Vera Stanhope 06 - Harbour Street (16 page)

The head teacher was small and bald and had a face that gave away nothing of what he was thinking. ‘I’m not sure how I can help you, Sergeant, but of course I’ll do anything I can.’

‘You’ll have heard of the murder.’ The office was on the third floor and looked down over the playground. The dark clouds gave a strange sense of dusk.

‘Of course. Two of our students lived in the same house as the victim. She was almost part of their family. I’ve asked their class teachers to keep an eye on them. They’ll obviously be upset.’ The teacher looked up at Ashworth. ‘I assume there’s no question that they’re involved in the crime.’

‘Would you be surprised if they were?’

There was a moment’s hesitation, but when he spoke his voice was unequivocal. ‘Astonished. Chloe is an outstanding pupil. She has ambitions for Oxbridge and has every chance of getting there.’ He paused. ‘We all feel that she puts too much pressure on herself. Sometimes I wish she were a little less driven. Adolescent girls can make themselves ill . . .’ His voice tailed away. ‘Ryan’s less academic, and I know that his mother has concerns about his progress. Comparisons are always being made with his sister. There have been a couple of unexplained absences, but I don’t think he has plans to go into the sixth form, so we’re reluctant to make a big issue of it. It’s tough for boys growing up without a man in the house.’

An electronic bell rang and children skittered across the playground and into the building.

‘But there is a man in the house now. At least, there soon will be.’

‘Ah, you’re here about Stuart.’ The man frowned. ‘Of course there’s been talk in the staffroom about that relationship.’ He paused. ‘We didn’t make the connection about Mrs Dewar’s musical past until she performed in the Whitley Bay Playhouse recently. Stuart persuaded some of us to go along to support her and it was a great evening. The students have never heard of Katie Guthrie of course, but for people of our age she’s rather a celebrity. We’re glad that she chose Mardle High for her children.’ Joe thought that the head had been a bit star-struck too.

‘So there was a lot of gossip about the relationship?’

The head gave a little smile. ‘Well, this is the first sign Stuart’s ever shown that he might tie the knot. Some of the female teachers have tried to persuade him over the years, but he’s always been wary of settling with anyone. The idea that he’s taking on a wife and stepchildren has fascinated us all, because it’s so out of character. The romance has become Mardle High’s very own soap.’

‘We’re asking about anyone who knew Mrs Krukowski,’ Joe said. ‘Routine. You’ll understand. Has Mr Booth been at Mardle long?’

‘As long as the school. It was built in the Eighties and he was one of the first intake of staff. He’s been head of music for the past fifteen years. He’s talking about retiring to support Kate in her career, and we’ll miss him. He’s given himself heart and soul to the kids. Not just the timetabled lessons, but all the extracurricular stuff. Music, of course – the choir and the wind band – but he’s keen on the great outdoors too. He leads our Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme. It’s rare these days to find a teacher with such passion for his work.’

‘He’s passionate about Kate Dewar too?’

The head smiled. ‘Apparently so.’

‘Was he in school the afternoon of the murder?’

The man raised an eyebrow. ‘Checking alibis, Sergeant?’ He was suddenly more alert. Tense.

‘As I said, sir. Routine.’

The teacher turned to the computer on his desk to check the electronic diary. ‘That was the evening of our Christmas concert. Stuart didn’t leave the building all day. He taught in the afternoon and then took the kids for a final rehearsal before the performance. I remember it because of the snow. We wondered if we should cancel, but most of our students live within walking distance, so we went ahead anyway.’

He looked up from the computer and Ashworth sensed that he was disproportionately relieved that his colleague was in the clear. Perhaps that was the natural response of a head teacher who was anxious about his school’s reputation. Or perhaps he had a suspicion that Stuart Booth might be capable of murder.

Malcolm Kerr’s yard was shut up, the big wooden doors padlocked. Vera was about to wander back to his house when she saw him walking past the fisheries towards the harbour, a dark figure dressed in oilskins and boots, recognizable by his stooped back. She hurried to catch him up.

‘I wanted a word.’

He stopped. It seemed he’d been engrossed in his thoughts, because he hadn’t heard her footsteps behind him and she’d startled him. ‘Well, you can’t. I’ve got work to do.’

She looked at his eyes and thought he hadn’t drunk so much the night before and had managed some sleep. He was truculent, but more human. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘Prof. Craggs left some of his equipment in the water off the island. He didn’t want to pick it up the last time we were out because of the weather. I said I’d come and get it the first chance that I had.’ He carried on walking.

The boat was already tied up at the harbour wall and ready to go. Not the
Lucy-May
that carried the trippers around Coquet Island in the summer, but a small open boat with an outboard at the back. A newer version of the vessel that had carried her and Hector out to the island years before.

Vera looked down at it. It seemed sturdy enough. ‘Room for a small one?’

He stared at her as if she were mad. ‘You want to come out with me?’

‘Why not? You’ll not be long, will you? And like I said, I need a word.’

He chuckled. ‘Taking a bit of a risk, aren’t you? If I’m a murder suspect, I could pitch you out between here and Coquet, and nobody would know. And, whatever I say, you’ve got no corroboration. It’d never stand up in court.’

She looked at him for a moment. Of course he was right and it was a daft thing to do. ‘Ah, I’ll risk it.’

She carefully lowered herself down the metal ladder fixed to the wall and into the boat. Gravity helped. She hoped the tide was on its way in and that the water would be higher when they returned. Then she wouldn’t have so far to climb up. The boat wobbled when she stepped in and she had a moment of panic, imagining herself tumbling into the freezing brown water. Kerr fished a buoyancy jacket from under the back seat and threw it to her and arranged a plastic cushion for her in the middle of the boat. ‘Don’t move. The weight of you, you’ll have us over.’ He tugged on the starting rope and the engine coughed into life.

There was quite a different perspective on the town from the water. A monochrome vision like a black-and-white film. She could see the backs of the buildings on Harbour Street. The women in the fisheries were getting ready for the lunchtime rush, carrying white plastic buckets of prepared potatoes from an outhouse at the end of the yard. The guest house looked rather grand from here, the narrow windows symmetrical and the grey stonework as solid as a fortress. There was a small garden between the house and the shore. Beyond, the tower of St Bartholomew’s dominated. She felt like a voyeur, a peeping Tom looking at the world from a hiding place. Though they were hiding in full sight.

‘Why did you lie to me, Malcolm?’ They were outside the harbour wall now and there was a slight swell on the water. She’d always been a good sailor and was untroubled by it. ‘You said you hadn’t had any contact with Margaret recently.’

‘I haven’t!’ But he sounded like one of the young scallies she used to round up as a junior PC, all bluster and swearing.

‘Come on, Malcolm man. You were seen dropping her off at the Haven the day before she died.’

He didn’t reply immediately and the only sound was the rasp of the engine and gulls screaming.

‘Look, man, talk to me. This is about as unofficial as it gets, in a bloody boat in the North Sea.’
With me looking like the Michelin man in a bright-orange life jacket.

‘We were friends,’ he said. ‘I was probably the only real friend she had round here.’

‘Lovers?’

He shook his head sadly. ‘A long time ago. Not recently. Not many times even then.’ He paused. They were halfway across the stretch of water that separated the island from Mardle. ‘And we didn’t meet much as friends when I was still married. She knew what I felt about her and thought she’d get in the way. She said that it wouldn’t be fair to Deborah. She was kind enough when I was getting divorced, but she made it clear there was no chance of us getting together again.’

‘Is that what you wanted?’ They were close enough to the island for Vera to make out details. The warden’s house and the muck on the cliffs where the seabirds had nested. She tried to remember more details of the trip she’d taken there with Hector to steal birds’ eggs all those years ago, but all that came back was the sense of foreboding and the dreadful certainty that they’d be caught. ‘You wanted more than friendship, even now?’

‘I adored her from the first time we met,’ Kerr said. ‘I should never have married. When I lay next to my wife I was dreaming of Margaret.’

Vera wondered what that would be like and decided it was probably easier to adore a fantasy heroine than a real woman.

‘But you’d spent time together again recently?’

‘She’d just found out that she was ill,’ Kerr said. ‘She wanted to tell someone. Not Kate and the kids. She thought they’d get too upset.’

‘She told you that morning before you dropped her off at the Haven?’ Vera had to turn in her seat to see his face.

He nodded. ‘She asked if I fancied going for a walk. We went to the beach at North Mardle. It was freezing and we had the place to ourselves, apart from a couple of dog walkers miles off. Then the sun came out.’ Vera could see that in his head he was back on the beach in the winter sunshine walking beside the woman he’d known since he was a young man. Had he taken her hand? Put an arm around her shoulder?

‘She had cancer,’ Vera said.

‘I said I’d look after her. Whatever she needed.’ He was almost in tears. ‘She said she had to sort a few things out. Affairs to get straight. “I’ll need you to help me with that, Malcolm.”’ He smiled. ‘Of course I hated the thought of her being ill, but I loved her involving me, making me part of her life again. So we’d be together in a way, even if we didn’t have very long.’

‘Did she say what she needed to sort out?’

But Malcolm didn’t answer immediately. They’d reached a red buoy close to a rocky outcrop of the island. He cut the engine and tied the boat to a metal ring on the rock. The boat swung and he reached out to haul in the rope attached to the buoy. The water was very clear here and Vera watched the object slowly emerge. He lifted it, dripping, into the body of the boat. A weighted metal plate covered in sand. Vera’s attention shifted briefly from the investigation.

‘And what did you say is in there?’

‘A sediment monitoring plate. The Prof. needs it for his research. I said I’d bring it in, in case there’s a storm over the holiday.’ He slipped the knot from the ring and pushed the boat away from the rock. ‘He’s a good man, the Prof. I don’t mind doing him a favour when I can.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d met Margaret when I talked to you yesterday?’ She was exasperated. ‘We could have saved all this carry-on – half my team having you down as a murderer.’

‘I was scared,’ he said.

‘You said you’d been in touch with Margaret since your divorce? Did you approach her?’

He shook his head. ‘She knew how I was fixed. It was up to her. She contacted me about Kate Dewar’s lad.’

The boat was moving back towards the shore. Spray blew into her face and she could taste the salt on her lips. ‘What about him?’

‘He was getting into bother. Skipping classes occasionally. Nothing serious. That house full of women, Margaret thought he could do with some male company. She asked if I could find any work for him around the yard.’

‘And you said yes?’

There was a pause. The strange, dark sky was pierced briefly by one arrow of bright sunlight. ‘If she’d asked me to swim naked three times round the island, I’d have said yes. I loved her.’

‘How do you get on with the boy?’ Vera wasn’t sure that kind of passion was healthy. It embarrassed her that Kerr was prepared to talk like that. As if he had no self-control or pride. Much safer to move on to a discussion about Kate’s son.

Kerr seemed to consider for a moment before answering. ‘I never have any bother with him. He’s just one of those lads who don’t like school. He’s kind of restless. You see him walking the streets at all hours. Too much energy for school work.’ He was bringing the boat round the harbour wall now and the sunlight had disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. The water was calmer. ‘Ryan was a bit cocky when he started, but he settled down once he realized I wasn’t going to stand any messing. He wants to make something of himself, and I’m glad of the company.’ He paused as if that was a confession. ‘When I was his age I’d already been working full-time for a year.’

‘You never fancied staying on and getting an education?’ Because Vera thought that Kerr was more intelligent than he’d seemed to her at first. Margaret wouldn’t have taken up with a stupid man, even briefly.

‘Never got the chance.’ Even now this obviously rankled. ‘My Dad needed cheap labour in the family business.’

Vera turned back to face him. ‘Just like mine.’ They grinned.

With an easy move he had the boat next to the ladder in the wall. It occurred to her that he’d done this so many times that he’d manage it with pinpoint accuracy even with his eyes closed.

‘Your friend the professor said you were back in Mardle by three o’clock the afternoon Margaret died,’ Vera said. She took off the life jacket, but stayed sitting. ‘Where did you go when you got in from the water?’

‘The Prof.’s wrong about the time. You know what these academics are like. Not fit to be let out in the real world. It was later than that. Nearly dark.’ He took her hand to help her to her feet and then leaned across her to grab one of the rails to hold the boat steady. She hoisted herself onto the ladder, aware of how close to him she was. When she got to the top and looked back, he had the engine running and the boat on its way back to its mooring. He waved at her and she waved back.