Ann Cleeves - Harbour Street

‘When did you move to Mardle?’ Holly asked.

‘Then. This aunt I’d never heard of died, leaving me the house on Harbour Street. It seemed like the most wonderful piece of luck. A place of our own and the chance of a steady income. I remortgaged to do the renovations. I thought Robbie might be excited too. He might see it as a possibility.’

‘But it wasn’t his thing?’ Holly had chosen a cake for herself, but it lay untouched on her plate. She gave Kate her full attention.

‘He told me he’d got a job on the rigs. A couple of his mates were there already. And I thought it might work. Two weeks on, two weeks off. And it would give me a break when he was working away. It’s hard to describe what he was like when we were here. He was so restless and he had so much energy, but it was destructive. Like it wasn’t the sort of energy that got walls painted or the house cleaned. He just prowled like a lion in a cage.’

‘It sounds as if he might have been depressed,’ Holly said.

‘Yeah? Well, I think I was depressed too.’ Kate paused for a moment. She knew what she wanted to say, but couldn’t quite find the words. In the end she continued in a rush. ‘Do you know what I felt, when the news came that Robbie had died in an accident offshore? Relief. I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about him any more. I wouldn’t have that constant anxiety when he stamped around the house, shouting at the kids.’

‘Was he violent?’ Holly asked the question as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And for a detective perhaps it was natural. Her working day would be spent with people who kicked off at the least provocation.

‘Sometimes,’ Kate said quietly. ‘When he had a drink inside him. I mean, he never broke any bones, but he could lash out. Not with the kids, but sometimes with me.’ And the children saw. She pictured them, white, terrified, backed into a corner in the sitting room, watching. Ryan’s nightmares had started about then. The nightmares and the wandering. ‘It was more that he was unpredictable. You never knew from one day to the next what sort of mood he’d be in.’

‘I can see why you’d be relieved that he was dead then.’ Holly sounded perfectly matter-of-fact. And finally she cut a corner off the cake. She looked up. ‘Did Margaret know he had a temper?’

‘I don’t think she ever heard us arguing.’ Thinking back to that time when they’d first moved into the Harbour Guest House, Kate found that she was feeling tense and cold. It was remembering the big house and the kids, and dreading the days when Robbie would come back from the rigs. ‘And I didn’t know her so well then. But she’d have picked up that there was an atmosphere. One day she said to me: “You’re a different woman when Robbie’s away.”’

‘Would you have divorced him if he hadn’t died?’

Kate thought Holly probably didn’t have anyone serious in her life. Otherwise she wouldn’t ask these questions as if there was one simple answer. ‘I’m not sure,’ Kate said in the end. ‘Even when he was angry and restless I felt sorry for him. Responsible. As if he was another kid. And partly I was responsible. If he hadn’t hooked up with me, if I hadn’t dragged him to Mardle, perhaps he could still have had the life he always wanted. The perfect wife and kids, the happy family.’

‘You didn’t consider going back to the music, once he was dead?’

Kate thought about that and tried to answer honestly. ‘I’d lost all my confidence,’ she said. ‘I sang for me and the kids. Taught them to play the piano. But I thought all I was good for was to be a guest-house landlady. Until Stuart came along and persuaded me otherwise. There was no pressure, but he let me believe in myself again.’ As she said the words they sounded like the worst sort of cliché, too cheesy even to use in a song, but still she thought that they were true.

They sat for a moment in silence. Holly stood up. ‘I’m going to have another coffee. Want one?’

Kate nodded.

Then the talk was all about Margaret, and Kate couldn’t decide whether she was pleased or sad about that. ‘Did you get the impression that Margaret had been in an abusive relationship?’ Holly asked. She was very serious now.

Was that what I had? An abusive marriage? Again Kate thought that it wasn’t possible to sum up a relationship in one phrase.

‘No, I thought her husband had been the love of her life. Why do you say that?’

‘Because she had a special sympathy for the women at the Haven.’ Holly seemed surprised that Kate had asked. The informal chat had turned into an interrogation. ‘And she seemed to recognize what you were going through, didn’t she?’

‘I suppose she did.’ But Kate thought it wouldn’t have taken personal knowledge to see what was going on with her and Robbie.

‘What about Malcolm Kerr? His wife claims that he hit her. Did Margaret ever say anything to suggest that Malcolm might have been violent towards her too?’

‘No!’ The whole tone of the discussion had changed and Kate felt that she’d been misled, conned somehow by the expensive haircut and the pretence of friendship. ‘I don’t even know if they were an item. I just told your inspector that Malcolm was upset when he turned up at the house yesterday.’

‘You hadn’t seen them together recently?’ Holly finished her coffee and pushed away the plate with the half-eaten pastry.

‘No!

‘He never gave her a lift in his car, for example?’

‘I never saw them together.’ Kate heard her voice rising in pitch. ‘Not in the street. Not in a car.’ She got to her feet and started walking towards the door. How could she have been so stupid as to have trusted this woman? To have thought that they might be friends.

Holly followed her and they walked together back towards Harbour Street, the atmosphere quite different now. There was no schoolgirl giggling over tasteless jokes. Instead, an icy silence. Outside the guest house they stopped.

‘And Stuart? How did he get on with Margaret?’

‘Fine! They got on well together. They had lots in common – a love of music. The countryside. But they didn’t really know each other. They only met occasionally when we invited Margaret to have supper with us.’ Kate sensed she was talking too much and shut her mouth tight. No way was she going to invite the detective into the house.

‘So Margaret didn’t know Stuart before he came here to visit you?’ Holly was pulling her car keys from her bag. This was her last question.

‘No! Of course not! How would she?’ But even as she was speaking, Kate was remembering the first time she’d introduced Margaret to Stuart. It was in the summer, an unusually fine day and she’d put lunch in the small garden at the back of the house. Chilled white wine and cheese and salad. She’d called up to Margaret: ‘Come down and meet the new man in my life.’ Margaret had walked out onto the patio and Stuart had stood to meet her, and for a moment Kate had been sure there’d been a mutual jolt of recognition.

Joe Ashworth pushed on the door of the church and was surprised when it opened. It was midweek and weren’t all churches locked these days because of a fear of theft and vandalism? But it seemed that he’d walked into the middle of a service. Inside a scattering of elderly women sat on the front pews. They all turned and stared, curious. The priest was kneeling with his back to them and continued to read a prayer. The women turned back to the front and joined in a response. The priest’s voice was deep and musical. Joe took a seat at the back and waited. They stood. A skeletal woman with fingers like claws began a tune on the organ and they sang a hymn. Very slowly. Stopping occasionally to allow the music to catch up. Again the priest’s voice rose above them, carrying them along. The music stopped and they dropped to their knees for a moment of private prayer, before pulling together their belongings and turning to chat. The service, it seemed, was over. The women disappeared into a door to the left of the building and Peter Gruskin swept up the aisle towards Joe.