Ann Cleeves - A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy

‘You have no idea what he was doing here this afternoon?’

‘None,’ Tanner said. ‘If Dorothea had been alive I would have suspected her of sending him. She had some silly idea that we might be friends. But of course that’s impossible.’

‘Yes,’ Ramsay said. ‘ That’s impossible.’ He felt a sudden deep sympathy for this sad little man. The violation of his privacy by the murderer was a crime in itself.

From outside, a long way off and distorted by amplification, came the sound of rock music. The carnival parade was about to start. Ramsay realised it was already evening. On the Ridgeway Estate Hilary Masters was waiting with Theresa Stringer to speak to him. It was too hot, too complicated and he longed for a moment to escape to his cottage in Heppleburn, where there would be a breeze up the valley from the sea, and complete silence. He stood up.

‘Are you going?’ Walter Tanner said in a panic. Perhaps he was afraid that he would be left again to Gordon Hunter.

‘Yes,’ Ramsay said. ‘We’ll both go now and leave you in peace. Someone will be back later to take a statement.’

On the doorstep he paused. Hunter was waiting by the front gate, angry that his opinion had been disregarded, fuming. Ramsay wanted to say something to Tanner to show him that he thought well of him. What right had Dorothea to judge him so harshly? He knew what it was like to be lonely, unpopular, frustrated.

‘Mrs Cassidy must have cared about you,’ he said, ‘to have shown so much interest.’

But the thought seemed to give Tanner no consolation. ‘ She cared too much about everyone,’ he said. ‘ That was the problem.’

He stood in the porch and watched the men walk down the street towards their cars.

Beside the cars the men paused. Ramsay could sense Hunter’s hostility but had neither the patience nor the skill to deal with it. Perhaps the tension, the edge of competition made them more effective, he thought, but life would have been more comfortable if they could have got on.

‘What do you want me to do now?’ Hunter asked.

‘Go back to the station and co-ordinate the team working the fair,’ Ramsay said. ‘We’ll need photos of Dorothea and Imogen. That was the last time Dorothea was seen. You could see if you can get hold of the Buchan girl too. If she was working this morning she should be free now. The hospital will have an address and phone number for her. She might know where Patrick Cassidy is.’

Hunter nodded reluctantly. It made sense.

‘I’m going to the Ridgeway,’ Ramsay said, ‘to talk to the boy’s mother. Miss Masters from the social services is with her.’

He added the last sentence as an afterthought, dropping it in as if it had no significance, but Hunter was not fooled. He smirked, imagining the interest he could stir up in the canteen. Ramsay and the Snow Queen he would say, his voice full of innuendo. They’d make a good team. The thought cheered him up and he drove away.

It took Hunter longer than he had expected to find out where Imogen lived. There was no Buchan in the phone book. Her parents, fearing malicious calls from kids at school, were ex-directory. When he phoned the vicarage, thinking that someone there would surely know where to find her, the vicar was vague and unhelpful. Patrick had still not come home he’d said. He feared another dreadful tragedy. Hunter listened to his ravings for a while then replaced the receiver while he was still in mid-stream. The hospital was suspicious. By now all the administrative staff had gone home and the ward sister was unwilling to take the responsibility of passing on personal information over the phone. He persuaded her in the end by allowing her to call him back, after she had checked his credentials with the station. When at last he had the information he needed he dialled the number but there was no reply.

Almost immediately afterwards he was told that a Mr and Mrs Buchan were at the front desk. They wanted to report their daughter missing. Hunter saw the Buchans into a small interview room. It had no natural light. Hunter had been eating fish and chips and the smell of it clung to his clothes. The Buchans were embarrassed and apologetic. Of course, Imogen was a grown woman, they said. They realised she had her own life to lead. They would be the last people to question her right to independence. It was this business with Dorothea Cassidy that worried them. Dorothea had been so close to them, a great friend. It was only natural, wasn’t it, that they should be worried?

Hunter tried to contain his excitement. There was probably nothing sinister in Imogen’s disappearance. These were middle-class parents whose daughter had fancied a bit of life without telling them.

‘Has she got a boyfriend?’ he asked in his specially perfected bored voice, though he knew the answer already. The last thing he wanted was for them to panic.

‘Of course,’ Mrs Buchan said. ‘ I thought we’d explained. She’s going out with Patrick Cassidy. That’s why we’re so concerned.’

‘And she’s not with him now?’

‘Apparently not. He seems to have disappeared too.’

Surely that was significant, Hunter thought. Patrick Cassidy had lied about meeting his stepmother the afternoon before. Dorothea had rushed to Newcastle to speak to Imogen at work and had probably been seen with her at the fair during the evening. Now the pair of them had vanished. It was all down to him now, he thought. Ramsay had left him in charge while he went off to play social workers with Theresa Stringer on the Ridgeway Estate. He had the opportunity of reaching a conclusion to this case on his own.

Mrs Buchan was still talking. ‘She seems to have been under such a strain lately,’ she said. ‘ It’s not easy, of course, working with the terminally ill and she has such dedication…’

‘When was she last seen?’ Hunter asked.

‘She finished her shift at two o’clock,’ Mrs Buchan said. Her husband seemed lost in thoughts of his own and content to let her do all the talking. ‘She came straight back to Otterbridge and went to the vicarage to see if Patrick was there. He wasn’t. She must have come home then, because her car’s parked outside. I expected her to be there when we came in from work but there was no sign of her. I wasn’t worried at first, of course. I thought she’d gone into town to do some shopping. Otterbridge is such fun during festival time, isn’t it? But now the shops have been closed for hours. She hasn’t many friends, you know, besides Patrick, and I can’t think where she might be.’

‘Perhaps she’s at the fair,’ he said. ‘ Does she enjoy going?’

They were non-committal, as if they had no real idea what she did enjoy.

‘Did she go out yesterday evening?’

She went out with Patrick, they said. She hadn’t told them where they were going.

‘What time did she come back?’

Mrs Buchan shrugged. ‘ I don’t know. We were back rather late ourselves. It was the festival ball.’ She paused and looked at him as if he were one of her remedial fourth formers. ‘She didn’t disappear last night, you know. I saw her at home this morning, before she went to work.’

He was apologetic, understanding. He realised that, he said. It was a question of finding a pattern, of working out where she might be. There was probably nothing to worry about. The carnival seemed to have gone to everyone’s head. She would be out, watching the procession with the rest of the town. He would circulate the photo they had brought, make a few inquiries. They were to leave it all in his hands.

The Buchans left the police station reassured, charmed by him.

It took Ramsay longer than he had expected to get to the Ridgeway. His drive across town coincided with the start of the parade and none of the roads he tried was clear. Front Street was closed to traffic, cordoned off with plastic bunting which reminded him of the tape they had used to mark the area where Dorothea’s body had been found. As he sat in a queue of cars he heard the rhythmic crash of the brass band which always led the procession. It conflicted with the fairground music and the amplified noise from some of the floats. He could see nothing from the car but he could picture the event. As a child he had always been brought to Otterbridge for the carnival and nothing had changed very much. Behind the band would be a group of miners, carrying the banner of a pit which had closed years before but which was still given pride of place. His father had worked down the pits but had refused to take part in the parade.