Burial of Ghosts

Chapter Twenty-seven

When I got back from Warren Farm I turned my attention to Harry Pool. If I could find out where he lived, I could talk to him at home. It would be quieter there and we wouldn’t be overheard. But he was ex-directory. Everyone seems to be these days. I don’t know why, but it became really important to track him down. Perhaps it was because I hadn’t discovered anything useful at Warren Farm. It ate away at me. Tom had been uneasy about something going on at the yard. Marcus had mentioned that first and Ellen had confirmed it. A sensible voice, somewhere behind my eyes, said, Tell Farrier. This is his work, not yours. Let it go. But being out, sniffing around, was better than sitting in Sea View brooding, and at least it would get Jess off my back.

At four o’clock I was parked outside the haulage yard, waiting. Just up the road was a church hall where some dance classes must have been going on. Cars came along and dropped off little girls in shiny black leotards, their hair pinned up so they looked all bare and skinny. There were even some lads, Billy Elliot wannabes. The parents waited and watched them safely in before driving away. No one noticed me. I was just another mother waiting for a five-year-old ballerina. It might sound strange, but sitting there for all those hours, I wondered for the first time what it would be like to have kids. It had honestly never occurred to me before.

Harry didn’t appear until six-thirty. The dancers were older now. Young teenagers in leg warmers, leggings and baggy sweatshirts. Some made their own way, giggling and gabbing up the road, but there was still a steady stream of doting parents. By then I was desperate for a wee. I thought there must be a toilet in the hall, and I was about to gamble that he wasn’t at work that day, that he was out, touting for business, when the nose of his Jag pushed through the gateway and pulled up just on my side. He got out and swung the big iron gates together, locking them before getting back into the car and driving off.

He took the road to the sea front, then indicated south at the Playhouse. I slipped through the lights just in time and followed him, two cars back. We drove past the clubs and the pubs where the teenage dancers would hang out in a couple of years’ time, where they probably hung out now, on a Friday night, all tarted up, with an older boyfriend to get in the drinks. It was strangely dark for a summer evening. No rain but glowering cloud, giving an unnatural feel. Like there was an eclipse or something. Some of the neon signs were on, flashing, and some of the cars had switched on headlights.

They were digging up the road near Cullercoats harbour and the traffic was slow. It wasn’t hard to keep up with Harry Pool in his plum-coloured Jag. He turned away from the sea just past that big church, the one where I’d sung Christmas carols when I was still making an effort to be good. The road was a cul-de-sac so I shouldn’t lose him now and I didn’t want him to see me. I parked on the front next to a shutdown hot dog stand and went up the street on foot.

He’d already parked on the drive of a big three-storeyed house. It was detached, all gables and porches, older and classier than I’d imagined. I’d pictured him in a brick monstrosity, like something from an American soap, on a new estate. Mrs Mariner hadn’t exaggerated how much money he must be making. This was a long way from the little street in North Shields. He got out of the car and clicked the key fob to lock it. He didn’t look at the street. There was another car in the drive, a small VW with children’s seats fitted in the back. He went into the house and shut the door behind him. I walked past slowly but I couldn’t see anything interesting. The only room visible from the road was a sitting room, quite grand, with a piano against one wall and a big bowl of flowers in the fireplace, and that was empty. I bottled out of ringing the bell. I hadn’t worked out what to say. There was a distant rattle of a metro train. The line must run past the back of his house.

I started back towards my car but at the main road turned onto the flat area of grass they call the Links. I thought it might be possible to get to the back of the Pool house. There were a couple of kids kicking a ball around and a woman being pulled by a dog on a lead. I stuck my hands deep in my jeans pockets and walked as if I was lost in thought, like I’d had a row with my boyfriend and needed to be alone. No one took any notice. The kids picked up the ball and ran off. The woman disappeared towards the Sea Life Centre. I gave a quick look round, then climbed the fence onto the metro line embankment. The fence was wire mesh, high but buckled in places. It had been climbed before. The other side was wild, trees and shrubs had been allowed to grow thickly together to repel vandals and graffiti artists. No one would be able to see me, even if a train went by. I undid my jeans and crouched to have that piss, taking care not to sting my bum on the nettles, but so desperate by then that nothing else mattered.

The houses by the church were separated from the embankment by a big wall with glass cemented into the top. I thought they’d have burglar alarms and security lights too. I stood by the wall, knowing that Harry Pool’s back garden was on the other side, but all I could see were the upstairs windows. I thought I could hear children’s voices, but I couldn’t tell if they came from a neighbouring garden. It was dead frustrating, not being able to see in, and in the end it was too much for me. I threw my jumper onto the top of the wall and rooted around in the undergrowth for something to stand on; all sorts of rubbish had been thrown in there. In the end I found a plastic bin. It was split down the side, but firm enough to hold my weight when I turned it upside down. I was able to haul myself up far enough to look over.

At my end of the garden there was a fruit cage and some apple trees, which broke the line of the wall and gave me some cover. Then a vegetable plot, then down a couple of steps to a lawn and flower beds, with a patio next to the house. Everything very tidy. The lawn had stripes down it. Not Philip Samson’s style at all. I’d been looking in books and magazines since I’d found out what he did for a living and he liked wilderness, everything blurred together, overgrown. The embankment was more his sort of place.

Harry Pool was sitting on the patio, watching the children whose voices I’d heard earlier. They must have been his grandkids but they were just as much at home as if they’d been in their place. I remembered the children’s seats in the VW and thought that Harry’s wife must look after them while their parents were at work. Harry had mentioned that after Tom’s funeral. There were two of them, a girl aged four or five and a younger boy, still unsteady on his feet. They were playing on a yellow plastic slide and occasionally Harry got up to help. A French window from the house was open. A light had been switched on in the room inside and a woman was laying the table. Because of the light I could see her clearly. She was middle-aged but still very smart, younger than Harry by about ten years. Something disturbed her in her task because she left the room by a door I couldn’t see. A little later she returned and walked to the French window.

‘Come on, you two. Your mummy’s arrived.’ Harry chased them inside but didn’t follow them. He sat down again and lit a cigar. I could smell it above the garden smells of cut grass and honeysuckle. A little later the woman joined him and sat beside him on the white, wrought-iron bench. The neighbourhood was very quiet and I could just make out what she said.

‘Supper’s ready when you feel like it.’

He seemed lost in thought and didn’t reply.

‘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.’

‘Did he enjoy it?’

He gave an awkward laugh. ‘Does anyone enjoy work at that age? I know damn fine I didn’t.’

‘But nothing was bothering him? He got on OK with everyone?’

‘Of course. We all did. They’re like family, my lads.’

He stood up. I felt I was being chased away, as he’d chased his grandchildren back to their mother the night before. As he shut the door behind me, I heard the phone ring.

It was as I was on my way back to the car that I realized how relieved he’d been to see me go. He didn’t seem to notice that he’d given me no new information on the Spicer case.