Ann Cleeves - The Baby-Snatcher

The sixth book in the Inspector Ramsay series, 1997

The knock at the door surprised Ramsay. He received few callers at the cottage in Heppleburn and Jack Robson, who turned up occasionally to take him to the pub, knew better than to come this early. Ramsay seldom arrived home from work before eight and then he had to eat. If he arrived home at all. These days there was Prue, the woman in his life, and he was just as likely to stay at her home in Otterbridge.

He went to the door expecting to find someone collecting for good causes and on his way he looked through a pile of mail to see if there was a charity envelope he’d overlooked. It was just starting to get dark and he switched on the light in the storm porch.

He recognized the girl who waited on the step but for a moment he could not place her. Then he realized she was one of the walkers. That was how he thought of the couple who seemed to carry out most of their business on foot. There was this girl and an older woman. They walked miles. He had passed them on the roads out of Heppleburn and wondered about them. He was surprised that a teenage girl would choose to spend so much time with her mother. He assumed that the older woman was the mother. There was a family resemblance. They had the same large, unblinking eyes, and there was the walk, purposeful, long-strided, fast.

The girl was attractive. She had been bonny enough at least to catch his eye, to make him look again as he drove past them on the long, straight road from Otterbridge to Heppleburn. She was fifteen or sixteen, with very blond hair, white and frizzy, which might have been considered angelic in a toddler, but in the young woman seemed unnatural. Of the mother he had taken less notice.

Ramsay stood inside the porch and waited for the girl to speak. She was wearing the uniform of Otterbridge High School in a manner which was unusually chaste and tidy. Often the skirts came up to the girls’ buttocks and the ties were loose, bulky knots. Her respectability made him think again that she was probably collecting. For the Guides perhaps or a church group. He looked over her shoulder expecting to see the mother. He’d never seen the girl on her own before. Then he realized she was nervous, shaking.

‘Yes?’ he said kindly, then, sensing that it wasn’t shyness which roused the trembling, but fear, he asked, ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘You are a policeman?’ Her voice was not what he had expected. It was educated. There was hardly a trace of accent. Before tonight if he’d had to place the women socially he’d have put them down as the deserving poor. A single mother and her daughter struggling to make ends meet in a council house. Walking everywhere to save the bus fare. Now the voice as much as the question confused him.

‘Yes,’ he replied. He did not ask how she knew. In a village like Heppleburn that sort of information was common knowledge.

‘It’s my mother.’ She spoke in a rush. ‘I’m worried about her. I didn’t know what to do.’

‘You’d better come in.’

As he opened the door wider he wondered if he was being entirely sensible. There were rules about this sort of thing. But he could hardly leave her on the doorstep when she was so distressed and she didn’t seem the attention-seeking type. He couldn’t imagine her running off and crying rape. All the same he sat her in the chair by the window so the table was between them and said, ‘ If it really is police business, you know, you should call the station. Or 999 if it’s an emergency.’

‘We haven’t got a phone at home. Anyway, I thought she might be in the dene. Then it started to get dark and I saw the light in your window. I thought you’d know what to do. I’m sorry. I suppose I’m being silly. I expect she’s all right.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘She wasn’t home when I got in from school.’

He waited for a further explanation but that, it seemed, was it.

‘Doesn’t she work?’ he asked.

‘Oh no!’ She seemed quite shocked by the notion. Ramsay wondered what Prue would make of that. She had taught her daughter to be independent.

‘And she’s usually there when you get in?’

‘Always. I’ve got a key for emergencies but I’ve never had to use it before.’

‘And how old are you?’ He didn’t quite manage to keep the surprise from his voice.

‘Fifteen.’ Then, in a pompous, rather preachy way, ‘Mummy thinks family life is important. We all do.’

‘So it’s not just you and your mother?’

‘Of course not. But my father’s working tonight. I don’t know exactly where so I can’t get in touch with him. Then there’s Claire. It didn’t seem fair, to worry her too.’

‘Claire’s your sister?’

‘My aunt. My mother’s younger sister. She lives with us.’

They sat for a moment in silence. To his embarrassment she began to cry.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I know it’s unusual. Other people’s mothers go out all the time. But Mummy wouldn’t. Not without leaving a note saying where she was going. Not when she was expecting me back from school. I know something’s happened to her.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘The Headland.’

That too was unexpected. His perception of her shifted again. The Headland was an odd, isolated community on the coast, hardly considered part of Heppleburn at all. Young women who lived there did not usually speak of their mummies. The Headland had been formed when a Victorian pit owner had cut a channel in the rock and built a canal so he could ship out his coal, effectively splitting a small promontory from the surrounding land. Now the canal had been filled in and all the gully contained was a sewerage outflow. Ramsay supposed that the double row of terraced cottages had been put up to house the workers on the canal. There was no other reason for them to be there. The Headland was still separated from the main road, though now it was by a railway track which had superseded the canal and carried coal to a power station up the coast.

People had no reason to visit the Headland. There were no scenic attractions, no beach. All that remained were the two rows of redbrick houses, facing each other across the single road, and a redbrick social club, grotesquely large in proportion to the number of people who used it. There was also, Ramsay thought, some sort of coastguard building but he could not be sure of its purpose. It had been years since he’d crossed the railway line.

‘What time did you get in?’ he asked, then, before she had a chance to answer, ‘ I’m sorry, I don’t even know, your name.’

‘Marilyn Howe.’

He thought Marilyn was a very flighty name for such a respectable girl. Reading his thoughts she said, ‘ My father liked the pictures.’

‘Ah.’

She muttered something under her breath.

‘I’m sorry?’

She looked up at him and repeated it fiercely, angrily: ‘At school they call me Billy No Mates.’ She saw that he was confused. ‘That’s what they call people without any friends.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, awkwardly. It seemed a desperate sort of confession.

‘I get in at 4.40.’ She answered his original question as if the outburst had not occurred.

‘How did you get there?’

‘School bus. It stops at the club.’

‘And there was no sign of your mother then?’

‘No. At first I wasn’t worried. Not really. I mean I thought it was odd but in a way I was pleased. It meant she was letting go. I mean I suppose she is a bit clingy.’