Ann Cleeves - The Healers

When the team trooped back to the incident room the phones were already starting to ring. Ramsay stood by his desk, accepting the cheers and the backhanded compliments.

“You didn’t do bad, sir, even if you’re not the prettiest thing that’s been on the telly this week.”

“At least you didn’t fall off the platform like that DCI at the press call in Newcastle.”

“Well, Gordon?” he asked as Hunter came in. “What did you think?”

“I was wondering why you didn’t scotch the story that Faye Cooper was murdered.” It was Hunter in his most truculent mood, graceless and offensive.

“I think,” Ramsay said, “I wanted to keep the murderer guessing.”

Hunter was not going to give his boss the satisfaction of asking what that meant. He mooched on towards his desk. The inspector called him back.

“Can I have a word? I’ve got a job for you.” Something you’ll enjoy, he thought. Something that’s right down your street.

“What is it?” Hunter asked.

“Let’s get out of here, shall we? I could do with some fresh air. I’ve been stuck in this place all day.”

“If you say so,” Hunter said rudely. “You’re the boss.”

Ramsay led him down the path to the children’s playground by the river. They sat on the bench. There were two teenagers, a boy and a girl standing on the swings, talking shyly, but when they saw the policemen they disappeared.

“Perhaps they recognized you from the telly, sir,” Hunter said snidely. “You must be famous.”

Ramsay said nothing, though of course all the town knew who they were by now. They didn’t need the television for that.

“What do you want me to do, like?”

“Talk to Daniel Abbot,” Ramsay said. “It seems clear now that the girl committed suicide and the diary’s too vague for us to charge him with sexual assault. But let him know that we’re on to him. Make it clear that if anything of that sort happens again we’ll be down on him like a ton of bricks.”

Hunter was staring across the river and did not answer immediately. Ramsay was surprised by the lack of enthusiasm. Usually Hunter jumped at the chance to intimidate.

“Scare him away from Rebecca Booth, you mean,” the sergeant said at last.

“Aye,” Ramsay said. “If you can.”

“Oh, I can manage that all right.” But there was no real pleasure in the thought.

They sat in silence.

“Are you all right?” Ramsay asked tentatively.

“What d’ya mean?” Hunter demanded aggressively.

Ramsay shrugged. “You don’t seem yourself. I

wondered if something was bothering you.”

Hunter frowned, did not answer directly.

“Do you mind if I ask you something, sir?”

“Go on.”

“Do you think there’s anything in this alternative medicine crap?”

Ramsay was amused but knew better than to show it.

“I’m not sure. I suppose I try to keep an open mind.”

“I was wondering, y’kna, if I was missing out on something. Personal growth. Isn’t that what they call it? Finding out about yourself.” He looked at Ramsay earnestly.

“You seem to have survived without it,” Ramsay said.

“But I just can’t see it working!” Hunter went on. “Needles in the hand to cure headaches. Energy forces in the body. And that re birthing -lying on your back for an hour, just breathing. That’s all bullshit, isn’t it?”

“It’s not illegal,” Ramsay said, ‘which is all that concerns us at present.”

But he could see that more than that concerned Hunter. Oh my God, Ramsay thought. He’s fallen for the girl.

Lily Jackman was thinking about Hunter too. When she and Sean had first moved into the Laverock farmhouse they had stayed in the kitchen. They put their sleeping bags on the floor each night to sleep and they washed in the sink. After all, they had come into the kitchen when Ernie was alive. They were more comfortable there. The rest of the house had seemed out of bounds.

Later, however, they took the place over. They even slept upstairs, in the room that had once been Cissie Bowles’s. It still smelled faintly of the moxa herb used in acupuncture and there were pots of homoeopathic remedies on the huge Victorian dressing table. And in the evenings they went into Cissie Bowles’s lounge, with the grandfather clock and scratched leather chairs, and watched the television. They were sitting there, eating beans on toast from a tray, when the police press conference came on.

“Isn’t that the policeman?” Sean said. “Not the one that’s been sniffing round you all week. His boss.”

He switched the sound up, motioned to her to be quiet until it had finished. When it was over he seemed pleased with himself.

“Sean,” she said, “I’ve been thinking…”

Something in her voice made him turn round sharply. “What?” he demanded.

“I wanted to ask you…” she said, then her voice trailed away. “Oh, it’s nothing. Probably it’s nothing.”

At Long Edge Farm the Richardsons were watching the local television news while they were finishing their evening meal. Mrs. Richardson had made a venison stew, braised in brown ale. She still had plans to open a restaurant at the farm for visitors and she’d been practising. She thought the food should have a local flavour.

“What do you think?” she said to Stan.

“It’s all right,” he said grudgingly. “At least there’s meat in it.”

Because she had taken to cooking vegetarian meals, in preparation for when the Abbots took over Laverock Farm. They might pick up quite a few customers from there, she thought. She felt very optimistic about it.

“Look,” she said, ‘there’s Inspector Ramsay on the television.” She giggled. “Doesn’t he look dishy!” She still used words like that. “Dishy’ and ‘smashing’ and jolly good show’. It was as if she were stuck as a schoolgirl in the early sixties. Nothing could shake her enthusiasm, not even her husband’s indifference. She turned to her son who had been eating, steadily and silently. “You never did tell me what he wanted the other day, Peter.”

“You’ve never been here to ask,” he said.

“I have been busy,” she said complacently, knowing that it was only her effort which was keeping the farm together.

Stan Richardson pushed his plate away from him. His attention was still on the television. He watched the young reporter ask her questions about Faye Cooper, saw Ramsay’s awkwardness, the noncommittal reply.

“Didn’t you know a lass called Faye a while back?” he asked his son.

“So what?” Peter said defiantly.

“Nothing. I just wondered if it was the same girl, that’s all.”

“Why should I care? I moved on from that ages ago.”

He slammed his plate on the draining board.

“Can I borrow your car tonight?” he asked his mother.

“Of course, pet,” she said, absentmindedly finishing the last of her meal.

“It’s about time you got a car of your own!” Stan shouted after him as he left the room. “I pay you enough. It’s about time you stood on your own two feet!”

Magda Pocock did not possess a television so she did not see Ramsay’s appeal for information. The inspector saw her, silhouetted against the lighted, sloping window of her flat when he went back to the pub to phone Prue. He would be working for most of the night and he needed a break. From Hunter, as much as anything, who was still self-absorbed and short-tempered. Even a successful interview with Daniel Abbot had failed to cheer him up, though he described it with a gloomy satisfaction.

“I had him snivelling like a bairn,” Hunter said. “He blamed it all on the lass, of course. Said she overreacted to a simple gesture of friendship.