Ann Cleeves - Killjoy

She lived in the same house he had visited as a boy. It was called, for some reason, Minsmere, and the letters were painted in flaking gold on the semicircle of glass over the front door. He recognized them immediately. It had seemed very grand to him twenty years before to live in a house with a name and a number.

The house was red-brick and would have been rather ugly, but its outlines were softened by a Virginia creeper climbing up one corner and by large trees in the front garden. It was at the junction of two residential streets and was still shabbier, much less smart than the surrounding houses. At first it was quite unfamiliar to Ramsay and he almost walked past it, then realized that it only seemed different because he had never been there in the winter. He had only seen it when the trees were in leaf and his memory was so fixed that now, in the gloomy half light, it was almost unrecognizable. It was the letters over the front door which stopped him short and made him turn into the drive.

When Ramsay arrived at Minsmere it was nearly dark and the street lights were on. It was already very cold. Through the living-room window, where the curtains had not yet been drawn, he saw the shape of a grand piano and the stool where Mrs Bennett had perched to give music lessons. He knocked at the door and wondered why he had never bumped into Prue in a place as small and intimate as Otterbridge. He did not flatter himself that she had been avoiding him. He had not been as important to her as that. Perhaps he had seen her shopping in Front Street on a busy Saturday morning with her daughter and not known her. The thought distressed him.

She opened the door to him almost immediately then stood in the doorway staring out at him, waiting for him to take the initiative. She was still slim and straight and wore clothes she might have chosen as a girl-denim jeans and a long jersey.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ he said, taking refuge in formality. ‘ I explained that I’d need to see you again.’

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘We’ll go through to the kitchen. It’s still the only warm room in the house.’

She was wearing flat leather slippers which slapped against the red-tile floor as she walked ahead of him through the dusty hall to the back of the house.

He was disappointed that the room was different. It had been dimly lit, with old-fashioned painted cupboards. He had spent a lot of time there, drinking coffee, watching Prue cook, listening to the piano music, knowing that when it stopped they would be interrupted. Now there were new stained-wood units and the window seemed bigger. There were spotlights instead of the flickering neon, and pictures and posters and plants. On a cork pinboard he saw a photo of Anna and Gabby together, their arms around each other, grinning and waving madly towards the camera. Gabby was a small, slight figure, who only came up to Anna’s shoulder. But the scrubbed wooden table, marked with the greasy rings of coffee cups and red wine bottles, was the same, and sitting on the boiler in the corner there was a black cat as there always had been.

He wondered what had happened to her parents and before he could phrase a tactful question she told him. They were both dead. Her mother had died suddenly when she was still at Cambridge. Prue had come back, eventually, to care for her father. He had died five years before and she and Anna had stayed on in the house.

‘Was there nothing to keep you in the south?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘I was glad of the excuse to leave,’ she said. ‘There was never any prospect of settling down with Anna’s father. We never married.’

‘Where is Anna?’ he asked. The girl was a reminder that he could make no assumptions about Prue, that things had changed.

‘She went to school. I tried to persuade her to have a day at home but she thought she’d be better off with her friends.’ She shrugged. ‘ It’s hard sometimes to accept that she’s reached an age when she can make decisions for herself.’

Ramsay did not know what to say. He stood by the boiler, feeling the warmth dull his brain, and stroked the cat until it started to purr.

‘I was just going to make some tea,’ she said. ‘Will you have some?’

He nodded and sat at the end of the table, watching her fill the kettle and spoon tea into the pot. He tried to concentrate on the investigation, to form questions which he would normally put to a witness, but he was too interested in her.

‘What happened after Cambridge?’ he asked.

‘I got caught by the theatre bug at university,’ she said. ‘ Not acting. Producing. I’d never done anything so exciting. When I left Cambridge I got taken on as an assistant in a rather good provincial theatre in East Anglia. Then I blew it all by getting pregnant.’ She paused. ‘ I tried to carry on working,’ she said, ‘but it wasn’t so easy then. I couldn’t find a reliable childminder and my friends all thought I was crazy to have the baby in the first place. In the end I gave up and became a full-time mother. It was a dreadful time, wretched. I was so bored and lonely. As I say I was quite glad of the excuse to come home and look after Dad.’ She stopped again, then continued: ‘I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear all this. You’ll want to ask some questions about Gabby.’

He could have said that in a murder investigation he was interested in any background information on the witnesses, but that would have implied that she was a suspect, and although it was true it would hardly be tactful to say so. It was impossible to pretend that they were strangers. Perhaps he should use her inside knowledge. Hunter would have no scruples about using a friend to further an investigation.

‘Tell me about that place,’ he said. ‘What’s the set-up there? How’s it organized?’

‘The Grace Darling?’ She poured the tea into mugs and absentmindedly put a tin of biscuits on to the table. ‘The building’s administered by a charitable trust. It’s supported by grants from the local authority and Gus and I are paid by the council but the trustees like to think they’re independent.’

She hesitated and he picked up a trace of irritation.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I’ve just remembered that one of the trustees was there last night, talking to Gus. I was wondering what she wanted. She’s a particularly active member of the trust. They’re the ones that can make life difficult.’

‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘Mrs Wood. Do you remember if she was there when you found Gabriella’s body?’

‘She was with Gus when I went to ask him for the programme. That’s why he gave me the car keys and asked me to fetch it for myself. But when I went back to the Centre to phone the police she’d gone.’

‘Did you see her leave?’

‘No, but Gus’s car was at the far end, away from the door. I wouldn’t have done.’

‘Tell me about Amelia Wood,’ Ramsay said.

‘Oh,’ Prue said. ‘She’s an active citizen. A magistrate. On the council. You know the sort.’

‘Would it be usual for her to call into the Centre in the evenings?’

‘I can’t remember seeing her there in the evening before but it would be her style. She had a bee in her bonnet about us using the trust’s resources efficiently. She might see it as a spot check. To make sure we were all on our toes. She was certainly giving Gus a hard time last night.’

‘You don’t like her,’ he said. It was a statement not a question. She smiled-

‘Amelia’s all right,’ she said. ‘ I suppose. She’s one of those women with too much energy. Hyperactive. Interfering. Inclined to be bossy. Good at her job, though. Even I’ll admit that. When the council was poll-tax capped we thought the Centre might have to close but somehow she found the grants to keep us going. She wangled some sponsorship deal with some local businesses too. I don’t know the details… But it is hard to like her. She thinks we should only use the Centre to house events which will attract a big audience and pay their way. She considers anything experimental as left-wing propaganda.’