A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy (21 page)

It took Hunter longer than he had expected to find out where Imogen lived. There was no Buchan in the phone book. Her parents, fearing malicious calls from kids at school, were ex-directory. When he phoned the vicarage, thinking that someone there would surely know where to find her, the vicar was vague and unhelpful. Patrick had still not come home he’d said. He feared another dreadful tragedy. Hunter listened to his ravings for a while then replaced the receiver while he was still in mid-stream. The hospital was suspicious. By now all the administrative staff had gone home and the ward sister was unwilling to take the responsibility of passing on personal information over the phone. He persuaded her in the end by allowing her to call him back, after she had checked his credentials with the station. When at last he had the information he needed he dialled the number but there was no reply.

Almost immediately afterwards he was told that a Mr and Mrs Buchan were at the front desk. They wanted to report their daughter missing. Hunter saw the Buchans into a small interview room. It had no natural light. Hunter had been eating fish and chips and the smell of it clung to his clothes. The Buchans were embarrassed and apologetic. Of course, Imogen was a grown woman, they said. They realised she had her own life to lead. They would be the last people to question her right to independence. It was this business with Dorothea Cassidy that worried them. Dorothea had been so close to them, a great friend. It was only natural, wasn’t it, that they should be worried?

Hunter tried to contain his excitement. There was probably nothing sinister in Imogen’s disappearance. These were middle-class parents whose daughter had fancied a bit of life without telling them.

‘Has she got a boyfriend?’ he asked in his specially perfected bored voice, though he knew the answer already. The last thing he wanted was for them to panic.

‘Of course,’ Mrs Buchan said. ‘ I thought we’d explained. She’s going out with Patrick Cassidy. That’s why we’re so concerned.’

‘And she’s not with him now?’

‘Apparently not. He seems to have disappeared too.’

Surely that was significant, Hunter thought. Patrick Cassidy had lied about meeting his stepmother the afternoon before. Dorothea had rushed to Newcastle to speak to Imogen at work and had probably been seen with her at the fair during the evening. Now the pair of them had vanished. It was all down to him now, he thought. Ramsay had left him in charge while he went off to play social workers with Theresa Stringer on the Ridgeway Estate. He had the opportunity of reaching a conclusion to this case on his own.

Mrs Buchan was still talking. ‘She seems to have been under such a strain lately,’ she said. ‘ It’s not easy, of course, working with the terminally ill and she has such dedication…’

‘When was she last seen?’ Hunter asked.

‘She finished her shift at two o’clock,’ Mrs Buchan said. Her husband seemed lost in thoughts of his own and content to let her do all the talking. ‘She came straight back to Otterbridge and went to the vicarage to see if Patrick was there. He wasn’t. She must have come home then, because her car’s parked outside. I expected her to be there when we came in from work but there was no sign of her. I wasn’t worried at first, of course. I thought she’d gone into town to do some shopping. Otterbridge is such fun during festival time, isn’t it? But now the shops have been closed for hours. She hasn’t many friends, you know, besides Patrick, and I can’t think where she might be.’

‘Perhaps she’s at the fair,’ he said. ‘ Does she enjoy going?’

They were non-committal, as if they had no real idea what she did enjoy.

‘Did she go out yesterday evening?’

She went out with Patrick, they said. She hadn’t told them where they were going.

‘What time did she come back?’

Mrs Buchan shrugged. ‘ I don’t know. We were back rather late ourselves. It was the festival ball.’ She paused and looked at him as if he were one of her remedial fourth formers. ‘She didn’t disappear last night, you know. I saw her at home this morning, before she went to work.’

He was apologetic, understanding. He realised that, he said. It was a question of finding a pattern, of working out where she might be. There was probably nothing to worry about. The carnival seemed to have gone to everyone’s head. She would be out, watching the procession with the rest of the town. He would circulate the photo they had brought, make a few inquiries. They were to leave it all in his hands.

The Buchans left the police station reassured, charmed by him.

It took Ramsay longer than he had expected to get to the Ridgeway. His drive across town coincided with the start of the parade and none of the roads he tried was clear. Front Street was closed to traffic, cordoned off with plastic bunting which reminded him of the tape they had used to mark the area where Dorothea’s body had been found. As he sat in a queue of cars he heard the rhythmic crash of the brass band which always led the procession. It conflicted with the fairground music and the amplified noise from some of the floats. He could see nothing from the car but he could picture the event. As a child he had always been brought to Otterbridge for the carnival and nothing had changed very much. Behind the band would be a group of miners, carrying the banner of a pit which had closed years before but which was still given pride of place. His father had worked down the pits but had refused to take part in the parade.

‘Look at them,’ he would say. ‘Dressed up like a cartload of monkeys. So much for the dignity of the working man.’

There would be children in fancy dress, and the sword-dance team, and the lorries carrying floats, elaborate tableaux celebrating local charities and businesses. As a child the floats had fascinated him. What it must be like, he had thought, to ride up there above the crowd, waving! But when, one year, Annie had arranged for him to dress up and be on the church float with her he had refused, horrified at the suggestion. The line of traffic started to move slowly and he drove on.

He had never seen the town so busy. Perhaps the heat of the evening made it impossible for people to stay indoors. They jostled in a stream along the pavement, spilling occasionally into the street so Ramsay was forced to stop again.

There were family parties, the children made nervous and fretful by the crowd, groups of teenage boys, high-spirited and loud, clutching cans of lager, and groups of young women, giggling in fancy dress. The pubs were all full and customers were forced on to the pavements with their drinks. It was an explosive mix, Ramsay thought: the hot evening, the alcohol, the gangs of young men all set on showing off. He was glad he did not have the responsibility of policing it. As he was forced to stop again to allow a pack of cub scouts to cross the road in an orderly crocodile, he thought he saw Joss Corkhill coming out of an off licence with a bottle in his hand, but when the traffic moved again he had disappeared.

At last he was clear of the town and he drove quickly along the by-pass towards the Ridgeway, knowing that he was a fool to hurry because Hilary Masters would have given up waiting by now. But when he got to Hardy Street her car was still there, parked outside the house, and through the window he could see the two women sitting together on the sofa. Hilary Masters was turned towards him and when she saw him she smiled. It was a smile of welcome and relief, and suddenly he was a young man again, plucking up the courage to ask a girl to go out with him, thinking: Perhaps with this one I’ve a chance of pulling it off. Perhaps this one fancies me. Hilary Masters stood up and came into the hall to open the door to him.

‘I’m sorry I’m so late,’ he said. ‘I hope I haven’t caused you any inconvenience.’

He could hear the words as they were spoken, as distant and formal as Hilary had been on their first meeting. He wished he could start again.

‘That’s all right,’ she said. She smiled again and looked very tired. ‘Really. I would have waited anyway. I don’t think Theresa’s in any state to be left alone. The doctor gave her something to calm her but it seems just to have made her confused. I’m not sure you’ll get any sense out of her tonight.’ She stood close to him and spoke softly, looking through the door towards Theresa.

‘Did she tell you anything?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘Not very much. Clive left the house before we did this afternoon. She didn’t see him again. She thought he was going to work.’ She paused. ‘Where’s Joss? Theresa will want to know. She’s been asking for him.’

‘We let him go,’ he said. ‘He couldn’t have killed Clive and I don’t think he met Dorothea yesterday afternoon.’

She seemed worried by the news and he wondered if she had some inside knowledge. Perhaps Theresa had confided in her and she felt unable to pass on the information.

‘He hasn’t been here,’ she said.

‘I don’t think he will come back,’ he said. ‘He was talking about leaving.’

‘Poor Theresa. It was bound to happen some time, but he might have waited.’

She turned back to the room where Theresa sat, quite still, and waited for him to follow her.

The room was stiflingly hot and airless. He looked at the poster of mountains and sea and thought that if he were Joss Corkhill he would run away too. Unable to breathe he opened a window. The estate was silent, empty. Usually at this time on a sunny evening it would have been at its most lively with children on bikes, adults on their way out, but even the ice-cream vans had deserted the place for the centre of town. The Ridgeway Community Association was entering its first float and though no one thought it had a chance of winning they all wanted to be there to cheer it on. He turned back to the room.

Theresa Stringer stared at him, bewildered. He was not even sure if she remembered who he was.

‘I’m sorry about Clive,’ he said.

She shook her head as if she were unable to take it in.

‘You took Joss away,’ she said. ‘What have you done with him?’

Would it be kinder, Ramsay thought, to lie, to tell her that Joss was still in custody? He could not do it.

‘We let him go,’ Ramsay said. ‘We haven’t charged him.’

‘Oh,’ she said and he thought she was relieved though it was hard to tell. ‘I expect he’s at the fair then. Or the pub. He’ll be back later, when they throw him out.’

And she gave a little smile, as if that had been an attempt at a joke.

‘Yes,’ Ramsay said. ‘Perhaps.’ He looked at Hilary Masters, hoping that she might explain that Corkhill was unlikely to return, but she seemed preoccupied and he thought again she might be keeping something from him. He was afraid of being, in her eyes, the heavy-handed policeman and he did not pry.

‘Where’s my baby?’ Theresa cried suddenly, like a child waking up in the middle of a nightmare. ‘I want my baby.’

Hilary Masters sat beside her again on the sofa and took her hand.

‘Ssh,’ she said. ‘Ssh. Beverley’s quite safe. You know that. She’s with her foster mother. I’ll take you to see her tomorrow.’

Her voice was low, caressing. Ramsay was very moved.

‘No!’ Theresa cried. ‘No!’ But the outburst passed and quite suddenly she returned to her state of blank incomprehension.

‘Tell me about Clive,’ Ramsay said gently. ‘Do you know who killed him?’

She stared at him, obviously terrified. ‘I don’t know anything,’ she whispered. ‘ You ask Joss. He’ll tell you how I don’t know anything.’

‘Do you think Joss killed Clive?’ he asked. Her reaction surprised him. He had expected grief, confusion, but not this fear.

‘I don’t know anything,’ she repeated, clinging to Hilary’s arm for support.

‘It’s no good,’ Hilary said. ‘I really don’t think she can help you.’ The women stared at him together, so he felt cruel, heartless in persisting.

‘I’d like to see Clive’s bedroom,’ he said, knowing he was only putting off the unpleasant task until later: he would have to talk to Theresa that night. However confused she was there were still questions which had to be answered. Surely Hilary would understand that. He hoped he might find in Clive’s room something which would provide a focus for the questions, something to start them off. Besides it would give him a break from this stuffy room and the accusing eyes of the women.

Hilary turned to Theresa. ‘ Is that all right?’ she said. ‘You don’t mind?’

Theresa shook her head and he left the room and climbed the stairs. Clive’s bedroom was small, square and surprisingly tidy. It was at the back of the house. The bed was made and the faded greyish sheet was folded back over a threadbare blanket made of different coloured knitted squares. Built into an alcove there was a wardrobe which obviously came as a standard fitting to the council house, and a kitchen chair beside the bed but no other furniture. Ramsay opened the wardrobe door. Most of the clothes were piled on shelves at the bottom. He took the garments out one at a time. Occasionally he came across something new which had obviously been a present from Dorothea – there was a brown T-shirt with an Oxfam logo and a bright hand-knitted sweater – but the rest had the limp, shapeless look of old jumble.

Inside the wardrobe door was stuck a photograph of Dorothea and Clive together, standing formally outside the vicarage. Clive was upright and proud and grinning broadly. Was it tact, Ramsay wondered, which had caused him to hide the photo away? Did he think his mother would be hurt by his affection for the vicar’s wife?

Ramsay looked under the bed and found a pile of comics and a lot of dust. On the chair by the bed was a plastic mug of water and Clive’s watch. That too, Ramsay remembered, had been a present from Dorothea. Clive had been wearing it the day before when he waited for her to come out of Mrs Bowman’s flat in Armstrong House. I never asked the old lady about that, he thought. I never followed up the discrepancies in their stories. He could not see why it would be important but the thought of the watch troubled him, niggled throughout the rest of his conversation with Theresa. Before going downstairs he paused and looked out of the boy’s window and wished again that he could be in Heppleburn.

In the living room it seemed that the women had hardly moved. He found that he had no patience with either of them.