Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher

by Ann Cleeves

  But still Bernard Howe had seemed unable to move.

  In his office Ramsay looked up at Hunter who blocked the doorway.

  ‘A full-scale murder inquiry, then,’ he said. ‘As if we haven’t got enough on our plates. You know the ropes.’

  Hunter nodded but remained where he was.

  ‘You knew her, didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘The victim?’ He could be as nebby as an old woman, started most of the canteen gossip.

  ‘Not really. I met her once and I’ve seen her around.’

  ‘They’re a funny bunch out on the Headland,’ Hunter said. ‘I went out with a lass from there once. Her dad took me to the club. You’d have thought I was a Martian. No kidding. The place suddenly went quiet and they all stared.’

  ‘They don’t like outsiders?’

  ‘Oh, they’re friendly enough when they get to know you but if there’s not a member of your family who can remember the Cotter’s Row street party at the end of the war, you’re a newcomer.’

  Well, Ramsay thought, there were still plenty of communities in Northumberland like that. He wondered how long the Howes had been living on the Headland. He could not imagine that they belonged.

  ‘Sal Wedderburn stayed the night with the family,’ he said. ‘She was there when I told the girl about her mother.’

  ‘Aye.’ Hunter was disapproving. ‘I’d heard you’d called her in to play social worker.’

  Ramsay wondered if it was time for a warning about the petty rivalry which flared between the two officers occasionally but decided against it. Gordon Hunter was given to sulks and flounces and he could do without that now.

  ‘They seemed to take to her.’ But as soon as the words were spoken he wondered if that were true. There had been no hostility but the family had hardly seemed to acknowledge Sally’s presence. When he’d said that he’d like her to stay – for support, to fend off the press if that proved necessary – Bernard, had emerged briefly from his stupor to say, ‘But where will she sleep? Claire uses the spare room.’

  Ramsay had explained that the sofa would be fine and there had been no more comment. He had hoped that Marilyn would form a relationship with Sally, would confide in her, but realized now that this was unlikely to happen.

  ‘You think one of the family’s involved, then?’ Hunter asked.

  ‘I don’t know anything at this stage.’ The words were sharper than he’d intended and he added, ‘No. That’s not why I asked Sally to stay. The girl was very close to her mother. They went everywhere together. She’ll know better than anyone if Kath Howe was anxious, frightened. I’d hoped she’d see Sal as a friend.’

  ‘Ah.’ Hunter was relieved. ‘Like I said. Playing the social worker.’

  ‘I’d like you to come over to Heppleburn with me,’ Ramsay said. ‘I want every single person on the Headland talked to. I don’t mean a plod asking a couple of questions on the doorstep. I mean a pot of tea on the table and someone listening for as long as the chat goes on. Gossip. Not just about the Howes but about anyone living in the place.’

  ‘You think we’re looking for a local, then?’

  Ramsay shrugged, tried not to show his frustration at Hunter’s demand for easy answers. ‘It’s not the sort of place a stranger would wander across to by chance. Especially in the weather we’ve had this weekend. I don’t suppose we’ve got a time of death yet?’

  ‘Nothing specific. Some time Saturday.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘The Coastguard House has been converted to private use. On Saturday afternoon there was a kiddies’ party. I presume that means carloads of strangers visiting the place. Not exactly a problem. More of complication. We’ll need a list of visitors, car registration numbers. It certainly doesn’t make life easier. Anyone unfamiliar on the Headland that day would have been put down as a guest of the Coastguard House.’

  ‘Do you want me to talk to the owners?’

  ‘No,’ Ramsay said. ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Leave me to deal with the peasants? Is that it?’ Hunter grinned to show there were no hard feelings, exposing teeth which seemed very white in an even brown face. He’d been on a package holiday to Turkey in the autumn and he’d topped up his tan regularly since then on the sun beds.

  ‘Charm the old ladies more like,’ Ramsay said. Hunter liked that and grinned again.

  The jetty was still roped off with blue and white plastic tape. Despite the drizzle a small group of onlookers stood in the car park of the Headland Social Club. Mostly old men with pitmen’s coughs. One of them was blind and had his arm linked with that of his companions who provided a running commentary on the proceedings. Not that there was much now to comment on.

  A blue transit van with a noisy exhaust rattled to a stop beside the group. On the side ERIC WILSON MOBILE SHOP was painted in uneven white letters. This was the excuse for the gathering, though Ramsay thought that on normal Mondays it would be the women who’d be waiting. Perhaps the men had persuaded them it wouldn’t be safe to be out.

  Eric Wilson jumped out and opened the back doors of the van. Apparently from nowhere a group of children came running down the road. They pushed to the front of the queue and began pointing at the trays of improbably coloured sweets and chews which the shopkeeper stored sensibly out of their reach. The men muttered disapproval but did not try to stop them. It was as if they were scared to. These were the children who had been throwing stones at Kath Howe’s body.

  Ramsay waited until they had been served then made his way towards them. They munched silently, surrounded by a scattering of dropped sweet wrappers. In other circumstances he would have ordered them to collect the litter, but he resisted the temptation and said mildly, ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

  They grinned as if they had caught him out.

  ‘Na. Half term, isn’t it?’

  It was only later that he realized he’d seen the school-crossing lady in Heppleburn Village. A sudden death on the Headland had been too much for them to resist.

  ‘Were you playing round here on Saturday?’

  ‘We might have been here.’ As if playing wasn’t a concept they recognized.

  ‘I need your help.’ He began walking away from the men buying bags of potatoes and tins of beans. The children followed. When they could not be overheard he said, ‘It’s a murder inquiry.’

  That had them hooked. They wanted to know if Mrs Howe had been shot, stabbed or had her head cut off. They acted out scenes from particularly nasty videos and pretended to be carrying automatic machine guns. Every other word was an obscenity. Ramsay felt out of his depth. He’d been imagining the Gorbals Diehards not these manic addicts of celluloid pornography.

  ‘Was it a serial killer?’ one of them asked. ‘Was it?’

  ‘No!’ he said, more sharply than he’d intended. ‘And if you’re going to be stupid I’ll ask someone else to help.’

  Then they calmed down because above everything else they were bored.

  ‘What time were you here on Saturday?’ he asked.

  They looked confused. They didn’t own a watch between them.

  ‘Before tea or after tea?’

  Again that had little meaning. They seemed to eat continually when they weren’t at school, scrounging crisps and biscuits from whichever mother they could con into providing them.

  ‘What was on the television before you went out?’

  ‘Live and Kicking. When that was finished there was only the sport.’

  ‘And what was on when you went back in?’

  ‘Baywatch’. It was the oldest boy. He gave a lecherous smirk. ‘My dad always watches that.’

  ‘So you were out all afternoon?’

  They nodded.

  ‘Where did you go? Were you down by the jetty?’

  ‘Earlier on.’

  ‘Did you see anything?’

  ‘The murder, you mean? Na.’ He shook his head, disappointed, then gave a blood-curdling scream, an imitation presumabl
y of a woman being stabbed. ‘Later we hung around the Coastguard House. There was something going on. Loads of big cars.’

  ‘It was a birthday party,’ one of the younger boys said almost wistfully, then added, ‘Not that we’d have wanted to go.’

  ‘Na!’ they all joined in.

  ‘Did you see Mrs Howe that afternoon? You would all recognize Mrs Howe if you saw her?’

  ‘Course we would. She was an ugly bitch. And a stuck-up cow.’ A pause. ‘ That’s what my mam says.’

  ‘Did you see her on Saturday afternoon? At the jetty?’

  They shook their heads, quite certain.

  ‘What about later? You’d have had a good view down the Headland from the Coastguard House.’

  They looked at each other. Ramsay thought they were taking the question seriously, trying to reach a consensus.

  ‘We didn’t see her. But we mightn’t have. It was drizzly and misty. Like today only worse. And it was sodding cold. You couldn’t see much. Especially when it started to get dark.’

  Ramsay imagined them, banned from their homes by the men who wanted to watch Grandstand in peace, hovering round the gate of the Coastguard House, attracted by the noise and the flash cars. Being a nuisance. Getting in the way. If they were noticed at all.

  ‘So you didn’t see anything unusual?’

  But by then they’d lost interest and they were already swaggering away, back to the jetty, to swing on the blue and white tape and shout insults at the constable on duty.

  Ramsay walked up the hill to the Coastguard House.

  Chapter Eight

  Claire didn’t turn up for work at the Coastguard House on Monday morning. Emma hadn’t really been expecting her to. She’d heard about Kathleen Howe’s death from Brian who’d gone down to the club for a pint after his Sunday lunch and found the jetty cordoned off, the place crawling with coastguards and police.

  ‘What a terrible accident!’ Emma had said, meaning it at first and only thinking of the implication later. Then there was a feeling which was not so much relief as gratitude.

  ‘Not an accident.’ Brian’s words were slightly slurred. The club might have been shut but he’d had a few cans at home and most of a bottle of Rioja with his roast beef. ‘That’s what the talk is. The lass spoke to the blokes who fished her out.’

  She hadn’t replied. Couldn’t. She would have expected Brian to go on about the tragedy all afternoon, making sick jokes, even phoning his friends to tell them. Luckily he never mentioned it again.

  When the doorbell rang late on Monday morning Emma hoped that it would be Claire, deciding that she would be happier at work after all. Claire would know what was going on.

  But Claire would have gone round to the back and let herself in. Instead there was a man who waited patiently while Emma unlocked the door and tugged at it. It always warped in the damp.

  ‘Yes?’ she said briskly. She tended to become officious when she was nervous.

  ‘Mrs Coulthard?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My name’s Ramsay. I’m a detective inspector with Northumbria Police.’ He paused. ‘It’s about Mrs Howe.’

  Ramsay was a man who wouldn’t be easily fooled. Emma saw that at once. Before the babies she’d headed up the Human Resources Department of an electronics firm which had moved to Wallsend and she’d worked with men of authority. She’d admired them. Not the bullies, the pushy, lippy little men – they almost always were men – who blustered and posed and did sod all work if they could help it. But the one or two decent managers who meant what they said. Always.

  He was not particularly impressive to look at. About her age. Possibly a bit older. Tall, bony and angular with long limbs like a marionette. Dark hair which could do with a cut. She was too nervous to focus on his face but she saw dark eyebrows almost meeting in the middle which left the impression of a continual frown. He was wearing a raincoat. It was too big for him and hung over the shoulders, dragged out of shape by the weight of the material so it looked like a cavalry officer’s cape.

  ‘Claire’s not here today,’ Emma said quickly. ‘I don’t expect she could face it.’

  ‘She hasn’t been in touch?’

  ‘They haven’t got a phone. She’d know I’d understand.’

  ‘Of course.’ Ramsay paused so long that Emma wondered if that was it, if now he would turn away and walk down the hill to Cotter’s Row.

  ‘It was really you I wanted to talk to,’ he said at last. ‘ You or your husband. Perhaps I could come in. If it’s convenient.’

  ‘The children are here.’

  ‘Oh, I won’t need to disturb them.’

  ‘But they might disturb us. That’s what I’m saying.’

  He smiled. ‘We won’t mind that, will we?’

  So she had no alternative then but to stand aside and let him into the house. He thought it was a place where he could have lived. There was a lot of polished wood and white paint. It was not so tidy that it was intimidating. They sat in the kitchen with the door open so Emma could keep an eye on the boys playing in the other room. The floor was covered with toys. He knew nothing about children but it seemed to him that so many could only confuse. It was very different from the houses where his work usually took him.

  ‘It was David’s birthday at the weekend,’ Emma said. ‘ He had loads of new things. It should keep them quiet for a bit.’

  But almost as she finished speaking there was a scream of rage from the other room. The smaller boy had been fixing together pieces of wood to form a railway track. The blocks making a bridge had fallen apart. He picked up the painted train and hurled it away from him, then lay on his back, pounding his feet on the floor. Emma went in to him. When she tried to comfort him he pushed her away, punching at her with his fists. At last the sobs subsided and he fell limp in her arms. She set him gently on the floor and returned to the kitchen.

  ‘Just a temper tantrum,’ she said. ‘Now he’s past the terrible twos perhaps they’ll stop.’ Then, as if she felt some explanation was necessary, ‘David’s speech is very poor for his age. They say there’s nothing really wrong. Boys are often slow developers. But he gets frustrated when he can’t communicate.’ She caught her bottom lip with her teeth and he had the impression of a real anxiety.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be fine,’ he said. He felt she needed reassurance.

  ‘I hope so. My husband says I’m making a fuss about nothing, but he doesn’t speak at all.’

  Through the open door they watched the boy return to his game.

  ‘You have two children?’

  ‘Three. The baby’s asleep. Coffee?’

  ‘Please.’

  She ground beans, fiddled with a percolator. There was a jar of instant on the work top and he wondered why she didn’t use that. Was she trying to impress or did she need time to collect her thoughts? She poured coffee into pottery mugs.

  ‘This is a murder investigation,’ he said. ‘ Mrs Howe didn’t die by accident.’ He waited for some response. ‘You’re not surprised?’

  ‘There’s been talk. The men that helped pull her out of the water thought … You know what the gossip’s like in a place like this.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought you’d get involved in that. Not living up here.’

  ‘Brian – my husband – goes to the club.’

  ‘Ah.’ They’d used the club as a base the day before. It was somewhere the pathologist could get out of the rain. Of course there’d be talk.

  ‘We believe Mrs Howe was killed on Saturday,’ Ramsay said. ‘We need to eliminate anyone who was on the Headland then. I understand you held a party. We’ll need a list of all the guests and an address or a phone number for each one.’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked up from her coffee. ‘But no one who came here knew Mrs Howe. What reason would they have to kill her?’

  ‘As I said, it’s a question of elimination. And of finding witnesses.’

  ‘Yes.’ She seemed reassured. ‘I see.’
r />   ‘Besides,’ he went on gently, ‘it’s not exactly true, is it, that none of the visitors to the Coastguard House knew Mrs Howe? Both her daughter and her husband were here on Saturday afternoon. And her sister is your nanny.’

  ‘I didn’t mean…’ She blushed. ‘I wasn’t trying to hide anything. I meant the guests. They wouldn’t have known the Howes.’

  ‘They didn’t mix in the same social circles?’

  ‘No, well, I suppose not.’

  ‘But you will be able to give me a guest list?’

  ‘Of course. I put a list of names and addresses on the computer before I sent out the invitations. I’ll print you a copy.’

  She returned with a sheet of paper and a baby. The baby was round faced with downy hair and curls damp and flattened where she’d been lying in the cot. She was still sleepy. It was the closest Ramsay had ever been to a child so young. He wondered if some comment was expected about her prettiness, a question about her age, but he just took the list of names and scanned it quickly. There was no one he recognized.

  ‘And this is it?’ he asked. ‘There was no one else?’

  She paused for a moment and shifted the baby into a more comfortable position against her shoulder. ‘ There was one extra. Mark Taverner. He’s a friend of my husband.’

  ‘Taverner?’ The name was familiar then he remembered where he had heard it in connection with the case. ‘ Is he a teacher at Otterbridge High School?’

  ‘That’s right. RE and music. Why?’

  Ramsay shook his head, smiled. ‘Nothing sinister. It ties in with information from another witness.’

  Marilyn Howe had said she’d been given a lift back from the choir rehearsal by Mr Taverner. He’d told her he was coming to the Headland anyway.

  ‘I’ll give you his address,’ Emma said. ‘I don’t know why Brian invited him. It wasn’t really his thing. We try to include him in family events because he lost his wife recently. He must get lonely.’

  I lost my wife, Ramsay thought, but to a BBC news reporter with a blond moustache and a red sports car. And no doubt he’s lost her now, too.