Vera Stanhope 06 - Harbour Street (37 page)

Vera took the time for a half-hour power nap and a shower when she got back from Harbour Street. There was a change of clothes in her office, kept in case she was called suddenly to court, and she looked unusually smart when she joined Joe in the interview room. She could tell that he was impressed by the transformation. It was another cold, sunny day, hoar frost on the roofs outside the station window.

She hardly recognized Kate at first, she looked so lined and withered. The woman had aged overnight. Ryan was super-cool, lounging across the table, loving the attention. The court case would be a dream for him. All those years of being in his sister’s shadow, and now he’d be centre-stage.
What made you different? Losing your dad when you were young? Watching him batter your mother? Or were you just born evil? The shrinks will have a field day.

Vera didn’t talk directly to the boy, but to his lawyer. Her way of showing Ryan that he wasn’t as important as he believed himself to be. ‘I hope your client is ready to cooperate, Mr Watson.’

The man nodded. She knew that he had teenage lads of his own. Was he wondering what his sons got up to when they weren’t at home?

Now she did turn to Ryan. ‘Let me tell you about that day in the Metro, the day you killed Margaret Krukowski. You’d bunked off school at lunchtime again, and gone into town to hook up with a mate and a couple of lasses from the posh school. I bet they thought they were
so
grown-up, going out with a dangerous moron like you. Thief, petty drug dealer and full-time scrote. I spoke to Emily Robertson, who was at St Anne’s too, and she knew all about you. You were one of the reasons she ended up in a place like the Haven. She saw you at the winter fair there and she freaked out big-style, asked to go back to the hospital rather than having to face you and your taunts.’

Vera paused before returning to the thread of the story. ‘So there you were, playing the lad about town, and who should catch on but Margaret Krukowski.’ Vera took another breath, watched the sun edge over the roof of the building opposite, and found that her mind was wandering. She’d be glad to get home. She’d ask her neighbours in for a drink. A big drink. They’d stay up and see Christmas Day in together. She didn’t fancy being alone tonight, dreaming of vulnerable women and violent men. Or perhaps Joe Ashworth would be let off the leash for an hour to come back with her.

She turned her attention back to the boy whom she thought of as Ricky Butt reincarnated. ‘And she saw you, missing lessons, having lied to your mother again. Maybe that was when she decided she couldn’t let it go any longer, that she couldn’t save you. You weren’t to be her route to salvation after all.’

Vera saw that they were looking at her strangely and, when she continued, her voice was crisp and matter-of-fact. ‘Margaret had seen you in town before, of course. There was the day she took Dee Robson into Newcastle to buy her a winter coat. She’d told Dee that the Haven charity would pay for it, but of course that wasn’t true. She’d paid for it herself. Margaret was a kind woman. A good woman. She saw you swaggering through town, playing truant, playing whatever game made you money. She knew your mam was worried about you and she chased after you, hoping to make you see sense. And what did you do? You ran away.’

For the first time since she’d started talking Vera looked at Kate Dewar. She was a good woman too. A woman who had wanted to think well of her son. A woman who had hoped for some joy and excitement as she reached middle age.

‘Dee Robson saw you,’ Vera continued. ‘She saw you run off into the crowd. And she was on the Metro the day you killed Margaret. Pissed and hardly aware of anything, but you knew her, didn’t you? Everyone in Harbour Street knew the fat slag Dee Robson.’

The boy looked up, almost provoked to speak. There was a moment of silence. Vera changed the subject abruptly.

‘Tell me about the photograph, Ryan. The photograph that you stole from Mr Booth’s wallet.’ Vera knew this would be upsetting to Kate, but at this point her lover’s past was less important than getting the boy to talk.

‘It was gross.’ Ryan’s face was red, the picture of righteous indignation. ‘Margaret dressed in hardly anything. Stockings. Posing. Like those cards that Dee Robson stuck up all over the Metro station.’

Vera shot a glance at Kate, but her face was blank. Vera thought she couldn’t take in this extra information.

‘You’d looked in Mr Booth’s wallet for money?’

‘He had plenty.’ Ryan looked up and gave that slow, sly smile. ‘He’d have given it to me, if I’d asked. I just couldn’t stand the lecture that would’ve come with it.’

‘And you thought the photo would be much more valuable?’

‘I was shocked,’ Ryan said. ‘I wasn’t thinking like that. I just took it.’

And brooded about it. And wondered how you could best make use of it.

‘You showed it to Margaret.’ Not a question. Vera still wasn’t sure how this had worked, but she wasn’t going to let the boy see that.

‘I gave her the chance to explain,’ he said. ‘That only seemed right.’

‘And
when
was that, Ryan?’ As if she just needed her memory jogging.

‘A couple of nights before . . .’ he said.

‘. . . before you killed her?’

‘I went up to her room,’ he said. ‘Knocked at her door.’

Vera pictured him slouched against the door frame. Made cocky by the photo.
Information is power.
But still nervous inside. Still the little boy who’d had nightmares, who’d run away from Margaret in town.

‘She let you in?’ Vera allowed a little surprise into her voice. ‘She liked her privacy.’

‘She said that she wanted to talk.’ He was less certain now. ‘She made me tea.’

‘And you showed her the photograph.’

‘I put it on the table.’ He paused and looked away.

‘And she was angry,’ Vera said. ‘I’d guess she was very angry.’

‘She had no right.’ His face turned red again. ‘She was the one dressed up like a slut. She was the one whose photo was in Stuart’s wallet.’

‘What did she say exactly, Ryan? This is very important. We need it word-for-word if you can.’

‘She said that if I expected her to pay for the return of the picture, I was very much mistaken.’ He was a natural mimic and for the first time Vera thought she could hear Margaret’s voice. Clear, decisive. ‘She said that she’d made allowances for my behaviour. I’d had a tough time. She’d asked Malcolm to give me work and she’d been pleased with my progress there. But this was my last chance. If she caught me thieving or skipping school again, she’d go to the police. She’d tell them that I’d stolen from Stuart and from the Haven, and that I’d attempted to blackmail her.’ He broke off and his natural voice returned. ‘As if I was bothered. She was a snooty cow. And a tart.’

‘What did she do with the photo, please, Ryan?’ Because they hadn’t found it in her room, but she’d have taken it off the boy.

‘She took it from me and burned it.’ He sounded like a sulky toddler. ‘She held it over the flame of a candle.’

‘So let’s move on to the afternoon of her murder, shall we, Ryan? Your friends got off the Metro, and Margaret Krukowski got on. The woman who could land you in the shite big-time. She’d given you one last chance, but here you were bunking off school again. What did she say to you? Whatever she said, it must have been pretty strong, because you followed her to her seat and took out the knife you always carry . . .’
Just like Ricky Butt.
‘. . . and when she turned away from you – when she
dared
to turn her back on you – you stabbed her.’ Vera had allowed disgust to colour her voice. Kate Dewar was sobbing. She’d probably been sobbing all night.

‘Well, Ryan?’ Vera insisted. Looking, she saw that he was sitting upright now. Very tense. Reliving the humiliation of being put in his place by an elderly woman. White with anger.

‘She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to say anything. She looked at me. Kind as if I was a naughty kid. She’d been a prostitute. She had no right to look at me like that.’

‘So you killed her.’

‘Yes!’ Temper constricting his throat, so that his voice was hoarse. He half-rose to his feet and, when he spoke again, he sent a spray of spit across the table. ‘I killed her.’

There was a moment of silence in the room, broken only by Kate’s muffled cries.

Vera nodded at Joe Ashworth to continue the story. ‘I was in the Metro,’ Joe said. ‘I saw you with the girls, and I hated the way you treated them. It never occurred to me that you were a killer, though. Just a little jumped-up yob, I thought. And that’s what you were. A jumped-up yob who thought it was clever to sell drugs to vulnerable kids and stab an old lady to death.’

‘You left the Metro at Partington with all the other passengers,’ Vera said. ‘Hidden by the snow. The Metro bus was waiting and drove you back to Mardle. You got home late.’ Vera paused. ‘But your mother didn’t realize. She thought you’d come in from school with Chloe.’

Kate looked up. ‘I heard him come in,’ she said. Appalled, as if this tiny example of ignorance made her complicit in his guilt. ‘I heard the door and I thought it was just the wind rattling the letter box. It always rattles when the wind’s northerly.’

‘Did Chloe know?’ Vera thought this might be an even worse sin than murder, to involve his brainy sister, to make her choose between sibling loyalty and justice for Margaret. Because she’d feel guilty anyway – the favoured child, the apple of her mother’s eye. She had a brief flash of memory: her and the neighbours, and herself in a rare moment of honesty after too much drink, talking about a case when she’d failed; and Jack, wise and gentle, saying: ‘Hey, Vera. Just dump the guilt.’

Ryan looked up, suddenly defensive; the anger was spent, but he was still tense. ‘I didn’t tell Chloe.’

‘But she guessed?’

He turned away and said nothing.

Vera nodded to Joe Ashworth. The next part of the story was his.

‘When I first walked into the kitchen at Harbour Street, something was familiar,’ he said. ‘There was that sense of déjà vu. You were there, sprawled on the sofa, just a school kid in your uniform. I didn’t connect you with the lads I’d seen on the train. Then I recognized your mother – I’d been a fan when I was young – and I thought that explained the sensation of familiarity. If I’d remembered properly, we’d have had you in for questioning and the thing would have been over. Dee Robson would still be alive.’

Vera thought that Joe would have to live with that for the rest of his life. Thinking he’d been swayed by the soppy words of a popular song.
Just dump the guilt, pet.
In the end it was Val Butt talking about
her
violent son that had set them on the right trail. Besides, if they’d arrested Ryan on the first day, they’d never have found the body of Ricky Butt under the shed in Kerr’s yard. She still wasn’t sure what she thought about that, and the consequences for Malcolm. Sometimes perhaps it was better to let sleeping bodies lie. Then she decided that it would be an evil sort of world where a man could kill and get away with it, even if the victim was a toerag like Butt. Besides, this might give Malcolm a bit of peace in his last years. She could imagine him as an orderly in the prison library, catching up on the reading that he’d missed out on as a bairn. Vera thought she might even go and visit him there.

In the interview room the clear winter sunlight was pouring in through the narrow, barred window and Joe was continuing the interrogation.

‘Why did Dee have to die?’

There was no response from Ryan. He continued to stare at the scarred table in front of him.

‘Because she saw you in the Metro that night? She connected you with the lad who’d run away from Margaret in town? And she’d seen you at the winter fair at the Haven – might even have worked out that you were stealing from them.’ Vera pitched her voice a little louder, demanding a response from him.

‘She was on the bus that took us from Partington to Mardle. I couldn’t take the risk that she might tell somebody, could I?’ Ryan looked up now, aggressive again, proud because he’d had the nerve to kill two women, ready to boast. The solicitor touched his arm, a gesture of warning, but Ryan took no notice, and Vera thought the solicitor was as disgusted as the rest of them. Certainly he made no further attempt to stop the boy from talking.

‘Talk us through that, would you, Ryan,’ Joe said. ‘Tell us how you got into her flat.’ The voice bland, a schoolmaster’s voice. He could have been Stuart Booth.
Talk us through that equation, would you, Ryan?

‘She invited me in.’ The boy gave a sudden wild, wolfish grin. ‘She was pissed and bumped into me on her way back to Percy Street. ‘Offered me sex. Stupid cow! As if I’d ever had to pay for that.’

‘Go on.’ No accusation in Joe’s voice. Vera felt a moment of pride. He was her protégé and he’d learned to control his emotions. He’d been soft as clarts when he’d first come to her.

‘The flat was a dump,’ Ryan said, as if that was an excuse for what would come later. ‘Filthy. She went into the bedroom to change. I mean, just looking at her made me gag.’

‘And then?’

‘There was a knife on the table in the front room. A kitchen knife. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I thought it would be safer. Better not to use my knife.’

He flashed a look at Vera.
My God, he wants a gold star for being clever.
She clamped her mouth shut. Best not to reply. He’d like any response better than being ignored.

‘But the knife did work?’ Joe made it sound as if he was truly interested.

Ryan didn’t answer that at first. ‘I switched up the telly,’ he said. ‘In case she made a noise, then I went into the bedroom.’ He looked up at Joe. ‘The blade was a bit bendy. It took some strength to get it in. But yeah, it worked fine.’

‘What did you do then, Ryan?’

‘I went into the bathroom and washed. I wiped my fingerprints off the door handles and the handle of the knife. Then I went back to school. I had music and I didn’t want Stuart telling my mother that I was bunking off again.’