Harbour Street

Chapter Thirty

The evening briefing. Outside it was dark and the traffic was heavy. The start of the long Christmas weekend and people making their way south to visit family and friends. Vera had shut herself away in her office and only emerged as the meeting was about to begin. She’d run her fingers through her hair so that it stuck up at the back, but nobody dared tell her.

She stood at the front of the room, with her legs apart, her eyes bright. ‘Let’s get this cleared up by Christmas, shall we, folks? Then you can all go home to your bairns in time to open the stockings.’

In the room a few sceptical cheers. Vera wasn’t known for her family-friendly policies.

‘I’ll go first, shall I?’ Defying them to contradict her. She pointed to the photo of the young Margaret Krukowski on the whiteboard. ‘Our first victim. Seventy-year-old woman, member of St Batholomew’s Church, committed to the work of the Haven, a hostel for homeless women. From the beginning we wondered if there might be a clue there. Had she been in an abusive relationship? Was that why she’d befriended our second victim, Dee Robson?’

From the back of the room Joe Ashworth thought he’d never seen Vera looking so animated. She seemed ten years younger. He wondered if she’d been at the secret stash of whisky that she kept in her office drawer. Or if she had some information of her own to share with them.

Vera continued: ‘But yesterday a witness came forward and has thrown a very different light on the relationship between Dee and Margaret. As you all know now, it seems that there was another connection between the women.’

Vera paused. The room was silent. She looked out at them, and Joe could tell that she was loving the attention. ‘Thirty years ago Margaret Krukowski was a call girl, working out of the house in Harbour Street, where she was living when she died. Discreet and classy, despite the neighbourhood. Successful too, because I reckon the money in her savings account probably came from that time. Seems to me that this answers a lot of the questions we’ve had about this woman. She sometimes talked about secrets and implied that she had a mysterious past. It explains, at least in part, Malcolm Kerr’s reluctance to be straight with us. He fancied the pants off her and wouldn’t want her memory sullied by rumours that she’d been a sex worker. And it explains her fondness for Dee Robson. I’m assuming Margaret went into business when she was deserted by her husband. And when she lost her office job with the Kerrs. Sad that she preferred selling her body to going to her parents and admitting that she was wrong about him, but she was a proud woman. And it seems that she was in control of her own business. Booth didn’t mention that a man was involved. Margaret valued her independence.’

She fell silent and looked around her. Joe wondered if she was expecting a round of applause for her expert summing-up. Holly stuck up her hand.

‘How does this move the investigation on, boss? It was a long time ago. How many people still around knew that she was on the game?’

Oh, Holly! Joe thought. When will you learn? You don’t question Vera Stanhope when she’s on a roll.

But Vera must have been feeling generous and today there was no cutting put-down. ‘This is still relevant, Hol. Because you’re a babe-in-arms you don’t understand how the dim and distant can come back to haunt you. Maybe Margaret wanted to go public about her past before she died. To set the record straight. And there were respectable people – ex-clients – who didn’t want her to do that.’ She paused. ‘How did you get on at the Haven?’

‘One of the residents there claims that she lived in the house in Harbour Street at the same time as Margaret.’ Holly looked at her notes. ‘Susan Coulson. She’s a bit confused, and was talking about having had a child that was taken away from her. But she did say that she knew Margaret’s boss.’

‘Okay. That’d be Malcom Kerr. Or his father, Billy. Let’s get Malcolm in tomorrow. I can’t believe that he didn’t know how Margaret was earning her living at that time. He’s always seen himself as some sort of confidant. I don’t see him as a pimp, though. Anything else?’

Holly looked again at her notes. ‘Not from the Haven, but I spoke to Enderby’s wife.’

‘And?’

‘She confirmed that she’s left him. Posh Diana has fallen for a guy who runs the stables where she keeps her horses.’ Holly grinned. ‘He’s very fit apparently. She went into some detail… And I asked Enderby if we could take the outdoor clothes that he was carrying around in his wheelie suitcase for testing.’

‘How did he seem when you asked him?’

‘Hurt. “How can you believe that I would do something like that?” He didn’t kick up too much of a fuss, though.’

Vera looked around the room. ‘Anyone else like to contribute to this investigation? Or is this just a case being run by the women on the team?’

Joe slowly raised his hand.

‘Yes, Joe. You and Charlie have had a nice day out in the country visiting our professor.’ She pointed to Mike Craggs’s name on the board. ‘What did you get from him? He was knocking around in Mardle at the time. A young research scientist. Was he one of Margaret’s customers, do you think?’

‘Craggs admitted that he admired her,’ Joe said. ‘But nah, I don’t think so. He was already married to his wife then, and you can tell that he loves her to bits.’ He saw that Vera was about to sneer – any talk of romance and she pretended to puke – so he moved on quickly. ‘Craggs did pass on one interesting bit of information, though.’

‘Get on with it, Joe man.’

‘The Kerrs were in financial difficulties in the Eighties. They owed money all over the town and when the office building burned down, it seemed a bit too convenient. Rumour had it that it was an insurance scam.’

Joe could see Vera processing this and dismissing it as unimportant. He suspected that she’d developed a theory of her own. That would explain her excitement. She was just waiting for the right moment to share it. Still he persisted. ‘Margaret would have known the Kerrs’ financial position. She kept their books, after all. If she was planning to come clean about the past, maybe she was going to talk about that too.’

‘That’s petty stuff. I don’t think anyone would give a toss so many years later.’

So, Joe thought, that’s put me in my place. Vera might have given the idea at least a moment’s consideration.

She moved forward, a star preparing to step into the spotlight. ‘Could the professor tell you anything about Pawel Krukowski, the husband?’

‘Nothing. He was already off the scene by the time Craggs got to know Margaret.’ Joe was going to offer up the photo album to Vera, but thought that the mood she was in now, elated and carried away with some theory of her own, she would only mock him for implying that it had any significance.

There was a silence. Vera looked out at them, and Joe saw that at least she was gearing up to share her grand idea. ‘I don’t believe that Pawel suddenly disappeared off the face of the Earth,’ she said. ‘Margaret could have been hiding more than the fact that she sold sex for a living.’ She looked around her and again she seemed to be expecting applause.

‘You think that she killed her husband?’ Joe thought Vera was entering the realm of fantasy now. Margaret Krukowski wasn’t a killer, but a victim.

‘I don’t know exactly what to think at this point.’ She glared at him. ‘We’re telling stories. Creating theories. But tomorrow we need to check some facts.’ She was back at the whiteboard and she wiped out a bare patch and started making notes. ‘Pawel Krukowski. What’s happened to him? I’m betting that he’s dead and, if he’s still alive and living happily in Warsaw, then I’ll be buying the carry-outs for the next five years. Charlie, you take over tracing him. First thing in the morning. Get our European colleagues to help out. Hol, you see if you can find any record of the fire at Malcolm’s yard, but don’t waste too much time on it.’

She stopped, her hand raised, holding the marker pen. ‘This Susan Coulson, did you meet her when you visited the Haven, Joe?’

Joe reeled back his memory and saw a grey-haired woman stirring soup, the tears rolling down her cheeks. He’d thought she was odd, overreacting to the death of a virtual stranger, but if she and Margaret had been friends for more than thirty years that would make more sense. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I met her.’

‘Chat to her. Away from the hostel, if you can manage it. Jane Cameron’s a control freak. It takes one to know one. And I don’t want her listening in.’ Vera paused again. ‘Bring her back to Harbour Street. Buy her a fish-and-chip dinner or a port and lemon in the Coble. See if you can jog any memories.’

‘I really don’t think she’d be an admissible witness, boss. Any defence brief would eat her for breakfast.’ Holly had jumped in again. Joe wondered if she was resenting the fact that her witness had been taken away from her, though he knew Holly would have little patience with Susan, who was old and confused.

Vera kept her voice mild. ‘At this point I’m not worrying about the court case, Hol. I just want to know who killed these two women.’

When Joe arrived home the kids were looking out for him. Sal’s parents had taken them to see a panto at Whitley Bay Playhouse and the two oldest were full of it. Michael had been onstage and a clown had pulled a live rabbit from his ear. They were full of wonder, even Jessie, who claimed that she was a bit old for magic these days. He wondered how he would cope with her as a teenager, stroppy and defensive, and remembered again the schoolgirls he’d seen in the Metro on the afternoon Margaret Krukowski had died. Simpering and playing up to the boys. It was hard to imagine that they’d ever been excited by a pantomime.

In bed, he found it difficult to sleep. He was planning how he might carry out Vera’s instructions to get Susan Coulson away from the Haven. He’d been intimidated by Jane Cameron, and he could hardly kidnap the woman. And something about the picture of the older woman, her eyes streaming with silent tears, seemed very moving to him. He wasn’t sure now if she was weeping for Margaret Krukowski or for the child that had been taken away from her. Later he replayed his conversation with Michael Craggs, anxious because he felt that he’d missed something important. The last image in his mind, just before he slept, was of the elderly couple leaning over their garden gate, their arms around each other and waving goodbye to him.

When he woke, it came to him, almost as part of a dream, that he hadn’t passed the photo album on to Vera.