The Missing Marriage

He sat moving his bare feet now, in the carpet’s filthy pile, while the Inspector checked the cabinet in the bathroom for signs of occupancy other than Bobby Deane’s. There was nothing apart from a bottle of Old Spice, a cup of tea, a couple of buttons, and a penny whose copper had turned blue. There was a fraying yellow towel hanging from a nail in the wall, no sign of any toilet paper – and a bath full of water.

Laviolette let the bath out then crossed the hallway into the kitchen where there was a piece of board over the hob on the oven and a Calor Gaz camping stove on top of this. On the surface, lined up, were cartons of weed killer, a box of disposable gloves, and various tools. Somebody was using Bobby Deane’s kitchen to cut Methadrone, and it smelt bad in here.

In the lounge, Bobby Deane age twelve had been running with the other boys down the dunes onto the beach. Now he’d taken the edge off his excitement, he thought he should go and check on his pony so he climbed back up and slid down the other side into the field and there, standing by the hawthorn bush and pit pony, was a girl. She must have been collecting some sort of berries because her mouth, her hands and her dress were stained almost black with them, and she was holding a flower in one of her hands. A carnation? Bobby stopped half way down the dunes, watching her stroke the pony.

When Laviolette went back into the lounge, Bobby was staring at the wall opposite where the bungalow’s previous owner had left a barometer hanging – the needle was pointing to ‘Fair’. He was smiling while clenching and unclenching his feet in the carpet.

‘I’m going now, Mr Deane,’ the Inspector called out.

Bobby stared at him in shock. Who was he? How long had he been standing there for, and what was he doing in his house?

‘I’ll ask Rachel later when she gets in from work,’ he heard himself saying, automatically. ‘Her shift finishes soon. I’ll ask her – she’ll know about Bryan.’

Laviolette left Bobby Deane’s bungalow and stood in the front garden for a moment, thinking about Rachel Deane – who he remembered as a long, silent woman – and Rachel Deane’s suicide. Then he crossed the immaculate garden belonging to the bungalow next door. There was a stone donkey on the porch, pulling a stone cart planted with purple pansies; the purple jarring with the yellow the front door was painted. He knocked and a tidy, sour-looking woman answered – promptly enough to suggest that she’d been watching his approach from behind the nets.

He showed his ID, introduced himself and explained that he’d been next door at Mr Deane’s – aware that the woman already knew all this. Only the left hand side of her face and body were visible behind the door as her eyes, worried, searched the street behind Laviolette, torn between desperately wanting to know what the police were doing next door, and not wanting anybody to see the police on her own front step.

‘I’d ask you in, but I’ve just done the floors,’ the woman said, staring at the Inspector’s feet, which weren’t clean.

‘That’s fine, Mrs –’

The woman hesitated then said, thinly, ‘Harris.’

‘Mrs Harris.’ Laviolette smiled. ‘Mr Deane’s son, Bryan, sometimes visits him Saturdays. I was wondering whether you happened to notice whether Bryan Deane visited Mr Deane yesterday?’

‘What’s all this about?’

‘Just follow up to something – a family matter.’

‘A family matter involving the police?’ She waited, but the Inspector had nothing more to add to this, he just stood there smiling at her.

‘Did you see Bryan Deane here yesterday, Mrs Harris?’

‘He was here.’

‘What time?’

‘Around eleven.’ She sighed. ‘I noticed because it was the first time in ages I’d seen his car parked outside – and he was parked in my husband’s spot. My husband’s registered disabled – that’s why we’ve got the bay outside. I was about to go out there and ask him to move – when he drove off.’

‘So he didn’t go into the house?’

She shook her head. ‘He was parked there for, I don’t know – ten minutes or something – then he just drove off, like I said.’

‘He didn’t get out of the car at all?’

She shook her head again. ‘No. And like I said, it’s the first time he’s been round here in months – maybe even longer. Not like the other one.’

‘The other one?’ Laviolette said sharply.

‘There’s another one – tattoos – he’s been round a lot the past six months, and when he’s round, the shouting that goes on . . . it comes through the walls. I mean, we have the television up loud anyway because of Derek’s hearing aid, but when that lad’s round we can hear everything, and the language . . . in our own home. We’ve been on and on to the council, but they’re not doing anything about it.’ She paused, waiting for an echo of sympathy from the Inspector, but it never came.

The Inspector wasn’t following this. He was thinking hard about Jamie Deane. Mrs Harris had to be talking about Jamie Deane, who’d been in prison for twenty years – and who was released six months ago. The Methadrone production line in Bobby Deane’s kitchen had Jamie Deane all over it.

‘. . . and nobody deserves neighbours like that,’ Mrs Harris concluded.

Laviolette stared at her for a moment, his mind still elsewhere. ‘When you hear shouting through the wall – coming from next door – does it never occur to either you or your husband to knock and see if Mr Deane’s okay?’

Mrs Harris looked bewildered.

‘That would certainly be the neighbourly thing to do, don’t you think? It might save on your phone bill as well – to the council.’

‘Are you saying . . .’ she began.

But Laviolette cut her off. ‘What I’m saying, Mrs Harris, is this – has it ever occurred to you while you’ve been on the phone to the council to drop in the fact that you’ve got an elderly man living alone next door to you – with Alzheimer’s?’

Mrs Harris was too shocked by the Inspector’s anger to respond. All she could do was lay her hand against her collarbone and throat and watch him retreat across the immaculate garden, her eyes wide.

‘I’m a good Christian,’ she shouted hoarsely after him, afraid, when he stopped at the gate and turned.

‘Does Mr Deane get any other visitors?’

‘There’s a woman up on Parkview who brings in shopping for him – Mary Faust – but that’s only once a week,’ she said quickly, her eyes wet. ‘I’m a good Christian,’ she repeated, not wanting the Inspector to walk away with the wrong opinion of her, before shutting her yellow door on the world.

Mo’s daughter, Leanne, could have told the Inspector exactly when Jamie Deane visited his father in the bungalow on Armstrong Crescent because Jamie Deane’s irregular appearances in the store over the past six months were the only thing that made life inside the glass security booth worth living for her. She knew everything there was to know about him – even things he didn’t know about himself, like the way his eyes creased at the corner and got brighter when he laughed. Leanne knew everything.

Today though, Jamie caught her off guard.

She was busy reading a filthy text a friend had just sent her about Daniel Craig while talking to her daughter, Kayleigh, who was in the booth with her because it was Sunday, and who wanted to know what a zombie was – when she looked up and saw Jamie standing smiling through the security glass at her. The locket she’d been sucking on dropped out her mouth and fell wetly against her skin. That’s exactly who Jamie Deane reminded her of, she thought – Daniel Craig.

‘Haven’t seen you in a while,’ Leanne said, pulling her tracksuit top down nervously over her waist, breathing in and sliding off the chair.

‘Missed me?’

She pulled her hair back over her shoulders and laughed.

‘Put a pack of Bensons on the tab for me, will you.’

‘Your tab’s getting long.’

‘I’ll make it up to you.’

She was shaking as she got the cigarettes off the shelf and slid them through to his side, and thought she might cry when he stroked the back of her hand – briefly – with his forefinger.

Close to clinically obese, there was so much going on between chin and counter that all Jamie could do was stare vaguely but appreciatively at Leanne’s midway bulk – em blazoned with the word SWALLOWS spelt out in sequins (a gift from the friend who sent the Daniel Craig text) – before heading out of the shop and back into his van.

Two minutes later, he was back.

‘You can’t of smoked the whole pack.’

Jamie, distracted, said, ‘There’s a car parked outside dad’s – know anything about it?’

‘What car?’

Abandoning Kayleigh and leaving the booth door propped open with a fire extinguisher, Leanne followed Jamie out of the shop, but didn’t recognise the car parked outside Bobby Deane’s bungalow.

‘It might not be for your dad,’ she said at last, pleased with herself for thinking this.

Jamie grunted in concession to this theory as her eyes slid over the chain caught in the crease at the back of his neck and she breathed in the smell of him – take away food, dog, dope, anger, and a sweetness that vanished as soon as she tried to define it, and that wasn’t aftershave or the backlash of the dope.

‘Any strangers been in the shop this morning?’

‘No. Wait –’

‘Who?’ he demanded, irritable. ‘A woman who knew mum.’

‘Police,’ he hissed, turning round suddenly and nearly knocking her backwards she’d crept so close.

She lifted her eyes with difficulty from his neck and watched Inspector Laviolette leave Bobby Deane’s bungalow then ring on Mrs Harris’s door.

‘What the fuck’s he doing now?’ Jamie mumbled running, crouching into his van, which had Reeves Regeneration painted on the side.

He watched through the windscreen as Laviolette stood talking to Mrs Harris then Mrs Harris’s front door shut and the Inspector got back in his car.

Soon after this the burgundy Vauxhall accelerated past Jamie Deane’s parked van and Mo’s daughter, Leanne, standing with her arms folded on the pavement outside the shop. Behind her, Kayleigh was pressing a tongue dyed red with lolly against the glass.

Jamie wound the van’s window down. ‘Has he gone?’

‘Yeah – he’s gone.’

‘Get me a pasty.’

Leanne turned and walked automatically back into the shop, taking a pasty past its sell by date from the cold cabinet.

Jamie took it from her then put the van into gear without another word, without so much as even looking at her.

She stood on the pavement and watched him turn into Armstrong Crescent, her heart breaking.

*

‘What was he doing here?’ Jamie yelled at Bobby, his mouth full of pasty, staring at the Inspector’s card. He’d already been in the kitchen, and the stuff in there was untouched. ‘I can’t believe you let that bastard in here. Him!’ he cried out, in frustration.

He knew that losing patience didn’t work, but he hadn’t yet discovered what did so in the meantime he carried on yelling at Bobby Deane who’d just had time – following the Inspector’s departure – to walk into the hallway in search of a staircase that didn’t exist in order to go upstairs to a bedroom that also no longer existed.

Perplexed at being unable to find any stairs at all, Bobby had gone back into the lounge and sat down in the armchair again when he heard the front door opening. The next minute a man walked into the room who he briefly recognised as one of his sons – he just couldn’t remember which, and had no idea what his name was.

Then his son started yelling at him and then he stamped on his left foot, which was bare still, and the pain was such a shock to Bobby it blocked out the yelling for a while.

He became confused and as a result of this confusion, Jamie and the bungalow slipped entirely from his mind as he fell into a profound sense of unfamiliarity, which made him panic and want to leave the chair he was sitting in and go in search of the stairs again. If he could only find the stairs, he’d be able to find Rachel.

Rachel was upstairs waiting for him; she had something to give him – a flower – and the flower was beginning to wilt; it needed water.

He tried to get up, but was pushed back down.

After that, he kept his eyes on the man pacing in front of him.

There was a dense pain in his left foot that made him feel helpless – then he remembered, momentarily. ‘I told him Rachel would be back soon – that she’d know where Bryan was.’

Jamie stared at his father. ‘Bryan? It was nothing to do with me then?’

‘Who are you?’ Bobby said, managing to get to his feet at last, in spite of the pain, and shuffling to the window.

‘I’m your son, you stupid fuck – your son, Jamie.’ He let out a few brief, frustrated sobs. ‘And I did twenty years for you. Twenty years – and you’ve got no idea who the fuck I am.’ He put his hand over his face.

Bobby, who was looking out the window, said, ‘He’s gone.’

‘Who’s gone you daft fucker?’

‘Our Bryan was parked outside. I thought maybe he’d come to take me for a drive up the coast – I haven’t seen the sea in a while – but he never came in. Why didn’t he come in?’ Bobby appealed briefly to Jamie, who was now smoking one of the Bensons he’d taken from the shop. ‘Can I have one?’

‘No,’ Jamie yelled. Then, ‘I don’t fucking believe this. Twenty years and it’s still Bryan. Bryan.’

Bobby looked down at the windowsill where there was a spider’s web flecked with flies. ‘Are you looking for Bryan too?’

‘Why would I be looking for Bryan?’

‘He’s gone missing.’

‘Bryan?’

‘Bryan. The police are looking for him.’

Bobby turned back to the window, distracted by a woman next door who looked vaguely familiar, wheeling her bin out onto the pavement. The bin had the number eight painted on it, in white. Bobby wondered about the number and the woman, who was staring at him and who looked like she had a freshly pruned rose bush up her arse.

Laughing quietly to himself, he waved, but she didn’t wave back.

In fact, she almost ran back up the garden to her front door.

Still laughing, Bobby mumbled, ‘That’s it – piss off back to where you came from.’ Then, turning away from the window and seeing a man standing in the room behind him, smoking – who he was sure hadn’t been standing there earlier – he said again, ‘Can I have one?’

‘Give over.’ Jamie threw the cigarette into the fireplace’s empty grate.

Bobby followed its course through the air and into the grate, waiting.

When the man left the room, he called out, ‘Where are you going? I’m hungry.’

He followed him out into the hallway, desperately trying to think of a way to make him stay, suddenly terrified at the thought of being left alone. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said again.

Jamie paused at the front door, leaning back against the wall and accidentally turning the light switch on. He seemed preoccupied – bored, even.

Bobby was fiddling with the zip on his Texaco anorak, wondering where the door in front of him led to.

‘You already ate,’ Jamie said. ‘When?’

‘Just now. Can’t you smell it still?’

Looking around him, Bobby gave the air a quick sniff. ‘What did I eat?’

‘Sunday roast – the full works . . . beef . . . yorkshires . . . roast potatoes.’ Jamie belched. ‘Excuse me.’

‘My stomach feels tight.’

‘Cause you stuffed yourself silly, that’s why.’

‘But, I’m still hungry.’ Bobby was starting to panic again now. ‘Is it Sunday?’

Jamie pulled open the front door and Bobby saw the crescent of bungalows curving round the green. In the centre of the green there was a yellow bin, lying on its side. It looked like somebody had tried to set fire to it. Tilting his head slightly, which hurt, he could just make out the words Wansbeck Council.

‘The man who was here,’ he called out, suddenly, ‘he was Laviolette’s boy. That’s who he was,’ Bobby declared, his voice triumphant.

Jamie walked back towards him. ‘I don’t know what you’re sounding so pleased about. I don’t know how you can even bear to say that man’s name.’

‘I used to sing with Laviolette in the colliery choir – the Ashington Male Voice Choir. We went to Germany together with the choir.’

‘And what else, dad? What else did you do? You don’t even remember, do you?’

Jamie slammed him hard against the wall – the crown of his head catching the bottom of the electric meter.

Bobby, slumped against the wall, shook his head.

‘Mum. D’you remember her?’

Bobby fought hard to catch at something flitting round inside his head; he shut his eyes and pushed his hand out to take hold of the flower proffered. ‘Red carnations,’ he gasped. ‘The women were in the pit yard, waiting for us. They gave us flowers – carnations for heroes – to take the hurt out of having to go back after the Strike.’ He shook his head sadly, the clarity and sharpness of the women’s faces he’d summoned, already fading. ‘But there were no heroes by then – everything was broken.’

Jamie shook his head in disbelief. ‘Yeah, everything was broken.’

‘I looked for her,’ Bobby insisted suddenly, ‘among the women with flowers, but she wasn’t there. She’d already gone by then, hadn’t she?’ he appealed softly to Jamie, his eyes wet.

‘Oh, she’d gone a long time before that only you were too busy with the bloody Strike to see.’

‘She was tired – thirty-one pounds a week minus the fifteen the Government took off her saying we got paid by the Union, only we didn’t. What does that make?’ Before Jamie had time to work it out, Bobby said, ‘Sixteen pounds a week. Sixteen pounds a week makes you tired – it would make anyone tired.’

‘How the fuck d’you remember that – sixteen pounds a week – and not remember Roger Laviolette?’

‘Roger Laviolette,’ Bobby echoed happily. ‘I used to sing with –’

‘Yes, you used to sing with him,’ Jamie yelled into his face, holding onto him by his anorak, which smelt terrible up close, ‘and how is it that you remember the singing, but you don’t remember the killing?’

‘I never killed anyone,’ Bobby said, frightened.

‘Yes you did. You killed Roger Laviolette because of mum and him.’

‘Wait – where are you going?’

But Jamie was no longer there.

There was washing hanging across the balconies of the flats above the shops and Bobby stared for a moment at a large bedspread with a picture of a leopard on it, before walking, barefoot, out the front door and down the overgrown garden path to the gate as a white van turned the corner out of Armstrong Crescent.

He was waiting for somebody, he was sure, but he was only sure for a few moments. Then he forgot who it was he thought he was waiting for.

Then he forgot he’d even been waiting, and no longer knew what he was doing standing barefoot at the end of the path, leaning against the gate – so he let himself out and crossed the street onto the green opposite, still curious about the yellow bin.

After contemplating it for a while, he looked about him trying to work out not so much where he was going, but where he’d come from. Neither the bungalows in front of him nor the block of flats behind signified anything much. He only knew that his feet were cold and that the left foot hurt. Looking down, he saw that his feet were bare and that the one on the left was badly bruised.

The front door to one of the bungalows opposite was open and there was a woman staring at him from the windows of the bungalow next door to that.

If he just sat down in the grass and waited, it would probably be okay. What would come to pass would come to pass in a world that was as tired of him as he was of it.

A flock of seagulls flew overhead then circling the upturned bin and its contents, interested. They only came inland when the weather was bad out to sea.

Bobby tilted his head back and looked up at the sky, the fast moving clouds disorientating him further.

Was it today he’d been down to the beach and onto the dunes with the pit ponies?

Was it today he’d seen the small girl in the dress? It couldn’t have been – this was no weather for dresses like that, and the dress had been stained with some kind of fruit, but it couldn’t be blackberries because it was too early in the year for blackberries.

He looked around to check the trees and see whether they had leaves or not, but there were no trees on any of the horizons. There was no colour in the gardens opposite either – the only thing that stuck out was the yellow door in the bungalow where the woman’s face was staring at him still.

Then it started to rain.

He pulled his collar up and carried on sitting there, unsure what else to do or where to go until a woman came walking through the rain. She was wearing a long waterproof coat, and a headscarf – and she had a blue carrier bag in her hand.

It took him a while to realise that she was walking towards him; walking fast, her shoes slipping on the wet grass.

‘Bobby!’ she gasped. ‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ She turned round on the spot, taking in the flats and the back of the shops and the bungalows as he’d done earlier, only she was more stunned. ‘How long have you been out here for? Where are your shoes? You’ve got a cut on your head – there’s blood.’

She was on the verge of tears as she pulled him to his feet and led him towards the bungalow with its front door open still.

‘I don’t want to go in there,’ he said, pulling his arms away from her.

‘Get inside out of this rain, Bobby.’ She pushed him forcibly indoors and he stood in the hallway listening to the sounds of water running, and soon there was steam coming out of the room at the end of the hallway.

Chapter 6

The sky was clearing by the time Anna turned back down Quay Road towards the Quayside, and the sun now making its way through the disappearing clouds, was harsh. She was driving straight into it and so didn’t see Martha Deane sitting on the bench opposite the Ridley Arms until she pulled up right beside her.

Martha had her bike with her.

Laviolette had been right – here was Martha paying her a visit and sooner even than he’d probably anticipated.

‘How long have you been here for?’ Anna asked as she got out of the car, squinting because of the light coming off the water.

‘I don’t know,’ Martha mumbled, unsure of her tone. ‘I can’t stand it at home any longer, and . . . you don’t mind?’

Anna sat down on the bench beside her, sighing and tilting her face instinctively towards the April sun.

‘I don’t believe her,’ Martha said suddenly.

‘Don’t believe who?’

‘Mum. I don’t believe her about anything. Do you?’

Ignoring this, Anna said, ‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘I heard dad and Nan talking yesterday morning. Dad said you should have phoned him about a short term let – that he’d have done you a deal.’ She paused. ‘Nan said she told you to phone him.’

‘She probably did. I don’t know – I’ve had so much on my mind.’

This was a lie. She had phoned Tyneside Properties before coming north and asked to speak to Bryan, but found herself unable to – so hung up.

‘Nan says your granddad’s dying.’

‘He is.’

‘That’s sad.’ Martha threw something into the sea. ‘I wanted to go out with them this morning on the search – one of the boats, helicopters, anything . . . I just want to be out there doing something. It doesn’t feel like anybody’s doing anything.’ Her voice was loud – tearful – and the next minute she had her head on Anna’s shoulder and her arms round her neck, pulling herself to her.

Anna put her hand stiffly on Martha’s hair, and tried not to tense up. She could feel Martha’s tears running over her collarbone and beneath her running vest.

When Martha stopped crying, she let her arms drop but kept her head resting on Anna’s shoulder, staring out to sea, and after a while said, ‘I came home late once from a hockey match, and dad’s car was parked on the drive. It wasn’t until I triggered the security light that I saw he was in the car still, just sitting in the car on the drive, in the dark.’ She paused, thinking about whether she wanted to say what she was going to say next. ‘He waved at me and acted like he’d just got home, but I knew he’d been there a long time.’ She twisted her head on Anna’s shoulder, looking up at her. ‘He just looked so unhappy, and you know what I keep thinking? I keep thinking – what if he just couldn’t cope any more with all the rows they’ve been having?’