by Ann Cleeves
The disturbances on the Starling Farm got out of hand because nobody was expecting them. It was a rainy Monday evening and the weekend had been quiet. The possible trigger to trouble—the arrest of the Pastons—no longer seemed to apply. The women were given bail in the late afternoon and delivered home by a kind constable. He accepted Alma’s offer of tea and stayed and chatted to her for half an hour before returning to the station. On his way out of the estate he saw a group of lads gathering in the car park of the Keel Row. They jeered at the panda car and threw a few stones but that was par for the course on the Starling Farm estate. He had a feeling that the gathering was more purposeful than usual, that the kids might be waiting for someone, but when he reported the incident back at the police station no one took any notice. It was five o’clock. Trouble usually started later when the pubs closed.
By five o’clock in Hallowgate police station Stephen Ramsay thought he knew who had killed Gabriella Paston and Amelia Wood. He had motive and opportunity and the description of the person Mrs Wilkinson had seen in Martin’s Dene was more accurate than he could have hoped. But he had no proof, no forensic evidence. At this stage there was definitely not enough to convict. He discussed the problem with his superintendent.
‘Should we go for an arrest?’ he asked.
The superintendent sat behind a desk stacked with paper and was deeply troubled.
‘Think of the publicity,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a media circus. Could we guarantee a fair trial after that, even if we get enough to bring charges?’
‘Not here,’ Ramsay said. ‘ But the trial could always be moved out of the area.’ Besides, he thought, that’s not our problem. My problem is to find the evidence to convict and I’m not sure an arrest would help. A confession’s not enough. Not these days.
‘What about searching the property? Would that be any use?’ The superintendent looked up from his papers. He looked suddenly tired and very old.
‘I think it would. We’ve the forensic report on Lynch’s car back now. There are some unexplained fibres on the driver’s seat. I’d be happier if we could tie them in with something belonging to our suspect.’
‘Yes, I see.’ He paused, seemed to be considering all the options. ‘Not a pleasant job,’ he said. ‘Never is.’ He looked at Ramsay with some sympathy.
‘Will you go yourself?’
Ramsay stood up and walked to the window. He looked out at the rain. A buoy flashed on the south side of the river.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I think I should go to the Grace Darling Centre.’ The drama had started there, the week before, and he thought that was where the thing would be concluded.
‘How long then,’ the superintendent demanded, suddenly alert and awake, ‘before it’s all over?’
Ramsay turned to him sadly. ‘We’ll get it finished tonight,’ he said. ‘One way or another.’
Ramsay drove to the Arts Centre through the centre of Hallowgate. The shops were still dark and shuttered, the streets almost empty. A squally wind blew litter across the pavement and made the branches of the big Christmas tree outside the shopping centre sway crazily. The large coloured bulbs which were its only decoration scattered light on to the wet streets and the blank shop windows. As Ramsay stopped at a junction a car drove up behind him very fast and overtook him, jumping a red light, almost causing an accident. It sped off at great speed before he could take the registration number and left him with a sense of shock and unease which remained all evening.
At the Grace Darling Centre everything was much as it had been the week before. It was the quiet period before the evening rush. Joe Fenwick sat behind the desk in the lobby, his legs stretched in front of him, his eyes half closed, resting.
Gus Lynch’s sense of elation had persisted. He paced about his office, with his door wide open so his voice carried through the building, speaking on the telephone, trying to drum up advance publicity for The Adventures of Abigail Keene. He used the murders shamelessly.
‘Look,’ he said to friendly reporters, ‘the girl who died was actually playing the lead. You can’t get more topical than that…’
And he replaced the receiver satisfied that they would have all the publicity they could use.
Prue Bennett tried to work but she was distracted by Gus Lynch’s voice and her anxiety about Anna. It was not only a concern for the girl’s safety which made it impossible for her to concentrate on the report to trustees she was trying to prepare. Gus Lynch’s insinuations that Anna had benefited from Gabriella’s death remained with her, persistent and alarming, and other incidents, things Anna had said, took on a new and disturbing significance.
This is mad, she thought. It’s caused by exhaustion and worry. If Anna were here, so I could see her and talk to her, I’d realize it was all nonsense. But still she could not settle to her work and finally she went to the cafeteria and waited there, drinking coffee after coffee, trying to clear her mind of all her suspicions.
At six o’clock Ellen Paston turned up for her shift in the cafeteria. She nodded to Joe in the lobby on her way through as she always did, leaving her soaking raincoat on a hook behind the counter and put on her nylon overall. The place was quiet and she had time to fill all the sugar bowls before the customers arrived. Prue came to the counter to order another coffee but Ellen said nothing of her ordeal of the morning. She kept the humiliation of police questioning to herself, and brooded on it as she worked.
Half an hour later members of the choral society and the writers’ group began to arrive. They talked with ghoulish curiosity of the tragedy that had occurred the week before and spent longer over coffee than they would usually have done.
‘Come on, then,’ one said at last. ‘We’d best get started. I think we’re all here. Except Evan. He said he’d be able to make it this week too. Oh well, if he were coming he’d be here by now. We’ll have to manage without him.’
And they went to make music without giving Evan a further thought.
When Ramsay arrived at the Grace Darling Prue was still in the cafeteria, sitting in the corner where she could watch the door, waiting for a glimpse of Anna. As soon as the inspector came in she got to her feet and hurried to meet him, knocking a coffee cup off the table with the sleeve of her jacket in her haste.
‘Why are you here?’ she said. The colour had drained from her face. ‘Is there any news?’
He shook his head. ‘ You’ve not heard any more from her?’
She tried to hold back her tears.
‘She’ll turn up,’ he said. ‘I promise she’ll turn up.’ He wanted to take her into his arms and comfort her.
At six o’clock news began to come through of disturbances on the Starling Farm. The news hit so quickly because the television companies had been warned in advance by an anonymous phone call about what would take place. The reporters were in position in the grounds of the nursery school which had been left untouched by previous looting. They watched a gang of youths smash the windows of the school and break down the door. They did nothing to assist the caretaker, an elderly man, who tried to stop the destruction, but they turned to each other and called it ‘ good television.’
The mob who had broken into the school ran off with a television, a video recorder, and an aquarium full of newts, but it seemed that they were more interested in provoking a reaction from the police, in bringing them on to the estate, than in what they could steal. When the police arrived to find a road block of burnt-out cars outside the school the crowd cheered and pelted the officers with rocks, bricks, and beer cans. They lobbed petrol bombs like grenades. It was all more organized and serious than the policemen had expected. They retreated and waited for reinforcements.
The police who arrived in the next wave were so anxious not to be overwhelmed by the crowd that they over-reacted. They were aware of the criticism of delay levelled at them after the Meadow Well riots, and decisions were hardened because the television cameras were already there. No one wanted pictures of riot and disorder to be seen again in
living rooms throughout the country. The north-east had a bad enough image already. The officer in charge of the operation was insecure, temperamentally unsuited to taking responsibility. He panicked. He thought it was better to have the reputation of coming down hard on troublemakers than going soft. All the political comment in recent months had reinforced his attitude. He was not prepared to wait, to be seen as a coward, a laughingstock.
His men arrived in armoured buses, wearing riot helmets, carrying shields and batons. They were greeted by an even louder cheer from the crowd and that seemed to provoke the officer in charge beyond endurance. He told his men to go in hard, immediately, and the young people behind the road block, many of whom were only there as spectators and stood laughing and drinking beer were surprised by the attack. It was over very quickly and brutally. The riot police weighed in without proper supervision or preparation. They seemed to lose control, hitting out with their batons, tramping over bodies already knocked to the ground in the rush to escape. It was perhaps fortunate for the officer in charge that only one incident—the beating of a twelve-year-old boy—was captured on television. It could have been worse. The rioters retaliated aimlessly, set the school alight, then scattered on foot and in stolen cars.
At the Grace Darling Centre Gus Lynch eventually agreed reluctantly to cancel the rehearsal. Anxious parents who had seen pictures of the violence on the local early evening news phoned in and said that they would not let their teenagers out. Still there was no information about Anna, and Prue Bennett grew more anxious and withdrawn.
‘Where the hell is she?’ she cried. ‘ She should have been here by now. I can’t stand this waiting.’
Ramsay said nothing. His work was all about waiting and he was used to it.
A police car on traffic patrol on the road from Newcastle to the coast was parked in a layby close to the Co-op hypermarket which had been raided earlier in the week. From there the driver could look down on the Starling Farm estate. He saw the flashes of petrol bombs and the huge bonfire which had once been the nursery school. He heard the screech of sirens.
‘If any of them come this way,’ he said to his partner, ‘we’ll get the bastards.’
In the opposite direction two fire engines and an ambulance went past at speed. They turned off the main road. The policemen in the car were frustrated and watched the disappearing blue lights with envy. They wanted to be involved. They had friends hidden behind helmets and riot shields. But they had been ordered to keep their position on the Coast Road until they were needed.
The radio crackled and the message had begun almost before they had realized, while their attention was still on the scene below.
‘Blue Sierra. Registration number: Alpha 749 Romeo, Tango, Golf. Two occupants wanted for questioning in relation to Starling Farm disturbances. Moving west towards the Coast Road.’
‘That’s it,’ the policeman said. ‘They’re ours.’
He switched on the engine and sat, tense, over the wheel, just as John Powell had sat watching the races on the estate.
They heard the car before they saw it. Its exhaust had no silencer and it roared like a jet plane up the slip road to the dual-carriageway. They switched on their siren and followed.
‘Bloody young fools,’ the older policeman said uncomfortably. ‘They’ll kill themselves.’
But the driver was caught up in the excitement of the chase and said nothing. The speedometer rose to a hundred miles an hour.
‘That old banger will fall to bits if they go much faster,’ the older policeman said, but still the driver made no attempt to moderate his speed.
The road was busy still with commuter traffic. On the opposite carriageway there was a tailback from roadworks and temporary traffic lights and as they approached the town the cars ahead of them were moving less freely.
‘Slow down!’ the policeman shouted but the driver seemed not to hear him.
Ahead of the Sierra a Mini indicated and pulled out carefully to overtake a bus. The middle-aged woman driving must have seen the Sierra behind her but had misjudged its speed. The Sierra swerved wildly to avoid it but clipped the back of the Mini, so it swivelled to face the oncoming traffic, then crossed the central reservation and smashed into the stationary cars on the opposite carriageway. The Sierra hit with such force that the chassis crumpled and the stationary vehicles were bounced like billiard balls across the width of the road. The driver of the police car slowed down automatically and came to a halt, then stared at the wreckage with astonishment. It was as if he had just wakened from a dream and couldn’t believe the reality in front of him.
The Grace Darling Centre was quiet. The Writers’ Circle and Choral Group finished early and rushed away to watch the violence with a vicarious excitement on their television screens. Ellen was sent home.
‘Can’t we give you a lift?’ Prue said. ‘It might be dangerous out there.’ But Ellen refused the offer firmly, without explanation, and they stood in the lobby and watched her plod across the square, her back more stooped than usual, until she disappeared down Anchor Street. Only Prue, Gus, Joe Fenwick, and Ramsay were left.
Ramsay could sense Prue’s tension. He knew she would wait there all night for Anna if he let her. ‘I’ll drive you to the police station,’ he said. ‘If there’s any news of Anna they’ll have it there.’ He turned to Gus. ‘You might as well go home too, Mr Lynch. I need to talk to you but I can do it just as well in your flat. You will be in all evening?’
‘Yes,’ Gus said. ‘I’ll be in. But I can’t think what this is all about. I’d have thought you had better things to do with all these disturbances. It’s all a matter of priorities, surely.’
‘My priority is to complete a murder investigation,’ Ramsay said quietly. ‘I’ll be coming to talk to you tonight.’
Behind his desk Joe Fenwick was almost asleep. The doors were already locked and he stretched as he got up to let the three of them out. Outside it was still raining and the bare chestnut trees in the square glistened and dripped. There was a faint smell of burning. Ramsay and Prue waited at the top of the steps to say goodbye to the old man and Lynch went ahead of them into the street. He stopped and turned towards Ramsay.
‘You people have still got my car,’ he grumbled. It was another grievance. ‘I’ve had to hire one. This time I’ve left it in the street where I can keep an eye on it. I hope you intend to pay me back. It’s costing me a fortune.’
He stepped out into the road to cross the square.
From the corner of his eye Ramsay saw the headlights of a car move around the square. They seemed to be picking up speed, to be moving much too fast in the enclosed space.
‘Look out!’ he shouted and Lynch threw himself on to the pavement as the Renault hurtled past. It mounted the pavement, missing Lynch by inches. Its wing hit a lamppost and the car came jerkily to a stop. In the orange street light they saw Jackie Powell, her head resting on the steering-wheel.
Ramsay went to the car, opened the door, and helped her out. He told her gently that he was arresting her for the murders of Gabriella Paston and Amelia Wood. As he stood on the pavement to radio for help he saw a small, bedraggled figure walk across the square from Anchor Street. It was Anna Bennett. She saw Prue and ran into her mother’s arms.
Chapter Twenty
They sat in the kitchen of the house in Otterbridge. It was almost midnight. Ramsay had sent them back in a police car and promised to come later to explain it all to them. Anna was wrapped up in a towelling dressing-gown in the rocking chair. When Ramsay arrived Prue made a fuss of him, took his wet coat, offered him tea, a drink.
‘Whisky,’ he said. ‘If you’ve got it.’
‘Anna’s been explaining what happened,’ Prue said. She couldn’t take her eyes off her daughter. She sat on the arm of her chair and stroked her as if she needed to make sure she was really there.
‘Perhaps you’d better tell me,’ Ramsay said to the girl. ‘If you can face going through it again.’
&nb
sp; ‘I think it was a kind of madness,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what got into me.’
‘You met John Powell?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘We went to the Starling Farm,’ she said. ‘The kids there race stolen cars…’
‘And you?’ he asked. ‘Did you take part?’
‘Not the first time,’ she said. ‘The first time I just watched but when I went on Sunday afternoon I joined in. John was driving. I just sat beside him. I had my eyes closed most of the time but it was so exciting…’
‘And after the racing?’ Ramsay said flatly. ‘ What did you do then?’ He wanted to tell her that she was a stupid fool, that her mother had been frantic with worry, but he knew that Prue wouldn’t have wanted that.
‘I asked John to take me home,’ she said defensively. ‘But he wouldn’t. He was going with some friends to a sort of party in one of the boarded-up houses on the estate.’
‘You could have phoned me,’ Prue interrupted. ‘I would have come for you.’
‘I know.’ Anna paused. ‘It was pride, I suppose. I couldn’t bear phoning up, begging to be collected. Like a child. And I wanted to be with John.’
‘So you went to the party with him?’
She nodded. ‘I didn’t enjoy it much. It lasted all night. I just wanted to go to sleep. John drank himself senseless and was in no state then to take me home.’
‘What happened in the morning?’ Ramsay asked.
‘I said I should go to school but they all laughed at me. What did I want with school, they said. I told them I’d have to phone my mother. She’d be frantic. She’d have the police out looking for me and it would only cause trouble. So John took me to the Community Centre and I used the phone there.’
‘You were still in the Community Centre when Connor got the news that the Pastons had been arrested?’ Ramsay asked.
She nodded. ‘Connor told John to run away. He said the police would be on to him like a shot. They’d cause a disturbance to distract them, and give John a chance to get away. But John said he wasn’t running anywhere. I think in a way he would be glad to be caught. He knew he was out of his depth. It had all got out of hand.’ She looked directly at her mother. ‘I tried to leave then,’ she said. ‘But Connor wouldn’t let me. He said I would only give them away. I was a sort of hostage, until it was all over.’ She shivered. ‘I think he must be mad,’ she said. ‘I heard him plan it all—the petrol bombs, the looting. He phoned some friends from Newcastle to join in.’
