A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy (12 page)

She knew the number of St Mary’s Vicarage, Otterbridge, without having to look it up and dialled with trembling fingers. Outside people were starting to arrive for the afternoon’s visiting and she realised she could be disturbed at any time, yet still she kept the receiver to her ear and prayed that someone would reply.

Please, she pleaded to herself. It can’t be true. Let there be some mistake.

But when she left the hospital at the end of her shift there were pictures of Dorothea Cassidy on every noticeboard. The woman’s eyes seemed to be following her down the corridor, making Imogen feel that even after her death there was no escape from her.

When Ramsay had first come to Otterbridge to work he had been surprised that such a prosperous town should tolerate an estate like the Ridgeway. Surely, he thought, the rate payers would demand that it be tidied up, that the graffiti be removed. But although the Ridgeway residents’ association did their best they had little power and the estate was invisible to the rest of the town. There were no through-roads and the only glimpse the more affluent residents of Otterbridge had of it was from the train and even then the houses were hidden by the old cars and decaying furniture which had been tipped down the embankment.

Hilary Masters drove on to the estate without comment. Outside the community centre a small crowd was gathered to watch the decoration of a lorry for the carnival parade that evening. The theme for the event was Otterbridge, Ancient and Modern, and there were people trying on peculiar tunics which Ramsay thought were supposed to be Roman togas. The scene was chaotic, good-humoured. It was school lunchtime and an elderly lollipop man leaned on his stick and watched them drive past. In the playground boys defied the heat and chased after a football. On every corner there was a scruffy ice-cream van and through the open car windows Ramsay could hear the conflicting tunes of their chimes. Outside the houses women sat on the pavements and chatted. They took no notice of Hilary’s smart new car. They were used to social workers in the Ridgeway.

Theresa Stringer’s garden came as something of a shock. The grass was brown and straggly through lack of water, like all the others in the street, but there was a pond, with a concrete bridge across it and a pair of gnomes with fishing rods.

‘That’s Joss Corkhill’s influence,’ Hilary said. ‘ He probably dreamed it up after a night at the pub and spent hours building it. He’s like a kid.’

The front door of the house was open and Ramsay could see a hall with bare floorboards leading to a small kitchen. There, Theresa Stringer and her son sat at a painted wooden table eating chips from newspaper. Ramsay recognised the teenager who had been lurking in the Armstrong House garden when he went to see his aunt.

Hilary stopped on the doorstep and called in, ‘Theresa, it’s me, Miss Masters. Can we come in?’

Theresa Stringer left the table and walked down the hall to meet them. She was tiny, as slight and slim as a ten-year-old. She wore a T-shirt dress in red and black Dennis-the-Menace stripes. Her hair was dark and short and she wore bright red plastic earrings. There was something of the hyperactive child about her. She seemed restless, perpetually on the move. But she was not stupid. That was clear to Ramsay from the start and her bright intelligence surprised him. He had expected her to be more of a victim. She regarded Hilary aggressively.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘ I thought Mr Peacock was coming today.’ Then: ‘What have you done with my Beverley? I thought you were my friend. How could you let them take her away?’

‘Beverley’s fine,’ Hilary said gently. ‘I phoned the foster parents before I came out. They say she had a good night’s sleep and she’s settling in well. They’re taking her to the beach later today.’

‘It’s not fair,’ Theresa said. ‘ I can’t afford things like that for the bairn.’

‘She can be home on Monday,’ Hilary Masters said, ‘ if you give up that crazy idea of going away with Joss.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Theresa cried. ‘ I love him.’

There was an intimacy between the women which was more like friendship than the professional relationship between social worker and client. They had nothing superficial in common but they spoke to each other honestly, as equals. Again Ramsay was surprised. He felt he had misjudged Hilary completely.

‘Do you?’ Hilary said. ‘It would never work.’

‘How do you know?’ Theresa demanded. ‘You don’t even know him. You won’t give it a chance.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Hilary said. ‘ We have to talk to you. Can’t we come in?’

Theresa shrugged and moved away from the door to let them into a living room. There was a square of carpet in the middle of the floor, a sofa and a television, but no other furniture. Despite that the room had a cluttered and claustrophobic feel. There were magazines on the floor, toys in a blue plastic washing basket in the corner. On one wall was a replica poster for Barnum’s Circus, on another an Irish Tourist Board print of mountains and sea. In a small, round glass bowl on the mantelshelf three goldfish swam listlessly.

‘Joss brought those back for Beverley from the fair,’ Theresa said. ‘She loved them.’ She pointed suspiciously at Ramsay. ‘Who’s he?’

‘This is Inspector Ramsay,’ Hilary said. ‘He wants to ask you some questions.’

‘Why?’ Theresa demanded, suddenly frightened. ‘I told you, Joss didn’t touch her, I was here all the time.’

‘This isn’t about Joss,’ Hilary said quickly. ‘ Not now. The inspector’s here to talk to you about Mrs Cassidy.’

‘What’s Dorothea been up to?’ Theresa said. ‘Been arrested, has she, for not paying her poll tax? She said it was unfair and she wasn’t going to pay.’

‘Didn’t Clive tell you?’ Hilary said, shocked. ‘Mrs Cassidy’s dead.’

‘No,’ Theresa said, shaking her head slowly. ‘He didn’t say a thing.’

‘Mrs Cassidy was found murdered early this morning in Prior’s Park,’ Ramsay said formally. ‘We’re making inquiries about her movements yesterday. I understand that she was here?’

But Theresa was unable to reply. She flung herself on to the sofa and began to cry. Ramsay watched the thin blades of her shoulders move under the cotton dress. Hilary went over to the sofa and began to stroke her hair away from her face, until she sat up abruptly.

‘Who killed her?’ she asked. ‘Who was it?’

‘We don’t know,’ Ramsay said. ‘Not yet. That’s why I’m here. Are you well enough to answer some questions?’

Theresa nodded.

‘Was she here yesterday afternoon?’

‘It was about dinnertime,’ she said.

‘Why did Mrs Cassidy come to see you?’

‘She promised she would,’ Theresa replied quickly. ‘She said as soon as the case conference was over she’d come and tell me what had happened.’ She looked angrily at Hilary. ‘Mrs Cassidy was on my side. She didn’t want Beverley taken away.’

‘Theresa!’ Hilary said quietly. ‘I’m on your side. You know that.’

Ramsay ignored the interruption and continued: ‘Why did Mrs Cassidy come and not your social worker?’

‘Mr Peacock, the social worker, came with her,’ Theresa said. ‘In his own car but at the same time. He came to collect Beverley.’ She paused and Ramsay expected another outburst of tears but surprisingly she smiled. ‘He didn’t like coming here on his own,’ she said mischievously. ‘He was frightened of Joss when he’d been drinking. Mrs Cassidy wasn’t frightened of anything.’

‘So Mr Peacock came to take Beverley to the foster parents and Mrs Cassidy stayed here to talk to you?’

Theresa nodded.

‘What did you talk about?’

Theresa looked to Hilary Masters for reassurance and then answered with jerky bursts of speech.

‘She wanted to know about everything,’ she said. ‘Mrs Cassidy was that kind of woman. All questions. When she first came here to see Clive, I thought she was one of those nosy do-gooders. What does she want to come up here for? I thought. Why mix with the likes of us? She’s not even paid for it. But she was canny. She wasn’t how I expected.’ She paused but Ramsay said nothing. He hoped to recreate his image of Dorothea from these incoherent ramblings.

There were footsteps on the pavement outside and Theresa jumped up and looked out.

‘Are you expecting Joss?’ Hilary asked. ‘Where is he?’

‘On the Abbey Meadow,’ Theresa said defiantly. ‘ Working on the fair. He’ll come home this afternoon then go back to work with his mate this evening. It’s the last night. They’ll be busy.’

‘Will he come home?’ Hilary asked quietly. ‘Or will he go to the pub? Drink all his wages.’

‘He’ll come home!’ Theresa said. ‘He promised.’

But the footsteps outside the house seemed to have unsettled her and though she returned to the sofa her attention was elsewhere. There was a silence, then the sound of a baby crying through the thin walls from next door.

‘You were talking to me about Mrs Cassidy,’ Ramsay prompted. ‘She asked lots of questions. Was she an easy person to talk to?’

With some effort Theresa directed her attention away from the window and back to him.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I didn’t like her coming at first. I knew she was a vicar’s wife. I told her at the beginning: “You might persuade our Clive to come to your church but you’ll not get me inside.”’

‘What did she say to that?’

‘She laughed. There was nothing you could say to offend her. She said there were more important things than going to church.’

‘Tell me about yesterday,’ Ramsay persisted. ‘What exactly did you talk about then? When Mr Peacock left you alone.’

Suddenly Theresa went mysterious. It was none of Ramsay’s business what they talked about, she said. It had nothing to do with him.

‘But you must have talked about Joss. She must have wanted to know what happened between Joss and Beverley.’

‘She believed me!’ Theresa said defensively. ‘She believed it was an accident.’

‘Theresa,’ Hilary Masters said, ‘did you tell Mrs Cassidy how Beverley got those bruises?’

‘Yes!’ Theresa shouted defiantly. ‘ I told her everything. You couldn’t lie to her.’

‘Why didn’t you tell Mr Peacock before the case conference? Or me?’

Theresa shrugged. ‘Mr Peacock doesn’t like Joss,’ she said. ‘He’d always believe the worse of him.’

Ramsay interrupted quietly. ‘What
did
happen, Miss Stringer? You do realise that you’ll have to tell us.’

Theresa crouched on the sofa, her knees by her chin, her red and black dress stretched over them.

‘Joss was pissed,’ she said. ‘It was before the fair came and he was fed up, bored. He couldn’t get work. We had a row.’

‘What about?’ Hilary asked.

‘I can’t remember exactly how it started,’ Theresa said. ‘ It doesn’t matter now.’

Ramsay thought she would be a fighter and imagined the pair of them, the drunken man and the tiny woman, hurling insults from one room to another, throwing things, waking the baby, confusing Clive. Probably they both enjoyed the drama of it. A good row would clear the air, get rid of some of Corkhill’s frustration. Only the children would be terrified.

‘When was this?’ he asked.

‘About a fortnight ago. It was in the evening. Joss had had a win on the horses and had been drinking all day. I’d been here with Beverley. It didn’t seem right that he’d been out enjoying himself. I wouldn’t have minded a change.’

‘Where were the children when this was happening?’

‘Clive was in his bedroom, reading comics. I was getting Bev ready for bed. When I heard Joss come in I sent her upstairs.’

‘Did you often row when Joss had been drinking?’

‘No,’ she said, desperate for him to understand. ‘ He’s not violent, not really. Usually we have a laugh. Or he goes to sleep.’

‘But that night he picked a fight.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, then added honestly: ‘I expect I picked the fight. Because I’d been in all day with the bairn.’

‘If you and Mr Corkhill were arguing here and the children were upstairs how did Beverley come to be hurt?’

‘She must have been frightened by the noise. By that time Joss was throwing things around. We were in the kitchen. We didn’t hear her come downstairs. She just appeared at the door. Then she ran between us and held on to me, crying. Joss wanted to move her out of the way, to get at me. He didn’t mean to hurt her.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He picked her up and threw her to one side. She hit her head and cheek on the oven and her ribs on the floor.’

Throughout the exchange Hilary had been watching Theresa anxiously, like some defence solicitor, Ramsay thought, who is frightened a client will incriminate herself. Did she know more about Theresa’s relationship with Dorothea than she was letting on? With the last admission she seemed almost relieved. Perhaps she felt that now her decision to take Beverley into care had been justified.

‘You do see,’ Hilary said, ‘that it makes no difference whether Joss meant to hurt her or not. He might have killed her.’

‘I know,’ Theresa said. ‘That’s what Dorothea told me.’

‘Did she give you any idea what you should do next?’ Ramsay asked quietly.

‘She said I couldn’t go with Joss to work on the fair.’ Theresa spoke reluctantly. Ramsay could tell that she was still attracted by the romance of the idea. ‘She said that was impossible if I wanted to have Beverley back.’

‘We’d all told you that,’ Hilary said with some irritation. ‘You didn’t believe us!’

‘She said I had to tell Joss that I wouldn’t go with him as soon as I saw him. If I left it I would find it harder. If he loved me enough he would stay. If he didn’t I was strong enough to carry on by myself. She would be there to help me.’

She turned to them, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘But she won’t. Not now.’

‘Did you do as Mrs Cassidy suggested and talk to Mr Corkhill as soon as he got home yesterday afternoon?’ Ramsay asked.

‘Oh yes!’ she said. ‘I thought I was so brave, I told him all right.’

‘What happened?’

‘There was a scene,’ she said. ‘He was furious. No interfering old bat was going to tell him what to do. He was going to leave with the fair when it goes at the weekend. It was up to me to decide whether or not I wanted to go with him. He’d give me until tonight to decide.’