Ann Cleeves - A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy

Hunter nodded. He pressed the bread of his sandwich together so the grease dripped through and bit into it hungrily. Ramsay chose black coffee and a cheese roll then disappeared. Hunter finished the sandwich, wiped his hands on a paper napkin and followed him.

‘Well?’ Hunter said, leaning against the doorframe of the inspector’s office. ‘How did you get on with your social worker?’ He spoke as if social workers, like mothers-in-law, were inevitably a source of humour.

I don’t know how I get on with her, Ramsay thought. How can you tell what a woman like that is thinking about?

He drank coffee and kept his voice cool. ‘I think we have a possible suspect,’ he said. ‘His name’s Corkhill, Joss Corkhill. Does the name mean anything to you?’

Hunter shook his head. Ramsay pushed a computer printout of the man’s record across the table towards him.

‘Dorothea Cassidy was at a social services case conference yesterday morning. It was to decide whether or not a child should be taken into care. Dorothea had discovered that the girl was probably being battered by the mother’s boyfriend – that’s Corkhill. He’s working on the fair at the Meadow and wants to move on when it packs up – with the mother. Dorothea tried to persuade her to stay here with her kids. Corkhill’s a boozer with a pretty violent temper. He was expected back at the house this lunchtime, but he didn’t turn up.’

Hunter nodded, impressed but unwilling to give Ramsay any credit for the discovery.

‘Where’s Corkhill now?’

Ramsay shrugged. ‘ He was at the fair this morning. I’ve put out a general alert. He’ll not have got far.’

‘So it’s all over,’ Hunter said. It was the sort of case he could understand after all. A man with too many beers inside him losing his temper with an interfering busybody of a woman.

‘I don’t know…’ Ramsay said. ‘There’s a coincidence. The family is called Stringer and there’s a boy, a half-brother of the child who’s been taken into care, who works at Armstrong House.’

‘Is that important?’

Ramsay shrugged again. ‘Dorothea was there visiting yesterday and she was supposed to be giving a talk to the old people in the evening. It might be relevant.’

‘Have we got a time of death yet?’ In the past Hunter had dismissed Ramsay’s doubts as a form of cowardice, but Ramsay had been right too often for an ambitious man like the Sergeant to ignore him.

‘Provisional,’ Ramsay said. ‘ Between ten and midnight.’

‘But I thought she was reported missing early in the evening.’

‘She was,’ Ramsay said. It was the thing that was troubling him most. ‘ I wish I knew what happened to her after she left the Stringers’s at quarter past five.’

‘Perhaps she was abducted,’ Hunter said. ‘Kept against her will. Was there any sexual assault?’

Ramsay shook his head.

‘What’s the theory then? Was Corkhill waiting for her when she came out of Theresa’s house?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Ramsay said. ‘She had a car. He didn’t. If he’d approached her between the house and the car someone would have noticed. Perhaps he was waiting for her at Armstrong House. He had an excuse for being there through Clive.’

‘I think I saw the boy hanging round there this morning,’ Hunter said. ‘A vacant-looking lad…’

Ramsay nodded. ‘Clive Stringer can drive. He’s no licence but he’s been done for taking and driving away several times. Perhaps Corkhill used him to get rid of the car. He was out last night. He claims to have been at the fair but that’s no sort of alibi. He’s simple and might have chosen to leave it close to where he works, just because it was familiar.’

‘It would tie in with the evidence of the only witness I could find in Tanner’s street,’ Hunter said. ‘He claims to have seen the car being badly driven all over the road. That might mean an inexperienced driver.’

‘The lad won’t be easy to interview,’ Ramsay said. ‘I’ve had one go at him. He’s frightened of something. Perhaps I’ll ask the social worker to talk to him. She might get more out of him than me.’

Was that an excuse, he wondered suddenly, a means of seeing Hilary Masters again?

‘At least we can work out a timetable of Mrs Cassidy’s movements well into the afternoon,’ he said briskly, putting all thoughts of the immaculate Miss Masters firmly from his mind. ‘What time did she leave Emily Bowman?’

‘At about half past three,’ Hunter said, ‘after she’d taken Mrs Bowman to Newcastle General Hospital for her x-ray treatment.’ He explained that there was someone in the hospital Dorothea wanted to see.

‘I’ve arranged for some publicity on the wards and the out-patient department,’ he said, ‘but there’s been no response yet. I spoke to a staff nurse – Imogen Buchan. She was there all yesterday afternoon but she didn’t see Mrs Cassidy.’

Ramsay looked up from the notes he was taking. The name was unusual but strangely familiar. He thought he had heard it recently, but could not place it. He worried about it for a moment then gave up.

‘Was Mrs Bowman definite about the time?’ he asked. ‘ Clive Stringer claims that Dorothea went into Mrs Bowman’s room and was still there at four o’clock.’

‘He must have made a mistake,’ Hunter said. ‘Or he’s lying. She didn’t go into Mrs Bowman’s flat when they got back from the hospital. According to the old lady, Mrs Cassidy helped her into the lift then left. She was in a hurry, Mrs Bowman said, and only took her to the lift because everyone else was playing bingo and there was no one to help.’

It seemed impossible to Ramsay that Clive should have made a mistake. He had been so insistent about the time. Why, then, would he want to lie?

‘What now?’ Hunter asked. He was like a small boy whose attention wanders easily. All the talk made him restless.

Ramsay stood up and walked to the window. He could see the old town walls which had been built to keep out the marauding Scots and the crowds already starting to gather for the evening’s parade. He opened the window and there was the faint sound of fairground music. Some of the smaller rides must have already started.

‘We have to know where Dorothea Cassidy was yesterday evening,’ he said. ‘She can’t have vanished without trace.’

Yet, he thought, looking down at the crowd, there were so many people in Otterbridge during festival week, that it might be possible to disappear into them.

He was going to give Hunter more detailed instructions when the phone on his desk began to ring, and then immediately afterwards the phone on Hunter’s desk in the adjoining room. The two calls must have come through to the switchboard within seconds of each other. Later Ramsay checked and found that they were both logged for four o’clock.

Hunter took the call that came into his room. It was from a policeman who had picked up Joss Corkhill.

‘Tell your boss I want a medal for this,’ the man said breathlessly. ‘His bloody dog bit my leg.’

‘Where are you?’ Hunter asked.

‘On the by-pass close to the Ridgeway Estate.’

Then Ramsay received his news: Clive Stringer was dead.

His first reaction was numbness, a sense of failure. He had botched the Corkhill arrest and should have realised that the boy was vulnerable. He had decided, after all, that Clive was probably Corkhill’s accomplice. He was quite certain now that the boy’s death confirmed Corkhill’s guilt. And when Hunter came bounding back into the office with the news that Corkhill had been picked up he thought the case was all over.

But as more details came in Ramsay’s certainty turned to confused panic. He learned with horror that Walter Tanner’s house had been used for the second murder. There was no suggestion that Corkhill had ever met Tanner, let alone that he had a reason for wanting to implicate the church warden in Clive’s death. Tanner had become an obvious suspect.