Ann Cleeves - The Baby-Snatcher

‘Except the time when she was missing and you called at my house,’ Ramsay reminded her gently. ‘You were worried about her then.’

‘I was, wasn’t I?’ She seemed consoled by the memory.

Ramsay waited until she had composed herself.

‘Did anyone get off the bus when you got on? Someone who might have followed your mother up the Headland, perhaps caught her up?’

‘No. No one.’

‘Mr Taverner gave you a lift back from school that afternoon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he tell you why he was coming to the Headland?’

‘He’s a friend of the Coulthards who live at the Coastguard House.’

Ramsay turned to Claire.

‘You’ll know him then?’

‘I’ve met him.’

‘Is he a regular visitor to the Coastguard House?’

‘He has been recently.’ She gave a sudden smug little smile which vanished so quickly that he wondered if he’d imagined it.

‘Oh?’

He was hoping for gossip, even scandal, but she said gravely, ‘I expect he’s lonely. His wife died a few months ago. She was Sheena Taverner, the writer.’

Then he realized why the name had been familiar. He had seen Sheena Taverner’s books in Prue’s house; had even met her once at some party to which Prue had dragged him. There had been so many thin, soulful women that he found it hard to place her, but he thought he remembered her. Had Mark Taverner been present too? He could not remember, and turned his attention back to Marilyn.

‘Would your mother have known Mr Taverner?’

‘She’d met him at parents’ evenings. He was my tutor in Year Seven and now he takes me for music. She’d have recognized him.’

‘Where did he drop you?’

‘At the club. He was meeting Mr Coulthard there.’

‘And you walked up the hill by yourself?’

‘Yes.’

‘Weren’t you worried that your mother might be waiting for you at the bus stop?’

‘No. I told you yesterday. She wasn’t expecting me back until later.’

There was a silence. The restaurant was, by now, very gloomy and a little cold. Ramsay poured more coffee.

‘Did you meet anyone as you walked up the hill?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Perhaps you could concentrate. It’s important that you’re absolutely sure.’

‘I didn’t meet anyone,’ Marilyn explained, ‘ but I saw Claire come out of the house and walk on up towards the Coulthards’. I don’t think she noticed me. The weather was dreadful. She wore her hood up and her head was bent down against the sleet. I shouted but she didn’t hear me.’

Claire did not speak. She continued to stare into the courtyard.

‘I thought you spent all day in the Coastguard House,’ Sally Wedderburn said.

Throughout the conversation Ramsay had been aware of a controlled hostility between the women, and wondered what lay at the root of it. Perhaps they had just got on each other’s nerves cooped up in that house. Now Claire was unapologetic, even defiant.

‘So I went home for something to eat? Why shouldn’t I? Everyone else has a dinner break.’

‘Was Mrs Howe there?’

‘Of course not! I would have said, wouldn’t I?’

‘But Mr Howe was?’

‘I suppose so. Upstairs. He spends hours up there practising.’

Claire lapsed into silence. The carafe of wine was empty but a little remained in her glass. She held it up so the fading light from the window caught it, then she drank it all.

Ramsay was thinking that this might be an explanation for Mr Howe’s belief that his wife had returned to the house. A door had slammed shut and he had assumed it was Kath. But the timing was wrong. Claire’s lunch break would have occurred much later than Mrs Howe’s expected return from the bus stop. Was it possible that so much time could have passed without Bernard’s noticing? Ramsay thought that perhaps it was. Bernard had been concentrating on his rehearsal, his mind, as Marilyn had once said, was full of magic and illusion. Ramsay decided they should work on the premise that Kath Howe had last been seen by her daughter, waved away across the level crossing before she could cause embarrassment.

‘But what would she have done then?’ He realized he had spoken aloud and continued in explanation. ‘ You were all busy. I was wondering how Mrs Howe would usually have spent her time on Saturday mornings.’

The similarity of the terraced house in Cotter’s Row to the Coal Board cottage where he had lived as a child made him think of his own mother. When he reached school age she’d taken a part-time job in a draper’s shop and Saturday had become her cleaning day. He’d been sent out to play in the street while she dusted and hoovered. He remembered her squatting on the stairs, a small, hard brush in one hand, furiously beating the fluff and the dust down into the hall, shouting at him through the open front door to clear out until she’d finished. He couldn’t imagine that Mrs Howe would ever set aside a day for housework.

Her relatives seemed surprised by the question. They looked at each other. Neither answered.

‘I understand she was interested in craft. Dyeing. Spinning.’

‘Aye,’ Claire said. ‘ That was the latest fad.’

‘What were the others?’

‘Botany, watercolours.’ She looked at Marilyn. ‘Is there anything I’ve missed?’

Marilyn shook her head. It was a gesture of distaste, not an answer to the question.

‘Is it possible that she was following one of these hobbies on Saturday morning?’

‘It’s possible. Bernard would be able to tell you. That spinning wheel of hers makes a real racket and the living room’s right under the bedroom.’

‘What else might she have done?’

‘I don’t know,’ Marilyn said. ‘ She walked a lot. Read. There was no regular routine.’

Claire leant forward. ‘The trouble with Kath’, she said, ‘was that she’d never really grown up. She played at things. It was all too easy for her.’ And with that she shut her mouth and became her old taciturn self.

Brian Coulthard was running late. Emma was in the kitchen with the kids squawking around her and when he shouted down the stairs she didn’t hear him. In the end he had to go himself. He stood in the doorway, bare chested, and said in as restrained a voice as he could manage, ‘ I don’t suppose there’s a clean shirt in this house.’

She was heating milk for the baby’s cereal and hardly turned round.

‘There are some in the tumble dryer. If you hang on a minute I’ll iron one.’

‘I need it now. I’m late already.’

She was still in her dressing gown and he felt like screaming, ‘What the hell do you do all day?’ But that would have provoked a row which would only have delayed him further.

‘All right .’ she said. The martyr. ‘I’ll do it now.’

She slammed open the dryer door and yanked the ironing board into an upright position.

When he left the house he tried to kiss her but she turned her cheek away. There were roadworks on the A19, and traffic was tailing back from the Tyne Tunnel to the Coast Road roundabout. He liked to be first in the office. Today his secretary was already there and the phones were ringing. A backlog of work to be cleared before he started.

Brian Coulthard had set up his computer software business in 1985. It had been a gamble going it alone, and it hadn’t all been plain sailing, however it seemed from the outside. There had been times at the beginning when the banks had threatened to call in the debt and it was only Emma’s wage which had kept the company afloat. He had seemed then to spend all his time on the road touting for business, giving presentations to an audience so obviously uninterested that he had known they had already decided to place their contract elsewhere. Now there was more work than he could handle. He employed a dozen programmers and they were all rushed off their feet. That was stressful too, though Emma didn’t seem to realize.