love didn’t come into that, either. He’d take her money, take all this, then live his life the way he wanted too. But then the child came — Mary — and they lost her, and he never really got over it — did he, Lizzie?’
Lizzie’s head was down, but she shook it.
‘So he went back to sea. And that left the two of us, sisters, here, together. Latrell was good-looking — you can see that in Ian. So we got married at the register office one afternoon. It’s crazy — you think your life gets changed by the big events, the big decisions. Then you do something like that — on a whim, just because it feels right.’
Bea was quite calm — at ease, even — and Shaw thought she had a rare gift of being truthful to strangers about her own life. She touched her bottom lip and Shaw saw he’d been wrong, that there was lipstick, but just the subtlest of touches.
‘When Nora found out she said she’d never talk to me again, and that was one virtue she had, Inspector: she kept her promises. And you know — this is difficult to believe — I don’t think then it was about the colour of Latrell’s skin. I think it was the fact that he was going to take me away. And she wanted me here — in my place.’
Bea turned her back on them. Kath picked up the coffee pot, swilled what was left around. ‘I’ll get a fresh one,’ she said, and went to the kitchen.
‘Latrell applied for a posting back home. We flew to the States on a military transport,’ continued Bea. ‘I wasn’t going to be able to live here anyway, was I? Not with a black man. During the war it might have been OK — people like Latrell were considered exotic, exciting. But when the local men came back, things changed. What had happened was forgotten. So we had to go.’
She held out her hands so that they could see her silver rings more clearly.
‘Latrell took me home — to Hartsville, North Dakota. Small-town America’s smallest town.’ She laughed, but caught sight of the sketch on the coffee table and turned away again.
‘Latrell’s father ran the town drugstore. Latrell trained up as a pharmacist — there was a programme for GIs — and I just helped out in the shop. We tried for kids, but it didn’t work. I’d pretty much given up, and then Pat was born — in 1962.’ She stopped for a few seconds, and Shaw knew what she was doing — working out how old he would have been now, if he’d lived.
‘Latrell died in 1980 — cancer of the liver. He was fifty-nine. He drank. Everyone drank in Hartsville because of the winters. You’ve never seen snow like it — and nobody moves, especially if they’re snowed in at the town bar. The thing that really got me in the end was the quietness of winter. It just sucks the life right out of the day, that blanket of suffocating snow.’
She walked to the window again. Outside, big wet flakes were falling. ‘I tried to stay, I thought I wanted to stay, after he died. I kept the business going. There was someone new, someone I’d known but who’d kept their distance in those last years. Pat was at high school in Bushell — he was a bright kid. Journalism — that was the big thing. But suddenly, the second winter after Latrell died, I just couldn’t stand it any more. It’s such a mundane emotion, homesickness. I’d lived in Hartsville all those years and then woken up to find it was a foreign place — just like that. One moment home, the next minute somewhere I couldn’t stand to be.’
She looked around the room. ‘Then I got a call from Alby. He was at Bedford, before the trial. He told me what had happened. He said he wanted to tell me the truth before someone else poured poison in my ear — that’s what he said —
Kath had been standing on the threshold unseen, holding a fresh pot of coffee.
When Bea saw her she seemed to change tack. ‘She wasn’t on her own, of course — she had friends, people like Kath. But I came back and brought Pat with me. I told him it would be like a holiday, just a couple of years. An adventure. He was Lizzie’s age. But the tickets were one way. Pat resented the move — he didn’t really like Lynn. I got him a place at the college — on the media studies course. I got him his own flat — well, a bedsit. I sold up the drugstore in Hartsville, so I wasn’t short of money — Pat always had cash in his pocket.’
She stopped at that, thinking about what to say next. ‘He was popular with the girls. I knew that.’
Shaw looked at Lizzie but she, oddly, was looking at Kath Robinson, who’d sat down with the coffee pot. Lizzie pressed her hand and the other woman’s pale skin suddenly flushed.
There was an awkward silence, then Bea went on. ‘He was growing up, he had a family around him, so it wasn’t such a bad life. Then, when he went missing, Lizzie told me what I hadn’t seen — what had been so obvious, but unnoticed.’
Kath stood quickly, started moving things about on the table to set down the coffee. She didn’t seem able to create a space. Bea gently took over, taking the pot. Kath retreated, looking at her shoes, to stand at the window.
‘Pat and I fell in love,’ said Lizzie, then covered her mouth as if she wanted to claw back the words. ‘It was a secret.’ She touched the sketch. ‘We thought it was a secret.’
‘No one knew — absolutely no one?’ asked Campbell. She tried to keep a note of incredulity out of her voice but even she’d admit she’d failed.
‘I made a mistake,’ said Lizzie. ‘I told Dad — when we went to see him at Lincoln after the trial. He still had lots of visitors then, so I suppose it got back.’
‘I didn’t know,’ said Bea, and she even managed to keep a sour note out of her voice.
Shaw was trying to imagine what life had been like for this family back in 1982 — conflicting, heated emotions crowded beneath this single roof.
‘Dad was happy for us,’ said Lizzie, and Shaw couldn’t help but think the remark was directed at her aunt. A flash of anger brought Lizzie’s eyes alive, the flashing green dominating the grey and brown. ‘Dad liked black girls. The girls he’d met in the ports. He’d tell his cronies about them in the bar.’ She looked at Shaw. ‘It wasn’t all about sex. He liked the life in them, black people, the joy. He met Pat in jail, on visiting days. He was fond of him. Pat liked a good time too — and he was always out to get it. Pat made him smile, even in jail.’ She looked down at her hands, suddenly ashamed.
‘When did you last see Pat?’ asked Shaw, but he’d guessed the answer.
‘The wake,’ said Lizzie. A whisper again. ‘He went to the funeral too, and stood at the graveside. Nora was his aunt, after all.’ She bit her lip, wrapping both her hands around Bea’s. ‘It was that evening, at the party, that I told him
She looked at Shaw, the kind of look that made him ask himself again if this was a career he really wanted: a lifetime spent watching other people’s lives unwind.
‘I was pregnant — with Ian. He was really happy. We talked about what to do. We’d talked about getting married before, though never seriously. But now we had the business — the pub. And the funeral was over — finally over, after all those months. And the trial. I could sell up. Start a life somewhere else.’ Her voice had changed, become lighter, almost joyful, as if she was reading a line from a fairy tale.
‘The States?’ asked DC Campbell.
‘No. We couldn’t go back to Hartsville — North Dakota’s one of the states where …’ she tried to find the right word, ‘where it’s illegal. Still. Leviticus — that’s what they always say, isn’t it? Leviticus, chapter eighteen. They should read it sometime.’ Her thin mouth set murderously straight.
‘So …’ prompted Campbell. ‘What did you do?’
‘That night? I didn’t tell anyone else. Just Kath.’
‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ said Kath quickly. ‘You made me promise, didn’t you, Lizzie? I keep my promises.’ Again, thought Shaw, the childlike cadence of speech.
‘There were people who already hated Pat — for his colour,’ explained Lizzie. ‘But if they’d guessed …So we couldn’t touch each other, nothing, not in public.’ She looked at her hands, trying to focus. ‘The idea of a child — it was frightening. Wonderful, but frightening.’
She looked squarely at Shaw. ‘When I told Pat that night, he was happy — like I said. But the wake was in full swing by then, so we couldn’t talk, not properly. We arranged to meet the next day. Then he left. He said we had so much to discuss, so much that was exciting, and if he couldn’t talk to me then he’d rather go home.’ She set her jaw again. ‘He said he hoped it was a boy, said we’d talk more tomorrow, then he walked out. I never saw him again.’ She looked at the sketch.
‘What time?’ asked Shaw. ‘When he left the bar.’
‘Ten — maybe later.’
