Hidden Depths (31 page)

Julie thought she could never tell what Laura was thinking, never had been able to.

‘I might stay over. Nan will be here.’

‘I’ll be fine. Really.’

Julie sat in the old Fiat she’d had since Geoff had left, which was held together now with filler and paint. Each year at MOT time there was a crisis and her friend Jan’s mechanic son would work his magic and pull it through. This was another first. She hadn’t driven since Luke had died. She imagined the neighbours looking through their nets, waiting for her to drive away. What would they think? That she was a heartless cow or that she was brave to start putting her life together. She wasn’t sure herself which it was.

It was only eight o’clock but she went straight to the town. There was the usual panic when she hit the motorway at the old BT roundabout. She never knew which lane to take for the bridge. Then in Gateshead she missed the turn for the Sage and ended up in the car park for the Baltic. She couldn’t face going back and stayed where she was. She sat for twenty minutes, her mind quite blank, before buying a ticket at the pay and display machine. Nine o’clock. The light was starting to go. She realized she was relishing the sensation of being alone.

She left the car and walked around the front of the Baltic Gallery. There was some sort of reception in the downstairs bar. Through the long glass windows she saw women in long dresses, men in dinner suits. They were drinking champagne from narrow glasses. A fat woman with very short hair was making a speech. Julie felt as if she’d travelled to a new country, as if these were exotic creatures quite different from her. On an impulse she walked across the new millennium footbridge from Gateshead to Newcastle. She’d never done that before either. She stood in the centre and looked upstream at the arcs and towers of the other bridges, the Tyne, the High Level, the Redheugh, familiar landmarks seen in a completely different light. On the Newcastle Quayside, she pushed her way through the crowd in a bar, just to use the toilet. She wasn’t tempted to stop for a drink. She wanted to be clear-headed when she met up with Gary. She felt a bit mad as it was.

By the time she got back to the south bank of the Tyne it was quite dark. The river was draining towards the sea. The smart people were still in the bar at the Baltic, though the speeches were over. She sat on a bench outside, watching them. It was as if the big plate window was a giant film screen and though she couldn’t hear what they were saying she got caught up in the drama. There was a pretty young woman who couldn’t settle. She fluttered from group to group, talking and laughing, growing more and more unsteady. When she moved away, the groups turned in and talked about her. She seemed so lonely that Julie wanted to cry.

Her phone rang. She looked at the time as she answered it: 23.38. She’d been sitting here, watching, for more than an hour. And enjoying every minute of being alone.

It was Gary. ‘Hi. I’ve finished earlier than I thought. Where are you?’

‘I’m here already. At the front of the Baltic, by the river’ She was going to add that she’d just arrived. She didn’t want him thinking that she’d been sitting here for hours waiting for him. But he was talking about the gig and how well it had gone, a joy. Despite the crap music and the small audience. How some nights were like that. Smooth and sweet. And then she saw him walking towards her, still talking on his phone. He’d walked down the steps from the entrance to the Sage. She stood up, so he could see her. The phone went dead and she stuffed it into her bag, so her hands were free. They stood for a minute just looking at each other, then almost stumbled together, awkward like kids. She expected him to kiss her, but he didn’t. He held her for a moment, rubbing her back.

‘Where would you like to go?’

‘Can we go back to yours?’ she said. ‘I don’t feel much like company.’

‘Sure.’

‘I’d better follow you,’ she said. ‘I don’t know the way.’ She hoped he’d suggest something different.
Why don’t you leave your car here? I’ll bring you back to get it in the morning.
But he didn’t, so they were only together for a few brief minutes before they were separated again. He was giving her instructions about waiting for him in her car and what to do if she lost him. She felt like the girl weaving her way through the crowd in the Baltic bar. Lost and unconnected.

But she didn’t want to make a fool of herself so she did as he told her. She waited at the car park entrance until the white van drove past and she followed it all the way back to Shields. If she lost him at lights he pulled in so she could catch up with him. She drew in behind him when he parked in a narrow street. Here there was another view of the river. Suddenly she was so nervous she wished she was back at home, sitting in her nightie in front of the telly, her mam wittering on.

In the flat it was easier. He opened a bottle of wine and she drank a large glass very quickly. Sod it, she thought. She’d never intended to drive home that night anyway. He put on some music she didn’t know. They both sat on the sofa, leaning back against the cushions so they were almost lying down. He had his arm around her and he was talking about the music, what he loved about it, but in a whisper, so she could feel his breath on her cheek. He put his hand on her neck, stroked it just underneath her ear.

And suddenly she thought of Luke. How someone had put their hand on his neck, pulled a rope tight around it and squeezed until he was dead. She didn’t scream. The last thing she wanted was to make a fuss. But Gary must have felt her tense because he pulled gently away.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘Nothing to be sorry for.’

She told him what she’d been thinking about. Luke in her bathroom and someone strangling him. ‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘I’m a bit of a liability.’ But she’d drunk the wine too quickly and the word came out wrong. She giggled and he joined in.

‘We can do whatever you like,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to take you home?’

She thought how lonely she’d feel in the double bed. Her mother would have made it, so the sheets would be stretched tight, tucked into the mattress. She never bothered making it herself, she preferred the sheets soft, slightly crumpled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Can I have more wine?’

He poured her another glass.

She woke with a hangover, lying on the sofa, fully clothed except for her shoes. There was a strange light, coming from a different direction, so she’d known at once it wasn’t her own bed. The smell of proper coffee came from the kitchen. She hadn’t thought he’d be into proper coffee. He must have been waiting for her to wake because he came in carrying a mug, a plate of toast.

‘You could have had the bed,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t move you.’

‘God, I feel dreadful. What time is it?’ She did feel dreadful, but only the way she always did when she had a hangover, sick and heady, and that was reassuring, a sign of things getting back to normal. And she
had
slept, without the sleeping pills.

‘Ten o’clock.’

‘Oh my God. Laura will have already left for school. Mam will kill me.’ She swung down her legs, so there was room on the sofa for him to sit beside her. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘About last night . . .’

‘It’s all right, I had a great evening.’

‘Really? I don’t think so.’

‘You’re good company. Even when you’re pissed. And we’ve got plenty of time.’

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘I hope we have.’

She took the scenic route home along Whitley Bay seafront and past St Mary’s Island, singing along to one of the compilation tapes her dad had put together for her. Motown. She was trying to put off the moment of going back into the house. Here, driving the Fiat so slowly that the guy in the Astra behind her hit his horn, yelling at the top of her voice, she could almost believe that the rest of it, all the nightmare stuff, had happened to someone else.

As soon as she opened the door, her mother appeared from the kitchen. She was like a figure in one of those mechanical clocks. Not a cuckoo, of course. A peasant woman in an apron, bobbing her head and wringing her hands.

‘Thank God. Where have you been? I’ve been so worried.’

‘I told you I’d be staying at Lisa’s.’ And that wasn’t a lie, was it?

‘I expected you to be back before Laura went to school.’ The guilt again.

‘Yeah, well, I had a bit much to drink. Did she get off OK?’

‘She didn’t have time for breakfast.’

‘She never has time for breakfast.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve had anything to eat either.’ And immediately she popped back into the kitchen, to put on the kettle and start frying bacon. ‘I got this from that decent butcher in Monkseaton. It’s not all water and fat.’ And though the smell of it almost made Julie want to throw up, she sat at the table and waited until the sandwich appeared, then forced herself to eat it. To make up for lying to her mother. To make up for having a few hours when she wasn’t thinking about Luke.

It was only after the plate was clean that her mother brought in the mail for her to look at. Not such a big pile. On the top, a long white envelope.

‘Look,’ Julie said, trying to re-establish friendly relations. ‘This is addressed to Laura.’

Her mam, already in her Marigolds at the sink, turned round. ‘That’s nice. Some of her friends from school, maybe.’

‘Maybe.’ But by now Julie had recognized the square capital letters, remembered Vera’s response to the last card. ‘All the same, I think I’ll just give Inspector Stanhope a ring.’

When the call came from Julie, Vera was in her office, reading. The night before, she’d started a short story by Samuel Parr, one she’d never heard or read before. It was in the book she’d picked up from the library on her way to meet Ben Craven, a collection published by a small press based in Hexham. The title
Jokers and Lovers
had some sort of resonance, but she couldn’t remember where it was from. It said on the jacket that the anthology had won a prize she’d never heard of. The story she’d been looking for, the one she’d heard on the radio, hadn’t been in it, but she’d started reading anyway. Vera had fallen asleep after a couple of paragraphs but, perhaps because of the beer swilling round in her veins, the opening image had stayed with her all night. It had described the abduction of a teenager. The abduction had been described lovingly. A summer’s morning. Sunshine. The flowers in the hedgerow named. It became a seduction, rather than an act of violence. The gender of the child was left deliberately ambiguous, but Vera imagined Luke. A great deal was made of the child’s beauty. This was a form which would turn heads. And Luke could have been a girl with his long lashes and his slender body. Half child, half man, he’d been an ambiguous figure too.

In the office, Vera held the morning briefing. Joe Ashworth had checked all the car-rental places in North Tyneside.

‘Nobody of Clive Stringer’s name or description hired a car on Wednesday night or Friday. I suppose that lets him off the hook.’ He sounded disappointed.

Vera almost felt sorry for him. She described the interview with Peter Calvert. ‘We know he was Lily’s lover. We know he’s a lying bastard, with an unhealthy interest in bonny lasses. We know she left her silver and opal ring in the Calverts’ cottage. But we can’t prove she didn’t drop it when she looked round the day before. And we can’t prove any connection between him and Luke Armstrong.’ Then she’d gone on to describe the connection between Lily and Kath. ‘Is it significant that the new Mrs Armstrong didn’t tell us she knew the Marsh lass? God knows. It is to us, of course. But we’re living and breathing the investigation. Maybe she just wanted to forget all about it and get on with her life.’

Then Vera had retreated to her office. She knew there were more important things to do, but she told herself that her team would already be doing them. She was pulled back to the story, the strange central character. Then the phone rang.

‘Julie Armstrong on the line, ma’am. She won’t speak to anyone but you.’

Vera listened in silence when Julie described the envelope, the writing. ‘I didn’t want to bother you, like. But last time you seemed to think it was important. We haven’t touched it. Well, just my mam when she brought it in from the front door.’

‘Has Laura got a mobile?’

‘Oh aye, they’ve all got mobiles these days, haven’t they?’

‘Phone her and tell her to stay at school. She’s not to go out with anyone, not even someone she knows until you pick her up. I’ll send someone in a car and you can go and fetch her. I’ll contact the school. Leave the card where it is. Don’t open it.’

‘She won’t have her phone switched on,’ Julie said. Vera could sense her confusion, the onset of panic. ‘It’s a rule. They’re not allowed.’

‘Don’t worry, pet. Just send her a text and leave her a voicemail message. I’ll see to the rest.’

She hung up and took a moment to compose herself. She’d picked up some of Julie’s panic, could feel her brain start to scramble, the eczema start to itch. Then she phoned the high school in Whitley Bay, bullied her way past an officious secretary to the headmaster. He understood at once what was needed, motivated, Vera thought, as much by the possibility of tabloid headlines –
How did they let it happen? Young girl snatched from school gate
– as by concern for Laura’s safety. Then she told herself she was a cynical old bag. He said he’d track Laura down and keep her in his office until Julie and the police car arrived. He’d phone Vera back and let her know when that had happened. Vera sat, waiting. Her eyes wandered back to the book on her desk, the atmospheric jacket in muted blues and greens. The phone rang.