Ann Cleeves - Harbour Street

She couldn’t see the figures now. They’d started to climb the dunes to the beach and all the shadows had blurred. She strained to listen. Out in the bay she saw the light buoy marking Coquet Island, and again her mind went back to Hector and his raids to collect terns’ eggs. He’d trained her well. What better training could there be for this kind of work?

Then she heard the sand shifting and slipping so close to her that she almost felt that she could reach out and touch the walkers. Grunting and heavy breathing: Malcolm out of condition and out of breath, and the frozen air making him wheeze. His companion seemed fitter. Vera waited. Sometimes it seemed she’d spent her childhood waiting, heart thumping. Waiting for Hector or for the police, startled by the noise of sudden wingbeats or heavy footsteps.

Now there was an expected sound: her quarry sliding the last few feet onto the flat beach. And at last she could see them, two dark figures walking towards the water, shadows in the moonlight. Vera shifted her stiff and frozen limbs and began to move. For such a heavy woman she walked quietly. She’d been a heavy child and Hector’s jeers had made her conscious of every footstep. For Christ’s sake, girl, do you want us both to end up in prison?

At the bottom of the dunes she paused. Now she could hear voices. One voice. It was Malcolm, and it seemed that he would never stop or even pause for breath. This was a slow, relentless stream of bitter accusation, a rasping whisper, the voice almost of a lover betrayed. Vera thought he would only stop speaking when the object of his hatred was dead.

And that was when she raised her voice and bellowed too, shining her torch towards them, each word spoken slowly and given equal emphasis. ‘No more killing.’

Joe finished his phone call to Sal and headed back to Mardle, driving too fast along the icy roads. It was the day before Christmas Eve and the gritters would be on double time, so the council hadn’t called them in. He felt responsible for Vera; she thought she was invincible, that she could control any situation with the power of her personality. She could be an arrogant cow, with no sense of danger. He couldn’t allow anything dreadful to happen to the boss.

He pulled into the lay-by opposite a petrol station that was putting up Closed signs. The roads were almost empty now. Stepping out of the car, he was hit by a sudden cold that took away his breath for a moment. The moonlight made everything monochrome and dreamlike and the shadows were very sharp. He headed away from the road and towards the beach. After a few minutes he heard the sound of an engine, moving down the track towards the car park, and he was close enough to recognize Malcolm’s car, the rattling, spluttering sound of it and the shape of the model. There was a bank of bramble and he hid behind that and watched two figures head towards the beach. Joe waited until they were far enough into the dunes not to hear his footsteps and then he followed. He must have got lost in the strange dunescape, because suddenly he found himself facing the wrong way and looking down towards the main road and the lights of the town in the distance. Perhaps Jessie had inherited his sense of direction. Then he had another moment of panic, imagining Vera dealing with this situation alone. He wished he knew where she was.

At last he reached the highest sand hill and from there he had a view of the beach. The white curve of the softly breaking waves catching in the moonlight. The same two figures, very close, walking towards the water. Did they intend to continue walking, heading towards Scandinavia, until they were killed by drowning or by the cold? Some odd suicide pact.

This was like the set of a black-and-white silent movie. There was no sound apart from the occasional distant rumble of a truck on the main road. It was so quiet that when the words came they were shocking.

‘No more killing!’ A bellow like a bull elephant.

And he saw Vera, recognizable because of her bulk, moving across the sand at a speed that seemed physically impossible for someone of her size. A giant hovercraft, hardly seeming to touch the ground. And the two companions must have been shocked too, because they stopped moving and watched her running towards them.

Then he was moving too, sliding down the sand, the frozen grains like sandpaper against the skin of his wrists and ankles, trying to keep below the line of the horizon and not make too much noise, because perhaps this time Vera herself might need saving. Even for her, two killers might be too much to tackle.

On the flat, hard sand he stopped and watched. The moon made a path across the water and over the wet ridged shore. Three figures in conversation. Malcolm Kerr, hunched and broken. Vera Stanhope, triumphant. And Ryan Dewar, the teenage boy who had killed two women and had threatened Joe’s daughter. Kerr had his arm around the boy’s throat. As Joe watched, Kerr shoved the boy towards Vera and raised his hands in grateful surrender.

Early Christmas Eve and they were in the police station in Kimmerston. Vera and Joe were preparing to interview Malcolm Kerr. They’d leave Ryan until later, once his mother and the lawyer had arrived. Thinking about what Kate Dewar must be thinking, Joe felt sick and sad. Malcolm Kerr had brought his daughter to safety. Kate was another grieving parent, but for her there would be no happy ending, no happy families.

Now Vera was in her element, part mother superior and part Mystic Meg, reading the past like a mind-reader. There was a plate of bacon sandwiches on the table between them. God knows where she’d found them at this time of the morning. He could smell the bacon and the coffee and, when he replayed the scene later, describing it to colleagues as an example of Vera working her bloody miracles, it was the smell that remained with him. They’d offered Malcolm a solicitor, but he’d just shaken his head. ‘No need for that.’ Joe thought he was glad that it had ended like this. Prison wouldn’t seem so bad after the soulless house in Percy Street.

‘Ricky Butt,’ Vera said. ‘A horrible young toerag.’

‘Ricky was a psychopath,’ Malcolm said. Joe might just as well not have been in the room. All the prisoner’s answers were directed at the inspector. Joe was back in his role of observer – Vera’s second pair of eyes. ‘He liked hurting people. Dealt heroin. Dealt women. We weren’t angels in Harbour Street, but we weren’t used to that. Not his mother’s fault. Val was a bit rough, but her heart was in the right place.’

‘And he was making life difficult for Margaret?’

‘He’d only been in Mardle for a few months and he was throwing his weight about. He had this attitude. You know, cocky. But cruel with it. Always carried a knife to show he meant business. He said he couldn’t have Margaret working freelance on his patch. She should work for him or leave. Or he’d change her looks so that she’d never work again. You could imagine him, his knife on her face. He’d have loved the excuse.’ Malcolm’s voice was flat and hard. Joe believed every word he said.

‘So you decided to sort him out.’ Vera wasn’t asking a question now, just acting as straight woman, moving the story along.

‘I decided to have a word,’ Malcolm said.

‘The night of your father’s fiftieth birthday party. The night that photo was taken.’ Vera leaned forward across the table and her eyes were bright. You wouldn’t have thought that she’d had no sleep for forty-eight hours.

I asked him to meet me in the yard,’ Malcolm said. ‘Told him I thought we might do some business together. That was the only language he understood. Business.’ Coughing out the last word like an oath. He paused for a moment and then he continued. ‘It was hot. During the day so hot that the tar on the road had melted. The heat made everyone crazy. It made me crazy. Butt was just a boy, but he had no respect. No sense of how things worked in Harbour Street.’