What will you find? An attic bedsit. Like Margaret Krukowski.
‘We’ll have to check your story with your wife, of course.’ But Vera thought this time he was telling the truth, or as close to the truth as he could bear to get.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Early afternoon and Vera was back in Kimmerston. An emergency meeting of the core team to discuss the new information. She had picked up a message from Joe when she’d left the Lit & Phil. He hadn’t given any details, but she’d sensed his excitement. They were squashed into her office, and the smell of onions and garlic came from the pile of empty pizza boxes stuffed into her wastebin. Holly looked as if she was about to retch.
Vera was perched on her desk. She preferred to look down onto the rest of them.
‘So, Joe, let’s have it again.’
‘Stuart Booth said that Margaret worked as a high-class hooker out of her flat in Harbour Street. She wasn’t greedy. She had a few well-paying clients. But she was a prostitute.’ He frowned.
Vera thought that he was feeling let-down. He’d believed in Margaret the saint, the embodiment of womanly virtue. ‘And Booth was one of her customers? Didn’t he think he should come forward earlier with this information?’
Joe shrugged. ‘He’s in a new relationship. He’d hardly want it made public, would he? It was only when he found out that the second victim was in the same business that he thought we should know.’
‘Very public-spirited,’ Vera said. ‘Or very clever.’
‘You think he’s lying?’
‘People do, pet. He’s got a motive, hasn’t he? If he’s found the love of his life at his age, the last thing he’d want is Margaret Krukowski spoiling it for him.’ Vera spotted a smear of melted cheese on her sweater and tried to scrape it off. ‘Let’s dig around in the past of Mr Booth and see what else we can find. Charlie, that’s the rest of your day taken care of.’
The new, happier Charlie didn’t even pull a face.
‘And it would be useful to track down other people who knew Margaret all those years ago.’ Vera wasn’t sure what to make of the new information about Krukowski, couldn’t make up her mind if it was relevant or a distraction. ‘Any suggestions?’
‘An old lady, a neighbour of Dee’s in Percy Street, talked about one of Margaret’s admirers.’ Joe looked up from his notes. ‘A lad called Ricky Butt. He’d be in late middle age now, but he might remember her. His mother was landlady at the Coble.’
Vera remembered the portrait over the bar. ‘Check that out too, will you, Charlie? See if you can get an address for him.’
‘How did you get on with George Enderby?’ Joe was impatient. Now that they’d finished eating he thought they should be working, not sitting around chatting. The Protestant work ethic again.
‘Hol, what did you make of him?’ Holly sulked if she didn’t get her share of the limelight, and it was only fair that she should get a chance to express her opinion. She’d discovered that Enderby had been lying to them.
‘I thought he was a bit pathetic actually. He didn’t even like his wife, so why make such a fuss when she decided to leave him?’ Holly stretched. Vera thought she was too young to feel the real pangs of isolation. It wouldn’t occur to her, so youthful and healthy, that she might die alone.
‘Is Enderby a potential murderer, do you think?’
‘Well, he had opportunity, didn’t he? If you check the timeline, he was in Mardle early enough to be on the Metro with Margaret, and until we check his alibi with Craggs we only have his word for it that he was away from the area when Dee Robson was killed.’
‘Motive?’
A silence. ‘He’s weird, right?’ Holly said. ‘And he hates women.’
But Vera knew that wasn’t enough. ‘You don’t remember seeing him on the Metro, Joe?’
‘Nah, but it was packed. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.’ A pause. ‘In the wheelie suitcase, the one he usually carried books in, there was a change of clothes. Waterproof jacket, jeans, boots. Worth taking them in for testing? Just in case of blood spatter. Be interesting to see his reaction when we ask, anyway.’
‘So it would.’ The room was warm and Vera suddenly felt sleepy. It was time to get outside for some fresh air, or she’d end up snoozing, her head on the desk. Like George Enderby in the Silence Room. Time to get the team moving.
‘Hol, I want you out at the Haven this afternoon. I told Cameron that Joe would go, but I want you to do it. Did any of the women know about Margaret’s past? This new information helps us to understand why she was so sympathetic to Dee Robson, doesn’t it? And the girls wouldn’t tell us, unless we asked. That thing about speaking ill of the dead. See if anyone knew Margaret before she started volunteering. They’re all local people. And I’d be interested to hear what you make of Jane Cameron and the women.’ She paused for breath. ‘Joe, you take on Professor Michael Craggs. He misled us too. Why was he still in Mardle that afternoon when he told Holly he’d headed straight back to Hexham? Do a bit of digging today, and first thing tomorrow go and see him at home. Take Charlie with you. He could do with a day in the country after being chained to his desk for days.’
Charlie gave her a grateful smile.
‘You see Craggs as a suspect?’ Joe was sceptical. He’d always been taken in by the educated classes.
‘Why not? He lied to us. And he’s the right age to have been one of Margaret’s customers. And as the head of a happy family, he had a lot to lose if she decided she wanted to go public about her past. Knowing that she was dying might have made her want to set the record straight.’ Which might have made Margaret feel better, Vera thought, but would have been cruel to the people around her.
‘What about you, boss?’ Holly. ‘What are your plans?’ As if it was any of her business.
‘I’m going back to Mardle.’ She didn’t elaborate and they knew better than to ask.
The rest of the afternoon Vera paced around Mardle, unable to settle, getting her thoughts into some sort of order. The knowledge that the church-going charity worker had sold her body for money had already changed the way the team saw the investigation. Changed the way they saw Margaret. There was a danger that suddenly the investigation would become simple for them. They’d be looking for a killer of prostitutes. The case would be reduced to that.
But Vera thought the information only made the murders more complex and subtle. There was the relationship with Malcolm Kerr, for example. Had he known how Margaret earned her living? Surely he must have done. And how had that worked, when he was so obviously in love with her? He’s protecting her honour even now, Vera thought, though she failed to define the relationship. Then: Who else knew?
For some time she’d been unaware of her surroundings and only now realized that she was outside the high school. Ugly brick and concrete, with a fence that made it look like a prison. Bars on some of the windows too. Presumably an attempt to stop vandalism, but they made Vera want to hurl bricks. This was the outside limit of the boundary to the case. A profiler would make a map and put pins in it. This is where all the major players live. Except for the Haven, Vera thought suddenly. The old rectory was out of the town, but it was at the heart of the case too. Many of the people involved in the case had been there on the afternoon of their winter fair. Margaret had wanted to discuss a problem with Jane Cameron. Her illness or something else? Could one of the older residents have been in the same business and recognized her? Vera would have liked to go to the Haven herself. She would have been patient with the women, teasing out their memories. But how would Holly develop as a detective if Vera never gave her the chance to go it alone?