by Ann Cleeves
‘And you’ve been in the Centre all day?’
‘All day. Certainly.’
‘You didn’t go out for lunch?’
‘Lunch?’ Lynch expressed surprise as if lunch were too trivial a matter for the Inspector to bother himself with. ‘Oh, yes, of course. I’m sorry. I should have realized. Just to the Ship in Anchor Street for a sandwich. But I walked. I didn’t take the car.’
‘And on the way out did you notice that your car was in its usual place?’
‘No,’ Lynch said. ‘Not specially. My space is at the end of the car park, under the trees. I wouldn’t see from the front door or the street.’
‘Do you usually go to the pub for lunch, Mr Lynch? Was that a normal daily routine?’
‘Yes,’ Lynch said with some irritation. ‘ I suppose so. If I’m here. I have other commitments, of course. Radio. Local TV. But if I’m here I like to go to the pub, get some fresh air.’
‘When was the last time you looked inside the boot of your car, Mr Lynch?’ Ramsay asked.
Lynch answered immediately. ‘This morning. Before I left home for work. There was a programme I’d been working on. I put that in the boot.’
There was a pause.
‘Would that be a bulky manuscript?’ Ramsay asked at last.
‘Bulky?’ Lynch seemed astonished. ‘ No, of course not.’
‘Wasn’t it unusual then,’ Ramsay asked, ‘to open the boot specially? Wouldn’t it be more normal to take the paper into the car with you, to put it perhaps on the passenger seat?’ He paused again. ‘Unless of course you had a passenger with you.’ He looked up from the notes he was making. ‘ Do you live alone, Mr Lynch?’
‘Yes,’ Lynch said sharply. ‘ Of course.’ There was a silence which he seemed to need to fill. ‘I have been married, Inspector. When I was a drama student. We were both very young. It didn’t work out and we parted, quite amicably, twelve years ago. Since then I’ve lived alone.’ There was another pause before he continued. ‘My wife was a rather jealous woman, Inspector. She couldn’t cope with my success.’
Perhaps he expected then a question about his career in television because he seemed quite surprised when Ramsay said: ‘Tell me about Gabriella Paston.’
Lynch shrugged. How can I tell you anything, he implied.
‘How long has she been a member of the Youth Theatre?’
‘For four years. Since she was fourteen.’
‘You must have learned something about her in that time.’
‘Look, Inspector, we’re not friends, me and the kids. I never meet them socially. I run a workshop session every Monday night and then they go home. There’s no time to chat.’
‘You don’t meet for a coffee afterwards?’
‘No,’ Lynch said. ‘ The kids usually meet up in the cafeteria but to tell you the truth I’ve had enough of them by nine. I’m knackered and I want to get straight home.’
‘But not tonight?’ Ramsay interrupted.
‘What do you mean, not tonight.’
‘You didn’t go straight home after the workshop finished tonight. You were still here, in your office at nine thirty when Miss Paston’s body was found. What was different about tonight?’
‘I had a visitor,’ Lynch said reluctantly. ‘One of the trustees, Amelia Wood. She descends on me occasionally to make sure I’m running the place efficiently. The trustees think I need help with the administration.’
‘Was she still here when the body was found?’
‘I’m not sure. She might have been downstairs. She’d left my office by then.’
‘And there’s nothing more you can tell me about Gabriella Paston?’
‘You should ask one of the others, Inspector. Her aunt works in the cafeteria here. Her landlady’s my assistant. But I’ll tell you something about Gabby, I liked her. She was fun.’
During the interview Hunter had remained uncharacteristically unobtrusive. There was no fidgeting, no theatrical sigh to show that he thought the witness was a blatant liar. The stillness was unusual and Ramsay wondered what was the matter with him. He would have been surprised to discover that Hunter was thinking, with some regret after all, about Gabriella Paston.
He thought he had probably seen her three or four times in the night club in Otterbridge. Hunter went there regularly to impress new girlfriends and it was always packed. He had only spoken to Gabriella once. On the other occasions he had glimpsed her sitting at the bar with friends or on the dance floor under the flashing lights, but she had always attracted his attention. On the night he had spoken to her he was on his own, stood up by some woman, determined all the same to have a good time. She had been sitting on a tall bar stool, her legs crossed at the ankles, laughing. He had offered to buy her a drink, and she had laughed again and refused, saying she was waiting for a friend. That was all that happened. There had been no more contact than that, but Hunter felt the result of the encounter all evening. He was excited, suddenly optimistic about the possibility of good times ahead. He wasn’t sure what it was about her that had been so special and was trying to find a word to describe her when Gus Lynch provided it for him. Gabriella Paston was fun.
In Lynch’s office Ramsay looked at Hunter, giving him the opportunity to ask questions of his own, but the sergeant shook his head.
‘That’ll do for tonight, Mr Lynch,’ Ramsay said, surprised. ‘We’ll be in touch again tomorrow.’
‘Oh!’ Lynch said with some bitterness and self pity. ‘ I expect you will. How will I live it down, do you suppose? What will the trustees think? Even if they don’t believe I’m a murderer they’ll think I’m remarkably careless. To allow my car to be used as a dump for dead bodies.’
Ramsay was already on his feet but he hesitated at the door.
‘Were you careless?’ he asked. ‘ With your car keys for example. There’s no indication that your boot was broken into. Could someone have taken your keys without your realizing?’
Lynch shrugged. ‘I keep them in my jacket pocket,’ he said. ‘My jacket’s usually hanging up in my office. I don’t usually lock my office door. I suppose that’s careless.’
He turned his back to them and poured another drink.
In the lobby Joe Fenwick was still pretending to read the Sun, but he was looking out for them, hoping to be involved, an insider in the investigation.
‘The others are waiting for you in the small lounge,’ he said. ‘At the end of the corridor and turn left. I can show you if you like.’
Ramsay seemed to consider the offer carefully. ‘ No,’ he said. ‘Thank you. I think someone should stay on the desk if you don’t mind.’
‘Sure!’ Fenwick said, grinning to expose a mouth full of crooked teeth.
In the lounge the mock-leather chairs were still set in a circle. Earlier the Writers’ Circle had sat and listened with rapt attention to a local author of historical romances talk about the necessity of proper research. The three women in the room had pulled their chairs out of the circle and sat in a corner around a small table which held a tray with a teapot and mugs. The heating in that part of the building must have been switched off automatically because the room was very cold. The women were all wearing coats.
Hunter opened the door without knocking and they turned to face him with the wary suspicion that usually met the police. Ramsay, standing behind him, did not hear the sergeant’s introduction and his explanation that they had questions to ask but they would be as quick as possible. He was staring at Prue Bennett, recognizing her immediately, waiting for some sign that she recognized him.
Chapter Three
One summer, more than twenty years before, Stephen Ramsay had been in love with Prue Bennett. He had been a sixth former at Otterbridge Grammar School. She had been a year older, at the same school. There, Ramsay had been considered boring. He was hard working, not terribly bright, never a real member of the arty group which dominated the Common Room. He found the talk of politics, rock music, and pop psychology bewildering. The
re was nothing in his background or personality to excite interest and the girls who were at that time into long floral dresses and self-expression ignored him. In their presence he was awkward, gawky, quite socially inept. He cared too much what they thought of him, desperate for some contact, some intimate female company. Now, in the Grace Darling Centre, standing in the doorway, trying to catch Prue’s eye, he still remembered with pain the desperation of that summer and the occasion that had brought them together.
A trendy young English teacher had organized a trip to the Newcastle City Hall in the school’s minibus. The lead guitarist from a famous rock group had recently gone solo and was playing there as part of a country-wide tour. Who was he? Ramsay wondered now. But although he had an image of a fine-featured young man, with long ginger hair, bending over a guitar, could even hear one of the more lyrical tunes which had the girls in the party dancing, he could not remember the musician’s name. Had it been familiar to him even then? Or had he gone along on the trip just because he was frightened of being left out altogether, of becoming one of the strange, misfit pupils, the target of jokes, hardly considered as part of the sixth form at all? He had gone, he admitted to himself now, though he would not admit it then, because there would be girls in the party and in 1971 he was obsessed by women. For Ramsay, at that time, almost any girl would have done. He would have been content with a kiss, a touch, a token taste of the sexual activity which was going on all around him and in which he never participated. He supposed that someone fat or particularly ugly would have been an embarrassment but he had the sense that once he made it with one girl the rest would be easy. There was a feeling of time running out.
Prue Bennett was not any girl. She was a calm, dark young woman as tall as he was. She was in the upper sixth and had already gained a place at Cambridge. She was, he knew, way out of his league. Yet because of chance or circumstance, because the trendy English teacher was infatuated with a married woman, Ramsay and Prue were thrown together.
It had been arranged that the minibus would deliver all the girls to their homes, but it had taken longer than the teacher had expected to negotiate the traffic generated by the concert. He had a date with his mistress and knew she would not wait for him if he were delayed. She had a husband to return to. He was a mild distraction to relieve her boredom, not someone to ruin her life for. When he arrived at the town centre with Prue still on board he was frantic.
‘Look!’ he said, persuasive, chummy, one of the lads. ‘I’ve got an appointment, something I can’t miss. You know how it is. Steve, you’ve got to get the bus home anyway. Can’t you walk Prue to her house and get it from the top of the hill?’
‘All right,’ Ramsay had said hesitantly. Would Prue Bennett want him to walk with her? She was independent. Perhaps she would prefer to walk alone. He was more nervous than he had ever been. More nervous than before ‘O’levels, even than before the eleven-plus and then he had been so frightened that he had spewed up in the playground of the village school where he’d been a pupil.
‘Prue?’ the teacher had said. ‘You don’t mind, my love? You’ll be quite safe with old Steve.’ And he had laughed, a little unpleasantly, as if he knew of Stephen’s inexperience and was making a joke of it.
‘No,’ Prue had said easily. ‘Of course not. I’d like the walk if you don’t mind …’ She had turned round in her seat in the minibus to face him and put her hand on his arm. ‘If you’re quite sure.’
Oh yes, Ramsay mumbled. He was quite sure.
‘Let’s go through the park,’ she said as they crossed the bridge. It was still warm but a breeze from the Otter blew her hair, and the skirt between her legs. He looked away.
‘I thought it was locked at night,’ he said.
‘It is. But I know a way. Come on. It’s miles quicker.’
And she took his hand and ran with him across the bridge and pulled him through a hole in the hedge. They were alone in the moonlight in the park. The trees threw long shadows across the path and there was a smell of honeysuckle and roses.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s lovely,’ he said. ‘Really lovely.’ But he was not sure if that was what she wanted him to say. Perhaps they were too corny for her these images of moonlight and roses. Perhaps she expected him to laugh.
He was still holding her hand. He began to stroke her palm with his thumb, expecting her to pull away and make a fuss. He was tensely defensive, prepared for rejection. But she didn’t make a fuss and when he put his arm around her shoulder and then pulled her towards him to kiss her she went along with that too, with a kind of amused good humour.
Now, in the Grace Darling Centre, he wondered what she had seen in him. She could have chosen any of the boys: one of the intellectuals from her scholarship group, a musician, an artist, anyone. Perhaps she had picked him through a stubborn perversity, just because he was unfashionable. Walking with her that night through the park, burying his face in her hair, he did not care. He knew he would never be so happy again.
She had lived in a large Victorian house on the corner of a street, with a view over the park to the town.
‘Why don’t you come in?’ she had said that night. ‘Meet Mum and Dad.’
‘I don’t know,’ he had said. ‘ I don’t want to disturb them. Perhaps they’ll be ready for bed.’ His mother would already be in her candlewick dressing-gown, nervously watching the clock, waiting for his return. ‘No,’ she said. ‘ Of course not. Don’t be silly. It’s early yet.’ And in her laughter he had the glimpse of a domestic world completely different from his own.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said reluctantly. ‘ I should get the bus. My mother …’ he did not finish the sentence, unwilling to imply that he was in any sense a mother’s boy.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Well, another time.’
‘When?’ he had demanded, decisive for the first time. ‘When can I come?’
And she had laughed again. She was pleased with him. ‘Whenever you like,’ she said.
‘But when? Give me a definite time.’
‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Come for supper tomorrow. About seven o’clock.’
And she had run up the crumbling grey steps and through the front door, so he was left open-mouthed, staring after her.
He had three months before she would go away to university. He never considered that they would stay together once she left the area. The affair had a natural time scale and he counted the days. He came to know her parents quite well during that time. He was happier in the large, untidy house than he was introducing Prue to his own home. Mr and Mrs Bennett were older than his own parents, in their late fifties, and he thought their age gave them a licence to be eccentric. Although Prue was an only child they allowed her a freedom which he envied. They were wrapped up in their own interests: Mrs Bennett taught piano and always seemed, Ramsay thought, to have music in her head. When she was not teaching the stream of eager middle-class children who came to the door she was playing herself, and even in the middle of a conversation she would break off, and begin to hum absentmindedly. She encouraged Prue in her academic interests without putting too much pressure on her—of course the girl would do well, she implied. Why should she fuss about it?
Mr Bennett had been a civil engineer and had taken early retirement because of ill health. He was a cheerful, unassuming man who held the house together. He took care of all the practical matters—ordering milk and bread, fixing dripping taps, battling with the large, unruly garden.
Stephen was flattered because the family seemed to like him. He was invited regularly to relaxed, chaotic meals, where he was introduced to olive oil, garlic, and wine. It was much easier than taking Prue back to his home in the pit village between Otterbridge and the coast. She was charming, uncritical, but in her presence Mrs Ramsay grew uneasy and threatened. She looked around the small Coal Board cottage where they lived, as if she knew it was not what Prue was used to. She could not bring herself to apolog
ize for it but Prue’s style and confidence made her resentful. She was brittle, too polite, and when Stephen’s father came home from the pit with coal dust under his fingernails she blushed with shame.
Ramsay standing in the doorway, looking at the three women huddled around the tea tray, thought that Prue had grown to look more like her father. She had not changed so much. Her hair was streaked with grey and she was drawn and tired but he would have known her anywhere. She looked up at him calmly, without apparent recognition, and he thought he must have aged dramatically or that their relationship had meant so little to her that she had forgotten it long ago.
‘Good evening,’ he said evenly. ‘ I’m sorry to have kept you. My name’s Ramsay. I’m an Inspector with Northumbria Police.’
Then there was a slow recognition, a relief. ‘Stephen,’ she said. ‘It is you. I wondered but I couldn’t believe it. It seemed too good to be true.’
Ramsay was uncomfortably aware of Hunter. What would the sergeant make of that? he wondered. What sordid rumour would he start in the canteen?
He spoke formally. ‘I’m afraid I have to ask some questions,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand.’
‘Yes,’ she said. Was she offended by the formality? Surely she would understand. Probably she hardly cared either way. If there was a daughter there was probably a husband. She wore no wedding ring but that meant nothing. And many women used their maiden names for professional purposes. ‘Yes,’ she repeated. ‘ Of course.’
He was aware of the need to concentrate, to bring his attention back to the case, to treat it as just another investigation.
‘Perhaps you would introduce me,’ he said briskly, to get things moving. She seemed surprised by his tone but answered readily.
‘This is Anna,’ she said. ‘My daughter. You must realize that she’s very upset. Gabby was a close friend.’
He looked at a thin, pale teenager with unusually straight dark hair. He saw a shadow of Prue as a girl in the features, but there was none of Prue’s confidence and the shadow disappeared. Anna had been crying and clutched a wet handkerchief in long white fingers. She looked up at him and nodded, then returned to her grief.
