The Seagull Read online

  At last the chaplain called time on the Q&A. An orderly carried in more tea and there was an undignified scramble for the chocolate biscuits. She was about to make an excuse when John Brace appeared in front of her, blocking her way. His legs might not be much use, but he was still a big man. Broad shoulders and thick neck. Still a bully. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Because she’d never appeared in court. She’d pointed her colleagues in the right direction, helped them build their case, but the prosecutors had decided she’d be toxic. Hector might have been dead by the time Brace was charged, but her father’s involvement with the detective had gone back years.

  Brace called over to the chaplain, ‘Any chance we could use your office, Father? The inspector and I would like to chew over old times.’

  ‘Sure.’ A pause. ‘I suppose you two must be old friends.’

  ‘Not quite, Father.’ This was Brace. Oily, confident. That confidence had persuaded his superiors that they could trust him. ‘I knew the inspector’s father, though. I have some information, and I’m sure she’d like to hear it.’

  That had Vera hooked, as Brace had known it would. Even as a child, curiosity had been her undoing. And she still had an unhealthy interest in Hector and all his misdemeanours. Brace wheeled his chair ahead of her into the cramped office, not even looking back to check whether she was following.

  She cleared a pile of hymn books and leaned against the desk, looking down at him. Outside, the men were waiting for an officer to take them back to their wing. The teacher with the short hair was there too, chatting to a couple of the men. There was a background noise of soft voices through the half-open office door. Only the chaplain was showing any interest in the two of them, and he was too far away to hear their conversation.

  ‘What can you give me, John?’

  He tilted his face to look up at her. His teeth were yellow. ‘I’ve got MS. Did you hear?’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s for your lawyers to use the illness, to get you out of here. Nothing I can do.’

  He didn’t answer for a while. It was as if he didn’t think her response worth considering. ‘Did you ever wonder what happened to Robbie Marshall?’

  Another of the Gang of Four. A man who’d worked in the Swan Hunter shipyard on the Tyne. A middle manager, he’d been in charge of sourcing components. That was like putting a bairn in charge of the sweetie shop, and it had made him popular. Local firms slipped him bribes and he had access to tools and material that he could sell on. He could find lads to do anything for a few quid. So rumour had it. ‘I assumed he made himself scarce when you were charged,’ Vera said.

  ‘Nah, he went missing years before that.’ John Brace smiled. ‘The word was somebody made him scarce.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m a con now, Vera. Cons don’t give away information for free.’

  ‘I’ve told you – there’s nothing I can do to get you released early.’

  ‘I don’t want anything for myself, Inspector.’ The emphasis on the title was pure, bitter sarcasm. ‘But I have a daughter. Patricia Keane. Patty.’ His voice softened. ‘She married a maniac against my advice and he’s run away. Left her with three kids and some mental-health problems. I don’t want her ending up in a place like this, and the kids in care. Specially not the kids in care. You’re a stubborn bitch, Vera. If anyone can get her the help she needs, it’d be you.’

  ‘And what do I get in return?’

  ‘I tell you where the body’s buried.’

  ‘Robbie Marshall’s dead?’ Vera hadn’t realized she’d raised her voice, but the chaplain looked over at them. He frowned. Maybe he had her down as the bully, yelling at a poor, helpless cripple.

  Brace slowly inclined his head.

  ‘Did you have anything to do with that, John?’ She spoke quietly, leaning forward so she was almost touching him. ‘You do know that if I find out you were involved, there’s no deal.’

  ‘Are you calling me a killer, Vera?’ His voice was mocking. ‘And me an officer of the law.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put much past you,’ she said.

  ‘It was nothing to do with me. But I used to hear things, you know. I’m planning to talk to Patty at the weekend. If she tells me you’ve been to see her, I’ll point you in the right direction. You can take all the glory, Vera. My friends on the job tell me you still like to do that. You’re still a one-woman band.’

  Chapter Three

  Vera forgot about the ice cream until she was nearly back in Kimmerston and then it only caused a niggle of regret for a treat missed. Her mind was elsewhere. There were roadworks on the bypass again and by the time she arrived at the police station it was knocking-off time. When she met Joe Ashworth on the stairs, his car keys were already in his hand. Sometimes these days she thought he was more taxi driver than detective. There was always pressure to get home, to drive his kids to music lessons or football. She missed the after-work beers and the chat. It had been easier when his children were babies; he might be a new man, but even Sal had realized he couldn’t breast-feed.

  ‘Can’t they just play out?’ she’d asked once. ‘Like we did.’ Though there hadn’t been many other children near the house in the hills where she’d lived. Her play had mostly been solitary and, when she’d been old enough, she’d been dragged along on Hector’s adventures, acting as lookout or to be pushed up trees to get eggs for his collection, when he knew the branches wouldn’t hold his weight.

  Joe had looked at her as if she was mad. ‘You can’t just let kids wander these days. The world’s changed. It’s not safe.’

  Vera thought the executive estate where he lived with his family was probably the safest, and most boring, place in the world. And anyway, she’d been born at about the time of the Moors Murders, and that hadn’t caused a moral panic about children playing out. But what did she know about being a parent?

  Now Joe paused, his feet on different steps, his body language making it clear he didn’t have time for a long conversation, although he knew her well enough to tell she was fired up about something. ‘I thought you were going straight home.’

  ‘Aye well, something’s come up.’

  There was a moment of hesitation. She could sense his loyalty to the two women in his life pulling in different directions. ‘If it’s important, I could see if Sal can collect Jess from Youth Orchestra.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to put her out, pet. It’s only a sniff of a possibility at the moment. And if Holly’s still around, she can make a start.’

  That made up his mind. ‘Nah, I’ll just give Sal a ring. It’s not bedtime for the little ones yet. She can just stick them in the car to pick up Jess. She’ll understand.’

  Vera doubted that, but allowed herself a little triumphant smile as she carried on up the steps to let him make the call in private, then thought how childish she was being. They weren’t in the playground, fighting over the most popular kid in the school.

  Charlie was still at his desk too, and that’s where they gathered, the core of her team: Holly Clarke, bright, ambitious but with the social skills of a computer geek, as much of a loner as Vera herself. Vera had come to appreciate her more recently and thought they were getting along better. Charlie, who was from the same generation as Vera herself, rumpled and lonely but given a new lease of life by the return home of his daughter. And Joe, her favourite. Her boy.

  ‘As you all know, the boss sent me out to Warkworth today.’ They all called him the boss, the word laden with irony. Some days Vera even forgot his name and had a struggle to remember it when she was sending him an email. ‘I was speaking to men on the EDW.’ She looked at them and they nodded. They’d obviously kept up with the new acronyms. ‘In the audience was one John Brace.’ A brief pause. ‘Ex-Superintendent Brace.’ Nobody interrupted but she knew she’d sparked their interest with this. Brace had been convicted eight years previously for offences carried out over the preceding twenty years. Only Charlie had worked w
ith him, but the others knew all about the case. It had scarred the reputation of the police service in the North-East and everyone had been left dealing with the consequences. All the same, she thought she should spell out the details and make it clear what her role in the conviction had been. Sometimes there were more myths than facts, and some officers saw Brace as a hero who’d broken a few petty rules but had caught a lot of villains along the way.

  ‘Brace was a friend of my father’s. They shared the same passions, the same obsessions.’ She was on her feet now, in lecture mode, riding her hobby horse big-style. ‘There’s an assumption that there’s no crime in the countryside. No real crime. Rustling a few sheep. Using red diesel on the roads. Not like major theft or murder. But my father and three of his mates managed to make a reasonable living out of apparently gentle pursuits. They traded in rare birds’ eggs and sold raptors from the wild, for considerable sums. Apparently they love to fly British falcons in the Middle East. My father did a bit of taxidermy too. None of it legal. I knew about all that when I was growing up, but when I left home to join the force as a cadet at sixteen, I lost touch. Hector was already drinking too much and had lost power within the group. Later, it seemed the Gang of Four diversified, and by then he wasn’t any sort of leader.’ They kept him on as a sort of pet. And because he was almost the real thing. Younger son of the landed gentry. Black sheep, but with the bloodline that counted. They were always into bloodline, whether it was peregrines, men or dogs.

  ‘The Gang of Four?’ This was Holly. She was taking notes on some sort of electronic device on her knee.

  ‘That was what they called themselves. Pathetic, really.’ Vera had found the secrecy intimidating when she’d been young. Now Hector was dead and John Brace was in a wheelchair. And Robbie Marshall might be dead too.

  ‘How did they diversify?’ Joe wanted to keep the conversation on-track. Maybe Sal hadn’t been so keen on taking on the role of taxi driver and he’d promised not to be too late home.

  ‘They ran a recruitment service. Muscle for hire. If you wanted to break up a demo of hunt saboteurs, or warn off locals who didn’t like the idea of gamekeepers poisoning hen harriers. Or if you wanted to swell the ranks of a march against the ban on fox-hunting. They picked up lads from the council estates in Newcastle or out towards the coast where the pits were already closing. Fit young lads, who needed ready cash and liked the idea of a scrap. All done at a distance. No way of connecting the muscle to the Gang. Not until the muscle started talking.’

  ‘Sweet.’ Holly almost sounded as if she admired the business model.

  Vera looked at her sharply. ‘Sweet? Not so sweet for the gamekeeper’s wife who came home to find her man dying, because his spleen had burst when two thugs had beaten him up.’

  ‘I thought you said the muscle was to support the keepers when they were shooting…’ Holly consulted her notes, ‘… harriers.’

  ‘Ah, pet, not all gamekeepers are on the side of the devil. Glen Fenwick was a lovely man. Gentle. And he didn’t like the way things were moving, so he decided to come to us.’ Vera paused, felt the old stab of guilt when she remembered the man’s widow spitting accusations into her face, when Vera had approached her after the funeral to offer condolences. ‘He decided to come to me.’ Another pause. ‘And even though the bastards killed him, he’d given me enough information to pass on that they could start an investigation into Brace’s involvement. I should have been the one to blow the whistle. When I was younger. I should have been more aware of what was going on – and braver.’

  She paused. The others knew better than to speak. ‘By then I’d moved back in with my father. He’d had a stroke, and that and the booze triggered dementia right at the end. There was enough info in the house for the forensic accountants to track down a link to John Brace. He’d moved on, taken retirement as soon as it was possible and was still living in comfort in a posh house in Ponteland. It must have come as quite a shock when the police officers knocked at his door.’ Vera paused for a moment to enjoy the thought of that. She hadn’t been there, of course. Too close. They all said she was too close. Hector was still alive then. Just. But she’d liked to picture Brace’s face.

  ‘So Brace got put away.’ Joe was getting impatient again. ‘The lads he’d hired to scare Glen Fenwick got scared themselves when the gamekeeper died, and they confirmed what the gamekeeper had on Brace. There was a lengthy investigation and trial, but in 2009 he got done for planning the attack and for perverting the course of justice. He’d been on the take throughout his career, and that unravelled when the forensic accountants got started on him. So I don’t understand what’s new.’

  ‘Like I said, they called themselves “The Gang of Four”,’ Vera said. ‘There was Hector, Brace, someone I never met that they called “The Prof.”, and Robbie Marshall. Robbie was the one they sent to make the deals with the lads on the estates. He’d grown up in Wallsend and worked his way up to middle management in Swan Hunter’s yard. He could mix with the scallies in a way that Brace never could. But he disappeared. I’d thought he’d gone AWOL around the time of Brace’s arrest, but in fact it happened before that. He was reported missing in ’95. I checked on the way back. He lived with his mam, in the house where he’d grown up. All his spare cash seemed to go on foreign trips. He was the real obsessive about collecting birds’ eggs and went all over the world to find something new.’ She could have continued talking about Robbie, but again she could sense Joe getting restive and decided that could wait. ‘Today John Brace told me that Robbie Marshall is dead.’ Vera looked around at the group. ‘He said he’d tell me where I could find the body.’

  ‘So where is it?’ Charlie was sceptical. She didn’t blame him. He hadn’t been there in the chaplain’s office.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Well, of course he wants something in return. He wants me to go and see his daughter and her three kids, give her a bit of support. Apparently she’s going through a bad time.’

  She heard a stifled giggle and looked around the group to see who’d made the noise. They stared back innocently.

  ‘You don’t think I can do that? Offer a bit of support to a single mam?’

  No reply.

  ‘He’s given me her mobile number but no address, so those of you who can spare the time this evening…’ Vera shot a look at Joe Ashworth – he might be her boy, but sometimes he needed reminding who was boss, ‘… can make a start on finding out all we can about her. Before I wade in with my size-seven wellies, playing at Mother Teresa. Brace is phoning her this weekend and he’ll be asking her then if I’ve been able to help. Her name’s Patricia Keane, also known as Patty. Apparently she was married to a chap Brace called a maniac. No name for him, but it shouldn’t be hard for detectives of your calibre to put together a file for him.’ Vera paused again, this time to catch her breath. ‘Hol – Keane and her man are for you.’

  Holly nodded. She moved away from the group to her own desk and was hitting the computer keys before Vera had started talking again. The thing about Holly was that she always felt the need to prove herself. Vera had felt the same way as a young officer, but she’d been the only woman in the team, overweight and the butt of all their jokes. Holly was a graduate entrant, smart in every sense of the word. Sharp as a tack, and turned out for work like a PA for some global media company. She had two parents who seemed to care about her. She hadn’t been dragged up by Hector Stanhope. Vera couldn’t see how things could be tough for her.

  She continued her instructions. ‘Charlie, you give me all you can about Robbie Marshall.’ She stopped short as an idea came to her. ‘Did you ever meet him?’ Charlie was a plodder, not much given to original thinking, but he had the memory of an elephant. He didn’t answer immediately and she watched him plough through years of policing in his head, fancied she saw the images just as he saw them. The everyday events of a community police officer: drinks with informants in stinking pubs, pulling apart pissed newlyweds when the wedding breakfast turned i
nto a brawl, endless chats with sullen tearaways in soulless interview rooms.

  ‘He was never arrested,’ Charlie said, ‘but I came across him a couple of times in my early days. I was a beat officer in Wallsend. He was a young man then too, working in the shipyard. I caught him with stuff he shouldn’t have had. Obviously nicked from work. Though, to look at him, you’d think butter wouldn’t melt; he was always smartly dressed. Polite. The company never pressed charges.’

  ‘Why not?’ This was from Holly, looking up from her computer. It seemed she could multi-task, along with all her other virtues. It was supposed to be a feminine skill but Vera wasn’t sure she’d ever mastered it.

  ‘He had a good mate who was big in the union,’ Charlie said. ‘The company decided it was better to put up with occasional losses than have a total walkout.’

  ‘As I remember, he was always one for finding mates who could look out for him. Like our old friend Superintendent Brace. A useful skill to have.’ Vera felt fitter than she had for months. It had been a quiet summer and they’d all been treading water. She’d been overtaken by a terrible lethargy and had started feeling her age. Maybe I just need to feel useful. Perhaps that’s what this is about.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Joe was on his feet now. He still had on the coat that he’d been wearing when she’d met him on the stairs.

  ‘I thought you had to be away.’

  ‘I can come in early in the morning.’ So Sal had only given him a temporary reprieve tonight.

  Vera suddenly felt sorry for him. It must be hard to think your life wasn’t your own. ‘You dig away at our John Brace. He claims Marshall’s death was nothing to do with him, and I don’t think he cares so much about his daughter that he’d serve a full life-sentence for her, so I believe him. He’s up for parole in less than a year. But he must know who did kill him, so let’s go back through all the files, known associates, friends, rellies, bits on the side.’