Vera Stanhope 06 - Harbour Street (22 page)

‘You think George could be the murderer?’ Stuart waited for her to answer and she saw that this wasn’t an idle question. She recognized the teacher in him. He’d use the same tone standing in front of his class.
Is that really how you think that piece should be played?
He seemed unusually serious.

She took his question seriously too. ‘No,’ she said at last, because despite her earlier misgivings and the hesitation in the detective’s voice, it was impossible to think of quiet and gentle George Enderby hurting anyone. She’d seen him open a window to allow a wasp to escape. ‘What reason would George have for killing Margaret? And he’d have hardly known Dee Robson. Unless she’d tried to pick him up in the Coble.’

‘What do you mean?’ Stuart frowned.

‘Dee was always trying to pick up men in the Coble. The locals knew her and just made fun of her.’ Kate couldn’t help an awkward smile, as she thought how embarrassed George Enderby would be by such an encounter. Polite and awkward, but terrified too.

‘Are you saying that Dee Robson was a prostitute?’ The coffee had stopped dripping and he poured a mug for Kate. She saw that he was shocked. She had never thought of him as a prude.

‘I suppose I am. Not a very good one, though.’ She gave a nervous smile. ‘An amateur, not a professional.’ Then she thought the attempt at humour was in poor taste. The woman had just been killed. She slid a look at Stuart, but if he disapproved of her flippancy he didn’t show it. He seemed lost in thought.

‘What shall we do for the rest of the day?’ She imagined a walk in the hills. The kids had said they’d be out until the evening, so there was no danger they’d be in the house alone with George. She and Stuart had talked about doing a part of Hadrian’s Wall. Then perhaps lunch in a pub. A real fire and homemade broth. Suddenly she was desperate to escape from Mardle and Harbour Street.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll be a bit tied up after all.’ She was expecting an explanation, but he still seemed preoccupied. He jumped to his feet as if he had a sudden impulse to escape from
her.
At the bottom of the stairs he stopped abruptly. ‘Can I come round again later?’

‘Of course!’ It came to her now that the strange behaviour had a logical explanation: he was going into town to buy her Christmas present. That was why he was being so secretive. ‘You know you can come here at any time.’ And she turned her head to kiss him.

Left to herself in the big house, Kate felt that things were slipping out of her control. She wished now that the children were still at home, that Ryan was back from Malcolm’s boatyard and that Chloe hadn’t disappeared into town with a mysterious friend. She wanted everyone here, where she could keep an eye on them. Where they’d be safe.

Joe crossed the road so that he couldn’t be seen from the Harbour Guest House basement and wondered what he should do next. He assumed Vera had gone into town on the trail of George Enderby. She’d probably dragged Holly or Charlie along with her, a corroborative witness if the case came to court. He tried phoning her, but the call went straight to voice-mail. Joe was still standing there dithering, phone in his hand, when the door of the guest house opened and Stuart Booth emerged. He hesitated and then looked back at the house. Joe expected Kate Dewar to follow, but the man closed the door behind him and remained there for a moment. Dithering too. They formed mirror images of each other on both sides of the road. Booth seemed to come to a decision, before making a dash across the street to join Joe outside the church.

‘I wonder if I might talk to you, Sergeant. I have some information; it might be relevant to the murder of Margaret Krukowski.’

Joe was in a pool car and he drove Booth to the police station in Kimmerston. Vera might have done it differently, had some informal chat over tea or beer or chips. But Joe wanted this done properly – the man’s words recorded. Driving to Kimmerston, he felt a tingle of excitement. It occurred to him that the man intended to confess to murder: Booth was so still and so serious.

In the car Booth didn’t speak. Joe turned occasionally to sneak a look at him and saw that he was staring out of the window, very tense. The muscles in his face were set hard. Joe had come across men like him in rural Northumberland. Hill farmers and shepherds, with few words. Tough, sinewy men. It was hard to imagine Booth as a musician. Joe had looked him up, and Google said that jazz was his thing. Perhaps that was when he
did
relax, and he could picture the man then in a basement bar playing saxophone, head tilted back, eyes half-closed, wrapped up in his music.

‘What instrument do you play?’ The question came without thought.

Booth didn’t turn away from the window to answer. ‘At school, whatever they need me to. Piano for assembly, recorder to start the little buggers off. But for pleasure, the alto sax.’

Joe was pleased that he’d guessed right.

In the station Joe got Booth coffee from the staffroom, in a mug, not the cardboard cups they usually gave to witnesses. One of Vera’s tricks. Holly had gone into town with Vera in search of Enderby, so Charlie sat in, the silent man, the observer, while for once Joe took charge of the discussion. They sat in an interview room and their words bounced off the gloss-painted walls and seemed to rattle like hail from the ceiling. He asked if he might record their discussion and Booth nodded.

‘So, Mr Booth, you said that you have some information about Margaret Krukowski.’

It took Booth a while to speak. Perhaps he was expecting the officers to ask him direct questions.

As he waited, Joe looked at him, taking in the details. His clothes. Denim jeans and a checked shirt and knitted sweater. Those sturdy trainers that could act as walking boots. Booth was wearing a green fleece too, though it was warm in here. He wouldn’t be a man to feel the cold, but it would have taken movement to get it off, and still he wasn’t moving much. A face moulded by the weather, and eyes like slate.

‘Margaret Krukowski was a prostitute,’ Booth said. ‘Not recently, as far as I know, but years ago. I only just discovered – when Kate said it – that Dee Robson was a sex worker. And suddenly it seemed important.’

Sparks were firing now in Joe’s head.
So we’re not looking for a man who hates women, but a man who hates prostitutes.
He wondered what Vera would make of the news, then thought she might not be surprised that church-going Margaret had once worked in the sex trade. The boss had said from the beginning that they needed to uncover Margaret’s secret.

‘How do you know that, Mr Booth?’

He took a deep breath. ‘Because I used her services. Regularly, over a number of years.’ Joe thought the man would stop there, but he continued to speak. Joe thought that a priest taking confession might feel like he did now – curiosity flecked with embarrassment and distaste. Booth continued: ‘I was a newly qualified teacher, awkward, shy. Needing a relationship, but not sure about how to get one. A kind of joke with the other musicians. One of them gave me her number.’ Even now he seemed to be blushing at the memory. ‘I got drunk one night and phoned her.’ He paused. ‘She didn’t call herself Margaret, of course, and never mentioned a second name.’

‘What did she call herself?’ The room was on the ground floor, and outside there was the background rumble of traffic.

‘Anna,’ he said. ‘She told me she was Polish, but I didn’t believe that. Her accent was English. Perhaps she thought the story would make her seem more exotic.’

‘She married a Polish man.’ Joe felt an urge to stand up for the woman, despite her chosen profession. ‘So it was almost the truth.’

‘Well, of course she never told me that she’d been married.’

‘The marriage didn’t last long,’ Joe said. ‘Only a couple of years.’

‘I was probably with her longer than her husband.’ Booth leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. The notion seemed to give him some satisfaction.

‘Where did she live?’

‘Where she was living when she died.’ He opened his eyes again. ‘That flat in Harbour Street. The house was very different then, but her rooms were always clean, pleasant. You’d walk up the stairs past the sound of kids grizzling and the smells of cooking, and then you’d go into her place. Everything calm and warm. Like going into a different world. I went for that, as much as for the sex. The escape from reality.’

‘She worked from her home?’ Joe was surprised by that. All the working girls he knew were fiercely protective of their privacy.

‘I think she’d looked into the possibility of finding a place to operate from, but she said she’d been ripped off. She’d rather trust her clients than the sharks who preyed off sex workers. And there weren’t many clients. We paid well. She was worth it.’

Joe was suddenly intensely curious about what had gone on between these two people. Despite himself, he imagined them in the attic room in Harbour Street, the shy young teacher and the slightly older woman, who was taking money for sex. He found himself wanting details. Perhaps Booth guessed what he was thinking because obliquely he answered the unspoken question.

‘Anna was amazing.’ He paused. ‘I counted the days until I could see her again. Though, looking back, I suppose it wouldn’t have taken much to please me. I was young and awkward and she was older and more experienced. Kind. And there was the thrill of the illicit. I never told anyone about the encounters, not even the friend who’d passed on her name. I loved the fact that our meetings were secret, that the next day I would walk into school to be a respectable, responsible teacher and nobody had any idea what I’d been doing the night before.’

‘Why did it stop?’ Joe asked. ‘I take it that it
did
stop?’ He couldn’t imagine this man in his late fifties climbing the stairs to see Margaret when Kate wasn’t looking.

‘I found a girlfriend, Sergeant. Not someone I cared for as I do about Kate, but someone to sleep with. That was less exciting than the visits to Harbour Street, but it seemed more appropriate. And as I got older I lost my courage. I was scared someone would see me. I couldn’t have stood it getting out that I used the services of a prostitute.’

‘Did you ever meet any of Margaret’s other clients?’ The thought came to Joe quickly. A sudden flash of hope.

Booth shook his head. ‘No. As I say, I think we were a select bunch. Margaret presented a respectable face to the world too. A couple of times I saw the back of a man disappearing down Harbour Street in the gloom as I came in. But no faces. Nothing that would be of any use to you.’

‘When did you realize that Margaret was still living in the same house?’ Joe thought Stuart seemed almost relaxed now. The relief of sharing his secret had eased the tension.

‘Not until Kate introduced us. A sunny lunchtime in the garden. When I found out that Kate lived in Harbour Street I was intrigued. It seemed some sort of omen when it turned out to be the same house. Perhaps I was hoping to regain that youthful excitement. And I have captured it, in a way, though the house was unrecognizable. She’d talked about Margaret, the friend who helped her in the kitchen, but of course I didn’t make any connection. The woman I’d known was called Anna, and I’d last seen her more than thirty years before.’

‘But you recognized Margaret?’

‘Oh yes, immediately.’ He leaned forward across the scratched table to make a point. ‘She was still a very beautiful woman.’

‘And did she recognize you?’

He thought for a moment before answering. ‘I think she did. I hope so. I had the sense that she was giving Kate and me her blessing. We never talked about our former lives, even on the few times that we found ourselves alone.’

Joe drove Stuart back to Mardle. He was glad of an excuse to leave Kimmerston and, like Vera, he thought that Mardle was the centre of the investigation. There was still no conversation. Booth directed him to a small development on the edge of the town, a conversion of farm outbuildings where he had an apartment. The place was on the west side of the town and Joe thought that it would be just a short walk across open fields to the Haven. When the car stopped Booth stayed still for a moment and turned to Joe, wanting reassurance. ‘I suppose this makes me a suspect. Because Margaret could have told Kate about my past, I do have a motive of a sort.’

Joe wasn’t sure what to say. ‘We keep an open mind,’ he said at last. ‘We always do. Everyone who knew Margaret Krukowski is a potential suspect. But we’re grateful for the information. It’s been very useful.’

Stuart frowned. ‘Do you think I should tell Kate? I suppose if there’s a court case it might come out. It would look better if I told her now.’ He paused. ‘I did wonder if she’d guessed that I knew Margaret. I’d kept a photo of her in my wallet. Margaret gave it to me as a memento when I told her that I wouldn’t be visiting her any more. It’s gone. I thought perhaps Kate had found it, but rooting through other people’s possessions isn’t her style. It must just have fallen out one day.’ He stopped suddenly and seemed terribly sad that he no longer had anything to remember Margaret by.

In theory Joe was a great believer in honesty in a relationship. Though there were certainly things in his past that he’d never discussed with Sal. But this was a murder investigation, and information was power. He imagined Vera’s face when he passed on the news, and thought it gave
him
power too. At least it would earn him a few brownie points. ‘We’d rather you kept this to yourself for the moment, sir.’

Relieved to be let off the hook, Stuart flashed him a sudden bright smile, and got out of the car.

Vera stood outside the Georgian symmetry of the Lit & Phil Library in Newcastle city centre, waiting for Holly, and letting her mind wander. Passengers from Central Station swept past her and cars screeched at the lights, but Vera was lost in thought and took no notice. Two women. Margaret Krukowski, bright and smart, born into affluence and wanting to set her affairs straight because she realized that she was ill. Dee Robson, one of life’s unfortunates, someone who’d needed looking after from the moment she was born, though until Margaret had come along, nobody had bothered much. They were linked by geography, living close to each other, on the seaward side of the railway line, and they’d both travelled on the same Metro train the afternoon of Margaret’s death. As had Joe Ashworth. And his daughter Jessie. Vera wondered if it had occurred to Joe that he and Jess might be in danger too. Perhaps it was just as well that he had so little imagination.