Ramsay 04 - Killjoy Read online

  In the cafeteria Anna Bennett pretended not to notice that John had left without buying her a drink, without saying goodbye. The place was busy so she could chat to her friends and ignore her mother’s glances of anxious sympathy.

  ‘Gabby wasn’t here tonight,’ Prue said to Ellen as she collected her coffee.

  Ellen looked up, said nothing.

  ‘She told me she’d be here,’ Prue said, trying to contain her impatience. ‘You don’t know where she might be?’

  Ellen shook her head then seemed to realize that some contribution was expected.

  ‘Perhaps she’s poorly,’ she said.

  ‘She didn’t say anything this morning,’ Prue said. ‘ But perhaps that’s it. Perhaps she didn’t feel well at school and went straight home.’

  ‘You don’t want to worry about that one. She can look after herself,’ Ellen said unhelpfully. She began to serve the next customer and added as an afterthought: ‘No need to fuss.’

  ‘All the same,’ Prue said, ‘ I think we’d better go home and check.’ She imagined Gabby in the house at Otterbridge, alone, seriously ill. She drank her coffee quickly and called to Anna who was standing at the edge of a group of girls, smiling too brightly, pretending too hard to be interested in what they were saying. With a relief that was only obvious to Prue, Anna gathered up her coat and bag and followed her mother into the lobby.

  At an impressive wooden desk sat a short, thick set, bald man, reading the Sun. This was Joe Fenwick, retired boxer, porter and security man. He looked up from the paper and smiled.

  ‘All right, Miss Bennett?’ he said. ‘Finished for the night, then, pet?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Prue, then, contradicting herself, ‘no, I’d forgotten. I must see Gus before I go.’ She turned to her daughter apologetically. ‘He’s worked out a final draft for the programme and I want to check it before it’s printed. I’ll take it home with me.’

  ‘Go on then!’ said Anna, long suffering, tolerant of her mother’s middle-aged absentmindedness. ‘I’ll wait for you here.’

  Prue ran up the stairs and paused outside Gus’s office door to catch her breath, then knocked and went straight in. She saw first that Gus had a visitor then that she had interrupted some silent confrontation. Gus was sitting behind his desk facing a middle-aged woman who sat squarely in a leather chair inherited with the house. The woman was well dressed, confident, classy. Prue recognized her as Amelia Wood, Deputy Chair of the Grace Darling trustees. Prue composed herself. Mrs Wood was an intruding presence and she wondered briefly what trouble the old bat was causing now. She smiled.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Gus,’ she said lightly. ‘I’m here for the programme. I was hoping to work on it at home, this evening.’

  He jumped to his feet, all tension and nervous energy. He was rattled, Prue thought. Mrs Wood sat with her gloved hands clasped in her lap and smiled.

  ‘Yeah,’ Gus said. ‘Right. Of course. Look, the draft’s still in my car. In a file in the boot. Why don’t you help yourself?’ He took keys from the pocket of a jacket which was hanging on a coatstand by the window, and tossed them to her. ‘Leave them with Joe at reception,’ he said. ‘Save you coming all the way up the stairs again.’

  Mrs Wood watched his agitation with amusement. She stood up, offered one of her hands to Prue and said: ‘Miss Bennett! How nice to meet you again.’

  Resisting the urge to curtsy Prue left the room and returned to Anna.

  When they walked into the car park the Christ Church clock was striking 9.30. Usually the place was brightly lit with security floodlights but they had been smashed by vandals the weekend before and still not replaced. After the warmth and light of the house the car park was chill and uninviting. The only light came from the orange street lamps beyond the trees and from the uncurtained windows of the cafeteria. From the mouth of the river came the distant, muffled sound of a foghorn and the smell of mud. The car park was almost empty. The teachers and solicitors who came to the Grace Darling Centre to sing and write enjoyed its facilities but were nervous about its location. One heard such dreadful stories. At the end of each meeting they were relieved to find their cars still there intact, and drove back with relief to the civilization of Tynemouth and Martin’s Dene.

  Gus had his own space in the car park. He had insisted that Joe Fenwick should paint DIRECTOR in big white letters on the concrete. The blue Volvo was parked at an angle between the parallel white lines as if he had arrived in a hurry. Prue fitted a key into the lock of the door. As she lifted it a bulb inside lit automatically, and she had no difficulty in seeing the contents. There, on top of the file containing the programme for The Adventures of Abigail Keene, lay Gabby Paston, curled on her side like a child at sleep. But her eyes were open and bulging. Gabriella Paston was dead.

  Chapter Two

  Inspector Ramsay was loaned to the North Tyneside division of Northumbria Police to work on the Gabriella Paston murder because it was desperately under-staffed. The area had seen an epidemic of what was known in the anodyne jargon of the sociologist as auto-related crime. Young people had always stolen cars and driven them dangerously. The offence was so common in the North Tyneside courts that it was hardly taken seriously. But recently the thefts had become more organized. There was a suspicion that they were being co-ordinated by more sophisticated criminals. The situation was complicated too by gangs of ram raiders who drove high-performance cars through shop windows to steal the expensive goods inside, and by the circus-like exhibition of the racing of stolen cars around the district’s council estates in the middle of the night.

  Nightly street disturbances followed the police’s attempts to control these demonstrations of male bravado and there were tragedies: the death of a seven-year-old child as a stolen car chased by the police swung out of control at a school crossing, and the stabbing of an eighty-year-old man who was rumoured to have given information to the police. In the quiet period before Christmas there was little other domestic news and the broadcasters and newspaper reporters gathered in the area in their hundreds, inflaming the locals’ bitterness with their cameras and their questions. There was talk of riot and constant criticism of the policing of the area; the Northumbria Police sweated it out defensively, waiting for the situation to calm of its own accord.

  The murder of a teenage girl, which in other circumstances might have been seen as a welcome break from routine, an excitement to see them through until Christmas, was only an added complication, a distraction from the important issues. Ramsay was welcome to it. Besides, they soon found that the girl had lived in Otterbridge, the Northumberland market town twenty miles away where Ramsay was based, and that was excuse enough to pass it on to him.

  Ramsay arrived at the Grace Darling car park at the same time as the pathologist, a man of ridiculously youthful appearance, consultant at one of the Newcastle teaching hospitals. He was a clean-shaven athletic Scot who spent his spare time climbing mountains and playing rugby.

  ‘What did you think of the game at Murrayfield on Saturday?’ he whispered with barely concealed delight as they walked together to the car, managing just to maintain an air of appropriate solemnity. He had Ramsay down as an ardent English fan, perhaps mistaking him for some other colleague met in similar circumstances and always made some comment on the latest Rugby International. Ramsay, who had no interest at all in sport, was never sure what to say.

  ‘She would have been a pretty young thing,’ the pathologist muttered appreciatively, peering into the boot of the car. Ramsay resisted the temptation to say that he could tell that, without a medical qualification. The pathologist straightened. ‘I can’t give you much,’ he said cheerfully, ‘until I examine her. It looks like asphyxiation. No scratch marks on the neck but I’d say she was strangled. And moved of course after death.’

  ‘Time of death?’ Ramsay asked, more in hope than in expectation.

  But the pathologist shook his head and refused to commit himself.

  One of the
attractions for Ramsay of taking responsibility for the Hallowgate murder was the chance to work with a new team. He thought he was getting stale. He hoped, perhaps to find a new enthusiasm for the job. In Otterbridge his sergeant was Gordon Hunter, brash, over confident, with the sensitivity of a cart horse. Ramsay thought that in Hallowgate he would find a more sympathetic colleague, someone less abrasive. There was Evan Powell, for example; he would find out if Evan was available to join him on the enquiry. They would work well together. He felt a jolt of disappointment then, when he saw Hunter sauntering across the car park towards him. The sergeant wore his usual uniform of designer trainers, jeans, and leather jacket and greeted colleagues from North Tyneside with easy frivolity, using nicknames, making jokes.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Ramsay demanded, then regretted his abruptness. Hunter was a good policeman in his way. There was no point in putting his back up. But Hunter was too insensitive to take offence.

  ‘Knew you couldn’t manage without me,’ he said. ‘Besides, it’s as quiet as the grave in Otterbridge. All our bad lads are on this patch joining in the fun.’

  Ramsay thought that riot and ram raiding and the death of a child was hardly his idea of fun but he did not want to provoke an argument, especially here in front of strangers. He knew he already had a reputation for being pompous and humourless.

  Hunter sensed nothing of Ramsay’s disapproval. ‘Think of the overtime,’ he said. ‘It’ll come in handy just before Christmas. And it doesn’t hurt to volunteer for something occasionally. Makes them think you’re keen.’ He turned to one of the local uniformed officers who had been first on the scene. ‘What’s the score, then? Do we know who she is?’

  ‘Her name’s Gabriella Paston,’ the young man said warily. He was new to the force and unsure of Hunter’s authority. ‘She’s a member of the Youth Theatre but she didn’t turn up for the rehearsal tonight.’

  ‘What is this place?’ Hunter asked of no one in particular. He looked with distaste at the building with its Gothic turrets, at the gloomy garden and dripping trees. This time Ramsay answered.

  ‘It’s the Grace Darling Arts Centre,’ he said. Diana, his ex-wife, had brought him to the Grace Darling when she was trying to educate him, to see experimental theatre groups and exhibitions by obscure local artists. He had no positive memories of these experiences but remembered what Diana had told him about the place. ‘It was a big private house. The old lady who lived here left it in her will to the community to be used as a centre for encouraging the arts. She came from Bamburgh originally and stipulated the name. Eventually the trustees bought up the house next door and extended it.’ He stopped, knowing that Hunter hated to be lectured and saw that his attention was already wandering. He was staring at the body.

  ‘I think I may have seen her around,’ Hunter said. ‘In Otterbridge. In that new night club on the market square. She was a cracker. You couldn’t help noticing her.’ He paused and Ramsay thought he might express some grief, a reflection on the waste of a young life, but he continued cheerfully, ‘I offered to buy her a drink once but it didn’t do me any good. She could have had any bloke in the place.’ He swung round and faced the uniformed constable. ‘Who found the body, then?’

  ‘A mother and daughter,’ the man said. ‘But it’s not their car. Apparently the owner gave them his keys to fetch something from the boot.’

  ‘Where is the owner of the car now?’ Ramsay asked.

  ‘In the Centre with the other witnesses. We’ve got the names and addresses of the people who were here when we arrived but we’ve let most of them go home. There weren’t that many—mostly kids from the Youth Theatre hanging around the cafeteria. Apparently it was very busy earlier on but most people went at about nine. The only people left now are some security and domestic staff, Gus Lynch the director, who owns the car, and the two women who found the body.’

  ‘We’ll need an appeal on local radio tomorrow morning asking everyone who used the Centre today to come forward,’ Ramsay said, thinking out loud. ‘Then we’ll need more men to take statements.’

  ‘You won’t be popular,’ Hunter said, grinning, thinking again about overtime. ‘I hear they’ve already exceeded their budget.’

  Ramsay turned away and muttered under his breath. This would be hard enough—working on an unfamiliar patch—without the political pressure of keeping costs down. Perhaps over-work wasn’t the only reason why his North Tyneside colleagues had handed the case to an outsider. He shivered, feeling suddenly very cold. The mist was thinning again and above the grey slate roof of the Grace Darling appeared a small sharp-edged moon. In the distance they heard the wailing siren of a police car or fire engine, the sign, perhaps, of more disturbance.

  ‘Come on,’ Ramsay said. ‘Let’s go in and see what they’ve got to say for themselves.’ Then, with an optimism he did not feel, ‘This might be a straightforward one. Perhaps we’ll have it all wrapped up by morning.’

  The sound of the siren came closer.

  In the lobby of the centre many of the original features of the old house remained. There was wood panelling, a huge portrait of a stern Victorian, a chintz-covered sofa. How did they survive, Ramsay wondered, these remnants of gracious living, without being stolen or vandalized?

  Joe Fenwick recognized the men as police as soon as they came in. Until he was fifty he had worked as a bouncer for one of the roughest clubs in Newcastle. He was a squat tub of a man, known to his opponents in the ring as Popeye, because of his protruding head and his ability to find sudden bursts of strength from nowhere. He had retired from boxing thirty years ago and still missed the excitement. The work at the Grace Darling was steady, without the aggravation of the club, but he found himself perpetually bored. The murder had lifted his spirits considerably. He set aside his newspaper and waited for Ramsay to approach him.

  ‘You heard what happened outside tonight?’ Ramsay said.

  Fenwick nodded.

  ‘Is this the only entrance?’

  ‘Aye, that’s right. The trustees decided it’d be more secure that way.’

  ‘Do visitors have to check in?’

  ‘No,’ Fenwick said. ‘ It wouldn’t be practical the number that use the place. But there’s always someone on duty here, day and night. It costs them a packet but they reckon it’s worth it. I’ve been here since ten this morning.’

  ‘Do you ever get any trouble?’ Ramsay asked.

  ‘Nothing we can’t handle,’ the porter said. ‘ It gets a bit rowdy sometimes, especially if they have a rock group in, but not nasty. You know what I mean?’

  Ramsay nodded.

  ‘They got a consultant in to make it vandal-proof—wire-mesh shutters on the windows, everything with locks on. It’s not foolproof—some bugger smashed the security lights last week—but I’ve never had any real bother. I’ve been here since the place opened.’

  ‘So you know most of the regulars, at least by sight?’

  ‘I suppose so, but there’s often something different going on—one-off shows or concerts, that bring in their own audience. I can’t keep track of everyone then.’

  ‘No,’ Ramsay said. ‘ Of course not. Was anything unusual happening tonight?’

  Fenwick shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was just a normal Monday night—the Youth Theatre rehearsing in the New Theatre, the Choral Society in the music room, and the Writers’ Circle in the small lounge.’

  ‘And all the activities started at the same time?’

  ‘Aye. They all run from seven until nine. It doesn’t always work out like that. The groups fix their own times.’

  ‘Did you know Gabriella Paston?’ Ramsay asked gently.

  ‘Oh, we all knew our Gabby!’ Fenwick exclaimed. ‘Such a bonny lass. It brightened my day to see her.’

  ‘Did you see her today?’

  ‘No,’ Fenwick said. ‘And I missed her.’

  Ramsay paused and Hunter, impatient as always, hoped that he had finished with the old man. But Ram
say continued: ‘You can’t see the car park from here. Do you do any security checks out there?’

  ‘No! The trustees are worried about the building, not the punters’ cars.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t have noticed if Mr Lynch’s car was there all day?’

  ‘No,’ Fenwick said sadly. He would have liked to have helped them.

  ‘We’d like to talk to Mr Lynch,’ Ramsay said. ‘ Where can we find him?’

  ‘Upstairs in his office.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ramsay said. ‘You’ve been a great help.’ He walked up the curving wooden staircase with Hunter at his heels.

  Gus Lynch was drinking whisky from a large tumbler. His face was grey and the hand that held the glass was shaking. When they knocked at his door he was speaking, caught in mid-sentence, and when they went in his mouth was open, gaping and ridiculous. Ramsay introduced himself. Lynch half stood to greet them and finally shut his mouth.

  ‘I was just explaining to the policeman,’ Lynch said, nodding towards the constable who sat nervously in the corner clutching a notebook on his knee, ‘that I didn’t know anything about it. How could I? I would hardly have given my keys to anyone else if I were intending to dispose of a body.’ He looked around desperately. ‘Now would I?’

  Ramsay ignored the question.

  ‘How long has your car been parked there, sir?’ he asked. The calm question seemed to reassure Lynch. He set the tumbler on the desk and made a visible effort to control his panic.

  ‘Since ten o’clock this morning,’ Lynch answered. ‘I don’t work office hours, Inspector. Most of my active work is done in the evening.’