‘The thing is,’ he said at last, ‘you’re the only one on the Headland who seems to have anything like a social life. Except the Coulthards, of course, and we’re speaking to them too. Whoever killed Mrs Howe knew the place. They knew where it was safe to dump the body, for example. You do see that we have to ask about any visitors you might have had. It’s nothing personal.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘ I can see that.’
‘So if you could give us a list of any people who came to your house. Men or women. Say in the month before Mrs Howe was murdered.’
She looked worried again.
‘You wouldn’t hassle them, would you? Call at their homes?’
The old Hunter would have asked if she was worried that would be bad for business, but tactfully he kept quiet.
‘They’re friends, you know,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t want them to get into any bother.’
‘We’ll be discreet. I guarantee it. I’ll see to it myself.’
‘Oh aye,’ she said, laughing. ‘ Discretion’s your middle name. I can tell that. Coming to the playgroup and scaring us all out of our wits.’
All the same she sat with him in the shelter of a sand dune while he took out his notebook and she reeled off about a dozen names. She had details of some. She could give their occupations, their addresses. She even knew the names of their children. She didn’t seem to resent their other, respectable lives. For others, like the man in the Mazda, she just had first names and brief descriptions.
Mark Taverner’s name was not on the list.
‘And this is all?’ Hunter asked. She had trotted out the names so glibly that he did not believe it was exhaustive.
‘Yes!’ She was close to being offended again.
‘You don’t know a chap called Mark? Mark Taverner.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘He’s a teacher at the high school.’
‘Well there you are, then. I never go out with teachers. I can’t stand bossy men.’
‘Are you doing anything tonight?’ he asked casually. If he was likely to bump into her in Whitley he wanted some warning, though if she were there, perhaps she’d be able to point out this Paul to him.
‘Na,’ she said. ‘A quiet night in.’
She stood up and called in Kirsty. Hunter took them home, dropping them at the level crossing so the old ladies in Cotter’s Row would have nothing to talk about. For the rest of the day he found dribbles of sand in his clothing: in his trouser turn-ups, in his jacket pockets. Even in the seams of his underpants when he went for a piss.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It reminded Gordon Hunter of being a boy again. Friday night and out on the prowl in Whitley. In those days, though, he’d have had a couple of mates with him for moral support and to take a turn in the fight at the bar.
When it got dark the temperature plummeted. The cars parked in the streets leading away from the seafront glistened with frost and as he breathed in, the cold stung his throat and his nostrils. There was a thin, sharp moon, upended like a smile.
The streets were heaving with people dressed for the dance floor. The lasses wore skimpy little-girl frocks in pastel colours and when they were caught in car headlights you could see their lacy panties and their underwired bras. Though they shivered and hugged themselves that seemed to be more through excitement than a response to the arctic conditions. When he’d been young he’d never felt the cold either. He’d never taken a jacket to Whitley for fear it would get pinched or that he’d get so pissed he’d put it down and forget it. Or one of his mates would throw up all over it in the taxi home.
He walked along the seafront trying to get a feel for the place again. It had been a while since he’d been there and the pubs and clubs seemed to change hands almost monthly. Then their characters altered with the management. Kim Houghton had said she’d met Paul in the Manhattan Skyline. In his youth that had been a place for under-age drinkers, a bar where a thirteen-year-old girl with enough make up and bravado could get a vodka and tonic if the police weren’t in and she had an older lad with her. Now it obviously catered for an older market.
It stood on a corner. Once the façade had been painted pink but the salt wind had blasted most of the colour away. A barrel-chested bouncer in a gleaming white shirt, only just held together by straining buttons stood outside the door and a sign said: OVER 21S ONLY. He didn’t have to turn anyone away. The high school kids walked straight past. They wouldn’t have been seen dead in there. When Hunter pushed through the swing door he could see why.
The music was loud but not ear-shattering and Abba’s greatest hits seemed to be on a continual loop. The Manhattan’s decor must have been devised originally to go with the name. There were high, tubular steel stools by the bar and a neon cocktail glass, tipped on one side, flashed on one wall. The effect had been spoilt by an attempt to turn the rest of the room into a Mediterranean taverna. A fishing net hung from the ceiling and there was a scattering of rustic tables and chairs. Most of the space was left clear to fit in as many drinkers as possible.
Hunter did not notice the clash in design styles. He slouched at the bar and asked for a bottle of Holsten, then swivelled to take in the other customers, who were lit intermittently by the flashing cocktail glass and strobe lights over the dance floor.
There were a few couples in early middle age trying to recapture their youth and some single men intent on serious drinking standing beside him at the bar. None of them fitted the description of the Mazda driver. The rest of the customers were women. One large party had pulled most of the chairs into a tight circle. An elderly woman seemed to be in charge of bags and coats. The others – aged from sixteen to sixty – got up from time to time to dance. For some this seemed a new experience. They were already very drunk. A works do, Hunter decided. They’d been at the Lambrusco surreptitiously all afternoon, into the bogs to change, then out on the town. Noticing that a tall, dark woman was the butt of all the jokes, he thought it was probably a hen party. When she was too paralytic to stand they’d wrap her in toilet paper and push her up the street in a pram.
He didn’t see the hen party as regulars. When Abba reached the end of ‘Super Trooper’ again, and the dancers collapsed giggling, he wandered across the dance floor and pulled up a chair on the outside of the circle. They giggled some more, but pretended not to see him.
‘Ladies,’ he said, ‘ I wonder if you can help me.’
They couldn’t help him though they would have liked to. They worked in Otterbridge Town Hall collecting the council tax. They’d hired a mini bus to bring them to Whitley so they could give Maggie a good party before she lost her freedom. It was the first time most of them had been out socially for ages apart from the pictures or the pub. They did have an office trip out just before Christmas but that was always to Newcastle, for a Chinese banquet in Stowell Street. The music started again and Maggie was pulled to her feet. Hunter returned to the bar.
There were three bar staff, all men. They wore white shirts, bow ties and matching waistcoats. They were busy. Not rushed off their feet, that would come later, but too busy to stop work while they talked.
Hunter identified himself. They weren’t impressed.
‘I’m looking for a chap who was in here Friday night, three weeks ago.’ Hunter leant across the bar and shouted so they could all hear him.
‘What’s he supposed to have done, like?’
‘Nothing. But he might be a witness to that murder on the Headland.’
That got their attention.
‘He says his name’s Paul. He could be a regular. Hanging out on his own looking for company.’
‘Aye well. There are plenty of those. But late on a Friday night I could serve my sister and not notice. They shout the order, you pull the pint, you take their money. You look at their hands not their faces.’