I thought he was winding down, but he’d only just started. It was as if he was the champion of the honest haulier. Everyone else was on the make and the fiddle. He took a moment to catch his breath and to take a mouthful of tea, which must have been long cold.
‘Then there’s fuel! How much a litre is diesel?’ He was in full flow now and he didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Well, I’ll tell you. Sixty-three pence plus VAT. But red diesel is thirty-two pence and you don’t pay VAT on that. We buy red diesel for use in the yard, for the fork lifts and the machinery. You’re not telling me that your cowboy doesn’t use red diesel in his tanks.’
‘The authorities must test for it,’ I said tentatively. ‘And if it’s red…’
‘Ah!’ He was triumphant. ‘But in Ireland it’s green.’
‘So?’ I thought even a colour-blind inspector would be able to tell it was dodgy.
‘It starts off as green, but you can filter out the dye by running it through fertilizer. It’s smuggled across the Irish Sea.’ His face was lit up by excitement. Like some Bible-bashing preacher, he was delighted by the extent of the wickedness involved. I’d met cops like him when I was young. Other people’s depravity was a justification for their existence.
The phone rang again. A driver was stuck in a traffic jam on the M18. Could Kenny tell the customer he’d be late? I wondered cynically if the tachograph could tell the difference between a traffic jam and an illicit encounter with a lonely housewife nearer to home. When Kenny came off the phone I put the point, more tastefully, so as not to shock him. I had the impression he’d be easily shocked.
‘Not the tachograph,’ he answered with a straight face. ‘But GPS – you know, satellite positioning. That would tell you. And Harry’s talking about putting that in here soon.’
Before I could escape I had to hear again about how incorruptible Harry was.
‘That’s why they asked him to be RHA rep. He’s got the reputation for being straight. And it pays off in the end. It’s good for business. Must be. The customers know he’ll play fair with them. They come back to him again and again. It’s his reputation that’s kept him afloat when the competition’s going bust.’
I didn’t know where Harry Pool was and I didn’t want still to be sitting here when he returned. I didn’t think he’d be taken in by my story as easily as Kenny.
Sitting in the bus on the way back to Newbiggin I went over everything Kenny had told me. There was certainly scope for a scam at Harry’s Haulage, some illegal dealing for Thomas to discover and report to Shona Murray. But it must be clever to keep Kenny in the dark. I was sure he’d told me the truth as he saw it. If Pool was operating some elaborate fiddle, he had a lot to lose. His reputation was important to the business.
The bus was slow and gave me plenty of time to think. By the time I got back to Sea View I thought I wasn’t the only person in the frame for Thomas’s murder. If Farrier had me in for questioning again, I could put together a plausible case against Harry Pool too.
Chapter Nineteen
A day later I bought a car from Ronnie Laing. He phoned me at Jess’s at nine in the morning. She was out and for a while I was tempted not to answer, but the caller was persistent and the noise was irritating. Jess was on her weekly trip to Asda. It was a social event. She met four mates there and ended up having fancy coffee and sticky buns with them in the café where once I’d been caught thieving.
So, eventually I picked up the phone and it was Ronnie Laing. I knew his voice at once.
‘Hello, Lizzie. That is Lizzie…’ His voiced tailed off nervously, leaving a question. I’d never given him my second name.
‘Beswick,’ I said. Jess’s name. ‘Lizzie Beswick.’
Why did I lie? I thought he might not have made the connection between me and the young woman who’d discovered his stepson’s body. And I didn’t want him to. The sensible thing would have been to put down the phone and to stay away from everyone who’d ever known Thomas Mariner. But I couldn’t. I was too close to it and I couldn’t see clearly. I continued briskly, ‘How can I help you?’
‘This is Mr Laing. From the garage on the coast road. I think I might have found you a car. A little Peugeot. Diesel. Brilliant economy. Good price.’
He gave me the details. There was no stammer. Perhaps it was easier for him to speak on the phone. I found I was writing down the information on the notepad on the hall table; afterwards I couldn’t remember what he’d told me and was glad of the notes. It seemed to me then that his voice changed. He stopped being a salesman. His tone was more confiding.
‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Are you interested?’ Perhaps he was just selling something else. Perhaps I’d got him all wrong and he was a more skilful salesman than I’d realized, more subtle.
‘Yes.’ I could hear a breathy nervousness, hoped he hadn’t picked it up. ‘Yes, really, I think that I might be.’
‘I can bring it round to you if you like. Let you have a test drive.’
But I didn’t want him knowing where I lived and we left it that I’d call round as soon as I could fix up a lift. When I replaced the receiver I was shaking, not just with nerves but with excitement. And what did that say about me?
I phoned Dan at the hostel, hoping to con a lift from him – he owed me a favour – but I got through to Ellen, who told me it was his day off. She brought up the subject of Thomas before I did. She’d recognized my voice.
‘You must write a piece,’ she said, confusing me for a moment. I’d forgotten I’d told her I was a journalist. ‘How many young men have to die before something is done?’
Then I remembered her son had been attacked on the streets and had died too. Thomas’s death must have brought all those memories back. She must have realized she sounded a bit crazy because she apologized. ‘We’re all on edge here. You must have seen about the boy who was killed in Seaton Delaval. He used to be one of our residents.’
‘How terrible.’ Trite and pathetic, but she seemed not to notice.
‘I find it so hard to let them go anyway,’ she said. ‘I mean, I know they have to move on, be more independent, but I hate it. I worry so much for them. After this it will be a thousand times worse.’ She paused. ‘But can you imagine what his mother will be going through?’
For the first time since finding Thomas I tried to understand. How would you feel if a child you never wanted, who was always a nuisance, died? I decided guilt is what you’d feel. A searing explosion of guilt.
‘Do you think I should go to see Mrs Laing?’ Ellen asked. ‘Or would that make things worse?’
I muttered something about not being in a position to give advice and replaced the phone before she could drag me any further into her distress. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it and repeated Ellen’s question to myself. Should I go to see Kay? If I did, what point would it serve? For me or for her? Before I came anywhere near an answer, Jess staggered in, the fingers on both hands white, where three carrier bags in each had cut off the blood supply. I wasn’t expecting her back so soon. She’d caught an earlier bus than usual, missing out on the coffee and buns. Perhaps she thought it wasn’t safe to leave me alone for too long. She was starting to make me feel suffocated. I understood what was going on. As Ellen had said, it was hard to let go. But I was an adult and Jess wasn’t my mam. I needed to get away from her and Sea View before I said something hurtful. I needed a car.
We hadn’t seen much of Ray since Thomas’s death. I don’t think he and Jess had fallen out over me. He was too besotted by her to do anything to cause a disagreement. Perhaps he’d just felt he should spend a bit more time running his business, otherwise he’d go bankrupt and there’d be no cash then for visits to folk clubs or trips into the hills.