Ann Cleeves - Burial of Ghosts

I nodded, but she didn’t really expect a response. It had taken me a moment to concentrate on what she was saying, but now I was hooked. It’s like when you know the end of a story but you don’t know how it’s going to get there. That’s still exciting, isn’t it? And there was something mesmerizing about watching this woman who was usually so controlled and self-protective suddenly letting go, just telling it as it came to her, desperate to get it right.

‘The policeman, Inspector Farrier, asked me about Thomas’s father,’ she said, ‘and I didn’t tell him. I couldn’t. Not even when it might have helped him track down the killer. I was too ashamed. Not by what I’d done, but that I could be so stupid. Can you believe it? I was afraid that they’d laugh at me, so I kept quiet.’

She was wearing a calf-length cotton dress with a flower print. It had small covered buttons at the neck and the wrist. She looked very prim and schoolmistressy, literally buttoned up. But she was shaking with anger at herself and the man who’d taken advantage of her.

‘He had a wife. That made him safe. I thought that and so did my parents. I didn’t like the wife as much. She wasn’t friendly to me. When he tried to press me with gifts or persuade me to stay a bit longer, she’d say, “I expect Kay would rather go home.” Her mouth was pinched with disapproval. I thought it was me she disapproved of, but it wasn’t. It was Mr Pool.’

She broke off and stared out of the window. I wondered if speaking his name was a big thing for her, the first confession, but it wasn’t that. She hadn’t even realized. She was just reliving it in her head.

‘It happened one night when Mrs Pool was at her mother’s. I think there’d been a row. She’d taken the children with her. I don’t think he planned it, he wasn’t that devious. I mean, I don’t think he even remembered it was Friday and I always baby-sat on Friday night. When I rang the doorbell he seemed surprised to see me. I’d hate to think he’d set it up. He’d been drinking. I don’t know if that was the cause of the row with his wife or the result of it. I always hated to see Thomas drunk. Perhaps that was why.

‘He asked me in. Usually the children were in their pyjamas ready for bed when I arrived and I took them up and tucked them in and read them stories. They’d be waiting for me in the living room. But I saw from the hall that they weren’t there. “Are they in their rooms already?” I asked, and started up the stairs. He followed me. At the top, near the landing, he put his arms around me. I could smell the whisky. He was whispering in my ear. “You’re a lovely girl, Kay. You know I think you’re a lovely girl.” And then he was unbuttoning my blouse.’

She stopped abruptly. Her arms were folded across her chest. Her mouth was a line. Even today she couldn’t bring herself to describe the details.

‘It was rape,’ I said. ‘Not your fault.’

‘I could have fought. I’m not even sure if I screamed. It was such a shock. I couldn’t believe it. And I’d been brought up to be polite. It was like a nightmare I was powerless to stop. I thought the scene would run to its end like bad dreams do, and then I’d wake up. But of course I never did.’

‘What happened next?’

‘Harry Pool drove me home. As if nothing had happened.’

‘He must have realized that Thomas was his son.’

‘I suppose so. We never discussed it. They didn’t ask me to baby-sit again. My mother asked if I’d done something to upset them. I couldn’t tell my parents what had happened. There was this dreadful embarrassment. Harry was my dad’s best friend. Dad admired him. His energy, his enterprise, all the money he made. They wouldn’t have believed me and I didn’t want to make a fuss. And it never dawned on me until too late that I could actually be pregnant.’

‘Why did Thomas start working at Harry Pool’s?’

‘Harry offered him the job. He made out that he was doing his old mate’s grandson a favour. What could I say? Thomas needed work. I didn’t like it but there wasn’t much I could do.’

‘I think Thomas might have found out that Harry was his father. You didn’t tell him?’

‘No!’

‘Does Ronnie know?’

‘I never told him,’ she said. ‘But Ronnie has his own ways of digging out information.’

What happened next was farcical. It was like one of those interludes in Shakespeare when the mood suddenly changes. You know, everything’s really heavy and people are obsessing about statesmanship or death, and then in the next scene you get a couple of clowns or jolly rustics drinking and joking.

I was thinking through the implications of everything Kay had told me. There was too much to take in all at once. It had never occurred to me that Philip might not be Thomas’s father. Why would he lie? Wasn’t the deathbed the time for truth? And what would be the point? Had it just been a ruse to get me to accept the money? That seemed too elaborate to make sense, and I had to start all over again.

Perhaps the story hadn’t been invented by Philip at all, but by someone else. It had certainly been his signature on the bottom of the typed sheet. I recognized the handwriting from the letter he’d left me in Marrakech. But there could have been a lot of papers which needed his signature before he died. Legal stuff, drawn up by Stuart Howdon. Perhaps by then Philip had been too ill to read through everything properly. He trusted Stuart. He could have told him about our fling in Morocco. But why would Stuart send me on a wild-goose chase to track down Thomas Mariner? The obvious answer was because he wanted Thomas dead. I just couldn’t work out why. At that point I gave up and turned my attention to Harry Pool.

So Harry Pool was a bastard who’d assaulted Kay Mariner and got her pregnant. She’d kept the secret for twenty years, demanding nothing of him, trying to pull together a life for herself and her kids. It seemed to me that it had taken more courage than screwed-up Ronnie swanning back from some Third World skirmish with a bag full of money and a few unpleasant dreams. That must sound unsympathetic. Perhaps I should have had more fellow feeling for Ronnie. But his self-obsession irritated me. I was beginning to understand how irritating I must be. Not something it was pleasant to face.

Harry must have worked out that he was Thomas’s father. No one had ever suggested that he was thick. And when he heard from his old pal Archie that Thomas was going through a bad time, some vestige of conscience made him offer the boy a job. Or more likely it was that male pride again. He couldn’t stand the thought of his son being unemployed. It must have been hard when Thomas left home to live in a hostel with junkies and asylum seekers. Harry wouldn’t have liked that.

So Thomas started working at the haulage yard. But Pool couldn’t leave it at that. He couldn’t resist telling Thomas they were related. He had to poke the bear. And maybe instead of being all grateful, and full of admiration for Harry’s money and the flash car and the big house, Thomas got angry on his mother’s behalf. Angry and self-righteous. He wrote the letter to Shona Murray, threatening Harry with exposure over whichever racket he was operating – smuggled fuel or smuggled people. Perhaps he even threatened to tell Archie Mariner that his best mate wasn’t a good guy after all. Perhaps that was what led to his death, and Philip and Stuart had nothing to do with it.

All this was going round in my head as I drove back to Newbiggin. As I’ve said, it was pretty heavy. Tragedy not comedy. Not many laughs. Then when I got back to Sea View it was like walking into a madhouse. Ray and all his mates from the folk club were there drinking home-brewed beer out of old cider bottles and bursting into song every five minutes and generally making prats of themselves.