Almost immediately afterwards he was told that a Mr and Mrs Buchan were at the front desk. They wanted to report their daughter missing. Hunter saw the Buchans into a small interview room. It had no natural light. Hunter had been eating fish and chips and the smell of it clung to his clothes. The Buchans were embarrassed and apologetic. Of course, Imogen was a grown woman, they said. They realised she had her own life to lead. They would be the last people to question her right to independence. It was this business with Dorothea Cassidy that worried them. Dorothea had been so close to them, a great friend. It was only natural, wasn’t it, that they should be worried?
Hunter tried to contain his excitement. There was probably nothing sinister in Imogen’s disappearance. These were middle-class parents whose daughter had fancied a bit of life without telling them.
‘Has she got a boyfriend?’ he asked in his specially perfected bored voice, though he knew the answer already. The last thing he wanted was for them to panic.
‘Of course,’ Mrs Buchan said. ‘ I thought we’d explained. She’s going out with Patrick Cassidy. That’s why we’re so concerned.’
‘And she’s not with him now?’
‘Apparently not. He seems to have disappeared too.’
Surely that was significant, Hunter thought. Patrick Cassidy had lied about meeting his stepmother the afternoon before. Dorothea had rushed to Newcastle to speak to Imogen at work and had probably been seen with her at the fair during the evening. Now the pair of them had vanished. It was all down to him now, he thought. Ramsay had left him in charge while he went off to play social workers with Theresa Stringer on the Ridgeway Estate. He had the opportunity of reaching a conclusion to this case on his own.
Mrs Buchan was still talking. ‘She seems to have been under such a strain lately,’ she said. ‘ It’s not easy, of course, working with the terminally ill and she has such dedication…’
‘When was she last seen?’ Hunter asked.
‘She finished her shift at two o’clock,’ Mrs Buchan said. Her husband seemed lost in thoughts of his own and content to let her do all the talking. ‘She came straight back to Otterbridge and went to the vicarage to see if Patrick was there. He wasn’t. She must have come home then, because her car’s parked outside. I expected her to be there when we came in from work but there was no sign of her. I wasn’t worried at first, of course. I thought she’d gone into town to do some shopping. Otterbridge is such fun during festival time, isn’t it? But now the shops have been closed for hours. She hasn’t many friends, you know, besides Patrick, and I can’t think where she might be.’
‘Perhaps she’s at the fair,’ he said. ‘ Does she enjoy going?’
They were non-committal, as if they had no real idea what she did enjoy.
‘Did she go out yesterday evening?’
She went out with Patrick, they said. She hadn’t told them where they were going.
‘What time did she come back?’
Mrs Buchan shrugged. ‘ I don’t know. We were back rather late ourselves. It was the festival ball.’ She paused and looked at him as if he were one of her remedial fourth formers. ‘She didn’t disappear last night, you know. I saw her at home this morning, before she went to work.’
He was apologetic, understanding. He realised that, he said. It was a question of finding a pattern, of working out where she might be. There was probably nothing to worry about. The carnival seemed to have gone to everyone’s head. She would be out, watching the procession with the rest of the town. He would circulate the photo they had brought, make a few inquiries. They were to leave it all in his hands.
The Buchans left the police station reassured, charmed by him.
Chapter Seventeen
It took Ramsay longer than he had expected to get to the Ridgeway. His drive across town coincided with the start of the parade and none of the roads he tried was clear. Front Street was closed to traffic, cordoned off with plastic bunting which reminded him of the tape they had used to mark the area where Dorothea’s body had been found. As he sat in a queue of cars he heard the rhythmic crash of the brass band which always led the procession. It conflicted with the fairground music and the amplified noise from some of the floats. He could see nothing from the car but he could picture the event. As a child he had always been brought to Otterbridge for the carnival and nothing had changed very much. Behind the band would be a group of miners, carrying the banner of a pit which had closed years before but which was still given pride of place. His father had worked down the pits but had refused to take part in the parade.
‘Look at them,’ he would say. ‘Dressed up like a cartload of monkeys. So much for the dignity of the working man.’
There would be children in fancy dress, and the sword-dance team, and the lorries carrying floats, elaborate tableaux celebrating local charities and businesses. As a child the floats had fascinated him. What it must be like, he had thought, to ride up there above the crowd, waving! But when, one year, Annie had arranged for him to dress up and be on the church float with her he had refused, horrified at the suggestion. The line of traffic started to move slowly and he drove on.
He had never seen the town so busy. Perhaps the heat of the evening made it impossible for people to stay indoors. They jostled in a stream along the pavement, spilling occasionally into the street so Ramsay was forced to stop again.
There were family parties, the children made nervous and fretful by the crowd, groups of teenage boys, high-spirited and loud, clutching cans of lager, and groups of young women, giggling in fancy dress. The pubs were all full and customers were forced on to the pavements with their drinks. It was an explosive mix, Ramsay thought: the hot evening, the alcohol, the gangs of young men all set on showing off. He was glad he did not have the responsibility of policing it. As he was forced to stop again to allow a pack of cub scouts to cross the road in an orderly crocodile, he thought he saw Joss Corkhill coming out of an off licence with a bottle in his hand, but when the traffic moved again he had disappeared.
At last he was clear of the town and he drove quickly along the by-pass towards the Ridgeway, knowing that he was a fool to hurry because Hilary Masters would have given up waiting by now. But when he got to Hardy Street her car was still there, parked outside the house, and through the window he could see the two women sitting together on the sofa. Hilary Masters was turned towards him and when she saw him she smiled. It was a smile of welcome and relief, and suddenly he was a young man again, plucking up the courage to ask a girl to go out with him, thinking: Perhaps with this one I’ve a chance of pulling it off. Perhaps this one fancies me. Hilary Masters stood up and came into the hall to open the door to him.
‘I’m sorry I’m so late,’ he said. ‘I hope I haven’t caused you any inconvenience.’
He could hear the words as they were spoken, as distant and formal as Hilary had been on their first meeting. He wished he could start again.
‘That’s all right,’ she said. She smiled again and looked very tired. ‘Really. I would have waited anyway. I don’t think Theresa’s in any state to be left alone. The doctor gave her something to calm her but it seems just to have made her confused. I’m not sure you’ll get any sense out of her tonight.’ She stood close to him and spoke softly, looking through the door towards Theresa.
‘Did she tell you anything?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Not very much. Clive left the house before we did this afternoon. She didn’t see him again. She thought he was going to work.’ She paused. ‘Where’s Joss? Theresa will want to know. She’s been asking for him.’
‘We let him go,’ he said. ‘He couldn’t have killed Clive and I don’t think he met Dorothea yesterday afternoon.’