Burial of Ghosts

Chapter Seventeen

When I arrived back at Sea View, Jess was in the kitchen ironing. She always stood up to iron, her feet planted firmly apart, and she attacked the washing with the same sort of energy as if she’d been doing aerobics at the gym. I stood for a moment watching her, thinking about her and Ray and whether they’d get married, and Dan and Nell, and wondering if I’d ever have sex again with someone I cared about. Then Sally, the pensioner who lives on the estate round the corner, turned up with her shopping trolley of News Post Leaders. She’s seventy-five if she’s a day and our paper girl. Jess always makes her tea because we’re about halfway through her round, and anyway she knows the old girl’s lonely and it’s an excuse for her to chat. Sally’s a spinster and I wondered if she’d ever had sex at all.

I sat with them at the kitchen table, drinking tea and flicking through the paper while they gossiped about people I’d never met. The Leader’s a free sheet but there’s usually plenty of local news in it. It’s not all advertising features and car sales. Today there was a full page on Shona Murray, headlined ‘A Day in the Life of Our MP’. A reporter had followed her round the constituency until she took the night train from Newcastle to get to the House in time to vote on an education bill. According to the article she was specially interested in education because she’d been a lecturer in a sixth-form college before she joined Parliament. A lot of her shadowed day had been spent visiting schools.

I stood up and slipped out of the room, taking the newspaper with me. Jess and Sally seemed not to notice. They were talking about Jerry, the community policeman, and Sally’s hairdresser, Trish. According to Sally, they were having an affair. There’d even been a passionate weekend away in a hotel in Scarborough. Sal might never have had sex, but she loved to talk about it.

I’d hidden Shona’s letter to Thomas in my knicker drawer. Jess never came into my room without asking, but I hadn’t wanted to take any risks. I pulled the letter out and read it again before turning my attention back to the article. It said that Miss Murray was holding her regular monthly surgery in Newbiggin Sports Centre the following evening. It wasn’t necessary to make an appointment. When I returned the paper to the kitchen, Sally and Jess had moved on to the funeral of Mattie Watson, who used to keep the pub next to the post office. I’d never met Mattie, but by the time Sally went I felt I knew him as well as they did. If I’d had any relatives of my own he’d have felt like a favourite uncle.

When I got to the sports centre the next day, there were already half a dozen people in the queue ahead of me. I was the youngest by about thirty years. Shona was using one of the meeting rooms as an office and we sat in a corridor outside. I felt as if I were waiting for a job interview, nervous and strangely competitive. I eyed up the other candidates, thinking that none of them could have as interesting a reason to see Shona as I did. A smart young woman who didn’t identify herself asked for my name. I gave it half expecting a reaction, if not from her, then from the listening people waiting – Eh, aren’t you that lass that found the body in Delaval? But there was nothing. Thomas’s murder was already old news.

‘Shona’s running a bit late,’ the young woman said. ‘The trains again.’ Her voice was pleasant enough and she flashed a smile, but she didn’t look at me. I said I didn’t mind but she was still looking at the sheet of paper in her hand and I’m not sure she heard.

I sat on an orange plastic chair of exactly the same design as the one in the interview room at the police station, took out my library book and got lost in a Celtic dream world of a beautiful maiden and her seven brothers who were turned into swans. OK, so I like fantasy, right? I know it’s sad, but it’s harmless and I don’t care. When my name was called I looked up and saw with a start that all my competitors had disappeared. Even the young PA had gone. Shona Murray had put her head round the door to call me. I recognized the red hair from the television. She seemed tired but she managed to smile and look at me at the same time. Perhaps she was relieved I was the only one left. I followed her into the room.

She didn’t sit behind a desk but on a low easy chair by a coffee table. When I went in she was arranging her skirt around her. It was long and full and already crumpled. She motioned for me to take a seat beside her. I was reminded suddenly of my forced therapy sessions with the elderly psychiatrist. The layout of the room was much the same. So was the initial question; each time it seemed he’d forgotten who I was and what I was there for.

‘Well, what can I do for you?’

I’d always been tempted to give a flip reply: Sign my sick note and tell the court I’m complying with the order. I never had, though. In some situations you have to be prepared to go with the games. With Shona I wanted to play it reasonably straight. When she came out with the question I paused for a moment, then answered, ‘I’m the person who found Thomas Mariner’s body in Seaton Delaval.’

Her interest until then had been professional and courteous. I was aware now of something else. She was more alert.

‘I read about it,’ she said. ‘It must have been terrible.’

‘Had you ever met him?’

She didn’t answer directly. ‘He wasn’t my constituent.’

I pushed it. ‘But you had met him?’

‘I visited Absalom House, the hostel where he was living.’ She paused. ‘It’s an interest of mine. Young people who’ve dropped out of formal education.’ She was more confident talking about herself than about Thomas.

‘The police think I might be implicated in his murder.’

‘And are you?’ I admired that. She might have been talking to a murderer but she kept her cool. She didn’t shout for her PA. If there was a panic button in the room she didn’t go for it.

‘No. I’d never met him.’

‘I can’t be seen to interfere with a police investigation. Not at this stage. That’s what solicitors are for.’

I didn’t say that in this case a solicitor was the problem.

‘I realize that. That’s not why I’m here.’ Except if I can find out who did kill Thomas it might let me off the hook.

‘Why, then?’

This was the part I had to embroider a bit. I could hardly admit to having opened Shona’s letter to Thomas.

‘Thomas had a girlfriend. She’s young. Seventeen. They’d had a row and she didn’t have time to make up with him, so she’s feeling really wretched. She needs an explanation, you know? Some sort of closure.’ It was American jargon at its worst but Shona seemed to accept it. ‘She asked me to help. I’m a social worker.’ It was true, wasn’t it? Just because I was no longer practising… ‘She said that Thomas had written to you. She’s got it into her head that it could have some sort of bearing.’

For a moment Shona sat very still. ‘Any correspondence between a member of the public and me must be confidential.’

‘Of course.’ I held out my hands. Look, this isn’t me asking. I’m just a go-between.

‘But you would be able to tell the police?’

‘Do the police know that Tom wrote to me?’ The question was sharper than she’d intended.

‘They don’t trust me with that sort of information.’

She smiled again. ‘No, I imagine not. And I imagine your interest is more about getting them off your back than helping Tom’s girlfriend.’

I smiled back, but I was wondering why she didn’t want to go to the police. She hadn’t refused to tell them the details of the correspondence but I sensed her reluctance. Surely she couldn’t be involved in any way with Thomas’s death? I’d never believed in conspiracy theories.

‘Did you know that he’d moved from Absalom House?’ I asked.

‘No. Not until I read the report in the paper.’ She looked up at me. ‘How were you involved with him? Professionally?’

‘He had problems with his mother and stepfather, but, as I said, I never met him.’

‘I only met him once.’ She was speaking slowly. ‘He made a big impression. Part of it was that he was different from most of the lads there. Well spoken, you know. He said his mum was a teacher. I wondered how he could have ended up there. But the others were trying to show off in a loud, lippy sort of way and he was quite cool. For someone so young, he had style. And he seemed to take to me. The power thing probably. People always think MPs have more power than we actually do. It was an informal visit and we had quite a long chat. I was trying to persuade him to go back to college. His GCSEs weren’t bad. With a bit of support he’d have got a university place.’

I had a sudden weird thought. Thomas’s social worker could have placed him with Jess. She could have worked the same magic with him as she had with me. He wouldn’t have had to show off, then. And if he’d been living with us at Sea View, I’d have looked after him. I’d have stopped him being murdered. It was ridiculous but the dream of that parallel universe made me feel more responsible for his death than I had all along.

Shona was continuing. ‘He asked what the law was on whistle-blowing. Who should he go to for protection? That’s what he said. He was very melodramatic, very mysterious. “If there’s something worrying you, tell me now if you like,” I said. But he wouldn’t. “Not here. Not in Absalom House. You don’t know who could be listening.” The melodrama again. “Write to your MP, then,” I said, and I remember writing down the name of the Tyneside MP on a scrap of paper. But he told me he didn’t want to tell a middle-aged man. What could he understand?’

‘So he wrote to you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He wrote to me. He made allegations, but they were vague, imprecise. Nothing I could really use. I thought perhaps he was attention-seeking after all. Like all those other lads at the hostel. He just had a more sophisticated style.’

‘So you didn’t believe him?’

‘Not all of it, certainly. Perhaps there was some truth hidden away in there. It was hard to tell. I needed proof before I could do anything.’

‘Who was he writing about? Someone at work?’

‘You don’t really expect me to tell you.’ Her tone was light but I could tell she was still thinking about the boy. He’d got to her. ‘It took me a long time to reply,’ she went on. ‘I mean, he got an acknowledgement from my office saying I’d received his letter, but I was actually away on holiday and there was a mountain of stuff to get through before I got round to answering him. And it took me a while to remember him. I meet so many people. He probably never got my letter. It depends when he moved, I suppose. I sent it to the hostel. Perhaps he just thought I couldn’t be bothered.’

‘Will you still have the letter he sent to you?’

‘Sure. It’ll be on file somewhere.’

‘You might want to show it to the police,’ I said. ‘Inspector Farrier in Blyth.’

‘Sure,’ she said again.

But she didn’t write down the name and I wasn’t convinced she’d actually do it.