Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher

by Ann Cleeves

  She thought too that if she could drive Bernard might be able to make more of his magic shows. He hated working in that office. These days it was all market testing and saving money. Although he’d never said, she had the feeling that everyone there made fun of him. He never mentioned any friends.

  ‘If you wanted to go out for a pint after work, you know I wouldn’t mind,’ she’d said recently.

  Kath would never have thought of it, but Dad had gone to the pub with his mates every Friday. They’d played darts, made a night of it.

  Bernie had shaken his head. He said he thought some of the chaps went out together but he wouldn’t feel right about asking to go along too.

  ‘Besides,’ he’d said. ‘I like getting home now. It’s so cosy.’

  Then she’d felt a glow of pleasure and knew she’d done the right thing.

  She didn’t mention the driving lessons to Bernard. It wouldn’t be tactful to make too many changes too soon. People would talk. She’d seen Sally Wedderburn staring at the television the last time she’d come to visit. As if renting a telly was some sort of crime.

  She’d forgotten how soothing a night in front of the set could be. They all enjoyed it, though Marilyn wasn’t much interested in the programmes themselves. She still disappeared up to her bedroom with her books most nights. She did watch Top of the Pops but Claire thought that was just so she could talk about the groups with the other girls at school.

  In the evenings Claire and Bernard had developed a routine. She would clear up the meal and wash the dishes, then the two of them would settle in front of the television. At nine o’clock he would make cocoa. They’d call Marilyn down from her room and drink it together. It was, as he’d said, very cosy.

  Without a car Bernard had to rely on taxis to get him to the church halls and Scout huts, where he performed for the children. He took bookings for his shows at work and explained over the telephone that he would have to charge travelling expenses on top of his modest fee. Sometimes that put people off. Not people who’d actually seen him perform, though. They thought he was worth every penny.

  She could see he was nervous about the Sunday school anniversary party. It was the first show he’d done since Kath’s death. He was worried he’d find it hard to concentrate sufficiently to make the tricks work. In magic, concentration was everything.

  He’d asked Marilyn if she’d like to go with him, be his assistant.

  ‘We could find you a costume,’ he’d said enthusiastically. He would have liked her standing beside him in a sequinned leotard and shimmering tights.

  But she’d refused absolutely. She’d told him that she’d arranged to meet a friend in Otterbridge. This was unheard of and Claire thought it was probably an excuse. Perhaps Marilyn was worried that some of the girls would find out. It probably wasn’t considered cool to be a magician’s assistant.

  Claire would have gone with him for support, but she’d already agreed to work for the Coulthards. Emma and Brian had planned a Saturday afternoon out on their own. Another unheard-of occasion.

  In the event Bernard needn’t have worried about his performance. It was as confident and fluid as ever. Indeed, in the beginning everything seemed to work like clockwork. The taxi turned up on time. He was met outside the church by a pleasant, motherly woman, in a flowery print dress.

  ‘Mr Howe,’ she said. ‘How kind of you to come.’ He could tell she meant it.

  The hall had been built very recently. It had a polished-wood floor, a real stage and spotlights. The helpers had set aside a little room for him to get ready for his act. They brought a pot of tea and a plate of home-made cakes. In the hall he heard them shouting to the children to settle down. They were very lucky that Uncle Bernie had agreed to visit them. It all made him feel important.

  When he stood up to perform there was immediate silence. The faces turned towards him were attentive, scrubbed clean. The girls wore frilly frocks and patent-leather sandals. He would have liked to dress Marilyn in prettier things when she was little but Kath had never cared much what her daughter looked like. The admiration of the children made him feel even better than the fussing women. He knew he would do well.

  He chose a boy to help him, picked him out from the front row.

  ‘And what’s your name?’

  ‘Alex.’ He wasn’t the least bit shy.

  ‘And how old are you, Alex?’

  ‘I’m six.’

  He wore red braces and a blue tie, a miniature merchant banker. His hair was still damp where his mother had slicked it into place. Throughout the show Alex watched every move Bernard made and gasped as each trick was performed. The audience followed his example and gasped and laughed in all the right places. The adults at the back clapped and shouted compliments.

  This time the climax of the performance was not the creation of a birthday cake. Bernard had performed that many times before and was bored by it. Instead he reached into his bowler hat and threw handful after handful of sweets into the audience and then scattered, with a sweep of his arm, a cloud of silver stars which floated down on to the upturned faces like snowflakes.

  He gave a deep bow and the room erupted into cheers.

  He asked Alex if he’d like to help him pack his magic bag.

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The two were left on the stage, forgotten, while the children chased round the room after the sweets he’d thrown. The helpers came out of the cloakroom with armfuls of coats.

  ‘I’m going to wait outside for my taxi,’ Bernard said. The boy was standing very close to him and he could tell now that the hair was slicked back not with water but a glutinous cream which had a strong and distinctive smell.

  ‘You can come with me if you like.’

  Bernard had already been paid. He supposed he should say goodbye to the women but they seemed busy and Alex was pulling him by the hand through a side door.

  ‘Here,’ Bernard said. ‘Round the back. This is where it’ll be.’

  There was a short, tree-lined path, which led to the street. It was quite dark. The parents collecting their children must be using another entrance. The boy still held his hand. They were close enough to the building to hear laughter, shouting mothers, but here they were alone. It was starting to get cold again. The boy shivered.

  Suddenly a door was flung open and from the oblong of light a tiny woman in a short skirt, leather jacket and high-heeled shoes hurtled towards them. She was followed at a more measured pace by the helper in the floral dress.

  The stranger grabbed Alex by the arm and pulled him away from Bernard. For a moment she stood with her arms wrapped around the boy. Her chin was bent towards the child’s hair and it occurred to Bernard that at such close quarters the scent of the gel would be overpowering and very unpleasant. She raised her head and said to Bernard. ‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’

  It was a southern voice, deeper than he had expected, furious.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Don’t play the innocent with me. If we hadn’t come out then you’d have had him away.’

  ‘No,’ Bernard said. ‘Really. No.’

  ‘You drag him into the dark without telling anyone…’ She turned away from him in disgust and started on the Sunday school teacher. ‘You’re supposed to be looking after them. Not letting them wander off with any pervert who wants to abduct them. I should call the police.’

  In the end the woman in the flowery dress who was, it seemed, the minister’s wife, calmed the situation. She explained who Bernard was and they all agreed to put the incident down to a misunderstanding. The taxi pulled up and Bernard was allowed to climb into it. He tried to say goodbye to Alex but the boy wouldn’t look at him. Bernard felt cheated. The day had been so promising and now it was spoiled.

  Alex’s mother had a short fuse and soon forgot to be angry. When she got the boy home and he told her again what had happened she saw that no harm had been done. She even, felt a bit sorry fo
r the bastard for laying into him. The look on his face!

  The minister’s wife was not able to treat the event so lightly. She thought about it all evening and then, without discussing it with her husband, who tended to think the best of everyone, she phoned the police station.

  ‘It’s probably nothing,’ she said. ‘If it weren’t for all those other incidents I wouldn’t bother mentioning it.’

  Before her marriage she had worked as a psychiatric social worker. She had met sad adults still troubled by unpleasantness in childhood.

  To her discomfort the woman on the other end of the line took her seriously and said an officer would be sent that night to take a statement. Then the following day two detectives, a man and a woman, turned up at the manse and she had to explain again, or at least try to, what it was about Bernard Howe which had made her concerned.

  ‘It wasn’t anything he actually did,’ she told Ramsay and Sal Wedderburn. ‘I mean he was very nice. Charming, in fact.’

  The house, like the church hall, was new and they sat in a bare living room which still smelled of paint, looking out over an untidy garden. As it was Sunday the minister was busy. She paused. Ramsay looked at Sally, warning her not to speak. In the garden a noisy blackbird was gathering dry grass for a nest. The woman continued.

  ‘We have a number of elderly spinsters who run the Sunday school, and they fussed over him. They had heard, of course, that his wife had died in tragic circumstances. He played up to them. I thought at first he was just being kind. Most men are embarrassed by the attention.’

  She paused again. ‘I’m not explaining this very well. It wasn’t a real, adult conversation. He was behaving like a spoilt eight-year-old. As if all that fussing was due to him. It wasn’t normal.’

  ‘I see,’ Ramsay said. ‘Did he have any difficulty communicating with the children?’

  ‘None at all. They loved him. The little boy who went outside with him wasn’t frightened and I’m sure nothing untoward happened.’

  ‘Yet you felt sufficiently concerned, that you contacted us.’

  ‘Yes. There was something about the pair of them, standing there in the shadow hand in hand… Mr Howe didn’t seem to realize he was in a position of trust. When we went outside – the mother, of course, was frantic – it was as if he felt no more responsible for the incident than the boy. It was a sort of arrogance. He was the only person who mattered. We were inconsiderate fools to cause a scene.’

  Ramsay leant forward.

  ‘Are you saying you think he would be capable of abducting a child?’

  She looked back at him, troubled.

  ‘I suppose I am. He’d do it thoughtlessly. Probably not meaning to cause any harm. Just for the company. Not realizing what people might think. The spoilt child again.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘I knew he was a queer bastard.’

  The weather was still cold in the evenings and Hunter stood with his backside against the radiator. It was the Sunday night after the children’s party at the church hall. The station was quiet. The three of them were crammed into Ramsay’s office.

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Ramsay said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Think about it.’

  ‘What’s there to think about? It’s obvious, isn’t it? Uncle Bernie has a taste for little boys and his wife finds out. So he stabs her. What better motive can there be?’

  ‘Think about it,’ Ramsay said again. ‘Think about the other abductions. What were the common features?’

  ‘The kids were given sweets. He sat them on his knee and cuddled them but he didn’t actually interfere with them. That fits, doesn’t it? Isn’t that what the vicar’s wife said? That Bernie wouldn’t have the bottle to do anything.’

  ‘You’d admire him more if he had?’ Sally Wedderburn spat at him.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, that’s not what I said.’ He turned his eyes to the ceiling. ‘You can’t speak in this place without someone twisting your words.’

  Moody cow, he thought. Really it took the patience of a saint to work with Sal Wedderburn. They should pay a special allowance for it.

  ‘What was the other common feature?’ Ramsay asked.

  Hunter looked blank, Sally triumphant.

  ‘He was a driver,’ she said. ‘Different cars. One red saloon, one blue estate. But each time he drove the kids around and then he dumped them by the side of the road. Bernard Howe doesn’t drive.’

  ‘Just because he doesn’t usually drive doesn’t mean that he can’t.‘ Hunter’s voice was superior but they could tell he was clutching at straws. ‘And using different cars. That would be significant. It might mean that he doesn’t own a vehicle but that he has to nick or borrow one specially.’

  ‘I can’t quite see Bernard Howe as a car thief,’ Ramsay said. ‘Can you?’

  ‘So it’s a coincidence? Is that what you’re saying? The fact that he likes little boys.’

  Sally Wedderburn turned on him again.

  ‘Get real. How many calls do you think we’ve had about the abductions? Hundreds. Probably running by now into thousands. All from people accusing men of liking little boys. It might be a neighbour who watches their kids playing in the street. Or an overfamiliar lollipop man. Or a football referee who puts his hand on a lad’s shoulder before sending him off. We’ve had the lot. At a time like this folk overreact. You can’t blame them. Anyone who has regular contact with kids is going to be a target. As you say, it’s a coincidence.’

  ‘All the same,’ Ramsay said, ‘I don’t think we can dismiss the allegation altogether.’ Working with Hunter and Wedderburn he felt not so much a superior officer as a mediator trying to keep both parties sweet, to find some point of contact. ‘ Besides anything else it tells us more about Bernard, doesn’t it? Informs the picture we already have, at least, of a lonely man with no adult friends, who’s chosen a hobby which brings him into contact with youngsters.’

  ‘Like I said,’ Hunter interrupted. ‘A queer bastard.’

  ‘Perhaps. Anyway I think we should check. Discreetly. If the press gets wind of the fact that Bernard could be involved in the abductions they’ll have a field day. There’ll be no chance of operating effectively with them baying for his blood. Gordon, find out if he’s ever had a licence or owned a car. Sal, have you got the times and the dates the kids were snatched?’

  Not so much a mediator, he thought, dishing out the tasks equally so there’d be no cause for complaint. More a bloody nursery nurse.

  Sally returned almost immediately with the information. An apparently random list of four dates and times.

  ‘Look at this.’ Ramsay was speaking to himself. ‘The second was in Newcastle. The second week of January. A Thursday at five thirty. A child was left outside the post office in Eldon Square while his mum dashed in before it closed. Bernard Howe always visits his mother on Thursday. He hasn’t missed one, apparently, even since Kath died. He goes straight from work then cycles back to arrive home at about ten. If she can confirm that he’s turned up every Thursday since Christmas we can almost certainly dismiss him as a possible abductor. If he wasn’t at her house that day.’ He looked up at Sally, smiled. ‘ Well, that will probably mean that Gordon’s right and Uncle Bernie has something to hide.’

  ‘Do you want me to check with the mother?’

  ‘No. I’d like to do that. Tomorrow you go and check with the woman who runs the Shining Stars Nursery. She saw someone hanging around on the street the day the kid went missing from there. See if the description matches Bernard.’

  ‘Right.’

  On her way out she bumped into Hunter, who was looking despondent. She gave him a wide and patronizing grin.

  ‘No joy, then,’ Ramsay said, as Hunter took up his position next to the radiator again.

  ‘Na. Bernard Howe’s never had a licence, not even a provisional one and he’s never owned a car.’

  ‘We can’t rule him ou
t altogether. You know as well as I do that there are ways round the system.’

  ‘Not very likely though, is it?’ Hunter knew his boss was just being kind.

  ‘How did you get on in Whitley on Friday night?’

  Hunter shrugged. ‘It’s not been my week.’

  ‘No one had ever met this chap Paul?’

  ‘Oh aye, they’d met him, but they couldn’t tell me anything about him. Nothing useful at least. He’s still the mystery man. The bar staff at the Manhattan will give me a ring if they think they see him but I don’t hold out much hope.’

  ‘You said you didn’t get anything useful. Did you get anything at all?’

  ‘Just the fact that he once went to a funeral,’ Hunter said flippantly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There were two women, friends of Kim’s, who think they remember him. The first time they met he was pissed out of his skull. Upset, apparently, because he’d been to a funeral.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Last September. Is it important?’

  ‘Probably not.’ But Sheena Taverner was buried in September. Ramsay wondered if that were a coincidence too.

  When he left the police station Ramsay drove to the crumbling Edwardian house where Prue lived with her daughter. Prue wasn’t expecting him. When she opened the door she was in a striped towelling dressing gown. In the kitchen there was a half-drunk bottle of wine on the table and a pile of plates in the sink.

  ‘Mattie came to supper,’ she said. ‘I meant to clear up, then I started reading this play. Have you eaten?’

  ‘Not much.’ A dubious canteen pie.

  ‘There’s some salad. Nice cheese.’

  She was distracted. He could tell she was still thinking about the play.

  ‘That’ll be great.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you.’

  She shut the book she’d been reading and gave him her full attention.

  ‘Don’t be daft. I mean I was half hoping you’d turn up. But I knew you were busy. You will stay?’