Murder in My Backyard

by Cleeves, Ann

“Do you think he needs a doctor?”

  “I don’t know what he needs.” The words were sharp and unhappy, then he reconsidered. “Perhaps he should see a doctor,” he said, “but I’d never persuade him to go.”

  “Is he violent? I heard there was a fight with Tom Kerr.”

  “No!” Elliot seemed frustrated because Ramsay could not understand immediately. “Tom Kerr started that business. He’s got a wicked temper. Charlie wouldn’t hurt anyone. Especially not Maggie Kerr. But he talks loud. He talks big. He doesn’t make the effort to be polite anymore.”

  There was a silence. “He misses his mother,” he said. “ His mother understood him. I could never handle him. I never had the patience. I always lost my temper. My wife said we were too alike, but I never saw it myself.”

  “Does he have any friends?” Ramsay asked.

  “Not really,” Elliot said. “He goes to the Castle and buys drinks all round. They say he’s a grand lad then, but they’re laughing behind his back. They think he’s made a fool of himself over Maggie Kerr. Then Henshaw’s never been popular and they like it when Charlie’s rude about him. They haven’t the guts to say the things he says, but they cheer him on. They set him up.”

  “Does he drink too much?”

  “Aye,” Elliot said. “Probably.” He hesitated again, then went on in a rush. “ I talked to Mrs. Parry about him. I thought she might understand. She was a magistrate.”

  “What did she say?” Ramsay asked.

  “To give him time,” Elliot said. “And encouragement. She said he was bright. ‘He’s wasted at the garage,’ she said. ‘He should have a business of his own.’ I even thought of selling the post office to set him up. But then where would I live? It would have been different if Henshaw had decided to build the cheap houses. Mrs. Parry offered to talk to him, but when I told him he just laughed at me.”

  From the other room there was a sudden, loud burst of music, then silence.

  “Dad!” Charlie Elliot called. They heard his footsteps approaching the door. “What about some tea then?”

  He pushed open the door and stood, just inside the kitchen, staring at Ramsay. His rudeness was deliberate and contrived, but it was the result, Ramsay thought, of insecurity. Throughout the interview the bravado hid considerable stress.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m a detective,” Ramsay said formally. “ I’m enquiring into the death of Alice Parry.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” Charlie Elliot said. “ Someone’s been here already.” It was hard to tell that he had once been a soldier. He was overweight, unshaven. Ramsay was not surprised that Maggie found him unattractive.

  “I know.”

  “What are you doing here then?”

  “Just a few more questions,” Ramsay said easily. “Routine.”

  Fred Elliot had turned to the sink and was filling a kettle as his son had ordered. He clearly found the exchange embarrassing. Charlie sat on one of the chairs. “You’ll have to be quick,” he said. “I’ll have to be back at work soon. Tom Kerr’s a real slave driver.”

  “Mrs. Parry received a threatening letter on the afternoon of her death,” Ramsay said. “ Did that have anything to do with you?”

  “No,” Charlie Elliot said. “ I had my say at the meeting. What was in the letter?” He grinned unpleasantly and spread his stockinged feet towards the fire.

  “It threatened to kill her.”

  “She got what was coming to her then, didn’t she?”

  “Charles!” Fred Elliot turned on his son. He was white-faced with anger. “I’ll not have that talk in my house. It’s indecent.”

  The outburst shocked Charlie. He was unused to contradiction. He seemed confused and offended, like a spoilt child reprimanded in front of strangers.

  “Where were you on Saturday evening?” Ramsay asked.

  “I’ve already told that Hunter.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I was in the pub,” Charlie said. “ I always go to the pub on Saturday night. There was a darts match.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “I don’t know. About quarter to eleven.”

  “Wasn’t that unusual?” Ramsay asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you usually wait until Maggie had finished work?”

  Charlie looked at Ramsay with deep hostility. “That’s none of your business.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ramsay said. “ I’m afraid it is. Usually you waited until Maggie finished work and followed her home. What made that night different?”

  “I don’t know,” Charlie muttered. “Perhaps I realised she wasn’t worth it. I’d had a lot to drink.”

  Ramsay said nothing, waiting for Charlie to expand his explanation.

  “Look!” Charlie cried. “Perhaps I’d come to my senses, realised I couldn’t carry on like that. I’d decided to leave the village. I’m going to look for work in the south.”

  Ramsay nodded his understanding but gave no indication of whether he believed Charlie. He continued impassively: “ What time did you get home?”

  “About eleven o’clock, I suppose.”

  Ramsay turned to Elliot, who was stirring tea in the pot. “Is that right?”

  Elliot hesitated, then nodded. “Aye,” he said. “ I always wait up for him. I know it’s daft.”

  Ramsay returned his attention to Charlie. “ Did you see Mrs. Parry on your way home?”

  “No.” Charlie had recovered some of his composure and was showing off. “I didn’t see her, but then I’d had eight pints of Scotch. I might not have noticed.”

  Ramsay stared out of the misted window. “ So you can’t remember what you did,” he said. “You were drunk.”

  “I can remember fine.”

  “Did you stop on the way?”

  “No,” Charlie said. “Why should I stop? It was cold.”

  “Did you meet anyone in the street?” He spoke in a flat, courteous civil-servant’s voice.

  “No.” Charlie was sneering. “Most of Brinkbonnie’s in bed by ten o’clock. It was dead quiet.”

  Then his triumph at remembering despite the alcoholic haze overcame his resentment of the policeman. For the first time he contributed freely to the conversation. “ There was a girl! In the churchyard. I saw her when I came out of the Castle.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t recognise her. She was all right. Young, you know.”

  Ramsay gave no sign that the information was of any importance to him. He turned back to the window. “Did you speak to her?” he asked.

  “I might have shouted to her,” Charlie said. “ Something about it being a cold night.”

  “Did she answer?”

  “No, snooty cow. She walked through the gravestones towards the Tower. She looked like a bloody ghost.”

  “Did she go through the gate into the Tower garden?”

  “I didn’t see. I wanted to get home. I needed to piss.”

  “What did the woman look like?”

  Charlie shrugged. “It was hard to tell in that light,” he said. “Small, dark. I think she had long hair.”

  “And what was she wearing?”

  “How should I know? She was on the other side of the wall. I couldn’t see much more than her head.”

  “You are sure,” Ramsay said slowly, “that there was a woman? This isn’t a game to annoy the police.”

  “Oh,” said Charlie. “Think what you like.” He swore under his breath.

  Ramsay ignored him. “ Did you notice a car near the green?” he asked. “ One not usually parked there?”

  “No,” Charlie said. “ I didn’t notice anything.” But he spoke too quickly to have considered the matter and it seemed that the childish resentment had returned. “ Look!” he said. “How much longer are you going to keep me here? I’ll lose my job.”

  “You’re free to go at any time,” Ramsay said. “We know where to find you.”
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  He rubbed a clear patch in the condensation on the window and looked out into the yard. Charlie Elliot went to a cupboard in the corner and pulled out a jacket. They watched while he laced shoes and fastened buttons and then Ramsay saw him go out into the yard. Fred Elliot was standing helplessly in the middle of the room with a teapot in his hand. “ I’ve made this now,” he said. “Do you want some?”

  “No,” Ramsay said. “ I expect you want to open the post office.”

  “Yes,” Elliot said. He seemed miserable and lost. “I suppose I should.” He seemed afraid to be left on his own. “ There’s no hurry.”

  “Is it just a post office or is it a shop, too?”

  “Yes,” Elliot said. “ It’s a newsagent. We sell magazines, stationery, confectionery. The post office counter is at the back. It’s a canny little business. Especially in the summer.”

  “Where do you keep the stock you don’t sell?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There must be out-of-date newspapers, magazines. You can’t keep them on the shelves. What do you do with them?”

  “I save them,” Elliot said proudly. “Then sell them to a wastepaper merchant. For charity. I give the money to the hospital where my wife died. I can show you it if you like.” He had no suspicion, it seemed, of Ramsay’s motive for asking. Still in his slippers, he led the policeman across the yard to a large, well-built shed in one corner.

  The collection of wastepaper had become a hobby, it seemed, almost an obsession. “I collect the neighbours’ papers as well,” he said. “And the church helps. It’s surprising how it mounts up. You can make pounds.” He unbolted the shed door and switched on a light. Inside, against one wall, in neatly stacked and wrapped bundles, were piles of newspapers. Ramsay could imagine Elliot in there, escaping from his rude and unpredictable son, soothing his nerves by counting the papers and calculating their worth. In comparison to the general tidiness, the floor was a mess of paper scraps, as if a child had been playing at cutting out. There was a pair of round-ended scissors and a tube of glue. Elliot stood, betrayed and horrified, realising for the first time what the questions had been leading up to.

  “I take it,” Ramsay said, “that these have nothing to do with you.”

  Elliot shook his head.

  “You do realise that we’ll have to take these pieces of newspaper to compare with the print on the anonymous letter to Mrs. Parry?”

  “Yes,” Elliot said. He looked at Ramsay desperately. “ He might have sent the letter,” he pleaded, “but that doesn’t mean that he killed her.”

  “No,” Ramsay said gently. “ It doesn’t mean that he killed her.”

  “What will you do with him now?”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Ramsay said. “Probably take him to the police station and ask him some questions. You mustn’t worry too much. He can see a solicitor.”

  “He wouldn’t have killed her,” Elliot said, as if he were trying to convince himself. “He wouldn’t have killed her.”

  Ramsay left him in the shed, surrounded by his beloved wastepaper, standing by the open door and looking out at the whirlwind of sand funnelled by the wind into the yard.

  Out in the street little had changed. An old woman stood on the pavement patiently waiting for the post office to open. Two detective constables moved slowly along the terrace on the other side of the green, knocking on doors, asking questions. In the garage workshop Tom Kerr stood before the open bonnet of a car. Ramsay stood by the open door and looked in.

  Kerr straightened slowly. “ Inspector Ramsay,” he said. “How can I help you? Olive’s in the house.” He looked slightly ridiculous in his boiler suit still wearing the heavy-framed glasses. He would be more at home, Ramsay thought, in his choirmaster’s cassock.

  “I’d like to speak to Charlie Elliot,” Ramsay said.

  “Aye,” Kerr said with a trace of anger. “You and me both.”

  He wiped his hands on a cloth and moved to the front of the garage to meet Ramsay. “ He’s not here,” he said. “He came in from his dinner about half an hour ago. We had a car with a timing problem and he said he’d take it up the road to see what was wrong. He’s not back yet. It doesn’t take a ten-mile drive to check a timing problem.”

  “Where do you think he’s gone?”

  “I don’t know,” Kerr said. “He doesn’t talk to me. He’s very moody. This had made my mind up for me. I’ve been thinking of telling him to leave for a while.”

  “He was talking of looking for work in the south,” Ramsay said.

  “Was he?” Kerr seemed relieved. “He’s not said anything to me.”

  “If Charlie comes back, will you tell him to get in touch? I’ll be up at the police house.”

  But Ramsay knew that Charlie was unlikely to return and realised with a depressing certainty that he had allowed a major murder suspect to run away. In the street outside the garage a Radio Newcastle reporter stopped him and asked for an interview, but Ramsay said he had no comment to make and hurried up the hill to the police house. He sent cars up each of the roads out of Brinkbonnie, but by then it was too late. Charlie Elliot had disappeared.

  Chapter Ten

  Hunter seized on the disappearance of Charlie Elliot as an excuse for activity. While the communications centre at Otterbridge put out a general description of Charlie Elliot and of the car he was driving, Hunter drove at great speed around the country lanes, hoping to make an immediate arrest. He returned to the police house in the middle of the afternoon, disappointed, but still convinced that Charlie Elliot was a murderer. Ramsay knew the danger of jumping to conclusions too quickly and cautioned patience, an open mind.

  “Charlie Elliot had an alibi for the time of the murder,” he said reasonably. “His father confirmed that he was in the house by eleven. And then there was the girl he saw in the churchyard. We should be looking for her.”

  “What girl?” Hunter demanded. “ Man, that was just Elliot making up stories to throw us off the scent. No-one in the Tower saw a girl. And the old man was lying to protect his son.”

  “What about motive?” Ramsay said quietly. “ I thought you said no-one would commit murder for the sake of a few houses.”

  “No-one sane,” Hunter said. “We know Elliot was unbalanced, unpredictable. Look at his obsession with that girl in the pub. He’s our man. He can’t have got far. We’ll have him tonight.”

  But as the afternoon wore on there was no information about Elliot. No-one had seen the car. The men waiting in the police house became irritable and impatient, and to make things worse Fred Elliot was on the phone every half-hour wanting to know if his son had been found and claiming that Charlie, too, had been murdered.

  At half-past six Ramsay had waited long enough.

  “I’m going to Otterbridge,” he said to Hunter, “to talk to the Laidlaws. Go and sit with old man Elliot. There’s a chance Charlie will come home when he’s cold and hungry. And you’ll need to break that alibi if you’re to prove Charlie guilty. Elliot might talk while he’s so upset.”

  They walked together down the street to the green, where Ramsay’s car was parked. Despite the cold, two teenage boys in black leather stood by the bus stop, smoking a cigarette, passing it between them.

  Poor sods, thought Hunter. What else is there for them to do in a place like this?

  “Nip over and get their names and addresses,” Ramsay said. “Stella Laidlaw saw some lads at the bus stop on Saturday night. Find out if it was them.”

  Hunter went, sauntering towards them, indirectly over the grass. Ramsay thought Hunter had more in common with the boys than he did with him. The sky was clear and there would be another frost. Ramsay shivered as he watched the three figures by the bus shelter. He saw Hunter take a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and hand it around, then the three of them huddled together around the lighter, sheltering the flame from the breeze. He imagined the three in conspiracy against him. “That’s my boss,” he imagined Hunter saying. “Bu
t don’t take any notice of him. If you’ve got any information, come straight to me.”

  That’s ridiculous, he thought. Diana always said I was paranoid. But his suspicions about Diana had been justified and she had run away eventually with someone who produced television programmes for the BBC in Fenham.

  Hunter returned, stubbing out the cigarette with the heel of his designer trainers before he reached the inspector.

  “They’re all right,” he said. “Bored out of their brains, but who can blame them in a place like this? They weren’t here Saturday night, but they’ve given me the names and addresses of a couple of other lads who might have been.”

  Ramsay nodded and walked on alone to his car. Hunter might be good at communicating with local teenagers, but he had other skills. He had been married to Diana. He knew how to talk to the civilised middle classes.

  Max Laidlaw was on call that Monday morning but paid the deputising service to take the duty for him. Judy wanted him to take Peter to school, then spend some time with her and the twins. In the afternoon he had a surgery and by then he would be pleased to leave the house. He told himself he needed time to think. In a sense Alice Parry’s death had changed nothing and there were still decisions to be made. In the chaotic house in Otterbridge he found decisions impossible.

  Judy made things worse. All morning she seemed unable to leave the subject of his aunt’s death alone. She followed him around the house demanding his attention, desperate, it seemed, for his opinion. Even while he was shaving she was shouting at him through the closed bathroom door.

  “What did you think of Ramsay, the detective?” she asked. “I didn’t know what to make of him. He seemed rather hostile, I thought.” Then: “How did Alice seem to you that night? Was she even more upset than she said?”

  “I don’t know,” he shouted, slamming out of the room, almost tripping over her on the landing. “And I don’t bloody care.”

  “But you talked to her,” Judy said, catching him up as he ran down the stairs to the kitchen. “You helped her clear up the dishes after supper and she wouldn’t let anyone else into the kitchen. ‘I want a private word with Max,’ she said, and she sent us all away. So what was the great secret?”