Ann Cleeves - Harbour Street

The Metro car park was full and he ended up stopping in Harbour Street, just across the road from the church.

Passing St Bartholomew’s, he tried the door and found it was open. He’d been brought up to believe in a Methodist God of social justice and respectable hard work. His dad had been a lay preacher and had seen evil as exploitation and poverty and the flamboyant decadence of people in the south. Now, Joe couldn’t contemplate evil as an almost inevitable result of poor housing or family breakdown. There could be no excuse for a man who planned harm to his daughter. He slipped into the back pew and tried to pray.

Bring our Jessie back safely and I’ll do anything you want of me. He tried to think what pact he could make with the Lord, but nothing seemed sufficiently important to set against Jessie’s life. There was a deep silence in the church. He was leaning forward with his forehead on his arms, and it was only when he straightened that he realized he wasn’t alone. Peter Gruskin was standing in front of the altar looking at him. Joe couldn’t face explaining his presence to the man. He stood up and hurried outside.

A shower blew in from the sea. Stinging rain flecked with ice. Further inland there would be snow. The street was almost dark, although it was still early afternoon, but there were no lights in the Harbour Guest House. It seemed like months since he and Vera had first visited there. He remembered walking down the basement stairs, and meeting the woman whose song had been the background music to his romance with Sal. ‘White Moon Summer’ played in his head again. He realized suddenly that his ignorance had made him responsible for a murder. He wondered if a lifetime of guilt was enough to barter against his daughter’s safe return.

When Joe phoned Vera – ostensibly to ask for news of Malcolm Kerr, but really hoping to be told that his daughter had been found safe and well – the inspector was standing outside the Haven. A flock of black-headed gulls picked over a freshly ploughed field beyond the hawthorn hedge. Vera had ideas of her own about where the investigation might lead.

She knocked at the door of the big house and then went in, too impatient to wait for anyone to answer. Laurie and Susan were in the kitchen as usual and the dog was lolling against the bottom oven of the Aga.

‘Where’s Jane?’ Vera wanted this ended and was in too much of a hurry to be polite. No more killing , she thought. It seemed to her that the recent deaths had been a sickening waste. There had been no real reason for them. No adequate explanation. But she knew now who had killed Margaret and Dee, and who had killed the young man in Kerr’s yard forty years ago. Joe could have confirmed it for her, but he was caught up with his own anxieties and he wasn’t in the mood to think clearly. No more killing.

‘She’s gone into town to catch up with some mates.’ Laurie had her standard I don’t cooperate with the pigs voice.

Vera thought about this. Perhaps she didn’t need to talk to Jane now. ‘The winter fair,’ she said. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘It was a fund-raiser and a kind of social too. Jane invited lots of the ex-residents back. Kids. A friend of Margaret’s dressed up as Santa.’ Laurie made it clear she thought this was a waste of time.

‘George Enderby?’

‘Yeah, that’s right. He must have spent a fortune on the stalls. Besides the books he gave away. He’d wrapped them all up in Christmas paper, and we found him a sack so that he could play the part properly.’ Her voice softened.

Vera nodded. She could imagine Enderby playing Father Christmas, all jovial and generous.

Laurie continued talking. ‘It was sunny and we set stalls out in the barn as well as the house. Invited people from Holypool. They turned out to gawp at us. We had a barbecue, did mulled wine. Susan had been knitting kids’ clothes for months and we sold them all. It was cool. Until Em had one of her panic attacks.’

‘What happened?’ Vera wasn’t sure that she had time for this, but thought it might be relevant.

‘She just went all weird on us. Said she couldn’t cope and she needed to go back to hospital. Jane talked her round in the end.’

‘Do you have Emily’s address?’ This was what Vera had come for. ‘She went back to her mother’s home for Christmas, didn’t she?’

Laurie stared at her, suddenly bristling with antagonism again. ‘What do you want with Em? She’s not well.’

‘I want to stop another murder!’ Vera shouted the words so loud that she could feel the painful rasp in the back of her throat. ‘So if you don’t mind, lady, I’ll ask her a few questions. Quietly and kindly, but needing to get some answers.’

Laurie continued to stare, this time with a little more respect. ‘She lives in Tynemouth somewhere. The address will be in the office,’ she said. ‘On Jane’s computer. But it’ll be password-protected.’

‘Shit!’ They looked at each other, a moment of shared communication. If Susan was following the conversation, she gave no sign of it. She was sitting in a low chair close to the Aga, knitting something small and pink. The wool lay in a basket at her feet.

‘I can probably find it for you,’ Laurie said. ‘Not sure it’s entirely legal, though, poking around in the system. Hacking into social services.’

‘Sod legal!’ Vera saw that Laurie was enjoying this. ‘Look, I’ll take responsibility. Just find that address.’

Laurie grinned and disappeared. In the chair in the corner Susan gave a little smile and continued to knit. She hadn’t acknowledged Vera’s presence. Was this one of her less coherent days? Or was she pretending to be distant and slow so that she wouldn’t be asked to leave the Haven?

‘Tell me about Ricky Butt, Susan,’ Vera said. ‘You knew him, didn’t you? He was Val’s son and he lived with her in the Coble.’

Susan looked up from her knitting. Her eyes were cloudy. Vera thought she must still be on medication. Vera had read about people becoming addicted to tranquillizers, and Susan had been taking drugs for decades.

‘Ricky Butt,’ Vera prompted.

‘Margaret’s boss,’ Susan said.

‘Was he? Her pimp? He wanted to be.’

‘She hated him,’ Susan said. ‘And so did I.’

Vera had a sudden thought. ‘Were you at the Coble the night of Billy Kerr’s birthday party?’ she asked. ‘The night there was the fire at the yard?’

Susan closed her eyes a moment, as if she was making an effort to remember. But before she could speak Laurie bounced back into the room with a scrap of paper in her hand. ‘Here’s the address,’ she said. ‘A piece of piss. You should tell them they need better security.’

Outside it felt colder. The wind came from the east and tasted metallic, like ice. Vera’s phone went. It was Joe.

‘Joe.’ Almost faint with hope. If anything happened to his child he’d leave the police service and he’d never speak to her again. And didn’t that prove that she was the most selfish cow in the world? A child was in danger, but she could only think about losing the sole person who came close to being a friend. ‘Any news?’

‘Not yet.’

Vera said nothing. Any words would provoke him to further outrage.

‘But I think I know who we’re looking for now.’

He gave a name and a reason for believing it. Confirmation. ‘Ah, Joe man, great minds think alike.’

‘You’d got there already?’ Even in his grief she could tell that he had a moment of disappointment.

‘Something someone said. You?’

‘The same. Then a memory to confirm it. I feel like a fool.’

Another flurry of sleet rattled against the windscreen. It was so noisy that she had to ask Joe to repeat his next words.