Ann Cleeves - The Baby-Snatcher

What had happened now? Had the girl overreacted to her mother’s absence again? Perhaps this time she had taken his advice by phoning the station instead of knocking on the door of a stranger. He unclipped the form from the file and looked at it in more detail.

It had been the husband, not the daughter, who had phoned the station.

Ramsay considered the piles of paper on his desk, then swivelled his chair so his back was turned to them. He was curious and he wouldn’t concentrate on other work until he had checked this out. He picked up the phone.

‘This missing person from the Headland?’ he asked. ‘She turned up yet?’

‘If she has no one’s told us. But, they don’t always, do they?’

‘I’ll deal with it if you like. Talk to the family anyway.’

‘Why?’ The voice was suspicious. Routine missing persons shouldn’t have interested Ramsay. ‘Something going on there that we should know about?’

‘Nothing like that.’

How could he explain his feeling that something was wrong? He could hardly say, ‘I went there once. The lassie was more worried than someone her age has a right to be. And there were no blackberries.’ He’d be a laughing stock. So he said nothing.

‘Well, if you’re short of work you’re welcome to it.’ The voice at the end of the phone had turned sulky. The receiver was replaced with a thud.

Ramsay drove back down the road along which he’d just travelled. There was a straight avenue of dripping trees before he came to the familiar grey terraces of Heppleburn and the road to the coast. As he drove he half expected to see the ramrod-straight figure of Kathleen Howe marching towards her home, carrying her canvas shopping bag and another excuse for her unexplained absence.

As on the previous occasion he had to wait at the level crossing. A coal train was rattling slowly on its way to the power station. On the other side of the line, beyond the barrier, a pedestrian was waiting to cross. He was a large man in a black PVC cape and Ramsay imagined the moisture trickling from the greasy collar into his neck. As the barrier lifted and Ramsay drove slowly across, the man peered into the car, sticking his head right up to the passenger window, so close that for a moment Ramsay was afraid he intended to jump in front of the vehicle. It occurred to Ramsay as he drove on towards the club that he should have stopped, and at least asked the man for his name and address. Already he was thinking of Kathleen Howe’s disappearance in terms of a police investigation.

The Headland was covered with a fine drizzling mist which hid the Coastguard House from view. Ramsay drove slowly past the club and towards the houses of Cotter’s Row. A red minibus loomed out of the fog ahead of him. He had seen it before parked in the street close to his cottage. It collected people who had no transport and took them to the ten o’clock service at the Methodist church in Heppleburn. He pulled in to let it pass and had a glimpse, through windows spotted with rain, of elderly faces.

He parked outside the Howes’and waited for a moment, suddenly daunted by the prospect of an encounter with Marilyn Howe. He thought he should have brought Sally Wedderburn with him, then told himself he was overreacting. When he knocked on the door Kathleen Howe would probably open it herself.

The door opened while he was still sitting in the car so he felt awkward, irrationally guilty, as if he’d been spying. Marilyn stood on the step. She was dressed in clothes which her mother might have worn: a shapeless knee-length skirt, a roll-neck sweater, fluffy pink slippers. Her hair was pulled away from her face. The effect was of middle-aged dowdiness and exhaustion.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s you. I heard the car and I thought… Is there any news?’

He shook his head. ‘Your mother’s not back yet? You’ve not heard from her?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Perhaps I could come in. I’d like a word with you all.’

‘I’m the only one here. Dad’s out looking. He went as soon as it got light. I don’t think any of us slept.’

‘Is your father a big man? Wearing a black cycle cape?’

She nodded.

‘I think I saw him on the road.’ So the strange figure at the level crossing had been an anxious husband, not a suspect. Not yet at least. Marilyn continued. ‘Claire’s at work. She offered to stay but there didn’t seem much point.’

‘Claire’s your aunt?’

‘That’s right.’

She moved away from the step to let him in and took him straight to the back living room. There was a fire banked up in the grate and the sulphurous smell of smokeless fuel which reminded him again of his mother’s house. In one corner a clothes horse was draped with towels and the windows ran with condensation. The dining table was spread with textbooks.

‘I was trying to do some homework,’ Marilyn said. ‘ I thought it would take my mind off Mummy but I couldn’t really concentrate.’

He sat in the rocking chair where Kathleen Howe had been when he had surprised her on his previous visit to the house. In the hot, steamy room it would have been easy to doze off.

‘Why don’t you tell me what happened?’

‘We don’t know what happened!’ the girl cried. ‘She just disappeared.’

‘Well, when did you last see her?’

‘At breakfast yesterday. Then I went out.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘To school.’

‘On a Saturday?’

‘There was a special choir rehearsal. We’re taking part in a music festival at the Cathedral.’

‘What time did you get home?’

‘Two o’clock.’ She paused then continued like an ordinary schoolgirl, chatty, enthusiastic. ‘ We’d taken packed lunches because Miss Winter thought the practice would drag on into the afternoon but it went really well and we finished early.’

‘Your mother wasn’t expecting you back then?’

‘Not until later. That’s why I didn’t worry at first.’

‘How did you get home from school?’

‘I got a lift.’ There had been a slight hesitation. A flush of embarrassment. Or was it pleasure?

‘Who from? A parent? One of the sixth-formers?’ He had seen them, the kids coming out of the High School. They all seemed to have cars these days, and not just old bangers either.

‘No.’ She hesitated again. ‘ One of the teachers sings with us. Mr Taverner. He was coming this way.’

An adolescent crush, Ramsay thought.

‘Was anyone in when you got home?’

‘My father. He went out at about four. He works as a children’s entertainer. He had a booking at a kids’ party.’

‘Didn’t he tell you where your mother had gone?’

‘He thought she might have walked into Heppleburn, to the Co-op.’

‘Wasn’t he sure?’

‘Not really.’ She had been standing with her back to the table. Now she leant forward. ‘ When you meet my Dad properly you’ll understand. It’s not that he’s stupid. He’s absent-minded. When you talk to him he doesn’t always listen. Especially to Mummy, who tends to nag. I think it’s because his head’s full of tricks and illusions.’ Again she saw the need to explain. ‘He’s a magician. Brilliant. Anyone round here will tell you. He’s only part-time, of course. His real job’s with the DSS at Longbenton. The insolvency section.’

‘I see.’

Ramsay was glad he had visited Marilyn Howe in his own time and alone. He wondered what his sergeant, Hunter, would have made of the family. Hunter’s prejudices were widespread and various. He distrusted anything outside his own experience. A household without a car or a television would have struck him as sufficiently odd to raise his suspicions. But a part-time magician…