Murder in My Backyard

Chapter Thirteen

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.

“Yes,” she said. “He’s a doctor at the Health Centre. I know his wife. We’re both involved with the women writers workshop.”

“Did you talk to Mrs. Parry about Max or Judy Laidlaw?”

“Only indirectly,” she said. “ She thought her family should have given her more support over the development issue.”

“She wanted them behind the banners trying to stop the builder?” Hunter was sneering, trying to provoke a reaction.

“Something like that.”

“Not very likely, is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Probably not. James wants to keep his objectivity. Max might be more sympathetic.”

“What time did you leave Mrs. Parry?”

“I don’t know. About half-past four. She was expecting her family.”

“Did anyone come to the house while you were there?”

“No,” she said. “But as I was on my way into the village someone was coming across the green towards the Tower. When he saw me, he waited until I came out before he went into the churchyard. I was a bit worried. I wondered if I should go back and check that Mrs. Parry was all right, but I thought she was probably able to look after herself.”

“Are you sure he went up to the house?”

“Yes,” she said. “I saw him walk through the churchyard to the little gate into the garden.”

“Who was it?”

“The fat man who was so rude to Mrs. Parry at the meeting.”

Charlie Elliot, Ramsay thought, delivering the letter.

“Did you see him come out again?” Hunter asked.

“Yes,” she said. “ Just as I was getting into my car.”

“Where had you parked your car?”

“By the green outside the church.”

Hunter paused, drank tea. “ Did you walk through the churchyard to get to your car?”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t like to wander through Mrs. Parry’s garden. I went down the drive.”

“Did you go into the churchyard later that evening?”

“No,” she said. “ It looked very interesting, but I didn’t go in.”

You’re lying, Ramsay thought. But why? Hunter was continuing with his questions.

“When did you leave Brinkbonnie?”

“As soon as I got to my car,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

She hesitated just for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “What reason could I have for staying?”

Ramsay’s head was full of questions, none of which was possible to ask her. If she was the woman in the churchyard, where had she left her car? No-one had seen any strange car on the green that night. And what on earth had she been doing there? Was there an angle on the planning story she was reluctant to talk about before her article was finished? Or was the reason more personal? He spoke for the first time since the interview had started and his soft voice surprised her.

“Tell me,” he said. “What relationship do you have with your employer?”

“What do you mean?” she demanded angrily. “Relationship? Do you want to know if he is screwing me?”

He smiled, as if amused by her childishness, her lack of taste and sophistication.

“Let me tell you,” she said. “James Laidlaw and I have no relationship at all outside the office. He’s besotted with his wife.”

“You don’t meet him at all socially.”

“Occasionally,” she said vaguely. “ We have some mutual friends.”

Ramsay nodded and indicated to Hunter that he should continue the questions.

“Where were you on Saturday evening?” Hunter asked.

“In Newcastle,” she said. “At a party.” She looked at him defiantly. “I can give you the address if you like. I got drunk and stayed the night. I slept on the floor. On my own.”

“That would be very helpful,” he said.

“What time did you arrive at the party?” Ramsay asked.

“I don’t know!” She was almost shouting. “How should I know? I went home to change first. I didn’t want to get there until it had warmed up. What are all these questions about?”

“A woman answering your description was seen in the Brinkbonnie churchyard on Saturday night,” Ramsay said formally. “We need to eliminate her from our enquiries.”

“This is ridiculous,” she said. “Who saw this woman, anyway?”

“A reliable witness,” Ramsay lied.

“Why are you bothering with this?” Mary cried. “ You know who killed her. Why aren’t you out there looking for him? You’re just wasting time, my time.”

Ramsay said nothing. He knew Hunter agreed with Mary Raven. He thought they were wasting time, too. Charlie Elliot had murdered Alice Parry and run away. If he was innocent, Hunter had said, he would have come forward by now. We’ll find him. He might even have left the country, but we’ll get him in the end. Ramsay sighed. He felt his options were closing. He could not afford another failure. It was easier, perhaps, to accept the general opinion that Charlie Elliot had killed Alice Parry in a drunken rage. It was not so unlikely, after all. He stood up and then, on impulse, wrote the number of the Incident Room on a scrap of paper.

“If you remember anything,” he said, “or come across any information that might help, give me a ring. Inspector Ramsay.”

She looked up briefly and nodded, but he saw her roll the paper into a ball and push it into her pocket before returning her attention to her notebook.

In the street the policemen paused in the sunshine. Hunter wanted to get back to the Incident Room, taking phone calls, tracking down Elliot, but Ramsay seemed gripped by an obsession, haunted, Hunter thought, by the woman in the churchyard.

“I didn’t believe Miss Raven,” the inspector said. “She was lying.”

Hunter stood sullen and unresponsive. He thought Mary Raven was an irrelevance. He was afraid of their colleagues stealing the glory of Elliot’s discovery.

“Go to Newcastle!” Ramsay said. “ Check her story. Find out what time she arrived there and as much as you can about her.”

Hunter nodded unenthusiastically.

“I’ll go back to Brinkbonnie,” Ramsay said, “and check the addresses of the lads in the bus shelter. They might have seen the woman in the churchyard.”

He felt a renewed energy and hope. Mary Raven’s denial became a challenge. He looked again through the café window. She was drinking more coffee and stared anxiously and absent-mindedly towards the wall.

Hunter found the house where Mary Raven claimed to have spent Saturday night in a quiet, scruffy street close to the hospital. There was a Chinese take-away on the corner and rubbish in the small front gardens. Many of the houses were owned by the same landlord and let to students. From one house came the sound of rock music. Outside another group of young people sat on the front steps talking in loud southern voices. Hunter felt he had wandered into an alien land. The group on the steps stopped and stared at him, though by the time he reached the house where Mary’s friends lived they had resumed their conversation. The house was near the end of the terrace, with a CND sticker in a bedroom window and a bicycle propped against the fence. He knocked at the door, hoping that he would find no-one there. Weren’t students supposed to go to college after all? Didn’t they have lectures and tutorials to attend?

The door was opened by a pretty blond girl wearing a kimono. She had a towel wrapped around her hair, bare feet, and pink toenails. She did not seem surprised by Hunter. Nothing surprised her.

“I didn’t expect to find anyone in,” Hunter said. “ I thought you were all at the university.” He would have liked to mention grants, taxpayers’ money, but felt his disapproval would be lost on her.

“No,” she said vaguely. “ Not today. No lectures. I’ll be going in to the library later.”

She looked briefly at his identification card and stood aside to let him into a poorly lit hall. The plaster was peeling onto the floor, and as she walked ahead of him into the living room he saw the small white pieces stuck to the soles of her feet.

The living room was large and well proportioned but almost empty. A huge Japanese paper lampshade hung from the ceiling. There was a settee with a pine frame and brown cushions and an expensive stereo with a shelf of cassettes and a box of records. The carpet was threadbare and not very clean. Hunter sat gingerly on the settee. He could feel the wooden struts of the frame through the thin padding of the cushion.

“Sorry,” she said. “It isn’t very comfortable.” She sat on the floor, her long, smooth legs straight before her, her ankles crossed. She began to dry her hair.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“You had a party on Saturday night,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, unbothered, unafraid. “It was my birthday on Sunday. Did the neighbours complain about the noise? I don’t know why. We invited them all to come.”

“No,” he said. He was finding the interview very difficult. “It’s not that. Was Mary Raven at the party?”

“Yes,” she said. Her hair was long and fine. She pulled out the tangles with her fingers. “ She was here. She stayed the night. She was too drunk to drive home.”

“How did you meet her?”

“I can’t remember exactly.” She considered, frowning. “ She was at university, I think, with some of my friends. I share the house with a couple of postgraduates. I probably met her through them. She always seems to be around. Of course, she’s a lot older than me.” She took the damp towel from her shoulders and folded it on the floor. “What’s this all about?”

“Miss Raven was in Brinkbonnie on Saturday afternoon. We need to eliminate her from the Alice Parry murder. It’s only a formality.”

“Oh.” For the first time she was shocked, even impressed. She looked at Hunter through long, fair eyelashes. “How exciting.”

“What time did she arrive at the party?” he asked.

The girl shrugged. “ She was late,” she said. “We didn’t get home ourselves until the pub shut and she turned up soon after, perhaps eleven-thirty, a quarter to twelve. She was definitely here by midnight. They all sang ‘ Happy Birthday’ to me when the clock struck twelve and I remember Mary joining in. She’s got a terrible voice.”

“And she didn’t leave the party after that?”

“No,” the girl said. “I’ve already told you. She was too drunk. I think she’d been drinking before she got here.”

“Was Miss Raven on her own at the party?”

“What do you mean?” She seemed already to have lost interest and was looking vacantly out of the window.

“Did she have a boyfriend with her?”

The girl smiled, her attention caught again. “ Oh, no,” she said. “We’re never allowed to meet Mary’s boyfriend. He’s a deadly secret. She only talks about him when she’s been drinking and then she starts to cry.”

“Who is he?” Hunter asked.

“I’ve told you I don’t know. None of us have ever seen him.”

“But she must have told you something about him.”

She smiled again. “Nothing useful,” she said. “Only that he’s handsome, stimulating, sensitive. And married.”

“How long has she known him?”

“I think it all started last summer. She disappeared from the scene for a while then, and she’s never gone out with anyone else since.”

“And you have no idea who this man might be?”

“No,” she said. “ Sometimes I think Mary made him up. She can be quite strange at times, you know, a bit intense, and rude. I had thought he might be a figment of her imagination.”

Hunter was reluctant to go. He sat on the low, uncomfortable sofa watching the pretty young woman brush her hair like a veil across her face, hoping that she might offer him coffee, allow him to prolong his stay. But she looked up at him and smiled.

“Is that it?” she asked. “Any more questions?”

He shook his head and she stood up to show him out into the street.

Outside Hunter felt elated. It was twelve o’clock and the smell of ginger and soy sauce lingered in the street, but he was no longer offended by it. If Mary Raven had arrived at the party in Newcastle by midnight, she could not have murdered Alice Parry. Now, perhaps, Ramsay would leave the case alone and admit that Charlie Elliot should be caught and brought to court. He would have to admit that Hunter was right.