Ann Cleeves - A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘The baby was in her cot. She was a difficult child and Theresa didn’t have the patience to cope with her. She put a pillow over her head and smothered her. Then she phoned me. When I got there she was sitting on the stairs, weeping. The baby wouldn’t stop crying, she said. She had to make it stop crying.’

Hilary spoke flatly, with the same detachment as she had in her office.

‘You didn’t tell the police?’

She shook her head. ‘I was young,’ she said. ‘ Not very experienced. I thought I’d get the blame. And I didn’t want Theresa to endure the court case, the publicity. Even if they didn’t send her to prison I didn’t want her to have to go through all that. And it was my fault. I should have seen how desperate she was. She’d asked me to visit the day before and I’d been too busy to go. I felt responsible.’

‘So you covered it up?’

She shrugged. ‘I didn’t mean to cover it up. I didn’t want to be the one to give her away, but I thought there would be a post mortem. I thought they would discover then that it wasn’t a natural death, but apparently it isn’t that easy to detect.’

‘Weren’t you worried that Theresa might turn on Beverley in the same way?’

‘No!’ she said sharply. It was as if he were questioning her professional judgement. ‘ Really I wasn’t. Theresa had matured a lot in that time. Clive was grown up and she could give all her attention to the baby. And I gave the case to Mike Peacock. He’s young but he’s a very competent social worker. Then, as soon as there was a hint that the child was being abused, I took her into care.’

So, Ramsay thought, that explained the speed with which the child was removed from the family. And the haste had made Dorothea suspicious and had led to her death.

‘When did Dorothea find out about Nicola?’ he asked.

‘Yesterday afternoon. You knew she went back to the Stringers’ in the afternoon?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘ I think we have Dorothea’s movements for the afternoon worked out quite precisely now, thank you.’

It was as if she were still a colleague and they were working together to get at the truth.

‘Theresa was upset,’ Hilary said. ‘She’d come to terms with the fact that if she wanted Beverley back she’d have to give up any idea of going away with Joss Corkhill. That made her depressed. And then Dorothea was suspicious. “ I can’t quite understand why Miss Masters is so keen to take Beverley away from you Theresa. I think there must be something you haven’t told me. How can I help you if you won’t tell me the truth?’”

‘So Theresa told her,’ Ramsay said.

‘How could she help it? I’ve explained that she was already depressed, feeling sorry for herself. You don’t know what Dorothea was like.’

I think I do, Ramsay answered silently. I feel as if I’ve spent all day with her.

‘How did you find out that Theresa had confessed to Dorothea?’ he asked.

‘Theresa phoned me from a call box on the Ridgeway. She was hysterical. At first I couldn’t work out what had happened. It was like the time she phoned me after Nicola died.’

‘Did you look for Dorothea?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I waited for her to come to me. I knew she would be in touch.’ She looked at him. ‘ I didn’t have any plan. It wasn’t in any way premeditated.’

‘How did Dorothea get in touch with you?’

‘She turned up at my flat. The waiting was awful. I had expected her earlier. She said there had been something urgent she’d had to attend to. Some family business.’

She had been in the vicarage, Ramsay thought, with Patrick Cassidy, trying to persuade him, perhaps, that he did not love her, trying to fend off his teenage passion.

‘What time did she come to the flat?’

‘I’m not sure. At about seven.’

‘She had an appointment to speak to the Armstrong House Residents’ Association at half past. Didn’t that bother her?’

‘She tried to phone them to cancel it,’ Hilary said, ‘but she couldn’t get through. She thought the phone was out of order.’ She paused. ‘I’d disconnected it. I had no plan to kill her then – it wasn’t that I was covering my tracks – but I was afraid she might phone someone else, tell them about Nicola. I wasn’t thinking very clearly.’

‘What did you do then?’

‘I made her tea,’ she said. ‘ We talked.’

‘About the baby?’

She nodded. ‘She spoke as if we’d meant to kill Nicola. She went all religious on me. She even began to cry.’

‘Did you know,’ he said, ‘that she’d never been able to have children of her own?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t realise. But I’ve never had the chance of children either. It didn’t give her the right to preach.’ She paused. ‘ I had the feeling that she wanted something from me. Some show of remorse. Repentance I suppose she would have called it. I couldn’t give it. I knew that next time, in a similar situation, I would probably do exactly the same again.’

‘What did you do then?’ he asked.

‘She said she was hungry. She would take me out for a meal. Her treat. It seemed bizarre. We’d been arguing for more than an hour and she wanted to share a meal with me. I asked her about the appointment at Armstrong House, but she said it didn’t matter. This was more important. We left her car outside my flat and walked through the fairground to that Italian place in Newgate Street.’

‘You were seen,’ he said, ‘ in the fairground. Joss Corkhill saw you. But when he described you I thought he was talking about someone else. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t recognise you. Then I realised that senior social workers don’t often work directly with clients. That’s how I knew.’

There was a silence. The policewoman moved slightly on her chair in the comer. She gave no indication that she was listening to the conversation and stared out at the shiny cream walls with blank boredom.

Then Hilary continued, although he had not asked a direct question.

‘The restaurant was packed,’ she said, ‘and very noisy. It took us ages to get served. Dorothea ordered spaghetti and ate it very neatly, twisting it between her fork and her spoon. She seemed ravenous. She insisted that I had a meal too, though I wasn’t hungry. I had expected another lecture but still she didn’t mention Nicola once. She talked, I remember, about friendship. When we left the place it was almost ten.’

‘Did you walk back through the fair?’

‘No. We went the long way round, down the end of Newgate Street. When we got to the flat I expected her to get into the car and drive away. It hadn’t even crossed my mind then that I might kill her. She had been a social worker and I didn’t think that she could really let loose all that publicity. She would know what would be likely to happen: the tabloid press, the MPs screaming for my blood, the witch hunt that would affect everyone working for social services. I thought I could make her understand.

‘Then at the car she began to start again. She made me get into the passenger seat. “I can’t let you go,” she said, “until I’ve got some sort of commitment.”’

‘What did she want?’ he asked.

‘My resignation,’ she said. ‘ I think, in the end, that’s what she wanted.’

‘Where did you kill her?’ he asked in the same tone of mild interest.

‘In the car,’ she said. ‘She was going on and on, not shouting you know. She never shouted. But somehow relentless. I wanted to stop her talking. I put my hands around her neck, just to show her how strongly I felt about it. As soon as she went quiet I stopped. But then I realised it was too late. She was dead. Theresa must have felt exactly the same when she killed the baby.’