Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘Except the time when she was missing and you called at my house,’ Ramsay reminded her gently. ‘You were worried about her then.’

  ‘I was, wasn’t I?’ She seemed consoled by the memory.

  Ramsay waited until she had composed herself.

  ‘Did anyone get off the bus when you got on? Someone who might have followed your mother up the Headland, perhaps caught her up?’

  ‘No. No one.’

  ‘Mr Taverner gave you a lift back from school that afternoon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he tell you why he was coming to the Headland?’

  ‘He’s a friend of the Coulthards who live at the Coastguard House.’

  Ramsay turned to Claire.

  ‘You’ll know him then?’

  ‘I’ve met him.’

  ‘Is he a regular visitor to the Coastguard House?’

  ‘He has been recently.’ She gave a sudden smug little smile which vanished so quickly that he wondered if he’d imagined it.

  ‘Oh?’

  He was hoping for gossip, even scandal, but she said gravely, ‘I expect he’s lonely. His wife died a few months ago. She was Sheena Taverner, the writer.’

  Then he realized why the name had been familiar. He had seen Sheena Taverner’s books in Prue’s house; had even met her once at some party to which Prue had dragged him. There had been so many thin, soulful women that he found it hard to place her, but he thought he remembered her. Had Mark Taverner been present too? He could not remember, and turned his attention back to Marilyn.

  ‘Would your mother have known Mr Taverner?’

  ‘She’d met him at parents’ evenings. He was my tutor in Year Seven and now he takes me for music. She’d have recognized him.’

  ‘Where did he drop you?’

  ‘At the club. He was meeting Mr Coulthard there.’

  ‘And you walked up the hill by yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Weren’t you worried that your mother might be waiting for you at the bus stop?’

  ‘No. I told you yesterday. She wasn’t expecting me back until later.’

  There was a silence. The restaurant was, by now, very gloomy and a little cold. Ramsay poured more coffee.

  ‘Did you meet anyone as you walked up the hill?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Perhaps you could concentrate. It’s important that you’re absolutely sure.’

  ‘I didn’t meet anyone,’ Marilyn explained, ‘ but I saw Claire come out of the house and walk on up towards the Coulthards’. I don’t think she noticed me. The weather was dreadful. She wore her hood up and her head was bent down against the sleet. I shouted but she didn’t hear me.’

  Claire did not speak. She continued to stare into the courtyard.

  ‘I thought you spent all day in the Coastguard House,’ Sally Wedderburn said.

  Throughout the conversation Ramsay had been aware of a controlled hostility between the women, and wondered what lay at the root of it. Perhaps they had just got on each other’s nerves cooped up in that house. Now Claire was unapologetic, even defiant.

  ‘So I went home for something to eat? Why shouldn’t I? Everyone else has a dinner break.’

  ‘Was Mrs Howe there?’

  ‘Of course not! I would have said, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘But Mr Howe was?’

  ‘I suppose so. Upstairs. He spends hours up there practising.’

  Claire lapsed into silence. The carafe of wine was empty but a little remained in her glass. She held it up so the fading light from the window caught it, then she drank it all.

  Ramsay was thinking that this might be an explanation for Mr Howe’s belief that his wife had returned to the house. A door had slammed shut and he had assumed it was Kath. But the timing was wrong. Claire’s lunch break would have occurred much later than Mrs Howe’s expected return from the bus stop. Was it possible that so much time could have passed without Bernard’s noticing? Ramsay thought that perhaps it was. Bernard had been concentrating on his rehearsal, his mind, as Marilyn had once said, was full of magic and illusion. Ramsay decided they should work on the premise that Kath Howe had last been seen by her daughter, waved away across the level crossing before she could cause embarrassment.

  ‘But what would she have done then?’ He realized he had spoken aloud and continued in explanation. ‘ You were all busy. I was wondering how Mrs Howe would usually have spent her time on Saturday mornings.’

  The similarity of the terraced house in Cotter’s Row to the Coal Board cottage where he had lived as a child made him think of his own mother. When he reached school age she’d taken a part-time job in a draper’s shop and Saturday had become her cleaning day. He’d been sent out to play in the street while she dusted and hoovered. He remembered her squatting on the stairs, a small, hard brush in one hand, furiously beating the fluff and the dust down into the hall, shouting at him through the open front door to clear out until she’d finished. He couldn’t imagine that Mrs Howe would ever set aside a day for housework.

  Her relatives seemed surprised by the question. They looked at each other. Neither answered.

  ‘I understand she was interested in craft. Dyeing. Spinning.’

  ‘Aye,’ Claire said. ‘ That was the latest fad.’

  ‘What were the others?’

  ‘Botany, watercolours.’ She looked at Marilyn. ‘Is there anything I’ve missed?’

  Marilyn shook her head. It was a gesture of distaste, not an answer to the question.

  ‘Is it possible that she was following one of these hobbies on Saturday morning?’

  ‘It’s possible. Bernard would be able to tell you. That spinning wheel of hers makes a real racket and the living room’s right under the bedroom.’

  ‘What else might she have done?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Marilyn said. ‘ She walked a lot. Read. There was no regular routine.’

  Claire leant forward. ‘The trouble with Kath’, she said, ‘was that she’d never really grown up. She played at things. It was all too easy for her.’ And with that she shut her mouth and became her old taciturn self.

  Chapter Twelve

  Brian Coulthard was running late. Emma was in the kitchen with the kids squawking around her and when he shouted down the stairs she didn’t hear him. In the end he had to go himself. He stood in the doorway, bare chested, and said in as restrained a voice as he could manage, ‘ I don’t suppose there’s a clean shirt in this house.’

  She was heating milk for the baby’s cereal and hardly turned round.

  ‘There are some in the tumble dryer. If you hang on a minute I’ll iron one.’

  ‘I need it now. I’m late already.’

  She was still in her dressing gown and he felt like screaming, ‘What the hell do you do all day?’ But that would have provoked a row which would only have delayed him further.

  ‘All right.’ she said. The martyr. ‘I’ll do it now.’

  She slammed open the dryer door and yanked the ironing board into an upright position.

  When he left the house he tried to kiss her but she turned her cheek away. There were roadworks on the A19, and traffic was tailing back from the Tyne Tunnel to the Coast Road roundabout. He liked to be first in the office. Today his secretary was already there and the phones were ringing. A backlog of work to be cleared before he started.

  Brian Coulthard had set up his computer software business in 1985. It had been a gamble going it alone, and it hadn’t all been plain sailing, however it seemed from the outside. There had been times at the beginning when the banks had threatened to call in the debt and it was only Emma’s wage which had kept the company afloat. He had seemed then to spend all his time on the road touting for business, giving presentations to an audience so obviously uninterested that he had known they had already decided to place their contract elsewhere. Now there was more work than he could handle. He employed a dozen programmers and they were all rushed off their feet. Tha
t was stressful too, though Emma didn’t seem to realize.

  Whenever he was asked he said his office was in Jesmond. People knew that was Newcastle’s smartest suburb. In fact it was in Sandyford, close to the bus depot and the cemetery, near enough to the new Cradlewell bypass for him to hear the rumble of heavy traffic if he left his window open. It was in a gentrified terrace with a firm of accountants on one side of him and solicitors on the other. He was very proud of the office. He was buying, not renting it. Beside the door there was a brass plaque with COULTHARD COMPUTING engraved upon it. He parked the BMW in the space reserved for him and let himself in.

  ‘Anything urgent?’

  His secretary was a smooth-faced young graduate who’d given him the shock of his life when he’d turned up at Coulthards for interview. Brian had assumed the agency would send a woman though he hadn’t been displeased. He preferred to work with men. The secretary was called Noel, a name of ambiguous gender which suited him.

  ‘Mr Taverner rang.’ Noel knew that Brian would consider that urgent.

  ‘When?’

  ‘About ten minutes ago, but he said not to phone him back because he’s teaching all morning. Can you give him a ring at school at lunchtime? He was hoping you might meet for a drink this evening.’

  ‘Right.’ Brian wondered why Mark had not phoned him at home before he left for school. That was the usual practice.

  ‘And Inspector Ramsay phoned again. He’s been trying to get in touch for a few days, he said. He really would prefer to meet you during the day but he could come to your home this evening if that’s impossible. He says you’ve got his number.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Brian had made a few desultory attempts to get back to Ramsay but they hadn’t connected. Brian knew he could have organized a meeting if he’d made the effort. So did Noel. The last thing he wanted was office gossip about him obstructing the police.

  ‘Give him a ring, will you, Noel? Tell him I can fit him in during my lunch break. Say about one o’clock.’

  Ramsay arrived at exactly one. Brian went out to reception to meet him. He knew Noel was listening to every word.

  ‘Have you eaten, Inspector? I’m afraid I’m rather hungry. It was chaos at home this morning and I didn’t even manage a slice of toast.’

  Ramsay shook his head. He wondered for a moment if he would be wined and dined.

  ‘I usually buy some sandwiches from the deli in Cradlewell. In weather like this I like to eat them outside. It’s a break from the office. Would you mind talking at the same time?’

  So they walked together down the street. Ramsay noticed that for a man of such heavy build Coulthard had very small feet and a walk that was dainty, almost dancing.

  ‘I usually sit in the cemetery,’ Brian said. ‘ You won’t find that macabre? Of course you won’t mind. Not with a job like yours.’

  It was a large Victorian cemetery, too big to keep tidy. The graves were covered in mounds of dead leaves and overgrown with bramble. Where the grass had been cut close to the paths there were snowdrops and in the tangle of undergrowth an overblown, greenish-white Christmas rose.

  The weather was fine, unusually mild, and other office workers strolled down the wide paths. They found a wooden bench in the sun.

  ‘I didn’t know the woman,’ Brian Coulthard said. ‘I mean, you’ll have gathered what it’s like. I’m rushed off my feet. I’m hardly ever at home.’

  ‘But you would have recognized her.’ Ramsay was sure about that.

  ‘No. I don’t think so. Why should I?’

  ‘She walked everywhere. You must have seen her on the roads round the village, striding out. Usually she has a girl with her.’

  ‘Oh was that her? I have seen them. She always struck me as rather odd.’ He paused. ‘And it was the girl, wasn’t it, who turned up at the party?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Poor child.’

  ‘Did you ever speak to Mrs Howe?’

  ‘No. Never. Though I nearly ran over her once. I’d have spoken to her then if I’d had the chance.’ He bit into a tuna roll, wiped mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She ran off the pavement like a lunatic, straight into the path of the car. I remember it because it was the day my daughter was born.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Last September.’

  It was in September, Ramsay thought, that Mrs Howe last disappeared.

  ‘But I suppose you want to know what I was doing that day.’ Coulthard seemed eager to move the interview on. ‘When she died.’

  ‘Last Saturday. Yes.’

  ‘In the morning I came into work.’

  ‘What time did you leave the Headland?’

  ‘Nine. Nine thirty.’

  ‘Did you see Mrs Howe or her daughter on your way out?’

  He could have done. Marilyn had timed the bus’s arrival at nine forty-five.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You seem very definite.’

  ‘As soon as I heard the woman had been murdered I went over things in my mind. I knew you’d be asking.’

  ‘But you didn’t know then who Mrs Howe was.’

  ‘I didn’t see her on my way out. I know because I didn’t see anyone adult. It had snowed and there were a few kids mucking around on the pavement using a black bin bag as a sledge. That was all.’

  ‘Any strange cars?’

  ‘A very flash Mazda parked outside Kim Houghton’s house. I’d not have left a car like that in Cotter’s Row. But I don’t suppose he had car security on his mind.’

  ‘You know Kim Houghton?’

  ‘Only by reputation. They talk about her in the club.’

  ‘Did anyone phone you at work?’

  ‘At weekends all the phones are switched on to the answering machine. Except my personal line. I had one call on that. Mark Taverner – a friend. He paused. ‘ I put in a few hours then came home for about one. To a madhouse. Emma so wound up you‘d have thought Princess Di was coming for afternoon tea, the kids as high as kites.’ He turned to Ramsay. ‘Have you got children?’

  Ramsay shook his head.

  ‘You won’t understand what it’s like, then. When they get excited they fizz.’ He shook his head and smiled. ‘Like an Alka-Seltzer. It starts off bubbling gently then gets wilder and wilder until it overflows.’

  Ramsay said nothing – he could not imagine Marilyn Howe fizzing, even as a five-year-old – and Coulthard continued. ‘I was glad to get out of the house again.’

  ‘Where did you go? Back to work?’

  ‘To the club. I’d arranged to meet a friend there.’

  ‘Mr Taverner?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did you drive?’

  ‘Walked. I knew I’d have a few drinks. I’m not sure of the time. Claire Irvine, the nanny, walked down with me. She’d probably know. I think she’d had enough of the madhouse, too. She usually stays for lunch with Emma, but that day she’d obviously decided she needed a break.’

  ‘She walked with you to the club?’ Ramsay was deliberately obtuse.

  ‘No. Just as far as Cotter’s Row, then I walked on down by myself.’

  ‘Did she let herself into the house or knock on the door?’

  ‘I think she had a key.’

  ‘Was Mr Taverner in the club when you arrived?’

  ‘No. I had to wait for him. He said he’d probably be late.’

  And that would fit, Ramsay thought, because Marilyn had seen Claire when she was on her way back to the Coastguard House, her hood up, head bent against the sleet.

  ‘Tell me about Mr. Taverner. Is he an old friend of yours?’

  It was a polite question, not emotionally loaded, yet Brian found himself talking, rambling even, as he might in the rugby club after far too much beer to someone who wasn’t really listening.

  ‘We met at university. Durham. He was doing theology and I was doing applied maths. In the
first year we had rooms on the same corridor, and we’ve been friends since then. Surprisingly, because we’re quite different characters. Mark comes from the south. Worcester. He was the first southerner I’d really known. His father was a clergyman, something high up in the Cathedral. Mine was shop steward in a bakery…’ He stopped abruptly, seeming to expect another question. Ramsay said nothing and he continued.

  ‘Mark’s the only one of the Durham gang I’ve kept in touch with. I was always into computers. I got a job with an electronics company straight out of university and stayed with them until I set up on my own. That’s where I met Emma. She worked for personnel.’ He paused again, remembering. ‘We all thought Mark would be a priest, follow in his father’s footsteps and I think that’s what he intended until he met Sheena. His poet. That’s what he called her. But Sheena wouldn’t have made a vicar’s wife. You couldn’t see her running the Brownie pack or organizing the flower rota. That wouldn’t be nearly poetic enough for her. Even if she was a Christian, which I don’t believe she was. So he went into teaching.’

  ‘You didn’t like her?’ Ramsay’s voice was uncritical but surprised.

  ‘It didn’t matter what I thought of her. Mark loved her. That was enough for me. That’s why I got involved when she was ill. Not because I fancied her, which is what some people thought.’ He must have decided then to answer Ramsay’s question because he added, ‘No, I didn’t like her. She was too wrapped up in herself. She treated Mark like shit.’

  ‘What do you mean – you got involved when she was ill?’

  ‘I suppose I hustled on their behalf. I tried to persuade them not to give in. When she was diagnosed as having breast cancer they both seemed to regard it as a death sentence. It was ridiculous. It can be a treatable disease. But neither of them would fight it. They wouldn’t ask questions, press for different therapies. They just let it happen. I know I was interfering but I wanted to keep her alive for him.’ He shrugged. ‘ I failed, didn’t I? Made a fool of myself for nothing.’ Suddenly he seemed embarrassed by the conversation. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I should go back. They’ll be sending out search parties.’