Ann Cleeves - The Sleeping and the Dead

She was brought back to the pub by a sudden blast from the jukebox, a couple of bikers laughing. Porteous gave her another pleading look but she ignored it. She told him she had nothing else to say and offered to look after the bar so they could talk to Frank.

Frank must have realized that Porteous would want to talk to him about the bloke who’d been in the Prom asking after Mel, but he didn’t seem very pleased about it.

‘Look, I don’t think I can be much help…’

‘Don’t be daft, Frank. No one else can remember him.’

And she gave him a playful little push, sending him out into the room. He looked shaky, panicky, walking towards the policeman as if he were already about to go into the witness box. From the bar she couldn’t hear exactly what the group in the corner were saying, but Frank was facing her and she saw him staring blankly, occasionally shaking his head. His eyes were unfocused, wandering. It was as if he wasn’t really thinking about the questions and the answers. He was just trying to survive the interview, waiting for it to be over.

The next day she tackled him about it. She’d been thinking about it all night. Frank had liked Mel, in the way that he seemed to like all the young people who came into the Prom. He’d joked with her, acted sometimes as father-confessor, standing at the bar for ages listening to all her troubles. So why had he been so reluctant to discuss her with the police?

She waited until about five o’clock when they had their meal break together and she could get him on his own. They sat in the little staff-room which led off the kitchen. They propped the outside door wide open and sat beside it on old bar stools, their plates on their knees, looking out at the pavement. Families were already trailing back from the beach, the children fractious and covered in sand, the parents loaded with towels and toys. There was the hot smell of drying seaweed and frying onions from the burger stall at the fair.

‘What was going on yesterday, Frank?’

‘What do you mean?’ He was defensive. He had the same unfocused look in his eyes as when he’d been talking to Porteous. She thought: But he can’t be scared of me. Frank had always been the boss. He knew everything there was to know about running a bar. She’d been the dippy teenager who couldn’t pour a decent pint, who couldn’t get up in the mornings, who turned into work with seconds to spare. He teased her and poked fun in a slightly flirty way which kept her wary. Something new was going on here which she didn’t quite understand. The power in the relationship had shifted.

‘Well, it didn’t look as if you were being particularly cooperative,’ she said, carefully keeping her voice neutral.

He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

‘Don’t you want to catch the bloke who killed Mel?’

‘I don’t think the chap that came in that night did kill her.’

‘How did you know that, Frank?’

He shook his head, a refusal to answer.

‘If you knew anything you should have told the police.’

An open-top bus rattled past. A party of kids on the top deck all held helium-filled balloons. Rosie imagined the bus rising slowly in the air, carried slowly out to sea. Frank took a mouthful of sandwich, muttered something which she couldn’t make out.

‘What was that?’ Sharply. Sounding like her mother trying to teach him table manners.

‘I said I’ve had dealings with the police. I know what they’re like. They’d set me up given half a chance. Best policy’s not to say anything.’

‘Nobody’s saying you’d ever harm Mel. Why would you?’

He turned to her. Grateful, sad puppy eyes were focused properly on hers for the first time. ‘I’ve got a record. That’d be enough for them.’

She hadn’t known about the record. Again she looked at him in a new light. She wondered what he’d been done for and if he’d ever been inside. She imagined him in Stavely asking her mother to find him books, then thought she couldn’t see him as the reading type.

‘But they’ll know you couldn’t have done it. You were working the night she disappeared.’

‘Only until closing time. I could have done anything after that. I live upstairs on my own, don’t I? Lisa won’t let the kids come to stay any more.’

Lisa was his ex. It was an old complaint. Rosie was irritated by the self-pity but she tried not to show it.

‘Did you go out?’ Rosie asked. She wanted to shake him. It was like speaking to a surly child.

He shook his head. ‘But if they make out I’m tied up in this case I’ll lose any chance I ever had of access.’

‘That’s ridiculous. The kids have nothing to do with this.’

Then she wondered if she’d been too hard on him. Frank doted on his children. Before Lisa started being awkward they’d come to stay at weekends. Rosie tried to understand what it must be like for him, how lonely he must feel. Perhaps that was why he was good at his job. He made an effort with the staff and the customers because without them he’d have no one to speak to. He ever talked about friends or other family.

‘Why did you say that about the bloke that came in here looking for Mel? I mean, how did you know he didn’t do it?’

‘He wasn’t the type.’

‘Come on, Frank. What is the type? You must listen to the news. Anyone can commit murder. Teachers, doctors, anyone. And if they find him, you’ll get the police off your back, won’t you? There won’t be anything to get in the way of the access application then.’

He put his empty plate on the floor. ‘You’re a good lass, Rosie. I’ll miss you when you go to college.’

Oh God, she thought. A revelation. He wants to get inside my knickers.

‘I’ve got a lot to lose,’ he said.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘This place. It’s all I’ve got.’

‘So?’

‘So people could make things awkward. With the brewery or the authorities.’

‘Has someone been threatening you?’

He looked at her with those eyes again.

‘For Christ’s sake, Frank. Go to the police. Get it sorted.’

‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘They always catch murderers, don’t they? No need for us to get involved.’

‘Yes, Frank, there is.’

But he hardly seemed to be listening. By now she knew exactly what was going on. Joe might not go for her heavy-bosomed, hippy look, but it appealed to middle-aged men. She fended off the flattery and the clumsy approaches every day at work. She’d always suspected that Frank fancied her. Now she was certain. She pulled her chair closer to his.

‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to see the police again. I can talk to them. I’ll say one of the customers remembered seeing the guy that night. Give me a description, a name even. I’ll pass it on. That way we can find Mel’s killer and keep you out of it.’

He didn’t answer immediately, but she knew she had him hooked. It crossed her mind that it wouldn’t be much fun working with him after this. Then she thought, Sod it. She’d just leave. She could do with a holiday anyway before she went to university. Her dad could pay up some guilt money.

She reached out and touched his arm and lowered her voice. She knew what a tart she was being, but found she was enjoying the role. The power thing again.

‘Please, Frank. I’d be really grateful.’

Rosie’s shift ended at seven. She tried to phone Hannah then. She was standing on the pavement outside the Prom, her hand cupped round her mobile, blocking out the sound of the traffic. She’d wanted to talk to her mother ever since Frank had spilled out his story. In the end he hadn’t treated her as any sort of object of desire. There’d been no groping, none of the usual crap about how lovely she was. She’d felt like his mother, for God’s sake, as he stumbled through his confession. She’d put her arm around him and told him she’d make everything all right. And she believed that she could.