Murder in My Backyard (17 page)

He paused, expecting some questions about how Max and Judy were, but James said nothing.

“They seem upset, too,” Ramsay said. “ I understand Judy and Mrs. Parry were very close. They shared a lot of interests.”

But again, if he hoped to provoke a response from the Laidlaws, he was disappointed. Stella seemed about to speak, but James looked at her and she remained silent.

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with Mary Raven, your reporter,” Ramsay said. “She wasn’t at home yesterday. Do you know where she is? I phoned the paper earlier, but no-one had seen her.”

“She was working in the magistrates court this morning,” James said. “I usually cover it, but Alice’s death made me forget all about it. She’ll be in the office tomorrow, I expect, if you want to talk to her, though I’m not sure if she’ll be able to help you.”

That came as something of a relief to Ramsay. One disappearing witness was quite enough.

“We have a little more information about Mrs. Parry,” he said. “She left Henshaw’s quite safely and arrived home at midnight.”

“We were both in bed by midnight,” Stella said quickly. “Weren’t we, darling? I was fast asleep. I always sleep so much better at Brinkbonnie than I do here.”

“I was certainly in bed,” James said, “though I was probably still reading then.”

“You didn’t hear anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Where was your room?”

“In the northwest corner of the Tower.”

“So you would have had a view of the churchyard and the drive?”

“I suppose so. Yes. But I didn’t look out.”

“What about you, Mrs. Laidlaw? Did you see anyone around the Tower or in the churchyard?”

She smiled a wide, feline smile. “No,” she said. “I didn’t see anything.” She almost purred with satisfaction, stretched, and settled again into the chair.

“Surely the most important thing,” James said, brusque and businesslike, “is to find out who wrote that anonymous letter.”

“Oh,” Ramsay said. “We know that. It was Charlie Elliot.”

“He’s your man then.”

“Perhaps. We need to talk to him certainly.”

“You mean you’ve let him go!”

Ramsay felt a familiar irritation. “It’s important, you know, to keep an open mind,” he said mildly.

“All the same, there’ll be some serious questions about how this investigation’s been handled!”

There was the sound then of a car pulling up on the drive outside the house and the front doorbell rang. James seemed frustrated to be disturbed in the middle of his indignation. He shut the door behind him as he went out, but from the sitting room they heard raised voices, angry words. For a moment the other voice was vaguely familiar to Ramsay, but it subsided almost immediately and the impression was lost. The front door was opened and slammed shut and then the car drove away.

“Problems?” Ramsay asked when James returned to the room.

“Not really,” James said. “We printed an uncomplimentary story about a local businessman who’d been prosecuted by the health and safety executive. He wanted to complain. Said we were biased. It’s all nonsense, of course.”

“Do people often come to your house?”

“No,” James said shortly. “ It’s not something I encourage. It won’t happen again.”

They offered Ramsay another drink, but he refused and said he should go home. When he went outside, the air was milder and droplets of moisture hung in the air. All night there was the sound of melted snow dripping in the gutters, and in the morning the garden was green again and the sun was shining.

The car stolen by Charlie Elliot from Tom Kerr’s garage was found late on Monday evening in the car park of a Do-It-Yourself Superstore in the industrial estate just outside Otterbridge. No-one could remember how long it had been there. No-one had seen Charlie Elliot in the streets around the town, though a motorbike had been stolen from outside a house close to the estate and the police were working on the theory that he had taken it. His picture was on the front page of every local newspaper. The press had found an old army photograph with Charlie standing beside a friend, smiling, and because that did not look sufficiently sinister there was a police sketch, too, with staring eyes and stubble on his chin. It was evident from the pictures and from the tone of the newspapers’ reporting that Charlie Elliot was a murderer.

Ramsay was under increasing pressure to limit the scope of his investigation to the arrest of Charlie Elliot. Early on Tuesday morning the superintendent had Ramsay in his office.

“Look,” he said. “ Steve.”

Ramsay winced.

“I respect your integrity, but I think you’re being unnecessarily cautious here. We have motive. We have opportunity. The chap’s run away. That’s almost as good as a confession. We really can’t justify the time and cost of any wider investigation. It’s a matter of following up sightings until he’s caught. It’s all a question of publicity now. He’ll be miles away. You’re a good man. We must think about your career. After that unfortunate business at Heppleburn you should keep your head down for a while. Avoid controversy. Steve, I’m thinking of your future.”

“I don’t think he did it,” Ramsay said. “ I believed him. There was a woman in the churchyard.”

“Find me the woman and we might have a different situation.”

“Look,” Ramsay said. “I’m investigating a different angle on the development. Henshaw’s got no record, but apparently he’s been known to use violence to get what he wants. He’s not the respectable builder he likes to be thought of. I want to follow that up, too. But I need time. And men.”

“Steve. Leave it alone. I’m sorry. This is an order. It’s a matter of economics. If we had unlimited resources …”

“Two more days,” Ramsay said. “ Give me two more days. Me and Hunter.”

“You think you can wrap it up in two days?”

“I’ll have to,” Ramsay said. “Won’t I?”

The superintendent nodded.

In the Incident Room Hunter was on the telephone. Calls were coming in from all over the country. Elliot had been seen on a train between Cardiff and Swansea, hitching a lift down the M1, in a bus queue in south London.

“Fantasies!” Ramsay said, when Hunter showed him the reports. “Nothing worth bothering about there.”

He dialled Jack Robson’s home number, but though he let it ring there was no reply. The lack of response made him irrationally angry.

“Come on,” he said to Hunter. “ You can’t stay in here drinking tea all day. There’s too much work to do. We’re going to talk to Mary Raven.”

Mary Raven slept badly, and while it was still dark she got up and wandered about the flat drinking mug after mug of black coffee, trying to decide what she should do about Max. The sensible thing would be to stop the affair now. It had caused enough hurt. He had treated her abominably and had appeared at the flat the night before because he wanted reassurance and information. She was a fool to think he would leave his wife and his precious family for her. He did not care that much. Then the romantic excitement of his appearance at the flat, uninvited, shy, moved her almost to tears. She knew it was unreasonable to expect him to leave his wife, but she had never been one for logical thought.

She had always been attracted to danger and extremes. When other girls at school had misbehaved, they had kept open an avenue of retreat, of apology. In arguments with parents they had been prepared to compromise. Mary Raven had been expelled from school, and at sixteen she had left home to live in a squat until the life there had become too uncomfortable and she had returned, still defiant, to her parents. She had never been reasonable.

When it was light, she went to the kitchen and poured out a bowl of cornflakes. There was no milk and she padded, barefoot, through the entrance hall to the front door to fetch it. Outside it was warmer and the sky was clear. She felt restless and optimistic. Perhaps she should drive to the Health Centre, she thought, and wait for Max. It would be a pleasure just to see him, to exchange a few words with him. But she rejected the plan almost immediately. Max might be irritated by the attention and, besides, it would be dangerous. It was to distract her from doing anything foolish that she sat at the table to work. She began to write up the court proceedings of the day before, banging on her secondhand typewriter and waking up the student who had the bed-sit in the next room. Soon she became engrossed. When she paused to dress and make more coffee, she thought that while Max was making up his mind she still had her career to consider.

Mary Raven was not in the
Express
office when Ramsay and Hunter arrived. James Laidlaw was there, hostile and intimidating, still talking about the police mismanagement of the case and their incompetence in allowing Charlie Elliot to run away.

“I understand that he was interviewed twice,” James said, “ and still you let him go. I’ll be making the point very clearly in this week’s paper.”

He could not tell them where to find Mary Raven, and it was Marjory, the receptionist, who suggested that they try the small café on Front Street.

“She came in very early,” Marjory said, “before I arrived. She’s rather a melodramatic young lady. She left me a note saying she was working on a story and she didn’t know when she’d be back. But if she’s in Otterbridge at this time, she usually has a coffee and a sandwich across the road.” She returned to her typing.

The café was empty except for Mary Raven. It had print tablecloths, silk flowers in bowls, and an elderly lady in a black uniform to serve the customers. In the summer it would be full of day-trippers from Newcastle. Mary was drinking more black coffee, cupping her hands around the patterned china cup. She seemed lost in thought. Ramsay looked at her through the window and decided she might be the mysterious woman who had been in the churchyard. She was small, dark, with long hair. She fitted Charlie Elliot’s description. If they could persuade her to admit that she was there, that night, walking through the gravestones, his superintendent might be inclined to believe the rest of Charlie’s story. As they watched she set down the empty coffee cup and began to write in a shorthand notebook that was on the table in front of her. She wrote quickly and fluently, pausing occasionally as if searching for the right word. When they walked into the café, she looked up briefly but took no notice of them. She put them down as reps in town to collect goods from the agricultural suppliers near the market. She imagined them delivering dog food all around the region.

“Miss Raven?”

It was Hunter who approached her while Ramsay went to the counter to pay for tea.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m Mary Raven. Who are you?”

“My name’s Hunter,” he said. “ Gordon Hunter. I’m a policeman.”

“What do you want?” They stared at each other with evident hostility. Ramsay thought they might have been brother and sister: too alike, always fighting. They were both dark, aggressive, unruly. She was still holding the pen and seemed anxious to continue writing. As Ramsay approached with the tea she turned the notebook facedown so that they could not see what had been written.

“Just a few questions,” Hunter said, “about Mrs. Parry.”

“But I thought you were looking for someone in connection with that.”

“We are,” Hunter said angrily, “but there are always a few loose ends. You know how it is.”

“No,” she said, “ I’m not sure that I do. But if you’re going to disturb me anyway you can buy me another coffee.” She waited while Ramsay bought coffee from the counter. “ Who are you?” she asked. “ His sidekick?”

“Something like that,” Ramsay murmured. He sat back in his chair, out of her line of vision, and watched her, while Hunter asked his questions.

“You met Mrs. Parry on the afternoon of her death?”

“Yes,” she said. She lit a cigarette. Ramsay thought she looked very tense, very tired. His optimism increased.

“Why did you go to Brinkbonnie?”

“You must know that already,” she said. “ To cover the residents’ meeting about the proposed new development.”

“But Mr. Laidlaw had made it clear that he did not want to follow the story any further.”

“Yes,” she said. “Well. Perhaps James has too many scruples.” She spoke with a bitterness that surprised Ramsay. “Perhaps he could never had made it in Fleet Street, after all.”

“What do you mean?”

“He once had an offer of a job in London on a daily,” she said, “but he turned it down. He claimed it was because his wife wouldn’t want to move, but I’m not so sure. I don’t think he could have handled it. He’s been a big fish in a little pond for too long.” I must be tired, she thought, I’m just being bitchy.

“But you could handle it?” Hunter asked.

“Yes,” she said. “ Why not? I need a break. I don’t want to stay on the
Otterbridge Express
for the rest of my career.”

“And that’s why you went to Brinkbonnie?”

“Partly,” she said. “I do stuff sometimes for one of the Newcastle papers. Henshaw’s got planning applications outstanding all over the county. I thought it might make a feature. And no-one had done an interview with Mrs. Parry.”

“And she agreed to speak to you?”

“Yes. She was really nice.”

“What did you talk about?”

“The development at first. The meeting had upset her. She wasn’t the sort of rich outsider who moves into a village and takes no part in its affairs. She’d lived there for twenty years. Her husband died there. She thought they were all her friends, then they turned against her. That hurt her.”

“What else did she talk about?”

“All sorts of things. Her family. She showed me photographs of her great-niece and nephews. Then I talked to her about my problems. She was dead easy to talk to.”

“Oh.” Hunter was all charm and flattery. “What problems could you possibly have?”

“I don’t think,” she said, “ that’s anything to do with you.”

He shrugged and smiled. “She didn’t say anything that you feel might have a bearing on her murder?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

She looked at her notebook and Ramsay thought she wanted to be at work again.

“Do you know Max Laidlaw?” Hunter asked.