The Healers

Chapter Eighteen

The anonymous letter arrived the next day. It was sent to the incident room at Mittingford police station and addressed to Ramsay personally. It was typed and literate, though brief.

“Sir, I suggest you find out what happened to Faye Cooper. She was the first.” There was no signature, not even ‘friend’ or ‘well wisher’.

“The first what?” said Hunter, who was reading the letter over Ramsay’s shoulder.

The room was quiet. It had the untidy peace of a classroom when the children have gone out to play. Half Ramsay’s team were trying to trace the people who’d been at Magda Pocock’s Voice Dialogue workshop with Val McDougal. It wasn’t easy. Magda’s records were scanty. She usually made a note of group members’ names but not their addresses. She had said it wasn’t worth it -some only turned up once then decided the group wasn’t for them. The rest of the team were at the college in Otterbridge, talking to Val’s colleagues, trying to find someone who remembered seeing the Abbots during the acupuncture lecture. Sunlight slanted over the desk and made Hunter wish he was outside too.

“Well?” he said. “The first what?”

“The first death,” Ramsay replied quietly. “I

think that’s what it must mean.” He slipped the letter into a clear plastic folder. “Faye Cooper went on one of those weekend courses held by the Abbots for their patients and other like-minded groupies. It took place in a big house just over the border into Cumbria near Hadrian’s Wall. They call it Juniper Hall. For most of the year the place runs adventure courses for stressed executives: mock battles in the woods, how to survive on the hills with a sheet of plastic and a scout knife. You know the sort of thing.”

Hunter nodded. The force ran similar courses. He’d been half tempted to apply for one himself but he knew he’d miss his beer.

“Once a year in early autumn the Abbots hire the place for the weekend and invite visiting lecturers. This is a brochure of the last one, when Faye died.”

“Where did you get this then?”

Ramsay paused for a moment. “A friend of Prue’s was on the course.” He waited for Hunter to make some comment about the arty farty theatre crowd but none came.

“One of the attractions of Juniper Hall is its swimming pool,” the inspector went on. “It’s not used much, except I suppose by macho executives who want to show how tough they are. It’s outside. But the September of the Abbots’ course was unusually warm, an Indian summer and some of the more hardy souls did venture in. It provided a focal point in the evenings, an attractive place to sit. Faye Cooper was drowned in the pool. No one saw the accident happen. She’d been talking, apparently, about how good it would be to swim by moonlight. She must have come down when everyone else was in bed. Her body wasn’t found until the next morning. The local police investigated but were satisfied in the end that it was an accidental death.”

“You seem to know a lot, like.” Hunter was suspicious. He thought Ramsay was following his own line of investigation again. They were supposed to be a team, a partnership. It made him look a fool if Ramsay refused to confide in him.

“No,” Ramsay said, ‘not very much. I only found out about Faye Cooper last night. I got the Cumbria force to fax me the details this morning. It seemed a coincidence another death connected with the Alternative Therapy Centre.” Not, he thought, that I have to justify my actions to you.

“What did you find out then?”

Ramsay sat back in his chair, his eyes squinted shut against the bright sunshine. He did not need to look in his notes.

“Faye Cooper was just eighteen when she died. Left school at sixteen and left home at the same time. Set up in a bed sit in Otterbridge. She was a student at Otterbridge FE college taking a secretarial course.”

Before Hunter could interrupt he added quickly, “I’ve checked if she was ever taught by Val McDougal but apparently not. She was quite a bright girl and never needed a remedial teacher.”

“Why did she leave home?” Hunter asked. “It’s canny young for a lass to be living on her own.”

“I’m not sure,” Ramsay said. “We’ll have to check. I don’t think the investigating officer was too impressed with her parents. He was certainly thorough he talked to her college friends and checked her background besides taking statements from everyone staying at Juniper Hall when she died. Reading between the lines I’d say he suspected suicide, though no evidence of that was brought before the Coroner’s Court. I’d like to talk to him but it seems he’s left the force.”

“Why did he think she killed herself?” Hunter wasn’t prepared to accept the judgement of some rural wooden top without question.

Ramsay shrugged. “He thought she was mixed up, lonely. There’d been a row with her parents. Her mam had remarried and she hadn’t ever got on with her stepfather apparently. The college staff said she was a bit wild, especially when she first started there. She didn’tjoin in the social life of the other students. Most of them said they only saw her in class. I suppose he just thought that suicide wouldn’t have been out of character.”

“Boyfriends?” Hunter asked. “Some teenage romance which went wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Ramsay said. “The report doesn’t mention anything like that.”

“How did she get mixed up with the bunch at the Old Chapel in the first place?” Hunter asked. “If she was living in Otterbridge and had no transport she’d not come across them socially. It’s not the sort of thing that would attract a young girl anyway. And how did she afford the weekend away?” He flipped through the brochure which still lay on Ramsay’s desk and whistled. “Do you see what it costs? You’d need a second mortgage.”

Ramsay did not answer. He was preoccupied. Hunter’s question about boyfriends had triggered a memory. He was looking for the notes he had taken after his interview with James McDougal.

“Here we are!” he said at last, triumphantly. “When I talked to Val McDougal’s son I asked how she’d got into alternative therapies. He said it was through him and he’d first become interested in New Age philosophy after travelling to festivals with his girlfriend. Whose name was Faye. That at least explains how she got to know the Abbots.”

He tipped his chair forward so his eyes were in shadow.

“That must be suspicious,” he said. “Relevant anyway. The Alternative Therapy Centre is supposed to be all about healing, yet three people connected to it have died suddenly. Faye’s death could be a coincidence but it needs investigating. The writer of the anonymous letter certainly thinks so. Of course he might have his own reasons for that. It could be a distraction.”

“Any way of tracing the writer from the letter?”

Ramsay shook his head. “Not unless you want to look at every typewriter in the county.”

“Postmark?”

“Newcastle,” Ramsay said. “The main post office in Eldon Square. Which at least shows a degree of intelligence. If it had been sent from Otterbridge or Mittingford we’d have had somewhere to start’

“Means he must have transport if he lives in Mittingford. It’s a good sixty miles into town.”

“Not necessarily. There’s a bus. One a day each way from here and one every hour from Otterbridge direct to the Haymarket.”

“That’s a lot of bother to go to,” Hunter said. Ramsay always tended to opt for the over-elaborate explanation. “Perhaps Faye Cooper had contacts in Newcastle and someone from there sent the letter. Where do her parents live?”

“Wallsend,” Ramsay said. “Those houses by the river.”

“It’s a hell of a lot easier to get to Newcastle from Wallsend,” Hunter said. “Perhaps the mother thought there was something odd about the lass’s death…”

“And felt she owed it to the daughter to let us know. But didn’t want to contact us directly for some reason. So she sent an anonymous letter. It’s possible that her concern was triggered by the publicity surrounding the recent murders. The press has got hold of the alternative therapy angle.” Ramsay was talking slowly, to himself. Hunter might not have been there.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Hunter demanded. He was already irritated at being ignored.

“Go and talk to the mother. If she admits sending the letter she might have other information. Interview her, without the stepfather if you can. Find out what all the rows were about.”

“Then what?”

“See the boy. James. Treat him gently, though. Don’t forget he’s just lost his mother.”

“What do you take me for? An ignorant slob?”

Ramsay did not answer.

“I had the impression that the relationship between him and Faye was over before she died. Find out what happened. If he finished with her we might be back to a reason for suicide. We need to know how involved she was with the crowd at the Old Chapel…”

“Yeah,” Hunter said. “OK…” No need to spell it out, he thought. I’m not some wet-behind-the-tears DC.

“And it will be useful to know how they met,” Ramsay went on. He paused. “Don’t disturb the lad at school. He’s been through enough without having to explain you to his mates. Wait until four o’clock and see him at home. And if the father’s there, for God’s sake be polite. He’s the type to stand on his dignity.”

“OK,” Hunter said again. Generally it had all turned out much better than he could have hoped. A day away from the Mittingford sheepshaggers, the chance of a good lunch on expenses and the possibility of actually moving the case forward. He could do with the recognition. He felt vaguely that he was always in Ramsay’s shadow. If Ramsay had been a different sort of man, more of a character, more he struggled with the idea heroic, that wouldn’t be so important. But to play second fiddle to such a dull dog did his image no good at all.

He was on his way out of the incident room when Ramsay called him back.

“Take Sally Wedderburn with you,” he said. “She’s on her break but she’ll be back in five minutes. She could do with the experience. And Faye Cooper’s mam might find it easier to talk to a woman.”

And at least Sal has a modicum of tact and discretion, he thought, but did not say.

“Yeah,” Hunter said, trying not to show how pleased he was, trying to sound as if it were a chore he could do without. “Yeah. All right.”

After Hunter had gone Ramsay sat in the incident room and took out the file he was compiling on Faye Cooper. In a corner a DC was stabbing inexpertly at a typewriter. Otherwise the room was empty and still. Ramsay re-read all the information and tried to form a picture of the girl. He wished he had a photograph. Beside the original police report into the accident at Juniper Hall and the coroner’s statement, he had obtained records from her high school. What occurred to him most was that she had been abandoned by all the adults who had been responsible for her. It was clear that there had been no contact with her parents once she left home, and the staff at the college seemed to have been unconcerned about the way she lived. Perhaps they did not know. Or did not care. Val McDougal would have cared, he thought. She would have had the girl back to her home for meals, kept an eye on her. But once the romance between Faye and James was over, what would have happened to her then? He was becoming fascinated by her.

His teenage years had been stifling. Every move had been monitored by an over-protective mother and an extended family of aunts and cousins with nothing better to do than look out for his welfare. He tried to imagine what it must have been like to be left so completely alone. Exhilarating perhaps, but terrifying. He found himself groping towards an explanation for Faye’s attraction to the people at the Old Chapel. She wouldn’t be turned on by traditional religion. That would seem staid and irrelevant. But the philosophy of Daniel and Win with their close family life, Magda’s evangelical zeal, her charisma, would be more exciting. Belonging to that community of believers would give Faye a meaning to her life and the same sense of comfort as belonging to a church.

It occurred to him that Lily Jackman might have had the same sort of rootless past. More affluent, he thought, but similarly insecure, attracted to the group at the Old Chapel for the same reasons. He wondered what else the two girls might have had in common.