Ann Cleeves - Harbour Street

He remembered in detail what Margaret was wearing that day. A peasant skirt in Indian cotton and a white cheesecloth blouse. Sandals. The fine leather strap tied round her ankle in a bow. Not her work clothes. She dressed up for work as if she was going to an office. Black underwear and a black suspender belt. Sheer stockings and shoes with pointed toes and heels so high you’d wonder how she balanced. Leather and silk. He’d seen her dressing for work once. When he was out in the boat to lift his creels he’d anchored in the bay and peered through her window, using the professor’s binoculars. She’d thought nobody was watching, thinking that nobody could look into her bedroom, because all there was outside was the sea. Her silhouette had been black against the faint artificial light in the room. She’d stood on one foot, poised as a ballerina, and unrolled the sheer stocking along her other leg. Completely balanced and completely relaxed. Who are you dressing for, Margaret? He’d watched her turn, imagined her opening the bedroom door to let in her client. But the angle was too steep for him to see who’d come into the room, or to watch what happened next. He’d guessed, though. He’d run the scene through his mind.

The night of his father’s birthday party Margaret had been off duty. She’d made that clear. So it was the peasant skirt and the white blouse, the flat sandals. And she’d been drinking, and he knew she never drank when she was working. She’d let that slip on another of her days off. He’d taken her out to Coquet Island and they’d had a picnic. That day she’d been wearing jeans and a striped cotton jersey, canvas shoes. They’d drunk a bottle of white wine between them and she’d brought sandwiches and homemade cakes. Malcolm had known his father would be furious if he found out – Billy had disapproved of Margaret big-style – but somehow he hadn’t cared. It was enough to be lying in the sun beside her and talking. No work for me tonight. I never drink when I’m working. Walking down the path to the boat, she’d taken his hand.

The Metro pulled into a station. Malcolm glanced over the newspaper. They hadn’t reached Newcastle yet and he didn’t think the kids would leave the train until Newcastle. Why would they? What other reason could they have for being here, other than to go into town, last-minute shopping, last-minute fun? And there they were, still laughing and swinging round the pole at the centre of the carriage, behaving like three-year-olds. More people bundled in, but his quarry remained.

He looked out of the window at the flat coastal plain, but in his head he returned to the evening of his father’s birthday. A sunny evening, warm, all the heat of the long day trapped in Harbour Street. The middle of the Seventies had brought years of dry summers, of droughts and empty rivers. The seaweed stinking on the rocks in the fierce sun. And that night Margaret had asked him a favour:

‘Sort him out, Malcolm, would you? Talk to him. Would you do that for me?’

And of course Malcolm had done as she’d wanted. Like he’d told that fat woman detective, he’d have swum naked three times round Coquet, if she’d asked him.

The rest of the evening had been a blur. Too much alcohol. Tension prickly, like static electricity. A series of images clicked through his memory, like the slides Prof. Craggs used to give his lectures, each one dropping into an old-fashioned projector. The show ended with the fire licking along the floor of his father’s office, a bright-orange snake’s tongue, fiercely hot. They’d stood with their backs against the railings, watching the varnish on the wooden walls blister in the heat, black and oozing like charred meat. Then the flames had been so high that they’d stood back to watch in wonder, the sparks soaring into the clear sky.

Had that been the first of his sleepless nights? Certainly he and his father had both been standing in their clothes of the night before, when the police and the fire officer had come to sniff around in the morning. Another hot day.

‘Arson,’ the officer had said. ‘No question.’ He’d looked at them. ‘Any reason why anyone would want to set a fire?’ Accusing them with his eyes, but reluctant to go any further than that. More bother than it was worth, and he was a working man himself. If business was bad, he could understand that they might want to claim on the insurance.

‘No,’ Billy said. ‘Unless one of the lads at the party did it. Thinking it was a joke, like.’ And that was the story they’d put about. Some of the lads at the party had got a bit wild and leery, and thought it would be fun to set the place alight. And the Kerrs wouldn’t make a fuss, because the insurance would come in handy, and they were all mates in Harbour Street, weren’t they? Billy had gone into the Coble at lunchtime as soon as the bar opened, spreading the tale. And Billy was a respected man in the town, so the regulars all listened and shook their heads at the foolishness of youth. Val Butt had nodded too, her hands on her ample hips. She understood how these things worked. ‘Sometimes these kids are out of control.’

That morning, the smoke in his nostrils, Malcolm had watched from a distance, letting his father take charge, as he always did. Malcolm had never been good at keeping secrets. Had he known even then that the knowledge of what had led to the fire would weigh him down like an anchor, dragging him under, drowning him for the rest of his life?

The train pulled into Haymarket station. Malcolm watched the other passengers carefully. None of them had seen him. He thought they just didn’t see the middle-aged or the elderly. He’d wondered if the girls might get out here, at this end of Northumberland Street. The young girls in the group by the door were as flighty as moths, restless and unsettled, but they stayed where they were and it was at Monument station that everyone left the train. Malcolm folded his newspaper in his pocket and followed them onto the escalator and out into the heaving streets.

Vera blamed herself for Malcolm’s disappearance. She should have kept the man in custody while they searched the yard, evidence or no. Now she thought that he was dangerous and desperate. She felt trapped in her office in Kimmerston; she would have preferred to be at the crime scene in Kerr’s yard, squeezing early information from Paul Keating and Billy Wainwright. Or out searching for the killer.

Joe Ashworth phoned.

‘Tell me you’ve got something for me.’ In her mind she’d seen Malcolm, hunched, walking along the beach, and now she imagined that Joe had him in his car, ready to bring in, ready to talk.

‘Nothing.’

She slammed her palm so hard onto her desk that the skin stung. As soon as she replaced the receiver there was another call. Kerr’s car had been found at the station car park at Partington. So he’d got onto the Metro and could have taken off from Newcastle Central Station and be anywhere in the country by now. Or he could have taken the Metro to the airport and be anywhere in the world. But Vera didn’t see Malcolm as an international traveller. Did he even have a passport? Vera was back on the phone checking, when Holly knocked at the door. Tentative, but also smug. Vera hated it when Holly was smug.

‘Boss?’

Vera waved her in.

‘I’ve tracked down Pawel Krukowski.’ Holly sat on the chair on the other side of the desk.

‘What do you mean you’ve tracked him down? He’s in a hole in the ground in Mardle. Unless Paul Keating has authorized removal of the remains to the mortuary.’

‘No, boss, he’s not.’ Holly paused. ‘He’s running a tour company in Krakow, arranging travel to the UK for students and workers. He lives with a Polish woman and they have three kids and five grandkids.’