Ann Cleeves - Murder in My Backyard

Ramsay nodded and walked on alone to his car. Hunter might be good at communicating with local teenagers, but he had other skills. He had been married to Diana. He knew how to talk to the civilised middle classes.

Max Laidlaw was on call that Monday morning but paid the deputising service to take the duty for him. Judy wanted him to take Peter to school, then spend some time with her and the twins. In the afternoon he had a surgery and by then he would be pleased to leave the house. He told himself he needed time to think. In a sense Alice Parry’s death had changed nothing and there were still decisions to be made. In the chaotic house in Otterbridge he found decisions impossible.

Judy made things worse. All morning she seemed unable to leave the subject of his aunt’s death alone. She followed him around the house demanding his attention, desperate, it seemed, for his opinion. Even while he was shaving she was shouting at him through the closed bathroom door.

“What did you think of Ramsay, the detective?” she asked. “I didn’t know what to make of him. He seemed rather hostile, I thought.” Then: “How did Alice seem to you that night? Was she even more upset than she said?”

“I don’t know,” he shouted, slamming out of the room, almost tripping over her on the landing. “And I don’t bloody care.”

“But you talked to her,” Judy said, catching him up as he ran down the stairs to the kitchen. “You helped her clear up the dishes after supper and she wouldn’t let anyone else into the kitchen. ‘I want a private word with Max,’ she said, and she sent us all away. So what was the great secret?”

“There wasn’t any secret,” he said. “ You know what she was like.”

“At one time you would have trusted me. Now you don’t share anything.” She gave him one of her hurt and vulnerable looks.

“There was no secret,” he said. “Really.”

I’m too soft, he thought. When she looks at me like that, I’d promise her anything. He wanted to make some gesture of affection, but before he could show her how much he cared for her, one of the twins cried for her attention and she turned away.

Throughout the morning the children irritated him. On the way to school Peter was listless and tired, reacting to the smallest provocation with tears or temper, and in the house the twins whined with a mechanical, metallic sound that grated on his nerves.

“Of course they’re demanding,” Alice had said on the evening of her death when they were alone in the kitchen at the Tower. “But you wouldn’t be without them, would you?”

And he had responded wholeheartedly: No, of course he wouldn’t be without them. He loved them.

Now it did not seem so simple, and he longed for the old times, when he was a tandem-riding student, before guilt and responsibility.

When the time came to go to the surgery, Judy seemed to sense his unhappiness. She was concerned about him, she said. She put on boots and a sweater to help him clear the ice from the windscreen of the car and told him to take care when he was driving.

“Drive slowly,” she said. “It’s still very slippery. Perhaps you should walk.”

“I’m only going into town,” he said, though he was pleased that she was worrying about him. “The roads will be clear by now.”

Before he drove off she stood close to him and kissed him. Her nose was cold and the unexpected gesture shocked and touched him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “ It’s been my fault. You will take care?”

He nodded and squeezed her arm, then got into the car.

The roads were a slushy mess, the thin layer of snow already melted by salt and regular traffic, but in a school playground a queue of running boys in grey uniforms slid down an icy run. Max braked too sharply at a traffic light and the car slid forward before stopping, harmlessly, against the kerb. The jolt made him think of Judy and her concern for him. She was wrong, he thought. It was not her fault, but he could think of nothing that would make things right. The lights changed and he drove on slowly.

The Health Centre was packed. Four buggies had been parked in the porch outside, and he had to push his way past them to get into the waiting room. Inside the room was hot and noisy with the damp acoustics of swimming baths. The place was full, it seemed, with feverish children and bronchitic grandmothers. The receptionist was flushed and fraught. She hardly acknowledged Max as he walked past because she was trying to answer the telephone and find a missing file at the same time. The ill-tempered chaos suited his mood and he called irritably for the first patient.

Stella Laidlaw phoned late in the afternoon when he was examining his last patient, a toddler with an ear infection. The receptionist spoke to him first.

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said. “I explained that you were busy, but the lady insisted. She wouldn’t give her name. She said it was personal.”

Max felt a sudden exhilaration. His promise to Alice was immediately forgotten.

“Give me two minutes,” he said, “then put her through.”

He wrote a hurried prescription for the child, then, as calmly as he could, saw him and the mother into the waiting room. He picked up the telephone again.

“Yes,” he said. “Max Laidlaw.”

Stella’s voice surprised and disappointed him, and for a moment he could not place it. He had been expecting someone quite different.

“Max,” she said. “I’m sorry, Max. I need your help again.”

“No,” he said angrily. “ I told you before. That was the last time.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m desperate.”

“You should see your doctor.”

“I can’t. You know that. He’s a friend of James.”

There was a silence, then she continued spitefully: “I could tell James all about you, Max. I could phone Judy. I know she’d be interested. You wouldn’t like that.” She had the affected accent of minor royalty and always sounded to him like a lonely public-school girl, but it was impossible now to be sorry for her. “I know what happened, Max,” she went on, “at the Tower. You wouldn’t want me to tell Judy that.”

“That’s blackmail,” he said, but even as he protested he knew he would do as she wanted, because he always took the easy way out. He was weaker than she was.

“You’re ill,” he said. “You need help. Real help. Not the kind that I can give you. You need someone to talk to, to share things with.”

“I can talk to you,” she said, her voice almost seductive, “ when we meet.”

“I’m so busy,” he said, with a last flicker of resistance. “ I’ve so little time.”

“You’ve time enough for this.”

“I can’t come today,” he said quickly, playing for time. “ It’s dark already and the roads are bad. If I’m late, Judy will worry and phone the practise.”

“Tomorrow then,” she said after a pause. “James is out all day. Come tomorrow.”

She put the phone down quickly, so Max wondered if someone had disturbed her at the other end of the line. The conversation had upset him and he felt that he needed comfort, to feel good about himself again. He dialled the telephone number of the Otterbridge Express office, enjoying the sensation that he was taking a risk by calling her at work.

“Could I speak to Mary Raven?” he asked.

“I’m sorry.” The woman’s voice was bland, uncaring. “Miss Raven has just left the office. Can anyone else help you?”

“No,” he said, and quickly replaced the receiver. He would have to plan some romantic gesture to make his peace with Mary. It was impossible, after all, to think he could do without her.

Judy spent the afternoon in desultory clearing-up. The twins grizzled themselves to sleep eventually, and after school Peter sat slumped close to the television watching a Walt Disney cartoon. His eyes were heavy and he refused to communicate with her. When she tried to hug him, he shrugged her away. All day the phone rang with friends offering their sympathy and help, wanting, she thought, a share of the drama. Finally she took the phone off the hook, and when people came to the door she sent them away. Only Max could reassure her and he was refusing to talk. She had known for months that he was worried about something but had been too busy, too exhausted, too engrossed in playing the part of a fulfilled and active woman to find out what was troubling him. Now perhaps it was too late.