Murder in My Backyard

Chapter Nineteen

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.”

“Sorry,” she said again, implying that she was not sorry at all. “I can’t help you.”

“Someone saw you,” he insisted. “I think I explained before. Charlie Elliot saw you. Do you not think it’s something of a coincidence that now he’s dead?”

She shrugged, as if the death of Charlie Elliot was a matter of total indifference to her, yet she was remembering with a sudden clarity the look on Max Laidlaw’s face when she had told him that Charlie had seen her in the churchyard.

“That had nothing to do with me.”

“How well do you know Dr. Laidlaw, Miss Raven?”

She feigned anger. “Look,” she said. “You’ve asked me that before. It’s late. I want to go home.”

“Could you answer the questions,” he said. “Humour me.”

“Dr. Laidlaw isn’t my doctor, but I go to his practise and see him sometimes. I know his wife.”

“Has he written any prescriptions for you lately?”

This time the question genuinely surprised her.

“No,” she said. “Can’t you tell? I’m the picture of health.”

“A prescription with your name on it was taken to a pharmacist in the middle of Otterbridge today.”

“It must be a coincidence,” she said. “ Really, I haven’t been to the doctor for years.”

“It was a fictional prescription,” he said. “Made out for someone else entirely. But Dr. Laidlaw chose your name. Why was that, do you think? Why, of all the patients in the practise, was yours the first to come into his mind?”

“I don’t bloody know!” she said, but she was secretly delighted.

“When did you last see Dr. Laidlaw?”

“I can’t remember.”

There was a pause. Mary lit another cigarette. It was very late and she had not slept well on Sophie’s sofa. She yawned.

“We’ve had some difficulty in finding you during the last few days,” Ramsay said. “Can you give me some idea of where you’ve been?”

“Be more specific,” Mary said, playing for time.

“What about Tuesday morning?” Ramsay said. “ That’s when Charlie Elliot was murdered.”

But if he hoped to frighten her he did not succeed. She seemed to take a keen interest in the questions. She was wary. But she did not feel under any personal threat.

“I talked to you,” she said. “You came into the café in town and I saw you there.”

“What about earlier that morning?” he asked. “ Between five and six-thirty. Where were you then?”

“I was at home,” she said. “ I was restless and couldn’t sleep. I started to do some work.”

What’s wrong with all these women? Ramsay thought, remembering that Stella Laidlaw, too, had complained of being restless. Do they all suffer from insomnia?

“Can anyone confirm that you were at home?” he asked.

“I was typing,” she said. “Someone else in the house might have heard it.”

“Why have you spent so little time in the office?” he asked. It was a final question. He expected to get nothing else out of her. He was profoundly disappointed.

So she told Ramsay a little about her story. It was a relief to have something to tell him without pretence, and as she spoke with immense enthusiasm he became more interested.

“If it comes to anything,” he said, “you should let me know. It might be a police matter.”

“Yes,” she said. Perhaps he wasn’t such a bad policeman after all. She was tempted just for a moment to trust him. Then she remembered Max, sobbing and overwrought, and knew that this was just another trick to put her off her guard.

Ramsay told Hunter to take Mary home, and as he had just started eating a bacon sandwich in the canteen, she had a long wait for him. It was half-past one and the town was quite quiet. Hunter said nothing as he drove through the empty streets. Mary Raven wasn’t his type.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” he asked when he parked outside.

“No,” she said. “ I can manage fine.” And he put her independence down to the sort of woman she was. He almost expected a lecture on feminism.

She waited until the car had pulled away before she went into her flat. She moved quietly because she did not want to draw attention to herself and she did not want to disturb Max. She pushed open the door into the bedroom, expecting to hear his drunken heavy breathing. But Max had gone and the only sign that he had been there was the crumpled bed.

Her first impulse was to rush out into the street to look for him, but she realised that he had probably been gone for hours. She climbed into the bed and fell asleep, exhausted.

When she woke, she switched on the radio immediately, half expecting to hear that Max Laidlaw had been arrested for murder. There was nothing. She phoned his home, but Judy answered the phone in a tight and tearful voice, and she replaced the receiver without speaking. It was too early for him to be at the surgery. Again, to escape her growing anxiety, she returned to her story. She looked back in her shorthand notebook for the name and address of the man she had seen in the magistrates court who had been convicted for a second time of drunk driving, then went out intending to find him.

In the street outside her flat she thought at first that the Mini would refuse to start. It spluttered and choked and she explained to it, more loudly and obscenely with every twist of the key in the ignition, that she needed this story, she really needed it. At last the engine turned over. As she looked in the mirror before driving off, she thought she saw the back of someone in the front garden of the house where she had her bedsit. She thought for an instant that it was Max, but when she looked again behind her, the figure had gone. Then she told herself that she was losing her mind. She was tired and she had made the image up. It was the postman or that strange man who lived on the ground floor who always went into the garden to clean his shoes. But all day as she drove around the region following her story, asking her questions, becoming more alarmed and triumphant about the answers she received, she had the sense of a shadow behind her. She never saw anyone. She did not even think that she was being followed. It was that someone knew where she was going and arrived there first, that he was following the workings, the logic of her mind. You’re imagining things, she thought. You’re so desperate to have this story to yourself that you’re imagining the competition.

The drunk driver had his own business in a new glass-and-plastic factory on the industrial estate to the west of Otterbridge. He made valves, he told her. She gathered it was something to do with the oil trade, deep-sea diving. He sat in his cluttered office and explained it all in detail, hoping, she supposed, for a feature that would give him free advertisement, but she did not take it in. He offered to take her round the workshop and she went because she thought it would please him. He had a daughter, he said, not much younger than her, a student. She seemed to remind him of his daughter, and when he offered to take her out for lunch, she accepted, thinking she might get more out of him when he had drunk a couple of pints.

“Only the pub over the road,” he said, grinning. “ I can’t take you into town. Not now. I have to get a taxi home and back.” Then, suddenly and lonely: “My wife’s left me, you know. She said the publicity was the last straw. I hope my daughter will keep in touch all the same.”

And there, in the pub over Scotch and scampi, he told her everything she wanted and more, and she came away with a list of contacts. As she went to the ladies’ halfway through lunch, she looked carefully around the lounge bar, sensing again the shadow behind her, but she saw no-one she recognised. When she drove away from the factory, the Mini starting this time as sweetly as anything, it was probably only coincidence that a large grey saloon parked along the road pulled out, too, and kept far enough away from her that it was impossible for her to see the driver.

She arrived home just as the children were coming out of the school on the corner of her street and the pavement was full of mothers. In her flat the curtains were still drawn from the day before and there was a bottle of sour milk on the table. Mary Raven opened the curtains and opened the window to let out the smell, but the noise of the children distracted her and she shut it again. She tried to phone Colin Henshaw, as she had tried several times over the previous days, but again his wife answered. Mary pretended to be an estate agent phoning on behalf of a client who wanted to buy one of the new houses in Brinkbonnie, but Mrs. Henshaw still said he would be out all day.

“Who are you?” Rosemary Henshaw repeated suspiciously when Mary gave her fictitious name, as if she recognised the voice on the telephone and did not believe the fiction.

“Perhaps you could tell me where I can get hold of him,” Mary persisted.

“No,” Rosemary Henshaw said shortly. “ I’m sorry. I’ve no idea.”

So Mary went back to the list of contacts, and encouraging the Mini with soft words and endearments, she set off round the region again, feeling the shape of the story growing more solid with every interview she did, already seeing her name on the front page of the London dailies.

When she got back to the flat late that night, triumphant, needing coffee, whisky, the biggest Chinese take-away in the world, there was a note from James Laidlaw asking her to make sure she reported to the office the next day.

Sod you, she thought. One more day and I’ll have this cracked. Then I won’t need you anymore. You’ll be finished.

Of Max there was no word.