‘No,’ he said. ‘But my bedroom’s at the back of the house. I wouldn’t have heard anything going on in the street.’
‘Do any of your neighbours keep late hours, work shifts? It would be very helpful to find someone who saw the car arrive.’
Tanner shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. Armstrong House is next door. I suppose most of the residents there would go to bed rather early but the warden might have been awake. I don’t have a lot of contact with the rest of the street.’
Ramsay stood up then and held out his hand to Tanner. The old man took it uncertainly. If there had just been the two of them, he thought, just he and the inspector, it might have been easier to explain. But the presence of the sergeant, so young and fit, so uncompromising, so like Dorothea in many ways, made it impossible. He walked with the policemen to the front door and saw them out of the house, then returned to the living room to watch them, peering like a prying old woman round the grey net curtains.
Ramsay stood on the drive and looked down the street. Tanner’s garden was enclosed by a privet hedge but the car must still be visible from one of the upstairs windows of Armstrong House. Perhaps some elderly insomniac had seen it driven there. The old people’s flats were new, brick-built and stood on a corner between the narrow street where Tanner lived and a much busier road. Previously the site had housed an old nursing home, which had closed down suddenly with the death of the owner and been allowed to become derelict before it was bought by the charitable organisation. Then it was demolished completely and the flats were built.
It seemed strange to Ramsay that Dorothea’s car had been found so close to the place where she had missed an appointment. Had she made it to Armstrong House after all? But that made Aunt Annie and her friends suspects in a murder inquiry and what possible motive could they have?
Hunter was directing his attention to the car, taking care not to touch anything. He took special interest in the back which, because it was an estate, was exposed to view.
‘There’s a rug there,’ he said. ‘Do we know if that was here, in the car already?’
Ramsay shrugged.
‘The keys are still in the ignition,’ Hunter said. He wanted to bring the inspector back to the concrete detail of the investigation. Nowadays crimes were solved by scientists, not by detectives asking endless questions and staring up at the sky. ‘No sign of the diary or the handbag but they might be in the dash.’
But still Ramsay looked down the street vaguely as if somewhere behind the mock-Tudor gables and stained-glass porches he would find inspiration.
‘How far is it to Prior’s Park from here?’ he asked suddenly.
Hunter looked up from the car. ‘The little entrance is just at the end of the street,’ he said. ‘It’s only a couple of minutes’ walk away.’
‘Why here?’ Ramsay demanded. ‘Why leave her car here? In the drive of someone who was known to her? Does that mean the murderer knew them both?’
That too, he thought, must be more than coincidence.
‘Do you think the old boy had anything to do with it?’ Hunter asked. The policeman turned towards the house and caught Tanner’s eye as he was looking out at them. Shamefacedly he let the net curtains drop and moved away from the window.
‘No,’ Ramsay said. ‘ Probably not. If he’d murdered Dorothea Cassidy the last thing he’d do would be to bring her car here.’
He felt suddenly that the solution to the case lay with Dorothea Cassidy herself. This wasn’t a random attack on a pretty young woman in a park. It was more complicated, more purposeful than that. He felt that in the discussion with Walter Tanner he had lost the clear image of the woman he had seen in the photographs. Tanner had disliked her and been frightened by her enthusiasm. Through his eyes the picture of Dorothea Cassidy had been distorted. In the vicarage Ramsay had felt that he had known her and he wanted to recapture that intimacy. Unconsciously he echoed the reactions of the boy who had found the body: What’s wrong with me, he thought, that I’m attracted to a dead woman?
‘Stay here,’ he said quietly to Hunter. ‘Wait until they come for the car then organise a door-to-door of the street. I’m going to Armstrong House. They’re a nebby lot. They might have seen something.’
Annie Ramsay lived in Armstrong House and Annie Ramsay had known Dorothea well.
Chapter Five
Clive Stringer carried the big television from the common room at Armstrong House to the repair van outside. The van’s driver watched the feat of strength with amazement. He was standing on the pavement.
‘Eh,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t shift it. You’re a strong lad.’ He was a kind man and sensed that Clive Stringer received few compliments. The boy stared at him with distrust, his mouth open as if he had never got the hang of breathing through his nose. They were standing at the main entrance to the flats by the busy road and there was a lot of traffic noise.
‘What are you doing working here, then?’ the driver asked. It was more pleasant outside than in his stuffy workshop and the boy’s unnatural strength fascinated him. ‘Odd-job man, is it?’
‘I was sent here,’ Clive Stringer said. ‘Community service for stealing cars.’
His voice was jerky and excitable and the driver felt a shudder of revulsion. He’s one of those, he thought. Mental. His lift doesn’t go all the way to the top. The boy came closer to him and reached out to touch his arm. Still smiling and nodding, the man quickly climbed into his van. He drove away without saying anything more and Clive was left standing awkwardly in front of the flats, stammering, as if he had something important to say if only the man had waited long enough to listen.
Clive walked furtively around the flats towards the back entrance. From there he could see Dorothea Cassidy’s car and he stood, staring at it, waiting for something to happen. When Walter Tanner emerged on the doorstep, calling out for Dorothea, he felt a desire to giggle but he controlled himself. He thought that anyway there wasn’t much to laugh about.
Clive knew he was in trouble. For as long as he could remember he had been in the sort of trouble that came from not understanding what was expected of him, from being different and awkward. It had been a vague unease, an awareness of unsuspected perils, that he had learned to cope with. But this was different. He knew quite definitely that he had done something wrong and that there was not one person he could talk to who had the power to put it right.
I’ll have to tell someone, he thought, as he moved guiltily from the pavement into the cool of the building, but there was no one to confide in. His mother would not know what to do. He had tried relying on her and she had always let him down. Besides, now she could think of nothing else but the baby. Joss, his mother’s boyfriend, was friendly enough when he was sober, but Clive never knew what to make of him, knew only that he could not be trusted. Those in authority over him – his probation officer, his social worker, the warden of Armstrong House – all had the power to put him in prison. They had made that quite clear on a number of occasions. This is your last chance, lad, they had said. Screw this up and you’ll be away. For a long time. They had frightened him with their descriptions of the youth custody establishment and he knew they were all on the same side as the police. There had been times of crisis before, but then he had turned to Dorothea Cassidy, seeking her out in the vicarage, lurking in the street until she came out. Now he knew that was impossible and Dorothea Cassidy would never help him again.
Emily Bowman sat by the window of her flat and looked out with irritation at Clive Stringer. What was the boy doing, loitering on the pavement with that vacant look on his face? Really, they paid enough rent for the flats in Armstrong House to be entitled to staff with at least a modicum of intelligence. She sat back on the chair and felt the sting of burned skin on her shoulder as it touched the cushion. Her irritation was the result of her tiredness and the late arrival of the ambulance. Clive Stringer had his uses and he had always been an easy target for her annoyance.