Killjoy

Chapter Five

The next morning Ramsay arrived at Hallowgate police station early. It was an impressive grey-stone building close to the quayside next to the Seamen’s Mission. Along the street in the greasy café fishermen were eating breakfast and their laughter spilled out into the street. It was just getting light and very cold. Against the grey sky floated the white shapes of herring gulls, calling continuously. It was all very different from the inland county town of Otterbridge where he was usually based and he enjoyed the novelty of the surroundings, thought again that a new patch might rekindle his enthusiasm for the job.

Inside he was offered a bare, cold room on the first floor with a faulty radiator and no view but he accepted it gratefully. He would need somewhere away from the noise and hysteria of the Incident Room to collect his thoughts. Most of the morning was spent in meetings, organizing manpower, a press conference, negotiating overtime. Gabriella Paston was almost forgotten.

In the canteen Detective Inspector Evan Powell was giving Hunter a lecture about joy riding and ram raiders. There had been three more cases of TWOC in the night and a ram raid on the Co-op Hypermarket on the Coast Road, during which thousands of pounds’ worth of small electrical goods, spirits, and cigarettes had been taken. Powell had had little sleep.

‘It’s all a symptom of the same lawlessness,’ he said, his Welsh voice rising in passion as he spoke. ‘There were villains on the patch in the past. Of course there were. But they came from the same families. We knew where to find them. We could control them. This is a different thing altogether. Far more widespread. On some of these estates there’s a generation of kids who’ve been brought up without hope…’

Hunter, who had been hoping to enjoy a bacon sandwich in peace, muttered that Powell sounded like a bloody social worker. Powell, a Presbyterian, frowned in disapproval at the swearing, then continued:

‘Their parents haven’t got the wit or the interest to care about them, the schools can’t control them, they live in a dump that the council tries to pretend doesn’t exist… And then there’s the boredom factor! They’re not all dumb, you know, those kids. The Home Office like to think they’re stupid. But they need a challenge like the rest of us. I know some of the joy-riding gangs go specially for the cars with the most elaborate security. Would you believe it? It gives them status, you see, in the eyes of their friends. And the ram raiders! Well, man, they’re really at the top of the heap. Everyone on the estate knows who they are. They’re heroes. You’d think every one of them was Robin Hood!’

He paused for breath. Hunter looked around him, searching for some means of escape. He was a policeman not a sociologist. All this talk made him uneasy. But Powell was going on.

‘We let the situation get out of hand, of course,’ he said. ‘That’s why we had those disturbances on the Starling Farm earlier in the month. The Chief decided we’d have to crack down on joy riding after that little girl was killed but by then it was too late. The kids had been getting away with it for years. We’d shown we weren’t prepared to deal with it seriously. When we did go in hard they were ready for a fight. It was the boredom again. They liked the arson and the petrol bombs. It was like November fifth every night.’

Hunter saw that Ramsay had come into the room. Never before had he been pleased to see his superior. Powell, distracted at last, jumped to his feet to greet the Inspector.

‘Stephen!’ he said. ‘I’d heard you were joining us. It’s really good to have you on the team. I was just explaining to your sergeant here some of our special local difficulties.’

‘They’re hardly relevant to the Gabriella Paston case, though, are they?’ Hunter said bluntly. ‘No suspicion of auto-crime here.’

‘All the same,’ Powell said, a little offended, chiding. ‘ It never does any harm to understand your patch.’ Pointedly he got up and walked away.

‘He’s a good policeman,’ Ramsay said. ‘You should listen to him.’

‘I have been listening to him,’ Hunter grumbled, ‘for at least half an hour. He’s a fanatic.’

Ramsay felt his usual irritation at Hunter’s attitude returning. It would be hard enough in Hallowgate without offending their colleagues.

‘Powell’s a local man,’ he said. ‘He knows this patch inside out. We might need him.’

Hunter shrugged. If I ever need to ask for help from someone like that, he implied, it’ll be time to give up.

‘I’m on my way to the Starling Farm,’ Ramsay said. ‘ I want to talk to Gabriella’s grandmother and to the aunt again. At present she’s the last person to have seen the girl alive. And there was something very odd about her attitude, didn’t you think? No grief at all. It might just have been the shock, but all the same…’ If he had been talking to Powell he might have added that he wanted to be out, on the ground, listening, building an image of the girl he had lost during a morning of meetings. But Hunter would have considered the idea fanciful and he kept it to himself.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Hunter demanded. He too was bored with a morning of administration. He wanted some action.

‘Go to Hallowgate Sixth-Form College,’ Ramsay said. ‘Talk to her teachers, her friends. Find out if she was there at all yesterday. Did she give any idea where she was going in the afternoon? Get a list of all her special friends, especially boyfriends-’

‘All right,’ Hunter interrupted. ‘I get the picture.’ He had never liked being told what to do and the thought of going to school made him nervous.

The Starling Farm was still not the worst estate of its kind in the area. It could not compete, for example, with the Meadow Well along the river, where the houses were almost derelict and the residents were bitter, embattled, or on tranquillizers. The Starling Farm still had some streets where the gardens were tended, and the houses were all occupied. It was still safe for children to play in the streets during daylight, if they kept away from the broken glass. Women on their way to the only food shop which remained stopped to gossip and exchange jokes. But the place was shabby and dispirited. The disturbances had left it in a state of shock.

Alma and Ellen Paston lived in one of the older, more pleasant streets, in a crescent of semi-detached brick bungalows which had been built specially for the elderly at a time when the council could afford to care for you from the cradle to the grave. Some of the residents of Seaton Crescent had been children during the depression. Their dads had marched from Jarrow. They stood in the back gardens, with their rows of vegetables and home-made pigeon lofts, and discussed with puzzled voices the fact that nothing had changed. Starling Farm had been built with such hope just after the war and now it was just a slum, like the old slums of Jarrow and Shields. They blamed the young people, of course, for disturbing their peace with car chases, the loud unfamiliar music played from stolen ghetto-blasters in the streets, but they had grandchildren themselves. They understood the frustration. They wondered if they might be in some way to blame.

Ramsay followed a WRVS van delivering meals on wheels into Seaton Crescent. The spry white-haired woman who carried trays to the doors was herself of pensionable age. He wondered, uncomfortably, what he would find to do in retirement. No meals were delivered to the Pastons’ house. Ellen, presumably, catered for her mother.

It was Ellen who came to the door. She must have recognized him but she did not ask him in.

‘Yes?’ she said cautiously.

‘It’s Inspector Ramsay,’ he said. ‘We met last night at the Grace Darling Centre. Perhaps I could come in.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Mam’s having her dinner. She doesn’t like being disturbed.’

‘Ellen!’ said a deep, unctuous voice from inside. ‘Who is it, hinnie?’ And Alma Paston appeared behind her daughter. She was a huge woman, medically obese, with thick shapeless legs and blotched, flabby arms. Ramsay felt in his pocket for his warrant card, but he did not need to explain who he was. Alma Paston could smell a policeman from the other side of the Tyne.

‘Eh, hinnie,’ Alma said. ‘What are we thinking of? Stand aside, pet, and let the officer in. We’ll stick w’ dinners in the microwave when he’s gone.’

She led Ramsay into a front parlour. Ellen was left in the hall to shut the door. The room was very warm and dark. A fire burned in the tiled grate. There was a thick red carpet on the floor and red-and-gold patterned wallpaper. The table was covered with red-plush cloth. Alma waddled across the room, stood poised before a large armchair, then dropped into it. For a horrifying moment Ramsay glimpsed long grey knickers. Ellen stood, feet slightly apart, just inside the door.

‘Now, hinnie,’ Alma said. ‘ Sit down and tell me what all this is about.’

She peered at him, her small eyes almost hidden in folds of flesh. It was an affectation. She must know very well why he was there.

‘It’s about Gabriella,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ Alma said. ‘The poor bonny lass.’ She sighed theatrically. Then: ‘She wasn’t living here, you know. You mustn’t think that we can help you. She found herself lodgings with some folks in Otterbridge.’

As with Ellen, Ramsay was surprised by the lack of feeling. It was almost as if she had disowned the girl. Did they regard Gabby as her mother’s daughter, hardly related to them at all?

‘But you kept in touch? You must have seen her?’ He was trying to get some angle on the relationship.

‘Not for months,’ Alma said quickly, then, realizing that she had been too abrupt, she added in explanation: ‘ I can’t get out, you see, hinnie. I’d never make it to the end of the street. And she always said she was too busy to come to see her poor Gran. I had news of her, of course, through Ellen.’

‘Why did she leave?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Was there a row?’ It was hard to imagine a lively teenager in this house but something, surely must have provoked her into leaving. And if she had left amicably wouldn’t she have made some effort to keep in touch with her grandmother?

‘No,’ Alma said. ‘No row. Nothing like that. You know what bairns are like these days. They think they’re so grown up.’ But as she spoke she shot a warning glance at Ellen and Ramsay did not quite believe her.

‘Did she take her stuff with her when she went?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps I could see her room.’

‘She took everything,’ Alma said. ‘There’d be no point.’

There was a pause. Ramsay felt the questions were getting nowhere. He had come across unresponsive witnesses before but had known no one as impenetrable as the Pastons. Alma sat beaming at him, unruffled and in control. By the door Ellen stirred impatiently.

‘Is that it, then?’ she demanded. ‘ Can we have w’ dinner now?’

Alma shook her head indulgently as if Ellen were a naughty child.

‘You mustn’t mind Ellen, Mr Ramsay,’ she said. ‘She’s never liked the police. Not since her brother died. They were twins you know, as close as can be. She’s never got over it.’ And although Ellen was watching she tapped her head significantly to suggest mental derangement.

‘I don’t understand,’ Ramsay said, ‘how the police were to blame.’ He realized later how cleverly Alma had changed the conversation and how defensive he had suddenly become.

‘It was harassment,’ Alma said. ‘They covered it up at the inquest but everyone knew.’

‘Everyone knew what?’ It was an Alice in Wonderland conversation with a strange logic of its own.

‘That Mr Powell wouldn’t rest until he got our Robbie.’

‘Evan Powell?’ he said, shocked, giving away more than he had intended.

Alma Paston smiled, pleased by the response.

‘He was still in uniform then,’ she said. ‘Based on the Starling Farm. We all thought he was such a nice man, didn’t we, Ellen? At first. He went into the schools and talked to the bairns, visited the old folks. A community policeman, I suppose they’d call him now. It was a new idea then. He was supposed to solve all our problems.’

Ramsay said nothing. He could have defended Evan Powell but he waited, encouraging Alma Paston to continue. He suspected that a police operation twelve years before could have little relevance to the murder of Gabriella Paston, knew that in listening without comment he was condoning the spread of damaging and malicious rumour, but he needed all the information the spiteful woman could give.

‘Our Robbie wasn’t a saint, Mr Ramsay,’ she said. ‘No one could call him a saint. Not even Ellen. He worked hard but he drank too much, stood up for himself if there was any bother. He had a house on the other side of the estate with Isabella and Gabby. Isabella was Spanish, temperamental. Sometimes they had rows. She wasn’t one for rowing quietly. It was all screams and throwing the furniture about. You’d think he was murdering her. Then the neighbours would call the police and our nice community policeman would come to sort it out.’ She paused, still smiling. ‘Mr Powell was a man of fixed ideas,’ she said. ‘ He got it into his head that Robbie was a villain!’ She paused again. ‘He thought he was battering Isabella!’

‘Well?’ Ramsay said. ‘ Was he?’

‘No more than she was battering him.’

‘What else was Robbie up to, then?’ Ramsay asked.

She moved her huge bulk in her chair and did not answer directly.

‘It was 1980,’ she said. ‘Not an easy time on Tyneside, Inspector. Men losing their jobs. Worse even than it is today. Robbie had a family to support. And he was wild. I admit that. He needed the excitement.’

‘So he stole cars,’ Ramsay said. ‘Is that it?’

She shrugged. ‘There’s no death penalty for stealing cars,’ she said.

‘You’d better tell me exactly what happened.’

‘We don’t know exactly what happened,’ she said sharply. ‘No one would tell us. There was a police operation, they said. Evan Powell was driving the car following Robbie. They knew who he was. They could have picked him up at any time but they followed him so hard that he drove into the back of a lorry.’ She squeezed tears from between the folds of flesh of her face. ‘The bairn was six years old,’ she said.

‘You don’t think this has anything to do with Gabby’s death?’ Ramsay said. ‘Not after all these years.’

‘I knew that he was there last night. At the Grace Darling,’ Alma said sharply. ‘Ellen saw him, didn’t you pet?’

Ellen, still standing by the door nodded. ‘He’s in the choral society,’ she said. ‘He came into the cafeteria after for a cup of tea.’

‘That’s hardly a good enough reason to suspect him of murder,’ Ramsay said lightly.

‘I’ve reason enough,’ Alma said. She lay back in her chair and slowly closed her eyes.

‘If you’ve any information,’ Ramsay said impatiently, ‘you should tell me.’ But Alma Paston gave no sign that she had heard him and remained with her eyes shut.

The door bell rang. Ellen stood uncertainly by the door and did not move. The bell rang again. Eventually Alma Paston opened her eyes.

‘Go on, then, pet,’ she said. ‘Let’s see who’s there.’

Still Ellen hesitated and looked at her mother as if questioning her judgement. Alma nodded encouragingly and Ellen lumbered slowly to the front door.

‘It’s Gary Barrass,’ she said cautiously.

‘H’way in Gary, hinnie,’ shouted Alma. ‘Don’t be shy.’

Ellen stood aside to let in a boy of indeterminate age. He was thin, with a grey unhealthy pallor. His hair was cropped short and Ramsay wondered if he had recently been released from some institution. Despite the cold he wore a short-sleeved cotton T-shirt. He shivered slightly and stared at Ramsay.

‘This is our Gary,’ Alma said to the Inspector. ‘My friend’s lad. He runs errands for us, don’t you pet? Helps us out in the garden.’

The boy, obviously confused, simply nodded. He looked at his hands. LOVE had been written in black ink on the knuckles of one hand and HATE on the other. His nails were split and bitten.

‘I don’t think we need anything today, pet,’ Alma Paston said. ‘But perhaps you could come back later.’ She winked at him.

‘What time?’ the boy said.

‘Oh,’ Alma said. ‘Any time.’ She laughed. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

The boy hovered. He shuffled from one foot to the other and seemed about to ask a question.

‘Off you go now,’ Alma said interrupting. ‘This is Inspector Ramsay from Northumbria Police. You don’t want to disturb him.’

And he disappeared before Ramsay could speak to him.

With his departure the atmosphere in the room changed. The women relaxed. Ramsay felt again that he had been outwitted in some way. The heat and Alma’s superficially jovial words had worn him down. He thought he would get no more from them now. He stood up and sensed Alma’s triumph.

‘Are you off now, Inspector?’ she said. ‘You’ll not mind if I don’t get up. Ellen’ll see you out.’

Ramsay stood in the doorway for a moment, enjoying the fresh air, reluctant still to go. He knew that the interview had been a failure. He wondered, as he always did at times like these, if Hunter could have done any better. But even Hunter would have found it hard to bully two ladies on their own. Perhaps he would have taken them at face value, commiserated with their loss, considered them characters in the great Tyneside tradition. What motive could they have for murdering the girl? The idea was ludicrous. But Ramsay was uncomfortable. As he hesitated on the step he heard a deep, uncontrollable chuckle from the depth of the house. Alma Paston was laughing. At a time of grief the noise was horrifying. Ramsay walked quickly to his car and drove away.

As he was approaching the main road which circled the estate Ramsay saw Gary Barrass, the boy who had come to the Pastons’ house supposedly to run errands. The idea of Gary as an angel of mercy was improbable and Ramsay was interested. The boy was standing on a corner outside a big gloomy pub called the Keel Row, which had been famous once for its Saturday night fights, but which now attracted so few customers that it had lost even that distinction. Gary seemed to be waiting for someone. He was dancing up and down with the cold and seemed pathetically young. When Ramsay slowed the car and drew up beside him he approached at first as if this might be the person he was waiting for, then he recognized Ramsay and he started to run.

Ramsay jumped out of the car and chased after him, wondering as he did so why he was bothering. Gary crossed the pub car park and scrambled over a wall. Ramsay, already out of breath, stood and watched as the boy scuttled down an alley behind a row of almost derelict houses. He knew it would be pointless to follow him now. He would have friends or relatives all over the estate prepared to hide him. Besides, he would be easy enough to trace. Ramsay wished, though, that he had had a chance to tell the boy that he only wanted to help.