Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’ But despite the flip response she watched him anxiously, frowning so the thick eyebrows met.

  ‘We think that’s where Kath was killed. Or if she wasn’t killed there she was put there soon after she died. Are you surprised about that?’

  ‘Of course I’m surprised. If it’s true.’

  ‘Then later, when the tide was high, she was moved to the jetty and thrown into the water. That’s what we think must have happened. I’d say it would take more than one person to do that. Or someone who had a car. Have you any idea who that might have been, Claire? How do you think the body was moved to the jetty?’

  ‘How the hell would I know?’ She glared at him.

  ‘But you must have noticed the stain in the shed?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s got a mucky floor. What’s one more stain? Anyway, I don’t go in there very often.’

  ‘But you must go in every day. To fetch coal.’

  ‘Na!’ she said. ‘That’s one of Bernie’s jobs. When he remembers.’

  She gave a little cry and put her hand to her mouth in a gesture of dismay.

  ‘You’ve been trying to make a nice home for Bernie and Marilyn, haven’t you? Since you took over the running of it. You want everywhere to look nice. Is that why you planted the tub of flowers in the yard? That was you, Claire, wasn’t it? Kath would never have thought of it.’

  But before she could answer there was a knock on the door and Hunter came in.

  ‘Could I have a word, sir?’

  He kept his voice even but Ramsay could tell he was excited.

  ‘Why don’t we take a break now, Claire?’ Ramsay said. ‘I’m sure you could do with a break. Sal, you make certain that Claire gets a cup of tea.’

  In the corridor Hunter couldn’t keep still. He paced backwards and forwards, talking all the time.

  ‘I’ve been taking the statement from Hooper,’ he said. ‘The child abductor. I know we’ve cleared him of the Coulthard abduction but I started the interview…’

  And you wanted to be sure the arrest was down to you, Ramsay thought.

  ‘… so I decided I’d take him over that Saturday when Kath Howe was murdered. All along we thought he might be a possible witness.’

  ‘Did he see anything on the Headland?’

  ‘Not exactly. When he left Kim Houghton’s house he went to the phone box by the club to call his wife. To check she was all right, he said, but it was to establish his story about him working away for the weekend, to say he was on his way home. He chatted for a few minutes then he left the Headland. Guess what he did next?’

  Ramsay had begun to guess what Paul Hooper had done next but he was a kind man and he didn’t want to spoil Hunter’s story. At the end he even pretended to be surprised.

  ‘Has anyone tried to contact Mark Taverner this afternoon?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye. Like you said. But all we get is the answering machine.’

  ‘He’ll be at home. Fetch him in. I want to talk to him before I go.’

  ‘And where will you be off to then, sir?’

  Ramsay smiled, pretending again. Letting Hunter believe he was relishing the job. ‘Where do you think?’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  He took Sally Wedderburn with him to Newcastle. In the car he explained to her what it was all about, but since Claire’s dig about her own childhood she seemed to have lost interest in the case. She wasn’t even shocked.

  Ferndale Avenue was full of parked cars and they had to stop in the next street and pull up on to the pavement. As they walked to the house they had glimpses through an occasional uncurtained window of family groups gathered round Saturday evening television. At Mrs Howe’s the curtains were drawn. There was a curtain at the front door too and they waited for Bernard’s mother to draw it back before she let them in. She seemed too excited to be surprised to see them.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ she said, sounding almost jolly. She was wearing a maroon velveteen dress – a best frock put on for the occasion – and held the cat to her shoulder so it looked like a fur stole. It stared at them with watery eyes. Its fishy breath wafted to them across the doorstep.

  ‘Come in,’ Mrs Howe said again with a touch of impatience. ‘We’re having a little recital. Bernard has often told me how musical Marilyn is but I hadn’t realized until now the extent of her talents.’ They stepped into the hall and they did hear rather plodding piano music coming from the living room. ‘If we’re lucky we might persuade Bernard to do some magic for us later.’

  She released the cat, leaving it stranded on her shoulder, and clapped her hands in appreciation and as a childish gesture of delight at the piano piece which had just stopped. Ramsay realized she had achieved just what she had always wanted. Her son was back home with her. For a while at least. Through an open door Ramsay saw a Victorian dining table laden with the remnants of a high tea.

  The living room was as hot as it had been on his previous visit, but Bernard was sitting with his chair pulled up close to the fire. He was wearing carpet slippers. When he had returned to Cotter’s Row after performing his magic tricks to the children of Gosforth Ramsay had explained that he and Marilyn might be more comfortable if they moved elsewhere for a while. It seemed odd that he had chosen to bring carpet slippers with him, then Ramsay realized that these slippers had been bought by Mrs Howe and kept at the house in Ferndale Avenue for Thursday evenings. And in readiness for the time when Bernard, as he surely would, recognized his mistake and returned home.

  As they entered the room Marilyn turned on the piano stool to face them. Bernard looked up from the fire but he did not stand up to greet them. Ramsay thought he was full of food, as lazy as the cat now settled on Mrs Howe’s knee.

  Sally sat on an upright chair in a corner. Her face was lit from below by an ugly table lamp with a porcelain base. It made the skin under her eyes look dark, like bruises.

  ‘I wonder if I might have a few words,’ Ramsay said.

  ‘Where’s Claire?’ Bernard asked. ‘Is she all right?’ But really he seemed not too bothered. He was asking because it was expected of him.

  ‘Oh yes. She’s been very helpful.’ For the moment Ramsay had forgotten about Claire. What would happen to her now? ‘I expect you’re wondering what’s going on at Cotter’s Row. You’d like me to explain what all our people are doing there.’

  ‘Routine, you said.’ Bernard shifted. On the arm of his chair there was a glass bowl containing chocolates in brightly coloured cellophane wrappers. He reached out and took one, unwrapped it carefully and dropped it into his mouth. ‘Because that child was found in our shed.’

  ‘There’s a bit more to it than that.’

  ‘Oh.’ He shook his hands out in front of him and began to stretch and flex his fingers. Ramsay supposed it was an exercise to keep his hands supple for the tricks of illusion. He found the movement and Bernard’s contemplation of the dancing fingers so irritating that he wanted to scream at the man to sit still. Instead he continued calmly.

  ‘We found blood on the floor of your shed.’

  ‘But I thought the boy was fine. That there was no harm done.’

  ‘He was imprisoned for two hours. A terrifying experience for a child that age.’

  Because he was looking out for it he saw Sally Wedderburn in her corner tense then force herself to relax.

  ‘But an accident surely. That’s what I was given to understand.’

  ‘No,’ Ramsay said. ‘ No accident.’

  The hands fluttered to rest in his lap. ‘And the blood?’

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t notice that. You must have been in there every day for coal.’

  ‘Yes. And it was clear enough when you pointed it out. But we didn’t notice it None of us did. We had other things, I suppose, on our minds.’

  ‘There will be tests but we believe the blood is your wife’s.’

  ‘You think that Kathleen was killed in our shed?’ He didn’t seem shocked
by the thought. Rather, he seemed to think it mildly amusing. Here, in his mother’s warm living room he obviously thought himself above suspicion, quite safe.

  ‘Perhaps. Or left there until it was convenient to dispose of the body.’

  Bernard seemed to consider the matter. His head was tilted to one side so the long strands of his hair almost reached his shoulder.

  ‘Dispose of the body how, Inspector?’ he asked at last.

  ‘We believe that it was loaded into the boot of a car, parked in the alley behind your house, and driven to the jetty. Again, there are tests which will prove the matter.’

  A smile appeared on Bernard’s round, white face.

  ‘It’s clear then that you can’t suspect one of us, Inspector. The shed must have been used without our knowledge. We don’t own a car. We don’t drive.’

  ‘Of course,’ Ramsay continued, as if Bernard had not spoken, ‘it’s possible that the murderer had help to move the body.’

  There was a moment of silence. The cat sneezed then began to pad rhythmically, catching the velveteen material of Mrs Howe’s frock in its claws. She continued to stroke it. Ramsay thought that her deafness had probably excluded her from the conversation. They had been speaking rather quietly. She gave the impression of listening but had no idea what they had been talking about. Certainly now she seemed unaware that they had stopped and when Ramsay spoke directly to her, clearly and loudly, she answered without hesitation, assuming perhaps that it followed naturally from what had gone before.

  ‘Do you drive, Mrs Howe?’

  ‘I do. I learned as a girl in the war. In the Land Army.’

  It was hard to imagine her dressed in overalls driving a truck.

  ‘And you own a car?’

  ‘Certainly. A Standard Ten. I gave Bernard lessons in it. I could tell almost from the beginning that he would never make a driver. His co-ordination was satisfactory but his concentration let him down. He would have been a menace on the road.’

  ‘Do you still drive, Mrs Howe?’

  ‘Of course. Why should I not? I’m old but I’m not senile, Inspector.’ She gave a complacent smile. It seemed not to occur to her to ask why the questions were being asked.

  ‘Regularly?’

  ‘I give Olive a lift to the supermarket once a week so she can stock up on groceries for me. In the old days I’d enjoy a spin in the countryside but alas not any more. I’m too anxious at the prospect of breaking down.’ She shook her head, grieving for her jaunts into the hills. ‘ It would be different if Bernard would come with me occasionally but he claims he’s too busy.’

  ‘Mother!’ Bernard interrupted. Then to Ramsay: ‘What are you saying, Inspector? That my mother is implicated in some way in this crime? That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘No!’ The cry was involuntary and came out as a shrill scream. Marilyn even stamped her foot to demand their attention, so hard that her body was thrust backwards and Ramsay thought the piano stool would tip over. With her frizzy hair and her petulant face she looked like an adolescent version of Violet Elizabeth Bott.

  ‘You came here to talk to me,’ she said. ‘You came here to find out why I killed Mummy.’

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Ramsay had not meant, with his questions to Mrs Howe, to provoke Marilyn to confession. He was not sure now why he had brought up the subject of her car. Out of malice, perhaps. Spite. Because the case had dragged on for weeks longer than it should have done. Because Bernard, lounging in front of the fire, was annoying him. To put Marilyn at her ease. He had not expected the outburst.

  He turned to the girl. ‘ We have a great deal to talk about,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ She had twisted strands of her white hair into a thin, stiff thread. She put the end into her mouth.

  ‘But not here. In the police station. Then we can get someone to help you and make sure we don’t catch you out with awkward questions. We have to do it properly. For your sake and Mr Taverner’s.’

  She looked up.

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘We know most of it. We still need your help.’

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Now.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘Why not? There are two of you. My dad’s here and my nan. If you take me to the police station I won’t speak at all.’

  So Marilyn told her story there, still perched on the piano stool, to the audience of adults gathered in the semicircle around her.

  ‘When did your relationship with Mr Taverner begin, Marilyn?’ Ramsay asked.

  She seemed gratified by the description, pleased that he was taking it seriously.

  ‘Last autumn. Just before his wife died. I went to his classroom after school to ask about some homework. He was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. I thought he was ill. Then I saw he was crying. I talked to him but he didn’t even realize I was there, so I put my arm round his shoulder. I didn’t think about it. I mean I’d fancied him for ages but it wasn’t like that. I was just sorry because he was so upset.’ She paused. ‘He turned around and he held on to me. As if I really mattered to him. It was the most wonderful moment of my life. Whatever happens now I’ve still got that.’

  Ramsay was too kind to tell her that at that moment, in the classroom, Mark Taverner had been so desperate that he would have clung to anyone.

  ‘I held him until he’d finished crying. By that time I’d missed the bus. I told him Mummy would panic if I was late so he offered me a lift. On the way home he stopped the car.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the lay-by near that empty farm house on the edge of the dene. He talked. About his wife and how difficult it was at home. I was the only person he had to talk to. Everyone else was sorry for her. They didn’t think about him.’

  Nonsense, Ramsay thought. There was Brian. But Brian was all action. Perhaps he was so busy shouting at consultants and being indignant on Sheena’s behalf that he didn’t have the time to listen.

  ‘He started to cry again. I held on to him and he kissed me.’

  ‘And then you made love?’

  She nodded. ‘He didn’t force me,’ she said defiantly. He wondered what she had made of the groped encounter in the car. He imagined it passionless, selfish. A moment of violence and madness. Hardly the stuff of teenage fantasy.

  ‘Was that the only time?’

  She nodded again, reluctantly. ‘It didn’t mean he didn’t care. His wife died soon after. He couldn’t see me then, could he? I understood that. I was prepared to wait.’

  She paused. Ramsay looked at Bernard Howe. He had his back to the fire now, he had turned his chair to face his daughter when she began to speak. He made a small ineffectual movement towards her – whether of support or condemnation Ramsay could not tell – then, the effort proved too much for him, he sank back into his seat and closed his eyes.

  Marilyn continued. ‘I tried to talk to Mark, Mr Taverner. He said he was sorry and that it should never have happened. I’d caught him at a vulnerable time but that was no excuse. I said he didn’t need an excuse.’ She caught her breath. ‘By then I was sixteen. It was legal. He said that didn’t matter. Because he was a teacher and I was a pupil it was wrong.’ She was becoming agitated. ‘He didn’t mind spending time with Mrs Coulthard, though. She’s married, isn’t she? That’s wrong too.’

  ‘He wasn’t having an affair with Mrs Coulthard,’ Ramsay said gently. ‘She was a friend, someone to talk to.’

  ‘But he could have talked to me!’ It came out as a cry. He was reminded of David Coulthard in the middle of a temper tantrum. She gave a little sob. ‘ Did he tell Mrs Coulthard about me?’

  ‘I think he probably did. He felt very guilty about the way he treated you.’

  ‘It wasn’t fair. He thought I was a baby. Not that you could blame him. Look at me. No decent clothes. No make-up. Do you know what Mummy called him? The baby-snatcher.’

  ‘Why did you tell your mother about him?�
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  ‘I was angry.’ He could already see that she was subject to rages. Usually they were hidden by politeness and good manners. Occasionally they would be uncontrollable.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dad had gone up to the Coastguard House to discuss doing magic at the party. He saw them there together. He said when he got here she was half-naked. Are you sure they weren’t having an affair?’

  ‘Quite sure.’ Because he had already discussed this with Mark Taverner. Mark was sitting still in the Interview Room at Otterbridge police station. When they’d brought him in he hadn’t stopped talking. Ramsay supposed that someone with his background would be into confession.

  ‘Couldn’t you tell anyone else about this?’ he’d asked.

  ‘I told Emma about Marilyn, and the letter I got from Mrs Howe. She promised not to tell Brian. She didn’t want to. She thought it would upset him to know I’d done something like that.’ Mark had lowered his voice, forcing himself to come out with the words. Confession again. ‘ That I’d seduced a schoolgirl … Then after Kath Howe died she wouldn’t see me.’

  ‘Did she suspect you of killing Mrs Howe?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He was shocked by the thought. ‘Perhaps she did.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you talk to Brian Coulthard? I had the impression you were very close.’

  ‘I tried. Several times. It was as if he didn’t want to know.’

  He believed you were having an affair with his wife, Ramsay thought but did not say, and he wanted you to be happy so he didn’t stand in the way.

  Mark had looked up from the varnished table which was scratched with graffiti like one of the old desks at school.

  ‘I think Marilyn’s been following me. When she threatened the kids I believed her.’

  In Mrs Howe’s overheated room in Ferndale Avenue Marilyn waited impatiently for more questions.

  ‘What did you tell your mother?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Everything?’