by Cleeves, Ann
It seemed impossible to Ramsay that Clive should have made a mistake. He had been so insistent about the time. Why, then, would he want to lie?
‘What now?’ Hunter asked. He was like a small boy whose attention wanders easily. All the talk made him restless.
Ramsay stood up and walked to the window. He could see the old town walls which had been built to keep out the marauding Scots and the crowds already starting to gather for the evening’s parade. He opened the window and there was the faint sound of fairground music. Some of the smaller rides must have already started.
‘We have to know where Dorothea Cassidy was yesterday evening,’ he said. ‘She can’t have vanished without trace.’
Yet, he thought, looking down at the crowd, there were so many people in Otterbridge during festival week, that it might be possible to disappear into them.
He was going to give Hunter more detailed instructions when the phone on his desk began to ring, and then immediately afterwards the phone on Hunter’s desk in the adjoining room. The two calls must have come through to the switchboard within seconds of each other. Later Ramsay checked and found that they were both logged for four o’clock.
Hunter took the call that came into his room. It was from a policeman who had picked up Joss Corkhill.
‘Tell your boss I want a medal for this,’ the man said breathlessly. ‘His bloody dog bit my leg.’
‘Where are you?’ Hunter asked.
‘On the by-pass close to the Ridgeway Estate.’
Then Ramsay received his news: Clive Stringer was dead.
His first reaction was numbness, a sense of failure. He had botched the Corkhill arrest and should have realised that the boy was vulnerable. He had decided, after all, that Clive was probably Corkhill’s accomplice. He was quite certain now that the boy’s death confirmed Corkhill’s guilt. And when Hunter came bounding back into the office with the news that Corkhill had been picked up he thought the case was all over.
But as more details came in Ramsay’s certainty turned to confused panic. He learned with horror that Walter Tanner’s house had been used for the second murder. There was no suggestion that Corkhill had ever met Tanner, let alone that he had a reason for wanting to implicate the church warden in Clive’s death. Tanner had become an obvious suspect.
Hunter wanted to be at the scene of the crime. He bounced impatiently from one foot to the other like a runner at the start of a race. Ramsay knew his mind would already be racing in tabloid headlines.
‘Well?’ Hunter demanded. ‘Are you coming?’
Ramsay shook his head. ‘Not yet. You go. Take charge. See what you can get out of the old man.’
Delighted, Hunter ran off, jumping down stairs three at a time, slamming doors, making as much of a drama as he could manage. Ramsay sat quietly at his desk waiting for information.
It came relentlessly, proving conclusively that Corkhill could have played no active part in Clive’s murder. The arresting officer reported that Corkhill had been standing on the by-pass for at least an hour waiting for a lift. He was drunk and disreputable and no one had stopped. He had been seen by a number of council workmen who were digging up that stretch of road. Then the pathologist who had arrived promptly at Tanner’s house to examine the body had said that Clive was only recently dead. He had died perhaps only a matter of minutes before Tanner found him, he had told Ramsay cheerfully over the telephone. Certainly not more than half an hour. So Ramsay realised that unless there was the coincidence of two murderers in Otterbridge, each separately choosing to implicate Walter Tanner, Corkhill had not killed Dorothea Cassidy. Ramsay ordered more black coffee and knew he would have to start from the beginning again.
From his office he made several phone calls. The first was to Hilary Masters.
‘Hold the line a minute,’ the receptionist said, ‘while I check that she’s in.’
Then there was the social worker’s voice, cool and professional, matching the formality of his own. He told her, unemotionally, that Clive Stringer was dead and there was a silence. He wondered if she had been called away from the phone but when at last she answered it was obvious that she had been crying.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was fond of him.’
He was terribly moved but could think of nothing to say to comfort her.
‘I’ve sent a WPC to tell Theresa,’ he said, ‘but I thought you would want to visit.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
There was a silence. ‘Who killed him?’ she cried suddenly. ‘Was it Joss?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘ We’ve brought in Mr Corkhill to help us with our inquiries but it’s unlikely that he’ll be charged.’
He realised he was hiding behind the jargon. He did not know how to respond to her distress.
‘Then who was it?’ she cried again.
‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘ Not yet.’ He had never felt so inadequate.
‘Will you be coming to talk to Theresa today?’ she said. ‘Will I see you there?’
‘I won’t be there until later,’ he said. ‘I know you’re very busy. Perhaps you won’t have the time to wait.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll wait. I think I should be there when you talk to Theresa. Besides …’
Her voice trailed off and yet he was left with the sense that a promise had been made, that the possibility of contact between them had been established, and he was as excited as a boy.
The next phone call was made to the Walkers. His determination that he should start again at the beginning made the Cassidys an obvious target of investigation. When the phone rang Dolly was picking raspberries, stooping under the nets which were supposed to stop the birds taking the fruit, and she heard the bell through the open kitchen door. It took some time for her to disentangle herself from the net and she expected the phone to stop before she reached it but it continued with a persistence that frightened her. When she picked up the receiver her hand was shaking.
‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Hello?’ She expected it to be her husband.
‘Mrs Walker,’ Ramsay said. ‘I wonder if I might speak to Edward Cassidy.’
She felt defensive, as if he had accused her of neglecting her duty.
‘He’s not here,’ she said and felt herself blushing. ‘He insisted on going home. We tried to persuade him but he wasn’t himself at all.’
‘Patrick then? It is rather urgent.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Patrick’s not here either. We were rather worried about him. He went off in such a state. Actually my husband’s out looking for him.’ Then she stopped abruptly, feeling strangely disloyal.
Ramsay probed gently for precise times – when exactly had Patrick left them? What time did they leave the vicar in Otterbridge?
She sensed that something was wrong and became flustered and evasive. She was no good about time, she said. Ramsay would have to talk to her husband. But when the Major returned from his unsuccessful attempt to find Patrick Cassidy, he persuaded her that it was dangerous to lie and that the police had their own methods to get to the truth. He thought it might be safer to distance themselves from the Cassidys.
Chapter Thirteen
Ramsay was tempted to leave Joss Corkhill to be interviewed by someone else. It seemed now that the man was only on the periphery of the investigation, an incidental distraction. Let Hilary Masters sort out the Stringer family’s problems. Yet Joss had had a reason to seek out Dorothea Cassidy on the afternoon of her death. And Ramsay was curious to meet the man who had brought such apparent joy to Theresa Stringer’s life and who had betrayed her trust so completely. Later Ramsay was glad that he had taken the time to talk to Corkhill. For the conversation gave him the first glimmer of a real motive.
After the hours of waiting Corkhill was sober and looked ill and drained like all alcoholics needing a drink. He was perfectly at home in the interview room. He sat with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, his eyes shut, and though he must have heard Ramsay
come into the room he did not move. He was a slight man with dark, curly hair and the inspector could see why Theresa might have found him attractive. He had cultivated the image of the travelling man. He was dressed in a striped collarless shirt, the sort students had worn when Ramsay was young, and a grey waistcoat. Round his neck was tied a red cotton scarf. In the interview he was almost entirely self-centred, yet occasionally there were bursts of wit and self-mockery. When he had had a drink or two Ramsay could see that he would be good company, lively, funny, but wanting always to be the centre of attention.
He opened his eyes, though still he did not look at Ramsay. He spoke with a thick Merseyside accent.
‘What have you done with my dog?’ he said. ‘ That’s a valuable animal. I’ll not have her ill-treated. She might be sick already, poisoned. She took a good bite out of that pig’s leg.’
Ramsay said nothing. It was as if Corkhill had not spoken. He sat at the table and arranged papers in front of him, a fussy civil servant, then switched on the tape-recorder to begin the interview.
‘We have a problem, Mr Corkhill,’ he said in his polite, civil servant’s voice, ‘and we think you may be able to help us. Perhaps you would be kind enough to answer a few questions.’
Corkhill looked up. ‘What is this all about?’ he said.
‘Come now, Mr Corkhill,’ Ramsay said, ‘I’m sure you know. I would have thought that the news of Mrs Cassidy’s murder must have reached the Ridgeway by now. A major talking-point, I should have thought, the murder of a vicar’s wife in a town like Otterbridge.’
Corkhill shrugged. ‘ Nothing to do with me, pal.’
‘But you did know Mrs Cassidy?’ Ramsay persisted.
‘So did most of Otterbridge,’ Corkhill said. ‘She had her nose into everything.’
‘But recently I understand you came under her special attention.’
Corkhill refused to answer directly. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘ this is intimidation. Why pick on me? I know you haven’t locked away the old boy who had her car on his drive. I saw him today.’
‘Do you know Mr Tanner?’
Corkhill smiled, aware that his ploy to distract Ramsay had succeeded.
‘I’ve met him a few times,’ he said airily. He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Usually in the bookies on the Ridgeway. He’s a regular there. Always loses. Didn’t you know? Not much of a detective are you? I saw him there today.’
Ramsay wrote a brief note but did not give Corkhill the satisfaction of a direct response.
‘To return to Mrs Cassidy,’ he said. ‘You didn’t like her very much did you, Mr Corkhill? She interfered in your private life and I suspect that you rather resented it.’
‘Not at first,’ Corkhill said. ‘At first I thought she was all right. On our side.’
‘But later you came to resent her?’ Ramsay persisted.
Corkhill was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the pose of flippancy. He needed a drink, and the soft, insinuating questions had begun to irritate him. His uncertainty made him want to lash out.
‘She was an interfering cow!’ he said. ‘Theresa and me had everything arranged. We were going to work together, a team, like the real gypsies. Then Mrs bloody Cassidy stuck her nose in and spoilt it. You don’t know what she was like …’
‘No,’ Ramsay said. ‘Well … perhaps you had better tell me. Did you meet her at Miss Stringer’s house?’
‘There was no way of bloody avoiding it once she took on the lad,’ Corkhill said. ‘I thought she understood me. She’d travelled herself. We talked. Then she found a few bruises on the kid and everything changed. She came to the house, all high and mighty, laying down the law. “I think this is a family problem, don’t you? And you’re part of the family, Mr Corkhill.”’ He spoke in a falsetto parody of a woman’s voice. ‘She was so bloody sure of herself,’ he went on. ‘And so bloody sure that she knew what was best for us all.’
‘It’s a responsibility taking on a woman with two kids,’ Ramsay said. ‘How did you get on with Clive?’
Corkhill shrugged. ‘ He’s all right,’ he said. ‘ Not very bright but then brains don’t run in the family.’
‘What about Beverley?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Is she a backward child?’
‘No,’ Corkhill said grudgingly. ‘She’s got more about her than her brother.’
‘That must have been very difficult,’ Ramsay said. ‘I understand that bright children are often demanding.’
‘Look,’ Corkhill said, confiding, world-weary. ‘ I know what this is all about. I had it all out with that Mrs Cassidy. “Why do you blame everything on me?” I told her. “ How do you know it wasn’t Theresa who knocked the kid around. She lost a baby before after all.”’
‘But it wasn’t Theresa who knocked Beverley around, was it?’ Ramsay said. ‘Theresa told us what happened. And she told Mrs Cassidy yesterday. Mrs Cassidy wanted to talk to you about it. And she persuaded Theresa that she couldn’t go away with you. You wouldn’t like that.’
Corkhill longed for a drink. His attention was wandering and he could think of nothing else. He moved restlessly in his seat. Ramsay noted his discomfort.
‘Now I want to talk about yesterday,’ the inspector said. ‘Perhaps you could give me an account of your movements. You worked on the fair in the morning?’
Corkhill nodded.
‘What time did you get back to Miss Stringer’s house?’
‘Two o’clock. Half past.’ He wanted the interview to be over so he could get out.
‘What did you and Theresa talk about?’
‘Nothing!’ Corkhill said defensively. ‘I wanted some peace before I started work again. What would there be to talk about?’
‘Her daughter had been taken into care,’ Ramsay said. ‘She might have thought that worth a mention.’
The sarcasm was lost on Corkhill.
‘Oh that!’ he said. ‘She was rambling on about that but I told her to shut up.’
‘I thought you had a row. Didn’t Theresa tell you she wasn’t going to come away with you after all?’
This surprised Corkhill. He hadn’t expected Ramsay to have so much detailed information about him.
‘You were angry, weren’t you?’ Ramsay went on. ‘You thought Theresa had let you down. And you blamed Dorothea Cassidy. She came back later to talk to Theresa. Did you wait to have it out with her?’
‘No!’ Corkhill said. ‘I didn’t touch her. I didn’t even see her then. I was bloody angry and I went out to work.’
‘What time was that?’
‘About four o’clock.’
‘What happened then?’ Ramsay asked. ‘ How did you get into town?’
‘I walked. I’ve not got money to spend on bus fares.’
‘Did you stop anywhere on the way?’
Corkhill hesitated. ‘I needed a drink,’ he said. ‘ I stopped at the off licence on the estate.’
‘Did you see Dorothea’s car on its way to the Ridgeway?’
Corkhill shook his head. ‘I was bloody angry,’ he said. ‘ I didn’t see anything.’
‘What time did you get to the fair?’
‘Half past four, quarter to five. And I was there all evening. My mate will tell you.’
‘You didn’t slip away to the pub? For a meal?’
‘It was too busy,’ he said. ‘We had some chips on the site.’
That’s it then, Ramsay thought. It’s impossible for him to have killed Dorothea Cassidy. Even without the news of Clive’s death they would have to let him go. He was preparing to tell Corkhill that the boy was dead when Corkhill volunteered information of his own.
‘She was there last night,’ he said. ‘At the fair. She didn’t come to my ride but I saw her all the same.’
‘Who?’ Ramsay demanded. ‘Who was there?’
‘The vicar’s wife. Mrs Cassidy.’ He spoke as if Ramsay was a fool.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. She was wearing that blue jacket.
I’d know her anywhere.’
‘Did you talk to her?’
‘No,’ Corkhill said, reluctantly, as if admitting some lack of courage. ‘ By then I’d calmed down again. It didn’t seem worth making a fuss.’
‘What time did you see her?’
He shrugged. ‘ I don’t know. It wasn’t late. Some time between eight and half past.’
‘Was she on her own?’
‘No,’ Corkhill said. Despite himself he was enjoying the sense of importance the information was giving him. He could tell Ramsay was excited. He paused, tantalising the inspector, smiling.
‘Well?’ Ramsay said. ‘Who was with her?’
‘It was a woman,’ Corkhill said. ‘A pale thing, pretty enough.’
‘What were they doing?’
‘How should I know?’ Corkhill said. ‘I was busy. There was a crowd.’
‘But you must have seen something.’
‘They were walking together, talking. There’s nothing else to say.’
Ramsay was already planning the next stage of the investigation. They would put as many men as he could spare into the fair that night, with photographs of Dorothea. Who was the woman with her? Corkhill’s description had stirred some vague memory. Perhaps Cassidy would know, he thought.
‘Can I go then?’ Corkhill said, suddenly cocky.
‘Not yet,’ Ramsay said. ‘I’m afraid I have some news for you.’ He spoke in exactly the same tone as before. ‘Clive Stringer is dead. He was found murdered this afternoon.’
He watched the man carefully and was convinced it came as a surprise to him.
‘I didn’t know,’ Corkhill said. Then, with a burst of temper, ‘I suppose you want to pin that on me too!’
Ramsay shook his head.
‘Just make a statement,’ he said. ‘ Then you can go. I expect Theresa will be glad of your support at a time like this.’
Corkhill shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough. I’m not going back there. She’s too much like bloody trouble. I’m leaving, going back on the road. On my own.’
He stared out of the window.
Ramsay stood up to leave the room when Corkhill spoke again.