Ramsay 04 - Killjoy (5 page)

He looked at a thin, pale teenager with unusually straight dark hair. He saw a shadow of Prue as a girl in the features, but there was none of Prue’s confidence and the shadow disappeared. Anna had been crying and clutched a wet handkerchief in long white fingers. She looked up at him and nodded, then returned to her grief.

‘This is Ellen Paston,’ Prue said then. ‘ Gabby was her niece.’ Ramsay saw a large middle-aged woman with a permanently curved back, she shape of a turtle’s shell, and huge red hands. She stared back at him, blankly, without distress or anger.

‘I work here,’ she said. ‘In the cafeteria.’ Then, grudgingly: ‘I suppose you’ll want some tea.’

He shook his head. He was unsure how he should handle the situation. He should see them all separately of course, take statements, check discrepancies, the small lies and mistakes which would lead to a conviction. But was there any need for all that tonight? Surely it could wait until the morning. Tonight an informal discussion, when shock would make them talk more freely, would be more fruitful. Hunter would disapprove of course. He had the technique of the macho hectoring interview down to a fine art. But Ramsay was used to Hunter’s disapproval. He pulled a chair between Anna and Ellen Paston. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said, gently.

‘We found her body,’ Prue said. ‘You know that.’

‘It was dreadful!’ Anna cried. Prue seemed surprised by the interruption and Ramsay thought it was hysteria which had given the girl the courage to speak. ‘I was so cross when she didn’t turn up tonight, you know. She messed us around and put Gus in a bad mood. I even thought she’d done it on purpose to make us realize how indispensable she was. And then there she was. In the back of Gus’s car. Her face all swollen and distorted.’

‘You were expecting Gabby at the rehearsal tonight?’

The girl nodded.

‘When did you last see her?’

‘This morning at breakfast.’

Ramsay looked at Prue for explanation.

‘Gabby lived with us,’ Prue said. ‘ She was a sort of lodger, I suppose.’ She looked warily at Ellen.

‘We weren’t good enough for her,’ Ellen said sharply. ‘We brought her up and when she was sixteen she decided Starling Farm wasn’t good enough and she left.’

‘We?’ Ramsay asked.

‘Me and her gran. Her mam and dad were killed in a car crash when she was a bairn.’

‘When did she leave home?’ Ramsay asked.

Ellen shrugged, not sufficiently interested apparently to work it out.

‘About eighteen months ago,’ Prue said.

‘And she’s lived with you since then?’

Prue nodded. Ramsay turned again to Anna.

‘You didn’t see Gabby at school?’ he asked.

‘No,’ the girl said. ‘She still went to school in Hallowgate. To the sixth-form college. I’m at Otterbridge High.’

‘How did she get to school from Otterbridge every morning?’

‘I gave her a lift,’ Prue said. ‘Unless I had a meeting in another part of the region. Then she got the bus.’

‘But this morning?’

‘I gave her a lift.’

‘All the way to school?’

‘No. We were late. I dropped her here and she said she would walk.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘I left her here in the car park. We made plans for this evening. She said she had been invited to a friend’s house after school and she would come straight here afterwards. I never saw her again.’

‘Was that sort of arrangement usual?’

Prue shrugged. ‘She was eighteen, as streetwise as any kid I’ve ever met. I didn’t feel any need to check up on her.’

‘She didn’t seem unusually worried? Or excited?’

‘She was always pretty high,’ Prue said. ‘ But perhaps she was even more excitable than usual. I didn’t think anything about it.’

There was a pause.

‘Did you notice any change in her clothes when you found her body?’ Ramsay asked cautiously. The last thing he wanted was a distressing scene with Anna in floods of tears. ‘Or was she wearing the same things as when you left her this morning?’

‘The same,’ Prue said. ‘Definitely the same. Black leggings, a long navy sweater, a black leather jacket, and DMs.’

‘DMs?’ Ramsay asked.

For the first time Hunter interrupted, pleased to emphasize Ramsay’s age, to show how out of touch he was.

‘Dr Marten’s,’ he said, with a sneer. ‘They’re boots.’

‘Oh yes!’ Ramsay said confused. Weren’t Dr Marten’s worn by the thugs who kicked policemen at football matches and marched on National Front demonstrations? What was a pretty young girl like Gabriella Paston doing wearing boots that his dad would have worn down the pit?

‘They’re quite common,’ Prue said. ‘All the kids have them.’

He said nothing. How could he know what all the kids were wearing?

‘We’ll check with the school,’ Ramsay said at last. ‘See if she was there all day. We haven’t got a time of death yet…’

He paused unhappily, aware that he was passing on ideas and information to which the witnesses had no right. He was treating Prue Bennett as a friend not as a possible suspect in a murder investigation. He should know by now the danger of becoming involved…

‘Gabby weren’t at school,’ Ellen Paston said suddenly. ‘At least she weren’t there late this morning. I saw her.’

‘Where did you see her?’

‘Hallowgate Market,’ she said flatly. ‘I don’t start here until six on a Monday. I went out and did my bits of shopping before I came.’

‘What time did you see Gabriella?’

She shook her head. ‘Twelve o’clock,’ she said. ‘Half past.’

‘Did you speak to her?’

‘Na!’ she said. ‘I didn’t get a chance. I was queuing by that stall that always has the cheap veg.’ She turned to Prue. ‘ You know the one. I said to the lass behind me: “It’s like bloody Moscow waiting to be served here.” But it’s worth it in the end. You can get a canny bargain…I was just about to be served when our Gabby came past, walking very fast, almost running. I shouted out to her but she didn’t take no notice. Perhaps she didn’t hear me but I think she heard well enough. I wasn’t going to lose my place in the queue to go chasing after her.’

‘Were you surprised,’ Ramsay asked, ‘to see her out in Hallowgate when she was supposed to be at school?’

‘Na!’ Ellen Paston said. ‘It’s not like a
real
school is it, the sixth-form college. They’re in and out of it all the time.’

‘Did you see if she met anyone?’

She shook her head. ‘I was too busy keeping my eye on the lad who was serving me. They give you all the shite from behind the counter if you don’t watch them.’

She sat back in her chair, her feet planted firmly on the floor, her legs slightly apart remembering her weekly triumph in the battle with the market salesman. Perhaps the thought of the victory gave her courage because she went on: ‘ Well, if that’s all I’ll be off. I’ve been here two hours longer than I’m being paid for and I doubt if Mr Lynch will want to cough up the overtime.’

Ramsay was surprised by the woman. He would have expected more reaction. Even if she and Gabby had lost touch shouldn’t there have been some grief, the pretence at least of sadness? She seemed not to care what impression she was making. He decided that her lack of response was caused by shock, and her gracelessness touched him and made him sympathetic. He would have taken her address and arranged to speak to her in the morning then let her go. But Hunter wanted to stamp his authority on the interview. He thought she should have more respect and thought he would show her who was in charge.

‘This is a murder enquiry,’ he said sharply. ‘A serious matter.’

‘Go on then,’ she said, not intimidated in the least. ‘Get on with it. I live with my mam. She’s an old lady. She’ll be wondering what’s happened to me.’

Hunter paused. Having made his point he was having difficulty coming up with a relevant question.

‘There is something,’ he said. ‘Probably not important but I’m interested all the same. Why Gabriella? Why choose a name like that? Not a common name for a Hallowgate lass.’

‘Her mother was Spanish,’ Ellen Paston said, as if the word was an insult. ‘Our Robbie met her when he was working the fishing boats. He had a season down in Spanish waters and brought her back with him. She never settled. I don’t know why. Our Robbie spoilt her rotten. I doubt if it would ever have lasted. Mam and I could never take to her. All show.’

She was jealous, Ramsay thought, of her brother’s wife. Is that why she expressed so little grief at Gabriella’s death? Had her ugliness made her resent the beautiful young girl?

‘And they were both killed in a car crash?’ Hunter said.

‘Aye.’ Ellen paused, leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. For the first time Ramsay sensed real pain. She had loved her brother. She seemed lost in thought, then stared up at Hunter defiantly. ‘ Look,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you because you’ll find out anyway. Or perhaps you already know. They were in a stolen car. Robbie was a bit wild when he was a lad and that wife of his only egged him on. They were coming out of town down the Coast Road when the police saw them and started chasing them. They drove into the back of a lorry. They didn’t have a chance.’ She snapped her mouth shut as if she had already given away more than she had intended.

‘Did Gabby know how her parents died?’ Hunter asked.

‘Not the details,’ Ellen said flatly. ‘Not from us.’

So, Ramsay thought, despite what the politicians and the media said, joy-riding wasn’t an invention of the nineties. Since the invention of the motor car there had always been foolish young men who drove too fast.

‘We won’t keep you,’ he said to Ellen. ‘If you wait in the lobby I’ll arrange for someone to give you a lift home. My sergeant will come with you and make sure we have your details.’

He was left alone then, in the cold impersonal room, with Prue Bennett and her daughter. He wanted to say something which would establish some real contact between them, to ask about Prue’s parents, to tell her about Diana and the divorce. But Prue had taken his last words as a general dismissal. She helped Anna to her feet and left the room without a word.

When John Powell arrived home the house was empty. It occurred to him briefly that his mother was out a lot lately, but with the self-absorption of youth he only considered her absence as an effect on his own convenience. He had not eaten since lunch time and he was hungry. He was worried that the house might be cold.

The house was modern, detached, built at the end of a light-bulb-shaped close on a new housing estate. John hated it. His friends at the sixth-form college mocked him for living on the smart new estate. Most of them lived on the Starling Farm or in the terraced houses which spread from Hallowgate Front Street to the river. Some allotments and an adventure playground had been flattened to allow the new houses to be built—the council, poll-tax capped and almost insolvent, had reluctantly sold the land for private development—and feelings in the area had been high. There had been demonstrations and petitions.

Evan Powell had insisted on the move from the three-storeyed terrace house where John had spent his childhood. That part of Hallowgate wasn’t a good area to bring up a teenager, he said. There were too many distractions, too many temptations, the wrong sort of influence altogether. The new estate, called by the developers Barton Hill, would attract a different class of family. John would meet new friends, find new interests. And the move would be good for Jackie too. It would give her something to do, planning the decoration and the furniture. They could afford it after all since he had got his promotion.

As John approached the mock-Georgian front door the security light was switched on automatically. The white light threw a shadow behind him and made him blink. Its brightness still surprised him. He unlocked the door and went immediately to the downstairs cloakroom to switch off the burglar alarm. Bloody security, he thought. His father was obsessed with it. What have we got that’s worth stealing anyway? It’ll all be insured.

He threw his coat and bag on to the floor at the bottom of the stairs and prowled through to the kitchen looking for food. The house was, as always, immaculately tidy. The thick-pile carpet in the living room still lay in strips where it had been hoovered, like a closely mown cricket field, the glass-topped coffee-tables gleamed, the Dralon-covered sofa stood square to the wall. He thought again about his mother and wondered how she stood it on Barton Hill. At least in the old street there had been a bit of life and bustle. This was like a grave. And she wasn’t dumb. She had been training to be a teacher when Evan Powell, fresh from the valleys, had exerted his Celtic charm and swept her off her feet. So how did she put up with the tedium of housework? Her only social life seemed to consist of charity coffee mornings and parties organised in neighbours’ houses to sell imitation perfume. Soon he would be going away to college and then there would not even be his mess to clear away.

In the kitchen there was a note on the table and a meal for him to microwave. He studied the note with more interest than usual, hoping that his mother had found something more challenging to do with her time. But it said only:
Babysitting at Joan’s.

Joan was his mother’s younger sister. She had two primary-aged children and it seemed to John that the cycle of domestic drudgery was simply continuing in a different place.

He had just put the meal into the microwave when the telephone rang. John felt a rush of adrenalin. He was expecting Connor to call. When he picked up the receiver his hand was shaking.

‘Can I speak to Evan, please?’ John recognized it as a colleague of his father’s and relaxed.

‘No,’ he said. ‘He’s not in yet. He’ll be back any time. He should be here by now.’

‘Ask him to phone work as soon as he gets in. It’s urgent.’

John replaced the receiver and heard the sound of his father’s car pulling into the drive.

He could tell as soon as his father came in to the room that he was irritable and he moved immediately to the offensive.

‘Where have you been then?’ he demanded. ‘I didn’t see your car at the Centre. I had to walk home.’

‘I was there!’ Evan Powell said, but he was relieved that his son had an adequate excuse for not meeting him. He always wanted to believe the best of him. ‘I had to park round the corner. I was in your mother’s car. You know that. I waited for you in the cafeteria. I thought you usually went for a drink after rehearsal.’