m pretty well up to date. I don’t think we’ll get another surge of calls until after the six-thirty news.’

It was already late afternoon. After the buzz of the press conference Holly had spent the next couple of hours in the police station, plotting names onto large pieces of graph paper. She’d tried to map the location of passengers in the Metro carriage electronically, but in the end it worked best to spread the graph paper over a double desk, each large square marking either a seat or a space. Still there were gaps. Some of the people Joe had remembered – the smooching kids and the partying businessmen – had failed to come forward. Other passengers had seen Margaret get onto the train at Gosforth, but hadn’t noticed if she’d been followed onto the platform.

There was a moment of silence on the end of the line, so Holly wondered if she’d get a bollocking again for complaining. She felt every contact with Vera Stanhope was like an approach to a large and unpredictable dog. You never knew whether it would lick you to death or take a chunk out of your leg.

‘Do you want a break from the desk work?’

‘I wouldn’t mind!’ Holly regretted the words almost as soon as they were spoken. The trouble with Vera was that she took advantage. Holly might be sent off on a wild goose chase that had no relevance at all to the investigation.

‘Have a word with Professor Michael Craggs,’ Vera said. ‘I can’t see him as any sort of suspect, but he’s on the edge of the investigation. He stays regularly at the guest house where Margaret lived and worked, and he might be able to provide an alibi of sorts for Malcolm Kerr.’

‘And who’s Kerr?’ Again Holly wondered if she might have missed something, some detail of the briefing, and waited to be yelled at for not paying attention. Vera always made her feel like a school kid.

‘Sorry, Hol. I should have explained. Kerr’s a boatman. He has that scruffy yard close to the harbour and lives in Percy Street, just behind the Metro line. Margaret Krukowski worked for him when she was a young woman. Kerr turned up at Kate Dewar’s place this morning in a bit of a state. She had the impression that he and Margaret might have been lovers. Anyway, he claims to have been out collecting samples of the North Sea with Craggs when Margaret was stabbed. So check out the alibi, but see if Craggs can tell us anything new about our victim too. At the moment we still have no family and no close friends, and the professor has been a regular at the Harbour Street guest house for years.’

Holly replaced the receiver, shell-shocked, because she’d had an apology from the boss, and checked out the number for the university. She was told that the professor wasn’t in the building today, but was working with a group of undergraduates at the Dove Marine Laboratory in Cullercoats. She collected a pool car and set out for the seaside.

Cullercoats was on the coast south from Mardle, a pretty cove between the wide sweeps of beach at Tynemouth and Whitley Bay. On the front a couple of restaurants and a wine bar looked out to the sea. In the summer it was a place for eating and drinking at tables on the pavement, watching the kids play on the beach. Holly had spent happy evenings in the village with friends. Now, as the light was fading and cold rain blew in from the sea, it was grey and dismal. She parked in a side street and crossed the main road that followed the coast. A light marked the end of the pier. The occasional car splashed through the icy puddles, but nobody else was out.

The laboratory was a red-brick villa with a modern extension, built almost on the beach. Inside, the students were calling it a day, pulling on outdoor clothes and packing equipment into bags. Craggs was a gentle Lancastrian in his sixties. Holly thought he looked too old and heavy to be clambering around in small boats. She found the group in a small room kitted out with lab benches and metal stools and he stood at the front, calling goodbye to the young people, wishing them a happy Christmas. Holly felt a pang of regret. She’d been a graduate entrant into the police service. She’d enjoyed her time at university. Perhaps, after all, she’d have been better suited to life as an academic. Then reality kicked in:
Nah, you’d have been bored rigid.

He looked up and saw her. ‘Hello! Anything I can do?’ He was friendly and sounded genuinely helpful. But Holly seldom found older men unfriendly. They were flattered by the attention of a young, attractive woman, even when they discovered what she did for a living. Now the room was clear of students and she identified herself.

‘What’s this about?’ No anxiety. He turned to glance at a row of test tubes behind him.

‘You haven’t heard about Margaret Krukowski?’ But perhaps, after all, it wasn’t so hard to believe. The students wouldn’t be interested in the death of a woman who would appear to them impossibly old. They’d be gearing up for the end of term – this was obviously their last seminar before leaving for the Christmas holidays – and the main preoccupation for everyone seemed to be the weather. And even now Craggs seemed focused on his research. He moved his attention to the microscope on the table in front of him as if he longed to get back to it. He frowned. ‘Kate Dewar’s Margaret? No. What’s happened?’

‘She was murdered,’ Holly said. ‘Yesterday afternoon. Stabbed while she was in the Metro on her way home.’

She’d expected an expression of grief, horror. Even strangers seemed to think a response was needed when they heard of a violent death. But Craggs’s reaction seemed dramatic. The colour appeared to drain from his face and he sat suddenly on the stool by his side.

‘Poor Margaret. What a terrible way to die.’

‘You knew her well?’

He took a while to answer. ‘I’ve been researching in the waters off Mardle since I was an undergraduate, and I’ve stayed at the guest house in Harbour Street at least one night a month since it opened. Kate and Margaret felt almost like a second family. Kate must be devastated. Even now that she has a new partner, I’m not sure how she’ll cope there without Margaret.’ A pause. ‘Do you know who killed her? I’m not sure how you think I could help.’ He sat with his elbows on the bench. Holly saw that his blue rib-knit sweater had been neatly darned. There was a splash of something that might have been egg on the front of it. He looked like an absent-minded professor from children’s stories.

‘We’re talking to all the regulars at the guest house.’

‘Of course.’

‘When did you last see her?’ Holly took a seat herself. They faced each other across the bench. There was a background smell of chemicals and something organic.

‘At breakfast yesterday. She cleared my table as usual.’

‘How did she seem?’

‘Just as she always seemed.’ Craggs played with his wedding ring, turning it on his finger. ‘Polite, helpful, cheerful. I had an early breakfast because I had a full day ahead of me. If there were other guests, they hadn’t appeared by the time I left.’

‘You didn’t have any impression then that she was upset or anxious.’

‘No, but then I probably wouldn’t have noticed. We don’t often notice the people who look after us, do we? Though we’d miss them if they weren’t there.’

Holly thought he was a strange man. She wondered if he was quite as sharp as a modern professor should be. She couldn’t imagine him fighting his corner with university politics or pulling in overseas students prepared to pay high fees. ‘We’re having problems tracing her family,’ she said. ‘Did she mention anyone to you?’

Again he took a while to consider before he answered.

‘All the years that I’ve been staying at Harbour Street I only once had a real conversation with Margaret. She had a flat upstairs and rarely came into the visitors’ areas except for work. But one evening we came into the house together. She’d crossed the road from the church, I think, and I was chilled after a day on the water. I invited her to join me for a drink, and we sat together in that dark, gloomy lounge.’ He paused. ‘I probably talked about my work, my family. I’ve been married for forty years and have grandchildren of whom I’m ridiculously proud. Happy people can sound very smug, and I thought suddenly that she wasn’t happy at all. That the quiet efficiency was a show, and underneath there was a terrible desperation. I asked her about her husband. Did she ever see him? “Oh no,” she said. “He’s long gone.” Then she said something very odd. “Secrets are all I have left.” I didn’t ask her what she meant. I could see that she wouldn’t tell me.’

Holly made detailed notes. Some of it didn’t mean much to her, but Vera had been in the guest house and it would all mean more to her. She turned back to the professor. ‘You spent yesterday with Malcolm Kerr?’

‘Yes. He took me out to Coquet Island. My research is into water temperature and how small changes can have an impact on microorganisms and therefore affect things further up the food chain. We collected samples. It’s meticulous work – some might say tedious. It took until the middle of the afternoon.’

‘You don’t have a student to do the fieldwork for you?’ Holly had once gone out with someone doing a PhD, who was always complaining about doing the donkey work for his supervisor.

Craggs gave a little laugh. ‘I’m what you’d call a control freak. I like to be in charge of my own data.’ He continued to twist the ring on his finger. ‘Besides, I enjoy being on the water. That was what drew me to the subject in the first place. A passion for ecology and for open spaces. I’m due to retire next year. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with myself. Write a book, perhaps, like all retired academics.’