by Cleeves, Ann
‘And Dorothea?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Did she have principles?’
The vicar sat forward in his chair. ‘I rather think,’ he said, ‘ that she had too many.’
Chapter Sixteen
Walter Tanner sat in the dusty living room and stared with increasing hostility at Gordon Hunter. Although the policeman had arrived more than an hour before, he had only just begun to give Tanner his full attention. At the start it had been noise and self-important bustle, with Hunter standing in the hall directing a stream of strangers upstairs. There were still police cars outside and a small crowd of the less inhibited neighbours gathered to watch. From the landing came men’s loud voices and someone was whistling. For a moment Tanner felt something of the excitement and exhilaration that came to him when he was gambling. In the betting shop there was noise, a breathless sense of risk and the feeling that in the minutes of watching the horses on the television in the corner of the shop he was really living. This is a gamble, he thought, as somebody else came to open the door and stamped up the stairs without waiting for an invitation. How much I tell the police, how I play the situation, it’s all a gamble. Then he looked at Hunter’s face and thought that, as in the bookmaker’s, the punter was always destined to lose.
‘You can’t expect me to believe that this is all coincidence,’ Hunter said. He was standing, leaning against a solid bookcase with one shoulder. He knew that this was his big chance for promotion and he was convinced Tanner was a murderer. I’ll show Ramsay that you don’t have to have been to the Grammar to get results! he thought. ‘A murdered woman’s car and now the boy’s body,’ he said. ‘It’s about time you started telling us what it’s all about. Where were you this afternoon?’
Tanner took a deep breath. This was it. He was under starter’s orders.
‘I was on the Ridgeway Estate,’ he said.
‘Were you visiting someone?’ Hunter demanded. ‘Was it Stringer? Something to do with the church?’
Tanner smiled and showed uneven nicotine-stained teeth. Keep it light, he thought. Keep it confident. Make it seem that there’s nothing to hide. Some of it they’ll find out anyway.
‘No, Sergeant,’ Tanner said. ‘Hardly that. I was there to visit my bookmaker.’
‘Do you expect me to believe that?’ Hunter said. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘Not at all, Sergeant. I have a little flutter occasionally. Nothing substantial, of course. It’s a little harmless fun since I retired.’
‘There were witnesses?’ Hunter said.
‘Of course, Sergeant. Of course.’
And they had not got much further than that when Ramsay arrived from the vicarage. He had been back to the station to pick up a car and Hunter watched it draw up with anger and disappointment.
That was typical, he thought. Ramsay had arrived to steal the glory, just as Tanner was about to confess. But Ramsay, it seemed, was unconvinced about Tanner’s guilt. Hunter met him in the hall and tried to persuade him to take the retired grocer to the police station for questioning.
‘Put him in the cells for an hour,’ he said. ‘That’ll persuade him to talk.’
‘How does he seem?’ Ramsay asked.
‘Cocky. Too bloody cocky. Seems to find it funny.’
‘Perhaps he’s hysterical,’ Ramsay said. There was after all something ridiculous about a body in a bath. It was like a second-rate horror movie.
‘But the evidence!’ Hunter said. ‘The car and the boy’s body. And now you tell me there was motive too. The vicar’s wife had found out about his gambling and Tanner couldn’t stand the lad. It’s too much of a coincidence.’
‘Perhaps the murderer has a perverse sense of humour,’ Ramsay said. ‘Or a grudge against the old man. And we don’t know that Dorothea had found out about the gambling. It’s only a possibility.’
He was distant, as if his attention was elsewhere and he was going through the motions of considering Hunter’s opinion. Of all the inspector’s moods Hunter found this the most irritating.
‘Is there anything else I should know?’ the sergeant demanded. ‘Something relevant which might be worth a mention?’
Ramsay blinked as if shocked by the crude sarcasm but he answered calmly.
‘Dorothea Cassidy went back to the vicarage late yesterday afternoon. She met Patrick. The witness says the atmosphere was strained but she’s deaf so she’s probably rather unreliable. And I know who Dorothea went to see in the hospital yesterday.’
Hunter remained defiantly silent. He would not give Ramsay the satisfaction of asking for the information.
‘It was the staff nurse you spoke to,’ Ramsay said. ‘Her name’s Buchan. Imogen Buchan. She’s Patrick Cassidy’s girlfriend.’
Hunter swore under his breath.
‘There is something else,’ Ramsay said. There bloody would be, Hunter thought. ‘Joss Corkhill saw Dorothea Cassidy at the fair last night. Or he says he did. He might be a malicious witness playing games but I think I believe him. She was with a young woman whose description fits that of Imogen Buchan. He should be at the fair all night. We’ll send someone round with a photo to make sure.’
Still Hunter insisted that they should take Walter Tanner to the police station but Ramsay pulled rank and refused. The double murder had attracted the attention of the national press. They were jumpy and took delight in coming too quickly to conclusions. The phrase ‘helping the police with their inquiries’ would be seen by them as a euphemism and Annie Ramsay’s evidence made it impossible that Walter had killed Clive. Even if the boy were waiting for Tanner inside the house he would hardly have had time to commit the murder between arriving home and phoning the police. There was Dorothea, of course; still a chance that Tanner had killed her. But in that case who had murdered Clive? And what could be the motive? Ramsay felt that Tanner was useful because he had been close to Dorothea and understood the politics of the church. But he certainly wasn’t a suspect in his own right.
When Ramsay returned to the room Tanner was standing up, smoking a cigarette. He looked at Ramsay hopefully, seeing him as an ally, someone to rescue him from the bullying Hunter. Ramsay took a seat, waited until Tanner had stubbed out the cigarette, then spoke quietly.
‘When did Mrs Cassidy find out about your gambling?’ he asked.
Walter stared at him, his mouth slightly open. He clearly thought the man must be some sort of magician. He was too shocked to deny it.
‘Well?’ Ramsay persisted gently. ‘It was a recent discovery, wasn’t it?’
This was a guess but he imagined that Dorothea would never allow a situation she considered unsatisfactory to go on indefinitely. She would use all her energy to do something about it.
Walter Tanner nodded.
‘How did she find out?’
‘She’d been visiting a family on the Ridgeway,’ Walter said unhappily. ‘She saw me going into the bookies.’ The exhilaration which had sustained him through the interview with Hunter had left him.
‘What did she do?’ Ramsay asked.
Tanner paused, trying to find the words, stammering over them and when he spoke Ramsay was surprised by the power of them.
‘She tormented me,’ he said. ‘She was so certain … so morally superior … so horribly kind.’ And so beautiful, he thought. A vicar’s wife had no right to be so beautiful.
‘What did she expect you to do?’
‘To stop, of course. She seemed to think that it would be easy. “I really don’t see the problem,” she said. “ You don’t need that sort of thing. Not you, Walter. Not with your faith.”’
‘But it wasn’t that easy?’
‘It was impossible,’ he said. ‘ I knew she was right and I tried to give it up but it was like a terrible addiction.’ He paused again and ran his tongue over his lips. ‘ Then she thought I should make the whole thing public. She said I needed the support and encouragement of the whole congregation. If it remained a secret I’d never stop.’
‘Did she threate
n to tell the others?’ Ramsay asked.
‘No,’ Walter said. ‘To be fair, she never did that. But she was always here, putting pressure on me. “ Why don’t you tell them at the PCC meeting?” she would say, and then throughout the meeting she would be there, staring at me, waiting for me to speak. She didn’t see that her interference just made things worse. It made me realise what a mess I’d made of my life. I couldn’t stand it.’
‘When was Mrs Cassidy last here?’ Ramsay asked.
‘On Saturday morning. She came to ask me to Sunday afternoon tea.’
‘But you didn’t go, did you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘ I couldn’t face it.’
‘Did you kill her?’
‘No,’ he said, with a strange, comic dignity. ‘I wouldn’t have killed her.’
There was a pause, the sound of footsteps on the stairs, the slam of the front door. The house was suddenly quiet.
‘Has anyone else got a key to your house?’ Ramsay asked. ‘The lock wasn’t forced.’
Then after some thought, Walter answered. ‘No. When my mother was ill a woman came in to look after her. She had a spare key. I don’t think we ever got it back.’
‘How do you explain the fact that the door was open?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I forgot to lock it when I went out. I was upset.’
‘Tell me about Clive Stringer,’ Ramsay said. ‘ Why did you dislike him so much?’
‘I didn’t dislike him,’ Walter said. ‘Not really. It was what he represented.’
‘What was that?’
‘I suppose,’ Walter said slowly, ‘he represented all the changes Dorothea had made in the church. He made me uncomfortable.’
‘You have no idea what he was doing here this afternoon?’
‘None,’ Tanner said. ‘If Dorothea had been alive I would have suspected her of sending him. She had some silly idea that we might be friends. But of course that’s impossible.’
‘Yes,’ Ramsay said. ‘ That’s impossible.’ He felt a sudden deep sympathy for this sad little man. The violation of his privacy by the murderer was a crime in itself.
From outside, a long way off and distorted by amplification, came the sound of rock music. The carnival parade was about to start. Ramsay realised it was already evening. On the Ridgeway Estate Hilary Masters was waiting with Theresa Stringer to speak to him. It was too hot, too complicated and he longed for a moment to escape to his cottage in Heppleburn, where there would be a breeze up the valley from the sea, and complete silence. He stood up.
‘Are you going?’ Walter Tanner said in a panic. Perhaps he was afraid that he would be left again to Gordon Hunter.
‘Yes,’ Ramsay said. ‘We’ll both go now and leave you in peace. Someone will be back later to take a statement.’
On the doorstep he paused. Hunter was waiting by the front gate, angry that his opinion had been disregarded, fuming. Ramsay wanted to say something to Tanner to show him that he thought well of him. What right had Dorothea to judge him so harshly? He knew what it was like to be lonely, unpopular, frustrated.
‘Mrs Cassidy must have cared about you,’ he said, ‘to have shown so much interest.’
But the thought seemed to give Tanner no consolation. ‘ She cared too much about everyone,’ he said. ‘ That was the problem.’
He stood in the porch and watched the men walk down the street towards their cars.
Beside the cars the men paused. Ramsay could sense Hunter’s hostility but had neither the patience nor the skill to deal with it. Perhaps the tension, the edge of competition made them more effective, he thought, but life would have been more comfortable if they could have got on.
‘What do you want me to do now?’ Hunter asked.
‘Go back to the station and co-ordinate the team working the fair,’ Ramsay said. ‘We’ll need photos of Dorothea and Imogen. That was the last time Dorothea was seen. You could see if you can get hold of the Buchan girl too. If she was working this morning she should be free now. The hospital will have an address and phone number for her. She might know where Patrick Cassidy is.’
Hunter nodded reluctantly. It made sense.
‘I’m going to the Ridgeway,’ Ramsay said, ‘to talk to the boy’s mother. Miss Masters from the social services is with her.’
He added the last sentence as an afterthought, dropping it in as if it had no significance, but Hunter was not fooled. He smirked, imagining the interest he could stir up in the canteen. Ramsay and the Snow Queen he would say, his voice full of innuendo. They’d make a good team. The thought cheered him up and he drove away.
It took Hunter longer than he had expected to find out where Imogen lived. There was no Buchan in the phone book. Her parents, fearing malicious calls from kids at school, were ex-directory. When he phoned the vicarage, thinking that someone there would surely know where to find her, the vicar was vague and unhelpful. Patrick had still not come home he’d said. He feared another dreadful tragedy. Hunter listened to his ravings for a while then replaced the receiver while he was still in mid-stream. The hospital was suspicious. By now all the administrative staff had gone home and the ward sister was unwilling to take the responsibility of passing on personal information over the phone. He persuaded her in the end by allowing her to call him back, after she had checked his credentials with the station. When at last he had the information he needed he dialled the number but there was no reply.
Almost immediately afterwards he was told that a Mr and Mrs Buchan were at the front desk. They wanted to report their daughter missing. Hunter saw the Buchans into a small interview room. It had no natural light. Hunter had been eating fish and chips and the smell of it clung to his clothes. The Buchans were embarrassed and apologetic. Of course, Imogen was a grown woman, they said. They realised she had her own life to lead. They would be the last people to question her right to independence. It was this business with Dorothea Cassidy that worried them. Dorothea had been so close to them, a great friend. It was only natural, wasn’t it, that they should be worried?
Hunter tried to contain his excitement. There was probably nothing sinister in Imogen’s disappearance. These were middle-class parents whose daughter had fancied a bit of life without telling them.
‘Has she got a boyfriend?’ he asked in his specially perfected bored voice, though he knew the answer already. The last thing he wanted was for them to panic.
‘Of course,’ Mrs Buchan said. ‘ I thought we’d explained. She’s going out with Patrick Cassidy. That’s why we’re so concerned.’
‘And she’s not with him now?’
‘Apparently not. He seems to have disappeared too.’
Surely that was significant, Hunter thought. Patrick Cassidy had lied about meeting his stepmother the afternoon before. Dorothea had rushed to Newcastle to speak to Imogen at work and had probably been seen with her at the fair during the evening. Now the pair of them had vanished. It was all down to him now, he thought. Ramsay had left him in charge while he went off to play social workers with Theresa Stringer on the Ridgeway Estate. He had the opportunity of reaching a conclusion to this case on his own.
Mrs Buchan was still talking. ‘She seems to have been under such a strain lately,’ she said. ‘ It’s not easy, of course, working with the terminally ill and she has such dedication…’
‘When was she last seen?’ Hunter asked.
‘She finished her shift at two o’clock,’ Mrs Buchan said. Her husband seemed lost in thoughts of his own and content to let her do all the talking. ‘She came straight back to Otterbridge and went to the vicarage to see if Patrick was there. He wasn’t. She must have come home then, because her car’s parked outside. I expected her to be there when we came in from work but there was no sign of her. I wasn’t worried at first, of course. I thought she’d gone into town to do some shopping. Otterbridge is such fun during festival time, isn’t it? But now the shops have been closed for hours. She hasn’t many friends, you know, besides Patrick,
and I can’t think where she might be.’
‘Perhaps she’s at the fair,’ he said. ‘ Does she enjoy going?’
They were non-committal, as if they had no real idea what she did enjoy.
‘Did she go out yesterday evening?’
She went out with Patrick, they said. She hadn’t told them where they were going.
‘What time did she come back?’
Mrs Buchan shrugged. ‘ I don’t know. We were back rather late ourselves. It was the festival ball.’ She paused and looked at him as if he were one of her remedial fourth formers. ‘She didn’t disappear last night, you know. I saw her at home this morning, before she went to work.’
He was apologetic, understanding. He realised that, he said. It was a question of finding a pattern, of working out where she might be. There was probably nothing to worry about. The carnival seemed to have gone to everyone’s head. She would be out, watching the procession with the rest of the town. He would circulate the photo they had brought, make a few inquiries. They were to leave it all in his hands.
The Buchans left the police station reassured, charmed by him.
Chapter Seventeen
It took Ramsay longer than he had expected to get to the Ridgeway. His drive across town coincided with the start of the parade and none of the roads he tried was clear. Front Street was closed to traffic, cordoned off with plastic bunting which reminded him of the tape they had used to mark the area where Dorothea’s body had been found. As he sat in a queue of cars he heard the rhythmic crash of the brass band which always led the procession. It conflicted with the fairground music and the amplified noise from some of the floats. He could see nothing from the car but he could picture the event. As a child he had always been brought to Otterbridge for the carnival and nothing had changed very much. Behind the band would be a group of miners, carrying the banner of a pit which had closed years before but which was still given pride of place. His father had worked down the pits but had refused to take part in the parade.
‘Look at them,’ he would say. ‘Dressed up like a cartload of monkeys. So much for the dignity of the working man.’