Ann Cleeves - Burial of Ghosts

‘You look sad tonight.’ I saw her take his hand. She was wearing white linen trousers. Her hand on top of his rested on her knee. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’

He stood up and they walked hand in hand into the house. I slid down the wall, pulling my jumper behind me. The glass had snagged a hole in the sleeve. It was only Matalan but it was a favourite and I was well pissed off that I’d ruined it for nothing.

I phoned him the next day at the yard. I still didn’t have a proper game plan but I did have a vague script in my head. He didn’t answer himself. I spoke to Kenny, who didn’t seem to recognize my voice.

‘Mr Pool please. It’s personal.’

I could sense Kenny’s curiosity but he didn’t say anything. There was a moment’s silence then, ‘Harry Pool.’ Booming, so I had to hold the receiver away from my ear.

‘Mr Pool, this is Lizzie Bartholomew. We met at Thomas Mariner’s funeral.’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘So we did.’

‘We had met before actually. I was one of the reporters when you gave the news conference at the yard about Mike Spicer.’

‘Were you, though?’ Noncommittal. Amused, rather than hostile, I thought.

‘I wondered if I might do a more in-depth piece.’

‘Bit young to be a hardened reporter, aren’t you? What are you? Some sort of trainee?’

I adapted the script in my head. ‘Yes. I have to submit a piece for college. I mean, obviously I hope I can sell it too. But it’d be really great if you could spare the time to talk to me.’

I knew I sounded overeager, but it didn’t matter. A student hoping for an exclusive would be. And how old did he think I was? Eighteen? Nineteen?

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘You’ll not make a worse hash of it than the professionals.’

‘When can we meet?’

‘Might as well get it over with. Can you make it today? Not at the yard. I’ve got to be home this afternoon anyway. I’ll give you the address.’

I almost said it was OK, I knew where he lived, but I shut up just in time.

So at two o’clock I was back in Cullercoats, driving along the sea front towards the big house next to the church. And this time I could park outside and walk up the gravel drive and ring the doorbell. The VW wasn’t there and, though Harry didn’t say, I guessed his wife was out. When he opened the door he was in shirtsleeves with a mug of tea in his hand. I wasn’t important enough for the grand lounge at the front with the piano and the flowers, or even the dining room with the French window. Instead he took me into a big kitchen, which was just what you’d expect – quarry tiles on the floor, everything fitted, a long pine table. He waved the teapot at me and, when I nodded, poured out a mug. He pushed a tin of biscuits across the table towards me.

‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘What I know of students, they’re always starving.’

I’d dressed carefully. A trainee, trying to make an impression. Knee-length skirt and cheap white shirt. Hair pinned up.

‘You said you were a friend of Thomas’s family,’ he said casually. He sat at the table opposite to me. ‘How do you know Kay, then?’

Panic. It couldn’t be through work. She was a teacher and I was studying journalism. ‘Church,’ I said. ‘We met at church.’

‘My,’ he said. ‘And I thought Methodists didn’t drink. You put away enough the day we buried Thomas.’

‘It’s more my parents’ thing,’ I admitted. ‘The church, I mean. I don’t often go now.’

‘Kay was a bit prim even when she was your age,’ he said. ‘She was a Sunday school teacher when all the other lasses were out enjoying themselves. We knew her very well at one time, Bridget and me. She baby-sat when the children were small.’ He looked up, smiling. ‘And now they’re grown up with kids of their own.’

I took another chance. ‘It must have been a shock when she found out she was pregnant.’

‘Aye, so it must, but we’re not here to talk about that. There was gossip enough at the time.’ He smiled to take the edge off the rebuke. ‘We’re here to talk about poor Mike Spicer. Now tell me, Miss Bartholomew. What do you want to know?’

‘Before we look into the details of Mr Spicer’s case, would you mind giving me some details about your company? How you came to set it up, that sort of thing. You’re the Road Haulage Association representative and the background would give readers a great understanding of the pressures on the industry.’

Most people like talking about themselves. Harry Pool certainly did. ‘I took redundancy from the shipyard,’ he said, ‘and I could see there was no chance of more work in that field. It seemed a good time to set up on my own. I’d always liked the idea. I started off with one wagon, doing local runs down to Teesside and up to the Borders. Then I sold my car to buy a second, a bit bigger, a curtain-sider. Now I’ve a mixed fleet of twenty-five and we’ve a certificate for international work.’

‘So you run the risk of bringing illegal immigrants into the country too, like Mike Spicer?’

It was a random question to support the fiction that I was doing a follow-up piece on the Spicer news conference, but Harry Pool’s attitude changed. He didn’t lose his temper, nothing like that. But he suddenly became alert. Before he’d been laid-back, humouring a student, now every word was spoken with care.

‘What exactly are you implying, Miss Bartholomew?’

‘Nothing. Just that working overseas must involve more risk, more complications. Not just because of the dangers of unknowingly carrying asylum seekers.’

He conceded that I was right. There was a lot of red tape. ‘We had to think very carefully before expanding into Europe. Previously we occupied a niche in the market. Big companies don’t like delivering to the Borders. There are no motorways and transport time is slow. Obviously there’s a lot more competition now, and not just with British firms.’

‘They have lower fuel costs?’

‘Much lower.’ He quoted some of the figures I’d heard from Kenny. ‘The price of fuel is crippling for a medium-sized business like ours. How can I compete with local firms in Germany and France?’

‘Don’t the French hauliers have higher overheads?’ I asked. ‘National insurance? Tax?’ I’d been reading up on the subject. I hadn’t wanted to look a complete prat.

‘Maybe they have.’ He would have preferred to be allowed to continue unchallenged. ‘If they have to pay them. A good accountant and you can get round most of that. There’s no avoiding the duty on diesel.’

‘Isn’t there? I’d heard there was a black market trade in the red diesel farmers use.’

‘That’s all talk and rumour.’ For the first time the good humour slipped. I didn’t tell him the talk and rumour had come from Kenny. ‘Reputable hauliers couldn’t afford to get mixed up in that.’

‘Someone must buy the stuff, though. I read that it’s smuggled in. Through Ireland, they say.’

‘Shady outfits with nothing to lose. Not me. I prefer to play it straight. That’s why I’ll have nothing to do with convoys and blockades.’ He looked pointedly at his watch. ‘Is there anything else? I’m expecting an important call.’

I closed the notebook. ‘How did Thomas feel about all that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The convoys and protests. He was a Countryside Consortium supporter. They backed the fuel protesters, didn’t they. They see cheap fuel as a countryside issue.’ According to the leaflets Marcus had given me at Wintrylaw.

Harry didn’t seem inclined to discuss the finer points of the argument. ‘I didn’t care what Thomas did in his own time. In my time he was there to work.’