overall was a shade of lavender found nowhere in nature. Karen’s parents still lived in a street populated by ex-miners and their kin in unfashionable Methil, but even the most dysfunctional of their neighbours would have taken more trouble with their appearance when they knew they were in for any kind of official visit. Karen didn’t even bother trying to avoid judging Jenny Prentice on her appearance. ‘Good morning, Mrs Prentice,’ she said briskly. ‘I’m DI Pirie. We spoke on the phone. And this is DC Murray.’
Jenny nodded and sniffed. ‘You’d better come in.’
The living room was cramped but clean. The furniture, like the carpet, was unfashionable but not at all shabby. A room for special occasions, Karen thought, and a life where there were few of those.
Jenny waved them towards the sofa and perched on the edge of an armchair opposite. She was clearly not going to offer them any sort of refreshment. ‘So. You’re here because of our Misha. I thought you lot would have something better to do, all the awful things I keep reading about in the newspapers.’
‘A missing husband and father is a pretty awful thing, wouldn’t you say?’ Karen said.
Jenny’s lips tightened, as if she’d felt the burn of indigestion. ‘Depends on the man, Inspector. The kind of guy you run into doing your job, I don’t imagine too many of their wives and kids are that bothered when they get taken away.’
‘You’d be surprised. A lot of their families are pretty devastated. And at least they know where their man is. They don’t have to live with uncertainty.’
‘I didn’t think I was living with uncertainty. I thought I knew damn fine where Mick was until our Misha started raking about trying to find him.’
Karen nodded. ‘You thought he was in Nottingham.’
‘Aye. I thought he’d went scabbing. To be honest, I wasn’t that sorry to see the back of him. But I was bloody livid that he put that label round our necks. I’d rather he was dead than a blackleg, if you really want to know.’ She pointed at Karen. ‘You sound like you’re from round here. You must know what it’s like to get tarred with that brush.’
Karen tipped her head in acknowledgement. ‘All the more galling now that it looks like he didn’t go scabbing after all.’
Jenny looked away. ‘I don’t know that. All I know is that he didn’t go to Nottingham that night with that particular bunch of scabs.’
‘Well, we’re here to try to establish what really happened. My colleague here is going to take some notes, just to make sure I don’t misremember anything you tell me.’ The Mint hastily took out his notebook and flipped it open in a nervous flurry of pages. Maybe Phil had been right about his deficiencies, Karen thought. ‘Now, I need his full name and date of birth.’
‘Michael James Prentice. Born 20th January 1955.’
‘And you were all living here at the time? You and Mick and Misha?’
‘Aye. I’ve lived here all my married life. Never really had a choice in the matter.’
‘Have you got a photo of Mick you could let us have? I know it’s a long time ago, but it could be helpful.’
‘You can put it on the computer and make it older, can’t you?’ Jenny went to the sideboard and opened a drawer.
‘Sometimes it’s possible.’ But too expensive unless there’s a more pressing reason than your grandson’s leukaemia.
Jenny took out an immaculate black leather album and brought it back to the chair. When she opened it, the covers creaked. Even upside down and from the other side of the room, Karen could see it was a wedding album. Jenny quickly turned past the formal wedding shots to a pocket at the back, thickly stuffed with snaps. She pulled out a bundle and flicked through them. She paused at a couple, then finally settled on one. She handed Karen a rectangular picture. It showed a head and shoulders of two young men grinning at the camera, corners of the beer glasses in shot as they toasted the photographer. ‘That’s Mick on the left,’ Jenny said. ‘The good-looking one.’
She wasn’t lying. Mick Prentice had tousled dark blond hair, cut in the approximation of a mullet that George Michael had boasted in his Wham period. Mick had blue eyes, ridiculously long eyelashes and a dangerous smile. The sickle crescent of a coal tattoo sliced through his right eyebrow, saving him from being too pretty. Karen could see exactly why Jenny Prentice had fallen for her husband. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Who’s the other guy?’ A raggedy mop of brown hair, long, bony face, a few faint acne scars pitting the sunken cheeks, lively eyes, a triangular grin like the Joker in the Batman comics. Not a looker like his pal, but something engaging about him all the same.
‘His best pal. Andy Kerr.’
The best pal who killed himself, according to Misha. ‘Misha told me your husband went missing on Friday the fourteenth of December 1984. Is that your recollection?’
‘That’s right. He went out in the morning with his bloody paints and said he’d be back for his tea. That was the last I saw him.’
‘Paints? He was doing a bit of work on the side?’
Jenny made a sound of disdain. ‘As if. Not that we couldn’t have used the money. No, Mick painted watercolours. Can you credit it? Can you imagine anything more bloody useless in the 1984 strike than a miner painting watercolours?’
‘Could he not have sold them?’ the Mint chipped in, leaning forward and looking keen.
‘Who to? Everybody round here was skint and there was no money for him to go someplace else on the off chance.’ Jenny gestured at the wall behind them. ‘He’d have been lucky to get a couple of pounds apiece.’
Karen swivelled round and looked at the three cheaply framed paintings on the wall. West Wemyss, Macduff Castle and the Lady’s Rock. To her untutored eye, they looked vivid and lively. She’d have happily given them house room, though she didn’t know how much she’d have been willing to pay for the privilege back in 1984. ‘So, how did he get into that?’ Karen asked, turning back to face Jenny.
‘He did a class at the Miners’ Welfare the year Misha was born. The teacher said he had a gift for it. Me, I think she said the same to every one of them that was halfway good looking.’
‘But he kept it up?’
‘It got him out of the house. Away from the dirty nappies and the noise.’ Bitterness seemed to come off Jenny Prentice in waves. Curious but heartening that it didn’t seem to have infected her daughter. Maybe that had something to do with the stepfather she’d spoken about. Karen reminded herself to ask about the other man in Jenny’s life, another who seemed notable by his absence.
‘Did he paint much during the strike?’
‘Every day it was fair he was out with his kitbag and his easel. And if it was raining, he was down the caves with his pals from the Preservation Society.’
‘The Wemyss caves, do you mean?’ Karen knew the caves that ran back from the shore deep into the sandstone cliffs between East Wemyss and Buckhaven. She’d played in them a few times as a child, oblivious to their historical significance as a major Pictish site. The local kids had treated them as indoor play areas, which was one of the reasons why the Preservation Society had been set up. Now there were railings closing off the deeper and more dangerous sections of the cave network and amateur historians and archaeologists had preserved them as a playground for adults. ‘Mick was involved with the caves?’
‘Mick was involved in everything. He played football, he painted his pictures, he messed about in the caves, he was up to his eyes in the union. Anything and everything was more important than spending time with his family.’ Jenny crossed one leg over the other and folded her arms across her chest. ‘He said it kept him sane during the strike. I think it just kept him out the road of his responsibilities.’
Karen knew this was fertile soil for her inquiries but she could afford to leave