The Missing Marriage (14 page)

‘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?

Anna heard the post through the letterbox, and went slowly downstairs – stopping suddenly halfway. There, on the doormat at the bottom of the stairs near the front door, was Bryan in a red T-shirt, smiling up at her from the front page of
The Journal
, which Mary had delivered. Running down the last few steps, she grabbed hold of the paper.

It was the same photograph as the one she had in her kitchen at the Ridley Arms – the same restaurant; same checked tablecloth; same white-capped sea. The only thing that was different was Bryan, who was smiling. She pictured Laura going through the albums of Deane family life, trying to decide which pictures – pictures taken in innocence – to give the police, who would have asked for photographs of Bryan smiling because Bryan was the victim rather than perpetrator of a crime. Photographs published of perpetrators never showed them smiling.

Over the past few days Anna's world had become so small that now there were only four people in it: herself, Mary, Erwin and – sporadically – Susan the nurse. Erwin had barely been conscious at any point during the past forty-eight hours and between them, Mary and Anna had been keeping a constant bedside vigil, sleeping in alternate two hour shifts in Anna's childhood bedroom.

They moved in a silent circle through the house – from Erwin's room, down to the kitchenette where they ate, back up to the bathroom where they washed then into Anna's room where they slept. Only Anna found it hard to sleep – especially during the daytime – and so stood looking out the window with a mixture of outrage and envy at the children in the garden of the Deanes' old house, number fifteen, on the trampoline sucking ice pops mid-air as they bounced in their school uniforms.

She watched the man next door at number twenty-one haul grow bags across his patio and plant them up with tomatoes and was as amazed at this as she was by the children on their trampoline. She was amazed that these things could be accomplished when death was so close to them. Hadn't they realised that a man was dying in pain in an upstairs bedroom close by?

It seemed extraordinary to her that buses still passed the windows of number nineteen Parkview with passengers; that there were people who could simply get on a bus and go wherever it was they needed to go because they weren't living with death.

It felt as if she and Mary would just continue to exist like this forever more, moving in the same silent circle through the rooms inside number nineteen Parkview, no longer able to tell the difference between grief and exhaustion.

She went into the kitchenette to pour herself a cup of tea, and that's what she was doing when the front doorbell rang. She jerked the teapot with shock at the sudden sound – scalding herself – and went to answer it, her left hand throbbing.

It was Martha Deane.

‘Who's that?' Mary called out from the top landing.

The sound of the doorbell must have woken her up and she made her way wearily downstairs, stopping when she saw Martha.

‘It's alright, Nan – you go back to bed.'

Mary hesitated before disappearing back upstairs.

Anna passed her hand over her brow, exhausted, before turning back to Martha.

‘I'm staying at Nan's – she said you were here. What happened to your hand?'

‘I burnt it – just now, on the kettle. Look, I meant to phone you – after the appeal – but my grandfather's much worse, and I'm not really sleeping.' She rested her head against the front door. ‘I don't know what's going on at the moment – I'm not really myself.'

Martha bit on her lip, anxious, then turned away without saying anything – walking off down the garden path.

‘Martha!' Anna called out after her. ‘Martha – wait.' She caught up with her at the gate.

‘It's okay,' Martha mumbled, pulling her arm slowly out of Anna's grasp.

Anna wasn't even aware she'd grabbed hold of her. ‘Has something happened?'

‘It's seeing his picture everywhere. I can't stand all those people – strangers – seeing him.'

‘You know what?' Anna said, ‘I could do with some air – d'you feel like a walk? We could go down onto the estuary if the tide's out.'

‘Okay.' Martha sounded pleased.

So this was where she was, Laviolette thought as he parked his car outside number seventeen Parkview behind Anna's yellow Capri. He got out and looked up at the house as he made his way towards the Hamiltons' front garden where there was a sign sellotaped to the gate, which said
No takeaway leaflets or junk mail please
. He rang on the doorbell and waited.

It was Don who answered, in trainers and a tracksuit – and not because he'd been running – a roll up cigarette in the corner of a mouth that still held the lines of its youthful sensuality.

‘Alright Inspector?' Don said, worried.

‘I tried phoning –'

‘I never hear it when Doreen's got the TV on.'

‘Nothing to worry about.' Laviolette paused, but Don's face didn't relax. ‘I was just in the area and . . . mind if I pop in for a few minutes?'

Don hesitated then nodded. ‘Sure, sure – come in,' he said, taking the cigarette out of his mouth, suddenly eager to show the Inspector some belated hospitality.

Laviolette followed him through to the kitchenette at the back of the house, which smelt heavily of cigarette smoke. He imagined that this bothered Laura Deane – especially when Martha came home smelling of it after having spent the weekend at her grandparents.

‘Afternoon Doreen,' he called into the lounge as they passed.

Doreen was sitting only inches away from Jeremy Kyle's face on the TV screen, which had some sort of magnifying attachment over it.

‘She won't hear you,' Don said, putting the kettle on. ‘Tea?'

Laviolette sat down at a small drop-leaf table identical to the Fausts' next door at number nineteen – both tables had been purchased in the Co-Op's furniture department during the sixties. There was an ashtray in the middle full of stubs.

Don made tea and the two men sat drinking it, comfortable in their mutual silence – in a way that reminded Laviolette of how comfortable his own father used to be with silence; a trait he'd inherited and that he used to great effect during interrogations.

‘I just wanted to check in with you – following the appeal,' he said after a while.

‘We didn't watch it.'

‘I can understand that.'

Don looked at him. ‘Doreen didn't feel like going out today, but we're going for a drive tomorrow – maybe up Rothbury way,' he added, distant. ‘Laura wanted to go into work – I wasn't sure it was a good idea, having to meet all them people . . . customers and what not.'

‘Routine . . . habit . . . they're stronger allies than we give them credit for.'

‘Allies,' Don repeated, unconvinced. ‘To tell you the truth, I think the whole appeal thing was worse for her than Bryan's actual disappearance. D'you mind?' He gestured towards his tobacco tin. ‘Want one?'

‘I'm fine.' Laviolette watched Don roll himself another cigarette – with great delicacy – using a small red roller, and holding it between his thumb and forefinger in the way men used to smoke.

‘Nobody's contacted you?' Laviolette asked. ‘Since the appeal?'

‘Like who?'

Laviolette picked up his cup and started drinking his tea again. ‘Like Bryan.'

Don laughed then, unsure why he was laughing, stopped. ‘You're serious,' he said, watching the Inspector.

‘Has Bryan tried to contact either yourself or Doreen, in confidence, since his disappearance? It can happen in families.'

Don continued to watch him in disbelief. ‘Bryan's dead.'

‘We don't know that.'

‘He disappeared ten days ago. He went out to sea in his kayak, and he never came back. He's drowned – dead.'

‘We've got no evidence of that.'

‘And you've got no evidence otherwise either. Now you listen to me. It's a tragedy – a great big fucking tragedy – and we need to be left in peace to grieve. This is my son-in-law we're talking about – my daughter's husband – grand-daughter's father – family. My family. We need to get over this. Appeal –' Don spat.

‘You're angry.'

‘Yeah,' Don agreed, ‘yeah, I am. Bryan's dead.'

‘Maybe,' Laviolette conceded.

‘Definitely,' Don said, finishing his cigarette.

The sound of wailing came from the TV in the other room.

‘There are some things we need to investigate further – unfortunately.'

‘What's there to investigate for Christ's sake?'

‘Financial strain.'

‘Meaning what?'

‘We need to establish –'

‘What?'

‘Whether Bryan's disappearance –'

‘Death –'

‘Was connected to this.'

‘In what way?'

‘In an intentional way.' Laviolette stopped and looked across the table at Don. Don was a physical man, and right now he was just about holding onto the threads of the conversation. Laviolette knew that if he pushed him much further he'd explode.

Don stared at him. ‘You mean – suicide?'

Laviolette nodded as Don drew his right hand down into his lap, leaving his other hand curled lifelessly on the kitchen table.

The next minute he started to sob loudly.

‘God,' he mumbled, helpless, his shoulders shaking.

‘I'm sorry,' Laviolette said.

‘How can you think that?'

‘I have to think everything.'

‘They're good people, Laura and Bryan. They lead good lives . . . they've worked hard for what they've got, and you come round here, and –'

‘I know that.'

Don looked up suddenly, passing his arm harshly across his face. ‘Alright, love?' he said to Doreen, who was standing in the doorway to the kitchenette staring at them both.

‘What's happened?'

‘Nothing's happened – it's fine. Go back to your programme.'

‘My programme's finished,' she said, watching Don get to his feet and go over to the window, turning his back to them as he carried on sniffing and wiping at his face. ‘Don?'

Laviolette started to make his way to the front door, but Don caught up with him, pulling hard on his arm. ‘Don't you dare talk to Laura about this. You let her be. You let her be, d'you hear me?'

‘I'll be in contact, Don.'

‘Know who you remind me of – your bloody father, that's who.'

It was after this that Laviolette – gloomy, preoccupied – saw Anna and Martha.

Anna and Martha walked down Parkview towards Longstone Drive, glancing at number fifteen where Bryan used to live as they passed.

There was a new front door with frosted glass panels, and – apart from an exhaust pipe under the privet hedge – the front garden had been filled with gravel and looked tidy.

‘Dad never talks about his family – I ask him about stuff sometimes but he won't talk about the past.'

A woman in slippers and a long T-shirt with Daffy Duck on it came out of the side passage door and put some cartons in the recycling bin, squinting down the path at them.

‘Did you ever know my uncle, Jamie Deane?' Martha asked suddenly. ‘I didn't even know I had an uncle until he phoned Easter Sunday and I took the call. Nobody told me.' She paused. ‘He sounded just like dad.'

They carried on walking – past the large, detached redbrick house on the corner of Parkview and Longstone Drive, built by the council as a children's home.

‘What did he want?'

‘I don't know – he thought he was speaking to mum. He's only been out of prison six months.'

Anna saw Laura, at the age of thirteen, sitting sullen and scared at the top of the stairs in the Deanes' house.

‘Did you tell her he'd phoned?'

Martha nodded. ‘She didn't really say anything. She just looked scared. Why didn't anybody tell me dad had a brother?'

‘He killed a man, Martha – that's a difficult thing for a family to talk about.'

They'd reached the stile at the end of Longstone Drive, which they crossed, jumping down onto the footpath that led to the estuary.

The footpath ran down the side of a field of oil seed rape, on the brink of yellow. The slip road to the new bypass rose up across the end of the field and the traffic on it was loud.

‘You should be careful, Martha,' Anna called out, above the sound of distant traffic.

Martha laughed and Anna followed her down the path.

‘Did you tell Inspector Laviolette about Jamie phoning?'

Martha nodded, running her hands through the tall grasses lining the path, beyond which there were wild roses, hawthorn and brambles. Every now and then different coloured butterflies rose to shoulder level from under Martha's hands, before dropping back into the grass again.

‘What did he say?'

‘Nothing much.'

They got to the road bridge – where the photograph of Bettina that Erwin gave her was taken. There was sand underfoot now as the path followed the River Wansbeck's mouth so Anna slipped off her shoes.

‘This was my walk – when I lived at Parkview. You get to the sea quickly – away from all the houses and stuff.'

‘Did you come here with mum?'

‘No – this was my walk when I was at the Grammar School. Your mum and I weren't really speaking by then.'

They rounded the lip of beach at the river's mouth and were suddenly able to see the coastline stretching south – down to the windmills on the north harbour wall at Blyth where the Ridley Arms was. They walked to the water's edge leaving footprints in the wet sand, the wind picking up their hair, pulling it back off their faces.

‘That whole summer, we made plans – your mum and me. We weren't going to let things change between us just because we were going to different schools. It was a summer of oaths and promises that didn't make any difference in the end. My world changed in a way I'd never anticipated, and for the first time in my life, I was unhappy.' Anna paused. ‘Unhappiness does things to you; it has a deeper more lasting effect on a person than happiness. I went into myself. I wasn't really there for your mum, and I think she could have done with me being there.'