Murder in My Backyard

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ramsay would have liked to take Mary Raven to his cottage in Heppleburn to talk to her. He would have been more comfortable there, without interruptions and telephone calls. He could have made her coffee and waited until she was ready to talk. But he knew it would not do and the interview would have to take place in the police station in Otterbridge, with its institutional furniture and the knowledge that somewhere in the same building James Laidlaw was being questioned, too.

At first she refused to go with him.

“It’s my story,” she said. “I need a phone and a typewriter. No other bugger’s going to get the glory after all this work.”

“It will be your story,” he said, coaxing her with his attention and his gratitude. “ There’ll be no press release tonight. All the papers will know is that James Laidlaw has been arrested. They’ll be desperate to talk to you tomorrow. And, you know, I might be able to give you some useful information.”

So she allowed herself to be helped into the back of his car, complaining only when he drove past the Castle Hotel without stopping to buy her a drink. At the police station he left her for a while in the company of a policewoman, but she seemed not to mind and from the corridor he saw her scribbling intensely in her notebook. He went to talk to Hunter. Laidlaw, it seemed, had started talking as soon as the car left Brinkbonnie and nothing could stop him.

“He asked to write a statement,” Hunter said. “He’s doing that now. He refused to see a solicitor. We’ll have no problem with a conviction.”

So when Ramsay returned to begin his interview with Mary, he knew most of the details of the case. But he gave nothing away. He was diffident, unsure, so she thought he needed her. He let her believe that it was her story after all.

“How did you find out about James Laidlaw’s racket?” Ramsay asked. They drank tea with a little whisky in it. They were at the top of the building and there were no blinds on the windows. Outside spotlights lit up the old walls that surrounded the town and the ruins of the abbey.

“It was just really a wild guess at first,” she said. She was more herself, excitable, proud. She was showing off. “ His decisions about which stories to run were so arbitrary. The Brinkbonnie development was just an example. When the plans first went before the council, he wrote an editorial about the destruction of rural communities. It didn’t bother him that Alice Parry was his aunt. Then, when the village started its own campaign, he began to talk about objectivity and ordered me off. I thought it was just some weird autocracy-that he wanted to show me who was boss-until I did court duty on the morning after Mrs. Parry died.”

She paused to catch her breath. He waited patiently and smiled to encourage her.

“People who appear in court are often much more worried about being in the paper than they are about the fine they receive from the magistrates,” she said. “ James usually did the monthly magistrates court and that was strange in itself. Most editors think themselves too superior to mix with petty criminals-they’re more likely to be taking the magistrates out to lunch. James said it was his way of keeping his finger on the pulse of the town, but of course it wasn’t that at all.”

Ramsay interrupted gently, reluctantly, showing her that he was entertained by her conversation, but that he needed all the details.

“What did happen when you were in the court that Monday?” he asked.

“There was this drunk driver,” she said, making the most of the drama, playing up to him, watching his reaction. “He’d been in court before and he was disqualified for twelve months. But he had his own business and was much more worried about the bad publicity than about losing his licence. He came up to me in the waiting room and asked if there was any way of keeping his name out of the paper. Of course I said it was impossible. He got quite cross and said he had heard it was possible to come to an arrangement about it. He was a wealthy man, he said. Money was no object. At first I thought he was just an isolated loony who was trying it on, but when I considered it later he seemed indignant, almost self-righteous, as if I was treating him unfairly.”

“So James was taking bribes from people who had appeared in court and wanted the fact kept secret?”

“Yes,” she said, and her eyes sparkled because he was listening to her so carefully and following her line of thought so well. “But that wasn’t all he was doing.”

She paused dramatically while he poured her more whisky, then, although he already knew what was coming, he waited, attentive for her next revelation.

“The odd twenty quid to keep a bank manager’s name out of the paper was only chicken feed,” she said. “That wouldn’t keep our Stella in designer frocks and fancy kitchens. So James got more ambitious and the racket with local businesses started.”

“When was that, Mary?” Ramsay asked, quiet and apologetic. “When did the local business racket first start?”

“Years ago,” she said. “Perhaps even before I started on the paper.”

“Tell me,” he said. “ How did it work?”

“Well,” she said, tantalising him, the perfect performer. “Of course I don’t know all the details…”

“But it’s your story, Mary. You know how it worked.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “ I know how it worked. James Laidlaw, the great investigative journalist, threatened to put people out of business if they didn’t pay him lots of money. That’s how it worked.”

“How could he do that, Mary? I need to know.”

“He snooped,” she said. “He was a bloody good reporter. He followed leads, listened to rumours. He found out all the things that people wanted to hide. And if they were clean as the driven snow, he started the rumours himself.”

“What about evidence?” Ramsay asked. “ You’ll need evidence for your story.”

“There are some people willing to talk,” Mary said. “ There’s May Smith in the cottage hospital. She’ll talk to you.”

“May Smith?” Ramsay said, although Hunter had been visiting her only hours before. “Who’s she, Mary?”

“She’s an old lady. She was a resident in the White Gates old people’s home. She liked it there. She was happy. But the place had to close because James ran a campaign about it in the Express. Relatives of the old folks who lived there took them away because they thought everything you read in the papers is true.”

“Why did he run the campaign, Mary?”

“Because the matron refused to pay him protection money.”

“Why didn’t she go to the police?”

“Would you have believed her?” Mary demanded. “After all the publicity there’s been about the ill treatment of old people in nursing homes? Or would you have thought she was making the whole thing up to protect her business?”

“Perhaps,” Ramsay said. “But we would have looked into the complaint.”

“And you would have found nothing!” she said. “ No witnesses, nothing. None of the other old people’s homes in the area would admit to paying up in case the same thing happened to them. James Laidlaw was a powerful man, and married to a Rutherford. They were frightened of him. They thought he was worth a fortune.”

She paused again, went to the window, and looked down on the street.

“Someone did tell the police what James was doing,” she said. “Joe West, the county councillor. Do you remember him? But you were too busy investigating the allegations of fraud James was making in the Express to take any notice.”

Ramsay thought. He remembered Joe West, though he had not dealt with the investigation personally, and he could recall no connection in the case with the Express. It was something about fraudulent expense claims for his council work. And he had had his house painted, Ramsay remembered, by council workmen using materials paid for by Northumberland County. In the end they had decided not to prosecute. How many other councillors, after all, could claim total honesty if there was a major investigation? Joe West had resigned and they had considered the matter at an end.

“What happened to him?” Ramsay asked.

“He’s great,” she said. “Really amazing. It’s the best thing that ever happened to him. He’s running a project for the homeless in Newcastle down by the river. But he hates James Laidlaw. He’ll talk to you and you should go to see the centre.”

It wasn’t only the wealthy businessmen and powerful councillors in the area who had been blackmailed by Laidlaw, Ramsay thought. It must have become almost a habit. He had made the same threat to Tom Kerr about his brawl in the street with Charlie Elliot. Ramsay remembered his conversation with the choirmaster in the dimly lit room earlier that evening.

“I could never have gone into the church again,” Tom Kerr had cried. “Not with a story like that splashed all over the paper. How could people have any respect for me?”

“So what did you do?” Ramsay had asked.

“What do you think I did? I paid him and I’ve been paying him ever since.”

Ramsay drew his thoughts back to the office and to the woman who sat with him.

“Now, Mary,” he said. “What has all this to do with Alice Parry?”

“Don’t you know?” she cried, immensely pleased because she thought she still had the power to surprise him.

“Do you mean you really haven’t guessed?”

He did not answer directly. He had never enjoyed lying.

“It’s your story,” he said again. I want you to tell it, I want to know what Alice Parry said to you on the afternoon of her death.”

“Oh, that,” she said. “That’s almost irrelevant.”

“All the same,” he said. “ For completeness. Out of interest. I want to know.”

“We talked about Max,” she said. “We were having an affair.”

“Yes,” he said gently. He did not want to hurt her. He paused. “Did you realise Stella Laidlaw was blackmailing him about it?”

She looked up sharply. “ No,” she said. “I hadn’t realised even that she knew about us. She must have guessed. Blackmail must run in the family.”

“Do you know where Max is?” he asked. “We need to find him to tell him what’s happened. Besides, his wife is very worried about him.”

“No,” she said. “ I haven’t seen him since the night you took me in for questioning.” She grinned briefly. “He was there in the flat when the policeman came to fetch me.”

She paused. “He’ll be hiding,” she said. “Poor Max.”

“You must have thought the note arranging to meet you at Brinkbonnie was from Max,” he said. “And you went to meet him.”

“Yes,” she said. “It looked like Max’s writing. James must be an expert in forgery, too.”

She looked up at him. “ How could James know about Max and me. I suppose he guessed.”

“Apparently,” Ramsay said, “ when he realised you suspected him of blackmail, he searched your desk at work. There was an old letter from Max. It was rather explicit. It even mentioned where you met.”

She sat, deflated and very sad, so he felt sorry for her. To cheer her up, he said, pleading: “Tell me the rest of it then. Tell my why James Laidlaw murdered Alice Parry.”

She brightened immediately. “Henshaw had bought James off,” she said. “You must have worked that out.”

Ramsay remained impassive. He did not want to disappoint her and spoil her story. But he had worked it out. After the discussion with Tom Kerr, the explanation was inevitable. Henshaw hadn’t bribed community activists as Jack Robson had thought, he hadn’t needed to. Any village event is considered entirely unimportant until it is reported in the local newspaper. The story gives it credibility. With James Laidlaw in his pocket Henshaw could dictate the image the public received of his development. And of the developer, Ramsay thought, remembering the picture in the Express of Henshaw surrounded by adoring toddlers. Then he remembered the evening he had gone to the Laidlaws’ house and the interview being interrupted by an angry visitor. He realised now that the visitor was Colin Henshaw, furious because he thought James Laidlaw would break their deal.

Mary seemed encouraged by Ramsay’s silence and continued: “Henshaw wouldn’t talk to me, but I think he started paying James after the first editorial about the Brinkbonnie development. He had lots of other plans waiting to be approved by the planning department and he wouldn’t want bad publicity at that stage.”

“Tell me Mary,” he said, “ exactly what you think happened.” He said it to humour her because she needed to feel clever and in control after the assault on the sand dunes. James Laidlaw had already admitted the whole thing to Hunter. But he said it, too, because she was lively and funny and he did not want the conversation to end.

“Mrs. Parry felt guilty about selling her land to Henshaw,” Mary said, “and after I’d spoken to her that afternoon she decided to try to buy the field back. Of course Henshaw refused to sell. There must have been an argument and Henshaw told Mrs. Parry about James. You can imagine him, can’t you, blurting it out in the middle of the row: “You won’t get any support, you know, from that nephew of yours. I’m paying him off. You’ve no chance without the publicity of getting the support for your campaign.” Then Mrs. Parry not wanting to believe it but seeing in the end that it was probably true. Poor Mrs. Parry. How upset she must have been.”

“James Laidlaw was waiting for her in the garden when she got back from the pub,” Ramsay said, taking the initiative for the first time. The pretence that he was the passive recipient of her knowledge was over. After all, he had promised Mary some useful information. “Stella had taken a sleeping pill and it was easy enough for him to leave the room without anyone noticing. He went out through the kitchen door. Max was watching television and didn’t hear anything.”

He pictured James in the windy garden with its smell of ivy and salt in the black shadow of the Tower, waiting for Alice, wondering what Henshaw had told her. Then she had come back, angry and disappointed, threatening to expose him. He had killed her, stabbing her from behind with a knife he had taken from the kitchen as he had followed her into the house.

“I didn’t see James,” Mary said, breaking into his thoughts. She was embarrassed. It was a sort of confession. “ I was in the churchyard waiting for Max. He didn’t turn up. I supposed, of course, that it meant that he’d decided to stay with Judy. I was upset. I thought he didn’t care about me. I left soon after eleven and I saw no one in the Tower garden then. But perhaps James was hiding.”

“No,” Ramsay said. “He couldn’t have been hiding. He was seen by someone in the village.”

“Who?” she demanded. “Who saw him?”

It was his turn to tease her. “Can’t you guess?” he asked.

“Charlie Elliot!” she said, delighted because she had worked it out after all. “ It must have been Charlie Elliot, but you said he was home before Mrs. Parry died.”

“He was,” Ramsay said. “ But he came out again. He was drunk, a little amorous. He’d always been obsessed with Maggie Kerr and he stood in the street and stared up at her window. On his way home he must have seen James Laidlaw standing in the moonlight in the middle of the Tower lawn waiting for Mrs. Parry. It wouldn’t have meant anything to him until the next day when he heard about Mrs. Parry’s death.”

“But why didn’t Charlie tell you about James?” She had taken a notebook from her pocket and was scribbling details in shorthand. The door opened and Hunter slipped quietly into the room, but she took no notice of him.

“Because it would have meant admitting that he was out of the house at about the time Mrs. Parry died,” Ramsay said. “ Besides, he hoped to use the information against Laidlaw.”

“And that’s why he died,” she said.

He nodded.

“Charlie phoned Laidlaw the day he disappeared,” Hunter said. “Laidlaw promised to come to his hideout the next day with enough money for Charlie to go abroad, start again. Instead he came up early in the morning and killed him.”

He spoke with great satisfaction and she looked at him with distaste. She seemed small and very tired. The euphoria of her story and the pleasure in the completeness of all the details had gone. She was realising, Ramsay thought, how close she had been to becoming the third victim.

“I didn’t realise about Charlie Elliot,” she said. “I thought he was the murderer. It never occurred to me that James might have killed his aunt. I thought it was just about money.” She paused. “Why did he do it?” she asked. “Why was he so desperate for money? The paper can’t have been doing badly.”

Ramsay looked at Hunter to check his facts. “It was Stella,” he said. “As you said, she has expensive tastes. Everyone thought her father paid for that big house by the river, but he’d had nothing to do with her since she went into hospital. James was afraid of losing her. He thought if he gave her everything she wanted he might keep her happy.”

“What will she do now?” Mary asked.

Ramsay shook his head. “I don’t know.” But it wasn’t Stella who concerned him. It was the child with the white hair and the transparent skin who had lost the only adults she could trust. He never knew that Carolyn had realised almost from the beginning that her father had killed Alice Parry. Peter, sleepless with excitement, had seen his uncle on the lawn, waiting. He had told Carolyn because he told her everything and he had kept the secret because she had wanted him to. Yet though Ramsay never knew of that terrible responsibility, he considered her the real victim of the case.

Ramsay heard from Mary again two months later. She phoned him at Otterbridge and offered to buy him lunch.

“To celebrate,” she said. “I’ve just got a job on the Journal.”

“I’m not surprised,” he said. It had been impossible in the weeks after the Brinkbonnie murders to escape Mary’s picture in the press and the articles of the “local intrepid reporter who finds solution to murder mystery.” She had even been on national television. “They’re lucky to have you.”

“Let’s go to the Castle in Brinkbonnie,” she said. “You can pick me up at the flat, then I can get drunk.”

So he gave her a lift to Brinkbonnie. The sun was shining and there was a mild westerly wind. In the street where she lived the blossoms dropped from the trees like snow. In Brinkbonnie everything seemed much the same. As they drove down the Otterbridge Road he looked into the Greys’ farmyard, but there was no blue Rover in view. Perhaps it was discreetly parked in the tractor shed. The post office was still shut for lunch and the same cars were for sale outside Kerr’s garage. They stopped, for a moment, outside the field where the houses were planned, but there were no bulldozers. The council had decided to appeal against the inspector’s decision to the high court, so building was delayed.

In the Castle they sat on the stage in the lounge bar and ordered steak. She drank beer and most of a bottle of overpriced red wine. She wore wide red dungarees and enormous earrings shaped like frogs.

Halfway through the meal when she was already loud and flushed she put down her knife and fork.

“Did you know that Max and Judy are moving into the Tower?” she asked. And he realised that he was only there because there was no-one else she could talk to about her secret lover.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

“He resigned from the Health Centre after the business with Stella and the prescription,” she said. “ They’re planning to open the Tower to the public, run courses in local crafts, folk music. You know the sort of thing.”

He nodded.

“Have you seen Max?” he asked gently.

“No,” she said. “I thought he might have been in touch, but it’s probably just as well this way.”

“Yes,” he said. He could think of nothing more to say.

“I’m moving to Newcastle at the weekend,” she said. “I’m not really a small-town girl.”

He would have liked to ask her what had happened to Stella and the little girl, but decided in the end that he preferred not to know.

When he dropped her outside her flat, he thought she might ask him to come in for a drink, but she only waved like a child and beamed when he wished her good luck. He went home to the cottage in Heppleburn. In the woods in the dene there were bluebells and wood anemones and the trees were green with new leaves. He made a pot of coffee, so the smell of it filled the house, sat on the windowsill, and thought that he should appreciate the view while it was still there. Then the telephone rang and Hunter, at the other end, told him he was needed at work.