As he waited, Joe looked at him, taking in the details. His clothes. Denim jeans and a checked shirt and knitted sweater. Those sturdy trainers that could act as walking boots. Booth was wearing a green fleece too, though it was warm in here. He wouldn’t be a man to feel the cold, but it would have taken movement to get it off, and still he wasn’t moving much. A face moulded by the weather, and eyes like slate.
‘Margaret Krukowski was a prostitute,’ Booth said. ‘Not recently, as far as I know, but years ago. I only just discovered – when Kate said it – that Dee Robson was a sex worker. And suddenly it seemed important.’
Sparks were firing now in Joe’s head. So we’re not looking for a man who hates women, but a man who hates prostitutes. He wondered what Vera would make of the news, then thought she might not be surprised that church-going Margaret had once worked in the sex trade. The boss had said from the beginning that they needed to uncover Margaret’s secret.
‘How do you know that, Mr Booth?’
He took a deep breath. ‘Because I used her services. Regularly, over a number of years.’ Joe thought the man would stop there, but he continued to speak. Joe thought that a priest taking confession might feel like he did now – curiosity flecked with embarrassment and distaste. Booth continued: ‘I was a newly qualified teacher, awkward, shy. Needing a relationship, but not sure about how to get one. A kind of joke with the other musicians. One of them gave me her number.’ Even now he seemed to be blushing at the memory. ‘I got drunk one night and phoned her.’ He paused. ‘She didn’t call herself Margaret, of course, and never mentioned a second name.’
‘What did she call herself?’ The room was on the ground floor, and outside there was the background rumble of traffic.
‘Anna,’ he said. ‘She told me she was Polish, but I didn’t believe that. Her accent was English. Perhaps she thought the story would make her seem more exotic.’
‘She married a Polish man.’ Joe felt an urge to stand up for the woman, despite her chosen profession. ‘So it was almost the truth.’
‘Well, of course she never told me that she’d been married.’
‘The marriage didn’t last long,’ Joe said. ‘Only a couple of years.’
‘I was probably with her longer than her husband.’ Booth leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. The notion seemed to give him some satisfaction.
‘Where did she live?’
‘Where she was living when she died.’ He opened his eyes again. ‘That flat in Harbour Street. The house was very different then, but her rooms were always clean, pleasant. You’d walk up the stairs past the sound of kids grizzling and the smells of cooking, and then you’d go into her place. Everything calm and warm. Like going into a different world. I went for that, as much as for the sex. The escape from reality.’
‘She worked from her home?’ Joe was surprised by that. All the working girls he knew were fiercely protective of their privacy.
‘I think she’d looked into the possibility of finding a place to operate from, but she said she’d been ripped off. She’d rather trust her clients than the sharks who preyed off sex workers. And there weren’t many clients. We paid well. She was worth it.’
Joe was suddenly intensely curious about what had gone on between these two people. Despite himself, he imagined them in the attic room in Harbour Street, the shy young teacher and the slightly older woman, who was taking money for sex. He found himself wanting details. Perhaps Booth guessed what he was thinking because obliquely he answered the unspoken question.
‘Anna was amazing.’ He paused. ‘I counted the days until I could see her again. Though, looking back, I suppose it wouldn’t have taken much to please me. I was young and awkward and she was older and more experienced. Kind. And there was the thrill of the illicit. I never told anyone about the encounters, not even the friend who’d passed on her name. I loved the fact that our meetings were secret, that the next day I would walk into school to be a respectable, responsible teacher and nobody had any idea what I’d been doing the night before.’
‘Why did it stop?’ Joe asked. ‘I take it that it did stop?’ He couldn’t imagine this man in his late fifties climbing the stairs to see Margaret when Kate wasn’t looking.
‘I found a girlfriend, Sergeant. Not someone I cared for as I do about Kate, but someone to sleep with. That was less exciting than the visits to Harbour Street, but it seemed more appropriate. And as I got older I lost my courage. I was scared someone would see me. I couldn’t have stood it getting out that I used the services of a prostitute.’
‘Did you ever meet any of Margaret’s other clients?’ The thought came to Joe quickly. A sudden flash of hope.
Booth shook his head. ‘No. As I say, I think we were a select bunch. Margaret presented a respectable face to the world too. A couple of times I saw the back of a man disappearing down Harbour Street in the gloom as I came in. But no faces. Nothing that would be of any use to you.’
‘When did you realize that Margaret was still living in the same house?’ Joe thought Stuart seemed almost relaxed now. The relief of sharing his secret had eased the tension.
‘Not until Kate introduced us. A sunny lunchtime in the garden. When I found out that Kate lived in Harbour Street I was intrigued. It seemed some sort of omen when it turned out to be the same house. Perhaps I was hoping to regain that youthful excitement. And I have captured it, in a way, though the house was unrecognizable. She’d talked about Margaret, the friend who helped her in the kitchen, but of course I didn’t make any connection. The woman I’d known was called Anna, and I’d last seen her more than thirty years before.’
‘But you recognized Margaret?’
‘Oh yes, immediately.’ He leaned forward across the scratched table to make a point. ‘She was still a very beautiful woman.’
‘And did she recognize you?’
He thought for a moment before answering. ‘I think she did. I hope so. I had the sense that she was giving Kate and me her blessing. We never talked about our former lives, even on the few times that we found ourselves alone.’
Joe drove Stuart back to Mardle. He was glad of an excuse to leave Kimmerston and, like Vera, he thought that Mardle was the centre of the investigation. There was still no conversation. Booth directed him to a small development on the edge of the town, a conversion of farm outbuildings where he had an apartment. The place was on the west side of the town and Joe thought that it would be just a short walk across open fields to the Haven. When the car stopped Booth stayed still for a moment and turned to Joe, wanting reassurance. ‘I suppose this makes me a suspect. Because Margaret could have told Kate about my past, I do have a motive of a sort.’
Joe wasn’t sure what to say. ‘We keep an open mind,’ he said at last. ‘We always do. Everyone who knew Margaret Krukowski is a potential suspect. But we’re grateful for the information. It’s been very useful.’
Stuart frowned. ‘Do you think I should tell Kate? I suppose if there’s a court case it might come out. It would look better if I told her now.’ He paused. ‘I did wonder if she’d guessed that I knew Margaret. I’d kept a photo of her in my wallet. Margaret gave it to me as a memento when I told her that I wouldn’t be visiting her any more. It’s gone. I thought perhaps Kate had found it, but rooting through other people’s possessions isn’t her style. It must just have fallen out one day.’ He stopped suddenly and seemed terribly sad that he no longer had anything to remember Margaret by.
In theory Joe was a great believer in honesty in a relationship. Though there were certainly things in his past that he’d never discussed with Sal. But this was a murder investigation, and information was power. He imagined Vera’s face when he passed on the news, and thought it gave him power too. At least it would earn him a few brownie points. ‘We’d rather you kept this to yourself for the moment, sir.’