Ann Cleeves - The Baby-Snatcher

‘This house was searched, wasn’t it?’ They had been looking for letters, an address book, some indication that Mrs Howe knew her murderer.

‘Yeah. The day after the body was found. You suggested it and Mr Howe gave his permission.’

‘But properly searched?’

‘Well, we didn’t pull up the floorboards. I mean the chap had just lost his wife. Be sensitive, you said.’

Because there had been no real suspicion then that Mrs Howe had been killed in the house. And if anything had been hidden after the murder it would be long gone now. Still, Ramsay thought, it wouldn’t hurt to get a team in.

He and Hunter interviewed Bernard first. They took him into the front room.

‘By man, it’s like an ice box in here.’ Hunter shivered to make his point. Bernard switched on an electric fire, but it seemed to have little effect on the temperature.

Ramsay, remembering what Marilyn had told Sally about thin walls, had suggested that the women might like to watch television while they waited. The noise from the back room was distracting but at least the interview would not be overheard.

Bernard was red faced, blustering, defensive. There were three easy chairs in the room, all covered with the nylon stretch covers which are advertised in mail-order catalogues. Ramsay motioned him to sit down.

‘I don’t know what this is all about,’ Bernard said. ‘Really, it’s not on.’

‘Come on, man.’ Hunter was chummy. He perched on the arm of Bernard’s chair. ‘You can’t expect to keep things quiet when you sneak off for a night together. What do you think Kim made of the two of you turning up on her doorstep? She’ll not have thought you were there to play Scrabble.’

Bernard blushed a deeper crimson, said nothing.

‘Or didn’t you turn up together? Is that how you worked it? Claire went first, then you trotted on down when the coast was clear?’

There was no answer. Hunter’s voice hardened.

‘Is that how you worked it?’

‘Yes.’ It was a scarcely audible mumble.

‘Well, all this secrecy has really landed you in the shit.’ Hunter was all smiles again. ‘You do see, Bernard, that the only way to get out of it is to answer all our questions? If you lie to us again we’ll think you’ve got something else to hide. Beside your little affair, I mean.’ He got up from the arm of the chair, looked down on his victim. ‘You do see that, Bernard, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Despite the cold he had begun to sweat. ‘But we didn’t really lie.’ He was panicking and the words came out as a babble. ‘Not about anything important. Not about Kath’s murder. If you’d asked us we’d have told you.’

‘What would you have told us?’

‘Well, that Claire and I had become…’ He paused. ‘… friendly.’

Hunter walked away in apparent disgust. He stood with his back to the fire, his arms folded, watching.

‘Tell me,’ Ramsay said gently. ‘When did you and Claire start to become “friendly”?’

Bernard looked at him suspiciously. He, too, had changed from his work clothes. He was wearing olive green cords, worn thin at the knees and a Marks & Spencer’s patterned sweater in lilac and pink. A Christmas present, Ramsay supposed, from his mother. Claire would have had more taste and Kath would have considered it an extravagance.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Was it soon after Claire came to stay with you?’

‘She wasn’t under age!’ The panic had returned. ‘ She was seventeen.’

‘Didn’t it occur to you that you might be abusing a position of trust?’ Ramsay asked.

Of course it didn’t, he thought. That’s what the Minister’s wife said when you wandered off into the night with the little boy. Like the spoilt child you are you did just what you felt like. You didn’t consider the consequences at all.

‘Abuse never came into it,’ Bernard said. ‘ You ask Claire. We were happy together. That didn’t seem wrong.’

‘I don’t suppose that’s how Kath saw it.’

‘No,’ Bernard muttered. ‘ Kath didn’t understand. Not at first, anyway.’

‘How did she find out?’

‘It was September. Claire hadn’t started working for the Coulthards. She’d finished at the college but she couldn’t find a job so she was home a lot. My office works flexitime. If I do enough overtime I can have the occasional half-day off. We knew Kath was going to be out that afternoon. She was doing a course at the Open Door Learning Centre. Word processing. She thought she’d be able to help Marilyn with her school work. It was every Wednesday. But the tutor was ill so she came back early.’

‘She didn’t come home because she suspected you were being unfaithful?’

Bernard winced at the word, shook his head. ‘ No, she didn’t suspect anything. That might have been easier. It was the shock. That’s what floored her.’ He stared past Hunter. ‘You should have seen her face.’

‘What happened?’

‘She ran out into the street. It was getting dark. I heard a screech of brakes. Some fool driving too quickly up Cotter’s Row. I thought she’d killed herself. But she was only frightened.’

‘You went after her?’

‘Of course. I was worried. We both were.’

‘Were you?’ Ramsay’s voice remained polite but faintly sceptical.

‘Yes! We didn’t want to hurt her. That’s the last thing we would have wanted. That’s why we’d kept our friendship secret.’

‘Not because you were afraid Kath would want it to stop? That she’d cause a scene?’

‘Not exactly.’ He paused. ‘ When we’d made sure she hadn’t been run over we thought it would be better to give her some time alone. That was what she wanted. I was booked to do a magic show. I took Claire with me. I thought by the time I got back Kath would have calmed down.’

And none of you considered Marilyn, Ramsay thought, coming home and finding no one here.

‘Had she calmed down?’

‘In a way. It was horrible. She cried. I’d never seen her cry before. She wasn’t angry. She blamed herself. When we got in Marilyn was in bed and Kath was sitting in her chair in the kitchen with tears running down her cheeks. I’d have done anything to make her stop.’

‘So you and Claire promised to break off your relationship?’

‘No!’ He seemed astounded by the notion. ‘We couldn’t do that. We love each other.’

‘I don’t quite understand, then, what happened.’

‘When we’d had time to think about it we realized that nothing need happen. That things could go on just as before.’

That’s not how Marilyn tells it, Ramsay thought. She told Sal that Claire and Bernard stopped being ‘ friendly’ when her mother found out. Was she deluding herself? Or is Bernard lying again?

Bernard was continuing. ‘ Kath didn’t want to leave. We were quite happy for her to stay. If we were discreet there shouldn’t be any upset or disruption.’

Hunter couldn’t contain himself. ‘And she was ready to go along with that? To share your bed at night knowing you were screwing her little sister on your afternoons off.’

Bernard seemed horrified. He looked to Ramsay for support. No one had ever spoken to him like that before. Ramsay said nothing.

‘We worked things out in a civilized way,’ he said, very much on his dignity.

‘Wasn’t your wife jealous?’ Hunter demanded. When he went out with a lass he expected undivided attention. Any flirting or funny business and she’d be out on her ear.

There was a brief silence.

‘If she was, she was too proud to show it,’ Bernard said. ‘She was a little withdrawn for a while, but things soon settled back to normal. Kath was frightened of being on her own. That’s why she agreed to the arrangement.’ Deliberately ignoring Hunter he sat up straight and turned to Ramsay. ‘And that, Inspector Ramsay, is why I had no need to murder her.’