‘Oh, I do agree.’ She bent earnestly across the desk towards me. One of the walls was made up almost entirely of windows and the sun was streaming in. I caught a whiff of smelly armpit. ‘We none of us take the Consortium lightly. It’s a difficult decision to make to become involved. But we do have to come together over these important issues. I see it as a moral fight. I don’t think that’s putting it too strongly. We can’t let our enemies have their own way. We simply can’t.’
She wrung her hands. It seemed an extreme response. This was interesting. Thomas had talked about a crusade. What had fired them up to this point?
‘Enemies?’ I asked lightly, not mocking her but sounding as if I needed to be convinced.
‘Oh, yes! There are people all over the countryside who have a vested interest in seeing the Consortium fail. Politicians, conservationists, woolly-minded liberals…’ She paused. She wanted to add to the list but she was running out of steam. ‘Ramblers!’ she cried triumphantly.
‘I see.’
Obviously I sounded sceptical, because she really started to wind herself up then. ‘Let me tell you, young lady, that two young men involved in the struggle have died recently. One of them was your friend Marcus. The police might see that as a coincidence, but I don’t.’
If she was hoping to shock me into listening to her seriously she succeeded. While the idea of a vendetta against the Consortium seemed ludicrous, it was an angle I hadn’t considered before, and there was a logic, a simplicity in her theory, which was appealing.
‘Do you really think they were killed just because they worked for the Consortium?’
‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘I do.’
‘Who by?’
Woolly minded liberals? Ramblers?
‘As I’ve told you. Enemies of the cause.’ Her eyes were wild. She believed absolutely in what she was saying. But then, some people had believed that foot and mouth had been introduced by Greenpeace to get back at the farmers.
‘If you have any evidence,’ I said carefully, ‘you should go to the police.’ What I really wanted, of course, was for her to share any evidence she had with me.
She opened her mouth to speak, but before the words came out there were footsteps on the stairs. I turned to see Marjorie, Stuart Howdon’s wife, looking very Conservative Ladies Luncheon Club in a blue silk dress. For a moment she seemed not to recognize me and directed her attention to the woman on the other side of the desk.
‘How are you coping, Doreen?’ she asked brightly. ‘Any more queries from the press?’
‘If they ring I just say that no one’s available to speak to them at present.’
‘Good girl.’ As if Doreen had been six. Then she turned her focus to me. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘This young lady wants to become a member.’ Doreen beamed.
‘I don’t think so. I don’t really think Miss Bartholomew shares our aims and objectives.’ She stood back, leaving the way to the door clear for me. It was a hint and I took it.
I waited in the car for more than an hour, hoping that Marjorie would leave and I could get more information from Doreen, but there was no sign of her. By now, I thought, as I drove off, Doreen would have been persuaded that I was one of the enemies of the Consortium and I’d get nothing from her anyway.
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.