Then he left, because what motive could an old lady who was dying of cancer have for murder?
Clive Stringer was in the garden picking up litter that had blown there from the street when the policeman arrived at the flats. He was in plain clothes but Clive’s experience of the police went back to early childhood. There was something about the way they stood, their confidence, the way they looked about them that gave them away. He continued to pick up the litter, moving with slow, stooped movements over the grass, filling the black plastic sack which he carried in one hand. He was wearing gloves. The warden always insisted that he should wear gloves when he was working with the rubbish. She was afraid that he would catch germs. Yet every time he put a scrap of paper or a can into the sack he glanced sideways, so he saw the tall policeman walk away from Dorothea’s car and into the front door of Armstrong House.
That’s it, he thought. They know. It didn’t occur to him that there was no way they could know. He continued to work but when the old man from next door came out of his house he dropped the plastic sack and put the gloves in his pocket.
Distracted for a moment from his worry, he grinned maliciously and followed Walter Tanner up the street.
In the small house Walter Tanner had felt trapped. There were things he needed to do but he felt he could not leave while Hunter and the police constable stood outside on the pavement. They might ask where he was going. He began to devise some fictitious explanation but felt suddenly ashamed that he could have considered such deceit. He hadn’t sunk, he hoped, to lying. It was unnecessary. He went to the kitchen and began to wash up his breakfast dishes. Usually he left the plates on the draining board but today, because he wanted to delay for as long as possible a decision about going out, he dried them on a threadbare tea towel and put them away. By the time he had hung the tea towel to dry on the oven door and returned to the living room the car had disappeared from the drive and Hunter and the constable were on the other side of the road, knocking on doors, talking to neighbours. Even if they saw him leave the house, Tanner thought, there was nothing they could do to stop him. He had not, after all, been placed under some sort of house arrest. This anxiety was ridiculous.
But he waited until Hunter was right at the end of the street before leaving the house. Hunter was the one who frightened him. He would not listen to excuses or explanations. There would be no shades of grey with Hunter. Out in the street Tanner felt very exposed. He hurried, making his short legs walk very fast. He turned once and saw the half-wit from Armstrong House lurching up the street behind him.
What’s the matter with the boy? he thought. Why is he persecuting me like this?
He walked faster until he was almost running but it did no good. When he caught the bus towards the Ridgeway Estate Clive Stringer was right behind him and sat in the seat across the aisle from him, grinning all the time.
Chapter Six
The social services office for north Otterbridge was only a street away from Armstrong House and it backed on to the park. Ramsay wondered whether the geographical closeness had any significance but came to no conclusion. The street was wider than where Walter Tanner lived and the houses were larger. There were smooth green lawns and trees to ensure privacy. The only indication that the social services were housed in the building was a discreet sign by the gate and a car park at the end of the drive. Next door there was an exclusive private nursery and as Ramsay left his car he heard the fluting sound of a Joyce Grenfell nursery nurse calling to her charges. He wondered what the social workers’ clients who lived on the Ridgeway Estate thought of it all. It would be like walking into another world.
The senior social worker who had worked most closely with Dorothea Cassidy was called Hilary Masters. Ramsay had never met her, though Hunter had come across her when he was investigating a series of school arsons, and for a while she had been the subject of his canteen gossip. He had nicknamed her the Snow Queen.
‘Talk about icy,’ he had said. ‘Man, she’d freeze your balls off.’ He had spoken with regret. ‘She’s a beauty, mind.’
‘Perhaps,’ Ramsay had said tartly, ‘she’s just discriminating.’
‘Aye well. Perhaps you’re right. She might go for your type. But I like my women to have a bit of life in them all the same. There’s something weird about that one.’
Because of that exchange Ramsay felt Hilary Masters was worthy of admiration – he had never trusted Hunter’s judgement – and as he waited in the reception room he was nervous, and at the same time prepared to be disappointed.
He was shown into a large, airy office and saw a tall woman in her thirties. She was single, obviously independent and Ramsay thought she would be ambitious. She was dressed in a cotton skirt and blouse in swirling pastel colours which did not suit her. Her legs were very long and her feet rather big. Yet she was, as Hunter had said, a beauty. Her face was startling – oval, flawless and perfectly symmetrical. She sat behind her desk and stared at him with calm grey eyes.
The police station had been in touch with her and she was expecting him.
‘Inspector Ramsay,’ she said. ‘How can I help you?’
He felt ill at ease with her. Partly it was her perfect face and her air of competence, but he felt too that she was magically perceptive. She seemed to know his weakness just by looking at him. But he was not disappointed by her.
‘I’m investigating the murder of Dorothea Cassidy,’ he said. ‘I understand that she was here for a case conference yesterday.’
She paused, as though wondering if it were against her principles even to tell him that.
‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘She was here yesterday.’
‘Can you tell me what the conference was about?’
She frowned. ‘Is it relevant to your investigation?’
‘It might be. We’re trying to trace Mrs Cassidy’s movements yesterday. She was seen at lunchtime on the Ridgeway Estate. Perhaps you could tell me who she had gone to visit there.’
Hilary Masters sat quite still.
‘A woman called Stringer,’ she said. ‘Theresa Stringer.’
‘Was she the subject of the case conference?’
‘No,’ she said reluctantly. ‘It was her daughter, Beverley. We had to decide whether or not she should be taken into care.’
‘What decision did you come to?’
‘We decided that we would go for a place-of-safety order.’
‘What does that mean?’
She looked at him as if offended by his ignorance. ‘It means that we thought she would be at risk if she were left at home.’
He wondered if the measured, uninformative answers were designed to provoke him to anger. Why was she so politely hostile? Did she dislike him personally or simply distrust all men in authority? He recognised her prickly defensiveness as part of himself.
‘What sort of risk was she in?’ he asked evenly. ‘Neglect, sexual abuse, physical abuse?’
‘It was a complicated situation,’ she said. ‘We were worried about the influence of her mother’s boyfriend. His name’s Corkhill. Joss Corkhill.’
Her apparent inability to give a direct answer frustrated him but he kept his patience.
‘Perhaps you could tell me all about the case,’ he said carefully, ‘and about how Dorothea Cassidy came to be involved. I realise that you have ethics to consider, but you can understand how important it is.’
She paused and shrugged.
‘We’ve been involved with the Stringer family for a long time,’ she said. ‘Theresa was a difficult child, not very bright, rather disturbed. She went to a number of special schools. Her parents were elderly. They did their best for her but when she left school they couldn’t cope and threw her out. She worked for a while as a chambermaid in a hotel in the Midlands, then turned up here again, homeless and pregnant.’