Ann Cleeves - The Healers

He pushed open the door and walked in ahead of Hunter.

“Inspector,” she said, and frowned. “What is it? It’s not Peter, is it? There’s not been an accident?” Still she remained quite composed.

“No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”

“Can’t it wait until the morning, Inspector? It’s been a very long day.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You’d better sit down then.” She set the papers with their rows of figures aside and suddenly became more of her old self. “Would you like a drink? Tea? Coffee? Or could I tempt you to a whisky?”

He shook his head.

“Did you know Val McDougal?” he asked.

“The teacher who was killed in Otterbridge? No, I don’t think so.”

“She was about your age,” Ramsay persisted. “Perhaps you met her before you married. Her maiden name was Brown. Or perhaps you came across her at Otterbridge College where she worked. They run courses for people setting up in the holiday business. I’ve checked.”

“I haven’t been on any courses, Inspector,” she said, good-naturedly. “I never found the time. I’ve had to pick it all up as I went along.”

“Can you explain what your car was doing outside Mrs. McDougal’s house then, on the day she died?” It was Hunter, blunt and impersonal. She looked at him in surprise. People she invited into her kitchen didn’t usually speak to her like that.

“Of course not,” she said. “Because it wasn’t.”

“Where is your car tonight?” Ramsay asked, politely.

“Peter asked to borrow it.”

There was a pause while the implication of the words sunk in.

“Did he borrow it on the night of Monday May 10th?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, uncertainly. “That’s more than a week ago, isn’t it? I’d have to check my diary. See what I was doing that night.”

“Perhaps you would do that for us, Mrs. Richardson.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

She was fumbling in her handbag for the diary when they heard a car come too fast down the drive, the squeal of brakes, the crunch of gravel.

“I’d not let that lad drive any car of mine,” Hunter muttered.

“There’s Peter,” she said gratefully. “You’ll be able to ask him yourself.”

The door opened and Peter stood, blinking and a little unsteady, just inside the room. Ramsay thought it unlikely that he would pass a breath test but that was hardly his concern now.

“Peter,” he said, “I’d like to talk to you.”

“Well I don’t want to talk to you!” The boy was full of beer and mock bravado. “I’m off to my bed.” He swayed slightly forward. “Unless you’re planning on arresting me.”

His mother gave a nervous little giggle.

“I’ll do that too if I think it’s necessary,” Ramsay said calmly. “Sit down.”

Peter sat.

“Did you know James McDougal?” Ramsay asked. “He was Faye’s boyfriend, before you.”

“No.” Peter was dismissive. “She told me about him. He was only a kid, wasn’t he?”

“And Mrs. McDougal? She taught at Otterbridge College ‘

He shook his head, yawned in a parody of disinterest.

“Do you often borrow your mother’s car?”

“Yeah,” he said. “She doesn’t mind.”

“Did you borrow it on the evening of May 10th?”

“I don’t know. I might have done. Why?”

Ramsay slammed his hand flat on the table. “Because that’s the evening when Mrs. McDougal was killed and a car like your mother’s was parked in the road outside her house.”

“It’s a common car that. Thousands of them about. It could have been anyone’s.”

“But I don’t think it was anyone’s. I think it was yours. Where were you on that Monday night?”

“I don’t know.” The aggression had gone but he was sullen and determined not to co-operate.

“He was with us, Inspector.” Mrs. Richardson had retrieved her diary and was peering at it through her spectacles. “Don’t you remember, pet? It was the FWAG do at the agricultural college.”

“What’s a FWAG when it’s at home?” Hunter asked.

“The Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group,”

Sue Richardson said. “Stan’s not very keen on it, but I thought we ought to belong. It looks good on the publicity we put out for the holiday cottages. And you can get some useful information. On set-aside, how to create a pond or maintain woodland. You know the sort of thing.” Her tone was determinedly cheerful.

“And there was a FWAG meeting on the 10th?” Ramsay asked sceptic ally He couldn’t imagine Peter Richardson going along to a talk on the rise and fall of the corn bunting.

“Not a meeting,” she said. She gave another of her little giggles. “You’d not get Stan along to a meeting. No, it was the annual dinner. The college put on quite a good spread, didn’t they, pet? And there was a bar. It was just a good opportunity to meet old friends.”

“Were the three of you there all evening?”

“Of course,” she said. “It went on longer than I expected. It was gone midnight when we got home.”

“Which car did you go in?”

“Not the Fiesta,” she said quickly. “The Volvo.”

“You left the Fiesta parked outside the farmhouse?”

“Of course.”

“Was the car locked?” Ramsay asked.

She laughed. “I don’t expect so. We’re rather naughty about security out here, Inspector.”

“Did you notice if the car had been tampered with? If there was extra mileage on the clock?”

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“You wouldn’t have left the keys in the ignition?”

“Of course not, Inspector. I’m not a fool.”

“Did you keep a spare set in the house?”

“Yes,” she said. “On the hook over there.” A row of mugs hung on hooks from the dresser.

“And I don’t suppose you always bother locking your back door?” Ramsay said.

“No, Inspector. I’m afraid I don’t.”

“So someone could have stolen your car, and replaced it without your noticing?”

“What a ridiculous idea, Inspector! Why would anyone want to do that?”

They sat for a moment in the car, looking out over the moonlit valley. Hunter shivered. All that space made him uneasy.

“What was that about?” he demanded.

Ramsay spoke slowly. “The problem was always how he covered the distance,” he said. “How he got all the way to Otterbridge without transport. At least now we’ve got a possible explanation.”

“Who are you talking about, man?” Hunter said impatiently.

“Slater,” Ramsay said. “I think it was Slater.”

“So it was that bastard all the time.” Hunter was ecstatic. “Mind you, he couldn’t have nicked Mrs. Richardson’s car on the afternoon James was killed. It was broad daylight and there’d have been folks in and out of the house all the time.

It’d be too risky, that.”

“He didn’t need to steal a car then,” Ramsay said.

“What do you mean?”

“Think, man! Can’t you work it out?”

Hunter thought and only looked nonplussed.

“You took a phone call, didn’t you, on the afternoon of James’s death, from a drunken farmer who said he’d seen Ernie Bowles’s ghost in Mittingford. What exactly do you think he’d seen?”

“A bloody hallucination.”

“No,” Ramsay said. “Not a hallucination. Ernie Bowles’s Land-Rover. If he’d seen it from a distance he’d have recognized the vehicle there aren’t that many farmers let their cars get in that sort of state but not the driver.”

“And by then Slater had moved into the house at Laverock Farm and he’d found the Land-Rover keys!”

“Quite.”

“What about motive though, sir? I can see why he would have wanted Bowles out of the way, but not the McDougals. And what about his alibi?”