Jayne was able to find a parking space a street away from where she wanted to be.
She was in a grid of terraced streets, ten long lines running up the hill, the green dome of a mosque at the top. Cars occupied every space and net curtains were in every window. Some women in plain black hijabs were watching her, making her conscious of her baggy T-shirt and tight jeans, but they smiled as she passed them.
Built to house the workers employed in the mill that had long ago closed down, the mosque standing in its place, the area was typical of so many parts of Highford, an enclave for those families who’d moved there in the sixties to work the shifts the local population wouldn’t, until it had grown into a small community.
It was the mosque that had made Jayne think of it when, looking out of her window the night before, she’d seen its dome.
She was looking for number 12, the house where Trudy was living when Sean married Karen. It had been a call to Karen that had got her the address. Number 12 was at the bottom of the hill, where the road started to level out before a junction, the houses continuing along the other side of a busy through road.
Jayne turned around and looked at the street diagonally opposite, one terrace along and on the other side of the junction. She was right.
The door of number 12, like all the others in the terrace, was right against the pavement. She knocked on it, and it was opened almost immediately by a young woman in her late teens, wearing tight hipster jeans and with gleaming dark hair, straight and flowing over her shoulders.
‘Hi,’ Jayne said. ‘I’m an investigator for a local law firm.’
A voice shouted from the back in a language Jayne couldn’t understand, and the woman replied in the same language before speaking to Jayne in unaccented English. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m looking for anyone who has lived here a long time, more than ten years, who might remember a previous occupant, Sean Martin.’
The woman frowned. ‘Is he the guy who went to prison? I can’t help you. We didn’t know him. We’ve heard about him, but we lived on a different street before moving here. Try her across the road though.’ She pointed. ‘She’s been here for ever.’
Jayne followed her gesture to a house that was grubbier than the rest, with paint flaking on the window frames and an England flag stuck to the bottom corner of the front window.
‘Is she friendly?’
The woman laughed. ‘She’ll be fine with you. With me, she’d slam the door in my face, but she’s the one who knows all about the history of this place. She certainly rants enough about how we’ve ruined it all. But we look out for her, just the same as everyone else.’
Jayne thanked her and went across the road, tapping on the door. A dog barked, followed by the sound of someone trying to calm it down. The door was opened on a chain, wary eyes peering through.
Jayne introduced herself. The door slammed. She was about to knock again when it became apparent that the person inside the house was merely trying to stop the dog from bolting into the road as she wrestled with the door lock.
Jayne turned to see a woman in her sixties with pinched cheeks and grey hair cut in a bob, greasy and lank, holding on to a dog collar with nicotine-stained fingers.
‘You say you’re an investigator? For what? Claims? I can say I was a passenger if you want.’
‘No, it’s not that.’
‘Why not? Some good money there. There was a man who came round all the time. Every time a bus had a bump, he’d come looking for people to say they were on it. I bought my new telly with the money he got.’
‘I’m more interested in the people who used to live in the house opposite. The young woman there told me that you know all about this area.’
‘Did she, now?’ She glared past Jayne towards number 12. ‘You’d better come in.’
Inside, the house smelled sour, like unwashed clothes and a dog that needed a bath. The sofa Jayne was instructed to sit on felt greasy and thick with cigarette tar.
‘What else did she say, across the road?’
‘Why, what’s wrong?’
‘They want me out. They all do. They want to take over the whole area, and people like me are blocking them. All my family have moved out, sick of seeing how this place has gone to the rats.’
Jayne decided not to debate the point. The street looked well cared for to her, but the house she was sitting in seemed one of the grubbiest.
The woman reached for a cigarette. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘About the woman who lived at number 12 before that family did – about twelve years ago. Trudy. She was going out with Sean Martin.’
‘The one who went to prison?’
‘It is –’ Jayne paused as she opened her notebook. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your name.’
‘It’s Geraldine. Yes, I remember her, and him, of course. I wasn’t surprised when I read what he’d done.’
‘Why weren’t you surprised?’
‘Because he was arrogant. Thought he was so much better than everyone else, so damn special. I laughed when he went down.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He was always carrying a book, tucked under his arm, and it was always a poncey one, like really old or highbrow, as if we were supposed to ask him about it. And they had parties there all the time. People around here now talk about him as if they knew a celebrity, but really he’s just someone who got lucky, because we all know he did it.’
‘Did what? Killed Rosie Smith?’
‘What else?’ She leaned in closer, as if sharing a secret. ‘People like us don’t get breaks. If we go before the courts, we get convicted. But Sean?’ She waved her hand. ‘He was always going to walk.’
‘He went to prison first time around.’
‘Yeah, but no one stopped fighting for him though, because people like Sean win every time. I didn’t like him, didn’t trust him, and I bet he killed that poor girl. Not even Trudy could see what he was really like.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She thought the sun shone out of his proverbial. I could see it in her eyes when they were out together. His eyes? Wandering, that’s what, but she must have been blind to it. Obsessed with him, she was, together all the time, like glue, drinking until late, always loud laughter and music coming from the place at all hours. I was surprised when they split up. But look at them now, living it up.’
‘Do you know why they split up back then?’
‘I’m not that nosey, but one day they were together and then they weren’t, and he moved away. But it was bad news for that young lass, wasn’t it, the one who died. Once he came into her life, she was as good as marked.’ Geraldine looked confused. ‘Why are you asking about him?’
‘He might be relevant to a case I’m involved in, that’s all.’ Jayne leaned closer and spoke more quietly. ‘And I want to ask you about another girl. Well, a woman.’
Geraldine’s eyes widened. ‘Who?’
‘She lived on the other street, just over the junction. Claire Watkins.’
‘What’s she got to do with this?’
‘You know who I’m talking about?’
‘Of course. I know her parents. Don’t know what happened to her, but not many people go missing round here.’
‘What kind of woman was she?’
‘Lovely. Bubbly and chatty and not snooty at all, and she was going places. Had a job at a doctor’s surgery, on the reception, I think. One day she went to meet a friend in town, so the story went, and she never arrived.’
‘What do people round here say about it?’
‘They were scared for a while because there could be a kidnapper roaming the streets. Not that it stopped Sean Martin, because he carried on like it meant nothing, swanning around on his boat like he was the big man, the damn thing done up like it was from a child’s story. Red and green and with flowers. Saved on the council tax, I think. He used to park it by the canal down there. Do they say park it?’
‘Moor it, I think.’
‘Well, whatever they call it, he had one and that’s where he left it.’
‘Do Claire’s parents still live in the same house?’
‘No, they moved away not long afterwards. It broke them, it really did. It was the constant waiting. They used to say that they wished she’d turn up dead somewhere, just so they could know when to rebuild their lives.’
‘Did Sean Martin know Claire well? Were they friends?’
Geraldine stared at the ceiling as she thought back. ‘I don’t think so. She wasn’t one of Sean’s gang. Too sensible. I never saw her at his house. Go speak to her friend, Mandy Rogers. On the same street, the end house, by the canal.’
Jayne thanked her and made her exit, trying not to sniff too obviously at her clothes when she got back onto the street, aware that Geraldine would be watching her.
She cast one last glance across to the house where Sean and Trudy had spent so much time together. What secrets had it seen?