Ramsay 04 - Killjoy (16 page)

There was a moment’s silence while the superintendent leaned forward, his arms on his desk.

‘I’d be grateful to get this cleared up quickly,’ he said, awkwardly.

‘Of course.’ Ramsay was surprised. He had not expected to be put under pressure.

‘There should be no difference in our response to a teenage lad stabbed to death in a pub brawl on the Starling Farm estate as to a magistrate strangled in Martin’s Dene.’ The superintendent was speaking almost to himself but looked up to check that Ramsay understood what he was saying. ‘ Morally there’s no difference at all. But practically…’ He smiled wryly. ‘ Practically there’s all the difference in the world. The respectable citizens of Martin’s Dene will be affronted by an outrage on their doorstep. They’ll take it personally. When you spend that much on a house you expect to be insulated from the nasty realities of the outside world. I get enough flak about dog mess on the pavement. They’ll write to their MPs, to the members of the police committee, to me. They’ll make my life hell.’ He smiled again, more gently. ‘I was hoping for a peaceful year before I retire. As I said, I’d be grateful.’

‘I’ll have a try,’ Ramsay said, but his voice gave little room for hope.

From his cold, depressing office in Hallowgate police station Ramsay phoned the Grace Darling Arts Centre. The call was answered by Joe Fenwick on the reception desk. It was a small piece of luck but made Ramsay feel optimistic for the first time that day.

‘Ellen Paston,’ he asked. ‘Is she working today?’

‘Aye. She got in half an hour ago.’

‘That’s fine then. You’ll not tell anyone I was asking.’

‘Me!’ Joe Fenwick laughed. ‘Man, I’ll not tell a soul.’

Ramsay sent a car to bring Ellen Paston to the police station. It was a gamble, of course. She might just refuse to come. He had been tempted to go to the Grace Darling to talk to her there, tempted too by the prospect of seeing Prue Bennett again. But in the end he had decided to bring her into the police station. Away from her own home ground, her mother and her work, she might be more prepared to talk. And he thought that she
would
come. Curiosity would bring her along.

He had hoped to find somewhere more pleasant to interview her, thinking she might be persuaded to relax her guard in less formal surroundings, but no other room was available and he saw her in his office. He phoned for a WPC to bring them tea, hoping to make Ellen Paston feel important, special. She spent her life waiting on others, dominated by her mother, patronized by the customers at the Grace Darling. He felt she would be susceptible to flattery.

‘I believe you’ll be able to help me,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to tell me about your meetings with Gabriella.’

She looked up at him but said nothing. A policewoman knocked at the door, then came in with a tea tray which she set on the table. She took a chair to the corner of the room where she sat, apparently lost in thoughts of her own throughout the interview. Ramsay poured tea, offered biscuits.

‘You
did
meet Gabriella quite regularly,’ he said gently. ‘She kept a record of your appointments in her diary.’ He held his breath, hoping that he was right and that the E of the diary was Ellen Paston.

‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘We met. She’d never come to the house but she wanted to keep in touch.’ She spoke bitterly. ‘We weren’t much but we were all she had.’

‘Why didn’t she come to the house?’

Ellen shook her head as if it was beyond her understanding. Ramsay tried to control his impatience.

‘Was it because she knew she wouldn’t be welcome?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘She’d have been welcome enough. We’d have had her back to live if she’d wanted to come. She didn’t want to go there. That’s all.’

‘Did your mother know that you were meeting Gabriella?’

‘She knows I saw Gabby at the Grace Darling,’ Ellen said, ‘but not that I saw her away from work.’

‘Why didn’t you tell her?’ Ramsay asked.

Ellen shrugged. Perhaps she had so little privacy that any secret, however harmless, was important to her. Perhaps there had been so much animosity between Alma and Gabriella that her mother had forbidden her to see the girl. Whatever the reason she refused to say.

‘Where did you meet?’ he asked.

‘Usually in the coffee shop in Martin’s Dene,’ Ellen said. Had they chosen Martin’s Dene, Ramsay wondered, because they were unlikely to meet any of their acquaintances from the Starling Farm there? Ellen leaned forward greedily and took another biscuit. ‘We had tea, cream cakes. It was a treat, something to look forward to.’

‘Who paid?’ he asked.

‘We took it in turns,’ she said resentfully, ‘if it’s any business of yours.’

‘Did you ever give her money?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ She obviously saw it as an admission of weakness. ‘I know it was all her own fault storming out of the house like that, but it didn’t seem right that she should live off a stranger. Not completely. I wanted her to have some cash of her own.’

‘How much did you give her?’

‘Ten pounds, twenty pounds, whatever I could afford.’

That would be a lot, Ramsay thought, for Ellen Paston. Probably a day’s pay. But it didn’t explain the eight hundred pounds in the building society.

‘Did you ever give her more than that?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps for her to start a savings account?’

Ellen shook her head. ‘Where would I get more than that?’ she demanded. ‘There’s only Mam’s pension and what I get from the Grace Darling.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, surprised by her aggression. ‘ Is that why Gabby came to meet you?’ he asked, suddenly brutal. ‘For the money?’

Ellen’s mood changed quickly, like a child’s. She forgot her anger and smiled.

‘Nah,’ she said. ‘She’d have got that anyway. She knew I’d not see her go short. I told you. She wanted to keep in touch.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Everything,’ she said. ‘Bit of news from the estate. She’d lost contact with most of her friends there. What was going on in the Grace Darling. Gossip, I suppose you’d call it. A bit of a crack.’

Ramsay saw that it was quite plausible. Gabby Paston had lived on the Starling Farm for sixteen years. Despite Prue’s kindness it must have been a strain to be uprooted into a middle-class household. The rules of engagement would be different. The talk would be of books, the theatre, politics. He remembered his own introduction to the Bennetts. It had been an exhilarating experience but he had been frightened always of betraying his ignorance and it had been a relief at times to escape home, to soap operas on the TV and his mother’s chat. So Gabby had sneaked away every couple of weeks to eat cream cakes with her aunt. With Ellen she could relax for an hour and use the dialect words and expressions which the Bennetts would hardly understand. And she could listen to gossip, to the trivial, salacious, and amusing bits of news which would be despised in her new life, but which would make her feel part of the estate again. Then why had she left in the first place, he wondered, if it was such a wrench? He did not put the question immediately to Ellen Paston. He thought she would refuse to answer it and he had other things to ask while she was being co-operative.

‘Did you talk about Amelia Wood?’ he asked. ‘She was a trustee at the Grace Darling and there must have been stories to tell about a woman like that.’

‘Maybe,’ she conceded, ‘but we didn’t see enough of her at the Centre to find out.’

‘Had you heard that she’d been murdered?’ he asked quietly.

She shook her head and for a brief moment he thought he saw her mouth turn up in a strange lopsided grin. Was it shock? Embarrassment? Or the pleasure in having information which he needed and which she was not prepared to share?

‘She was strangled,’ he said more sharply. ‘Like Gabriella.’

‘When?’ The question surprised him. He had expected some expression of regret.

‘Yesterday evening,’ he said. ‘At some time after six.’ He paused then asked deliberately. ‘What were you doing then?’

She seemed pleased to have gained accurate information from him and answered almost absentmindedly.

‘I was at home with Mam. There was no work. The Centre was closed for the day.’

‘You didn’t leave the house all evening?’

She shook her head and looked up at him, a challenge. ‘Ask Mam,’ she said. ‘She’ll tell you.’

Oh, yes, he thought. I bet she will.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Why did Gabriella leave home?’

She looked straight at him, not caring whether or not he believed her.

‘I’ve told you,’ she said. ‘ It was her age. She just got fed up with us.’

‘She fell out with your mother,’ he said.

‘Aye. It was something like that.’

‘What was the row about?’

She smiled maliciously. ‘ You’ll have to ask Mam,’ she said. ‘ Won’t you?’

Ramsay did not answer. They both knew that Alma Paston would give little away.

‘Look,’ Ellen said. ‘ I should get back. I’ve work to do.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘ I’ll clear it with Mr Lynch. And I’ll take you back myself. There’s just one more question…’ He looked directly at the hunched, ungainly figure sitting on the chair on the other side of the desk. ‘Gabriella had eight hundred pounds in a building society account. Do you know where she got the money?’

Ellen gave a hard laugh and he could have sworn that her astonishment was genuine.

‘The mean little madam,’ she said. ‘And she still took money off me!’

The resentment was directed not at the fact that Gabriella had money, but that Ellen had known nothing about the account.

Joe Fenwick heard the news of Amelia Wood’s death on the transistor radio he kept behind the reception desk to liven up the duller moments of the day. The afternoon was always quiet. There were a few old ladies in the small lounge for a reminiscence session, sharing stories of their childhood in the twenties, but Joe thought that most of them were so deaf that they would not be disturbed by the strains of Radio Newcastle coming from the lobby. There was an extended report of the murder during the two o’clock news and Joe thought the information was too interesting to keep to himself.

He found Prue Bennett and Gus Lynch in the theatre. They were arguing in an irritable, petulant way about the following week’s rehearsal of
Abigail Keene.
Prue thought the whole production should be cancelled or at least postponed. How could they go on with the rehearsals, she said, pretending that nothing had happened? The information, given by Joe, that Amelia Wood had died only strengthened her argument. They must cancel now, she said. They couldn’t go ahead when both a member of the Youth Theatre and a trustee had been killed. Besides the question of taste it was a practical matter. They couldn’t encourage young girls to come out after dark. Not at a time like this. The parents wouldn’t stand for it.

‘If the parents don’t like it,’ Gus Lynch said crossly, ‘they can arrange to bring the kids to the square and pick them up after the rehearsal. It’s not beyond the wit of man to organize some sort of rota.’

His reaction to Amelia Wood’s death surprised Prue. She was shocked and frightened— it seemed to her that everyone connected with the Grace Darling was a potential target—but Gus seemed overtaken by a terrible excitement. He talked about the murders all the time and became feverish and restless, insisting even more strongly that the production should go ahead. ‘The publicity won’t do us any harm,’ he said. ‘It’ll ensure a full house at least. And the press will certainly be there.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s terrible. We don’t want that sort of publicity.’

‘There are lots of parallels with the play when you come to look at it. Sam Smollett was accused of murder. He just never got caught.’

‘But who’ll play Abigail?’ Prue cried, hoping that a discussion of the practical details would make him calmer, give her a chance to make him see sense.

‘Anna, of course,’ he said, as if Prue were a fool. ‘She’ll make a perfectly adequate understudy.’

‘Look,’ Prue said. ‘I’m not sure she’s up to it. Not after all this strain.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said impatiently. ‘ Of course she’s up to it. It’s a group piece. She won’t be on her own. Besides, shouldn’t you ask her, before making up her mind for her?’

‘Yes,’ Prue said. ‘I suppose I should.’

But Gus had walked away without waiting for an answer and she was left in the theatre alone. She shivered with a sudden panic and was tempted for a moment to phone Stephen Ramsay. But what would she tell him? That she was concerned by her boss’s reaction to the news of Amelia Wood’s murder, that he seemed under some psychological strain? The call might give her fears more weight than they deserved. It might even give the impression that she saw Gus Lynch as a murderer.

She was still in the theatre when Ramsay arrived at the Grace Darling. He left Ellen Paston in the lobby and went to look for Prue, wanting to get the most awkward interview over first. She heard the door bang and watched him walk across the polished wood floor to join her. In the unnatural light of the theatre she saw him as a stranger and wondered even if she would have recognized him that first evening if he had not given his name.

‘I’m sorry for the intrusion,’ Ramsay said. ‘ You’ll have heard about Mrs Wood?’

She nodded. She was wearing the jeans and sweater of the night before and her face was tense and strained. He wanted to comfort her and to make her smile.

‘I’m afraid I have to ask you some questions about your movements yesterday evening,’ he said.

She did not answer.

‘What did you do after I left?’

‘I went to see a friend,’ she said. ‘Anna wasn’t very good company and I needed someone to talk to.’

‘I’ll need the name of the friend,’ Ramsay said apologetically. ‘You do realize we’ll have to check.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘ Of course. Her name’s Judy, Judy Delaney. She’s a solicitor. She lives in a flat just round the corner from me.’

‘You won’t mind if someone goes to speak to her?’

‘Not at all. She’ll love the drama. She’s quite a character, great fun.’ She paused. ‘I needed fun,’ she said. ‘Last night.’

‘Was Anna left in the house on her own?’ Ramsay asked.