Ann Cleeves - Murder in My Backyard

“Sorry,” she said. “It isn’t very comfortable.” She sat on the floor, her long, smooth legs straight before her, her ankles crossed. She began to dry her hair.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“You had a party on Saturday night,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, unbothered, unafraid. “It was my birthday on Sunday. Did the neighbours complain about the noise? I don’t know why. We invited them all to come.”

“No,” he said. He was finding the interview very difficult. “It’s not that. Was Mary Raven at the party?”

“Yes,” she said. Her hair was long and fine. She pulled out the tangles with her fingers. “ She was here. She stayed the night. She was too drunk to drive home.”

“How did you meet her?”

“I can’t remember exactly.” She considered, frowning. “ She was at university, I think, with some of my friends. I share the house with a couple of postgraduates. I probably met her through them. She always seems to be around. Of course, she’s a lot older than me.” She took the damp towel from her shoulders and folded it on the floor. “What’s this all about?”

“Miss Raven was in Brinkbonnie on Saturday afternoon. We need to eliminate her from the Alice Parry murder. It’s only a formality.”

“Oh.” For the first time she was shocked, even impressed. She looked at Hunter through long, fair eyelashes. “How exciting.”

“What time did she arrive at the party?” he asked.

The girl shrugged. “ She was late,” she said. “We didn’t get home ourselves until the pub shut and she turned up soon after, perhaps eleven-thirty, a quarter to twelve. She was definitely here by midnight. They all sang ‘ Happy Birthday’ to me when the clock struck twelve and I remember Mary joining in. She’s got a terrible voice.”

“And she didn’t leave the party after that?”

“No,” the girl said. “I’ve already told you. She was too drunk. I think she’d been drinking before she got here.”

“Was Miss Raven on her own at the party?”

“What do you mean?” She seemed already to have lost interest and was looking vacantly out of the window.

“Did she have a boyfriend with her?”

The girl smiled, her attention caught again. “ Oh, no,” she said. “We’re never allowed to meet Mary’s boyfriend. He’s a deadly secret. She only talks about him when she’s been drinking and then she starts to cry.”

“Who is he?” Hunter asked.

“I’ve told you I don’t know. None of us have ever seen him.”

“But she must have told you something about him.”

She smiled again. “Nothing useful,” she said. “Only that he’s handsome, stimulating, sensitive. And married.”

“How long has she known him?”

“I think it all started last summer. She disappeared from the scene for a while then, and she’s never gone out with anyone else since.”

“And you have no idea who this man might be?”

“No,” she said. “ Sometimes I think Mary made him up. She can be quite strange at times, you know, a bit intense, and rude. I had thought he might be a figment of her imagination.”

Hunter was reluctant to go. He sat on the low, uncomfortable sofa watching the pretty young woman brush her hair like a veil across her face, hoping that she might offer him coffee, allow him to prolong his stay. But she looked up at him and smiled.

“Is that it?” she asked. “Any more questions?”

He shook his head and she stood up to show him out into the street.

Outside Hunter felt elated. It was twelve o’clock and the smell of ginger and soy sauce lingered in the street, but he was no longer offended by it. If Mary Raven had arrived at the party in Newcastle by midnight, she could not have murdered Alice Parry. Now, perhaps, Ramsay would leave the case alone and admit that Charlie Elliot should be caught and brought to court. He would have to admit that Hunter was right.

All morning Ramsay was aware of time passing, of seconds and minutes slipping by. In Otterbridge on his way from the Express office to the café to interview Mary Raven, he had walked so quickly that Hunter had difficulty keeping up with him. On the way to Brinkbonnie he knew he was driving too fast. It was a mild spring day and the only remaining trace of snow was a white swathe under the hedges and trees and, as he drove past at speed, what might have been a carpet of snowdrops.

As he approached the village he reluctantly slowed the car. He passed Henshaw’s palatial bungalow and turned briefly to see if Henshaw’s Rover was parked in the drive. There was no sign of it. Then he came to the high, ivy-covered wall to the entrance of the Tower drive. From there he could see the sweep of Brinkbonnie Bay and the sunlight on the breaking waves. In the centre of the village he parked behind the Castle Hotel so that his car could not be seen from the street. He did not want to give the residents warning that he was there.

The first address on Hunter’s list of lads who regularly hung around the bus shelter was a red-brick council house in a small crescent behind the smart houses that overlooked the green. The road was dark, in the shadow of the hill, and it was quiet. Ramsay knocked at the door, but there was no reply. A neighbour who must have been watching the inspector’s approach from behind thick lace curtains hurtled out into the front garden, obviously afraid that he might leave before she could find out who he was and what he wanted.

“She’s not there, pet,” the elderly lady said, then, hopefully: “Can I take a message?”

Ramsay ignored the offer. “Where is she then?” he asked.

“At work, pet,” the woman said. “ She’s a dinner nanny at the little school. She’ll be home soon. You can wait in with me if you like.”

“No,” Ramsay said. “Thank you.” She was so lonely that he knew it would take him hours to escape once he was in the house. “It was the lad I wanted to talk to.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, he’s not there. He’s at school.” She looked at him curiously. “At least he went off on the school bus this morning,” she said. “Are you from the welfare?”

She had placed Ramsay as an education officer checking on truancy.

“No,” he said. “It’s nothing like that. I’ll call back later when he’s home from school.”

Disappointed, she stood on the concrete path that divided her immaculate lawn into identical halves until he disappeared from the crescent and onto the green.

I suppose, he thought wryly, that was the neighbourhood watch in action.

The second address given to Hunter by the boys in the bus shelter was Grey’s Farm. Ramsay recognised the name. Robert Grey was the man who had been drinking heavily in the Castle on the evening after Alice Parry’s death, and Ramsay had turned into the farmyard by mistake, in the snow, when he was looking for Henshaw’s bungalow. Ramsay came to a five-bar gate and swung it open a little nervously, expecting the dogs to bark again. The house was square, built of grey stone, and had a grey-slate roof. The cobbled yard was covered in mud. By the side of the house was a barn, and approached by a track to the side of the house was a cowshed and a large, open building containing farm machinery and an ancient tractor. An empty Land Rover with the engine still running stood in the yard. As Ramsay approached the house, Robert Grey appeared on the storm porch and almost ran to meet the policeman. He was shaking and Ramsay wondered if he had been drinking again. His behaviour was erratic and bizarre.

“Come with me!” he bellowed. “Where’s your car? You can park in the farmyard and I’ll take you up in the Land Rover. You’d not make it in a car. Man, you were quick. I’d just left Celia in the house phoning the police.”