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Back Harbour Street Save as PDF
Chapters (47)
  1. Contents
  2. Chapter One
  3. Chapter Two
  4. Chapter Three
  5. Chapter Four
  6. Chapter Five
  7. Chapter Six
  8. Chapter Seven
  9. Chapter Eight
  10. Chapter Nine
  11. Chapter Ten
  12. Chapter Eleven
  13. Chapter Twelve
  14. Chapter Thirteen
  15. Chapter Fourteen
  16. Chapter Fifteen
  17. Chapter Sixteen
  18. Chapter Seventeen
  19. Chapter Eighteen
  20. Chapter Nineteen
  21. Chapter Twenty
  22. Chapter Twenty-One
  23. Chapter Twenty-Two
  24. Chapter Twenty-Three
  25. Chapter Twenty-Four
  26. Chapter Twenty-Five
  27. Chapter Twenty-Six
  28. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  29. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  30. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  31. Chapter Thirty
  32. Chapter Thirty-One
  33. Chapter Thirty-Two
  34. Chapter Thirty-Three
  35. Chapter Thirty-Four
  36. Chapter Thirty-Five
  37. Chapter Thirty-Six
  38. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  39. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  40. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  41. Chapter Forty
  42. Chapter Forty-One
  43. Chapter Forty-Two
  44. Chapter Forty-Three
  45. Chapter Forty-Four
  46. Chapter Forty-Five
  47. About the Author

Malcolm gave a little shrug to show that he no longer cared.

‘Then you fetched your dad and he organized things for you. Dealt with the mess. Because that’s what parents do.’

‘He wrapped the body in a bit of tarpaulin and hid it in a rusting old trawler we had in the yard.’ Malcolm was obviously still proud of his father, and still a little bit in his shadow. ‘Then he set fire to the office. The next day, when the cop and the fire officer turned up, they were only interested in the office. Nobody looked in an old boat waiting to be cut up for scrap.’

Vera nodded. ‘And later you were able to bury the body, and you concreted over the grave and built the shed over it. Every day you sat there, you must have remembered Ricky Butt.’

Malcolm thought about that for a minute and then he shook his head. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘That night felt like a dream. I couldn’t believe what had happened.’

‘Did you tell Margaret that you’d killed the boy?’

This time the denial was immediate. ‘No. I told her we’d frightened him off.’

‘But she guessed?’ Vera pushed the question.

Malcolm nodded. ‘You couldn’t get much past Margaret. I told her it wasn’t her fault, but she felt responsible, blamed herself.’

Of course she did, Joe thought. And it was guilt that had made Margaret Krukowski who she was. It wasn’t the prostitution that had turned her to the church and to helping other women. She hadn’t been ashamed of her profession, of the service she provided. It was the knowledge that she’d led to a man being killed.

Vera was moving on, jumping ahead by forty years. ‘Ryan Dewar must have reminded you of Ricky Butt,’ she said.

Malcolm Kerr didn’t seem to hear for a while. It took him longer to move into the present. He was still remembering a hot summer’s night. He lifted his head to look at Vera and she repeated the sentence.

‘I didn’t want to think that way,’ he said. ‘I wanted to believe the best of the lad. But yes, he’s a psychopath too. Cleverer than Butt, and more plausible. No conscience and no shame.’

‘When did you know that he’d killed Margaret?’