Laura woke up – clawing clumsily at the hair covering her face – to the smell of bacon cooking, and had an awful feeling that her parents were downstairs. What time was it?
She got out of bed – saw Martha standing at the end, staring at her – then got back into it again, pulling the covers over her this time and dislodging Roxy, who let out a muffled whine before running past Martha downstairs to the kitchen where Doreen was frying bacon, and Don, unsure what to do with himself, was sitting awkwardly at the breakfast bar fiddling with a basket, which had strange-looking fruit in it he couldn’t have put a name to.
Laura shut her eyes. ‘Roxy needs a walk. Why don’t you take her down to the beach?’
Ignoring this, Martha said, ‘Who’s Jamie?’
Laura sat up, her hands grasping at the duvet, wide-eyed.
‘Who is he?’ Martha demanded. ‘He phoned you on your mobile last night – I picked up.’
Laura’s eyes flicked rapidly round the room until she located her mobile, which had been put back on the bedside table the night before – after Martha had put Jamie’s number into her own phone.
Checking incoming calls, she saw that she’d received a call from the same unknown number twice – once at 00:03, and then again at 00:06.
‘Why did you pick up?’ Laura said, angry.
‘I didn’t know who it was, I just I heard your phone ringing and it was late, and I thought it might be important – about dad.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Who is he?’
‘What did he say?’ Laura demanded.
‘I don’t know – nothing.’
‘He must have said something.’
‘I don’t know,’ Martha yelled, tearful. ‘He said he’d heard about dad. When I looked out the window I saw a white van parked outside.’
‘Parked outside where?’
‘In front of the house.’
Laura got out of bed and went over to the window.
There was no sign of a white transit van, only Don and Doreen’s sparkling clean lentil-coloured Toyota that Don rarely pushed above forty miles an hour.
‘If my phone rings again, you leave it alone. I don’t want you touching my phone.’ She stayed by the window, uncertain.
‘Who is he?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll go down and I’ll ask Nan. I’ll tell them he phoned.’
‘No you won’t,’ Laura said, crossing the room and grabbing hold suddenly of Martha’s wrist, twisting it hard. ‘Don’t you dare do that. His name’s Jamie Deane, and he’s dad’s brother.’
Martha, shocked, pulled her arm away. ‘Dad’s brother? You’re lying.’
‘I’m not lying,’
‘I never even knew dad had a brother. How come I never knew that?’
‘He was in prison – for a long time – that’s why dad never said anything. He didn’t want you knowing.’
‘What was he in prison for?’
‘Beating somebody up – badly.’
‘How long for?’
Laura hesitated. ‘Twenty years.’
‘For beating someone up?’
Pulling absently on her necklace, Laura turned away from Martha and walked back towards the window. ‘The person died.’
She stared down at the street and saw Don on the drive, washing her car. She could hear him whistling as well, breaking off to say something to the McClarens who were emerging from the garage at number six – an endless stream of children and bikes. The McClarens spent most of their weekends in Lycra – involved in pursuits that were good for the cardiovascular.
The McClarens didn’t shy from Don, on the drive washing Laura’s car, because a disappearing husband wasn’t the kind of thing to dent the social confidence of people like the McClarens – people who spent their summers, en famille, re-thatching remote village schools in places like Tanzania.
There was a camping table at the end of their drive with a sign sellotaped to it:
DAISY’S PERFUME SHOP. ROSE PETAL PERFUME ONLY £2.
The jars of rose petal perfume – made by the youngest McClaren, Daisy, were lined up on top.
‘You’re scared of him,’ Martha said suddenly.
Martha was right – Laura was scared. She wished Bryan was there only Bryan wasn’t.
Breakfast was eaten in silence. Each one of them in turn tried to think of something to say, but in the end only Don succeeded – with a flaccid observation that the garden furniture needed a new coat of oil, which did little to initiate further conversation.
So they continued to eat in silence, aware that if Bryan had been there still, Doreen would never have cooked breakfast in Laura’s kitchen.
With Bryan’s disappearance, Laura had become their daughter again.
She needed them.
After years of there being nothing to do except stand on the sidelines and marvel at the life Laura and Bryan had built for themselves – now, at last, they had something to do.
After breakfast, while Don and Martha looked for Roxy’s lead and got ready to take her down to the beach, Doreen – who was virtually blind – knelt on all fours in front of the oven with some wire wool, arguing with Laura about the amount of Nytol she was taking, and what she was mixing it with.
They were still arguing when Martha, hooking her arm through Don’s, let Roxy lead them down Marine Drive past neighbours who’d barely been aware of her before (apart from Mr Thompson), but who had since heard about Bryan, and who now stared at her – Martha Deane, the girl whose father had gone missing.
She held tightly onto Don, pressing her face into his jacket, which smelt heavily of soap and aftershave.
‘I don’t like people staring,’ she mumbled.
‘They’re not staring,’ Don said lightly.
‘They are,’ Martha insisted, keeping close to him until they’d crossed the main road onto the dunes where she let Roxy off her lead.
Don threw a couple of sticks for her, but she just watched them arch through the air and fall onto the beach ahead while continuing to pant expectantly.
‘Daft dog – they’re for you, they are,’ he yelled, above the wind, hurling a stick into the sea this time. Roxy watched as the stick meant for her was pursued by an excited Border Collie who went crashing into the waves after it.
Don and Martha stood at the water’s edge along with Roxy, watching the Collie in the sea attempt to retrieve Don’s stick.
After a while Martha said, ‘Why did nobody ever tell me I had an uncle?’
‘An uncle?’ Don said, not denying it so much as surprised to hear it put like that.
‘Jamie – Jamie Deane.’
Don looked at her then shook his head. ‘Who’s been talking to you about Jamie Deane?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Oh, well, it was going to come out at some point.’ Don sighed and put his hand roughly on top of her head, wobbling it from side to side.
‘Is it true he beat somebody up so badly they died?’
Don thought carefully about this.
‘He’s a bad lot, that’s all.’ Then, because this sounded too much like a judgement, and he wasn’t one to judge, he said, ‘That lad never seemed to have any luck.’ He shook his head, laying Jamie Deane to rest because he didn’t really want to think about Jamie Deane.
Martha, still able to hear Jamie’s voice in her head, decided to let it rest as well. She could have asked Don more, but what Don had said and how he’d said it had taken the fear out of last night’s call for her.
Now, standing on the beach in broad daylight with Don beside her, she just felt vaguely sorry for this uncle she’d never seen. Part of her even wondered – hoped – if he’d try to contact them again.
She pulled Don’s hand out of his pocket and took hold of it, swinging it gently – aware of all the calluses on it, and how hard his hand felt in her own small hand. It was a hand that had seen decades of hard labour, and it was the gentlest hand she would ever hold. They stared out to sea, half expectantly – towards the horizon.
Neither of them was thinking about Jamie Deane any more.
Don slipped his hand out of Martha’s, putting his arm round her instead and pulling her close as she started to cry.
‘I want him to come back.’
Don didn’t say anything, he just held her even tighter, rubbing at her arms.
After a while she pulled away, looking up at him. ‘Your hair.’
‘What about my hair?’
‘It isn’t moving. I mean, it’s like gale force down here and your hair isn’t moving at all.’
Don ran his hands over the Brylcream sculpted Teddy boy cut he’d had since before he started dating Doreen even, and smiled.
When they got back to Marine Drive, Bryan’s car was being towed onto the drive at number two, watched by Inspector Laviolette who was leaning, relaxed, against the open door of his own car, smoking.
He stood up when he saw Martha and Don approach and started to walk towards them, sombre but smiling, his focus mostly on Martha – concerned that it might in some way be upsetting for her to see her father’s car returned in this way.
‘Alright, Martha?’
She nodded, waiting, pulling Roxy back hard to heel.
Behind them, Sergeant Chambers was talking to the man in the cab of the tow truck.
Laviolette had seen the CCTV footage yesterday and nothing had come up. He’d watched Bryan Deane park his car opposite St George’s Church and get out, stretching and looking around him. He’d seen him get into his wet suit, lock up the car and take the kayak off the roof. Then Bryan Deane had watched the sea for four minutes, which was a long time, before making a phone call.
This was the phone call to his wife – Laura.
Laura had told them about it.
He made the call at 15:37.
Then he made another call – the missed call to Martha, who hadn’t picked up – before putting the mobile in the boot of the car, and after this the camera lost sight of him as he disappeared down the cliff path, past the redbrick building housing the Toy Museum and Balti Experience – down onto the beach, Laviolette presumed.
He would like to have seen Bryan Deane on the beach; he would like to have seen Bryan Deane talking to Anna Faust on the beach, and kept watching half expecting – ir rationally – to see the beach and Bryan and Anna because that’s what he really wanted to see.
He watched hours of footage after that . . . the Bank Holiday traffic on the roads and pavements gradually decreasing . . . the parking wardens checking the ticket in the windscreen of Bryan Deane’s car and booking it . . . twilight . . . the close of day . . .
Bryan Deane never went back to his car.
‘You’re done with it, then?’ Don said, looking at Bryan’s car, uncertain.
‘We didn’t find anything,’ Laviolette said carefully, aware of Martha watching him intently.
He smiled blandly at her, thinking about the footage he’d seen and how his mind had picked up on something sub consciously – something important; something to do with the second phone call Bryan Deane made, the call to his daughter.
‘Can I ask you something?’ he said to her, smiling still. ‘Your dad tried to phone you Saturday afternoon, didn’t he?’
Martha nodded. ‘I already told you that.’
‘That’s right,’ Laviolette agreed. ‘I was just wondering – I know you spend most Saturdays with your grandparents . . .’ he nodded here at Don, who was staring warily at him ‘. . . and then you go home Sunday morning?’
‘That’s right.’ It was Don who answered this, not Martha.
‘Is it usual for your dad to phone you at some point?’
Don turned to Martha.
Martha was thinking about Laviolette’s question – seriously considering it because it was a very good question, and one she had the impression Laviolette felt he should have thought of asking earlier.
‘No,’ she said after a while, looking directly at Laviolette. ‘He never usually phones me while I’m at Nan’s. In fact,’ she added, ‘Saturday was the first time I think he’s ever tried to call me.’
For some reason this realisation made her smile – and warm to Laviolette in a way she hadn’t until then.
Laviolette smiled back at her – he didn’t doubt her and ask if she was sure, or ask her the question again. He didn’t do anything other than nod silently.
‘Dad phoning me – is that a good thing or,’ Martha hesitated, ‘a bad thing?’
Laviolette deliberated over this for what seemed like a long time because now he knew something about Bryan Deane that made him increasingly certain of one thing: Bryan Deane’s disappearance was deliberate. He briefly revisited the idea of suicide while continuing to smile lightly at Don and Martha, but in the end pushed it aside.
‘We’ll see,’ he said finally, in answer to Martha’s question.
Martha stood gripping her bike’s handlebars, listening to the sound of the TV through the walls as the garage door started to rise; the smooth electronic mechanism failing to conceal the sound of her mother’s laughter. Don and Doreen had left at around three o’clock and now Martha, who’d finished her doll and decided to make a present of it to Anna, was cycling over to the Ridley Arms in Blyth.
Fifteen minutes later – barely aware of the long, slow sunset taking place around her – she turned into Quay Road, got off the bike at the entrance to the Ridley Arms and pressed on the buzzer for Flat 3. She buzzed another two times, but nobody answered so she crossed over to the other side of the road where the Harbourmaster’s office was and, looking up, saw that the entire building was dark. There were no lights on inside the Ridley Arms.
She tried calling, but Anna didn’t pick up, and was about to leave when the lights along the quayside came on. Turning instinctively towards them, she saw the Inspector’s car parked where Anna’s yellow Capri usually was, facing out to sea.
He must have seen her at the same time because he got out of his car and gave a broken wave. All Laviolette’s physical gestures looked sad, Martha thought, watching him at a distance – like a succession of small, incomplete finales.
He waited by the car as she wheeled her bike over, unsure whether she was pleased to see him or not, but smiling anyway – a small, defeated smile.
‘She’s not in,’ he said.
‘I know – I just tried. She’s not picking up her phone either.’
They looked up at the windows to Anna’s apartment then Laviolette said suddenly, ‘Was she expecting you?’
Martha shook her head. ‘How long have you been waiting here for?’
He seemed surprised at the question then smiled at her again. ‘Only about ten minutes or so.’
Martha didn’t believe him. She didn’t know why, but for some reason he was lying to her. ‘Why did you want to see Anna? Nothing’s happened, has it?’
‘Why did you want to see Anna?’ he asked.
A trawler with its lights on was making its way between the pier heads and into the harbour, and every now and then a single voice could be heard clearly above the sound of the engine.
‘I’ve got something for her.’
The Inspector was watching the approaching trawler as Martha undid her rucksack and brought out the porcelain doll, holding it carefully in her hands while smoothing the hair down.
He stared down at the doll. ‘You made that?’
She nodded, continuing to stroke the doll’s hair.
‘For Anna?’
She nodded again then turned to face him.
The Inspector smiled, and was completely unprepared for what Martha said next.
‘You think dad’s committed suicide, don’t you?’
‘No – I don’t think that.’
‘Yes you do.’ After a while, Martha said, ‘They argue all the time – mum and dad. She lied on Saturday when you asked her if everything was okay between them and she said everything was fine. It isn’t. They’ve got no money and everything’s pretty much going to shit. The other night she was going on and on at him because she was drunk – she’s always drunk at the moment. She went on and on at him until he shouted back at her . . . I heard him . . .’ light tears were rolling down her face, but she carried on speaking as if unaware of them, ‘. . . that he’d be better off dead.’ Martha paused, staring intently at the doll. ‘What if she forced him to do something?’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know,’ Martha said, exasperated. ‘But you should consider it – as a possibility.’
Laviolette pulled up the zip on his coat ‘These things have their own rhythm, and right now the focus is on the search and possible appeal.’ He started to look in his pockets for his car keys and when he found them said suddenly to her, ‘Have you got lights for that?’
Martha shook her head.
It was dark now.
‘I’ll drive you home – we can put the bike in the boot.’
‘What’s this?’ she said as he started up the engine and the car filled with the sound of choral music.
‘Miners – singing.’ He didn’t tell her that it was an old recording and that one of the singing miners was his father. ‘The thing you need to keep in mind,’ he said, a few minutes later, ‘is that there’s only one person who really knows what happened to your dad – and that’s your dad.’
‘Your car’s tidy.’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘I’m not talking about that sort of tidy.’
‘How many different sorts of tidy are there?’ He smiled through the windscreen at the road.
‘I don’t mean tidy like clean and tidy. I mean empty tidy, like even if you wanted to make it untidy, you wouldn’t be able to because you haven’t got enough stuff to litter it with. See what I mean?’
Laviolette, amused, thought about this – still smiling – then said, ‘Yeah – I do.’ He paused. ‘You’re right.’
They drove in silence for a while after this, Martha watching the wind move through the grasses on the dunes as the car crawled along. Then she turned to him and said, ‘You’re not married, are you?’
This time he took his eyes off the road to meet her gaze. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘I don’t know – it just feels like there’s only you.’
‘You’re a very astute young woman. I used to be married.’
‘When?’ she asked, interested.
‘A long time ago – I wasn’t much older than you are now.’
‘Like mum and dad then – they married young.’ She stared out the window again, glad she was inside the car and not out in the night on her bike. ‘What went wrong?’
‘Well, we should never have married in the first place – so it was more a case of nothing was going to go right anyway.’
‘So why did you – marry?’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’
Martha leant back in the seat, turning her head to watch him. ‘Are you still in touch?’
‘No – no.’
‘Vehemently said.’
Laviolette laughed.
‘What? Did I say something stupid?’
‘I can’t imagine you ever saying anything stupid. Vehemently,’ he repeated, trying not to let the fact that he was unsettled by her interest in him, show. He wasn’t used to people being interested in him. ‘I haven’t heard that word in a long while.’
‘It just came to mind.’ She paused. ‘I’m not sure if I like it – as a word.’
‘Me neither.’ Then Laviolette said quietly, ‘I’m not even sure if she’s dead or alive.’
‘Your wife?’
He nodded.
‘Why would she be dead?’
‘She was a heavy drug user. Heroin.’
‘Is that why things didn’t work out?’
‘It wasn’t the drugs I had a problem with – it was the part of her that needed them.’
‘It’s the same thing.’
Laviolette gave her a quick look.
‘I’m never getting married.’
‘You’re only fifteen.’
‘I don’t care. I’m never getting married. Whatever’s there in the beginning – it always turns out the same. Look at you – mum and dad.’
She put her leg up on the dashboard, distant from him now.
‘There’s a moment – and it’s hard to say when exactly it happens because it happens so gradually – when life becomes about owning rather than just being, and that’s when things get complicated.’ Laviolette paused. ‘At your age, people don’t expect you to own anything – they don’t even expect you to own yourself.’
Martha turned away from him to look out the window, uninterested. ‘Do you think anybody marries the person they’re meant to?’
‘Some people do.’
Laviolette turned into the Duneside development.
‘On Saturday – when dad was dropping me off at Nan’s – Anna was there, and it was the first time they’d seen each other in, like, sixteen years, and he was holding my hand so tight it went – numb,’ she finished, gripping suddenly onto Laviolette’s arm. ‘Stop the car.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘The van – the one parked outside the house,’ she whispered, ‘it’s dad’s brother – Jamie Deane.’
Laviolette’s hand remained on the gearstick as he peered through the windscreen at the van. ‘Does he often come round to the house?’
Martha was staring so intently out the window that Laviolette, unsure whether or not she’d heard the question was about to ask it again when Martha said, ‘Never. I didn’t even know dad had a brother – until last night when he phoned mum, but she was too doped up to hear – so I picked up.’
‘What did he want?’
Martha thought about this. ‘Nothing. He just said that he knew about dad. I didn’t say anything – I just let him talk. He thought he was speaking to mum. He sounded just like dad – on the phone. That was weird. Where are you going? Wait –’
But the Inspector was already out the car, running in a way that should have made him look ridiculous, but didn’t – towards the white van, which juddered into life, pulling away sharply from the kerb and reversing over the ‘Private Property’ sign on the edge of number four’s lawn before accelerating unevenly away – the van’s exhaust scraping the blue gentians in Mr Thompson’s rock garden.
Half way up Marine Drive the van jumped as the gears were changed. Thinking it was going to stall, Laviolette ran after it, but was left stooped panting over a drain as the van accelerated once more – watched by Martha who was smiling to herself, pleased. Jamie Deane had got away – from what, she didn’t know, but he had got away and for some reason this made her suddenly happy.
Still bent over double, Laviolette twisted his head in the direction of number two Marine Drive, whose door was open.
The front door to number four was also open. It opened, in fact, at the same time as the door to number two, and Mr Thompson – who’d been watching the white van long before the wanton act of vandalism – was now running in a lopsided fashion towards the rockery where he fell on his knees in the damp grass in front of his shredded gentians.
Laura Deane stood in the doorway to number two, her phone in her hand, and it was Laura Deane the Inspector made his way towards, still breathless.
For a moment her face was the most open he’d seen it – verging on vulnerable – and this, he realised, was due to fear.
But before Laviolette had a chance to speak Laura – who was watching Martha get her bike out of the Inspector’s car and wheel it slowly past Mr Thompson next door, prostrate still before his gentians – said, ‘What’s Martha doing with you?’
Laviolette was about to respond to this when all three of them became suddenly aware of Mr Thompson getting numbly to his feet on the lawn outside number four, two dark patches of dew on his trousers at the knee.
‘This is private property,’ he hissed unevenly at them before stalking indoors with his left fist clenched, fully intending to write a letter requesting compensation for damages.
‘Shall we go inside?’ Laviolette suggested at last. ‘I want to talk about Jamie Deane,’ he carried on smoothly, noting the expression on Laura’s face.
‘My uncle,’ Martha prompted her. ‘The one I never knew I had?’
Ignoring this, Laura said, ‘I’ll open the garage so you can put your bike in.’
Laviolette waited in the hallway while Laura opened the garage door. He heard her talking to Martha. The tone was angry, but he couldn’t make out the words and when they emerged from the garage Martha walked straight past him up the stairs, holding her arm as if it hurt, her face set.
‘D’you mind if we go into the kitchen,’ Laura said, looking suddenly tired.
He hauled himself awkwardly onto one of the bar stools – as awkwardly as Don had earlier – and watched her fill the kettle with water and switch on the gas.
‘I’m putting the kettle on – I don’t know why. D’you want tea? Coffee?’
‘I’m fine thanks.’
‘Me neither.’ She switched off the gas and hovered restlessly for a moment in the corner of the kitchen. ‘Actually, I’m going to have a glass of wine – it’s been a long day. I don’t suppose you’re allowed one, are you?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said again, watching her uncork an already open bottle and close her eyes as she took the first sip.
‘We decided not to tell Martha about Jamie.’
Laviolette didn’t say anything.
‘It was a joint decision,’ she added. ‘Are you comfortable talking about this?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Well it was your –’
‘How did Jamie feel about this joint decision?’
Laura shrugged irritably. ‘Put it this way – he never tried to contact us either.’
Laviolette stared down at the reflection of himself in the polished granite surface of the breakfast bar. ‘Until now.’
‘I don’t know how he found out about Bryan,’ she said, watching him.
‘Or why finding out about him should provoke an impromptu visit.’ He looked up at her.
‘D’you think he’s got something to do with Bryan’s disappearance?’
Ignoring this, Laviolette said, ‘How did he know where you lived?’
Laura shook her head and looked afraid again. ‘No idea. I’ve got no idea how he got the number either.’
‘What did he say – on the phone? What did he want?’
‘Nothing – apart from that he knew Bryan had gone missing, and that he was parked outside.’
‘Did he threaten you in anyway?’
Laura gave a short laugh. ‘Most women would find a man calling them to say they’re parked directly outside their house threatening.’ She paused. ‘I feel taunted. Jamie was always good at that.’ She stopped suddenly as she realised what it was she’d said.
‘So you knew him well at some point?’
‘As a child.’ She poured herself another glass of wine.
‘And as a child was it Bryan you knew first – or his brother, Jamie?’
Laura hesitated. ‘Jamie, I suppose.’
‘How was that?’
‘I don’t know. He just always seemed to be around.’
‘Were you and Jamie ever together as in a relationship together?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Not really,’ the Inspector repeated.
‘But you already knew that, didn’t you, Inspector?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘You know all about Jamie Deane.’
‘I do.’
‘So why are we doing this? Why are you even handling this case?’
‘Because although you’re answering my questions, you’re not giving me anything here.’ He brought his palm down suddenly against the granite surface, leaving a print.
Laura jerked in reaction to this, spilling some wine, as Laviolette slipped off the stool far more gracefully than he’d got onto it, walked purposefully towards the patio doors and stared out at the garden – wondering briefly which of the Deanes was responsible for it, and trying to discern any real horticultural passion.
‘How old were you and Bryan when you first started seeing each other?’
‘I was thirteen. Bryan was fourteen.’
‘What did Jamie think about that?’
‘I don’t know – he was in prison.’
Laviolette sunk his hands in his pockets and swung round to face her, ‘Have Bryan and Jamie been in contact at all over the years?’
‘Not that I’m aware of. Bryan’s never said anything anyway.’
‘Do you have much contact with your father-in-law, Mr Deane?’
‘My father-in-law?’ Laura repeated, surprised. ‘We never really got on.’
‘Your father-in-law’s got Alzheimer’s,’ Laviolette said, aware that Laura winced every time he said ‘father-in-law’. ‘He shouldn’t be living alone.’
Laura stared at him, impassive, but her expression changed to shock when he said, ‘I went to visit him yesterday.’
‘Why?’
‘To ask him if he’d seen Bryan.’
‘How would he know? He doesn’t know who Bryan is any more.’
‘Does Bryan visit him?’
‘Occasionally – I think. He doesn’t really talk about it.’
‘Doesn’t it weigh heavily on him – a father with Alzheimer’s, living alone?’
‘They fell out years ago. It’s complicated – but then, that’s families, isn’t it? They’re complicated.’
She looked out the kitchen window at the McClarens’ cat – a mink-coloured Burmese attempting to catch a fly by the Hebe.
‘Are you a family?’ she asked him.
The question was strangely but accurately put. ‘Your daughter asked me that on the way over here in the car.’
‘She did?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know – maybe once, but not any more.’
He nodded.
‘That’s sad,’ Laura responded.
He turned away from her, back to the garden, and watched a cat – the McClarens’ cat – sprint from the fence onto the lawn where it stood, one paw raised, alert and absorbed in its own agenda. It flicked its head quickly in his direction, just to the left of his shoulder as if there was somebody standing directly beside him; somebody he could neither see nor feel. Then it looked away. Behind him, he heard her say, ‘People on the outside don’t understand, do they – the work that goes into a marriage?’
‘I ran out of energy – the energy required to undertake the monumental acts of heroism needed to keep us together.’
He crossed the kitchen aimlessly then stopped, feeling suddenly stranded. He wanted a glass of wine now, and had to put a lot of effort into stopping himself asking for one.
‘In the beginning you can’t imagine anything ever going wrong, can you? You see other people – couples; families – and you think, I’m never going to let that happen to me . . . us. But somehow stuff does go wrong, and one day you look around you and realise that you’re just like everybody else – clinging on.’ She stopped speaking and started to twist the wine glass nervously in her hand.
Laviolette was watching her trying to decide whether she’d taken herself by surprise speaking like that or whether the whole scene – this speech included – was pre-meditated. Then he decided that he didn’t care – her words had a resonance to them he found hard to resist.
He looked quickly at her. For the first time since meeting her, he realised that he was thinking of Laura Deane as a victim rather than . . . rather than what, he wondered? The word that came to mind was ‘conspirator’.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘About what?’
She hesitated. ‘Jamie – coming round here.’
‘Feeling threatened isn’t the same thing as being threatened. I can’t stop him coming.’
‘Why are you protecting him?’ she said harshly, frustration changing her tone. ‘I can’t believe you’re protecting him – after what he did.’
‘What did he do?’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘He killed your father.’
‘I don’t know,’ Laviolette said, thoughtful. ‘I’ve spent such a lot of time thinking about that over the years, and I’m not sure he did.’
‘But that’s why he went to prison – for twenty years.’
‘What if he didn’t go to prison because he murdered my father, but because all those years ago, a girl lied? That would be a very different matter, wouldn’t it?’
Laviolette drove down the coast to Tynemouth, turning left at the Priory onto Pier Road and the bulk of headland known as the Spanish Battery. Although there were houses here – his own included – and the white clapboard headquarters of the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade (anchored to the headland by steel guy ropes to prevent it from being carried away in the frequent storms), the headland felt severed from the land rising behind it; a severance reflected in the poise of the Admiral Collingswood statue (Nelson’s second in command at Trafalgar), whose face was turned resolutely seawards. The Spanish Battery was named after the seventeenth century Spanish mercenaries who manned the guns on the headland in response to the Dutch threat at the time. Laviolette had, for some reason, always had a soft spot for those Spanish mercenaries.
He parked outside number four Old Coastguard Cottages – an old stone house that was also home – the headlamps illuminating the long grass that was rolling in one of the headland’s perpetual winds. Even after he’d switched off the engine, he could still feel the wind rushing under and over the car, rocking it from side to side.
He continued to sit in the dark car, aware that the last thing he felt like doing right then was walking into number four Old Coastguard Cottages and asking Mrs Kelly how her day had gone – how his son, Harvey, who she looked after, had been. He didn’t want to listen, smiling, to the account of their day, rent with the small seismic details Mrs Kelly insisted on giving him because Mrs Kelly was a gem . . . a real find, and Laviolette knew that these small seismic details were borne of the love she had for his son; a love that let him off the hook. He felt responsible for Harvey, but he didn’t love him.
He thought about the conversation he’d just had with Laura Deane, and how today – for the first time in years – he’d spoken about his wife, and not just once but twice: first with Martha then Laura Deane. In fact, Laura Deane reminded him a lot of Lily – what Lily could have been in the right hands. He’d told Martha that he had no idea whether she was living or dead and he hadn’t said it to be barbaric. Years ago when he first lost her, he might have done, but not now.
He shut his eyes and saw her briefly – thin, blonde, scruffy, and bruised. He hadn’t loved her, which made him the last person she should have entrusted herself to . . . agreed to marry.
He swung his gaze away from the house back out to sea. There was a couple walking tightly together along the pier below the cliff on which stood the priory’s ruins. A couple taking a walk . . . he knew that normality could conceal the most incredible acts of sedition, but tonight he chose to believe that the couple taking a walk were nothing more than what they seemed: a couple taking a walk, and wondered what it would be like to walk with someone along the pier at the end of the day. How did people get to the stage where they could just take a walk together like that?
Sighing, he got out of the car, bracing himself against the wind and the cold as he made his way across the small garden separating his house from the road. Instead of going to the front door, he stood outside the window whose curtains Mrs Kelly rarely drew before he came home – an old superstitious habit she’d acquired over the years being married to a fisherman.
Through the window he saw Mrs Kelly and Harvey sitting on the sofa together – Harvey was a lot taller than Mrs Kelly – watching what looked like a costume drama on TV. There was a tray on the coffee table in front of them with cheese and biscuits on it, and some paper covered in the 3-D shapes Harvey was forever drawing. Harvey, perched on the edge of the sofa, was rocking gently backwards and forwards. Mrs Kelly sat still with her hands clasped in her lap.
He couldn’t remember when or why he’d painted the walls of his house yellow; when or why he’d chosen the carpet he had, but somehow it all hung together. He’d constructed a life for himself out of a series of inescapable facts, and number four Old Coastguard Cottages looked like someone’s home.
Mrs Kelly twisted her head instinctively towards the window and, smiling, waved at him as if the fact that he was standing out in the garden peering in through the window at them was the most normal thing in the world.
He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, but thought suddenly of Bryan Deane’s four-minute vigil above Longsands on Easter Saturday – the one he’d watched on the CCTV footage. Bryan Deane’s four-minute vigil had been motionless and yet during those four minutes Bryan had departed one life and entered another.
Once Mrs Kelly had put Harvey to bed for the night and left, Laviolette went up to the small room at the top of the house he used as a study. It was tiny, and full of stuff too meaningless and personal to go anywhere else in the house. It felt like a student’s room – one he was renting inside his own house – and he often spent the night up here on the sofa.
There was a skylight in the roof, but no windows – the lack of a view calmed him.
He had a cardboard box by the desk full of objects he’d collected over the years that had got broken – tea pots, desk lamps, Harvey’s toys – that he often found himself repairing before realising that they no longer had any purpose in his life, and so were returned, repaired, to the box where they got jolted to the bottom, broken once more.
A therapeutic cycle of needless activity. It made him think of the factory Lily used to tell him Harvey could work in when he got older – a place where they made people like Harvey spend half the day making wooden crates and the other half smashing them up with rubber mallets.
People like Harvey.
He also had things up here he shouldn’t have – like copies of interview tapes from the investigation following his father’s murder, and it was one of these he put on now, dated 7th August 1987.
He sat down on the sofa that was covered in a crocheted blanket he had a feeling his mother must have made – maybe while she was dying.
The room was a deathly blue and beige that always made him feel depressed, but he was able to think clearly there – he’d never sought to understand the connection between depression and lucidity.
Putting the tape player on his lap, he pressed play then leant back against the sofa – arms behind his head; his eyes closed.
Inspector Jim Cornish – now Superintendant – started speaking.
Jim Cornish was old school – a lumbering heavyweight who was far more mentally agile than he appeared, and renowned for the dogged pursuits he used to lead. The tape didn’t make for easy listening. Jamie Dean’s incoherent screaming – he must have been fifteen at the time – followed by silences so taut and sullen they made Laviolette’s ears pop.
But Jamie stuck to his story – despite being locked in a tiny room with Cornish and his protégé, Tom Kyle: a notoriously violent man who was relocated in the early nineties when they had to shut down the Berwick Street station where the interviews had been conducted. Berwick Street had a reputation – over half the people who went into it never came out, and in the end it was easier just to close it down than clean it up.
Jamie Deane sensed he was fighting a losing battle – that came across despite the screaming and the silences – but he stuck to his story: he claimed that he’d spent the afternoon of 7th August 1987 having sex in his bedroom with Laura Hamilton. He went over it again and again. He didn’t go stupid on them, and he didn’t cave in.
Neither Cornish nor Kyle got to him.
The thing that got to him was the loss of his only alibi – Laura Hamilton.
Laviolette took out the Jamie Deane tape and put in the Laura Hamilton one.
He listened to Cornish tell her that Jamie Deane claimed he’d spent the afternoon of 7th August 1987 having sex with her.
Laura Hamilton, terrified, denied this then burst into tears.
Cornish and Kyle took their time with her because the social worker sitting in on the interview was pissing them off, and they enjoyed putting uncomfortable questions to the attractive thirteen-year-old. The interview was halted here – when it resumed, Laura was calmer.
She sensed that what she was saying wasn’t falling on deaf ears; that they wanted to believe her, and that escape from the interview room, police station, and darker side of life was imminent. She relaxed, becoming almost flirtatious – especially with Kyle.
When Jamie heard that Laura denied having spent the afternoon with him, he broke in half, and that’s when Cornish and Kyle nailed him.
A job well done.
Laviolette turned off the tape, but kept his eyes shut, thinking of his own recent interviews with Laura.
He was convinced of one thing: Laura knew how to lie.
But knowing this brought him no closer to answering the two questions he would have been happy to exchange what was left of his life for answers to:
If Bryan Deane wasn’t dead, where was he?
If Jamie Deane didn’t kill his father, then who did?