Murder in My Backyard (24 page)

Once, just as she was crossing the road, a middle-aged woman called after her: “Stella, my dear! How are you?” But Stella ignored her and slipped across the congested road behind a lorry full of sheep.

At the far end of Front Street Stella began to move more slowly. She looked about her. Ramsay had to take care not to be seen. As he hid in doorways and stooped to tie already fastened shoelaces, he felt uncomfortable, ridiculous. How could he justify this wasted time? He should be looking for Mary Raven. What would he do if Stella ended up in the smart wine bar in the High Street, sharing a bottle of claret with her husband or one of her friends? Yet as he came closer to her he saw a desperation and an increasing lack of control in her movements that made him think she might be dangerous.

At a street corner she stopped suddenly and looked all around her. She must have seen Ramsay but, in her haste and agitation, seemed not to recognise him. Perhaps she was looking for someone else. He stood, thinking she was on the verge of some crisis as the pale blue eyes searched both sides of the street, then she set off again with her jerky, unpredictable walk.

She’s mad, he thought. She’s quite crazy.

She disappeared then down an alley into a street of small shops. Ramsay’s way was blocked by a group of schoolgirls in the old-fashioned brown uniforms of an expensive Otterbridge day school, and when he pushed through into the street, there was no sign of Stella. Most of the shops were closed. The sun was low and the street was peaceful. A newsagent was bringing papers from a rack outside in preparation for closing and on the far corner a couple of men were sitting on the steps of a pub waiting for it to open. It seemed as if Stella Laidlaw had vanished into thin air. He ran down the pavement, pushing at locked doors, peering into shop windows. When he came to the chemist shop, he thought that it, too, had closed. The window was unlit and only a sign on the door saying that the pharmacist was on the out-of-hours duty rota made him look inside. Stella was there, the only customer. She was talking to a respectable elderly gentleman in a suit, who stood behind a counter where the dispensing took place. It was hard for Ramsay to see what was going on. The shop was disorganised and dusty, and the window was cluttered with bottles of shampoos and boxes of food supplements and milk drinks. A normal exchange seemed to be taking place. The chemist disappeared into a little room behind the counter and Stella waited, pacing between a pile of disposable nappies and a tray of lipsticks. The chemist returned; she took a wallet from her handbag, paid him, and then almost ran out of the shop, although the man called after her that he owed her some change.

Then suddenly the street was full of brown-uniformed schoolgirls tunnelling through the narrow alley, no longer prim and pompous but with all the ambiguity of adolescence. At one moment they were posing, loose-tied and tarty, then they were children again, throwing a schoolbag from one to another, jumping to catch it and showing regulation-brown knickers. Then they were racing to the newsagent before it closed, hoping to buy … What? Ramsay wondered. Cigarettes? Romantic magazines? Gum? They pushed into the shop and the street was empty again, except for Stella Laidlaw hurrying away. In the narrowest part of the alley, framed on each side by high walls, another schoolgirl stood. She was younger than the rest. Her arms were straight beside her, one of them weighed down by a violin case, the other, as if for balance, by a briefcase full of books.

“Mummy!” she called, and if she had not spoken Stella would have walked right up to her without realising who it was. “What are you doing here?”

Stella stopped and smiled at her daughter, as if waking slowly from a dream.

“Why,” she said, “ I thought it would be nice to come and meet you so we can walk home together.”

She slipped her arm through Carolyn’s arm without offering to carry the bag or the violin, her attention fixed on the shops in the main street. The girl hung back, staring down the alley after her friends. She saw Ramsay, who was still standing outside the chemist shop. Their eyes met, but the child gave no sign that she had seen him and did not mention him to her mother.

In the shop the chemist was back in his dispensary. The doorbell brought him out into the shop to the counter.

“Yes,” he said. “ Can I help you?”

“Who was the woman who was here just now?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the chemist said. “ I can’t tell you that, you know.”

Ramsay showed his identification card. “What did she want?” he asked.

“She was bringing a prescription,” the chemist said rather defensively. “There was nothing unusual about it. Tranquilisers. She seemed rather neurotic, didn’t she. It was written by Dr. Laidlaw.”

“His surgery’s on the other side of town,” Ramsay said. “ Why did she bring it here to have it made up?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it was more convenient.”

“Is it legal for a doctor to prescribe for his own relative?”

“But she wasn’t a relative,” the chemist said impatiently. “At least I had no indication that she was. The prescription was in the name of Raven. Mary Raven.”

On her walk home with her mother Carolyn felt the same panic that she had had some years ago when she had been pushed into the deep end of the swimming pool before she could swim. There was the same gasping breathlessness, the same sense of inevitable pain. Then, she had fought to the side of the pool and saved herself. Now she felt helpless. The sight of Ramsay close to her mother had confirmed all her worst fears. He must know everything.

In the house her mother suddenly became kind and solicitous. Carolyn wasn’t looking well, she said. There was a lot of flu about. Perhaps she should go to bed. But Carolyn was frightened to leave her mother alone and sat with her in the kitchen. Stella’s apparent concern for her well-being made her feel sick and angry, but it was better to put up with that than to be in bed, not knowing what Stella was up to.

“When will Dad be home?” she asked at last. Her mother was frying onions and mushrooms in a pan, and there was a smell of garlic.

“I don’t know,” Stella said. “He should be here by now. Perhaps he’s working late.” She seemed quite unconcerned and Carolyn marvelled at adults’ capacity for deceit. She was desperate for her father’s return.

“Haven’t you any homework to do, darling?” Stella asked. “Or violin practise?”

But Carolyn shook her head. She knew she could not concentrate on anything until she had spoken to her father.

Stella began to chop parsley with a wide-bladed knife, holding the handle with one hand and hitting the blade quickly with the palm of the other. Carolyn watched, fascinated, and when the phone rang, she was unable to move. Stella set the knife down on the chopping board and went out to answer the phone.

“That was Daddy,” she said when she returned, “He’s got a meeting and will be working late tonight, so it’ll just be us for supper.”

She smiled, and Carolyn, faint and exhausted, thought, This must be what it’s like to drown.

In the days of waiting for Max to make a decision, Mary became obsessed with the idea of her story. She had never, she supposed, been a person with a highly developed sense of proportion. She smoked too much, drank too much, loved too much. Now she wanted to see the story through to its conclusion, and even her desire for Max occupied less of her thoughts.

When Hunter and Ramsay were waiting outside her flat on Tuesday night, she was in Newcastle, wandering round the bars where reporters hung out, talking, picking up information, drinking whisky, buying drinks. Later she staggered to the students’ house there, woke the neighbours up by banging on the door to be let in, and spent the night on the settee.

The next day she decided not to go into the office to work at all. Even the news of Charlie Elliot’s murder could not distract her. Every other reporter in the northeast would be working on that. Her story would be exclusive, more important in the long run. If she went to the office, James would want to know what she was up to and she was not ready yet to discuss it with him. He would talk her round and send her to interview a housewife in Hexham whose first novel had been bought by Mills & Boon. In her obsession it no longer mattered whether or not she got the sack from the
Express.
Other papers would run her story, she thought. Better papers. She imagined it splashed over the front page of the
Journal
, sold outside of the metro stations in Newcastle and Gateshead, bought by all the businessmen on their way to work. From the students’ house she phoned the office to tell them she would not be there.

“I’m not coming in today, Marg,” she said to the receptionist. “Make up some story for me, will you? You should be good at fiction by now.”

“Oh, pet,” Marjory said. “ Do you think that’s wise? You know what he’s like.”

“This is a big story, Marg. It’ll make my fortune for me. Tell him I’m ill. Tell him I’ve got a hangover.”

“The police are looking for you. That inspector’s already phoned here twice.”

“He’ll have to wait then. I’m too busy to see him today.”

“I don’t think you’re well, dear,” the receptionist said. “You sound very highly strung. I’m worried about you. We all are. Why don’t you see a doctor?”

And that, Mary thought, lighting a cigarette from the one she was about to put out, is the last thing I need.

Mary spent the day in the library in Newcastle looking up old press reports, feverishly taking notes, stopping only to take the lift to the gloomy cafeteria in the basement to drink black coffee or to go to the lavatory. When she left the place, she had no idea what time it was—her watch had stopped—but it was dark and she was very hungry. She drove back to Otterbridge, stopping on the way to collect fish and chips.

She was in the shower when Max arrived. There was a loud knock on the door and she thought it must be the police, tracking her down at last, so she dried off and made herself decent before she went to answer it.

When she saw Max standing there, she was astonished. Usually he came discreetly, slipping into the house when no-one was there to see him, tapping gently on the door so that he would not be heard by the other tenants. By the time she had got to the door, he was banging it with his fist and shouting.

“Mary Raven, let me in!”

She saw immediately that he had been drinking, and that surprised her, too. Usually, when they went out, he drank little and then he ordered what she considered women’s wimpish drinks: white wine and small glasses of lager. Now he was loudly and incoherently drunk. She let him in, glad to have the opportunity of looking after him, and switched on the fire because he seemed very cold. Then she made coffee for him. When she returned from the kitchen, she found him weeping. There was more wrong with him than just the drink, she thought. She, after all, was an expert in these things.

“Max,” she said. “ What’s the matter?”

She sat on his lap and put her arms around his neck, thinking that she might distract him from his misery with sex. But he seemed only to want her for comfort and clung to her, his head against her shoulder still crying. At any other time she might have tried to laugh him out of it, but he seemed quite distraught and she began to be frightened.

“Max,” she said. “ What have you done?”

But that seemed only to distress him more.

“I’ll find somewhere else to go,” he said. “ You don’t want me here.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Of course I want you. I always want you. Why don’t you spend the night here? You can’t go back to your wife like this.”

She took his hand as if he were a big and backward child and took him to the bedroom. There she undressed him gently, wishing he was more himself so that he could appreciate the care she was taking of him. She sat him in a chair while she made the bed, smoothing biscuit crumbs from the sheets onto the carpet, shaking pillows so that he would be comfortable. Then she kissed him gently and left him to steep.

In the morning, she thought, when he’s sober, we’ll talk about this and make love slowly. And at least when he was in trouble he came to me and not to his wife.

She made more coffee for herself and sat in front of the gas fire to drink it, satisfied because Max was under her roof again.

She was still there when Hunter arrived to invite her to the police station for a few questions.

“What questions?” she demanded. “I’ve told you everything I know.” But she did not make too much fuss because she was afraid Max would wake, and she knew that at all costs Max must be protected from the police.

Ramsay saw Mary Raven in his office instead of in the interview room next to the cells. He thought she was stubborn and would react to confrontation with rudeness or awkward silence. He needed to persuade her that he did not suspect her of either murder and that he needed her help. Yet throughout the interview he was surprised by her determination to give nothing away. She seemed to be trying to be obstructive and he could not understand it. He grew frustrated by her attitude. She was an intelligent woman, wasn’t she? Couldn’t she see that she would land herself in trouble if she did not tell the truth? He could not tell that she did not care what happened to her—she had a naïve belief in English justice and knew she was innocent. But she had Max to protect, and as the questioning progressed his alcoholic agitation seemed more significant and sinister.

“Miss Raven,” Ramsay said. “We have evidence that you remained in Brinkbonnie last Saturday after seeing Mrs. Parry. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

It was not what she had been expecting and she looked at him before answering. She could not tell whether or not he was bluffing. He was cleverer than she had realised. She decided that the only thing to do was to stick to her story.

“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know where your information’s come from, but you’ve made a mistake.”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“I heard that your mate went and spoke to Sophie in Newcastle,” she said. “You know I can’t have murdered Mrs. Parry. I was at her birthday party.”

“But you might have seen something,” Ramsay said. “You could be an important witness.”