Ann Cleeves: Murder in My Backyard

Carolyn Laidlaw arrived home from school on Friday evening to find the house empty. She had her own key and let herself in, apprehensive about what she might find there. She switched on the radio to Metro, almost expecting to hear on the local news that someone had been arrested for the Brinkbonnie murders, but there was only a bland announcement that the police were following a number of leads.

In her parents’ bedroom she found signs that her mother had left the house in a hurry. There were the clothes that she had been wearing that morning flung on the floor and in the bathroom a tap had been left running. Carolyn was tempted to search through the dressing-table drawers while she had the house to herself, but while she would have welcomed certainty she was frightened about what she might find there.

Her father had said he would be working late and she wondered if she should contact him at the office to find out where her mother was, but she knew that would worry him, so she kept her fear to herself, listening all the time to the radio, until she heard the key in the door. Then she could not stop crying.

The discovery that Colin Henshaw could not have killed Alice Parry left Ramsay with a sense of panic. At first he could not think clearly. Perhaps Henshaw had hired someone to commit the murder, he thought, because his commitment to Robson’s theory was so great that he was reluctant to let it go. But that would not work. If Henshaw had not killed Mrs. Parry, Charlie Elliot could have had nothing to blackmail the builder about, and the motive for the second murder disappeared, too. Ramsay had been certain that this evening would mark the end of the investigation, and now it seemed they would have to start at the beginning again and reconsider all the old evidence. Hunter had been right all along, Ramsay thought. This case was about more than a few houses.

In the police house Hunter was almost asleep. His chair was tilted backwards and his feet were on the desk. When Ramsay came into the room, he sat up slowly and stretched.

“Well?” he said. “How did you get on?”

“Henshaw is having an affair with Celia Grey at the farm,” Ramsay said. “He was there on Saturday night, so he couldn’t have killed Alice Parry. He might have murdered Charlie Elliot, but I can’t see what motive he would have had.”

Hunter knew better than to gloat. “At least we’ve eliminated Henshaw from our enquiries then,” he said. “ That’s a positive move.”

“Yes,” Ramsay said. He did not feel positive. “I suppose so.”

“Someone came to talk to you while you were out,” Hunter said. “He wouldn’t speak to me. Tom Kerr. From the garage.” He looked at the desk where he had scribbled notes on an envelope. “He said he’ll be in all evening. On his own. The rest of the family will be out. He seemed to think that was important.”

Ramsay listened absent-mindedly. Now that Robson’s theory of local activists having been put under pressure by Henshaw seemed impossible, he was not sure what useful information Tom Kerr could have.

“He seemed very keen to talk to you,” Hunter said. “A bit tense and strung-up.”

“All right,” Ramsay said. “I’ll go and see him now. Is there anything from the Incident Room?”

“Yes,” Hunter said. “Some bright P.C. thought he saw Mary Raven’s Mini outside the old Cottage Hospital in Otterbridge. God knows what she was doing there.”

“Well, you won’t know,” Ramsay said, “ unless you ask. Go to the hospital and find out. Max Laidlaw is a doctor. Perhaps he’s hiding out there. I’ll meet you in the Incident Room later.”

At first Ramsay thought that the house behind the garage was empty. Although it was nearly dark, there were no lights on and everything was quiet. When the sun went down, the temperature had suddenly dropped and he waited impatiently on the doorstep to be let in. At last he heard footsteps on the other side of the door and then Tom Kerr opened it and waited silently for Ramsay to follow him into the house.

He must have been sitting, Ramsay thought, just by the light of the fire, but now he switched on a small lamp that revealed the tension in his face. His cheeks were drawn and behind his glasses his eyelids seemed grey and heavy.

“Inspector,” he said. “It was good of you to come. Sit by the fire. You’ll be cold.”

Ramsay sat and waited for an explanation, but the words when they came still surprised him.

“Inspector,” Kerr said. “My conscience has been troubling me. There’s something you should know…”

Ramsay said nothing but waited for the man to speak again.

Kerr stared into the fire. “ I have a temper,” he said. “A terrible temper. Since I was a child it’s got me into trouble.”

Still Ramsay remained silent. The man needed to talk. Interruption would only distract him.

“Even when Charlie and Maggie were children I found it hard to like him,” Tom Kerr said. “I was not sorry when Maggie broke off that first engagement. I found Charlie moody, unstable. I thought such an attachment was unnatural at that age. They shouldn’t have been taking things so seriously.”

He paused, apparently in deep thought, perhaps remembering his daughter when she was a girl.

“It wasn’t any easier when he left the army and came back. I told myself that Margaret was partly responsible and the the boy had been genuinely misled about the way she felt, but it was hard to find any sympathy for him. Perhaps that’s why I took him on in the garage. I thought that if I could not find any charity for him in my heart, I could at least go some way to meet his practical needs. It was a mistake, a form of pride. I suppose I wanted the village to see that I was not lacking in duty. Even though he was a reasonable worker, he annoyed me. I dreaded going to work. Then things came to a head and there was a fight in the street. I lost my temper. If I’d had the chance, I would have killed him.”

“Mr. Kerr,” Ramsay said. “ Is this why you wanted to talk to me? To tell me about the fight? I had already heard about it. It really shouldn’t cause you any anxiety. There’s no question that the police would prosecute after all this time.” He felt a sense of anticlimax.

“No!” Tom Kerr cried. “I’m trying to explain. That’s how it all started. But the real wickedness came later.”

“I think,” Ramsay said, “you should tell me all about it.”

The man started speaking, bending towards Ramsay across the fire in an attempt to explain his actions, pleading indirectly for understanding. When Ramsay stood up half an hour later to drive into Otterbridge, he thought he knew why Alice Parry had been murdered. He left Tom Kerr still sitting by the fire. The confession seemed to have brought him little relief and Ramsay was not sure if it was wise to leave him alone.

“You can go,” Kerr said. “Olive will be back soon. I’ll talk to her then.”

In the car Ramsay spoke to Otterbridge control on the radio. “If you see Mary Raven, I want her stopped and brought in for questioning,” he said, almost shouting in his jubiliation. “Find her for me now.”

Hunter thought that the visit to the old Cottage Hospital would be a waste of time. There must be dozens of orange Minis in Otterbridge, he thought. The policeman on the beat must have made a mistake. Why would Mary Raven want to go there? The place had been changed to specialise in the care of geriatrics about ten years previously when a big, new district hospital had been built just outside the town. He had been there once before to visit an elderly aunt who was dying and he had hoped never to step inside the place again.

He found it easy enough to find out who Mary had been talking to. The arrival of a reporter in the unit had caused something of a stir among the people who could find little to change the routine of their days. Those who were well enough to communicate were still talking about it as they sat in their beds to eat the evening meal. There was the smell of vegetables and milk pudding.