Vera Stanhope 06 - Harbour Street (25 page)

She parked next to a black Volvo and, as soon as she climbed out of the car, the wind seemed to blow right through her jacket. Somewhere a dog was barking. She knocked at the door and it was opened almost immediately by a thin girl, hardly more than a child.

‘Are you the social worker?’ Her words eager, her eyes wide. Her red hair was tied back with a ribbon. She was dressed like a student, but a student with taste and money. Holly would have had her down as a staff member, but she was too thin and too nervy, nibbling now on her nails.

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Ah.’ The girl backed away from her, disappointed. ‘A social worker’s supposed to be coming to take me home for Christmas. My key worker’s away on holiday. My mother said that she’d give it another go.’

‘Any chance I could speak to the person in charge?’

And at that point a plump woman appeared in the corridor. ‘I told you she wouldn’t be here until five, Emily,’ she said to the girl. She could have been talking to an eight-year-old. ‘Go and wait in the kitchen where it’s warm.’ Then she held out her hand to Holly. ‘I’m Jane Cameron and I run this place. You must be one of Vera Stanhope’s gang. I assume you’re here to talk to the residents about Dee Robson.’

Jane reminded Holly of her former French teacher. She had the same good-natured authority and the same confidence that she would get what she wanted from her charges without any fuss. The same sort of Scottish accent. There was a sound from further inside the house and Peter Gruskin the priest appeared. If he recognized Holly he didn’t acknowledge her. He was frowning. ‘I’ll get off then, shall I? I don’t think there’s anything else we can do at this stage.’ He nodded to both women and made his way outside. The wind tugged at his cloak and his hair. They stood watching until he drove away.

Holly followed Jane into the kitchen, where two women were pulling on gloves and boots. ‘We were just planning a walk,’ Jane said. ‘Everyone seems to have been stuck indoors and the weather forecast is dreadful for the rest of the week. We all need a breath of fresh air. Come on, Em. Coat on. I promise you won’t miss the social worker.’ Jane turned to Holly. ‘That is okay with you? We can talk as we go.’ And Holly had no choice. There were just three residents – the others had apparently been invited to more comfortable or exciting places for Christmas. The skinny child, Em, an athletic young woman called Laurie, who strode ahead throwing sticks for the dog, and Susan, who was older, grey-haired and who scarcely spoke when they were all together.

At first Jane let the women walk ahead of them and spoke to Holly herself. ‘Have you met Peter Gruskin before?’

Holly nodded. She’d thought she would be the one to ask the questions. She felt that she was being dragged along by this assertive woman and had the sense that she was losing control of the situation.

‘What did you make of him?’

Holly hesitated. She could hardly gossip about other witnesses.

Jane didn’t wait and answered her own question. ‘He’s a horrible man. The last priest was lovely. Gentle, and the women liked him. Peter finds us incomprehensible. He’s anxious that the press will pick up the Haven connection between Margaret and Dee. Is that likely, do you think? He would rather that we just went away.’

‘I don’t know. We haven’t said anything.’ They were walking along a footpath that skirted the edge of a bare field. A small flock of brightly coloured finches fed on dead thistle heads.

‘What’s it like working for Vera Stanhope?’ Jane sounded amused.

Holly paused, torn between loyalty and a desire to let off steam. In the end she restrained herself. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘Inspector Stanhope is a fine detective.’

Jane chuckled and Holly walked ahead to talk to the women. This route-march might be the only opportunity she’d have, and she had to get something to take back to Vera.

At first Emily had nothing useful to say. She was preoccupied with the prospect of getting home for Christmas. ‘My mother thinks it might work this time. We’ve talked about my going back to school to retake my A levels.’ The voice wistful and not very optimistic.

‘Where do you go to school?’

‘St Anne’s in town, but Mummy thinks I might be better at the local comp. Less stress. I’m not sure, though. I think that might be a bit scary. I’ve never been at a school where there were boys.’ She blinked and was quiet for a while. Holly thought this fragile young woman would never survive for a week in a big high school.
Her
parents had saved hard for her to go private. ‘Margaret was going to come and visit, to see how I was getting on,’ Emily said. She turned to Holly and her voice was pleading. Perhaps she saw Holly as a substitute saviour.

‘Did you know Dee Robson?’

‘No.’ A pause. ‘Well, I met her once at the winter fair – she’d come with Margaret – but I had a bit of a panic attack. All those strangers. I didn’t really talk to anyone.’ And Emily walked on, leaving Holly to follow. She must have realized that Holly wasn’t someone who could help her. When Holly caught her up, Emma continued talking about the murders. It seemed that she hadn’t spent any time with Dee Robson at the Haven because she’d only been in the hostel for a few weeks, referred from the adolescent unit of the local psychiatric hospital. ‘The girls told me about Dee. They always made out she was a bit of a joke. Nobody deserves to die like that, though, do they?’ They walked for a while in silence, the only sound the cawing of rooks in the nearby trees and the engine of a distant tractor.

‘Did Margaret mention if anything was bothering her?’ Though Holly thought the last person Margaret would have chosen as a confidante would be Emily, who was weak and had so many problems of her own.

Emily shook her head. ‘You had the feeling that nothing bothered Margaret, that she’d seen it all.’

Laurie knew Dee, though. ‘She was one of those lasses who were always around in Mardle. Like people got so used to seeing her making a spectacle of herself that they didn’t notice her any more. It’s the same with the
Big Issue
sellers. They’re there, but you don’t really see them.’ Laurie swiped at the dead brambles by the side of the path with her stick. ‘Margaret thought that some time at the Haven would sort Dee out.’

‘But it didn’t?’

‘Nah. She hated it from the time she got here. I love the countryside, me, but Dee didn’t know anywhere outside Mardle.’

‘Where did she stay before she came to the Haven?’ Holly hoped that she’d remember all these details when she got back to the station. She was lost without her iPad.

‘Prison. She’d got into a scrap with some guy in the Coble and got done for ABH. She was already on a suspended for shoplifting. At the end of the sentence she wanted to go back and stay with her gran, but they’d stuck
her
into a home when Dee was inside. So the probation brought her to us. Jane didn’t want to take her, but Margaret persuaded her to give Dee a chance.’ Laurie shrugged. ‘I could have told them it was never going to work.’

‘Did Margaret know Dee from before?’ That, after all, was the information Vera had wanted.

‘I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe she knew Dee’s mother. I think that was it.’ Laurie threw the stick for the dog again and it ran after it. Of all of them, she seemed most at home in this place. ‘Dee’s family have always lived in Mardle.’

They’d turned back towards the house on a different track through the trees, when Holly spoke to Susan. The older woman had been struggling to keep up and Holly had to wait for her. The wind was blowing in the bare branches above them, and because Susan seemed not to hear well, at times Holly had to shout to make herself understood. The others had wandered far ahead.

‘How long have you been at the Haven?’

It seemed a safe way to start, but Susan appeared threatened by the question.

‘I don’t have to move, do I? Margaret said I could stay as long as I wanted. I know it’s only supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but she said I was a special case.’ The voice surprised Holly. It was anxious, but soft and articulate.

‘Had you known her for a long time?’

‘Oh yes, we’d been friends for many years.’ The woman paused. ‘But Margaret was always much stronger than me.’ Another pause. ‘My nerves have never been very good. And now my memory is going too.’ She gave a strange little giggle. ‘I’m falling apart.’

Ahead of them the other women had disappeared from view. The wood was all dark shadows.

‘Did you know Margaret’s husband?’ Holly asked.

‘Not him, no. He’d gone by the time we met. I knew her other man. The one she worked for.’

‘Malcolm Kerr?’ Holly was thinking that Vera would love this. There was nothing she liked better than an unexpected connection.

‘Is that what he was called?’ Susan looked around her vaguely as if she couldn’t quite remember where she was. ‘I don’t recall the name.’

‘Were you living in Mardle then?’ Holly wished this woman were more reliable. These might not be memories, but Susan’s weird imaginings.

‘In Mardle? Oh yes. I was living in Harbour Street, in a ground-floor flat. Margaret was in the attic. I had a baby, you know, but they took her away. I wonder sometimes where she might be now. She’d be quite grown-up. But it was all for the best. Yes, I’m sure that it was all for the best.’

‘Do you know what Margaret did for a living?’

There was no response. Holly wasn’t sure that the woman had heard the question and she repeated it.

But still Susan didn’t answer. Instead she started humming. At first Holly couldn’t make out the tune and then she recognized it. She’d had a boyfriend once who was into Nineties music. ‘White Moon Summer’ by Katie Guthrie.

When the two of them arrived at the house, Emily was back hovering by the front door waiting for the social worker. Laurie had disappeared and Susan shuffled off too, still humming, to a room at the end of the corridor. There was the sound, very loud, of a television game show. Holly found Jane in the kitchen making tea.

‘Did you get what you wanted?’ The woman turned round. She’d been slicing cake and still had the knife in her hand.

‘I’m not sure.’
And what business is it of yours, lady?
Perhaps it was the resemblance to the schoolteacher, but Holly found herself distrusting this woman. Disliking her at least. ‘Tell me about Susan.’

‘Ah, poor Susan. She has a history of depression and psychotic episodes. In and out of mental hospital. They tried everything from talking therapies to ECT, but I’m not sure there’s ever been a reliable diagnosis. She seems quite stable at the moment.’

‘Has she been here for a long time?’ Holly sat down at the table, took out her iPad and discreetly started to make notes. She tapped out what she could remember of her conversation with the women on the walk. Vera liked these things word-for-word.

‘More than two years. We’re supposed to provide temporary accommodation in an emergency, and honestly she should be moving on, but it suits her here and I’m not sure that I’ve got the heart to ask her to leave.’ Jane poured two mugs of tea. ‘Where would she go?’

‘She said she used to live on Harbour Street in Mardle.’

‘Did she? I’m sure she has no family close by. Social services would have checked.’ Jane joined Holly at the table.

‘She told me that she knew Margaret Krukowski years ago.’

‘Really, you shouldn’t take too much notice of what Susan tells you.’ It was Jane in schoolmistress mode again, patronizing. ‘She gets confused, hears things that people say and repeats them, or turns them into a narrative about herself. She’d make a very unreliable witness.’ The words sounded almost like a warning.

Then there was a commotion at the door. It seemed that the social worker had arrived early for Emily after all. The girl rushed into the kitchen with her holdall to say goodbye and Jane went out to the car to see her off.

‘I hope it works out for her,’ Holly said, when Jane returned.

‘Aye, well, I’ll not hold my breath. Last time her mother could only cope with her for one night and was outside social services with her in the morning, waiting for the office to open. She has problems of her own. A new partner with money, but no time for Emily. This time social services will have closed for Christmas, and I expect I’ll have to pick up the pieces.’ Jane must have realized that she sounded hard. ‘Sorry. Compassion-fatigue. I’m just tired.’

Holly thought that she felt tired too – and she’d only spent an afternoon in the place.

Professor Craggs lived in a low stone cottage in a village not far from Hexham and the Roman Wall. All the way there Joe Ashworth was thinking that this was a waste of time. A phone call would have done. But Vera was a great one for face-to-face contact. ‘It’s much easier to lie on the phone,’ she’d said before he set off. ‘And Craggs has known all the players for a long time. Get his take on the set-up at Harbour Street, and dig a bit further for information on Kerr and Enderby. I know Holly spoke to him, but she’s impatient; she doesn’t always give people time to get the words out.’

In the end he enjoyed the drive. Charlie fell asleep as soon as they left Kimmerston, and Joe felt he had every right to play his own music. There was a CD of Jessie’s choir and he had that on as they approached Craggs’s house. He’d chosen the Military Road, built by the Romans. It was straight as the eye could see, following Hadrian’s Wall, and there was little traffic. The soaring children’s voices suited the wide, empty landscape and were only partly spoiled by Charlie snoring beside him. Joe shook Charlie awake as they drove down the narrow road towards the house, a low cottage that could have done with a fresh coat of whitewash. The professor was in the garden, raking dead leaves from an untidy lawn. He heard the gate and turned round, leaning on the rake, faintly hostile. Joe saw that the man had decided they were salesmen or Jehovah’s Witnesses, and he got in first.

‘DS Ashworth. Northumbria Police. And this is my colleague Charles Laidler.’

Craggs was big and square, with cropped grey hair. He hadn’t shaved today and had holes in his trousers and his sweater. A grey mackintosh was tied at the waist with a bit of binder twine. Stick him on Northumberland Street in town, with a ratty dog, and you’d have him down as a well-fed tramp. Joe thought clothes were important, and he wouldn’t have dressed like that even in the garden. The professor and Vera were two of a kind. Maybe she should have driven all this way to do the interview herself.