Ann Cleeves - Harbour Street

‘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.